Tuesday, May 1st 4:03 pm
“Stephanie, get up!” Tommy
shouted.
“NO!” I shouted back. The
force of my negative rocked me so hard my back had the chance to
re-experience the hot, smelly asphalt digging into my skin.
I knew no part of what I was doing was
sane, but I also 100% didn't give a fuck. I loved him and he was not
going to leave me.
“You are so completely
unbalanced!” he yelled from out the window of his Ford F-150.
The neighbors were all watching, nosy
bastards, as I prostrated myself right there in front of the shiny
chrome grill of his truck. I could smell the exhaust and pretty much
every gross thing that had touched this section of blacktop, but it
only made me more determined.
I could suffer for my love.
“It wasn't me!” I screamed at the
cloudless sky. I knew he could hear me because he scoffed in disgust
and revved the engine.
He could run me over for all I cared.
I would die for my love for him and then he would know the truth.
“I'm leaving now, Stephanie!” Tommy
called, his white tank top gleaming in the midday sun against his tan
shoulders.
“You can't leave!” I cried,
desperate for him to understand. It was so TV Movie to say my twin
sister did it, but what if it was true? “You haven't even tried
to listen!”
“Why don't you try to not be such a
ho-bag?” he bellowed over the roar of the V-6 engine. “Then I'll
try listening, mmmmkay?”
He revved the engine again as I felt a
pathetic denial bubble up out of me: “You can't do this!” I
shouted, balling my hands into fists against the hot pavement.
“Watch me, skank!” he yelled,
throwing the truck into reverse and knocking over my parent's trash
cans in an effort to reposition his truck. Before I could even roll
back in his way, he sped off down the street, the beer cans in his
truck bed making an extra clatter as he went.
I felt the miserable sobs welling up
from a place deep inside me and into my constricted throat. I lay there
and let the tears just leak out onto the pavement until my bones
ached from the hard rock under me and I was sure all the neighbors
had gone back into their houses.
All of the neighbors with any shred of
human decency, that is.
“That was the most pitiful display
I've ever seen,” Steve said as he leaned against the
magnolia tree at the end of the driveway, his stupid hipster jeans
gleaming turquoise in the sunlight.
“Poor Stephanie Barnes, dumped in
front of her own house by Tommy 'Look Ma, No Hands' Franklyn,” he
said, shaking his head slowly. “Maybe if you wait there long
enough, the garbage man can come by and dump you, too.”
“Shut
the fuck up, Steve,”
I said, flinging my middle finger in his general direction.
***
Saturday, June 30th 12:15 pm
I tilted my head to the side so the
giant pimple-turned-open-sore on my chin (A.K.A. the Scourge of my
Adolescence) was just out of the frame, and carefully moved my thumb
to press the tiny picture button on the screen.
During the two second delay between the
button push and the picture-taking, something moved in my peripheral
vision which I couldn't see through the flash.
Then the picture came up on the screen
of my phone – Steve's dopey cross-eyed face next to my awkward,
open-mouthed side-eye. The Scourge of my Adolescence was front and
center.
“Goddammit, Steve!” I
shouted, shoving him off the counter he'd jumped up on to photo bomb
me. I glanced towards the door to the kitchens quickly to make sure
my parents hadn't seen me just physically assault a customer.
“You know, on the internet they say
taking selfies is a cry for help,” he said, jumping up on one of
the stools next to counter, seemingly unaffected by the fall.
“Especially if you are sending them to Tommy 'Keg Stand' Franklyn,”
he continued, making a face I assumed was supposed to be an imitation
of Tommy's crooked-tooth smile.
I rolled my eyes at him, and deleted
the picture from my phone. No one needed evidence that'd happened.
Besides, I never looked good in pictures.
I responded without looking up from my
phone. “Fuck Tommy 'the Shithead' Franklyn,” and his ability to
tell me and Sarah apart in grainy YouTube videos, I thought, putting
my phone away.
“What are you doing here?” I asked,
planting my hands on my hips like Wonder Woman. I read on the
internet that standing like this ten minutes a day can improve your
mood. “Don't you have a church to desecrate?” I asked.
