No One Here Is Lonely

by Sarah Everett

  It was bad enough before, when I had no reason to read into everything she says and does, but now it grates on me even more.

  I try to tell myself she doesn’t do it on purpose; her job just bleeds into our lives. Or our lives bleed into her job. Either way, Mia had a meltdown a couple of years ago when she discovered that Mom had used a potty-training anecdote about her in one of her older books.

  I guess Mom gets some points for trying to act supportive of my job. The problem is that when you have one daughter whose plans include rubbing elbows with senators all summer and another who is destined for the Olympics, it feels like a letdown to be like, Oh, and that one is bagging groceries.

  I find and rescue my keys from the bowl and then run for the front door.

  Mom protests as I leave that I didn’t hug them goodbye.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” I say, which is true. The rest of the truth is that I don’t want her to touch me.

  I drive to More for Less and find the employee parking. I pull in, then start to back out to correct my parking, when I hear a sudden crunch.

  Oh God.

  I’ve hit another car.

  I scramble out to face a tall girl with dirty-blond hair and a deeply impatient look on her face.

  “Shit,” she cries as she inspects the front right corner of her car. There’s a coin-size dent there, but mostly we’ve just exchanged paint.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, even though I’m not totally sure whose fault this was. I glance at my phone screen and it’s 8:01.

  “Um, do you want my number? My insurance?”

  The girl is quiet for a moment, then she releases an exasperated breath, blowing up her bangs. “No, whatever,” she says, getting back into her car.

  I stare after her for a second and then do the same. After I’ve parked, I hurry inside the building.

  This is not how I saw my first day of work going.

  Outside the staff room, a bunch of people are assembling. Thankfully, there is no sign of James yet. I look around to see if I recognize anyone. One of the new hires is a smiley woman in her twenties whose polo shirt is tucked into her jeans. She’s talking to another newbie, a junior I recognize from school. I think her name is Shelby. As they are talking, the girl from the parking lot sidles up to them. She gesticulates wildly as she speaks, clearly reporting what happened. I have a feeling that in her version of the story, I rammed right into her, not bothering to check my back, when in actuality the coast had been clear—she’d just come out of nowhere.

  I stay at the back of the group, not keen on having another run-in with her so soon.

  The other two new hires are a tall, long-haired blond guy who looks about seventeen and a short black guy of the same age with dreadlocks. Contrary to my mother’s theory, he does not look like someone who has given up. I wonder how much more she’s been wrong about.

  The two guys are discussing some video game I have never heard of.

  Around us, six or seven workers are stocking shelves and cleaning tills, and there is a lot of activity coming from the bakery section.

  I look around, trying to spot Oliver.

  I suddenly feel desperate for a friendly face, desperate to know even one person here.

  The group chatters around me, people introducing themselves and making idle talk as we wait.

  The woman in her twenties looks friendly, like the kind of person I could just slip next to and start a conversation with, but at just that moment, the girl from the parking lot, who is standing beside her, spots me and shoots me a dirty look. Her friend Shelby follows her gaze and then they whisper to each other.

  Perfect.

  Really mature of them.

  It shouldn’t bother me at all, but all of a sudden, a well of bitterness springs inside me and I find myself resenting Lacey.

  This—working at a grocery store, alone—was in no way how my summer was supposed to go. She was supposed to be my right-hand man, my co-counselor, for the duration of camp. For more than just camp. We were supposed to conquer our precollege to-do list, and now she’s off working at Libby’s uncle’s country club while I’m here. Alone.

  Better get used to it, a tiny voice in my head says, and now all I can think of is weeks and weeks of this. Then months, then years. Wandering campus alone, struggling to find the friendliest face in the crowd so I have someone to talk to.

  None of this was supposed to go this way.

  My throat is tightening, tears forming in my eyes, but they would be disastrous right now so I push them back.

  At exactly 8:05, the Employees Only door that we’re all standing in front of swings open and James and his light-reflecting head appear. He’s carrying a stack of what looks like files in his hands.

  “I’m popular today. How is everybody?” he says in a deep-timbred voice that makes every word sound like a cross between a threat and the rumblings of someone who is falling asleep. Sort of like Batman, I think, making a mental note of how to describe it to Lacey later.

  And then I remember that Lacey and I aren’t exactly speaking.

  There might not be a Later.

  People mumble a smattering of goods in response to James’s question.

  “I have employee packets for everyone,” James says. “Cate?” he calls. The smiley twenty-something woman steps forward with a grin.

  “That’s me,” she says, taking her packet from James.

  The girl from the parking lot steps forward next when James calls for a “Jenn.” He doesn’t call out everyone’s names, just some—maybe people he doesn’t remember from the interviews.

  James is handing the guy with dreadlocks his packet when the automatic door not far from us opens. Relief fills me when I see that it’s Oliver.

  He’s sticking a water bottle into an empty-looking backpack, running shoes hanging off it by the shoelaces. He makes a point to walk by and brush against my arm on his way into the staff room.

