How to Meet Boys (6 page)

“Windows and doors,” Jackson said.

“Great. Sounds great.” While Jackson fetched the bottle of glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels from the utility closet, I started straightening and tidying all the shelves of T-shirts, sweatshirts, towels, dish towels . . . you name it, my grandparents’ store stocked it. I have to give them credit, though. Most of what they had wasn’t tacky, as far as those things go. Some of it was even cute.

But after a while, it got tedious. I walked over to the front doors to get some fresh air. I fiddled with the iPod they used to play music in the store. I read a few entries in
An Apple Farmer’s Almanac
.

“Plant a seed today and feed the world tomorrow.”

“North wind at night, grower’s delight.”

“A bee on the tree is worth two in the hive.”

I put the book back on the shelf and glanced at my watch, wondering if it was time for lunch yet. It was only ten forty-five. The days were going to crawl if I didn’t talk to Jackson. Besides, I wanted him to know that I was completely cool now—as in, no longer interested in him. At all. The easiest way to do that would be to joke around and show him I wanted only to be a friendly coworker. It didn’t mean that I’d forgiven him yet; just that I could see the wisdom of talking to him, if it helped pass the time. Maybe he could even apologize. That could be a conversation.

I migrated to the magnet tree, which was literally a metal tree covered in cute magnets. I absentmindedly ran the feather duster around the tree, stopping when my eye caught a rectangular magnet styled like a book cover:
50 Shades of Apple
. I laughed, wondering if my grandparents even knew what it meant.

I picked up the one that said
The Original Apple Store: iApple—Do You?
and brought it over to show Jackson. “How long before my grandparents get sued for this, do you think?”

He turned to me just as he was spraying the door. The bottle kept spraying and blue window cleaner went right into my eyes.

“Ack!” I cried.

“Sorry!” Jackson said. “You okay?”

Sorry? My eyes were burning and I could hardly see. I was going blind from glass spray. And all he could say was “Sorry?” I rushed to the big sink in the cold storage room and splashed my face with water. My eyes were still burning, so I doused them about a hundred times.

Finally the feeling started to go away. I grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall to dry my face. I blinked a few times.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Jackson said from the doorway. “Are you okay?”

I could still see. Unfortunately. My reflection in the paper towel dispenser was blurry but showed me two things: one, my eye makeup was smudged and disastrous-looking; and two, the neck of my T-shirt was soaked. Great. So this was how I had to start my first day on the job. I dabbed at my eyes, trying to fix the smeared mascara. “I’m fine. Maybe a little drenched, and I might need glasses to see from now on—”

“You can’t see?” Jackson asked. “Are you serious? Crap! Where’s the phone?”

“Don’t ask me! I’m practically blind here,” I said.

“No. Come on. Really? I’m so sorry, I—”

I started laughing, despite the stinging pain in my eyes. “Relax. I’m fine.”

“You’re—you’re fine?”

“Really. I was pulling your leg. Kind of,” I admitted. It felt good to see him freak out. Not that I’d be plotting revenge all summer, but seeing him so defensive and apologetic made things a teeny bit better.

“Well, be serious. Is there anything I can do?” Jackson asked. “You need more paper towels?”

“No, I’m good. I’m going to blink a lot for the next couple of hours, but I’ll be okay, I think,” I said.

“People are going to wonder why you’re making faces at them. I can’t believe you just did that to me,” he said. “I thought I blinded you for life or something.”

“I can’t believe you just sprayed glass cleaner in my face,” I said.

All of a sudden it felt like we were kids again, having a typical argument. We both laughed, breaking some of the tension. Actually, I don’t even know how much tension he’d been feeling; but I’d felt pretty crushed by the weight of it.

