Heather put the Saran Wrap down, crossing her arms over her chest. He wasn’t even hungover yet-he was still drunk from the night before. Scottie leaned over the counter, pouting at Heather. We specialized in coffee that was dessert. Brad drank black coffee, but Scottie ordered Twix-flavored, just so he could comment on how disgusting it was. On every copy of the Mariner we had in stock, I was featured on the cover.īrad and Scottie were there, drinking their second cups of coffee, basically harassing us. We also sold single rolls of toilet paper, expired gum, and last week’s issues of the Hopuonk Mariner and the Boston Sunday Globe. The top button of her uniform shirt was undone, showing her cleavage.Įmmylou’s doubled as a convenience store, with shelves full of instant noodles, one-dose packs of Advil and Pepto-Bismol, and penny candy. Heather arranged a bunch of Saran Wrapped cinnamon buns and neatened the scratch ticket rolls. I was the only employee without blond hair. Since I was fourteen, I’d been a coffee girl at Emmylou’s. The next day at work, I spent most of my time grinding coffee beans. I remembered something Heather said to me once in the bathroom at school, while she applied frosty lipstick to my lips, and I pictured her voice in the pink cursive from the magazine. My hair and eyes were just brown, and I tried to figure out what other people thought was so special about me. I moved it in slow circles, removed it, then dotted my temples with it. Watching my reflection, I slid a finger inside myself. Use yourself as perfume, it said in slinking pink cursive.
I’d read about it in one of Sandra’s issues of Cosmo. I walked into the bathroom to do my morning ritual. Outside, Brad’s Datsun crunched over the gravel as he pulled away. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her listening. Sandra was also the Hopuonk homecoming queen, but in 1978.
I couldn’t see his face, but his legs were tangled in hers, and he was balding a little. She faced the wall, her red hair spilling across the faded pillowcase, and a man lay in bed beside her. I went upstairs and stood in the doorway of Sandra’s room, which smelled like dust, drugstore perfume, and superiority. That glimmer of hope-that he might want to know, that he might let me go live with him in California-that was all I had if I didn’t want to be a dental hygienist. Other kids’ fathers left them, but mine didn’t even know about me.
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