Uncreased Spitcleaned
The mist hung on the apartment complex parking lot like an oversized thrift store shirt. He glared at his mother’s back and swung the door closed, shrugged a backpack strap over his shoulder and tugged his hood on. The walk to school took only half an hour, an improvement over the stop-and-go bus ride from the last apartment. The bus was heavy with the shuffling breath of the pseudo-homeless who rode the 24-hour route continuously. Walking brought solitude, no women his mother’s age pressing against his fourteen-year-old body to ask what he liked and if he had a light and what he was doing all by himself and how old are you baby with a laugh like cigarettes and grease traps.
He got to campus under the spotlight of an SUV, a teacher he never had, who slowed down and looked away from the hooded boy walking across the wet lawn that broke the school up from the busy road. The cafeteria doors were unlocked. Lots of students got to school an hour or so early after complaints from advocates for homeless students a few years ago. Now the school started opening doors at 5 AM.
Breakfast was free. Three boxes of apple juice, the thin Ukrainian worker, alert and smiling, said nothing even though students are allowed one milk and one juice. The apple juice was to help chew the breakfast corndog, an unsure of itself reheated pancake. His hood stayed on as he brought his body down onto the table. Between bites, he wiped his tongue over his teeth. They felt like peach fuzz. The apple juice made his molars ache and pulse like he had bass amps in his tonsils. A few tables over, a girl his grade rested most of herself on the table. A cheap and soft blanket around her shoulders, a hoodie on and sweatpants reading, “State High School Dance Championship” in glitterpoverty script. Her finger reminded the boy of his breakfast corndog as is scrolled up and down. He stared at the girl, she was here before he was, glasses, acne-licked cheeks, hair wrenched back. The finger stopped running up and down the phone screen, a long minute passed and a low snore dribbled from the girl’s back. The panopticonic lights blazed. The stage that the drama class used had its curtain pulled closed concealing timpani and locked trombone cases. The oversized puppy-gates that later closed the hallways off from students during lunch stood open, as inviting to the milling student body as an open patrol car door.
He thought about going home, but his mom threatened to kick him out again after screaming about his friends and the sooty glass pipe tucked in a sock. He forgot about it and resolved to catch up on sleep himself during his first couple classes. A bell sounded, electric and toneless. He thought it sounded like his mother’s voice. He stood and left the cafeteria to check in with his dealerfriends before admin stormed the halls: shooing students into classrooms and writing up the tardies, calling by name each and every absentee.
_______
The hallways cleared. “Ok class.” rang down the hall like dollar-store windchimes. Somewhere a voice shot, “Get to class.” The smell of her own feet filled her nose as she shuffled to her locker. Bunching up her blanket, she set it beside a magnetic mirror and a library book she checked out freshman year. She noted him, burnholes, hood on. ‘Stoner,’ she thought as he leaned into the classroom door across the hall from her locker. A thin voice received Stoner’s evaporating form, “I’ve already marked you absent.”
Wandered to the bathroom, locked the handicapped stall, sat down. Let the bun of hair explode. Guided her hands through the greasy tight curls. Skids of dandruff grew beneath fingernails. She pulled out her phone, scaffolded her body, elbows on thighs, scrolled. A cigarette lighter rasped as two girls whispered gravely. Her mom texted, boyfriend coming over tonight, clean up.
_______
He locked his knees waiting in line. A crunchy polystyrene tray held milk, apple juice, and cheese pizza. A poster screamed the nutrition of tomato sauce and white cheese. A basketball swished through a net made of milk. At the check-out station, a different Ukrainian nutrition services woman smiled at him, nodded the languageless contract of lunch. The screen: red, the negative balance; a picture of him from freshman year: acnebumped and hard looking. His mother hadn’t ordered those pictures. “Where’s that smile? What’d I pay for those teeth?” The lunch woman nodded again, quicker and with eye contact. Maybe nodding meant something different in Ukrainian. We’re surviving, aren’t we? She placed a packaged brownie on his tray. He nodded, smiling tightlippedly, looking for an empty table.
At an open table sat a familiar figure. The same girl from this morning. He couldn’t remember her name. Seeing her without the blanket, he remembered he’d been going to school with her for years. She curled over her phone. She’d gotten three slices, heaped on her tray like dirty shirts.
“Hm.” he intoned as he brought his legs over the bench, and sat his tray down. He reached for his brownie, knocking the apple juice off the tray, sending it down the table.
“Here,” she droned, namelessly. Handed him the boxed juice.
“Thanks.” and took the box, bit it, sucked it down.
Fakes behind him talked about a fight in the girl’s locker room. His teeth hurt gnawing the half-frozen brownie, he rinsed his mouth with juice.
She’d seen the same post a dozen times today. Did the acne wash actually lighten the skin too? Or was it just the ad? Her feet were hot, still damp from cutting through grass. He smiled absently when she glanced over. “Those good?” She asked. His eyes waltzed, lips drawing tight as he sucked down apple juice from where he’d bitten the box. “Shoot, fine.” when he didn’t say.
_______
Her older sister picked her up from school. Dressed in a branded black polo, workwear, pants stained, fryer oil archipelagos. The sedan held together by the will of a penniless woman that has to be somewhere.
“Mom’s saying you gotta clean. That litter needs to be scooped.” Her sister smiled.
“Psh, I know.” She replied.
“I know you don’t like Chris coming over, but you know he treats mom nice.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll be home ‘round midnight.”
_______
He looked forward to an undramatic end of the school day. A bell would ring, and the Pavlovian masses suddenly in better moods, would exit the school. He set his eyes on the door’s pushbar. A passing teacher smiled, saying something, voice muffled but too bright, so he kept walking. He left school and headed away from home. The community center usually had decent food, crock pots on Wednesdays. He couldn’t count on his mom to feed him, at least not without grilling him on where he’d been and what surfed through his blood.
_______
The sun lingered on the concrete horizon as if waiting for a late bus. Two apartment doors opened and closed on opposite sides of the complex. Backpacks tumbled romantically to the linoleum, shoes were tucked away, eyed for new creases, spit on, rubbed clean.
Tanner Abernathy teaches high school English in a Seattle suburb. He writes image-centric poetry and fiction and enjoys walking and caring for his cat and rabbits. Tanner's favorite writer is Wendell Berry and often discusses Berry with his grandmother. His poetry has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Jeopardy Magazine, and Washington 129+. He was also a winner of the 2018 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest.