The Mall Read online

  The General Cinemas ticket-taker couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen a single film all summer, and when I blamed mono and tried to prove my love for the art form by recalling the last movie I’d watched in the theater, the first one that came to mind was Hudson Hawk, which was a piece of shit that I’d only agreed to see because Troy bribed me with popcorn and Jujyfruits and promised to come with me to see Thelma & Louise, which he never did and obviously never would.

  When asked of my dishwashing experience, I very earnestly replied that I sometimes emptied the Kenmore at home without being asked and quickly followed up by inquiring about a hostess position that kept me far, far away from the kitchen and was therefore a better fit for my vegetarian lifestyle, and I was curtly informed that half a dozen shift leaders were already in line for that cushy job, and I’d have to work my way up the Ponderosa Steak & Ale organizational hierarchy from dishwasher to busser to food runner to server to shift leader, which could take years and I did not have that kind of time and also I was already nauseated by the smell of roasting animal flesh.

  After the Ponderosa rejection, I circled back to the music store to worship at the altar of Morrissey. This, for anyone who knows anything about The Smiths front man turned solo artist, was counterintuitive at best and suicidal at worst. With legendarily morose songs like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” the Moz was the go-to artist for wallowing in pain, not overcoming it. Perhaps it was for the best that the poster I had admired earlier had been removed from the display.

  “You’re loitering.”

  The Asian guy in the Sam Goody tee was technically correct. I was standing aimlessly with no intention to buy. But I also wasn’t bothering anybody either. Except, evidently, him.

  “You’re loitering,” Sam Goody repeated. “If you step inside, another one of our sales associates can provide you with all the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch merchandise your heart desires.”

  With his pompadour, rockabilly boots, and black jeans rolled just so, there was no question who had put the Morrissey poster in the window. Maybe he knew why it had been removed.

  “For your information,” I said, “I came here looking for Morrissey…”

  Sam Goody spasmed with laughter.

  “Oh, because you’re so deep?” he asked facetiously. “Because you’re so dark?”

  “I am deep!” I protested. “I am dark!”

  This only made Sam Goody laugh harder. He removed his thick-rimmed specs and wiped away pretend tears.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “There’s a boy you like who doesn’t like you back. Boo-hoo-hoo!”

  How did he know? Was the rejection written on my face? Had Troy turned me into such a plainly pathetic cliché? I had no time to ask because Sam Goody wasn’t finished mocking me yet. He was about to use the lyrics to one of my favorite songs against me.

  “So you go home and you cry and you want to die?”

  No ride.

  So I couldn’t go home.

  No plan.

  No boyfriend.

  No job.

  Suddenly everything I didn’t want to think about was all I could think about. How dare this smirky jerk weaponize “How Soon Is Now?” to such devastating effect?

  I refused to cry. And I didn’t want to die.

  But as Sam Goody was my unwitting witness, I wasn’t too far off.

  5

  CHICEST AND UNIQUEST

  I stood on the edge of the Wishing Well. My weary eyes imprecisely counted the coins that had come to rest on the bottom, each penny a wish that would never come true.

  “Don’t jump!”

  The warning squawk had the opposite of its intended effect. I slipped on the tiled lip and would’ve fallen in if a manicured hand hadn’t pulled me back from the brink. It was only a foot-deep drop so I wouldn’t have, like, drowned. But walking around in sopping wet penny loafers would’ve added a whole new and unpleasant dimension to my already sucky day.

  “Oh my Gawd!”

  The Wishing Well was located on the far border of the food court in Concourse G. In happier times, Troy and I called these crossroads Unz Unz Alley, after the thumping bass that originated at Chess King and reverberated across the intersection to the entrance of Bellarosa Boutique. It was at least five years since we’d last spoken, but I immediately recognized my rescuer as the latter shop’s owner, Gia Bellarosa. I was less sure if she recognized me.

  “Hon, are you okay?”

