“We were wondering about that!” Caroline would chirp from atop her step stool.
And then they would take out the cream ones and find where they went and put them there and it was better.
“Hey, Chloe, see how these Advil have this child-safety lid? They go right here. These other ones, with the easy-off lid, they go over here.”
“Whatever,” Chloe would groan.
But she would stomp over and take them and put them in the right place.
It was very calming to have this repetitious work to do. I could have gone on inventorying forever.
* * *
After serving the cheese enchiladas Ulysses and I made for dinner and cleaning up, I was nearly asleep on my feet but I wanted to look for Astrid. I took a plate of enchiladas, covered in foil.
“What are you doing with that?” Niko asked me.
“I’m leaving them out for Astrid,” I said.
“Good idea,” Niko said, yawning. “She’s on my list.”
Yeah, I thought to myself, she’s on my list, too.
I had no doubt that she was still in the store—there was no way for her to leave, and why would she?
But where was she holed up? Even after a day of cleaning, the store was pretty messy, it’s not like I could look for clues.
I set up a stool in the center of the main food aisle and just left the plate there.
No note. Too tired.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE POWER OF PANCAKES
I woke up to the beep-beep-beep of my Panasonic travel alarm clock. Everyone else got to sleep until eight, but for me and my little kitchen helper, whoever it turned out to be that day, it was up at seven. We had to make breakfast for the troops.
“Batiste,” I whispered to the sleeping boy. With his face softened by sleep, he looked less superior and judgmental. He looked sweet, curled onto his side, with his two hands placed under his cheek as if in prayer.
“Batiste.” I nudged him with my sneaker. “We have to make breakfast.”
He opened his eyes and looked straight at me.
“Stuffed pancakes with fresh berry syrup.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Breakfast. I already planned the menu.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you know how to make that?”
“Duh,” he answered.
Okay. I guess it was a stupid question. Still there’s nothing like sarcasm from an eight-year-old to make you want to wring their neck. Especially at seven in the morning.
* * *
But he could cook, actually. He walked through the aisles like a pro, selecting Bisquick, a dozen noncrushed eggs, two bags of frozen berries, a brick of cream cheese, vanilla extract, and a box of confectioner’s sugar.
We found Niko in the kitchen. This was why I didn’t complain about having to get up at seven. Niko got up at six. Yep, six. Seis. Six a.m.
“Good morning,” he said brightly. “Batiste, you’re Dean’s helper for today?”
“Yes and I have the whole day planned.” Batiste turned to me. “We need the blender.”
As for Batiste, he reprimanded me once for not washing my hands (“Cleanliness is next to Godliness, Dean!”), but besides that, he was a great helper. In fact, I sort of became his helper as he whipped up the cream cheese and sugar in the blender and then mixed pancake batter in the KitchenAid and then created these delicious pancakes in a cast-iron muffin pan.
Who knew eight-year-olds could cook?
“Wow!” said the kids as they filed in, led by Josie.
“Oh my God, that smells amazing,” Sahalia moaned. She was still in her pajamas but everyone else was fully dressed and ready for work.
“Good morning, Josie,” Niko said, crossing to Josie with a cup of coffee. “You want some coffee?”
“No, thanks, I drink tea,” she said.
“Oh. Okay,” Niko said. Then he just stood there.
“Chloe and Ulysses, please keep your places in line. You know where you are to stand. Yes, you do.”
“That’s so smart that you gave them, like, a set place in line,” Niko said to Josie.
I felt for the guy. He was truly horrible with the small talk.
Josie didn’t seem to notice Niko’s awkward efforts. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice Niko at all.
“Max,” Josie said, moving away. “Everyone gets one to start, then you may have seconds if there is enough for everyone.”
“I made enough for you all to have thirds,” Batiste said proudly.
And we did have thirds. The only thing that diminished our pleasure in eating the pancakes was that every time someone said, “God, these are good!” Batiste reprimanded them for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
I had hardly seen Alex for the last day and so I tried to grab him after breakfast.
“Hey, A,” I said. “Think you could stick around for a few minutes after breakfast? I was hoping I could get you to look at these ovens. I can’t get the temperature right…”
A machine that needed adjusting might grab his interest.
“Sorry, Dean. But Niko needs me,” he said, hurrying off.
I was left there, wearing an apron, feeling like a middle-aged mother whose children have discovered the mall.
* * *
After breakfast I took a plate with three stuffed pancakes drowning in berry sauce and wandered around looking for Astrid.
Instead, I ran into Jake and Brayden.
They had cleared away a section of the Women’s Department and set up a makeshift bowling alley with bottles of bubble bath and a heavy yoga ball.
“Dude! You shouldn’t have!” Jake said when he saw me with the plate.
He ambled over. His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled like old beer.
“They’re not for you, Jake,” Brayden said. “They’re for Astrid.”
I felt the blood rush to my face.
“Aw, is that right?” Jake drawled.
“Well, I’ve been leaving food out for her. I want her to know, you know, that she’s welcome to come back.”
