The Mall Read online

  It was this excessively maudlin detail that put me over the edge.

  I’d tried to convince myself I had it all together when I absolutely did not. I slumped to the ground and finally gave in to my ugliest sobs.

  8

  OVER AND UNDER

  I didn’t know how much time had elapsed when the door opened.

  “Cassie!”

  I was eye level with a pair of shiny black heels.

  “Get up off the gawddamn floor!”

  A stiletto stomped the cement. I still didn’t move.

  “Look! I got a present for you!”

  An Electronics Universe bag landed on my head.

  “It’s that memory expansion thingie for the computer you asked about.”

  Had Drea flirted with Mr. Mustache just to get this for me? On any other day, I would’ve expressed gratitude for the gift. But full deletion of my heart’s hard drive was what I really needed, and I doubted Electronics Universe sold any products for that purpose.

  “What happened to you?” Drea asked.

  What happened to me?

  What happened to me?

  I’d lost everything I’d worked toward my whole life.

  “You never used to cry,” said Drea. “And now you’re boo-hooing all over the place.”

  I’d always been so proud of my stoicism. Like, when our team lost our case in the first round of Mock Trial, I was the one who consoled a tearful Troy. Had mono weakened my physical and emotional immunity?

  “Don’t tell me all this drama is about your ex and his new girl.”

  I sat up.

  “You know?” I sniffled. “About Troy and Helen?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “Anyone with eyes knows because they’re grinding all over each other out there.”

  I moaned.

  “It’s gross.”

  I moaned even louder.

  “Oh, stop it,” Drea snapped. “Troy is not worth it.”

  “We went out for two years!”

  “So?”

  “How would you know if he’s worth it? You’ve never dated anyone for more than two months!”

  Drea’s eyes turned to slits.

  I almost felt bad about saying it. I mean, I wasn’t coming straight out and calling her slutty, but that was the implication. If she smacked me in the back of the head, I couldn’t say I hadn’t sort of deserved it.

  But Drea took the high, nonviolent road.

  “You’re right. I’ve never dated anyone for more than a month or two.” She cocked her hip defiantly. “But I’ve never sobbed on a filthy floor over anyone either.”

  “And neither have I,” I replied. “Until now.”

  Drea opened her purse and removed a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint gum.

  “Want a piece?”

  It wasn’t sugar-free. To my parents, she might as well have offered me drugs, but I accepted anyway.

  “The way I see it”—she folded the stick of gum into an accordion and popped it into her mouth—“the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

  Of course Drea saw it that way. What her relationships lacked in longevity, they more than made up for in variety. But I was the one on the floor, not her. Who was I to say her choices were worse than mine?

  “The thing is.” I sniffled. “Um. This is so embarrassing. But…”

  “But what?” Drea pressed. “What could possibly be more embarrassing than wearing an American flag abomination of a uniform?”

  I laughed. The ABC apron was almost impossibly unflattering.

  “I’ve never been. Um. Under anyone,” I admitted. “Not even Troy.”

  Troy and I had decided to hold off on sex until I could get a prescription for cheap birth control through the university health care center without parental knowledge or permission. The Pill was part of the plan.

  I braced myself for another one of Drea’s honking fits of hilarity. For someone as experienced as everyone knew Drea was, I assumed she’d mock my babyishness just like when we used to be friends.

  But she did the opposite.

  “Virginity is nothing to be embarrassed about,” she said. “Especially when your top prospect was someone who’d need a compass to navigate your nethers. Know what I mean?”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Troy actually consulted his older brother’s Human Anatomy textbook for pointers.

  “If you want to forget that loser, I can help you with that,” she said. “Just like you can help me with the treasure.”

  “The treasure?” What was Drea even talking about?

  “There’s a fortune hidden somewhere in the mall,” Drea said, “and I’m determined to find it.”

  “Excuse me, but I’m totally confused.”