  I had a clear view of Drea Bellarosa, Gia’s daughter, in the display window, carefully adjusting a bustier on one of the mannequins. She stretched catlike in her catsuit, evoking the sexy feline villain from the groovy sixties Batman series I slept-watched during my recovery. Her real body was somehow even more unrealistically flawless than the fake, a prerequisite for upselling overpriced bimbo couture imported from Europe—though I supposed being the owner’s daughter also helped. Watching Drea, it was hard to believe we were from the same species, let alone the same graduating class. It was even harder to believe that once, so very long ago, we had briefly and fiercely pledged to be each other’s best friends forever in the way that only fifth-grade girls can.

  Gia tried again.

  “Are you okay, hon?”

  I was too dazed to answer. Instead, I stared at the hand resting protectively on my arm, nails painted bloodred to match a sweater dress that would sell well among Bellarosa Boutique’s clientele. It was July, but the retail calendar was already well into fall. Outside the mall, humanity wilted in the muggy swelter of a South Jersey summer. Inside the mall, the temperature was just chilly enough to get shoppers in an artificially autumnal state of mind.

  I wished I could fast forward through summer and get to my future already.

  “No, I am not okay,” I finally replied. “I am not okay at all.”

  This was the first hint of true kindness anyone had shown me all day. And before I could stop myself, I unloaded.

  “I got mono, and my boyfriend of two years dumped me for a foaming-at-the-mouth mallrodent who tried to spritz me to death, and I lost my job, and I might be haunted by a ghost with a pierced tongue, and I don’t have any skills, and I doubt I could be hired by a sad, sad Scott Scanlon, and I was mocked by a Morrissey lookalike who accused me of liking Marky Mark and the friggin’ Funky Bunch and…”

  Gia was totally unfazed—a telling testament to the certifiably insane shit she’d seen in her lifetime.

  “Come on, hon,” she said, gently leading me by the arm.

  Without hesitation or explanation, I followed her to Bellarosa Boutique, best described in the ad that ran weekly in the Ocean County Observer: “Jersey Shore glitz meets Manhattan glamour since 1984. Upscale sportswear and special occasion dresses for South Jersey’s chicest and uniquest clientele.”

  The 90210 taxonomy did not apply to Bellarosa Boutique. The design and décor were an unapologetic celebration of eighties excess, all onyx and gold leaf, marble and crystal, velvet and jungle prints. It were the only store at the mall operating on a whole different system of measurement—the Dynasty Scale—where it would always and forever reign at the Alexis Carrington apex of fabulousness. By twelve years old, Drea carried herself with the confidence of a nighttime soap opera diva, a junior-high Joan Collins catwalking around the halls of Pineville Middle School in double-wide shoulder pads and starter heels.

  It’s no coincidence that our friendship ended right around that same time.

  “Drea!” Gia brayed as we walked into the store. “Quit getting paid to do nothing and come over here!”

  Drea very slowly lifted her head from the Cosmopolitan magazine spread out on the counter. She was the very picture of glamorous nonchalance.

  Until she saw me.

  “Cassie Worthy!” Drea gasped. “I thought you were dead.”

  It was so like Drea to take the rumors about my ill health to a more dramatic and morbid level.

  “No, I’m alive,” I said.

  Barely, I thought.

&n
bsp; Drea jumped up and click-clacked her way over to us. With meticulously applied makeup and dark hair sprayed to exhilarating, ozone-poking heights, Drea looked older than she was, Gia younger. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve assumed they were roughly the same age—meeting somewhere in the middle around thirty. Neither mother nor daughter would ever correct such a mistake.

  “Cassie here has fallen on hard times,” Gia said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “She needs a job and we’re hiring.”

  “We’re hiring?” Drea asked.

  “You’re hiring?” I asked.

  “We need someone on the books,” Gia answered. “You know, keeping track of inventory, making sure vendors get paid—”

  “What about Crystal?” Drea interrupted.

  Gia frowned.

  “I’m loyal to family, but enough is enough,” Gia said decisively. “I’m done with my no-good brother’s no-good wife’s no-good brother’s no-good daughter.”

