His initial indifference to my situation shocked me, but I don’t blame Tim. He doesn’t know me. There was no baseline in his mind for what I should look like or how I should be acting. In his eyes, the limp in my walk could be a lifelong condition and thus one he doesn’t want to pay extra attention to for fear of stigmatizing me. But all of that does not change the fact that I am a 16-year-old girl with a half-shaved head, glaringly obvious lack-of-sleep bags under my eyes and a right leg that doctors would technically consider “broken.” Oh, and my parents think I’m dead.
The nametag on his chest told me who he was far before he did. My vision, as described by another doctor, has been declared “extraordinary” given that I can see things from a distance that most humans cannot. I’m not a superhero or anything, just like an extra five or ten feet better than regular visionary abilities. I’m extra visionary! It isn’t until I get up to the counter that he can read the name on the tag hanging around my neck, similar in shape to his, but different in color and with a different company logo.
“Jane-Jessie,” he sounds out. “That’s an unusual one.”
“You don’t know that half of it, compadre. People usually just call me J.J.”
“Nice to meet you then, J.J.”
“Likewise, T-bone.”
It is only at this moment that it occurs to me that using my real name in a convenience store that already has a dozen missing persons posters hanging up is probably not wise, let alone using that same name at a job in an equally public location a mere two states away from my last known location. I’m 16, remember? I DON’T HAVE THIS ALL FIGURED OUT.
Sorry. I get a little frustrated with myself sometimes. Getting to this point was as far as I ever planned, and that took me a good two years to set into motion. During that entire time all I could imagine was my mom carrying out a surprise inspection of my bedroom and finding my various notebooks and slowly growing stockpiles of supplies. I tried my best to keep them separated so that if she found one, it would seem like some trivial thing she didn’t understand, and not a giant stash of items screaming “RUNAWAY ALERT: CODE RED!!!!” This fear actually helped my mom a lot since I became militant about keeping my room absolutely spotless and thus not a target for her curiosity.
“So what can I do you for?” Tim eventually asks after roughly three times the average human non-awkardness period for silence.
“Well, shop keep, I require a few essential supplies. They include one axe of wooden handle, some matches in a box, a rope of several feet, and one Pepsi in the 2-liter size.”
“We’re fresh out of number one, but the others I can hook you up with.”
He moves from behind the counter in a much smoother gait than I can manage at this point and proceeds up and down his three crammed aisles until he returns with my request in a stack on the counter. The matchbox holds 100. The rope is six feet long, skinny and white. The Pepsi is cold. I am satisfied with this result.
Tim slides back behind the counter, this time to the side with the register that beeps with every button he pushes and displays a final total of $8.39. My jeans pocket – the side where my fiubula is currently in several distinct pieces – holds my entire bankroll of just more than $6 (this is why I got the job, which won’t pay me for another 10 days).
“Timothy, I have a proposition for you.”
His eyes go wide as he steps back from the counter and throws up his hands in the international signal declaring he wants none of what I’m about to put down.
“You’re way too young for me to even listen to anything like that,” he stammers.
It takes a second for what he’s saying to sink into my brain. I blame the potential shock of the leg situation for slowing my usually quick processing capabilities. My face flushes with what feels like all of the blood in my entire body while the remaining pieces of meat and bones weigh the prospects of sprinting away from this mortification on the one good leg I’ve got.
“Oh Jesus. No. No no no. Tim. Buddy. Listen to me. This is not an ideal request, but it’s not gross! I don’t have very much money and I was wondering if you could just let me give you like five bucks now and the rest some other time.”
I grab my nametag – the one he clearly knows about already, but I feel is a useful prop to emphasize what I’m saying – and thrust it as close to his face as I can without ripping off my own neck.
“I have a job, I’m just not to payday yet, my man. I will have more than enough to OVERpay for these items as soon as that check hits these mitts. I just need a little help, good sir.”
Tim visibly exhales and slowly steps back toward the counter. The three feet takes a solid eight steps for him to cover, but he makes it.
“Yeah. Sure. Fine. That’s fine. It’s fine.”
“So…it’s fine?”
We both chuckle the nervous kind of little laughter you see from the subset of people who escape death and think that’s hilarious. Our initial misunderstanding probably smoothed the way for this to happen in a way that being clear at first would not have. Good job, J.J.
I collect the items as best I can, slipping them into my backpack and limping out of the store much the way I came in. My next shift begins in nine hours and I don’t yet know where I’m going to sleep. For the past few days, I have found refuge behind my store, but I realized that since I work there now, the security folks will be more inclined to ask questions about my presence rather than ignoring me. Tonight my first choice will be to amble down the street to a public park where I’m hoping I can find a tree or bush to hide behind while I get some of those sweet Zs.
But first I sit behind the very store I just left where for some reason there is a bench that looks out onto the beauty of a road. The best I can figure this is a smoking spot for employees, but who knows. Maybe the bench fairy dropped it here one day by accident. I slide the rope out of the pack, pull up the right leg of my jeans, and try to ignore the stabbing pain that comes. My skin is dark purple with streaks of blue that screams to bears and other predators THIS IS A PAINFUL AREA RIGHT HERE. Hell yeah it is. If only that punk kid had been more careful about the trajectory of his skateboard, or I had been more careful about walking at the base of a railing down which said kid and said skateboard were traveling, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Also, some may point out that faking my death would open up the option of going to traditional medical facilities such as a hospital, but in time you’ll understand why I embarked on this path.
So here I am. On the bench behind whatevermart. I start the rope just above my ankle and wrap it around and around. Up and up it goes as I urge myself to pull it tight. The pain is a 275 on a scale of 1-10. I remain convinced this is a great way to make a cast myself and will allow me to get through a long day at work, standing mostly on my good leg anyway, cheerfully checking out customers who are buying whosawhatsits and whatchamacallits for their perfect suburban homes. The rope runs out two inches above the edge of the purple splotch. The entire thing now throbs at once with my heartbeat. My mind focuses for a while only on that, on the slight delay between when I can feel my chest thump and when my leg pulses in rage at my life choices.
No regrets. No turning back now. I own my decision.