The Last Days of California: A Novel by Mary Miller

cell phones work—people pick up if they want to talk to you, or they see you called and call you back.”
    She looked like she was going to cry, so I told her I was sure it was nothing, his phone was broken or he’d lost it. Dan was supposed to love her. He told everyone he loved her. Once he’d even told me. The two of us had been sitting together in the den, waiting for Elise to finish getting ready, and I’d stopped eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch to listen to him tell me how great she was, how she was “his person.” He had found “his person” in life early and he was one of the lucky ones. He must have been drunk. By the time he finished, my cereal was soggy and I took the bowl into the kitchen and dumped it out.
    Our parents were halfway through with their hamburgers when we returned. My father handed me fifteen dollars and we got in line behind a pair of guys in work clothes, their names in cursive on their shirt pockets. They stared at Elise.
    “What?” she asked, and one of them mumbled, “Nothing.” The other said, “ Dang .” They inched forward, discussing secret menu items.
    “You know what’s funny?” I said.
    “What?”
    “If those guys were cute, you wouldn’t be like, ‘What?’ You’d be glad they were looking at you.”
    “You’re a deep thinker,” she said. “One of the best thinkers of our time.”
    “Fuck you.” The counter lady heard me and looked horrified.
    I ordered a combo: cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla Frosty—which was even better than the original—and Elise ordered a side salad and a baked potato with butter, sour cream, and chives.
    “Why can’t we ever go to Burger King?” she asked, taking everything off of our tray.
    “Because their fries are awful,” I said, unwrapping my burger. “It’s like they were fried and then sat for a while and then fried again.” I looked out at the parking lot, packed with cars and trucks and boats.
    “Bow your heads,” our father said, and we stopped eating and looked at the table. Somebody had spilled salt everywhere. My father grasped my hand so tightly I didn’t have to hold his at all. My sister’s hand was cool and dry.
    “Dear Heavenly Father,” he said.
    “Why do we always have to pray in public?” Elise asked, cutting him off. “People are staring at us.”
    “People are always staring at you,” I said. Nobody was looking at us except for a well-dressed older lady sitting by herself. She was smiling, but it was a sad smile, like she’d had a family once, too.
    “We’re praying because we’re about to eat,” our father said. “To thank Him for providing this food for us.”
    “You always do it so loud.”
    My father bowed his head and continued.
    We ate in silence until Elise asked if anyone wanted her potato.
    “I don’t eat vegetarian food,” our father said, in the nastiest voice he could muster.
    “It’s a potato,” Elise said. “You’re eating potatoes right now. You also eat eggs and grits and bread and ice cream and about a million other things that are vegetarian.” She got up and threw her food away. I was worried that the baby wasn’t getting enough nutrients. At home, she mixed chocolate protein powder with vanilla almond milk, took multivitamins.
    She went to the bathroom again and I listened to a conversation at a nearby table—a white girl with cornrows telling her friend she didn’t eat chicken. Her friend said it was un-American. “What do you eat?” she asked.
    “Hog, cow,” the girl with cornrows said. I’d never heard anyone say “hog” or “cow” to refer to meat before.
    I finished my burger and fries, saved my Frosty for later.
    In the parking lot, a man approached my father with a story about a dead body he had to pick up in Oklahoma, and the gas money he needed to get there. My father said he didn’t have much and the man told him his older brother had been in an automobile accident and there was no one else to claim him. The body had been in the