Read Between the Lines

by Jo Knowles

  Soon the assholes from the high school will show up again like they own the place. They’ll look at me and not look at me. They’ll see some schmuck. That’s all. Not a particular one. Just one of those guys. One of those losers who didn’t go to college. Didn’t get a real job. Didn’t get a life. They’ll wonder if I ever even graduated. I flex my biceps and wonder what it would feel like to hurt them.

  It’s temporary.

  In two years, I’ll be twenty-one, and I’ll quit this job faster than . . . I don’t know. Just fast. Faster than my Mustang at zero to sixty. I’ll go work with my dad and earn commissions, and we’ll shoot to the top of the sales board. Unstoppable. I’ll buy my own place. And people like Marcie and that slutty little tease neighbor will wish I’d do more than check them out.

  Maybe my mother will find out about us and maybe she’ll regret leaving. Too bad for her. It will be way too late to come crawling back.

  I take my breaks outside. I bring my own lunch. No way am I going to eat this stuff and gain a thousand pounds like that guy who ate at McDonald’s every day and made a movie about it and almost died. It’s bad enough I have tons of acne from sneaking the occasional fry.

  No.

  I sit at one of the picnic tables near my car.

  Hi, I say to it inside my head.

  Hey, dude, it says back.

  I would sit in my car, but my work clothes smell like fried meat and I don’t want my car to smell like that. Instead, I look out beyond the parking lot and pretend I’m a customer. Pretend I’m here from my real job, on lunch break. I eat a turkey sandwich and drink a protein shake.

  Slowly.

  I might know the number of bites it takes to finish the sandwich. Nineteen.

  I might know how many swallows it takes to finish my protein shake. Twenty-one.

  I might know how many pieces of orange peel I have to break off before I finish peeling. Six.

  2:27.

  I wipe my mouth with a napkin and throw my trash away. I take slow breaths as I walk back to hell.

  Five hundred eighty-four work days to go.

  2:31.

  I watch suspiciously from behind the counter while the high-schoolers file inside and get in line. They do not respect the rules. They snap gum that I will find later pressed under a chair or table. They push each other. They grope each other. They drop trash on the floor.

  I hate them all.

  I was never like them in school. I didn’t get to hang out with my friends. We didn’t go anywhere after school together. We had jobs after school. We worked our asses off at crap jobs like this. Got made fun of by assholes like them. Survived. Barely graduated high school. Got slightly less crap jobs. Tried to forget the Marcies and the rest of the people who only let us watch. Drool. Wish we were them. But never let us get too close.

  We were outsiders, waiting to become invisible.

  Waiting to amount to nothing.

  I cross my arms at my chest and flex my muscles again. I like looking threatening. I like looking tough. I realize my cobalt-blue shirt and stiff black baseball cap don’t exactly help, but the muscles cancel them out. That’s what I pretend.

  I go to the gym every day after work. It helps me release my aggression. It also helps me get buff. And I am. I know I said that already. But it’s important to me. It’s important to me to know with confidence that I could beat the crap out of any one of these privileged jerks.

  I stand behind Alice as she takes an order. I make her nervous. Her fingers shake above the keypad. She turns to me and makes an innocent, helpless gesture. What does she want me to do?

  Kristen moves much more quickly and efficiently. Her fingers dance over the keyboard she’s already memorized. She’s smart. She shouldn’t be here. She should be on the other side of the counter hanging out with her friends, poor fool. Instead she let herself get knocked up, and now she’s one of us.

  Jeff is laughing. His pothead friends are ordering more food than they can probably afford. I’m sure he’ll try to get away with giving them free stuff. But it won’t happen. Not while I’m managing. I walk over to him and he straightens up. His friends look at me and burst out laughing.

  Go ahead. Laugh. Losers.

  Jeff gets all serious and tells them how much they owe. They freak out over the price and have him cancel the order. They get one order of large fries to share. Predictable.

