Page 2 of Electricity

She’d have to explain to her mom how come she got off early on a Friday. Her mom was a tougher customer than Burton—maybe the reason she hadn’t texted me was because she hadn’t gotten to go out at all? She’d gotten home and her mom had smelled the lies on her and grounded her instantly.

“Jessica!” Burton shouted. I yelped and hid my phone without thinking. “Fries!”

“On it!” I shouted back, and ran for the fry station.

Twelve o’clock rolled around and we finally got to close the doors.

Raj stood guard so that no one else could come in while the rest of us waited for our remaining customers to leave—a family of four, eating burgers like they were chewing cud.

Couldn’t they feel all our eyes on them?

The weight of the hush as we cleaned, our intermittent stares?

Why was an eight year old and his six year old sister eating fries at midnight?

Were their parents the best parents ever, or the worst?

I looked down at my phone again. No messages. Goddammit.

“Finally,” Darius muttered from the broiler.

I looked up and the family was waddling toward the door.

One by one, we finished our end of shift tasks—being quiet for the family had totally killed the end-of-shift mood—and made our way to the back.

Burton was counting out the tills in his office, and the rest of us were trying to escape before he finished and could think of new chores.

Which was when I realized the flaw in Lacey and I’s plan—she had been my ride.

“Shit—”

“Hmm?” Darius made a querying sound as he hitched his black backpack on over a green military jacket, the canvas-y kind with lots of pockets.

He was relatively new to school, as he’d been yanked to Kansas from California at the end of last year—and if he was trying to look cool now, he wasn’t succeeding.

He was also our restaurant’s resident pot dealer. This was the third burger joint I’d worked at, since beginning to work the day after I turned fourteen, and every restaurant had had one. Darius, or someone like him, practically came pre-installed.

I did a quick inventory of people who had cars in the parking lot divided by people who lived on my side of town and people I could stand. Darius made the cut, just barely.

“Lacey had to leave?—”

“Yeah, I heard. Female problems,” he said.

I gave him a pained smile. “She was my ride.”

“Ah,” he said, nodded, and then nothing else. I leaned forward expectantly, waiting for him to catch on, while he looked back at me, slowly turning his head to one side, like a confused dog with a smattering of light acne.

I slumped, broken. “Look, can I get a ride with you?”

The corners of his lips curled up. “Sure,” he said, and started for the door with me at his heels.

The humidity outside hit me like a wall. If the air’d been any more damp, we’d have needed scuba gear. I wondered, not for the first time, why anyone had ever moved to Kansas. How could so many people have simultaneously lost a bet?

Darius fished in one of his coat’s many pockets for keys.

A Toyota Corolla in the corner beeped as its doors opened, and I took a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that dealer Darius was driving a cream colored car meant for a mom.

He went for the driver’s side, while I scraped my way through the bushes that lined our parking lot’s far side and opened the passenger door.

Fry cartons spilled out as I did. Technically, I should have picked them up and thrown them away as a good Snax Shax employee—but technically, someone would be here for the breakfast shift in under six hours with parking lot duty and they could do it then.

“Are you stealing these for an art project?” I said, sweeping his passenger seat clean.

“Careful about those!” He lunged to grab something, and I saw what they were through the thin plastic bag.

“Comic books?”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said, putting them carefully under his own seat. “You getting in, or what?”

“I’m getting in,” I said.

I closed the door and did that thing where you make yourself small and tried not to touch anything. I was almost glad for the protective layer of Snax Shax grease separating me from his junked out car. What was it we called it in biology? A lipid bilayer.

“You live in Ventana Park, right?” Ventana meant window in Spanish. I’d learned that in 7 th grade, and wondered ‘window to where?’ ever since.

“Yeah.” I got my phone out again. Still nothing.

I watched the passing streetlights we drove under reflect off of its screen.

There was a pick wedged in between the door’s armrest and the door.

Darius’s hair was far too short for it, close-cropped over his head like a layer of dark velvet. Maybe he had a sister.

“Must be nice,” Darius said. I glanced over and realized he was giving me side-eye.

“What?”

“To get out of work so easily.”

I shrugged. “It is. The trade-off though is that when you are at work, you sometimes catch Burton staring at you creepy.”

He made an appropriately disgusted noise and then said the wrong thing. “Dude, that’s totally worth it.”

I inhaled to ask him how he’d feel about that if he had boobs, then stopped since I’d rather not attract attention to my own.

They’d been doing a fine job of that themselves ever since I’d turned twelve.

When I’d turned thirteen and realized why guys were staring—I felt like I’d been putting up with Burtons my whole life.

Darius had no idea. “Here’s my turn,” I said, pointing.

“I know,” he said and rolled in, sans turn signal.

I directed him back through the park to where our trailer was, refusing the temptation to make him drive by Lacey’s. Allie was alone—hopefully not waiting up—and my mom’d be home soon. I needed to beat her there.

He parked on our driveway and I hopped out, looking back. “Did you really not know that I wanted a ride, earlier?” He was a year older than me and in a sprinkling of honors classes, just like I was. But just because he was math-smart didn’t mean he couldn’t be stupid.

