Hello! This is the third installment of the twenty-one chapter debut novel In the Pines by Wells Thompson (that’s me). I’ll be publishing one chapter a week on Substack until it’s all up, so if this is the first one you’re seeing, you can find the previous chapters in the Newsletter backlog. I hope you enjoy the ride!
“So, you’re stuck wondering if you should feel angry that your roommate left without a word or relieved that they’re back?” Dr. Skinner had, for the first time, taken some notes while Sarah blathered on about what felt like nothing. Except that talking about nothing was beginning to feel significant, and the more she asked herself why, the more frustrated she became.
“Is it too much to ask to feel both?” She finally let out after contemplating how to answer the question. Sarah felt her nose twitching as she watched Dr. Skinner scribble.
“Not at all. I get the feeling that this roommate you’re talking about is a little more significant than just a roommate. Do you want to tell me about them?”
“Her. She’s uh… wild.” Nowadays, every time Sarah thought about Kayla she seized up. If she wasn’t being purposefully obstinate with the shrink, she’d have admitted in their first session that that’s why she was here. To suss out what was and wasn’t reasonable with their entangled lives, to figure out where the lines needed to be drawn.
“How long have you two lived together?”
“Going on something like eight years.”
“I think that technically counts as common law marriage.”
Sarah sighed, “We’ve never dated, but yeah, we’re a little married.”
Dr. Skinner covered her mouth as she laughed quietly. “Sorry, that’s unprofessional,” she admitted.
“What does that even mean…?” She found herself drumming her kneecaps, which was weird, Sarah wasn’t normally this jittery. “Do you know where Park Hills is?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Small town in Missouri, we ended up there right after we met.”
“Which was how, exactly?”
“On a train.” Sarah started gritting her teeth. Down her forearm, she followed the arms of an octopus that curled and wrapped themselves around her skin from her elbow to her wrist. She’d only gotten the tattoo earlier in the year, just before things had gotten really stressful between her and Kayla. Again. The site of the ink was still new to her and sometimes caught her off guard.
“What kind of train?”
“Not the L. Do you want to hear the story?”
“Sorry, you’re right, continue.” Sarah tapped her foot and scrunched up her nose. She knew it would circle back around if she didn’t give the doctor something.
“I was fifteen and we were running away and we ended up in Park Hills.”
“Okay…That sounds like I really need to follow up on it.”
“Please don’t. Now, this was like six or seven months after that.”
***
“How much did you make?” Richard asked Sarah, who was adding up her tips on the screen where she clocked in, rang in food, and was basically chained to during her shift. She bit her bottom lip and stared intently at the screen as she punched in the numbers; fourteen dollars here, twenty-two dollars there. One table gave her thirty on a fifty dollar check. They were about to head to the airport to go to a special hospital. The woman was wearing a headscarf and the man looked tired, but never stopped smiling. By the end of their meal, they’d promised to come back and see Sarah again, and even though she said it wasn’t necessary, she was excited at the thought they might return.
“It’s not about the money,” she said, then turned to smirk at Richard, “it’s about good service.” He was tall and his beard was cut on the sides of his jaw so that his chin hair didn’t touch his sideburns. He leaned up against the terminal, in a pose she saw him strike frequently, usually talking to girls. She assumed he was around twenty-five and that he clearly didn’t realize how old she was. Not that she would have been honest if he’d asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not the manager and we both know it’s really about the money,” he said, winking and smiling.
“That kind of thinking is why you never break two hundred.” The confidence was odd to her, out of place. Almost every day, her coworkers volunteered their earnings and she couldn’t help but compare, even if she knew it was rude to do so. Maybe the fact that she routinely made the most on every shift was finally getting to her head.
“You make money because creepy old men like that you wear makeup at six in the morning.” Richard flicked his nose and smiled, the words had the cadence of a joke, but Sarah knew this was just something he believed, but this thin veneer of humor made it socially unacceptable for her to get upset.
