The Lie Read Online Free

might be one other student working with me who was also forced into work-study, but no, Mac’s Place cafeteria was staffed with nine people per shift. There was some overlap but not much, so with a total of probably about sixteen to twenty employees whose first language was Spanish, I was forced to brush up on mine in a hurry. The lunch shift manager, Raulio, was probably the worst English speaker in the whole bunch. His favorite phrase was, “Now find trays and make them new.” The “make them new” part didn’t really bother me, but I always thought “Now find trays” was funny because it implied that the trays were hidden instead of being on tables or in the tray return bins, both in plain sight.
    My job, by the way, was basically to wash the dishes during the lunch and dinner rushes and go get the tray stacks and return them to the front of the line where people first come in. The work itself wasn’t bad, I guess, but being the douchebag in a hairnet that every hot chick in McElvaney would point and laugh at was about as bad an experience as I could have hoped for in a job. But I had no real choice. It was either that or not go to school, so I did it.
    Anyway, even though I hadn’t run into her at all, Heather was pretty much all I thought about over those next few weeks. I would go from being pissed at myself for not trying anything when she was in my bed to the more gay emotion of being sad that I would probably never see her again. I think I thought about her so much because all the chicks in my classes were either fat ugly pigs or they were so nerdy that they couldn’t carry on a normal conversation. I remember telling Brett that and he said something like, “I’ve fucked a few nerds in my life and let me tell you this, they might seem unassuming, but in the sack they will peel your dick like a fucking carrot if you’re not careful.” I think I just laughed at him because I didn’t really even know what that meant—if it was a good thing or not, having your dick peeled like a carrot.
    The rest of my female interaction was at work, where I got acquainted with the only two coworkers who weren’t men—Isabel and Monica—both of whom were around fifty and strangely missing teeth close enough to the front to notice every time they talked.
    So, comparatively speaking, Heather was the single hottest chick I had interacted with the entire time I had been at school. Because of this, and because our next meeting happened by chance, I know I attached way too much meaning to it. Like most people, I think, I saw it as some kind of sign or predestined event—whatever you want to call it—even though I know all of that is a complete load of crap. I was in the laundry room at McElvaney getting my stuff out of the washing machine so I could put it in the dryer, but all the dryers were stopped, full of various assholes’ crap that no one would come down to get for hours, making it impossible for other people to dry their clothes. So I picked the dryer closest to my washing machine and started taking the clothes out of it, piling them up on top.
    I assumed the clothes belonged to a chick, based on the amount of thong underwear I was pulling out of the thing. And, as luck would have it, I, of course, was holding just such a pair of thong underwear, and imagining the ass it belonged to, when Heather walked in.
    She said, “Oh, hey, Kyle, right?”
    “Yeah.” I pretended to vaguely remember her name, “Heather, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah. Um…are you thinking about like stealing my underwear or…”
    I realized I was still holding the underwear and I further realized it was hers. This is how completely retarded I was for this girl. At that exact moment I actually thought to myself that this would be a hilarious story to tell people later when we were married. If I could go back, I think I might just drop my pants and shit in her laundry. Instead, I said, “Oh, sorry, I was just, I was, you know, taking the stuff