“I already hit all the ones in
walking distance. Wanna give me a ride?” he asked, putting one arm
on the counter and giving me what I'm sure, in his dorky brain, he
thought was a charming smile.
“I'm working,” I said, alluding to
the fact that I was clearly behind the counter in my parent's
popsicle shop, which they made me work every weekend because they
were horrible people.
“Hello! Welcome to the Popsicle
Spot!” my dad called as he came in from the kitchens. “What can
we do for you?” he asked Steve, giving me a look like he knew I
hadn't been perfectly polite to this customer.
I mean, there was no way he could know
my exact level of politeness. He was just guessing. Most of the time,
I'm fucking delightful.
“Actually,” Steve started as he
fished through his backpack. “I was wondering if I could put up a
flier on your board.” He gestured to the community news cork board
we had on the far wall. The paper he held in his hand was slightly
rumpled, but clearly had a guitar on the front. “It's for a
concert.”
“Of course!” my dad said, smiling
so broadly you could see all his teeth. “You know, I used to be in
a band when I was your age.”
I literally couldn't roll my eyes hard
enough as they went off in their little musician babble-talk. I went
to sit on the other side of the shop, behind the counter and near the
door, counting down the minutes until I would be released from my
popsicle hell.
“Thank you, Mr. Barnes!” Steve
called as he headed out the door, my dad giving him an indulgent
smile and a wave.
As Steve passed me, he gave me that
stupid smile again.
“So, a rain check on the tri-county
church desecration, then?” he asked. I flipped him the bird from
behind my phone and he slipped out the door, laughing.
***
Thursday, July 9th 1:45pm
“UUGGggh,” Courtney said, rolling
her eyes at my computer. “These guys are so overrated.”
I just nodded, because to engage
Courtney in this kind of discussion was to admit defeat ahead of
time. Courtney would say kittens were overrated if she thought it
would make her look cool.
“I don't know why we're listening to
this when we could be listening to Megavox,” she said.
“We're listening to this because you
gave me this CD last week and said I had
to listen to it,” I said, watching people walk by the large windows
of the Popsicle Spot. “And who is Megavox?”
I immediately
regretted asking as Courtney's eyes lit up with triumphant glee.
“I'm
not surprised you haven't heard of them,” she said, smiling
grossly. “They're really underground. They're the best post-punk,
post-dubstep band out right now.”
I was giving her a
look, but she was ignoring me. We'd been friends a long time.
“Most
people haven't heard of them because they're just too real for
mainstream,” she continued without prompting from me, because she
knew she wasn't going to get it. “They only play places that are
completely vegan.” Courtney emphasized this by crunching loudly on
her non-fat, gluten-free, black bean chips.
“Who
is going to hear of a band who only plays completely vegan places?”
I asked, annoyed. “There's like, two places that qualify in the
entire state.” I eyed her bag of chips but didn't tell her to put
them away because my parents were upstairs in the office and probably
wouldn't see.
“It's
not about the fame, Stephanie,”
Courtney said, drawing my name out to three syllables. “It's about
the music.”
“That's
bullshit,” I said, crossing my arms. “If it was about the music,”
I did a sarcastic quote gesture with my fingers, “then they
wouldn't be so goddamn picky about where they played.”
“Sarah!”
My mom called from upstairs. “Sarah, is that you?”
Courtney froze like
she'd just seen a snake, her diet coke halfway to her mouth.
“It's
just Courtney,
Mom,” I called back, annoyed to the point where I would now call it
anger. “Sarah isn't back yet.”
Courtney cast a
quick glance over her shoulder like she expected my sister to come
waltzing in the door with a chainsaw and crazy in her eyes. I took a
deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to pretend Courtney wasn't
there for a second.
“Anyway,”
Courtney said, making me open my eyes again. She seemed to have
recovered from her fear, though she was still eyeing the door. “You
wouldn't understand. I don't consume bits of other sentient beings -”
“Are
you vegan, Courtney?”
asked Steve, who'd somehow managed to open the door without making
the bells chime. “I haven't heard you talk about it in, like, five
seconds.”
“Oh
my god, I can't believe you are allowed in here,” Courtney said,
sneering at Steve and his skinny jeans. “Shouldn't there be a law
against hipsters?” she asked. I thought that was pretty rich coming
from her.
