Burn for Burn

AFTER SCHOOL ON WEDNESDAY, I TAKE THE FERRY OUT to see Kim at the music store. When I called to ask if I could use their copy machine, Kim put me on hold and made sure the owner, Paul, wasn’t going to be around. When she came back on the line, she said they were pretty low on paper so I should bring what I think I’ll need. I stole a whole ream of it from the library. Five hundred sheets to humiliate Alex.

As amped as I am about doing this, it’s sort of annoying. I mean, basically my whole night is going to be spent doing this crap. I wouldn’t care, but Mary hasn’t done much of anything so far. I don’t blame her for not having any ideas yet—she doesn’t know Alex. But she’s going to need to pick up the slack and earn her place. Lillia’s been all right, I guess. Although her ideas have been pretty weak. The Retin-A thing was fine, but if it were me, I’d have put Nair in Alex’s shampoo or something. Go big or go home.

Whatever. We’re just getting started. Hopefully by the time it’s my turn and we’ve got Rennie in our cross hairs, we’ll be a well-oiled revenge machine.

Kim perks up when I walk through the door. Even though there’s a customer waiting in line to be rung up, she pulls me behind the counter and gives me a big hug. The guy’s a punk with a full-on Mohawk, so I guess Kim thinks he doesn’t give a crap about customer service.

“Kat!” she says. “I’ve missed you, bitch!”

“Missed you too,” I say. Actually, I guess I haven’t. I’ve been too caught up in this revenge thing.

The summer before my junior year, I spent hours and hours perusing the racks at Paul’s Boutique, checking out bands I’d never heard of at the listening stations. There was one where the headphones had an extra long cord, and I could sit on the floor. I wouldn’t listen to a song here or there but whole albums. Five, six, seven.

Kim kicked me out a few times. She’d be ready to lock up for the night, and I’d be on the floor with my eyes closed, the volume turned up as loud as it could go, with no clue what time it was. It wasn’t that I didn’t have other things to do. I was always welcome to hang out with Pat and his friends. But I could only handle dudes-who-love-dirt-bikes talk for so long before I wanted to lock the garage doors, rev all the engines, and die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

So Kim was, rightfully, annoyed with me back then, because I really was a terrible customer. I’d mostly just hang around all day without buying anything. If I were her, I would have barred me from the store along with the shoplifters.

I’m not sure what made her eventually take pity on me, exactly, but it happened like this—I went up to the register and tried to buy a ticket to see this band called Monsoon in the garage space, even though the show was for people twenty one and older.

Kim called me out right away. She leaned over the counter and looked me up and down. “What are you, like, thirteen?”

“I’m sixteen,” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

She laughed in my face and held up the ticket. “I don’t think I heard you right. How old are you again?”

It took me a second to figure it out. I cleared my throat and said, “Twenty-one.”

She arched one of her thick-as-hell eyebrows. “Where’s your ID?” I bit my lip. I didn’t have an answer. Luckily, Kim gave me one. “You left it in the car, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Yup.”

She gave me the ticket. I tried to hand her ten bucks, but she wouldn’t take it. “I’ve got an extra comp ticket.”

“Wow,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Nobody else working here wants to see them, so I’ll be working the show alone. Monsoon sucks, if you didn’t already know. And you’re going to help me take down the set when it’s over.”

She was right, of course. Monsoon sucked big-time. But it was still one of the best nights of my life.

Kim peels herself off me so she can look me in the eyes. “Hey. Sorry about having to be so quick on the phone last week. It was a crazy show. The last band showed up late and so drunk they could barely get through their set, and Paul’s been a complete prick lately. You caught me at the worst time possible. It’s been—”

“It’s totally fine,” I say, cutting her off. Kim’s day doesn’t sound half as terrible as mine was, and anyway, I’ve got to get this done before the last ferry back to Jar Island. “Can I just chill in the office?” That’s where the copier is, and the store computer. They’ve got programs loaded on it to make flyers for shows. I helped Kim make them a couple of times. I’m going to lay this thing out real nice. But not so nice that it gets back to me. I’m thinking a scan of Alex’s handwriting with some cheesy clip art of two unicorns touching horns or something.

“Yeah, sure.” Kim rings up the Mohawk guy, and then he leaves. “What’s this school project about?”

“Umm, it’s more like an art thing.”

“Oh. Cool. And how’s your boy Alex? You guys riding off on a golf cart into the sunset?”

I feel a pang at the sound of his name but quickly try to cover it up. “Eww!” I say. When Alex was on his fishing trip, I came to the store almost every day. And I know I talked about him a lot. God, it’s crazy how much can change in a few weeks. I start walking backward, away from Kim, because I really don’t have time to chat.

“But he was so nice, Kat. You need a nice boy. And he liked you, I could tell. I think you’d be good couple.”

I roll my eyes. “I just can’t wait to finish this year out and get to Oberlin. I’m ready to, like, start my life, you know? If I had to live around here for another year, I swear I’d kill myself.”

Kim’s mouth gets thin. “Yeah. I hear you.”

I can tell she’s mad, but I wasn’t talking about her. Of course I wasn’t. Kim is, like, the coolest person I know. “Kim, I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t know if you ever caught on, but Paul and I are screwing. Well, we were screwing, until his wife found out. So now he’s being a huge prick and bitching about how the register’s off by a dollar or that there’s never any toilet paper in the store bathroom. Dude is trying to fire me and kick me out of the apartment over the store. I know it.”

“Damn,” I say. “That sucks.” It really does. I met Paul once. He’s kind of old. And gross.

“Yup,” she says, and the P makes a pop sound. “You know where the copier is. Just try not to make a huge mess.”

I feel like an ass. But I am in a rush. And when Kim gets in a pissy mood, it’s best to just leave her alone.

As the computer warms up, I take out Alex’s notebook and start flipping through it, because maybe there’s another poem even more lame than “The Longest Hallway.” Though I doubt it. That was so wack.

Near the front of the book, I see something called “Red Ribbon.” God, he is such a weirdo.

Winter stars fall so I keep wishing.

I love the way you look in sweaters.

Can we Eskimo kiss all night long?

’Cause your red ribbon has me tied up in knots.

Red ribbon? What the hell is that? Some kind of menstruation metaphor?

Oh, yeah. This is so it.