If Grace’s mother had done this on purpose just to “get her out of the house,” Grace was going to kill her.
Grace put on sunglasses as she skulked across the parking lot, then took the back way to the store rather than go past all the pretty fountains with the splash pads for the little kids. Grace didn’t think she could handle seeing them, hearing them shout about the water, without thinking of what Peach might look like at that age. Just seeing a baby on TV made her change the channel. It was like her heart was being stabbed with the most immense kind of love, and regardless of its source, the pain was still too much to handle.
Whisked Away was pretty much empty when Grace finally made her way there (she guessed browsing for kitchen appliances wasn’t everyone’s ideal thing on a Saturday morning). She got in line behind a woman who was paying with a check. A check.
Grace wondered if the woman’s cart and oxen were double-parked outside.
Just as it was her turn to get up to the register, though, Grace saw a few people come in. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them from school. Two girls who had always seemed nice enough, but Grace suddenly wanted to fall down a hole like Alice, disappear into Wonderland before anyone could see her, and her heart started beating a pattern that felt like a gun going off at the start of a race, over and over again, telling her to run.
She didn’t run, per se, but she left the line and did a ridiculously fast walk toward the back of the store, near the clearance section, where they did their cooking classes. It was deserted back there, and cooler, too, and she stood under the draft of an air vent and tried to catch her breath.
It was so stupid. They probably didn’t know who she was, and even if they did, who cared? It wasn’t like they had caught her trying to rob the store at gunpoint.
Grace knew all this, of course, but it was taking her heart a little longer to catch up with her brain.
“Can I—oh. Hi.”
Grace turned around, ready to tell the salesperson that she was fine, that she didn’t need help, she was just browsing, anything to get them away from her, when she realized who it was: Rafe, the guy from the dreaded formaldehyde bathroom.
Of course it’s you, Grace thought. Of course it is.
“Oh, hi,” Grace said instead. “Hey. I was just, um, yeah. I’m returning some stuff.”
“Cool,” he said, but he didn’t move. The green apron he had to wear made his eyes look even more brown, but it might have just been the light. Or the reflection from the Teflon cookware display case. That was probably it.
“Yeah,” Grace said again. She sounded super intelligent. This was easily her best conversation ever. “You, uh, you work here?” Gold medal–winning conversation, for sure!
“No, I just like aprons,” Rafe said. He said it so seriously that she blinked, wondering if maybe she had accidentally struck up a conversation with a psychopath who had a thing for baking. Then he smiled. “Kidding!” he said. “Sorry, no one gets my humor. I’m kidding. I work here. But I do like the apron. Don’t tell anyone.”
Grace nodded, trying to figure out how to get out of both the conversation and the store as soon as possible. “It has pockets,” Grace said. “That’s always nice.”
“It is,” Rafe said, then stuck his hand in the front pocket and flapped it a little. “Room for all my secrets. Sorry, that’s me attempting humor again, in case you couldn’t tell.”
He was somewhere between embarrassing and charming. Grace couldn’t decide if she liked him or just felt bad for him. “Got it this time,” she said.
“So, you’re returning something?” he asked, and okay, Grace had to give him credit. It couldn’t be easy trying to make conversation with a girl who he had last seen crying on the floor of a bathroom because she had just punched another boy, all while dead animals were being hacked up next door in the name of science.
“I am,” Grace said, then held up the bag. “For my mom. She has insomnia and buys a lot of stuff online, then returns it.”
“Ah. I can help you with that. The return, not the insomnia.”
Grace glanced up toward the front of the store. “Could you, um, maybe do it back here?” she said.