The Other Side of the Street

by Nicole Thorn

  “A food truck,” my boyfriend said with a smile. “If we get a truck and fix it up, then we can look as fancy as those fishy dumbasses. We’re still coming up with new things to sell, and we can probably get some kind of menu together in the next couple of weeks. It’s not hard to cook, and I’ve already been teaching you what I know.”

  My eyebrows went up. “How could we possibly get the money for an actual food truck?”

  “We can find an old one to fix up, or maybe get a loan.”

  “Is a bank going to give a loan to two eighteen-year-olds without a steady and consistent income? I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that kind of thing.”

  “That’s what parents are for. I can ask my dad what he did when he got the butcher shop. He would know all the steps we can take and what we can do to look a little less like insane kids who think this is all just a game.”

  I just didn’t know. I didn’t think I could walk into a bank and be taken seriously. And what if it failed? Then we would owe a bunch of money, and we’d get buried under debt before we even got out of our teen years.

  “I know this is terrifying,” Hammy said, reaching out to take my hand on the couch. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now.”

  I knew he wouldn’t pressure me, but I still felt it. We scrambled every single day, and it seemed like we stood on the edge of something. Success or failure, I couldn’t be sure. But I wanted to be sure, and the only way would be to try.

  I picked up my phone, pulling up the conversation the mechanic’s kids had started with me. I typed something, feeling my whole body get colder from the stress of it. If I passed out and died, then I really wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore, so it would probably be fine either way. As my fingers found the right letters, I tried not to think about what I was doing, convincing myself it wouldn’t be the end of the world. If this didn’t work out, there would be other cars. Even ones that could accommodate what I needed.

  “What was that?” Hammy asked when I set the phone down.

  I opened my mouth, then didn’t say anything as another text came in fast. It had a lot of excitement and thanks. “I just sold my truck.”

  Hammy genuinely looked surprised, but happy. “Holy hell. Really?”

  “Yup. Eighteen hundred in actual cash. They just need a few days to gather it up and then they’re gonna come here and exchange it for the papers. Then I am officially without a truck.”

  Hammy rubbed my arm comfortingly. “I promise you that I’ll make sure you have a ride anywhere you want to go.

  I sank back into my seat, my eyes on the TV while I silently told myself it would be okay. I knew it would be. That truck had been garbage at best, and not something to rely on. That was also more money than anyone else would have offered for it when it needed so much work.

  Bea came home. She said something I couldn’t hear, too distracted with the TV and my own worried thoughts. She sat up on the arm of the couch beside Hammy, and I assumed he told her about my truck thing. She seemed happy, but I couldn’t quite get there on my own. Maybe in a few days.

  “Bea,” Dee Dee said, looking up as our sister dug her hand into the jerky bag. “What’s rent?”

  I froze, looking over at Hammy. He had a similar ‘oh shit’ expression on his face. We both said nothing.

  “Rent?” Bea asked. “Uh, it’s when you pay someone to use something that they own. You can rent a car, or a house, or an apartment. Why?”

  Dee pointed at me. “Because Jay said he needed money for rent.”

  I cursed internally, wondering why the hell Dee wouldn’t have just asked me if she wanted to know. But it would be fine, I could still get out of this.

  “Rent?” Bea asked again, but at me this time. “Why the hell would you need rent money? You live here.”

  I opened my mouth, prepared to lie to my best friend in the world. But then I couldn’t. She would find out anyway, and I wouldn’t be sparing anyone. “I’m moving out.”

  She paled, her lips parting while she stared at me. “What? No. Why? When?”

  “Soon,” I answered. “And because I need to.”

  “Bullshit you need to. Why do you need to?”

  I didn’t want to make it sound like AJ was the reason, but the facts still remained. “This house is really small for as many people to live in it as we have. I’m eighteen now anyway. I can’t live here forever.”

  Bea stood from the couch, her hands clenched at her sides and eyes glassy. “You can’t just leave. If you leave, then I have no one to talk to.”

  “You have all your friends.”

  “But my friends aren’t you. You’re the one I tell everything to. You’re the one that I care most about.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t stay because my sister wanted me to keep her company. Every day, AJ and Dee got older and still shared a room. It didn’t seem right, and when Beatrice stopped being upset, she would see that.

  “You can’t even have bees in an apartment!” she yelled, then pointed at me. “Ya know what, I’m telling on you. Mom! Dad! Are you home?”

  Hamilton gave me a sympathetic look. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone like this, but at least it was finally coming out. If it had been up to me, then I really didn’t know when I would have told anyone.

  Dad came in through the garage, and Mom had been in her room. They both looked worried, of course, and asked Bea why she kept shouting.

  She pointed at me again, accusingly. “Tell him he isn’t allowed to move out.”

  Mom’s eyebrows lifted. “Move out? What are you talking about? Jay?”

  I sighed, rubbing my eyes again. “I was thinking about trying to find another place to live. There’s not enough room for all of us here and I think everyone in the house knows it. It would be a lot less cramped for all of you if I left.”

  Dad stared at the floor. I knew what he thought, seeing the guilt on his face. I didn’t blame my parents for not being able to get us some huge house somewhere. Things were hard, even for people who worked all the time. All three of us had jobs for years and still barely got by.

