Husky by Justin Sayre Page B

Sweet Jane, the air is on, and it’s super cold and nice inside, I may have to stay for a bit to chill.
    Jules says, “H-ey,” from behind the counter without lifting her head. I ask her if I can make up a box of stuff to take to my friends. She looks at me, almost as if she doesn’t think it’s really me at first, but then looks down again and says, “I gu-e-ess.” She folds me a pink box for cookies and cupcakes. I go around to the back of the counter and start pulling things from the display, but she stops me with a look.
    â€œHe-ey, you’ve really got to wear a gl-ove when you do that.” Jule looks at her shoes. “Or at le-ast, like, wash your ha-ands.”
    â€œSorry, Jules,” I say slowly as I reach for the box of rubber gloves.
    Chocolate chip cookies, everybody loves them, and a lemon bar, yes, and sugar cookies in different colors, sprinkles make everything look better. And then cupcakes: one for me, Ellen, Charlie, Sophie, Allegra, and Hannah. That’ll be nice. That’s six, which is a lot, but it’s how many I need. A woman at the counter sees me and says, “Those aren’t all for you, I hope,” smiling at me, or making what she must think is a smile but is reallymore a crimpled-up mouth. It’s that smile that’s trying to be sweet in the face of something gross. And I think that something gross is me.
    â€œNo, I’m going to a friend’s house.” And I think that’s that, right?
    But Crimple Lady starts in again with, “On a day like today? It’s beautiful out. You and your friends should be outside. We’re not going to have too many of these days left.” And she crimples her mouth again as she pays Jules for her coffee and chocolate croissant. “When I was a kid, we were always outside. You could never make us go inside.” She laughs, and then goes back to her crimple face.
    I wish that were still true, I wish she would never come in here. Mrs. Crimples thinks she’s being nice and trying to get me to have a good time with the few days of summer I have left before I go back to school, but her crimple is there to let me know that that’s not all. She’s looking at me and saying to herself,
I bet that fat kid is going to go and eat every cookie in that box and five of those cupcakes easily before he even makes it to his “friend’s” house. And Friends! WhatFriends? Who likes fat kids anyway? Nobody. Nobody likes fat, lazy kids who eat too much and stay inside, because just being outside in the summer makes them sweat and wheeze through their fat little chocolate-covered mouths
. That’s the crimple, and that’s the crimple smile. This Crimple Lady thinks she is saving my life, my lonely fat-kid life. And I hate it.
    I close the lid of the box and tie it off, both of which Mom has taught me to do really well, so well that now the lady sort of feels like I might work here or something, and that I’m not just some sugar-junkie fat kid. But she can’t help herself or her crimple and again she says, “Well, it’s a beautiful day, you should get out and enjoy it.”
    And I don’t know why, honest, because I have never let anything like this slip before, but I say, out loud, “You first.”
    Jules’s eyes bug out and she laughs like I’ve never heard her laugh. And the lady sort of fixes her neck and walks out the door with a huff. As soon as she’s gone, Jules looks at me, like right at me, with her eyes still huge, and laughs a real laugh again. Her mouth is open almostas big as mine. But mine is out of shock. I can’t believe I did that. What if I start doing that all the time? I can’t today. Not with Allegra. Not today.
    Jules keeps laughing so hard that Paolo comes out from the back to see what’s so funny. Paolo is in just shorts and a tank top, and he’s sweating all over the place, but he doesn’t care.