The phone rang, and Jackson headed to the counter to grab it, while I ducked into the bathroom to see if I could fix my makeup—not that I had any with me, because it was all in my bag in the office. I could just run and grab it, but I wasn’t thrilled about looking like a raccoon in public, a sad, tearful raccoon. I was about to dab my eyes with a tissue when

there was a gentle knock on the door. “Um, telephone call. For you,” Jackson said awkwardly.

“Who is it?’ I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A girl’s voice?”

I quickly swiped the tissue across my face and tossed it into the trash can. When I walked back out, the store had suddenly filled with customers. “What’s going on? Bus tour?” I asked Jackson as I hurried to the phone, on the wall by the register. I’d have to get rid of whoever it was—probably Mikayla. I hoped her first day at work wasn’t going as badly as mine was.

“Lucyloo! It’s Mom. You didn’t answer your phone, and I got worried so I called the store.”

“Mom. The reason I didn’t answer is because I’m at work. At the store,” I explained. I’d just talked to her an hour or so ago when she called to check in, and told her that I was on my way.

“Well, anyway, have you found a good dress yet? Because I’m standing here at this new shop on Fiftieth and France, and they have the cutest—”

“Mom. Mom! I can’t talk right now. I’m at work,” I said. Again.

My parents had been divorced for a little over two years, and now both were engaged and planning on getting remarried soon, maybe even during the summer. I couldn’t believe how quickly they’d moved on, especially considering they’d been married for fifteen years.

I knew that if I’d stayed at home for the summer, I’d be buried in wedding plans, helping my mother with every detail and doing a thousand errands for her. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t drag me in as much as she could over the phone.

My dad and his fiancée were planning a small wedding in the fall, and they’d asked me to do a reading for the ceremony—in addition to being a bridesmaid—so I’d been leafing through my giant poetry anthology from school, searching for a good passage. My dad’s wedding would be much more low-key than my mom’s. I was counting on it, in fact.

“But this dress is perfect for you. I can just see it with a nice pair of earrings and then some sandals . . ”

I suddenly caught my reflection in the small apple-shaped mirror on the wall beside the phone. I no longer had raccoon eyes. Now I looked like a Goth clown. I grabbed my purse from the office shelf, found a tube of lip balm, and started using it as a makeup remover. “Mom, please, I have to get back to work. I’ll call you later,” I said.

“Oh, look at that necklace. I might need that. Anyway, let me describe this dress to you. It’s sort of a peach. Would you say it’s peach or more poppy?” she started asking someone at the store.

“No—don’t!” I said. I had visions of spending my entire summer on the phone with my mom. With the wedding planning going on, she’d probably be calling me thirty times more than she usually did. “I need to wait on some customers.”

“But I need to know now. I also need help with the cake, and the decorations, but we can talk about that later. So what about this dress?” she asked. “Should I pick it up while I’m here?”

“Your call. Gotta go, Mom. Love you.” I hung up the red phone on the wall. Was she going to call me every day at work? I could just see her doing that. When I went to a weeklong soccer camp in tenth grade, she was famous for calling me every other hour to make sure I was drinking enough water—and to tell me what she’d been doing in the time since we last spoke.

As I walked back out to the register, I saw a line of about five people waiting. Had I been on the phone that long?

“How do you ring these up?” Jackson said, showing me a handful of red candles.

“Carefully?” I said, stepping up beside him.

He handed them to me. His hand was sort of shaking, and the candles felt a little mushy. He was nervous. That made me smile. Good. I wasn’t the only nervous wreck around here. Just the one who knew how to ring up teeny little apple-shaped votive candles that were practically melting. But was he nervous because of me and our awkward past, or because he didn’t know they were three for five dollars?

“You ring, I’ll bag,” he said. “I’m good at that, anyway. Two years working after school at Lunds,” he added, referring to a grocery store back home. He shook out a small red handled bag and started filling it with Original Apple Store goods.

