“Oh, look! We’re open!” Daniel comments. He mutters the next part under his breath. “Just in time.”
* * *
Three hours of bookselling later, I walk into the break room, ready to scarf down my turkey sandwich and chips. I nod at Tanya, who smiles and gives a small wave, charm bracelet jingling on her wrist, before she returns her eyes to her book. My lunchtime doesn’t line up with my friends today, and anyway, I want to avoid the food court and temptation of spending money. I packed my lunch with tense muscles this morning, wincing at the loud crinkle of the chip packaging, trying not to wake up Mom and Mama.
I sit down and pull a book out of my tote bag. It’s historical fiction about a vigilante, murdering doctress in the nineteenth century. It’s excellent, but I’ve been so busy with the holiday season, I’ve barely had time to read it. As I search for my bookmark, which always seems to slip between the pages like we’re playing a game of hide-and-seek, my phone buzzes. Hmm, probably just spam, but no—it’s an e-mail from YouTube, and suddenly I remember I posted Geraldine’s video online last night. My heart pounds as I bring up the page and gasp. Literally gasp. Like Tanya looks over at me from her own book and lunch of tuna fish and crackers and says, “Everything all right, dear?” Gasp.
“Yes!” I reply, excitement flooding through me. “All good!”
My eyes widen as I take in the number: 923. Almost a thousand people have viewed Geraldine’s video. A thousand! In just one night! And there are comments as well, thanking her for all of the cool tips. Oh my god. I knew it. People love Geraldine. I have to tell her! But it would be awesome if we could crack a thousand views first.
I send links to a few more YouTubers, including, after racking my brain for the name, that Lucille Tifton girl that Geraldine is obsessed with. She probably won’t watch the video, but hopefully other people in her thousands of comments will be curious and click the link. I can’t believe this worked!
As I’m finishing up, my phone buzzes with a text message from Mama: Thanks for the marmalade, darling.
My chest hums with contentment. Maybe my cover was blown about the groceries, but it was better than leaving the pantry empty. And maybe I can do something more to help, something more than washing dishes and buying groceries. Maybe I can… Oh, that would be perfect…
“Yes!” I shout for a second time. Tanya looks up again. I give her an apologetic smile. “All good, promise. Want some chips?”
“No thanks, sweetie,” she replies with a smile, turning back to her book yet again.
And I am all good. I text my moms and ask them to be home in time for dinner tonight. I tell them I’m cooking us pasta. But I’m not cooking us pasta. I’m going to get them Thai from their favorite restaurant, and they’ll actually sit down and talk and listen and remember why they love each other so freaking much in the first place. Ooh! What if I could get prosecco as well, so it could be just like one of their anniversary dinners? Hmm, the Thai food alone will push my budget for Barbra to the limit… though maybe…
“Hey, Tanya,” I say, interrupting her again. She puts her book down on the table this time and looks at me with the patience of a saint. I twirl a piece of my hair and smile wide. “Can you do me a favor? Pretty please?”
* * *
Tanya agrees to buy two bottles of prosecco in exchange for three free babysitting sessions for her boys next year and a promise I’ll snap a photo of my moms with the alcohol—otherwise she’ll storm my house to tell them I’ve been underage drinking. It’s kind of funny how easy it is to get alcohol when no one suspects you’d actually drink it. I also call the Thai restaurant and place my moms’ staple order for delivery: shrimp pad thai, vegetable basil rice, and tom kha gai soup. The price isn’t too bad—$37.24. With the wine-for-babysitting exchange and the bonus money, I’ll still have enough for Barbra. Just enough. Like I might be couch diving for gas change the rest of the year.
Now if only my moms would actually text me back. I bite my nail as I leave the break room and check my phone one last time. No messages yet.
I wander down the young adult fiction aisle and am soon swept back up in the tide of bookselling. After helping half a dozen shoppers and sending them off to the registers with my QR code, I spot Jake and a customer in the nonfiction section. The woman smiles down at a tablet in her hands as Jake chats with her, nodding at something in agreement. What did he mean earlier about me not winning the bonus? What’s the magic trick up his flannel sleeve?
