Dead End Job Read online

  “It’s a big deal to me, though,” he said. “That’s why I brought you these.”

  He pulled a box out of his jacket pocket. It was a full set of pastels. Really, really good French pastels. He put them on the counter. I couldn’t believe it.

  I shook my head. This wasn’t right.

  “You can’t give me those!” I pushed them back toward him. “They’re too expensive!”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’m actually okay for money.”

  I looked at his scruffy jacket. He noticed.

  “Okay, so I don’t look it!” He laughed. “But it’s the truth! I’ve got lots of money. In fact, that’s why I came out here. I wanted to tell my dad I just signed a big recording deal.”

  “Really?” It was probably rude of me to look so surprised.

  “Yeah. Really. I figured Tom might be happy to see me now that I’m a…success.” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. He rolled his eyes like “what a joke.”

  “In fact, I was going to go over to his place today but …” He shrugged. “I chickened out. I went into the city instead to buy you these.”

  He pushed the pastels back toward me. “C’mon. I made a special trip just for you.”

  I sighed. I just looked at them. I didn’t know what to do. I felt bad for the guy. I couldn’t take them. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings either. It sounded like he’d had a rough enough day already.

  “Please,” I said. “That’s really nice, but I’d rather you keep them.”

  “Nah. I don’t want them,” he said. “I bought myself something even better.” He took the tiniest digital camera you ever saw out of his pocket. “Cool, huh?”

  He came around the counter and showed me what it could do. I had to lean in close to see.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  He held the camera out at arm’s length and took a picture of us. The flash surprised me. I laughed.

  “This’ll be good,” he said. “Your hair looks great like that.”

  “You’re such a liar,” I said.

  His head snapped around.

  “Did you call me a liar?” He had this totally psycho look on his face.

  “I…I just meant you’re lying about my hair!” I said. “It’s all sweaty and tangled. It looks terrible. I mean it. I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

  He laughed. It was like nothing had happened. His face had gone completely back to normal. He said, “I’m not upset. I was just kidding around. And anyway, I think your hair looks great like that. See?” He showed me the picture. He had one arm around my shoulder and was smiling at me. I was laughing. “You look gorgeous.”

  I didn’t want to call him a liar again. I just smiled and said, “Ah. It’s almost midnight. I’ve got to do my cash, get ready to go.”

  “I’ll help if you want. I could sweep or whatever.”

  I didn’t have time to answer. I saw a car turning off the highway.

  A 1985 Impala.

  That’s all I needed right then.

  Leo catching me with Devin.

  Chapter Four

  “It’s my boyfriend,” I said. I must have gone totally white.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I looked out the window. Thank God Leo was having trouble with first gear again. It gave me a couple of extra seconds to figure out what to do.

  “Yeah. Fine,” I said, but I was lying. I wasn’t fine at all.

  I heard the engine turn off. I panicked. I said, “Don’t let him see you!”

  Devin asked, “Why?”

  I pushed him. “You’ve got to go!”

  I didn’t have time to explain. It didn’t matter. Devin was suddenly smiling at me, like we had some big private joke.

  “Oh, I get it,” he said.

  The car door closed.

  “The bathroom window!” I whispered. “Go out the bathroom window!”

  Devin winked and ducked down behind the Pringles display. I heard the door creak open. I stuffed the pastels beneath the counter and pretended to straighten the lottery tickets.

  I don’t know how Leo missed seeing Devin, but he did. He walked right past the display and gave the bell on the cash register a little ding. I looked up. He kind of half-smiled at me. I went all liquid inside.

  “Hey,” he said. His back was to the store. He couldn’t see that Devin was standing up now and waving at me. I wanted to kill the guy.

  “You came,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound so cold. I couldn’t help it. I was terrified.

  “I always come,” Leo said. “I’m a jerk, but I always come.”

  I turned away. It must have seemed like I was still mad. I was really just trying to motion to Devin to get out while Leo wasn’t looking.

  Leo sighed. I could see his big shadow slump. “Look,” he said, “I don’t blame you for not wanting to see me. I admit it. I’m a bonehead. I’m an idiot. I acted like a two-year-old. I’ve got a jealousy problem. I’ve got a confidence problem. But, hey, I’m a guy. Sometimes I can’t get the words out to tell you …” He sucked in his breath, “…that I’m, you know… scared, I guess. I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to give up on me. But I know if I keep on acting like I did, you will.”

  Leo threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what else I can say! I’m sorry, Frances.” That’s when I knew how bad he felt. He always calls me Frank.

  I could see Devin making fun of him in the background. He was rubbing his eyes like he was crying. He was pretending to go “boo hoo hoo.” If Leo saw him, he’d never forgive me.

  I’d never been that scared in my life. I clenched my teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter. Leo looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I was still holding out. He usually just had to turn those hazel eyes to me and I gave in pretty quickly.

  “This probably won’t make any difference, but I brought you something,” he said. He lifted his right hand to his pocket and winced. His knuckles were all red and swollen. “I have to get a softer dashboard if I’m going to use it for a punching bag.” He tried again to put his hand in his pocket, but he couldn’t close it enough. “Can you get it for me?”

