Glitter Girl by Toni Runkle Page A

popular with the young people.”
    â€œI think she’s got all of those.”
    â€œAll righty then, could you give me a wee bit of a hint so I can steer us in the right direction?”
    â€œWell, she’s in the Shakespeare Club at school,” Kat offered.
    The old man’s eyes lit up. “Shakespeare you say, the ever-lovin’ Bard of Avon?”
    â€œUh, yeah. I guess,” said Kat, vaguely remembering Jules using that nickname for him.
    â€œYou are in luck, my good lady!” said the clerk. “For just this very day arrived in the store a very special shipment indeed. I haven’t even put it out on the shelf yet.”
    He reached under the counter and pulled out an enormous book.
    â€œ The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare ,” said the salesman, reading the cover. “ The Complete Works, Annotated and Illustrated .”
    It was practically as large as Kat’s family Bible that her grandma gave her on her first communion day a few years ago. But it was even more beautiful, if that were possible. It was bound in deep scarlet leather, with pages that had gold around the edges. Kat paged through the book and looked at all the notes and illustrations. Scenes from each of the plays were in vivid color that made even Kat want to read them.
    As Kat was busy being dazzled by the book, she thought of Jules’s pile of dog-eared paperbacks that filled her bedroom. Or that discount Collected Works Jules had bought used for $9.99 on eBay, and when it finally arrived, she had discovered there were markings all over the margins and some of the pages of Hamlet had been torn out. This would put them all to shame. This was the perfect gift on a birthday that really needed a perfect gift, especially after last night. Only how much could it be? This was not just a book; this was a work of art. Kat scanned the inside and outside cover looking for a price, but none was to be found.
    She gulped, “Uh, how much is it?”
    â€œWell, I haven’t really priced it out yet,” the bookseller replied. “It just arrived today, you see.”
    The old man could see Kat was doing calculations in her head and looking for an answer. “What might be your budget for this gift, young miss?”
    â€œUh, my mom said I could spend fifty dollars,” Kat said, knowing that such a treasure had to be more than that. “But,” she said, silently adding up all the other cash she had in her purse, “I could go as high as…seventy-five dollars?”
    The old man looked sternly from Kat to the volume of Shakespeare on the counter, doing his own set of calculations in his head. “Well, lassie,” he said, “as luck would have it, this particular volume is exactly that, seventy-five dollars, tax included.”
    â€œYou’re kidding!”
    â€œNo,” said the bookseller, sighing and seeming to be already calculating the loss he would be taking on the book, “I wouldn’t kid about such a thing.”
    Kat plunked down the seventy-five dollars, and as it turned out, she had $77.95 in her purse. She insisted the clerk accept all of it, which he did. The bookseller wrapped the book in some special brown paper and the transaction was complete.
    Kat thanked the man about twelve times and then left the store, clutching the special parcel tightly. She was elated because she knew in her heart of hearts that Jules was so totally going to love this and think it was the best present ever. It wouldn’t hurt, of course, that as a side benefit of such an amazing gift, any lingering bad feelings Jules had toward Kat would certainly instantly disappear.
    As he watched her go, the old clerk shook his head. “Mr. Sullivan will surely have my head for this one, glory be.”
    â€¢ • •
    The next morning, Kat got up early to design the perfect combination of Glitter Girl stuff for her school debut. She had already chosen the nail polish, a color