Far from the Tree(35)

Grace poked around at the tissue paper, ignoring her. “What are these?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

Grace ignored her some more. It was a tiny ceramic fried egg nestled in an equally tiny ceramic skillet. “Are these . . . ? These are salt and pepper shakers!” Grace held up the egg. “I can’t tell if these are terrible or amazing.”

“They’re an insomnia purchase,” her mom said. Her insomnia caused her to buy a lot of things online around three in the morning, things that were often returned as soon as they arrived, once she’d seen them in the cold, harsh light of day. (Grace suspected that insomnia was also how her mom had made it through all the Tolkien books.)

“They’re terrible,” Grace finally decided. “Dad will hate them.”

“Dad does hate them!” her dad yelled from the kitchen.

Her mom raised an eyebrow at Grace as if to say, Do you see what I’m dealing with here? “Just please return them,” she snapped, handing Grace a twenty-dollar bill. “You can get yourself a giant fancy coffee or frozen yogurt or something.”

Luckily for Grace’s mom, Grace was easily bribed. She took the salt and pepper shakers. And the money. And the car keys.

Once Grace pulled in at the shopping center, though, she realized that she had made a huge mistake, one much bigger than salt and pepper shakers. It was a Saturday, also known as a nonschool day. The parking lot wasn’t too crowded, and she didn’t recognize any of the cars from her school’s parking lot, but that didn’t make her suddenly nervous stomach feel any better. After all, the last time Grace had seen any of her classmates, she had been punching one of them in the face. She wasn’t exactly looking to repeat the experience.

If Grace’s mother had done this on purpose just to “get her out of the house,” Grace was going to kill her.

Grace put on sunglasses as she skulked across the parking lot, then took the back way to the store rather than go past all the pretty fountains with the splash pads for the little kids. Grace didn’t think she could handle seeing them, hearing them shout about the water, without thinking of what Peach might look like at that age. Just seeing a baby on TV made her change the channel. It was like her heart was being stabbed with the most immense kind of love, and regardless of its source, the pain was still too much to handle.

Whisked Away was pretty much empty when Grace finally made her way there (she guessed browsing for kitchen appliances wasn’t everyone’s ideal thing on a Saturday morning). She got in line behind a woman who was paying with a check. A check.

Grace wondered if the woman’s cart and oxen were double-parked outside.

Just as it was her turn to get up to the register, though, Grace saw a few people come in. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them from school. Two girls who had always seemed nice enough, but Grace suddenly wanted to fall down a hole like Alice, disappear into Wonderland before anyone could see her, and her heart started beating a pattern that felt like a gun going off at the start of a race, over and over again, telling her to run.

She didn’t run, per se, but she left the line and did a ridiculously fast walk toward the back of the store, near the clearance section, where they did their cooking classes. It was deserted back there, and cooler, too, and she stood under the draft of an air vent and tried to catch her breath.

It was so stupid. They probably didn’t know who she was, and even if they did, who cared? It wasn’t like they had caught her trying to rob the store at gunpoint.

Grace knew all this, of course, but it was taking her heart a little longer to catch up with her brain.

“Can I—oh. Hi.”

Grace turned around, ready to tell the salesperson that she was fine, that she didn’t need help, she was just browsing, anything to get them away from her, when she realized who it was: Rafe, the guy from the dreaded formaldehyde bathroom.

Of course it’s you, Grace thought. Of course it is.

“Oh, hi,” Grace said instead. “Hey. I was just, um, yeah. I’m returning some stuff.”

“Cool,” he said, but he didn’t move. The green apron he had to wear made his eyes look even more brown, but it might have just been the light. Or the reflection from the Teflon cookware display case. That was probably it.

“Yeah,” Grace said again. She sounded super intelligent. This was easily her best conversation ever. “You, uh, you work here?” Gold medal–winning conversation, for sure!

“No, I just like aprons,” Rafe said. He said it so seriously that she blinked, wondering if maybe she had accidentally struck up a conversation with a psychopath who had a thing for baking. Then he smiled. “Kidding!” he said. “Sorry, no one gets my humor. I’m kidding. I work here. But I do like the apron. Don’t tell anyone.”

Grace nodded, trying to figure out how to get out of both the conversation and the store as soon as possible. “It has pockets,” Grace said. “That’s always nice.”

“It is,” Rafe said, then stuck his hand in the front pocket and flapped it a little. “Room for all my secrets. Sorry, that’s me attempting humor again, in case you couldn’t tell.”

He was somewhere between embarrassing and charming. Grace couldn’t decide if she liked him or just felt bad for him. “Got it this time,” she said.