“It’s just a little fight and it isn’t your fault,” I said to Dani, turning her face so I could look her in the eye and she’d know I was telling the truth. “All parents have them. It’s going to be okay.”
Here’s what I discovered about talking to my sister: sometimes I said things because she needed to hear them, and sometimes I said things because I needed to hear them. It never mattered that I couldn’t tell the difference.
5
Finals were over and school was done, and the days now stretched as tall as they could go.
So here was summer, all official. The white noise of cicadas and crickets, rising and falling against the hum of my bedroom fan. The two big trees outside my window sighing with the breeze. Somewhere on the other side of them was Camden Armstrong.
When I got to Millie’s for the first day of my new schedule—nine o’clock to two o’clock, five days a week—Richard looked up from the greeting card catalog he was flipping through, putting sticky notes on the ones he wanted to carry in the store. “Hey, ducky,” he said. “It won’t suck too bad, will it? Working here? I remember what it felt like at your age, to be forced to do something.”
I adjusted the stool at the register to my height. “You understand why I wanted a different job, right? It had nothing to do with the store.” Say it, Ari. He deserves it. “Or you,” I added.
Richard’s face warmed, even though I hadn’t answered his question about the suckiness. “I do understand,” he said, “and I also understand that your mom’s in a weird place right now. She’s worked so hard to get where she is. I think she’s afraid it’s all going to fall apart any second.”
“We make sure it holds together,” I said.
“Just until the glue dries.”
“I always think of it as Velcro. When things do come undone, we can easily stick them back on.”
“See, Ari. If you didn’t work here, you wouldn’t be allowed to use craft metaphors so freely.” Richard scooped up the catalog along with some others and headed toward the back room. “I have some ordering to do,” he called over his shoulder. “Holler if you need me.”
It was a slow morning. Art students from a summer college program buying jumbo drawing pads. A mother and her son looking for a Batmobile model car kit, their joy at finding the last one as if we’d saved it especially for them. An elderly woman spending over twenty minutes trying to decide between two fancy journals—you know, the kind you can’t actually write in because they’re too beautiful—then eventually putting them both back on the shelf and walking out.
God, it was going to be a long summer. The next time the door chimed, I really had to force myself to look up and do the HiCanIHelpYou smile.
Camden’s friend Max was standing in the vestibule, unstrapping his bicycle helmet.
Something in my throat now. A sandpaper-wrapped grapefruit, perhaps, or aquarium rocks. Whatever it was, I had to swallow it down if I wanted to keep breathing.
This was what always happened the summer before, seeing Max or Eliza. I’d have some kind of physical event, because it meant Camden might be nearby. I grew to know the backs of their heads as well as I knew the back of Camden’s. It’s an unsettling side effect of being infatuated with someone. The infatuation bleeds into everyone surrounding the person, and the sphere of things that make you feel sick with longing grows dangerously wide.
Max saw me at the register and it took him a moment to figure out why I was familiar.
“Oh, hey!” he said. “The lake, right?”
“Yes.” My voice caught.
“Are you . . . Millie?”
“Oh. No. Millie’s dead. My stepdad bought the store from her daughter, so I guess he’s Millie now.” I sounded weird to myself. High-pitched.
“I was kidding.”
“I know,” I lied. “Can I help you find something?” That was better.
“I. Um. Am supposed to find yarn.”
Move, Ari. Act normal. Human, at the very least.
I stepped out from behind the counter and motioned for him to follow me down an aisle.
“We have some, but not very much.” I glanced at Max and he smiled at me, and I realized he was only a guy looking for yarn. And that was odd, yes, but not exactly intimidating. “There was a business feud for a while,” I added. “Between Millie and the lady who owns the knitting store down the street. They worked it out. We honor the treaty.”
Max looked at our selection of yarn, then shook his head. “I need a super-specific color. It needs to match this.” He held out a fabric swatch.
“Agnes at Knit Your Bit. She’s your woman.”
He shook his head again sadly. “I was hoping to avoid that. Let’s just say, Millie wasn’t the only one she had a feud with. We’re sort of banned from shopping there.”
I didn’t know who “we” referred to, but the more appropriate thing for me to ask was: “What do you need it for?”
“My girlfriend, Eliza . . . she’s making me a scarf.”