“That is so sweet,” Brayden said. “And here we thought the food was for us.”
“God, that smells good,” Jake said. “Do you mind if we eat them? I really don’t think Astrid would mind. I saw her yesterday, eating some trail mix. I think she’s doing fine.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want them to eat her pancakes, but I didn’t want to look like an idiot, either. Or like I cared.
Jake took the plate from me, and he and Brayden fell on the pancakes like they were starving to death.
“These are fantastic!” Brayden said, his mouth full. “These are the best pancakes I’ve ever had.”
“It’s all Batiste,” I said. “Turns out he can cook.”
“Jeez,” Jake mumbled, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “What’s for lunch?”
* * *
And there they were at lunch, lined up with all the other kids. Sahalia was right behind Jake, trying to start a conversation with him. He ignored her but was pretty nice to the other kids, joking around and ruffling Max’s hair.
Niko walked into the kitchen and saw Jake and Brayden there and paused in his stride. Then he just picked up a tray and got on line.
Lunch was less of an immediate hit. Curried tuna fish on toast. The curried tuna had slivered almonds and currants in it (who knew they sold currants at Greenway? Organic, no less).
Batiste told everyone they would like it and, true enough, once they started eating, they loved it.
“Where did you learn to cook?” Chloe asked him.
“Church camp,” he answered.
While everyone was eating, I saw Niko approach Jake and Brayden’s table.
“Hey, guys,” Niko said.
“Niko.” Jake nodded.
Brayden just kept eating.
“Jake, I was hoping you would take on an assignment—Head of Security,” Niko said all in a rush. “I want someone strong and capable to check the store and make s
ure everything is safe.”
The little kids prattled on, eating their curried tuna and slurping their juice boxes, but Josie and I shared a look: Would Jake fall in line? Would he help us or were he and Brayden going to be a problem?
“I’ll think about it,” Jake said.
Niko let out his breath.
“Good.”
Niko took his tray over to Josie and sat with her.
As Batiste went around and gave out the dulce de leche cupcakes we had spent most of the morning on, I watched Jake relax. He walked over to Chloe and complimented her on her hair accessories, which were numerous. And he got Max and Ulysses excited about the idea of starting a little football team.
Brayden went along with Jake, but he seemed distracted. I watched him watching Niko.
Niko was trying, in his uneasy way, to flirt with Josie.
And, out of the corner of his eye, Brayden just watched.
* * *
The “secret” assignment Niko had given Josie to do, while the little kids were all busy doing their aisles, was to improve our living quarters.
She had gone through the store looking for the coziest, safest-feeling space in the store.
It turned out to be the dressing rooms. They stood in the northwest corner of the store, against the wall.
One of the things that made them feel homey is that the rest of the store had a cold, linoleum floor—but the dressing rooms had bamboo floors.
The ladies’ and men’s dressing rooms shared a common wall and shared the same layout. There was one big dressing room (measuring six by ten feet—handicapped accessible) when you first entered, then beyond it there were eight dressing rooms, four on each side of a fairly wide hallway. Each small dressing room was a paltry four feet by four feet.
I know this because that afternoon Josie asked me to help her take down some of the walls. Her idea was to have the little kids sleep together in the two big dressing rooms. For the bigger kids she wanted to make us each a eight-by-four sleeping berth by taking down a wall separating two of the smaller dressing rooms. There would be four of these berths in the ladies’ room and four in the men’s dressing room.
“I’m not really good with carpentry,” I told her as we studied the spaces.
“Well, you’re better than me,” Josie said.
“I bet Niko would do a really good job at this,” I said.
I don’t know. I felt for the guy. It was clear, to me, anyway, that he had a thing for Josie. I thought I might as well set him up a bit.
Josie rolled her eyes.
“Niko is…”
“What?” I asked.
“He’s so uptight and formal. He’s exhausting,” she answered.
“Yeah, I guess I could see that,” I said.
“So maybe we cut this panel out here?” Josie said, tapping on the wall. “We each want privacy and also to be able to stretch out.”
“Have you guys seen Jake?” came Brayden’s voice.
We stepped out of the dressing rooms.
Brayden was standing there, his hands jammed in his pockets. His dark hair was falling in his eyes and he looked down at his feet.
“We haven’t seen him,” Josie said.
“Maybe he decided to start doing his job,” I said, going back into the dressing rooms.
“What are you guys doing in there?” I heard Brayden ask Josie.
“We’re taking down some walls to make sleeping areas for everyone.”
“Want some help?” Brayden said. “I used to frame houses in the summer, so I know how to handle a hammer.”
It was so alien to me, the concept that Brayden would want to help—be offering to help—that I actually had to peek back out to see if he was serious.
He was.
He was just standing there, with his head hung, like a sad puppy.
“I’d love your help, Brayden,” Josie answered. “You know, I have to say, it would be really good for all of us if you and Jake came back and participated.”
“Yeah,” Brayden said. “I think you’re right. So, put me to work…”
And he smiled. He had a movie star smile.
