Chapter 19
Ava
Every car that passed as I walked along the road made my fear rise another notch.
I hurried along the highway that Mother and I drove to go to the grocery store.
When I made it to the tangle of streets and houses and stores, I relaxed.
Mother would wake up soon, but I needed to talk to Frank at the grocery store.
I had a job there, and he would pay me money. Maybe if I started working today instead of Monday, I could get money right away to buy food.
It was a terrible idea, since Mother would look for me there. But it was the only idea I had.
The store was quiet at this early hour, so I went straight to the customer service desk.
It was closed. A sign on the counter said it would open at 8 a.m.
What time was it now? I had no idea.
A boy who seemed close to my age approached the counter, pushing a stack of boxes on a rolling cart. Stocker. Maybe I could learn something from him. He seemed friendly, a flop of hair falling over his forehead. He wore the red Shelfmart shirt.
I reached out a hand to stop him. “I’m about to start working here. I was hoping someone could walk me around.”
He shrugged. “Sure. What are you going to be doing? Cashier?”
“Stocker.”
He had wires hanging out of his ears, but he took them out and stuck them in his pocket. I wondered what they did.
So much to learn.
“You must be replacing Phil,” he said.
“I’m not sure,” I said carefully. “I talked to the manager yesterday.”
“Justine or Frank?” he asked.
“Frank,” I said.
“Frank’s a card,” he said. “You’ll like working for him.”
I didn’t know what he meant by Frank being a card. Cards were something you use when you played a game with clubs and aces. But I didn’t say that. I had my wizard face on.
“That’s good,” I said.
“The pallets are all in the back. New stuff gets delivered every day. You’ll have a section. Phil was in dry goods. I reckon they’ll put you there too, since you’re kind of small to be lugging heavy stock.”
I looked down at myself. I was certainly small compared to him.
“You want somewhere to put that bag?” he asked. “It looks heavy.”
I adjusted the duffel bag on my shoulder. I didn’t want to let it out of my sight. It was the only thing I possessed, my life and my memories.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Maybe you’re stronger than I thought.” He grinned, and my heart flipped.
I pressed my hand to my chest. I’d only felt that funny flutter when Rolf kisses Liesl after singing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” I didn’t know real people could make it happen.
We walked along with his cart. He led me through the store, pointing out the aisles that had cereal, pasta, and other things I knew well.
“I’ve been coming to this store all my life,” I said. Then I realized, no, I hadn’t. But I couldn’t change it now.
“Cool,” he said. “Then you will know where most everything is already.”
“I do.”
“Well, let’s head to the back for a minute. I can leave my cart here. I’ll show you around. When did you say you were starting?”
“Monday.” I didn’t mention that I wanted to start sooner. I knew this boy couldn’t tell me it was okay. It had to be Frank. The manager made the decisions.
“And you’re here on a Saturday,” he said. “You’re going to show all of us up.”
I had no idea what that meant. But he said it with a smile, so I smiled back.
“Frank is going to love you,” he said. “He’s better than my old boss, Penny.”
“What happened to her?”
“She moved to a different store.”
“There’s more than one Shelfmart?”
He laughed. “You kidding me?”
I laughed too, but my head was spinning. There was more than one store, and people could move to others and keep their jobs. If I moved to another Shelfmart, Mom wouldn’t know where I was. Working here was so risky. She’d come here first when she realized I was gone.
“Do you sometimes work at one of the other stores?” I asked.
“No, generally we pick one and stay there.”
“How do I pick a different one?”
“It wouldn’t be too hard to move if you wanted. That’s what Phil did. He moved to San Antonio. Penny would take you at hers, I bet, if you can put up with her.”
I had put up with Mother. How bad could this woman be?
“How do I talk to Penny?”
“Hold on, I probably have her number.”
We stopped by the swinging doors behind the meat counter, which was still dark and empty since it was so early. He pulled a small, shiny object out of his pocket.
I’d seen other people carrying them in the store, but I had never fully understood what they were. Some people held them to their ears, while other people stared at them in their hands. When he touched it, a screen lit up like a tiny TV.
I wanted to ask about it, but I knew better. They were common. He would know I wasn’t normal if I let on that I didn’t know.
