Captain Crunch. Behind you.” Though she carries a slight Valir accent, her words are a bit more articulate than some folks on this island. I’m guessing that’s due to the fact that the younger generation just doesn’t speak it as fluently as the older. Unlike Cajun, it adopts more traditionally French phrases, and there seems to be a degree to which it’s spoken here. For some, it’s fairly thick, and for others, nothing more than an accent.
“Oh!” Breaking out of my stupor, I step aside for her, and her son’s curious eyes are on me again.
“Dat lady is pwetty, huh, Momma?” The cuteness of his little voice is made all the more adorably unbearable by the accent that clings to it.
Pressing my lips together to hide a smile, I look up to see the woman giving me a onceover out of the corner of her eye. Could she possibly recognize me after all these years? I’ve changed the color of my hair a few times, my name each time we moved from one place to another. But at the core, I’m still Céleste. Surely, she has to see some small flicker of that?
When she stares back at me, though, I notice the dilated pupils, the exhaustion tugging the corner of her eyes. Maybe pain. She’s high. That much I can pinpoint in her lengthy gaze, and I won’t dare say a word and risk a scene.
Like Russ said, I can’t draw attention. No questions. But damn. Drugs? I don’t remember much about Brie’s older sister, but the sketchy fragments I do remember paint a picture of a book-smart girl who wouldn’t have touched them.
Unless my head has twisted some of my memories into a whole different picture.
“She is, ain’t she, baby?”
“That’s … Thank you.” I’m the queen of awkward encounters. Doesn’t matter that he’s only three, or four, years old. Kids, in particular, make me nervous, the way they stare like they can see right through a person. I’m just waiting for him to blurt out that I’m carrying a fake ID in my wallet.
Abandoning my stalking, I head toward the checkout, where the clerk manhandles my sandwich as she drags it over the scanner, loosening a small corner of the plastic wrap. The smashed tuna half leaking from the hole she’s opened suddenly doesn’t look so appealing, particularly when she scrapes her finger over the dribbled bits and wipes it on her apron, before closing the sandwich in again.
Five bucks for a sandwich fondled by hands that have touched God knows what on all that cash.
Swallowing back the urge to puke, I make my way out to the truck and toss the food onto the seat beside me. “Should’ve opted for Popeyes, I guess.”
Russ always called fast food fake food. He often joked that the chicken was actually a powdered mix of discarded parts that’d been ground down into patties and tossed into a deep fryer. Though, even that sounds better than my mangled tuna sandwich right now.
Glancing up, I see who I’m certain is Marcelle and her son exiting the store, making their way across the parking lot toward a beat-up sedan that makes Russ’s truck look like the luxury edition. As I fire up my own vehicle, a part of me is tempted to follow her, if only for the chance of getting to see Brie again. When I shift the truck into reverse and begin to back out, the bag beside me tips, and the sandwich tumbles out, onto the floor.
“Son of a bitch!” I throw it in park again and hunker down to grab the damn thing. The poor sandwich has suffered more trauma in the last ten minutes than an MMA punching bag, and at this point, I’d be better off feeding it to the trashcan just outside the store.
Disheartened, I toss my mangled dinner back inside the bag, but at a startling knock at the window beside, I jump in my seat.
Marcelle stands alongside the truck with her son on her hip, and I roll the window down, taking in the distress etched across her face.
“Sorry. Don’t mean to bother you, it’s just … you’re, like, the only one here. My car … it broke down. I don’t suppose you can give me a jump?”
Leaning forward, I glance around the lot to find that she’s right, it is mostly empty, aside from a few cars that likely belong to the clerk and whoever else works at Gaspard’s.