Sam and Carly sat in orange plastic swivel chairs, facing each other across a table almost too small to hold their fried chicken platters. Carly tore a piece of crispy crust from a drumstick, munched it thoughtfully. A horn honked out in the parking lot.
"You already ordered some to take back to Spencer and Freddie?" Carly asked.
Sam, her mouth too full of chicken meat to say 'yes,' grunted an affirmative sound. She finished chewing, swallowed it down, said, "Yeah, they'll bring it out to us." She wiped her fingers on one of the little cheap brown napkins and watched for a moment as Carly picked at her drumstick.
"I haven't seen you shake once today yet," Sam said.
Carly glanced down at the floor, smiled. "The new medicine helps a lot with that."
She glanced up as the bell rang over the front door of the restaurant. A young Hispanic girl walked in from the sunlight, wearing skinny jeans and a black T-shirt from Warm Subject that bore the logo of some quasi-metal/emo hybrid band. Sam called those kinds of bands 'mallcore' and insisted they all sounded exactly alike.
Carly watched the girl approach the counter and place her order. Sam glanced over her shoulder, then looked back to Carly and flashed an evil grin.
"Sam," Carly sighed. "She's too young."
"Hey, if you're not old enough to buy alcohol yet, then you should still be allowed to do it with teenagers."
Carly chuckled, sighed. "It's so beyond sexual, though. She's cute, yeah, but it's not like I want to throw her to the floor and do her. It's so much more than that."
Sam bit into her fourth chicken wing. "Ah, the identification thing again?"
"You just want to follow her home and see what it's like, you know? You just want to experience for yourself the sweet, beautiful texture of her life."
"If it is indeed sweet and beautiful."
Carly nodded. "If it is."
The Hispanic girl, having placed her order, sat down in a booth by the front window. The late afternoon sunlight fell on her like a warm, golden cloud. Soon she had her phone in her hands and was texting with someone.
"Ma'am, your order is ready," an employee said from the counter, gesturing at Sam and Carly with two boxes stacked in a white plastic bag.
"Ooh, I'll get it,"Carly said, enthusiasm ringing in her voice. She sprung to her feet with the drumstick still in her right hand, stepped quickly toward the counter, but then stopped, frozen. She moaned, dropped the chicken leg on the orange tile floor. It rolled, picking up dust and hair and cobweb as debris stuck to the grease in the meat.
"I got it," Sam said, kneeling down quickly. She picked up the chicken leg, threw it in the trash, then took the bag from the guy behind the counter. She turned, laid her hand on the younger girl's shoulder.
"Come on, Carls."