Alex, Approximately

“You won’t find anything cheap around here!”

—Lana Turner, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

My first real shift at the Cave begins the next day at noon, and when I see the jammed parking lot, I nearly turn the Vespa around and head back to Dad’s house. But Grace spots me before I can. She’s waiting at the employee door, waving her arms, and now there’s nothing I can do but march off to my doom. We clock in, stow our stuff in our assigned lockers, and don our orange vests.

Shit just got real.

Mr. Cavadini and his pointy blond vampire hairline greet us in the break room, clipboard in hand. “You are . . . ?”

“Bailey Rydell,” I supply. It’s been one day; he’s already forgotten.

“Grace Achebe.”

“What’s that?” he says, leaning closer to hear her.

The irritation in her eyes is supreme. “ACH-E-BE,” she spells out.

“Yes, yes,” he mumbles, like he knew it all along. He hands us plastic name tags. The sticker printed with my first name is stuck on crooked. It feels like a bad omen. “All right, ladies. Your supervisor on duty is Carol. She’s tied up with a problem in the café right now. The morning shift at ticketing is ending in three minutes, so we need to hurry. Are you ready to get out there and make some magic happen?”

Grace and I both stare at him.

“Terrific,” he says with no feeling, and then urges us out the door and into the employee corridor. “First thing you usually do is go to security”—he points down the hall toward the opposite direction—“to count out a fresh cash drawer, like we showed you in training. But today there’s no time. You’ll just have to trust that the supervisor on duty didn’t steal anything or foul up the drawer count, because it comes out of your paycheck if they did. . . .”

I freeze in place. Grace speaks first. “Wait, what’s that?”

“Come on, now,” Mr. Cavadini says, pushing me forward. “Two minutes. Shake a leg. Security will meet you at the ticketing booth to get you set up and answer any questions. If you last a week, we’ll consider assigning you a key to the booth. Otherwise, you’ll have to knock to get inside, because it locks automatically. Good luck and don’t forget to smile.”

And with that, he guides us into the lobby and promptly abandons us.

The museum was empty during orientation. It’s not now. Hundreds of voices bounce around the rocky cavern walls as patrons shuffle through the massive space, heading into the two wings. The café upstairs is packed. People are eating sandwiches on the slate stairs, talking on cell phones beneath the floating pirate ship. So. Many. People.

But the only person I really see is standing against the ticket booths.

Porter Roth. Beautiful body. Head full of wild curls. Cocky smile.

My archnemesis.

His eyes meet mine. Then his gaze drops to my feet. He’s checking to see if my shoes match. Even though I know they do, I check them again, and then want to take them off and bean them at his big, fat head.

But he doesn’t say a word about it. He only says, “Ladies,” and nods when we approach. Maybe this won’t be as bad as last time. Balancing two covered cash tills in one hand, he raps on the ticketing booth’s rear door four quick times before turning toward us. “Ready for the thrill of hot cash in your hands?”

The door to the booth swings open. For what seems like forever, Grace and I stand waiting while Porter enters the booth, swapping out the cash drawers, and two wide-eyed new hires spill out of ticketing, wiping away sweat like they’ve just been inside the devil’s own boudoir and seen unspeakable, depraved acts that have scarred them for life.

Now I’m getting really nervous.

Porter’s pissed. He’s saying something obscene into the radio doohickey on his sleeve, and for a second, I wonder if he’s telling off Mr. Cavadini, but then a shock of white hair comes bounding through the lobby and the other security guard—Mr. Pangborn—appears. He looks frazzled. And way too tired to be doing this job. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, completely breathless.

Porter heaves a long sigh and shakes his head, less angry now, more weary. “Just escort them back to cash-out and watch them count their tills until Carol gets down from the café.” He turns back toward us and whistles, tugging a thumb toward the booth. “You two, inside.”

“Balls,” Grace mumbles. “I don’t remember how to run the ticketing program!”

“You’ll do it in your sleep, Gracie,” he assures her. For a second, he almost seems nice, and not the same boy who humiliated me in front of the entire staff. A mirage, I tell myself.

