by Amy Sparling
Jack Brown sold real estate for a long time when I was younger. It was one of those names you’d see on For Sale signs all over the city. Then he moved to billboards with his smiling mug on it, and even some cars drove around town wrapped in the advertisement for his real estate company. Now, I think he just does businesses instead of selling houses. Any time a construction crew decides to tear down a piece of land and build something on it, it usually has Jack Brown’s company logo.
I was not very happy to see him there on my bench.
In December, the store got a phone call with Jack Brown’s company name showing up on the caller ID. I ignored the call, and then after he’d left a voicemail, I listened to it just long enough to delete it. It said something along the lines of wanting to talk about a possible buy out.
Um, not happening.
So when he met me on the boardwalk that day, I had a pretty good idea why he’d bothered to stop and introduce himself.
“How’s the store?” he’d asked.
“Perfect,” I said, plastering on a fake smile. “I really love working there.”
“That’s wonderful. I was actually hoping to have a moment to speak with your mother, but I haven’t been able to get through when I call. Is there a good time to reach her?”
That’s when I lied. I told him she was incredibly busy lately because we’re considering opening a second store since our store is doing so well, and that Mom was often out scouting locations and too busy to work at our current store.
I don’t know if he bought my pathetic lie or not, but he wished me well and then said he’d stop by soon to buy a gift for his wife.
So far I haven’t seen him, which is a relief because Mom actually is at the store all day. Usually it’s just her alone because I have this stupid annoyance called school that I try to attend whenever I can. The last couple of months have been kind of bad in that regard—I skipped most of December to help with the Christmas rush, and lately I seem to stay at the store once or twice a week. Like today, for example. Mom woke up with a migraine, so I offered to open the store until she felt better. When she finally came in around eleven, it would have been lunch time at school, so I just stayed at the store. And then I didn’t feel like going after all. Senior year is kind of a waste anyway. We do stuff for half of the year and then after the holidays, teachers are lazy and just ready for it to be over. I’m not missing much, and the store needs me more than school does.
I reach the Longwood neighborhood and know I’m about halfway home. It’s been twenty five minutes even though it feels like I’m walking quicker than usual. On a good day, it takes around forty-five minutes to get home. Today must not be a good day.
The only good thing is that now I’m so cold my body has kind of accepted it, and there’s a numbness to my face that has stopped my shivering. As soon as I get home, I’ll take the hottest shower our water heater can provide.
As much as I try not to think about Jack Brown, now he’s invaded my thoughts and caused a knot of anxiety to settle in my stomach. Just after Valentine’s Day, Jack called the store again. It was a Monday, but I was skipping school to work on the store’s website, so I managed to get to his voicemail before my mom did.
He was much more open about his intentions this time. He offered eight thousand dollars for the store.
Anger boiled in my veins. Eight thousand dollars? That’s nothing. It definitely wasn’t enough money to keep us afloat until Mom found a job, which is what she’d have to do if the store closed. If he wants to offer a hundred thousand or so, then we could talk. But even then, I’m still not ready to let this store go. It’s my life. It’s been here since I was a baby, and I want to own it when I’m an adult. Jack Brown can piss off.
I’m still gritting my teeth by the time I see my house in the distance. Our house is two stories, narrow and long, the white paint now weathered. A shotgun style house that’s just like all the others on this side of town. Our neighbors are just five feet away, and our backyard is so tiny there’s no way we could ever have a dog because we’d be picking up poop for eternity.
But it’s home. And it’s the one thing the failing store can’t take from us. Mom and my asshole ex of a step dad bought it in cash when they got married. They’d both inherited some money from relatives and didn’t want to have a mortgage. After the divorce, he let us have the house free and clear, which was nice. The Magpie earns just enough money each month to pay the rent at the store and to keep our lights on and put food on the table. One of these days, I’ll make sure we’re earning enough to have a great life.
Right now, I just want to warm up. It’s probably a combination of being pissed about the store and being cold as hell, but now my teeth hurt. I rub at my jaw as I let myself inside. Warmth envelops me, instantly making me feel better. There’s a faint smell of spaghetti in the air and it makes my mouth water.
I venture into the kitchen, excited to tell Mom about my big sale, but she’s not in here. There’s leftover spaghetti and garlic bread on the stove, so I make a plate and then peek into the living room.
“Mom?”
She’s not there either, so I call up the stairs. “Mom!”
Her door swings open, the floor creaking as she walks out and peers down the stairs at me. “There’s food on the stove,” she says. Her hair is messy and she’s wearing a nightgown. I glance at my watch. It’s almost eight, but she looks like she’s been asleep. “I already got food,” I say, holding up my plate. “Want to come watch TV with me?”
She shakes her head. “I’m tired, Natalie.”
“Oh.” My heart sinks. Since I’ve been spending so much time at the store this year, I’ve kind of abandoned all of my friends. Chatting with Mom is what I look forward to after a day of work.
“Okay, well, goodnight,” I say, but she’s already gone back to her room, closing the door behind her.
