"Snitch" by Erin Gnidziejko-Smith

Maddy’s boyfriend, Ross, has no job, so he has energy to tune his guitar all night and sleep all day. Ross’s guitar cost the same as a month’s rent. Maddy knows this because she pays the bills with her checks from Waffle Pantry. Maddy wants to get pregnant. She wants to quit Waffle Pantry to stay home and raise the baby. She wants to wash a baby and make up stories to tell it. She wants to care for the baby while her nocturnal boyfriend works.

At work, her boss frowns. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve been up all night. If you fall asleep, you’ll lose this job.”

“I can’t afford to lose this job,” Maddy says. She often feels humiliated at Waffle Pantry, but she doesn’t have the experience or the degree to work anywhere else. Her job does not fulfill her. All she does is wipe the sticky off the booths and keep an eye out while the boss stores drugs in the walk-in refrigeration unit and distributes them in the alley after the restaurant closes. Once Maddy asked what she should do if a cop walked in, and her boss said. “Stand there and look pretty. I don’t know. Wipe something.”

Maddy’s boyfriend decides to see how long he can go without sleep. He records himself staying awake and tuning his guitar with the video camera Maddy bought for the baby that keeps not coming. He puts the videos on YouTube, hoping for fame. Secretly, Maddy finds his videos flat and repetitive. They contain no story, and Maddy knows people like a story. Since she cannot sleep when he is around, Maddy stays up watching police dramas and mob movies until her ears buzz. She identifies with the police informants. When she was younger, she used to tell on other kids—not because she objected to them eating paste and sticking their hands down their pants—but because she liked when her teachers gave her popsicles and ribbons for good citizenship. At home, for pocket change, she told her parents when her little brother cried or smeared poop on the walls. It wasn’t until high school that a teacher told Maddy her behavior wasn’t making her any friends. “People don’t like a snitch. Why do you think you don’t have a handsome boyfriend?” It was true, Maddy realized. People didn’t invite her anywhere. Nobody told her secrets on the phone.

Maddy eventually learned to keep her mouth shut. Every time her new friends misbehaved, she locked it away in her mind even though she strangled with the desire to share. Now at twenty-four she has a handsome boyfriend, but he is a loser and he isn’t letting her get any sleep. She wonders if this is why she is not pregnant.

After the eighth night Ross keeps her up, she makes a decision. She watches the sky pinken with dawn and then calls in sick at Waffle Pantry. She puts on her most businesslike outfit and walks downtown and into the police station where a fat woman bends under the desk rubbing lotion onto her legs. Maddy’s heels clack on the tile. The woman pops up and asks, “Can I help you, honey?”

“I want to be a snitch,” Maddy says.

“What?”

“A confidential informant. Like on TV. I tell you something and in exchange you send me to witness protection.” She will get a new identity, an apartment, and a better job. Her future will be free of Ross and Waffle Pantry, free of drugs and the tiny apartment that smells like socks and Ross’s expensive guitar. “I’ve been to three semesters of college and I know everything about a lot of people.”

“What kind of information?”

“I know about underage drinking and cheating on tests.”

The policewoman squirts lotion into her palm and spreads it over her hands and wrists. “That’s not helpful. We generally arrest the underage drinkers when we are called out for other reasons. We don’t allot manpower to go out and actively catch them.”

“I’m willing to give up anyone.”

The woman chuckles. “That’s not how it works. You can’t just walk in here and demand witness protection. That’s for, like, mob-related things.”

“Oh,” Maddy says sadly.

“Why do you want witness protection? That completely uproots your life. You have to start from scratch. Nice girl like you, shouldn’t you be married or holding a good job down at Waffle Pantry?”

“I already work at Waffle Pantry, and a bunch of crooks run it.”

The woman is putting her lotion into a drawer, but she perks up when Maddy said this.

“I could tell you things about my boss at Waffle Pantry,” Maddy begins.

“Waffle Pantry over on Kinsey Boulevard? You need to talk to Daniel. It’s his investigation.” She comes around the desk and leads Maddy down the corridor. She knocks on an office door. It is a big room with two windows overlooking the park. Inside sits Daniel, a handsome policeman whom Maddy recognizes from high school.

“You’ve been arrested?” he asks, confused. He has bright eyes and a sparkly badge.

“She has information,” says the policewoman.

Daniel furrows his brow. “They called you Stool Pigeon in school. You said I threw tater tots and I got detention,” he says. “I was afraid it would keep me out of the academy.”

“Maybe I can tell you something about the Waffle Pantry,” Maddy suggests.

“She wants to be a snitch,” the policewoman says. “Wants witness protection. Can you believe that?”

Maddy says, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Aren’t you frightened? That guy’s dangerous. Dog fighting. Drugs. Illegal weapons. Child pornography.” Daniel’s face is pale and very, very handsome. “But if you can help me put away this criminal, I’ll protect you any way I can.”

Maddy puts on a brave face. “Daniel,” she says. “Officer, I want to do my duty.”

That night she tells Ross to get out. She can’t miss more sleep because she has to learn to operate the tiny spy camera Daniel assigned her to secure evidence. In the morning, she will go into work like normal, but instead of wiping sticky out of the sinks, she is supposed to snoop around. After work, she will meet Daniel at Mocha Coffee Bench and share the evidence.

She uses the spy camera to take secret photographs of the bricks of drugs in the walk-in, and she invents a reason to go down to the basement in order to photograph the concrete pits where her boss hosts dogfights. But then, her boss gets twitchy and suspicious. “Go wipe something and act normal,” he whispers. “The cops have been hanging around all day. I can sense it.” He counts the money in the cash register and blends a milkshake for a little girl and her mother. Later, he says, “I have a WWII machine gun in the condiment drawer, and I plan to annihilate any cop that walks in here, so make sure you’re out of the way.”

Maddy understands that he is serious. What if he gets out of jail in a few years? What if the police department doesn’t do a good job hiding her?

He says, “If I ever find out who tipped the cops off to my illegal activities, I’ll make them pay.” He chops strawberries for syrup, and the way his knife hacks makes Maddy imagine him chopping off fingers.

So later, during her break, she sits in a booth and erases all the incriminating photographs from the spy camera. She replaces them with photographs of the interior of the dishwasher. After work, she walks to Mocha Coffee Bench, which is twenty percent cleaner than Waffle Pantry. Daniel trips over his briefcase taking her arm to help her to her seat. After they order, Maddy talks about her boss cheating on his girlfriend. Daniel leans close to her so they can examine the interior photographs of the dishwasher together. She doesn’t share any of the real dirt because despite her grades in school, she is not stupid. She can’t risk pissing off the scariest person she knows. What if she has a baby when he gets out of jail?

She makes up stuff about the cooks, too, enough stuff that Daniel touches her arm again and says she’s been very helpful and he hopes they can have coffee again the next day. He calls her later to make sure she’s home safe. It doesn’t matter that none of her stories pan out. Her life goes on. She keeps her lousy job at Waffle Pantry, but now the handsome cop is her boyfriend and on his days off, he takes her ring shopping. Once they get married, she plans to be a stay-at-home mom. She will wash her baby and tell it all kinds of stories. Nothing could make her happier.

Erin Gnidziejko-Smith's work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, PANK, and others. She holds an MFA from Penn State and lives in Staunton, Virginia.