One "Heads up!" was my only warning before it was launched over the aisle toward me. Even though I was on one knee, stocking shelves with acrylic paint tubes, my reflexes were on their feet. My long forearms met the ball of rubber bands with a force that sent it hurling back toward where it came from.
"Ouch!" Pam, my coworker-slash-bestfriend, yelped.
Snickering to myself, I rushed over to her aisle to apologize. She gave me the dramatic, injured look, so I knew it wouldn't be easy.
"C'mon, it was just a few soft rubber bands," I offered sweetly.
"Yeah -- and not a volleyball." She pouted, rubbing her forehead. "I swear, London, from now on, going to one of your volleyball matches is gonna feel like watching a scary movie."
"Seeing as how you overact worse than a Hollyweird D-lister," I teased, "that would be a step up for you."
Pam forgot about her wounded act and coughed up a boisterous laugh that I'm sure all of northern New Jersey heard. She's not usually the loud type, but the girl is known to turn up the volume on just about every aspect of her personality.
"You're never gonna let me live that down, huh?" Pam placed her hand -- the one not holding a stack of colored pencils -- over her heart and squinted as if the sun was in her eyes. "I did it for you. The ref had to understand how foul his call was."
Her theatrics aside, I appreciate that she comes to almost every one of my home games to show her support.
"Mmm-hmm," I teased. "Next time you get the urge to run screaming across the court during game time, don't do me any favors."
"Owww," Pam whimpered. Going for the right distraction to change the subject, she started stroking her forehead again. I grinned and wrapped my long arms around Pam's shoulders, giving her a quick, apologetic squeeze. My five-foot-ten frame extended half a head taller than her.
"Sorry." I picked up the rubber orb and carefully pulled off the red band on top. "Anyway, I only asked you for one."
"Next time I won't be so generous." Pam got in the last word before she carried on placing colored pencils into separate slots on a fixture.
I smiled to myself and headed back to my acrylic paint duties. Without intending it to be, working the same shift at Art Attack was becoming the perfect chance for Pam and me to hang together. Even though we're both sophomores at Teawood High, my volleyball season being in full swing and Pam's double passions for fashion and her boyfriend Jake have kept us preoccupied. Before this job, we'd mostly been keeping in touch via text.
Unexpected bonus BFF time aside, Pam got me a job here for another reason altogether. Once she heard I was passed up for the volleyball summer camp scholarship and had to raise the fifteen-hundred-dollar fee on my own, she put in a good word with her boss. Now here I am, two weeks later, proudly rocking the faux-paint-splattered, red employee vest.
Art Attack was one of a few artsy stores to pop up on Main Avenue in recent months. The seven-block strip, known to locals as "the Ave," always had potential. Just a few miles from New York City, Teawood, New Jersey, is a large suburb with a metropolitan vibe. Cozy coaches -- or as we like to call them, adult school buses -- make their way down the Ave, shuttling Teawood residents to and from their New York City jobs every workday morning and evening. On Saturdays kids either head across the bridge to shop in Manhattan or parade down the Ave in celebs-on-a-coffee-run attire. For them it's all about comfy boots with oversize handbags and shades.
In the heart of the strip, the brick sidewalks are spacious and lined with benches and old-world lampposts. Luxury car dealerships, designer shoe stores, and fancy evening gown showrooms stand alongside busy restaurants, open-late ice cream shops, and trendy clothing stores. Lots of famous folks who live in nearby, more upscale towns -- including a few rappers who publicly claim to still be living in New York City -- can be spotted shopping or lunching here. (Reverend Run's kids are known to pass through, reality show cameras in tow.) Shiny cars cruise up and down, looking for both attention and parking.
No celebrity sightings in Art Attack to report yet. That's probably because my part-time working hours are spent avoiding customers and their art-related questions. Pam, in her artsyliciousness, is a much better fit for this job. Honestly, if I'd known that a prerequisite for working at an art supply store was creativity, I would've found another way to earn the money.
But it's all worth it. The Peak Performance Volleyball Camp in upstate New York trains top high school players from the tristate area and gives them a shot at making the national team. I've wanted to go to Peak Performance camp ever since my gym teacher told me about it in the eighth grade. It has the best reputation. Plus it lands athletes on the radar of prominent college scouts -- which is right where I want to be.
