James Keith Smith
A week after she dumped him, Scott saw Allie’s face on a billboard. From her forehead to her chin was dozen feet. Her pupils were the size of traffic lights. He wondered how long it had been there–a blue jay had made a nest in the scaffolding. The billboard was for a credit union. Allie had always been a beautiful girl, but now she was larger than life, her face glowing with an acetate sheen.
***
“I can’t believe it,” he told his sister Peg when he called her that night. “I was going to ask her to marry me. I even bought a ring. A nice one.” It was a lie, there was no ring. Scott always embellished the stories he told to his sister. He’d been doing it since he was six and she was ten, and she pushed him off the monkey bars.
Peg said she couldn’t believe it either. She loved her brother, but she really wanted Allie for a friend. “I hope she still comes to my housewarming party,” she said. Peg had recently purchased a faded yellow craftsman overlooking Puget Sound, and was always hauling old sinks and doors around in her little pickup truck.
“Peg, it’s me or her. You can’t be friends with us both.”
“Then I choose her,” Peg said. “You didn’t honestly think it’d last forever, did you? You’re a six or a seven, tops, on a good day. She’s a nine or a ten. Think of it this way: she came into your life, made you better, then went away.” Peg made him sound like a fixer-upper in one of those home improvement shows on HGTV, one where they strip the house down to the studs, put in a new marble countertop and redo the bathroom.
***
‘Your personality is that of a tiger,’ the online quiz said. ‘A ferocious hunter, but with a playful side.’ He took another quiz on his phone that said he was a hippo. He looked down at his stomach, covered in powdered sugar. The box of doughnuts he’d brought into the teacher’s lounge was nearly empty.
In the hallway, the vice principal asked Scott if he could donate spa passes for the spring fundraiser, something Allie had done in the past.
“I’ll have to ask my girl—” he caught himself. He had to stop saying that, his ‘girlfriend.’ They were broken up now. She had moved on. He had moved on, too. He was taking online personality quizzes. He had ordered a new electric toothbrush, a set of hand grip strengtheners.
***
Another Allie billboard appeared on the highway leaving town, so that any time he left, he’d be reminded not only of the pain and heartache he was experiencing, but also to consider taking advantage of a free checking account with no annual maintenance fees.
This Allie was different from the first, her expression less serene. Scott pulled over again, got out. A motorcycle roared by. Someone flicked a cigarette from a car window. He stood beneath the billboard.
Before she dumped him, Scott was pet sitting for an African parrot. “Parrots are sensitive,” she had told him one night. “My aunt had a cockatiel who pulled out her feathers because the couple who were bird-sitting had sex in the same room.” The comment had insinuated there would be physical intimacy when the pet sitting concluded, but when he went to kiss her, she turned away.
“When’s the last time you washed these sofa cushions?” she asked.
Scott walked down the side of the road picking up fast food wrappers, smushed paper cups, plastic bottles. Occasionally, he looked back up at the billboard. Allie was wearing one of those silly French berets. She had such full lips.
***
Another billboard appeared by the fairgrounds, and one near the stadium. Then, on the way to Peg’s housewarming party, he discovered a fifth. That week, he’d been so anxious about running into the real-life Allie at the party, he had forgotten to pick up a gift. Scott pulled over, turned off the car. On the billboard, Allie was reading a book, lounging in a beach chair, by the ocean. Something was strange, off about the billboard. Her lips were moving! Scott rubbed his eyes, blinked.
Allie set the book in her lap. “You’re probably want to know why I broke up with you,” she said. “It’s because you never took me to the beach.” She picked up her book again. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to your sister’s housewarming party. I’ll be right here, sunbathing.”
A police cruiser pulled up behind and the officer got out. “Move along, son,” the officer said, wrapping his knuckles on the hood of Scott’s car.
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James Keith Smith writes short fiction. His work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Typehouse Magazine, and others. He was born in Michigan and lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family.