You're Welcome, Universe

by Whitney Gardner

  It’s nine billion degrees standing over the fryer this morning. The Sunday morning shift might be my very favorite, though. I can tell the difference between french-fry smell and hash-brown smell, and I prefer the latter. It’s a bit after eight and the actual work hasn’t picked up speed yet, but the fryers are running full blast.

  I’m going to Urban Café after my shift to make a paint order. I’ve had enough drama; it’s time to get to work. I’m debating between hitting up that spot near the Little League field and doing a big pen piece in one of the bathroom stalls in the Greenlawn Diner. I don’t feel ready for the overpass yet. I’ll probably go with the field, more public, more—

  There’s a little pinch on my waist and I snap back to reality. Donovan flashes me a smile and points to my blinking timer. Whoops. I pull the browns from the oil and hook the baskets up so they can drip for a second.

  “What’s up?” he signs.

  “Nice signs.” I shake my hand, impressed.

  “Jordyn taught me.” Unfortunately, I read his perfect lips. Thanks, Jordyn.

  “More, please,” I sign, my fingertips touching.

  “Kiss you? Damn, girl.” He plants a big one on my cheek and heads past me to his station. Suddenly it’s fifteen billion degrees and I am but a puddle on the floor, no bones, just thoughts and feelings. He looks back over his shoulder at me and chuckles. I assume it’s because the expression on my face must look something like a cross between HOLY FREAKING UNICORNS RIDING ON MAGICAL GLITTERING RAINBOWS and DEAD. And to put the cherry on top of my melted Mickey D’s sundae of feelings, he actually winks at me. The bastard.

  This is the sign for more:

  This is the sign for kissing:

  I can see why he got confused—the signs have the same hand shapes and all—but it’s not really a hard one to mess up in terms of context. What’s up? Kiss me! Doesn’t that sound like a bit of a leap? Jesus. I’m a brave person, but Jesus.

  Speaking of Him, church must have just let out, because the lines start to grow, drive-thru gets hectic, and orders start flying up on the screen. Fry! Fry! Fry! It’s pretty cute when parents bring their kids after church, all pouty in their patent-leather shoes and polo shirts, exhausted moms and dads bribing them to behave during Mass so afterwards the kids can pray in their molded plastic pews to the gods of cheap toys and Happy Meals and french fries, amen.

  I fill up a bunch of small fry bags, knowing how many Happy Meals are about to get ordered, and it hits me—of course he knows the sign for kissing. Why would Jordyn teach him anything else? The thought of them making out leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I thank God she isn’t working today.

  Something changes. Donovan raises his shoulders, his arms tense up. He starts pacing in what little space the windowed area allows. Checking the monitor, shuffling around the take-out bags. Oh, crap. Drive-thru drama.

  The first thing I like to do when I notice things going downhill is put a big batch of fries down. The gush of hot steam, millions of bubbles rushing to the surface, means business. I know if an order has gone wrong or if someone is acting hellacious, Donovan likes to upgrade their fries, so it’s best to overprepare at this point. Twenty billion degrees.

  The next car pulls up to the window. It’s a minivan with some sort of Little League team crammed in the back like sardines. The owner is pissed. She keeps checking her watch and screaming into the backseat. She also has one of those Bluetooth receivers wedged in her ear. How do hearies listen to so many things at once? It must be maddening. She peeks above her oversized sunglasses and snaps at Donovan. He’s trying to calm her down. He hasn’t even lost his temper yet when the manager, Arnold, comes and taps me on my shoulder.

  “Bring——bagsover—-mepleasewouldja?” He hands me five stuffed paper bags and dashes back to the office, talking into his own headset. He talks way too damn fast. I pull the fries out of the oil with one hand and make my way to the window. I place the bags between Donovan and Mrs. Soccer-hockey-tee-ball Mom.

  “Excuse me! No!” She must be yelling. She jerks away from the window.

