The Mall Read online

  “We never meant for this to happen,” Troy insisted.

  “I had a boyfriend when we met.” Helen stopped groping Troy and casually twirled a crusty curl around her finger. “I was only at the Pineville prom because I went with Sonny Sexton…”

  This was just about the only part of this whole sordid situation that made any sense to me. Sonny Sexton was legendary at Pineville High for being the first twenty-year-old senior in school history. Obviously, we’d never had a single class together. But I couldn’t avoid passing him in the halls, this denim-on-denim dirtbag who reeked of weed and Designer Imposters Drakkar Noir even at a distance. Sonny Sexton and Helen made sense. Troy and Helen? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  “It’s kind of funny,” Troy said. “If you hadn’t insisted I go to the prom without you, Helen and I never would have met.”

  My ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend rested her head on his shoulder, releasing a brittle crunch of Aqua Net dandruff onto his ABC polo shirt.

  “We have you to thank for putting us together…”

  For thousands and thousands of years, going all the way back to the ancient Greeks, four types of body fluids—or humors—were believed to influence personality and behavior. Bad moods were blamed on too much black bile in the spleen. I got off easy with an IV and six weeks of bed rest. In the fourth century BC, Dr. Hippocrates might have treated a “splenic” temperament by surgically removing the bulging, bilious organ without the benefit of anesthesia or antiseptic. I know all this because Troy left a copy of Apollo to Zeus: Greek Mythology and Modern Medicine in my mailbox as a get-well gift.

  Blame a buildup of bad humor for what happened next.

  I grabbed the only weapon within reach—the tray of Fat-Free Fudgies—and chucked it directly at Troy. I only wish I’d felt more satisfaction when it smacked him right between his lying eyes.

  3

  BEING ALIVE

  The Volvo inched toward Macy’s. If my legs weren’t so shaky, I would’ve leapt out the vehicle and run the rest of the way. Anything to escape Mom, Dad, and Barbra Streisand.

  “Nothing’s gonna harm you…”

  The Broadway Album. Track Four.

  “Not while I’m around.”

  Too late, Babs, I thought. Too late.

  Kathy hit fast forward on the tape deck to get to the up-tempo Sondheim number she preferred.

  “Explain to me again why Troy couldn’t drive you to work today?”

  I earned top grades, respected curfew, and kept myself too busy with extracurriculars to cause trouble. I’d never had incentive to lie to my parents about anything this big before. Without much practice, I did the best I could.

  “He got promoted to seasonal assistant manager and had to, um, attend a meeting?” I answered unconvincingly. “Or something?”

  “Hmph.” Frank tapped the steering wheel. “Why does he get to be seasonal assistant manager and not you?”

  I should have predicted Dad would be disappointed in me for not getting a nonexistent promotion for a job I didn’t have anymore.

  “Because he’s worked there for six weeks and I haven’t started yet?”

  “You should have the same opportunities as him,” Dad said. “Your medical condition shouldn’t be held against you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said noncommittally.

  The mall wasn’t open to customers yet, but the parking lot was already filling up. Shoppers stayed in their cars, keeping the engines and AC running right up to the moment the doors opened at 10:00 a.m.

  “I was surprised when you told us you needed a ride,” Mom said. “Troy assured us that he’d do all the driving this summer. And when Troy says he’s going to do something, he does it.”

  “You can’t expect us to drive you every day,” Frank warned.

  “I don’t,” I said, though I kind of did.

  I didn’t have a license. I took driver’s ed like the rest of my class, but I just hadn’t bothered to take the road test. It wasn’t a priority. Since I was ten years old, I’d fallen asleep with a poster of the five boroughs map above my bed, dreaming of public transit, of attending college, and living the rest of my life in New York City.

  Who needed a license when I had Troy? With a September birthday, he was one of the first in our class to turn seventeen. He’d gotten his license early and had chauffeured me around in his hand-me-down Honda Civic ever since. Not that we ventured out very far, very often. By junior year, I was sticking subway tokens in the slots of my penny loafers, a perpetual reminder to prioritize practice tests over parties.

  “You can’t spell ‘Saturday’ without SAT,” I’d joke to Troy.

