Burnt Tongues

  I worked at a greasy spoon called Gary’s Diner my senior year when I was seventeen. It was a dirty place to eat and work, but they were hiring, and it was twelve miles away in Centralia, where they had a Walmart and two banks. The diner smelled like the rich kids in grade school when they’d get out of their parents’ cars in the mornings with their McDonald’s sack lunches and fancy Trapper Keepers.

  I worked with Glenn, who would rather work at Gary’s with me than try to find a better job, since the community college was too tough for him to handle. In the Eric-less years that followed, the scars faded and became a part of me, and I started training myself to not see them. Glenn would talk about girls as if I looked normal. And I did for the most part. I had my ears and nose and one perfect side, but the right part of my jaw had crooked lines from surgeries and pocked skin from grafting, a permanent road rash of sorts, all twisted together, hard in some places, swelling with infected hairs since the days that puberty hit.

  I was washing dishes in the back when Glenn came from his post in the grill area. He looked suspicious and angry, like he was swallowing pride.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just stay here,” he said, and I knew. I tried to get past him, and he wouldn’t let me, but I looked over Glenn’s shoulder and saw Eric at the service counter. The manager was kicking him out—don’t know if he did anything to get kicked out or if Glenn was simply grown up now and trying to make sure there wasn’t a scene by telling the manager that Eric had to go or shit was going to hit the fan.

  Eric was tall, filthy, unshaved, and looked like an ex-con, which he was. Battery, theft, drugs—he’d become a repeat customer for the state’s version of hot meals and accommodations and all this at the age of twenty. I knew because people told me about his arrests, about the current events of Eric’s existence. As if they were doing me some sort of favor. As if they were cheering me up.

  Eric caught my eyes, and he was shocked. He wasn’t seeking me. He just wanted a hamburger, and here we were. “He knows I didn’t mean it,” he screamed, words we’d both heard in our heads in the years since. “We both know what happened.” Not anger but hurt. He couldn’t struggle against the lie, but he, of all people, had the truth on his side. He pointed and walked past the counter, coming for me.

  Glenn left me unguarded and sprinted toward Eric. Eric was much bigger and taller than Glenn, who stayed short and stout even at twenty, yet Eric still ran when he recognized him. I looked out the drive-through window, gawking, frozen again. Glenn chased him when I should have, but Eric had huge animal strides.

  Seeing Eric again, feeling myself not moving made everything inside me come open, fresh. I knew what he was when he was thirteen and always knew what he would become. We all did. But he had seen something kindred in me, and he’d wanted us to huff and stab together, to share his sister in that hot tent. I thought I severed him with that lie, but I was part of his history now, sewn into the fabric of his life. He could blame me for everything he was, and I couldn’t tell him different.

  Glenn couldn’t keep up. He leaned over near the intersection, hands on knees, getting his breath. Drivers slowed down, staring, but they kept moving all the same. I lost sight of Eric when he turned the corner by the auto parts store, and I never saw him again.

  Glenn walked back inside. “Sorry, man. He must be used to running from the cops. If I got him this time, I was going to curb stomp that fucker once and for all.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “Not worth it,” I said. Then I went back to my dishes.

  Would Glenn have blamed me if he knew? Once, we sat on that rock pile, only with my car parked near the rocks, a five-hundred-dollar Corsica bought with money earned from washing cars. I’d just turned sixteen, and we were celebrating. The sun was down, and we were the same height as the streetlights, a living piece of the town’s constellation. In the dark, though, it could be sort of beautiful. From there, we could see the kind of town I live in now, the kind that puts out a huge dull bulb on the horizon—kids suffocating in the black of country nights can look and know it’s out there somewhere. That light, the confluence of traffic signals, of gas stations open all night, of stores that leave their big signs on even when they’re closed.

  We drank a few beers, the crushed cans clinking down the side of the pile as we emptied the cooler. Glenn didn’t ask anything; he just told me. “Larry, bad things happen to people, and then you wonder why and wish it were different. Don’t ever wish it were different. That’s the wrong way to go about the whole thing.”

