Lights On Buildings and Everything That Made Her Wonder

my (nicer) other mom

I work at Wegmans, the super market down the street from my house every Wednesday and Thursday. To be completely honest, it bores the hell out of me, but to be fair, any job would. So it's not Wegmans fault I'm an antsy, impatient employee.
    Actually, a lot of kids from school work here, too, which I find half nice and half annoying. It's nice because there are familiar people but it's also annoying because literally, it's like, I see you at school, please get out of my life. Needless to say it's not that I don't get along with other kids at school, I just don't particularly like most of them. Except for Naser. Naser is my coworker and he also goes to my school, and he's like a really oblivious but funny sidekick who you just really love because they make you shit yourself laughing all the time. So he makes work s little less glum.
      Usually on my shifts, the other cashiers are Nagdy, a nice old Egyptian man and his sister, Janet, who is perhaps a better mother to me than my own mom. I really like working with Janet because she always compliments me on my artwork and she wears cool headbands that her daughter makes her. She always says,
     "Sara, you are smart girl. You very smart." Which is kind of odd because I'm not smart at all. I'm a very emotional and frighteningly deep person. Maybe since Janet can't speak a lot of English she thinks that "smart" means "crazy and annoying".
       Like today, I am thinking of Peter and how he shook up my world. Peter is perfect to me in ways I can't really explain. He has really pretty blue eyes and this smile that literally kicks me in the lady balls.  We hang out at school a lot and it's been that way for a year. I was one of his first friends at Woodson High School, I came up to him and just sat down and started talking. Now I sit with him almost every day. And since then his voice and his smile and the things he does have all captured me in a strange way that makes me a little uncomfortable.
   I am thinking of the time Peter said I was really pretty (which is not true because I'm not really pretty) and probably smiling in a really stupid way when Janet gives my hand a little smack.
    "Sara, you have customer!" I snap out of it because Janet's right; I've just realized I have a line of businesspeople with their lunches, waiting to be checked out.  Then I see that Two people into the line there's the cat lady again, who also lives next door and likes to talk my ear off. She's always talking about her son who is a carpenter and her cat, Molly, who has arthritis or something. Even when I say very nicely,
    "Mrs. Jacobs, thank you for the talk, but I'm afraid I really have to get going." She says "ok" and keeps talking. I nudge  Janet because I really don't have time for Cat Lady's shit today and I have to pee anyways, and Janet takes over my line. Thank God for Egyptian second moms.