As a reflex, I pulled my hair forward to shield the one side of my head as I biked across the Zayre Shoppers City parking lot. I didn’t need to. My knot of melted flesh was already covered. My Quadrafones were snug to my scalp, playing this month’s pick, Led Zeppelin’sPresence. I’d started wearing ’phones right after the accident, once it was healed enough not to hurt, to hide my deformity. In retrospect, that was officially the dumbest thing I could have done because it drew attention to me, wearing big ol’ earphones not connected to anything. Now I was at least smart enough to carry a tape recorder.
Thanks to the Columbia Record and Tape Club, my whole life had a soundtrack.
“Nobody’s Fault But Mine” started piping through my ’phones. It was my favorite song on the tape. Too bad I was nearly at the Zayre employee entrance. I’d have to listen to the rest of it later.
I’d started working at Zayre the week after school got out. Dad had insisted I get a job. He said a woman needed to be able to take care of herself in this world, that he didn’t want me to ever have to rely on somebody else. Then he called in a favor to get me the position. I worked at the deli counter with Claude and Ricky and some older ladies. We pulled icy soda and slung sandwiches with a side of chips and a frog-colored pickle spear.
Our customers were all shoppers taking a break. They needed it. Zayre was a grocery, hardware store, furniture outlet, clothing store—heck, there was even a barbershop in there. I never told Dad that Iwould have rather worked in the clothing department, folding pretty silk shirts and straightening the latest bell-bottom jeans, or the jewelry counter, arranging the emerald-, ruby-, and sapphire-colored stones.
Instead, I acted grateful for the job at the deli.
It wasn’t all bad. In fact, it was pretty exciting at first. I liked being responsible for the till. I enjoyed making customers happy. It felt good to feed them. I had played store clerk so much as a girl, store clerk and teacher and actress and housewife, that it seemed like fate to actually do it in real life.
It didn’t hurt that I got to work with Claude most shifts. We’d occasionally remind each other of how, when we were little, we’d hold our tongues and try to say “Zayre Shoppers City” and then nearly pee our pants giggling when “city” sounded like a swear word. Now we both worked there. Claude stayed out front with me, where he’d fill glasses of pop and make sure Ricky was cooking up the correct orders. There wasn’t a huge selection. Club sandwiches, hot dogs, barbecue, and a grilled cheese sandwich that was sliced Velveeta on white. Three kinds of chips plus that pickle spear. Ketchup, mustard, and relish that customers served themselves. Even with the limited menu, we were busy. Zayre was the place to go on this end of town. Some people used it for their social time.
I rested my bike against the signpost in the back of the deli and locked it up. There was only a minute or so left on the song, but I didn’t want to punch in late, so I hit pause on John Bonham and slid the Quadrafones to my neck. The sticky air was as uncomfortable as a stranger’s hug.
“Hey, Head.”
I jumped. Ricky stood between the dumpster and the building, about to light a cigarette.
“Hi,” I said, heart thudding.
Ricky was pretty much the only one who called me Head. It wasn’t a kind nickname, but it wasn’t as mean as it sounded, either. He saidit in a normal voice, and anyhow, it was better than pretending I had two ears. He’d come up with it right after the accident, when I was still all bandaged up. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me leave the house. I think they didn’t want anyone to see how banged up I looked, but they acted like it was for my own good. Ricky was the only one who came by regularly.
It was before his fever, so he couldn’t have been more than eight. He’d bring his crabby old housecat over. Mrs.Brownie, he called her. She hissed at everyone but him and me, and he knew I loved to pet her silky fur. Though she tolerated me and Ricky stroking her, she hated being held and even more being held and then walked, so his arms would be scratched bloody when he’d arrive. He’d set her on the bed next to me and flop into a chair, complaining about his sisters and his brothers and his mom and his dad, talking until he reached some point that only he could see, at which time he’d scoop up a furious Mrs.Brownie and disappear until the next day.
It kept me from feeling too sorry for myself, Ricky dropping by with his old tabby cat, never asking me about the accident, pretending like it was all normal except he called me Head rather than Heather. He stopped visiting once my bandages came off. We’d never talked about those visits since, acted like it’d never happened.
My heart puffed up thinking of them.
I was just about to ask if he remembered when he blew out a stream of smoke. “You look like shit,” he said, squinting at me.
“Thanks, Ricky,” I said, rolling my eyes, reminded why I’d never brought it up. I left him to the already stifling day as I stepped into the cool of the break room.
Claude was pulling a box of straws off the shelf. He tossed me a tight smile. He’d sensed something was up last night, of course. We’d known each other our whole lives. But he hadn’t pushed it.
“Gonna be a busy one,” he said, tipping his head toward the front. “We already have a line.”
I punched in. “Who eats a hot dog at ten in the morning?” My stomach lurched as I remembered the meal I’d barfed up last night and washed off the lawn before I’d hopped on my bike.
“It’s already seventy-seven degrees out,” he said. “People’ll eat a lot of hot dogs if it means they can stay in the air-conditioning.”
“You coming to my party tomorrow?”
Ricky wore a paper hat over a hairnet, same as me and Claude. He was hunched in front of the soda fountain, filling his plastic cup with a suicide, a little bit of every flavor. This was the first breather we’d had in two hours. Customers had flowed through in a steady stream. When the men came to my counter, I found myself peeking at their wrists, looking for a copper-colored bracelet, even though I’d told myself to forget about last night, had promised Brenda I would.
I’d also told her I’d float with her to Ricky’s party. “Probably.”
I felt a flutter of excitement when I said it out loud, despite myself. If the cabin was where Brenda said it was, it would be my first quarry party. That was a big deal for a Pantown kid. Jumping off those big fortress rocks into the icy deep. No place to stand and catch your breath because there was no bottom, just a gaping hole that might as well stretch to the center of the earth. A hole that probably hid prehistoric water monsters, slithering, sharp-toothed creatures that needed immense depths to survive but that sometimes, only every few years or so, would unfurl a tentacle and wrap it around your ankle and suck you down down down.
“Can I come?” Claude asked, emerging from the back with a packet of napkins to fill the metal dispenser.
“No single dicks,” a man said, appearing at the counter.
I blinked at the guy. He looked like he’d stepped off a 1950s movie set. His hair was jet black and oiled, the straps on his leather jacketjingling, his worn jeans rolled at the cuffs. How could he stand to wear all those layers in this heat?
“Hey, Ed!” Ricky said. He took a swallow from his drink before adding more orange. “Head, you met Eddy yet?”
