Beast(58)

Stop. Focus. I breathe. It’s just a beard, not a death sentence.

I need something else to do in the store and decide on examining shoelaces. My choices are brown, black, and white in either twelve-or twenty-inch lengths. Twelve seems too short, but the twenty looks too long. One of the laces isn’t wrapped properly at the end, and the end is fraying. The store should offer it at a discount. A ruckus hits my ears.

The guy has Jamie pinned in a corner.

He’s in her space, her back against the wall, and picks up a lock of her hair. She smiles, a fake one, and twists her hair away as he laughs. I’m there before her hair hits her shoulder. “Leave her alone,” my voice booms above him.

The dude turns around and faces me. “What’s it to you?”

“Get what you need and go,” I say, stepping in between him and Jamie.

“What if I’m in the middle of getting her number, huh?”

I look at Jamie. Her head shimmies no, just enough for me to see. “Is he bothering you, miss?” I ask her.

She clamps her lips down. “I’m fine; you can go.”

“You heard her,” I tell the punk.

“No, you,” she says.

“What?”

Anger slips across the way from her to me. It’s so strong, I almost want to hold on to the shelves. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to be here,” she says, as if she just found out I drowned all her new puppies in a sack. Then warmth comes over her and she smiles at this f*ckfaced jerk. “Hey,” she says to the guy. “Thanks, but no thanks. And you, sir,” she says to me, suddenly cold again. “I’m good. Okay?”

“You heard the girl, bro,” the guy says to me. “Step off.”

“She told you the same thing. Take a hike.”

The guy shoves me with his pointy little fingertips. “You got something to say on this hike of yours, tell me outside. I always wanted to take on the Man.”

Hold on, I’m the Man?

I have been a bully. I don’t think I want to be the Man.

My reflection in the dim light of the window is everything I don’t want to be, because that’s not me. That’s what I might be. I’m not some old man in a sports coat; I’m a kid. I should catch a glimpse of some thin-shouldered twerp in a ratty old T-shirt and beat-down hoodie with acne all over his face.

Jamie called me sir, but not in the fun jokey way. Feels like I’m the bad guy now. She stands firm and I have no idea what to do. My only talent is growing bigger, so I wish she’d just let me chest-bump this dude all the way to Idaho.

The punk looks me up and down and all over, hands flexing in and out of fists because he can’t figure out what’s next. He wants to take me on—I can smell it, hear the blood rush in both our ears. I step back, I want no part of this. He gets tighter in my space. Daring me. Jamie watches us from the side, her hand sneaking out to grab the neck of a glass bottle, just in case.

Out of the corner of my eye, Jamie creeps back many steps. Safe.

“She’s not interested,” I say in a low whisper.

“Let her be the judge.”

“You guys…,” Jamie says.

“She already said no thanks. You got a hearing problem?” I say. “In case you do, I’ll talk real clear. She’s underage. She’s off-limits. A real judge would throw the book at you for trying to get with a minor.”

The jerk’s got nothing after that. He slinks out of the store and finds his bike, riding off into the night. I turn to Jamie just as she puts the glass bottle down. “Are you okay, miss?”

She nods but doesn’t say anything.

Please look at me, I ask her without words.

She does. Why’d you have to do that? I was fine. Everything was fine.

How could I not?

I’m so pissed at you.

Why?

You’re not my f*cking bodyguard, okay? she says back as she stares at the ceiling.

Oh. “Let’s go,” I whisper, turning to leave.

She pinches the fabric of my sleeve. “Get the beer first.” I need to get shitfaced. I was kinda joking before, but I’m for real now.

I can’t be the prince, can’t be a bodyguard, definitely do not want to be the Man, and now even being a friend feels all shot up with holes. Don’t quite know what that leaves me, but it feels like nothing.

Jamie stands fast, not moving until I get more beer. Opening up a cold door, I get another six-pack and walk to the front. The counter girl’s phone is like a barnacle on her hand, practically burrowed into her skin. She was texting so hard, she never saw anything. Perhaps searching for the perfect meme GIF was involved. I hope she found it. The beer settles evenly on the counter and I wait for the girl to do something.

Card me. I dare you.

She gives me the slightest once-over and scans the bar code with her plastic wand. It beeps. “Eight dollars and seventy-five cents.”

I don’t budge. I’m fifteen years old, card me. My wallet flops open to my school ID. It’s me, only with no beard. I push it toward her. “Don’t you want to card me?”

She flips a hand. “Nah, you’re good.”

I take off the glasses. I tug at the acrylic paint in my beard and let several tiny gray tubes fall to the ground.

The clerk is oblivious to the point of pain. “Sir?”