Chapter Nine
The pair paid for their purchases and safely deposited them in the trunk of Mo’s car before turning to make their way toward the thrift store.
She watched as Aspen gave the campers a wide berth again, her eyes firmly on the ground in front of her.
Studying her a bit longer, Mo noticed how her shoulders seemed to be turned in while her gait significantly quickened, like Aspen was a toddler who was just scolded for simply existing.
Mo’s limited experience with Aspen had taught her that the woman was pretty lively and carefree, so this kind of behavior was stark in contrast.
Something wasn’t right.
“You good?” Mo finally asked as the two reached the front doors.
“Huh?” Aspen answered, obviously distracted. When their gazes met, Mo watched Aspen’s face brighten in mere seconds, like a switch was flipped. “Yeah, totally. I’m just laser focused.”
“On getting a phone?” Mo chuckled, pulling open the door for her, letting go of her previous concern. “It’s just a phone.”
“No, it’s Annie’s phone,” Aspen replied warmly. “It has to be special.”
Mo hummed in agreement, even as her chest tightened at the comment.
She was truly torn. On one hand, it excited her to get to know Aspen in this way.
A part of her was enjoying the woman’s presence, her heart, and this adventure she had generously planned.
But a different part, the part she had trusted for the past four years, was dreading Aspen’s involvement.
Mo had lied to this woman, and it had snowballed into a trip that she was wholly unprepared for.
“Hey, are you okay?” Aspen’s soft voice broke through.
Mo blinked, smiling instinctively before assuring Aspen, “Yeah, sorry. I got lost in thought there.”
“I noticed.” Aspen squeezed her forearm before nodding toward the left side of the store. “I know it’s not much, but the home goods are over there. Their clothes selection is eh, but they always have the most interesting odds and ends.”
Mo moved in that direction, stuffing her hands into her pants anxiously.
She finally looked around, taking in the rather cold and bland thrift store.
The Thrifty Squirrel was as bare bones as Blau’s, but instead of outdoor goods, Mo mostly found racks and racks of clothes.
Taller shelves stuffed full of housewares, electronics, and other assorted knickknacks lined the left side of the store, indicating Aspen was correct in leading them there.
A silence had fallen between the pair as they entered the section.
Mo followed her down the last aisle, watching as Aspen would reach out to touch random items even as she glided toward the back.
Mo enjoyed watching Aspen. Her movements seemed calculated yet careless in the same motion, a conundrum that just seemed to fit Aspen perfectly.
Before Mo could compute that her companion had come to a stop, Aspen was shoving an object in her face with glee.
“Frog phone!”
“A what?” Mo asked, startled by her sudden movements. Looking down, she found that Aspen was showing her a small desktop phone, very much shaped like a classic green and white frog. “That is indeed a frog.”
“It’s so cute,” Aspen exclaimed in a cutesy voice, manipulating the phone to hop in midair like a real frog. “Oh my God, I love it so much. I would one hundred percent die for this frog.”
Mo looked on in amusement, finding every aspect of Aspen adorable. After watching the frog jump for a few more seconds, Mo finally noticed that it lacked a cord. She reached forward to stop Aspen’s movement. “Is it cordless?”
“They weren’t when I was kid,” Aspen said, opening the frog’s mouth to display a set of buttons between the microphone and receiver. She then closed it again, turning to show Mo its butt where the cord would connect. “It would go here, I’m pretty sure.”
“Must have lost its cord. Bummer.” Mo sighed, watching as Aspen continued to absentmindedly play with the phone, opening and closing it as she regarded it thoughtfully. “I didn’t even know they were a thing.”
“You know,” Aspen began, her voice more low and even.
“When I was kid, I once got invited to a popular girl’s house for her birthday.
I’d never been allowed to go to anyone’s house before, and I was over the moon that I’d even been invited.
Thankfully, I was at Janice’s at the time, and she was sweet enough to let me go.
The girl’s name was…Mary, I think? It doesn’t matter, whatever her name was, she had one of these phones in her bedroom. ”
“In her bedroom? Damn, fancy.”
“I know, right?” Aspen paused for a few moments before continuing, “All the girls thought I was so weird because I was obsessed with the phone. I named it, petted it, and even begged Mary to go to her neighbor’s house and call, just so I could answer it. I wasn’t invited back.”
Mo reached forward, rubbing the side of Aspen’s shoulder gently. “Kids are mean.”
