Crush

Pulling my tight blue cotton shirt down, I smooth back my pixie red hair and wave back at dad. His chipped gold jeep sputters off. My grubby white sneakers squeak as I hop over the curious phlegm colored slime stream that spews out from under the cracked cement wall. I hop up the three steps and slip my fingers into the splintering picket fences lock, dirtied and caked in white paint after so many summers. In the scrub-streaked window I see my coworker, Janis, a washed-out artist who resembles a tilting ladder. Her old body stretches to reach the dried paints and broken crayons on the highest shelf. Her wiry black hair crunching as she flicks it over her shoulder. I crack open the gate and travel up the warped wooden platform that enters into the old church offices. I clutch my bee patterned tote bag, filled to the brim with paper crowns that the children have folded for me, and dog-eared books that I have stolen for myself from the cubby down the hall. I make a mental note to empty it when I get home.

When the children arrive, that, that is when his red rusted truck pulls up. I pretend to look at the children spilling in from the gate, all shiny eyed and glittering with sweat from their run from the school to us at the camp. But really, I am watching him, his forearm pulses as he puts it in park. I self-consciously pull my Yoda printed pajama pants up over my thick love handles. His dusty brown hair reveals itself as his body steps out gracefully from his vehicle. I look down at the yellow paint I have been dripping all over my hand; the bowl over a few inches from my left on the glue coated picnic table.

Melissa approaches me with her same smile and same fizzy golden hair. She says something supposed to be funny, something she has told me before probably, back when I was new at this job. But now it is the same kids, different clothes. Same crafts and projects, same crappy outcomes from the kindergarteners who piss themselves and the fifth graders who like to flirt. I do not care. I would rather be doing my own art; I would rather be in my dorm with my long-colored pencils and rainbow posters. Yet, because of the unspeakable act that I performed on myself with a can of root beer flavored hard seltzer, and Alice in Chains blasting my ear drums raw, I am now punished and exiled back home to my vanilla life and my whitewash room.

“Madeline?” It’s Janis. Her voice has a thick slab of annoyance stitched onto it. She points to the little boy Jeff B., who is smearing all his boogers into his black paint. I glance over. He is now rummaging through the back of his truck to extract a gleaming silver wrench, who’s shine blinds me briefly. But I do not mind at all.

“Next, take the corner of the paper and curl it like a lip…” Melissa’s soft voice is drowned out by the shaking of a spray can. With his elbows fluttering like a butterfly, he swoops and sprays fire engine red all over the hydrant. I remember when he put that piece in. All the girls from the vaginal wax shop came out to congratulate him on the job, as they snickered at his butt crack exposed to their precious brown eyes. But I don’t mind. If I was with him, we would picnic in the back of his truck, all his tools would be proudly hung in our cottage. We would lay on yards of navy flannel and eat popcorn as the cherry blossoms gently blew their pollen onto our eyelashes. He would be gentle, and I would be strong.

“Miss Madeline?” I am snapped back to reality like Eminem.

“Yes Toby?” I say monotonously, seeing that a colony of ants has latched onto his tiny ankle.

“Oh my God,” I say, swatting away at the bugs as Toby yells in my ear that this hurts worse than the biting. I leave him teary eyed to snag an ice pack from the mini fridge.

I would wash his dirt caked hands with my hair, I say to myself out loud once I am inside, alone. But then, I am reminded of how short my hair currently is.

I emerge back into the sun with the ice pack, which immediately begins to fog under its plastic coating. I walk over to Toby, carefully staying out of the line of sight of him. I hand Toby the frozen thing.

“That’s okay, it feels better when I run,” he says while he continues to play tag with Shelby.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him wipe his brow onto his upturned grey shirt, his 11-line abs exposed brilliantly in the rays of the hot sun. I rub my own pudgy stomach, vowing that one day I have a killer bod, enough to knock his socks off. That way he’ll have to talk to me. I know his type. Not to lie to myself, I realize he has probably had a lot of sex, probably with his ex and current girlfriend. And models.

“Ten minutes till parents come!” I yell, hoping he will notice my silky caramel voice, deep and sugary.

As I gather the loose crayons and marker lids from the sticky tabletops, he pops behind the big brown dumpster. I imagine him whipping out his stick to urinate. I pivot to try and get the right angle. But he emerges just as quick, pulling behind him a brown wooden chair.

He starts his stupid truck with a twist of the wrist, backing up, looking right at me through the rear-view mirror. His blue eyes gleam like two cursed gems. He hops out, slamming his work boots down on the smoking black asphalt, sputtering black clumps of dirt all over the ground. I look at each one, gripping the crayons so hard I snap them. But it is too late; his demon back flexes violently as the children’s highchair is lifted and placed onto his littered bed.

“See you tomorrow?” Janis commands, standing over me like a massive crow perched on my shoulder, ready to pluck out my beating heart.