Free Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles Page B

is just a joke to him. He thinks he’s so funny. Well, I can take something from him, too. I smile, take his money, and tell him the last thing he wants to hear. About me and his slutty tease sister. It’s not clear from his expression if he really believes me, but it doesn’t matter.
    Mission accomplished.
    Prick.

    2:00.
    The lunch rush has died down, and I get to take my break. I get thirty minutes. I savor it.
    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