That Summer(9)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“Like hell I will,” Ashley said in a loud voice. “This is just the most selfish, bitchy thing she could do. I swear if she wasn’t in Ohio I’d go right to her and punch her face in.”

“My goodness!” Lydia said with a nervous laugh.

“I would,” Ashley said. “Goddamn it, I have had it, I can’t take this anymore. No one can just do one simple thing that I ask them to do and this whole wedding is going to be a total disaster and it will all be her goddamn fault with her goddamn flat chest and her goddamn fiancé and who the hell does she think she is anyway calling me crying when she’s ruining my wedding and she’s such a damn idiot!”

Lydia Catrell added, “You’d think she was raised in a barn. You honestly would.”

“I hate her. I hate all of this.” There was a crash as something fell to the floor. “I don’t need her. I don’t need anyone but Lewis and we’re going to elope, I swear to God we are.”

“Honey,” my mother said, trying to be calm, but there was that crazy edge creeping into her voice, the family hysteria swelling to full force. “Ashley, please, we can figure this out.”

“Call the wedding off,” Ashley was saying. “Just cancel it all. I’m not going through with it. I’m calling Lewis right now and we’re eloping. Today. I swear to God.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Lydia Catrell had obviously not seen my sister in a fit before and so did not know to keep her mouth shut. “You can’t elope. The invitations are already out. It would be a social disaster.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Ashley snapped, and I sat up in bed. Lewis disapproved of cursing and it had been a good long while since I’d heard any four-letter word snap from my sister’s lips. For a moment, she sounded like the Ashley I remembered.

“Ashley,” said my mother quickly, “please.”

“I can’t take it anymore.” Ashley’s voice was tight and wavering now. “I’m so sick of everyone bothering me with their stupid details and I just want to be left alone. Can’t anyone understand that? This is my own wedding and I hate everyone and everything involved in it. I can’t stand this anymore.” She burst into tears, still babbling on, but now I couldn’t make out anything she was saying.

“Honey,” my mother said, “Ashley, honey.”

“Just leave me alone.” A chair scraped across the floor and it was suddenly dead quiet, like no one was even there anymore. A few seconds later the front door slammed and I walked to my window to see Ashley standing on the front walk in her nightgown with her arms crossed against her chest, staring at the Llewellyns’ house across the street. She looked small and alone and I thought about knocking on the glass to get her attention. I thought better of it, though, and instead went to brush my teeth and listen to my mother and Lydia Catrell cluck their tongues softly, voices low, as they stirred their coffee.

I waited until this latest storm of details had died down before I approached the kitchen and grabbed a Pop-Tart on my way out the door to work. Sunday one to six is the most boring of all the shifts at Little Feet, the children’s shoe store where I worked at the Lakeview Mall. It’s probably the worst job in the world, because you spend all day taking shoes off grubby little kids, not to mention touching their feet; but it’s money and when you have no working experience it’s not like you can be choosy. I got my job at Little Feet when I turned fifteen back in November, and since then I’ve been promoted to assistant salesperson, which is just a fancy title they give you so you feel like you’re moving up even when you aren’t. The first week I worked there I had to pass a series of lessons on selling children’s shoes. They sat me in the back by the bathroom with a boxful of audiotapes and a workbook with all the answers already scribbled in by someone else until I worked my way through the whole series: “What’s in a Size?,” “The Little Feet Method,” “Lacing and Soles,” “Hello, Baby Shoes!,” and finally “Socks and Accessories—A Little Something Extra.” My manager was a man named Burt Isker who was older than my grandfather and wore old moldy suits and kept a calendar of Bible quotes next to the time clock. He was rickety and had bad breath and all the children were afraid of him, but he was nice enough to me. He spent most of the time rearranging everyone else’s hours so he never had to work and talking about his grandchildren. I felt sorry for him: he’d worked for the Little Feet chain his entire life and he’d ended up at the Lakeview Mall shuffling saddle shoes around and getting kicked in the crotch by squirmy kids.

The mall was only a few blocks from my house, so I took my time walking, eating my Pop-Tart as I went. When I got to the main entrance I stopped to put on my name tag and tuck my shirt in before going inside. I worked Sundays with Marlene, a short, chubby girl who was in community college and hated Burt Isker for no particular reason other than he was old and cranky sometimes and always nagged her for not selling enough socks. They kept track of these things, and every once in a while on a Saturday a Little Feet manager came down from the home office in Pennsylvania and set a quota for each of us on shoes, socks, and accessories. It’s hard to push socks on someone who doesn’t want them, and Marlene was always getting reprimanded for not being aggressive enough about it. They wanted you to hound the customer, and on big sale days Burt would stand behind me as I came out of the stockroom with my shoes and hiss, “Socks! Push those socks!” I would try but the customers would always say no because our socks were so expensive and they didn’t come in for socks anyway, just shoes. No matter what those higher-ups at Little Feet thought, socks just weren’t an impulse item.

Marlene was already there when I walked in, sitting behind the counter with a donut in her hand. The store was empty like it always was on Sunday, the mall deserted except for some senior citizens from the nearby retirement home doing their laps, from Belk’s to Dillard’s and back, with a pulse-check break at the Yogurt Paradise. The Muzak was playing and Marlene was reading the Enquirer and grumbling about Burt Isker when our first customers appeared. Because of her seniority it was always my turn when it was slow, so I got up and went over to see what they needed.

“Hi, what can I help you folks with today?” I said in my cheerful-salesperson voice. The mother looked up at me with a blank expression on her face; the father was over by the sneakers, flipping them over one at a time to check the prices. The little boy they’d dragged in with them was sitting next to his mother and gnawing on his thumb.