School and Environs

I go to a private school in Wheat Ridge, known affectionately as White Ridge. They're all about experiential learning, which means project after project after project. It's just off the highway in a neighborhood that always smells like exhaust. There are about four cheap hotels around it, and rumor has it that a murderer was arrested in one of them once. The high schoolers (we're PreK-12) can leave campus for lunch, but we underclassmen have to walk everywhere. No driving, and no hitching a ride with the seniors. The motels complain about us walking through the parking lots. They want us to go through the park across the street. We're not allowed in the park either. There are only three places you can walk to lunch and still be on time for your afternoon classes. One of those combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut places, Carl's Jr. Jr., as I like to call it, and the BK Lounge. Every time I decide to eat at the BK Lounge, it's Roberta's shift, apparently. I don't know Roberta personally, but I can read her name tag. Apparently, Roberta is the only person who works there. When you order, even if you say, for example, number 8, Roberta cuts you off mid-sentence to bellow, "You want the meal?" There's no sense making any specifications about what condiments you want, because she will always get them backwards. When she tells you what number your order is, she talks to you like you didn't come home all night. If Roberta has to give you change, she throws it at you. She takes an unneccesarily venemous tone to say, "Enjoy your meal." Someday, I'll work up the courage to say, "Enjoy your studio apartment." On slow days, Roberta makes a point of swooping in on your table the moment you get up. She makes sure you see her scowl at you as she wipes it down with a smelly rag. Today me and my "eating disorder buddy" (more on this later) decide we want some fat-filled French fries, because we have something to prove. I hope against hope that Roberta isn't working today. No such luck. Roberta wouldn't miss a day of work if she were vomiting blood. Just to piss off Roberta, my buddy and I take the booth that's clearly designed for six people. She curses at us in Spanish, and we let her keep thinking we don't understand. Life is good for a few minutes.