“I refuse to pay this ridiculous bill unless I am given the chance to at least finish my meal.” The waitress must have been new; she looked back at me as though I was a terrible monster and she my soon-to-be prey. She let the bill flutter to the table and then walked hurriedly to the kitchen, probably to tell the manager of my refusal. I sat back down in my booth, sawing at my pancake and shoving it into my mouth as quickly as I could. Tristan was uninterested in eating and continued sharing how I was to blame for everything that went wrong in his life.

“You relentlessly make sport of mocking all those around you; you don’t listen when people try to get a word in edgewise; you think you’re superior to everyone you meet and don’t give them a chance to prove otherwise.”

“Now that’s not true. I have to listen to your ‘high falutin’ vocabulary everyday and you constantly shove your high school GPA in my face. We’ve been out of high school for four years now. Get over it. And you are obsessed with a dead president and expect me to understand you and care.” I spied the history book that Mr. Ace the Manager had returned to the table with a THWACK and grabbed it, shaking it in my hand. I looked to see if Ace was around. He wasn’t. “If you didn’t treat everyone as less intelligent beings than yourself, maybe you wouldn’t remain the subject of our mockery. And stop arguing with dead authors!” With that, I threw his book at him. He ducked and the book sailed past his head, crashing into the jar of donations for starving children in Africa. Coins flew everywhere and Ace ran out of the kitchen. I attempted a quick escape and hurried to the cash register with the bill in my hand, making sure to snatch my sketchbook from the distracted, dysfunctional family.

“Don’t let them get away!” Ace yelled.

I had to laugh. Who did he think he was, anyway? A renegade cop posing as a Denny’s manager? I threw down the bill with the exact change, grabbed Tristan’s hand, and pulled him behind me out to the parking lot.

“Hurry up, you lout.” I hissed at him.

“I resent that,” he muttered. But resentful or not, he ran with me and beat me to his car. I barely had time to shut my door before he started the car and backed out.

As soon as we were in the car and out of the immediate danger of Sir Ace the Manager, I looked back at the restaurant and saw Ace sporting a cowboy stance and shaking his fist. With the middle fingers upraised on my rapidly revolving hands, I yelled out the all-time best line in Melvin’s preschool song: “Where is middle finger? Where is middle finger? HERE I AM! HERE I AM!” Tristan peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a red-faced and fuming Ace shouting and sputtering at us from the doorway of his restaurant.

“You know, we’ll have to mention this at home eventually. It’s doubtful we can ever go to that Denny’s again because I don’t think the manager will forget your ridiculous beard.”

“Haley, you are an idiot. Now please don’t speak. You’ve goaded me enough for one afternoon. My favorite book is gone, my reputation is ruined, and I somehow have salt and pepper in my pants. I see that you saved your precious doodlings and I hope you’ve learned some sort of lesson from them.” With that, Tristan pursed his lips together and sped home. He stopped the car five blocks away from the house and demanded that I get out. I had never seen such hatred in his eyes, so I slid out of my seat, feeling as though his eyes had severed my limbs from the rest of me.

“Thank you for a lovely afternoon. We should do it again sometime.” I couldn’t resist a final jab at him. Maybe I should have. I walked slowly home, sweating from the soon-setting sun and the excitement and embarrassment that finally registered with me. My boots rubbed at the backs of my heels until I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. I sat down cross-legged on someone’s front lawn and removed them. The dog of the house, a tiny, white “yipper dog,” ran toward me doing what it did best, that is, yipping it’s obnoxious bark. It didn’t help my mood any. I didn’t want the dog to attract its owner’s attention, so I fished through my bag and found a half-eaten granola bar to feed it and shut it up. It worked. The dog sniffed through my bag and licked the syrup off the back cover of my sketchbook. I took the book and flipped through the pages. As much as I hated to admit it, Tristan was almost right. I hadn’t realized how any of my drawings could possibly offend those who inspired them.

No time for more introspection, though, I needed to get back home. The comic strip contest deadline ended the next day and I still had a couple more frames to compose and color. I stood up and walked barefoot the rest of the way home. I tried not to imagine stories of the prodigal son returning destitute or of prophets wandering barefoot and being welcomed any place but their own homes.

Melvin was the first to greet me. He stepped in front of Carissa and Rush with a look that said, “Don’t worry, I’ll handle this.”

“Do you feel justly punished?” He asked, with too much honey dripping from his voice.

“Of course.” I held up my right hand. “I will never make fun of Tristan again as long as we both shall live. Well, I won’t needlessly make fun of him at least.” I quietly added the addendum to my oath.

As soon as I swore my pseudo oath, Melvin, Carissa, and Rush jumped me, tied my wrists and ankles with ropes and put a paper bag over my head. The guys hoisted me onto their shoulders and carried me up to my room. I laid on my bed and laughed. After about fifteen minutes, I stopped laughing; I wondered whether they would come back anytime soon. It felt as though at least two hours had passed before Adrian came in and untied me. He gave me the phone number to his group again. I took it this time.

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll call tomorrow. I need to get some stuff done first, though.”

“Alright. It’s not as bad as you think, you know. Tristan said he’d go, by the way.”

“Wonderful.” I answered.

Adrian walked quietly out of my room. I placed the phone number next to my sketchpad and took up my journal. “Dear Diary,” I wrote. “Today was interesting. If it hadn’t been for a crazy dream I had, and my overactive imagination, and my incredible ability to fashion an insult for every occasion, I doubt today would have been quite the same. I have so much fuel for a comic strip, that I don’t know what to do with it all. But maybe I should wait until things simmer down a bit.” I completed the entry with a quick sketch of Manager Ace and then thankfully slept a dreamless sleep.

THE END