by Drea Damara
“Aunt Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Am I supposed to come downstairs later or something?”
“No, you don’t have to. A kid’s got to have some kind of relaxation during the summer.”
Awesome. She was still pretty cool after all!
“You dive in whenever you feel like it, but I imagine it’ll start to get boring up here after a few days, so just let me know when I can put you to work.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” He looked around and noticed her television was older than he was. “Uh, do you have Wi-Fi up here?”
A guilty look crossed her face. “No. I’m still on dial-up. Sorry. I spend all day downstairs, so I keep the computer down there, but you’re welcome to use it when you want.”
“Thanks.” He tried to sound grateful, but the lack of privacy in her shop would likely curtail his Internet surfing. That meant gaming and video chat were probably out. His friends would think he’d fallen off the planet. “Well, maybe I will be down later,” he called as Aunt Sarah headed out the door.
She peered back through the door, just as she was about to close it. “Oh, and Ricky?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have a car. Let’s keep it that way, okay?”
The door closed, and she was gone.
“Damn it,” he grumbled as he stared at the door. “There just went some cool points.”
This was going to be the longest summer of his life.
SARAH SAT on the stool behind the counter, knees tucked up to her chest, feet resting on the seat. She pressed her teeth on the end of the pen she held in her mouth and tapped her finger on the counter. The charms on her bracelet made an incessant clink, clink, clink noise.
She glanced at the door when Shelby walked in. She muttered a hello and returned her aimless stare back out the window. Clink, clink, clink.
“You all right, Sarah?”
Sarah inhaled and looked back at the girl. “Yeah. Just thinking.” She continued to tap her finger on the counter and looked down at another list she had begun: The Weeping Books, Bad Language, Shampoo. She was trying to think of things she needed to warn Ricky about and things she had to get done without garnering his notice. It was easy to tell a little kid not to do something. You just told them, and they listened without question. Teenagers, though, had an annoying word in their vocabulary: Why? It was much more difficult to sell a lie to a teenager.
“Want me to put some stock away for you or something?”
Sarah looked up to find Shelby smiling at her, arms crossed, leaning on the counter. She stopped her incessant tapping and quickly palmed her note, crumpling it up into a ball. She tossed the wad into the wastebasket and sat up in her chair.
“No, that’s all right. My nephew is here for the summer to help me, so I’ll have him do that.” She glanced up the stairs and added, “Whenever he decides to come down.”
“Oh. So, you probably won’t need my help anymore then.”
Sarah looked at Shelby when she heard the dejection in her voice. In her absentmindedness, she’d made the poor girl feel rejected.
Shelby’s mother had started bringing her to Allister’s when she was still in grade school. The girl had been hooked on books ever since and spent every minute of her summers there since she was twelve. Her mother apologized to Sarah that first summer that Shelby was constantly hanging around her store. After a while, Mrs. Dannovan quit calling and coming in to whisk Shelby back home. Sarah must have proved to her that she would look after her little bookworm of a daughter, and Mrs. Dannovan was finally convinced Shelby never cared to wander anywhere else. If Shelby wasn’t curled up in the reading nook with her nose in a book, she was dusting shelves or putting away inventory. She was unusually knowledgeable and serious for her tender years, but Sarah was grateful for her company and help. She tried to give her money when she worked, but Shelby refused. She would, however, accept free books and the occasional snack.
“Oh, Shelby, no. I didn’t mean it like that. I would never fire you, sweetie.”
Shelby grinned at that. “So, I do work here?”
“Ha! I wouldn’t call a few hours a week in exchange for some free books a job, but sure. You’re the only real employee I’ve ever had. You’re my unofficial right hand. Besides, I doubt my nephew will be as enthused to help around here as you are.”
“Pfft. Well, he’s a boy. What do you expect?” Shelby turned to take her favorite spot in the nook by the front window.
