Read Online The Perfect Place by Teresa E. Harris - Free Book Online Page A

eaters. He tells me what he’ll name his cockatoo once his mother gives in and confronts her fear of birds—Clancy. By the time he starts talking about his allergy to pit fruits, I check out of the conversation and start flipping through the dictionary in my head, beginning with the
A
’s.
    Ameliorate: to make or become better; to make more bearable, as in, the only way to ameliorate my time with Terrance would be to glue his mouth shut.
    I make it to
cacophony
—a harsh clash of sounds—when Terrance asks, “So is it just you and your sister visiting Ms. Washington? Where’re your parents?”
    My dad has been gone for two and a half months and my mom is driving around searching for him, using a credit-card bill as her guide. As if Terrance would understand, with his zoologist father and his mother with her high living standards. I bet they have dinner together as a family every night and the only time his father has ever left was for a business trip and even then he made sure to call every night.
    The grits and bacon churn in my stomach. I close my eyes and press my forehead against the cool metal of the shelves.
    â€œAre you okay?” Terrance asks.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œAre you—”
    â€œI said I’m fine.”
    The clock above the stockroom door reads 12:10 when Great-Aunt Grace returns, carrying two aluminum-foiled bundles and two bottles of red juice. The bundle turns out to be a sandwich, turkey with mayo on white bread. She hands one to Terrance and the other to me. I wait for him to sit down near the door to the storage room. Then I pick a section of cold floor all the way on the other side of the room, far enough away from Terrance to discourage any further conversation, and open my sandwich. I’ve barely taken a bite when Tiffany waltzes in, carrying what’s left of her own lunch. Her smile could span the equator.
    â€œI rung up a customer,” she yells, throwing herself down on the floor next to me. “It was a boy, and he bought seven loose Tootsie Rolls. I don’t like Tootsie Rolls ’cause they make my teeth hurt. Anywho, it came to thirty-five cents and he paid with two quarters. Guess how much his change was?”
    â€œHmmm, I don’t know. Twelve cents?”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œFourteen, then.” I wipe mayo from the corner of her mouth.
    â€œNoooo.” Tiffany giggles. “Fifteen, silly. But I didn’t even have to know because the cash register told me.”
    Tiffany will ask for a cash register for Christmas.
    Great-Aunt Grace returns. She goes over to Terrance. What is she doing? Checking up on me? They come over to where I’m sitting, and Great-Aunt Grace says, “Seems to me you’ve worked hard enough today.” She looks from Terrance to me, and there’s something about the determined look in her eyes that I don’t like one bit. “So I was thinkin’ maybe the two of you could scoot off for a little, and Terrance here could show you around.”
    I’d rather clean every shelf with my tongue than be shown around by Terrance. I never knew a boy who could talk so much. I will suffocate under the weight of his endless conversation.
    Terrance, on the other hand, is ready to go. He nods and smiles at me, his eyebrows finally doing what they’ve been threatening to ever since we were introduced: kiss his hairline.
    â€œMaybe some other time,” I say. “I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”
    â€œGirl, please,” Great-Aunt Grace says. “Three hours and you’ve barely cleaned five shelves. Rate you goin’, you be my age before you finish. Now, go on, git.”
    She says this in a way that makes me snap my mouth shut and get to my feet.
    â€œWhat about Tiffany?” I ask weakly. She talks as much as Terrance, and with the two of them yakking, I won’t have to talk to anyone.
    But Tiffany shakes her head hard enough to