Okay, I was exaggerating the paycheck to make my point. But Troy didn’t focus on the money.
“You’ve been working at the mall since we broke up?” He blinked with incredulity. “Why haven’t I seen you?”
You haven’t seen me because I’ve been actively hiding.
“I’ve been busy,” I replied. “Living my life.”
“Oh.” Troy fiddled with his apron strings. “Oh.”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Drea was tapping an imaginary watch on her wrist.
“Where’s Zoe? I need to talk to her about something.”
“Ms. Gomez just stepped out,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“I seriously doubt it,” I replied.
“Are you sure I can’t help you?” he asked. “I know everything she knows. I’ve been trained as a seasonal assistant manager…”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at this. My imaginary management training program was real. Frank had a legit reason to be disappointed in me after all.
Troy misinterpreted my levity. When he reached for my hand, I snatched it away.
“Does America’s Best Cookie still have a walk-in freezer?” I asked.
“It’s not really large enough to be a walk-in freezer,” Troy answered, “it’s more of a stand-in freezer…”
“Oh my God! I don’t care!” Channeling Drea, I had an acute appreciation for how annoying such superfluous attention to detail could be at the wrong moment. “Do you know if anyone has ever found a doll in the freezer?”
“A…” Troy stroked his hairless chin, the way he often did when he collected his thoughts during cross-examination. “Doll?”
“You heard me,” I said. “A doll. Has anyone ever found a doll in the freezer. Specifically, a Cabbage Patch Kid.”
Troy gave his head a single shake.
“That would be a violation of America’s Best Cookie policy,” he said. “Freezers are for the purpose of storing America’s Best Cookie ingredients only. I’m not allowed to put my lunch in there. I can’t even imagine what would possess anyone to put a doll in there. Why are you asking me such a crazy question?”
On its surface, this was a crazy question. And now that I had kind of involved Troy, it wasn’t unreasonable for him to want an answer.
But that didn’t mean he deserved one.
“Ugh,” I said. “I knew you’d be no help to me.”
I turned and put a little extra oomph into my walk—a bit of Bellarosa bounce—knowing full well that Troy was watching me every strutting step of the way.
23
LOW-LEVEL ANARCHY
I strutted all the way to Sam Goody.
And I kept right on strutting up and down the aisles until I finally found him crouched in front of the magazine rack. When I gently tapped him on the shoulder, he sprang backward in a scrambled panic.
“Whew!” he said. “I thought you were my boss.”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s me.”
He nodded approvingly at the image of the soldier on my chest.
“Meat Is Murder.”
This was arguably The Smiths’ most iconic album cover. It had been proven that Sam Goody was paying attention to my T-shirts. So I had started paying even more attention to my T-shirts. But I couldn’t let him know that. Instead, I pinched the collar and made a bored face like, Oh, this old thing?
“Why are you avoiding the boss?” I asked.
He handed over a stack of zines with titles like Artificial Insanity, Gray Matter, and The Happy Thrasher. Xeroxed on cheap paper and barely held together with staples, the black-and-white photos and typefaces had gotten fuzzy and fuzzier with every sloppy photocopy and recopy.
“Did you make these?”
“No,” he replied. “I’m just a distributor.”
He stuck a zine with a bloody cartoon gargoyle on the cover between copies of Rolling Stone boasting a geezer rocker wrapped in a leggy supermodel wife half his age. The demon was less grotesque.
“You’re rebelling against your corporate overlords by sticking subversive reading material among the glossies?”
Sam arched a mischievous eyebrow. “Wanna help?”
“Of course!”
I stood lookout while Sam shuffled the magazines around on the racks. Grammar Police—featuring a doctored cover photo of First Lady Barbara Bush flipping the bird—caught my eye. I skimmed an article about the worst words.
“Says here ‘panties’ tops the list.”
“Really?” Sam asked. “What do people have against ‘panties’?”
“It’s just a word that makes people feel icky when they say it,” I said. “Here’s another. Get ready for it. Are you ready?”
“Am I ready?” Sam shook out his arms and legs, jumped up and down, smacked himself in the head a few times, and whooped. “I am ready!”
I took a step toward him, cupped my hand to his ear, and channeled Zoe’s creepy, creaky whisper.
“Mooooooiiiiiiiiiiisssssst.”
Sam shivered. I threw back my head and cackled. In that moment, I reminded myself of Drea.
“Moist Panties would make a great band name,” Sam joked.
“I loved their debut single.” I consulted the worst words list and put two of the grossest together. “‘Fetal Smear.’”
Sam grimaced, then grinned.
“Hmmm…” He tapped a finger to his temple. “I don’t know that one. How does it go?”
I batted my eyelashes in a most sarcastically flirtatious manner.
“Oh no, darlin’,” I demurred in a fake southern drawl. “Ah couldn’t possibly.”
Sam clasped his hands and got down on the floor.
“Pleeeeaase,” he begged. “I must hear ‘Fetal Smear’ by Moist Panties.”
“Okay,” I said, barely containing how thrilled I was to have brought this boy to his knees. “If you insist.”
I closed my eyes and started bobbing my head to the booming drumbeat in my head.
