the force is strong with femi dawkins (shieldsup) wrote in powerton, @ 2011-02-24 02:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | 02/17/2011, femi dawkins, jonah huerta |
you should get to know your town.
Choked by woods and farmlands, Kirkland was an ugly, slow as molasses little village where nothing ever happened. Everyone looked the same, everyone would be the same, tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after that. They were stuck on a neverending loop of monotony and no one would ever care enough to break the spell. But to Femi anything was better than being confined to the Powerton campus for what felt like all of eternity. If there was a chance to get the hell away from that shitshow she would take it, hillbillies be damned.
During the Newspaper Club meeting that afternoon she'd gotten a text from one of the Andrades, the family that owned Farm Fresh Grocers, asking her to cover for another cashier that was in the hospital, so she didn't have any time to dawdle between kicking the kids out of the computer lab and picking up the slack at work. Being the only one on checkout had made for a long and strangely lonely night, no Rahn to bullshit with, no Blake to harass. The teens from the local high school (the normal ones, she'd found herself thinking from time to time) didn't care for her much either: whenever she was behind the register they'd talk at her slowly, use small words and make meaningless hand gestures in the air like she was dumb as a rock. They were mocking her, and she'd just bare her braces in a menacing smile and try to "accidentally" smash up a carton of eggs or bruise the produce before the groceries were bagged. If only they knew what she was capable of, what all the kids at Powerton could do. Then maybe they would think twice before opening their big fucking mouths.
By the time Femi had finished for the night sleet was already coming down, the asphalt shining with translucent slush. She flipped up the hood of her jacket and made a dash across the parking lot toward the rusty heap of metal that was her truck, nearly catching her icy fingers in the door as she slammed it shut with a terrific clang. It was an old Ford F250 and showed: the paint job had faded to a flaky pastel blue with age, the exhaust leaked, the cab always had that oily scent of petrol that made you light-headed when the windows were up, and everyone told her they could easily hear it from a few blocks away. Best of all it was only $700.
Turning down the street ahead and coasting to a rumbling stop in front of Carl's Electronics and Hardware, she rolled her window down and impatiently gestured at the boy standing outside, "Come on, dumbass, get in!" Femi didn't make a habit of playing chauffeur, but lots of Powerton students worked in town; if they were headed the same direction and didn't distract her from driving, all she wanted was some cash kicked her way and she'd be just fine and dandy. Jonah, on the other hand, was a slightly different story. They were... friends, in the loosest sense of the word, and she never really minded joyriding with him as long as he kept his hands to himself. He was the sort of person Femi liked to give shit precisely because her particular brand of brutal honesty and harsh humour never bothered him. If anything he seemed to thrive on it.