  I glance out at the crowd again and spot that little dick from next door. I can’t believe he came back. We lock eyes. He looks pissed. Seriously pissed. Good.

  I pace back and forth behind the counter, just waiting for him to get to the front of the line. But all of a sudden, the little turd and his friends take off. I see them running in the parking lot. Then there’s a commotion at the back of the line. Everyone’s gasping and yelling, and some guy is on the floor. I jump over the counter. What the hell is going on?

  The guy looks bad. Maybe it’s a heart attack. Who knows? Things happen fast and I do what I can to help the poor dude. His wife and kid hang on to him as if he’s going to rise up and float away. I can see why. He is not in good shape. He looks like a burned-out business guy. He’s wearing a really ugly brown suit, and his shoes have those gross leather tassels on them that were popular in, like, the nineties or something. He looks kind of pathetic to tell the truth, and not just because he’s clinging to life. I make a vow on the spot that I will never look like that. Ever.

  Everyone stands around. Staring. Waiting to see if the guy will die. The wife and kid look desperate and helpless. I also vow never to look like that. I decide to do what I can and bark some orders. Get the guy some water. Tell everyone to step back and give him some room. What else can I do? I have no idea.

  Luckily the EMTs show up in minutes and take over. I walk outside and make sure everything goes smoothly. The fresh air is nice and I drink it in guiltily, knowing I shouldn’t allow myself to feel good when some guy is dying in the wailing ambulance that is taking off down the road.

  I take a few more deep breaths anyway.

  I turn and force myself to walk back to the front door.

  Sixteen steps.

  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.

  In hell, things have gone back to normal.

  The crowd has gotten back in line. The registers have started beeping again, and no one would ever know that a guy might have just croaked on the floor we’re all standing on.

  I think about my own dad and what I would do if something happened to him. But I don’t want to imagine that. Because nothing can. Not before this temporary life is over and we live our dream.

  4:59.

  Alice taps my shoulder. “I’m going to clock out now,” she says. Her eyes are kind. For a minute, I feel bad for being such a jerk to her.

  “OK,” I say. “Have a good night.”

  The rest of the workers follow. The poor saps on the next shift wait to take their places. They look tired, and they haven’t even started yet. I punch my time card and file it in my designated slot. I admit, I smile. At the moment, there is little else that feels better than checking out of this place.

  When I step outside, I take off my cap and let the breeze blow over my sweaty head. I open the trunk and rip off my shirt, roll it up in a ball, and stick it in a plastic bag so it won’t smell up the car. I put on a tank top for the gym and get in the car.

  Breathe.

  Five hundred eighty-four days to go.

  5:07.

  I drive to the gym with the windows down and the radio blasting. When I go past the hospital, I wonder if the guy from earlier made it. I turn the volume up louder. The bass thumps through my chest and makes me feel alive. I rock my head to the beat. This is the happiest part of my day.

  5:23.

  I t
hink the chick behind the counter at the gym is into me. She always asks to see my club card photo before I go in and then takes an extra long time looking at it, then me, it, then me. Smiling like she wants me.

  Supposedly she’s dating one of the personal trainers, but I never see her with him.

  Today when she takes my card, she spends even more time checking me out. When she hands it back, she licks her lips. I smirk seductively and leave her there.

  I head to the locker room, finish changing, and find my dad already lifting weights. We spot each other for the next hour. Then we run side by side on the treadmill. Three miles in twenty-two point five minutes.

  After, we sit in the sauna. We don’t need to talk. Just sit and sweat whatever we have left out.

  We shower.

  We go home. He in his Ford Explorer. Me in my Mustang.

  When I drive past the school, I flip it the bird again. The car behind me honks. Then I realize it’s my dad. He sticks his finger out too. Heh.

  At home we walk around the yard before going inside, pulling up any weeds that might have cropped up. My dad carries a bottle of Roundup and sprays. Sometimes a piece of trash blows onto the lawn and we pick up that too. Once, a Little Cindy’s burger wrapper blew across the front walkway. I set it on fire.