My phone chimed
from the counter where it was lying and we all glanced at it.
“Who's
it from?” Courtney asked, her hands balled into fists in front of
her like she was trying to be a cute boxer. “Is it from Josh?”
she asked, all pretense of nonchalance forgotten.
“Josh
McKay?” Steve asked,
trying to get a glance at my phone before I swiped it off the table.
“How is he texting you? Can he spell?”
“Mom!
I'm home!” I heard Sarah call from the back, interrupting us. I
think it was the clomp of Sarah's motorcycle boots that finally sent
Courtney scurrying out the door with fake excuses. Like if she was in
the same room, the crazy sex-tape cooties would attach themselves to
her.
“You're
not going to send him selfies,
are you?” Steve asked dropping his backpack on the ground and
putting his hands on his hips like he was a teacher who was
disappointed in me.
“How
is that any of your fucking business?” I asked. He shrugged and
picked his backpack up off the floor, leaving a stack of fliers for
his band on the counter.
“It's
just that a picture will never do you justice, because you have the
kind of beauty that moves,” Steve said, swinging open the door and
waltzing out.
“Stop
using Ani DiFranco to hit on girls,” I told him as he left. “It's
not cute.”
***
Sunday, October
16th
11:30 am
“Stephanie! We have customers!” my
mom called back to me. I looked up from the glowing screen of the
store's tablet and saw her leaning through the door and giving me an
exaggerated motion that could only be translates as What the hell
are you doing?
I was sitting in the dark, windowless
industrial kitchen we had in the back of the Popsicle Spot, and I
could feel the light from the screen lit up my face creepily. I
hadn't even noticed when the cooks left and turned out the lights
behind them.
“I'll be right out mom, I'm almost
finished,” I told her. She smiled indulgently and shook her head as
she went back out front.
I don't know why I was so excited about
this play list, except that no one ever has a good Halloween lineup.
It's all Monster Mash and Purple People Eater, which aren't really
songs as much as they are audio viruses.
This year, I'd had divine intervention
in the form of my dad's old Tom Waits CDs.
Tom
Fucking Waits.
The chain-over-gravel voice started
pouring through the speakers and I couldn't help smiling to myself.
“Not really popsicle eating music, is
it?” my mother asked no one in particular when I came out front. I
ignored her.
Outside I saw a flash of pink and
distantly caught the 8-bit strains of Pop Goes the Weasel from
out the open door. I pressed my lips into a thin line and tried to
pretend I hadn't seen it.
Ever since he'd gotten that job two
months ago, Steve passed by our shop in his flaming pink ice cream
truck at least once a day just to piss me off. Sometimes, he would
even sit in the parking lot across the street, infecting the world
with his audio diseases.
Like anyone would ever choose his
shitty, pre-packaged ice-cardboard over my parent's gourmet
popsicles.
Everyone stared at him when he did it,
and he acted like he didn't care. Sometimes, I think he actually
believes he'll steal away some of our customers.
He came by again, and was stuck at the
light right outside the shop. I glared fixedly at the passenger-side
window, in the Wonder Woman stance, even though he probably couldn't
see me.
“He's been coming by a lot lately,”
my mother said, waggling her eyebrows at me like this was some
elaborate attempt at flirting.
But I knew the truth: he was trying to
annoy me to death.
***
Wednesday, November 24th
5:02 pm
I heard them in the alley, huddled
together and cackling like cartoon characters.
But the first thing I saw was that
fucking truck – the Regurgitated Cotton Candy Pink van with a
megaphone mounted on top. Thank god it was silent.
“Quick, he'll be back in, like, two
seconds,” one of them said. I knew it was Marshal by the way he
lisped his way through the word 'seconds'.
When I fully rounded the corner into
the alley, I could see the back of his head and Rick's profile, bent
close together.
“What the shit are you two doing?”
I asked, wondering what fresh fuckery was this. If even one of them
had their dick out, I swear to god, I was going to call the cops.
I stopped about ten feet away from the
two of them and the back of the van, but I needed to eventually get
around them to reach to the large trashcans behind the Spot. The
plastic trash bags in my hands were getting heavy and smelled
strongly of almost-soured milk.
