Taking the Wave (Working Title)

Chapter Three

Taking the Wave
Chapter Three

It had been Anna’s decision to go to Jo Jo’s for ice Cream, and yet she had been checking her watch repeatedly for the last half hour. The ice cream parlor was located on the boardwalk, and we were sitting out on the patio facing the pedestrian traffic.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked finally, as I watched a mother push a toddler in a stroller with an infant passed out in a sling against her chest. I had ignored Anna’s fidgeting up until now, but clearly something was up.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah right,” I said, looking over at her now. She had a bit of chocolate ice cream at the corner of her mouth. “Why are you so anxious?”

She perked up suddenly, her gaze fixed on something behind me. I turned to look down the boardwalk, but saw no one of interest. I was just turning back to my ice cream cone when I saw Anna’s boss walk into the store next door.

The store, Sparks, was a clothing shop geared towards the hip SoCal crowd, and Anna had started working weekends there around spring break. She never really talked about her experiences there; she always said she’d prefer not to talk about work when she wasn’t at work.

“I’m not anxious,” she replied, getting up. “Just impatient. Lauren was supposed to be at work fifteen minutes ago.”

She threw away the rest of her ice cream, and waited for me to follow suit. I took a bite and threw away the cone.

“What’s going on?”

“I want you to get a job at Sparks,” she said, her face completely serious.

I just looked at her for a moment. “What?”

“I already talked to Lauren about it, and she said she would totally fire you.” She waited a second, then said, “So what do you think?”

I let out a long breath and looked at the display window, currently featuring a blue background draped with a fish net, and a pair of mannequins, one dressed in a bikini and one in a pair of trunks.

A job? Working at the World’s Odds and Ends shop was the only experience I had so far. As school had been inching toward summer, never once had it crossed my mind to get a job. Money had never been an issue, since both of my parents were more than happy to give me whatever I asked for as long as they each thought that they were the one providing for me.

“Come on,” Anna said. “It’s not that bad. It’ll help pass the summer, and you’ll get some of your own money.”

I still didn’t respond, my eyes fixed on the sign hanging above the door that displayed the word Sparks in cursive lettering, surrounded by hibiscus flowers.

“Besides,” she continued. “We have a deal.”

There it was. I had a feeling it was coming, and now it hung between us, almost like a barrier.

“Alright,” I said finally. “I’ll do it. Maybe it’ll be good for me.”

Anna grinned and gave me a hug. “Great!”

She dragged me into the store then, and had me meet with Lauren. With Anna working there, I had met Lauren before. Whenever she was there, she was either in her office on the phone or checking people out at the register. As far as I knew, however, she was a read hard ass about everyone else getting the workload completed.

I sat in the office for about twenty minutes while she went over my duties (which consisted of every aspect of the store, depending on the day), my hours (on average about twenty per week), and my pay (seven fifty an hour to start). I simply nodded to all of this, not quite sure if I really wanted to work as much as she was demanding, or if I was being cheated by my designated wage.

“Just fill out these papers, and on your first day, bring in your driver’s license and your social security card,” she told me now, handing me a manila envelope. “Oh, and I only have one rule about dress code—you have to wear something we sell.”

Anna was waiting by the door when I came out, and she immediately brightened when she saw me. “So how did it go?”

I sighed and looked around. “Apparently I need to buy some new clothes.”

“Excellent,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the girl’s side of the store.

Anna loved shopping. She didn’t even have to go shopping for herself—as long as she was spending money on something (or in this case, helping someone else spend their money), she was happy. In this sense, she and my mother were freakishly similar.

I used to love shopping too, but at some point I had just stopped caring about all of the latest fashions and decided that the clothes I had were perfectly fine. Why should I buy more things I’d probably never wear anyway?

“So,” Anna said, poking through a rack full of different colored tank tops, “do you own anything from here?”

I shrugged. “I think I bought a pair of shorts from here last year.”

“Well, then you are definitely going to need some of these,” she said, almost to herself, as she pulled some tank tops off the rack. “And how about a bathing suit? You know you can wear a bikini top as long as….”

And off she went, pulling shirts, shorts and bikinis off racks as she patrolled the aisles, not even asking for my opinion. I followed, at a slower pace, and every now and then picked something up to examine it more closely. The only thing I ended up liking was a vintage-looking T-shirt with a faded image of a geisha down the side.

Anna was making a beeline for the shoes in the back when a girl wearing a Sparks lanyard around her heck walked over to her. When I approached, Anna was in the process of telling her about me.