He had an easy smile, revealing bright white teeth. “No, I just wanted to hear you say it.”

As I suspected. He laughed.

“You’re welcome, Jessie,” he said, and leaned over to close the door.

I watched his Corolla drive away and tip-toed up the stairs. My little sister had ninja-hearing. No one would ever manage to break into our trailer before she called 911, but it made it really hard to sneak out—or in.

I opened the door only as wide as I needed to sidle through, and then closed it quietly, sealing it shut with my hand and then carefully latching the lock.

No guarantees my mom was even coming home.

She didn’t always. Wouldn’t want anyone to break in and rob us of our Rent-a-Center TV in the meantime.

Then I walked down the hall to my right. If Allie’s door was closed, she was asleep—but if it was open a crack and if I could see light from inside like I could now—I inhaled, pushing it open, ready to give her a lecture about staying up too late again—but Allie wasn’t in her bed.

My heart leapt into my throat as I looked at the tangle of pink sheets. She’d been in her bed at some point in time— “Allie?” I spun around.

“M’in’here,” came a voice, from inside my bedroom.

My room was next door. I opened its door and saw her there by the neighbor’s omnipresent porch light that filtered through my blinds. She was in my bed with a fortress of stuffed animals around her. “I had a nightmare,” she announced.

I sat down at the foot of the bed. “You should’ve called me.”

“Didn’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Well, I’m home now—go back into your own bed,” I reached over and wiggled her legs. “It was a really bad nightmare, Jessie.” She sat up and scratched at her face. I could see the exhaustion in her eyes, she’d been fighting sleep for hours.

“The kind that if you talk about it, it gets better? Or the kind that if you talk about it, it gets worse?”

“Worse.”

“I hate those,” I said, kicking off my shoes. “But I’m home now. Everything’s fine. So get.” I made to tickle her toes through my blankets and she zipped her feet up out of reach.

“Only if you come to bed with me.”

“Allie—” I was disgusting. I always was when I came home from my job, but without Lacey there, I’d actually hustled a lot, and the layer of grease all over me was mixed with sweat.

“Please, Jesse? Pleaseeeee?” She squirmed beneath my sheets, knocking stuffed animals off the bed. She was at that stage of tired that there was almost no return from, and we both needed to be in bed before/if mom got home.

“All right, all right. Go get in your bed while I shower.”

I washed myself in the shower until the water went from murky to clear and by the time I was done Allie’d moved her army of stuffies back into her own room.

I tugged on pajamas and pulled my phone out of the pocket of my discarded uniform before walking down the hall, hoping I’d find Allie already asleep.

But she wasn’t. She was waiting up for me. She scooted over, making room, and patted the bed. I flopped into it dramatically, making her and her stuffed animals bounce.

“Okay. Bedtime,” I demanded.

“K,” she agreed, and I pulled the cord on her bedside lamp.

I waited to pull out my phone until I thought she was snoring. Tilting the screen away from Allie, I turned it on. Still nothing.

If Lacey was grounded, I didn’t want to give anything away.

But if she wasn’t—if she was too busy having fun to get back to me, like I didn’t matter anymore—I couldn’t help myself. I texted:

SOOOOOOO?????

“I can see the light,” Allie complained.

“Because your eyes are open,” I said, and fake-smothered her with a bunny.

I left my phone on vibrate in case Lacey responded.

Allie’d already started to toss and turn—I wasn’t sure where all of her was anymore, if the pointy thing in between my ribs was Mr. Snuffles’s nose or her knee.

I waited a little longer and then carefully got up, just as I heard my mom’s keys scratching the doorknob.

Oh God. I hustled down the hall, but wasn’t fast enough.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” my mom asked at volume. She wasn’t worried about waking anyone else up—and I saw the light inside Allie’s room flick on, under the doorway.

“I’m going!” I said, and ducked into my room, closing the door behind me.

I flung myself into bed and hauled up my sheets.

She was alone, that was something. I could hear her stumble down the hall, two steps for every thump where she leaned her hand against the wall for balance.

I knew if I were out in the hallway with her, I’d smell the cigarette smoke and stale beer.

My mother, voted ‘ Best Bartender! ’ of the worst dive bar in Redson, three years in a row.

I listened to her make her way down the hall, praying that she’d pass my room, but no. She paused outside, fumbled with the doorknob, and then leaned in. “You know you mean everything to me, don’t you?” The words were drawn out long with an alcoholic accent I’d come to loathe.

“Of course, Momma,” I said, soft and kind for safety’s sake.

“Good,” she slurred. I made myself small again and waited, hoping that she was done.

Emotionally-overwrought-mother was only a few turns of the dial away from verbally-abusive-mother was a few turns of the dial away from the-mom-who-threw-things-until-she-puked.

As if sensing my surrender, my mother grunted knowingly then retreated back into the hall, leaving my door open like a ventana into the blackness.

If I’d had to bet on what my little sister was having nightmares of, I’d pick her.

I waited, tense, until I heard my mom shut her door, then checked my phone one last time before plugging it in to charge for the night.