A few days passed before Dad asked me to work at the bookstore again. He said he was still figuring out what my regular schedule would be, but for now, I could expect to be on call. That meant I couldn’t make any real plans. He was the worst.

When I went into Between the Pages that morning, I half expected to see Rainier and his nerdy-self sitting behind the counter or putting books on the shelving around the store. Or, maybe even charming some more middle-aged women looking for their lady porn.

I didn’t expect to see Jenny. I guessed she wasn’t sick anymore. I could already see the smug superiority written across her face with the fake cheerfulness in her expression.

I didn’t say anything as I set my purse down on the counter. I gave Jenny a plastic smile of my own in return.

“Let’s just put everything out there, shall we?” Jenny crossed her arms over her chest. “You were a real jerk to me our senior year. I know you don’t like me, and I know you don’t want to be here, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you walk all over me like you did with Rainier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t think the store ran itself when you weren’t here, did you? We worked together yesterday, and I asked him what to expect.”

They were already talking about me behind my back. Nice.

“He told me to stay out of his way while he did everything,” I said, not that I needed to give Jenny an explanation.

“Rainier was in a hurry, which is why you got away with it. I don’t have anywhere to go. Which means if we stay late and your dad has to pay me more, so be it. You’re going to learn the ropes, and you’re going to pull your weight.”

“Whatever.”

“Here,” she said handing me a stack of books and pointing to the wall opposite of where we stood. “These all go on the fiction wall. It’s alphabetized by the author’s last name. If you can’t remember what comes after G, we have some alphabet books in the children’s section.”

Oh, she’d gotten some attitude in the past year. The last time I’d spoken to her, she was a music geek with an unnatural love of the violin. She carried that thing all over our high school campus. One time, during senior year, I tripped her in the hall.

It wasn’t my fault the case went flying across the floor, and Tyler had kicked it even further away from her. I still remembered the way she tried not to cry while we all laughed at her. Seeing her so different now behind the counter of the bookstore made me feel…weird. It wasn’t exactly guilt because we were just having fun. That said, I didn’t think I’d be messing with her again anytime soon. She had a newfound confidence.

That was something I could respect.

I took the books she gave me and walked over to the fiction wall. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of titles now that I was closer and had to find where the books in my hands went. Thank goodness, my dad didn’t own a Barnes & Noble. I’d only been in once when Avery wanted to stop in to get coffee and a copy of The Hunger Games.

“Everyone else is reading it. I thought I might too,” Avery had said when I asked her what she was doing.

“We could just watch the movie,” I’d argued.

She hadn’t wanted to watch the movie though. It took her less than two days to finish it before she was buying the next two books in the series. At least she agreed to buy them from Between the Pages that time. Might as well help my dad out if she was going to be a nerd.

Looking at the shelves on the wall now, none of them seemed like those books. There were scenic looking covers, symbol-ridden ones, even some wild artistic looking books. I didn’t see Katniss anywhere.

It took me about fifteen minutes to put the stack of books away, and when I returned to the counter triumphantly, Jenny handed me another armful. “These go in the romance section,” she said, before ringing up a customer's items.

I looked down at the book on top of the stack in my arms. It looked similar to the book I’d made fun of the other day. A shirtless man was embracing a woman in a flowy dress. The title was something about a rake, although I didn’t see anything remotely related to gardening. I opened up to a random page in the middle.

Lord Chauncey steered Lilith away from the ballroom in which the many members of the ton were dancing the waltz. What a scandalous dance indeed. Of course, it wasn’t nearly as nefarious as what the Lord had in mind once they reached the balcony of the manor.

“I had to see it for myself,” a voice shrieked from beside me, and I dropped the stack of books I was supposed to be putting away. I was startled and only slightly embarrassed by what I was caught reading. I looked up to see my mother standing in front of me.

“I heard your father had you working here this summer and I could not believe it.”

“Believe it.”

She ignored me and bent down to pick up the books that had fallen onto the floor. “And now you’re reading this garbage?”

“I wasn’t reading it.”

“Honey, I caught you with it open and your eyes glued to the page. This stuff is disgusting.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Excuse me?”

“You ran off with Daniel. I don’t think reading about a dance is any worse than that.” I snatched the book out of her hand. “Besides, what choice did I have. It was this or get cut off.”

