The Mall - Megan McCafferty Page 0,41

to my own health and well-being, Helen meant absolutely nothing to me. And Troy just an infinitesimal smidge more than that. My indifference felt, well, a little messed up. Was something fundamentally wrong with me? Had I inherited my drastic romantic detachment from my equally messed-up parents?

“She’s not working here anymore either. She got a job on Casino Pier,” Troy continued. “I know it’s late in the season, and we’re leaving for New York in a few weeks…”

“I’m leaving for New York in thirty-two days.”

Troy had lost the privilege of using the collective pronoun “we.” My correction was totally lost on him, though.

“Right. Orientation starts August twenty-third. But if you’re still looking for a job…”

His presumptuousness on all levels was almost too much for me to take.

“Why would I work here for minimum wage when I’m making twice that much doing the books for Bellarosa Boutique?”

Okay, I was exaggerating the paycheck to make my point. But Troy didn’t focus on the money.

“You’ve been working at the mall since we broke up?” He blinked with incredulity. “Why haven’t I seen you?”

You haven’t seen me because I’ve been actively hiding.

“I’ve been busy,” I replied. “Living my life.”

“Oh.” Troy fiddled with his apron strings. “Oh.”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Drea was tapping an imaginary watch on her wrist.

“Where’s Zoe? I need to talk to her about something.”

“Ms. Gomez just stepped out,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“I seriously doubt it,” I replied.

“Are you sure I can’t help you?” he asked. “I know everything she knows. I’ve been trained as a seasonal assistant manager…”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at this. My imaginary management training program was real. Frank had a legit reason to be disappointed in me after all.

Troy misinterpreted my levity. When he reached for my hand, I snatched it away.

“Does America’s Best Cookie still have a walk-in freezer?” I asked.

“It’s not really large enough to be a walk-in freezer,” Troy answered, “it’s more of a stand-in freezer…”

“Oh my God! I don’t care!” Channeling Drea, I had an acute appreciation for how annoying such superfluous attention to detail could be at the wrong moment. “Do you know if anyone has ever found a doll in the freezer?”

“A…” Troy stroked his hairless chin, the way he often did when he collected his thoughts during cross-examination. “Doll?”

“You heard me,” I said. “A doll. Has anyone ever found a doll in the freezer. Specifically, a Cabbage Patch Kid.”

Troy gave his head a single shake.

“That would be a violation of America’s Best Cookie policy,” he said. “Freezers are for the purpose of storing America’s Best Cookie ingredients only. I’m not allowed to put my lunch in there. I can’t even imagine what would possess anyone to put a doll in there. Why are you asking me such a crazy question?”

On its surface, this was a crazy question. And now that I had kind of involved Troy, it wasn’t unreasonable for him to want an answer.

But that didn’t mean he deserved one.

“Ugh,” I said. “I knew you’d be no help to me.”

I turned and put a little extra oomph into my walk—a bit of Bellarosa bounce—knowing full well that Troy was watching me every strutting step of the way.

23

LOW-LEVEL ANARCHY

I strutted all the way to Sam Goody.

And I kept right on strutting up and down the aisles until I finally found him crouched in front of the magazine rack. When I gently tapped him on the shoulder, he sprang backward in a scrambled panic.

“Whew!” he said. “I thought you were my boss.”

“Nope,” I said. “It’s me.”

He nodded approvingly at the image of the soldier on my chest.

“Meat Is Murder.”

This was arguably The Smiths’ most iconic album cover. It had been proven that Sam Goody was paying attention to my T-shirts. So I had started paying even more attention to my T-shirts. But I couldn’t let him know that. Instead, I pinched the collar and made a bored face like, Oh, this old thing?

“Why are you avoiding the boss?” I asked.

He handed over a stack of zines with titles like Artificial Insanity, Gray Matter, and The Happy Thrasher. Xeroxed on cheap paper and barely held together with staples, the black-and-white photos and typefaces had gotten fuzzy and fuzzier with every sloppy photocopy and recopy.

“Did you make these?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m just a distributor.”

He stuck a zine with a bloody cartoon gargoyle on the cover between copies of Rolling Stone boasting a geezer rocker wrapped in a leggy supermodel wife half his age. The