There was something about it, though. The more she looked at that box, the more she felt...
"Could I see it?" she said. Touch it, was what she meant. For some reason she wanted to feel the weight of it in her hands, the sharpness of its corners in her palms. It was silly, but she did want to. She really wanted to.
The guy leaned back, tilting the box between his own hands, gazing at its glossy top. Jenny noticed that there wasn't a single fingerprint on the shiny finish, not so much as a smudge. She also noticed that his fingers were long and slender. And that he had a snake tattooed on his right wrist.
"Well..." he said. "I don't know. On second thought, I'm not sure I can sell it to you after all."
"Why not?"
"Because it really is special. Un-mundane. I can't let it go to just anybody, or for just any reason. Maybe if you explained what it was for... ."
Why, he's a tease, Jenny thought. Without in the least stopping being scared, or disturbed, or any of the other things she'd been since she'd come into this store, she started being amused as well. Wildly, inexplicably amused.
Maybe if I looked like him, was that gorgeous, I'd be a tease, too, she thought. She said seriously, "It's for a party tonight, for my boyfriend, Tom. He's seventeen today. Tomorrow night we'll have the big party-you know, with everybody invited, but tonight it's just our group. Our crowd."
He tilted his head to one side. Light flashed off the earring he was wearing-a dagger or a snake, Jenny couldn't tell which. "So?"
"So I need something for us to do. You can't just get seven people in a room, throw Doritos at them, and expect them to have a good time. I've screwed up massively by not getting organized until now-no real food, no decorations. And Tom-"
The guy tilted the box again. Jenny watched its surface turn milky, then bright, then milky again. It was almost hypnotic. "And Tom will care?" he said, as if not believing it.
Jenny felt defensive. "I don't know-he might be disappointed. He deserves better, you see," she added quickly. "He's-" Oh, how to explain Tom Locke? "He's-well, he's incredibly handsome, and by the end of this year he'll have lettered in three sports-"
"I get it."
"No, you don't," Jenny said, horrified. "He's not like that at all. Tom is wonderful. He's just-so wonderful that sometimes it takes a little keeping up with him. And we've been together forever, and I love him, and I have since second grade. Okay?" Anger gave her courage, and she advanced a step toward the guy. "He is absolutely the best boyfriend in the world, and anybody who says he isn't-"
She stopped. The boy was holding out the box to her. Jenny hesitated, nonplussed.
"You can hold it if you want," he said gently.
"Okay," Jenny said, embarrassed, her vehemence fading. She took the glossy box gingerly between her palms-and forgot everything else. It was cool and just weighty enough to be intriguing. Something inside rattled slightly, mysteriously. There was a quality about it that Jenny couldn't describe, a sort of electric current that ran up her fingers as she held it.
"We're closing," the boy said briskly, with another of his arbitrary mood swings. "You gonna buy it?"
She was. She knew perfectly well anybody crazy enough to buy a box without looking inside it deserved whatever they got, but she didn't care. She wanted it, and she felt a strange reluctance to take the lid off and peek in. No matter what, this would make a great story to tell Tom and the others tonight. "The craziest thing happened to me today. ..."
"How much?" she asked.
He went to the counter and hit a key on an antique-looking brass cash register. "Call it twenty."
Jenny paid. She noticed the cash drawer was full of odd-looking money all jumbled together: square coins, coins with holes in the center, crumpled bills in pastel colors. The wrongness of that cut into her pleasure in the box a little, and she felt another chill, like spiders walking on gooseflesh.
When she looked up, the boy was smiling at her.
"Enjoy," he said, and then his heavy lashes drooped as if at a private joke.
From somewhere a clock chimed the little unfinished tune that meant half past some hour. Jenny glanced down at her watch and stiffened in horror.
Seven-thirty-it couldn't be! There was no way she could have been in this store for over an hour, but it was true.
"Thank you; I have to go," she gasped distractedly, heading for the door. "Uh-see you later."
It was just a politeness, not meant to be answered, but he did answer. He murmured what sounded like "at nine" but undoubtedly was "that's fine" or something like that.
When she looked back, he was standing half in shadow, with the stained glass of a lamp throwing blue and purple stripes on his hair. For just a second she caught something in his eyes-a hungry look. A look completely at odds with the indifferent manner he'd worn while speaking to her. Like-a starving tiger about to go hunting. It shocked Jenny so much that her "goodbye" froze in her throat.
Then it was gone. The boy in black reached over and turned the acid house music on.