Emily couldn’t believe she was letting herself be talked into this. All she wanted was to be back on the road headed toward the party. “Where the hell is this Little-J Mart?”
“Also, what the hell is a Little-J Mart?” Ana asked.
“Is it like a K-Mart’s kid brother?”
“Brandon! This is not funny.” He clearly wasn’t taking this seriously enough.
“Actually . . . ,” he said.
Ana glanced back at Brandon in the backseat and started giggling. Chestnut and Liz joined in.
“I mean, what’s the big deal, Emily?” Brandon said. “We’re gonna take them to their next stop and drop them off.”
“ ’Course, if ya’ll wanna help us out a little by distracting the cashier,” suggested Chestnut, “we’d be much obliged.”
“Why not?” Brandon said casually, shrugging.
Emily felt like she was about to lose control of the car. Not literally—her hands were both still in the ten and two position on the steering wheel—but internally, she felt as though they were tumbling end over end down the embankment in the middle of the highway. “Why not?” she yelled, shaking her head. “There are so many reasons why not I can’t even list them. There isn’t enough time in the rest of my life to tell you all the reasons why not!”
“Oh c’mon,” said Brandon, borderline whining. “They don’t even have any bullets. It’s not like we’re gonna rob the place. Nobody’s gonna get hurt. Besides, what a freaking incredible story to tell when we get to college.”
“If we get to college,” said Emily. “We’ll be lucky not to spend the rest of our teens and twenties behind bars.”
In the distance Emily saw a big sign looming over the next exit ramp, a lowercase j lit from within. Chestnut pointed and said, “That’s it up there.”
“So, quick question,” Ana said. She seemed much more calm, now that she had payment for her phone. “How do you guys normally get around? Why didn’t you get into your own car?”
“We didn’t have one,” Liz said. “Normally we use cabs. They’re great. You grab the cash and run outside, then just hide for a bit. People assume that you sped away in your getaway car, when really we just call up a taxi and they take us out of there, no problem.”
“And the drivers don’t mind being an accessory to grand larceny?” Emily asked
“Grand what?”
Emily sighed as Chestnut piped up. “Aw hell. There’s nothing grand about any of our robbing folks. Don’t usually get away with more than a few thousand bucks—and that’s if we’re lucky.”
“So what’s your plan?” Brandon asked.
“Plan?” Chestnut shrugged. “We’ll see what we can get from the mart, then get a cab after. Same as always.”
They were pulling up to the Little-J Mart, and Emily was about to pull into the parking lot, but Brandon stopped her and directed her to drive past the convenience store and closer to a small metal building next door, finally telling her to shut off the car there.
“What are we doing?” Emily asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “We could’ve just dropped them off.”
“Don’t want cameras catching a glimpse of the license plate, right?” Brandon said.
Emily nodded, sort of impressed. At least he was thinking now.
“Okay, Liz and Chestnut, it was great meeting you, we had so much fun, please keep in touch, say hello to Artie for us, you can get out of the car now.” Emily put on the biggest grin possible as she turned around and looked at them in the backseat. “Don’t forget to keep your ski masks firmly in place.”
“Wait, wait,” Brandon said. “We’re going too.”
“Excuse me?” Emily wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Didn’t we just conclude that we’re not getting involved.”
“We won’t really be involved,” Brandon said. He looked at Liz and Chestnut like they were his new closest friends. “So here’s the deal. We’ll go into the shop and do some looking around, case the place, whatever, you know? And then you guys will follow. We’ll cause a sufficient enough commotion in there so you can get your money and get out, and then we’ll follow afterward, after calming down the clerk and things like that. In and out. Easy.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Chestnut said.
“It sounds dangerous,” Emily said loudly.
“Come on, Em,” said Brandon. “YOLO, right?”
“No.” Emily shook her head. “Not at all.”
Ana grabbed Emily’s shoulder and pleaded. “Come on. It might be kind of fun. And it’s not like we’re doing anything. No one will get hurt, and right afterward we can be on our way to the party again.”
Emily looked at the clock and shook her head. They were already off schedule time-wise. And she had the feeling Brandon and Ana weren’t going to let up, and the faster she could get Chestnut and Liz out of her car, the better. They could do the plan just as Brandon said, and then as Chestnut and Liz went off in their taxi, Emily, Ana, and Brandon could get back on the highway and head straight for the Steins’, with no stops along the way.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
They all piled out of the car together, then quickly made their way toward the mart. Ana was bouncing with excitement, and Brandon seemed pretty pumped too. Emily was excited, but only because this was marking the end of a very horrible, very time-consuming sidetrack in their one-day road trip.
