by Liz Appel
Someone gasped. A loud, strangled sound, like a wounded animal had been let loose in the church.
Two hundred heads swiveled to face me. There was no wounded animal making that noise.
It was me.
FIVE
There was a stack of boxes in the toy store on Monday morning, a stack big enough that I could hide behind. Except my job was to unpack them and get the toys on the shelves of Wonder World.
Marcus, my boss and the owner of the most bizarre toy store on earth, didn’t say anything to me when I walked in at 9 a.m., and I wondered if he knew. He peered up at me through his thick eyeglasses and nodded a good morning from his perch in the back office. He was a man of few words and even fewer smiles.
I’d spent the Sunday after the disaster on the couch. My phone buzzed with texts and missed calls all day. I ignored them. I huddled under a burgundy afghan and watched Lifetime and cried over the sad movies. At least that’s what I told myself I was crying about. And every time my thoughts would drift to the scene in the church—the anguished look on Chase’s face and the murderous one on Angela’s, the bemused expressions of all the wedding guests—I’d force myself to refocus on She’s Too Young or No One Would Tell. It worked. Sort of.
I slid the box opener through the tape and pried open the box. A dozen plastic play sets, complete with tiny figures and furniture. I pushed the box along the floor and hauled them out and onto the shelf. The next box was filled with dolls, porcelain collector ones in elaborate costumes. These were on display in the case behind the counter, so I hauled the box up to the front of the store.
I lifted the lids to their boxes, looking for new ones. A flapper doll with a red-fringe dress and thick black eyeliner. A doll dressed as Dorothy, complete with Toto huddled in a little basket. And a bride. Dark hair, dark eyes. Just like Angela.
“Resorting to voodoo?”
I spun around.
Jill Wegman stood at the counter, holding a Starbucks iced-coffee and looking pointedly at the doll nestled in my hands.
“Um. No.” I placed the doll in the case.
Jill Wegman was many things. She was my best friend and the smartest person I knew. She was also the most outspoken person in the universe and I knew exactly what she would have had to say about my hare-brained idea. It was why I hadn’t told her. And why I hadn’t picked up the phone at all yesterday. But, somehow, she knew.
“You’re sure that’s not next on your list of stellar ideas?” She sipped her drink from a lipstick stained straw. “You know, since crashing the wedding didn’t work?”
I didn’t answer, just popped the lid off the next doll box.
“Seriously, Bon. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.” I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” She adjusted the strap of her purse, lifting her brown hair off her shoulder. “Any fallout?”
It felt like a trick question. Wasn’t the sheer number of phone calls and texts I’d gotten the day before a sign that yes, people had noticed and yes, there probably were going to be some repercussions from my latest stupid move?
“Not yet,” I said.
“You gonna tell me why you decided to pull that stunt?” She paused, her eyes narrowed. “And if you say the tarot cards told you to do it, I seriously will have you committed.”
She had no appreciation for spiritual tools. None. I didn’t think she would appreciate song inspiration either, though.
“No tarot was involved in the making of this disaster,” I said.
“So…what?” She tossed her empty drink in the trash can behind the counter. “Did you and Chase talk? Before the wedding?”
“No.”
“OK. Did you see Angela with someone else?”
I knew what she was doing. Trying to put together pieces of the puzzle. The only problem was, she did’t have all the pieces. And I couldn’t give them to her. She was my best friend but there were some things I’d done, some things that were so stupid, I couldn’t bring myself to share them with her. Especially with her, my perfect, no-nonsense, will-beat-me-senseless-if-she-finds-out-what-I-did best friend.
“No.”
Jill sighed. “I’m going to get it out of you eventually, you know. There’s a reason I’m going to law school.”
I smiled. I knew that. She was persistent and could wear even the strongest person down with her incessant questions. I’d told her more than once that she was missing her true calling. Why be a lawyer when she could be an interrogator for the CIA?
“How did you hear?” I asked.
“You didn’t see the front page of the paper today?” She laughed when she saw my expression. “Kidding. Though it wouldn’t surprise me. Danny was there. He saw you.”
I felt my face redden. I was glad Jill hadn’t been around to see me make a fool out of myself, but having her younger brother there was almost as bad.
“What did he say?”
“Just that you were at the church door, looking in. Moaning or something.” Jill shook her head. “Really, Bon. Not cool.”
“Did he say anything about Chase…fainting?”
Jill leaned against the counter. “Before or after you hit him with your shoe?”
My cheeks flamed tomato-red.
“No one knows it was yours,” she said. “Danny mentioned a shoe on the altar. There were a lot of Cinderella jokes. I was the only one who put two-and-two together. I mean, put you and shoe together.”
Of course. She was Jill, wasn’t she?
I flattened the box the dolls were in and tucked it behind the cash-wrap area. A customer approached with a stuffed bacteria in his hands.
I rang up the E. coli and swiped his credit card. Ten bucks. Jill watched in disbelief as I bagged it and handed the man his receipt.
“Who buys that?” she asked after he’d gone.
I nodded my head toward the door. “That guy.”
Jill shook her head. “Crazy. People are crazy.” She looked at me. “Including you.”
