How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal Page B

ask, I pulled the lid off to show it was used. “I’ve had this.”
    “Okay, then, we’re square. You want to come up to the front, I’ll ring those up for you when you’re ready.”
    He walked off calmly. The devil girl inside me shoved everything off the shelf and left it on the floor for him to pick up. I saw it in my mind’s eye over and over, twenty times while I stood there, smarting and stinging, with my pockets hanging out beneath my belly and a twenty-dollar bill in my right hand.
    The real me tucked my pockets back in, put away my money, and left the store. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you , I chanted in my mind. And I didn’t mean the pharmacist.
    I meant Armando, who didn’t even know he’d done this to me. And probably wouldn’t care if he did.
    Out on the street, I considered trying to find Poppy and clinging to her until it was time to go home. If I told her what had happened, she would be sympathetic.
    But the record store was only two doors down, and I had the whole twenty to spend now that I wouldn’t buy anything from that guy, not even a fire extinguisher to put myself out if I was on fire. I wanted the art supplies, but maybe we could get them somewhere else, or we might go to Cinderella City one of these days. They at least had a Walgreens there.
    I walked to Blue Fish Record Store. It had been there since thehippie days, and looked it, with dusty paisley curtains and a giant jade plant in the window. A yellow cat sunned himself on the windowsill, and I stopped to pet him. He blinked and started purring. “Aren’t you hot, cat?” I asked.
    “Cats never get too hot,” a voice said behind me.
    Warily, I turned around. The guy behind the counter was maybe college age, with hair that was long and dark brown, pulled back from his face into a ponytail, like an artist or something. He said, “They’re desert animals.”
    He had a very calming voice. Or maybe it was the music, which was some kind of flutes and drums or something. The air smelled like cinnamon and coffee. “I didn’t know that,” I said, and then I remembered. “Oh, yeah, like Egypt. They were really a big deal in Egypt.”
    His smile was kind. “Right.” He was writing on file cards, drinking out of a big ruby-colored cup. “You looking for something in particular this afternoon or just in to browse?”
    I shrugged. “Browse, I guess.”
    “I’ll leave you alone, then. If you want some help, I’m here, okay?” His eyes were direct, and for the first time all day, I felt as if somebody saw me instead of my belly.
    “Thanks.” I wandered around the bins, flipping through the albums for something I recognized. My dad was a big music fan. He collected records from the fifties and sixties, all kinds of rhythm and blues and rock. I saw covers I recognized—Cream and the Rolling Stones and Albert King.
    “You like Cream?” the guy asked.
    I didn’t know if it would be cool or not cool, but my dad was always saying that Eric Clapton was the best guitarist in the history of the world. But being cool hadn’t really gotten me very much, so I told the truth. “They’re okay, I guess. My dad likes Clapton.”
    “How about you? What do you like?”
    I lifted a shoulder. Now that I was a few steps closer, I could see his eyes were the color of honey, very clear light brown, and he had that way about him that said he’d been other places besides this. A quietness, a clean and generous curiosity. He was probably a music fanatic if he worked in a record store. “I don’t know,” I said finally, again telling the truth. “Everybody tells me what I should like.”
    Something shifted in his face at that. “That’s how the world is sometimes.” His voice was great—not deep but echoey, kind of, as if it came out of the body of a cello, which I’d played for a couple of years. “What’s your favorite record?”
    Here was where I should say the Rolling Stones or the Clash or somebody cool, but that would be a lie. I