“Fetal Smear!” I shout-sang. “Clogged Slacks!”
I was loud, but not loud enough for anyone but Sam Goody to hear me over the classic rock blasting from the sound system.
“Curdle Slurp! Bulbous Maggots!”
I pogoed up and down.
“Queasy Phlegm! Chunky Roaches!”
The heinous word pairings flowed one into the next, like the best poetry should. The song ended with one last bit of thrashing and a final, primal scream.
“Munch! Munch! Muuuuuuunch!”
I threw my body into a nearby clearance rack, a mosh pit for one causing a tiny avalanche of half-priced cassingles. It was very punk rock. And yet, no one but Sam Goody even noticed.
“That was incredible,” he said, applauding. “I’m officially Moist Panties’ number-one fan.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d exerted myself like that. But I felt more exhilarated than exhausted.
“Too bad they broke up,” I said breathlessly. “Creative differences.”
This made Sam Goody laugh so hard, his glasses fell right off his face.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
I had no idea what to say next. I mean, how do you follow up an act like that?
“Why are you here?” he asked.
It was a good question. This was the first time I’d dropped by the store without a specific purpose other than wanting to see him again. But I couldn’t come right out and say that, could I?
“Why am I here?” I mused. “Why are you here? Why are any of us here?”
Sam Goody smiled but didn’t take the pseudo-philosophical bait.
“Well, whatever the reason,” he said, “I’m glad we’re here together.”
And for the very first time all summer, the mall was exactly where I wanted to be.
24
MASTER MULTITASKER
Drea and I were stuck.
Literally and figuratively stuck.
It had been two weeks since making the connecti
on between One Potato Twenty and ABC and we weren’t any closer to getting the next clue. This was the treasure hunt’s biggest setback by far. I didn’t see how we could possibly continue, but she refused to officially call off our quest. Drea’s unrelenting determination led us to the Cabbage Patch catacombs before breakfast.
“We are so close!” she insisted. “I can feel it!”
All I felt was glued to the floor. My loafers and Drea’s stilettos were equally ill-equipped to navigate the gummy, scummy linoleum. Moist sucking sounds followed us with every step, a nauseating noise I hadn’t noticed over the blare of Vanilla Ice the last time I was down here. And had it reeked so strongly of stale beer and body odor?
“Let’s get some lights on down here,” Drea said.
She hit the switch. Full fluorescent illumination did not do the Cabbage Patch any architectural or aesthetic favors.
“Ewwww.”
Drea took a wide berth around the couch of dubious hygiene. Each cushion showcased a different stomach-turning mosaic of smudges, smears, and stains. I took small comfort in knowing there was no way Troy or his ex had come away from their dry hump without contracting a highly contagious and possibly leprotic disease.
“Let’s get in and out of here as quickly as possible,” I urged. “I don’t want to be the first virgin in history to get a contact STD.”
Drea ignored my joke and marched to the storage room as briskly as possible under these sticky conditions. She pushed open the door, and despite knowing what to expect, the sight of row upon row of Vince and Tommy’s unadopted Cabbage Patch Kids still struck me as strange and almost unbearably sad. Fortunately, Drea didn’t give me any time to wallow.
“We need to open every box and check every birth certificate,” Drea instructed. “There might be another map hidden in here…”
I thought her obsession with the treasure hunt had gone too far. But joining Drea down here this one time was a fair exchange for her driving me to work every day for the rest of the summer. I’d do just about anything to avoid spending any more time around Kathy, who had recently taken to reading books with titles like, Hotter Than Ever: Satisfying Sex You Deserve After Divorce.
I grabbed the first box (Prentiss Charlemagne) and dug my fingers into the top.
“No!”
Drea slapped my hand away.
“Ouch!”
“You need to open it carefully,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to notice that these dolls have been disturbed in any way. We don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves. We don’t want anyone getting suspicious…”
I was starting to wonder how I’d know if Drea had reached the paranoid point of no return. Then she reached into her bra and removed a knife.
“Whoaaaa!”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Drea. “It’s a letter opener.”
It was a letter opener that looked exactly like a knife. She used it to cleanly slice through the seam on the top of a box belonging to a girl named Rhonda Bess.
“Voila!”
Then Drea reached into her bra to remove a second letter opener that also looked exactly like a knife.
“For you.”
“What else you got in there?” I said through a burst of laughter. “Please tell me it’s breakfast.”
“You gotta earn your breakfast,” she said. “Let’s get to these birth certificates.”
She removed the pink envelope from Rhonda Bess’s box. It looked legit from what I remembered from my own doll’s documentation, but Drea wouldn’t take my word for it. I swear she muttered a prayer as she cautiously ran the letter opener along the envelope and plucked out the paper inside.
“Gawddammit!”
“No map?”
She didn’t acknowledge my dumb question, choosing instead to return to the task at hand.
“Come on!” she commanded. “Your turn!”
I opened the box, copying Drea’s precision. The result was the same.
“No map,” I replied, holding up Prentiss Charlemagne’s birth certificate for her to see.
“Two down,” she said. “One hundred and eighteen to go. Between us both, I figure we can open and close two boxes a minute…”
“You’re serious about this?”