  7:45.

  We get dinner together. Salmon. Rice. Broccoli. We always sit in the same place at the table. My dad on one side, me on the other. My mother used to sit on the end, sort of between us. Even though that was a long time ago, I sometimes wait to start eating until she sits down. When my dad digs in, I remember she’s not here anymore.

  Tonight I eat my food slowly, around the plate. Bite of salmon. Bite of rice. Bite of broccoli. One at a time, taking turns. My dad likes to take a little bit of each food and put it on his fork so he gets a taste of all three at once. This is one of the only things we don’t have in common.

  “I saw Rachel checking you out,” my dad tells me after he takes a long drink of Bud Light from the beer glass I gave him for Christmas last year. It’s a Patriots glass. That’s our favorite football team. I take my own drink from my Red Sox glass. That’s our favorite baseball team, and the glass I gave my dad the Christmas before. My dad lets me drink beer at dinner just like him, even though I’m only nineteen.

  “I doubt it,” I say.

  “No. She was.”

  I shrug. “She has a boyfriend.”

  “She doesn’t have a ring yet. Fair game.”

  “She won’t go out with me as long as I’m a fast-food manager.”

  He sighs and takes another drink. “That’s temporary.”

  I smile. “Maybe her boyfriend will be too. I can wait.” That’s my plan. I know she’s into me now. No doubt. But I’m not letting her know where I work.

  My dad nods and takes another bite. The food is carefully balanced in three parts on his fork. Pink, yellow, and green. When he chews, he makes a kind of contented grunting noise. I’ve caught myself making the same sound on occasion. It used to drive my mother crazy.

  Would the two of you shut up, for Christ’s sake! It’s like living with animals!

  We made her so miserable.

  “By the way, I have a date tomorrow,” my dad says. He pulls his phone from his back pocket and brings up a message with a photo, then hands it to me.

  The woman looks OK.

  “Three left on my plan,” he says. “This one seems real nice.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “She looks nice. If it doesn’t work, are you gonna renew?”

  He shrugs and takes another drink. “Who knows? This whole online dating thing is costing me a fortune. Sometimes I think ladies just sign up for free food. Last week’s date ordered a ton of extra food and had the waitress put almost all of it in doggie bags to take home. I bet she’s feeding her kids off dates.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  He takes the phone back and sets it on the table.

  “I never really dated before. Your mom and I could never afford to go out to eat. Didn’t want to. All we wanted to do was find a place we could be alone to —”

  “Don’t say it,” I interrupt. It’s hard to imagine my mom and dad being close. All I remember is how much she seemed to hate him. Nothing he did was good enough. Nothing.

  My dad says she was sick. Mentally. He finally convinced her that she should see a doctor. She used to do some sort of crazy things that I don’t really want to talk about. Most of the scars she left have healed and disappeared. But they’re still there inside.

  Anyway. She ended up having an affair with her doctor and leaving us for a better life. Her doctor convinced her it wasn’t good for her recovery to see us. She agreed.

  For a long time, I tried to be better, in case she came back. My dad did too. We picked up the house. We mowed the lawn. We made everything perfect. Kept it perfect. Still do.

  Even though we know she’s never coming back.

  It’s a just-in-case thing.

  “Well,” my dad says, “we’ll see what happens.”

  “Yup,” I say.

  We finish eating, bring our dishes to the kitchen, and wash them. Then my dad does what he always does. Opens another beer, pours it into his Patriots glass, and watches Law and Order reruns in the living room.

  I do what I always do. I go outside to get some air. Seems like I’m always trying to get some air.

  8:32.

  It’s chilly on the front steps under the light. It’s too cold for bugs to swarm the bulb in their frantic way.

  Why do they do that, anyway?