  “I don’t want Muslim hands touching my food! Or the children’s.” She turns and wraps her arms around the boy in the passenger seat, who looks as confused as I do. Some things I wish I didn’t lip-read. Just because I’m brown doesn’t mean I’m Muslim. Not that it should even matter. Take your hate to Chik-fil-A. My only god is Banksy. I hold my hands up and back away. Donovan offers his fry-upgrade tranquilizer and it seems to work. We head over to my station. Out of sight, he pretends to refill the bags. He motions for me to add the extra fries.

  I reach for one of the colder bags—as if she deserves anything for free; why should she get the good stuff?—Donovan holds the take-out bag open, and I drop the fries in, but the Band-Aid from my X-Acto slash slides in with them. Sweat and the heat, I guess. We both look up at each other, stunned.

  “Screw her,” he says, and takes the bag to the window.

  I can’t believe we served that lady a no. 4 with a side of scabs. I guess she was too rushed to notice, because she never came back. I try to forget her, and what she said. I’m thankful I don’t have to hear her voice ringing in my head. All those kids, though. I feel bad for them, I wish they didn’t have to hear that shit. No one should.

  After my shift I get both backpacks from my locker; the black bag needs a resupply. This means it will spend a night under the driver’s seat and some time hanging in my school locker. It’ll be a tricky week.

  Donovan comes into the locker room, already halfway through unbuttoning his shirt. Don’t look. Don’t look. He straddles the bench next to my locker, practically defining the word swag. Pretending to ignore him, I zip up my hoodie. He waves up at me. Okay, fine, you have my attention.

  “Sorry——-that woman.” He points over his shoulder.

  “It’s nothing.” I wave the thought out of the air. “She was psycho.” He understands because I use the classic pointer finger making circles near my temple motion.

  “Ha-ha! Yeah,” he laughs. I win. “So, you and Jordyn are tight, right?”

  “Yeah…” Moment killed. Jordyn finds a way to ruin everything.

  “I———take her————-cool, you know, like a date?” Can he tell how hard I’m scowling on the inside? I act like I don’t know what he’s asking. I wish I didn’t.

  “Oh, sorry.” He looks at the ground. He’s mad that I can’t understand him. At least he doesn’t realize I’m faking it. There’s just no way I’m helping set them up.

  I grab my black bag, fling it over my shoulder, and bang my locker shut. I wave on my way out, but he stops me. He points to my bag, and I feel like I have to get my eyes checked. He can’t possibly be gesturing the words spray paint. There’s no way.

  “What?” I keep pretending that I don’t understand. He points to my bag, and once again crooks his index finger and moves it back and forth in front of me, spraying invisible paint in the air.

  “No.” I lift my shoulders, shake my head. Who, me? Of course not. Donovan tilts his head and looks at me and my black bag with more skepticism than Casey did when I told her I had friends.

  “But—” He points out all the paint on my hoodie. Grabbing at the cuffs, he runs his thumbs along the stained ribbing. I yank my hands away, as much as it pains me to. Crap, I’ve got to get rid of it.

  “See you later!” I sign with a smile, and hurry past him. I never thought I’d be running from Donovan, but even he can’t know about this.

  ‘Black bag stashed underneath the passenger seat, I pull into Urban Café’s parking lot. It’s closer to school, far from my home base. They love me in Urban Café. There, I’m this polite little deaf girl who comes in for treats and to write her school papers. In my head I call myself Melissa, bat my eyelashes, and wear my old hearing aids (turned off) for extra it’s-rude-to-stare points.

  It’s not a cozy place. The lights are too bright and the floor is white tile. There isn’t a little section with couches or armchairs,
no fake library on the wall. All they have is tables, chrome chairs, and the counter. I imagine it was a frozen-yogurt place that folded, and the new owners couldn’t be bothered to change the vibe. Anyway, the hot chocolate comes with homemade marshmallows, and that’s what keeps me coming back.

  I take my drink to my seat and fire up my laptop. I check the Stencil Bomb forums to see if someone was foolish enough to post a picture of their lame diss on my tag. There’s a section for Long Island, but I get bored after combing through page after page of weak tags and lazy work. Amateurs posting hurried, dripping hate-paints. I can’t stand them.

  I log in. I have to post something. This is so unacceptable.