I walk up to him and the customer, and in a breezy voice say, “Hello, I’m Shoshanna! Can I also assist you today?”
“Sure!” The woman smiles at me before glancing back at the tablet in her hands. “I’m just finishing up your quiz. This is awesome!”
“Our quiz?” I ask, leaning over to glance at the screen. It’s some kind of Buzzfeed-style quiz, like the ones that sort you into your Harry Potter house and are always wrong, and how dare anyone say I’m anything other than a Ravenclaw?
The questions are straightforward yes-or-no.
Did you read this book? Yes.
Did you read this book? No.
Each answer generates a new, more niche title.
The woman is totally engrossed. I glance at Jake, who seems pleased as heck with himself, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans. We both step back as the woman continues with the quiz. Jake leans toward me, his voice low enough to make my skin buzz. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks.
“Um, I guess.” I shrug. Seriously? This was his genius idea. No way some Buzzfeed quiz is going to outsell me. “Where’d you find it?”
“Oh, I didn’t find it anywhere.” Jake yawns, stretching one arm behind his back and tugging it with the other, exposing a sliver of his abdomen, like when I first met him only a couple days ago. He must do it on purpose. Sliver-of-skin-exposing, flannel-wearing mastermind. “Sorry.” He grins at me. “Tired. It was a late night. I was up building that quiz.”
“You…” I pause, feeling a tiny seed of panic. “You what?”
“I built the quiz,” he repeats in a casual tone. “It’s based off of Once Upon stock and weighted toward store bestsellers and staff recommendations.”
“Oh!” the woman exclaims, looking up from the screen in delight. “Perfect! I had this on my list last year and forgot about it!”
“Perfect!” Jake smiles at her, then at me. I hate his white teeth. Like, big deal you have good oral hygiene. Mazel tov, you floss. Show-off. “I’ll take you right to it.”
Before they head off down the aisle, Jake passes the tablet to me. “Here, take a look if you want. Let me just…” He signs me into his password-protected quiz. His ridiculous popcorn-stringing, light-untangling dexterous fingers move too fast for me to even see the username, much less the password. He then leads the woman off as I look down at the screen. The design is attractive and clean. The quiz title asks: “What Is Your Next Great Read?”
I roll my eyes and push back the seed of panic. Please. Like anything Jake builds could predict something I’d want to read. I sigh and start tapping answers. I’m led down the Time Stands Still category, but I mean, that’s a major book. Like half the planet owns a copy, so of course it’s on here. There’s no way Jake can predict what I want to read next. Even I have trouble.…
“Damn it,” I mutter.
The quiz leads me right to a fantasy series the author of Time Stands Still often recommends. I’ve been meaning to read it and keep forgetting. But still. That’s pretty obvious. We print out recommendations like that on our receipts: “Do you read X? Then you might also like Y.”
I’m sure if I picked more difficult options it wouldn’t work… though, the book it selected for that woman has been out for years. And it’s the author’s only novel, so it’s not a basic “other titles by this author” recommendation.
My shoulders tense as Jake rounds a corner. He walks back to me with so much confidence, with a grin so cocky, I want to kick out my foot and trip him. He takes the tablet
back with one hand and runs fingers through his hair with the other. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks. “Oh, wait. One second.” Suddenly he pulls out a walkie-talkie. My eyes widen in shock as he presses the button, and the system buzzes overhead. “Jake to stockroom, we’re low on Christmas Cat calendars again; Jake to stockroom, low on Christmas Cat calendars.”
My voice is loud enough without a radio. “Myra gave you PA privileges? Already? You only started working here forty-eight hours ago!”
“Actually, forty-six.” Jake winks. “To be exact.”
My eyes narrow as I look back down at the tablet. “You don’t read books. How did you make this quiz?”
