Benny had already made his way over to the pet store by the time Alyssa had changed. Even before she rounded the corner, she heard him lambasting the store owner.
"Truly unprofessional behavior... vile to consider taking advantage of a young teenager who doesn't know the law... extortion, plain and simple..."
The store owner appeared to be visibly wilting under the force of Benny's legalese. Charlotte looked on with a besotted expression, occasionally patting Benny's arm as he made what must have been a particularly salient point. It all sounded like gibberish to Alyssa, but to the store owner, it must have meant something, because he was turning paler and paler under the continued onslaught of legal terminology.
"Huh," said Dakota, who had followed them. He was fiddling with his phone, but as Alyssa looked at him, he shoved the phone in his pocket and grabbed Jordan's hand. "Must be nice, being a lawyer."
Alyssa looked down at their clasped hands with dawning understanding. Jordan was blushing slightly.
To Alyssa's right, somebody cleared their throat.
It was the cashier from the pet store, the one who had almost been decapitated when the shelving had collapsed on top of her head. She looked much better than she had a few hours ago—at least, there were far fewer wood splinters sticking out of her hair now, and where her hand had been bleeding before, there was now a small band-aid. She was trundling back to the shop, a crate under her arm and a net over her shoulder, but she paused when she saw Alyssa. A look of concern swept over her face.
"Oh my goodness, you're still here!" She put down her net, frowning. "I overheard some of the things the owner said to you earlier. He is such a jerk, and you didn't deserve any of that! Are you okay?"
Alyssa nodded.
The girl from the pet store looked relieved, although a trace of concern still flickered in her eyes.
"Listen..." She raked a hand through her hair. "I am so sorry about this, I know it's not right to ask you for help, this whole thing wasn't your fault, and I totally understand if you don't want to... but it really is important that we catch as many animals as possible tonight. So that they don't starve, I mean. Most of them have never been outside the pet shop, so they don't know how to find food on their own. It was a bit hard to catch anything before this, what with the crowds, but now that the mall's clearing out a bit, we might actually have a chance."
Alyssa met the girl's eyes—and swallowed. She'd been too distracted earlier to fully appreciate how pretty the cashier was, but she couldn't miss it now. Her eyes were a smiling shade of brown. A cluster of black curls framed her face, and a dimple lit the corner of her cheek when she smiled.
Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Alyssa, swept the still-damp hair from her eyes. "Sure," she said.
"We'll help too!" Dakota offered. "I kept geckos as a kid, so I've had a bit of experience chasing them around."
"Awesome," said the cashier, her face collapsing with relief. "The security guards tried to help out for a bit, but they were pretty useless, and I've been going crazy here, trying to catch the geckos all on my own. My name's Esha by the way."
And so it was that Alyssa, now with dry clothes and considerably fewer concerns about getting arrested and losing the money she'd been saving for college, found herself stalking geckos for the second time that evening.
It was amazing how much better a seemingly impossible task became when you had company. For a moment, Alyssa was almost able to forget her troubles with Sandra as she sprinted about, shooing geckos toward Esha's net.
"I got into this job because I loved animals. I didn't expect to have to deal with that asshole of an owner though." With the air of one who has done this particular move a hundred times, Esha plucked the first gecko from the net and transferred it into a tank. "I was meaning to quit before this whole wrecked store debacle, but this really sealed the deal for me. He's trying to blame me for the gecko cages being stacked like that, when he was the one who put them there!"
"We should get Benny to threaten him for that, too," Jordan remarked, as he took a swing at a green-and-brown gecko with his net and missed. "Aw, nuts—"
"You gotta bring your net real close in," said Dakota. "Suuuper, super slow, like this..."
"Ha! I GOT ONE!" Jordan's shout was so loud, it startled a few straggling customers who were just slinking out of Macy's. They shot him a dirty look and hurried away. "Uh, sorry," he said in a quieter voice.
"You did great!" Enthusiastically, Dakota high-fived Jordan, then turned to Alyssa.
"Hey so... uh, I know this is none of my business, but do you like Sandra?" he asked.
