The Other Side of the Street

by Nicole Thorn

  “Thank fucking god,” Stanley sighed.

  “I’m gonna call my mom and tell her we’re having a baby!” Helen shouted, then ran into the truck. “Oh god! It smells like fish!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hamilton

  That night, after everything had been locked up tight, the three of us sat on our empty table, staring at the food truck. Sam had openly wept for a few minutes after Helen and Stanley left. His weeping stopped when he realized that we would be the ones to clean up all the fish inside, but it had been a glorious couple of minutes for him nevertheless.

  “This is strange,” Jay said.

  I looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

  He shrugged. “We went from thinking about getting a food truck to having one, without having paid, in less than a week. Don’t you find that strange?”

  “Shh!” Sam said, waving his hands. “Whatever gods of karma are on our side, don’t piss them off. They hate when you look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Jay and I both turned to stare at him. He didn’t seem to notice, too busy gazing at our food truck, which would need a new paint job, with all the love in the world. I took a sip of the water I’d snatched from the RV before Helen and Stanley took off with it.

  They’d left about two hours ago, having given all the people who vomited their money back. The store manager had come out with several huge buckets of water to throw on the vomit, hoping that it would wash most of it down the street. So, we stood on the side of the road that only kind of smelled like old puke and too warm fish. The forecast called for rain the next day, so that would hopefully take care of the problem. We would be too busy figuring out the food truck to actually be out there selling, anyway.

  “What should we paint it like?” Jay asked.

  “Obviously, our logo should go there,” I said, and pointed to where the food truck’s old name had been emblazoned. “And on the other side, so that it matches.”

  “The rest of it can be yellow and black,” Sam suggested. “Striped, like a bee.”

  Jay nodded slowly, seeing our vision. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  I grinned at him and bumped my shoulder against his. “It’ll be beautiful. Once we get the fish out of the back, anyway.”

  “And scrub it with holy water, to get Helen’s presence out,” Sam said.

  “And make a menu that’ll work for such a food truck.”

  Clearly, none of us had any delusions as to how much work this would be. I knew that didn’t bother Jay or me, because the two of us always worked like dogs. The fact that Sam seemed excited to get started shouldn’t have surprised me, either, because he had been working hard these last few weeks. And yet…

  “We already have a pretty good menu,” I said. “This just means we can add hot sandwiches and actual drinks onto it. Maybe even some chilled desserts…”

  Jay nodded eagerly. “We can keep some honey and jerky in there too, so that we can still sell that.”

  I smiled at him, hooking an arm around his shoulders. “Whatever you want, honey boy.”

  Sam had stopped paying attention to us, too busy walking around and around the food truck. “Wait until we’re done with the paint job,” he said. “I’ll be able to post it on all of our social media…” He went on for a while, but I tuned out most of what he said. Not because I didn’t agree with him, but because he talked so fast that I couldn’t understand half of what he said.

  When he finally stopped, Sam turned back to us, beaming. “I can’t wait to tell my parents about this. They’ve been hassling me all summer to get a real job, telling me that I needed to be more serious about my life. If I heard the word Harvard one more time, I was going to scream until my throat bled.”

  Both my eyebrows popped up. “They want you to go to Harvard?”

  Sam nodded, still looking at the truck. “You should have seen the look on my mother’s face when I told her that college wasn’t for me. I thought she was going to get a belt and beat me.”

  Jay looked worried, so I assured him that Sam’s parents never actually beat him.

  “Not physically anyway,” Sam said, still bouncing up and down on his heels with excitement. “They just make me wish that I hadn’t come home.”

  “Well, now you can tell them that you have a real job,” Jay said. “You own part of a food truck.”

  Sam whipped around; eyes wide. “Own?”

  Shrugging, Jay stared down at his feet. “It’s not like Hammy or I want to market online anyway. You do so much of the work, it just feels right… We wouldn’t have gotten the food truck without your help.”

