Chapter 32 continued
-Promise
-To Tell All
They walked into the smell of fresh ice cream and candy.
“You call this breakfast?” Tammy asked skeptically.
“You call IHOP breakfast?” I bantered back.
“We all have our things, don’t we?”
Jamie smiled, “I guess we do.”
“Hi there, welcome to Coldstone!” A girl said cheerily from behind the
counter. She had long blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail and a visor
over it.
“Would you like to test any flavors for free?”
“No thanks,” Tammy said to her, “I’m feeling adventurous here today.”
Tammy walked up to the glass where all the flavors were displayed.
“Hey, Jamie, come here,” she called out excitedly, almost childlike.
“Yeah?” Jamie said as she reached the glass.
“They have pancake batter!”
Jamie laughed, once again realizing how Tammy still seemed like a
teenager in some ways.
“I’ll have a small pancake batter,” she said to the blond girl, “with…
blueberries mixed in.”
The girl, whose crooked nametag revealed her as Sydney, went to work,
scooping and mixing exotic ice cream concoxtions.
“Leave it to you to find IHOP in Coldstone,” Jamie said with a sigh.
“It was your idea, remember?”
“Yeah,” Jamie said, “Hey, Tammy, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah sure,” Tammy was observing the cakes.
“What made you decide to be a layer?”
Tammy looked at Jamie, there was a hint of fear in her eyes.
“Order, and then we can swap stories,” she said.
Sydney turned to Jamie next, “and for you?”
“Vanilla with Oreo’s,” Jamie answered.
“You’re really boring,” Tammy said as Sydney got to work.
“Depends on my mood.”
“And what is that?”
“Curious,” Jamie said. Sydney finished the order and handed the ice cream
to them.
Tammy led them to a small round table near the back of the store where
she was sure nobody would be able to hear them.
“What are you curious about?” She asked, digging a white plastic spoon
into her ice cream.
“You said ‘swap stories’, it made me realize that I really don’t know much
about your past,” Jamie said, “it makes me wonder.”
“A lot of people don’t know about my past. I like it that way.”
“So why would you tell me?”
“Because, it’s something you need to know,” Tammy ate her first bit of
pancake ice cream, letting a satisfied look glaze over her eyes.
“And that,” said Jamie, “is what I’m curious about.”
“Like I said, tell me your story, and I’ll tell you mine.”
Jamie took her first spoonful of ice cream before starting, “where did we
leave off last time.”
“Richard’s razor,” Tammy answered.
“Oh yeah,” Jamie said, “it wasn’t long after that before you came along.
“I remember seeing you for the first time, thinking about how much you
were just like the others. I figured you would stay until my dad got fired
again, and then leave. That’s what everybody was like.
“Then I realized that there was something different about you. You cared.
And maybe, you even knew what he was doing. I didn’t realize that you
were different until you talked to me that one time, at the lake. When you
said you were going to leave. It was then I knew I could trust you.”
Tammy was looking down at her ice cream, pushing a spoon around in it to
mix it up even further.
Jamie looked down at the table before continuing.
“And then you left, and though I was happy, I knew the shit was about to
hit the fan.”
“What happened?” Tammy asked.
“The night you left…”
Jamie said it. Everything she thought she could keep from the world came
out of here. The whole time she told it her voice stayed strong, as if it had
happened to somebody else instead of her. And then Tammy did
something Jamie never expected.
She cried.
____________________________________
Chapter orders...
32
32cont.
32still
30.2
33
Chapter 32 (still)
-Promise
-To Tell All
-And all shall be told