The booth is small. Really small. The booth smells. Really bad. There are two swivel stools, a counter that holds the computer screen, and a shelf beneath, on which the tickets print from ancient printers. The rear door is centered behind us, and there’s barely room for a third person—much less Porter—to stand behind us and give directions. In front of us, it’s just Plexiglas covered in smudged fingerprints separating us from a line of people wrapped around stanchions. So many people. They are not happy about the delay.

The dude standing at my window is mouthing, Four, and he’s holding up four fingers, saying something nasty about me being an idiot female. That churro cart is looking better and better.

“Green means on, red means off,” Porter’s voice says near my face, a little too close. An unwanted shiver chases down my arm where his wild hair brushes my shoulder. It smells briny, like ocean water; I wonder if he’s been surfing today. I wonder why I care. His arm reaches around my body and taps the counter, startling me.

“Right, yes,” I say.

Dumbly, I glance down at the two-way intercom controls, marked OUTSIDE (to hear the customers) and INSIDE (so they can hear me). Green. Red. Got it.

“You’ll pretty much want to keep the outside mic on all the time, but if you want to hang on to your sanity, you’ll only engage the inside microphone on a need-to basis. Finger on the trigger,” he advises.

They told us that in training. It’s coming back to me now. Grace is freaking the hell out, so Porter has shifted over to her area. The jerk in front of my window is pressing four impatient fingers against the glass. I can’t hold on any longer. I hit both green buttons and smile.

“Welcome to the Cavern Palace. Four adult tickets?”

The computer does all the work. I take the man’s credit card, the tickets print, Mr. Jerkface goes through the turnstile with his jerky family. Next. This one’s cash. I fumble a little with the change, but it’s not too bad.

And so on.

At some point, Porter slips out and we’re on our own, but it’s okay. We can handle it.

I remembered how cold the Cavern lobby was during orientation, so I wore another cardigan. Ten customers into the line, and I now realize why they nickname the ticket booth the Hotbox. No air-con inside. We’re trapped in a box made of glass from the waist up, with the sun beaming down on our faces, lighting us up like we’re orchids in a freaking greenhouse.

I strip off the cardigan through my vest’s gaping sleeve holes, but every few minutes, I have to swivel around to let someone inside the door—Carol, the shift supervisor, the guy from the information booth telling us to retake a season pass photo because the customer “hates” it, sweet old Mr. Pangborn delivering change for all the big spenders who want to pay with hundred-dollar bills. Every time I swivel around to open the ticket booth door, (A) I bust my kneecaps on the metal till, and (B) a blast of freezing cave air races over my clammy skin.

Then the door shuts, and the Hotbox reheats all over again.

It’s torture. Like, this is how the military must break enemy combatants when they want to get information out of them. Where are the Geneva Conventions when you need them?

It gets worse when we have to start juggling other things like pointing out where the restrooms are, and handling complaints about ticket prices going up every year. Is this museum scary? How come we don’t give senior discounts to fifty-year-olds anymore? The wind just blew my ticket away; give me a replacement.

It’s a circus. I’m barely exaggerating. No wonder people quit the first day.

Not us. Grace and I have this. We’re champs, fist-bumping each other under the counter. I handle the job the best way I know how. Avoid eye contact. Play dumb. Shrug. Evade the hard questions. Point them toward the information desk or the gift shop.

If we don’t sweat away all our bodily fluid, we’ll make it.

A couple of hours into our shift, things slow down considerably—as in, no one in line.

“Did we scare them all away?” Grace asks, wiping sweat from the back of her neck.

“Is it over?” I say, peering over the intercom to see around the stanchions. “Can we go home now?”

“I’m asking someone to bring us water. They said we could. It’s too hot. Screw this.” Grace uses the phone to page Carol, and she says she’ll send someone. We wait.

A couple of minutes later, I hear four quick raps on the door and open it to find Porter. It’s the first time we’ve seen him since the beginning of our jail sentence. He hands us plastic bottles of water from the café and gives me that slow, lazy smile of his that’s entirely too sexy for a boy our age, and that makes me nervous all over again.

