The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five

by Dionne Abouelela

  I threw my chin towards the tangerine splashed sky and the sinking sun, pushing my bargain bin neon yellow plastic flip-flops towards the restaurant, casting a quick glance towards my poor flammable pink Chuck’s in the floorboard. I summoned all of the strength in my anemic body to throw open the heavy glass door, my exhaustion making the thin panes feel like they were made out of iron, and marched proudly to the counter to place my order.

  “I’ll take a double cheeseburger and a small fry,” I quipped with a smile.

  “Double cheeseburger and a small fry,” the order boy responded without ever lifting his eyes to acknowledge me. “That will be $2.14.”

  The realization I was once again spending money on something other than gas started to sink in, as did the realization I was a fool to base my entire journey on just the price of gas. From my quick calculations, spending $2.14 on a meal that may not even qualify as real food would probably remove around twenty-nine miles from reaching a potential new home. Not only would I be losing mileage, apparently, I knew nothing about money or responsible financial decisions. My slowly building confidence crumbled back to nothing.

  “Here you go,” he said, sliding a plastic tray topped with tightly packaged food in a brightly colored recycled to-go bag with grease stains already starting to seep through the pulp of the thin paper. He finally looked up and I was confronted with brilliant emerald eyes, shining brightly against soft caramel skin. I felt a burning sensation creep in to my cheeks and my mouth went dry. He may have been the most beautiful male I’d ever laid eyes on, although I hadn’t seen too many outside of Franklin. I focused on his orange and red nametag that said Tyler. I glanced back up quickly and melted inside as his soft rosy lips formed a smile before telling me, “Have a nice day. Come back and see us.”

  I was sure he had to tell everyone to come back, and I was also sure my plan to dominate the world did not involve falling in love with a fast-food cashier. But, I reasoned, he could be like me: lost, on a journey for a better life, looking for something else, or just making money until he could take the next step.

  I smiled and tilted my head to the side, a soft, “Thank you, I will,” slipping out with a wink. Trepidation and embarrassment mixed in the pit of my stomach over this newfound skill of subtle flirting. Not only had I never flirted with a boy before, I could count the amount of times I had spoken to someone of the opposite sex on one hand. I wasn’t sure if this was a new badass side developing, or just subtly ingrained social niceties I’d never been able to put in to practice.

  I hurried my dueling personalities out to my rust bucket of an automobile. I tore in to the greasy patties of artery clogging meat mixed with some sort of filler and called a cheeseburger, stashing rows of perfectly salted fries in between the patties and the bun. The rush of salt, sweet ketchup, and slightly melted cheese lit my under-developed taste buds on fire. The hunger I felt called my attention to the issue of self care and served as a reminder a body must be fed in order to function. I proceeded to furiously shove the remainder of the cheeseburger down my throat, barely chewing, even though I should have savored each bite.

  The sun made its final slip under the horizon; the sky darkened into a rich indigo, broken only by the halo of light pollution. I pulled on the plastic handle to tilt my seat back, forgetting my car was shoved full of trash bags and half collapsed suitcases without handles forming a perfect and haunting representation of who I was trying to leave behind.

  “UGH,” I cried out in frustration, half leaning over the top of my seat with my ass proudly on display in the driver’s side window. I pushed and shoved my old life around like the trash it was until I could lay my seat back enough to not be sitting upright. This would have to do. There was no budget in my thin wallet to sleep in hotels and I wasn’t ready to give up yet. Saint Louis was not my town, and I would not be forced to stop here.

  “Ma’am,” a muffled voice called out with obvious notes of frustration, accompanied by a loud and persistent rapping on glass. I slowly recognized the growing patter to be coming from my left. “Ma’am, you can’t sleep here.” The man behind the voice tapped on the glass again — my glass.

  I opened my hazy eyes and noticed it was still dark outside. I had cottonmouth – the aftermath of enough grease and sodium to shock your body into rejecting itself. “What time is it?” I yawned and felt around for a water bottle only to find the smashed plastic to be empty. I rolled my eyes and threw the worthless chunk of plastic into the back seat where it quickly found a place with my other mound of trash — my old life.

  “Ma’am,” he continued hesitantly, “could you please put your, um, breast…back into your shirt? I feel awkward trying to wake you up when it’s just kind of hanging out.”

  My brain cells struggled to understand the meaning of his words while simultaneously registering a slight breeze caressing my left nipple. The combination of an awkward seat angle, a deep v-neck tshirt and one aging jersey knit bralette dealt a fatal blow to my modesty.

  I muttered a few curse words and tried to quickly tuck my stray breast back into place as delicately and politely as I could. “Why are you still standing outside of my window you perv?” I yelled and rolled down the window a crack to make sure he could hear every word I was carefully enunciating. “I’m awake, I get the point, I have to leave. I’m going, I’m going.”

  I looked at my peeping Tom only to discover the emerald-eyed beauty that handled my dollar menu specialty four hours ago. If my mother could have heard the disappointed huff escaping my gaping mouth, she would have slapped my face and told me to adjust my attitude.

