Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless Page 10

  Gabe turns back to look at the rest of us, still crammed in the office. “Z, she didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “It’s Zaina. And you shouldn’t defend her all the time,” Zaina says curtly before she walks out to take up a position as far from Sammi as possible.

  “Sammi acts tough, but she’s not actually mean.” Gabe seems eager to convince at least one of us as we file out. As soon as we’re clear of the door, Solomon goes inside and lets it shut behind him.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t talk about me when I can hear you, geniuses,” Sammi says from near the bank of lockers.

  “Do you ever get tired of being such a bitch all the time?” Tyson asks.

  Her jaw slides to one side. “Do you ever get tired of being so fake?”

  “Fake?” he repeats.

  “You always act so nice. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ and ‘Yes, sir!’ Like you’re so polite and perfect. It’s disgusting.”

  “Shut up!” The words are out of my mouth before I knew I was going to speak.

  Sammi zeroes in on me. “Bite me, Red.”

  “Leave her alone,” Tyson says.

  “Oh, here we go.” She rolls her eyes. “Time to be the knight in shining armor.”

  “Sam.” Gabe speaks in a low voice.

  “Stay out of it, Gabe.”

  “I’m just trying to be a friend.”

  “To who?” she demands. “To them? Or to me?”

  “To all of you.”

  “Yeah? Well, you can leave me out of it, okay? Does that make it easier?” She slumps into a chair, face turned to avoid looking at any of us.

  No one speaks. My whole body feels like it’s crawling with bugs, and my stomach is churning. I hate situations like this.

  I have to do something, even if it makes me look like an idiot. Anything will be better than this bath of unspent hostility.

  Diving headlong into potential disaster, I ask, “How’s your thumb, Sammi?”

  Her eyes slide to me before her head turns. “Oh, it’s fantastic. It feels so great, I’m thinking of cutting the rest of my fingers open, too.”

  “What happened to your thumb?” Micah asks.

  “She sliced it with a box cutter,” Gabe answers before she can. “Pretty bad.”

  “Ouch,” Micah says.

  “Don’t talk about me behind my back.” Sammi stands, glaring at Gabe.

  “Actually, I’m talking about you in front of your back.”

  “Whatever.” Sammi kicks her chair farther away from the table and sits mostly turned away from the rest of us. I can see the backs of all her earrings in one ear and the curve of her cheek.

  “Don’t be like that.” Gabe taps her chair with his foot. “It’s not like I told them some major secret.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t even care.”

  “Yeah, you sound totally over it.”

  She whips her head to look at him. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Fine by me.”

  She turns away from him again, but Gabe picks up another chair and moves it around to face hers. He sits, clearing his throat and looking impassively at her.

  “Do you think that’s funny?” she says.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were speaking to me.”

  “Shut up.” She shifts, uncrossing her legs to give his chair a push with her foot.

  He nudges his chair closer. “Excuse me, you’re in my space.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” she says, but even from this oblique angle, I can see she’s starting to smile.

  “You’re so shitty at pouting.” He leans forward, elbows on knees to speak softly to her. “And it’s really annoying on top of that, so could you knock it off?”

  She tries to scowl at him, but fails.

  I can’t take my eyes off them. They’re a strange pair, but Gabe actually seems to get her.

  After a moment of murmured talk between them, he stands up and goes behind her chair to turn it with her still sitting in it. The rubberized feet squeal across the floor. She’s trying to look pissed, but she’s also trying not to laugh as he scoots her closer to the rest of us with an earsplitting rrreeeeeeeeeee!

  “There!” he says in a cheerful, preschool-teacher voice. “Look at these nice people who are trapped in work jail with you. Don’t you want to play with them?”

  She twists to swat him in the stomach with the back of her hand. “God, you’re such a pain in the ass.”

  I can’t help noticing her hand as she smacks him. It’s the one she cut earlier, but my awful bandage is gone. I blurt out, “Did the bandage fall off?” totally alerting them to the fact that I’m watching them like a TV show.