  I nodded—but I really meant the nod for Devin. He was pointing to the bathroom and pretending to tiptoe away.

  Leo lifted his arm. I leaned across the counter and slipped my hand inside his jacket. Devin acted like he was shocked at my behavior and wagged his finger at me. It brushed against a row of chips. There was this really loud crinkling sound. I cringed. Leo jerked halfway around.

  I had to do something fast.

  I grabbed Leo’s head with my other hand. I pulled him across the counter and kissed him on the mouth.

  It worked. Devin got out of the store without being seen.

  And I got back with Leo.

  I also got another box of pastels.

  Chapter Five

  The pastels Leo gave me only came from the Dollar Store, but they meant a lot to me. I knew he didn’t want me to go to art college. But he gave me something to help get there anyway.

  As a thank-you, I decided to draw him a picture. That Tuesday on my free period I sat behind the school and sketched the football team practicing. (Hey, he’s a jock. That’s the type of picture he likes.)

  It was a disaster. Like I said, the pastels meant a lot to me—but they were still cheap. They broke. They smudged too much. Or they wouldn’t smudge at all. I had no control over what I was putting on the paper. It was so frustrating.

  I was just about to pack up my stuff when this little spray of pebbles landed on my lap.

  “Don’t be scared!” someone whispered.

  I turned and saw Devin tiptoeing up to me.

  He was going, “Easy, girl. Eeeeeeea-sy.”

  It was kind of funny. He was acting like I was this wild animal that could attack at any moment. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

  He plopped down beside me.

  “What are you doing here?” h
e said.

  “I go here.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “There’s only one high school in town. I don’t have much choice,” I said. Then it dawned on me. “But you do. Why in the world would anyone come to Lockeport Rural Academy if they didn’t absolutely have to?”

  He shrugged. “What else is there to do around here?”

  “Good point.”

  “Other than draw, that is.”

  He looked down at my picture. I really didn’t want him seeing this one. I didn’t want anyone seeing this one. I put my arm over it.

  “Let’s not start that again,” I said.

  “Oh, right. That’s what got me in trouble in the first place,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, I won’t look at your picture if you promise to tell me one thing.” He tried that cheesy smile on me again.

  “Deal,” I said. “What?”

  “Why are you using those crap pastels?” I tried to brush it off.

  “I don’t know,” I said, although, of course, I did know.

  The truth is I was embarrassed to admit my boyfriend got them for me. I was embarrassed to admit I’d like a guy who didn’t know the difference between a $2 box of pastels and a $50 box. It’s terrible but true.

  Devin said, “Why don’t you use the ones I gave you? Your mother will thank me.”

  “My mother? What are you talking about?”

  He pointed at my arm. When I tried to hide the picture, the pastels had come off on my sleeve. My white shirt was covered with these gross smudges. My picture of the football team was even worse. It was just a bunch of burgundy and gold blotches on a green background now.

  I handed him the picture. “Sure. You can look at it all you want.”

  “Very interestink,” he said in a German accent. “I see the passion! I see the fire! Ooops. Sorry.” He turned the drawing around the other way. “I see I had it upside down!”

  The expression on his face changed suddenly.

  “Hey,” he said in his own voice. “You know all this needs to be really good?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you mind?” he asked and took what was left of my black pastel.

  “Go ahead,” I said. Who cared at this point?

  He started drawing on my picture. He hunched his back so I couldn’t see what he was doing.

  After a while he said, “Yeah, this is better. Much better. What do you think?”

  I looked at it and laughed. Devin had played connect-the-dots with all the burgundy football blobs and turned them into a picture of a big, black bunny with bloodshot eyes. The blue plaid splotch that had been Coach Isnor was now the bunny’s tail.

  “A definite improvement,” I said. “It’s just missing one little detail.” I added bloody fangs.

  “Wunderbar!” he said in his German accent again. “Together we will take the art world by storm!”

  He handed me the picture. “Your signature please. It very much increases the picture’s value on the international market.” I signed it in purple. He signed in red.

  “I will keep it always,” he said with this dreamy look on his face.

  It dawned on me that Kyla Swimm—my best friend and Lockeport’s only other art nerd—might like him. He wasn’t bad looking, and I could see her going for his weird sense of humor. I got it in my head that I should set them up.

  Big mistake.

  Chapter Six

  I told Kyla about Devin that afternoon. I didn’t exactly lie, but I didn’t tell her all the gory details either. No use mentioning that I thought Devin was weird the first time I met him. That would just make her feel like I was handing her my rejects. She didn’t need to know about the pastels, either. I didn’t want it getting back to Leo that other guys were buying me presents too.

  I told her about Tom Orser and the recording deal and Devin’s interest in art. Kyla stopped doodling and looked at me.

  “How ugly is he?” she said. She’d been set up before. She was suspicious.

  “Not ugly at all,” I answered.

  “Well, I’m interested then,” she said. “Not ugly at all means he’s cuter than 97 percent of the guys around here.”

  My only problem now was going to be finding Devin. I didn’t have a number for him. In fact, I didn’t even know where he was staying.