“Go away, Steph, we're going to mess
up this faggot's gay-mobile,” Rick said. He only glanced at me
briefly before he went back to watching the entrances to the alley.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a can of black spray
paint, which he started to shake.
“This is my parent's property, douche
bag,” I said. “They could get sued for this.” That probably
wasn't true, but I still felt the need to stop this from happening.
Frozen Desert Seller's Code?
“Shut up, no they won't. Stop
being such a girl,” Marshal said.
Which was just the goddamn
limit. I watched as my small
supply of fucks withered up and died inside me. I had no more left to
give.
The trash bags hit the both of them at
the same time, their black, plasticky, sour smelling mass blocking
the idiots from view for a couple seconds.
“I am a girl, Mar-shal!”
I shouted, kicking them both in the shins and any other place I could
reach before they could properly recover. “And I am fucking telling
you to get your ass off my parent's property before I call the cops!”
My voice did that thing I hate when it winds itself up to a
hysterical pitch.
Marshal looked panicked and glanced
towards the mouth of the alley like the coward I knew he was, but
Rick squared his shoulders at me like he forgot who my sister was.
“Steph, stop being a pain in the ass.
You're not going to call the cops on us. If we get arrested, there
will be no one to play with your boyfriend tonight at the gig,”
Rick said, smirking.
He was right, the asshole. Josh
couldn't play without his band mates. But that didn't mean I was down
for the count.
As Rick turned back to the van with a
smug smile and the spray can, I had an idea.
“If you touch one molecule of that
van, I will tell Josh about how you groped me in the mosh pit last
weekend,” I said, pointing an accusing finger at him.
Rick's smug smile slid right off his
face to splatter on the floor. He'd gone a little pale.
“Looks like a party back here,”
came a voice from behind me at the other end of the alley.
I swung around and turned on Steve like
he'd just insulted one of my play lists.
“And you!” I said, index
finger inches from his face. “Don't park your fucking pedo van on
my parent's property!”
I don't really know why I was mad, but
now that I was, everyone was going to hear about it.
“Your sister said I could,” Steve
said, arms up in the air like I was holding a gun on him.
“Yeah, well, I know you're new around
here, fag,” Rick laughed, “but everyone knows better than
to listen to Psycho Sa--”
Rick didn't get to finish the rest of
his sentence because my fist connected with his throat and he made a
choking sound instead.
I wanted to pound him into the
pavement; to scratch out his eyes and pull off his eyebrows and make
him drink the three gallons of sour milk mom had just thrown out.
But I didn't get any closer because
fucking Steve caught me mid-air before I even got a single eyebrow
hair.
Marshal and Rick made a mad stumble
around us to the exit, glancing back over their shoulder as I
screamed every curse I knew at them.
“She's just as crazy as her sister!”
I heard Marshal yell as he rounded the corner out of the alley at a
run.
Steve still had me in his grip and I
could smell his aftershave.
“Put me the fuck down!” I
said/shrieked. I wasn't crying. It must have started raining or
something.
He let me go and I
stalked off towards the end of the alley without looking back at him,
those bags of garbage could live in that alley forever for all I
cared.
“Thanks
for saving my van, Steph!” Steve called after me, to which I
responded with a middle finger waved over my shoulder.
***
Friday, January 14th 7:19pm
It's raining.
I watched the murky sky and probably
freezing rain from behind the windows of the Popsicle Spot where I
sat, alone, on a Friday night.
It's not like hard managing a popsicle
shop no one goes to in the winter, it's just the principal of
the thing.
I'm young and alive and shouldn't be
chained down on a Friday night – someone should make it illegal.
Plus, the PA system was down, so I
couldn't even play music. I had to listen to the sound of my youth
draining away slowly as I aged.
And just like that, my night was ten
times worse, because who should come in but Steve of the Pink Creeper
Van.
“Oh my god,” I say, looking up at
the ceiling and hoping he and his hipster glasses won't be there when
I looked down again. “Fuck. Off. Steve.”
“Hello, purveyor of fine frozen
treats!” Steve said grandly. “I am here to sample your wares.”
“And I'm not allowed to sell to
idiots,” I said, taking in his guitar strapped across his back and
his shaggy haircut.
