I couldn’t find the spider I sprayed. It crawled through a crack in the wall and I was on the phone with a good friend. I’d sent her a voice memo of me freaking out over failing my driver’s test for the second time. I’d had a tantrum, the kind just short of bashing your head into a wall for a moment of rest and relaxation.
“Hold on, gimme a moment. I don’t know where the fucking spider went.”
She didn’t say anything. Or maybe she did. I was still looking for the little monster.
“Fuck, it got away. Ugh, whatever.”
I sat back down. Put my chin in my palm and looked at my desk1. Fingered the dry coils at the back of my neck and dreaded my next braiding session. I’d been considering coloring my hair ginger. My head was still buzzing, far from the complete calm I needed to be a functional human being.
“Well, it makes sense…”
I nodded along with her words. My nose still burned from shame, from the close memory of me rocking against my bed, sobbing into my jacket.
“I don’t know. I just get so embarrassed. And it’s like, I made one mistake, I was gone. Just…” I paused, swiping a hand across my forehead. Remembered she couldn’t see me. “Like, everything just went blank. He said I was wrong and I just…lost it? Just shut down. It was done before it started.”
“Well, why didn’t you go to the American Driving School?”
“If I’m gonna be driving, I want to make sure I know how to drive. I’m not saying that’s the easy way out. But, I mean, my sister went to Compton when she failed her first test. And then she got it. But I’m not fucking confident enough. So, I want people who aren’t gonna give me this without me knowing exactly what I’m doing.”
“That’s fair.”
We talked a little more. Hung up. I sighed, leaned back in my seat. Contemplated writing about my failure. Couldn’t do it without sounding off my rocker. Considered going back to bed. Now that I’d quit my job, I had nothing to do until I had to start packing to move.
Two nights ago, I’d finished my last shift at my job. It was a shitty last shift, pretty standard for a shitty job. Shitty as in…fast food was shitty. The customers were shitty, with shitty attitudes, shitty orders, shitty breath.
One lady asked me if the Oreo shake had Oreo in it. Then, if the shake had ice cream. Then what a shake was.
If I could have, I would have strangled her. And smiled while doing it.
As things came to an end, I wanted to catalogue everything. Suddenly, the way I stacked the cups for the last nine months was worthy of a poem. The informational flyers in the break room were Pulitzer-winning photos. The simple conversations had in stilted Spanish were worthy of being recorded.
And then my last customers came through the drive thru.
Two guys, early twenties, high as fuck. They yelled at me in that not-all-there way. Tried to fight with me. Littered. Scoffed. Swore.
“Were those my last customers?” I asked my shift lead once they were gone. “That would be pretty…ironic, right? Or coincidental. For that to be my last experience here.”
I guessed that meant that it was just a job. That, although knowing that I was only there for a short amount of time, the time really meant nothing. Outside the store, it was just a drive thru open 24 hours. To customers, I was just a nameless girl with a black mask and uniform taking their order. Handing them their food. Someone to be left behind, someone to be forgotten.
I never claimed to be more than that.
But I was surprised that I tried to find meaning. My first months there were filled with anxiety, a simmering lack of control. Surely, there was camera footage of me crying under the fluorescent lights at 1 am. Trapped, fearing for my sanity.
And then I adjusted. Time, so often my enemy, waved a white flag.
For the time being, before you go to grad school, let’s teach you stoicism. Calm. Breathe. In, out. It’ll pass. It always does.
The time passed. And here I was, wondering how it happened so quickly.
“I want to see what it says when I clock out. Like, will it glitch?”
“I don’t know,” my shift lead said. We’ll call him OG. He was an OG. I’d asked him to make me a burger for my last meal there. It was in my hand, an iceless ginger ale in the other. My purse was slung over my shoulder, my hat in my armpit, and tears in my eyes.
I clocked out for the last time.
You have successfully clocked out at 02:07. The Altametrics Clock has not received details of your next scheduled shift. Please contact your manager if assistance is required.
That was it. Nothing special. It was the same message I’d seen when I first started working last October. Then, my shifts were staggered, uncertain.
“Well, that was anti-climatic.”
OG nodded.
“Well, no crying,” I said. “I’ll see you on Friday when I pick up my check.”
