Hazel woke up feeling out of sorts, restless, and melancholy. She put it down to drinking the night before and swigged back some aspirin with the last dregs of a carton of orange juice. Her mom had left a note to pick up bread and milk clothespinned to a ten-dollar bill in the giant pottery catchall bowl that sat in the center of the kitchen table.
With a groan, Hazel went back upstairs to put on leggings and a baggy black shirt. She shoved the green hoops back into her ears.
Music was on in Ben’s room. Even though he didn’t play anymore, Ben always had a continuous sound track in the background, even as he slept. If he was up, though, she hoped she could persuade him to run Mom’s errand, so that she could go back to bed.
Hazel knocked on Ben’s door.
“Enter at your own risk,” he called. Hazel opened it to find him holding a cell phone up to his ear as he hopped his way into a pair of mustard-colored skinny jeans.
“Hey,” she said. “Can you—”
He waved her over, speaking into the phone. “Yeah, she’s up. She’s right in front of me. Sure, we’ll meet you in fifteen minutes.”
Hazel groaned. “What are you agreeing to?”
He tossed an easy grin in her direction and said good-bye to the person on the other end of his cell. The person she was pretty sure was Jack.
Ben and Jack had been friends for years, through Ben coming out and his obsessive relationship with the only other out boy at school, which ended in a huge public fight at the homecoming bonfire. Through Jack’s bleak depression after being dumped by Amanda Watkins, who’d told him that she was dating him only because she really wanted to date Carter and dating him was like dating Carter’s shadow. Through both of them liking different music and different books and hanging out with different people at lunch.
Surely, a little thing like her kissing Jack wouldn’t even ripple the waters. But that didn’t make her eager for the moment Ben found out what she’d done. And she wasn’t looking forward to Jack’s watching her warily all afternoon as though she might lunge at him or something.
But, despite herself, she was looking forward to seeing him again. She couldn’t quite believe they’d kissed, even just for a moment. The memory filled her with an embarrassing jolt of happiness. It felt like an act of real daring, the first she’d committed in a long time. It was a horrible mistake, of course. She could have wrecked things—she hoped she hadn’t wrecked things. She could never do it again. At least she couldn’t think of a way it would be possible to do it again.
Hazel wasn’t sure when her crush on Jack had started. It had been a slow thing, an exaggerated awareness of him, a thrill at his attention, accompanied by a constant stream of nervous chatter when he was around. But she remembered when her crush had become acute. She’d walked over to remind Ben he was supposed to be home for a music lesson with one of Dad’s deadbeat friends and found a whole group of boys in the Gordon kitchen, making sandwiches and goofing around. Jack had made her one with chicken salad and carefully sliced tomato. When he was turned away to get her some pretzels, she had snatched his partially chewed gum from where it was stuck to a plate and shoved it into her mouth. It had tasted of strawberry and his spit and had given her the same pure shock of agonized happiness that kissing him had.
That gum was still stuck to her bed frame, a talisman she couldn’t quite give up.
“We’re going to Lucky’s,” Ben offered, as though maybe he should inform her of the place she hadn’t agreed to go. “We’ll get some coffee. Listen to records. See if any new stuff came in. Come on, Mr. Schr?der probably misses you. Besides, as you are so fond of pointing out, what else is there to do in this town on a Sunday?”
Hazel sighed. She should tell him no, but instead she seemed to be running toward trouble, leaving no stone unturned, no boy unkissed, no crush abandoned, and no bad idea unembraced.
“I guess I could use some coffee,” she said as her brother picked up a red blazer, apparently matching his outfit to a sunrise.
Lucky’s was in a big, old restored warehouse on the duller end of Main Street, beside the bank, the dentist’s office, and a shop that sold clocks. The place smelled like the dust of old books, mothballs, and French roast. Mismatched shelves filled the walls and defined the aisles down the center. Some of the bookshelves were carved oak, others were nailed together from pallets, and all had been picked up for cheap at garage sales by old Mr. and Mrs. Schr?der, who ran the place. Two overstuffed chairs and a record player sat beside big windows that overlooked a wide stream. Customers could play any of the old vinyl albums in stock. Two big thermal dispensers held organic, fair-trade coffee. Mugs sat on a painted table with a chipped jar beside them marked: HONOR SYSTEM. FIFTY CENTS A CUP.
And on the other side of the room were racks and racks of secondhand clothes, shoes, purses, and other accessories. Hazel had worked there over the summer, and a big part of her job had been going through what seemed like hundreds of garbage bags in the back, sorting what could go on the shelves from stuff that was ripped or stained or had an unpleasant smell. She’d found a lot of good stuff, hunting through those bags. Lucky’s was more expensive than Goodwill—which was where her parents liked for her to shop, claiming that buying things new was for the bourgeois—but it was nicer, too, and she got a discount.
Jack, whose family definitely qualified as bourgeois to Hazel’s parents, and who bought his clothes new from the mall, came to Lucky’s for stacks of biographies of the obscurely famous, which he read with the frequency other people smoked cigarettes.
Ben came for the old records, which he loved, even though they skipped and hissed and degraded over time, because he said the grooves mirrored the sound’s original waveform. He claimed they gave a truer, richer sound. Hazel believed that what he truly loved was the ritual, though—taking the vinyl out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, bringing down the needle in just the right place, and then balling his hands into fists so he wouldn’t tap out the notes against his thigh.
Well, he might not love that last part, but he did it. Every time.
The day was bright and chilly, the wind slapping their cheeks on the walk over, turning them rosy. As Hazel and Ben entered the shop, a dozen crows rose from a fir tree, cawing as they flew up into the sky.
Mr. Schr?der looked up from where he was napping when the bell over the door jingled. He winked at Hazel, and she gave him a wink in return. He grinned as he slumped back into his armchair.
On the other end of the room, Jack was putting a Nick Drake album on the turntable. His sonorous voice filled the shop, whispering about golden crowns and silence. Hazel tried to study Jack without his noticing, gauging his mood. He was his usual slightly rumpled self, wearing jeans, two-tone oxfords, and a wrinkled green shirt that seemed to bring out the silver shine of his eyes. When he saw Hazel and Ben, he smiled—but was Hazel imagining that his smile looked a little forced and didn’t quite reach his eyes? Either way, it didn’t matter, because his gaze slid over her and went to her brother. “So what’s all this about ditching your date like Bruce Wayne after spotting the bat signal?”