The Team

Written by: Elliot (25-U1)

Designed by: Lynette (25-U1)

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The afternoon was unkind, and Ada was only slightly happy that this was the outcome. She had prepared as much as she could, worn the right outfits and learnt the right moves, but there was always a chance of things going wrong. Now the only thing to do was answer the Question at home.

Ada Emerson strode along Fletcher Street, adjusting the too-loose spaghetti strap of her top. She had not bought lunch nor made notice to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson that she would be home for an early dinner. Instead she was checking the map for restaurants in Allison. She swapped between the map and her feed, liking and scrolling past another goth outfit check.

It was under this influence that she stopped at an intersection. A post office stood to her right. The Allison Native American History Museum rested on the left. There weren’t any Native Americans in the town’s history, as much as she knew, but she could be forgetting. Main Avenue cut through several other streets. If she went rightward, she could eat at Marvin’s. Nobody looked in the alleys between the restaurants.

“I didn’t want it anyway,” Ada Emerson said, scrolling. She smiled for a moment.

It fell just as fast. The Question always made her freeze up, and she wasn’t in the mood for lunch. Yet the heat demanded shade, or at least a cold drink. “Yeap.” She ignored the strap of her top falling again. “Arby’s it is.”

***

“You look crazy old.”

Normally, Paula Vandermann ignores that. But the diner was quiet. Everybody had heard Ada and had started staring at her booth, and at Paula by her seat. “It’s only been a year since you started work here,” Ada said.

“It’s called a work face, prep girl.” She turned the page of the Arby’s-branded notepad. She took a pencil from her pocket. “Orders?”

“Paula, we know what I like.”

She watched the waitress — face pockmarked, hair frizzy, shirt and apron stained. “I don’t, you twit. And I’m called Mrs. Vandermann.”

“Everyone else calls you Paula.”

“Company policy. Now, orders.” Paula tapped the table with her pen.

“D’you get tired of repeating yourself when I call that out?”

The order was not taken. Mrs. Vandermann stormed to the back. From the kitchen doors Ada heard the sniffling barks of an order. She returned to staring out the window for a moment, then realised she could focus on the Question now that she had ordered her food. The phone emerged again.

charlie

dalton (ew.)

ellis

halifax

kaela (WITH AN EL)

kalea (WITH AN LE)

kayla

kayley

mom <3

pop

purrrrl

She lingered on it. This was not abnormal. Ada Emerson’s eyes could bore into you if you let them. The few other middleschoolers and highschoolers in the Arby’s had turned their heads at the spaghetti-strap top and too-tight microjeans and Converses, not her usual vocational wear. They might notice she didn’t have her black lipstick on.

Her phone pinged. A boy approached. His body was blocking the way out of her booth.

“Ada! Hey, Ada. I just heard about the prac—”

“Not now, Dalton.”

“I—We’ll catch up later? Please?”

It wasn’t bad. If anything, she preferred this outcome. The situation needed rephrasing for the Emersons, though. Ada, Allison Middle uncheerleader-to-be, replied to her sister.

wya

arbys

mums cooking

we just got back from costco

i got a rotisserie chicken for you

c:

alr

omw ill ttyl

how were tryouts?

“Emerson!” Ada pocketed the phone and stumbled out the booth to the collection counter. A beanie-donned guy, maybe thirteen, but too scruffy and dazed to tell, swerved out of her path. 

“’Scuse me — Ada?”

“Oh, hey, Pearl,” Ada chuckled. It came out soft. “New beanie? You, uh — you look good today. Tell me about the new beanie later, alright? And the jeans. Tell me about the jeans.”

Pearl brushed a hair past his ear. “Microjeans? I—Did Charlotte make you wear this?”

“Order’s here. Tell you later.”

“Wait! How did today go?!”

“Later!”

***

The Emersons live where the wheatfields stopped. According to Mr. Emerson, they had to repair trucks and tractors back then, and it helped the mechanics to live close by. The garage was still near the wheatfield, a little way off where Ada was staring at the front face of her two-floor family home. White paint was peeling at the walls’ edges, but the porch chair was intact, sitting with a stained glass table, watching it paint the floorboards cyan. The windows that April’s rain lingered on were half-washed.

Ada Emerson knocked on the authentic oak door; then, the doorbell. No answer. The only sound on the family lawn was the buzzer.

No answer. So the Question could wait. Ada turned about on her heel, hoisting her bag off the porch doormat back onto her shoulders. Usually, she’d enter on her own. That could wait. She’d go to the park and wait until Pop came back from work.

“Ada, y’know I can see you, right?”

Someone was home. Platinum blonde, Charlotte Emerson, was poking out the second-floor window, staring at her younger sister. For a moment neither spoke.

“Hellooo? Future Cheercap Ada? How were tryouts?” Charlie grinned, leaning over the windowsill, head resting on her palm. Sweaters were supposed to be fatal in a North Dakotan July. Luckily, Charlie’s AC was turned on. Ada could feel its cool air from the lawn.

“Right.” She waved. “Hey, Charlie.”

“Mom’s out for a little. Like, napping kinda ‘out’. Not shopping ‘out’. You gotta stay close, y’know. You can’t just wander off. Lemme get changed.”

The front door was opened. Ada entered.

The Emersons’ house was a white and blue affair. From the foyer, at left, the kitchen was entered, blue and white checkerboard floors and walls of navyhue cupboards, at right the living-room of a blue L-couch, poking out the doorway in, a midnight-blue carpet for flooring, blue curtains, a white flatscreen. Seventy inches of high-definition video would be seen from the staircase, also white, bannister to step, where, by craning the neck, as Ada was doing as she walked up, one would see a dining table and four black chairs at the left of the living-room. To the right of the dining-room was the door to the basement and utility closet. That was hard to get to. As kids, when playing hide-and-seek, Charlie liked to hide in there. They took turns.

“Ada?”

Ada jumped at the sound, turning to Charlie on her left. Her cheer captain jersey was not removed, and its white and blue strap could be seen where Charlie wore her sweater off-shoulder. “Yeah? What?”

“Dinner. How’s meatloaf sound?”

“Nah, I haven’t had meatloaf.”

“No, you ditz. I’m asking if you want meatloaf.” She eyed Ada. “What’s going on?”

No answer. Nearest to the top of the staircase was Ada’s half-open room door, the locks rusting. They still worked. “Ada,” Charlie said, firmer.

“How old are these locks?”

“Hell if I know. Why? You wan’em changed?”

“No.”

The door was slammed shut. Allison High’s cheer captain pinched her nose bridge. “Your strap’s still falling, you know!” she shouted.

No answer.

***

Dinner was the time for every type of question. Magnus Emerson, all six-foot-five of him, was grinning, shovelling meatloaf onto four clean plates. Marion Emerson sat to his left, Charlie his right, Ada opposite him, her back to the foyer, according to the seating plan. The father gestured to the wife with the spatula.

“So how did tryouts go? What did Ms. Keys say?” she asked. She was grinning, like Magnus, watching Ada crumple that black, black baggy sweater of hers. The game show in the living-room was starting. That was the key: a TV would be in the other room, announcing who won a $25,000 trip to Miami, or somewhere else far, far away.