Chapter 7: One Word on Paper

On Monday I walked into the locker room with my forehead showing and my head up.

Conversation stopped, and then started again too loudly.

Someone laughed, quickly cut off.

Bridget was waiting by my locker with her arms crossed, looking at every person who looked at me.

"Don't," I whispered.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're glaring."

"That's my face."

At the hair check, Chef came down the line with her clipboard.

She stopped in front of me and looked at my bangs for exactly as long as she had looked at them on Friday.

"Sorrell. Regulation."

"Thank you, Chef."

"Saturday. Eight o'clock. Bring the book."

"Yes, Chef."

She moved on, and my shoulders came down.

At the ten o'clock break the cohort drifted toward the back kitchen for coffee.

I stood on the step stool by the dry storage with a clean sheet of paper and a pencil.

"Hey," I said. "Everybody. One minute."

Some of them kept talking.

Bridget put two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

That did it.

Twenty faces turned toward me, and I made myself look at each one.

"Chef says we vote Saturday," I said. "I'm not asking how you're going to vote. I'm asking if you remember writing against my name on any Thursday."

Nobody said anything.

"I'm not angry. I just want to know."

"We're not supposed to talk about it before the hearing," said a tall guy from the third row. "Chef said."

"Then don't talk. Just write it down. For or against, in your own hand, on this paper, and fold it."

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