Part 22 (2/2)
”It's kinda expensive,” she whispers, ”but you can use my discount.”
I glance around for a manager, but all the people working seem young and nice.
”Yeah, okay,” I whisper back.
At the machine, I breathe in the smell of ink and paper.
She shows me how to get the settings right, and once I've gotten the hang of it, she goes back behind the counter.
Out the window, people are strolling by, pus.h.i.+ng strollers, walking dogs, sipping coffee. A few couples wait, relaxed, outside a restaurant. I open to Ingrid's first page and wonder how many hours I've spent staring down at it, alone, looking for answers or comfort.
I place it down on the lighted gla.s.s, close the lid, press START.
A second later, a perfect copy spits out of the machine. I pick it up and hold it. There is her crooked smile, her yellow hair.
I press start again.
19.
An hour later, I'm finished. I carry my thick stack of copies to the counter and Maddy rings me up.
She reaches under the counter, pulls out a piece of thick, brown paper, and folds it around my copies. ”So Dylan told you about Danny. That's huge. She never never talks about Danny.” talks about Danny.”
She pauses, but her face looks thoughtful, so I wait for her to say more.
”She doesn't let too many people get close to her. She's very guarded. But she really cares about you, and she knows how it feels to go through something like this.”
She unfolds a bag and rests my copies inside.
I don't want to take it. I don't want to leave the store. Everything feels perfect-the suns.h.i.+ne, the music, the woman and her tattoos still working away on some never-ending project, Maddy smiling kindly from across the counter-then it hits me.
This is how it feels to have friends.
It isn't something fleeting. It won't end when I walk out the door.
I take the bag, reach in, and find a copy of a drawing Ingrid did of a girl's skirt and legs. At the bottom it says, Brave Brave.
”I want you to have this.”
Maddy lifts it to eye level, grasping it gently on both sides.
”Tell me about it,” she asks, without looking away.
I lean over the counter so I can get a better look. ”It's from the middle of her journal, where she seems really confused in most of the entries. But it seemed like she still had some hope then.” I shrug. ”I don't really know anything else about it.”
I think of driving earlier, the man on his way to work, the old woman and her sweater. ”We could make it up,” I suggest.
”So, let's see,” Maddy says. ”She was sitting outside somewhere in your town.”
”On the steps by the Starbucks.”
”Waiting for you.”
”My mom was gonna drop me off to meet her.”
”So she was just watching people, wasting time till you got there.”
”And she saw a girl.”
”An eleven-year-old.”
”And she thought she was cute.”
”But didn't want the girl to see her staring.”
”So she only sketched the bottom half of her.”
”And then . . .” Maddy says. ”Your mom pulled up and you hopped out of the car.”
”And she shut her journal 'cause she was always really private about it.”
”But later that night she opened it again, and thought the picture was missing something.”
”So she thought about it,” I say, and as I invent the next part of the story, I really picture Ingrid, sitting at her colored-pencil and watercolor-covered desk. ”And she remembered what it was like to be an eleven-year-old girl, either scrawny and flat-chested . . .”
”Or chubby and too embarra.s.sed to tell your mom you need a bigger training bra.”
”And she thought that it was hard.”
”It was really hard hard . . .” . . .”
”To be eleven, and be a girl.”
”So she got out her black pen . . .” I say.
”And she wrote the word brave brave.”
Maddy lowers the picture and smiles. I smile back.
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