4. The Worst Day Ever
The Worst Day Ever
HENRY
The store was in ruins when I pushed through the front door.
Startled by the unexplainable mess, I gasped, dropped my keys, and spilled my large to-go coffee all down the front of my shirt.
Equally scalded and alarmed, I quickly weighed my options: go in and find the responsible party or run away for napkins and help.
The decision-making centers of my brain had clearly not woken up yet—hence the need for the massive coffee—so I pressed inward.
I quelled the urge to call out for someone. If this was a person’s doing, then certainly the perpetrator had long since scattered to the winds. Though there weren’t any signs of a break-in. The door was locked, as I’d left it. None of the windows were broken.
I would’ve heard an intruder, right? I was only sleeping a floor away.
Yet, ever since college, I slept with earplugs and a white-noise machine. The slightest pipe gurgle or wind creak sent my mind swirling. To mitigate the anxiety, and to not have to survive on energy drinks alone, I blocked out noises entirely. Light, too, with a heavy-duty sleep mask.
Heart thumping, I rushed right to the cash register. Everything was in order.
All signs led me to believe this was the work of an animal. A squirrel? A raccoon, maybe? Had it snuck in through the vents? The last thing I wanted to do was call a wildlife control specialist whose bill I couldn’t afford.
I pondered the possibilities until a loud groan echoed out from the back room.
While the groan was guttural and low, it didn’t register as distinctly animalistic.
Still, a sharp jolt of fear straightened my spine as I inched closer to the source.
We kept the safe back there. Could a robber have broken the code?
My coffee-starved brain was supplying a limitless number of unhelpful scenarios, so the only thing to do was to inspect for myself.
Cowering, I poked my head around the corner and found an even more unsettling scene than the shredded-up shop.
A built blond man about six feet tall lay sprawled across all four red sparkly dinette chairs with his eyes closed and his hands pressed to his stomach.
The floor was papered with wrappers and containers and a half-spilled bottle of coffee creamer.
The air was tinged with an unpleasant odor—like sweat and sour cream—and held a light chill as if the door to the minifridge hadn’t been shut properly.
I couldn’t help but think that, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there, the intruder was undeniably gorgeous.
Not a single lock of his perfectly blond hair was out of place, even as he slept.
The white undershirt he wore hugged the curvature of his sculpted abs and his sleeves strained slightly against his bulging biceps.
His face was symmetrical, as if it were factory-made.
Who was this man? And why was he breaking-and-entering?
I gained control of my senses enough to realize that I needed to call the police. Even if nothing was stolen, the store was vandalized, and someone was sleeping in here. The landlord, Mr. Potter, would have a conniption if he knew, and I was already on thin ice with him regarding back payments.
The sleeping man stirred suddenly, causing the chairs beneath him to squeak, which scared me even more. My preservation instincts kicked in finally, but as I backed away, I slipped on a bitten stick of butter and sailed straight onto my butt.
Having heard my epic plop, the intruder rushed to me, clearly trying to help me up, but I held out a hand to keep him away. Who knew what kind of weapons he might have been concealing? I had a newly bruised tailbone and no way to protect myself.
“Henry Aster?” asked the clean-shaven Adonis with not a single visible pore. His eyes were the purest blue I’d ever seen—Caribbean Ocean blue—which stunned me for a second.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, confused and still the slightest bit awed by how flawless yet familiar he looked. Was he a friend of Great Aunt Isla’s? Of Mr. Potter’s? That would maybe explain how he got inside.
“I’m supposed to give you this,” he said, fishing something out of his back pocket and holding it out to me. I instructed him to put it on the floor between us. He set it dangerously close to a glop of mustard that I was not looking forward to cleaning up.
At first, it seemed like a regular red business card, but then I touched it. The paper vibrated with an inexplicable power in my grip as I read it:
Your wish has been granted! Meet your perfect man. If he doesn’t experience true human love before the midnight chime on New Year’s Eve, he will turn back into a mannequin.
Mannequin?
I glanced up from the card and into the expectant expression of…
“No. There’s no way. This is not happening.” I scrambled up to standing, bolted out of the back room and straight for my window display, and… wow, it had been demolished. All that hard work for nothing. The backdrop was torn down. The drink glasses and ornaments were shattered.