“Yes. I know. You’re ready to have me committed. Great. Lead the way.”
“Well, technically, that’s my last resort.”
“Whew.”
She pulled her phone from her purse and pecked at the screen. “We need to keep you busy. Keep your mind off the ex. And we need to set you up with someone new. Like, pronto.”
I walked back to the stack of boxes and she followed me.
“I don’t want to be set up.”
“Of course you don’t.” She pursed her lips. “You’re pining. You want people to feel sorry for you. You want to feel sorry for you. Well, guess what? You’ve been feeling like this for almost a year now and nothing’s changed. You’re single. You haven’t had a date in months. And the man you think you love just ran off and married the Wicked Witch.”
“I do love him.”
She rolled her eyes behind her tortoise-shell glasses. On anyone else, they would have looked bookish. Nerdy. On her, they looked hot. “Puh-leeze. You’ve ’loved’ him since you were five years old.”
“Not true.” I didn’t like Chase at all in kindergarten. Or at any time in elementary school, come to think of it.
“Fine. A long time. Too long. But at this point, I don’t think it’s love. It’s more like fixation. Fascination. Chase has become your security blanket.”
“Wrong,” I said. “You don’t know.”
“Oh, I do know. It’s safer to say you love Chase than it is to see anyone else and move on with your life.”
I didn’t say anything. And I wished that I had a rag to stuff in her mouth.
You’ve never given another guy a chance. But now you’re gonna have to.”
I shuddered. I knew what was happening. Jill was like that robot guy from the Terminator movies. Focused. Unwavering. Usually, she applied that to academics. There was a reason she was Valedictorian, a reason she managed to finish her undergrad degree in two years: sheer determination. AP classes in high school, CLEP class
es to test out of others, and a full course-load every single semester. While I wandered aimlessly at Mansfield Community College, trying out classes like they were flavors of saltwater taffy, Jill plowed her way through credits.
But it was summer. Law school started in the fall. And she was looking for something to do.
She showed me her phone. A dating website called Match Me.
I shook my head. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“What makes you think some guy I don’t know would want to take a chance on me?” I motioned to my body. “This? Really?”
It wasn’t that I was unattractive. I knew that. I was just…there. There was nothing singularly spectacular about me. Blondish-brown hair. Green eyes. Freckles. A smile that, if you cocked your head just a little to the left, stretched mostly straight. Too tall to be a gymnast but too short to look like a normal 20 year old.
“You’re not ugly,” Jill said. It was apparently as much of a compliment as she could manage.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Let me finish,” she said, annoyed. “You’ve just decided that you aren’t attractive. Again. It’s a fall back. Saves you from having to put yourself out there for the right guy. And the right guy is going to see that you’re gorgeous and smart and funny.”
“Chase was the right guy.”
“Chase is a moron. Look, we need to get you mingling with people outside of Mansfield. It’s entirely too insular here. You need to expand your horizons. And since you never step foot out of this God-forsaken town, well, this is one way we can get you to see what else is out there. Who else is out there.”
I knew she was right. She was always right. It wasn’t that I was a hermit. I had a job. I took a couple of classes. I hung out, sometimes, with friends on weekend nights. But when friends went down to the Cities, I always stayed home. I liked Mansfield. I was comfortable there. It felt like me. I felt out of my element when I stepped outside of Mansfield.
So I appreciated what she was trying to do. But she was forgetting one thing: I loved Chase Somers.
“I don’t want anyone else,” I muttered.
“Too bad.” She smiled. “Because we’re going to find you someone else to want.”
SIX
I stopped for groceries on my way home from work. Business had been slow at Wonder World and I’d spent the better half of my shift taking inventory of the greeting cards.
So, apart from Jill, no one had said anything to me about the wedding.
Until the cereal aisle.
“Those should fit nicely around your finger.”
My grip tightened on the box of Frosted Cheerios I was holding.
Jenna O’Rourke stood behind me, her hands resting on a shopping cart.
“Excuse me?”
She smirked. “You know, since Chase didn’t put a ring on your finger.”
I could feel the cardboard buckle as my fingers clenched.
“They’re in Hawaii, you know,” she said, adjusting the sunglasses perched on her blond head. “Having the best time.”
What was I supposed to say to that?
“And they had a good laugh over your appearance at the wedding.” She smiled thinly. “We all did, actually.”
I turned away from her so she couldn’t see my cheeks burn. I didn’t know what I’d expected after that stunt. I mean, I knew what I’d wanted to happen. I’d wanted Chase to run away with me. To live out the song, to get the guy, to be that happily ever after. I never gave much thought to alternative outcomes.
“I’m surprised you weren’t better dressed for the occasion.” She selected a box of Kashi GoLean and tossed it into her cart.
I’d spent fifty bucks on the dress at Forever 21. What was wrong with it?
“I mean, what if Chase had changed his mind?” she asked, her eyebrows raised. “If you’d been wearing a wedding gown…why, you could’ve just stepped right in and taken Angela’s place!” She erupted into peals of laughter.
I pushed past her, toward the produce section. I was sure my cheeks were as red as the bin of apples in front of me.
