Bookish and the Beast
“After that trailer, I’m feeling lucky,” I reply, flipping the quarter with my thumb, and step outside in the warm September evening.
There is a Starfield toy dispenser by the grocery cart lane, featuring the old characters from the TV series, though the Amara really looks nothing like Natalia Ford. She’s in this skimpy bodysuit with a pistol, and honestly Princess Amara would burn the entire dispenser if she saw that. Carmindor and the other six collectibles look somewhat like themselves, at least, though I’ve gotten so many Carmindors I could melt them all down and make a life-sized Carmindor to use for target practice whenever I decide to take up axe-throwing.
Maybe today, though, I’ll finally snag a Sond.
I pop the quarter into the Starfield toy machine. A toy rolls out, and I fish it out of the metal mouth and shake it. It doesn’t sound like another Carmindor. Maybe Amara? Euci?
Ugh, I have enough Eucis, too.
The outside of the shell reads, LOOK TO THE STARS AND CHASE YOUR DESTINY!
Dare I disturb the universe, crack open the egg, and find out what my future holds?
I’m about to twist the sucker open when someone calls my name. Like, not just calls from across the parking or anything, but like…megaphone calls my name.
I glance up.
And pale.
Oh, no.
Garrett Taylor is standing in the bed of his Ford truck with a karaoke machine. On the window of his muddy black truck, he dramatically unfurls a banner that says, HOMECOMING?
What the…
Oh.
Oh Jesus Mother Mary Aziraphale Crowley.
The realization of what’s happening hits me like the Prospero fresh out of hyperdrive. And I don’t have time to escape.
“Rosie Thorne,” Garrett begins valiantly, turning his snap-back around. Tufts of his chocolate-brown hair stick out the hole in the back of his cap, shaggy around his ears. A silver stud glints in his left ear. “You and I are a tale as old as time,” he says into the microphone, trying to be smart and funny.
He’s none of the above, and this is one hundred and ten percent mortifying.
Forget the carts in the parking lot. I try to make it back into the store before he can do something I will regret.
“Rosie!” he calls after me, vaulting off the flatbed, and races to cut me off. He succeeds. Barely. “What do you think?” he asks, motioning to the large HOMECOMING? banner. His posse follows him with their expensive GoPros, and I can feel their tiny bulbous camera eyes slowly leeching my soul.
Ever since he went viral on YouTube, I can’t stand him. He was fine before, but now he’s just insufferable. Everything has to be video’d and monetized.
“Garrett,” I say, putting my hand up so the GoPros can’t capture my face, “I’m flattered, but—”
He grabs me by the hand I was using to block the cameras and squeezes it tightly. “Don’t say it! Just think on it, okay?”
“I did think—”
“Rosie, you know as well as I do that we’re a team! Remember back in elementary school? We were the best Red Rover pair.”
“We have similar last names so we had to stand by each other—”
“And then in middle school, we made the best English projects together.”
I try to yank my hand out of his. “I did all of the work!”
“And I’m sorry high school hasn’t been very kind to you. Not since your mom died, and you had to move into a bad apartment after you had to pay for the medical bills—”
All things that make my skin crawl when he brings them up. Things that he has no right to say—period. Especially not on camera.
“—but I want to make your last Homecoming the most magical it can be. Yeah? Remember back on the playground? I promised you I’d look after you.”
“I’m not a charity case, Garrett,” I snap, finally able to pull my hand free. “Is that what you’re doing? ‘Oh, poor Rosie, she’s had a tough time—’ ”
“You’re also really pretty, if that helps,” he adds, and his two henchmen wince. He realizes a moment too late his folly, because I’m already halfway back into the grocery store. “Wait! That’s not what I meant!”
“You’re just too kind, Garrett,” I tell him over my shoulder in the most sickeningly sweet voice I can muster. “I don’t deserve you.”
