‘School Lunch Trio’

Antoine Liu, born in 2006, is a free campus poet, painter and composer, as well as an undergraduate student in University of International Business and Economics, in Beijing.

School Lunch Trio

They ate together daily in the cafeteria, all through grade school, junior high, and high school. Sometimes discussing sports and current events, such as the latest active-shooter drill, or just staring at their phones. They occasionally traded sandwiches and chips, in exchange for nibbling at Gail’s elaborate salads.

It’s been a minute. When last heard from, Gail was playing in two different bands and stocking produce at the food coop downtown. She was very big on salads. But, no good story begins with a salad. What else? Gail boasted that her superpower was being able to see what people looked like as children, as little punks on the playground. Kind of hard to verify. 

One of Gail’s bands departed on a college-town tour just before the Covid shutdowns, and she never came back. That was over five years ago. Stuff happens. No more grocery store downtown. People get hitched and change their names. And nobody actually talks on the phone anymore. 

“Gail called you out of the blue last night. Really?” 

“I didn’t recognize the number at first, and then it clicked.” 

“Our girl buddy with a tying-her-shoes compulsion.”

“She was very happy when Velcro came along.”

“There was always another layer with her, like she had a mental privacy fence.”

“So, what did she want?”

“I didn’t answer. I thought it might be a scam.”

Everything was a scam with these two guys, especially the raw deal with life. They couldn’t seem to get ahead, forgot to read the fine print. They tried community college. They tried 9-5 desk jobs. They tried starting a gutter-cleaning business. None of their schemes for world domination came anywhere near fruition. 

Now they were working seasonal gigs, concessions at the football stadium and spring road crew, filling potholes. Gail had been their squeaky third wheel, or so they thought. More like, she was the blueberry vinegar in their dressing and without her, they were limp salad.

“Gail called again yesterday and left a message.”

“You didn’t pick up?”

“I was scared of telling her that we’re still living at my uncle’s fishing camp.”

“I’m worried that she might want money. She was always hitting us up for a buck here and a buck there.”

“Right, that would be a problem.”

The dark river gurgled and groaned. Splash of fish jumping. Cast out a line and hope for breakfast. Something better than Pop Tarts. The glow of their cigarettes was barely distinguishable from the fireflies. Another few minutes of silent reflection, as they thumbed through old photos on their phones and found some of Gail in her prime, eating crudities from her lunchbox and wearing hip boots with Velcro straps.

“Did you listen to Gail’s message?”

“Turns out she’s in jail over in Illinois and wants us to post bail. She got busted for shoplifting. Typical Gail. She claims that we all took a vow, senior year in the lunch room. A vow that if any of us were every arrested, we could call each other for bail money.”

“I don’t remember doing that, but honestly, it is possible.”

“There’s got to be a statute of limitations on that kind of thing.”

These guys were unusually good at pretending stuff hadn’t happened. The election didn’t happen. The pandemic didn’t happen. The shortages didn’t happen. The ICE raids didn’t happen. Gail coming back to town didn’t happen, or rather, it did and they all just tried to ignore each other.

“I almost ran into Gail yesterday at the pool, coming out of the locker room.”

“Did she say anything?” 

No, but she gave me that look.”

“The one that penetrates to the dark recesses of your nose-picking past.”

“She wants us feel guilty.”

“It’s working. Frankly, I do feel bad. She seems a lot worse for wear.”

Twenty-five going on fifty. It was some kind of early onset condition, arthritis or MS or fibro. She didn’t play music anymore and used a cane and couldn’t work at the supermarket. Word on the street was she’d applied for disability and moved into the granny-flat above her parents’ garage. 

The guys finally felt guilty enough that they offered to include in their latest get-rich scheme. It was after the tornado. Trees uprooted, blocking the streets. Houses and barns destroyed, mostly on the west side. It was an F5 tornado, causing so much indiscriminate damage. Two brawny guys with rented chainsaws were suddenly a hot commodity. They hiked along the torn-up residential blocks, climbing over the debris, and took cash deposits from shell-shocked homeowners, desperate to begin the clearing. They texted Gail and offered to include her as the driver of their truck and trailer. She didn’t respond.

“This is one godawful mess.”

“The lady at that last place cried on my shoulder for twenty minutes.”

“Up over that hill is where somebody got pulled out from under an oak that crashed down into their bedroom.”

“Watch out, here come those farm kids who want help burying their dead horses.”

The level of grief from their customers made it hard to do any clearing. The pain felt contagious. The guys couldn’t sleep and made up excuses not to go in to work. A week of avoidance became two weeks. A month of avoidance made it harder to remember their clients’ names and addresses. And then came the spinning lights and sirens and the arrest at the fishing camp for being disaster crooks, for having absconded with five thousand dollars in deposit money from distraught citizens, one of whom was smart enough to take a photo. 

They made the newspaper, front page. Looking like bug-eyed, unshaven evil-doers. Of course, there was a rush to judgment. Hate email and phone calls. Nobody came to visiting hours at the jail. The public defender even appeared reluctant to speak to them. On day four, without any notice, the sheriff appeared and unlocked their cell door. They were being bailed out. Say what? They were being bailed out by you-know-who. She was successfully putting them to shame. It felt worse than the midnight arrest. The sheriff opened the cell door and led them out to the parking lot. Gail stood leaning against her beater Toyota. 

“Gentlemen, fancy meeting you here.” 

“Okay, you win, Gail. We’re so sorry. We’ve learned our lesson. But, seriously, it’s not what you think. The article made us sound like criminals, like we planned it all.”

“I know you didn’t plan it. I know you’re just a couple of loser goofballs, who got in over your heads.”

“Why are you doing this for us?”

“To honor my vow.” 

“Nobody does that anymore. You must want something.”

“I want you to buy me lunch,” she said.

Ian Woollen has recently published short fiction at Arkansas Review, Amarillo Bay, Millennial Pulp, and OxMag.