“Hold on, I probably have her number.”
We stopped by the swinging doors behind the meat counter, which was still dark and empty since it was so early. He pulled a small, shiny object out of his pocket.
I’d seen other people carrying them in the store, but I had never fully understood what they were. Some people held them to their ears, while other people stared at them in their hands. When he touched it, a screen lit up like a tiny TV.
I wanted to ask about it, but I knew better. They were common. He would know I wasn’t normal if I let on that I didn’t know.
“I have it here in my phone,” he said. “You want me to send it to yours?”
A phone. That was a phone.
“I’ll write it down,” I said. “My phone is… broken.”
“I hear you,” he said. “Dropped mine a couple weeks ago and had to get a new one. It was a pain in the butt.”
I had no idea why that would hurt his backside, but I stayed quiet. I pulled my diary out of the bag. A pen was tucked inside it. “What was the number?”
He gave me several digits. “She’s Penny St. Martin,” he said. “You can tell her I sent you.”
“And you are?”
He pointed to his badge, and my face flushed hot that I hadn’t looked at it.
“James,” he said. “She’ll remember me.”
“Thank you, James.”
I had a plan again. But even though I knew the numbers, and I’d seen a phone, I had no idea how to call this Penny person.
We moved through the swinging doors. A huge open room was filled with stacks of boxes. Several more Shelfmart workers loaded items onto carts.
James droned on about the delivery doors and how to watch your back with the night stockers. I tried to pay attention, but really, I thought hard about all the places I knew. The Shelfmart. The gas station. There were other buildings around them. I knew of the bank, although we never went there. I didn’t have money for something like the phone James had.
I could ask to use his. It would be embarrassing. But what if Penny St. Martin found out I didn’t know about phones? Would James tell her? Would they laugh at me? And if they did, would she still let me work there?
No, I had to find another way. Someone who wouldn’t tell Penny.
The employee who gave me the application had said I could do it online, whatever that meant. Maybe I could send a new application to Penny online.
“Where can I do online?” I asked James, interrupting him mid-sentence.
His eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t look mad. “I guess I got boring, rambling on about stockrooms. You don’t have internet at home?”
“I don’t.”
“You could go over to the library. They have computers you can use.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to the library.”
He laughed. “I don’t step foot inside it myself.”
Oh. Was it a bad place to go? Dangerous? I would have to risk it. “Where is the library?”
“Really close if you walk out the back door.” He pointed to a double door on the far wall. “You just have to cross the field. If you take the road, it’s a long way around.”
This was good. The library was somewhere I’d never been. Possibly dangerous. But somewhere Mother wouldn’t look. Would she call the police? Would they come find me? I didn’t know. I’d have to do it. I had no other choice.
It was time to get out of this Shelfmart, where she’d certainly come first.
