LJ Idol Week 10: “If you are here to help me, you’re wasting our time.”*

There’s No Place Like Home

“You will be taken to the court of the Sidhe to stand trial for your crimes.”

The sound of the knives hitting the weather-beaten floorboards snaps her back into the moment. The music from the jukebox comes next and then the cracking sound of the balls on the pool table. Mel has to blink a few times to see clearly and nearly drops the stack of plates balanced on her left arm. She lowers them onto the nearest table and scoops up the silverware that had fallen. She looks up to see Holly, the other waitress, looking at her from across the room while pouring coffee for a couple of seniors wearing fanny packs and conspiring over a map spread out on their table.

Taking a few deep breathes Mel starts to dump the plates and silverware into a grey bus bin and worries with the locket she wears around her neck. Calli. The name echoes through her head and she lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You alright?” Holly asks coming up behind her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. You need me to do anything?”

“Well Free Mustache Rides is whining for more ketchup,” Holly whispers with a grin pointing in the direction of the man in the trucker cap featuring the slogan and a pretty impressive horseshoe mustache.

“Dude,” Mel chuckles.

Holly winks at her and heads back toward the kitchen taking the bus bin with her.

Mel tries pushing her anxiety away. It’s been so long since she’s had a vision of inevitable future events that she’d almost forgotten how quickly it could happen and how hard it could be to shake it off.

She tries to take comfort in her surroundings. She genuinely enjoys working at The Greasy Spoon Roadside Café. It mostly serves truckers and tourists stopping off the highway, people who are just passing through. Mel likes it that way. Holly is really the only friend she’s made in town besides Eddie the cook and Myrtle her eccentric neighbor at the nearby trailer park.

It feels like home now even though it’s vastly different than where she grew up. From the various state license plates on the walls to the old cigarette burns on the cracked Formica table tops, she loves it. She feels safe here. She forgets to throw salt over her shoulder or step over cracks. She forgets that dropping a knife portends a male visitor.

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*  “If you've come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

A quote by Australian Aboriginal Elder Lilla Watson