  He could’ve been talking about anything or wanted me to talk about it, just one time, because I never did after I got home from the hospital.

  I asked him if he remembered the time he mapped out where a girl’s vagina was actually located and how Jerry pissed in the morning fire and said he was cooking bacon. We laughed, and I drove him home only a block down the street. His mother left the outside light on. Glenn stood on the dimly lit porch and slapped at his jeans, sending up puffs of rock dust that mixed with the fluttering moths, the yellow light and his smile, and that’s how I remember him.

  After the Eric chase was over, after the diner closed, the waitresses, Julie and Janice, asked about what happened, why the ruckus, why the chase.

  Glenn stayed quiet.

  I told those girls how Eric lit me on fire on purpose, with malicious intent. The story was alive—I couldn’t stop it from coming out in one whole piece, like it was all greased up.

  They hung on every word, then told me I looked really good, that they didn’t even notice the scars.

  Glenn listened, quiet, a look etched on his face like he didn’t want me to break the silence he’d leaned against so long.

  We stood in a circle in the unlit parking lot, with me the center of attention. The girls fawned, and I felt them attracted to me because I told them such a painful story. Julie especially, the brunette waitress a year younger than me who had the clearest blue eyes I’d ever seen, eyes that never looked away from mine while we talked.

  Julie and I left together that night. We made out on Jolliff Bridge Road, concealed by corn and the night; her mouth was wet and warm, her hands clumsy. In the coming weeks, we went to see movies, went to dinner. I met her parents, and I could tell they were proud of her for dating someone damaged. Her dad asked about college, said he’d heard I was a real brain and might be valedictorian. Julie squeezed my hand while he talked, proud. She loved to hold hands in public, loved reading, and loved books.

  We’d been dating for six weeks when Glenn asked me over a grill full of cooking burgers if I’d finally done it, if I’d finally joined the club.

  I had in the basement of her parents’ house. Julie made it a point to kiss my scars. With her hand against my bad side, she whispered that she loved all of me, and I heard her jeans unbutton, her bra unclasp, clicking noises in the dark. I heard every tooth of her zipper part, and she asked me if I wanted her. We made love, and it wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I told her I loved her all the same because I did.

  I told Glenn yes, I’d joined the club.

  “Sounds like your life is really turning into something,” he said, as if to say his wasn’t, but he still smiled.

  Because of me, a little piece of him felt smart; a little piece of him was dating a girl as beautiful as Julie. I knew it, but I knew a little piece of him was poisoned because I’d never told him. I never gave him the choice to be my friend.

  I loved Julie. But I was the smart one and knew what had to be done. On our six-week anniversary, I bought her a sterling silver bookmark with her name engraved on it. We made out on that basement couch, and I asked her why she loved me. She said handsome first, as if to stress it. Smart. Sweet. Genuine. She could just tell I was a good guy.

  She turned the question back on me. I told her I couldn’t answer because I didn’t love her—the second big lie of my lifetime, a fat, noble seed that never grew the way I thought it would. I tried to kiss her good-bye, ju
st on the cheek, but she slapped me on my numb side. I still felt it, like dental instruments prodding a cheek swollen with drugs.

  I left that night and didn’t come back. I ran to a city an hour away because that’s as far as a Corsica can go on half a tank, but it was a city with a big mall and diners that could fit three Gary’s Diners in them, and I might as well have been on the moon.

  After learning Eric was dead, I picked a new bookstore hangout, this one less commercial, without the huge kids’ section and the racks of DVDs. Less people, more dust and dampness, with books priced by hand, blue ink on tiny, white tags.

  The first day I was there, a little girl called me a monster.

  She hadn’t learned the value of not saying. She knew nothing of white lies, as opposed to those black lies that feed confrontation and embarrassment.

  The girl held her mother’s hand, staring at me, and I smiled to diffuse her. She had curly brown hair, an incomplete set of kiddy teeth, and big old blue eyes.