  It turned out I didn’t have to track him down at all. I saw him the very next day.

  I was at the town library, sprawled across one of the chairs, reading, when he came up behind me.

  “Frances? Hey, what are you doing here?” He looked at my book and shook his head in amazement. “You’re not going to believe this …” he said.

  He was holding a scrap of paper. There was a file number written on it and a title for a book called Strange Houses: Odd Abodes Throughout the Ages. It was the book I was sitting there reading.

  “Wow. Great minds think alike, huh?” he said.

  I smiled. I had to admit it seemed like a pretty weird coincidence. I’d never even heard of the book before. I just picked it up because it sounded interesting—and here he was actually looking for it.

  “So are you going to hog it?” he asked. “Or can we share?”

  I said, “Share, I guess.” Why not? I wouldn’t have wanted Leo to see us together like that, poring over a book. It would have really bugged him. But since he never came into the library, I figured I didn’t have to worry. I also needed a few minutes alone with Devin so I could bring up the Kyla thing.

  Devin pulled a chair up beside mine and we flipped through the book. He seemed to know quite a bit about construction and architects and people who build weird houses. It was interesting. I like learning about new things.

  I lost track of time. Suddenly it was almost five. I jumped up.

  “Yikes!” I said. “I gotta go!”

  He grabbed my arm. “Don’t go yet! Stay until we get into the twentieth century at least.”

  “I can’t,” I said and shook his hand loose. “I’ve got to go to Leo’s hockey tryouts.”

  “That sounds like fun!” he said.

  For a second I was worried he was going to ask if he could come with me.

  “Just kidding,” he said and elbowed me. “Would you really rather sit in a freezing cold rink than a nice warm library?”

  My answer of course was no, but I didn’t say that.

  I just said, “I don’t have a choice. I promised.”

  I threw my stuff in my knapsack and was about to take off. I had two minutes to make it to the rink, but I stopped anyway. I didn’t want to miss the chance to do my matchmaker thing.

  I turned around and said, “Hey, do you want to have lunch tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure. Sounds great!”

  I was going to tell him about Kyla, but I thought that might scare him off. In a weird way, he actually seemed kind of shy.

  “Do you know where D’Eon’s Diner is?” I asked.

  “That greasy spoon out by the fish plant? I love that place. It’s so 1962!”

  “Great. See you there at 12:30 then.”

  Devin was right. D’Eon’s Diner is so 1962. I’m sure most of the décor—and all of the coleslaw—is at least that old. But Kyla and I love it. No one from the high school ever bothers to go that far for lunch, and the seafood chowder is actually pretty good.

  Kyla and I got there at about 12:15 so we could get a good booth. I sat facing the door. The seat backs are so high that I had to keep sticking my head out in the aisle to watch for Devin.

  Kyla was nervous.

  “Do I look all right?” she said.

  She was wearing her usual mismatched Thrift Shop clothes. She had this thing tied around her head, but her hair still looked pretty wild. I mean that in a good way.

  “You look fabulous, darling,” I said. “Why are you so worried?”

  Kyla pulled at her curls so her hair wouldn’t be flat on top.

  “I don’t know. This guy just sounds too goo
d to be true. Rich. Artistic. Musical. Not ugly. When would I ever find another guy like that in Lockeport?”

  I felt bad then. Maybe I should have been a little more honest about Devin. It wouldn’t help Kyla’s chances if she acted like he was too good for her.

  I didn’t have time to do anything about it. Devin walked in the door carrying a big plastic bag. I called him over. He had this huge smile on his face—until he slipped into the booth and saw Kyla.

  He looked at her like she was a rotting corpse or something. He actually jumped back out of the booth.

  This was bad.

  I tried to laugh as if it was a joke and said, “Kyla, this is Devin.”

  “Hi,” she said. “Nice to meet you.” I could tell by the look on her face that it wasn’t nice at all.

  “Hi,” he said. He didn’t look at either of us. He held his package against his chest and kind of glanced around the room. He was all fidgety. He said, “Ah, sorry. Look. I just came in to say I can’t stay. Sorry. Have a good lunch. See ya.” And he left.

  I put this big smile on my face and turned back to Kyla.

  “Well,” I said. “That didn’t go so well now, did it?”

  “No, it was great!” Kyla said. “I think we really hit it off!” She grabbed her purse and slid out of the booth. I could tell she was going to cry.

  “Kyla …” I said.

  She got up and looked at me as if she hated me. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t try setting me up again. Like, how desperate do you think I am?”

  I tried to apologize, but she was really ranting by now. All the guys from the fish plant turned and stared.

  “What were you thinking?” She practically spat at me. “Oh, I know. ‘He may be a psycho, but he’s a single psycho. He’d be perfect for Kyla!’ Thanks for your confidence in me, Frances.”

  I couldn’t stop her. She stormed out of the diner. She didn’t even slow down to steal a handful of mints from the waitress station like she usually does.

  Everyone went back to their meals. I sat in the booth and stared at the red leatherette seat. Kyla was right. What was I thinking? I should have gone with my first instinct. The one that told me Devin was not the type of guy to get mixed up with.