August 2010

“Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t,” I cursed while running through the busy morning streets of Seattle. It was supposed to be mid-summer, yet, eighteen days before the end of our summer vacation, Washington State had, once again, decided to grace us with moody autumn vibes and rain. But I guess I was in no position to complain. I mean, I was the strange guy wearing a darker than black hoodie that wavered loosely around my slim figure of five foot five while most of the people I ran past on the pavement were dressed in t-shirts and shorts. Then again, I used to wear hoodies all the time; except when I had to put on the outdated white and green striped polo shirt for work. And work was where I was heading right now – ten minutes late. 

I rushed past honking cars and daydreaming pedestrians and pushed open the white-painted door of Book Den’s back entrance. Cursing under my breath, I threw my backpack on one of the three plastic chairs surrounding the tiny breakfast table in the staff room, dragged my drenched hoodie over my head, and exchanged it for my polo shirt and name tag. One glance into the tiny mirror on the wall next to a gigantic Harry Potter-themed calendar, I ran a restless hand through my chin-long black hair, careful to drape my bangs so that they covered the right side of my face. When I opened the door to the store, an apology was already at the tip of my tongue but never left my lips.

I halted right outside the staff room at the end of the den-like bookstore that seemed to never have left the eighties. “What the…” On a Wednesday morning, the only things I was supposed to see from this angle were tall bookshelves, dark carpets, and the occasional layer of dust; instead, there was an endless line of customers waiting to pay for their books. Double sh*t. Avoiding eye contact, I rushed past the long queue until I reached the cashier.

“Kiddo! Thank goodness!” My boss grabbed my wrist and pulled me behind the counter. 

“Sorry, I…”

“Never mind,” Matt waved my apology away with a swift move of his hand and tended to his next customer while I entered my seller code into cashier number two. Smirking to myself when the queue began to slowly split up in front of both cashiers, I took my first customer’s novel. It was big and heavy, and the burgundy cover…

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed and blushed immediately when all eyes turned to me. 

Matt chuckled. “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” 

I snorted and scanned the novel’s barcode. “Quoting Nietzsche now, are we?”

Matt uttered a burst of dark and rumbling laughter. “If it fits? Why not?” Years and years of selling books had turned him into a walking encyclopedia full of quotes which sometimes caused customers to lift their brows in surprise. Not many people would expect Nietzsche’s words coming from a tattooed mountain of a man in his mid-forties. 

We spent the next eighty minutes selling copies of one and the same novel: New York Times-No.1-bestselling-author C. C. Starling’s latest release Genesis X. My favorite genre, my favorite author, I had even marked this day in crimson red in my calendar…and had still forgotten about it! Nervously, I let my gaze wander to the end of the queue. Hopefully, I could grab a copy of Genesis X before it was sold out.

But again: I had the best boss in the world. Next to me, I could hear Matt’s snort before he tapped me on my shoulder. “Hell, watching you wiggle like that is making me nervous.” He nodded towards the compartment below the counter when I shot him a clueless look. I narrowed my eyes until I could lay eyes on the heavy novel waiting in the dark. I squeaked: “Is that…?”

“A copy waiting for you.” He put both hands on my shoulders and turned my body until I was facing the queue again. “Something to look forward to during lunch break.”

Indeed. Mentally rubbing my hands, I spent the next three hours selling books and talking about C. C. Starling’s novels, exchanging fan theories, and closing my ears to eventual spoilers. I had just finished tending to my final customer when my fingers already reached below the counter. I scanned the novel, paid the price, and rushed into my secret reading nook in the corner that was farthest away from Book Den’s glass entrance. Though, the only thing that made this narrow spot in between two high bookshelves secret was the layer of dust on the floor cushion which repelled most customers so much that the spot was always vacant. Good for me because I didn’t care. 

Until that day. 

I had just read the first captivating pages of Genesis X when a shadow rushed past the bookshelf to my right and fell to their knees right in front of me. My heart was pounding in my chest while I stared at this creature in horror. I’d never seen one of them outside of school; Hell, I had never expected them to come to this place! In front of me, crouching on the ground, and sobbing to her heart’s content was a terrifying…cheerleader! 

Dressed in a light summer dress with a floral print, Holland Demdike was in a state I’d never seen her in. As captain of our high school’s cheerleading team, she usually wore a bright smile on her slim face or hissed like a serpent whenever one of the less popular kids acted against her wishes. I’d seen her with four guys around her pinky at the same time and I’d seen her make my Chemistry teacher cry in front of the class – he quit one week later. Now, however, sobs made her body shake and her golden blonde hair was a wet mess. I blinked when realizing that, suddenly, she seemed to be…mortal. The polar opposite to her goddess-like position inside the Olympus of popularity. 

After watching her for a couple of minutes like a deer in the headlights, my brain kicked in. There was a girl crying in front of me, and all I did was stare?! Fighting back my own nervousness, I put down my novel and gulped. “I…is everything o…okay?” 

Holland froze momentarily before the temperature in this part of Book Den fell below zero and her ice-cold gaze fell on me. “Are you f*cking kidding me?!”, she hissed. “Nothing is okay!”

Gulping I locked my gaze to the ground, counting dirt stains on the grey carpet while mentally wondering why I had even bothered to ask. If I was lucky, she’d just let it go and would walk away, if not…well, she wouldn’t be the first one to give me bruises. 

