A few months later…
The shopping cart had one flat wheel. Why did I always end up with the cart with the wonky wheel? I walked slowly down the aisle for no other reason than I was tired and I didn’t want to fight the cart any more than I had to.
A large red and pink wall of fake fur blocked my vision before I identified an oversized Valentine-themed gorilla settling into the cart. I sighed as I reached for it and hauled it back onto the shelf.
“You do not need a stuffed animal bigger than you,” I said.
“Spoil sport,” Ruby complained.
“Do you need a class pack of Valentine’s cards?”
“What? You aren’t going to make me make them this year?” she quipped.
“Excuse you, you made them? I’m pretty sure I’m the one melting the crayons and putting them into the heart molds. Everyone always loved your heart-shaped crayons. Every single one of your teachers always made sure to mention them.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “They just said shit like that because they knew you couldn’t afford the store-bought cards. How come you are willing to buy them this year?”
The truth was, I didn’t have the money to buy them this year, but I was also running out of time. “Language. No time.”
“Well, I don’t need them this year. They stopped having us do all that mandatory Valentine’s Day stuff in the sixth grade.”
I stopped the cart. “Good. Hey, I made crayons for you last year. Why didn’t you say anything then?”
Ruby shrugged. “You were having fun. Besides, my friends are weird and love them.”
I wasn’t having fun. I did them so she could participate like the rest of her class.
She pulled another stuffed animal off the shelf. “Can I get this one? Kenzie, look at its eyes, so big, so cute.”
It kind of looked like my sister with big green eyes, a tiny nose, and lips a little out of proportion and on the big side. It was cute, but Ruby was cuter. Not that I’d ever tell her I thought so.
“So, no Valentine’s cards?” I asked. I didn’t try to hide the relief in my voice. I didn’t remember elementary school as being so much work when I was the one in school. And middle school had just been a blur of dodging bullies, doing math homework, and Mom dealing with a baby. I certainly didn’t remember Mom ever having to do nearly as much schoolwork as I did for Ruby.
“No cards. Can I have this?” She found yet another stuffed animal.
I groaned. “No, Ruby, you cannot.”
“But you don’t have to buy class cards. This is only”—she checked the tag— “five bucks,” she whined. It was a fake whine, but my exhaustion was real, so her attitude was grating on my last nerve.
“We don’t have five bucks.”
“If you don’t have five bucks, why are we even in this store? Come on, Mom, you’re not being fair.”
I stopped and closed my eyes. Damn it, our petty banter had caught someone’s attention. And odds were good that someone was staring at us. Ruby only ever called me ‘Mom’ when it would fluster someone or really tick me off. I didn’t have the energy to deal with either situation.
“If Daddy would only pay child support. But I guess he can’t from Folsom. Stupid prison system.”
I stayed there with my eyes closed and tried not to laugh. If Ruby had gone as far as talking about her ‘daddy in prison,’ someone was being too nosy about our business.
I opened my eyes and looked around. I caught some middle-aged lady giving me a side eye. I didn’t know who it was. The half of town that knew us would have started laughing at Ruby’s Daddy in prison comments. Ruby and I didn’t have parents. Technically, we were orphans. And it still hurt, but we had gotten to the point in our grief that we could crack jokes. At least Ruby had.
Biologically, Ruby was my baby sister. A big surprise to my parents when I was almost twelve. Up until that moment, I thought I was going to grow up an only child. Legally, I was her appointed guardian. As her responsible adult, I fell into the job of ‘Mom’.
“Come on,” I groaned. “I want out of the Valentine’s aisle sooner rather than later.”
“I thought you wanted to look at the Valentine’s stuff.”
“No, I hate all this lovey-dovey hearts crap,” I answered. “I came down this way because there were no people.”
“Is that why you don’t have a boyfriend?” Ruby asked.
“What?”
“You just said you don’t like this lovey-dovey stuff. Boyfriends like this kind of thing.” She held up a pair of hugging monkeys. I remembered wanting a toy like that when I was younger. They had magnets in their little hands that kept them holding on to their partner. One was red, the other pink. Their little noses were heart-shaped, and they probably had little embroidered hearts on their chests.
