The bell on the door jangles when I push it open, and Hal looks up. I nod at him. He grunts back, charming as ever. I waste no time and make a beeline to the refrigerated section in the back. If my time in the media spotlight has taught me anything, it’s thatfunandalcoholare synonymous. So I grab a subpar—but probably good enough for the locals—bottle of vodka and a jug of orange juice. In a town with a population of a hundred and fifty, I’m bound to run into someone as desperate as I am for fun. When I do, I’ll invite them over. They’ll bring their friends, we’ll play drinking games, and,bam, I’ll be back to being the life of the party. So maybe Gavin’s right after all. Maybe I am going topull an Elena.
I confidently place my items at the cash register and wait for Halto ring me up. With money to pay him this time, I won’t encounter the same embarrassment from yesterday.
He starts ringing up the items and stops when he gets to the bottle of vodka. “Do you have ID?” he asks.
On reflex I swat a hand at him, as if it’s ridiculous he’s even asking. “ID?” I giggle. When he remains unmoved, I falter. “I didn’t bring one with me. Is that going to be a problem?” As much as I don’t want to encourage him, I realize that without my reputation to carry me, I’ll have to resort to something a little more foolproof. Leaning my body against the counter, I bat my lashes and then wait a beat before gazing directly into his eyes and pursing my lips ever so slightly.
“I can’t sell this to you without seeing proper ID,” he says in a voice resembling a low growl.
I blanch. How did that not work? “Are you sure you can’t look the other way, just this once?”
He doesn’t respond, but his expression—brows clenched and a glare that’s just shy of menacing—says it all.
Then, in a moment of weakness, I hear the words come out of me before it’s too late. “Do you know who I am?” Immediately I recoil. Am I that desperate that I’ve lost all sense of decorum? I mean, I may as well have asked to speak to the manager while I was at it.
“No, I don’t. Should I?” he says, revealing what I feared the most. No one cares who I am here.
“No, guess not,” I mutter pitifully.
“Great,” he deadpans. “That’ll be five even.” For once I’m grateful that this place is the land of the forgotten. If this were LA, my Big Karen Energy would have gone viral by now, canceling me indefinitely.
I leave the store with a bruised ego and a jug of orange juice Ihave no intention of drinking. I’m in a daze, and I nearly walk right in front of a white Jeep Wrangler pulling into the parking lot. A second later, after the Jeep parks, the door opens.
“Hey,” Callie says, walking toward me. “Sorry I startled you. It seemed like you were lost in thought.”
“Yeah, I must have been.”
“I just realized I know who you are. You’re Elena Ok,” she says, catching me completely by surprise.
“Oh my God, yes.”Finallyshe gets it.
“You live at the property on Blaire Road, don’t you?” Callie continues.
I falter. It’s not exactly what I’m known for. And if she didn’t know who I was before yesterday, I’m pretty sure that whatever she’s learned about me in the past twenty-four hours can’t be good.
Her lips curl up, as if she knows our secret. I brace myself for it. “My dad’s Officer Hartford,” she says. “He said he stopped by your place earlier for suspicious activity. He mentioned new tenants.”
“Oh, right,” I say, trying not to sound disappointed. So Callie doesn’t know who I am, not really. “We learned our lesson the hard way. No more Bluetooth.” I point to my ear and laugh, probably a little too loudly. Luckily, Callie doesn’t seem to notice my strange behavior. Come to think of it, why would she, when she has no idea how I am normally?
After I regain clarity over the situation, I remember something. “I have your money,” I say, handing her two twenty-dollar bills from my pocket.
“I almost forgot about that. Thanks.” She pockets the twenties, then opens her trunk and pulls out a box of jars.
“So, do you work here?” I ask, taking a peek at the contents of the box. There are some jars of honey, which I remember Callie sayingher family makes. But there’s also a variety of other jars and oils along with them.
She stares at me curiously. “Oh,” she says, then laughs. “I’m sure that’s what it looked like. But, no, I don’t work here. I collect the locally sourced products and deliver them to the store.”
“But I thought the farmers all moved out of town because of some radioactive observatory,” I say, thinking out loud.
She laughs again, then stops when she realizes I’m not joking. “Oh, you’re being serious? Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that most people move here because of the radio telescope at the observatory. I assumed it’s what brought you here too.”
I shake my head. “Our tenants left, so we’re fixing up the house while it’s empty.”
“That makes sense,” she says, easily buying my story. “Most of the families left when the observatory was built. Some of us, including my family, maintain a small portion of the property that was farmed long ago as a kind of homage to the past.”
Farming as a hobby? Maybe that’s why my family seems so at home here. They’re among their people.
“Is it just you and your brother here?” she asks.