“One, two, three…” I counted off the supine mannequins, and sure enough, I was missing one.
A male one. A male blond one. “Did I eat something bad? Did I hit my head? Did I get into a car accident on the way here that I don’t remember and I’m dead in a ditch somewhere and this is all one big push through limbo before my final judgment? ”
The mannequin (apparently) stared at me from across the desecrated shop. No, not stared. It was almost worse because, if he truly was who the card said he was, he was blinking . It gave me the creeps. I tried to make sense of all of this, my mind flinging itself in several different directions.
“Who are you?” I asked, reaching for my nearest shield, which was a heavy antique lamp I did not want to have to smash over this man’s head in self-defense, but I would if it came to it.
“I’m your perfect man. At least that’s what my card says.”
“Your card?” I asked.
He started to move toward me. I wielded the lamp with the loose bulb high above my head. Remembering earlier, he set the card down and kicked it across the floor to me. I picked it up. “This is blank.”
“Yours was blank when I read it, too,” he said. In the light of the sales floor, he seemed much less of a threat. Hapless, almost.
Deciding this man must be off his rocker and did away with my mannequin as some depraved prank, I marched past him and out into the backyard where the trash bin was. I started throwing around the garbage bags willy-nilly.
“What are you looking for?” the man asked.
“You! The plastic ‘you’! The ‘you’ from before because there has to be an explanation!” I shouted without regard for who might overhear this.
I half expected anyone who stumbled upon this scene to only see me.
For all I knew, my perfect man was a manifestation of undigested beef from the questionable air fryer empanada I had last night.
“There is an explanation,” he said animatedly. “According to my card, you wished a wish and that wish came true.”
“Wishes don’t come true! Wishes aren’t real,” I said, feeling sad and silly and hopeless, and wishing the beauty of the ocean hadn’t overwritten my inhibitions. Gah, there I went again— wishing!
This man had obviously followed me out to the beach last night and listened in on a private moment. There was no other possible reasoning! He was clearly a deranged stalker.
“Wishes must be real because yours came true,” he said, wrenching me from my daze.
“Are you on drugs?”
“What are drugs?”
He had amnesia. That was it. He’d hit his head, wandered into my store, and I was saddled with a lost, hot amnesiac. “Okay. Let’s say you’ve been telling the truth. How would I unwish my wish?” I asked since he seemed so sure of himself despite having presumably bitten a block of butter.
He tilted his head. Puzzlement somehow looked adorable on him, which was outrageously inconvenient. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked.
“Because if you’re telling the truth and my wish came true, this was not what I meant at all!
” I paced right there in the yard, still holding a stray garbage bag like I expected it to contain the disassembled parts of my old favorite mannequin.
“What am I supposed to do? Who do I talk to about this? You can’t be here! ”
I dropped the slimy bag like it was on fire and raced back inside. I attempted to outrun him, slam the door, and call the police, but this mannequin-turned-man had quite the pair of long legs on him. He was right on my heels as soon as I whipped around.
“Now, hold on. The card said if I experienced true, human love by New Year’s Eve—whatever that is—I get to stay this way,” he said, panting. Had that short sprint winded him? And why was he holding his stomach like that? A new green coloring brushed down his cheeks, causing his smile to sag.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t feel so good.” He suddenly swayed a bit, looking a lot like his former mannequin self.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I said, hustling him quickly into the staff bathroom. I had enough of a mess to clean up as it was. I pointed right at the toilet bowl. He hunched over and heaved, but nothing came out.
I was deeply conflicted. Did I give this intrusive stranger his privacy, or, like a friend, did I metaphorically hold back his hair? Those blond locks did look glossy and soft to the touch…
No! Stop that! Stranger danger!
My perfect man unsuccessfully heaved once more before turning to me. “I feel better,” he declared.
Then he thew up all over my shoes.
“Okay, now I feel much better.” He smiled as if he’d done nothing offensive and his breath didn’t reek.
My stomach churned as I stared down at my feet. I’d never been good with bodily functions, and here I was, confused and disgusted and frozen with indecision. A rancid stench wafted up from my sneakers.