“I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.” Des drops her bag behind the counter and tucks the telltale edge of plastic wrap beneath the sleeve of her black cardigan. Her tattoo is starting to sting like a bad sunburn.
“What’s that?” Gram asks.
Des wasn’t planning to hide the tattoo exactly, but she was hoping to find the right moment to reveal it. Preferably a moment that wouldn’t involve arguing in front of customers.
“I got a tattoo,” she explains, carefully pulling off the cardigan and holding out her plastic-wrapped forearm.
“You did what?” Gram’s feathery eyebrows, identical to Des’s, shoot up so high, they disappear beneath her bangs. “You didn’t think this was something you might mention?”
“I’m nineteen,” Des says. “I don’t need your permission.”
Gram purses her lips. “Was this Paige’s idea?”
“It was, but I love it. I really love it. Look. It’s an Agatha Christie quote.” Des gingerly unwraps the plastic. “I did the lettering, and then Lola traced it. It’s kind of swollen right now, but—”
“Lola? Did you research this place first and make sure it was safe?” Gram asks.
“Paige has gotten all her tattoos there,” Des says. “And Lola explained the whole process before she even touched me. She was great. We were supporting an awesome, woman-owned small business.”
“We? So Paige got a tattoo too? How on earth did she pay for that? Every dollar she makes this summer is supposed to go toward repaying her mother!” Gram’s voice is getting louder. Mr. Dixon peeks around the nonfiction display and then makes his way toward the door.
“Gram. I don’t want to argue about Paige.” Des is not about to confide that she paid for Paige’s tattoo. It’s only a loan, after all. “I need to talk to you about something else. I would really like to take some time off this week. Do you think Bea or Kat could work for me Thursday and Friday?”
Gram rises from her chair, still a little wobbly, and grabs her cane. “You were two hours late because you were off getting a tattoo, and now you’re asking if you can take two days off with no notice? Your sisters are busy, Des. There are two issues of the Gazette this week. The café’s grand reopening is Saturday, and Kat has been working very hard to help Lydia get ready.”
Kat has been working very hard? What about all Des’s hard work over the last month? Hell, over the last year? Des tries to control her twitching temper. “Maybe you and Vi could work together? She can run upstairs for anything you need. I could help for an hour or two while she’s walking the dogs. I just—I really need some time off.”
“For what? Are you and Paige taking a trip? I have to tell you, Des, I really do not approve of this friendship.” Gram sighs.
“Excuse me.” It’s the woman with the two little boys, balancing the baby in one arm and a teetering stack of picture books in the other. “I’m ready to buy these.”
“Great. Thank you so much.” Des compliments the baby, asks how old he is, and hands the toddler a bookworm sticker while she rings up the purchase. She waits until they’re gone before she turns back to Gram. “I want to sell my art. Some of the quotes I’ve been working on. There will be so many people in town on Saturday for the parade and the reenactment and the fireworks. It would be the perfect time to try this, but I need to make more prints. Please, Gram.”
“Does that mean you want Saturday off too?” Gram shakes her head. “That’s one of the busiest days of the year for us, honey. You know that. I need you here.”
Des’s mind spins. She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet, but there has to be some way to make this work. She’s willing to compromise. “We always have a couple of tables on the sidewalk for Tea Party, right? What if you let me and Paige take one of them? She’s going to sell her earrings too. Then she can handle our table and I’ll handle the books. You’d need somebody outside anyway.”
Gram pulls off her glasses and cleans them on her white linen pants. “I don’t know. I don’t trust her, Des.”
“Then trust me,” Des says. “Please, Gram. This is important to me.”
Gram puts her glasses back on and looks at Des for a long minute. “All right. And if you can get one of your sisters to work for you, you can have Thursday and Friday off. But they have their own responsibilities, honey. They might not be able to accommodate you last minute like this.”
Des wants to remind Gram of all the times that Kat or Bea have flaked on their hours at Arden because they had rehearsal, or had too much homework, or had to work late at the paper, or wanted to see Erik’s tennis match. Des always covers for them. Always. Did they get lectures from Gram too? Why is Des’s time less valuable?
She doesn’t say any of that. Not now. The timing isn’t right. Instead, she nods. “Thank you, Gram. I’ll work it out with Vi. You won’t regret this. I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
BEA
On Wednesday night, Bea’s team gathers at Sierra’s house. They always work on the raft in Sierra’s backyard; her dad has all the tools they need and a shed big enough to store the raft. Their design is pretty simple this year: logs tied together with rope and a plywood platform on top. Their theme is Star Wars, so they’re building BB-8 and R2-D2 to accompany them. They’ll all be dressed as Star Wars characters: Sierra as Rose, Drew and Faith as Han and Leia, Erik as Poe, Bea as Rey, and Chloe in a C-3PO dress with gold body paint. Erik had wanted him and Bea to be Han and Leia, but Bea had pointed out that her hair isn’t long enough for Leia’s iconic buns.
Really, she doesn’t want to dress as a couple. It feels too much like a lie.
Sierra, who knows her way around power tools like a boss, is working with the boys to assemble the raft. Faith and Chloe are attaching Styrofoam legs to a trashcan R2-D2 they’ve already painted silver and white. Yesterday Bea spray-painted an exercise ball white and attached a half sphere of Styrofoam as BB-8’s head. Now she’s trying to paint the droid’s distinctive orange and silver markings.
She glances at the pictures she printed. She isn’t great at painting, and she doesn’t like doing things she isn’t good at. It’s her team’s fourth and probably final race. When they were freshmen, their Jurassic Park raft was a stylish disaster. It sank halfway through the race because they hadn’t properly accounted for the weight of their dinosaur props, but it won the Kitchen Sink Award for Most Impressive Failure. Sophomore year, they did a Captain America theme and won the Junior Cup for best raft with a crew mostly sixteen and under. Last year, their theme was Guardians of the Galaxy. Chloe dressed up as Gamora with green body paint, and they carried a stuffed raccoon and a Baby Groot. They blasted the soundtrack using Sierra’s waterproof speakers. And they won the coveted Tea Cup, the Best of Show. Bea is determined to win again this year. She can’t screw this up too. She dips her paintbrush in the orange paint can.