“You could have had her cake, her reception, her gifts.” She snickered. “Even her honeymoon…”
My stomach rolled. How could I not have seen this coming? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Is everything OK?”
It was Paul, a blue shopping basket hanging on his forearm. It was filled with single-serving packages of Stouffer’s frozen lasagna.
Jenna quickly smoothed her hair and fixed an innocent smile on her face. “Oh, hi Paul.” She looked him over, her eyes zeroing in on the basket. “You like lasagna? You should totally come over to my place sometime—I make a kick-ass lasagna.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He glanced in my direction. “You alright?”
Jenna answered for me. “Everything’s perfect. We were just reminiscing about the weekend. Weren’t we, Bonnie?”
I tried to nod my head. My stomach felt funny, but my head did, too, like there was suddenly more air floating around inside of my brain. It was a likely possibility—I was pretty sure a lack of brain cells was to blame for all of my recent acts of stupidity.
“Lay off, Jenna,” Paul said.
She frowned. “I’m not doing anything. Lighten up.”
Paul ignored her and stepped closer to me. “You don’t look so good.”
“Awesome. Thanks a lot.” I leaned against the cart.
“No, no. That’s not what I meant,” he stammered, a rush of red spreading from his neck upward. “You look…sick.”
I didn’t want to admit that I felt sick, too, all queasy and light-headed from my confrontation with Jenna. I knew this was just a precursor of things to come—I’d never live down what had happened at Chase and Angela’s wedding. Never. Maybe my time in Mansfield was coming to an end. Maybe I did need to think more seriously about becoming a hermit.
“Bonnie?” Paul spoke to me through a tunnel, his voice hollow but alarmed.
I tried to answer but I couldn’t. Because the grocery store started to spin and everything went black.
SEVEN
“What happened?”
Paul’s face was inches from mine. “Relax. You fainted.”
My hands were wet and sticky. So was my back. So was everything. I tried to focus my eyes but everything was blurry and lit-up, like I’d just spent fifteen minutes staring into a sky filled with fireworks. I attempted to sit up but he held me down.
“Hang on. Jenna went to grab you something to change into.”
“What?” I pushed his hands away and raised myself to a half-sitting position.
I was sprawled on the floor of the produce aisle, covered in something red and sticky.
“You fainted,” he repeated. “And, uh, you sorta took out the tomato display on your way down.”
My shoulders sagged and I sighed. Of course I did. A couple of curious onlookers had stopped and were staring at me, their expressions a mixture of horror and amusement. It reminded me of the looks on the faces of the wedding guests and I immediately wondered which event they were reacting to, my current situation or my past transgression.
Jenna appeared then, holding up a Minnesota Gophers shirt that looked more like a sail.
“This is all I could find,” she said, breathless.
Paul frowned.
“It’s a grocery store, not Target,” she said. “She should be happy I was able to find something that wasn’t covered in tomato paste.”
Paul took it from her. “Can you stand?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
He held out his hand to me and helped lift me off the floor. Jenna waited, watching.
“The bathroom is over by the deli,” he said. “You can go in there and at least change your shirt.”
I shuffled out of the produce section and toward the deli counter. Paul hovered next to me, his hand on my elbow. “I need to pay for it first.”
He ripped the tag off the shirt. “I got it.”
; “No.”
He steered me toward the bathroom. “Don’t argue with me. Just go change.”
“Do you need help?” Jenna’s voice was laced with honey. I didn’t know she’d followed us.
“You’ve already done enough,” Paul said.
Her face brightened and I knew she missed his intended meaning. “OK. Well, let me know about that lasagna. I’m free tonight…”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know.”
“Here.” He shoved the shirt into my hands. “Go change. And don’t leave. I’ll meet you back here.”
I opened the door to the women’s room and got a look at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was plastered to my head and my white t-shirt was stained a sickly, pale pink, speckled with tiny white seeds. My denim shorts were splattered with tomato juice. The dark splotches made it look like I’d wet myself.
I found an empty stall and stripped off my shirt. I wore an elastic hairband on my wrist, mostly as a holdover habit from my volleyball days, which I took off and pulled my hair together into a slimy ponytail. I slipped the Gophers t-shirt over my head. It hung to my knees and had all the shape of a muumuu. What did it matter? I was already the laughingstock of the town.
I pulled down my shorts and peed, washed my hands and dried them and headed out of the restroom, my stained t-shirt wadded into a ball.
Paul was waiting, his arms looped with plastic grocery bags.
“Better?” he asked.
“Uh. Sure.” I suddenly remembered my own groceries. “Oh, hey. You know where my cart might be?”
He smiled. “Relax.” He held out one of his arms. “Your stuff is right here.”
“You bought my groceries?” I groaned. Along with the Frosted Cheerios and Rice A Roni, my cart had also held a month’s supply of tampons and pads.
“You needed them, didn’t you?”
I shook my head as we walked through the grocery store to the exit. “Well, yeah. But you didn’t need to buy them for me.”
“I wanted to.”
The sun blinded me as we stepped outside and I fumbled for my sunglasses.
“Here.” Paul pulled my glasses from his shorts pocket.