Shopping with Beatriz was exactly what he said it’d be. I stood outside of the dressing room most of the time while she tried on various things. She did have a knack for finding amazing deals. Despite my family’s no purchased gift rule, I bought a new top for my Aunt Grace. And further bending the gift rule, I shopped for the materials I would need to make several pairs of earrings for everyone from a craft store.
The checkout line moved slowly like every other store we’d visited. While we waited, I watched the flow of people passing the store’s window. Safe from the cold, they moved slower in the mall, many of them clogging the mall’s main artery. The checkout line moved forward and I turned away from the view.
From the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a glimpse of Brian but when I looked back, I didn’t see anyone who looked remotely like him. My imagination was playing tricks on me. Probably because I still wondered about Clavin. I’d thought to have heard something by now, either from Clavin himself or the police. I didn’t want to reach out to him if he felt better. Hearing from me might cause a setback. But calling Brian might be an option. I decided to give it a few more days.
After checking out, with relief, I followed Beatriz to the food court. Brad waved to us from a table he’d already claimed. A mound of bags took up the chair next to him. Beatriz piled our bags with his and then pulled me into the lines for the restaurants lining the food court. First, we hit all the samples. Gotta love samples. Then we selected one of the Chinese places. With a pile of food for five dollars, we headed back to the table to take our turn watching the bags so Brad could order.
Brad teased Beatriz while we ate saying he’d gotten her an amazing gift and wanted to know which of her bags contained his gift. Since I’d been with her, I knew she hadn’t gotten him anything. She ate quickly and then insisted she still had twenty minutes she could shop before we needed to leave. Since Brad didn’t want to be standing on the wrong side of a dressing room door, he insisted I go with Beatriz.
Full and laden with bags, I followed her as she made a beeline for a high-end store. She led me unerringly to the beauty department where she started talking to a sales associate and sniffing cologne samples. I made the mistake of looking at a display case. Another sales associate swooped in and start asking me questions about the man I needed to buy for. I thought of Morik, but said I wasn’t interested in anything. My modest budget couldn’t handle this kind of store. Plus, he smelled good the way he was. But it did get me thinking about what I should get him.
After selecting cologne, we met up with Brad again and made our way out to the car. The sun had set. I paused by the trunk to look up at the stars as they stowed their bags, but disappointed by the light pollution, didn’t linger in the cold.
Pulling from the parking lot, I caught a flash of glowing green, but lost it before I could catch a glimpse of Morik.
They dropped me off just a few minutes before seven. Morik opened the door for me before I reached it and I wondered how his jumping from place to place worked. Mom, Aunt Grace and Gran sat on the couch in the living room looking marginally relaxed. I kept the bags behind me and hid them in my room while mom smiled at me knowingly.
We all watched a movie together. Afterward, Morik talked to my mom with ease regarding the movie’s plot and inaccuracies. Observing her as she responded to him, I could see her effort to make and maintain eye contact. He still made her nervous. I couldn’t believe it’d only been a few days since he showed himself to me.
After school on Tuesday, Morik watched me work on the earrings I planned to give as gifts. When we arrived home finding only Aunt Danielle, she’d informed us that Gran went to the neighbors again.
After swearing Aunt Danielle to secrecy, I spread out the materials on the kitchen table. The crystals resting in groups on the wood surface glittered in the afternoon light. I eyed them critically trying to decide how I wanted the finished product to look. Not too long or wide. Not too much crystal.
I started two small piles arranging them in a pattern and using metal beads to break up the crystal. When I reached to remove a crystal from each pile, Morik caught my hand stopping me. He reached under our joined hands and shuffled the existing pile. After his story about the shell combs, I wasn’t surprised when his arrangement looked amazing.
“Thanks,” I said turning to smile at him.