Downtown Rockland is foggy and smells like bait. The fog seeps into the store and makes the waffle cones droop. Usually this is a pain in the ass, but tonight I just find it funny.

Laura looks up from the phone. Laura has perfectly tweezed eyebrows. She has been talking to her boyfriend for ten minutes now; her boyfriend is a lobsterman.
We’ve been working together for four whole weeks, and you still haven’t told me your story.”

I shrug my shoulders and lean over to turn off the oven, “It’s dead in here," I mumble. "Let’s close early.”

For once she agrees with me. She wants to get home and cook dinner for her boyfriend. It’s times like these I’m almost jealous of the simplicity of her life. Tonight I will go home to a pile of textbooks, papers, pencils, and scholarship applications. Laura doesn’t understand why I won’t just settle down with a nice lobsterman or even a prison guard and start a family.

Later I’m turning the key in the lock and she’s asking me the same question she asks every night.

“Why don’t you just stay around here, if you want to go to college so bad the community college is only two towns over."

“I...I can’t," I stammer. "I’ve got to get out.”

“Get out of what?” she asks, but I can already hear her sneakers padding away from me on the pavement.

“I’ve got to get out, shrieking now; I’ve got to get out of this wicked little town.”

My words are lost in the fog.