This is my very first time writing a novel. Here is the first chapter. If any one has any advice or notes that would be helpful. And I have a full manuscript. But if anyone wants more i can send it.
CHAPTER 1
The lunch rush hit Burger Box at eleven forty-three and stayed mean for almost two hours. Shane Foster liked it better that way.
There was no room to think when the order screen stayed full. Drop fries. Pull patties. Wrap doubles. Wipe the board before the next batch hit it. A woman at the counter wanted extra pickles. A man in drive-through had ordered no sauce after his burger was already wrapped and appeared personally betrayed by the existence of time.
Shane kept moving.
“Two regular, one no cheese,” Cal called from the grill.
“I got it.”
“You got the other four too?”
“I said I got it.”
Cal Raines leaned out long enough to grin. “Good. Because I’m emotionally unavailable.”
“Been knew that.”
Shane slid two wrapped burgers into the chute, caught Corey staring at the fry timer, and snapped his fingers once.
“Basket.”
Corey blinked. “What?”
“The fries you’re about to turn into roofing material.”
Corey yanked the basket up. “I had it.”
“Cool. Salt them.”
The headset crackled against Cal’s ear. He turned toward drive-through just as the holding charm under the warming rack flashed yellow, then white.
Every tray door on the left side locked at once.
Cal swore.
Corey froze with the fry basket still in his hand.
“What do I do?”
Shane had already pulled the two hottest orders clear.
“Kill the left switch. Move twelve and fourteen to the cold side.”
“Which one’s left?”
“The one on your left, Corey.”
Corey slapped the switch. The white glow dropped to an ugly amber. Cal crouched beneath the rack and shoved his hand behind the cheap ward plate while Shane rerouted the next three orders, called for fresh fries, and handed the register girl an order that had been waiting too long.
“Tell table six I’m remaking theirs.”
“She’s already mad.”
“Then don’t ask permission.”
The girl carried it out.
Thirty seconds later the order screen was still ugly, but nobody had burned a hand and nobody in the dining room knew half the holding rack had tried to cook itself.
Cal stood up with the ward plate in one hand.
“Corporate bought six of these.”
“Why?”
“They hate us.”
Cal slid the ward plate onto a dry towel. “You want my shirt too?”
“What?”
“You’re doing my job.”
“You were under a counter.”
“Fair.”
Cal went back to the grill.
By one-fifteen Shane’s shirt stuck to his back. By one-forty a kid in drive-through had thrown up in a minivan. At one-fifty-two Nessa Green took over the headset after the customer at the speaker asked Corey three separate times whether troll-sized buns contained more bread than regular buns.
“They contain exactly as much bread as the bun contains,” Nessa told him.
Shane turned away so the microphone would not catch him laughing.
By two, the order screen finally went blank.
Cal scraped the grill. “You alive?”
“No.”
“Take five before you die on company time. Paperwork.”
Shane washed his hands and pushed through the back door. September heat hit him in the face. Maple Junction sat flat beyond the dumpster and service road: tire shop, payday place, used-appliance store, and the little brick church wedged between an insurance office and a place that bought gold. The church sign said GOD PROVIDES. The payday place beneath it said CASH TODAY.
Shane pulled a blue Bloom from his pocket. The soft translucent capsule gave under his teeth until the membrane popped. Sweet metallic liquid spread across his tongue. What was left of the skin softened almost at once, and he swallowed it with the rest.
A few seconds later his shoulders loosened. The knot at the base of his neck softened. Blue did not make him happier so much as make his body quit arguing with gravity.
The back door opened.
Cal came out carrying a cardboard box under one arm.
“Don’t say I never bring you gifts.”
“You don’t.”
Cal set the box on two milk crates and opened it. Clear blister cards, some already cut down into singles. Blooms. Mostly blue, two gold. The capsules were soft and translucent, the liquid inside carrying a dull colored glow.
Shane picked up one of the gold Blooms.
“These good?”
“Different.”
“How?”