Sarah opened a box that remained where Henry had left it the day before. She stopped herself and closed it again, just as she had the day before. This was getting frustrating. She put new inventory away as soon as it came in, but she needed to leave something for Ricky to do. She looked around the store for something else to occupy her and then remembered that she’d put Mary’s shampoo concoctions in the counter cabinet. She grabbed one of the brown paper bags she used for customers and threw the toothpaste and shampoo in it.
“Shelby?”
A loud bubble from Shelby’s gum popped, and she laced her tongue around it to pull the remnants of the pink goo back into her mouth. “Yeah?”
“Can you watch the store for a minute? I need to go over to Mary’s.”
Shelby unslung her legs from across the arm of the chair and hopped up. “Sure.”
Sarah hurried across the street to Scents and Suds. She shuffled past some of Mary’s customers and made her way to the counter. She looked around at the glass bottles of creams and paper-wrapped soap bars that lined the shelves as she waited for Mary to finish up with a customer.
Mary had done a nice job of maintaining the original ambiance of her building. In the middle of the store stood an old crock with a large pestle. It had been in Mary’s family for years. Once used as a crushing technique for grinding down flowers and herbs before adding them to medicinal creams and soaps, it served now as a display. Even the best historical film sets couldn’t compare with the feel of Mary’s little beauty products shop that had once been an apothecary.
“Hey, Sarah,” a sultry-looking young woman with a nose piercing called, toting a box of soap bars toward the back room of the store.
“Hi, Valerie.”
Sarah stared at the ends of Valerie’s thick midnight-black hair. It was pinned to the back of her head, but the ends stuck up in the air at all angles—the victims of hair spray. She wore a low-cut, bright orange tank top, a black leather miniskirt, and black fishnet tights. When Valerie walked past the counter, Sarah saw Mary cast a disapproving look at her daughter. The scowl reverted to polite attentiveness when she turned back to the customer she was helping.
“Mrs. Millville, I’ll be back. Again, thank you! I can’t tell you how much I love this stuff!”
“We’ll look forward to seeing you. Good day!” Mary smiled and waved as the customer departed. She reached for the paper bag from Sarah and said, belting without any of her previous refinery, “Valerie!”
“Yeah!” Valerie yelled from the back just as loudly as her mother.
“Did you get that shampoo I asked you about?”
Valerie sauntered back toward the counter. What little excess fat she had on her body jiggled with every step. It had to be a science. If Sarah could walk like that, she wouldn’t have it in her to do it in front of anyone. Mary sighed and rolled her eyes as Valerie approached with a dark plastic Calvin Klein shampoo bottle.
“Straight from the real world, Ma.” Valerie winked and shook the bottle back and forth.
Mary shoved Sarah’s bag at her. “Here. Go dump that out and funnel this into it for Sarah, will you?”
Valerie peered into the bag quizzically. “Ricky’s special blend, huh?”
“Just take it in the back quickly, will you? I don’t want anyone thinking I’m stealing Calvin’s products and rebottling them,” Mary said.
Valerie snatched the bag away and looked at her mother with a serious expression. She whispered, “Let’s just hope old Calv never finds
out about this.” As she sauntered to the back room, Sarah could hear her chuckling.
Mary threw her hands up in the air. “Sarah, you’re lucky you never had children. Twenty-six and she’s still as incorrigible as a teenager!”
ACROSS THE street, Ricky Allister stared into the refrigerator for the third time that afternoon. He wasn’t even hungry. He shut the door and walked back into the living room. Maybe something on TV would help to pass the time.
Click. Click. Great. Aunt Sarah didn’t even have the good cable channels. He threw the remote down and paced back to the kitchen. Eyeballing his two choices, the refrigerator door and the door that led to the shop downstairs, he grimaced.
“All right. Might as well get it over with.”
