"You asshole!"
I felt a cold, watery sting as the ice struck my neck and slithered into the collar of my shirt. I wheeled around, directing my verbosity at the culprit: Danny Bishop, the son of my employer. I thought I had been blessed when I landed a summer job at one of the hottest eateries in town, which happened to be owned and operated locally. For a non-franchise establishment, the Down South Deli sure brought in a lot of people, which usually made every workday fast-paced and tiring. As if that wasn't enough, I constantly had Danny making life hell for me. For some reason, he and I never seemed to really get along.
Actually, thinking on it, the reason is pretty clear: we're as different as night and day. He's a spoiled, private school educated prep who has about thirty friends who all look exactly like him. Never dressing in an article of clothing priced under fifty dollars, he's definitely the type who thinks his shit doesn't stink. His view of society is one of conformity; if you're not like everyone else, that means something is wrong with you. This makes me the embodiment of everything threatening to his "anti-individuality". I'm the eccentric type; I don't dress like a J. Crew model, I don't objectify the opposite sex (when it's not deserved), and my intelligence quotient isn't at or below my shoe size. So, of course, he hates me. Which really doesn't bother me, because at the moment, I'm not too fond of him either.
"What'd I do?" Danny asked with mock innocence.
"Threw ice at me, maybe?"
"What makes you think it was me?"
I rolled my eyes. "Well, the fact that you're holding a bucket of ice might give it away, if my deductive reasoning serves."
"If you're deducting what? Why don't you speak English for a change?" Danny shot scathingly before adding, "Instead of all those weird-people words?"
"So you equate intelligence with weirdness now, huh?" I asked bitingly. "Excuse me for having a decent vocabulary. I'll remember to go monosyllabic whenever I talk to you. How about that?"
"God, you're so weird," he said, rolling his eyes and going back to his task of cleaning off the grill.
"Knock it off, you two," Carol, our manager, chimed in pleasantly. "Danny, you got that grill cleaned yet? I'm telling you two right now, I don't want to be stuck in here till ten o'clock tonight, so get moving on your closing work."
"Dad gave me the keys tonight," Danny announced proudly. "He told me I was locking up."
Carol shrugged. "Take your sweet time, then; but don't think about leaving until everything is done. And done right."
A trail of sweat slithered down my forehead as I hurried to sweep the last of the kitchen. Two of our front people had already clocked out and left. Carol was gearing up to leave; I, on the other hand, had the entire kitchen to mop, but couldn't do so until Danny finished taking the old grease out of the fryers and replaced it with fresh oil. Typical Thursday night closing work, only when I was the one stuck with the job of mopping, Danny liked to take his sweet time with the fryers just to make me have to wait.
"Mmmm, about four more buckets of grease; hope you're not planning on going anywhere tonight," Danny said, his spiteful shit-eating grin spreading across his perfect features.
"At least I have places to go," I muttered aloud.
"Oh, yeah, that weird-people place downtown. I suppose you were going to get up and read one of your little poems," he jeered sardonically. He exaggeratedly cleared his throat and held up a cupped hand as if he were dramatically reciting a line from a Shakespearean drama. "The moon…is full…and the owls…go hoot…and I like to eat fruit…from a big brown boot," he recited haltingly from whatever miniscule part of his already tiny brain that computed rhymes.
"Wow…how deep," I said in a sarcastic monotone. "They'd love you. That is, if they even recited poetry there."
"My friend Mike told me what that place is like…what's it called, the Living Room? He told me about all the weird freak-o people down there. You must fit right in," Danny said condescendingly.
"At least I know that it's one place I can go without having to see your sorry, pathetic, conformist little face. Now if you'd like to hurry the fuck up with that grease, I'd like to start mopping so I can leave," I spat bitterly.
"Woo, she's getting mad," he said patronizingly. "Better not make her mad. She might do something weird to me."
"Fuck you," I said simply, going back to my sweeping.
Thinking back, perhaps that planted ideas in his head.
"You can mop now," Danny said about thirty minutes later, having just finished taking out the last bucket of grease. Carol had been gone for some time, leaving the whole place to the two of us, to my consternation. I hopped down from my perch on the counter and grabbed the mop handle, pulling it out of the soapy water. I placed it in the yellow plastic wringer, leaned my weight onto the handle to squeeze out the excess water, and flung the mop head onto the linoleum with a flat 'splotch'. I wove the mop across the floor quickly; once one starts mopping, it barely takes any time to have done the entire floor. I became determined to make quick work of it; I was definitely ready to leave.
I heard a tiny splat behind me as I carried on mopping the rest of the floor. I turned around to see Danny holding a plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup. A few small dots of ketchup were on a freshly mopped section of the floor.
"I'm not in the mood to fuck with you tonight," I said, quickly lowering the mop onto the spot spattered with ketchup, wiping it up.
"Too bad," he said. "I'm feeling playful." With that, he squeezed the ketchup bottle again. Being completely full, it didn't take much for the ketchup to erupt through the nozzle and land in another small puddle on the floor.
"Dammit, Danny, stop it. I mean it," I said threateningly. I was nearly fed up with his bullshit. A few more pushes and I felt I'd erupt just like the small shower of ketchup had.
"And what if I don't?" Danny asked, giving the bottle another squeeze, sending more ketchup onto my newly mopped floor.
I let the mop handle drop from my hand. I crossed the space between us in two strides, being careful not slip. "I'll fucking hurt you, is what," I growled, inches away from his face. My eyes were boring holes into his. If looks could kill…
"You can't do shit to me," Danny said indignantly, putting the ketchup down.
"Oh, I can't?" With that, I shoved him into the prep counter.
He quickly regained his balance. "I could knock the shit out of you," he said in a low, murderous voice.
"Do it," I challenged, getting right in his face again. "Come on; I dare you. Hit me."