Alyssa was grateful for the dim lighting and her darker skin, which hid her embarrassment. "I don't think she likes me back," she said. It was odd, how much calmer she felt after having a good cry by the fountain. She still felt hollowed out, a bit dead on the inside, but it was nice to have someone to talk to—even if that someone had been her arch nemesis just one hour prior.
"That's rough, mate."
"We used to be best friends," said Alyssa, "but we've been sort of... drifting apart for awhile. We stopped talking much this summer—her sister vanished, and she was going through some personal stuff—and she hasn't really been down to hang out much since. I keep inviting her to come over, but she's always busy, and eventually I stopped asking. I waited for her to invite me to hang out... but she never did.
"But I'm guessing you already know this." It was hard to hide the bitterness from her voice. "Seeing as how you hang out with her so often, and all."
"I'm her math tutor," said Dakota.
"Huh?"
A pained expression crossed his face. "I'm probably not supposed to talk about this. But she flunked a math class last year, and I've been tutoring her ever since. We hang out because of that, but I don't think she's really happy to be hanging out with me. I don't think she's actually really close to anyone anymore, actually. I just agreed to pretend to go out with her as a favor." He paused. "I see her eating lunch with the popular people sometimes, too," he added. "But I'm not sure she's having much fun."
"What d'you mean?" said Alyssa, ignoring Jordan's muttered, "Popular people are gross."
Dakota looked down. "She just seems kinda unhappy. Like she's there and putting on a front, but she's not really enjoying herself, you know? When she asked me if I'd mind it if she asked me out in front of the class, she seemed so over everything. She told me she isn't interested in guys or girls, she just wants people to leave her alone."
It was so unlike the old Sandra that Alyssa could barely fathom it, but she could not deny that she had noticed the same thing. Her friend had been... different for the last six months, and Alyssa had been too busy with school, work, and college applications to notice.
"I don't mean to intrude," said Esha, heaving another gecko into the tank. "But it sounds like this Sandra person might be going through a rough time and could use a friend right now."
"But if she needs a friend, why does she keep pushing me away?" said Alyssa.
"Sometimes it's easier to push people away than to talk about your problems," said Esha wisely. "It's kind of stupid, but people don't always make sense."
"I don't just want to barge back in on her life if she doesn't want to hang out with me." Alyssa frowned down at the gecko tank. Jordan had just made another catch, and the tank was getting progressively fuller. She sighed. "What if she really is just tired of being my friend?"
"I don't think that's true," said Dakota.
"If you like her romantically, that could make things extra complicated, though. It sounds like she maybe needs a friend right now, not a romantic relationship." Esha snatched a bunny off the ground and held it to her face with a squeal of delight. "Ohmigosh, aren't you just the cutest!"
Alyssa gave the bunny a few pats on the head. The poor thing looked absolutely terrified, which probably wasn't surprising, given that it had just spent all day trying to navigate a mall where uncautious shoppers were constantly threatening to step on it.
"The question," said Esha, relinquishing the bunny to its carrier before it could pee all over her in fright, "is whether you would want to just be friends with her if that's all she wanted, or if that would be too painful."
She grinned sympathetically at Alyssa. The smile lit her eyes and caused the dimple to appear in her cheek again. Alyssa felt her heart skip a beat.
"Um, I think Sandra and I could just be friends," she said, still slightly breathless in the aftermath of Esha's smile. "Honestly, I'd be happy with things just going back to how they were before. I like her, but our friendship's more important."
"Awesome," said Dakota, and—to Alyssa's horror—he held out his cell phone. "I have Sandra on the phone right now, so you can tell her that yourself!"
~~~~~~
CMF_Wright
CMF writes a combination of humorous and dark fantasy peppered with high-stakes situations, smart female leads, and quirky characters. (Also angst. Lots of angst.) Alyssa and Sandra both play minor roles in her Rest is Riddles trilogy, an intricately-crafted epic adventure filled with magic, mystery, and egotistical sorcerers. If you're looking for bantery romance, lighthearted chaos, and animal catastrophes, you might also enjoy CMF's ONC project, Eight Legs Too Many!