“You guys, he’s coming.” Annemarie sounded panicked. We pulled our heads apart and Colin shoved the rubber stopper back in. I was out front by the time Jimmy held the door open for the delivery guy, who had a stack of sodas loaded onto a hand truck.
“Hey, lady!” Jimmy called. “I need you. This is man’s work.”
“Sorry.” Colin came strolling out of the back in his apron. “Bathroom break.”
Annemarie smiled at me while Colin and Jimmy were busy loading the soda into the big refrigerated case by the door.
“You’re nuts,” she said. “You know that, right?”
I could still feel the spot where Colin’s head had pressed up against mine. “I know. It was kind of stupid.”
We walked back to school with Colin between us. He was zigzagging and bumping his shoulders against ours, saying, “Boing! Five points. Boing! Ten points,” while we both laughed like idiots.
Things You Push Away
“Ready?” Richard asks Mom. We are practicing even more now. He sits in a chair opposite her. I’m the timekeeper. Mom closes her eyes, and I know that she is lifting a corner of her veil. She nods, and we begin.
Mom says each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world, like a bride wears on her wedding day, except this kind of veil is invisible. We walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. The world is kind of blurry, and we like it that way.
But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there’s a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore.
She doesn’t mean that it’s a real veil. And it isn’t about magic, or some idea that maybe God is looking right at you, or an angel is sitting next to you, or anything like that. Mom doesn’t think in those ways. It’s just her way of saying that most of the time, people get distracted by little stuff and ignore the big stuff. To play in the Winner’s Circle, Mom has to get herself in a certain frame of mind. She says it’s sort of like lifting one little corner of her veil, enough to see more than usual but not so much that she gets totally distracted by life, death, and the beauty of it all. She has to open her mind, she says, so that when the clues start coming, she can see the thread that joins them. Of course, if her celebrity is as dumb as a bag of hair, it’s hopeless.
I’ve thought a lot about those veils. I wonder if, every once in a while, someone is born without one. Someone who sees the big stuff all the time. Like maybe you.
Things You Count
Right before Thanksgiving, Colin and Annemarie were behind the counter weighing a slimy heap of sliced turkey into quarter-pound piles separated by pieces of waxed paper. Jimmy said they should do a whole week’s worth.
“Won’t it go bad?” Annemarie asked.
“Nah. Stuff’s full of preservatives.”
Colin licked his lips and said, “Yum, yum. Chemical turkey.”
“Shut it,” Jimmy said.
For once, I was happy to be counting the rolls.
Now that he had us, Jimmy seemed to have nothing to do. He sat on one of the stools bolted to the floor in front of the big front window and watched me with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked under his yellow-stained armpits. He had already rejected my V-cut for the day—it was waiting for me on a tray behind Annemarie, getting dry as usual. Luckily, Jimmy didn’t limit our use of may onnaise.
“Lookie,” Jimmy said, pointing his chin toward the window. “There goes one of your little friends.”
On the other side of the street, Julia was walking alone, wearing her orange suede knapsack and an orange suede headband that matched. Matching suede knapsacks and headbands were probably all the rage in Switzerland, I thought.
“You mean Swiss Miss?” I grabbed two rolls and dropped them into the bag at my feet. “She’s not my friend. Not even close.”
He smiled slowly. “Swiss Miss. That’s a good one.” He stared outside for another minute and then stood up. “You’re funny, you know that?”
I shrugged, still counting, but happy. A compliment from Jimmy was a rare thing. When I finished, I folded the top of the bag and lugged it to its spot behind the counter. Jimmy had disappeared into the back. Annemarie was giggling at something Colin had said.
Ever since our foreheads had touched, looking at Colin made me feel strange. But good-strange, not creepy-strange.
“Eighty!” I called out to Jimmy. Right on the nose.
“Better luck next time!” he yelled back.
Colin looked at me and grinned, causing my stomach to sort of float inside my body. “He’s dying for the bread order to come up short, you know. You should throw a roll in the trash one day, just to make him happy.”
“Don’t listen to him, Miranda,” Annemarie said. “He’s just trying to get you in trouble again.”
But while she was talking to me, she was looking at Colin, and her expression was funny, as if her stomach might be floating too.
Messy Things
Annemarie and I stopped in the fourth-floor bathroom before going back to class after lunch. She said she wanted to wash her hands again after all that turkey.
“Today was fun,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror and combing her hair with her fingers. “I wish we got more than forty minutes for lunch.”
“I hate counting bread,” I said. “It’s boring.”
She laughed. “At least your hands don’t smell like chemical turkey.”
At least you get to goof around behind the counter with Colin, I thought. I’m always running to the store, cleaning up some gunk, or stuck talking to Mr. Yellow Stains.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m starving.”
Julia was standing right outside our classroom, almost as if she was waiting for us.
“Oh, no!” She sighed deeply and pointed at Annemarie’s arm. “Oh, Annemarie, your turquoise sweater. It’s your favorite. Poor you!”
And Mom thought I was dramatic.
Annemarie looked down at the hem of her sweater, which had some mustard on it. I had no idea it was her favorite.
“It’ll come out,” Annemarie said. “My dad will get it out.”
Julia leaned against the wall and adjusted her headband. “What I don’t understand is why you’re working at all. It’s not like you need the money.” Here she stopped to glance at me. “And no offense, but that place is kind of disgusting. I saw a roach there once.”
“I like it there,” Annemarie said. “It’s actually pretty fun.”
“That guy who works there is gross.”
“He’s not gross!” I said. “And he doesn’t”—I made air quotes—“‘work there.’ He owns the store.”
“We don’t get paid,” Annemarie said softly. “It’s just the sandwiches.”
“And sodas,” I said, waving my Sprite.
“Right,” Julia said, talking just to Annemarie, as if I didn’t exist. “Like you’re supposed to be eating sandwiches and drinking soda.”
Annemarie’s face folded up a little. “It’s fine.”
“Fine,” Julia said. “Forget it.”
Mr. Tompkin came to the door. “Why aren’t you three inside? Silent reading period started five minutes ago.”
As we walked in behind Julia, I whispered to Annemarie, “No wonder you don’t want to be friends with her anymore. She’s so rude to you.”