“No one’s stopping you from putting on some lipstick. Maybe some creepy old men will throw you a bone.” She waited a beat for Richard’s cheeks to flush and his smile to drop before she added, “Or, maybe you could try having a personality and see if people respond to that.” She giggled and knew she was watching a glorious implosion.
Richard took a step back and his face got serious. “I have—what’s that—that’s rude!”
“It’s just a joke.” And with that, Sarah brushed passed and walked through the top floor of the restaurant, her backpack slung over her shoulder. She scanned over the heads of people eating and looked for her other coworkers. Meg, Dale, and Zena were talking to each other in the corner with only Meg cognizant enough to watch out for a manager, who didn’t like servers congregating. She didn’t extend that awareness far enough to see the two top at table 313 trying to flag her down, though. Sarah fought the instinct to approach the table and help only because she was already clocked out and no longer in uniform and would have looked ridiculous approaching the table in street clothes. Besides, Meg would have accused her of sharking the table regardless, so she kept her head down and chose to ignore it, instead making her way to the stairs.
On the first floor, Josh waved to her from behind the bar and she met his gaze and waved back before continuing her scan. If Kayla wasn’t here, there was really only one place she could be, but her stomach sank to think of it. She called out to Benji as he passed and hoped to be proven wrong, “Seen Kayla anywhere?”
Benji walked past without a word and Sarah was left wondering if he’d heard what she said and chose to ignore her or was too stuck in his head to pay attention. Either way, she no longer felt odd about having confidence because it was gone, vanished into the ether, with Sarah left in the shape of a ghost haunting the floor and trying not to be noticed. She walked through the kitchen and out the backdoor to the dumpsters, doing her best to avoid eye contact and stay small, only occasionally squeaking out a “Behind” to keep from bumping into anyone.
When she peeked out the back door, she found Kayla gathered with two other servers, a busser, and the sous chef on the curb. The smell of the garbage was only slightly overpowered by the cigarettes they were all choking down. It was revolting. But, as Kayla was quick to point out, it made her look older. Old enough to be waiting tables, anyway. The IDs they’d bought worked well enough to get them an apartment, but they still looked sixteen and distracting from that was the only way they were going to survive. Most people, luckily, believed them when they said they just looked young—guests often joked about how they would be happy about it when they got older.
One of the other girls—Sarah thought her name might have been Harley, but wasn’t sure—was propping herself up against one of the garbage bins, her boot fitting in a dent in the metal. She let a strap of her suspenders fall off one shoulder and was speaking very seriously to Kayla about how to break glass with a baseball bat without getting hurt. Meanwhile, Pam only halfway paid attention as she let her bright red hair fall down on her face and watched a purple and blue flower growing between the cracks of the concrete. For a moment, Sarah admitted to herself that Kayla looked natural, her nose pointing to the end of the glowing orange cigarette tip. Even with her arm wrapped up in the old, browned-out cast, Kayla still looked like life was happening the way she wanted it to, the way she was comfortable with. Sarah felt she was the only one that looked too young to be there, even under all the makeup. It was only next to Kayla that Sarah worried she’d be caught out as underage, all that confidence melting off in a sheen of sweat. Kayla finally noticed her and forcefully blew out a billow of smoke. “Hey, girlie, you off yet?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said, coughing slightly as she choked down her worry, “let’s head out.”
“Sure thing,” Kayla said, stomping out her cigarette. “See you tomorrow,” she called back to the other girls as she walked with Sarah back to their car. Kayla drove; Sarah was still too young to get her license. She knew her fake ID was, in fact, a driver’s license, but she felt bad using it without taking a test or anything. The car was old, they weren’t sure what year, and though it was white now, it very well could have been painted at some point. It was a good deal, almost free, they found it abandoned on the side of the road one day with three of the tires slashed. After a tow, some engine work, new tires, and about eight hundred dollars—just thirty short of all the money they had saved between the two of them—they had a way of getting around this godforsaken collection of parking lots generously labeled a town.