“Oh, poor Josh McKay,” Steve said
with false sympathy, “Does he know he's not allowed in here?”
“Josh McKay is a god,” I
said with the conviction of a true believer. “And you wouldn't
catch him dead playing in such a dorky band.” I glanced
meaningfully at the stack of fliers he had in his hand. I mean, who
was going to see the fliers in the Popsicle Spot? It was the dead of
winter.
“It's funny, you're mouth is moving,
but it's Courtney's narrow-minded snobbery coming out there,” Steve
said, leaning towards me as though he was going to study an
interesting phenomenon.
He looked around wildly. “Where's the
curtain? You can tell me: is she controlling you with her mind?”
he asked wiggling his fingers at me dramatically.
I let out a huge sigh and glanced at my
phone to see how much longer I would have to endure this. Did all of
the times I was nice to customers when I didn't want to be mean I
could murder Steve now and it would all even out?
“Besides, Josh McKay isn't in such a
good band because he couldn't play his way out of a nursery
rhyme,” Steve continued, sliding into one of the stools by the
counter.
“That's not true!” I said,
offended. “I've seen him play guitar, and he's fantastic.”
“Ah! You've seen him
play, but did you actually hear him?” Steve asked.
“I mean... does it matter?” I asked
smiling as I remembered the way his biceps bunched and how his
fingers moved across the strings.
“Posing with a guitar and playing a
guitar are two different thing,” Steve said, and he would have
continued, but the bell over the door rang out and a woman with three
little girls came in.
I hoisted up my fake Customer Service
Smile and took their order, doling out the appropriate popsicles. The
oldest girl, maybe eight years old, insisted on paying with her
mother's money.
The family sat down at one of the
tables off to the right side, and I turned back to Steve, who was
still there for some reason.
“Are you going to buy anything?” I
asked, my Customer Service Smile as sarcastic as I could make it.
He glanced over at the family and got
this look on his face like he should have a light bulb over his
shaggy head. I knew he'd just decided to be a jackass.
“I've come to serenade your customers
with the songs of their choice,” he said with a large gesture,
turning to face the family and swinging the guitar over his shoulder
in a singe movement. This weird quality came into his face, like he'd
just switched himself on. He smiled and the whole room seemed to
lighten, like he had light bulbs instead of teeth.
“How about some Katy Perry?” he
asked the little girls, who squealed and clapped their hands.
Before I could even threaten to dig his
eyes out with a popsicle stick, he'd launched into an improvised
version of 'Teenage Dream.' The little girls were up on their feet,
screeching like banshees and bopping their little heads to the music.
The woman and I shared a look, and
though I meant it to be sarcastic, my face probably looked exactly
like hers: unaccountably amused. The girls were dancing so seriously
with their popsicles, even I had to laugh eventually, though I
withstood for a good minute.
Just in case I still wanted to yell at
him, Steve went directly into a rendition of 'The One that Got Away,'
weaving between his three little fangirls.
As he played, people came in from the
murky mess outside to see what all the noise was about. In the space
of about three songs, I had a shop full of dancing, popsicle-eating
customers rocking out to acoustic pop songs.
I happened to catch his eye, sometime
later, in the middle of a rendition of Taylor Swift's 'Mean' and I
could see the triumphant smile on his stupid face.
There would be no living with him now.
***
Saturday, February 20th 4:03
am
The night air stung, bitter and cold,
over my skin as I took deep breathes of it into my lungs.
If anger equaled raw destructive power,
there wouldn't be a single building left standing in this town. I
would have ripped the roof off the high school, where Josh had asked
me out for the first time; I would have upended Jennifer Bower's
pool, where he'd kissed me in front of everyone; I would definitely
have reduced the fucking movie theater to a pile of dust.
The cold wind cut right through my
pathetic wrap as I walked as fast as my three inch heels would allow
past the closed downtown shops.
I wouldn't let myself mince my way back
home, so I was walking full swing – one ass-cheek at a time –
and I'd already gotten a couple of honks from guys returning home
from the Senior Bonfire. My middle finger was getting a work out
tonight. This morning. Whatever.
