me once that the thing he loved about fiction was that there were rarely yes-or-no answers when it came to characters. The world is complex, he told me. Humans are too.
He and I have had hundreds of conversations about the characters in books. The last one we had was about Vernon God Little, a book by D.B.C. Pierre. I’d loved it enough to read twice.
‘What did you love?’ Dad had asked.
‘Vernon,’ I’d said, naming the main character. ‘And the way it’s critiquing America. But mainly it’s the language. It’s like he’s left the words out in the sun to buckle a while, and they don’t sound like you’d expect.’
‘You might like to be a writer one day,’ Dad had said. ‘What do you think?’ Anything, in our bookshop, was possible.
But anything isn’t possible. Clearly, it’s not, or Mum wouldn’t want to sell. She loves the shop as much as we all do, and she accepts that the business is dying. Anything will not be possible if, for the rest of my life, I earn the same wage I do now. Anything won’t be possible for George.
‘Yes,’ I say, running my toe along a crack in the tile. ‘I want us to sell.’
‘And what will you do after?’ he asks.
‘There’s still the possibility of travelling with Amy. I’ll probably study next year.’
‘Then it’s decided,’ he says sadly. ‘I’ll get things underway.’
I walk downstairs and start to detach myself from the bookshop. I don’t look at the Letter Library on the way past. I don’t check the Prufrock for strangers’ thoughts. I don’t look behind me into the reading garden.
I walk straight to the front counter where George is yelling at the new guy: ‘If you don’t get your computer out of the way, I’ll shove it up your arse.’ It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen so I take the stapler away from George because we’re a second-hand bookshop and we can’t afford to replace an eye.
The new guy – Martin – is about George’s age. He seems like a neat, good-looking, computer geek.
‘Hi,’ he says to me, and smiles.
He seems like a nice, neat, good-looking, computer geek. Or maybe he just looks like a geek next to George in her black clothes and her black hair with a blue stripe running down it. Away from my goth sister, he’s probably more popular guy in high school than geek, which might account for why she doesn’t like him.
‘I’m Henry,’ I say, holding out my hand for him to shake.
‘Martin Gamble,’ he says, and George says, ‘Martin Charles Gamble,’ in the same way she might say the words complete and utter dick.
Martin doesn’t look angry; he looks kind of amused. ‘Your mum hired me to help in the store and to catalogue the books. Which is why,’ he says to George, ‘I need to charge my computer.’
‘Mum doesn’t live here anymore,’ George says. ‘Henry is the manager today and he’s about to fire your arse.’
‘Excuse me,’ I say to Martin. ‘I just need to talk to my sister for a minute.’
I motion for George to follow me onto the street, but it’s clear she’s not in the mood to listen. She starts yelling before the door’s closed, and I really wish she’d stop because I have a cracker of a headache.
‘He goes to my school. He’s in my class. He used to date Stacy,’ she says. ‘They’re still friends.’
George doesn’t tell me a lot about what school is like for her, but I know about Stacy. She’s in the popular crowd and she’s not a big fan of anyone who’s not in the popular crowd, so she’s not a big fan of my sister. George told me once that Stacy liked to write George Jones is a freak over things like toilet doors, lockers and desks. Once, on a school camp, she wrote it on George’s face.
I peer through the shop window at Martin. ‘He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d call you a freak. Let’s give him a trial. Seven days.’
It’s clear she’s not changing her mind, so I try a different approach. ‘Think about how miserable you could make him in a week if you’re his boss.’
I can see the idea hadn’t occurred to her before, and now that it’s been pointed out, it really appeals. She looks through the window at Martin and considers it for a while. ‘Okay,’ she says eventually. ‘But he can’t bring his friends here. This is my home.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say, and then