I sit on the bottom stair and eat my food. I’ll have to get an excuse note for school tomorrow if I want to avoid getting another detention. I don’t even want to go to that stupid place, but the money I made today will cover for a bad sales day tomorrow. Plus, I can work on my notebook of good ideas for the store while I’m in class. I make a mental note to write a letter saying I was sick today and then forge Mom’s signature before I go to school tomorrow, and then I pack up the leftover dinner on the stove and clean up the kitchen before going to bed.
Tomorrow will be a better day, I tell myself.
It has to be.
Chapter 3
My cell phone alarm is this naturistic sound that starts off quiet, like crickets and birds chirping, and then it slowly gets louder as the seconds pass. It’s only the sounds of nature and not some stupid blaring honking sound, so you’d think it’d be a peaceful way to wake up. It’s totally not.
As soon as I hear those cheery birds in the morning, I know that I have to suffer through an entire day of school and work before I get the blissful event of sleep again.
I climb out of bed and throw on some clothes. I have only ten minutes until I meet April at the stop sign so we can walk to school. As I brush my teeth, I think back to how when school started I’d set my alarm to forty-five minutes before school so I had time to get ready and do my hair and makeup. As the months have gone by, I’ve pushed my alarm back further and further. If I thought I could get ready in five minutes, I totally would.
At least school is almost over. Three more months of this bullshit and it’ll be summer break, which is our most popular time of year at the store because so many people come to the beach. Since our store doesn’t open until ten in the morning, I always get to sleep in late. Summer is magical.
I grab a muffin for breakfast and then rip out a sheet of paper from my notebook. In a cursive-ish scrawl that’s very different from my own bubblier handwriting, I compose a letter:
Please excuse my daughter Natalie Reese for missing school on Thursday the 28th. She was suffering from a migraine and could not get out of bed.
&
nbsp; Regards,
My pen hovers over the signature line. I’ve never been able to get mom’s signature just right. It’s like a big capital M and then some squiggles and then an R and some more squiggles. When I sign my name, I like to fully write each letter in an elegant cursive.
Hefting my backpack over my shoulder, I run upstairs and knock on Mom’s bedroom door. She’s awake, luckily, standing in her bathrobe in front of the TV with the remote in her hand while she flips channels. “There’s never any good news on this early in the morning,” she says with a frown. “I just want to see the weather, not celebrity gossip.”
“Can you sign this real quick?” I shove the paper and my pen at her.
She gives my excuse note a quick glance and then scrawls her signature on it and hands it back. “They’re gonna figure out you’re lying one of these days,” she says as I leave her room.
I don’t bother replying. Unexcused absences means I have to suffer through detention to make up missed time. If they’re excused, I just get annoyed looks from the attendance lady in the office because she makes it like her personal mission to hate students who miss school.
April is waiting for me at the stop sign three houses down from mine. She’s one of the only people I know who can stand around and wait for someone without killing the time on her cell phone. She says phones are stupid and nature is more beautiful, but I kind of disagree. I always feel weirdly alone and awkward if I’m waiting for someone in public. The phone is my lifeline. My excuse that I’m busy doing something, to give off the look that I’m totally not awkward and alone.
“Morning,” April says with a half-smile. She’s only a freshman, but she seems wiser than most of the kids at school. She has long dirty blonde hair that goes all the way down to her butt and she usually lets it hang free like that. Sometimes on hot days she’ll put it in a ponytail. “I missed you yesterday,” she says in a way that’s more of an accusation than a real sentiment. She’s been pointing out my many absences lately almost as much as the attendance lady at school.
“Sorry, I got caught up at the store.”
She snorts. “I don’t know how you can miss so much school and get away with it.”
I hold up the letter that’s now folded in half in my hand. “I have an excuse.”
“Mmhmm, sure.” Two junior high boys in bicycles zoom past us on the sidewalk, already smelling like body odor. I feel sorry for their teachers who have to sit with them in class. April casts a sardonic glance toward my excuse note. “I’m pretty sure working at your store doesn’t count as an excuse to miss school.”
I shrug. “Good thing I had a migraine.”
April laughs it off, but there’s a serious look in her eyes that makes me feel kind of bad. And it’s crazy because she’s a freshman, so she’s basically a kid and I’m almost graduated, but I look up to her sometimes. She’s not only smart as hell, but she doesn’t care who knows it. She never wears makeup or fancy clothes, and she just kind of lives her life the way she wants to. I can appreciate that, even if I’m not the same way. I’m always worried about what people think of me.
We get to school just before the bell rings, which is a timeline we came up with at the start of the year. If you get here too early, you’re forced to stand around and hang out. After losing most of my friends last summer because I ditched them for the store, I didn’t really have anyone to hang out with. I was bitter about it for a while, but then I met April. We’re casual friends – aka, friends who walk to school together and that’s about it—but it turns out that’s just the friend I need. Real friends get too pissy when you have to work on the store instead of go out and party with them. April doesn’t party, and her school work is so important she doesn’t hang out after school. It’s the perfect friendship.
When the first bell rings, April nudges me on the shoulder. “Good luck,” she says, eyeing the attendance lady who is already watching us as we walk down the hallway.
