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twilitty · 2 years

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By The Moon

by @twilitty

word count: 2.9k

Chapter 9: Evergreen Books

Angela and I work together for my first shift, something that I am eternally grateful for. Her parents give me a call Sunday morning, which seems like an odd time to call a new employee, but I suppose my lack of interview or application alluded to the oddness of this process. I agreed to start work on Tuesday and was told to come in a couple minutes early so that they could show me around.

I spent all of Tuesday at school preoccupied, my mind struggling to make sense of my new reality. Working at a bookstore. It was like a dream come true, only better. I had never dared to dream of working in literature, it had felt unattainable. Not worth the energy to think about, I had to think realistically. Get a job that made sense.

This makes sense. Evergreen Books is small and warm, it pays a fair wage, and Angela and I get an excuse to spend more time together.

I had gotten home from school earlier than usual, truly pushing my luck as I drove back at speeds Charlie would wince at. My truck doesn’t go fast, but it manages when the right amount of urgency is placed on the peddle.

I had then spent a more than fair amount of time deciding on an outfit for my first shift at the bookstore. Did I wear something professional, a pair of slacks? Was it casual enough to wear blue jeans? These are questions I wished I had asked Angela at school, where it seemed casual and friendly. Now, if I was to text her, she would see it as me being nervous. I wanted to come across as calm and collected, not an anxious ball of nerves.

“Mom?” I whisper into the phone as the call connects itself with a click. I hear soft music in the background, something jazzy with a fast beat.

“Bella!” She calls into the receiver, and I flinch at the volume. “It’s been so long! How’s Forks? Does it suck? Be honest, you can be honest with me. I know how much you hate the rain.”

I suck in a breath, bracing myself against her onslaught of questions. I wish I had more time to talk with her, but my clock tells me that I must leave within the hour. Nostalgia and homesickness burrow into my gut at the sound of her voice, the familiarity of her child-like curiosity aching in my heart. “Actually, mom, I got a job.”

I’m prepared when she squeals with excitement, the phone already held a distance away from my ear. She yells something to someone near her, I can’t entirely make it out, but I pick out my name. She must be telling Phil.

“Where do you work? Tell me it’s somewhere cute! Is it in Port Angeles? Oh, babe, promise me it’s not in that crappy diner Charlie always goes to. You’re not a waitress, are you?” She sounds frantic, excited, and perhaps just a little bit high on life. I’ve spoken to her a couple of times since I’ve moved, and each time she sounds more and more alive. If that’s even possible. Florida must be treating her well.

“No, I’m not a waitress,” I promise her, trying not to think of Diane as I reassure my mother. Surely being a waitress isn’t that bad, Diane was so nice to Charlie and me. She was pretty, I know my mother would have been envious of her makeup if not for her career choice. “I actually got a job at a bookstore in town.”

She starts talking over me as soon as the word book comes out of my mouth. I can’t entirely comprehend what she’s saying, but I understand her tone and speech pattern. Excited, beyond excited. She’s talking fast, her words merging and pitch raising impossibly higher. “Bella,” she exhales at last. I can picture the emphatic smile she must be wearing at this moment. “That is so amazing, you love reading.”

A smile creeps over my lips. “I do,” I agree. “But my issue is I don’t know what to wear? Is it supposed to be casual?”

“Oh, babe, I’ll help you.” An imaginary arm, thin and toned, wraps around my shoulders and I feel myself falling into my mother's embrace. The homesickness in my stomach grows. “Don’t even worry.”

We end up deciding on a pair of brown slacks and a green sweater. Per my insistence that I wanted to look respectable and professional, we added a white button-down underneath, the collar folded perfectly over the top of my sweater. I sent her a picture while still talking to her and heard her sigh in contentment at my outfit.

“Bella, you look beautiful.” I blush at her words and say a quick goodbye along with all of the other necessary sentiments.

Charlie watches me pace back and forth in the kitchen as I wait for the proper time to leave the house. “You look nice,” he notices. “This for the new job with the Webbers?”

“Yeah.” He makes a face at my short response, and I quickly amend it. “Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“You’ll do well. They’re a good family and that’s a good place for you.” His moustache scrunches to the side as he considers his words. “You like books and quiet things.”

I smile because it’s true. I do like books and quiet things.

It takes me a couple minutes to find parking outside of the bookstore, which is happily situated on the main street of Forks. It sits between a modest coffee shop and some ambiguous storefront that has tinted windows and only a single light shining down on the door. The sign hanging from an extended post above the windows reads Frank’s. It provides zero context to the space’s interior.

