She smiled again, too wide. “Meet me in the food court in an hour and if you want to stay longer and talk to your friends, that’s fine with me. I told your father we might be late.”
“I’ll be back in thirty,” I said, and took off. I wanted a break from her, from how happy she was that I’d let her 189
take me somewhere, but there was no way I could spend an hour in the mall. It reminded me too much of Julia, of the way things used to be.
I avoided all the stores we went in, which left me with the stationery store, with its cutesy fake-homemade cards, and the kitchen store. I went in the kitchen store and walked around looking at the pots and pans and twelve dollar jars of salsa. It was very boring, even with a huge candy display at the back of the store, and after what felt like three hours, the cutting-edge and very expensive clock on display said ten minutes had passed.
I moved on to looking at vinegars. That took three minutes, and that included reading the back of one of the bottles. (Apparently organic vinegar is necessary if you really want to “taste the flavor” of your food. Go figure.)
I’d saved the candy for last but it was “old-fashioned”
stuff involving a lot of dried fruit. There was a ton of it, though, and after a while I found something with chocolate and marshmallows that looked edible. I could almost hear J saying, “Finally! Real food!”
I went through the whole stack of boxes twice before picking one up. It looked like all the others, but choos-ing that one meant that by the time I was done the clock showed twenty-three minutes had passed.
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Then it hit me. What was I going to do with the candy? Buy it? Julia wasn’t there to share it with, to pick off the marshmallow parts and eat them fi rst like she did with s’mores. The store’s cash register froze up as I stood there, and I watched it spit a long trail of receipts into the air.
The salesperson, who was about Julia’s mom’s age and had her color hair, bright bottle blond, looked like she was going to burst into tears. I had to put the candy down and leave then. I don’t know why. It wasn’t because I thought I was going to cry or anything. I just . . . I felt bad, seeing that woman’s face. Being there, in the mall, without Julia.
I should have run into someone from school then.
A big dramatic moment, straight out of one of those crappy movies J used to love to watch. A run-in with mustache girl, maybe. We could have exchanged glances, both of us knowing that shopping alone on a weekday afternoon wasn’t normal. It couldn’t ever pass as normal.
But I didn’t see mustache girl. I didn’t see anyone, and I walked back to Mom. She was talking on her cell when I got to the food court, facing away from me with one arm propped up on a table, head resting on her hand as she talked.
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I used to sit like that when I talked to Julia.
“I’m trying,” she said. “It’s just difficult. She still hasn’t said a word to me about visiting Julia’s grave. Has she said anything to—? No, I know you’d tell me if she had. I just . . . I hoped. Right, I know. All she said was ‘Fine’ on the way here, Colin. No matter what I ask, that’s always her answer. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I look at her and . . . ”
She should have realized I was behind her. Heard me breathing. Seen the shadow I cast. But of course she didn’t. “I don’t know her,” she said. “How can she be such a stranger to me? Why can’t I—? No, honey, I’m fine. I am. I just wish you and I—”
I left the mall. I didn’t want to hear her wishes. I could already guess what they were.
Outside, I went to the bus stop and stood next to two women with elaborate makeup and tired eyes. They discussed work schedules and how to sell moisturizer. They both told me I was lucky to be so tall. I sat behind them on the bus and listened to them all the way to the transfer stop, where they got off. I stayed on, resting my head against the window, and watched the sky turn dark.
Corn Syrup got on the bus my second time through the transfer stop. Her pep squad uniform was poking out 192
of her bag just so, as if everyone on their way from work would be impressed by the fact that she’s a second-rate cheerleader. She looked washed out under the bleary lights that blinked on as passengers climbed aboard, like a shadow of herself. She paid her fare and sat down on one of the seats that face sideways, the single seats that are supposed to be for old people or pregnant women. I could almost hear Julia laughing at that. We both knew bus etiquette real well.
I missed riding the bus with Julia. I hated it when we did it, couldn’t wait for J to get her car, but now . . .
now I would have given anything to have her sitting next to me.
An angry-looking pregnant woman got on at the commuter rail station and asked Caro, “So when is your baby due?” with a smile that was just bared teeth. Corn Syrup got up, apologizing and tripping over herself, and looked around for a seat. I watched her spot her choices.
Next to a fat man sprawled out with the paper, bulk and newsprint spreading over a seat and three-quarters, or next to me.
She picked me. When she sat down, she held her bag close to her chest, biting her lip. Julia would have said,
“Hi!” and stared at her until she looked away. I looked out 193
the window. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see much of anything, and we rode in silence for what felt like a thousand years. (It was probably only nine hundred.) No one pulled the cord for her stop, so she had to lean across me to do it. She mumbled, “Excuse me,” in a snotty voice, but the effect was totally ruined when the bus hit a pothole and her head smacked into the seat in front of us.
I didn’t laugh. I was going to, probably, but she didn’t give me a chance. Before I could do anything she’d straightened up, hands clenched around her bag again, and said, “You know our group project? For English? We should all meet at the university library this Saturday.
They have to let anyone use it because it’s a state school, right?”
I shrugged. She was right about being able to use the library but I didn’t want to encourage conversation, especially since I could guess what was coming.
My silence didn’t stop her.
“I was thinking maybe you could come.”
“Why?”
“It’s a group project.”
“Right. So that’s why, in class, you and Mel spend all your time asking me what I think.”
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“We’re all getting graded and we all have to—”
“Sure, that’s it. Come on. You want me there because of Beth.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Please. If just you and Mel meet, Beth will make it so you’ll be stuck eating lunch with people like me.”
She sighed. “Fine. You’re right. Look, I’m—I’m on the bus now because Mel asked me if I wanted to meet up this weekend before practice. Beth heard and told me she couldn’t give me a ride home.”
“And what, that surprised you? I could have told you your ass would be on the bus for talking to Beth’s prop-erty without her permission, and I haven’t spoken to her in years.”
Caro was silent for a moment. “Amy, about the other day—”
“What about it? I was bored, I got a meal out of listening to you whine—no big deal.”
“Right,” she said tightly. “So what about Saturday?”
“What about it?”
“I’m begging, okay? I can’t work on our presentation with just Mel.”
She sounded so miserable, and for a second I felt sorry for her. But only for a second. “Patrick will be there.”
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“He won’t show up, or if he does, he’ll leave after ten minutes or something. You know he hardly ever does anything, and this certainly isn’t going to be any different. And look, it’s not like group work is optional. We all have to give this presentation. And I can’t deal with what will happen if—” Her voice cracked.