He descended the creaky wood steps to the shop and heard the crank and ding of the old-fashioned cash register at the counter. He’d used to like that noise when he was a kid. The big, shiny brass register with its little round buttons and crank lever on the side had fascinated him. He used to sit on his aunt’s lap and pull the lever down to pop the drawer open. Now he dreaded hearing that sound for the next three months. He looked past his feet and saw the base of the counter. A pair of brown Converse sneakers swung below the chair where his aunt usually sat. As his view expanded, he saw a pair of purple-and-white-striped, stocking-clad legs attached to those sneakers.
“Well, that’s a new look,” he said under his breath.
Another step down and he saw a hint of pale thighs, the ruffle of a khaki skirt, a slim waist, and an olive-green corduroy vest over a white T-shirt with a purple and yellow flower on the front. A long blonde ponytail dusted the back of the vest as the girl ricocheted from side to side on Sarah’s chair.
Her jaw moved as she chewed her gum. She had a little button nose that curved slightly upward at the tip, and it too moved with each chew. Blonde bangs hung down over two light-colored, Barbie-perfect eyebrows. Her long lashes batted as she stared down at an open book.
Ricky stopped on the bottom step and felt himself swallow. The girl was oblivious to him, immersed in her book. The corner of her mouth curled up, causing a tiny dimple to form on her creamy cheek.
Ricky heard the air finally escape his lungs, realizing he’d been holding his breath. The girl must have heard it too because her head jerked up. She looked over at him with bright blue eyes. He waited for her to say something, but she continued to stare in silence.
“Hi,” he let out and took a step onto the landing.
Nothing. The smile on her face had changed to a quizzical expression. He continued down and stopped behind the stack of boxes between them.
“I’m Ricky. Sarah’s nephew.”
“I know,” she continued to stare at him as though she were waiting for some other explanation.
“Oh.” He glanced around the store but saw no sign of his aunt.
“She had to run across the street for a minute,” the girl said and then turned back to her book. Her jaw clenched, and a large pink bubble appeared in front of her pursed lips.
“Do you work here?”
Pop! The bubble burst and she sucked it back into her mouth, eyes still on her book. Very matter-of-factly, she replied, “I help.”
She seemed to have no interest in him, which was an awkward anomaly. At home, the girls in Ricky’s class swooned after him. He didn’t hesitate to take off his sweaty shirt after soccer practice when a feminine audience was present in the bleachers. He’d better tone it down a notch. In a purely conversational tone, he asked, “You go to school around here?”
The girl looked over at him with a blank stare for a beat, then let out, “It’s summer.”
“Yeah.” His cheeks had grown warm. Why did he feel so stupid? That should have been a normal question to ask someone. Maybe she wasn’t normal.
She was probably one of those know-it-all bookworm types. He sighed, glanced around the store, and took another step, leaving him right up against the boxes. He looked at the dainty blonde again and felt another round of tightness in his throat.
It was cute how she nonchalantly swung her legs, twiddling a strand of her ponytail with one finger, lost in her book. She was way too cute to be a nerd. She helped out, huh? Maybe this summer wouldn’t be so boring.
He leaned on the stack of boxes, making sure to press his rib cage against the sides of his biceps. The bulge of his muscles was forced to protrude. Just as he opened his mouth to say something he thought would sound clever, the top box gave way.
“Shit!” was the only clever thing that came out of his mind.
He lunged forward, grasping at the package to keep it from tumbling toward the girl. Arms outstretched over the remaining boxes, he realized the awkward position made his ass stick out in a much less macho pose than he’d intended. Standing stupidly bent over the pile with no leverage, all he could do was dig his fingertips into the cardboard of the weighty box and grunt.
The girl looked up and made a sound of exasperation. She slapped her book shut and hopped down from the stool. Ricky tried to rock his butt backward so the momentum would help to lug the box back onto the stack. However, without being able to move his feet forward, he couldn’t muster enough force.
He dug his chin into the top of the box when his fingers began to slip. It was the only other way he could prevent it from falling at the girl’s feet. Her blue eyes narrowed at the corners as they came into line with his. Then the weight of the box lessened, and he was shoved backward enough that he could right himself, as the girl pushed the box back onto the stack.