  “You can’t spell ‘party’ without AP,” Troy would joke back.

  Though he was technically correct, the wordplay wasn’t nearly as funny as mine. Comedy wasn’t his forte. But I laughed anyway because that’s what I did when we were together.

  And I hated myself for it now that we weren’t.

  “Troy is so reliable, I’m sure he’ll come through.” Kathy pressed play.

  Until yesterday I would’ve agreed with her. But not anymore.

  “Someone to hold you too close,” sang Barbra Streisand in between sexy sax riffs, “Someone to hurt you too deep…”

  From the back seat, I had zero control over the Volvo’s radio/tape deck.

  “But alone,” Barbra Streisand sang, “is alone…”

  Dad hit stop.

  “Frank!” my mother shrieked. “She was just getting to the best part!”

  “It’s 9:49.”

  “I don’t care what time it is!”

  Not even Dad could get away with shutting up Barbra Streisand when she was singing Sondheim. Mom pressed rewind, then play to give justice to her impeccable phrasing.

  “Not aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiive…”

  “We’re gonna miss it, Kathy!”

  Frank stabbed the eject button and another screech filled the car. Only this time, it was the unmistakable sound of The Broadway Album being eaten by the Volvo’s ravenous tape deck.

  “Frank!” Mom yanked the unspooled, unplayable tape out of the machine. “I’ve told you a million times that you’ve got to press stop before eject!”

  Dad had already hit number one on the radio presets: WOBM-FM. He never missed an opportunity to listen to the local radio station to make sure Worthy Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry got the advertising spots they paid for: Morning and afternoon drive time, on the fifties, five days a week. The simple, singsongy jingle was performed by a kiddie chorus who had graduated from high school years before me.

  “Braces make happy faces.”

  And in my parents’ case, a happy marriage too. Frank and Kathy fell in love over their mutual admiration of symmetrically aligned cephalometric X-rays, got married, cofounded Worthy Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry, and have spent nearly all day, every day, with each other ever since. Whenever anyone asked them the secret to their long-term professional and personal partnership, they made the same joke.

  Dad’s line: “We’re closer than a ceramic bracket to the back of a molar.”

  Mom’s line: “Our bond is stronger than resin-modified dental cement.”

  “Braces make happy faces…”

  “Well, they played the ad, just like they’ve been doing for twenty years.” Mom lifted the tangled ribbon of cassette tape for Dad to see. “And Barbra is dead.”

  Frank tunelessly hummed along to WOBM’s hazy, hot, and humid weather forecast as we finally reached the pedestrian drop-off in front of Macy’s.

  “Okay! Thanks for the ride! Goodbye!”

  I tugged on the door handle, only to find that it was on auto-lock. Dad put the car into park, pulled out his wallet, and handed me a twenty-dollar bill.

  “When you’re on break,” he said, “buy your mother a new Barbra.”

  Then Dad kissed Mom on the cheek, and I was ready to leggo my Eggos all over the Volvo’s leather interior.

  Not because I was grossed out.<
br />
  I was jealous.

  I mean, I’d always sort of known my parents’ seemingly ceaseless enjoyment of each other was unusual for long-term relationships. But I didn’t quite understand what an impossibly high standard they had set until I saw Troy’s tongue in Helen’s snaggletoothed yuck mouth.

  I flung open the car door and got out of there before I could incriminate myself.

  “Later!” I blew kisses at the car. “Bye!”

  I thought for sure I had made it when Mom popped her head out the window.

  “Give our best to Troy!” And then—just to make it extra excruciating—she added, “He’s a keeper, that one.”

  I waved goodbye and waited until the Volvo was of sight. Then I walked right past Macy’s and kept going, continuing halfway around the parking lot to Entrance Two, J. C. Penney. As the entrance farthest from the food court, it was the location least likely to result in another attempt on my life, and I needed to be alive in order to find a new job.

  Make no mistake: I was going to find a new job. I needed somewhere to be every day or my parents would start asking questions I couldn’t answer. Not yet anyway, not before I’d come up with a new plan that did not involve Troy.

  4

  UNWITTING WITNESS

  No plan.

  No boyfriend.

