Juliet Waller
Overpass
Who expects to see a herd of cows on the highway, meandering around their jackknifed semi-truck? Not me. Especially not me as I walked to school in the biggest funk of my life. I’m glad the people on the overpass had their eyes on the highway because I wanted no attention that day. If they looked at me, I know they’d think, that girl is having a wretched day. They would have been right because no one is more wretched than a sixteen-year-old who got just dumped by her boyfriend and then realized she might be pregnant. Plus, if we’re confessing here, which whatever, I might as well, that morning I didn’t know if I was more upset about being dumped or being maybe pregnant. That’s embarrassing because in my head, the head that produced a 3.7 GPA and knows how to prevent a pregnancy, I knew that I’d get over my broken heart but if I didn’t figure things out soon, I would have a baby and throw away my dream to become an orthodontist.
The cows on the highway were a distraction but they didn’t actually knock me out of my funk. My funk stayed very well situated in my body. It did shift a little when the rodeo showed up. Yup, the rodeo. Apparently, they were in town and some clever person thought to give them a call. They looked like you’d expect, guys on horses, in big cowboy hats trying to lasso the poor cows who briefly thought they’d found freedom. This already weird scene got even weirder when one of the rodeo clowns drove up in his pickup truck, makeup on, and started to sell sodas out the back.
Up close his face was super gross. Clown makeup does not hide a five o’clock shadow, it just makes it look like you’re trying to hide a condition. I’m not knocking conditions. I’ve got eczema and my boyfriend-ugh-ex-boyfriend had something gnarly that made his skin peel. It was painful but he was brave which is partly why I fell in love with him.
I don’t know why he fell in love with Jackie. She’s mousy. They met in Stretch Club which is just what it sounds like, a club where you stretch. It’s like yoga without the Ohm. Well, truthfully a mom called in and said yoga was demonic, so they switched the name. Whatever. I heard that the classroom stinks after Stretch Club because people can’t help but fart when they’re squishing their insides trying to touch their toes.
So, there I was, watching a free rodeo, drinking a two-dollar coke with a bunch of strangers. The crowd cheered as one wily cow evaded the lasso then pooped in the middle of the highway. I couldn’t bring myself to cheer with them. The humanity of the situation overwhelmed me. Amongst this crowd of strangers, I was just a student on the way to eleventh grade. Not a pregnant teenager, not a heartbroken girl, not a future orthodontist.
I wanted to go back in time but instead I started to cry. No one noticed, everyone had their eyes on the scene below except, it seemed, the rodeo clown. He came and stood beside me and together we watched the last few cows get wrangled. One of the cowboys looked up and waved at the clown. The clown tipped an imaginary cowboy hat back at him. Then he reached up and patted me on the back twice. It wasn’t creepy, just the kind of pat on the back a rodeo clown would give you when they notice you crying on an overpass. He said, “You’re going to be ok.”
His teeth looked super yellow against his clown makeup. His right front tooth crossed over his left and I imagined straightening them. “Really?” I was open to any prophecy, divine, clown or otherwise.
“Yup.” He tipped his invisible hat again and walked away. I looked down to see a cowboy lasso the final cow. The efficiency with which this problem had been solved impressed me. Okay. Oh. Kay. If someone could figure out how to fix a giant problem like this, I should be able to figure out my own stuff. I needed a rodeo. I took a couple of deep breaths to stop crying and realized, duh, I have one: my cousin Shari. She’s thirteen years older than me and super practical, like she changes her own oil and always has a pen on her. She’ll buy me a pregnancy test and help me get an abortion if I need it. She won’t tell my mom, and she won't make me feel like a terrible person. She won’t turn it into a thing-thing just something that needs to get done. She’s no nonsense like that. I felt pretty nonsense that day and thinking about my no-nonsense cousin made me feel a little better. A tiny comma's worth of better. That was enough to get me moving off the overpass. I walked past the backs of the people who watched the cowboys load up. The rodeo clown drove by in his truck. He honked and waved. I tipped my imaginary hat.
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Juliet Waller is a Seattle based writer and playwriting & theater teacher. Her pieces have appeared in, among others, The Kenyon Review (as a co-author), Muleskinner, New Delta Review, and Does It Have Pockets. She has an upcoming piece in Mountain Bluebird Magazine. IG-@julietpersimmon, FB @Juliet Waller