Page 39 of Kiss the Girl
“You’re off the hook,” the old man said. Gary. That was the name stitched on his shirt. “Go find the girl.”
I listened for a second. “You’re right. The hammering stopped. It usually means trouble when she gets quiet.”
“I meant Gracie.”
“Right.” I went to look for her at the graveyard display but instead I found Paige and Evie moving an Evie-sized skeleton around. “Uh, guys? What are you doing?”
“Grace needed help,” Paige said. “So I told her I’d take over the display.”
I stepped back to look at it. She’d rearranged some of what Grace had set up, but it looked good. Not a surprise. Paige had always had a good eye. “Do you know where she is?”
Paige shook her head. “Store’s not that big. I think your chances of finding her are good.”
I shook my head and went looking for her. She was in the yard aisle, talking to an older man about leaf blowers. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but her face was a polite mask, and I wondered if this guy had any idea how close he was to getting punched.
She nodded a few times, tried to talk twice, but he cut her off both times, until finally she slid her hands into her back pockets and pressed her lips tight. I interpreted it to mean he was wrong, but she was done arguing. He walked past me toward the exit.
“What was that all about?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Happens at least once a day. He thinks this leaf blower is overpriced. Says he can get a cheaper one on Amazon. I told him to go ahead. He’ll get what he pays for, and when it breaks in a month, he’ll be back to buy this one anyway. A lot of dudes don’t like to listen to me.”
“That must be irritating.”
“It’s been happening my whole life. Sometimes my dad sets them straight when he’s in here, but he can’t correct all the dummies.”
“Excuse me, miss,” a middle-aged woman called from the other end of the aisle.
Grace shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry. Saturdays are crazy around here.”
“Don’t apologize. We crashed without an invitation. I’m going to check on Paige and Evie.”
She walked off toward the customer, muttering again about hiring holiday help.
Paige immediately began ordering me around. For the next half hour, I rearranged all kinds of Halloween stuff. Grace would zoom by occasionally as she moved from one customer to the next, and at one point Paige called, “Can I rearrange your window display?”
Gracie cast a quick glance at Paige’s Halloween display and said, “Go for it,” before zipping off again.
We spent another hour working in the front window while Evie entertained passersby on the sidewalk by tapping on the window and waving at them. Paige would send me down the aisles in search of random stuff. “Get me a pitchfork,” or “Now go find a gas can.” Grace and I would cross paths a few times, and every now and then she’d glance at me in total confusion—especially when Paige sent me after the black stuff that went under the bark in landscaping beds—but she didn’t say anything.
It was about an hour after lunch before the steady stream of customers slowed to a trickle.
“This looks awesome,” Grace called, and we climbed out of the window where Paige had been putting her finishing touches. We joined Grace at the Halloween display, which Paige had managed to turn from a collection of corny tombstones into the corner of an eerie cemetery with the help of peat moss, a tipped over camping lantern, and a few creatively placed skeletons.
“Glad you like it. You want to make sure you’re okay with the way I changed your front window display?”
“Let me go check it out.”
Grace hurried out to the sidewalk, and we stood inside behind the display to watch her reaction through the window. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped before she broke into a huge grin.
“This isawesome,” she yelled through the glass.
I nudged Paige with my elbow. “She doesn’t smile like that very often. Good job.”
“Interesting you know that,” she said.
I ignored her as we waited for Grace to join us.
“Do you want a job?” she asked Paige. “I need to hire some seasonal workers, and I could desperately use you on the weekends.”
