Read Online Pretty Amy by Lisa Burstein - Free Book Online

stacked up like soda.
    “And if anything gets a little dicey, there’s a baseball bat behind the counter for emergencies.” Mr. Mancini sniffed and looked around. “So, you got everything?”
    Everything was a red Gas-N-Go signature polo that came down to my knees and a hair net I had to wear while working in the deli that I vowed to continually lose.
    As he left the store, he winked, like Connor and I were being left alone on a couch by some perverted father who was hoping to live through his son’s sexual exploits. I might have looked desperate, but there was no way I was that desperate.
    We watched his truck—which was teal with pink detail so that it looked like someone had swallowed a can of paint and then puked it all over the sides of the cab—as it roared away.
    “Let’s start with the cash register,” Connor said, indicating I should follow him behind the counter. He walked in that way you do when you’ve done something thousands of times before. A walk that said there were no surprises. A walk of resignation.
    “How long have you been working here?” I asked, eyeing the chip and candy aisle. Things were stocked in terms of their taste-bud quotient: the remarkably salty, the obscenely sweet, the mind-numbingly sour, the throat-hackingly bitter.
    “Does it matter?” He continued before I could answer. “You have to do this all manually.” He turned a key on the side of the register so it was in nonrecording mode. “Why don’t you try ringing up a pack of gum?”
    I tried, but it didn’t quite work out. I rang it up for $99 instead of $0.99.
    He came around my side and voided it. “All right, now watch this time.”
    I didn’t watch. I thought about how I had come into so many places like this without giving the people behind the counter a second thought. Now I realized they all had some reason to be there. There was no way you chose this without a metaphorical gun at your back.
    “Are you listening?”
    “Yes,” I said, but I think he could tell I was lying.
    “I know it’s not rocket science, but it pays the bills. It keeps my kid in diapers,” he said, shrugging.
    “You have a kid?” I covered my mouth, trying to hide the shock in my voice, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice.
    “Two. Here,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.
    I hadn’t asked to see a picture, but I accepted it when he gave it to me, like you are supposed to do when someone gives you a picture of his children. “Cute,” I said, like you are supposed to say when someone shows you a picture of his children.
    It was one of those holiday pictures. The kids sitting on a bed of cotton meant to be snow, wearing red and green and bells and bows and holding fake wrapped presents in their hands. The cotton made them look like they were pieces of strange jewelry sitting in a box.
    He smiled, like parents do when they are presenting pictures of their kids. “Do you have any?” he asked, like he was hoping this was something we could bond over.
    “No,” I said, so quickly I think he could tell I was offended by the question. “I’m only seventeen.”
    “I had my first when I was your age,” he said.
    I tried to picture it—me, with a baby . It was obvious I could barely take care of myself, but I guess I couldn’t talk. What if I were still working at Gas-N-Go five years from now and training someone else? Would I tell her that I had been her age when I was arrested for the first time?
    The first time . I shook my head.
    “Listen, I get it. You think you’re too good for this place,” he said.
    I had thought I was too good for it, but I was realizing that what I thought had little to do with reality.
    “You think I want to be here?” he asked, his voice rising. “You do a poll and I would say most people would choose to be somewhere else, doing something else, and if they really had the option, being someone else.”
    He was right, and I hated thinking that even before all this, I was most