“Can I help you?”
I blinked. The salesgirl stood on the other side of the counter now, obviously waiting for me to say something.
“Oh. Yeah. Pictures for Mary Lund?”
She promptly went hunting through the bin.
“Nope, nothing for Mary Lund.”
Usually I asked clerks to take a second look whenever the first answer was no. Most of them were young and bumbling and found the item on the second or even third try. This girl was young but looked like she’d never bumbled over anything in her life. She’d already straightened back up to face me, supremely confident, equally ready to hand me my hat or let me try again. I was the one fumbling now under her attention.
“Um, how about Elsa Reever?”
“You have some interesting aliases.” She grinned this time before diving into the Rs.
“A rose by any other name . . .”
“Would still have pictures at CVS,” she finished, pulling an envelope out of the bin and waving it with a flourish.
“Apparently.”
She rang up the pictures on the cash register. “So, Elsa, did you need anything else today?”
“Um—” I glanced back in the direction of the pharmacy, looking for any sign of Mary. Did she mention anything else? I couldn’t remember, and given the course of the evening, it was probably safer not to spend extra money.
“No, that’s all.”
I handed her my card and watched her complete the transaction. There was something about her: a brightness, a presence. Usually teenagers gave distracted or grudging service in these types of jobs, but this girl was wholly and happily in the moment. A distinct flash of hatred ran through me as I assessed her. Tall and lean, she had a conscious grace about her limbs. Her skin was honey-tanned, her too-wide mouth gleamed with some kind of gloss, and her eyes sparkled with the kind of sly intelligence that said her Romeo and Juliet retort barely qualified as an easy volley on her part. This was a girl who hadn’t made any mistakes yet, one who recognized the world as only a giant cupcake for her careless sampling.
She turned to hand me the pictures and her slyness evaporated. “What’s wrong?”
“Excuse me?” Her sudden concern startled me out of my fixation.
“You. You looked angry.”
What kind of town was this where total strangers called you out on your moods?
“No, I mean, well . . .” I stumbled around my words like an idiot. “I’m not . . .”
“You’re totally angry.” She enjoyed my stuttering, stretching her too-wide mouth wider. “I can see it here and here.” She pointed to her eyebrows and her jaw, imitating me with crossed arms until I dropped mine to my sides.
I shrugged. “Not about the pictures.” Why not admit it?
“Is it one of the aliases?”
“How do you know it’s not you?”
“Duh. We don’t even know each other. Oh, I’m Hattie, by the way.” She reached out a hand and I stared at it a second before shaking it.
“Peter.”
“Hi, Peter. You know what I do with an alias that starts sucking?”
“What?”
“I trade it in for a better one.”
“Yeah, you can do that when you’re sixteen.”
She giggled. “What are you, eighty?”
“Eighty-two.”
“Well, maybe you just need some stool softeners, then. They’re in aisle six.”
I burst out laughing and she nodded like she’d finished what she set out to do, and then Mary appeared with her bagful of prescriptions.
“Ready?” Mary asked.
“Yeah.”
I nodded to Hattie the cashier, who waved at both of us. “Good night. Thanks for stopping in.”
On the way back to the farm, I reached across the seat and laid my hand lightly on top of Mary’s, ready to try again. When we turned onto the gravel road that led to the farm, a light flashed across the sky.
“Look!” I switched off the headlights and hit the brakes.
We watched the shooting star race through constellations until it burned up and was gone. For a moment neither of us spoke. Then Mary turned her palm over so we were holding hands.
“Did you make a wish?” she asked.
“I thought that was for first stars.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it could be for first shooting stars, too.”
“Okay.” I linked our fingers together, happy to play along. “Star light, star bright . . .”
“No, you have to keep it a secret or it won’t come true.”
“Everyone knows that. I was just doing the prologue.”
She smiled and let me finish. Even though we didn’t talk for the rest of the drive, the tension had eased and it started to feel like the night I wanted us to have. I made a wish—silently—as we headed back toward the farm.
After five minutes of winding, gravel hills I pulled into the box of trees sheltering Elsa’s house and barns from the prairie winds. I turned the car off and let my gaze wander, in no hurry to go inside. Mary’s father had done a great job maintaining the place, but three years after his death signs of neglect were starting to show. Paint peeled off the corners of the main barn. Weeds overran the vegetable garden where green beans and peas used to grow in military formation. In the daylight you could see a few gnarled shingles scattered over the building roofs, caused by storm damage that no one who lived here anymore was capable of repairing. Elsa leased the fields to a neighbor, but the land, buildings, and chickens inside this windbreak of trees were still her domain. It made no sense why she wanted to stay here. My mother had moved to a condo in Arizona within a few months of my graduation. Why did Elsa want to grow old in a place that reminded her, with each broken fence and chipped windowsill, of her every disability? It was the worst retirement home I’d ever seen.