I got a perfect score on the road test. I was happy, but my mouth was closed in my driver’s license photo. My tooth had been broken beyond repair. It needed a full replacement.
“The other one too,” Mom had said.
“Both anterior central incisors,” Dad had said.
“Eight and nine,” they said together.
It turned out, I couldn’t just get one shiny new fake tooth and expect it to blend in with all my original old teeth. Many cosmetic dentists went too far, insisting on veneers for the entire upper row, but my parents didn’t think that was necessary in my case. They only fixed the busted tooth and the one right next to it. I still wasn’t used to the unfamiliar contours of my new smile. The difference was measurable in micro-millimeters, but I could feel every strange bit of it when I ran my tongue over my teeth.
I was lightly gassed during the procedure—grinding down tooth enamel with a sander wasn’t painful, exactly, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant. I was absolutely not whacked-out on drugs. I was lucid, if more relaxed than usual, even under the uncomfortable circumstances. I believed what I observed during those hours in the chair at Worthy Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry, and what I learned was this: I’d never understand why their business partnership functioned better than their marriage. But I’d always remember them—after they divorced and long afterward—working harmoniously and happily together, making two new teeth that were just imperfect enough to look like they belonged in their only child’s mouth.
I pulled the Volvo into the upper-level parking area. No one—in all my non-driving years—had ever thought to drop me off here between Macy’s and Sears. Entrance four was the only one that didn’t go through a major department store, but directly onto a short corridor leading to Concourse E. If you didn’t know it existed, it could be easily missed. And yet, judging by the difficulty in finding a decent space, it was the preferred entrance to a whole crowd of shoppers who would never understand why anyone parked anywhere else …
“Stop stalling.”
The Drea in my head was right. My first solo drive to the mall had gone smoothly, but now I was definitely stalling. Stores closed in three hours, and I had a lot to accomplish in that time. I needed to get out of the car to make amends while I still could. I made an actual checklist because writing it down made me more accountable.
JACKET
CHEST
MIXED
TREASURE
Again, I’d called upon my Odyssey of the Mind training, by putting the easiest to-dos first. By making small, but measurable progress, I’d hopefully gain the confidence I’d need to face the final trial, the most perplexing, vexing challenge of them all.
45
JACKET
The arcade was slow at this hour. Preteens, for whom the mall was de facto summer camp, had hopped on their bicycles and were pedaling home for dinner. The slightly older nighttime gamers were due to arrive in another hour or so, after finishing up their morning-into-afternoon shifts at Foot Locker or Ponderosa Steak & Ale.
Sonny Sexton would be there because he was always there, from opening to closing. It didn’t take me long to find him, crouched in front of the coin slot of a game called Double Dragon. He was wearing a checkered flannel shirt to keep warm in the cranked-up AC. I not only reneged on my promise to return the jacket within twenty-four hours—I hadn’t bothered returning it at all. For days afterward, a flowery hint of pomade exuded from the dingy denim. The jacket had become so inextricably linked to Sam that I’d pretty much forgotten why I’d borrowed it in the first place.
I’d kept it way longer than the lavender scent had lingered.
I’d kept it long enough to convince myself I had only imagined the traces of Sam Goody left behind.
“Hey,” I said.
He stood, leaned against the machine.
“Heyyyy.”
I held out the jacket by the sleeves. Without saying anything, Sonny removed his flannel shirt and knotted it around this waist. He slipped one arm in the denim, followed by the other.
“Ahhhhh…” He sighed as if he’d submerged himself in a warm bubble bath.
“I’m sorry for breaking my promise,” I said. “I should have returned it sooner.”
“A good girl like you?” He was smiling. “I knew you’d bring it back to me eventually.”
“I’m not good,” I replied. “It’s recently come to my attention that I’m a selfish asshole.”
“Well,” said a soft, female voice, “too much time around Troy will do that to a person.”
