Roadside Attraction

Elaine sat squeezed into the back of Jenny Lin’s father’s old van with three other skinny, sweating eleven-year-old girls. The bench was more couch than car seat, with beige plush wearing thin beneath them. They were on their way to the roller rink, which was just forty five minutes away from their home town, for Jenny Lin’s birthday. The store-bought invitation had a cartoon dinosaur wearing a party hat, and when Elaine held it in her hand the week before she couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of dismay. It wasn’t going to be another afternoon spent poring over old National Geographic magazines with little mention of the actual small world they inhabited. The gymnastics girls would be making an appearance as well.

Elaine fidgeted, knotting her fingers together or perpetually pushing long strands of thin blonde hair behind her ears. She looked out the parallelogram window to her right to see endless flat fields, the sun high in the sky and an unfamiliar little girl’s face outlined. The girl almost turned to look at her but Elaine quickly faced forward again, eying the stained carpet-runway that lead to the front of the vehicle. Elaine tried to occupy her thoughts and quit wondering what the other girls were thinking about, their presence all too palpable beside her. She thought of her family, her brother and his long nose and ratty hair, just two years younger than her, he’d hidden her chap stick this morning and a fight had ensued until their mother intervened. She lifted her brother into the air from behind, Elaine peering up, only able to see the similarity between a cat hoisting its young by the scruff of the neck. Just then Jenny Lin turned around and met her eyes, contorting her small frame in the front passenger seat.

“You okay back there, guys?” she grinned, her bangs fringing her pink plastic framed glasses. The thickness of the lenses already rivaled the librarian’s at school.
A chorus of excited replies shot forth from both sides as Elaine stiffened, forced a meek smile and nod.

Jenny Lin focused in on Elaine. “You want some ice cream?” She gestured to the large blue cooler nestled behind her seat. Elaine had thought it was a strange idea for her father to pour two bags of ice into the cooler and then neatly add an array of colorful ice cream wrappers. Wouldn’t they melt anyway? Ice or no ice, they weren’t meant to be out of a freezer, as far as Elaine was concerned.

She shook her head, but the girls flanking her screeched otherwise. Jenny Lin frowned at Elaine and scrambled around her seat to duck behind the lid of the cooler, her hair bobbing as the car hit a pothole. “Reese’s? Bomb-Pop? Or Monkey-with-the-bubble gum-eyes?” she asked, voice muffled. Elaine tried to recall the other girl’s names, knowing they were in the ballpark of Sienna, Sarah, Sandy, something like that --- all S’s was all she could remember.

The girls momentarily fought over the Monkey-with-the-bubblegum-eyes, resulting in the girl who’d been obscuring Elaine’s scenic view winning. The ice cream pops flew across the car; the girls giggled and tore them open with vigor unbeknownst to Elaine, who had never been a fan of sugar.

“Why didn’t you want any ice cream?” the girl to her right asked, words stilted as her tongue lapped at the bomb pop. Elaine stared at her, knotting her fingers. “I’m just not a fan,” she said, quickly turning to face the front.
The girl with the Reese’s ice cream sandwich whispered into Bomb-Pop girl’s ear. They giggled; Elaine didn’t try to fool herself into thinking it wasn’t at her expense. She raked her unpainted nails against her pale knees.

Jenny Lin was now engaged in an excited conversation with her father. Elaine saw her gasp and point at something off the side of the road, begin to hop in her seat. The car lurched to a stop and already Elaine was worried.

“Come on guys!” Jenny Lin exclaimed, mouth wide, not offering an explanation. Her father was out of the driver seat and yanking the sliding side door open, his comb over lifting in the summer breeze. He squinted through his glasses and grinned, ushering them out.

Elaine was glad for the sudden lack of warm bodies surrounding her and took moment to absorb the feeling of space. She stood up and made her way out of the van, hearing Jenny Lin’s father already giving a science lecture. The little girls crowded around him, and Elaine stopped a couple yards away.

They were crouched over a dead wild dog of some sort, its coat stiff and matted with dried blood. A black halo of flies swarmed in a circular formation above its belly; Jenny Lin pushed her glasses up her nose as her father swatted at them, his mouth moving as he pointed with his other hand. Elaine didn’t quite hear what he was saying and was utterly confused by the spectacle. Who did this? Her stomach lurched as she saw the dog’s tongue hanging out onto the baking pavement; she thought of her family’s dog at home, a much smaller, less feral-looking basset hound named Finnegan. These two animals were worlds apart, but at the moment they filled nearly the same role to Elaine. She turned and backed away, her white shoes skidding.

