The Mall - Megan McCafferty Page 0,47

by Sam as “the third most popular Bruce Springsteen tribute band on the Jersey Shore.” He was a decent supervisor, easy to please, except on Mondays when he was brutally hungover after a weekend of gigs. Sam greeted him cautiously.

“Morning, Freddy.”

“Unnnngh.”

Sam waited until Freddy entered the back office before resuming our conversation.

“Why do you get rides to work every day?” he asked.

He red-tagged the solo album by the other singer in The Go-Go’s who wasn’t Belinda Carlisle.

“I don’t have a license…”

“You don’t have your driver’s license? Are you kidding? I counted down the days until I could take my driver’s test at the DMV! Driving meant freedom!”

I shrugged.

“I never felt like I needed it until…”

I didn’t want to talk about Troy. Again, not because I was still pained by our breakup. It was embarrassing to admit out loud to Sam Goody that I had ever dated him at all.

“Until what?” Sam Goody asked.

“Until my boyfriend dumped me and I didn’t have anyone to drive me to work this summer,” I said. “But it won’t matter much longer. In exactly fifteen days I’ll be riding the subway in New York City where only the cabbies need driver’s licenses.”

I thought Sam Goody would be impressed by my metropolitan attitude.

He was not.

I watched him tag a bunch of other failed solo albums by lesser members of big bands—including the poor schmo from Genesis who wasn’t Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, or Mike (+ the Mechanics) Rutherford—before speaking up.

“What?” I finally asked.

“Not getting your license is a dumb idea,” he replied. “You should really get your driver’s license.”

“I told you,” I said, “it won’t matter—”

“Right, because in fifteen days you’ll be gone,” he said. “But what about when you come home? You don’t want to rely on your parents or your ex-boyfriend to take you everywhere, do you?”

I hadn’t left yet. Why would I already be thinking about coming home? As if that weren’t annoying enough, he took his argument to an even more infuriating level.

“As a feminist, shouldn’t you value your independence?”

KA-BOOM. An anger so intense, it distorted my senses. I literally saw red, as if Sam Goody had pulled the trigger on a pricing machine gun and shot a million crimson clearance tags directly into my eyeballs.

“You know what feminists really love?” I retorted. “When men tell us how to be good feminists!”

“Hey, Bellarosa, I’m sorry,” Sam said, “I didn’t mean it that way…”

He set down the gun and took a step back in a show of surrender.

It wasn’t his fault, really. I could see he hadn’t intended to enrage me then, just as he hadn’t meant to upset me when we first met. Sam Goody pissed me off because he didn’t know me. I was starting to think that maybe I was a tough person to know. I mean, Troy and I dated for two friggin’ years, and I don’t think he ever knew me at all.

My parents were married for twenty friggin’ years.

Did anyone ever know anyone?

Standing in the clearance section, the last chance for all the saddest has-beens and barely-weres, I didn’t have that answer. But this I knew for certain: The fifteen days I had left in Pineville wouldn’t be enough for Sam Goody and me to reach a deeper level of understanding. So why even bother trying?

“Maybe I’ll solve the problem by never coming home at all,” I said. “It’s not like there’s anything here worth coming back for.”

Sam Goody took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Well, I guess that solves that.”

And then he abruptly excused himself to assist a customer who—like me—didn’t need his help.

27

HOSTAGE

I was in a bad mood for the next few days.

And to make matters worse, Drea had zero time to attempt to cheer me up. On this particular day, she was wrangling with an exceptionally challenging bridal party. It’s never easy finding a dress that fit and flattered a dozen bridesmaids of greatly varying shapes, sizes, and ages, but the future Mrs. Charles Cappuccio was really making Drea work for the commission.

“It’s gotta go with the theme,” the bride-to-be demanded.

“Which is?” Drea asked.

“Pretty Woman meets Dances with Wolves.”

Drea—ever the professional—responded with zero hesitation.

“Beverly Hills Heartland.”

I was thinking “Frontier Hooker.” But I doubt my suggestion would have elicited a downright orgasmic reaction from the future Mrs. Charles Cappuccio.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I lacked Drea’s impressive improvisational skills. This is why I worked in the back office and not up front. Drea’s impeccable professionalism is to blame for what happened next. If she