The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(22)
“Sure, whatever,” she says. “But is there any way I can convince you to get your reconciliation Slurpee elsewhere?”
“Please,” I say. “I need this. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until right now. Bringing Dino a Slurpee will remind him of those Friday nights lying on the floor in his room or mine, shooting enemy ships, talking about everything and nothing, wondering what our futures were gonna to look like.” I laugh to myself. “There was this time for, like, three months when Dino was convinced he was gonna be a filmmaker, so he recorded everything on his phone and tried making a movie out of it, but I fell asleep while he was showing it and he got so pissed.”
The woman breaks in and says, “This is thrilling, but seriously, if you can fix your problems with a Slurpee, you can probably fix them without one.”
Ding!
Someone comes into the store. The woman sighs again and returns to her post, leaving the question of whether or not she’s going to fix the machine unanswered. I need to go pick up Dino, but now that I’ve got it in my head that I want these Slurpees, I don’t want to go back without them, and the woman is being mighty unhelpful.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of the girl that came in as she heads to the drink cooler. She’s humming a familiar tune, so I take a quick peek. Frumpy skirt, glasses, brown bouffant. Oh shit! Zora Hood.
I drop to a crouch and duck walk to the edge of the aisle so that I can glance around the corner. She must be on her way home from Hairspray rehearsals. That’s why I recognized her humming. She’s my understudy for the summer show at Truman High that I’m in. Was in. Whatever. She opens the cooler door and pulls out a couple of root beers, then stops at the chips and grabs two bags before heading to the counter. I’ve got to get out of here.
While the cashier is ringing her up, I creep toward the door, sneaking along the back end of the aisles to avoid walking near Zora. I’m clear. I’m going to make it. I open the door and then I hear, “July?”
For not even half a second, I freeze. Barely noticeable, right? She couldn’t have seen me pause, which was hardly classifiable as a reaction.
“July Cooper?”
But, of course, she did. I speed up, digging my keys from my pocket. I get into the car and start the engine and reverse out of the lot as quickly as I can. Zora runs out of the store as I’m pulling away. If my heart hadn’t been cut out and stuffed into a plastic bag before being shoved back into my body, it would be beating so damn hard right now.
What the hell was I thinking? How would I have explained to Zora Hood why I, a girl who died a week ago, was in a 7-Eleven trying to buy a Slurpee? This is why Dino didn’t want me to leave the funeral home. He feared something like this would happen. It nearly did. What if that had been my dad? He doesn’t live far from here. He could’ve gotten a craving for beef jerky or a burrito and decided to run to the corner store and seen me and then everything would’ve been a mess. Maybe the best course of action is to pick up Dino and drive to his house and hide until I know how long this is going to last so that I don’t get into trouble.
I stop at a red light to make a U-turn, and Zora pulls up beside me in her dad’s pickup truck. Her windows are down and she’s yelling, “July? Is that you?”
Thank goodness my windows are tinted, but why won’t this light change?
“Roll down your window!” she yells.
I ignore her. That’s my only option. Ignore her and hope she goes away.
The light changes to green, finally, and I floor it, pulling a U-turn and heading toward Walmart. I glance in my rearview and spot Zora behind me. She always was too persistent for her own good. Nice enough, but she didn’t know when to back off. And now I have no idea what to do. Obviously, I need to lose her—I can’t bring her to Dino and get him in trouble—but I’m not sure how.
There! A Taco Bell, and there’s a cop car in the lot. I cut into the turn lane, wait for a gap in traffic, and pull into the lot. I park far enough away to avoid too many people but near enough that I’m visible to the police cruiser. Then I kill the engine, lock the doors, crawl into the back seat, crouch down on the floor, and wait.
It’s less than a minute before Zora is knocking on the windows and calling my name. My plan, which isn’t honestly much of one, is to hope that the cop will come out of Taco Bell, happy and full of chalupas and sour cream and hot sauce, see some random girl freaking out around the car, come to investigate, hear Zora explain how she thinks she saw a girl who’s supposed to be dead driving a car, and arrest her for obviously being on lots of drugs. It’s horrible, but it’s all I’ve got.
“July? I swear to God I saw you. Come on! Open the car!”
“Hey,” a second voice says. “Is there a problem?” At first I think it’s the cop, but no. I know that voice. It’s Dino.
DINO
WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN, I came home from school, went into the house and got a snack, and then walked across the lawn to the office. I opened the door and found Dad standing in the center of the room in an apron that said YOUR OPINION WASN’T IN THE RECIPE, singing that awful song from Titanic, while Mom was sitting at the desk—atop which rested a severed arm—crying. I turned right around and left, and to this day I still have no idea what I walked in on.
Finding Zora Hood pounding on the window of my car in a Taco Bell parking lot while shouting July’s name produces about the same level of confusion. The major difference being that I can’t walk away this time.