“You could move in with me,” she suggested.

No thank you. My mom had never been the maternal type. She preferred playing tennis with her friends and getting massages than doing anything remotely motherly. But it was more than that. I’d watched as she snuck behind my dad’s back with some fancy plastic surgeon from Boise. They’d even met up in Cancun during our last family vacation together. He was born in Mexico before moving to the States as a young boy with his family. Now that he was a successful doctor, he liked to visit as a tourist.

You know, enjoy the sights. Destroy families.

I didn’t like the way Mom had done that to Dad. And I especially didn’t like the way my dear ol’ stepdad was always trying to help me. I couldn’t count how many times he had offered to help me with my breast problem. I was a healthy c-cup. I didn’t particularly want to go any bigger. I didn’t want him anywhere near them.

“I’m really okay. I’m thinking about moving on campus next year, so it’s only temporary anyway.”

“Is your father paying for that?”

I hadn’t mentioned it to him yet. “Uh, huh.”

“Don’t believe everything he says.”

“Says the person who lied to him for a year.”

I couldn’t stand the woman who was standing in front of me. She’d spent the last couple of years trying to pin me against Dad. I wasn’t blind. I could see what had gone down and I did not appreciate being manipulated.

“Oh, Michelle, you think because you’re nineteen, you know everything. You don’t. Come live with Daniel and me.”

“I already said no. I’m sure you will be fine without me.”

We sat and went back and forth for several minutes. It was the same conversation we’d had time and time again. I didn’t know how else to convey how much I hated my mom without flat out saying I hated her. I was ready to scream by the time she gave up.

“Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your book.” My mother flipped her hair and walked out of the store. I couldn’t understand why she was so persistent. There was no way she was doing it out of the kindness of her heart.

When I said my dad was ruining my life, I meant he made it difficult and I got frustrated by the rules I felt were unfair. But my mother really was ruining my life. She was evil. She’d threatened to move to California or Florida with her new husband time and time again. I wished she would do it already.

I slammed the books against the shelving as I found where they were supposed to go. I was annoyed I had to relive the divorce of my parents whenever I saw the woman who spawned me. It made me never want to be in a relationship again. I could be single for the rest of my life. Maybe I’d become a cat lady.

I looked at the romance titles as I put them away and couldn’t help but laugh because this was exactly why lonely women like the one that came in earlier during the week read this crap. It was easy. It was about dancing and stolen kisses on balconies. It didn’t tell you about the heartache, the cheating, the lack of understanding.

Well, I had to assume it didn’t because there was no way I was going to find out.

I went back up to the counter to grab more books. I was eager to do something. Jenny didn’t say anything when I came looking for more. She just grabbed another stack of books and told me they went in the science fiction section.

This time the pile consisted of books with pictures of spaceships and…well, there were a lot of spaceships on the covers. Some Star Wars and Star Trek covers too, which surprised me because I thought they were TV shows. It didn’t matter, and I put the books away with the same enthusiasm as the ones before them.

This continued on with a new section every time until I went up to get the newest pile and Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t expect you to get through them all.”

“Wait, that was it?”

“We only get so many deliveries.”

I wasn’t ready to give up my momentum though. Working was surprisingly therapeutic after seeing my mom. If I sat down in my chair behind the counter, I’d be left with my thoughts, and I didn’t want that.

“Well, there has to be something else I can do. Anything.”

The look that crossed her face was a mix of confusion and desperation. “I guess I could show you how to work the register. That way if a delivery comes in when we work together, I can leave you out here.”

Working with customers did not sound nearly as appealing as the task I had before, but I thought maybe learning how everything worked might be enough to distract me. At least for a little longer.

Jenny showed me the different buttons on the register, which took all of two minutes. But after that, she went through the book club the store offered to frequent shoppers. Then she showed me the computer system we used to look up books to determine whether or not we had them in stock and how to order them if we didn’t.

I even rang up a few customers before our shifts were over. I was clocking out and grabbing my purse when I saw Rainier come in. He gave me a smug look before walking over to Jenny.

They were talking and laughing as I walked out of the store. Rainier looked my way a couple of times. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to either of them, and I certainly wasn’t wondering if they were talking about me.

Or how I felt if they were.