Even after I laid eyes on the tiny girl with the teased hair in the Casino Pier T-shirt, it still took a few seconds to connect the vision to the voice. I’d never heard Helen communicate at any level lower than a full-throated screech. I couldn’t hide my terror.
“I come in peace,” Helen said, showing her palms. “I owe you an apology.”
“You do?” I asked timidly.
“I wasn’t right in the head for a while.”
“Too much time around Troy will do that to a person.”
Helen rewarded me with a soft chuckle I didn’t earn for lazily recycling her joke.
“My court-appointed therapist says I have anger management issues,” Helen explained.
From behind her, Sonny flashed me a warning look: Don’t ask. So as curious as I was about her legal troubles, I kept my questions to myself.
“Anyways,” Helen went on, “after I called her Dr. Douchenozzle and chucked an ashtray at her head, I realized she might have a point.”
Sonny opened his arms as an invitation for her to fold her body against his in a totally unsexual way.
“She’s made a lot of progress already,” he said. “Her parents and I are so proud.”
Until that moment, I hadn’t pictured Helen as someone with parents. In my mythology, she was not a normal human infant birthed on this Earth. No, Helen had emerged as a fully formed monster from the fires of Hades, a malevolent, vengeful hell-beast forged in the underworld’s furnace to make my last summer in Pineville as miserable as possible.
When, in fact, she was just a girl who was hurting inside.
Helen had demons. She wasn’t a demon.
“I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” Sonny said, pulling Helen closer. “I should’ve known something deeply fucked up was going on with you to hook up with Cookie Boy.” He turned to me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I insisted. “There’s something deeply fucked up with me too. Unfortunately, I don’t have an official diagnosis to treat it.”
I was about to leave this loved-up couple alone when Helen lifted her head from Sonny’s chest and gestured toward the Double Dragon machine.
“Wanna play a round?”
“Oh, I’m really, really bad at arcade games,” I said.
“So what?” Helen asked. “Do you always have to be the best at everything all the time?”
I’d spent seventeen years trying to be the best at everything all the time. And I had only succeeded at being the worst in all the ways that truly mattered:
as a daughter,
as a friend,
as a decent human being.
“It’s on me,” Sonny said, squeezing two quarters out of the coin holster around his waist.
“I’m just going to die right away,” I said.
“I swear I won’t let you die right away.” Helen held up two fingers like a Girl Scout. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
She got me on that one.
I clutched the joystick, hoping there was some truth to the word. As it turned out, one hour in arcade time was equivalent to five minutes in the outside world. I would’ve sworn in Mock Court that I’d played that video game with Helen for a fraction of the time I actually did. Double Dragon, as Helen had explained, wasn’t just a beat-’em-up game, it had a compelling story that set it apart.
“It’s a classic tale of family and friendship and love and loyalty and betrayal and brotherhoo
d,” she said. “You know, all the most important shit in life.”
Helen and I were twin martial artists—Billy and Jimmy aka Hammer and Spike—trying to rescue my girlfriend, Marian, who was kidnapped by a rival gang. Locations varied—city slum, factory, forest, secret hideout—but our mission never did. Helen’s expert advice?
“Just kick ass!”
We’d made it through level three and were moving on to the next when Helen grumbled about having to leave the mall to start her shift on the boardwalk.
“It’s almost six o’clock!” The numbers on my watch shocked me. “How did that happen?”
“There are no clocks in the arcade for a reason.”
I told Helen to thank Sonny for the—ahem—fun time.
“You make a great couple,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Helen. “We do.”
And then I found myself hugging the girl who had once tried to assassinate me.
46
CHEST
I was a half hour late for the next item on my to-do list. I ran through the Concourses to make up for lost time and was breathless when I got to Wood World.
“Sylvester!” I was panting. “I’m here!”
“Hi, there, Cassie,” he replied merrily as ever.