I walked past the closed Popsicle Spot,
wishing I hadn't left my purse in Josh's truck. I could've just spent
the night on the cot in the office upstairs.
I stopped for a moment and considered
breaking in, but didn't want this humiliating night to be compounded
by police involvement. So, I kept walking.
I heard the Pedo Van coming up behind
me before I saw it. I knew it was that stupid van because the sound
of the transmission had become so familiar to me, I could have picked
it out of an audio line-up.
Steve drove along side me for a couple
feet, the window of the cab down, letting all the freezing wind into
his cab. I didn't look at him because I really couldn't take him
being a jackass right now.
Or worse, being sympathetic.
“Nice night for it,” he called out
the window. When I finally looked at him, it was only to glare.
“Hey, could you do me a favor?” he
asked. I ratcheted my glare up a couple notches. He could not
possibly think this was a good time to ask me to do something for
him.
“This van has been acting a little
funky,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I
think it'll drive better if there's a person in the passenger seat.
You know, kind of a counter-balance.”
I actually stopped walking, I was
glaring at him so hard.
“What the fuck are you talking
about?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. He'd stopped
moving and the night was filled with the soft chugging of the pink
monstrosity before me.
“I just need your help until I get
back home. I don't think the van will make it otherwise,” he said.
I knew what he was doing, and I found
it inexplicably cute, god dammit.
Normally, my angry is like napalm: it sticks to everything and burns.
But everything I threw at him, it just kept on sliding off.
“I don't take rides from strangers,
Steve,” I said, “and you're pretty fucking strange.”
“You don't even have to be in the van
all the way to my house, I can drop you off at yours,” he said, his
face creased in lines of worry for his fake-ass van problems.
I was shaking my head and looking down
because I couldn't hide the smile on my face.
“Come ooon,” he said in a wheedling
tone. “None of the cool kids are doing it.”
With a laugh I couldn't suppress, I
spun around and stalked to the back of the van, jerking open the
right side of the door. I climbed through boxes and freezers until
finally squeegeed myself into the front seat, pulling the extra
fabric of my dress after me.
“Ahh, this is much better,” Steve
said as he drove off and pretended to test the steering of the van.
“Much more balanced.” He shot my his dorky Aren't I Cute?
Smile, and I turned my head before he saw me smile back.
“So, I guess you heard what
happened,” I said because there was no way he hadn't. Even the
handful of home schooled kids would know by noon tomorrow. This town
wasn't that big.
“All I heard was that Josh McKay
threw a fit at the Senior Bonfire,” he said warily, like he wasn't
sure he should admit to knowledge of our public spat.
“He broke up with me,” I said, not
feeling a way about it at the moment.
“Uhh...” Steve was, for once in his
god-forsaken life, at a loss for words.
“In front of everyone. He's such a
drama queen,” I said, hoping one day I would be able to look back
at this and be as over it as I was pretending to be.
“Why did he break up with you, if you
don't mind me asking?” Steve asked, keeping one eye on me
cautiously.
“Probably because I kicked him in the
balls,” I said, a vindictive smile spreading like butter across my
face.
Steve let out a bark of surprised
laughter.
“Why did you kick him in the balls?”
he asked.
“He seemed to think I was kidding
when I said I wasn't like my sister,” I said darkly. There was
silence in the van for a moment while I felt the anger building again
inside of me.
Was this going to be a thing, now? Guys
dating me because I looked like the girl who had a mental breakdown
and posted a sex tape on YouTube? I crossed my arms in front of me
angrily.
“What happened after the yelling?”
Steve asked a couple minutes later. We were driving directly towards
the lightening sky.
“A lot of stuff,” I said,
non-committal. There was a long pause. I should probably elaborate, I
thought. In the interest of full disclosure.
“I may be wanted by the police,” I
continued finally, tilting my head back onto the headrest and
watching him with one eye. His smile widened as he kept his eyes on
the road.
“That's okay,” he said as we drove
off into the sunrise.
Emily Ever is a LEGIT writer with an unfortunate case of wanderlust. Her current blog, all about being an unemployed writer, can be found here. Her blogs from the various countries she's lived in can be found here: (Saudi Arabia, Korea, and India). Follow her on twitter here: @CreateAsI_Speak
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