In twenty-four hours I saw my life turn upside-down.
My name is Jenna. I don't particularly care about that name. Wait, strike that, I hate it. Jenna, Jen, Jenny and all other nicknames that people had given me in these last fifteen years of life, I hate them all. So I had all my friends and family learn to call me Janis. Because of Janis Joplin, the singer. Every now and again I have to snap at people for forgetting that. People say that I have a strong temper, I can't see why they think so, though.
So yeah, I already told you my name and age. What's next? Occupation? Master spy. Pff, yeah, as if. Second year high-school student with a part-time cashier job at a bookstore. Not one of the fun bookstores full of fiction literature, no. This one sells law books. Disappointing, right? Yeah, I know.
Back when I was a child, people would ask me what I would want to be when I grew up. That's something every child seems to go through, solely for the amusement of adults, since it is rather obvious that children understand nothing of how society works. I remember saying silly stuff like "a scientist", or "an airplane pilot". Over time, though, I had learned to give up on most of those wild delusions. I wasn't a smart girl. Best you could say about me is that I was about average, with no particularly special traits or abilities. No hidden talents, no secret genius. Einstein once said that everybody is a genius, but some people are fish and can't climb trees. Or something like that. It's supposed to mean that everyone's good at something. Not me, though. If I were to guess, I was probably the tree. Or some rock in the background. Not a main character, not even a supporting role. Just the gal who cleaned the film set after everyone was gone. Which is why, at the prime age of 15, I was already set on living a dull life working a meaningless job at a nondescript office somewhere. I wasn't a pessimist. I was a realist. Life doesn't give you many options if you're not born smart or rich.
This was one of the many certainties I had about life. Back then I used to think I already understood perfectly how the world worked, how life worked, and who I was amid all that. Which is foolish. And, by Wednesday sunrise, I'd be perfectly aware of just how foolish all of those assumptions were. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's still Tuesday morning at the beginning of this story. And I was at work.
The customers who bought books from me always looked the same. Mostly men, mostly white, ages 20 through 60, usually wearing suits or some really expensive dress shirts from shops I was sure I'd never be able to afford buying at. There were women and people of color, but those were a significant minority. There was one trait, though, which every single one of them had. It was that they all looked busy and important. You could tell that those were the people who were born smart or rich — probably both.
Which is precisely why that one particular girl struck me as odd. She wasn't like the rest of them, not the least bit. A girl like her, all clad in colorful clothes — a layered skirt, a long-sleeved crochet shirt, and a poncho — that person looked like she belonged in a theater or a circus. Wait, that might have sounded wrong. She didn't look weird on those clothes, quite the opposite: everything suited her. It made her look beautiful and charming, like an acrobat or a skilled actress, perhaps. Maybe she was foreign?
I don't usually notice the clients. Mostly because they didn't usually notice me either. In this capitalist financial transaction of buying a book I was only an intermediator to them, like a vending machine. Give the money, get the goods. So I just zoned out and stopped caring. I couldn't do this with that girl. She had my attention glued to her from the moment she walked into the shop. Perhaps it was the contrast with all the suits and fancy shirts, perhaps something else. All that I knew was that she had me in a complete trance, like an animal enticed with a different smell.
She came to me with a book and I did my best to pretend I hadn't been staring. I don't know if she noticed it. But as she looked straight at me that gave me the opportunity to glance at her face. I was taken aback. She had these very distinctive facial features which gave her the most remarkable beauty. Not the kind you see in Hollywood stars and magazines. Something more unique. Far more remarkable. At least to me.
The one other thing I noticed was that she was young. I couldn't say how much so, but probably not too much older than myself. She wore makeup, but not the way I did. I couldn't spot any foundation or compact powder: I don't think she needed them, with how good her skin looked from up close. She did wear eyeliner and mascara, some earth-colored lipstick, but the most remarkable aspect of it was that every here and there her there were little colorful dots and scribbles over her face, like something hand-painted and very foreign-looking. Or perhaps someone just went crazy with colored eyeliner everywhere. It was... not bad, but definitely a little quirky.
When she spoke to me, I noticed how her voice was slightly low-pitched and raspy. It added a bit to the quirkiness factor. She had to speak to me twice, because I totally didn't pay attention the first time.
"Um, are you alright?"
I snapped out of it. Concentrate, Janis, you're at work.
"Yes. Forgive me," I took her book and registered the bar-code on the machine. "Will this be all?"
She smiled at my embarrassed self. I was totally out of it, that day.
"Yes, please."
"That'll be twenty."
"One moment..."
The colorful woman began to search her colorful purse. This gave me another opportunity to steal glances at her. And while she was fussing with the stuff in her wallet, her ID happened to fall from it on my lap.
"Oops, I'm sorry."
I picked it up.
"Ceres." That was her name. And I noticed one more thing. "Our birthdays are two days apart."
"Really?!" Ceres smiled at me as I gave the document back to her.
"Yes," I said. "Mine's July, 23rd."
Hers was on the 25th. She was also two years older than me. I told her that. I don't know why I was being so talkative with this particularly client. Normally I don't speak any more to them than what was required of me by the job. I'm not the type to chit-chat. But maybe it was how authentic everything about her looked. And I'm not just talking about her clothes. It was her dark eyes and her sincere joyful smile. She didn't look like the people who put on appearances in order to survive life in the concrete jungle. Which is to say, she didn't look like me. Or like the people who usually visit the shop. She seemed frank and somehow I knew that her interest in what I was telling her was every bit as real as it looked.
And she was indeed glad. She asked me my name and where I lived. Said that we could celebrate our birthdays together when July came around. And she was going to ask me even more stuff, which I didn't mind really, if not for this particularly grumpy client on an ugly suit standing in line to buy a Vade Mecum. So Ceres had to finish paying for her book (in cash) and I had to hand her the book and invoice, along with a customary "thank you for shopping with us," before I saw her leave and went back to my normal work routine.
That, I thought at the moment, was probably the last time I'd ever see that woman in my life.
Life, as it happens, thought otherwise. §
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