this boy started coming in every morning, sometimes with a girl who doesn't look anything like him. he orders jam donuts and black coffee at around 7 in the morning.
"are those roller blades comfortable?"
i look down and ignore the dirty cracks of the diner tiles. "they're not as bad as they look."
"you gotta take care of your feet," he says. "they're the only thing you can walk on."
he doesn't talk to me much when his girlfriend is with him. sometimes he comes in earlier, before we open. it's a good thing the bus drops me off an hour early every morning, cause i got the key and i let him in. those days he brings out the thick books from his backpack and piles them on the diner's counter while i make his coffee.
"what do you study?"
"the kinda thing that makes the wheels on your shoes turn. you ever wonder how that works?"
"not really. you wanna be some kinda scientist?"
his lips turn like the wheels under my feet, like how my stomach twists and i feel like throwing up glitter and dust. "you could call it that. what do you wanna be?"
"someone you see on tv. you wanna bet who'll get there first?"
he laughs, and i don't know why. everyone says im too quiet to crack jokes, but he smiles at me again, and i think of ripping his girlfriend's blond hair out from her scalp, braiding it thick around my roller blades' wheels so they stop turning, so i can quit this job and run away with newton. maybe he'll come up with a scientific equation that'll make me friends with ellen, and everyone will see that i'm on tv, and that's where i should be.
YOU ARE READING
daisy chains
General Fictiondaisy leads the cliché life of an aspiring actress working at a diner, waiting to trade roller blades for louboutins image: tashimrod on instagram