  Drea brushed dust off a cardboard shipping carton and sat.

  “Tommy and Vince D’Abruzzi were cousins,” Drea began. “Tommy was assistant manager at Kay-Bee Toys. Vince worked the night shift at the Coleco factory…”

  “This sounds like a Bon Jovi song,” I quipped.

  Drea sighed.

  “Keep your comments to yourself until I’m done.”

  Rightfully reprimanded, I shut up for the rest of the story. It went something like this:

  In late summer of 1983, Vince canceled a fishing trip with Tommy because he had to work overtime on the production line at the factory. He told his cousin how Coleco was going all in on these butt-ugly dolls; the market research predicted they would be the craze of the Christmas season. Tommy was a veteran of the toy biz. He survived the infamous Star Wars action figure shortage of 1978, and so he persuaded Vince to smuggle the dolls across state lines. They stockpiled hundreds of them in a secret storage room in the second basement level of the mall, biding their time until the demand far exceeded supply.

  “So that’s how the Cabbage Patch came to be,” I said.

  “Right,” Drea replied. “But that’s not the good part.”

  As legend had it, in the weeks and days leading up to Christmas, when the dolls were impossible to find at Kay-Bee or anywhere else, Tommy sold them for two, five, ten times the retail price. Together, Tommy and Vince made tens of thousands of dollars. Vince used his share to buy a Camaro. Tommy invested his in a cocaine habit. The coke made Tommy paranoid of “the Feds,” so he stashed his illegal earnings all around the mall until he figured out how to safely launder the cash later on.

  At this point in the story, Drea got as deadly serious as anyone could possibly be in an outfit that was 50 percent leather, 50 percent lace, and 100 percent bimbette.

  “Tommy died of a massive heart attack before he got the money out,” she said. “The treasure is still somewhere in the mall. And you’re going to help me find it.”

  I wanted to laugh right in her heavily made-up face. Hidden treasure? A black market for Cabbage Patch Kids? I mean, come on.

  However.

  Here were hundreds of Cabbage Patch Kids on shelves, the unlucky ones that had gotten left behind. And in between sobs, I had noticed something interesting. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it. But this detail only gained significance after I heard Drea’s story. What harm would it do to share this information with her?

  “About the treasure.” I hesitated. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “What’s ‘probably nothing’?”

  From the bottom shelf, I pulled out the Cabbage Patch Kid that had caught my attention. A boy with brown hair, brown eyes, and a single dimple in his left cheek smiled at us from behind the plastic.

  “His birth certificate isn’t authentic.”

  Drea eyed me skeptically. “What do you mean?”

  “I adopted three Cabbage Patch Kids…”

  Drea snorted at the word “adopted.” Genius toy company marketing ploys die hard.

  “I never played with those things,” Drea said. “I was way more into designing outfits for my Barbies.”

  “I remember.”

  Even at ten years old, Drea was far too fabulous
for changing pretend diapers.

  “When you compare this one’s documentation to all the others on the shelves, you can see the ink isn’t the same shade of green…”

  Drea took a closer look at this boy’s certificate.

  “And the decorative border is only one line, not two…”

  Drea chomped harder on her gum.

  “But it’s his name that really makes him interesting,” I said. “Rey Ajedrez.”

  Between junior high and high school, I’d taken six years of foreign language classes. I was confident in my pronunciation.

  And translation.

  “In Spanish, Rey Ajedrez means…”

  I paused to enjoy this moment. I had Drea’s undivided attention for the first time since fifth grade.

  “Chess King.”

  Drea stopped chewing.

  “That’s either one hell of a coincidence,” I said. “Or a clue.”

  Drea’s face shined brighter than all the sequins in Bellarosa Boutique.

  “The treasure is ours!” She pumped her fists triumphantly.

  I still doubted hidden riches were ours for the finding at the mall. But I knew I’d be unable to resist Drea’s scheme the moment she threw back her head and laughed in the full-throated way that only she could.