I rested on the counter to catch my breath. His flannel shirt was the same pattern as Sonny Sexton’s—a blue-and-black buffalo plaid—though Sylvester’s was faded and nubby. Flannel was showing up all over the place lately and it wasn’t even fall yet.
“You’re a trendsetter in that shirt, you know,” I said.
“I’ve owned this shirt for twenty years.” Sylvester ho-ho-hoed. “Live long enough and everything old is new again.”
That philosophy was at the core of his success, and what kept him in business all these years. By staying true to himself, Sylvester made Wood World transcend trends. Of course, it helped that he understood exactly who he was. I hadn’t reached that level of self-actualization. I was closer than I was a few months ago, but hadn’t arrived there yet.
“I was starting to worry I wouldn’t see you tonight,” he said.
“I might not have the best reputation these days, but there’s no way I would stiff you like that,” I replied. “Especially since this was kind of a rush job on such short notice.”
“Pshaw! Wasn’t anything to it. I love doing custom work. It’s what I live for!”
Even if the recipient didn’t appreciate this gift, I could at least feel good about bringing happiness to Sylvester.
“You ready to see it?”
“Yes!”
Sylvester laughed deep in his bowlful-of-jelly belly. I was like a kid desperate to open her first present of the holiday season. I really did want to see his creation—but quickly. I had two more to-dos before the mall closed at 8:00 p.m. Sylvester ambled out of the back office holding a wood chest, roughly the size of a shoe box. The grain was textured in various shades of purpleheart, from eggplant to amethyst to the plum lipstick I was wearing when I’d royally messed things up.
“Ohhhh,” I gasped. “It’s beautiful.”
Sylvester had charged me far less than what the box was worth, but it still cost a shift at Bellarosa. Half a textbook. One mezzanine ticket to a Broadway show.
“Inscribed as requested.”
He opened the lid on its double hinge to reveal the words he’d carved on the inside. I traced my finger along the engraving.
“What’s that from, anyway?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Obviously I was lying. Nobody pays for the inscription of “nothing.”
I thanked Sylvester and sped across Concourse F. I was halfway to my penultimate to-do, when I felt an unmistakable presence trailing behind me. It was perfect timing, really. It couldn’t have been better if I had tried to plan it. Which is exactly why I hadn’t. Why bother trying to find Zoe when I knew she would find me?
I stopped, spun around. “Boo!”
My best attempt at a scare worked well enough, even on a seasoned creeper.
“Ha!”
I’d finally beaten Zoe to it. Spooked her before she spooked me. And she was positively delighted. I was equally happy to see her wearing the velvet scarf.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” She slapped her palms to her hollow cheeks. “Ha!”
It was a robust burst of laughter, and I loved hearing it.
“I have something for you,” I said.
Her eyes saucered with surprise. “Really?”
I led her to a slightly quieter spot in the shadow of the escalators. We sat on the tiled ledge of a large planter containing a mix of real and artificial trees.
“I read these and thought of you.”
I opened the flap on my knapsack and pulled out the leftovers from my stint as a co-conspirator in low-level anarchy. It was the best of feminist underground lit, zines with names like: Bikini Kill, Chainsaw, and Riot Grrrl. All made specifically by grrrls, for grrrls.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Zoe couldn’t flip through the pages fast enough “They’re…”
I understood why she was at a loss for words. It was impossible to fully describe the scope of these publications. Handwritten manifestos railing against “racist, classist, fattist, speciesist, heterosexist” culture. Lesbian erotica. Typed, single-spaced essays debunking “the many myths of female masturbation.” Song lyrics (“hey you think you know me but you don’t”) by bands (Bratmobile) I’d never heard of. Photo collages juxtaposing 1950s advertisements and modern pop star iconography, Disney princess and pornography. I wish I’d had such inspirational reading material when I was recovering from mono.
“Wow,” Zoe finally said. “Where did you get them?”
“Someone put them in the magazine rack at the music store,” I said. “There’s another anarchist among us.”
