M Coe - New Veronia

“I got to eat,” Jay said.

The underpass smelled like metal and wax and puke. Because my hunger prevailed despite this stench, I knew that I needed food, too, and soon. I could feel my bones growing inside of my skin, stretching out my organs, pulling my stomach thinner. Growing pains, my dad used to say when I’d rub my shins and complain. I asked Jay, “Are you saying we just steal? From where?” Taking Tony’s mattresses, which had already been thrown out, was one thing; stealing from a store was another. Back in the fifth grade, a cashier had caught me lifting Necco wafers, and the horror instilled in me by the cashier’s anger, the mayonnaise-smelling room they’d locked me in before the policeman came, the policeman’s huge teeth, and the spanking my father inflicted on me made me wary of trying the experiment again.

Jay popped into a crouch and swiveled his head from side to side. “I see supper at…that gas station over there.”

The Mobil’s sign glowed at us from maybe a quarter mile off. “It’s late,” I said. “Don’t you think they’ll notice a couple of kids sneaking around in there?”

“We snatch some shit, then we take off. Totally out of this place. That’s the beautiful thing about being on the move: you don’t stick around long enough for people to notice you.”

Jay had already made up his mind about what we were going to do. Maybe I was feeling kind of down about Toshi; and running away without saying goodbye to my dad, even though he’d been basically awful lately, not like a dad at all; and scared that we were getting closer and closer to my mom, who had made it pretty clear my whole life that she wanted nothing to do with me, and how would she take it when I showed up at her house in Florida with a ravenous disrespectful Jay in tow when I was supposed to still be in Delaware; and also my stomach was eating itself, making me miserable from the inside out. All these bad feelings resigned me to tailing along behind Jay as he walked into the Mobil store.

We beelined for the back, where a shoulder-high shelf of chips and candies mostly hid us from the cashier. Jay grabbed beef jerky, beer nuts, and licorice and stuffed the snacks down his pants; as soon as I saw him at it, I did the same, my mouth prickling with saliva at the thought of eating.

It must have been only about thirty seconds before we started back towards the front door. We had to walk right past the cashier to get out, and as we rounded the final aisle, my guts started to quiver in fear, which felt extra strange paired with the hunger already gnawing me. The man was staring at us, fingering the little plastic nametag pinned to the front of his yellow smock. Ten steps from the door, I had this lightened feeling; I knew that we would make it.

“Empty the drawer.” Jay had stopped short directly in front of me. He pulled something out from under his shirt and pointed it at the man; the thing was metal; it looked like a gun. Curious, I watched the scenario.

“Empty it. Now. Give the money to him.” Jay jerked his head in my direction.

In just a few seconds, my whole body had switched from feeling every current of the air conditioner, every crack between the floor tiles, to feeling nothing at all. The cashier had opened the drawer; he was piling bills on the countertop. His face had turned bright red and his eyes were bulging, but he was careful not to look at us. I couldn’t think of a single thing to do besides reach out and scoop up the cash. It wasn’t stacks of twenties like in the movies, but it was something. All of a sudden I realized that we were in charge here. In a mean little thrill of power, I snatched a Cadbury egg, the expensive kind they put by the checkout for impulse buyers.

We ran. We ran as fast as we could, not in the direction of our underpass, but towards another gas station on down the road.

“It’s too bright over here!” I said. “They’ll find us for sure. What the hell was that? Where’d you get a gun ?”

“Muzzle up, Bennet; it’s part of the plan.” Jay, still holding the gun, pumped his arms as he ran, and for one gruesome moment I pictured the trigger going off beneath his chin, exploding his face into bloody pieces.

I said, “You didn’t tell me about that last ‘plan’! What the fuck, Jay? That was crazy. Be careful with that thing.” I could barely keep up with him.

The road continued over a drainage ditch and towards a circle of parking lot lights that surrounded another gas station.

Jay said, “Fuck that. I know what to do.” As we neared the parking lot lights, Jay slowed to a walk, casual-like, and zipped the gun into his backpack.

I stared at this crazy person, the moonlight glossing over his goatee so that his face looked more like a kid’s, and I had to forcefully remind myself that he was my best friend, that I would follow him wherever. “How long have you been planning that?” I asked. “Did you get it off of some cop show or something?”

Jay strolled right over to a pickup hitched to a flatbed trailer and slipped beneath the trailer’s tarp. I looked around, mouth agape, to see if anyone had noticed. It was quiet. I dove under the tarp with him and pulled the plastic shut behind us.

“What just happened?” I whispered. “What did you do? Hiding under here is part of the plan?”

Jay rolled onto his back and pulled his hands up behind his head. “That gas station sucked. Wish it had been a Wawa. Then we could have grabbed some real food.” He pulled the beef jerky out of his pants and started to eat.

I lay stomach-down on splintery boards, and my feet seemed tangled up with some other junk back where I couldn’t see. “We would have gotten away with just the food,” I said. “What did we need all that money for?” But now that we had the cash, I couldn’t deny that I was glad. I touched the wad of it in my pocket. This money would give us a little bit of security, at least.

“If you have money, you have everything,” Jay said. “They been stealing money from us for years, and it’s only right we take a little back.”

“Who’s been stealing from us?” I asked, but I shouldn’t have, because next I had to listen to Jay’s familiar rant about how our neighborhoods were being broken up, how we deserved payback, how we needed to demand respect.

As I half-listened to Jay, I fingered the bills, feeling transformed, rich and full of mystery. It was a powerful feeling, to think that I was cool.

“Somehow I knew this ride would be waiting for us.” Jay patted the trailer. “We’re special that way. Hey, give me the cash.”

“Do you hear that?” I said as I handed over the money. I felt a little sorry to give it up, because it was a concrete reward for the fifty seconds of numbing fear I’d endured when Jay had pulled out his gun. “Sirens?” But before I could confirm the sound, the truck rumbled to life and the trailer started to move beneath us. “Where are we going?”

“That was easy.” Jay snorted. “Man, that was so easy. If I’d known how easy…”

I unwrapped the expensive chocolate egg and shoved the whole thing into my mouth. At first, it tasted delicious, but after a trickle of it had slid down my throat, all it made me feel was thirsty. “Jay, why’d you bring a gun?”

“We’re on our own now.” He crunched a handful of chips. “A bear could come, or we might need to hunt our food. A gun is just, like, a smart tool to have.”

“But it doesn’t have bullets, right?”

“Only a pussy carries around an unloaded gun. Man, without me, you would never survive.”

After a half hour, the rattling of the trailer anesthetized my skin, and my head ached from my brain knocking around in there. I tried to sleep, but instead fell into a trance, the kind where all you’re doing is waiting, and the waiting takes forever. I either dreamed or imagined that I was in limbo with Toshi, my dead friend Tosh, and the place had the most uncomfortable metal chairs.