  I yanked Jay over and slammed my mouth onto his. He just looked so cute, trying to keep us from realizing that under all the murderous intent, he had a squishy heart. When we pulled back a full minute later, Sam grabbed Jay by the shoulders and hugged him like he thought Jay would float away otherwise.

  “Thanks,” Sam said. “I can’t even begin to tell you what that actually means.”

  They both looked awkward when the hug ended, which just amused me to no end. Sam rocked back on his heels again, staring at the food truck some more. “To be honest, they won’t care that owning a food truck is a real job that can bring in real money. They’ll still be mad at me for not doing what they want me to do. However, this means that I can maybe move out soon, so that I don’t have to hear about it.”

  Jay’s eyes turned sad, so I put my arm around him again. I knew Sam’s parents better, so I actually felt relieved. Sam didn’t deserve to be in that house, and the relief came from not having to be the one to tell him that they would not change their ways.

  “If you need a place to stay, just let me know,” I said to Sam.

  He waved his hand. “I don’t want your boyfriend to actually stab me in the chest whilst I sleep, so that’s okay.”

  “Good,” Jay said at the same time that I said, “Whilst?”

  “It’s a good word,” Sam argued.

  I laughed.

  We heard a squeaky wheel, and all turned around to see a store manager approaching us, pushing a large bin. He shoved the bin at us hard enough that I had to catch it to keep it from hitting Jay and Sam. The thing was heavier than I would have thought, and it nearly bowled me over.

  “I will pay you a hundred dollars right now if you get that truck cleaned out. Do you know how many customer complaints I’ve had in the last hour from it?”

  “Sorry,” Jay said.

  “Where’s the money?” I said.

  The manager forked over the hundred, and Sam jumped into the back before I’d even got it counted. I heard things crashing in there and decided not to worry overly much about it. “We’ll have it smelling good in no time,” I said to the manager, who turned and walked away.

  “You actually took the money,” Jay said, shaking his head. He also counted the bills, which I found adorable.

  “Of course,” I said. “We’ve got to repaint this whole truck and make sure that Helen and Stanley didn’t break anything inside it. Not to mention, it might actually take a miracle to get the smell of rotting fish out of it.”

  Jay glanced up at the truck and smiled. “I’ll talk to my mom. She’s got this secret formula stuff that can get anything clean.” He put his hand on my arm. “I mean anything.” He said this with the seriousness usually only reserved for honey and Wheel of Fortune.

  “Have you committed a murder I need to know about?” I asked, walking toward the back of the truck.

  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” Jay said.

  “The mystery is kind of hot,” I said. “You should keep that up.”

  Jay probably would have responded, if he hadn’t been pelted in the face with a packaged tuna. He made a disgusted gagging sound and stumbled back while I turned to glare at Sam, who had the biggest cat-who-ate-the-canary smile that I’d ever seen on a person’s face.

  “Oops. Guess you two will have to stop flirting and help me get this
cleaned out.”

  I glanced at Jay. “I’ll go make the trout fall on his head to avenge you.”

  “Thanks,” he said, continuing to rub his face.

  I climbed into the truck… our truck, feeling a dopey smile on my face. This day had been completely insane so far, and I hadn’t even had the pleasure of telling my father about it yet.

  I hoped he didn’t mind me trading his RV…

  ***

  Jay and I got our families together for dinner that night. We offered to get Sam’s in on the party too, but he assured us that being surrounded by people would not make his parents happier with his life choices. He claimed that it would only embarrass him more, so Jay and I let it go.

  I did, however, make him promise to text us after he told his parents about the food truck. He was still my friend and I worried about him.

  Jay seemed worried too, because he warned Sam that if we hadn’t heard from him by ten that night, we would be coming to his rescue.

  We got everyone together at my house, since it would be big enough to hold all eight people. Dee chased Purricane all over the house, screaming about how cute and fluffy he was, while the cat glared at me for letting this tiny human into his home to harass him. Dad and Jay’s parents hadn’t officially met before, but they got along so well that they felt like old high school buddies.