At the door Brandon entered first, and then Ana. Emily stood outside for a moment, taking a few deep breaths and trying to convince herself that she wasn’t ruining her life, and that she wasn’t stepping into a trap, and that she wasn’t going to get arrested in the next five minutes. Nothing she could say to herself really convinced her of any of these things, but eventually she just had to suck it up and take the step, walking into the chilled air of the small convenience store.
In one corner she saw Brandon with an armful of candy bars, Corn Nuts, and Doritos in different flavors. She scanned the store for Ana and then saw her at the counter under the register on her hands and knees, her face being licked by a Chihuahua whose entire body seemed to be wagging.
Emily made a beeline for Brandon, who handed her a handful of smoked almonds and an assortment of Skittles and M&Ms in different varieties. “Are you high?” she asked him. “We just ate a kabillion calories.”
Brandon shrugged. “Excitement makes me hungry.”
“This is nothing to be excited about.”
“Sure it is! We’re about to witness a holdup with no bullets.” Brandon moved on to the Slim Jim section of the snack aisle.
Emily turned around just in time to see Ana jump up and shriek as the Chihuahua began to dribble pee all over the floor in excitement. Emily wasn’t the only one to observe this. A wiry man with a trucker’s hat and a pronounced overbite appeared from behind the counter and growled with rage. “PICKLES!” A pointy cowboy boot shot out and caught Pickles in the ribs. He yelped in pain and raced to hide behind Ana’s legs.
“Hey!” Ana yelled. Her eyes were flashing fire as she reached down and scooped up the tiny dog in her arms. Emily wanted to stop all this somehow, to push the rewind/erase button on the past hour of their day, but there wasn’t anything she could do.
“Damn dog!” The man with the buckteeth and the cowboy boots was wiping up Pickles’s piddle with paper towels. As Emily approached, she noticed his nametag read EARL and wondered what the best way would be to get them all out of the store before Chestnut and Liz barged in. While she tried to come up with a plan, Ana begin to harangue Earl about kicking a canine.
“He didn’t do anything to you,” she said.
“Pissed on my clean floor,” Earl shot back. “I hate that damn dog. Girlfriend left him when she ran off with my mechanic.”
“I’d leave your sorry ass too,” Ana said, kissing the top of Pickles’s head.
“Maybe Pickles needs to go outside to finish his business.” Emily tried to sound helpful, and Ana turned toward the door as if this was a good idea. Emily dropped the armful of snacks Brandon had given her onto the counter. “Hey, Brandon! Let’s get going!” she called toward him. He was holding three bottles of Coke in place with his chin on top of the giant pile of junk food in his arms, and he was walking her way. Emily began to wonder if she had gained a foothold on the sheer rock wall of this impossible situation, but as she turned back to help Ana out the door with Pickles, she saw two familiar ski masks burst through the entrance.
“HANDS UP, ASSHOLES! THIS IS A ROBBERY!”
Brandon was as unprepared for this as Emily was, and he jumped about six inches into the air. The entire front of the store was showered with Doritos and Slim Jims and sodas. One of the bottles hit Earl in the back of the neck as he leaped up from cleaning the floor, and he knocked his head on the underside of the counter. He fell back to his knees, unleashing a stream of curses.
“Get up!” Liz shouted at him, waiving her gun in his face.
“Open the register, numb nuts!” Chestnut started prodding Earl with the barrel of his pistol.
Emily stood in the doorway next to Ana, unsure what to do next. Brandon was staring at Liz and Chestnut, too, as if they were going to give him a step-by-step on how to successfully rob a convenience store without ammunition.
As it turns out, the only person who was sure exactly what to do next was Earl. He was still swearing and rubbing his head with one hand, but he scrambled behind the counter, reached underneath, and pulled out a gun of his own. Of course, Earl’s gun did have bullets in it, which he proved in short order by beginning to fire wildly in all directions.
Emily threw both hands into the air for the second time that day and screamed. As she did, her keys flew out of her hands and landed in the rubble of Brandon’s junk food mountain. Without pausing, she turned, pushed Ana through the doors, and raced past the convenience store gas pumps. She heard the sound of Ana behind her, but it wasn’t until she had run into the alley next door and was in sight of her car that she fully comprehended the problem at hand: Her keys were still in the Little-J, lost somewhere on the floor under a pile of Frito-Lay products.