I close my eyes and let the music roll through my bobbing head, headphones soft against my ears as the bass sings. Artificial cherry flavored crushed ice solidifies my tongue, frozen and numb as I slurp, unable to stop. One taste is all it takes to stain bright red, a red that matches my headphones except where I’ve duct taped them as a theft deterrent. No one wants the tiny ipod that can’t connect to anything, but the headphones are a target.
Reluctantly, I open my eyes. It’s too dangerous here not to pay attention, even wedged in by the dumpster. No one wants to get this close, not with the overlapping smells of urine and rotting garbage from sweet Memphis barbeque sauce a week too old and gas station sushi I don’t even know why they bother trying to sell in the south. But here, no one can sneak up on me from behind.
Besides, this is my place to disappear from home.
Why the parking lot of a run-down gas station is the place to hang, I don’t know. Maybe the owner was one of us, one of the forgotten, when he was younger. He won’t tolerate dealing because it’s bad for business, but rarely runs us off if we’re just talking and don’t get too numerous. And he knows exactly when to yell out the door to scatter, right before things get so rough you can’t back down without losing face. So we’re polite and buy something. Nobody steals here, not from the semi-safe zone.
Otherwise we’re the forgotten wanderers, searching for a place to call our own, teenagers frightening the aged just by existing, competing with the homeless for spots to hide.
The door opens with a bell I can see but not hear, and I snap my head up. Jerome comes out, spooning what must be blue raspberry into his mouth. I can relax, he’s friendly enough, but my adrenaline’s still pounding.
Jerome wanders over. “Whatcha listening to?”
“ZZ Top,” I reply, eyebrows raised. He must be bored. He never talks to me directly. I try hard to blend in, hidden amongst the garbage. I’m discernable only through ubiquitous headphones I can’t quite let go, because I can’t let the music stop.
“Zee zee who?” he asks. He puts a finger over his straw to create suction and tilts his head back, trying to aim his melted prize into his mouth. Blue dribbles down his face.
He sees me staring at him in shock and shrugs. “All Ma lets in the house is gospel. Can I hear?”
“Huh.” I sit back and digest that, neatly sipping my slurpee. I wonder how I can dissuade him without being rude. Maybe make it boring. “Well, it’s bluesy. An’ there’s a line about heaven. So not too different.”
“Anything’s better than gospel,” he says, and sits down on the concrete wheel stop, with a giant, rusty nail barely holding it in place so crooked no one ever parks here. He slurps again, normally this time, rattling his straw against an empty cup. He grins, teeth stained bright blue, feet splayed, and holds out a hand with drops of liquid still glistening electric on his skin. “Lemme have a listen?”
I hesitate, but he’s one of the good ones, and a girl needs all the platonic protectors she can get in this world. He doesn’t need to know the duct tape’s only for show.
I shrug. The world can always use another blues rock fan. So I hand over the carefully faux-battered and taped-up headphones, and try not to act like I’m watching him to make sure he won’t run off with my prize from a summer’s worth of babysitting money.
He nods his head as I pretend interest in the wild cherry, too-sweet, melted in the summer stickiness slurpee, freezing my brain in the process because I’m splitting my attention.
“Nice,” he says approvingly, too loud because of the headphones.
I see him get into it, his eyes widening, feet tapping. I can follow along by his reaction, I know this song so well. “This is amazing. Wish Ma’d let this in the house.”
Reluctantly, the words drop from my lips. I don’t want to share the magic, but can’t resist. “Come by tomorrow and I’ll play you La Grange.”
“Why not today?” His eyes turn puppyish, liquid brown and pleading, and either I have him hooked or he isn’t as platonic as I think.
“You gotta savor ZZ Top. One day at a time. Today you get My Head’s in Mississippi.”
He leans forward, loose elbows on gangly knees, hidden under baggy fabric. “What do I get tomorrow?”
I shrugged, studiously noncommittal, studying the many-patched crack in the asphalt behind him. Maybe I’m less platonic than I thought, too. “Won’t know until it gets here.”
He laughed, and unfolds himself from the ground, hands back the headphones. “I gotta get back.”
He walks away, and I call after. “You’re gonna love La Grange.” He waves a hand in acknowledgement and keeps going.
“He will,” I mutter.
I toss the remnants of my slushy drink and caress the plastic for a moment before slipping the headphones over my ears again, seeking solace in brief silence before I play the song again.
As always, the music helps me travel. The gas station fades away, slowly invisible, as does the smell of uneaten old hot dogs and oxygenated beer, dripped through paper bags and cardboard to create a foul and sludgy miasma.
I know I’m there instead when I get the apricot whiff of sweet olive, when I can taste the barbeque smoke on the back of my tongue, feel the buzzing cut lumber of new construction, feel the tang of the river, untouched by West Memphis.
I open my eyes. The river spreads wider here, I see, but the heat and humidity make me feel flatter than a pancaked possum on the road.
I’ve definitely made it through the portal this time.
I turn around, away from the view, and reluctantly pull the headphones of my head to rest comfortably around my neck.
“Sorry,” I offer to the group of impatient eyes greeting me. “Took me a bit to get rid of him. How’s Mississippi so far?”
In this week’s Odd Prompts challenge, I prompted Cedar Sanderson with a 3-D printed spaceship. Leigh Kimmel gave me the ZZ Top lyrics that I took for a spin above: “I thought I was in Heaven. But I was stumblin’ through the parking lot of an invisible seven eleven.“