  She shrugs, inspecting her thumb casually. “I couldn’t do anything with it. Rick superglued it for me.”

  “What?” Tyson can’t help himself; he moves toward her for a closer look.

  “Superglue?” I ask. “Is that safe?”

  “Dunno, but it burns like a son of a bitch, I can tell you that,” she says.

  “Can I—?” Tyson holds out one hand, hesitant.

  She gives him a sideways thumbs-up, revealing a row of small bandages.

  “Is that okay? To use it on your skin, I mean?” I ask.

  “It worked.”

  “Doctors in the military used superglue for lots of things during Vietnam,” Micah supplies. “There’s a medical grade now, but it’s a slightly different chemical.”

  “Man, you’re a nerd,” Gabe says.

  Micah shrugs.

  “Pretty clean cut,” Tyson says, inspecting her hand up close now.

  “I don’t fuck around.” She takes her hand back and tucks it into crossed arms.

  Suddenly Tyson seems to realize he’s been admiring the cut of a girl he recently called a bitch. Twice. He clears his throat and steps back a few paces. “Look, Sammi, I’m—”

  She shakes her head. “Just forget it.”

  “No, but I—”

  “Seriously, forget it, okay? We’re all stuck here. It’s fine.” She looks at us through her bangs for a second, then down at her hands. “Sorry.”

  He nods. I check over my shoulder to see what Zaina’s doing, but she doesn’t make eye contact. She’s sitting at one of the other tables, focused on a spot a few inches from her folded hands.

  As much as I want to, I don’t know how to break the ice with her.

  “How long do you think it’ll take the police to get here?” I ask, mostly for distraction.

  “Somehow, this doesn’t strike me as a nine-one-one occasion,” Tyson says.

  “I know, right?” Sammi agrees. “Quick! Come to GoodFoods, it’s possible someone stole some money, but I don’t know how much, or if anything was actually even stolen! Hurry!”

  Gabe holds an imaginary phone up to his ear. “Uh, sir, you do realize there are consequences for making a fake call to nine-one-one?” he says in a nasally tone.

  Sammi grins. “But this is an emergency! Send a SWAT team! There are a few twenty-dollar bills missing!” She’s really hamming it up now, making Gabe laugh.

  “It could be eighty, even . . . gasp . . . one hundred dollars!” he adds.

  “Actually, it’s probably closer to ten thousand,” Micah says absently.

  The room goes still. It’s so quiet, I literally hear water dripping into the sink. Makes me wish I had a pin to drop.

  Chapter 13

  THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH $10,000

  1. Get 20,000 candy bars when they’re two for a dollar.

  2. Never have to beg your parents for gas money for the rest of high school.

  3. Pay for half a semester at Harvard.

  4. Buy a used car. (But you should definitely check if the driver’s-side door opens first.)

  5. Throw yourself one of those insane Sweet Sixteen parties like on TV.

  Gabe is the first to recover. “What?”

  “It’s just an estimate, but if today’s collection was any indication, it could have
been that much. It was at least a few thousand.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sammi half rises from her lotus position on her chair, then sits again. “Do you know what I could do with ten thousand dollars?”

  “If I had ten thousand dollars, I wouldn’t be working at this place, that’s for sure,” Gabe says.

  “Ten thousand dollars is still below the poverty line,” Micah reminds him.

  “Yeah, but it’s a hell of a lot of pizza-and-beer money when you’re living in a dorm.” Gabe rubs his hands together. “Unbelievable. Well, now you know for sure I didn’t steal it because if I did, I would be gone right now.” He stands, reaches across the table, and palms Micah’s head. “I swear on the head of Micah Yoder.”

  Sammi smirks.

  “I’d still work here,” Micah says. “I like it.”

  Gabe makes a frustrated sound and drops back into his seat. “Of course you do. But believe me, I’m only here because I have to be.”

  “I’d still be here, too.” Sammi sighs. “Ten K would be nice, but it doesn’t get you far in California.”

