Read Between the Lines Read online

  He barks. It’s not a happy bark. It sounds more like a Don’t leave me one.

  I step toward the unoccupied cube on the end. “I’ll be right out,” I say reassuringly.

  Oliver tilts his head, then growls low.

  I open the door and he trots over, frantically rubbing his side against my legs. Then he hops into the foul little room.

  “Um,” I say.

  He barks again.

  I sigh and join him. It smells terrible inside and I pee as quickly as possible while Oliver waits, watching.

  Hovering over the black toilet seat in front of a strange little dog in a disgusting city porta-potty, I start to giggle. When I decided to let the bus take me somewhere, this is the last place I thought I’d end up. Oliver pants and turns in a tight circle, poor thing. I quickly finish and we step outside into the glorious city air.

  We walk through the park and are about to exit at the other end when someone with a huge long-haired dog on a leash comes toward us. The dog strains against its red leash and barks at Oliver, who gets low to the ground between me and the other dog and growls. His wire hair stands straight up all the way down his back. His mouth pulls away from his teeth viciously. I realize I should have him on a leash and quickly crouch down to hold him, but he doesn’t even have a collar and I don’t have anything to hold on to except his scrawny body. I wrap my arms around him protectively and feel how truly skinny he is. He’s trembling. I hold tighter.

  The other owner struggles as his dog pulls against the leash, clearly intent on tearing Oliver to bits. I hold Oliver tight and wait until the man and his dog pass.

  “That’s what leashes are for!” the man yells over his shoulder.

  He stomps off angrily, and I give Oliver another reassuring squeeze.

  “Don’t pay attention to him,” I say. I carry him a whole block before he finally stops trembling. We stop and I set him down and unwrap another Slim Jim for him.

  I squint up toward the street. My house isn’t too far now. My parents won’t be home, though. I imagine bringing Oliver inside and feeding him something nutritious. Maybe I’ll make him a hamburger. Then I’ll fill the kitchen sink with warm sudsy water and give him a nice bath. Maybe I’ll find a big box in the basement and decorate the outside like a present to put Oliver in and surprise my parents. I know they’ll freak out at first, but I also know they’ll love him. Just like I already do. I’ll let him nap on the couch and get some rest, then I’ll take him for another walk and show him the neighborhood.

  I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to the rest of the day. I’ve forgotten about the girls and the game I’m missing tonight. And the homework I forgot to bring home. And to feel bad about the usual messages I haven’t received since I lost my part-of-the-girls status.

  For the first time, I don’t feel like everyone else.

  I feel like me.

  This is me.

  “Ready, boy?” I ask when Oliver finishes his Slim Jim.

  He wags his bum happily.

  As we walk toward home, I realize I also forgot about finding a new trendy café and whatever it was I dreamed of writing. I forgot all about the man with his finger, and how he made me feel. Like a fake. A fraud.

  My café fantasy was just that. A dumb dream. But this moment, this walking home with a new friend, is real. Is true. Is what I was looking for. That something more to life I’ve always wanted.

  Something to care about.

  I walk faster. Oliver starts to run ahead, so I jog after him. He yips at me in a friendly way, like, I don’t know where we’re going, but I can’t wait to get there!

  “Faster!” I yell, and sprint past him.

  He yips again, and we charge ahead.

  EVERY MORNING AT APPROXIMATELY 7:25, I pull out of my driveway and head to hell, also known as Little Cindy’s restaurant. I don’t like to talk about work. It’s temporary. My dad’s going to get me a real job at the Ford dealership he works at as soon as I turn twenty-one. Two years seems like forever. But this situation is temporary.

  At approximately 7:33, I reach my first traffic light. I always gaze at the green house on the corner and remember the girl who used to live there. Her name was Marcie. She was hot. Long dark hair. Huge tits. Tight jeans. Leather boots. She never looked at me. I heard she went to New York and became a model.

  Everyone I graduated with last year seems to have gone off somewhere to become something.

  Except me.

  At approximately 7:42, I drive past my old high school. I roll down my window, stick out my hand, and give it and everyone inside the finger. Sometimes there are still late arrivals rushing through the parking lot to get to school. I always hope they’ll see me, but they never do.

  Sometimes when I stick out my finger, a car behind me honks. Sometimes with approval. Sometimes not. It makes no difference to me.

  At approximately 7:53, I obey the ENTER HERE sign in the parking lot and park in the farthest corner. I sit in my car and breathe. A lot. I hate my job. My father always says beggars can’t be choosers. He says that someday I’ll be glad I had the experience. I’ll appreciate what I have more.

  My dad is kind of like my dad and kind of like my best friend. We do a lot together. We lift weights at the gym. We wash his car and my car. We keep the yard up nice. We watch TV. It’s always been like that since my mother dumped us.

  That’s another thing I don’t like to talk about.

  I guess you could call what I do before I go inside “car meditation.” If I don’t do some serious controlled breathing and positive visualization (me, not at this job), I’ll lose it. I will do something I will regret.

  I am not a patient person. I am not a tolerant person. That’s what they told me at school. In mediation every time I got in a fight.

