“You can’t prove that. Look at all those people from the steel mill with black lung.”

“You won’t get lung disease from waiting tables.”

“No, but I might get carpal tunnel from carrying the trays, and back problems, and …”

“And if I had another choice, I’d take it.”

I squeeze a spiral of bright orange icing onto a waiting cupcake, turning it to cover all the edges. Squeeze and turn. Squeeze and turn.

“It’s only for a little while,” Mom says. “Just until things get back on track. And look at the bright side—it’s a chance for you to finally learn some other aspects of the business. I was younger than you when I got my start, remember?”

Squeeze and turn. Squeeze and turn.

“Hudson, please?” she asks, softer than before. “I really need your help with this—at least on Sunday to Wednesday dinners. Right now the diner is the only thing paying Mrs. Ferris for the roof over our heads.”

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Pass the freakin’ butter.

“Speaking of paying Mrs. Ferris,” I say, “you know you owe me forty bucks, right?”

Mom stands, her shoulders slumped. I can almost feel the ache in her bones, radiating out through her skin. Her eyes are red and puffy, dark-circled as if she hasn’t slept in days. I know she just wants to kiss me good night and crawl between the cool sheets of her bed, but quickly, quietly, she digs two tens from her purse and hands them over. “I’ll get the rest for you tomorrow, okay?”

“Fine.” I stuff the money into my pocket and go back to icing the cupcakes.

“Can I … you want some help?” she asks.

Yes. I want some help getting out of this job, out of this apartment, out of this place. I want some help figuring out what to do with my life. I want some help believing that there’s more to it than unclogging toilets and inventorying milk and sorting money from a drawer that’s always just short of enough.

I hand her the box of animal crackers. “I need all the lions, tigers, and bears in separate piles. Um, please.”

She dumps the box into a bowl and picks through the crackers, snacking on the ones with missing limbs. While we work, she hums an old Bob Dylan tune, and the melody reminds me of this time we got stranded in the diner during a blizzard, us and Bug, and Dad couldn’t get to us because there was a citywide driving ban. We were there for two days, and without its usual crowds and smells, the place took on a kind of magic. We had all the food we needed and slept sideways in the big booths with the heat cranked up. On the second morning, the wind settled down and Mom took us outside to make a snowman in the parking lot. It had a carrot nose and cut potatoes for eyes and a Hurley’s apron tied around the middle. Later, when our noses froze and our fingers ached, Mom made us hot chocolate with scoops of vanilla ice cream and sang that Dylan song as Bug and I drank out of the pink-and-white diner mugs and took turns twirling around the floor, collapsing when we got too dizzy.

… without your love, I’d be nowhere at all. I’d be lost if not for you …

The plows came that night, digging us out so we could finally drive home. I remember watching them mow into our snowman, his raw potato eyes browning in the open air. I wished we could stay snowed in for one more night, but school was set to reopen the following morning and so would Hurley’s, and besides, my father was probably worried.

It was the last blizzard he ever saw.

I look up and catch my mother watching me over the counter, animal crackers separated on a plate before her, and my heart cracks right down the middle. The left half knows that look on her face from the months following their divorce—her anxiety and worry. All that desperation. The quiet regret, wishing she could have done better for us, wishing the one who really owed us the big fat apology was still around to say it.

But the right side of my heart looks at the lines in her face and sees the map of my future. Today I take the waitress gig. Next I’ll be managing the schedule. Then in a few years or a decade or maybe even two, I’ll inherit the restaurant. Cement my crowning achievement as Beth Avery’s daughter, the proud-but-struggling new owner and sometimes-cupcake-baker of a forgettable old diner off the I-190, a pair of scuffed-up ice skates dangling from a hook in the staff closet, a bittersweet memento of another life.

I used to believe that figure skating was my way out, my first-class, one-way ticket to all the good things in the world. “Mom and I didn’t have the talent and opportunities you have, kiddo,” Dad told me more than once. “If you stay focused, you can skate your way to the top. You can be the queen of everything. You just have to want it bad enough.”

For a long time after he left, I didn’t want it. And now that I’m finally ready to want something again, it’s too late. I’m afraid to skate in front of people. I’m giving up the last of my free time to work at my mother’s diner. Queen of everything? Please. Every one of my chances is gone, and here I remain, stuck outside of Buffalo, the chicken wing capital of the world, queen of nothing but a few zany cupcakes.

“Okay, Ma.” I swipe a lion cracker through the sunshine-colored icing and bite off his head. “I’ll do it. But Sunday to Wednesday nights blow. After tomorrow, I want better shifts.”

She smiles, and the deep lines in her face vanish, temporarily changing the map of my future to a broad, blank canvas. “You got it, baby.”

Chapter Five

Opportunity Knocks You on Your Butt Cakes

Vanilla cupcakes baked over a blend of chopped pineapples, butter, and brown sugar inverted on a warm plate and served with vanilla bean ice cream

“Oh, Hudson!” Mom fusses with my collar, making a show of it in front of Dani and the whole entire diner. “Don’t you look adorable!”

I tug at the bottom of the lavender zip-up dress. If I tried to wear this thing to school, Principal Ramirez would personally escort me home just so she could slap my mother for letting me out in public so scantily clad. But tonight? I’m a Hurley Girl—says so in fancy pink letters over my left boob.

“Big step, baby. I’m so proud of you.” She wraps me in a hug, her hair tickling my cheek. I blame myself, really. If only I’d been better about attending those spring flings and winter formals, she wouldn’t feel compelled to gush over my first day on the job.

“No pictures,” I say before she gets any ideas.

“I think you’re beautiful,” an old man at the counter—one of our Sunday night fixtures—says. He smiles gently and sets down his empty mug, tapping the counter three times. Mom grabs the coffeepot for a refill.

“You passed the Earl test,” she says as she pours him a fresh cup.

“Ma, he says that to anyone who still has their own teeth. No offense, Earl.”

“None taken,” he says. “But you got your own hair, too, so you’re twice as pretty.”

“See?” Mom says. “You’ll do great tonight. Just great.”

Yeah, just great. Just awesome. Just … kill me.

“Ready, Hurley Girl?” Dani asks.

I tug once more on the dress and take a deep breath. Only for a little while. Just until things get back on track. “Let’s do this.”

“The basic rule is to smile a lot,” she says, leading me into the kitchen. “Even when you feel like choking someone, keep on smilin’. The minute you show them you’re pissed, you lose.”

“Kill them with kindness. Or cheesiness.” I flash her a test grin. “Got it.”

“Sometimes the rowdy ones get a little grabby,” she says, flipping on the tap water. She fills a plastic pitcher and cups and sets them on the prep counter. “If you smack them straight away, they usually back off. You can also try the tray-in-the-lap maneuver, but that takes some practice, and—”