Chapter 6 #2
“If you want to help with this, you can,” she told Sophie, handing her a damp rag and a bottle of cleaning spray. “You can do the tables.” They’d tackle refilling the ice cream containers another day.
“Okay.” They worked in silence for several minutes, for which Zoe was grateful.
It had been a long day, and she had a long evening ahead of her, and sometimes all of life just felt…
long. She was grateful for Sophie’s help, and also grateful that Sophie seemed to want to be helped, but sometimes she didn’t know how much more she had in her.
“So what happened when you were caught?” Sophie asked as she returned the rag and cleaning spray to the counter, having finished all the tables. “Did you get in trouble?”
“No, but then I wasn’t caught by someone who worked in the store,” Zoe told her. “My art teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, saw me, and she spoke to me about it at school the next day. Which was, as you can imagine, very embarrassing.”
Zoe still remembered the look of sorrowful pity on the older woman’s face that still had the power to make her squirm inside. She never wanted anyone to look at her like that again.
“And then what happened?” Sophie asked.
“And then I decided to stop stealing, because it wasn’t worth it,” Zoe told her.
She decided not to mention the three further lipsticks she’d stolen before Mrs. Hoffman’s lesson had finally hit home.
“And Mrs. Hoffman started an afterschool art club which I joined, which kind of helped as an outlet.” She nodded toward the watercolors that adorned The Latest Scoop’s newspaper-print-covered walls. “Most of those are mine.”
“Really?” Sophie glanced at a watercolor of Starr’s Fall town green in all its glorious fall color. “You’re an artist?”
“Trying to be,” Zoe replied wryly. Painting was her one hobby, the one way she was able to forget her problems and lose herself in beauty.
“Occasionally one of these sells. Not often, though.” She reached for the rag Sophie had been using and rinsed it in the sink.
“But having a hobby is a good thing. Is there anything you like to do?”
Sophie’s face fell into its usual discontented lines. “Well, I did like doing ballet, until my dad moved us out here and there aren’t any lessons.”
“Actually, there are dance classes that are held in the church basement,” Zoe told her.
“Tina Williams offers them. Ballet and tap.” Tina had been offering dance classes since before Zoe was a kid.
She used to chain smoke as she stood by the basement back door while little girls in pink tutus did their clumsy pirouettes and pliés.
Fortunately, she’d quit smoking a few years back, and now she swigged energy drinks instead.
“Yeah, and I bet those are really good,” Sophie muttered.
“Well, I wouldn’t know, because I am definitely in the two-left-feet camp,” Zoe replied mildly.
“But you could check it out? And Tina usually likes having assistant teachers helping her in the summer, when she runs day camps for little kids. If you have the experience, you could do that, maybe. Along with working at The Latest Scoop, of course.”
A flicker of interest had passed over Sophie’s face at this suggestion, and she gave a grudging nod that Zoe decided to take as a win.
“Okay, closing time,” she said briskly. “Why don’t you put the chairs on top of the tables, and I’ll close down the kitchen?”
“Can I come back tomorrow?” Sophie asked, and Zoe wilted a little at the thought. As much as she wanted to help Sophie, the girl was still hard work.
“Yes, of course you can,” she said, injecting a note of enthusiasm into her voice. “And maybe I’ll even let you scoop some ice cream!”
Sophie brightened at that, and they worked in companionable silence for the last fifteen minutes before Zoe turned off the lights and headed out into the warm summer’s evening.
“I guess we’re walking in the same direction,” she said as she slid her keys into her pocket. “If you’re going home, that is?”
“Yeah.” Sophie gave her a glum look. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”
“Well,” Zoe remarked teasingly, “you could get to know some of those ‘losers’ you saw a few days ago.”
Sophie grimaced, both at the prospect and, Zoe suspected, in acknowledgment of her own folly. “I’m fourteen,” she told her. “Even if I wanted to get to know them, I can’t just go up to someone and ask them if they want to be my friend, like you do when you’re, like, five.”
“True.” Zoe thought for a moment as they fell into step together, walking down Main Street toward the lonely dirt road that led to their homes.
Even though her street was as close to the center of Starr’s Fall as her friends’, she often felt like she was off the beaten path, maybe even a little forgotten.
People had stopped swinging by a long time ago, but in some ways that had been a relief.
“Maybe I could arrange something.” She held up a hand to forestall Sophie’s protest. “Something subtle. I’m not an idiot, okay? ”
Sophie shrugged, diffident now, as well as defensive. “Whatever.”
And that, Zoe decided, was enough about that, at least for now.
They walked in silence down the street, turning onto the dirt road, and Zoe felt her steps slow as she approached her house.
She loved her parents, desperately so, but night after night of managing their care sometimes felt… like a lot.
“Okay, well,” she told Sophie in farewell as she took her keys out of her bag. “I hope you have a good night.”
“You should come over sometime,” Sophie said abruptly. “For dinner or something.” As soon as she said the words, she looked like she regretted them. “I mean,” she backtracked, “if you wanted to or, I don’t know, if we’re not busy…”
“That would be nice,” Zoe told her honestly. For a second, she let herself imagine it—chatting with Dan over drinks while Sophie set the table, the sun setting over the backyard, sending light streaming across the forested sweep of the Berkshire Mountains on the horizon.
It seemed like such a simple, easy pleasure, and yet one that so often felt beyond her. She rarely socialized, and even though Emma, her parents’ daytime carer, had said she could sometimes do nights, Zoe had yet to take her up on that offer more than every few months, if that.
It felt like a lot, just to go out on occasion for the business association meetings or the occasional dinner or party she was invited to, always arriving late and leaving early.
Zoe knew people thought it was because she was young and busy, with better offers than hanging out with a bunch of townies, and they thought that because she let them think it, but the truth was she was rushing home to her parents.
“I’d like that,” she told Sophie firmly. The Brysons lived next door, after all. She could run back home throughout the evening to check on her parents. Maybe it could happen.
Sophie smiled shyly, and Zoe smiled back, letting herself imagine a life where she did go to dinner, and maybe Dan asked her out for a drink again, with that slow smile, and…
No. Best not to get ahead of herself. With a wave of farewell, Zoe headed into her house and the life she didn’t imagine but already had.