I snorted. “Boyfriends have nothing to do with this sort of thing. And if you get one who does, that means someone had to tell him to go to the store and buy it. I keep telling you boys are stupid.” I started to walk a little faster.
“Is that why you won’t let me date?”
I froze, absolutely froze in place. “What? You don’t date.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Ruby didn’t like boys. She thought they were icky and had said so more than once. Oh, God, I wasn’t ready for her to hit full-blown puberty. Not yet, please not yet. My voice was shaky. Boys were going to be interested in my sister sooner rather than later. She was cute, and she was going to have serious curves. She was already trying to hide her developing chest behind baggy shirts. “Are you even old enough to be talking about dating?”
“I’m practically an adult,” she retorted.
“You’re thirteen. Who asked you out on a date?”
“No one. Not yet. But you are always saying that I’m never going to be allowed to have a boyfriend, that I have to focus on school…”
I let out a sigh. “I guess if you want to date, we can discuss the details when we come to it. Do you want to date boys?”
Ruby shrugged. “Not particularly, but it seems like more and more kids at school are. How old were you when Mom let you start dating?”
I shrugged as we turned the corner and I continued to head toward the back corner of the store.
“Mom never really gave me rules like that.”
“Dad?”
“Same. I mean, I went out on one date once. He took me to a movie, and Mom and her girlfriends were going out that night and they ended up at the same movie.”
“Uh, that sounds horrible. Where was Dad?”
“At home with you. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I guess. Mom threw popcorn at us all night. But I didn’t really date much.” And by much, I meant at all. One awkward date in the ninth grade, and that was it.
I stopped again, this time in front of the feminine hygiene products.
“Oh, that’s why we’re here,” Ruby groaned.
“Grab what you think you’ll need,” I said as I made my selection.
“I have stuff at home. Can I spend my money on the monkeys instead?” Ruby started.
“We don’t have money for stuffed animals because we need money for this, every month. And I have to buy quarters for laundry,” I explained.
“How do you know we don’t have money for those monkeys?”
“It’s called budgeting. Maybe I should teach you. It sucks to learn all of this stuff the hard way.”
She tried to put her choices into the cart as if she weren’t actually doing it. Her attention was off down the aisle, and she dropped the products into the cart as if I wasn’t watching. So much for practically being an adult. I fully understood the awkwardness and embarrassment. She wasn’t really ready for the biology that came with being an adult, even though she had to deal with it. I said nothing, and we moved on as if nothing had just happened.
Ruby rushed ahead and grabbed a bag of heart-shaped chocolates from an end display. I didn’t say anything when she dropped those into the cart. When she noticed I left them in the cart, she tried putting something else in, a box of heart-themed Band-Aids. I quietly lifted the box out and set it on the shelf.
I put a small bottle of cheap shampoo in the cart. Ruby eyed it.
When my attention was on the selection of conditioner, she must have taken the shampoo out, since it was gone when I put the conditioner in. This had somehow turned from a shopping trip into a personal challenge. I grabbed the shampoo and dropped it back into the cart. If I stopped paying attention, not only would the hugging monkeys end up in the cart, but she would also probably find a kitten and put it in there too.
The last item she tried to sneak in was a round hamster-looking stuffed creature. It was covered in hearts. It was cute and I hated pulling it out of the cart. I wished I could give Ruby everything she wanted and was keenly aware that I couldn’t. I was beginning to hate everything about this shopping trip.
Ruby held up a bottle of soda. “Can I at least have this?” The label had some Valentine’s promotion printed on it.
“Why is everything covered in hearts?” I complained.
“That’s a no?” she asked.
“You can have the drink. I’m just sick of everything being covered in hearts right now.”
“That’s because you’re some kind of love Scrooge. You hate Valentine’s Day.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she wasn’t wrong. I really did not like February fourteenth, and it had everything to do with love.