“I read books,” Jake responds, his tone short. A sick feeling courses through me. I didn’t mean to say that again. It just slipped out and sounded all judgmental. “I read books for school. And Daniel’s been giving me some stuff to read, and I—you know what? I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
“You’re right,” I say stiffly. “You don’t. I’m sorry.”
Silence stretches, the air crackling between us for a long moment, before Jake continues, “This doesn’t have to do with reading, anyway. It’s mostly coding and algorithms.”
“But if you’re so great with computers, why work here?” I ask genuinely. “Why not work at the Genius Bar?”
He steps closer to me, and I make the mistake of stepping closer too, and then I make the double mistake of inhaling, and he smells like chocolate cake and buttercream frosting, and I’m pretty much convinced this guy sleeps in a bakery every night, like is-there-a-Pillsbury-factory-nearby-and-does-Jake-have-a-bed-there convinced. “Because,” he says, my pulse skipping as his dark eyes lock with mine, “here I get the satisfaction of besting you in this competition. Might want to check the scoreboard, Shoshanna. Your lead is slipping.”
My heart thumps, then races. He’s lying. He has to be lying. There’s no way he’s beating me.
But the problem is, Jake doesn’t look like he’s lying.
“This—this is cheating!”
He rolls his eyes. “How is this cheating?”
“It’s—I—” I spin around. “I’m going to Myra. Myra!”
And then I’m speed-walking toward Myra’s office, and Jake is speed-walking behind me, muttering, “This is ridiculous! Why am I chasing you?”
And I’m saying, “You’re right. Maybe you should stop!”
But he keeps going, and then we’re both in the doorframe of Myra’s office, panting a little, which really tells me I should speed-walk through the mall more often. Myra glances up from a giant stack of papers and gives me the look. Then she gives Jake the look. Then she pauses Frank Sinatra crooning from her speakers and asks, “This conversation is going to aggravate me, isn’t it?”
“It had better!” I respond. “Jake is cheating.”
“I am not cheating! I am—” He pauses, realizing he was shouting and looking embarrassed. Who’s juvenile now, Jake? It takes every ounce of willpower to not stick my tongue out at him. “I am not cheating,” he repeats, voice calm, but a hand clenched at his side. “I promise.”
Myra nods. “I believe you, but could you do me a favor and tell me why Shoshanna here thinks you’re cheating?”
“I’ll show you.” Jake steps up to her desk. My stomach lurches as he shows her the quiz. I’m quickly regretting the second cup of sugar-laden coffee I drank earlier.
Myra says the good kind of “mmm” not the bad kind. “This is really something, Jake. You did this all on your own?”
“I have a friend who codes,” he answers. “And Daniel helped.”
“Daniel what?” I gasp. “Betrayer, first of his name.”
“How are the customers responding?” Myra asks, ignoring me.
“Some don’t want to take the quiz, but the ones who take it usually buy the recommended book.”
“Great, love it. Keep it up.” Myra glances at me next. “It’s definitely not cheating, Shoshanna. Come on now. The store is packed. You need to be selling books, not distracting Jake from doing exactly that.”
My throat gets all tight, and my face flushes, like I might start crying, which is a completely unreasonable response to my boss asking me to do my job. Myra is awesome, actually the best, and letting her down is not my favorite feeling. I take a quick breath. The last twelve hours have been a lot. I need a moment alone to recalibrate. Hoping my voice will be steady, I say, “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Good, thank you.”
I hurry out of her office, and with no more eyes on me, a few tears release, warm and wet against my cheeks. I wipe them away as I head through the break room and then into the stockroom, where I close the door behind me and slide down to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees and trying to breathe and keep from breaking into full-fledged crying.
It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. I’m going to win the bonus. My moms are going to love their Thai dinner. And everything will return to the way it’s always been.
“Why are you on the floor?” a voice asks.
Startled, I look up and find Arjun and Sophie-Anne on the other side of the storage room, unloading boxes. I quickly wipe at my face. “Nothing, no reason. Uh, I’m just tired. Dead tired.”
“Zombie or vampire?” Sophie-Anne asks. She flips open one of the books and looks at the text on the flap.