Holland chose option number three that I hadn’t even considered. She didn’t leave and she didn’t turn her anger against me; instead, she began…to talk. “Do you know how embarrassing it is to ask somebody out and they flat out reject you?”

“Um…” No, I wanted to say, because asking people out was not one of my strengths, but Holland didn’t even give me the time to form a coherent answer. 

“Gosh!” She tugged at her sun-colored hair. “I wanna die of humiliation!” 

When she looked at me as if to ask for my encouragement, I just nodded. I had no idea where this conversation was going as I couldn’t read this version of Holland - at all - and I was definitely not prepared when she turned her body in my direction and began chatting as if I were her best friend. “Okay, here’s the thing: my bestie Michelle got herself this super-hot eye candy as a bf. And I’m sooo happy for her, you know?” 

U-huh… 

“Anyway, now I feel kinda lonely, so we decided, it’s time for me to get myself a bf, too. I mean, I kicked Asher’s ass three weeks ago! That’s a lifetime.”

Now imagine her face if I told her that I’d never had a boyfriend. Which I didn’t tell her, of course. I was an introvert, and she didn’t care anyway. 

“So, we wondered who the best guy for that position would be.” Were we talking about a job interview now? I couldn’t help smirking and hid the lower half of my face behind my novel. Oh, how I wished, I could sink back into Starling’s fantasy world… “Then suddenly, Susan - one of my other girls - dropped that Clay Prescottis single!” The look on her face told me that she could hardly believe it. “I mean he’s like super-hot, isn’t he?” She bent closer to me, and her tear swollen eyes wandered over my worn-out outfit for a sec before she leaned back again. Guess coming close to a nerd in striped polo shirts was still off-limits. “But how would you know that? Clay is our high school’s soccer captain! He’s super famous and capital-H-hot! And smart, and…” 

While Holland kept bragging about Clay’s pros, it suddenly occurred to me that she had no idea who I was. Of course, I knew who Clay Prescott was. We’d been going to the same high school for three years. Ever since the Thunderbird soccer team had started winning all the small and the big championships, he’d been considered the most popular boy of our high school. This was Seattle after all; everyone dreamed of becoming a Sounder. 

Not me, of course. I’d never been good at sports. My A-game in PE was falling flat on my face and we didn’t even get grades for that. Plus, I was simply not special enough to stand out. In a time when everything in an American teenager’s life was about being cooler, prettier, or – put simple – more popular than anyone else, being a Japanese-American nerd with skin even paler than snow and clothes that seemed to come straight out of a black printer wasn’t helpful. 

So, yeah, the true stars of our high school were the athletes, thus, I was not surprised that Holland - captain of the cheerleading team - was after Clay - captain of the soccer team. The math should add up, but apparently, it did not. 

It took some time for me to realize that Holland had stopped talking but her gloomy gaze was a good hint. I stammered, “S…so you want him to be your boyfriend, and he said no?”

Her upper lip twitched like that of a bulldog before the snap. “Said no?! Said NO?!” She whined. “Yeah! He said No!” 

I blinked. “But…um…why?”

“What do you mean, why?”, she hissed. I was impressed by how fast her expression could change from the sobbing mess to the hissing serpent. 

“Why did he reject you? I mean, he must’ve given you a reason, right?” That’s how it worked, right? I had no idea because to be rejected I had to ask somebody out first… 

She nibbled at the hem of her floral dress hat formed a huge contrast to Book Den’s retro interior. “Well…he said that I don’t know anything about him. But I do!” 

I eyed her suspiciously when she averted her eyes. “What kinda things does he like?”

She snorted. “Soccer, duh!” 

“What else?”

She didn’t reply. 

“What’s his favorite movie? His favorite meal? Who’s his best friend?” 

I was surprised that I didn’t die in that instant, given that her eyes were shooting daggers right at me. I put my book down, my lunch break was almost over anyway. Could as well spend the rest of it talking to a girl who would forget that I existed the moment she left the store. “If you don’t know anything about him, then why do you want to be his girlfriend?” 

“Because he’s Clay Prescott!”, she exclaimed.

Matt chose that exact moment to stroll down the aisle between the bookshelves. He lifted his thick dark brows when he first took in Holland’s exhausted appearance before recognizing me sitting next to her. 

I shot him a silent call for help. He rolled his dark eyes but came over anyway. 

“What’s up kiddos?” 

Holland winced and just like before, she blabbered out what was going through her mind. The way Matt bit his cheek told me that he, too, was seconds away from laughing. He cleared his throat. “When I was young,” Matt began with nostalgia in his voice that indicated that he was referring to a time a hundred years ago, “we wooed the girls we liked differently. If she was out of my league – which didn’t happen often, of course – I asked one of her friends to praise me so she would be the one asking me out. And I asked them to tell me more about her, so I could shine like Prince Charming on our first date.”

That was so crazy, I actually believed it. 

Holland narrowed her eyes towards a point in space no one except her could see. “That’s…” Here we go, I prepared for the impact and crouched. “brilliant!” 

Huh?

Holland jumped up, took Matt’s hand between her far smaller ones, literally screaming “Thank you, Mr. Book Den!” and rushed out of the store. Startled, Matt and I stared after this blonde whirlwind. I guess neither of us really understood what had just happened. 

“Friend of yours?”, asked Matt still smirking. 

I snorted. “Fat chance.” My phone’s alarm announced the end of my lunch break and I decided to shake this very strange incident off; a hundred percent sure that I’d never see Holland at Book Den again.

Little did I know…