I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Jake proposes they stop at Dairy Queen, assuring the protagonist they’ll have a nondairy option for her. Though the protagonist still has a headache and it has begun to snow, she agrees to stop. They arrive at a Dairy Queen a few minutes before the store closes. The protagonist notes how the ice cream machine produces a droning noise like a dial tone. Two teenage girls come out from the back room to take their orders. The girls “have different shapes, different body types, but in all other facets are identical” (134). As Jake orders two frozen lemonades, the two girls giggle and whisper together, acting as if they know Jake and the protagonist. A third girl comes out from the back room to make their frozen lemonades. The third girl is inexplicably familiar to the protagonist; she knows the third girl but does not know how. “She appears fragile and anxious. She has a rash” (135) on her arm that makes the protagonist curious about her. As the third girl hands the protagonist her frozen lemonade, she whispers that she is scared for the protagonist before quickly returning to the back room.