  So that made No-Good Crystal Gia’s … niece-in-law? Untangling the branches of this family tree was like an Odyssey of the Mind brainteaser.

  Drea barely tilted her head in my general direction.

  “But you haven’t seen Cassie in years!”

  “I know! I was all worried about finding someone to replace No-Good Crystal, and there she was! It’s fate!”

  The Greeks cared so much about the concept of fate that they put not one, not two, but three sister bosses in charge of carrying it out for all humankind. I disagreed with the Greeks. I didn’t believe in destiny. And Drea didn’t either.

  “You don’t even know her!” she pointed out.

  Gia took hold of my chin and squeezed my cheeks. My own mother was never this hands-on with me.

  “She was always a good kid. And she can’t be worse than your cousin.”

  “Ma, look at her. She obviously doesn’t care about fashion.” Drea fluttered her thickly coated lashes at my Barnard T-shirt and cutoffs. “No offense.”

  I took, like, half offense.

  “Drea’s right,” I conceded. “I’m probably unqualified for this position.”

  “I saw your name listed in the graduation program,” Gia said. “Didn’t you get the math award?”

  I nodded.

  “Congrats!” Gia applauded. “You’re qualified! And I don’t have any more time for discussion because here comes the white whale.”

  Gia gestured toward a fiftyish woman in tennis whites making her way toward the store’s entrance. She carried a quilted Chanel handbag in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  “A whale?”

  This woman was all sinew, gristle, and bone.

  “It has nothing to do with her weight,” Gia said. “It means, she’s a big fish…”

  “Whales aren’t fish,” I corrected. “Whales are mammals.”

  “Fish, mammal, whatever!” Drea threw up her hands in exasperation. “I forgot how annoying you are!”

  Gia smacked her daughter in the back of the head.

  “Manners, Drea!”

  Then she turned to me.

  “Mona Troccola is a big spender,” Gia explained patiently.

  Mona paused at the entrance to take a last, long drag on her cigarette before depositing the butt into the child-size metal ashtray.

  “I have to pull some looks for Mona,” Gia said. “Drea, you take Cassie to the back office. Show her around.”

  “But, Ma…”

  “Do not give me any lip!”

  Drea pouted in literal defiance to her mother’s orders. Gia rushed over to greet Mona with a nicotine-tinged air kiss.

  “Mona! Darling! Mwah!”

  “Gia! Darling! Mwah!”

  I followed Drea through a mirrored door into Bellarosa’s back office. A multitiered chandelier hung over a gold-trimmed desk, behind which sat a zebra-print upholstered piece of furniture that more closely resembled a throne than any chair I’d ever seen.

  I was alone with my former best friend for the first time since seventh grade. I didn’t know much about what she’d been up to all these years; I mean, other than what we all knew about Drea. She’d run through dozens of boyfriends since middle school. Jocks, skaters, punks, metalheads, hicks … Drea’s exes shared no common denominator other than their inability to resist her many charms.

  I was at a total loss for what to say when Drea spoke up.

  “You reek.” She scrunched her nose. “Like rotten fruit.”

  “Really?”

  I’d barely had the energy to shower that morning and hadn’t bothered with shampoo. Maybe the scent was still trapped in my hair?

  “It’s cucumber-melon body spray,” I tried to explain. “I was…”

  “I don’t care if it’s Giorgio Beverly Hills! You need to change into something else before you contaminate the merchandise!”

  “But I don’t have any other clothes with me.”

  Rolling racks of couture lined the gilded walls. Drea slowly swiveled her head from one side to the other.

  “Where, oh where,” she asked, “could we possibly find you something to wear?”

  The idea of wearing Bellarosa’s clothes was so ludicrous that I still didn’t quite get what Drea meant, even as she started riffling through the new arrivals that would soon be displayed out front.

  “Aha! This!”

  She brandished a hanger with an electric-blue stretch of Lycra I couldn’t quite identify as a specific item of clothing. Was it a skirt? A top?

