The Girl Who Would Be King(51)

It’s wonderful.

It’s scary.



Half an hour later, when Erica pins me down in the backroom while clocking out, I feel less oatmeal-y and warm.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” she says, as if it’s part of another conversation we’ve already been having. I look around to see if there’s anyone else she could possibly be talking to, but we appear to be alone.

“Um…?” is all I get out before she begins hissing at me again.

“I have been flirting with that guy for like eight months and he’s finally starting to come around, so you better just back off,” she says, her nostrils flaring, her eyes flashing.

“Um…I didn’t do anything?” I offer up, more as a question than anything else.

“Oh please,” she says, rolling her eyes so hard I imagine they’re going to spring out of her head. The funny thing is, until just now I’d thought Erica was really pretty. She’s got this beautiful hair like sun, long darkly tanned limbs, and sparkly hazel eyes and perfect teeth, but she suddenly looks like a monster.

“Um. What did I do?” I ask. At this she stalks away and points her finger at me before leaving the room.

“Stay the hell away from him.” The door slams behind her and another voice pops up from behind a desk piled with books and a computer.

“Ugh. What a bitch.” I lean over the desk and see another girl – slender, with huge dark eyes and a tiny silver nose ring, her name tag says Liesel – lying on the floor on her side, behind the desk, reading Tropic of Cancer. She doesn’t even look up at me, but just continues reading and points a finger in my direction. “Don’t listen to her. I’ve seen that dude. Totally cute. You should go for it.”

I look down and blush. I don’t think I know how to “go for it” anyway, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.



But I didn’t think this whole “date” thing through, because I don’t have anything to change into – not that I have anything worth wearing anyway, and I look a mess, and what was I thinking?! At 6:05 I’m waiting outside the store, leaning against the warm stone wall, after I’d tried desperately, five minutes earlier in the store bathroom, to make myself presentable. Running a comb through my long red hair and applying some sheer lip-gloss and a coat of mascara. I’m lucky to have pretty good skin, which doesn’t need a lot of make-up, which is mainly fortunate because I don’t know the first thing about make-up and am not very interested in it either. I’d looked at my jeans and t-shirt and suddenly wished the bookstore had a strict dress code, so I’d have worn something different, which feels like a totally alien thought in my head. Until this moment, I don’t think I’d ever thought about my clothes as anything other than something to cover up nakedness, and now I look like a freaking waitress or…bookstore clerk, I guess, for my first date ever. When I look up from examining my nails for dirt, Clark is coming toward me.

It’s 6:06 and I know my life is changing.

He offers me his hand and flashes his charming smile and I’m so excited and afraid of what might be happening.

“Hi,” I say shyly, trying not to smile so big, trying to keep my voice from trembling. There’s something about him. He’s not like every other boy. He looks almost shiny to me, everyone else dull and faded in comparison.

“Hi,” he says back. He touches my arm lightly and I can’t remember anyone ever having touched my arm in that exact spot before. It feels nice. It feels important. “Let’s go, then?”

“Yes please,” I breathe. I imagine somewhere in the world Erica is cussing at me under her breath, but I try not to be too smug about it. I feel free and happy, maybe. It’s hard to know what happy is if you’re not sure if you’ve felt it before, but I remember my mother’s eyes and hair, my father’s smile, and our yellow kitchen. Yes, this is definitely happiness, I remember it.

We go to a little Ethiopian place nearby where we sit, legs crossed, on deep wine colored pillows, staring across a low table at one another. It’s dark and light and loud and quiet all at the same time, and looking at him sucking down water – after the too hot whatever it was that he just ate – I know I love him already. But even I know you don’t tell a boy you love him after spending an hour with him.

“I only started interning there because it’s what you’re ‘supposed to do,’” he says, talking about the big corporate law firm he’s working for this summer, “Well, that and I wanted to impress my dad, prove myself to him,” he confesses after the plates have been cleared. “Silly, right?” he half asks, blushing deeply.