Aspen pulled away, laughing it off. “No, they didn’t know better. I’m sure anyone would have found it weird. I was a strange kid.”
“What did you name the frog?” Mo asked, noticing her deflection.
“Frog.”
“You weren’t a strange kid at all.” Mo laughed. “Just unimaginative.”
“Hey!” Aspen balked, pushing Mo’s shoulder slightly with the frog. “Rude.”
Mo shrugged but grinned deviously anyway before saying, “As lovely as Frog is, I don’t think they will make a good wind phone. Kinda small, and it doesn’t have a base.”
Aspen nodded in agreement, giving the phone one more pat before depositing it back on the shelf. “Then let’s keep looking. They actually have a decent amount of phones littered through all this crap.”
They split from each other, sifting through all the random electronic goods to find the perfect phone. Mo began her search with a half-decent amount of drive, but after finding her fifth basic early-2000s cordless phone with base, she found herself becoming agitated.
“We might have to force Frog to be a tree frog. I can’t find anything more than these stupid, boring cordless phones,” Mo complained, moving a printer to peer behind it.
“Gotta have patience to pick,” Aspen reminded Mo from her knees as she sorted through some larger stuff on the bottom rack. “Ooh, jackpot!”
Mo didn’t waste time, moving to kneel next to Aspen as she pulled a see-through plastic wall phone from the depths of the shelving. Aspen flipped to sitting crisscrossed on the ground, already pressing each of the numbered buttons with fervor.
“Looks pretty sturdy,” Mo commented, moving to kneel on one knee as she scrutinized the prize.
It was a curved phone, with a button-laden cradle, and had minimal yellowing on the clear plastic surround.
It even had a clear spiral cord, something Mo was sure was rare.
Fun, indeed, but there was something off about it. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” Aspen said, turning the phone to study the back. “It has slots to mount.”
“Okay,” Mo responded flatly, still looking at the phone as Aspen played with it.
“It’s not Annie’s vibe, is it?” Aspen finally asked, looking up at her curiously.
The ease at which Aspen could read her was daunting. But even as Mo stood, uncomfortable under the woman’s keen gaze, she agreed, “No, it’s not.”
“No worries, then.” Aspen placed it back on the shelf. “We will keep looking.”
Instead of continuing the hunt, Mo stood there silently and watched Aspen perform her calculated tornado search of the lower shelves.
At this point, she was more excited to see Aspen’s happy reactions than she was for the phone itself.
As Aspen crab-walked to the next cluster of shelves, Mo caught a glimpse of blaze orange behind a black microwave, piquing her interest. She knelt down, sliding the microwave to the right, which knocked a bunch of things over onto Aspen’s hands.
“Avalanche!” Aspen giggled, stopping her search to put everything right side up. “I already searched through there—”
“Wait, I think I found something you missed,” Mo said, leaning all the way against the shelving to reach the cold plastic of the item she had spotted. It definitely felt curved like a phone, so she pulled it out and sat back on the ground in the same motion.
It was the ugliest phone Mo had ever laid eyes on.
The blaze-orange base was wide, boxy, and bland.
It had a stainless steel hang-up cradle for the receiver and a simple orange disk in the center that sported the slightly faded numbers.
A clear but time-yellowed rotary dial was mounted over the top with finger holes stamped out over each number.
In the center of it all was a removable piece of paper covered by a plastic disk that had the area code and emergency numbers typed out in Courier font.
The tightly coiled cord was dirty and dusty from the shelf but was just as ugly an orange as the rest of the phone.
Mo jiggled the cradle a few times before removing the receiver itself, noting how grimy the blaze-orange plastic felt in her hands.
It was a classic receiver, boring in every way, and as Mo held it up to examine it closer, it felt as uncomfortable as it looked.
“Is this it?” Aspen politely asked, sitting down across from Mo.
“Annie’s favorite color was orange,” Mo began, unable to control her smile as she thought about her late wife’s obsession with the color.
“If she’d have been allowed, and I say that only because the limits of society are what stopped her, she’d have bought everything in orange.
I mean, she drove us to our first date in her orange Ford Fiesta.
The bridal party on her side had accents of orange in their clothes—in the flowers even.
Her touring microphone had an orange surround.
Our house was littered with random pops of orange.
A chair here, a serving bowl there, an accent wall in our bedroom.
I think if she’d have found a backpacking pack that fit her in blaze orange, she would’ve bought it so fast.”