Jenny Lin lifted her head just in time to see her best friend retreat, hand in a claw over her stomach, face twisted in horror. Elaine met her eyes and Jenny Lin’s mouth formed an O, her expression curious; she beckoned for her friend to come forward, to join her in the gathering. The other little girls were sticking there tongues out, grossed out, but still laughing about it, slightly interested in whatever the adult above them was saying.

Glancing away, Elaine turned and tripped on the rail step of the van, scraping her shin. She positioned herself at the far end of the plush car seat, nearest to the parallelogram window, focusing her eyes on the outside. She tried to think of the impending arrival at the roller rink, the scent of the cleaning spray that clung to the insides of the rented skates, the blast of the air conditioning that swept you in right as you opened the doors. She tried to think of the races that were always announced toward closing time; she’d won twice before, and surely she could do it again. The car smelled sticky sweet from the melting of ice cream.

Her breath came out heavily and she wished she had brought her inhaler; it was unlike her to forget it. Soon the other girls filtered into the van; Bomb-Pop girl stared at her before Reese’s girl poked her, issuing a harsh “What?” from her friend. Jenny Lin jumped inside last, exclaiming, “Why didn’t you want to see it Elaine? It’s fascinating; Dad was telling us the process of decay.” Her hair tipped like a lampshade.

Elaine blinked; she suddenly recalled that her best friend wanted to be a doctor, and her father was obviously doing everything in his power to encourage this. The roadside encounter, though still odd, seemed less out-of-character suddenly.

“I-I just kept thinking of Finn,” Elaine sputtered. Bomb-Pop girl was definitely staring at her from across the car seat now.

Jenny Lin frowned. “That was much more like a coyote than a Basset,” she said thoughtfully.

Elaine slowed her breathing, nodded, and waited for her friend to smile at her, to reassure her it was alright to be so flustered. “Rare you see a coyote like that,” Jenny Lin continued, “next time that happens you should really get a closer look.” She started to smile; her lips were stained a heightened shade of pink from the ice cream, but her father told her to sit down, they would be late, so she turned and scurried back to her seat. Her seat belt clicked loudly.

The van rumbled to life and Elaine listened silently to the other girl’s conversation about their gymnastics class. Monkey-with-the-bubblegum-eyes could apparently do something on the high beam that Bomb-Pop had yet to master. An argument over which area of the gym was the hardest to be proficient in developed; Reese’s could do a flip on the vault, Bomb-Pop excelled at the bars. Elaine had once done a cartwheel when dared by her younger brother in her backyard at home. She remembered her sense of elation afterwards, the soaring accomplishment she felt at doing something so unlike her. Her mother, watering the garden, told her it was more of a round-off than a cartwheel.

Jenny Lin turned around and joined in the conversation; she, of course, was good at floor exercises. Elaine could attest to this, having watched her attempt endless back flips on her family’s trampoline.

She must have noticed Elaine’s lack of addition to the discussion. She brightened, glancing at her as she said, “Elaine got the typing award last year.” She looked for some sign of her other friend’s interest in the subject. Bomb-Pop smiled politely, “That’s nice.”

Elaine gracefully stopped listening to them. Jenny Lin winked at her and turned around again.

The ice cream wrappers littered the carpet of the van. Elaine saw that the two gumball eyes remained uneaten, trapped in the flimsy purple packaging, lolling around as the van sped forward. She stared at them, those faded candy eyes, thought of the coyote’s flaccid tongue. She became mesmerized by their ability to roll about, circling one another, without escaping onto the carpet. Why hadn’t they been eaten already? Hadn’t those girls fought like stray cats over that ice pop for the specific reason of those gumballs? Those gumballs like rubies nestled in that cartoonish white monkey face, screaming “pick me! I clearly have additional value; there are two extra edible parts on me!”

One of them rolled near the perimeter of the torn wrapper, edging towards escape. Elaine’s brow furrowed, surprised by the apprehension she felt. She reached a hand out without thinking, hoping to place the gumball back in its place and continue to watch its dance.

Her hand grazed another hand, and she looked up, startled, to see Bomb-Pop snatch it up in her hand.

Elaine watched as she placed the lost pink eye into her mouth and began to chew.