“So how much did you make today?” Kayla asked, starting the car.
“All said, three seventeen.”
“Hell yeah. How do you do that?”
“I don’t know, it just kind of happens.”
“Oh yeah? Any doctors or what?”
“Not really, I waited on a cancer patient, and a scruffy looking guy at breakfast that gave me a twenty for some bread. He almost looked homeless, but he had a briefcase and a suit. It was weird.”
“Why do you always get the good ones, all I ever hear is, ‘we asked for extra lemons with our water,’ and ‘we need to speak to the manager,’” Kayla said half-heartedly as she reached for her phone, keeping it in the console and using her rigid arm to manipulate it. After quickly glancing down and making a few quick, awkward motions, she put it away.
“Who was that?” Sarah asked.
“No one,” Kayla replied and looked forward at the road.
“We need to get that taken off.” Sarah said, gesturing to the cast. Kayle didn’t respond. Sarah looked out the windshield and saw buildings and shopping complexes and strip malls. This was the only road they traveled on between work and their apartment.
“You ever notice how there aren’t any trees out here?” Sarah asked.
“Not really,” Kayla replied.
“There were a lot more back home. I used to walk through a park on my way back from school.”
Kayla looked at Sarah as they stopped at a light, her eyes moving while her jaw locked in place. “They’re just trees. You’ll be fine without them.” Sarah didn’t say anything. It occurred to her that they never talked about home before. Sarah was never going back to Arkansas, she knew that in her bones, but she missed how beautiful it was, in the natural sense. Here it was just concrete and dirt. Kayla looked at Sarah out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “Heard Richard was gonna take a shot at you.”
“Ugh.”
“You don’t find him charming?”
“First of all, no. Second, he took his shot and missed. Wasn’t interested before, definitely not now.”
“Not at all?”
“You seem oddly invested in this.”
“I’m just curious, I don’t see you talking to—” Kayla was cut off by her vibrating phone. She fumbled to pick it up with her off-hand, but when she had it in front of her, she put it back down almost immediately. Sarah drummed her fingers against her knees and tried to trace the laces of her shoes.
“People don’t like me.” Sarah finally said.
Kayla tilted her head in confusion like a puppy, “The hell are you talking about girlie?”
“You were going to say you don’t see me talking to people. People don’t like me.”
“You’re an idiot, people love you.”
“Guests like me, the other servers can’t stand me. The girls only ever talk to me out of their side eyes and Benji won’t even look at me.”
Kayla lifted her finger above the steering wheel and tilted her head to glare out the windshield. “First of all, fuck Benji, dude thinks he’s better than everyone else because he took a fancy wine test. Second, the girls are bitchy by nature and they’re intimidated by you because you’re brand new and already way better than them at this stupid job.”
Sarah couldn’t help but turn the corner of her mouth into a restrained smile, even as her head hung low on her shoulders. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m getting better,” Kayla said proudly, then as an afterthought, “And I’m also not lying!”
“I know. How do you make friends?”
“What, you think I try? They just show up when I go out to smoke.”
“Ugh, keep ‘em.”
Kayla opened her mouth to defend herself, but stayed quiet. Then, after messing with the radio, “Richard wants to be your friend.”
Sarah twisted her face and suddenly she tasted lime on her tongue. “He’s like twenty-five and he just wants to sleep with me because he doesn’t know I’m fifteen still.”
“Twenty-six,” Kayla corrected.
“What is wrong with you?”
Kayla suddenly spoke slowly and deliberately, “I just thought you could take advantage of the situation. And also that, after you’re done with him, we could rob and blackmail him.”
“There’s just, there’s so much wrong with…all of that.” Sarah wished she could feel shocked, but this honestly felt exactly like something Kayla would cook up.
