Her voice was high-pitched, a little girlish. She kept her head lowered, just her eyes looking up. “You can’t get them anywhere else.”
He suddenly looked pleased. He slapped himself lightly on the forehead. There was no problem, he said. He smiled, his eyes hard on mine. We could go to both stores. We were in no particular hurry, right?
I shrugged. That was all. If he wanted to go to two stores, I could take him to two stores. I had Gretchen’s car for the night. When I’d called, she was studying at the science library. She said her car keys were in her room, and that I needed to try to calm down. “So you forfeit your house-sitting fee,” she’d whispered. “That’s enough. Don’t let him push you around.”
Jimmy was putting on his jacket, but still looking at me, and still standing very close.
“I need to get my mom’s phone,” I said.
Even without the dumb contacts, his eyes, green and very still, looked a little catlike. “Sure, Veronica.” He smiled, and his eyes didn’t move. “After we run our errands.”
We went to the co-op first. While Haylie shopped, I sat on a bench by the automatic doors and watched shoppers come and go with their cloth grocery bags and bulk foods. I tried not to watch Jimmy pace. Every time he walked across the mat in front of the doors, they slid open, and then shut, only to open again after he turned and walked back across the mat again. He was on his phone, talking in a very loud voice to someone named Degraff about the stupid bitch who had wrecked his car and then trashed his house over the weekend. I didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at me.
He was still on the phone when Haylie brought her groceries to the register. She said his name, walked over to him, and he handed her several bills from his wallet without even looking up. After she paid, she put the change in her pocket and sat on the bench to wait for him with me, or at least near me. She sat very still, her paper bag of groceries on her lap. I gave her a long look out of the corner of my eye. As much as she had changed, with her dyed hair and her black eyeliner, she still looked, more or less, like the girl I had played princess with in fourth grade. Her mother had made snacks for us. My mother had made snacks for us. But when Haylie finally noticed my hard stare, she didn’t seem undone.
“You really fucked up,” she said with a shrug. “I talked to people today. You let your friends wear my shoes. My clothes.” She took off a glove and examined a fingernail. “I don’t feel sorry for you at all.”
At the next stop, the regular grocery store, Jimmy told me I might want to have a seat again. “I’m feeling a little slow tonight.” He pulled a cart free with a hard shake. “I think we’re going to be here for a while.”
I found a seat by the movie rental counter, wishing I had at least thought to bring my chemistry book. But I had not thought to bring it, and so there was nothing to do but just sit there and listen to the store’s stereo system play light rock and watch people buy their groceries. I tried not to think of everything that was worrisome, pressing down.
“Veronica? Is that you?”
I looked up to see Rudy, Tim’s roommate, moving toward me with his odd, bouncy walk, his toes pointed slightly inward. He’d just gone through the checkout line, and he was carrying a can of soup in one hand and a new PC World in the other. I greeted him as warmly as I could. Tim had told me once that I was the only girl outside of sisters and cousins that Rudy was able to talk to without breaking into a visible sweat. And even that had taken some time. The first few times I went over to their apartment, Rudy had stayed in his room.
But tonight, given that I was hanging out on a chair in the grocery store, I felt like the weird one.
“What are you doing?” He put the can of soup under one arm so he could get his keys out of his pocket. “Do you need a ride or something?”
“No…I’m just…” I gestured vaguely into the aisles. “I’m just waiting