“Only three.” I wish they weren’t so expensive. I order them online for a discount, but they still eat up entire paychecks. My parents pay for my contacts, but I like variety. I’d prefer more variety. I peek at my phone, and I’m thrilled to find the text is from Max: saw two fallen branches in the shape of a heart. thought of you.
I grin like an idiot.
“Who was it?” Lindsey asks.
“Max!” But then I catch the look on her face. I shrug and turn off my phone. “It’s nothing. He saw . . . something.”
She flips her novel back open. “Oh.”
And then I have it: the perfect solution to her problem. Charlie is totally interested in her, Lindsey just needs someone there to guide her through those first difficult steps. She needs me there. A double date! I’M A GENIUS! I’m . . . dating Max. Who would never agree to such a thing. I glance at my best friend, who is staring through her mystery novel again. Trying to solve her own mystery. I cradle my phone in my hands and keep my mouth shut.
And I feel so disloyal to her.
I have an early shift on Saturday. I closed last night. It feels like I never leave, like I should just get it over with and put my old Disney Princess sleeping bag underneath the seventh-floor concessions counter. When I arrive at the theater, I’m surprised to find St. Clair behind the box office. Anna isn’t scheduled to work today. I’m further surprised when I notice what he’s wearing.
“What’s with the uniform?” I ask.
He shrugs. It’s a slow, full-bodied shrug that makes him seem . . . more European. “One of the managers said I spent so much time here, I ought to be working. So I am.”
“Wait. You got a job here?”
“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.” He widens his eyes, joking.
“You. Working?” St. Clair never discusses it, but everyone knows his family is rolling in it. He doesn’t need to work. Nor does he strike me as someone who’d want to.
“You don’t think I can handle ripping tickets?”
“My exhausted feet say it’s a little more than that.”
St. Clair grins, and my heart skips a beat. He really IS attractive. What’s my problem? I must be more tired than I thought. And I’m not interested in Anna’s boyfriend—he’s too short, too cocky—but the fact that I’m noticing him bothers me. I dive into work on another floor to distract myself from increasingly uncomfortable thoughts. But St. Clair approaches me a few hours later, once we’ve calmed down from a rush. “My feet feel dandy,” he says. “In fact, I’m considering forming a dance troupe. Would you be interested?”
“Oh, bite me.” I’m still irritated. The six people who complained to me about our parking garage didn’t help the situation. “Seriously, why did you get a job?”
“Because I thought it would build character.” He hops onto my concessions counter. “Because all of my teeth have fallen out, and I can’t afford dentures. Because—”
“Fine. Whatever. Be a dillhole.”
“I should be doing something productive, shouldn’t I?” St. Clair hops back down and grabs a broom from the supply closet. “All right, all right. I’m saving for our future.”
“Our future?” I give him a coy smile. “I’m flattered, really, but that’s unnecessary.”
He pokes my back with the tip of the broom.
“And is Anna aware that you’re saving for your future together ?”
“Of course.” St. Clair sweeps the fallen popcorn around my ankles while I take someone’s Diet Coke–and–soft-pretzel order. When I’m done, he continues. “Do you think I’d get a job and not discuss it with her first?”
“No. But still, I thought . . . you know . . .” He looks confused, and I’m forced to finish the thought out loud. “I thought you had money.”
St. Clair bursts out laughing as if I’ve said something foolish. “My father has money. And I’d like to keep him out of my future.”
“That sounds . . . ominous.”
The European shrug again. This time, to change the subject. “And it’d be nice to have a bit of spending cash so that I could take her out. We tend to dine mainly in our dormitory cafeterias.” He frowns. “Come to think of it, we’ve always dined mainly in school cafeterias.”
“In Paris?”
“In Paris,” he confirms.
I sigh. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“Actually, I’m confident that I do.” St. Clair props the broom against the wall. “So why do you work? To support your unhealthy costuming habit? And what IS your hair about today?”
“I wanted to see what it’d look like in tiny buns. And then I added the feathers, because they looked like nests.” He’s right. That is why I work. Plus, my parents said when I turned sixteen I had to get a part-time job to learn about responsibility. So I did.
St. Clair examines my hair closer. “Spectacular.”
I back away. “Exactly how far into the future are you planning ?”
“Far.”
The word hangs between us, loaded with strength and meaning. Max and I talk about running away to Los Angeles and starting a new life together—me designing elaborate costumes by day, him destroying rock clubs by night—but I get the sense that St. Clair’s conversations with Anna are more serious than the ones I have with Max. The thought makes me uneasy. I stare at St. Clair. He’s not that much older than me.
How can he be so confident?
“When it’s right, it’s simple,” he says to my unasked question. “Unlike your hair.”
Chapter ten
The moon is fat, but half of her is missing. A ruler-straight line divides her dark side from her light. She hangs low over the bustling Castro, noticeably earlier than the night before. Autumn is coming. For as long as I can remember, I’ve talked to the moon. Asked her for guidance. There’s something deeply spiritual about her pale glow, her cratered surface, her waxing and waning. She wears a new dress every evening, yet she’s always herself.
And she’s always there.
Since my shift was early, I rode the bus and train home. I’m not sure why I’m so relieved to be back in my neighborhood. It’s not like the work itself was hard. But the familiarity of Castro Street comforts me—the glitter in the sidewalks, the chocolate-chip warmth radiating from Hot Cookie, the groups of chattering men, the early Halloween display in the window of Cliff ’s Variety.