CHAPTER 23: First Day

"Hi Amy," Tails gretted as he climbed into Amy's Corvette after school let out on Friday.

"Hiya Tails," Amy greeted back. "Have a halfway decent day?"

"It was great," Tails said. "Some guy tried to hang me upside-down in a tree today in Ag, but Ms. Mary walked by in the hall, saw him through the windows, and carted him off to the principal's office." Both Tails and Amy had a good laugh about that one.

"So you got lucky today," she said. "Good, because we're usually a little busy on Fridays."

"I'm gonna have to remember to take it a little easier in PE from now on, huh?"

"You might want to, yeah. And try not to get knocked out in there anymore, too. Just stay near the coach the whole period, or sit on a basketball goal and stuff the ball down inside when someone passes it to you."

"I tried that before, but the coach saw me and yelled at me to get down. But, no one said I couldn't hover above one, so maybe I'll try that."

"Just watch yourself, in case some joker decides to throw something at you."

"Yeah, I know. Hey, what's that up there?" Tails pointed ahead of them.

"A lot of cops have been out today, pulling people over," Amy said, slowing down a bit. Tails looked at the speedometer and saw that they had been going seven over the speed limit. "I think they're on edge."

"Why?"

"Lot of murders lately. You heard about the one in the diner, right?"

"Yeah, I did. Sonic told me."

"Well, there was that one, then Espio, and I also heard about one where the bodies were nothing but bone and a few chunks of skin. They're bound to be a bit on edge with all that going on."

"I guess so." Tails shuddered and tried not to get any mental images of bodies with only a few chunks of skin left. Luckily, he succeeded.

"I got a few other things you might want to know before we get there. First..."

When she and Tails entered the diner, Amy pointed Tails to the back, so he could grab an apron, which was about the only kind of uniform to show he worked there. Graham walked over to her and asked, "That the kid?"

"Yeah, that's him," Amy said. "Go kinda easy on him, willya? Aside from this being his first day, he had a kinda rough day at school. Kids specifically target him for a punchtoy. He said today they tried to hang him upside down in a tree."

"That's the nice thing about school," Graham said. "You're either a small nerd, or a huge dumbass. There's no in-between, and no winning."

"You're right about that," Katie said as she walked over. "It's no wonder I spent most of my time getting revenge on people by egging their cars. I was just too small."

"I never would've guessed," Graham said carelessly. "Guess you've grown a bit since then, huh?" Katie narrowed her eyes, and Graham realized what he'd just said. "Sorry, I didn't mean it THAT way!" he exclaimed. Katie gave a careless little grin and walked away.

"You probably need to get back to work," Amy said. "Just show Tails the ropes for now, and have him work the register when things get busy. Keep him out of the way until he gets a pretty good feel for how everything works."

"Have you told him about Hell Sunday?" Graham asked.

"Well, no," Amy said, "but I will, don't worry."

"I don't care if he has advance warning, just as long as he can hit those keys in a blur and hit 'em right." With that Graham walked off to take orders at a booth.

"Whoa, how can anyone find anything back here?" Tails asked himself as he passed a large stack of boxes. He still hadn't found an apron, and he'd been searching nearly ten minutes. "Whoever stacked these must be retarded, or he just didn't read the labels." A moment later he heard a voice behind him.

"Who you?" asked a deep voice in what didn't sound like the most intelligent tone in the world. Tails turned around and saw a gray rabbit standing in front of him wearing gray sweats. A couple seconds later, he repeated, "Who you?"

"Uh, I'm Tails," Tails said, trying to decide if this guy was used to extreme heat or if he was just a retard, as it was almost stiflingly hot in the store room. The large rabbit set down a box on top of a bunch of others, crushing the one that had been on top a few seconds before. From the sound of it, the box had contained several smaller boxes of light bulbs.

"Uh oh," he said.

"Um, who are you?" Tails asked.

"Me Lance," said the rabbit, scratching the top of his head, as if he wasn't entirely sure. Tails recognized that name: he was the somewhat retarded guy Amy had told him about on the way from school. She was also the guy she warned him not to offend, because of his tendency to slug people when they did.

