KISSING THE HIGHWAY LIP

When she first told me about Casey, I thought she was joking. 

Yesterday, I sat in a mustard yellow, laminated booth chair for twenty minutes. I hid my phone within the menu. The waiter hadn’t come by yet, but my face burned with the feeling that he would think I was stood up. I texted her for an ETA and she asked why I always had to be early, claiming it was some sort of disorder, most likely genetic. 

Are you on your bike right now? I texted. She sent a winky face. 

A bell tinkled above the door when Casey burst through, caked in a thin layer of sweat. Threads of black hair clung to her forehead like spider legs. Her thighs made abrupt spurts against the plastic chair as she slid in across from me. The waiter couldn’t ignore her when she stuck her hand up and waved it around. She ordered steak and eggs, asking the waiter to lean in when she requested that the steak be left a little bloody. I ordered scrambled eggs and toast. 

The steak squirted blood between her teeth as she told me how hard it was to find this place.

“You can’t keep texting while you bike.” The bread was burnt, not toasted. My mother told me all burnt things are slightly carcinogenic. I tried digging the tip of the butter knife into the porous bread to scrape it away. A pile of ash collected on the white plate, covering a tiny porcelain bouquet of flowers. “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal,” I said, spreading margarine onto the crisp surface.

“I had to get something.” An egg disappeared into her mouth before she suddenly turned to her backpack. Upon unzipping it, the contents spilled onto the yellow plastic. She let her keys, pepper spray, and planner fall away. “It’s for Sam.”

She held her hand out to me as if to give a fist bump, then flipped it over revealing a red matchbox car. “I found it on Facebook marketplace from this guy living in Lakeview and he was about to go on vacation and close the shop entirely.”

My mother said that Sam was a troubled kid who skipped his afterschool programs and stopped speaking Mandarin in the house at age six. She said he already chose what side he would be on if they came for us next.

“It’s cute, but you didn’t have to go right before our brunch.”

“I know, but there’s just too much to do this weekend,” she sighed through a bite of molten yolk.

Cars whirred around outside. The diner sat two blocks away from the I-65. Biking along the highway separated the sheltered kids from the rebels. Casey told me she liked the stress of feeling like a semi could plow you down in a split second, leaving nothing but tire tracks to mark where you left the earth. I thought she was full of it.

“Have you ever biked the I-65?” I said, swallowing a smile. There was nothing she wouldn’t try once. “If you have to get somewhere fast, I’ve heard it’s the best way.”

“You get me to do all the things you never would,” she laughs. “You know no one would tell if you, I don’t know, came home after seven? Stayed out with us devils?”

“It’s not you devils that are the problem. My mom’s scared shitless of everything on the news.”

“The Lakeview Guy did kind of look like he wanted to kick me out of this country.”

“Shut up, he was probably relieved to pawn his trash off.”

Casey grabbed her butter knife and wielded it towards my face. “But not to a foreign devil!” The blood of the cow glinted off of the cutlery. “Kidding, he was fine if not a little surprised that I was the one who banged on his garage door at dawn.”

I lost interest in the toast and dragged my knife through the scrambled eggs. Gummy and crumbly, too yellow to be edible. Above Casey’s head, the hands of a red clock clicked at 9:45 am.

“I have to get to church,” I piled the too yellow glob together and slid a couple of bills onto the table. She put her hand over mine.

“Next Sunday, if you skip it, I’ll show you something.”

“Next Sunday, come with me and I’ll show you something,” I said, pulling my arm away. “See you later!”

Casey paid in cash with a generous tip to the waiter who tried to pretend we weren’t there. She looked at the local streets and up at the concrete beast looming above and took me up on my offer. Casey must have brought her butt off of the seat to build enough power to get up the curving ramp to the main stretch of the I-65. A couple of cars would have honked at her, maybe cursed her behind their wheels, but she would have her neon blue headphones over her ears, nodding along to Japanese Breakfast. The grey cement lip of the highway edge would kiss her handlebars, keeping her steady and in line as the road began to curve once more. Just before the highway split off into a ramp that was a straight shot onto her street, an arm would shoot out from a passenger window. The force exerted on the left handlebar would propel the bike into the wall and Casey over it.

“Casey fell off the highway?” My throat burns with the weight of the words. I pull Linda from the hallway into the girl’s bathroom.

“Someone behind them said he heard the person say something,” Linda looks around from me to the door and back, her ponytail racing through the orange chemical cleaner.

“What did they say?”

“He couldn’t make it out.”

I steady myself on the white bathroom sink, tracing my eyes along the curved edges. A ridge that rounds out the counter separates the edge of the sink from the ground. Casey would have biked along the divet. Linda’s eyes brim with fire. I’m sure mine look the same.

“Do you think it’s like the other ones? An attack?” The implication hangs in the air. Even Linda’s whipping ponytail can’t dispel it.

“It’s so horrible,” she looks at the tiled wall, eyes becoming glass and slipping away.

***

The house is thick with the juice of napa cabbage when I open the door.

“Honey, is that you?” my mother asks. Womp. Womp. Womp. The dutch oven is brewing as she chops the necks of the bok choy with a thick knife.

I can’t speak. The thought of answering brings a fresh wash of tears. I squeeze my face tight together to try to keep them from falling, snorting up the snot that never ends.

“Oh, dear, here,” a wobbling tissue approaches. “Blow.”

A hand on my back guides me to sit on our easy chair. She draws circles on my back, perched on one of the plush arms, and I blow until my ears feel like they’ll pop and shadow takes over my vision. After a couple of blows, I can hear the lid of the pot clanking around, daring to blow over.

“Mom, the Lion’s Head.”

Her head jerks up and she gives me a peck on the cheek before returning to the kitchen.

“It’s just horrible,” she shakes her head, raising her elbow to lift the meatballs and let each side plop into the pot. “She always was taking risks.” The meat sizzles as it hits the surface.

I wipe the last streak of snot from my face with my arm. “Are you blaming her?”

“Who told her it was okay to take the highway?” She continues chopping the vegetables.

“She was pushed,” I insist, glaring into my mother’s downturned face.

The knife pauses. “Why?”

I don’t have a good answer. My mother likes clear answers that make sense to her.

“She probably got too close to the car,” my mother thinks out loud. I don’t tell her that someone rolled down the window and said something to her, the last thing Casey would hear, just before they pushed her off.

“Shoot,” the cabinet door slams. “We’re running low on mirin. Would you watch the pot while I run to the store?”

Outside the window, the sky is an obsidian black. No one would see a thing.

“Stay in tonight, I’ll go with you tomorrow.”