Wickey D's

There's a WcDonald's not too far from neighborhood to walk but far enough where I don't really have to run into anyone I know. 

I'm such a WcDonald's fan I should get paid. I tell anyone who'll listen about the app even though it had been around for years before I downloaded it. 

I hated the way everything moved into an app, and that was when it was, like, fast food and coffee chains or banks. 

Then the apps became the banks. For a little while that was exciting. You could do things like double tap on a withdrawal through an app before it had the time to process it, especially over the weekends. 

There's a couple I'm still banned from, I but I'm up on them, in terms of who owes who what.

But the Wickey D's app is great. The points stack up so quickly. I don't eat there all that much, I don't think, but it feels like I'm always at enough points for something free again.

The important thing is I don't have to worry about running into anyone I know there. The place is flooded with extras,

It's a twenty four hour place, which is great, and it actually gets quite in the late night hours. It's loudest in the afternoons after school comes out. The teenagers come in like anthropomorphic tornadoes. I avoid it then, it gets too loud for me.

I see some of the same people sometimes, usually the same people at the same time of day. They must spend a lot of time there.

I've tried to count how many workers there are there, it's like seven at any one time, but they all move around in shifts. There was a girl I liked there, let's call her CJ. 

She was quiet and it took a while to get her to say anything to me, but eventually when she was bringing my food to the table once I got to talking to her. I knew her name, or her initials, from the nametag they all wear.

She said she'd worked at Wickey D's for like four years. I don't know if I'd been going there that long but I don't think I'd seen her there that long. She explained that they hadn't all four years been at this Wickey D's. She used to work to one closer to her home but it got too close. 

She knows. You don't want to be somewhere too many people know you for too long. It becomes you.

She brought my food a couple of times over the next few weeks before, I guess, they rotated her to the kitchen staff or whatever, but I had the chance to ask her out. She wasn't sure what I meant.

-They give me a meal for my lunch break, she explained.

-I could bring you something from somewhere else, I explained. That's what I was thinking. We could eat outside or something.

Or something. She said no. I stopped going for a little while but not too long. The deals on the app were too good.

I'd made an untoward comment about her initials and whether she'd give them to me. Fucking Gary suggested it. 

He's not allowed in there. He got too loud once and got banned. 

I think the security must be out-sourced. No one ever lasts too long. 

One of them must've had a problem with me. He'd told me once there was a 30 minute loitering rule. I've seen the sign, but it's never enforced. Another time he told me not to lean on the table. I was tired. One time I followed him a few blocks after his late night shift but he didn't see me.

I don't want to get banned from that Wickey D's. I like to meet my sister there. Because there won't ever be anyone I know there, and I wouldn't want any of my friends to interact with my sister.

She's important to me.

She's had a lot of questions about this new job of mine. Honestly so have I. It feels like somewhere they put me. They sent me to a place to pick up business casual clothing. I look pretty sharp in it. I don't know what I do there and people don't really interact with me.

We met at the Wickey D's after I got back from work on a Tuesday night. They do WcTaco's on Tuesdays.

I didn't tell you a name for my sister. Names have power. Even ones that aren't real come from somewhere. You know who you are because you've had the same name since it was given to you. I don't know what my birth parents named me. I don't know if they did, or if they held on to the name even when they let go of me.

Call my sister TKTK. Tiki to the siblings she picked up in her orbit as she caroused from one foster home to another. We counted ours up once, we'd both bounced around a lot. It's a clean way to describe it.

Tiki's siblings mostly didn't last long. I felt myself getting into her orbit when I first arrived at that group home. There were a few kids like her, aging out. I don't want to say I got bullied. I felt left out. Except for TKTK.

I shared the bedroom with three other boys and I stayed up the whole night the first night, half of it in the bathroom. I don't know why I was worried, I think they all slept through the night.

The next night Tiki let me stay with her. She made sure I knew how to bathe and shower, and would get strict about brushing my teeth in the morning and in the evening. Really strict.

They won't kiss you if your breath smells bad, she told me. 

She still checked my teeth when we would get together.

Tiki wasn't sure how I was paying the rent, it came down to the job. I wasn't in charge of my own finances anymore but everything was getting paid for and I got an allowance that was enough to exist from day to day.

Tiki didn't like it. She had gotten married and they had an extra room for a child that hadn't come yet. She didn't explain why. She wanted me to move in with them. She didn't like my friends. I guess I didn't either. Except for some of them. 

-And the rats, she said, your place is full of them.

I wish I hadn't told her about that.