  “I’m sorry. I was just told to come out here and wake up the girl sleeping in the parking lot. You were in earlier — dollar menu girl.” He furrowed his brow and it made his eyes shrink into tiny teacup saucers. “Indiana plates… What are you doing in St. Louis, sleeping in a parking lot?”

  “What anyone is doing sleeping in a parking lot. I’m running away from a shitty life, on a budget and trying to stretch my pennies as far as I can.”

  He lightly bit his bottom lip, nodding his head up and down, contemplating my disgrace with a furrowed brow. His expression made a poor girl with runaway boobs seem extremely interesting and worth a second thought..

  “So you’re not from St. Louis? That’s a dumb question. We already established that,” he said, quickly redeeming himself before I could react. “I have a couch you could crash on. It’s not much but it has to be more comfortable than a car seat that won’t recline. If you promise not to be a psycho killer, I’ll even let you take a hot shower.”

  The words hot and shower caught my attention. He had already gotten to second base visually, and unless he wanted to watch me pee behind the dumpster, he wasn’t getting to third.

  “You don’t know me,” I said hesitantly.

  “If you were a fugitive, you’d probably be sleeping in a forest under a pile of twigs or locked in someone’s back yard shed. I doubt you’d be driving around in a car with a license plate linked to your name.”

  “How do you know my license plate is linked to my name?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” he replied, “but, if you were going to steal a car I would hope you had better taste and would at least throw the trash out first.”

  “That’s not trash,” I exclaimed with fake anger. “Those are my clothes…and anything else I could fit into a bag in a thirty minute grab and run.”

  “I understand. Listen, I get off in ten minutes. If you want to crash, wait for me and you can give me a ride home. If you don’t, head on out so I don’t get into trouble. Just don’t fall asleep again. It’s late and some creep might get turned on by a stray boob.” He winked and shot an air pistol he created with his thumb and pointer finger into the air.

  I decided to wait. Somewhere to lie down and a hot shower…how bad could it be?

  “S
o, this is it,” he said as he quickly ushered me inside of a tiny and slightly decrepit open apartment portioned out of a much grander house, divided by one of those annoying landlords hell-bent on destroying classic architecture to make more money. The apartment was probably two rooms at one point, evidenced by the half wall running through the middle of the room with an empty door leading to the bed.

  I was happy to see Tyler did not have a king size bed he could easily walk around. I would be a little jealous of a kid working on the front lines of diabetes and having a nicer bedroom than I’ve ever had.

  “So, where’s this couch?” I asked and scanned the room, desperately hoping he didn’t tell a white lie to get me into bed with those emerald green eyes.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I just did laundry today and the dryers ran really slow. I didn’t have time to put everything away,” he apologized and moved a huge stack of laundry baskets off of a red plaid couch with wooden trim.

  “Grandma’s hand me downs?” I scoffed, hoping the worn fabric wasn’t the kind of wool hell bent on scratching every inch of your skin off or full or bedbugs.

  “Worse. Grandpa’s. Grandma at least had taste, but she would never give a hand me down. She would require payment. ‘You have to work for everything you get, nothing comes free that’s worth having,’ she always said. Annoying, but true.”

  “Wow, she sounds very strict.”

  “I don’t think I’d call her strict, but a product of hard work and beating the odds. She worked really hard to get where she is and she doesn’t believe in just giving hard work away to anyone,” he replied.

  “Anyone? You’re her grandson, though. What did she do — invent the world’s best toilet paper or something?”

  Note to self: Do not make smart ass comments moving forward.

  “Something like that. She created a line of cosmetics for African American women that actually matches their skin tone. It’s sold in almost all major department stores. She started the brand when she was only 21, at a time when she couldn’t even vote, in her sister’s garage because she didn’t have a place of her own yet. No one would rent to a single black woman. They called her a risk. ‘Rent to one of you and the rest will all come,’ they told her. She had to fight a lot to get recognition or to convince the world a black woman should be taken seriously in business. Now she’s worth over $550 million.”

  My jaw dropped. “Holy moly. That’s an amazing story. What does she think about you living here?”

  Note to self: don’t ask questions that could be seen as insulting or like you’re a hypocritical bitch.

  “She actually picked this place out for me after assessing my budget. I wanted to go with something more expensive to impress my friends, but she reminded me the end is greater than the means and a true friend will be by my side here and when I get myself into a bigger house.”

  “Oh, you mean when you get your trust fund?” I snapped before I could remind myself of what I had just told myself to learn.

  “No,” he laughed. “Grams doesn’t give things away to those who can work for them. Her fortune will go to charities supporting disadvantaged women in business education.”

  “That’s kind of shitty, don’t you think?” I really should just stick my foot in my mouth. Why don’t I have a filter? Was I always this rude or have I just not met interesting people before?

  He laughed. I hoped he wasn’t going to throw me out on my ass and back into my car. “No, not at all. The whole family supports her because she worked hard, she fought hard, and she loved us hard. She raised us to fight and we know we have our own battles to win. We will get what we deserve without a hand out. We support her and her ideas because if we didn’t, we would probably be lazy knowing all she had to do was die for us to live like royalty.”