  AJ and Bea sat in our living room, playing Mario on the TV. They screamed at each other every time one of them lost the other.

  “Pop the damn bubble!” Bea yelled.

  “Language!” Jay said, gesturing to Dee Dee, who had finally managed to catch Purricane. The cat purred in her arms, but he did so grudgingly while glaring at me. I wondered if he would try to suffocate me in my sleep.

  “Dinner!” Dad called from the kitchen.

  Bea threw her controller down in disgust while AJ laughed. He hit the pause button and followed her. We all ended up around our slightly too small kitchen table, but we made it work. My father had made burgers out on the grill. I half expected him to see the food truck parked in the big garage, where we used to have our RV, but he hadn’t. Which meant that we still had the pleasure of telling him about our day.

  “Mommy?” Dee said. “I want a kitten.”

  “No,” Jay’s mother said.

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.”

  Mrs. Barker looked at me with accusation in her eyes. I pointed at my dad. “He’s the one that got the cat in the first place.”

  She transferred the look to my father, who appeared affronted at my betrayal.

  I snickered while everyone started to get their stuff together. Jay cleared his throat. “So, uh, I have an announcement.”

  Bea gasped. “You’re pregnant?”

  “Ha ha,” Jay said. “No. Hamilton and I had an interesting day, though. We sold a ton of product, watched a vomit train, and got a food truck.”

  Bea, whose friends had witnessed the entire debacle, didn’t look surprised. Dad, however, nearly choked on his burger. I started to rise, but he put his hand up and took a heavy drink from his water. “Sorry. Wrong pipe. I’m not sure I want to know what a vomit train is, so why don’t we skip over that and get to the part about the food truck?”

  Jay beamed, looking so happy that I wanted to take him back to my room for a business meeting. A long one. “Stanley, he’s the guy who did all the cooking for the food truck, got sick of it all. He traded his food truck for the RV, and now we’ve got a food truck!”

  “Hope you don’t mind!” I said over the shouts of joy.

  My father waved me off as if it had been the most ridiculous thing that I’d ever said. “So, you’ve already improved the business,” Dad said, staring at me with what could only be pride.

  He ruffled my hair so hard that I felt dizzy. “Good. I’m proud of you.”

  I beamed.

  Jay’s mother leaned forward. “So, this means that you got your spot back?”

  “Yes,” Jay said. “And that I have a chance to make some real money. Not just with my honey, but—”

  “With your honey?” his mother said, gesturing to me.

  Jay and I both were both affronted at the pun.

  “Harry already said it, but I’ll say it again,” his dad said. “I’m proud of you, Jay.”

  His mother nodded vigorously, looking too happy to speak. She squeezed Jay’s hands as tightly as she dared.

  “Well, where is it?” Dad asked at the end of the meal. “Where is this food truck?”

  “Out in the garage,” I said. We all got up to go look at it. And the moment my father saw the thing, his eyes widened. “Oh my… they certainly made some bold choices with this thing, didn’t they?”

  I laughed, hauling Jay in against my side. The two of us watched in amusement as our families talked about all the things we could do with the truck. I didn’t know about him, but I could have stood there for another hour in contentment. We had a plan for the future, our families seemed genuinely happy to let us follow that plan, and I got to hold him while they dissed our actual sworn enemies.

  It couldn’t get much better than that.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jay

  “What am I supposed to say?” Dad asked, leaning against the doorframe of my almost not bedroom. “Am I supposed to be mad? Tell you not to do it? Tell you not to get pregnant? Don’t get pregnant, by the way. You’re too young.”

  I rolled my eyes, taping up the box that held my clothes in them. For the last three weeks, I’d been sleeping over at Hammy’s almost every single night. I literally hadn’t made my bed since before we got the food truck. It just seemed to make sense, moving in with Hammy and his dad. In separate rooms, of course.

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Say something, I guess. Like you don’t hate me.”