  “What’s in California?” I ask.

  “Anything,” she says. “Anything that isn’t this boring-ass town. The sun, for starters. Doesn’t have to be California, even. I don’t care.”

  Gabe nods slowly.

  I look at Tyson. “What would you do with the money?” From driving him home, I know he doesn’t exactly live in the wealthiest area.

  “College,” he says without hesitation. “It’s all for college.”

  I smile. “Me too. Do you know where you want to go?”

  “State,” he says. “I want to be a veterinarian.”

  My heart melts. As if he’s not already near perfect. “That’s amazing!” More words threaten to bubble out of me, but for once I manage to control myself.

  “Companion, Food, or Exotic?” Micah asks, which earns him more than one strange look.

  “Dogs and cats, I guess.” Tyson looks embarrassed. “What is that? Pets?”

  “Companion,” Micah says.

  “I’m guessing you’re going to go to some kind of genius school?” Gabe asks him. “Harvard or something?”

  “Probably something more like MIT or CalTech,” Micah says. “I like the hard sciences a lot.”

  “I’m shocked,” Gabe says dryly.

  “Not me,” I say. “I’d rather read a book than do math. Any day.”

  “What about you, Zaina?” Gabe asks.

  She shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll find something I like in college.”

  “So you’re going?”

  “My dad wants me to,” she says, then looks down with a slight laugh. “It’s unlike him. So modern.”

  “You don’t want to go?” asks Micah.

  “No, I do.” She bites her lip. “I’m not sure what I want to study, though.”

  “Why should you know?” Sammi asks. “The whole thing is ridiculous. They expect us to decide what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives while we’re still in high school. How do you know what you want to do when you don’t know what’s out there? I don’t even get why they expect us to go to college right away. Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until you know what you want to do?”

  “But I do want to go,” Zaina says firmly, making eye contact with Sammi. “For the same reason I wanted a job.” Her voice softens to its usual level. “I don’t work for the money—”

  Tyson winces.

  “—I work because I want to show my dad I can be independent without disappointing him.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Yes. My parents—my father, really—didn’t want me to get a job. He doesn’t think it’s proper for his daughters to work. None of his sisters worked when they were growing up in Lebanon.”

  “Ohhh, that’s where you’re from!” Micah looks like he’s just gotten an annoying splinter out after hours of fussing at it.

  Zaina’s beautiful, full mouth flattens into a line. “I’ve lived here since I was five years old. I’m American.”

  “Right, right.” Micah dismisses that. “I’ve just always wondered. You don’t have much accent to go by.”

  “I don’t have an accent at all!” she protests.

  I want to laugh, but I don’t want to be the only one. I cover my mouth with one hand and look at Tyson, who is smiling a lazy smile. Sammi’s face says it all, though. She has one of her dark eyebrows raised, and a smirk of disbelief.

  “Z, I hate to break it to you, but you’ve got an accent.”

  “I do?” Zaina looks stunned.

  We all make general noises of agreement.

  “I had it narrowed down to the Middle East, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what dialect,” Micah says. “I even watched videos on YouTube to try to pin it down. It must be because you’ve lived here so long.”

  Zaina stares at him. “You did that?”

  “I was curious.”

  She looks somewhere between horrified and flattered.

  “It’s not very noticeable,” I add. It’s really not.

  “But yeah,” Tyson says. “It’s there. Don’t worry, it’s kinda hot.”

  My heart bottoms out. Tyson thinks Zaina is hot. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?

  “Oh.” She presses her fingers to her lips.

  No one says anything for a minute.

  “You’re all staring at me!” she protests. “You’re making me self-conscious.”

  I flick my eyes to the nearest non-Zaina thing I can find, landing on the clock. Time is passing more quickly than I thought. I do a quick calculation to figure out how long it’s been since my watch alarmed for my scheduled blood-sugar check.

