I’ve been alone in this house for five days, except for my parents’ dogs. I haven’t left except to take them on walks, and I haven’t spoken to Bard people much at all. I don’t mind this new town so much, don’t resent that my parents moved, don’t resent that I never talk to my friends from back home anymore; it’s just the loneliness here, the total solitude. How do you meet new people in the middle of nowhere?
This evening I just started biking. It became bitterly cold here, almost overnight, and while trying to endure it I rode past a Five Guys. You have to understand; back home we don’t have Five Guys, we have Cougar Country, which is better in some ways but mostly just worse, though they do put mayonnaise on their burgers. But when I saw it I wanted a burger from Cougar Country, and goddamnit if I couldn’t get that right now I was going to get myself a cheeseburger, so I went in and bought myself one, with some fries. I think it was $8.78. I thought about eating it there, but I’ve never been great at eating alone, so gripping it from my handlebar I headed home.
About halfway home the bag burst on a one-way road. The fries were everywhere, the bag was shredded, but the cheeseburger was still perfectly wrapped in tinfoil. In a rush I grabbed that and started biking to avoid the oncoming cars. I could shrug off losing fries, because frankly the fries at Five Guys are kinda soggy anyway. I made it the rest of the way home like this, gripping the cheeseburger in its little tinfoil coat, but as I entered the driveway there was an explosion in my hand like in a Tom Cruise movie and the cheeseburger was everywhere on the ground, everything butter-side down.
I sat in the garage for a while, because I couldn’t bring myself to go inside and reheat the leftover curry I made last night. Instead I grabbed my bike again and rode as fast as I could, shame-faced, to the McDonalds a couple blocks away; I got a Pulp Fiction special, without mustard.
It wasn’t very good.