"Nice meeting you," he said. "Couldn't tell me where I could find an apron, could you?"

"Uh, cross hall, I think," Lance said after a few seconds, scratching his head again.

"Oh, okay. Thanks. Amy just said look in the back, she didn't say where." Tails left the storeroom and crossed the little hallway. Sure enough, behind the door there, he found a few spare aprons hanging up. After putting one on, he turned back toward the front of the restaurant to find out what he was supposed to do. As he passed the gray door leading to the kitchen, he turned to look at it- just in time to see it fly open and hit him square in the nose, and with a decent amount of force, no less.

"Coming through!" Katie's voice called out.

"Thanks for the heads-up," Tails mumbled, holding his nose in his hands.

"Oh, sorry," said Katie turning around as the door swung closed again. "Didn't see you there. You're Tails, right?"

"Yeah," Tails said, hoping his nose wasn't bleeding. "And you are?"

"Just call me Katie," she said. "Wanna help me with one of these? You can just follow me to the table, and I'll hand it out to 'em." Tails noticed she was holding a rather large tray of food in each hand.

"Yeah, sure," he said. He held up his hands as Katie lowered one of the trays for him to take, and he groaned slightly under its weight: it was heavier than Katie made it look.

"That's what I said the first couple dozen times, then I got used to it. If he wasn't such a slowpoke I'd have Lance helping me with 'em when he wasn't busy. And I don't mean slow physically, I mean mentally."

"Amy told me some of the more important things on the way here," Tails said, straining slightly.

"Did she now? Well, then I reckon you know all about Hell Sunday, right?" Katie cracked a grin, even if she knew Tails couldn't see it.

"Hell Sunday...?" If fur could turn colors without some sort of dye, Tails's face would've turned pure white. They were approaching the booth the food was bound for, so he urged himself on, just a bit further.

"That's what we call it. See, down the street a ways is a church that lets out around noon on Sundays, and it seems like half the people in Station Square go there. Anyway, they apparently heard good things about us, because they started coming in every Sunday for lunch. Now at first, it wasn't too bad. Then they spread the gospel, and it seems like everyone in that church shows up for lunch, all at the same time. We get so busy that we need ALL hands on deck, including Amy. We even call Lance off of stacking boxes, and he helps me with some of the simpler stuff, like flipping burgers and frying up pizzas. By the time they all leave, we're all so wiped out that we got to close for an hour at about 2:30 to regain ourselves, then we reopen. I tell you, Amy's made of some tougher stuff than she looks, bless her heart. During that time she runs the place, takes orders, delivers them, works the register, little bit of everything. Tries to do too much, if you ask me. I say she earns every little bit she has, and then some. There's been more than one occasion I had to wake her up in her office 'cause she fell asleep trying to handle stacks of papers right after we got done with the church groups. Mind you, if she hadn't left me instructions to do that in case she did fall asleep, I'd've just left her alone." By this point, Tails was in awe. He hadn't realized Amy put so much work into running this place, and Graham had to call his name three times before he heard him.

"TAILS!" shouted the dark green salamander. Tails snapped back to attention. "Good, now that I've got your attention, I need you to come over here so I can show you how to work the register. It's a little tougher than it looks until you get the hang of it."

"Okay," Tails said. "Sorry about that."

"You'll have to learn not to get too off-track like that when Katie starts talking, because she does it a lot. Other than that, no problem. Still, it'll be good to have some extra help around here, especially when Sunday rolls around. I know Amy'll benefit a lot from it, even if the rest of us don't. Like Katie was saying, she needs it."

"Can't say Katie's the only one around here who does some talking, huh?"

Okey dokey, another chapter down. Amy picks up Tails from school and they both go in to work, and Graham and Katie start showing him the ropes. That is, after he gets lost trying to find an apron to put on to work in, and runs into Lance. Nice first day so far, then he gets nailed in the face by the kitchen door and Katie describes Hell Sunday(as they call it). Ooh, if only y'all could imagine the look on Tails's face... Well, at least the look I imagined, anyway. R&R please.