“Cool,” the girl said, not looking too thrilled. Her lanyard had a clip on the end of it, that might have attached to a name tag.

“Rue, this is Diana. Diana, Rue.”

Diana lifted a hand in greeting, but said nothing.

“Diana’s the most enthusiastic salesgirl I know,” Anna said, patting Diana’s arm.

Diana rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Just wait until you get your first spoiled brat in here, dragging her very bitchy mother in after her.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked over at Anna for confirmation. She only smiled.

* * *

I got my first insolent preteen on my very first day. She wasn’t with a bitchy parent, which I thought would be to my advantage since it appeared her grandmother accompanied her.

It was Saturday morning and I had walked in with my two forms of ID, expecting to spend a few hours learning the register along with Retail 101. However, Lauren was nowhere to be found, and the supervisor on shift gestured me over to her as soon as she saw me.

“I know this is your first day and all,” she told me calmly, “but Maggie called out, and now I’m short a girl on a Saturday. So you’re no longer extra.” I think she could sense my fear, because she added, “Anna’s here, and the guys are like lightning n the register, so just focus on the fitting rooms and try to keep things clean, okay? If you have any questions, we’re all here to help.”

I let out a long breath and nodded. “Here are my two forms of ID.”

She grinned at me, took them and walked back towards the office. I groaned as I watched her go, then turned my attention to the floor, and locating Anna.

I had been so used to keeping my interaction with other people to a minimum that working at Sparks was a total culture shock. I had to say hello to everyone I came near—even if their back was to me. My primary job was to clean up after everyone, and I just could not believe how inconsiderate and messy people were. They just didn’t care. On busy days it was a mad rush to try and keep up with the floor and fitting rooms while trying to help customers find what they wanted.

I learned all of this on my first day, but the biggest lesson was taught to me by that evil woman and her granddaughter.

“My granddaughter needs this in an extra small.”

I had paused in my quest to pick up the mounds of clothes on the floor to greet what looked to be a sweet old lady with puffy white hair and large-rimmed glasses, and this was her response. She had flung a shirt at me, continuing to look through the rack.

I just stood there for a moment, watching her. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for (maybe a “please?”), but she didn’t even look at me.

The woman pulled another shirt off the rack—a blue lacy one this time—and lifted it up. “What about this one sweetie?”

A girl two racks over glanced at it and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I really like that other one.”

“We don’t have an extra small,” I said finally.

The old woman looked at me then, her eyes narrowed. “But this one is an extra small,” she said accusingly, wagging the blue shift in my face, as if I were lying to her. “You didn’t even look.”

“We don’t have backstock for those items,” I explained. “Only for shoes and accessories. Whatever is out is out.”

“I want this shirt in an extra small,” she repeated slowly, as if I hadn’t understood her the first time.

I opened my mouth, but then closed it. What more was there to say? It wasn’t as if there were other stores to call—Sparks was not a chain.

“Hey Rue, what’s going on?”

I hoped the relief didn’t show too readily on my face, although my smile was now genuine as I turned to Anna. “I was trying to explain that if there wasn’t an extra small on the rack, that we no longer have one,” I said, showing her the pink sparkly T-shirt.

“Ma’am, that’s true,” Anna told the old woman, who was now sighing loudly. “Would you like me to try and find something like it?”

“If it’s not this shirt, then I don’t want it,” the woman snapped.

Anna wished her a pleasant day through her fake smile, and led me away.

“Now try to avoid her until she leaves,” she whispered.

“I didn’t know people actually acted like that in real life,” I said incredulously.

Anna stooped down to pick up a hanger and a pair of capris. “You learn to shrug it off. Some people come into a store with the attitude that they’re not going to find what they want, and they’re not going to leave until they rip someone’s ass open. It’s a real bitch, huh?”

“That’s awful. Why am I working here again?”

Anna didn’t reply, instead she moved around to intercept the cranky old grandmother who apparently had more to say. I watched for a moment as Anna managed to remain ever-so-polite while the old hag became outright rude. Apparently her granddaughter had found another shirt she liked, but once again, could not find her size.

Whenever I visited Anna at work, the store was practically empty, and she was just standing around socializing with her co-workers. With the store so busy, it was like she had flipped a switch, and activated a side of her that I had never seen before. She was so… professional. Having known her practically my entire life, it was strange to realize that even now I didn’t know everything about her. There was this professional aspect that I was just seeing for the first time—what else did I have yet to learn?