  “HAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWNNNK!”

  This time she was laughing with me. And the magnificent sound of Drea’s effusive approval helped me forget—albeit temporarily—why I sought refuge in the storage room to begin with.

  “Cassie Worthy,” Drea said to me with a smile. “I always liked you.”

  “I always liked you too.”

  It was a weird thing to say to my old best friend, but given how different we’d ended up, somehow it made sense to say it out loud.

  Drea bumped her jewel-encrusted shoulder pad against my ratty gray T-shirt.

  “Let’s have a killer summer.” She snapped her gum and grinned at me.

  I snapped my gum and grinned right back.

  9

  LUSTIG ZEIT

  The next morning, Drea was poised on the edge of my desk in the back office, legs crossed in a way that was intrinsically provocative in fishnet stockings. More notably, she bounced not one, but two Cabbage Patch Kids on her lap. Sometime in the last twelve hours, Rey Ajedrez had been joined by a girl with red braids and a daisy-print pinafore.

  “Where have you been?”

  I looked at my watch. I wasn’t even late.

  “I’ll tell you where I’ve been.” She exhaled theatrically. “I was in the stock room of Chess King, risking life and limb and allergic reactions as I made my way through a treacherous maze of the chintziest rayon-polyester-blend suits I’ve ever had the misfortune to rub up against.”

  If Drea saw herself as Indiana Jones, Chess King was her Temple of Doom. When we had opened Rey Ajedrez’s box, we discovered that the flipside of the counterfeit birth certificate was, in fact, a map. Crudely drawn in Sharpie and definitely not to any recognizable scale, I’d had my doubts that it would lead to another clue. Drea insisted otherwise.

  “The map was legit?” I asked. “You actually found her in a panel behind the shelves?”

  “No,” Drea replied drily. “I went to Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia, and asked Xavier Roberts himself for permission to adopt a sister for Rey Ajedrez because I didn’t want him to be a maladjusted only child.”

  “I’m an only child,” I replied. Then, more to the point, “You’re an only child.”

  “Exactly! And look how maladjusted we both are! I was up all night searching through old People magazines trying to find out everything I could about Cabbage Patch Kids!”

  And before I could question whether she was kidding—about the research and our mutual maladjustment—she set the boy and girl aside with more care than I would have expected.

  “That map was legit,” she said, hopping off the desk. “And so is this one.”

  She waved another forged birth certificate in my face. When I reached for the document, she snatched it away.

  “Oh, so now you’re all in on the treasure hunt because you know it’s for real…”

  “I told you I was all in last night!”

  “But are you allllllllllllllll in?” she asked teasingly. “Because it won’t always be as easy as me flirting my way into the Chess King stockroom.”

  The entire staff at Chess King was madly in love with her. According to Drea, the store was doomed to go under because Joey and Pauly and Mikey spent more time flexing for her attention across Unz Unz Alley than pushing two-for-one mock turtlenecks. Despite the horny gullibility of her first marks, I thought she was vastly underselling her flirtatious powers.

  “Quit messing around,” I said. “Just tell me the next name.”

  I sensed that Drea would respect me more if I demanded rather than asked. And I was right. She smiled that devastating smile of hers for the first time all morning.

  “Does Loo-steeg Zite mean anything to you?”

  At first I assumed it was a matter of mispronunciation. But when she showed me the fake birth certificate, I conceded that she’d sounded it out in exactly the same way I would have. Unfortunately, Lustig Zeit meant absolutely nothing to me.

  “It’s definitely not Spanish,” I replied.

  Drea opened her mouth to rightfully inform me just how unhelpful I was being when her mother popped her head through the door.

  “Drea! Playtime’s over! We’ve got a banker’s third wife out there who somehow made it to thirty without learning the first thing about resort wear.” Then to me, “Morning, Cassie! Don’t let my daughter be a distraction!”

