CanIHelpYou?’s CallYouLater

Len says it’s not worth calling the police on a Drive-Thru runner. Even if they catch them, all they do is bring them back to the store to pay and Len says it makes them angry.

“But they stole it,” I say.

“Yes. And they’ll be back for more,” Len says.

Len is only here for an hour to check in on things, and he seems about as interested in this Drive-Thru robbery as I am in doing my homework. He goes back to the office and I’m left talking to the manager, Susan.

“The guy said he’d call me later,” I say. “It was creepy.”

“You know him?”

I run through my client list in my head. “No.”

“You sure? Maybe he knows your parents.”

“Definitely doesn’t know my parents.”

“He probably said it to distract you—you know, so he could take off like that without paying.”

I can’t explain the look the guy gave me when he said “Call you later,” but it was the kind of thing you’d see on that government website for registered sex offenders.

I suddenly want to check his face, while it’s still clear in my mind, against the sex offender database, but then the Drive-Thru bell sounds and I slip my headset back over my ears and say what I always say.

Three cars come one after the other and I feel jittery—more jittery than I should because that guy shook me. Each car arrives and I make them pay first. Always pay first. It’s the primary rule of Drive-Thru. I wonder why I didn’t think of this with the CallYouLater guy. I was looking at the girl in the passenger’s seat. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw how she sat, almost facing away from him, curling in on herself, shrinking.

That’s what distracted me.

Now I really want to call the cops, but I know Len wouldn’t listen to me and Susan would tell me that maybe the guy isn’t kidnapping/trafficking girls and maybe my imagination is taking off from the runway that is my brain, but that’s what the plane says and that’s what the runway is for. Something was wrong with that picture. That’s the name of my airport.

When I finally leave work, no word from Ian all day, I decide to skip texting him and just call him. My mother is always saying how my generation doesn’t know how to use a phone properly.

“Dude,” he says.

“Dude.”

There’s a weird silence. I’m not sure if it’s me still distracted from CallYouLater guy or if something is wrong. Ever since our acid night/I started falling in love with him, Ian has been different.

“I skipped AP history today,” he says finally.

“You love that class,” I say.

“That research paper. My thesis statement was all over the place. All my sources were lame. I stopped caring.”

I think about how I’m probably a bad influence on Ian. We should have never done that hit of acid. “I had a creep at the Drive-Thru tonight. It freaked me out.”

“Creep how?”

“Stole food,” I say. “Said he’d call me later.”

“Ew,” he says. “Do you know him?”

“I don’t think so. He’s older, you know? Had a girl in the car with him and she seemed scared. I didn’t piece it together until a few minutes later. I feel like I just helped a girl get kidnapped or something.”

“Probably not.”

“How would you even know?”

I feel like he thinks I’m hysterical or something for thinking the most obvious thought in the world. He says, “Do you remember the car?”

“It’s the guy who always asks me for straws. I know that much.”

“Call the cops?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Would they even care or believe me?” I say. “And what if I’m wrong?” And what if they know me? What if they know how I really make money?

“Then you tried—just in case. I mean, if you really think he was that creepy, then you should do something about it.”

This is when my brain runway does its best work. The plane is in the queue, not taxiing yet. I consider the same guy has asked me for straws and condiments at least twice before tonight. I consider the fact that he must be local. I consider the fact that I didn’t see the girl’s face. No planes ever really take off from my airport.

“I won’t be in tomorrow,” Ian says. “They suspended me for a day.”

“For skipping?”

“Mmm. My mom’s freaking out.”

“Dude, you’re a genius. Can’t you just come up with a thesis statement?”

I feel wrong talking about thesis statements while nearly calling the cops on a guy who’s probably fine and isn’t on the sex offender list. They teach us how to write a clear thesis statement long before they teach us how to deal with creepy-maybe-sex-offenders.

By the time my dad comes to pick me up, I’m scrolling through the sex offender registry on my phone browser. God, some of these people look like they climbed from the depths of Hell. I click the map view and as we drive home, I look around at how many there are. A lot of them just work around here. I knew a few worked at the battery factory because Mom rang her bell one day and we had a family meeting about it—places to avoid: the mall and the battery factory—but now I see a lot of them work at the bakery on Broad Street.

Makes me never want to eat another shoofly pie in my life.