“Well, you’ve been super stressed and could use the exercise. Plus, it would be good to put away a little money for a rainy day.” Kayla’s ability to look and sound innocent, even rational, was frightening in a way Sarah couldn’t articulate.
“Wait,” Sarah said after contemplating the day’s events, “Did you tell him to hit on me? Was this you?”
Kayla opened her mouth and her eyes searched for an answer on the roof of the car. “No?”
“You’re a terrible liar.” Sarah crossed her arms and looked away.
“It was a good plan,” Kayla sighed, though Sarah wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or to trying to make a rebuttal.
“We’re finally doing okay and you want to risk it all for a few extra bucks?”
“I don’t like eating out of a dumpster and I know you don’t either. Extra cash keeps us from doing that ever again. Excuse me for trying.”
Sarah might have continued to argue, but her stomach churned and a chill went down her spine and suddenly she was in no mood. “We need to make a grocery run.”
“Where do you think I’m headed?”
“Do we have a list?”
“Ramen noodles, peanut butter, bread, tomato soup, what else do we need?” Kayla began humming and Sarah knew the conversation was over. As she looked out her window, she watched for something new in the shopping center across the road that they could explore later in the day. They didn’t need to spend money, but they could always look around.
Eventually, they found parking and walked into the store and split up. Sarah went off to get bread and milk while Kayla went to find pasta of various sorts. As Sarah walked through the store and scanned the colorful, unhealthy mess of foods and food-type products, her attention snapped, weirdly, to the steps of Kayla’s plan. Assuming she’d actually asked Sarah to be a part of it, would Sarah have said yes? Step one: Invite Richard over to their apartment. Step two…Sarah realized, somewhat suddenly, that she didn’t really know what would happen past that point. Southern education was showing its limits and she could only really piece together through context clues that it involved getting naked and letting him do something to her. It seemed completely foreign and gave Sarah something of a stomach ache to think about, though that may just be the hunger setting in.
Part of her wanted to be angry with Kayla, but she couldn’t muster anything past annoyance. It wasn’t a convoluted plan to get Sarah to do something she wasn’t comfortable with, it was a convoluted plan to make sure they could put food on the table. Stupid, yes, but well intentioned, and she couldn’t stay upset about that especially when only months prior, that attitude had kept them going. When she was in the mood for admitting it, it was Kayla’s resolve that she admired. There were few things that didn’t get done once Kayla set her mind to it, a magnetic confidence that allowed her to get away with anything and take Sarah along for the ride.
Without Kayla, Sarah was a homebody at best and a scared child at worst. But when Kayla was around, Sarah felt welcome at parties and able to explore any which place she desired. Sometimes she thought Kayla might be invincible. The fluorescent warehouse lighting of the grocery store whined in Sarah’s ear as the thought crashed through her body: If not for Kayla, Sarah might have closed her eyes and slipped back to Little Rock, even knowing that when she opened her eyes she would be back in that basement where the dark would give way to something worse.
When Sarah finally collected the milk and bread, she looked around the front of the store for Kayla but didn’t see her. She walked towards the grains aisle to track her down and found her frozen, empty-handed and wide-eyed, staring straight down the aisle. Sarah called her name, but she didn’t respond. Her increasingly glassy eyes darted frantically, and her hair shifted subtly with the shaking of her spine, but her arms and legs were locked in place. When Sarah looked past Kayla, towards the end of the aisle, she saw a man with curly brown hair examining the shelf. He turned his head and noticed the two of them, and for an odd second, Sarah found it hard to tell the two apart. Then, he turned back and walked to the next aisle, crossing an item off of his list, not paying much mind to the two girls.
Sarah looked back at Kayla, who was failing to keep her composition. That’s when it should have been obvious, Sarah thought years later, why it was here in Park Hills that Kayla had insisted on stopping, but it was only in hindsight that she caught the finer details. In the moment, Sarah only thought to ask, “Are you alright?” Kayla didn’t say anything, though it sounded like she was trying to, but couldn’t force the words.
