Along for the Ride(22)

He chuckled. ‘Come on, Aud. You do not.’

‘I do.’

‘No, you don’t. It’s totally tacky.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s –’

‘Horrible,’ he finished for me. ‘Cheap and ridiculous. Probably the stupidest graduation gift ever, which is exactly why I gave it to you.’ He laughed, that booming, Hollis guffaw that, despite myself, always made me want to laugh, too. ‘Look, I figured there was no way I could compete with all the money and savings bonds and new cars you’d be getting from everyone else. So I decided at least my offering should be memorable.’

‘It is that,’ I agreed.

‘You should have seen the others!’ Another laugh. ‘They had them with all kinds of sayings. One was HELLO FRIEND! in bright yellow. Also, PARTY QUEEN, in pink. And then there was the one that said, inexplicably, in green, CRAZY PERSON. Like anyone would want their picture in that.’

‘Only you,’ I said.

‘No kidding!’ He snorted. ‘Anyway, I figured the cool thing was that you could keep switching out the picture. Because you don’t want THE BEST OF TIMES to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. And just like that, he’d done it again: taken a thought he’d probably come to on the fly, under any number of influences, and somehow managed to make it deep enough to resonate. It was an art, what Hollis did. Never calculating, but it did have its charms. ‘I miss you,’ I said to him.

‘I miss you, too,’ he replied. ‘Hey, look, I’ll send a CRAZY PERSON frame. You can put that picture of me in it, set it next to you in THE BEST OF TIMES, and it’ll almost be like we’re together. What do you think?’

I smiled. ‘It’s a deal.’

‘Cool!’ There was a muffled noise, followed by loud voices. ‘Okay, Aud, I gotta run. Ramona and me are headed to a party. Talk soon, though, okay?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Let’s –’

But then he was gone, just like that. Before I could ask him who exactly Ramona was, or what had happened in Amsterdam. That was my brother, the living, breathing To Be Continued. Like my dad’s book, he was always in progress.

I shut my phone, then slid it back into my pocket. Hollis was a great distraction, but any regret I’d been feeling about taking the job came rushing back as soon as I opened the door to Clementine’s and saw Maggie standing at the register, Leah and Esther on either side of her. There is really nothing more intimidating than approaching a group of girls who have already made up their minds about you. It’s like walking a plank, no way to go but down.

‘Hello,’ Leah, the redhead, said as I came toward them. She was one of those tall, curvy types with milky white skin and was wearing a low-cut sundress and strappy heels. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind, just sort of level as she said, ‘What can we do for you?’

‘She’s going to be doing the books,’ Maggie told her, although her eyes were on me. When I looked back at her, though, she flushed, turning her gaze to some papers on the counter in front of her, shuffling them busily. ‘Heidi’s been looking for someone since the baby came, remember?’

‘Oh, right,’ Leah said. She pushed back from the counter, hopping up on the one behind her, and folded her long legs. ‘Well, maybe now our checks won’t bounce.’

‘No kidding,’ Esther said. Her pigtails were gone, her hair loose and topped with an army-style cap, which she was wearing with a black sundress, a denim jacket thrown over it, and flip-flops. ‘I mean, I love Heidi. But getting paid at the ATM is kind of sketchy.’

‘You did get paid, though. Heidi’s a good boss; it was an honest mistake,’ Maggie said. Now she was making a studied point of not looking at me as she hit a button on the register, then pulled out a stack of bills, straightening them. Again, she was dressed in pink – both her shirt and flip-flops – and I wondered if this was some kind of signature thing with her. I bet it was. ‘Anyway, someone’s supposed to show her around.’

‘Who?’ Leah asked. ‘Heidi?’

‘No.’ Maggie shut the drawer, then looked at me. A moment later, Leah and Esther both followed suit. Clearly, I’d reached the end of that plank. Nothing to do but jump.

‘Auden,’ I said.

A pause. Then Leah pushed herself off the counter, dropping her feet to the floor with a clunk. ‘Come on,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘The office is this way.’

I could feel the other girls watching me as I followed her past a couple of racks of jeans, a shoe display, and a clearance section to a narrow hallway. ‘That’s the bathroom,’ she said, nodding at a door on the left. ‘Not for customer use, ever, it’s the rule. And here’s the office. Stand back, the door kind of sticks.’

She reached for the knob, then pushed herself against it. A second later, I heard a pop! and it swung open.

The first thing I saw was pink. All four walls were painted a rosy, almost bubble-gummy shade of Maggie’s favorite color. What wasn’t pink (which, at first glance, didn’t seem like much) was orange. Adding to the insanity, the very small space was jammed with all kinds of girly little touches: pink stacking bins, a Hello Kitty pencil cup, a bowl filled entirely with lipsticks and lip glosses. Even the filing cabinets – the filing cabinets! – had pink and orange labels, and a pink feather boa was stretched out over across the top of them.