1
BAD LUCK AND THE BURGER BUS
Beatrice Best, aka a lady who’s just over it
The first timeI sat inside a jail cell was a few months after my parents died. A lot of that initial time after the fire was a blur, but I distinctly remember Mrs. Camille being there, which meant that Hudson, my youngest brother, had to still be in fourth grade.
The spring of his Mrs. Camille year.
Every kid in Athena’s Rest remembers their Mrs. Camille year. A kid who has her as his teacher when he’s suddenly a homeless orphan remembers it even more.
Some of us even do stupid things like decide to date one of her sons years later and subject ourselves to her all over again.
But I digress.
Jail cell.
Mrs. Camille.
Hudson.
I was locked up behind bars because Mrs. Camille had looked down her nose at me during the fourth grade field trip to the police station—she loved giving the children a glimpse of theirfuture if they didn’t behave—and she said something likethat one looks like she belongs in jail.
Hudson had laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard—his big sister was nothing if not the last person on earth who would ever break any laws—and since laughter was sparse in our family in those months after the funeral, I sucked up my fear of confined spaces and let Mrs. Camille and the officer lock me inside a jail cell.
I handed my phone over to my baby brother, and pictures of me as a jailbird were the prominent feature of the Christmas cards I designed but forgot to send that year.
It was a private memento of what I assumed would be my last foray into the bowels of the Athena’s Rest temporary holding facility.
I was mistaken.
And now, at the end of a very bad week, here I am again.
In a small jail cell.
With one fluorescent light flickering overhead, the smell of sweat and urine and hangover lingering in the air, and smears of I-don’t-want-to-know-what on the concrete floor.
Also?
I’m trying not to hyperventilate over being stuck in the old, tiny cell with cinder block walls on three-and-a-half sides, no window, and only a door-width of metal bars facing a cinder block wall across the tight hallway.
Oh, and I need to pee.
“C’mon, Logan,” I call to the officer at the end of the short hallway, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “You know you don’t have reason to hold me, which means I have reason to tell the entire town you arrested me so you could try to jump your little brother’s leftovers in prison.”
Logan Camille.
Yeah.
ThatMrs. Camille’s oldest son is now a police officer, and he’s just like her.
Which is to say that while half the community thinks he’s the best police officer to ever walk the beat here in Athena’s Rest, New York, in my experience, he’s a power-hungry nightmare who loves scaring children, the elderly, and the weak of heart.
As is Jake, his brother, who’s also directly to blame for my shitty week and now indirectly to blame for me being behind bars.
It’s an indirect blame that takes two or three squirrely twists and one minor logic leap to get to, but you still arrive here.
Though it’s fairer to say that Jake’s favorite actor on the entire planet is directly responsible, and yes, that’s the complete, honest truth, which prompts the question—how, exactly, is this my life?
