Page 61 of Whatever It Takes

My mouth downturns, and I drop my hand. “Yeah, that was me.” I gesture to her. “I can go clean it…”

She turns her attention back to the computer and says something in another language. I think Korean. I watch too many foreign YouTube videos that I can just barely detect the language. If I paid more attention, I might’ve been able to catch one or two words and understand her better.

That’s not the point though. She purposefully wants me tonotunderstand her right now. It’s working. I shift uneasily, realizing how much trouble I’ve caused the store manager.

“I’m sorry,” I finally apologize—what I should’ve started with. “I’m really sorry, and I’m going to try to make it up to you.” I extend my arms. “Put me to work.”

I expect her to direct me to the bathrooms, to go clean toilets. “I was going to put Willow on inventory today. You can start in the storage room with her—blasted piece of technology!” She bangs the side of the computer, frustrated.

“Hey, let me see.” I head over to Maya, setting my hoodie on the counter.

She scoots to the side and points at the blue screen of death, pretty much the worst problem for Windows. “I’ve restarted it four times.”

“It might be a hardware problem.”

“How do we fix that?” She drums the counter with two fingers.

“You’d have to buy new equipment.”

Her mouth falls. Before she freaks out, I add, “I’m going to reboot it in safe mode and then check the computer’s memory. You didn’t install any new drivers, did you?”

Maya shakes her head slowly. “No.”

“Hey…” Willow emerges from the break room, hesitantly approaching us at the checkout counter. “What should I do?”

Maya is about to respond, but her phone rings, cutting her attention. She looks frazzled. “This is our indie distributor… I’ll be back.” She answers the phone and sprints into the break room.

I type in a couple commands and then wait for the computer to reboot. “I don’t know if you remember me.” I turn to look at Willow.

She stands closer to me than before, glancing at the blue screen and keeping her hands on the white countertop. “Sort of,” she says softly.

My pulse kicks up a notch, and I motion to the computer. “I’m trying to get it working.”

She nods and pushes up her glasses again. “Are you good at computers?”

“Sort of.” My lips try to rise.

Hers almost do too, but she stays quiet, just watching the blue screen blink out while I discover the issue. I’m so used to loud, overpowering noises—my friends talking over one another—that the hushed quiet between us is different for me.

It beats the silence of being alone. Because I can feel her here, beside me, thinking.

After a minute or so, I speak. “Do you go to school around here?”

“I start at Dalton Academy on Monday.”

Loren Hale’s cousin is going to Dalton Academy. The preparatory school that Loren went to as a teenager.

My muscles tense, instantly scared for her—because there are a lot of people that dislike him, based on his reputation with their older brothers or friends-of-friends. Now that he’s famous, there’s a shit ton of jealousy in the mix too.

“I can show you around school,” I offer, though I’m not sure how much this will help. It’s not like I’m beloved right now either.

She stiffens. “You go there?”

“Yep.” I bend down to check the hard drive after the memory check passes. The fan looks nasty with dust and cobwebs. I blow on it and realize that the thing probably overheated. I tinker with the equipment for another minute and let it cool off.

The front door chimes and about four more employees enter like they own the place, dispersing behind us towards the bakery and coffee makers.

Willow nearly hugs the counter. Like she’s in the way, but she’s not. She squeezes next to me, and then pauses. Realizing how close she is, she starts to back up. “Sorry.”