The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,39
hold her sunglasses around her neck when she isn’t wearing them, and a black wristwatch, water resistant up to two hundred feet. An air freshener, shaped like a flower with a smiling face in the center. Travis suggests beef jerky. I have never seen my mother eat beef jerky, but he says it’s good, and it’s only thirty-five cents.
“What’s her horoscope sign?” Carlotta asks.
“I don’t know.”
She blows another purple bubble and looks at me as if I am a bad person. “When’s her birthday?”
“December twenty-eighth.”
“Hmm. Capricorn. No wonder she’s down.” She reaches across the counter and picks up a small green tube that says CAPRICORN. “See, this unrolls into a piece of paper with all her astrological information. It can guide her through her whole year—career, family, romance, money…. It’s a dollar.”
I nod quickly, put it in the box.
“I’m a Capricorn too,” she whispers, leaning closer, the hickeys on her throat moving up and down like small, uneven eyes. “Good things are coming our way, this summer. You tell your mama that. This summer belongs to the goat, hands down.”
I pick up the green roll again, holding it more carefully now. This summer belongs to the goat. I like knowing that my mother will have a good summer, that the next three months are already certain, printed and rolled up into a wand.
“You could get her a magazine,” Travis says.
“I’m out of money.”
“Here,” Carlotta says. “Take my People. I’m already done reading it, and it looks new.”
“Thanks,” I say. On the cover, a man is carrying a woman wearing a ruffled pink dress with white tights, and the words say WHODUNIT ON DYNASTY?
“I’m done with it. No biggie.” She goes to work on the cash register, her fingernails clicking against the buttons. “Okay, that’s seven dollars and ninety-five cents, with tax.”
I give her all of my bills. She gives me back a nickel.
“Well, there you go,” she says. “That’s nice of you to want to give something to your mom. I used to have kids, and I guess they were sweet to me too once.” She leans her elbows on the counter. “Now they’ve gotten big and they don’t give me shit.”
Carlotta does not look old enough to have grown children. I tell her this, and she smiles and says I’m a little sweetie, and that I made her day. But I didn’t say it to be nice. I said it because she really doesn’t look that old.
I follow Travis out the door, the string of bells jangling behind us.
Once we’re out of the store, Travis begins unloading various items from the pockets of his jeans and the sleeves of his sweatshirt: five packs of gum, Tic Tacs, and a lightbulb.
“Here,” he says. “Give this gum to your mom.”
“You stole all of that? Just then? I was standing right by you.”
He wiggles his fingers. “Magic,” he says. He opens my mother’s care package and puts the gum inside. And now I know for certain, without asking, that he is the one who took Traci’s clothes. I also know it is better not to say this. It’s just something we both know.
“Why do you steal things?”
He thinks for a moment before answering, turning the lightbulb from hand to hand. “Because I want to get things I don’t have money for.”
“But you just gave me some of the things you stole.”
“So?”
“So you must not have wanted them.”
“I wanted them so I could give them to you.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
When we get to the highway, Travis pinches the skin at my elbow, as if I will run in front of a car if left on my own. Once we are on the other side, he stops walking, cupping his finger and thumb around his mouth. “I think it makes me feel better somehow, stealing. Like I get something for nothing, and it makes up for other times. You get something for nothing for all the times you just get nothing.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. I know stealing is wrong, but lying is wrong too. I’ve already lied three times today, and the day isn’t over.
“Like I was in a bad mood because my dad and Kevin went to this fucking baseball game without me because I’m grounded. But now I feel better.”
“But that’s why you got grounded in the first place.”
His handle ears rise up when he smiles. “Yeah.”
We round the corner and stop walking at the same time. My mother and Mrs. Rowley are both standing outside,