@mink: You don’t even know what it is yet. @alex: And I didn’t know what your horoscope meant, but it worked out. Take a chance, Mink. You helped me; now I’m helping you. Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing, my advice is to just do it. What’s the worst that can happen?
“Nobody ever lies about being lonely.”
—Montgomery Clift, From Here to Eternity (1953)
13
I don’t work with Porter on my next shift. In fact, I’m not scheduled to work with him again until Saturday—not that I’ve obsessively checked the schedule. But the level of disappointment that hits me when I pick up my till and see Mr. Pangborn’s white hair instead of Porter’s tangle of curls is so crushing, I have to give myself a mental shake. Why am I getting so worked up over a boy? ?is isn’t like me. At all.
“We’re still on for tonight?” Grace says when Pangborn is escorting us to the Hotbox, merrily whistling what I think is a Paul Simon song. When I hesitate too long, she grabs my orange vest. “Don’t you bail on me, Bailey Rydell.”
“I’m not,” I say, laughing as I push her away. “It’s just complicated. I might need to b a little to my dad about who we’re hanging out with, so when you pick me up, don’t mention any surfers.”
She wrinkles up her face, and then gives me a whatever look. “Eight o’clock.”
“Eight. I’ll be ready, promise.”
Pangborn does a little shuffling dance outside the ticketing booth door, one hand on his stomach, singing about some guy named Julio down by the school yard. “Yaa da-da-da-da!”
Grace grins. “?at must be some ne chronic you got your hands on this morning.”
“Nature’s medicine, my dear,” he corrects, making a quieting signal with his hand as he glances around—probably looking for Cavadini. “Never know who’s listening around here.”
A terrible thought crosses my mind. “You guys don’t have sound on the security cameras, do you?” All the things Porter claims Grace tells him about me … what if he’s been listening in on our conversations inside the Hotbox?
“Sound?” Pangborn chuckles. “We barely have sight. No, there’s no sound.”
Sweet baby Jesus. I sigh in relief.
“Why?” he asks.
“Uh … I just wondered if you guys were listening in while we gossiped in the Hotbox,” I say, trying to cover up as best I can— and doing a crap job of it.
He chuckles. “No, nothing like that. We can’t hear unless you call us, so gossip away. ?e system’s old. Hasn’t been upgraded in a decade, in fact. ?ey’re going to have to spend money soon. ?e offsite company that monitors the alarm system went out of business two weeks ago. Now if anything goes wrong in the middle of the night, all we can do is call the local police.”
“Just call Bailey,” Grace says. “She’ll chase down criminals and jump them.”
I bump her shoulder. “Shut it, Grace Achebe, or I’ll start counting change as slow as Michelle.”
“Noooo!” She waves her hand at Pangborn. “Hey, you gonna let us in any time soon? Not all of us have the luxury of your natural medication to make the day pass by faster.”
?e old security guard smiles goo ly and knocks on the door, announcing, “Team Grailey reporting for duty, boys. Open up. I seem to have misplaced my key again… .”
After we’re situated and on a roll, Grace turns off her mic and says, “Why were you asking Pangborn all that stuff about listening in on our gossip?”
“It’s nothing, really,” I say, but she’s not letting it go. “I was just worried that Porter might be hearing our conversations.”
“Why?”
“Because of some things he said a couple of days ago. It’s nothing. Stupid, really. He knows I have a sweet tooth—”
“I told him that.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“He’s been asking about you lately. Quite a bit, in fact.”
“He has?”