  You need to be more tolerant, Dewey. Do you know what that means?

  I see myself sitting at a conference table being talked at. My arms are crossed. I’m wearing a black T-shirt. My hands are curled around my biceps. I flex them and feel the muscles tighten. Back then, I thought I was pretty strong. I had no idea what my full potential was. I like to imagine that me in the body of this me jumping across the table and punching the principal in the face.

  Are you listening, Dewey? Do you have anything to say?

  I did, but I never bothered to share. No one would believe me anyway.

  Loser. That’s what Mr. Weidenheff used to call me. I’d stare at the stupid motivational posters on the wall telling me to BE A READER because IT WILL TAKE YOU ANYWHERE and wonder who they were supposed to inspire. Not me, that’s for sure.

  Why don’t you just quit school now? You’ll never amount to anything.

  That’s what he liked to say to the non-college-track kids. It wasn’t just me. I think telling us we were losers made him feel tough. I showed him what tough is.

  It’s wrong to punch your teacher. You could get expelled. So I ended up punching a lot of other poor assholes instead.

  There was a lot of crap about breathing slowly. Counting backward. Removing yourself from the situation. Staying away from people who cause you to have strong feelings. Like I had a choice.

  No one knew about the Heff’s secret messages to me and the other losers. Unless you count the janitor, who one time was cleaning in the hallway after the Heff kept me late. When I came out of the room, he muttered “asshole” under his breath. I choose to believe he was talking about the Heff and not me. But the janitor wasn’t going to help me. No one was.

  The principal and the counselors didn’t know I couldn’t stay away from the person who caused me to have strong feelings because he was my teacher.

  But then my teacher shot himself in the head.

  Sometimes I wonder if it was the losers like me who pushed him over the edge. But then I force myself not to think about it.

  Instead, I practice keeping my cool.

  Remember to breathe.

  Count backward.

  Remove myself from
the situation.

  Stay away from people who cause me to have strong feelings.

  For the most part, this is easy. Except when I get to work. And except when I see our dickhead next-door neighbor boy, who doesn’t lift a finger to do the yard work their house desperately needs. All the houses on our street are neat and tidy. All but the damned house next door. The mom works all the time, and the two kids don’t do crap to help out. I don’t know where their father is. Every Saturday, instead of going outside to mow their lawn or trim their hedges, the little bitch boy races out the door and jumps in his friend’s car to go waste time all day doing who knows what. Sometimes I want to kill him.

  The sister is no better. She does the same thing. Always going off with her friends. At least she’s hot and likes to give me a show when she walks down their front steps. Shaking her ass when she sees me watching. Slut.

  Breathe.

  Sometimes, on the weekends when the brats are off with their friends, I see the mom carrying stuff from her car into the house. Once she left the front door open, and I saw inside the front hall. It was filled with boxes and trash bags all the way to the ceiling. When she caught me looking, she slammed the door like I was the weirdo.

  Count backward. Ten. Breathe. Nine. Breathe. Eight. Breathe. Seven. Breathe. Six. Breathe. Five. Breathe. Four. Breathe. Three. Breathe. Two. Breathe. One. Breathe.

  At approximately 7:55, I get out of my car. I hold my breath, knowing what’s coming. When I can’t hold it any longer, I relent and try not to gag on the greasy restaurant smell waiting to violate my lungs. I fight the urge to puke.

  I press the lock button on my key chain. The car chirps good-bye. I admire the shine my dad and I gave it the night before.

  Be back soon, I say in my head.

  I’ll be right here, it replies reassuringly.

  I say the chant inside my head with every step toward hell. There are thirty-two.

  It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary. It’s temporary.

  At approximately 7:59, I get my time card and slide it in the slot.

  Punch.

  Clocked in.

  I hear Mr. Weidenheff’s voice:

  You’ll never amount to anything.

  And wish I could remove myself from the situation.

  I put on the finishing touches of my uniform. My name tag. Gold. Because I’m the manager. My hat. Black. Like everyone else’s. My earpiece. A contraption I use to boss everyone around.

  No one will greet me as they file up to get their cards and punch in. I’m not a good coworker. I’m orderly. I like to run a clean ship. I don’t put up with lazy asses, ex-cons, old people who don’t have the energy for this job but don’t have enough money to retire, teen moms, or stoners.

  Unfortunately, these are the most common types of people attracted to this job. Then there’s me. There’s a reason I got promoted to manager in less than six months. Mainly it’s because most people quit within two.

  At approximately 8:02, I check the schedule and make a note of who I’ll be supervising at the counter. Alice, Kristen, and Jeff.

  Alice is like seventy-two years old and needs retraining every day because she forgets everything she learned the day before. I should have recommended that we fire her by now, but she makes me cookies sometimes and I like that.

  Kristen is young. Pretty cute. Nice hair. Dropped out of school last year because she got pregnant. We went to the same school, but I don’t remember her. Her crowd didn’t go near my crowd. Now she works here to support her kid. I’m guessing that kid doesn’t eat well.

  Jeff falls under the stoner category. I don’t like his attitude. He thinks everything is funny. He doesn’t care when I yell at him. Or tell him he’s working too slowly. Too sloppily. Too inefficiently.

