The old waitress thought Lane and I were together. I didn\u2019t even say anything when she brought us refills and said, \u201cFor you and your bride.\u201d That word freaked me out because it reminded me of Halloween. My skin was adolescent, the color of a fish belly. I could have been dead.<\/p>\n
Lane and I were regulars at the sandwich shop, and they always let us stay past closing. Inside that booth, we disappeared. I felt like the eyes inside someone’s head. No one would even think to ask why I was there.<\/p>\n
We met up whenever what Lane called an \u201cepisode\u201d occurred between my parents. We\u2019d find our booth. We\u2019d wait things out. This night was a result of more of the same: my father was a boulder that brittle things broke around. I came home from school and the glass end table was missing. My mother was rolling the vacuum away.<\/p>\n
While I talked, Lane listened and worked at a crust of bread without making a sound. Noisy eating was a pet peeve of mine. \u201cOld people,\u201d said my mother when I asked her to chew with her mouth closed, \u201cThey lose their manners.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s they,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I finished my story and Lane chewed. A competitive rock climber, she had the patience to search out a perfect moment for landing. She spoke often about the value of control over brute force. The language of rock climbing confused me: paths were called problems.<\/p>\n
When Lane opened her mouth again, it was empty. \u201cEveryone\u2019s miserable,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t forget.\u201d Lane had a way of yanking me back down to a hard ground when I was floating away. People only liked talking about themselves.<\/p>\n
I pulled my t-shirt up around my face so it looked like I had no neck. It felt safe. I\u2019d begun to notice how violence was always hanging above us. A year ago, the TA of my geometry class was killed in a car jacking. He was leaving a gas station, waiting at the street, when four men appeared. He hadn\u2019t locked his doors, and all of them got opened. His empty chair sat in the back of the room until the school year ended. We used to dare each other to sit in it.<\/p>\n
More garlic bread came. We scraped the soft insides out.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everyone is miserable,\u201d I said, after a few bites and swallows. \u201cThere are<\/em> happy people. We just don\u2019t know them well.\u201d I was thinking of the popular kids, the ones with drivers licenses and parents who let them drink. Like Josh Kwilecki, whose father was teaching him how to play the stock market. Other lives picked up speed.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s your frame of reference.\u201d Lane was intelligent, but sometimes I suspected that she feigned experience. Once, at a party, she put her mouth on the wrong end of a cigarette.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to go.\u201d I held up two fingers, sliding out of the booth, but mainly out of the conversation. My departure was clumsy, and I would\u2019ve climbed if I could. Lane rolled her eyes and got on her phone.<\/p>\n In the men\u2019s room, one of the two stalls was taken. Just as I closed the door to the vacant one, the other stall opened. Someone was either sweeping or sniffing. I heard all kinds of sounds.<\/p>\n While I washed my hands, I looked in the trash. I saw a white heap of fabric. Outside the bathroom, an elderly couple was standing in the hallway. The man was telling the woman, \u201cThey\u2019re all wet. Just soaking wet.\u201d They were facing each other, hands clasped like they needed a home.<\/p>\n I went back to the booth to tell Lane what happened. She\u2019d zipped her jacket up while I was gone.<\/p>\n \u201cSee, those old people stay together,\u201d she said. \u201cEven when the guy wet his underpants. It\u2019s cute.\u201d<\/p>\n We watched the couple leave. The door was heavy, and they had a little trouble with it. Once they were outside, we watched the \u201cOpen\u201d sign swing back and forth. Lane pointed at the bill on the table and said, \u201cI paid already\u2014you can get me next time. Are you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n Lane and I parted ways in front of the elementary school, which we\u2019d calculated was the exact midpoint between our houses.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t die,\u201d Lane said. We both laughed. Tomorrow was a school day.<\/p>\n At home, I grabbed a bottle from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom: fish oil for the heart. A cardiologist told my father he could eat celery for the rest of his life and live a hundred years, or he could be happy. The child-proof cap came off easily. I closed one eye and looked down the opening.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing with those?\u201d My mother had appeared in the doorway, holding a mug.<\/p>\n I poured two pills into my hand and shrugged. \u201cI don\u2019t want old people problems.\u201d After I said this, my mother looked tired and different.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a kid,\u201d she said. \u201cGo outside and run a mile.\u201d She added some tap water to her mug and went back upstairs, and I wondered if my mother was ever there. When people left you at night, they left you forever.<\/p>\n The pills were impossibly gold, like cartoon treasure. I swallowed each one sideways.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n Daniel Enjay Wong <\/b>wants to be a doctor someday, but for now he works as a biochemical researcher, studying a mysterious protein complex called p97. His work has been published by Tin House<\/i>,\u00a0PANK<\/i>, Monkeybicycle<\/i>,\u00a0JMWW<\/i>, and Necessary Fiction<\/i>. Say hello at www.dwong.net<\/a>. The old waitress thought Lane and I were together. I didn\u2019t even say anything when she brought us refills and said, \u201cFor you and your bride.\u201d That word freaked me out because it reminded me of Halloween. My skin was adolescent, the color of a fish belly. I could have been dead. Lane and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-fiction","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"