Drea plunged the dagger into Orville Toby’s lid. She was serious about this. So serious that she blew off all attempts at conversation.
“So, you know how I’ve been talking to that guy at the record store, right? The one you called Elvis but really looks more like Morrissey?”
“The Chinese guy?”
“Japanese American, actually.”
Drea opened another birth certificate and groaned. No map.
“When I first met him, I thought he was one of those bitter genius types. You know, one of those slackers who’s naturally gifted and probably did really well on an IQ test in kindergarten, but he never applied himself in school because he was too cool or whatever. And now he’s pissed because he’s working at the mall and maybe taking classes at community college, which wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have, like, this raging superiority complex…”
Drea grunted as she pulled another box off the shelf. Inside was a yellow-haired girl whose name I couldn’t read from where I stood.
“Anyway, that’s who I thought he was. But he’s not that guy at all. We’ve only talked for, like, five minutes at a time so it’s not like we were plumbing the depths of each other’s soul or anything…”
In fact, we hadn’t even exchanged our real names. This was fine by me because we’d have no reason to keep in touch when I left for New York City in eighteen days. And yet, what I had learned about Sam Goody made me curious to know more. How did he find the courage to drop out of business school when I couldn’t bring myself to tell Frank and Kathy I’d gotten fired from the friggin’ food court?
“I never thought I’d admire someone for dropping out, but…”
“Cassie!” Drea rattled the box so hard, ribbons shook loose from the doll’s pigtails. “I’m not listening!”
Drea’s lack of interest was disappointing. Worse, her dismissal made me feel silly for wanting to discuss these latest developments in the first place. And the more I thought about it—and I had plenty of time to think about it as I monotonously opened and closed box after box and box—she was right. This wasn’t hot gossip. Sam and I weren’t hooking up—we were barely even friends. We were two fans of Morrissey and low-level anarchy who’d spoken for a grand total of maybe an hour over two weeks.
And yet …
I kept going back every day. I didn’t want to spend my breaks with anyone else. Then again, there weren’t any better options within 900,000 square feet to choose from. Was I drawn to Sam Goody for who he was? Or for who he wasn’t?
“Can we at least put on some music or something?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure I saw a boom box back there.”
“What about not attracting any attention don’t you understand? If someone finds us down here, they could snatch the treasure right out from under us.”
“That can only happen if we find the next clue…”
“Exactly!” Drea tapped her letter opener twice against my temple. Not so hard it hurt, but just enough to make a point. “Now get to work!”
I didn’t understand why Drea was so fixated on this quest. I saw the numbers: Drea wasn’t hurting for cash. Her weekly earnings tripled mine and not for nepotistic reasons either. Her mother had an uncanny knack for choosing inventory—the store turned a profit because it never had too little or too much merchandise—but it was still up to Drea to sell it. And she earned an impressive commission doing just that.
With that money, Drea invested in an endless wardrobe, an unrivaled collection of makeup and hair products, and standing appointments for tanning, highlights, and manicures at Casino Full Service Beauty Salon. Since sophomore year, she’d been living rent-free in what was essentially her own apartment—with its own separate side entrance—on the ground floor of Gia’s t
hree-story bayfront condo. Within days of getting her license, she was screeching through the Pineville High parking lot, gleefully terrorizing pedestrians in a shiny Mazda Miata.
I had to admit, when she picked me up in her cherry-red convertible that morning—top up because the wind would wreck her hair—I felt all caught up on the summer I missed out on because of mono. I finally got my 90210 moment, albeit an unaired episode in which rad Dylan McKay takes pity on sad, sad Scott Scanlon and takes him for a spin. But unlike those Beverly Hills brats, Drea wasn’t spoiled. I knew for a fact that she had started saving for that car when she was ten years old. What other fifth-grade girl taped a poster of a red convertible above her bed?
“Putting it near my pillow makes dreams come true,” she had explained.
“Because that’s where you sleep?”
She smiled, showing off several thousand dollars’ worth of Worthy Orthodontia.
“I knew you’d get it.”
Inspired by that conversation, I hung my NYC subway map in the same prime spot, where it had remained to that very day. Drea, on the other hand, kept new dreams coming. The summer before sixth grade, she replaced the convertible with a color newspaper photo of a wunderkind in short shorts who’d shocked the world at Wimbledon.
“Boris Becker?” I asked. “You don’t even like tennis.”
“I like him.”
It was the first time I’d seen Drea go all googly-eyed over a guy. At seventeen, he was the youngest male singles player to win that or any other Grand Slam tournament. Boris was replaced by New Jersey’s second most famous rocker, Jon Bon Jovi. After JBJ came Kirk Cameron and a string of even more forgettable boys from even worse sitcoms, followed by whoever happened to be BOP magazine’s Hunk of the Month. I don’t know who she traded up for after the Coreys because that’s when I stopped being invited over to her house.
I was still contemplating all this two tedious hours later. Only after every box had been opened and all 120 birth certificates verified did Drea finally speak.
“This blows.”
No maps. No clue. No treasure.
“Are you ready to call it off?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why do you need this money?” I asked.
The Mall Page 12