  I had nothing else to say. Not because I didn’t want to embarrass myself again, but because I never felt the emotions I was feeling before. I was in awe, I felt like I was learning something. I felt like I was in the presence of some great and powerful being. He was my Wizard of Oz, my Buddha, my Osho.

  “You’re like my new guru,” I said as my cheeks flushed.

  I should really learn to think before I speak.

  “Your what?” he chuckled.

  “My guru. Like when people feel unfulfilled, they sell everything they own in a moment of madness and run away to find some stranger living modestly in an ashram or yoga center and then supposedly get empowered with a strong education that makes them a better person. That’s like you, right now. You are my new guru.”

  “Only you didn’t sell everything. You packed it into trash bags and what looked like a few suitcases in the back seat of your car and your ashram is the dollar menu of BurgerBarn,” he chided.

  “Yeah, that,” I replied, a sheepish giggle escaping my mouth to show I accepted the truth of who I was.

  “Well, listen, I have to get up early for football training before class starts at nine. I finish with class at noon but I have a quick shift I picked up for a few overtime hours from 12:30-5:30. You’re welcome to stay here tomorrow and catch up on your rest. After work, I can show you around if you’d like. When I’m finished, you can decide if you want to stick around or keep running.”

  I sat in silence, staring into his deep green eyes, absorbing every word he said and hoping it would give me half of his drive, his dedication, his desire to be someone due to his own sheer will and not from the gifts of someone else’s hard work.

  “Sounds great,” I replied. “Maybe a full day of rest will do me some good. I can look at the map and try to make a better plan.”

  “By the way, what the hell happened to your hands?” Tyler asked.

  “Oh, that’s a long and funny story we’ll have to talk about tomorrow. The incident in question involves a small town in Illinois called Effingham and a ridiculously large metal cross in the late afternoon.”

  “You didn’t touch it did you? In the midday sun the heated metal would surely burn the shit out of your skin,” he said with one eyebrow raised.

  Was everyone smarter than I am? Was I born without a single shred of common sense or is common sense something that had to be nurtured into you?

  “I did…” I paused, not sure how to continue without looking completely helpless and incapable of taking care of myself. “But I bought a burn cream at the gas station and I’ve been sticking ice in the t-shirt shreds while I drive.”

  “Can I see the burn cream?” he asked. “I’m actually premed but I’ve been obsessed with healthcare and medicine my entire life. I can tell you if it will actually help you or not.”

  Premed? Dear God, you sent me an angel. Is this why you smited me at the cross? I fished the expired tube out of my peeling gold pleather crossbody bag, aware of its shabbiness for the first time in my life. I tossed the wrinkled tube into his lap, hoping he wouldn’t see the expiration date and tried to think of a better story to tell about the gas station if he asked.

  “This isn’t burn cream. It’s diaper rash cream, and it’s expired. This won’t do a single thing for your injuries,” he snorted. “Sorry. I’m really trying not to laugh because this is one of those stories you could tell a friend where they would never believe you. Listen, I’ll pick something up for you tomorrow if you’re going to stick around and I’ll get your hands set for the next leg of your trip. Sound good?

  “Yeah, sounds good,” I sighed. “So, you promise you won’t be a total creep and stare at me while I sleep since your bed is right there? And you’ll sleep with clothes on, right?”

  “I’ve already seen your boob. Why be shy now?” he chided. I had to laugh. He was right. My dignity had already gone out the window along with my manners. “In all seriousness, I’ll close the doors in case anything falls out of place again. I don’t want to be rude.” I looked at him quizzically because there wer
e clearly no doors to be closed. I did not want to be the punch line again and I studied the opening to the room carefully. “Pocket doors, they slide into the wall. One of the redeeming factors of this small little hole. I can keep them open to make it seem larger when I’m by myself. Blankets are in the chest next to you along with a spare pillow. There’s cucumber water and some tea sandwiches in the fridge — my mom dropped by — and the bathroom is the door next to the book case. You may have to jiggle the handle on the commode and in the shower the hot water typically doesn’t start for five minutes. You’ll know because the water will start to spit and then scald your skin. Don’t get in until after it spits and the steam cloud gushes out.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks for letting me know. I don’t want any back blisters to match my hands.” We both laughed and I tried to ignore the fact he had cucumber water and tea sandwiches in his fridge. I tried to ignore the fact I had no idea what a tea sandwich was or why people needed a special sandwich just for tea.

  He stood to go back to his room, the soft odor of tiny fried onions and French fry grease drifted away with him. When he reached the entry to his bedroom, he tucked a finger into a small golden rectangle on the door and popped out a latch, gently pulled, and slid an ornately carved oak door across the opening. The simple act made the entire apartment suddenly appear grand and alive with a historical magic. I half expected to hear big band music traveling down the hallway and see women strolling by in feathered and fringed dresses with bobs and bright red lips.

  “One more question,” he began, turning around to face me. “I don’t even know your name. Care to share?”