I laugh. “Thanks. See you after school?”
“Yep.”
I step up to the attendance desk. It’s like a drive through window in the hallway, and the woman’s office connects into the main office. There’s another guy standing there talking to her so I slip up quickly and drop my excuse note into the tray, avoiding all eye contact. I’ve seen so much of the attendance lady this year that I’m pretty sure she hates me on principle.
When I get to first period, I slide into my desk in the back row and ignore the idiots who are currently drawing dirty images on the dry erase board. I have no idea why high school students are such children. Would I be the same way if I wasn’t so preoccupied with the store and keeping our bills paid? Maybe they’re luckier than I am because they don’t have to worry about those things. Or maybe I’m better off because I know how to handle real world life.
I swallow down the bitterness I feel every time I see students having more fun than me, and open up my notebook. First period is math class, and there’s a warm up on the board that makes absolutely no sense to me. It must be about what they covered yesterday. I flip open to where we are studying and find that Chapter 7 looks like hieroglyphics to me. Shit. I don’t understand any of this.
Mrs. Mafi begins her math lesson with a few formulas on the board that are supposed to build off of what everyone learned yesterday. Everyone but me. I take down notes and copy everything she says, but by the time class is over, I feel like I haven’t learned anything. I’ll have to find time to study my textbook and some YouTube videos tonight if I want any chance of doing my homework.
Second period chemistry is pretty much the same thing. Because of my horrible luck, they started a new lesson in class yesterday and I missed it. It’s even more ironic, because we’d been watching science videos the two days before that, so I figured I was fine for missing class yesterday.
Wrong.
In chemistry, I sit next to two jock assholes who spend their time looking up porn on their phones and talking sports with each other. They are of no help with our lesson today. As jocks, they slide by with solid C’s in every grade and it doesn’t matter. No one gives me a passing grade. I have to earn them.
I sigh and sink my head into my hand as I study the elemental chart on the worksheet in front of me. We’re making compounds. I can do this.
By third period, I actually do get a migraine. We’re reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet out loud in class and then taking a test over it. They started yesterday and are finishing up today, so I’ll only get to hear the last fifteen minutes before the test. Luckily, Mrs. Hardy tells me to read the play to myself and she’ll let me make up the test during lunch. I step outside the classroom, taking my textbook with me. I sit on the floor up against the wall and start reading the play. Our textbook has all these little footnotes that explain the language to us commoners who don’t understand Shakespeare. I’d like to be some smart poetic person who just gets it, but I don’t, so I use the footnotes a lot.
“You’re Natalie, right?”
I look up and see a thin girl with braids standing over me. She holds out a pink slip from the office. “This is for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking it. I’ve never seen a pink slip before. The yellow ones are early release slips for when your parents come to take you to the doctor or something. I glance at it and get a bad feeling in my stomach. So now I know what the pink slips are for.
The Assistant Principal’s office.
That’s all it says. Natalie Reese to AP’s office.
I chew on the inside of my lip as I make my way down to her office, the textbook still in my hand. I probably should have put it back in the classroom, maybe traded it out for my backpack, but I’m hoping that if I pretend this will be a short trip, it will be.
She probably wants to verify my emergency contacts or something.
I step into the office and show my paper to the lady behind the counter. She looks like she could be in high school herself, but she’s worked here all four years I’ve been here, so I
guess she’s just blessed with younger looking skin. She tells me to wait in one of the three empty chairs outside of the AP’s office.
I sit, the chewing on my lip intensifying.
Forty-five minutes pass.
The bell rings, and students shuffle into the hallways. I cringe as I think about my backpack left in the English classroom. Mrs. Hardy is a nice teacher, so she probably packed it up for me and set it to the side. My phone is in my pocket, so it’s not like I have anything valuable in there to worry about.
I’m going crazy with anticipation when the door finally opens and a creepily thin woman with short brown hair steps out. She’s so thin she could be a supermodel, if you know, her face wasn’t in this pinched up severe looking pose all the time. I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her around the school. She wears pencil skirts and button up blouses and her hair has been cut in that same bob forever.
“Ms. Reese, come in,” she says, motioning for me to enter her office. I wouldn’t exactly say she’s smiling, but her lips twist upwards a little.
I enter and sit down, my textbook flat across my lap. My heart is racing but I tell myself I’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t fight or steal or cheat on tests. She has no reason to bring me in here for disciplinary reasons. Maybe it’s just something stupid. Like in fifth grade when I was called into the principal’s office and given a birthday card and a candy bar.
“How can I help you?” I ask, cringing when I realize I’ve accidentally pulled out my customer service voice that I’d use at the store. But this is not The Magpie, and she is not a customer.
The AP sits behind her desk and places her hands on top of her computer keyboard.
“The question is more of what can you do to ensure you graduate, Ms. Reese.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, my brows pulling together.
“I would think you should understand quite clearly, Ms. Reese.” This time she does smile, but it’s a terrifying sight that’s all sarcasm and no kindness. “You have missed entirely too many days of school this year and you are failing three classes. How on earth could you not understand what that means?”