Free From Where I Watch You by Shannon Grogan

Phillipe?
    FOR THE REST OF the day I try to focus on the contest and cookie designs. I’m supposed to come up with a Valentine’s cookie but all I can think of is a variation on my Halloween skull cookies: Black icing, with bloody, slimy red eye sockets, and broken, bloody teeth.
    When it’s time for my shift at Crockett’s I actually look forward to it.
    There’s a new checkout girl.
    She smiles, with her too pink lipstick and her wine-colored hair tightened into a French twist. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
    “Kara.”
    “Well nice to meet you, Kara! I’m Justine—named after my dad, except with an e.”
    I decide immediately that I like her. When I’m too slow bagging groceries, she leans over to help without making me feel like a shitty failure. “Here, hon, let me help you.”
    Justine talks a lot, and I love that she ignores the customers to talk to me.
    A HALF-HOUR INTO MY shift, the boss appears, scowling. “Kara, I don’t pay you to talk and gossip. Get on with it,” he says, pointing at the pile of groceries on the belt.
    Jason stands with him, his shadow, smirking at me.
    What did I do? I can’t even manage to open my mouth in time to defend myself.
    Justine smiles sweetly and flicks her hand at him. “Oh shoot, Mr. Stewart, it was my fault. I was asking Kara if she knew the code for bananas. She’s innocent.”
    Before the two of them slither away, Dickhead sniffs and Jason looks at Justine’s boobs.
    I turn to her, frowning.
    “Jason’s just a little boy,” she says with a wink, as if reading my mind.
    JUSTINE AND I BOTH get off at the same time so I sit with her while she waits for the Metro.
    “How long have you been here?” I ask. I nibble on a Snickers and she takes a drag from her cigarette. I think about Kellen’s weed and how maybe Justine could teach me to inhale correctly. She’s just a few years older, but in terms of worldliness, she’s got decades on me.
    “Oh,” she starts, before exhaling a toxic cloud. “I suppose I been here about three months now, followed my ex up here when he landed himself a job with the electric company, working on power poles and stuff.” She pauses, studying and frowning at her perfect fingernails. “He was gonna take care of me, we were gonna get married, start a family, all the things I wanted. Then the fucker cheated on me with some ugly-ass waitress at the Moon Bar, so I hope he goes ahead and singes his nuts on them wires.”
    I giggle because it’s funny, even though her face is dead serious.
    “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
    “Aww, it’s okay. I’m over him.” She blinks a few times, so I guess this isn’t true. Plus she stops talking. In the few hours I’ve known Justine, I’ve discovered that talking for her is like breathing.
    “So . . .” I start. “Why didn’t you go back to Texas?”
    Justine takes another drag and exhales. “I like it up here. I love that I can see the mountains and the ocean—right here.” She gestures with her cigarette and smoldering ash falls to the sidewalk. “And I don’t need my mom givin’ me shit and telling me ‘I told you so.’ How about you? I’ll bet you lived here all your life, huh?”
    “Yeah.”
    Justine nods, dropping the cigarette and smashing it with the scuffed toe of her high heel.
    “You don’t talk a lot, do you, Kara?”
    “Sorry.”
    “Don’t apologize for being the way God made you.”
    The mention of God triggers my automatic eye roll.
    The bus rumbles up to the curb. Justine hops up from the bench. I want her to stay. I want to tell her about the notes and my stalker and my dead sister. But instead I watch her fan away the exhaust fumes and cough, before she grabs my hand and squeezes it.
    “You’re a sweetheart, Kara. Thanks for making my first day special.”
      
    AN HOUR AFTER I say good-bye to Justine, there’s a loud bang at the door that separates our apartment from the café. It’s Noelle. She pulls me into a booth. Her face is red and