I thanked James for his help and promised to find him again unless I transferred to Penny’s store. I’d learned a lot in the last hour. Mother had taught me so very little.
And that was when she wasn’t lying.
The truth washed over me again. I was eighteen years old. Years of my life had been lost because she didn’t let me remember them. Everything I knew was wrong. Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I had to be like Dorothy and find my own way back to Kansas, whatever that might be for me.
When I stepped outside, panic threatened to engulf me. Even though it was the back side of the store, more employees in red shirts were pulling up. They might see me.
Mother would get help, sound all the alarms. Sometimes there were “Find this child” pictures on the big signs on the highway. Would she put mine on one? She thought I was helpless. That I couldn’t make it without her.
But I would.
I pulled the hood of my jacket over my hair. I walked quickly with my head down.
The building James meant had to be the one beyond the trees. There was a little path to it. As I got closer, I spotted a sign that said, “Wimberley Village Library.”
But when I got to the door, it was locked. A sign said it wouldn’t open until nine.
I had no idea what time it was, but I could wait.
I sat on the concrete porch by the door, hidden by bushes, and sorted through the papers I had. The hospital records were still a mystery. Maybe I could go there for help. Maybe the hospital was close enough to walk to.
Then my notes.Trust only this handwriting.The only handwriting I would see now would be mine. Maybe I could cross out the words that didn’t match and salvage my notebook.
The door behind me clicked. A woman in a bright blue dress opened it and spotted me.
“Not too often we have someone breaking down our door so early on a Saturday morning,” she said.
I scrambled to my feet. “I need to do an application online. Or I could call Penny St. Martin on a phone. I need to transfer to a different Shelfmart.”
Her face shifted to confusion. “You don’t have a phoneat home?”
I could do this. Take everything I’d learned from James and convince her to help. “I dropped my cell phone, and it broke. I need to call Penny, the manager of a different Shelfmart, because I’m supposed to start a job there.”
She straightened. “Oh. Well, we don’t really have a public phone, but there’s no harm in you making a quick call, if you need to.” She led me inside, stopping at the end of a long counter. She turned a strange boxy object toward me and lifted the top section to hand to me. “You have to dial nine before the number.”
It wasn’t anything like the shiny thing James had held, but I recalled something like it in the movies I’d seen. People held this part to their head. I lifted it there. The woman moved farther down the long counter.
A set of buttons with numbers on them must be how I put in the digits James gave me.
I would figure this out.
After opening my notebook to Penny’s number, I pressed the first digit, and the woman said, “Don’t forget to dial nine first.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know how to get rid of the number I’d already done.
I needed help. I had to admit it. “Do you mind showing me how to do this?”
The woman looked me in the eye. “No landline at home?”
“No.”
“Gotta love Gen Z. Okay.” She stepped close and took the phone from me. She set down the top part of the phone and picked it up again, pressing it to her ear.
“You dial nine, otherwise you’re calling within the library. Then you punch in the numbers here.” She turnedmy paper to look, then tapped out the numbers. When she was done, she handed the top of the phone to me. “Ask for the person you want to speak to. The manager probably won’t answer the phone. Somebody else will.”
I nodded and pressed the phone to my ear.
A voice came on the line. “Thank you for calling your friendly neighborhood Shelfmart. If you know your party’s extension, enter it now.”