  “You don’t have to leave,” Mom said. “We’re all fine.”

  “Are we? Because AJ and Dee don’t have rooms of their own. They both can if I leave. I know you would have less money—”

  “I don’t care about the money,” Dad said. “I care about all my kids living with me in the same house. You’re still a teenager. You shouldn’t get pushed out the door because I couldn’t—”

  Mom rubbed her hand across his back. “Jay, I don’t think your brother is all that bothered with sharing a room.”

  “I like it,” Dee said. “It means that when I wake up, AJ is right there with me.”

  She was too little to understand, and that wouldn’t last. It just meant that when I left, she would think that I just didn’t want to be at home anymore. I would miss out on so much if I left, and I wouldn’t get to see my family every day. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about that. It upset me but changed nothing. A teenager needed their own room.

  “It’s happening,” I said. “I don’t know when, but I’m going to try and move out as soon as I can.”

  Bea blinked, tears starting to fall. “And what if I lock myself in your room with all your stuff? What then?”

  I had a quick moment of anger, thinking about all the times Bea would take off to see her friends and leave me behind. She had every right to see her friends, but did she get to be mad at me for leaving, because I wouldn’t be there when she wanted it?

  “This needs to happen,” I told her.

  She looked to Hammy. “Are you going to let him do this? Rent is insane and practically a waste of money. Be a good boyfriend and tell him he has to stay.”

  “Beatrice,” Mom said, shaking her head. “I know you’re upset, but don’t do that. We can’t stop Jay if he wants to go. We can be sad. We can wish he would stay, but we can’t make him.”

  Then my sister loo
ked at me with all the sadness in the world. “I would miss you.”

  I swallowed hard, wishing I had all the money in the world so I could buy a house that everyone I loved could live in. “I’ll miss you too,” I said, and it felt final.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hamilton

  “No way,” I said, staring at Jay. “We haven’t been dating for long enough to justify you asking this of me, and the answer is no. I would, quite frankly, rather get on my knees and beg Helen for advice than do this.”

  Jay frowned at me, still holding the jerky suit his mother had just finished. It looked almost like a piece of bacon, which made me want to wear it even less. “She worked so hard on this,” he said. “Do you really want my mother’s feelings to be hurt, because that’s what’ll happen.”

  “She won’t care,” I said.

  “She would care loads,” Jay countered. “She would be heartbroken and think that you didn’t like the suit.”

  “I don’t like the suit.”

  Jay looked wounded. Even knowing he faked the expression, it almost worked. I hated to see him upset. Then I looked at the jerky suit again, and I just couldn’t. I would do a lot of things that would take away my dignity. Putting that suit on would never be one of them. It looked fine. His mother had even put on little pieces of black fabric to represent the pepper that I used.

  Jay set the horrible outfit aside. The two of us sat in the RV, waiting for Sam to show up so that we could get to work. I’d settled on Busy Bees as our name. Cutesy as all hell, but I thought that other people would like it. Dee certainly seemed to when I suggested it the day before. She squealed in delight and asked if she could be a busy bee when she got older.

  “You would break my mother’s heart? How are we supposed to go on if you’re this cruel?”

  I stared at him. Then I kissed him. A few minutes later, we broke apart, both breathing heavily and trying to get the jerky suit out from between us. “That’s how,” I said.

  “You bastard,” Jay muttered.

  I didn’t take offense. I just sat back on the couch and stared at the boxes we had with us. We’d brought so many products, someone would think that we had lost our damn minds. No way could we sell this much, though the cookies had been flying off the table. So had the cakes. When people had a sweet tooth, they really wanted a fix.

  Jay wrapped an arm around my chest, pulling me close. “I know the game you’re playing,” I said.

  He gave me that wounded look again. “Game?”

  “You think that you can wear me down,” I said. “If you just look sad enough. I’m not putting the suit on.”

  “C’mon. I’ll wear my bee suit, you’ll have your jerky suit. We’ll match.”

  “We’ll confuse people,” I said, standing up. “No one is going to understand why we’ve got a bee and a piece of jerky.”

  “They will once they see this,” Jay said, passing me a piece of paper. It had an unfinished drawing on it, of a bee… surfing on a piece of jerky. It had been mostly colored in, with only the wave underneath the jerky needing to be finished. I lowered the piece of paper and stared at Jay. “What the…”

  He shrugged. “We needed a logo. I figure that at the very least, it will make people stop and stare.”

  “Why is he surfing?”

  “Oh, that’s just an example. I’ve got a couple of other options.” He passed me two more pictures. In one, the bee used the jerky as a skateboard. The little cartoon had on a helmet and knee pads, which I found funny. In the third, the jerky was a horse, and the bee rode him that way.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “What, you don’t like it?” Jay asked, and this time the hurt sounded real.

  “Oh, no, I think they’re great. I’m just imagining all the questions,” I said, selecting the surfing bee. “We should go with this one, because it makes the least amount of sense for Arizona. I don’t like the implications of the horse one, and I think a skateboarding bee might bring the wrong kind of crowd.”