  I fill my lungs with the biting, sharp night air. Hold it in till it stings, then slowly breathe it out. I do this five times, like always. Then I breathe normal and wait. Wait to be disappointed.

  The neighborhood is quiet. I like this time of night when everything’s peaceful and orderly. Next door, I realize there’s a car parked at the end of the driveway. I squint and try to see what make it is. I see movement inside. Then the door opens and Hot Cheerleader steps out. She’s pissed. She starts screaming at whoever’s inside the car. Another car pulls up behind them. The lights on the first car come on, and it takes off down the road.

  The brother gets out of the second car and runs over to his sister.

  “What’s all that racket!” I yell, to let them know I’m watching.

  They ignore me.

  The brother steps closer to her and reaches out in a comforting way. She brushes past before he can touch her. The other car still idles at the curb, headlights interrupting the peaceful dark night.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!” I yell.

  The brother waves to whoever’s in the car and they drive away. Then the two start to walk toward their house through the jungle of uncut lawn. The girl does not wiggle her hips for me. The boy scowls in my direction.

  “Hey!” I call again. I don’t even know why.

  They both finally stop and look over. Now I have to say something.

  “You ever gonna mow that lawn, bitch?” I ask.

  “Who are you calling a bitch?” Hot Cheerleader asks.

  I smile. They know.

  “Leave my brother alone!” she yells. She looks at me like I am dirt.

  “You live in a dump!” I call out.

  They just laugh.

  They laugh!

  And then Hot Cheerleader raises her hot arm and gives me the freakin’ finger.

  Assholes.

  Before they go inside, Bitch Boy turns and waves, all friendly. “Good night!”

  I shake my head at them.

  Idiots.

  I open the door and reach inside to turn the light off, then stand on the steps in the dark. It’s quiet again. Quiet and peaceful. Next door, the lights come on inside the mess house. The shades are always drawn, but lines of light outline the rectangular windows. I imagine the brother and sister climbing over all their mother’s crap to get to their bedrooms. It’s a pathetic image, and I turn away and loo
k down the quiet street instead.

  Sometimes when I stand out here in the peacefulness, I wonder where my mom is. She was always coming out here to stand in the dark, alone. She never let me stand with her. She had to get away from us. From our mess. From our smell. From our noise. From our presence. She hated being inside the house. Hated being inside the car. Hated being trapped. With us. She always needed air.

  When she left, I came out here and stood. I waited and wondered what it was she got out here.

  And I wondered if she would come back.

  I waited in the dark and hoped. I looked up and down the street, catching my breath every time I saw headlights. But every time, the headlights floated past or turned before they got here. One year. Then two. Then five.

  I breathe in deeply again. Feel the familiar sting.

  Come back.

  I wait.

  Our yard is all picked up now. We have nice cars. The house is freshly painted. Everything is in its place. No clutter. I know how to be quiet. I know how to be good.

  Come back.

  I wait some more.

  I wait for the headlights.

  I wait for the car, pulling into the driveway.

  I wait to see the face I’ve missed and longed for, even though it hurt me.

  Even though she treated me like nothing.

  I wait.

  And wait.

  And breathe the air just like she did.

  And fear that, maybe, this situation is not temporary after all.

  CAL, DYLAN, AND I CRAM INTO CAL’S BAKING-HOT SUBARU Forester during lunch. Cal bangs his hands against the steering wheel to pound out the rhythm of the music that’s blasting through the speakers and making my teeth vibrate. Dylan juts his head out the passenger-side window and pants like a dog thrilled to be going for a ride, except he doesn’t actually look very happy. He tries to copy Cal by pounding the dash to the beat, but the glove compartment keeps popping open when he does it, so he finally stops.

  Cal’s car is kind of falling apart. It’s a hand-me-down from Cal’s mom and is a total mommy car in every way. First, it’s white. Second, it still has the PROUD PARENT OF AN IRVING MIDDLE SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT bumper sticker on it from three years ago, the last year Cal showed anything resembling promise.