I don’t know that I’d ever seen him smile before.
I’d seen him laugh. In a mean way. But this was something new. This, I realized, was the smile he gave girls.
“You guys don’t need me then,” I said.
“I guess not,” Josie said.
She turned away from Brayden, breaking his gaze. Her eyes were twinkling, though. And she seemed flushed.
“Let me show you what I was thinking of doing, Brayden,” she said, going into the dressing room.
I got the hell out of there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MY FOOD AISLE AT NIGHT
Josie and Brayden worked hard all afternoon and by the evening free play period, they had new sleeping quarters for us all.
Josie led the little kids over. They rushed in to the dressing rooms. There was hooting and hollering from inside, but Niko and I stopped to look at the area right outside the dressing rooms.
Josie and Brayden had made it into a living room.
The floor was carpeted and they had laid down a bunch of throw rugs over it. They had brought over the beanbag chairs from the Media Department and added some more furniture. There were two futon couches, a fake-fur butterfly chair and two coffee tables and a desk. A lava lamp gently oozed on one of the coffee tables. There was a mini-fridge and a case of water bottles next to it. They had tricked it out to an absurd degree.
Right next to the furniture, there was a small clearing, with three card tables and seven folding chairs distributed among the tables. A table lamp stood on each table and two bookshelves had been stocked with what looked to me like one each of every book in the Book Department.
It was a kind of work area. Like a library.
“Downright homey,” Niko said to me.
Was that a joke? I glanced at him. Couldn’t tell.
So I just repeated him. “Downright homey.”
The kids were going berserk, so I stepped inside to see what all the racket was about.
Brayden had neatly removed the wall between the men’s and ladies’ dressing rooms so it was now one big bunker, with a hallway running down the middle and berths off to either side.
Josie and Brayden had Sharpied the names of the kids on the doors.
Chloe grabbed my hand.
“I found your bedroom,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
Chloe dragged me down the hall to one of the dressing rooms in what had been the men’s side.
Sure enough, it read “Dean” on the door.
Inside it was smallish. Four by eight. A hammock had been slung end to end. A locker stood on the floor. On top of the locker, a small lamp.
Above the hammock, running along the wall, there was a shelf.
And on the shelf were books.
An assortment of the paperbacks from the Book Department. Some mysteries, some cyborg fiction, five cookbooks. I laughed at that.
“Do you like your room?” Josie came up behind me.
“I really do.”
“You can, like, customize it any way you want. I just put some stuff here because I thought you’d like it.”
“I like it,” I said.
“If you don’t like the hammock, you can stick with your air mattress, though I’m not sure it will fit in here.”
“I like it just like this,” I said.
From the hallway outside my door I heard Max and Ulysses speaking. Ulysses said something and Max laughed.
“What’d he say?” Chloe demanded.
“Ulysses says it’s like a train!” Max announced.
“It is just like a train!” Chloe declared.
Our bedrooms, the dressing rooms at the Greenway, had just been given their new name: the Train.
* * *
The Train and its architects, Josie and Brayden, were all the talk at dinner.
Josie sat with Jake and
Brayden, which was an entirely new arrangement. And the three laughed and palled around all during dinner.
At one point Brayden stretched and put his arm across the back of the booth. Oldest move in the book. And Josie leaned right back into him.
Niko took his tray and sat at the table next to them. He kept trying to get into the conversation.
“You know, once, in Scouts, we took a trip to Yosemite. It got so cold at night we had to build makeshift lean-tos. We were out there at three in the morning, scraping up pine needles and leaves for insulation.”
“Wow,” Brayden said dryly. “Great story.”
And they laughed.
“But the funny thing was that then when we started the campfire, these pine needles kept falling in the fire and flaring up!”
“Oh man,” Jake interrupted, turning to Brayden. “You remember when Fat Marty lit that grease bomb?!”
“It was so funny, Josie,” Brayden said. “He saved, like, a month’s worth of bacon grease. He wanted to show us how to make a grease bomb.”
“And then he lit it and instead of exploding, it just gave off this horrible smoke.”
“And his mom came in screaming and she grabbed this fire extinguisher and doused us all.”
“It was crazy,” Brayden said. “Took us like five hours to clean it up.”
And Josie laughed. She was eating it up. Brayden’s rough-guy, laid-back charm.
Niko sat there, trying so hard to be cool. Smiling, laughing at the right places.
But I could see that every time Brayden touched Josie or nudged her or said her name, it was like a knife in his gut.
There was another person who didn’t seem to be so thrilled with the budding romance between Josie and Brayden: Sahalia.
She was acting extra-insolent and slouchy. She had nearly thrown down her tray with her food and now she just sat there with her arms crossed, staring daggers at Josie.
* * *
After we all settled down in our plush new accommodations, I realized I’d left my journal in the Kitchen.
The lights had already dimmed automatically, which meant it was after ten, but I could see, sort of, so I went to get my journal.
Approaching the Food aisle, I heard a voice.
More specifically, I heard hushed laugher. Astrid’s.
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