“What?” I ask.
“Zombie or vampire?” Sophie-Anne repeats, slapping the book closed.
Arjun’s silver chains jangle as he walks over to a box and slices it open. He explains, “You said you’re dead. I think she wants to know what kind of dead you are—zombie or vampire?”
“Oh, right,” I say, like that makes sense.
Sophie-Anne walks toward me. She leans over, blue eyes wide, blond hair falling in tendrils around her face. I blink hard, for a second feeling like I’m staring up at Mama. Then she speaks. “Zombies have more physical strength, but vampires have more control. What do you want when you’re eating people?” Her eyes widen. “Chaos or control?”
I scoot back against the door, mostly amused but with a healthy dose of fear. “Um, neither. Thank you for explaining, though.”
“No problem!” Sophie-Anne replies.
“Ow,” Arjun says in a monotone. I glance over. He has a paper cut on his index finger and is staring at the drop of blood.
“Ouch.” I wince.
“Ooh!” Sophie-Anne wanders toward him.
“Please don’t—” I say, but it’s too late. “—lick the blood.”
Sophie-Anne cleans off the finger with one swipe of her tongue.
“Oh my god,” I groan.
“Thanks.” Arjun gives her a dazed smile and then kisses her right on the lips.
“Y’all are disgusting.”
“Aw!” Sophie-Anne squeals. “Thank you!”
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Myra asking me to come back to her office. Nerves stiffen my shoulders. Am I in trouble? What if she bans me from the competition? At least Arjun and Sophie-Anne were weird enough to stop my urge to cry again. I take a deep breath, then force myself up off the floor. “I’ll see you guys later—” Sophie-Anne is now straddling Arjun on a box of books, fingers threaded through his hair. “And you’re making out. Okay. Bye.”
I really wish I could say this is the first time that’s happened.
Chapter Eight
Myra’s door is still open. Anxiety pulses through me, and I try to steady my thoughts. She’s not going to kick me out of the competition. It’s fine. Everything is fine, like in The Good Place. Wait, no. That’s a terrible example.
I shake my head, then step into her office. Myra looks up at me and slides down her reading glasses. A pink crochet chain holds them like a necklace across her collar. “Hello, Shoshanna,” she says, voice disconcertingly neutral.
“Hi.” I lift my hand to bite at a nail, then embarrassed by the urge, lower it back down and stuff it into my pocket. “I’m sorry about earli
er.”
“Apology accepted,” Myra replies. “If.” She lets that “if” hang in the air an extra-long time. “You prove it. By working together with Jake.”
At that exact moment, Jake pops into the office. My shoulders stiffen at the sight of him, and I feel a weird burst of irritation when he doesn’t even look at me. “You asked to see me?” he asks Myra.
“Yes.” Myra glances between the two of us. “We have the event tomorrow with Liv Childers.”
Oh! Of course we do. With everything going on, I almost forgot about the event even though it’s been in the planning for months. Liv is the author of Christmas Killings. It’s always awesome to have a great writer in the store, especially a kickass woman.
“Thanks to the scheduling gods hating me,” Myra says, “you two are the only ones available for the early morning shift. I need you both here, bright and early, for setup. The rest of the staff will be in later to help as the event gets started.”
Early morning setup. Alone with Jake. Not even with Daniel as a buffer. My palms suddenly feel clammy.
“But,” Myra continues, leaning forward in her chair, “because it will take all morning, you can give the customers your QR codes when you check them out for the signing, and it’ll count toward your numbers for the competition, all right?”
My attitude brightens. Now that’s a silver lining. “Really?” I ask. “There’ll be, like, hundreds of people here!”
“Really.” Myra nods.
“Thank you!” I say.
“Awesome, thank you,” Jake agrees.
“You’re welcome.” Her tone grows serious again as her eyes cut from Jake to me. “But split the sales in half evenly. No arguing and squabbling. I’ll ban you both from the competition if it happens again. I’m serious. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Jake says. He does glance at me this time, and I swear his expression screams, If she won’t, I won’t.
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