Chapter 8: Pancakes

"Termination," I whispered.

[Don't panic,] said the System. [Thirty days. Fifty points. You did ten in one laugh.]

"You're panicking."

[I'm a program. I don't panic. I'm just running very fast.]

Jesse had stopped laughing.

He was looking at me with his head tilted.

"You okay? You went white."

"Hungry," I said.

It was the first thing that came out.

He looked at me a moment longer.

"Come on, then," he said. "I know a place."

The place was a diner by the rail tracks, two blocks from the garage.

It had red booths with tape on the cracks and a pie case with one sad lemon meringue in it.

The waitress called Jesse "hon" and brought him coffee before he sat down.

"Pancakes?" she asked him.

"Two stacks."

I opened my mouth to say I'd just have a salad.

I'd made both of us eat salads for a year.

I closed my mouth.

"Two stacks," I said.

The waitress winked at him.

When she was gone, he said, "You just ordered pancakes."

"I like pancakes."

"I didn't know that."

"I didn't let you know that."

He leaned back in the booth.

The purple bar sat at ninety and didn't move.

The pancakes came, huge and buttery, with a little metal pitcher of syrup.

Jesse poured syrup on his in a spiral, very seriously.

"About Dane," I said.

"I told him end of the month," Jesse said. "He'll wait. He likes having something to hold over me."

"Okay."

"You're really not going to fix it."

"Do you want me to fix it?"

"No."

"Then I'm really not going to fix it."

He looked at me over his coffee.

"Can I ask you something now?" he said.

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