Finally, the vibration of Kayla’s phone broke the silence and pulled their attention. Sarah caught a glimpse of the text, the word cruel, but before she could read the whole thing, Kayla had thrown the plastic on the ground, shattering the screen and scattering the two spit pieces of the case and several loose electronic parts in different directions. Sarah reached for Kayla’s shoulder and searched for something to say, but stopped when she met Kayla’s wide eyes and clenched jaw. She’d seen the look before, just before getting bit by a stray dog, and she pulled her hand back as if it might happen again.
“Don’t touch me! This is so fucked! He was right there…” Kayla’s breathing became shallow and ragged and Sarah worried she might pass out.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she managed to get out, still frightened but letting her concern overpower her own instinct to back away.
“Oh, how the fuck would you know? Your biggest concern is whether some snooty bitch likes you at work, you don’t have real problems! What would you know about what passes for alright?” Kayla was screaming almost without realizing what she was saying until it was already out of her mouth. “I mean, Jesus, you can’t clean up a spill, you can’t kill a spider, you can’t drive a car, you can’t even make friends unless you’re stuck living with them. Why do I even keep you around?”
Sarah shrunk. She found herself looking at the floor, counting backwards. This would pass if she was very still, just like it had back home.
“Let’s just face it, the only reason I haven’t left you behind is because I feel sorry for you. Without me you’d never have made it out from the underpass you stupid little girl!” Sarah felt stiffness in the back of her neck and launched herself forward, striking Kayla across the face and putting them both on the floor. She stood up and braced herself, expecting Kayla to throw a punch in retaliation, but she didn’t move off the floor and seemed to press her forehead against the polished linoleum. Without saying anything, she took the keys from Kayla’s pocket and walked away, Kayla and the groceries spilling out on the ground. When she started the car and drove away, she couldn’t be concerned with how little experience she had with driving, just the throbbing pain in her knuckles and trembling in her legs. Her ears started to itch, but she couldn’t scratch them; her hands were far too attached to the wheel to move voluntarily or otherwise. Finally, when the heat went away and she could think clearly, she parked at a gas station not too far from their apartment and began shaking. Her arms shivered and her breath became short.
She scrambled for the glovebox and found Kayla’s carton of cigarettes and a lighter. When she hastily lit it up, she expected to feel some sort of relief, but dropped it as soon as she took a breath, coughing violently and feeling utterly defeated. Her throat burned and she grit her teeth, the words swirling in her ears, little girl. After she could force down a breath or two without choking, she found the still-lit cigarette on the floorboard and put it to her lips, inhaling slower, more calmly, watching the tip glow orange and holding it for a few seconds. She almost got the entire plume out of her lungs without coughing, but when she looked down the cigarette, all she could see was the cold, gray ash.
When Sarah inevitably drove back to the grocery store, Kayla was still there, sitting on the curb, bruises darkening on her face and groceries collected neatly into plastic bags. When she spotted the unmistakable rolling wreck that was their car, she stood slowly and made her way to the back seat. When she sat down, neither could bring themselves to say the things they needed to. Questions seemed to crawl out of their eyes as they glanced at each other in the rearview on the drive back home, until, finally, Sarah instigated what she assumed was the root of all of this. “Who was that man?” she asked meekly. The cigarette smoke in her throat combined with the uncertainty that comes with speaking for the first time in nearly two hours made her voice crack.
“No one,” Kayla said, looking at her feet and began to hum, though the tune was different, more dissonant than before. That was the end of the discussion. The road buzzed under the car and the girls were silent for a time. Kayla finally shifted to look at Sarah. “Can I ask you a question?”
“No,” Sarah replied and turned on the radio so she couldn’t hear anything else.
This story is considered a work in progress for legal reasons.
© 2024 Wells Thompson
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.