Two weeks passed and, as I had expected, I didn’t see Holland again. My days returned to the normal routine of sleeping, working, and gaming. My guildmates were quite amused when I told them about what we now referred to as ‘The cheerleader incident’ when I told them about it the following Friday. One of them was certain, I must’ve imagined it because he’d never seen a cheerleader cry over a guy.
Two weeks, also meant that there were only five days of summer vacation left and my mom kept telling me not to forget to quit my job at Book Den. I knew she only wanted the best for me, but how could I possibly quit when unpaid were bills piling up on the sideboard in our narrow entrance? My eyes locked on the envelopes while I tied the laces on my old black chucks. Mom was sleeping in her tiny bedroom, exhausted from her fourth night shift in a row. Yet, she’d told me with a tender smile on her pale, slim face that she’d take on another shift when school started so I could quit my job without having to worry about it.
Yeah, well…over my dead body.
So, instead of passing my letter of resignation to Matt on that day, I threw it in the bin at the bus stop next to our apartment complex before rushing to work. The hype about Genesis X had died down after a couple of days and our customers returned to normal, which was why I wasn’t surprised that the maximum number of two customers were inside the store on this Wednesday morning. Matt asked me to fill up the free space on the shelves while he went over to the small area at the left side of the store that he’d turned into a cozy café last winter. “Combining coffee and books! Brilliant, just freakin’ brilliant!”, he’d said, and I was still not one hundred percent certain if he really thought that he’d invented café and book shop combinations or if he was just messing with me. I never knew if Matt was talking nonsense if I was being honest.
Anyway, the day passed by rather quietly and I’d just unpacked my third box of books when Matt crept closer to me with quiet “Psst”-sounds. “Psst, kiddo, psst, psst.”
Snorting, I looked up from the list to which I’d just added a copy of the movie edition of Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse. “You’re weird, boss.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m weird because I’m the boss.”
Yeah, guess that made sense…
“So” Matt glanced back over his shoulder. “You sure you’re not friends with that blonde chick?”
“Blonde chick?” I furrowed my brows before I froze right then and there. “H…Holland?”
“Hell, if I know her name.” With the thumb on his left hand, he pointed towards Book Den’s café while casually leaning against the low bookshelf holding the small DVD collection he offered his customers. “She’s been sitting there for ‘bout an hour and she does look like she’s waiting for someone. You, in case you didn’t get it.”
I gulped. Why was she here? Matt had got to be wrong! As if Holland Demdike would come here just to speak to me of all people. When I got up, I realized that I hadn’t given Matt an answer. “We’re classmates. That’s it.”
“Okay, classmate. Then I’d suggest, you go talk to her, K?” He’d pushed me towards the café before even finishing the sentence.
Passing bookshelves and display tables, I stopped at the barrier separating the café from the bookstore. Mandy, the enthusiastic pink-haired barista, was busy chatting with two customers at the bar and lifted her hand when seeing me standing there. I nodded, but my gaze had already fallen onto the girl sitting alone at one of the tiny round tables, casually sipping at her cappuccino. Nervously, I dried my sweaty hands on my black jeans before approaching her.
Holland’s eyes shot upwards - and shot is the correct word because I felt hit by a shower of bullets even before she snarled at me. “You!”
“M…me?” Master of words, that was me.
“How could you give me such stupid advice?!”
I blinked. “Pardon?”
Holland turned on her seat until she was facing me while heavily gesturing with her hands. “I asked Clay’s friends to promote me, just like you told me! It didn’t work at all! What were you thinking!”
Too startled, I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t been the one giving her that advice. She kept on talking anyway. “His friends were just praising my good looks! But – excuse me” She pushed her light blond hair over her shoulder in a very movie-like gesture. “Anyone can see that I’m a goddess!”
If she said so… I mean, I guess she could be considered pretty with her fair skin and the baby blue eyes but as for her personality… Well, who was I to judge her?
“So, um…did anything else happen?”
Holland frowned. “Anything else?! Like that he rejected me again?!” She clenched her fist, and I could feel my final moments approaching. “Like I’d ask him again!”
“Whoa, pretty girls shouldn’t frown like that.”
I exhaled when Matt jumped to my side. Guess he’d assumed something like this might happen. He patted my back, quietly telling me that he got this.
Holland narrowed her eyes. “What now? Am I supposed to be happy that his stupid plan didn’t work as he promised?”
Again: not my plan. But who cared about the details?
Matt scratched his chin that was covered in dark, spiky stubbles. “What about the other part of the plan?”
Mentally doing backflips about what he meant, I exclaimed: “Yeah, what did his friends tell you about Clay?”
Holland wasn’t happy. If anything, her eyes turned even angrier. “Nothing. They didn’t tell me a thing about what he likes.”
Guess they were good friends who wanted to protect their captain from her claws.
“Now?” Holland stared at us and seemed to expect something.
“Now?” I repeated in a paper-thin voice.
She rolled her eyes. “Your plan failed. What am I supposed to do now?”
Hell, if I knew. Maybe I should tell her that I was a gay virgin. Chances were, she’d let it go…or it would make it worse. I made a face. Yeah, wasn’t gonna happen. It didn’t matter, anyway, because as always, Matt was the first one to break the silence. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, but when he spoke up, only the wrong words left his mouth.
Turning his broad body to me, he asked, “Do you know anything about that guy? What might he like? I mean, guys talk, don’t we?”
“I…”
“How the hell would he know?” Holland barged in before I could give Matt an answer.
“Well, you’re all attending the same school. Maybe he overheard something in the locker room or anything.”
Locker room…Sudden nausea swelled up in my stomach. Five days and my break from that personal hell would be over.
“You do?” Holland’s blue gaze took my entire five-foot-five self in. The crooked position of her mouth told me that she didn’t remember ever seeing me before. And I wished she hadn’t noticed me at all. “And? Do you know anything?”
I shook my head when my lips proved unable to produce any more words.
Though, it was a lie. In my mind, I could see the shady interior of a boys’ restroom, grey-ish tiles and a row of bathroom stalls, the sound of heartbroken sobs behind a closed door on the left echoing through the room. Are you alright? He did talk to me once, but he didn’t know it was me he had been talking to.
“Of course, you haven’t,” Holland mumbled and tapped against the rim of her cup absentmindedly. “You wouldn’t talk about sports, are too shy to brag about looks. Yeah…it could work.”
Helplessly I looked up at Matt who was eying Holland just as cluelessly as myself. What the heck was she mumbling into her beard?
After she kept quiet for a couple of minutes in which Matt excused himself to tend to a customer asking about young adult fiction, I asked with a weak voice: “Holland?”
Her mouth lifted. “And you know, who I am.” When she jumped up from her seat, I made a step back but couldn’t escape the ironclad grip of her surprisingly strong hands on my shoulders. “I need someone to tell me what Clay likes, so I can become what he likes!”
I waited but, when nothing else followed, asked her: “And?”
“Someone who wouldn’t brag about my good looks. Someone who gets close to Clay and tell me all his secrets.” When her smile broadened, my entire body began to shiver, still not knowing what was coming at me. “His current friends won’t do.”
Current…
No.
Nononononononononononononono!
“I need you!”
NO!
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