  “I won’t!” I promised. “I’m excited to get started on these spreadsheets…”

  “Thank you, Jesus”—Drea did the sign of the cross—“for bringing us the right nerd at the right time.”

  “Manners, Drea!” Gia smacked the air because her daughter was out of reach.

  “It’s not an insult! I’m truly grateful for her expertise,” Drea insisted as she followed Gia onto the sales floor.

  “You ought to be! A few more months of No-Good Crystal and we could’ve gone out of business.”

  Drea nodded at Gia, then surreptitiously turned to remind me of my priorities.

  “Lustig Zeit!” she whisper-shouted. “Figure it out before our lunch break!”

  * * *

  I did not figure it out before our lunch break.

  “What was the point of taking all those smarty-pants classes if you can’t even crack a cokehead’s secret code?” Drea demanded to know.

  I could’ve shot back with something about getting into the most competitive all-women’s school in the country. But then I would’ve had to deal with Drea’s inevitably horrified reaction to my decision to separate myself from the opposite sex for four years, pretty much guaranteeing that I would die a virgin unless I took her advice and got it on before it was too late.

  “I cracked a cokehead’s secret code,” I said instead, pointing to a paper covered in Crystal’s scribbles, “just not this cokehead’s secret code.”

  “Let’s hit the food court,” Drea suggested. “Feed that brain of yours.”

  “I already ate my lunch.”

  I didn’t want to remind Drea why the food court was off-limits. It was simply easier to say I preferred brown-bagging it for vague, post-mononucleosian nutritional reasons.

  “A change of scenery, then,” she suggested. “Could be just what your brain needs.”

  As Frank reminded me on the drive that morning, I still had to replace Kathy’s copy of The Broadway Album. The record store was located on the same floor as America’s Best Cookie, but hopefully at a safe enough distance to avoid being spotted by Troy and Helen. While I was in no mood to run into the lusty couple, that possibility was still more pleasant than sticking around Bellarosa’s back office and getting harangued by Drea for a half hour.

  “I need to go to the record store,” I said.


  “I’m in!” she said. “I want to hear the new Mantronix remix.”

  I knew as much about Mantronix as Drea knew about Morrissey.

  “Who?”

  “House music pioneers, that’s who,” she answered.

  Drea was really into house music—electronic bass-heavy beats that weren’t so popular on the radio but played in all the hottest dance clubs in New York City. According to Drea, all the Jersey Shore DJs were “trash.”

  “Do you go clubbing in the city a lot?” I asked.

  “Not as much as I want to.” Drea shrugged. “And Crystal was the one on all the VIP lists. Now that she’s on the outs, I’ll have a tougher time getting past the bouncers.”

  Right at that moment, a zitty boy in a Bart Simpson T-shirt walked into a potted palm tree because he was too preoccupied by Drea’s cleavage to watch where he was going.

  “I find it hard to believe you’d have trouble getting in anywhere,” I said.

  “Well, shit,” she deadpanned. “I knew I should’ve applied to the Ivy League.”

  By the time I’d decided it was okay to laugh, the joke had hung in the air between us for too long. It was already too late.

  Awkward jokes aside, I was grateful for Drea’s company. She’d be a good person to have by my side if we did run into Troy and Helen. I imagined her removing her door-knocker earrings and getting ready to throw down with a stiletto in each fist.

  I slowed down as we approached the record store. The brightly lit shop had a wide-open entrance and glass window displays, so I could stop to check if Sam Goody was working the floor before going in. I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see him, and headed straight to S for Streisand. I didn’t want to spend any more time in there than I had to. If he weren’t so annoying, I might have actually worried about Sam Goody’s inevitable hearing loss. The sound system blasted a bouncy adult contemporary hit at an assaultive volume.

  “Looooooove is a wonderful thing…”

  Fuck you, Michael Bolton. Seriously.

  “What’s up with you?” Drea asked just loud enough to be heard above the music.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Why?”