  “Try on this tube dress!”

  So … it was both?

  “Um, I don’t have the body for it,” I said.

  Drea stepped back to silently take me in from head to toe. She appraised me for a few seconds, then shared the results of her skillful scrutiny.

  “You’re European size thirty-two,” she said definitively. “You have the body for it.”

  “But it’s not exactly my style,” I said.

  Drea snorted. “You don’t have a style.”

  With black velvet clinging to her curves, Drea demonstrated why she was voted Best Dressed at Pineville High. She was the authority. Her expertise would not be denied.

  “Put this on right now because I can’t stand the sight or smell of you for another second.” Drea thrust the hanger at me. “Go!”

  I entered the private dressing room and tried to make sense of what Drea had just handed me. It would be hard to imagine a less practical article of clothing. I couldn’t figure out whether I should approach the electric-blue tube from the top down or the bottom up. Shockingly, I didn’t get stuck. With one tug, the slippery fabric slid right past my knees, over my hips, and up to my bust.

  “Come on out, Cassie!” Drea shook the silk drapes. “I don’t have all day.”

  I parted the pink curtains and cautiously stepped forward.

  “Well?”

  Drea always had this unforgettable honk of a laugh. It was the greatest, most gratifying sound if you were in on the joke. It was the worst sound in the world if you were not.

  I emerged to the mass strangulation of a million geese.

  “OHMYGAWHAWHAWHAWHAWWWWWWNK.”

  Drea’s awful laughter echoed throughout the whole store. Within seconds, her mother came bursting into the back office to shut her up.

  “What’s going on back here?”

  Gia stopped dead in her tracks at the preposterous sight of me in that tube dress.

  “Drea! What is wrong with you?”

  Drea was unable to catch her breath.

  “HAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNK.”

  “I told her I didn’t have the body for this!”

  “You have the body,” said Gia, stroking my hair. “But not the…”

  “Soul,” Drea finished for her.

  I thought Drea was making another joke at my expense. But Gia agreed.

  “She’s right,” Gia said. “It fits, but it doesn’t fit you. And that’s okay. As a back-of-store employee, you can be the exception to Bellarosa’s dress code.”


  “Maaaaaa,” Drea objected. “We’ve got a reputation to uphold…”

  Gia shushed her.

  “Let’s help each other out, Cassie.” Gia extended her palm. “I need a temporary bookkeeper and you need a job.”

  Could this handshake get my life back on track? I highly doubted it. But I couldn’t go home until I had somewhere to be every day for the rest of the summer. And what other options did I have?

  Drea rolled her eyes as I took her mother’s hand.

  “Just show up when the mall opens at ten tomorrow wearing whatever makes you feel comfortable and confident,” Gia instructed. “At Bellarosa Boutique, we encourage all women to be the best possible versions of themselves.”

  “Riiiiight,” Drea said. “Which is why Mona Troccola fuels her workouts with vodka, lettuce, and cigarettes.”

  We turned to look through the opened door at the opposite side of the store, where one of Bellarosa’s most dedicated customers rotated in front of a three-way mirror. In a brown suede halter top and matching pants, Mona resembled an anatomy skeleton draped in deli meat.

  “If that new outfit brings Mona a moment of peace,” Gia whispered, “mission accomplished.”

  Gia built a successful business on a simple philosophy: Purchases equal empowerment. Bellarosa customers found fulfillment through fashion, achieved self-actualization through accessorization. I’d take the job. But other than a paycheck, I was beyond Bellarosa’s help. No article of clothing could transform me into the best possible version of myself. How could it? After the past two days, I didn’t have a clue who I even was anymore.

  Or if I ever did.

  6

  NERD OLYMPICS

  As much as I looked forward to a carless existence in Manhattan, not all mass transportation systems were created equal. The thought of taking Pineville public transit to and from work every day was downright depressing. A ten-minute drive by car took nearly an hour by bus, so hitching rides with my parents was still by far the best option.