Escape from Coolville. Sherman Sutherland

awesome: it’s pretty damn awesome. It’d be even more awesome if I hadn’t just made her think I’m mentally deficient or something.

      So now I’ve got my head buried in my cubicle trying to think of any legitimate-sounding reason whatsoever to say something not stupid to her.

      First of all, if she doesn’t remember me and I’m all like, “Hey, remember me? I’m the guy who danced with you for almost five whole seconds almost a month ago,” then she’ll think I’m a freak.

      If she does remember, she still might think it’s weird that I would remember, too.

      But if I act like I don’t remember, would she think that I just don’t care? Or that I’m some disease-ridden male slut who does that kind of crazy, super-confident stuff with every girl I see?

      I’ve still got to come up with something to say.

      Possible things to say:

      Do you come here often?

      Do you want to go to my apartment after work and read each other’s Tarot cards?

      You look familiar; have we met before?

      Things not to say:

      You’ve got some long-ass hair! Does it make you horny when it tickles your butt crack?

      If I was a moon, I’d circle Uranus.

      I like to think about you when I masturbate.

      * * *

      How did I not notice her yesterday? That’s what I want to know. I mean, she had to have been here, didn’t she? You can’t just skip the first day of training, can you?

      If you can, I want to know how. And can I skip the next two weeks?

      * * *

      I was in the vending machine line behind the hot girl who sits beside me and she was like, “Oh, man,” and she turned around and said to me, “If you buy the Barbeque CornNuts, I’ll trade you the ranch flavor.”

      The dumbass vending machine guy put them both in the same slot again.

      I said, “Sounds sure yeah CornNuts.”

      “What?”

      “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

      For some reason, I could form real sentences again after I got my CornNuts. We started kind of sort of having a conversation. She’s got this happy, warm cocoa voice that makes you feel like a big soft teddy bear is hugging you from the inside. I was trying to figure out, without saying anything, if she remembered me from Lucky’s, or if that moment we had was all just my imagination.

      I’m still not sure.

      I don’t know what we talked about, exactly, because I kept trying to figure out where the black center part of her eyeballs ended and the dark sexy outside part began, but somehow it came out that she was standing next to me in line at the Cool Spot last Friday afternoon. And apparently she was here for training yesterday, too.

      She said, “You’re not very observant, are you?”

      She said it in kind of a good, mind-tickling sort of way—like, she doesn’t know me well enough that she can reach out and actually start for-real tickling me, so she just kind of teased me like that instead. That’s how I took it, anyway.

      Now that I think about it, though, maybe she was talking about our Lucky’s moment. Like, she doesn’t think I remember. I don’t know.

      Pretty soon, we were talking about CornNuts again.

      She’s all about the barbeque flavor, which surprised me for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, barbeque flavor’s awesome for road trips, or when you’re alone, but Barbeque CornNuts take a commitment because, when you eat them, you have that mushy cottony skunk mouth until the next time you brush your teeth.

      You can chew some gum and drink a Sobe Green Tea to sort of get rid of the skunk mouth, but every time you talk, it always feels like you just inhaled a big balloon of nitrous, except without the uncontrollable gigglies. That’s why they’re bad to eat at work.

      I didn’t mention the nitrous part because I’m not sure if she parties or not, but, other than that, we were having, like, kind of an okay conversation. As okay a conversation as you can have when you’re talking about CornNuts.

      I was right at the point where I was like, Screw it, I’m just going to come right out and say, “You know what? I hate to sound like a jerk, but I don’t know if I ever got your name. I’m L.J., by the way.”

      But right as I get to “You know what?” Adam comes back to the break room and he’s all like, “L.J.! Dude, I heard you quit! What’re you doing here in the morning? Did you come to see if there are any hot snatches in the new training class?”

      I tried to look at the girl with one of those, I hardly know this guy faces, but he was standing way too close and acting way too friendly for that.

      I asked him, “Is that why you’re here?”

      “Dude, ever since the cops made that big bust in Meigs county, my weed’s been costing me a fortune—and then the more hours I work, the more weed I need to smoke. It’s a vicious cycle,” and then he said to the girl, “You know what I mean?”

      She scrunched her eyebrows together like she was super-serious and she nodded and said, “Oh, yeah—absolutely,” real sarcastically. It was kind of cute and funny and sexy all at the same time.

      He didn’t notice. He said, “I just got a call from this crazy bitch who wanted me to take the voodoo spell off her ex-boyfriend. I go, ‘Ma’am, that’s not really what I do. My specialty is Tarot cards,’ just like that. So she was ready to hang up right away, right? So I said, ‘But I can use the cards to try to determine what your next steps should be,’” then Adam looked at me and then he looked at the girl and he was like, “I know, right? Great line. I learned it from this guy,” and he put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in real hard and he said, “Give this guy a deck of Tarot cards and he’ll make you believe anything.”

      Then he said, “So I give this stupid bitch her reading. Nothing special. But it only takes us to eleven minutes. I tell her not to do anything crazy—yeah right, right? Long story short, I convinced her to hum into the phone to take the voodoo spell away. She’s still humming. L.J., man, I knew you’d love that. I’m going to grab a quick smoke while she’s still humming.”

      After he left, the hot girl was like, “I couldn’t imagine doing something like that to a caller.”

      I was just like, “Uh, yeah. Me neither.”

      Then I figured, okay, now’s my chance to ask her name, but then Derek came over and he starts going on and on about how he just registered for classes at Hocking College because—wasn’t I listening?—ATS will pay your tuition after you’ve worked here a year and, as of yesterday, he has been here exactly one year.

      He doesn’t even care what classes he’s taking; he just wants to screw ATS out of his tuition money. Now all he has to do is maintain a B average, and how tough can that be at Hocking College?

      So I figured, okay, maybe that’s the end of it, but then he started complaining about his girlfriend/baby mama. He was like, “Every time I look in the cupboard, I swear she’s preparing for the apocalypse. We’ve got at least six jars of salsa, about ten cans of corn and ten cans of beans, five boxes of Fiber One cereal and five bottles of mouthwash. Why would anybody need five bottles of mouthwash?”

      Hot Girl said, “Maybe she’s trying to tell you something.”

      I like her more and more all the time.

      * * *

      Bannister, Caroline

      Davenport, Lucas

      Gillette,