  You’re so intense, man.

  That’s true. I am intense.

  At approximately 8:06, we deal with the breakfast rush and the smell of egg and chicken. Hell is hot and smells like chicken eggs and chicken meat because some crazy bastards eat chicken on a biscuit for breakfast. These people are on the list of people I fantasize about pushing over a cliff.

  Now it’s 10:37.

  Everything has gone as previously described. No surprise.

  I expect the rest of the day to go just as predictably as it does every day. The breakfast smells have started to fade as the cooks in the back start to prep for lunch. It still smells like chicken in grease. But now there’s beef in grease mixed in. If it weren’t for the French fries helping to lessen the stench, I don’t think I would survive. Alice carefully wipes the counters while Kristen follows with a dry cloth. Jeff wanders aimlessly, trying to look busy. I check supplies throughout.

  Napkins. Check.

  Straws. Check.

  Ketchup and other condiments. Check.

  Still hate my job. Check.

  11:05.

  The lunch crowd starts to flow in. It’s quiet at first, with mostly old people who eat early. But by noon there will be a line, and I will have to make sure everything stays orderly. I especially have to make sure that Alice doesn’t waste time chatting up all her old friends. Everyone seems to love her, and they have no problem telling her how sad it is to see her behind the counter. They don’t care how that might make everyone on this side of the counter feel.

  Sometimes I imagine myself saying something to the old man who clearly has a thing for Alice, though sometimes I see him checking out Kristen. The dirty bastard. He’s always telling Alice how hard it is to see her working. I want to tell him how sad it is to see him eating lunch at a freakin’ Little Cindy’s every goddamned day. Doesn’t he get how sad that is?

  No.

  Probably not.

  At least he’s still on the right side of the counter.

  12:05.

  Things are in full swing. I bark orders at everyone and march around behind the counter, helping the cashiers put the right food on the right trays. Every seven minutes I swivel around and go back to the kitchen to yell at Simon, the burger guy, to keep the burgers flipping. He’s friends with Jeff. He dances in place as he stares at the grill. God. What is it with stoners? They’re always so goddamned happy.

  “Simon!” I yell, just to harsh his mellow.

  Sometimes, I admit, I can be a bastard, too.

  He looks up and shakes his head, then goes back to flipping. I would fire him, but I haven’t had any applications in two weeks. At least not any that are worth considering.

  Every so often I go out to the dining area to make sure there aren’t any spills I missed or trash on the floor. I use this as an excuse to check on my car through the window. It’s an electric-blue 1988 Ford Mustang convertible that my dad helped me buy. When it came in at the dealership, he knew it was the perfect car for us to fix up together. A classic. I spend about as many hours working on that car as I do at this place. I know that sounds pathetic. It is. But that’s what happens when you barely graduate from a crap school and have zero interest in college and are destined to amount to nothing.

  When my dad and I get home from work, we buff the car. We rake or mow the lawn, depending on what the yard needs. We clean the house. We both like order. Unlike our goddamned next-door neighbors, the slobs. I bet they don’t even own a lawn mower. I offered to mow their place for them, cheap, but they said no. Or, I should say, the freaky mom said no. I wanted to tell her that maybe her two kids should get off their asses and do some work around the house like I do. But I just smiled in an obnoxious way to make her feel bad.

  I real
ly can be a bastard sometimes.

  But that damn house drives me crazy.

  They drive me crazy.

  If it weren’t for the girl giving me the occasional strut, I’d be tempted to set the place on fire.

  She’s a cheerleader. Did I mention that? She has long dark hair. An amazing body. She knows it, too. Just like Marcie. She shakes her ass extra hard when she sees me outside. She likes it when I watch. Marcie did, too. I could see it made her feel powerful. But I wasn’t allowed to get too close. I wasn’t good enough for anything more than watching from a safe distance.

  I hate teases.

  But I still watch.

  Whenever her brother catches me, I can tell he’s going nuts, which I love. Skinny little turd wouldn’t dream of coming after me except in his fantasies. He knows this. I know it. She knows it. It’s a game we play.

  12:20.

  I am back to pacing behind the counter. Bored. But then a nice surprise. The little turd from next door comes in with all his turd friends. Most people from the high school use the drive-thru. They don’t have time to eat inside during lunch period. I wait for him and gesture for Kristen to step aside. I got this.

  He looks at me. I look at him. I can tell he’s nervous. He took a paver from our driveway just to be an asshole, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to scare the crap out of him ever since. Why take a brick from someone’s driveway? Don’t they have enough crap in that house? Is that what they do? Go around taking things from everyone in the neighborhood? Or is it just us?

  My dad already replaced it. But I know what this little punk tried to do. Trying to piss me off like our neat yard is just a joke to him. He thinks he’s so funny. Well, I can take something from him, too. I smile, take his money, and tell him the last thing he wants to hear. About me and his slutty tease sister. It’s not clear from his expression if he really believes me, but it doesn’t matter.

  Mission accomplished.

  Prick.

  2:00.

  The lunch rush has died down, and I get to take my break. I get thirty minutes. I savor it.