  “Hey,” he whispers.

  “Hey,” I say back, and I wonder if he can hear the relief, the grateful recognition, in my voice.

  I know someone!

  I snap back to attention just in time to notice James holding out a big brown envelope to me.

  As Oliver passes into the staff room, I notice the broad smile Jenn gives him, and she gets an easy grin in return.

  “Morning, James,” Oliver calls.

  James responds with a gruff rumble, presumably hi, and then he goes back to pointing out stuff on his copy of the papers he’s just given us.

  I turn back to him and try to listen, try to orient myself to what is going to be my life this summer.

  WHAT JAMES SAID in my interview about this job turns out to be true: it’s easy. Like in all stores with computerized registers, there is minimal math required. It’s so straightforward there is barely a need for cashiers.

  But James gives an impassioned lecture at the start of our orientation about why he employs people instead of using self-checkouts like virtually everybody else.

  “For some people, when you give them their change, you are the only person who will touch their hands that day.”

  Every station has a sanitizer dispenser, so this is not as bad as he makes it sound.

  “It’s BS that when you say community, people think about some online forum and robots, virtual whatever. We try to be different here. Plus,” he adds, “a few of our customers are elderly citizens.”

  Most. Or all. Everybody else shops at FastMart and other places where you can run in and check yourself out in minutes. But More for Less is famously a little bit geriatric in population. Which is kind of ironic, because most of the people who work here are young. High school students, or college kids home for the summer.

  After we’re shown into the staff room, where there are several couches and a coffee maker,
sink and microwave, we’re all assigned lockers to dump our stuff into. It feels a little bit like the first day of school, being shown around and introduced to people who seem much older and wiser. At some point, we pass Oliver in Meats, where he is putting some fresh cuts on a tray below a display window. His head is covered in a blue surgical-looking cap, as is the head of the man beside him.

  As we walk by, the man yells, “Hey! New kids!”

  Oliver laughs and they both wave at our group. Apparently deciding that their friendliness outweighs the condescension in their action, a couple of people up front wave back. James completely ignores all of them.

  Shelby and Cate, the smiley woman, are dropped off at the bakery when we circle back a second time, having been shown every nook and cranny in the store. We lose Longlocks, the tall one with the blond hair, to Meats, and then the rest of us—Dreadlocks, Jenn and me—are led to the front of the store to be introduced to our “mentors,” who are just people who already work here.

  “You guys apply to be cashiers or just get put here?” Dreadlocks asks me and Jenn as the three of us lag a few feet behind James.

  “I applied. You?” Jenn says.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “I told them to put me wherever,” the guy says. A subtle look at his name tag tells me his name is Thomas.

  “Okay,” James says when we get to the front. He is looking at a clipboard to see who he’s paired each of us with. “Mark, you take Jennifer. Helen, Thomas is with you. And Sheridan, you’re with Kennie.”

  It takes me a couple of seconds to realize he is talking to me.

  Sheridan.

  It’s written on my employee packet—and on my name tag too when I pull it out of the brown envelope. I forgot to mention at my interview that I go by Eden. I could say it right now. Just casually, the way I have many times when a sub calls roll. I prefer Eden, but somehow the words don’t come out.

  “You’re with Kennie,” James repeats, pointing at someone about five aisles away from where we’re standing.

  “Oh, thanks,” I mumble.

  “Over here!” Kennie calls out, waving her arms as I start to walk over. “I’m hard to miss!”

  She is.

  Kennie towers above everyone else. She is curvy and bright-eyed, and as soon as I reach till 9, I’m nearly bowled over by the confidence she exudes. Her hair is in long black braids down her back, and she’s made a little tie on the side of her boring polo shirt, which I realize instantly is the only way to avoid looking frumpy in our uniforms. I fight the urge to immediately do the same to my shirt.

  “Hello!” she says warmly.

  “Hello!” I echo, overcompensating for how flat I feel.

  “Sheridan, right? I’m Kennie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I say.

  “How old are you?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.

  “Eighteen. You?”

  “Twenty-four. You’re a baby!” She says it playfully, but I immediately feel small, like how out of place and exposed I feel, being here alone, is obvious to everyone.

  We don’t have any customers at the moment, so Kennie runs through everything at our checkout station. Buttons to contact the bakery, Meats, the staff room. How to open the register. Where receipts come out.

  Her phone has been making a series of tiny beeps the whole time she’s been talking, and after a while, she pulls it out of her pocket to glance at it. James was adamant that we aren’t allowed to use our phones during working hours, so mine is stowed away in my messenger bag, in my locker.

  “It’s nine-fifteen,” Kennie says. “There’s a sweet old couple—the Jeffersons—they come in every morning around nine-thirty for bread and milk. Like it’s 1955. It’s so cute. They try and come to me if they can. Hopefully they’ll be your first customers.”

  Kennie gets her wish, and a few minutes later, I am passing change to a small elderly woman who keeps one hand on her husband’s walker while she pays. “It’s so nice to meet you, dear. Will you be here tomorrow?”