I return into the grocery store, and as soon as I’m out of direct eyesight from Garrett, I duck down behind a line of shopping carts and watch as he returns to his truck with his two goons, waving at them to quit recording. Then they hop into his truck and they drive away, the HOMECOMING? banner flapping in the wind like a strip of toilet paper on the bottom of a shoe.
I pull out my phone to text Quinn.
ROSIE (6:16 PM)
—YOU. WOULDN’T. BELIEVE.
WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED.
QUINN (6:16 PM)
—Oh no did Annie just throw down an entire bottle of kombucha again?
ROSIE (6:17 PM)
—No but
“Rosie!” I hear Annie hiss, and when I look up she’s at the register, making a motion to hang up the phone. But I’m not even on the—
The intercom squeaks and the tired voice of my manager says, “Rosie Thorne, please report to the office. Immediately.”
Shit.
Annie sighs to the heavens.
Well, time to grovel, I guess. Dejectedly, I stand and brush off my work slacks—someone really needs to clean the floors—and make my way toward the back of the store. The manager’s office is situated in the far left corner, shoved between the frozen produce and the meat counter, so it always smells like frozen chickens and artichokes. I knock on the metal door before I poke my head into his office. Mr. Jason is sitting behind a crappy desk, vigorously pumping a smiley-face stress ball. He motions me inside, and I close the door gently behind me.
“Just let me explain,” I begin, but he holds up a hand and I quickly fall silent.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Mr. Jason is one of those guys who hangs his screenwriting degree behind his desk to remind himself of all of the mistakes he’s made in his lifetime, now a lowly grocery store manager in the middle of nowhere rather than some award-winning screenwriter in LA. Maybe once he had a head full of black hair, but he opted to buzz it short when he started going bald. I only wish he’d shaved off his porn-stache too, but we can’t always get what we want.
“What did I tell you,” he says quietly, “about your phone?”
“You see, out in the parking lot—”
“This is your third write-up, Rosie,” he interrupts.
I stare at him, uncomprehending. “Third? That can’t be right.”
He flips open a folder on his desk—a folder I hadn’t noticed before—and begins reading from a detailed write-up form. “First write-up happened last summer, when you told Travis Richardson—and I quote—‘sit and rotate’ while presenting him the middle finger.”
“I turned him down, so he told me I’d die alone with seven cats!”
He went on, “And the second write-up was this past spring, when you filmed a TikTok in the middle of the frozen meats section to the song—”
“ ‘If I Can’t Love Her’ from the ending credits of Starfield, yeah I remember that one,” I mutter to myself. “But it went viral! I mean, sure I did a few bad things, but I’m a good employee! I was an employee of the month!” I add, flinging my hand back to the wall of photos behind me.
Mr. Jason closes the file and gives me a weary look. “Listen, Rosie. I understand that life without your mother must be difficult.”
The words are like a sword through my middle. My hands involuntarily fist.
“It must be tough,” he goes on, as if he understands what I went through, as if he knows what it’s like to have part of your heart ripped out, “and I’ve read in plenty of coping books that acting out is a part of healing, but—”
“I’m not acting out!” I interrupt, shoving myself to my feet, but he just stares at me with this sorry sort of look in his eyes. It’s the same look I’ve seen in the eyes of teachers, and neighbors, and classmates, and strangers alike.
And something in me breaks. It snaps. Right in two.
I claw at my name badge, unhook it, and slam it onto the desk. “I quit.”
“Rosie!” He gives a start, rising to his feet. “We can talk about this—”
I force myself to my feet and leave the office, anger pulsing through me like white-hot fire. I grab my bookbag from the lockers and I don’t look back.
Annie looks up from her phone, which she has, unlike me, artfully hidden under the counter, as I pass her toward the front doors. “…Rosie?”
I don’t stop for her. My eyes are burning with tears, because he had the nerve to look at me like that. My mom died. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, it sucked. Yeah, there’s a hole in my chest where she should be but it’s empty because she no longer exists.