Taking Stock Read Online Free PDF Page B

uninterested in me, I assumed Cassandra was a fluke. I assumed that this was the first and last time a girl would ever have time for me.
    We became close. We laughed a lot. She thought it was cool I liked to write, and I thought it was cool she was hot.
    She has large brown eyes, and a way of smiling with half her mouth that always made my heart race, back then. Whenever she was thinking about something she would brush her hair over her right ear. I noticed every time.
    We spent a lot of time together. I told her everything about myself, except that I loved her. She told me a lot, too. About her Mom walking out on her and her Dad when she was a kid, and never coming back.
    Once, she told me I wasn’t like other guys. I didn’t treat her like a ‘girl’ as distinct from a ‘boy’—I just treated her like another person. She liked that.
    That same day, I told her I loved her. After that, the hanging out stopped. So did the late-night IM conversations. In the halls at school, she smiled and looked away.
    That was grade nine. In grade 10, around Christmas, she messaged me to say she missed me. I was the only one who understood her. She wanted to hang out again, so we did. We went skating, and skiing, and when summer came, we did summer stuff. One day, in August, she reached out and took my hand while we were walking. I didn’t let go till we reached her house. When I did, she locked eyes with me and said, “You know, Sheldon, one day you’re going to hate me.”
    She got a boyfriend the first week of grade 11. We stopped talking again.
    I made friends with Sean that same year. He wanted to be a writer, too. He was well-liked—not an outcast, like me. I’m not sure how we were friends, actually.
    In grade 12, it happened again with Cassandra. I told myself I didn’t feel anything for her anymore. But I was wrong.
    One night, surprising even myself, I asked if I could kiss her. I asked her permission. She said no.
    And, when I heard a couple weeks later that she’d kissed Sean at a party, it crushed me. They started dating, and I haven’t talked to either since. Presumably their love attained breathtaking heights, and they went on adventures together to distant lands, bringing back stories they’ll recount again and again to their grandchildren. Hell, I don’t have a Facebook account—she might have married him, for all I know.
    Meanwhile, I attempted suicide.
    Yesterday Frank said the Grocery manager is named Ralph, and there’s a blond-haired man wearing a Ralph nametag in the warehouse, toting a futuristic black gun. I’m guessing that’s him. He and a delivery guy are circling a pallet stacked high with dairy products held together with plastic wrap. The guy rips the plastic, exposing a yogurt container’s barcode, and Ralph points his gun, a blinking red light playing over the product. There’s a beep, and Ralph presses some buttons on the gun’s interface. They repeat this several times. I wait patiently, a spectator to their awkward, shuffling dance.
    They finish. The delivery guy moves the pallet into the walk-in dairy cooler, and exits through the back door. Ralph and I are alone.
    “You’re the new guy, right?” he says. “Sheldon?”
    “That’s me.”
    He offers his hand, and we shake—firm but brief. “I’m Ralph. You worked your first shift yesterday, with...” He checks a schedule lying next to a computer. “Gilbert and Paul. What was your impression of them?”
    “They appear to know what they’re doing.”
    “How much work did Gilbert do?”
    “Not sure—I wasn’t with him, much.”
    “I know for a fact Gilbert did very little last night. And I think you know it, too.”
    “Really?”
    “So, I know you’re not a tattler. Which is fine—I don’t need a spy to know what’s going on in my department. Besides, I already have a tattler. Do you consider yourself a hard worker?”
    “I’ve never had a job before.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you something. Almost every new