Brooke and Jenson

The last place your parents would expect to find you is at a gas station, hiding your face behind a hood and sunglasses like some shady thug, while hiding a cat inside your hoodie. By now, they’ve probably contacted the school they enrolled you in late in the semester. Maybe Mom filed a missing person’s report while Dad insists on driving around the city in hopes of spotting you. They can’t seem to keep up with you anymore, not since the three of you traded the peaceful normalcy of New Orleans for the humid ghettos of Houston. While they’re frantically searching for you, you’re pretending to peruse the assortment of twinkies and cinnamon buns.  

The cat under your hoodie is named Jenson, and he’s making you look pregnant right now. He belongs to a boy from your new school who invited you to his place to study calculus together. He tried to touch you in places you did not want to be touched. Instead, you lied and said you had to use the restroom, found Jenson on the way, snatched him, and snuck out the boy’s house. That creep was the last straw for you.

The clerk behind the counter chuckles to himself as he watches something in Spanish on his phone. A man wearing cargo shorts and flip flops approaches him to purchase beef jerky and a lottery ticket. You wait for the man to leave so you can be alone with the aloof clerk. Jenson peeks his head out the neck of your hoodie to look you in the face. Is he wondering why you’re sweating so much? Is he curious as to why you’re heart’s racing a million miles per hours?

You take note of the exits on either side of the station. For a minute or two, you look at your reflection through the circular convex mirror hanging from the top right corner of the ceiling. In truth, you armed with a cat is exactly the type of behavior that caused your family to have to move in the first place. Mom and Dad wanted to separate you from the damage you caused. But you miss your friends. You miss Mardi Gras. You miss po’boys. You hate Houston weather. Your parents can’t control you. They can’t even reach you. You turned your cellphone off before you even got here.

Cargo shorts guy is gone. You take a deep breath. Now is your chance. You’re going to hold this Chicano up for all the cash in his register. You’re going to do the same thing a couple more times to stores in the area. You’re going to get a ride to the airport, purchase a one-way ticket back home, where you know your aunt will take you in and feed you and not try to strip you of everything you know and love. 

The stupid clerk is too absorbed in his phone to notice your approach. Still, you approach him with a pastry treat in hand under the guise of a simple purchase. The treat might as well be a maraca with the way your jittery hand rattles it. Once you’re close enough, the clerk looks up, his mood soured because now he has to work. This is the moment when you hesitate, when a part of you second-guesses yourself. You’ll be a criminal. They’ll be no going back. Now, Brooke, you scream in your head.

You drop the pastry. Its smack to the ground is your cue. You pull Jenson from out of your hoodie and point him at the clerk like a shotgun. “I want everything you got,” yells a voice that sounds like your own. The clerk’s arms spring up. “Now, motherfucker!” You feel the adrenaline rush through your veins more that you feel Jenson’s gray, cuddly fur. You have his feline eyes trained on the clerk, who’s cautious, but not unnerved. “Hurry up!” Your head jerks about. Is someone coming? Is there anyone behind you? Everything’s a potential danger until you get out of there with the damn money. 

You hear something Spanish come from the clerk’s mouth. With one hand up, he slowly reaches the other to the register. You notice his hand reaching too low. Something’s wrong. In an instant he pulls out a tabby-coated cat of his own, and it’s pointed straight at you. Oh, shit! You duck and run. “¡Pyew, pyew pyew!” cries the clerk, his feline weapon jerking his torso back with each shot fired. He means business. As you keep your head low your young legs rush you past the chip. You slide to the endcap, staying low to the ground, and hide there before the clerk has time to leave from behind his counter, knocking down plastic cans of bean dip in the process. Jenson vibrates from your trembling arms. As you sit in your panic in front of the clear cooler doors encasing cans of beer, it dawns on you that you’re the one who put yourself in danger.

In the reflection of one of the clear doors, you notice the clerk slowly walking down the aisle. “¿Quieres jugar, eh, puta?” he says through clenched teeth. His cat is raised, aimed, and ready. You keep yours close to your chest. You want to hold Jenson and cry this nightmare away, but you need him to fight for your life. 

The familiar chime of the entrance door opening rings through the heat, through to tension. “¡Pyew pyew pyew pyew pyew!” cries the clerk, followed by a chorus of painful groans. “Oh no, no no no,” says the clerk in a heavy accent. You crawl. You peak. The clerk hovers around a man clutching his chest against the wall. The man begins to droop downward until he’s on the floor, dying.

“You shot me, mane,” the innocent man laments. “I just wanted some smokes, mane.” His breathing becomes jagged. “What the fuck, mane?” An exaggerated sigh leaves his lungs. His eyes trail off toward the gas pumps outside. He’s not looking at them because he’s dead now.

“¡NOOOO!” The clerk is heartbroken. “¡Qué he hecho! ¡Lo siento! ¡Noooooo!” You clinch Jenson to your chest and take this opportunity to make a break for the other exit.

It doesn’t matter where you’re running to. You just need to create distance between yourself and the horror you caused—for the second time in your life. You hear police sirens in the distance, and a part of you wants them to find you and take you to jail. After a while you stop to catch your breath. You remove your phone from your pocket and turn it on. Dozens of miscalls from both Mom and Dad. You call Mom. Her worried voice is your body’s cue to let out all the emotion it’s been holding in. “Mom?” you say with tear streaming from your eyes. Jenson wiggles himself free from your arm and walks away; he, too, wants to go home.