I end up parking three stores down from my new workplace, and the walk gives me ample time to calm my nerves. By the time I reach the door, pulling it open on smooth hinges, my breathing is at least semi-normal.

All of my anxiety is wasted, and all of my stress over work attire and professionalism is unnecessary. Angela is sitting perched on the front counter as I enter, a book in her lap. A bell dings lightly as I let the door close behind me, her eyes looking up quickly at me. “Oh! Bella!” She hops off the counter, coming up to embrace me quickly. “I’m so glad you’re here, mom got us stuff from next door, and I didn’t want it to get cold.”

I smile appreciatively, but my response is lost as I look beyond her. Rows of bookshelves are placed narrowly across the shop, the wood of varying shades and bending in some places from the weight of their contents. The lighting is soft and yellow, not the bright fluorescence of Forks high school.

“I love it,” I tell her earnestly. I can hear the opening chords to a slow song playing over hidden speakers, not loud enough to invade my thoughts or conversation. “It’s so perfect.”

“Thanks, I like it here, too. It’s like my home away from home.” She snorts and draws my attention back to her. “Except, it feels less like home when I get the early shift. Then it feels like work.” I laugh at this before following her around the counter. She extends a small brown bag to me along with a warm mug of something. “Herbal tea,” she explains. “It’s really good, we just have to return the mugs after our shift.”

The beginning of my shift is filled with explanations and training procedures, although the latter are few and far between. She shows me the handwritten list of phone numbers to call if anything goes wrong, I notice that all the names are followed by Webber. This is truly a family business.

The main point of my training was learning how to work the ancient cash register, which wouldn’t open unless you performed some occult ritual by pressing a series of keys in rapid succession and tapping the locking mechanism. “We really should get a new register,” my friend explains sheepishly. “We got one a couple years ago, but my dad couldn’t get the hang of it so we kept this one instead.”

“No, I like it. It’s antique.” I emphasize the word with a flourish of my hands.

She laughs, throwing me a grin. “People use the word antique when they want to say old.”

“Antique sounds better.”

The rest of the shift is uneventful. We get a few customers, all people whom Angela knows by name and greets as so. They wander around the store aimlessly before bringing their finds to the counter to get checked out. Angela runs through the first customer, having me watch her process the payment and provide change. Then I run through the second customer, which takes significantly longer than it would have if Angela was doing it. The customer is patient, as if my friend, and once they are out the door Angela turns to me with a crinkly eye smile.

“I can’t believe how good you are at this,” she says kindly. I think she’s being a little generous, but I refuse to humble myself at this moment. I bask in her praise, providing her with an appreciative smile.

“Thanks, I really like it here.” I motion towards the crammed stacks of bookshelves. It’s getting a little later in the afternoon, and the little foot traffic that was outside has dwindled even more. All I see is the occasional schoolbag-laden child or elderly person. I notice both demographics tend to walk in groups. I suppose even age doesn’t change you.

It’s time to close before I’m ready, the atmosphere of the store so warm and comforting that I don’t want to leave. My friend demonstrated the proper closing procedure, which involves locking the register, confirming the dehumidifier in the backroom is on low and then locking the front door. I notice a sliding set of bars on either side of the window and bring it up.

“Do we not need to use those?” Angela gives me a wide-eyed look, her lips pulled into her mouth. I giggle at this, “Angela?”

“I am so glad you’re here.” She shows me how to pull the bars over the window, and which key to use to lock them. “My dad would’ve killed me if I forgot to lock the windows.” We then take our mugs, now empty and cold, over to the coffee shop next to us.

Trendy pop music is playing through outdoor speakers as we open the front door, the cashier waving us forward and ahead of a short line. One customer grumbles something unhappily, which I dutifully ignore. “Hey, Angela,” the cashier says.

He’s tall, taller than even Angela who is nearly six feet. I recognize his face and identify him as one of the boys in the cafeteria at school. He doesn’t sit with us, but I’ve seen him in passing. His face is slimmer than Mike's, but they have similar blonde hair. Mike wears his in spikes, but this boy wears his flat and without gel.

“Hi,” my friend says in a light voice. Her friendly, outgoing demeanour has shifted to her usual introversion. It seems that I am one of only a few people who see her bubbly personality. She’s quiet most of the time, which I relate to.

They look at each other for a moment, a customer coughing and pulling their eyes away from each other. She hands him her ceramic mug, then motions for me to do the same. I step forward and hand it to him. “Bella,” I say as a way of introduction. Angela seems a little too distracted to do the introduction for me.