  Dad came in, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t hate you. But you’re my least favorite kid now.”

  I hung my head. “I understand.”

  He pulled me in for a hug, holding me there. “Your mom and I would let you live here for the rest of our lives if we could, but we’ve always known you kids would grow up and leave. That’s the whole point of becoming an adult. You’re about to start a really big part of your life, and if you think you need to move on, then do it.”

  It made sense with work that I would be closer to Hammy, but AJ was still a major factor. I would be gone by the end of the day, and he could move his stuff into this room. As sad as leaving felt, nothing made me happier than knowing he would get what he deserved.

  “I’ll see you like every day,” I promised. “I’m only five minutes away.”

  “I know,” Dad said, patting my shoulder. “I know. Your bees live here after all.”

  Hammy came back with more tape and helped me with the last of my boxes. I only had a handful to start with, but we had to carefully pack all my game show memorabilia. My heart would have broken if I lost my Whammy button.

  “Should I give my boyfriend speech?” Dad asked Hammy. “The one where I tell you not to touch my kid?”

  Hammy snorted. “Um, you should maybe have that speech with Captain Hormones over here instead of me.”

  My face turned red. I would have scolded him if I could open my mouth.

  Dad laughed, shaking his head. “Just like his mom.”

  “Oh my god!” I shouted.

  “She’s why we got pregnant so young,” Dad told Hamilton. “Every time we were alone, that girl would hop on me. My god, she’s fun.”

  I gagged while Hamilton laughed at me. I would remember this later when he wanted to make out before his dad got home. I would punish him harshly… and then we would make out.

  “You’re good with all this, right?” Hamilton asked Dad as he set a box on the bed. “I don’t want you to hate me because I took your kid away.”

  Dad sighed, shrugging. “I don’t want him to go, but it’s going to happen sooner or later anyway. And I don’t reall
y think I should be upset he’s moving in with his boyfriend. He’s eighteen. You two can do what you want. It’s not like you’re even sharing a room, which doesn’t matter anyway, honestly. If I had a dollar for every time his mom snuck into my house when we were teenagers, showing up at my window looking for some—”

  “I literally hate you!” I said, picking up a box to storm out. “Why are you saying these words in front of me?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer, taking my box and bringing it out to load into Hammy’s car. Everything I owned could fit in the backseat, not including my bee children. They would have to stay for a while, but I could come visit them when I needed to.

  When I got back in the house, I stopped by Dee’s and AJ’s room. My brother cleaned off his now emptying bookshelves in preparation for the move. Bea had some stuff she wanted to move around, which he helped her with too. As I moved my things out, AJ moved his in.

  “It feels weird,” he said, holding a stack of skateboard magazines in his arms. I took them from him, so he didn’t have to struggle. “You aren’t going to be here every day.”

  “I’ll still come by,” I promised. “I’m not abandoning you.”

  “Good.”

  We went into my old room and AJ started putting stuff on my old shelves. Dee Dee piggybacked on Hammy, who pretended not to notice her there. She laughed when he ignored her, thinking it was the funniest thing in the world.

  “Presenting!” I heard Bea yell, making me look to the door. We all turned to see Mom stepping up, her hands on her hips and a massive smile on her face. She had on a suit of sorts, which added up to pressed pants, a jacket, a white button up, and a necklace with a honeybee on it. “The new assistant—soon to be actual manager—manager! Please welcome Mrs. Mama Bear to the stage.”

  AJ started humming the Price is Right theme as Mom strode in, head high as my dad tried to stare at her hard enough to get her clothes to come off. I tried not to notice.

  “What?” I asked. “When the hell did this happen?”

  “Today,” Mom said, trapped in a hug with Dad. He had his arms around her middle, holding her against his chest. While she tried not to giggle at his neck kisses, she said, “I didn’t tell anyone because we weren’t sure it was a done deal and they just burn through managers so fast. Bea only knows because she had to drive me to one of the interviews. Sorry, honey.”