Sunlight fought to reach the dearth underneath it, filtered by the thick stratus that spanned the gray sky above. What little light that came down cast soft dark shadows from the swaying trees and abandoned buildings below. Tiny droplets peppered the field and drummed the top of the tan sedan parked a short distance from the opening of the well visited mine. The rain bogged dust down, muddied shoes, pants, tires, and whatever happened to fall victim to gravity.
Helly propped her back against the side of the car and stamped her foot on the slippery dirt to an expectant rhythm. Her arms wound tightly across her chest and her crimson calloused fingers tapped along them. She glared with narrowed eyes. Her right hand raised to her mouth to release a slender but mangled number two pencil from her gritted teeth.
“So,” she began. “Do we know what’s wrong with it?”
Amata didn’t budge from under the carriage. Their tools worked without pause. “I might have a clue. When’s the last time you had this thing looked at?”
A pause hung stagnant in the air between the two. Cool breezes drifted around the vehicle and fluttered the stiff red grass blades that sprang up around its tires.
The pharmacy tech answered slowly, her voice low and dry. “Between picking up shifts at the hell hole corner store, paying rent, and coming here?”
Without batting an eye, Amata answered back, “If you don’t schedule maintenance, it schedules itself.”
Helly groaned. “It couldn’t have picked a better time? I got places to be.”
“Like where? Here? The hell hole?”
“Ha, ha,” she replied in a monotone that came naturally to her. “You know, I didn’t always hate my job.”
“What, you actually liked standing in one spot all day ringing up pills and chips?”
Helly's face crinkled and she shook her head. “Other job,” she corrected. “Before that.”
Amata replied, grunting through the twists of a wrench.“Pharmagene? What's so great about answering to Mr. Diamine himself?”
She gritted her teeth and a sigh seeped from the cracks. “Pharmaceutical engineering was my dream job. It’s everything I ever wanted to do.”
They inched out from under the vehicle to look her in the eyes. She didn’t return the glance. “You’re telling me every little girl dreams of cooking up prescription drugs?”
Helly squinted, inspected the bite marks on her pencil, and resumed chewing the end of it, savoring the cedar and flaking paint. “I’m telling you this one did,” she replied between chomps. “I take it you had big dreams of fixing up beaters as a kid?”
“See, that’s the difference between you and me. I didn’t get to dream about what I was gonna do with my life.”
The pharmacy tech twisted her eyebrow and tilted her head. “What, they didn’t make you spell it out in crayon or go over your career path in high school?”
Amata let out a roar, wiping a tear with their dusty fingers. “You think I could afford to go to high school? I was one out of ten brothers and sisters, I had better things to do than go to school.”
Helly simply rolled her eyes and faced the mechanic in training. “Better things, like going to the hell hole mines to dig rocks out of the ground for life?”
Standing up to lean against the car beside her, they shrugged and replied in an even tone, “Guess it doesn’t matter. Look at us. You studied at a fancy schmancy college and landed a job on cloud nine, I worked my whole life after my thirteenth birthday.”
Her shoulders sagged as the truth rang true in her heart. She sucked a deep breath in, wishing the pencil between her canines and molars were a cigarette. “All roads lead to Rome,” she admitted with little enthusiasm.