“You’ve both got that sweet Hotbox sheen. Looks better on the two of you than the last pair. By the way, one of them is . . .” He swipes his thumb across his throat, indicating that the kid quit, and not that he actually offed himself. I hope.

“Another one?” Grace murmurs.

He leans back against the door, one foot propped up, scrolling through his phone. The propped-up foot puts his knee in my space, mere centimeters from mine. It’s like he’s purposely trying to crowd me. “This job weeds out the weak, Gracie. They should flash their photos over the teepees in the fake starry sky in Jay’s Wing.”

“What time is it?”

He consults a fat red watch on his wrist with a funny digital screen and tells us the time. When I stare too long, he catches me looking and explains, “Surf watch. Swell direction, wave height, water temperature. Completely waterproof, unlike this stupid phone, which I’ve had to replace twice already this year.”

I was actually staring at his Frankenstein scars, thinking about how Grace had started to tell me something tragic about his family yesterday on the boardwalk, but I’m relieved he thought I was looking at the watch.

“How did you get to be security guard, anyway?” I ask, cracking open my bottled water.

He spares a moment’s glance from the screen and winks at me. Actually winks. Who does that? “Eighteen opens up all sorts of doors. You can vote, legally engage in any and all imaginative sexual activities with the consenting person of your choice, and—best of all—you can work full-time as a security guard at the Cavern Palace.”

“Only one of those things I want to do and don’t need any law to give me permission,” Grace says sweetly from the other side of the booth.

I don’t look at him. If he’s trying to make me uncomfortable with all of that “imaginative sexual activities” talk, he can give himself a pat on the back, because it’s working. But he’s not going to see me sweat. Except for the fact that I’ve been sweating for the last two hours in the Hotbox.

“Taran’s gone overseas for one week and you’re already turning to me to satisfy your womanly needs?” he says.

“You wish,” she retorts.

“Every day. What about you, Rydell?”

“No thanks,” I say.

He puffs out a breath, acting wounded. “You leave a boyfriend wailing for you back east?”

I grunt noncommittally. Grace’s stool creaks. I can feel both of them looking in my direction, and when I don’t reply, Porter says, “I know what will fix this. Quiz time.”

Grace groans. “Oh, no.”

“O-oh, yes.”

I risk a glance at his face, and he’s grinning to himself, scrolling madly on his phone. “A quiz is the best way to get to know yourself and others,” he says, like he’s reading a copy from a magazine.

“He’s obsessed with stupid quizzes,” Grace explains. “He inflicts them on everyone at school. Cosmo quizzes are the worst.”

“I think you mean the best,” he corrects. “Here’s a good one. ‘Why Don’t You Have a Boyfriend, Girlfriend? Take this quiz to find out why a super girl like you is still sitting home alone on Saturday night instead of pairing up with the boy of your dreams.’ ”

“Nope,” Grace says.

“I’ll just take this back, then,” Porter says, attempting to snatch the water from Grace’s hand. They wrestle for a second, laughing, and when she shrieks, spilling cold water on her orange Cave vest, I almost get Porter’s elbow in my face. He holds the water over her head, out of reach.

“All right, you win,” Grace says. “Do your damn quiz, already. Better than just sitting here, I suppose.”

Porter hands her water back, settles against the door, and reads from the quiz. “ ‘Your older sister takes you to a campus party while you’re visiting her at college. Do you: (A) dance with her and her friends; (B) skinny-dip in the backyard pool; (C) grab a hottie and go make out in an empty bedroom upstairs; (D) sit alone on the couch, people-watching?’ ”

I don’t bother answering. A young couple comes to my window, so I flip on the mics long enough to greet them and sell two tickets. When I’m done, Grace has chosen answer A.

“What about you, Rydell?” Porter asks. “I’m thinking you’re answer B—secret exhibitionist. If you don’t quit today, who knows. I might just look up on the monitors tomorrow and find you stripping by the Cleopatra Pool in Vivian’s Wing.”

I snort. “Is that what you’ve been imagining back in the security booth?”