  We were all silent, the girl, her mother, and I, looking at each other for the longest moment. The girl’s expression had Julie’s name caught in my throat, going nowhere, lodged like a razor blade. She asked her mother if I was a monster. The mother muttered, “Sorry,” then tugged her right out of the aisle, then right out of the store, as if she were a misbehaving puppy.

  I was sure my scars were angled towards the corner of the store, but maybe my scars wandered out of hiding and I didn’t notice—not noticing was that trusty insulation from the truth that makes me all grown up. But children cut right down to the bone of it, and maybe the little girl knew a monster when she saw one.

  I looked at my book, not reading a word, not registering a picture, but feeling eyes on me again, searching. An itch built up in the flesh of my face, a real itch, the kind that feels on the verge of eruption, like a mosquito bite on a sweating, socked ankle during a game of night tag.

  So I scratched, and scabs broke away when my fingernails crunched through them. I was surprised at the feeling—surprised when little spots of blood began to drip onto the book I was holding.

  But no one was in the store except for the clerk. He was oblivious, jotting something down behind the counter, so I turned the pages until the bleeding stopped.

  Dietary

  Brandon Tietz

  On Fridays the snide remarks are almost tolerable.

  (9:37 a.m.) Dr. Varden: “Tell me something, Pritchard—if I actually muster the necessary courage to reach across your face for that cruller, exactly how much danger are my fingers in?”

  (1:03 p.m.) Dr. Grint: “If you keep eating those Big Montanas like you do, you’re going to turn into one.”

  (1:55 p.m.) Nurse Fowler: “Oh, great, call the patent office. I’ve always wanted a three-hundred-dollar phone system that smells like curly fries.”

  This is exactly twenty-one days after the invitation came in the mail.

  Eighteen days following the initial order that required a Spanish-to-English translation, a peso-to-dollar currency calculator—I’m beaming for the first time in years when the creepy landlord of my apartment building called. “Miss Miranda, that package came today,” he drawls.

  With relief cascading, I’m thinking, Oh, Jesus, thank God, yes! because there was no tracking number provided. No confirmation code or customer service line.

  “Two Big Montanas, two large curly fries,” I order, with debit card at the ready.

  “It stinks re-e-e-eal funny, Miss Miranda,” he says in a leery tone, sniffing. “Kinda like a bathroom.”

  “Actually, go ahead and tack on another Big Montana,” I say, unable to control the impulse, and add with a friendly wink, “The husband might want seconds.”

  But the skinny waif of a girl in front of me is scrutinizing my face, my gut chub, and probably not buying it. Definitely should’ve gone drive-thru.

  “It’s all in Mexican,” my landlord says. “Do you speak Mexican?”

  “Yes, honey, I’ll be home real soon,” I say, slamming my phone shut.

  (1:59 p.m.) Nurse Fowler: Well, the good news is I’ll save money on the diet pools. I honestly thought you’d last four days on the Atkins deal up until Dr. Kessler ordered that French bakery into the waiting room, the fuckin’ cheater.

  The little RN groans. “Can’t believe you let him bait you out with scones. The way I see it, you still owe me fifty bucks.”

  This is not a joke.

  This is not my first attempt.

  (2:01 p.m.) Nurse Fowler: “Just between us girls, though, I think it’s good you’re finally cutting out all this nonsense.”

  She’s talking about that ridiculous popcorn diet.

  Other minimalist regimes include yogurt, prunes, lettuce, and cheese cubes. Pick one food and commit. For the rest of your chunky, pathetic life.

  “I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Grapefruit.”

  These methods have a proven 97 percent rate of failure.

  Nurse Fowler sweeps that black silk curtain behind an ear with her left hand, the one with the seven-karat skating rink on it, whispering sweetly, “Sometimes giving up is better than losing. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The phone beeps, granting me a reprieve.

  “Breckenridge Medical Group—Miranda speaking.”

