“Excuse me? Excuse me, sir! Can you tell me where I am right now?” The man Billie directed the question toward continued past her as though he hadn’t heard her. He stepped up into his truck and drove off.
Billie tried, again, to pull up her Maps app but it wouldn’t load. Her phone stopped working once she took the unmarked exit. She needed to pee but once she pulled into the gas station, an overwhelming urge to leave consumed her. Her heart started racing and she had a hard time regulating her breathing. She tried turning her car back on but the key just clicked in the ignition slot.
Just stay in the car and lock the door, the logical part of her brain directed.
Billie took a deep breath, and decided to go inside. Sitting in her car that wouldn’t start wouldn’t help her get out of here any faster. She didn’t need to pee anymore.
The gas station was a Shell, but it had no words on the sign. Not even to list the price of Regular versus Diesel. It was just a large yellow shell outlined in red. It looked innocuous enough. Billie could see through the large floor to ceiling windows a stack of what looked like Coca Cola 12 pack cases, alongside a large pyramid display of 7-UP and Mountain Dew bottles. The colors were right, but there were no labels. Just lots of red, yellow, and green.
She pushed open the door, and a bell tinkled to signal her arrival. The cashier, a woman with brown hair in a braid, sat with her elbows propped up on the counter. She stared off into the distance. She didn’t blink or move when Billie let the door slam behind her. On the right, there was a small end-table and on top of it was a lime green metal lunch box with swirls of red and yellow and the initials E.B.D printed on it in light blue. Her mouth went dry.
“That yours? It’s been there for a while now.”
Billie whipped around. It was the cashier. She was in the same position but her eyes were fixed on Billie.
“No, it’s not mine.”
“Sure looks like yours.”
A wave of nausea washed over her. She felt hot and cold at the same time. What is that supposed to mean?
Billie swallowed and nodded. “It’s not. I’m sure of it.”
“Sure.” She sounded as bored as she looked. The cashier resumed staring off into the distance. Billie pulled her phone out of her back pocket. It wouldn’t even turn on.
“Those things don’t work around here.”
She looked back toward the cashier but she sat in the same position, her eyes zoned out on the drink displays at the back of the store.
Billie gripped her phone even tighter and moved away from the counter. The fluorescent lights beat down on her and made her eyes hurt. She glanced at the candy that lined the shelves. Gum, Nutter Butters, Skittles, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey’s, Sweet Tarts, Sour Patch Kids. She tried to distract herself. You can only pick one candy, Billie, so make it count.
Her mother told her this when she was little. Her brother had no trouble at all, grabbing the first thing he saw and running to the front with their father to purchase his choice. Billie, on the other hand, saw all of the options. So many different candies. Did she want chocolate or something sour? Or maybe fruity? Should she get a Reese’s or a Kit Kat? Or maybe some Mike and Ike’s? And what about a drink? Coke? 7UP? Mountain Dew? The decision was too much and Billie broke down. There were too many choices. Her mother ended up letting her fill up her lunchbox that she took everywhere with her with as much candy as it would fit, but she had to split it evenly with her brother.
That lunch box was metal and lime green. She had painted on red and yellow swirls with nail polish one night after she’d gotten grounded for something her brother did.
Yeah but your initials weren’t in blue. I’m pretty sure anyways.
Billie looked down and saw she was gripping three pouches of Skittles and some Sour Patch Kids. She put the Sour Patch Kids back and grabbed a water, eyeing the display of Cokes she saw outside.
She went up to the counter and put her stuff down. The counter was white linoleum and had writing all over it in different colored pens. James + Lydia were here in green. Baxter Smith, 2015 in red. E.B.D. in blue. It was circled and underlined.
“Do you know who wrote this?” Billie asked, trying to sound as uninterested as the cashier looked. The cashier scanned her water and looked at what she was pointing at.
“That was here when I started working here. No clue.”
Billie exhaled through her nose. There are probably tons of people with those initials. It’s really not that weird.
“Do you need a box?”
She looked behind her and the lunchbox was gone. Her head moved imperceptibly, as if she shook her head from side to side.
“What?” She looked back at the cashier.
She stared at Billie unblinkingly. “Do you need a bag?”
She looked down at the counter, at her initials. “Uh, no, no. I’m good. Actually, do you have a bathroom?”
“Out of order. Some girl died in there last week.”
Billie looked up. “What?”
The cashier sat back down and propped her elbows back up on the counter but continued looking at Billie. “Yeah, she OD’ed in there. That’s at least what I assume after what we found in her lunchbox. She walked in there and never left. The guy on shift didn’t even notice until multiple people kept complaining that there was a horrible smell coming from one of the bathrooms.”
“That lunchbox was hers? Why’d you ask me if it was mine?”
The cashier shrugged. “I saw you looking at it. Thought maybe that girl stole it.”
“Did you ever get her name?”
She shook her head. “Police found a bottle of coke and some skittles in there, too.” She passed Billie’s bag across the counter.
Billie’s face felt slack. She opened her mouth to say something, anything. To ask another question she knew the answer to, to make conversation so she didn’t have to go back out to her car, but instead she just grabbed the bag. It felt like nothing, like it was empty. She wished she’d gotten a Coke when she’d had the chance. She stepped outside, and saw a car pull in. She started walking slowly back to her car.
A man approached her, looking confused, almost panicked.
“Excuse me, miss? Excuse me! Can you tell me where I am?” He waved his hand frantically.
Billie walked past him, thinking of how that Coke is going to haunt her, got in her car, and put the key in the ignition. She turned the key and it started immediately.
Lauren Ostrander is currently an MFA student at Mississippi University for Women studying short fiction. She is also a fiction and nonfiction editor for MUW’s in-house literary magazine, Ponder Review. Her short fiction is forthcoming in In Parentheses magazine.