Everything’s better somewhere else.
The Barn doesn’t even have the decency to look like what it’s named after, it’s just a boxy discount store—THE BARN, a sign in large, neon orange letters against an electric blue background over its entrance—with a parking lot that’s pretty full up because more people than don’t in this area get what they need to live here. We cross the parking lot and Mom puts in a quarter to unlock an orange shopping cart before we go inside.
Everything is here. Food and movies, clothes and cheap furniture that looks nice and falls apart fast. At the back of the store, there’s candy, toys, decorations for whatever upcoming holiday, then all your personal hygiene needs. The grocery department belongs to itself. In Grebe, there are two kinds of people: those who shop local and those who shop here.
Mom stays close while I pick through an eight-dollar bra bin at the back of the place. They’re so cheap, so unspectacular, they don’t even hang them up for display. Pieces of cloth with pads, that’s all. But it’s all I really need.
“Okay,” I say and toss them into the cart. There’s something about the way she looks at them that makes my face burn. It’s one thing when Tina calls my bras an embarrassment, but it’s another when my mother does, even if it’s not in so many words.
“Are those enough?” she asks.
“Mom.”
“I mean, are they going to give you enough support? They look sort of—”
“Yes. They will.”
She gives me a look. “You could have something nicer. I always think really nice underwear and pajamas are the best things you can get for yourself. I always feel so great when I have a good bra on or a—”
“Thanks for the nightmares, Mom.”
She laughs and wanders over to a rack of pink bras with fine, black lace edging. The tag attached to them has a picture of an amazing pair of breasts. It’s a push-up.
She holds it out to me. “Try it.”
“No. It’s okay.”
“What’s wrong with something like this?”
“I have what I need.”
I must have this look on my face because she drops it and I let her lead me through the rest of the store and stay quiet while she loads a week’s worth of groceries into the cart. At the checkout, it’s just boys at the registers and I can’t stand the idea of them knowing what I wear underneath my shirt. I tell Mom I have a headache, give her my wallet, and wait in the car while she pays for it all. I wish I didn’t have a body, sometimes.
i’m waiting for an old man to tell me what he wants to eat because he won’t let me leave his table before he decides because he knows he’ll decide as soon as I leave his table and then he’ll “spend the rest of the night trying to wave me down.” I can’t convince him otherwise, so I stand there while he adjusts his glasses and trails his finger over every menu item, waiting for something to call out to him, periodically asking my opinion on any potentials. It’s just fucking food, I want to tell him. It’s fuel. It doesn’t have to taste good to keep you alive.
After the first few minutes, he winks at me, like it can’t be helped. After the next five, I can’t help but sigh and he tells me kids my age don’t know shit about patience and then the air-conditioning flatlines and none of it matters anyway because he melts, he leaves without ordering. He’s not the only one. Tracey tells everyone drinks are on the house and by then it’s my break, thank Christ, because people are mouthing off like it’s something we’re doing to them on purpose.
Holly looks like she’s going to kill someone. She’s been in a pissy mood since she overheard Annie making plans to crash that college party this weekend, just like Holly thought she would. Now Annie’s grounded, Holly’s son is babysitting her on Friday and from the sound of it, no one in the house is speaking—but Annie’s slamming lots of doors.
“Thank God I don’t have to like her to love her,” Holly told me.
I find Leon in the kitchen and he asks if I want to spend the next twenty minutes with him in his car. I say yes and we sit in the back of his old Pontiac with the AC blasting and the radio playing low, awkwardly passing time with a deck of cards. It’s a vintage pack he found in the glove compartment when he bought the car and he decided it could stay because it features sexy pinups from the fifties. He’s embarrassed when he tells me this, watching as I sift through the cards, admiring the girls.
“Pretty,” I say.
“I’ve seen better,” he says. I flush.
He tries to show me how to do a shuffle called the Sybil cut but it’s too hard to follow, so I just watch the cards play against each other before turning back into a deck.
“Fun night, huh?” he asks.
“Real fun.”
Goose bumps prickle my arms and legs. I feel him beside me, so much. Too much. I stare out the window. I see the diner from here. I see patrons inside the diner from here. The bike rack. My bike. I watch a trucker and a woman cross the lot, their arms wrapped around each other. He nuzzles her neck and she tilts her head my way and I swear our eyes meet for half a second. I wonder what she sees when she looks at me.
I wonder what Leon sees when he looks at me.
How he decided on me.
The woman and the man climb into his semi.
“So how do you feel about good food and good people?” Leon asks. It’s so unexpected, I don’t know how to respond. He smiles. “That bad, huh?”
“Why?”
He tosses the pack of cards into the front seat. “I’m going to a party and I’m positive I’d have more fun with you there. It’s at my sister’s, this Friday. She’s in Ibis. How about it?”
“I have to work, Friday. You know that.”
“You could get Holly to cover for you. Or one of the other girls.”