Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,13
An older man walked over to the photo-maker, holding a flash drive and looking confused.
“I’m confused,” he called out.
Again, Jessica reached for the intercom, but stopped when she saw Peter Rojas jogging up from the back of the store.
“I can help the next person,” Peter cheerfully announced, sliding behind the counter while clipping on his name tag.
“Thanks,” Jessica muttered.
“No problem.”
During the summer, Jessica rarely saw Peter. He usually worked the overnight shift and was clocking in around when Jessica was clocking out. The old ladies who shopped at the pharmacy loved him. They always asked Jessica if he was working even though they knew his schedule by heart. They went out of their way to steer their carts into the aisle where Peter was stocking or to ask specifically for him to reach for items on the highest shelves. He asked them about their surgeries, and they showed him their granddaughters’ senior portraits and photos from their quince?eras. He seemed genuinely sad when they would tell him that another one of their old lady friends had died.
They’d gone to the same school, but since Peter was Iridian’s age and had just finished his junior year, Jessica didn’t know him well—they’d been in choir together; that was it—but he was one of Hector Garcia’s friends, which meant that, when he wasn’t at work, he was usually camped out at the house across the street from Jessica’s. He’d been there yesterday afternoon, in fact, standing out in the street with the rest of his friends, gawking as Jessica was trying to yank her distraught father off the ground. He’d seen her at her unraveled worst, begging her sisters for help and yelling at the neighbors to leave them all alone.
Standing there behind the registers under the industrial blast of air-conditioning, Jessica could feel her face get hot and the sweat start to gather behind her ears as if she were still outside with her father, crouched and crying on the asphalt.
“Here, let me,” Jessica said to the woman. She plucked twenty-three cents from the pile of coins and started sorting them into the register. “You know, it’s probably just scared.”
“What, dear?” The woman looked up. “Oh, hello, Peter.”
“Hi, Mrs. Rivas,” Peter replied.
“The hyena.” Jessica handed the woman her change with a long ribbon of coupons. “It’s probably just scared. Imagine if you were lost and alone in a strange place. I bet that would be pretty scary. You might start to do some weird stuff.”
Mrs. Rivas looked from Jessica to Peter, then back to Jessica.
“But you know,” Jessica couldn’t help adding, “that thing about the Yorkie? It’s probably just a rumor. People around here love to come up with all kinds of stories.”
Mrs. Rivas, once so chatty, was apparently at a loss for words.
“Have a nice day,” Jessica said with a grin. “I can help who’s next in line.”
Jessica ended up pulling a double because a coworker had to leave to take her kid to the emergency room after he accidentally smashed his hand in a car door. Even though she was exhausted, she was grateful for the excuse not to go home. She spent her time stocking toilet paper, thermometers, greeting cards, condoms, diapers, and cotton rounds. She worked the register some more and tried not to judge customers by their purchases. She spent ten minutes helping an older man look up a coupon on his phone, only to tell him that it had expired three months ago. She ate a granola bar and a fruit cup, and drank a cherry Diet Coke alone in the break room. She caught herself humming along to a Celine Dion ballad that was coming through the speakers. She’d worked four shifts a week at the pharmacy for nearly five months now, since the beginning of the spring semester of her senior year, and had probably heard that same song three hundred times.
Sometimes, she really loved how boring her job was.
Late in the night and toward the end of her second shift, Jessica was with Peter again, this time in the vitamin aisle, where they were scanning hundreds of little bottles that were about to go on sale.