“Don’t argue,” Meredith repeated.
“Jesus, Meredith,” Jen said. “If she doesn’t want a new outfit, she doesn’t want a new outfit. Leave the poor girl alone. You’re scaring the shit out of her.”
“Whatever,” Meredith mumbled. “I thought it would be nice.”
Clara squirmed in her seat, trapped in Katy’s hand and exasperated with Meredith’s insistence. How the fuck long does it take to get to the mall? she thought. She planned to ditch the girls and use her five dollars to take a city bus back to school to get her car.
But she didn’t. She was dragged into the mall by three determined girls who wanted to be her new pushy friends. They strolled the large open corridor, and Clara tried to remember the last time she was in the mall. It had that mall smell she remembered, the promise of walking out with something new folded neatly in a brown shopping bag.
She was dragged from store to store and listened to Katy blather on about the newest trends in fashion. She sat outside of the dressing rooms with Jen and Meredith and watched as Katy put on a fashion show, always coming out with a new top on saying the same thing: “Well, what do you think?” And Clara always replied, “It’s nice.”
Clara tried hard to push down the feelings of jealousy, knowing she would have to watch Katy dump an armload of clothes at the register and not think twice about whether she had enough money to pay for it all.
“Get yourself something, Clara,” Katy insisted. “You need to treat yourself.”
Clara had taken all she could handle. She wanted to scream. She didn’t have money to treat herself. And she was tired of Katy’s oblivious cheerfulness. She wanted to go home. She had no idea why these girls invited her out. She didn’t belong with them, and she wasn’t sure she wanted any friends after all. Why had she wished for a friend amidst the honeysuckle vines last spring? She felt like God was playing a cruel joke on her. “You wanted friends, I’m giving you friends,” she could hear him say as he snickered on his golden throne.
“Well, at least a pair of earrings,” Katy persisted. “Or this adorable necklace!” she squealed fingering the accessory hanging on a jewelry stand.
Clara exploded. “I can’t! Okay? I can’t afford clothes or candles or earrings!”
The three girls stood staring at her wide-eyed.
“Or necklaces! I can’t afford anything!” she went on. “Not even a fucking Coke from the food court!”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the store passing by several students she recognized from school. They gawked and whispered, and she didn’t care.
“Not even a Coke, huh?” a burly boy asked teasingly at the entrance of the store she just exited.
“Fuck you,” Clara spat and stalked towards the nearest mall exit. She heard laughter erupt behind her.
She walked the parking lot aimlessly until a mall security golf cart pulled up alongside her.
“Forgot where you parked?” the man asked.
“No,” Clara replied. “I’m looking for the bus stop.”
“Hop on and I’ll take you,” he said.
Clara thanked him. She turned around thinking that Jen, Meredith, and Katy would have come outside to look for her. But they didn’t. She snorted disdainfully. Not even bothered to make sure I get back to my car, she thought. But they’re not the bitches. Right.
Clara was too wound up to even cry though she felt completely humiliated. She was so tired of feeling humiliated all the time and wondered if it wouldn’t just be better to home school herself. Could she do that? How does home school work exactly?
“Bad day?” the security guard asked looking over at Clara.
“Something like that,” she mumbled.
“Well, the world is nothing but shit when you’re a teenager,” he explained. “But it gets better.”
“Does it?”
He opened his mouth to try for something positive, but then decided against it after glancing at Clara’s face. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about,” he admitted. “Look at me. I’m a fucking mall security guard.”
Clara smiled at that.
“Better than being an unpopular sixteen-year-old girl with no money,” Clara said. “I can’t even buy a Coke.” She looked down at her lap, ashamed to feel so sorry for herself in front of a stranger.
The guard stopped his golf cart and reached down on the floor. He flipped the lid of a tiny cooler and pulled out an unopened 20 ounce bottle of Coke. He handed it to Clara then continued driving.
“Well, now you don’t have to,” he said.
***
The house was lonely when Clara finally got home. The bus was off schedule; she didn’t get back to the school parking lot until an hour and a half after saying goodbye to the security guard. She drank her Coke on the bus and decided to save the bottle. She didn’t know why, but she thought it was the right thing to do. That way every time she saw it she would be reminded of the security guard’s kindness. Reminded that nice people still existed and in the most unlikely places.
She forgot that Beatrice was spending the night with Josey. And the girls were going to a movie the following day. Clara was adamant that Beatrice take some of her dog-walking money with her to buy her ticket and any snacks she wanted at the theatre. She earned it, Clara said.
She missed Beatrice already and would not see her until late in the afternoon the following day. She had no one to talk to and sat on the couch holding the empty Coke bottle in the deafening silence of the living room. She thought about the laughter that ensued behind her as she exited the shop in the mall. The humiliation bloomed red on her face all over again, and she jumped from the couch, tossing the bottle, and ran into the bathroom.