  H3R3: This shit gives us bad names. Why you think everyone want to lock up writers and artists? Because of people like you. What you adding to the world by doing this?? Nothing. Keep your hate out of our game. ELEVATE. Get on our level, or get out.

  I log into my Hushmail account and there’s nothing new. This is the sort of thing you have to do to avoid getting busted by someone worse than your principal. Free Wi-Fi, incognito mode, an encrypted email address to make paint orders from, and a place—

  Crap. I used to ship paint to the mailroom at Kingston. There was this work-study college guy that stuffed envelopes who I made friends with. Okay, I made out with him. A few times. Maybe more than a few times. He would set aside my boxes, and I would come grab them at the end of the day when the halls were chaotic. It was Jordyn’s idea. She would hang out in the hall and get a kick out of my attempts to flirt. Once, after I picked up an abnormally large order, she told me I looked like a horrible kisser.

  I think he knew what was in them, but he never said anything about it. So maybe I’m not such a bad kisser after all. Or he really liked me. Maybe both. It doesn’t matter, because I can’t show my face there anymore.

  I have to order paint online because I’d get carded in person. Before the whole mailroom scheme, I would just send it to my house. My moms wouldn’t even think to ask what I was ordering, and if they did, I’d show them. “Working on a project,” I’d say, and they wouldn’t even question it.

  I decided it was a bad idea to keep sending it to my house when I read on one of the forums that a kid got pinched that way. I was lucky that Mail Boy turned out to be pretty cute.

  Now what the hell am I gonna do? I can’t mail paint to McDonald’s. I’m not going to start racking; one charge on my rap sheet is enough, thank you very much. I consider if I’m old enough to open a P.O. box.

  This is why my grades are tanking. After all the effort I put into my career, there isn’t much energy left over for all this reproductive-system-of-a-frog junk. Who even needs to know about that?

  What a bust. I have only three cans left and the paint levels are dangerously low.

  YP: I’m so bored.

  JULIA: Whats up?

  YP: Nothing to do on sundays not even good TV

  JULIA: Im @ Urban Cafe

  YP: Be there in 10

  I don’t know why I invited her. It just happened.

  —

  There’s a tap on my shoulder and YP practically skips into the seat next to me. Her nose is pink from the cold, and it only adds to the cheeriness of her face. She grins and looks at her watch.

  “Eight minutes --- fifty——-seconds! A—-record!”

  “You ran here?” I can see she’s panting a bit.

  “Yep! Me, go, O R D E R,” she signs, fingerspelling, and bounces off to the counter. This can’t be her first coffee of the day. I take a minute to log out of everything, erase my history, clear my cache, and close my laptop.

  Yoga Pants—today’s pair are a dark shade of blue—heads back to our table and carefully puts her mug down. I was expecting her to get some sort of soy-caramel-extra-whip-extra-foam-type drink but no, it’s plain black coffee. Before she starts fumbling through her signs again, I wave my phone, indicating we should text.

  “Oh! Totally.” She pulls out her cell and all her bubbles burst at once. Staring at the screen, unblinking, her eyes start to glaze over before little pools of tears well up in the corners.

  “You OK?” I fingerspell for her.

  “Yeah, ’scuse me for a sec.” She puts her phone facedown on the table and heads to the bathroom.

  What the hell happened? Her phone taunts me from her side of the table. I can’t imagine anything that would dull her sparkle that fast, unless they were gonna close down Claire’s, or Taylor Swift decided to quit music, or someone was kidnapped and texting for ransom, or someone, you know, died. Yikes. I reach for the phone. No, no, I can’t. I’m no snoop, I’m not going to just—

  KATIE: Your not bad at cheer.

  just gross in the uniform now.

  No 1 wants 2 see that.

  I try to unlock her phone to get to the rest of the thread, but I don’t know her passcode. It’s not 1234. That one text says enough, though. I know what it’s like to get a text like that. I get them in real time, real life, every day at Finley. I want to get that bitch’s number and text back, tell her to fuck off, shove it, and die in a fire for insulting someone like that. But I don’t. YP shuts the bathroom door, and I slip her phone more or less back where it was.

