AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Six
Gina
“Earth to Gina!” I look up and see Leonard, my boss, staring at me with a furrowed brow. In his hand is a tagging gun. “I was starting to get worried. Everything okay?”
I nod, realizing I’ve been standing there, seemingly in a trance—and the customers have gotten antsy. The line is now five people deep. Their light chatter rings in my ears.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. I can feel the blood draining from my face. I'd been thinking about the argument with my father, about all the things I should have said, and more so, the things I shouldn’t have. But that isn’t all. I’d also given considerable thought to something I’d just read in one of the gossip tabloids that line the register. I often spend the time between customers imagining myself one day being in them, seeing my face on the front page. As they say, it’s good to have a dream. I just have to get to Hollywood first, and that’s a dream that seems to be taking longer than I thought it would. Daddy says I’m getting too old, that my time is running out. He says actresses have a shelf life, and that I’m better off sticking to simple things.
“I haven’t got all day,” Sharon Johnson snaps, looking at her watch and huffing impatiently. She might be a bitch, but I kind of loved her at the moment. No one in this town can cause a scene quite like Sharon. That and I can only imagine how much she hates me. It's written all over her face.
She scowls, looking from me to Leonard and back. “I stopped by the drugstore for areason.You know—to get in and out.”
She draws her words out, making what she’s saying take twice as long.
“Daddy’s having a rough day,” I say to Mr. Walton. “Sorry, my mind is elsewhere.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” he says with a sigh. He looks at Sharon Johnson apologetically. “But Mrs. Johnson is in a bit of a hurry, so let’s get her rung up as quickly as we can.”
He speaks with a singsong quality, as though he is speaking to a toddler. His face is positive and optimistic, crafted to elicit trust.
“My little Billy is sick,” she says curtly. “Poor thing was up half the night coughing. It’s so hard to see your baby sick, you know.”
She glances at Leonard and then leans in and pats his arm. With a laugh, she says, “Well,youknow.” She looks at me and lowers her gaze, but not her voice. “And God willing, someday Gina will too.”
“I hate children,” I say. “Almost as much as I’ve always hated you.”
I ring up her cough syrup and her lipstick. I guess little Billy isn’t so sick that she couldn’t spend a half hour in the cosmetics aisle. When I look up, not only are Sharon Johnson and my boss standing there, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, half of the customers in the store are too.
I quickly look away from the customers in the line. They all stare at me, some with distaste and others with pity, but all incredibly interested in what I might say next.
“Gina doesn’t mean it,” Mr. Walton says, and I almost feel bad. His shoulders are slightly more slumped than they were at the start of my shift, his deep wrinkles more prominent. Especially the crease in his brow. “We all have bad days.”
“Try a bad decade,” Sharon retorts.
“Yeah, well, I guess you didn’t have anything to do with that now, did you?”
“We make our bed, we have to lie in it,” she says.
Maybe I shouldn’t have stolen Sharon’s boyfriend in the fifth grade, but it was worth it just knowing she’s still angry about it all these years later.
Well, almost worth it. He turned out to be a terrible kisser, a real mama’s boy, and well-known for having a wandering eye.
That was all well and good.
It was the fact that Sharon Johnson—Sharon Cleaver then—turned all the other kids against me. I was mocked, teased, and bullied relentlessly. I was ousted from the other girls, called “easy” by the boys. The rumors she spread? Some of them persist until this day. They said I was weird, and they were right. I was different. Iamdifferent. Different isn’t bad, it just is. But once you’re labeled that way, well, labels tend to stick.
“How’s William, by the way?”
She looks at me sideways as though she can’t believe the audacity. “How should I know?” She should know, and I’m positive she does. She did name her firstborn after him. Billy’s dad’s name is Robert. Her innocent school crush? The one she’s still bitter about all these years later? He goes by Bill.
I shrug.
“Can you get any slower?”
“It’s possible, yes.”
Leonard frowns at me. “Would you like me to take over? I think it’s time for your break, anyhow.”
I offer him a bright smile. “I’ve got it,” I say, and I do.
I short Sharon’s change by a dollar and eleven cents. Not because I intend to steal from her, but because I’m hoping she’ll get out to her car, work the math out in her head, and have to walk back into the store. She’s married to Robert Johnson, a big shot accountant who commutes to the city five days a week and somehow still manages to keep his wife on a short leash.
I imagine them arguing over the missing change. Bob’s the biggest cheapskate six counties deep. How he ended up married to a woman like Sharon, I’ll never know. But it feels exactly like the kind of karma she deserves.
