Know Not Why: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

would … feel about this sign, if I
saw it. I really—”
    “Give me my fucking refund now . I have
things to do today; I don’t have time for this.”
    I stare down at the little girl. She’s twirling
her hair around one finger and glancing idly around the store, like
she’s not even interested in what’s going on. I wonder if she’ll be
nice enough to scream when her mother rips my still-beating heart
out of my chest.
    “Should you be saying words like that?” I ask,
feeling some vicarious guilt even looking at the kid.
    “Oh, so you’re telling me how to behave around my child now?”
    “No,” I say quickly, “I was not doing that.”
    “It sounded a whole lot like you were.”
    “It looks like nice glitter glue,” I say,
because a change of subject is necessary, it’s so necessary ,
man.
    “Oh really? Why don’t you fucking try it
then?”
    She is going to kill me.
    “I would,” I yelp, “but there’s not really
anything I need to glue or glitter at the moment.”
    She lets out a disgusted laugh. “This is
unbelievable.”
    You’re telling me, lady.
    “Let me talk to your manager,” she demands.
    “I would,” I say, trying not to writhe in pain
under her gaze, “but, um, he’s having sort of a shi—crap—” But even
‘crap’ seems pretty explicit in front of a kid that little, right?
“—poopy day—” And yep, there’s me, twenty-two years old, possessor
of a pretty damn decent vocabulary, driven to say poopy .
“—and if I bothered him with this, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be
so happy—”
    “Well, guess what? I don’t give a shit about what kind of a day he’s having, because I—”
    And then Kristy comes back from the bathroom. I
want to throw myself on her in a way that doesn’t involve sex at
all; just sheer, blissful gratitude.
    She, incredibly and miraculously, sorts it out.
It’s like watching a fairy princess at work. The woman gets her
money back, and she leaves. No blood is spilt. The kid doesn’t ever
even bother to stop twirling her hair.
    “That,” I say, slumped against the counter, “was
fu—…ricking insanity. ”
    I look over at her, expecting some ‘I know, my
gosh, we’ve never had anything like that happen before!’ speech.
What I get instead is, “Not really.”
    My blood runs cold. “What?”
    “People can get really touchy about this kind of
thing,” Kristy says. She shrugs. “You get used to it after
awhile.”
    I stare down at the offending tube of purple
glitter glue. That something so small could spark an ugliness so
vast …
    “Okay,” is what I say. And what I think is, What have I done??

Chapter Three

    I’m supposed to meet Cora on my fourth day of
work. Kristy’s not working, and Arthur’s gone back to shaving and
having functional vision, so I’m in a crappy mood to begin with. I
didn’t take this job to spend my time selling people buttons shaped
like flamingos, you know? And I never really wanted to know what a
bead roller was. Now the mystery’s gone; overall, I’m feeling
pretty disillusioned.
    And then I come out from the kitchen, forced to
tie my apron all by myself, to find that the store has been invaded
by crazy. Again.
    There’s a girl dancing on the counter. And not,
like, a dainty twirl or two. Hell, no. Just watching this dancing
is like having your eyes sexually assaulted. It’s all boppy and
writhey and – ugh, thrusty, officially thrusty. And while I’m not
in any way opposed to this kind of thing when it involves, say, a
smoky dimly lit establishment and a pole, it just seems wrong at
nine in the morning on the counter of a store that sells all the
supplies you need to make a reindeer head out of a clothespin.
    Besides, this girl isn’t exactly Patricia the
Stripper. Atop her head is an explosion of curly, fake-purply-red
hair. She’s wearing what looks like a ratty, violently bright green
bathrobe, except it’s got shaggy white fur around the collar and
the sleeves. It’s a coat, I