  No job.

  And worst of all?

  The food court was off-limits for the foreseeable future, so I couldn’t even wallow in our booth. It was perfectly situated, far away from the greasy fast-food grills but still in view of the special events stage where the Silver Strutters dazzled the lunchtime crowds. They were the best of the senior citizen aerobic dance troupes. I’d joke with Troy about the fierce competition among the various nursing homes, how the spryest octogenarian aerobicizers were actively recruited by coaches trying to lure them away from rival assisted-living facilities by offering artificial hip scholarships.

  Troy and I had always had the best conversations in our booth. It was there, as we dipped spoons into chocolate-and-vanilla-swirled spires of Froyo, we had decided to attend different colleges in the same city. It was there, as we dunked cheese french fries into mini paper vats of ketchup, we had said things to each other like, “A relationship needs space to help it grow.”

  Ha. I guess the best joke was on me.

  I wandered the mall in a sort of fugue state. After drifting unconsciously around the alphabetized concourses for who knows how long, I found myself in front of Surf*Snow*Skate. As much as I hated Troy for letting Helen in on it, I couldn’t help but refer back to our teen-soap-opera hierarchy of employment prestige.

  The 90210 Scale of

  Parkway Center Mall Employment Awesomeness

  1. THE DYLAN MCKAYS

  These were the unquestionably coolest jobs requiring the least possible effort.

  2. THE BRANDON WALSHES

  These jobs also held a certain social cache but with just the faintest whiff of dorkiness that knocked them out of the top tier.

  3. THE STEVE SANDERSES

  These jobs weren’t looked down upon as hopelessly loserish, but were certainly scrubbier than 1 and 2 (see above). This category was dominated by virtually every job in the food court, including America’s Best Cookie.

  4. THE DAVID SILVERS

  These were sucky jobs at all the punny stores specializing in very specific and very boring things beloved by old farts: Feet First (orthopedic shoes), Sew Amazing! (fabrics), Deck the Walls (picture frames).

  5. THE SAD, SAD SCOTT SCANLONS

  The lowest of the low. Woolworths Pet Center dead guppy scooper-outer. Razzmatazz Family Restaurant balloon animal-maker/busboy. Trash can gum-scraper.

  Surf*Snow*Skate was the Ultimate Dylan McKay.

  The HELP WANTED in the window was not merely a sign.

  It was the sign.

  At Surf*Snow*Skate, I’d find redemption. I’d show Troy and Helen and everyone else, I deserved more than America’s Best Cookie. I was better than a scrubby Steve Sanders! I was Dylan McKay material!

  I strutted into the store and found myself face-to-face with Slade Johnson and Bethany Darling. Voted Pineville High Class of 1991’s Best-Looking Guy and Girl, Slade and Bethany frustrated all fans of beautiful out-of-wedlock babies by rejecting the assumed inevitable and not coupling up. Bethany wore a pink push-up bikini top with high-waisted spandex bike shorts. Slade wore knee-length Jams, but his tank top was cut low around the armpits, almost down to his waist. He was exposing as much suntanned skin as she was, and I was sort of impressed by the store’s equal-opportunity, all-genders approach to sex as a sales tactic.

  “Hey!” I announced myself. “I’m here for the job!”

  Bethany and Slade did double takes.

  “Cassie Worthy?” Bethany squinted at me.

  Slade didn’t take his eyes off me.

  “Didn’t you like, almost die?” Bethany asked.

  “I had the worst case of mono my doctor had ever seen,” I bragged. “But I’m totally fine now.”

  “Totally,” said Slade. “Fine.”

  “Well, the mono diet is amazing!” Bethany marveled. “You must’ve lost, like, twenty pounds.”

  Leave it to Bethany to celebrate my involuntary starvation. I had to take her word for my weight loss because I never stepped on a scale. But I had noticed that my once-snug jeans now slipped past my hip bones. I also had hip bones for the first time in my teenage life, and my belt was cinched at a never-before-seen notch. It wouldn’t last long though. Unlike Bethany—whose entire diet consisted of cottage cheese and Diet Pepsi—I liked eating real food like a healthy human being.

  “You just need a few hours in the tanning booth,” advised Slade.

