Conflux: The Lost Girls

7 - Bright lights and long nights

A greasy diner smelling of fried eggs and sizzling beef. There's a musk of cigarette smoke but I don't see anyone smoking.

We splurge on giant burgers and fries, savoring every bite. By the time we get to a baked potato loaded with oozing cheese and stringy bacon, I'm stuffed, but Care's appetite seems unconquerable.

"Can't go to the ball on an empty stomach, Cinderella." She chews down a mouthful of food.

"It's anything but empty. I'm going to explode," I moan. "Hey, what day did the waitress say it was?"

"Friday," she munches. "Good day for a party, if those kids weren't just playing with us. Or the waitress. What kind of person asks what day it is, anyway?"

"Old people. People with bad memory." Like me.

"Druggies who can't remember what day it is." She stuffs the last chunk down and swallows. She waits and asks the waitress for the check, who comes over with a cigarette hanging from mean thin lips, impatient and uninspired.

Care leaves a couple dollars tip. "Never fuck with the people who make your food," she tells me.

The waitress comes back after a while and takes the bill, but snatches Care's cigarette and drops it into a near-empty cup of coffee even while one is half-burned in her mouth. "No smoking."

Care picks up her dropped jaw and we walk outside, where the sun is starting to drop.

"Nevermind what I said. Food people are the worst. They can spit in my food and I'll keep the tip."

"She looked like she might have spit in it anyway." My stomach grumbles.

We have new clothes on. A large part of the drugs are stuffed in a black and pink sports bag around her shoulders, mostly ecstasy, weed, acid, coke, and painkillers. The other drugs and liquor are stashed in the woods a few miles from the party, near a cheap old tent we bought from an army navy store and set up as a fallback.

I'm wearing a dark blue v-neck shirt under a black zip-up sweatshirt, tight black jeans and boots. Care looks like a goddess down to earth in comparison, all-black skate shoes, a beanie, and a plaid miniskirt. Her tank-top is blood red and sexy, covered over with a grey denim jacket.

"Hey, are you mad at me?" she asks. "You seem kind of quiet."

"Mad? No. I'm just full and it feels weird. And I didn't like all the eyes in the diner."

"Huh," she puffs. "Okay. It's hard to tell with you sometimes. You're not the type to show emotion too easy, babe. Except when something serious is happening. Then you're all oowooah! Aaaaah!" Her face shoots through a mimicry of expressions, shock, fear, anger, confusion.

"Am I really like that?"

"It's okay." She smiles, shutting her eyes for a moment. "It's cute."

I rub the back of my neck. "Do you know where we're going?"

She points at the sign in front of an elementary school as we pass by an empty parking lot.

"Don't know where Oak Village is, but it's near here, they said. Should be able to find the place before it gets too dark. Not a lot around the school here but woods and cricks."

"How do you know that?"

"Psh, how else? Getting driven around, reading maps. Gotta know your own backyard, ya know? I know the main roads and landmarks in town, mostly."

"You seem to know where you're going most of the time," I recall. "Why didn't you just go out on your own before?"

She scoffs. "Knowing an area and people and stuff is just basics. Putting it all together and surviving on your own is the tricky part. Anyone else I could have run off with before was probably worse than Matty. Maybe I just needed a partner in crime like you."