“All afternoon.”

“You’re an ass.”

He holds my gaze. “Scratch that. I think you’re actually answer C. You’d grab a ‘hottie’ ”—he makes one-handed air quotes—“and go make out in an empty bedroom. Am I right?”

I don’t answer.

He’s not dissuaded. “Next question.” He swipes the screen of his phone, but he’s not looking at it; he’s staring at me. Trying to intimidate me. Trying to see who’ll blink first. “Did you leave DC because (A) you couldn’t find any hotties to make out with? Or (B) your East Coast boyfriend is an ankle buster and you’d heard about legendary West Coast D, so you had to find out for yourself if the rumors were true?” he says with a smirk.

“Idiot,” Grace mumbles, shaking her head.

I may not understand some of his phrasing, but I get the gist. I feel myself blushing. But I manage to recover quickly and get a jab in. “Why are you so interested in my love life?”

“I’m not. Why are you evading the question? You do that a lot, by the way.”

“Do what?”

“Evade questions.”

“What business is that of yours?” I say, secretly irritated that he’s figured me out. And who is he anyway, my therapist? Well, I’ve got news for him, I’ve been to two of the best therapists money can buy in New Jersey, once with my mom and once on my own, and neither one of those so-called experts was able to keep me in the chair for longer than two sessions. They said I bottled up my feelings, and I was uncommunicative, and that evasion was a “maladaptive coping mechanism” to avoid dealing with a stressor, and that it was an unhealthy way to avoid panic attacks.

Says the man who wanted to charge my parents more than a college education for his expert advice. I’m coping just fine, thankyouverymuch. If people like this will just leave me alone . . .

Porter scoffs. “Seeing how this is your first day on the job, and may very well be your last, considering the turnover rate for this position? And seeing how I have seniority over you? I’d say, yeah, it’s pretty much my business.”

“Are you threatening me?” I ask.

He clicks off his phone and raises a brow. “Huh?”

“That sounded like a threat,” I say.

“Whoa, you need to chill. That was not . . .” He can’t even say it. He’s flustered now, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Grace . . .”

Grace holds up a hand. “Leave me out of this mess. I have no idea what I’m even witnessing here. Both of you have lost the plot.”

He makes a soft growling noise and turns back to me. “Look, I was just giving you a hard time—lighten up. But the fact is, I’ve been working here forever. You’ve been working here a few hours.”

“But don’t you already have me pegged? You know all about me, Mr. Famous Surfer Boy?”

He mockingly strokes his chin in thought. “Hmm . . . well, Little Miss Vogue,” he says in that low, gravelly voice of his. The one I thought was all sexy and charming when he was giving us the tour. “Let me hazard a guess. You’re some stuck-up East Coast sophisticate whose daddy got her this job where she’s forced to have normal conversations with surf trash like me.” He crosses his arms and smiles defiantly at me. “How’d I do?”

My mouth falls open. I’m so stunned, I feel as though I’ve had the wind knocked out of my chest. I try to untangle his words, but there’s just so much there. If he’s really just giving me a hard time, then why do I sense . . . so much bitterness?

How did he know my dad helped get me this job? Did someone in the office tell him? I mean, it’s not like I’m some spoiled, incompetent rich kid with zero work experience and mega connections. My dad’s just a CPA! But I’m not going to bother explaining that or anything else. Because right now, I’m halfway convinced a hole in my skull has blown right off and my brains are flowing out like molten lava. I think I might well and truly hate Porter Roth.

“You know nothing about me or my family. And you’re a goddamn dickbag, you know that?” I say, so enraged that I don’t even care that a family of four is walking up to my window. I should have. And I should have noticed that I left the green switch turned on from the last pair of tickets I sold. But the family’s wide-eyed faces clue me in now.

They’ve heard every nasty word.

For one terrible moment, the booth spins around me. I apologize profusely, but the parents aren’t happy. At all. Why should they be? Oh God, is the wife wearing a crucifix pendant? What if these people are fundamentalists? Are these kids homeschooled? Did I just ruin them for life? Jesus fu—I mean, fiddlesticks. Are they going to ask to speak to Mr. Cavadini? Am I going to be fired? On my first day? What is my dad going to say?