Specifics weren’t necessary. I didn’t need to mention the anarchist by name—or gender. Of course I didn’t miss the irony of one boy’s subversive act encouraging the radicalization of least one feminist, if not two.
Zoe closed her eyes and clutched the zines to her chest in full swoon.
“How can I repay you?”
“You already did,” I said, “when you told me where to find the final clue.”
When I was on Bellarosa’s toilet—down in “the dumper,” as Zoe had oddly and specifically put it—I looked up. And that’s when I noticed for the first time that the bathroom ceiling was at least a foot lower than in the store or back office. The low height contributed to the claustrophobic atmosphere that discouraged Bellarosa employees from lingering in the bathroom for too long. The ceiling was a grid of flimsy tiles, again, unlike anywhere else in the store. I got a fluttery feeling in my rib cage, the way I always did when I knew I was on the verge of solving the unsolvable.
I climbed onto the toilet, reached up, and poked at one of the tiles with my finger. It easily gave way. And there, hidden in that secret storage space right above the commode, was not another Cabbage Patch Doll, but a taped-up Reebok shoebox.
“The treasure!” Zoe exclaimed. “What was inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You didn’t open it?”
This was the most animated I’d ever seen her.
“If you’re so interested, why didn’t you open it?” I pressed. “You gave me the clue, remember?”
Zoe clicked her tongue stud against her teeth.
“It wasn’t my treasure to take.”
This witch certainly had a vengeful streak, but she also had integrity. And that’s more than I could say about how I’d conducted myself for far too long.
“It wasn’t mine either,” I said. “I didn’t deserve to open it.”
“Cassie Worthy”—Zoe paused—“wasn’t worthy.”
I groaned because it was so on-the-nose and also because it was true. I was a disappointment to everyone I’d come in contact with all summer, but no one more than the person who had introduced me to the treasure hunt in the first
place.
“Are you worthy now?” Zoe asked.
Not yet, but I hoped I was getting closer. I still had amends left to make.
47
MIXED
I almost expected Sam Goody to be wearing the same shirt I’d seen on Sylvester and Sonny Sexton. Didn’t everyone in the Pacific Northwest wear flannel? It was a relief to see him in the same outfit he was wearing the first time I laid eyes on him: employee T-shirt, pegged black jeans, boots. It occurred to me that I’d only seen him wearing that same exact outfit, and I wondered if I’d ever get a chance to see him in anything else.
I’d chosen my own outfit with care. For the first time since I’d gotten mono, I finally filled out my favorite jeans again. I’d paired them with the cream, collarbone-baring shirt Drea had designed for my disastrous date with Slade. In the weeks following that night, my stomach turned at the sight of that shirt crumpled in a ball on my bedroom floor. It might still be there if Kathy hadn’t picked it up while we were packing my suitcase for school.
“What a nice top,” she said, stroking the petal-soft material. “You should take better care of it than this.”
My mother was right. So I handwashed the shirt in my bathroom sink and let it air dry on the clothesline in our backyard. Drea’s design now smelled of fresh air and sunshine. It was even better than new. Next time, I’d complete this outfit with oxblood Doc Martens I was determined to buy before the end of first-year orientation. In our phone call over the weekend, Simone Levy had promised to take me to Eighth Street in Greenwich Village because that’s where she always went to get the best deals on shoes.
Sam Goody had his back to me. He was standing in front of the Billboard 100 wall, removing CDs from some slots and returning them to others. Customers were constantly putting merchandise back where it didn’t belong, and a good part of Sam Goody’s day was spent correcting other people’s carelessness. Freddy must’ve been really hungover because he was playing a deeply strange song combining Gregorian chants and French pillow talk over hypnotic rhythms. It was a hallucinogenic soundscape, and I had to focus extra-hard to stay grounded as I put one penny-loafered foot in front of the other.
The Mall Page 20