Creatures Of Habit

3 {Margot} 3

Late in the evenings, I like to take one of my parent's cars and just drive. I don't have a destination in mind whenever I go, but I tell my parents I'm going to buy snacks, or I'll offer to pump gas into their cars. The drives aren't long, but they let me think. I sort ideas into my mind, I relive scenes of the day like a reel just to make sense of it, or sometimes I just need space away from the chaos of my house full of three preteens, and to empty my mind. I think my dad knows this. He never says no, and when he isn't around, I don't ask my mom if I can take the car unless my anxiety is rising.

Tonight, I just didn't want to think about anything. I drove down the main street passing three gas stations, while the sun began to set and into the other side of town closer to school. There was a convenience store I liked where Steve, the cashier worked at almost every night. He had an easy smile and gave me discounts on Slurpees whenever I wanted. I think he had a little crush on me which I thought was sweet, even if I couldn't like him back.

By the time I got there, the sun had fully set leaving the sky a blanket of deep blue sprinkled in silver starlight. Only one car was parked off to the side but it wasn't Steve's. Just the same, I wasn't really in the mood for a Slurpee. A man I didn't recognize was manning the counter. He made a face as a group of guys walked into the store after me, laughing loudly, walking towards the back where the snacks were. I made a beeline for the refreshments and after a minute, picked out a bottle of Cherry Coke and walked back towards the counter where the guys were already paying. The bell dinged as a couple of them left but some took their place behind me. I knew them. James Shepard stood with his friend Paul Cormier. My belly fluttered in embarrassment. I always felt weird running into people I was supposed to know but I never knew if it was enough to warrant an acknowledgment of their existence in the realm of reality versus school. I decided to ignore them. Especially since I'd never answered James' message on MyFriends. I hoped he wouldn't bring it up, but he didn't even glance at me when I snuck a peak at them.

"That'll be $1.79," the man said when he rung me up.

"Can you break a twenty?" I asked holding out the bill.

He looked at me for a second and smiled. "I will if you show me how you're going to drink that bottle?"

"I'm sorry?" I faltered. Someone sniggered behind me.

"Come on, honey. Just show me how you're going to drink it." He winked at me and my stomach turned sour.

"Just let her pay, man," James said behind me and the man laughed, like it was all a big joke. Meanwhile my heart was pitter pattering in my chest and my defense instincts had kicked in making me shake. I ditched the drink and barely heard him call me back. "I was just messing around."

My hands continued to shake but I did my best to walk at an even pace towards the car. The guys who had left first were still laughing, joking around a large red truck by a pump. I recognized most of them too. One, the loudest, was Clark, but the other's names slipped my mind.

A hand touched my shoulder lightly, but I was still on edge so I whirled around, wide eyed. James and Paul stood there, while James held out something to me. "You forgot this." It was the soda. They didn't even give me a chance to thank them when they were already halfway to the truck, Paul laughing with his friends. I watched them move, like a wave, in perfect unison, around Clark, like he kept them in orbit. All of them, except James, who leaned into the truck his eyes somewhere else. I stared at him, wondering what had compelled his kindness. Had he thought me pathetic for running away? But again, he made no sign to turn to me, like none of this had just happened.

Clark caught me looking and made a face of disgust. "Sorry, no autographs for stalkers! Only restraining orders," he yelled at me, and right on cue, his friends acted like it was the funniest thing anyone could have ever said.

I climbed into the car, turned on the ignition, and took a sip of the soda to settle my nerves. It tasted bitter.

**

Mom was in the kitchen when I got home. She was baking a cake for my grandmother's birthday tomorrow: trés leches. I wished I could take a bite but before I could poke at it, mom's spatula found my hand and whacked it away. "Not for you, niña!" she chastised and I rubbed my hand where she'd hit me. She gave me a look that said don't be a drama queen and I gave her a shy smile slinking away before she could crack the tool again. I didn't tell her about what had just happened; she had enough to worry about with grandma's birthday. Gran was sick. She was really the reason we were all here, back in this God forsaken town we'd run away from so long ago and since we'd been back, my mom had not had a restful day. She'd always been a worrier, but these last two years had really taken their toll.

My mother's childhood had been tumultuous. She and her twelve siblings lived with my grandmother in a remote farming town in northern Mexico. Her father came and went, usually drunk, usually violent. She once told me how she and her siblings would cling to him as children, desperately trying to hold him back from their mother, who in turn, did everything she could to enrage him further. "It was a precarious ecosystem," she said to me. "One I wanted to get away from as soon as I could." As luck would have it, she didn't get away from them until she was in her mid-twenties, and after they'd already emigrated to America. She would cut her small paycheck in half weekly, and give it over to her mother, who though never demanding, was always anticipant of the small luxury. On her wedding day, she gave her mother half of what she usually gave her, and her mother's annoyance was clear. Still, my mother was one of the few from all her siblings who, when Gran got sick, was at her bedside to nurse her. Sometimes I wondered if my grandmother realized the struggle Mom had gone through. Maybe she was blinded by her own pain to notice anyone else's.

In an effort to not worry my mother, I often didn't tell her much of anything. I couldn't compare what I went through to what she had, so I stayed quiet, choosing to avoid having her fret. Likewise, I couldn't very well tell my dad, who suffered everything in real time. Where my mom kept her suffering to herself, Dad had physical reactions to tension and stress.

I made my way to the living room where I found him sitting on the couch.

"Hi, Daddy," I said and sat down next to him. He was watching a soccer game drinking a can of soda. A few years ago that would've been a beer, with three or four empty cans littering the floor around him and a few more waiting for him in the fridge.

"Hey, hey. How was your drive?" He asked and gave me a kiss on the cheek, which tickled. I told him it was fine just as the kids— , my three younger siblings— came racing into the living room and out the front door to play.

"Be careful! Don't go out onto the street!" My dad shouted and his hands began to shake a little.

"Hey, Dad, it's okay. They know that." I put my hand on his to try to calm him. His phone

buzzed with a call but he ignored it. I tried to see who the caller was, but it was too far.

"They could get hurt. I need to go out and watch them." And he did. Just like he did every day. He couldn't help it, not since the accident.

I had only been nine but I remembered how bad it got after. Drinking every night, the yelling, the fear, and now the paranoia. People talked about it a lot. I heard rumors in school saying horrible things about my father. I wanted to scream at them that I wasn't what they called us, that my father never hurt anyone on purpose, that we were good normal people from America. It wasn't until later that I found out I hadn't been born in the States either and I was a foreigner. It was even later than that, that I had made an effort not to hate the skin I lived in.

I knew it still haunted Dad, though, what had happened, and the prison spat out a man who was only the shadow of who I remember my father being. Our lawyer was enraged when Dad got time. He said if Dad had been a white man and the kid had been a little Mexican boy, nothing would've been done. I guess things just added up for us that day.

I followed Dad outside and he was kicking the ball around with the kids. We played for a little while until the sun went down and we couldn't see the ball anymore and the stars had begun to dot the sky.

When we got back inside, I saw I had another message on my MyFriends app.

hey it's james it read.

I stared at it for a long time until Mom called us for dinner. Again, I never wrote him back.