If I was hot before, I’m not now. Icy dread sends an army of goose bumps over my skin. I point the scarred family to Grace’s window and bolt out of my stool, shoving past Porter as I race out of the booth.

I don’t even know where I’m going. I end up in the break room and then outside in the employee parking lot. For a second, I consider driving away on Baby, until I remember that I don’t even have my purse; it’s back in my locker.

I sit on the sidewalk. Cool down, get myself together. I have a thirty-minute break, after all, don’t I? Thirty whole minutes to wallow in embarrassment over saying what I said in front of that family . . . thirty minutes to wonder how in the world I allowed Porter to provoke me into yet another argument. Thirty minutes to freak out over being fired on my first day. Me! The Artful Dodger. How did this happen?

This is all Porter’s fault. He provoked me. Something about him just brings out the worst in me and makes me want to . . . lock horns. He thinks I’m a snob? He’s not the first. Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I’m aloof. Maybe I just want to be alone. Maybe I’m not good at conversation. We all can’t be cool and gregarious and Hey, bro, what up? like he apparently is. Some of us aren’t wired for that. That doesn’t make me snotty. And why does he keep talking about the way I dress, for the love of God? I’m more casual today than I was on orientation. So sue me if I have style. I’m not changing myself to please him.

I’m not sure how much time passes, but I eventually head back into the break room. A few employees are milling about. I wait a few minutes, but no one comes to get me. I expect to be called into Mr. Cavadini’s office, or at least for the shift supervisor to want to speak to me. When no one comes, I don’t know what to do. I’ve still got several hours left on my shift, so I head back to the lobby, scanning for signs of an inquisition on the march. I bump into someone. I look up and see Mr. Cavadini, clipboard smashed against his chest, and my pulse triples.

“So sorry,” I say, apologizing for what must be a record-breaking number of times in the last half hour. This is it. I’m done for. He’s come to ax me.

“Please watch where you’re going, Miss . . .” He pauses while his eyes dart toward my name tag. “Bailey.”

“I . . .” Can’t apologize again. I just can’t. “Yes, sir.”

“How’s ticketing working out for you? Are you on a break?” His nose wrinkles. “You aren’t quitting, are you?”

“No, sir.”

He relaxes. Straightens his Cavern Palace tie. “Terrific. Back to your post,” he says absently, focus returned to the clipboard as he shuffles away. “Don’t forget to smile.”

Like I could do that right now. I head to the ticketing booth in a daze, still unsure what I’ll find there. I take a deep breath and knock on the door. It swings open. Porter is gone. A small line is forming on the other side of the glass, and Grace is handling it alone. Her shoulders relax when she sees me. She quickly switches off her mic.

“Hey,” she whispers. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m not going to be fired?”

She stares at me like I’ve gone nuts then shakes her head. “Porter just apologized and let them in free of charge. People will forgive anything if you give them stuff for free. Don’t quit! It’s all good. And I need your help now, yeah?”

“Okay.”

I close the door behind me and sit on my stool, waving the next person in line over to my window. I’m not sure how I feel. Relieved? Wiped out? Still humiliated and angry at Porter? I don’t even know anymore.

Before I click on my mic, I look down and see a fresh bottle of water and three cookies sitting on a printed Cavern Palace napkin. One chocolate chip, one sugar, one oatmeal. A note in scraggly, boyish handwriting is inked on the napkin’s corner, along with a drawing of a sad face. It says: Sorry.

LUMIÈRE FILM FANATICS COMMUNITY PRIVATE MESSAGES>ALEX>NEW!

@alex: I need cheering up.

@mink: Me too. Want to watch Gold Diggers of 1933?

@alex: Blues Brothers?

@mink: Dr. Strangelove?

@alex: Young Frankenstein?

@mink: Young Frankenstein.

@alex: You’re the best.

@mink: You’re not so bad yourself. Tell me when you’re ready to hit play.