  Bethany nodded in agreement. The two of them were sculpted and bronzed to teenage perfection. Slade was undeniably great looking and totally deserved the yearbook superlative, but I’d never found him attractive. Slade was just so predictable with his handsomeness, the quintessence of every uncreative football-playing, homecoming queen–dating, keg-tapping high school stud stereotype. It’s as if he’d enrolled in a master class at the Cobra Kai Academy of Asshole Arts and Sciences but took it pass-fail because he couldn’t be bothered to put in the extra effort required for a unique spin on teenage cockiness.

  “Oh! Okay! Thanks!” I said brightly. “So, you’re hiring?”

  “We’re hiring,” Slade said.

  “Yeah,” Bethany said, “but it’s, like, super competitive. We only take the best.”

  No duh, I thought. That’s why it’s a Dylan McKay.

  “We’ve got a few routine questions we ask all candidates.” Bethany pulled on the base of the platinum ponytail anchored high on her scalp. “It’s, like, a prescreening to see whether it’s even worth our time to give you an application.”

  “Really? This sounds more complicated than getting into college…”

  And as soon as I said it, I realized it was a mistake.

  “Does that mean you’re only going to be here until September?” Bethany asked.

  “Well…” I hedged. “Um…”

  “It’s our busiest time of year,” Slade said. “She’d be a big help.”

  “June and December are our busiest times of year,” Bethany corrected.

  “Just ask her the questions!” Slade demanded, going full Cobra Kai. “And let the head honcho decide!”

  “Fine,” Bethany said testily.

  Now for the sake of accuracy, I wish I could provide the exact wording of the merciless quizzing that followed. At best, I can only provide a vague approximation that went something like this.

  BETHANY: What are the pros and cons of a longboard versus a funboard for a beginner?

  ME:?

  BETHANY: What’s a goofy foot?

  ME:??

  BETHANY: Have you ever set foot on a surfboard, a snowboard, or a skateboard?

  ME:???

  “We can’t hire you.”

  I hated the store.


  I hated Slade and Bethany.

  I hated Troy and Helen.

  But I mostly hated myself for wanting the job so badly.

  “You don’t know anything about surfing, snowboarding, or skating.”

  See above for reference and trust that it was a million times worse than that. Bethany was right. I didn’t know anything about any of those things.

  “I can learn!”

  “I’ll teach her!” Then Slade got close enough that I could smell the coconut tanning oil that gave definition to the muscles in his shoulders, arms, and abdominals. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

  In two years of middle school and four years of high school, Slade had never, ever spoken to me. A peculiar sound escaped my lips that sounded strangely similar to … a giggle?

  “Stop thinking with your wang for once,” Bethany snapped. “You’ll forget all about her as soon as the next set of tatas comes bouncing into the store.”

  Slade slowly nodded. I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or tracking the up-and-down tata bounce in his imagination. Either way was bad for me.

  “Maybe try Sears?” Bethany adjusted the straps on her bikini top. “They look for your kind of knowledge of everything and nothing.”

  “Sears?”

  How dare she tell me to settle for a Steve Sanders! There were plenty of Dylan McKays that would be happy to have me. At the very least, I’d be willing to accept a solid offer from a Brandon Walsh but absolutely no lower than that. Sears was desperate, but I sure as hell wasn’t.

  Not yet anyway.

  I knocked over a revolving display of Oakleys on my way out. It was entirely an accident, but I didn’t apologize. I kept moving without looking back.

  If I had Greek-myth Cassandra’s clairvoyance, I would’ve foreseen the next humiliating hours of my life. Please forgive me for bullet-pointing my embarrassment.

  I couldn’t identify a single brand, shade, or formulation of foundation for sale at the Macy’s cosmetics counter, and I was shown a $25 bronzer highly recommended for brightening my pasty complexion, and perhaps I would be interested in purchasing a seven-piece Face for All Seasons Gift Set, which was on sale for the low, low price of $49.99 including the tote bag that came free with every Lancôme purchase, because with my warm undertones I was categorically a “spring” and I couldn’t help but consider what that meant on, like, an existential level because maybe my best season in life was already behind me.