  I can live without knowing my blood sugar, but I’m going to need some food soon to make sure it doesn’t get too low. A quick inventory of my body assures me that I’m still in a safe zone, but that doesn’t mean I can wait much longer. If we can’t figure out a way out of this mess, it’s entirely possible I’ll end up having to take my shirt off to get to my insulin pump, and that’s definitely not on my to-do list for the day. Or any day.

  Zaina gets a “kinda hot” accent, and I get diabetes. In a movie, she’d be the hot foreign-exchange student and I’d be, like, the friend of the geek the popular guys make a bet over.

  Chapter 14

  TEN MOVIES THAT MAKE ME WISH MY LIFE WAS MORE LIKE A MOVIE

  1. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

  2. 10 Things I Hate About You

  3. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

  4. Pitch Perfect

  5. The Princess Diaries

  6. The Breakfast Club

  7. Clueless

  8. Sixteen Candles

  9. Bring It On

  10. Easy A

  The sound of someone keying the code into the main door makes everyone jump. I didn’t think anyone was still in the store besides the six of us and Mr. Solomon, and he’s been in the Manager’s Office since the store closed. Then it opens and Kris comes in.

  “Hey, guys,” he says. He’s got a small stack of papers in his hand, and it occurs to me that he probably had manager-type stuff to do after close.

  “You’re still here?” Gabe echoes my thoughts.

  “Duty calls.” He flaps the papers at us as he crosses the Break Room to tap once on the door to the Manager’s Office. He disappears into the office for a few minutes, and when he comes back, he’s got a big grin on his face.

  “Guess what, Younglings!” He claps his hands together once. “You are now my minions.”

  “I thought we already were,” Tyson says.

  “All right, you are now my . . . servants. Come on.” He sweeps his arm toward the door, expecting us to get up and follow. Only Micah stands.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Gabe asks.

  “You’re going to help clean the store! Won’t that be fun?”

  Everyone but Micah groans.

  �
��Didn’t Agnes already disinfect the entire place before she left?” Sammi asks.

  Gabe shakes his head. “She doesn’t leave, remember? She sleeps in a freezer case.”

  Sammi snorts.

  “Come on, my young ones.” Kris coaxes us from the door with wiggly fingers. “Would you seriously rather sit in this room?”

  “Than clean?” Gabe says. “Yes.”

  “Well, too bad. On your feet. You’ve got work to do.”

  Slowly, we follow Kris out the door. Though I’d never admit it to him, it does feel good to stand up and move around a little bit. And I’d rather have something to do to pass the time.

  The late crew is still here, as it turns out, using the big motorized cleaners on the floors.

  “What do you want us to do?” Micah asks.

  Kris points to a large gray janitor’s cart near the Self Checkouts. “There’s glass cleaner and paper towels there. Find something glass and clean it.”

  Sammi gives him a look of disbelief. “Do you want to be more specific?”

  “There’s a lot of glass in here, Sammi. I don’t really care what you clean.” Beneath the smile, he looks tired. Really tired.

  Micah is the first to act, of course, taking the cart by the wide handle and angling it toward the Bakery/Deli part of the store. I look at Tyson, and he shrugs once before following Micah. I follow him, and the others fall in behind me.

  The lighting in the store is weird after-hours. There are still some low-wattage bulbs on, but not as many as there are during the day. And the back rooms behind Bakery and Deli are dark. I didn’t realize how much light comes out of the circular windows at the top of the swinging doors. Without it, the display cases have a distinctly creepy look. Especially the wrapped lumps of unsliced meat in the Deli section. My mind goes to horror-movie places.

  I’m not the only one, either. “Shh,” Gabe says, and everyone stills. “If you listen closely, you can hear the butchers grinding up human flesh for the sausages.” Then he lets loose with an evil laugh.

  “You have got to be the most immature idiot I’ve ever met,” Sammi says, giving him a shove.

  “Says the girl who just hit me.” He rubs his shoulder theatrically.

  “Where should we start?” Micah asks. He’s holding a spray bottle and a handful of paper towels, and looking back and forth between the Deli and Bakery.