The Distance Between Us

she’s something.” He’s quiet for a while. “I am being nice. You should tell her to be nice. She wouldn’t even tell me her name. . . . No, not because I’m being mean.”
    I love Mrs. Dalton.
    I write down in the book the date and time the special order was picked up. Then for some reason I add the “ander” on the end of the “Alex” I had written before. I close the book and put it beneath the counter. He’s still listening intently to something his grandma is saying. He meets my eyes at one point and then holds up a finger. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet and a credit card without even looking at it.
    “She already paid,” I whisper.
    He nods and puts it away.
    His grandma says something that makes him smile. The smile. What is it about that smile anyway? Maybe it’s his perfectly straight and white teeth that make it so amazing. But it’s more than that. It’s a little crooked, one side going up more than the other. And once in a while his top teeth bite his bottom lip. It’s a very unguarded smile, unlike the rest of his appearance, which is a fortress.
    “Well, hey, Grammy, I gotta go. Caymen is staring at me, probably wondering if I’m ever going to leave her store so she can get back to work.”
    It’s weird to hear him say my name. It makes him seem like more than just some random customer. Almost like we know each other now.
    He pockets his phone. “Caymen.”
    “Xander.”
    “Does this mean I won the game?”
    “I didn’t realize we were playing a game.”
    He picks up the doll and backs away with his lower-lip-biting smile. “I think you did.”

Chapter 5

    A bout a year ago my mom started booking little girl birthday parties in the back room of the store. It sounded ridiculous at the time (still does), but she had a vision of ordering unfinished dolls and then having the girls come in and pick out the finishing touches—clothes, hair color, eye color—so they could go home with their own personalized doll. At first my mom let them paint on the eyes, but that turned into Creep Show 101. So now I sit at the register painting eyes while my mom stays with the party in the back and helps them pick outfits and hair. On a good day we finish with a hundred dollars in our pockets. On most Saturdays we’re lucky to break even (my mom is a sucker and lets the kids pick more than the three allotted clothing items).
    Today I think we made twenty bucks, and I’m wishing beyond anything that we would stop booking Saturday parties. But it makes my mom happy—some nonsense about the laughter of little children—so I don’t complain. The girls giggle their way out of the store, clutching their newly clothed dolls and touching everything as they go. My mom will spend the next two hours cleaning up the “party room” (formerly known as the break room).
    I look up when Skye walks in, Henry tagging along behind her. “We missed you last night,” she says.
    I search my memory but come up empty. “What was last night?”
    “My band’s show at Scream Shout,” Henry says with a “duh” in his voice.
    “Oh yeah. How’d it go?”
    Skye smiles. “He wrote me a song.”
    Henry sets down his guitar and plops down next to it. “We thought we’d do a repeat of the night.”
    “Awesome,” I say, looking over the list my mom made of the doll clothes we were running low on and checking off the ones I’d already ordered.
    “She sounds like she’s not excited, but she totally is,” Skye says to Henry.
    “Totally,” I assure him dryly.
    He strums a few chords. “Caveman has no life,” he sings. I throw my pen at him, but then I need it back so I walk to where it landed on the floor behind him and pick it up.
    Skye laughs. “She has a life, Henry. It’s just a boring one.”
    “Considering I’m with you half the time, Skye, I’d watch what you say.”
    “Caveman has a boring life,” he sings. “She needs some toil and strife.”
    “No, I’m fine with boringness, thank you.” In fact I’ve settled into my monotonous life pretty well, only feeling the urge to rip my hair out about once a week now.
    Skye straightens a doll on the shelf beside her. “But seriously, Caymen, you should’ve come last night. Why didn’t you?”
    “What time did you get home?” I ask.
    “I don’t know . . . two-ish.”
    “And that’s why I didn’t go. I had to work this morning.”
    “It’s like she’s a grown-up already,” Henry says.
    Who asked you?
    “Play