  “Every day this week,” I say, hoping I can make it to Friday.

  “That’s wonderful. We’ll see you tomorrow!” she says.

  “You train her good, Kennie. Be on your best behavior!” the husband says as they slowly start to leave.

  “Aren’t I always?” Kennie retorts, and then the three of them burst into rapturous laughter. I smile, pretending to get the joke, watching how Mrs. Jefferson keeps her hand on her husband’s back while they walk, even as her own body hunches up at the top. I’ve always imagined my parents would look something like that when they’re old.

  “Cheeky.” Kennie shakes her head, still smiling after they’ve left. Her phone beeps again and she pulls it out once more, appearing to fire off a few texts.

  “What’s the busiest time?” I ask, looking around at the mostly empty aisles, trying to make conversation.

  “Hmm, really depends,” Kennie says, still distracted by her phone. “Eleven till noon. Then again, after lunch can be pretty crazy too. I…” She trails off. “Oh no. Applebee’s is off by that bridge, right? Close to the hospital?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Kennie groans and taps her temple. “Think, think, think.”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  She sighs, lowers her phone for the first time in minutes and leans closer. “I double-booked myself for a date. You’d think I’d learn but…” She shakes her head while I watch her, amazed.

  “You double-booked a date?”

  “I’m supposed to meet one guy for dinner at seven-fifteen, but Drinks Guy is at eight. So I was thinking, maybe a quick dinner and then run off to drinks?”

  My expertise in dating is so poor that all I can offer is a noncommittal sound, which I hope sounds like a byproduct of thinking and not, say, acid reflux.

  “You okay?” she asks. “Do you need a drink?”

  “Oh no, I’m fine.”

  “The fridge in the staff room always has waters, if you ever do,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  A second passes before she goes back to her date dilemma.

  “I don’t think I can make Drinks unless I leave, like, twenty minutes into dinner. And Dinner is actually promising.”

  “Oh, uh…” I don’t think I’ve ever even managed to attract the attention of two guys at the same time, let alone book two simultaneous dates. Who is this person?

  “You know what? I’m just going to text Drinks and see if he can meet next week. If he can, great. If not, it’s not meant to be and I’m not going to stress. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

  “That’s true,” I say, nodding sagely.

  “I know, I’m kind of old-fashioned and I’m supposed to be part of the Hookup Generation—which, by the way, what even is that? Like, how far do you have to go for it to qualify as hooking up? Anyway,” she continues, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone interrupt herself so many times, “I believe in dates. I like dressing up and shaving my legs and making an effort, you know? Like the good old days.” She says this last bit with a wistful sigh.

  “Yeah,” I say, and am relieved to see a man making his way over to us with a basket of groceries. After that, things pick up and we fall into a pattern of Kennie supervising while I scan people’s groceries. She discreetly checks her phone in the increasingly small windows of time when no one comes to our aisle.

  I don’t feel much like speaking, and, thankfully, Kennie doesn’t seem to mind.

  I try to imagine myself doing this for a couple of months, till the end of summer, and find that I can.

  I start to feel that thing that comes bubbling up right before things go terribly wrong. I think it’s called hope. Trying to implement some of the positive thinking that Maura Paulsen, PhD, would suggest, I have been telling myself:
This isn’t so bad. This is pretty easy. I haven’t messed up that many times.

  And it’s mostly true. But then, too quickly, Kennie is announcing that it’s time to break for lunch. All of us new hires have lunch at the same time during this week of orientation, along with a few of the other workers. The other mentors who have supervised new cashiers stay at their tills, but Kennie pokes at a switch so our light goes off.

  “Great job. You learn fast!” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  She surprises me by giving me something between a hug and a shoulder squeeze as we start toward the staff room. I didn’t think we had reached that stage in our relationship, but maybe she’s just one of those super huggy people.

  “What are you doing for lunch? I’d hang out but I’m off to pick out a dress. In thirty minutes.” She laughs at her own ambition. “Wish me luck!”

  “Good luck!” I say cheerfully.

  “Thanks,” she says, and then she works a combination for one of the higher-up lockers and breezes out of there. The staff room is filling up with this morning’s group of new people, plus a few more I don’t recognize. A microwave dings and the smell of mac and cheese circles the air, causing someone to inhale appreciatively.

  “Someone’s lunch is about to be awesome!”

  I look around, trying to figure out where to sit, who looks the friendliest, where there actually is a free space. The newbies are mostly sitting together, but the only empty space by them is next to Jenn and I’m not so sure about that. Plus, I didn’t bring a real lunch.

  This is the part of the day that I did not anticipate, the one that makes me want to go running home. My rage at Lacey is rising again as is my embarrassment at standing too long, surveying seating options, because there’s nothing that betrays friendlessness like looking around for somewhere to sit.

  This is the start of my new life.

  This is what college is going to be like.

  I can’t stay here.

  On the third attempt, I manage to get my combination, and then I am hurrying out of the staff room, out of the store and toward my car in the parking lot.