  To quote Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

  Jenny Craig, Slimfast, and Nutrisystem are merely three of them.

  These methods have a proven 92 percent won’t work rate.

  And later on at home, holding the smelly little box that cost a couple Franklins just to ship and handle—I know this won’t be an issue again. I read the invitation’s silver cursive on eggshell stationery for the umpteenth time:

  Gown shopping changes over ten years. The colors shift from it’s-my-first-time pink to don’t-forget-me blue and please-envy-me-again green.

  Just between us girls, this is how that saying “what goes around, comes around” gets put into practice. It’s how you add insult to injury.

  Everyone is going to want to see how fat Miranda Bitch-ard got, standing at the fifty-yard line all sparkly and spilling over the sides of her satin wrap. They’ll take time off work and purchase airfare just to see Karma come full circle, but they’re in for

  a disappointment.

  This wretched little box, the one that’s getting piss and dirt smells all over my hands, took nearly three days to track down on the Internet, and you can’t just Google search lose weight fast or best crash diet to find it. You have to use terms like dangerous and illegal and not approved by the FDA to even get started. Key in 100% effective viral diet, and prepackaged flu should pop right up along with Asiatic cholera.

  “You will literally shit the pounds away!”

  A less extreme version of this has already been tried.

  In addition to turning yourself into a walking fecal factory, the ex-lax diet fails 98 percent of the time.

  “This has gotta be your smelliest rebellion yet,” Nurse Fowler had said, fanning her spray-tanned face, her God-given, man-improved nose cringing. “If you still smoked, I’d tell you to waddle your ass back in there and light up.”

  My marriage to Marlboros lasted less than a week.

  A 99 percent rate of failure, just in case you’re wondering.

  And the wet garbage smell only gets worse when I actually open the box, saturating the bedroom and hallway in moist stink as it’s transported to my tiny home office desk next to the computer. The little piece of paper, tie-dyed shit shades of beige, coffee, and pine, included.

  My pudgy hot dog fingers type in no masticar and trager con agua to be translated. The stinky little slip of directions warns, ¡Tener sólo una!

  Guts begin to lurch, pins and needles bursting sickly inside me as those first waves of buyer’s remorse set in. I breathe heavier and tremble—until I scan the last line.

  100% eficaz.

  And the snide remarks are at their worst again on Monday
.

  (9:02 a.m.) Dr. Kessler: “Geez, Pritchard, how many breakfasts did you have?”

  (9:05 a.m.) Dr. Bresden: “Can I assume all the long johns are in your tummy, or did you leave one for me this time?”

  Contributing to the obesity epidemic gets you teased.

  Fail at being thin and torment ensues. Good bedside manner is the last thing these guys are going to waste on a loser secretary.

  (9:16 a.m.) Nurse Fowler: “I’m supposed to remind you that if the castor stem or the gas mechanism goes out on your chair again—it’s notcoming out of petty cash this time.”

  She’s looking for my trademark sad bastard frown but isn’t getting it. The present becomes considerably easier to deal with when you know the future. But don’t tell Nurse Fowler that—you’d be wasting your jelly-scented breath.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” she asks, Botoxed brow on the furrow. “Are they deep-frying the Munchkins in Zoloft now?”

  The happy bluebird inside me sings, “Thank you for calling Breckenridge Medical Group—Miss Miranda Pritchard speaking!”

  Nurse Fowler premieres an extended eye roll my way before stomping off.

  She can’t see it.

  None of them can.

  My dirty little secret.

  Fourteen pounds and a dress size later, Nurse Fowler is telling anyone who will listen, “She’s either getting laid or planning to bomb this place—no one is that cheerful.” She stomps her Vera Wang pumps like a child—like a contestant afraid of losing her crown.

  I’m daydreaming elbow-elbow, wrist-wrist.

  Chin out, smile and wave.

  Wave to the crowd.

  Hips cocked and locked, she’s pleading, “Look—just promise me if you smell rotten eggs you won’t automatically assume someone broke wind.”