Beast(53)

“Uh-huh, June.” Jamie takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. Feels like she’s made of fireflies and it lights me up. “I keep forgetting this is new for you, sorry.” She drops my hand and picks up a box with some girl’s slick and shiny cheek on it. “Only if you want to. Pride’s not going anywhere. What do you think of this moisturizer?”

“I don’t,” I say. I drift into the aisle and glance at the wonderland. I don’t even know what half this shit is. Lipstick? Okay, that’s easily identified. But lip gloss, lip balm, lip tar, and lip stain? You only have two lips. How many boiled dinosaur bones do two lips need? I grip my disgusting crutches, the rubber all split and cracked with wear and tear. When I look up, I have a heart attack. It’s my mom. Staring at her phone and ambling into Sephora. I duck down and almost crush Jamie. “Hide!” I tell her in a whisper.

“What?”

“My mom’s at the mall, she’s in the store, hide!”

Jamie jumps and turns and stops, waiting for me. “Aren’t you coming?”

All I can do is shake my head. “I’m too big.” Hiding, like crouching into a ball or something, is stupid. The only thing I can do is stand next to a wall and hope my mom doesn’t see me.

Mom is still staring, staring, staring at her phone. Please keep reading all those emails.

Jamie gives me a sad look and resigns me to my fate as she darts off behind a row of colors wedged in plastic containers. I lean against a post next to a bunch of tubes and tubs and wait, peeking from behind the brim of my hat. Mom comes in, finishes up a text, and looks around. Be small, I command my entire body, and it just goes, ha ha ha, sucker….

Mom sees me and gasps so loud everyone’s head in Sephora snaps along for the ride. “Dylan Walter Ingvarsson, what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Mom.” I look across the store. Jamie is invisible. It’s for the best.

“I want answers. Now.”

“I was…” I don’t know crap-all about any of this. I grab the nearest thing. “Shopping. For Mother’s Day. Here’s some lip…stuff.”

She peers at the black plastic tube of goo. “It’s November.”

“Christmas, then. But now you spoiled the surprise.” I put it back.

“Not buying it. Why aren’t you in school?”

Struggling to come up with something, I’ve got nothing. I shut my mouth.

“That’s what I thought.” She tugs at one of my crutches to get me moving. “You’re going back right this second, mister.”

“Wait a minute. Why are you here?”

Her mouth pops open. “I…had a feeling this is where I needed to go.”

Dad! Dammit, how does he keep doing this for her? I don’t get it. Why won’t he talk to me?

“And I have a coworker who’s retiring and I wanted to pick up her favorite perfume.” She reaches behind me and snares a box. It’s all pink and loopy with little white birds on it. “So now I have it, let’s pay and go.”

Mom marches me toward the cashier behind a counter and alternates between watching where she’s going and shooting me the look, just so I know I’m still in a very large amount of trouble. Got it. “That lip gloss wasn’t even my color, Dylan. I have more of a peach complexion.”

“Um, okay.” I sneak my head around. Jamie’s still hiding better than a baby deer.

“It was a good choice for you, though. You’ve got your dad’s pink cheeks. Wait.” She stops us both. “Were you shopping for yourself? Or Jamie?”

Now the look has shifted to oh no, what does this REALLY mean?

“Honestly, I saw you coming and ducked into the nearest store.”

Relief smooths her edges round. “Thank god. For a second I thought we had our own Jamie situation on our hands. Not that this negates all the trouble you’re in, mister.” She gets moving again and plunks the perfume on the counter. “Ma’am, do you have children?” she asks the woman behind the counter.

“I do,” she says brightly. “Two girls and a boy.”

“And what’s your strictest punishment for a kid who skips school, like my son here?”

The woman behind the counter looks up and up at me. “That’s your son?”

“Yup.”

“You poor woman,” she laughs. “You must’ve cracked open from the pressure.”

Mom smiles along. “Ten pounds, eight ounces, I demanded a C-section.”

They get their full jollies on and I stand there while they laugh at me. “Good lord, he’s a beast,” the woman says. “When he came in with that girl, I was like—”

“What girl?” Mom demands.

I eye-yell at the woman behind the counter to say no more, but she’s Team Mom. “She’s young, tall, and pretty. Think she had a camera?” the woman says, and I’m instantly screwed.

Mom tears away from the counter and storms through the aisles one by one. I catch a glimpse of Jamie trying to make a break for it, but Mom spies her first. “Jamie!” she yells. “Young lady, you and I need to have a talk.”

“Mom,” I interrupt, throwing myself between the two of them. “It’s not what you think! Don’t take it out on her, take it out on me.” If there was any way to bargain, to plead, to steer her another way, I’d do it all, but once she saw Jamie, it was over.