  “Sorry.” YP rubs her fist on her chest. I flip her phone faceup and she looks deep into her mug.

  “D E L E T E,” I spell, and point to the phone. She looks up at me, angry. She could rightfully blow her top over my snooping, but she doesn’t. She opens her newly glossed lips to say something, but reconsiders and shakes her head. I fingerspell again, “D E L E T E.”

  “Why? Damage————-done.” She pushes the phone away from her. I pull out mine and start typing. Her phone vibrates on the table.

  JULIA: Words are only words.

  JULIA: People speak words about me all the time. You kno what??

  JULIA: I can’t hear them so I let them say whatever.

  JULIA: The words dont make you.

  YOU make you.

  She rolls her eyes, but I notice the slightest upturn in the corner of her lips. She points at my laptop, changing the subject.

  YP: What were you working on?

  JULIA: Dumb class project

  YP: Mr. Katzs artist report?

  JULIA: No! I wish. not in his class.

  YP: Why not!!?!? Youre so good!

  JULIA: How do you know?

  YP: Your car!

  JULIA: Oh! No room in his class for me

  YP: Thats super unfair.

  JULIA: RIGHT? Its the only class I really wanna take

  YP: jerks. they could like totally pull up an extra dang chair.

  JULIA: Why cant i get one good part to my day, you know?

  JULIA: Makes me crazy!

  YP: Not your fault you came to school late.

  JULIA: Well…

  Her hands cover her mouth, eyes wide. I assume she’s apologizing but I can’t tell. You can’t read lips when they’re hidden. I pull her hands away from her face.

  “Sorry!” she signs. “I———-forgot—-—-E X P E L L E D.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I sign. It’s cute how flustered she is, like I’m embarrassed about getting expelled. I’m not, but I’m sure she would be mortified if it happened to her.

  I bet we look so perfectly normal, two cute girls drinking their hot beverages, texting away, not even looking at each other. We could be anyone, not some deaf chick and the girl who took pity on her. Just BFFs.

  But we aren’t, and I can’t go spilling the beans to anyone. Yes, everyone at Kingston knew why I got kicked out, and no one was surprised. Jordyn wasn’t the only person who knew about my penchant for spray paint, but she was the only person who snitched. Everyone knew I was the girl with the spray paint. The only clue about that part of my life now is Lee, and I guess my hoodie, but I’m taking care of that tonight.

  JULIA: Feel better?

  I text her as we start bussing our table. She’s bouncing again.

  YP: Little bit. Gonna jog
back, thatll help

  JULIA: I can drive.

  YP: No way…I need it.

  She pulls her sweater down around her hips. I don’t get it, the nasty text, the jogging. YP isn’t skinny, but she’s not gross or ugly or whatever that text said. She’s downright pretty. Shiny hair, blue eyes…So she’s not skinny. So what?

  JULIA: nah, youre a beauty.

  YP: Nothing big is beautiful

  After YP jogs off, I drive around for a while in my paint-stained hoodie. One last night together, gotta make it count.

  I considered tagging another street sign, drawing a hoodie on Mr. Silhouette in tribute. It seems too small now. Too small, and too easy for someone to retaliate. I head over to the park where the Little Leaguers must play in the spring.

  I’ve been eyeing the backs of the scoreboards for a month. There’s one in particular that’s low to the ground, so I wouldn’t need to climb up anything. Definitely not a heaven piece, but I don’t feel the need to put my life on the line. Not yet anyway. The field is empty at dusk, and it helps that it’s starting to get really cold outside. I probably won’t have to worry about some kid walking up on me.

  Dusk isn’t the prime hour for writing. The farther away I park, the longer it will take me to get back to the field. By then it will be darker. I take my ID out of my wallet and put it in my front pocket, leaving my phone and the wallet in the glove compartment. My car key and my house key go under the inserts in my boots. I know how noisy keys can be. [Keys jingling] is in, like, every closed-captioned movie ever.

  My black bag is not your standard L.L. Bean or whatever kind of backpack. It looks like one, nothing fancy, just a plain black backpack. But on the inside, I sewed in a false back with a zipper you can only access once it’s open, and even then, it’s hard to spot.