As I turned to swipe the credit card, we bumped elbows. I’m pretty sure it was the closest we’d stood to each other in three years. Since that disastrous day at the pool. I kind of hoped he didn’t remember that as well as I did.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“Where’s your swimsuit?” Sarah
asked, walking up beside me as I stood near the lake. Having just figured out how to keep ten kids from killing each other with tennis rackets for the past couple of hours, I was ready for a break. I slipped off my Nikes and walked onto the warm sand.

“I didn’t bring it,” I replied. “Why?”

My body was exhausted. I felt like I’d just run a marathon—not that I’ve done a real marathon . . . yet. But I think training for one could be easier than getting five- and six-year-olds to understand why zero was called
love
and why scores went up by fifteen and then by ten.

“Aw, you should have. Go buy one in the gift shop,” Henry said, following closely behind her. If Sarah was the assistant manager, then Henry was the assistant manager’s assistant. They seemed to go everywhere together.

“They don’t sell swimsuits in the gift shop,” Sarah said. “They sell
robes
. White terrycloth robes with the BBC logo.”

“Oh. Well, swimming in a robe could be interesting,” Henry said. “You’d look slightly insane, like you just escaped the asylum, but at least you’d be covered up.”

“What asylum? And somehow, I don’t think that would work.” I glanced down at my clothes. I was wearing a polo shirt and shorts—my official BBC uniform. Well, at least it was one of many. It wouldn’t matter if I got the clothes wet—I had another set just waiting for me at home.

I emptied my pockets and slid my jewelry into the toe of my tennis shoes. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” I yelled, then took off sprinting for the water, my feet tossing up sand behind me.

“You’re kidding, right?” Sarah called as she ran after me.

“I hate eggs!” Henry yelled, following close behind. “I’m ovo-intolerant!”

“Ovo-what?” I yelled back over my shoulder, then I plunged into the lake. The bracing jolt of ice-cold water took my breath away.

Oh no, oh no. How could I have forgotten how flipping
cold
the lake was? This was June, early in the season, and this was northern Minnesota, not Mexico. I was an idiot.

But at least I had company. “This lake is f-f-freezing!” I said, my teeth chattering.

“Keep swimming,” Henry said, his arms slicing through the water beside me. “Until hypothermia sets in, then get out if you can still move.”

Sarah was swimming on her back, kicking spray into the air. “Isn’t this why we have two heated pools? So we don’t have to do this?”

After another minute we raced just as quickly out of the water as we had into it. Elizabeth, who worked in the membership office, was waiting on the shore with a stack of white towels. She tossed one to each of us. “You guys are insane. You know that, right?”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, wrapping the towel around my shoulders. Standing around in a wet shirt wasn’t my idea of fun.

“We’re going for the record this year,” said Sarah. “We’re going in every single Friday. Right, Mikayla?”

“We are?” I asked. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Sarah said. “I’ll make up some kind of award.”

“Well, maybe if I bring my suit next Friday. That would help.” I clutched the towel tighter around my shoulders.

“Get dried off and come with us to Earl Grey’s,” Henry said. “A bunch of us are going—you can meet everyone and learn all the dirt.”

“Everyone who?” I said. “And what dirt?”

“I can’t tell you
now
,” Henry said. “Then you wouldn’t show up.”

“Of course I’ll show up. What time?” I asked.

“You know where Grey’s is?” Sarah asked, and I nodded. “Be there at six thirty.”

I finished toweling off, got my jewelry and slipped everything back on, and put my coins back in my pocket, along with a short pencil I’d been using to keep score in Yahtzee with a group of very competitive kids. I went inside to grab my backpack and helmet, then headed to my bike, waving to a bunch of people along the way. I was really starting to feel at home at the BBC—at least, with my coworkers. It was like an instant group of friends.

“Hey, Mikayla!” Sarah called after me. “You want a ride tonight? I can pick you up.”

“Uh, sure,” I said. “That would be great!” I walked over to quickly give her directions to the cabin on Hemlock Hill Road. It was fairly easy to find—as long as you weren’t looking for much of an actual
house
.