“I have it here in my phone,” he said. “You want me to send it to yours?”
A phone. That was a phone.
“I’ll write it down,” I said. “My phone is… broken.”
“I hear you,” he said. “Dropped mine a couple weeks ago and had to get a new one. It was a pain in the butt.”
I had no idea why that would hurt his backside, but I stayed quiet. I pulled my diary out of the bag. A pen was tucked inside it. “What was the number?”
He gave me several digits. “She’s Penny St. Martin,” he said. “You can tell her I sent you.”
“And you are?”
He pointed to his badge, and my face flushed hot that I hadn’t looked at it.
“James,” he said. “She’ll remember me.”
“Thank you, James.”
I had a plan again. But even though I knew the numbers, and I’d seen a phone, I had no idea how to call this Penny person.
We moved through the swinging doors. A huge open room was filled with stacks of boxes. Several more Shelfmart workers loaded items onto carts.
James droned on about the delivery doors and how to watch your back with the night stockers.
I tried to pay attention, but really, I thought hard about all the places I knew.
The Shelfmart. The gas station. There were other buildings around them.
I knew of the bank, although we never went there.
I didn’t have money for something like the phone James had.
I could ask to use his. It would be embarrassing. But what if Penny St. Martin found out I didn’t know about phones? Would James tell her? Would they laugh at me? And if they did, would she still let me work there?
No, I had to find another way. Someone who wouldn’t tell Penny.
The employee who gave me the application had said I could do it online, whatever that meant. Maybe I could send a new application to Penny online.
“Where can I do online?” I asked James, interrupting him mid-sentence.
His eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t look mad. “I guess I got boring, rambling on about stockrooms. You don’t have internet at home?”
“I don’t.”
“You could go over to the library. They have computers you can use.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to the library.”
He laughed. “I don’t step foot inside it myself.”
Oh. Was it a bad place to go? Dangerous? I would have to risk it. “Where is the library?”
“Really close if you walk out the back door.” He pointed to a double door on the far wall. “You just have to cross the field. If you take the road, it’s a long way around.”
This was good. The library was somewhere I’d never been. Possibly dangerous. But somewhere Mother wouldn’t look. Would she call the police? Would they come find me? I didn’t know. I’d have to do it. I had no other choice.
It was time to get out of this Shelfmart, where she’d certainly come first.
I thanked James for his help and promised to find him again unless I transferred to Penny’s store. I’d learned a lot in the last hour. Mother had taught me so very little.
And that was when she wasn’t lying.
The truth washed over me again. I was eighteen years old.
Years of my life had been lost because she didn’t let me remember them.
Everything I knew was wrong. Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
I had to be like Dorothy and find my own way back to Kansas, whatever that might be for me.
When I stepped outside, panic threatened to engulf me. Even though it was the back side of the store, more employees in red shirts were pulling up. They might see me.
Mother would get help, sound all the alarms. Sometimes there were “Find this child” pictures on the big signs on the highway. Would she put mine on one? She thought I was helpless. That I couldn’t make it without her.
But I would.
I pulled the hood of my jacket over my hair. I walked quickly with my head down.
The building James meant had to be the one beyond the trees. There was a little path to it. As I got closer, I spotted a sign that said, “Wimberley Village Library.”
But when I got to the door, it was locked. A sign said it wouldn’t open until nine.
I had no idea what time it was, but I could wait.
I sat on the concrete porch by the door, hidden by bushes, and sorted through the papers I had. The hospital records were still a mystery. Maybe I could go there for help. Maybe the hospital was close enough to walk to.
Then my notes. Trust only this handwriting. The only handwriting I would see now would be mine. Maybe I could cross out the words that didn’t match and salvage my notebook.
The door behind me clicked. A woman in a bright blue dress opened it and spotted me.
“Not too often we have someone breaking down our door so early on a Saturday morning,” she said.
I scrambled to my feet. “I need to do an application online. Or I could call Penny St. Martin on a phone. I need to transfer to a different Shelfmart.”
Her face shifted to confusion. “You don’t have a phone at home?”
I could do this. Take everything I’d learned from James and convince her to help. “I dropped my cell phone, and it broke. I need to call Penny, the manager of a different Shelfmart, because I’m supposed to start a job there.”