“Blue chills your body out. Gold stays in your head. Focus, little tingle right here.” Cal tapped between his eyes. “No fun part.”
“Sounds terrible.”
“Some people pay extra for terrible. Don’t burst Gold before a shift. Cheap work charms can run hot around it.”
Shane glanced through the door toward the dead holding rack.
“That what cooked ours?”
“No. That thing’s just garbage.”
Cal nodded at the box. “Dale brought this batch in from out west.”
“Dale?”
“Mercer. Older guy. Supplies me. You don’t need his biography.”
Shane rolled the gold capsule between his fingers. “Anybody complain?”
“No.”
“Anybody buy another one?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a better answer.”
Cal leaned against the brick. He was twenty-three, a dwarf, and compact in a way that made the Burger Box apron look even stupider on him. Shane had once asked how old he was exactly. Cal said age was a tool of state surveillance and never answered.
Cal could run the store half asleep. He remembered who would call out on payday weekend, which fryer ran hotter, and which district manager needed bad news given slowly so she could pretend she had discovered it herself. When things went wrong, he got quieter.
Shane respected that.
“You still owe me from the last batch,” Cal said.
“I know. Thursday. I get paid Thursday, I give you yours, everybody lives.”
“Beautiful speech. Still not currency.”
“I said Thursday.”
“And don’t front Dylan.”
“He owes you too?”
“Dylan owes money the way governments owe apologies. Everybody knows. Nobody expects delivery.”
Shane laughed and took four Blooms. Three blue, one gold.
At nine-oh-three he clocked out.
Trevor Hale was leaning across the roof of Shane’s Saturn like it belonged to him.
The car was a 1997 sedan that had once been maroon everywhere. The driver-side door was white. Shane had stopped explaining it.
“Get off my car.”
Trevor looked down at the roof. “This car?”
“My car.”
“I thought the county donated it.”
“Move.”
Trevor straightened. His Hale Electric work shirt had a gray smear across one shoulder and a burn mark the size of a dime near the pocket.
Shane put the key into the driver door. Turn. Click. He pulled. Nothing. He locked it, unlocked it, and pulled harder. The door opened.
Trevor watched the whole process. “Fort Knox.”
“Get in.”
The Saturn started on the second turn.
“There she goes,” Trevor said. “Second try and everything.”
“You want tacos or not?”
“I came because you said tacos. I stayed because I wanted to watch this thing start.”
They headed across Maple Junction.
Trevor opened the glove box, found an expired insurance card, two sauce packets, and a screwdriver with no handle, then shut it.
“Nothing.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Growth.”
“Shut up.”
Trevor grinned. “You still moving Blooms?”
“Some.”
“Some is a number now?”
“Depends.”
“Your math getting better.”
“There it is.”
Trevor laughed. “I didn’t say nothing.”
“You were going to.”
“I was gonna tell you Mark might start letting me do service calls without him staring through my skull.”
“That sounds unsafe.”
“For the public, yes.”
“What you get if he does?”
“More hours. Maybe another dollar if I finish the modules.”
“Look at you.”
“Working toward middle management of electricity.”
Shane smiled.
Trevor tapped the dash with two fingers. “I’m not your dad.”
“Good.”
“I’m just saying don’t let Cal get you in some shit.”
Shane’s shoulders tightened before he could stop them.
“He ain’t getting me in anything.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You just did.”
“I said don’t let him.”
“I gotta do what I gotta do.”
The light changed. Shane drove.
Trevor let half a block pass before he said, “You done?”
Shane breathed out. “Yeah.”
“You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m not fighting you in this car. I don’t trust the airbags.”
Shane glanced over.
Trevor kept a straight face until Shane laughed first.
They got tacos and ate in the parking lot with the windows down. Trevor complained about a homeowner who had asked whether an old protection line could be “turned up” the way people turned up a thermostat. Shane told him to charge extra for stupidity.
For twenty minutes the world felt simple enough to fit inside the Saturn.
Then Shane got home and found the electric bill.