We hugged quickly, I yelled my farewell to the cooks, and I walked into the black morning.
“You want?”
J handed me a pen.
I nodded, took it. Inhaled. Kinda missed the feeling, knew I shouldn’t be doing it.
“Ah, my lipstick.”
“It’s fine,” he said. He touched the tip of his own pen to mine.
“Touching tips. Awww,” I crooned, laughing a little. It was low-hanging fruit and I took it.
I talked to him about my last day. He told me how he hadn’t worked since Wednesday. The store started cutting hours a few weeks ago. He used to work five days. Now, he was lucky for three.
“I was desperate to work, then I got there and Wednesday was just horrible.”
Wednesdays were the bane of his existence. Nothing he told me was new. I felt guilty that he’d have to experience more like them without me. I’d stopped talking about my leaving a few weeks before I left. It wasn’t helping, and if anything, it dampened the already stale mood.
I watched him play Overwatch. Remembered that I hadn’t watched the videos he’d sent me about the game.
“Wanna play?”
I shook my head. Me and video games besides Mario Kart did not mix well.
We talked about my failed driver’s test.
“Girl, get the fuck up. We’re going driving.”
Soon, we were on his street, practicing how to parallel park.
“So, you want to go straight by the other car. Once you’re lined up with their driver door, swing the wheel two full rotations right, get to the edge, turn left, make sure you’re straight, then back up. Don’t! Don’t hit the damn curb.”
For an hour, I practiced. I hadn’t known about the wheel, the angling, the timing. When I practiced with my mom upon my first failed test, she just told me to back up. I, at my large age of 23, had never considered I could be taught anything genuinely helpful from anyone but my mother.
And yet, here I was, with a coworker-turned-friend at 11 in the morning learning to parallel park for real in an electric car.
Later, we played Scrabble.
“Can we use Floptropica words?”
“If you can make a case, yes.”
“Ok, then I’ll put down ‘mew.’”
“That’s fair,” I said. I was slightly tipsy, having taken two shots on an empty stomach. The kettle corn in my hand fell to the carpet and I picked it up with shaking hands.
I stared at the board, rocking slightly to the side. My head was clear and light, lighter than it had been in days. I hadn’t felt this way since college, when I went to see Insidious with my inner circle.
“Dang, I wanted to do ‘uproar’ but I don’t have a ‘p’.” I slumped.
“You know, we can stop if you want. We don’t have to finish the game.”
We’d been at it for a while, struggling to get good words on the board.
“Nah nahh, I wanna try to…hm…maybe we should stop.”
“We could play Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader,” J said.
I conceded and we cleaned up the game.
“You can come visit me in LA, you know. My door will always be open.”
J looked at me, a little deflated.
“Yeah, it’s just…my boyfriend doesn’t have a job right now and so gas money is tight. Everything’s going to groceries, rent, y’know.”
I didn’t know. I’ve never known. But I nodded in acknowledgment. I’m sure he understood that I couldn’t really understand.
We sat in his car a moment.
“Well, you can always text me,” I said, trying to hide my misplaced disappointment. “I still want to know what happens.”
“Of course, girl.”
We hugged.
“I love you,” he said into my shoulder.
“Love you, too.”
I’d never been able to say “I love you.” I’ve agreed with sentiments but independent statements never rolled off my tongue.
When I went to pick up my check, he was there, in the uniform I would rather burn than don another day of my life.
J came over and hugged me again.
“Will I be able to see you next week? Or will you be really busy?”
“I’ll be busy,” I said.
He nodded and let me go quickly. There was no one in the drive-thru but he let me go quickly.
A slight longing reared its head. Goodbyes had always been snotty things, nuisances like spiders crawling in my bathwater. But this was quick and relatively painless. At least for me.
How did he feel? Did I want to know?
Not really. I was selfish. I didn’t want to know what it’d be like to stare down years at the same place. I’d known that I’d be leaving anyone I made friends with at the job. That didn’t make it any easier.
But I still expected tears. From either of us. Nothing.
And as my mom backed out of her space in the parking lot, I saw him rush to his car.
“Wow, he’s booking it.”
“Yeah, he’s probably going on his ten.”
She pulled away and I waved through the window. He didn’t see me. We were too far away.
til next time,
lauryn