“If you need help, maybe you should just ask next time.”
Well, that hadn’t gone as he planned.
The door chime clattered, and Sarah walked in with a paper bag in her hand. “Oh, you came down already. And I see you’ve met Shelby.”
Met? He hadn’t even gotten her name yet. Shelby rolled her eyes, turned back to the counter and grabbed her book. She strode over to a big green chair by the window and dropped onto the cushion, her legs falling over the arm. She looked far more at home than he felt. He noticed then that Sarah was still staring at him.
“Yeah…”
If his aunt realized he had just had an uncomfortable encounter, she didn’t let on. He watched her pull a bottle of Calvin Klein shampoo out of the bag. “Well, I got this new promotional shampoo from Mary across the street. She has no interest in selling this name brand stuff, so I thought maybe you’d like it.”
“Oh. Thanks, but I brought my own.”
“Maybe you could try it a few times. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I think she meant it as a welcome present.”
“Sure. I’ll give it a whirl,” he said sarcastically.
“Great. Well, I’ve got a few of my own things to put away,” she said and patted the bag. “I’ll set this on your bed. Be back down in a few.”
Ricky stood by the counter feeling out of place after Sarah disappeared. Who was he kidding? He felt out of place when she was in the room. He was the stranger here.
Shelby sat chin to chest, staring at her book, chewing her gum. Her eyes shifted to him. One of her brows arched downward, and she gave him an annoyed look before returning her attention back to her reading. Geesh. What was her problem?
He took the seat behind the counter, deciding it was a far enough place away from Little Miss Moody to wait until his aunt came back. He chewed on the cuticle of his thumb and tried to stare out the window, but the bouncing striped socks in the reading nook were a distraction. Who dresses like that if they don’t want to be stared at? The stairs creaked, and he saw that Aunt Sarah had returned.
“Well, ready to get started?”
“Absolutely.” He couldn’t believe he actually meant it. Christ, give him something to do or he was going to lose his damned mind.
FOR THE next hour, Sarah showed Ricky how to run the cash register, how to zero it out at the end of the day, and how to take credit card payments on the much newer device that sat next to it. She explained
where the daily deposit went and when the bank picked it up, how she manually inventoried all the book sales, and other mundane tasks. Hopefully, he was absorbing most of the information. He seemed like a bright kid. Totally unenthused about the process, but clearly he was getting it.
He looked around a lot and she had to clear her throat to regain his attention several times. Damn it, he was doing it again. When she heard footsteps, however, she looked up to see that Shelby was on her way out.
“I’ll see you later, Sarah.”
“Oh. Okay, Shelby. I’ll see you—” she called, but the door closed before she could finish. That was odd. Shelby at least told her about the book she was reading before she left. Maybe she was still feeling replaced by Ricky. She glanced at her nephew and noticed he was staring out the window, watching Shelby. She arched a brow, but it took him a moment to realize she hadn’t commenced her lesson.
“What?”
“Don’t they have girls where you live?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, be nice. She comes in here a lot and I really like her.”
“What’s to like?” Ricky muttered and picked up a pencil.
She didn’t even have to guess. She was about to laugh but had a thought of terror that Shelby might not come back. She’d have to make sure that didn’t happen.
She walked around the store, explaining where each genre was located. She kept glancing at the upper level beyond the balcony railing. What would happen when she took him up there? Probably nothing but she imagined an explosion bursting from the back cabinet and witches flying around on brooms. Ludicrous.
“Aunt Sarah, I think you’ve pretty much covered everything down here already.”
Sarah looked around at the book displays and thought for a moment. “Wait, the geography section is on this lower shelf.” She pointed to a round shelf in the middle of the room.
“You covered that one already.” Ricky stuffed his hands into his jean pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“I did?”
“Yeah. You’ve repeated yourself like three times,” Ricky said with a smile. He followed her gaze to the upper level. “We haven’t gone back there yet. You still keep all the old books back there?”