When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut. My head hit the pillow, and I knew that meant I was sliding into Stage 2, because the sun was out and my head never hit the pillow before sundown unless I was in Stage 2. But I wasn’t in Stage 2, I was just tired. And I wanted to leave my body. And I wanted the sun to be purple instead of orange, because orange was too bright and purple soothed me. And I wanted Carla Banks to not be pregnant. And I wanted Snake to not be her boyfriend. And I wanted people to be there when I called them. And I wanted me to not be me. I wanted too many things for one person.
So I was tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep because it made everything quiet and still and easy. But nothing was ever easy. Not even swallowing my pride long enough to reach under my bed and grab the black composition journal Karen had bought me.
I picked up a pen and opened it up to the first blank page. I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to do it, how to put pen to paper and string coherent thoughts together. It had been so long since I tried.
I pressed the pen to the first line and scribbled What Crazy Means to Me.
All it took was a bar of sunlight from the window to strike my face, and I had it.
Snake.
That was it. Him. My profound, literary muse. Snake. Fucking. Eliot. The five stupid, arrogant letters of his ridiculous moniker jabbed into my brain, leaving a gaping hole for all of my rage to leak out. I was emitting him from my pores, snarling like a rabid dog. Snake Eliot. I wanted to kick him in his barely there nuts. I wanted to toss out his licorice stash so he’d stop rotting his teeth. I wanted him to leave me alone forever. I wanted to kiss him on his pretty-boy lips.
I pressed the pen down.
What Crazy Means to Me: Hating Snake Eliot so much you really don’t hate him at all.
It was no coincidence that Snake and Crazy were both five letters.
Chapter Seven
OINKY’S WAS PACKED FOR A SATURDAY night. By packed, I mean there were actually customers the night Snake decided to show up for work again. He knocked on the back door as he made his grand entrance, a trip coupled with a semigraceful recovery. His blue Oinky’s shirt was wrinkled in a thousand places, doing his lanky arms no favors. He probably liked how disheveled he looked. He couldn’t taint his “Steven Spielberg of indie filmmakers” image with combed hair and an ironed shirt.
Peyton was on vacation, which meant that I was running the show for the night. Looked like Snake was going to have to be my assistant director. The pleasure (see: paralyzing dread) was all mine.
“You look awful,” I greeted him ever so politely.
“I was aiming for sexy, but awful works too.” He collapsed into a metal chair by the register.
“I wouldn’t aim for sexy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“And blue really isn’t your color, but we work with what we’ve got.” He kicked his feet up on the wooden counter. “Any machines need fixing?”
“While you were out playing Where in Flashburn Is Snake Eliot?, Peyton and I successfully tuned every machine and deep cleaned the trailer. Your services aren’t needed.”
“And yet here I am.”
“Yeah, because your future father-in-law is calling the shots.”
“He’s not my future anything. And he isn’t calling the shots.”
He said it in a bitter way that was surprisingly becoming to him. I liked it. Bitter was my native language.
“Are you kidding? You’re having a baby Banks, which is like having the future president of the Narcissism Guild. You’ll be on an exceptionally tight leash for the next eighteen years.”
He leaned back in his chair and groaned like he had the last time I brought up Carla and the ginger squash. “Can we not talk about it?”
“And what would you like to talk about instead?”
“Global warming. Nuclear warfare. Relief efforts in Uganda. Literally, anything else.”
“You can’t just ignore it.”
“I know that, Reggie. But I get it twenty-four-seven from Carla and her dad. I’d rather not hear it from you too. Two weeks ago, you didn’t even know that about me. Can we just go back to talking about ridiculous and trifling things that are of absolutely no importance to our lives?”
He reached behind him for a vanilla-strawberry swirl I’d made. He grabbed the cone and dug his finger into the center, bringing it out covered in freezing cream. Like the jerk he was, he’d smeared it across my forehead before I had time to smack it out of his hand. “There. That was annoying. You probably think I’m childish. Let’s talk about that.”
I slapped him across the face. Honestly, it was more of a tap. It was like a love pat without the love. He put his hand to his cheek, shocked for maybe half a second before he grinned. Of course he did.
“You just took our relationship to the next level. We’re, like . . . engaged now.”
“No, we’re not. And there is no relationship.” I grabbed a washcloth that was dangling from my chair and wiped my face. “You’re a douchebag.”
“And you’re a bitter old maid. Face it. We’re meant for each other.”
“You want to know what you’re meant for? Blowing through people’s lives and wrecking everything. Carla. Me. Lord knows who else.”
“You were wrecked way before you met me,” he countered, not even slightly offended. On the contrary, he seemed encouraged. What a weird, twisted little soul he was. “It suits you, though.”
“What does?”
“Depression. It isn’t a good look for everyone, kind of like sexy is apparently not a good look for me. But, man”—?he shook his head and pulled a Twizzler from his jeans—?“you should patent it.”
He watched me with his lips curled up, eyes never leaving mine. Smug. It was even less becoming than his attempts at sexy. I ignored him for the next half hour as customers came and went, each one more stocked with complaints than the next. Flashburn’s entitlement issue was getting out of hand with the installment of three additional soft serves on Langley, Mills, and Bayer with prices half that of Oinky’s. With all the rate competition, I was tempted to spin a sign out front with an arrow pointing toward Mills so everyone would take their business elsewhere. At least that way I wouldn’t have to hear “Five dollars for a small?” gasped every ten seconds.
Snake dialed the portable radio to a classic big band station after the crowds died down. He was leaning back in his chair, swaying side to side with the jazzy beat. Reaching under the counter, he retrieved his hulking video camera that he had taken on our anti-date nearly two weeks ago. Why he brought it to work and how I missed him trying to squeeze it through the tiny doorway were the two currently unsolved mysteries of the evening.
“Snake . . .”
“Shhh.” The red light flashed on. The woman on the radio sang the most sappy, he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not song my ears had ever had the misfortune of hearing. “I’m capturing.”
“Quit pointing that thing at me, you freak,” I said, shoving my hand over the lens.
He grabbed my wrist and moved my hand away. “This is my favorite song of all time.”
“Seriously? This?”
The heartbroken woman yammered on about her ill-fated love story. It was the kind of song I would undoubtedly skip if my music app ever despised me enough to play it.
“It’s from the soundtrack of The Onslaught.”
“That sounds like a mosh pit band.”