  “What implications?” Jay said.

  I showed him the picture again. “I’m the jerky and you’re the bee. Figure it out.”

  Jay spluttered a laugh as I grabbed the first box and brought it outside. We had already started to set up the table and our sign before stopping to wait for Sam. He had trouble getting out of the house that morning, because his parents cornered him and started asking about his future. I’d gotten a load of texts from him, most of them asking me to come save him.

  Luckily for me, I had a boyfriend now, which meant that I didn’t have to go rescue my ex.

  He arrived just as I started putting the jars of honey out on the table. He looked ragged and had stress lines around his face. I’d only ever seen him looking like that once before; when his family found out he was bi.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Sam said, giving me a thumb’s up. “Just fine. Are we setting up?”

  “Do you need to sit down?”

  “No, we’ve got stuff to sell. I can’t sit down,” Sam said, taking the box from Jay as my boyfriend came out of the RV. Sam moved quickly around the table, putting everything down and rearranging things until he thought they looked nice. Jay and I both tried to get him to slow down, but he didn’t.

  “Is he all right?” Jay asked me.

  “Not in the slightest,” I said. “But hell if I can get him to slow down.”

  Jay’s look of worry persisted as Sam came out with the last of the products. “I think we need labels with our logo on it,” he said. “And name. It’ll give them a more authentic feel. I’ll start our social media just as soon as I sit down. Maybe we could even use Helen and Stanley to boost our own sales the way they did with us yesterday.”

  I glanced at Jay.

  “Sam?”

  He disappeared into the RV without another word. Jay and I took our seats at the table. After a few minutes, Sam still hadn’t come back out. I assumed that he had finally sat down and chose not to worry about him. “So,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “The forecast says it’s going to rain around three today.”

  Jay looked anxious as he pulled his phone out and started tapping on it. “Does it? We’re going to lose the entire dinner rush!”

  No one wanted to get out of their car to stand in the rain and buy things. Helen and Stanley had an awning, but we didn’t even have that.

  Jay cursed when he saw his forecast, which made me nervous. I hadn’t intended to start this conversation with giving my boyfriend a panic attack. I put my hand on his knee, effectively shutting him up for a second. PDA did that. “We can view this as a bad thing, or we could just go on a date,” I said.

  Jay looked shocked. “A date?”

  “Yeah,” I said, removing my hand. I hoped that I hadn’t jumped the gun. Even if we had been dating for about a week… “You know. The thing that couples do every now and then, to spend time together.”

  “We spend all day together,” Jay pointed out.

  I sighed. “Yeah, all right, fine.”

  “No, wait!” Jay shouted, throwing his hands out. He nearly smacked me in the face, but I forgave him because of his adorably panicked eyes. Clearing his throat, he said, “I mean… if you wanna go on a date, then sure. Let’s do that thing.”

  I leaned forward, fully intending on kissing him, but just then the RV door banged open. Sam stumbled out, wearing the jerky suit and already shouting at people to come and buy some food. Jay and I watched him as he marched down the lane, calling to people as loudly as he could.

  “He’s lost his mind,” Jay said.

  “Indeed.”

  ***

  Dark clouds had started to roll in around noon, threatening not only rain, but to bring quite the storm. Helen and Stanley had arrived about an hour before and set up their truck across the street from us, like they normally did. We had been doing fairly well before their arrival, but Helen had set up three awnings next to her truck, to protect potential customers from
even more potential rain. Sadly, it seemed to have worked, seeing as how our table had no one, and they had a line seven people deep.

  “Damn,” Jay said. “I was hoping that they wouldn’t get any money today either, at the very least.”

  Sam still paraded around in his jerky suit, calling to anyone that would listen. Jay and I forced him to take a break every thirty minutes, and we’d then walk down the street with the sign in our hands.

  The lunch rush hadn’t quite started when Helen jumped back into her truck. It rocked back and forth with her movements, and I frowned. “You don’t think she and Stanley are having a quickie, do you?”

  Jay gave me a disgusted look. “Your mind lives in the gutter.”

  “You love that about me.”

  He snorted. “You keep saying things like that. Must I remind you that we are sworn—oh my god.”

  His eyes had moved back over to the truck, and I followed them, right to Helen.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “This can’t end well.”

  I could hear Sam cursing from where I sat. Helen had changed out of her normal uniform and into a grass hula skirt and a bikini top. Her face had some color, thanks to the sun, but the rest of her didn’t, which made the image all the worse, in my opinion. She even dared to step out of the truck barefoot, knowing that the asphalt would burn her feet.

  She looked over at us, smiling wickedly. “Hello!” she said, waving her hand at the passing cars. “Please, join us for lunch!”

  She swayed her hips in that way that people who didn’t understand hula dancing did.

  Sam came rushing over to us, a worried expression on his face. “She’s competing with the jerky suit now!”

  “Well, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” I muttered, as she swayed right into a customer and giggled as if that would erase his annoyance. “She’s competed with us in every single other way.”

  The woman twitched her hips too hard, trying to make the skirt sway the way a real hula dancer would. The movement just showed that she had jeans on underneath the skirt.