Waiting Outside of the Friendly’s | Francine Witte

Me and Sasha, all dolled up like Barbie. Sasha all gooey with lust and black-eyeliner. We were waiting for Ted, who would be pulling up in his army-brother’s rusty Mustang. We were going who-knows-where to do who-knows-what. It was getting dark, like forest-dark, like when all the pine trees hover over you and close up into night. “Maybe they aren’t coming,” I finally said. They being Ted, for Sasha, and Larry for me. The two of them 19 and dangersexy. Me and Sasha still 16. Years later, I would run into Sasha at the very spot where the Friendly’s used to be. I hadn’t seen her since her oldest boy’s funeral. That was the boy Ted had pumped into her that night so long ago. Her eyes were too puffy for eyeliner now. She asked if I’d heard that Larry drove himself drunk into a wall. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t surprised given how he kept sucking on his beer can that night we all went out. How even though I saw him a few times after, he always seemed like he was headed into nothing, so why not a wall? Instead, I told her no I hadn’t, and I tried not to notice the bruises like purple kisses all up her arm. “Too bad about the Friendly’s,” Sasha said, “I hate how things always change.” And then she asked if I needed a ride. “Ted will be here any minute.” And this time I knew for certain he would show up, even though I was wishing he wouldn’t.

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books) She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC.