The automatic doors whoosh open and processed air washes over my skin, chilling it as goose flesh moves in. As soon as we get through the doorway, I hear my name. I look up and see Anna standing at a cash register, the magazine in her hand caught in mid-page turning. I smile weakly.
So Anna. And the grocery store.
Let’s go with the grocery store first
It’s where I’ve been working since I was sixteen. As soon as I was old enough, my mom said I needed to get a job to help out with the bills. Being sixteen and living in Seafare doesn’t give you a whole lot of options. To be honest, being any age in Seafare doesn’t give you a whole lot of options. It was either become a bagger or a busboy. Since my mom already worked at a restaurant at the time, I didn’t want to take the chance of having to work with her all the time, so I chose bagger. Now I’m a lead cashier. And before you all grow wide-eyed with amazement over my rags-to-riches story, it’s actually not that bad. I pretty much get to stand at the front desk and tell all the other cashiers what to do and when to go on break, stuff like that. It’s kind of like being a manager without actually getting paid to be one. Oh, and the manager gets to sit in an office, not at the front desk. Okay, so it’s not really like being a manager at all, but it could be worse, right? I could be working McDonald’s and hearing the Kid mumble each night I came home that I smelled like bovine genocide. And before you think I’m being overly dramatic, I once worked the meat counter and that’s exactly what he said to me. I requested never to be put there again.
So it’s not so bad, okay? I’ve been here long enough that I get to work pretty much whenever I want, which is good, especially working days so I can be done by the time that Ty gets done with school. And they allowed me to put Ty on the health insurance they offer after you’ve been here three years. They didn’t have to do that. I don’t like to think about what I’d do because the Kid gets a cold every other minute or so. So see? Things could be worse. A lot worse.
Now Anna.
I told you before how she’s my sort-of girlfriend. Do you remember? Now’s one of the times when she sort of is, and I feel guilty for a moment because I told her that I was going to call her as soon as I got to Creed’s house. But hey, I can say I wanted to just see her in person and everything works out. She’ll see right through me, though, she always does.
“Hey,” she says, smiling at me as I walk up to her.
“Hey, yourself,” I say back, standing in front of her register like a customer. She leans over to kiss me, and I turn my face lightly, feeling her lips graze my cheek. She pulls back and looks at me funny.
I jerk my head to the side in a sort of nod. “Look who’s here.”
She looks over my shoulder, and I see her face light up. “Otter!” She laughs and bounds around the register. I turn to watch her go and see Otter still standing at the door where we walked in. Funny, I thought he was next to me. She jumps into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist, and I hear him say, “Oof.”
So, yeah. Anna. I think I told you that she was the second person I met after Creed. She was in the same second-grade class as us, so it was inevitable that we would at least become friends. But it turned out to be much more than that. Anna is the only girlfriend I have ever had, the only girl I have ever kissed. We had sex, the first time for both of us, the summer between eighth and ninth grade, in the guest house that sits behind Creed’s house. She’s been my first everything, aside from having the honor of being my first best friend, as that goes to Creed. First love, first heartache, first (and only) proposal of marriage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But come on, we were ten! And she proposed to me, right after our first kiss. And it wasn’t even really proposing, it was more of a “Derrick McKenna, I am only going to kiss you if you say that we are getting married when we’re adults!” What’s a ten-year-old boy to do? I said yes, and she kissed me lightly on the lips, the touch of a feather. I remember turning red enough to light the world on fire. That sealed the deal.
Except for the times when she’s sort of not my girlfriend.
We’re way too much alike to ever get along all the time. I swear to Christ when we fight, it’s about the stupidest shit. She thinks she’s right. I know I’m right, blah blah blah, and it always ends with her flipping her long brown hair, her dark eyes flashing, muttering under her breath and sounding so much like me that it’s hilarious. And that’s always the worst time to laugh, so naturally that’s when I laugh. Of course, this pisses her off even more—which pisses me off—and it always ends with one of us stalking away, licking our wounds. I love her too damn much, though, and I know she feels the same and a couple of days later one of us will pick up the phone and call the other, and things will be good for a while.
And I do mean that. I love her. Anna was there for me growing up, listening to me bitch about how my mom was fucked up. She was there for me, making me talk to new people, telling me that the worst thing a person can do is not make new friends She was there for me when I found out Ty was on the way (trust me, I wasn’t very happy about that at the time). She was there for me when I stumbled into her house after reading my mom’s letter, tears of rage blinding me, clenching and unclenching my fists. She has seen the good, the bad, and everything in between that makes me who I am. Don’t get me wrong: Creed was there through a lot of that, too, but Anna gets me in a way that he can’t. It’s not his fault or anyone else’s. It just is.
It also helps that she worships the ground Ty walks on. Trust me, it could have been so much easier for her to walk away and not look back like Mom did. But she didn’t, and you have to admit, that takes balls. Anna’s one of the few people that Ty trusts and has no problem letting her watch him if I need to pick up a couple of extra shifts at the store. She’s the only one who pretends to get his whole vegetarian phase (and I know it’s just a phase; no brother of mine is going to eat like that forever). She has been there for him better than any woman ever was to him, and I think he needs that every now and then. He can’t look up to just me for the rest of his life, right?
Otter sets her down and leans over to whisper something in her ear. She laughs and slaps his shoulder, and I hear her say “Of course I’m still watching out for him! Who else is going to call him on his bullshit?” They both look back at me, and Anna sticks out her tongue. I flash mine back. Otter rolls his eyes and mumbles something about “kids these days.” They walk back over to the register where I still stand.
“Where’s the Kid?” she asks me.
“Watching something gross with Creed,” I say.
She smiles sympathetically. “That show on killing cows?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“He told me about it last week when I was babysitting him.” Anna looks over at Otter and whispers conspiratorially, “He didn’t want me to tell Bear because he said Bear would be too scared to watch it.” I scowl as Otter laughs. Just because apparently nobody I know is normal like me.
“So, Otter, what brings you back home? Getting too famous for California already?” she asks him.
He shrugs nonchalantly. “Just felt like I needed to come home for a little bit, I guess. Hey, where’s the soy ice cream? I promised the Kid some after he drank my beer.” Anna points toward the end of the store. “I’ll be right back,” he says, walking away.
Anna looks after him for a moment then turns to me. She leans forward a little bit, as if we are going to be overheard. “So what’s going on with him?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know?”
“He didn’t t
ell you why he came back home? He never just comes back to Seafare like this. He hasn’t been back for over a year. And,” she says, quieter, “he seems a little sad.” This takes me by surprise. I hadn’t noticed anything like that, and I tell Anna she’s projecting, a word she learned in her Psych 101 class that she uses on me all the time. She slaps me on the shoulder and goes to help a woman who looks older than God and apparently needed to come out into the rain to buy sandwich bags. And that’s it.
“Has it been busy tonight?” I ask, looking around.
She shrugs as she takes the woman’s money. “A little bit. It picked up again once it started raining, but Mary is here so it wasn’t too bad.” Mary is another cashier we work with who smells like menthols and Juicy Fruit. I don’t know where she gets the gum from because I don’t think they even make it anymore. Anna says she’s got a stockpile of it at her house that she bought years ago. I think she’s joking, though. I hope she’s joking.