Trust, I would walk around stuffed to the gills in grills like rapper Plies if you told me gold teeth had transmitters that blip on the radar of college scouts.
Crazy ambition aside, what's fun about Peak Performance is that after weeks of intensive training in the art of spiking, blocking, serving, and winning, the camp squad flies to Miami to play against teams from other regions across the country.
Even though scholarships were awarded to only two star athletes from my school -- seniors who have already been handpicked to play volleyball in college -- I was selected to join the camp. My parents said they'd gladly pay the hefty fee...but only if I enroll the summer after my junior year. Trouble is, who even knows what chance I'd have for getting picked next year! Considering there's no guaranteed placement, I just can't pass up this summer's opportunity.
So for now I'm all about improving my game, which it turns out, has been the therapy I needed to get over my ex-boyfriend Rick Stapleton. Correction: I didn't need to get over him, so much as the humiliation of being dumped publicly. Of course, all of that intensified volleyball focus has been reflected by my wardrobe (I pair a v-ball jersey with jeans, like, every day) and the number of v-ball clips on my Facebook page.
I'm finally shaking off the heartbreak, but I still feel stupid when I think of how, right before it went down, I was beaming like SpongeBob because I was genuinely happy for my then boyfriend. Picture gullible me, all chipper in the bleachers, watching Rick get honored as Peak Performance's Top Athlete in his age group. I jumped up and cheered so loudly when his name was announced that I gave myself laryngitis and a migraine. That was mere minutes before I found out that Rick had also worked on his playa-playa game during his summer away.
Yup, in August Rick returned from camp with a new girlfriend -- the hot v-ball star from a rival school. After practically skipping off the bleachers, intending to congratulate Rick and welcome him back with a kiss, I caught the sight of him hugging up on a Keke Palmer look-alike. He didn't even unglue himself from her when he saw me staring, frozen in shock. It didn't matter, because by then my voice was too hoarse (and my head too achy) to confront Rick.
We haven't spoken since.
But despite the prime-time shaft -- witnessed by the entire athletic student body, by the way -- I'm turning things around. It's October, and I've established myself as a new, strong player on Teawood High School's varsity squad. Not even the sight of Unslick Rick watching from the stands (with her) can throw off my game.
"London Abrams, you're on register." My manager's squawky voice yanked me back from my daydream.
I noticed that I'd been squeezing a helpless tube of paint, leaving it misshapen and crinkled. As best I could, I flattened it to its near-original figure before placing it at the back of the shelf behind the undamaged tubes.
My boss didn't notice -- he's in his own world. While other managers and employees of Art Attack are funky, creative types, this one is offbeat in a chop-off-an-ear van Gogh way. The poor guy seems tormented by a million unfinished personal art projects. He wears that torment in his hair. It looks more mad scientist than everyone else's bed-head vogue.
"Great, my favorite place to be," I said sarcastically, sidestepping his attempt at authority. With a million different possible payment transactions -- cash, credit card, Art Attack bonuses, promotional codes, coupons, employee discounts, buy-two-getone- half-off deals -- I still wasn't completely comfortable manning the checkout counter.
"Would you rather advise customers on how to put their art projects together?" he asked.
I suck at art advice. So, after stocking the shelves, I went to relieve the lanky goth guy signing off of register 1.
Fortunately for me, it was smooth sailing for the first two hours -- just simple cash and credit card customers. But about a half hour before my lunch break, things started getting busy. The checkout lane signs -- wide lamp shades displaying red numbers -- blocked the shorter cashiers from view. On the flip side, my head towered above my lane's sign. Because they could see me, customers assumed I was the only employee on duty. So a long line formed at my register, while my coworkers at registers 2 and 3 seemed to be hiding behind their signs on purpose.
Just when I thought my boss would take notice of what was going on, an inquisitive customer whisked him away on a calligraphy ink hunt. It was up to me to handle the situation. I still had too much of that newemployee uneasiness to call out my coworkers, so I addressed the customers instead.
"Registers two and three are also open," I informed the back of the coiling line.
My announcement totally backfired. A cutie had been heading to my line, but just as I said this, he queued up behind the two customers who had also just switched to register 2.