He gives me a kind smile. “Ben.” The customer coughs again and Ben rolls his eyes at us before turning back to the customer at the register. “What can I get for you?”

We exit the store, me offering Angela a ride home and her politely declining. “It’s okay, I borrowed my mom’s car for the shift today.” We walk in silence towards my truck, her seeming a million miles away and me unable to take my eyes away from the bookstore. There’s a cute wooden sign hanging above the door, my anxiety earlier not allowing me to read it clearly. Evergreen Books.

“Ben seems nice,” I say as a way of conversation when we approach my ancient vehicle. The sun has dropped in the sky and the truck's paint reflects the dim lighting of the streetlamps.

When Angela doesn’t immediately respond I turn to look at her. If not for the lighting, I wouldn’t have noticed the blush painted across her face. “Yeah,” she agrees after noticing my scrutiny. “We also have Spanish together.”

“Do you guys get along?” She nods quickly before I finish my question.

“He comes over sometimes.” Then, as if noticing my meaningful smile, she corrects herself. “To the store, I mean. Not my house. He likes books.”

“You guys have that in common.”

She smiles, looking at me with a shielded expression. “I should head home.”

“Are you trying to avoid the conversation?” I ask her with a laugh. “Because I won’t bring Ben up again if you don’t want me to.” I never really had girl friends, my closest was my mother and my second closest was probably a girl I tutored in Phoenix. She would tell me about how awful her boyfriend was while I tried to teach her Algebra. She failed her exam, but I now know that if my non-existent boyfriend ever tells me he’s going for a run, it means he’s cheating. I don’t entirely understand the correlation between running and cheating, but she seemed too upset to lie about something like that. Apart from that semester-long experience, I never got the opportunity to exercise my ‘girl-talk’ muscles. Angela is my guinea pig.

“No, I just can’t be home late.” She turns to walk away but pauses before taking another step. “I might also be avoiding the conversation.” She laughs quietly, the blush not yet faded from her face. “I might also be avoiding the fact that I like Ben's company as more than just a customer-to-cashier relationship.” I slap a hand over my mouth to cover the excited squeal I had almost let loose. Jessica would’ve been proud of me at that moment. The squeal would’ve been worthy of applause.

Angela notices this and hides her face behind her palms. “Angela! I can’t believe this! He seems so nice!” She turns and starts to walk away quickly. “Where are you going?”

“Home!” She calls back over her shoulder. “And also, to avoid this conversation!”

Charlie had visited Harry Clearwater during his lunch hour and brought back fish fry for dinner. I warmed my plate up in the microwave and ate on the couch with Charlie. There was some action movie on television the other night and he had recorded it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’m not an action fan, especially not after he had brought it up to me.

“I know you must’ve had a long day at work,” he had said with a knowing smile. My heart did a funny little jump at his words. “But I have this movie on the box. It has that one guy with the hair, uh…” He snapped his fingers as if to try and spark a memory of the actor’s name. He came up blank. “Anyways, you know the guy I mean, right?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have any idea who he was talking about. Most male actors had hair, that wasn’t a unique characteristic.

“I thought you might want to watch it with me.” He looked away, suddenly very interested in the buttons going up his shirt. “If not that’s okay, you must be tired.”

How could I have said no to my father at that moment? So, I agreed to watch the movie and promptly regretted not suggesting another movie. The plotline was unidentifiable, and the main character spent the entire two hours shooting people seemingly at random and supposedly saving the world.

I fall asleep an hour or so after the movie ends. My brain threatens to keep me awake, thoughts of my day spinning in circles as my eyes grow weary. The rain had at some point stopped hindering my sleeping patterns, and instead provides me with the natural white noise needed to push me into a deeper slumber. I lay on my side, one arm under my pillow and one over my sheet, as I look out my window.

The blinds are open, and the light of the moon illuminates the forest at the edge of Swan property. The trees are tall, broad, and have a commandeering presence. My eyes eventually drift closed, the swaying trees still playing in my mind as unconsciousness sweeps over me.

I dream of trees and moss and breaking new trails in the forest. I don’t hear the ominous bird cawing from my last dream, nor is there a large creature looking to maul me, yet a certain level of anxiety propels me further into the forest. As if I’m running away, or perhaps running towards.

It’s unsettling to be unsure of what motivates me, just that fear plays a role in my steadily increasing speed.

I wake up before my alarm, my forehead drenched in sweat and my blinds pulled to the side. The trees watch me blink away drowsiness, watch me walk over to the window, and watch me close the blinds with perhaps too much force. I’m closing you before bed, I mentally threaten the offending blinds. It’s your fault my dreams have been so awful.

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