As I stood behind the counter in R’s, the small music shop I worked in, a familiar boy came in. He was tall and skinny, with curly brown hair that he was always pushing away from his eyes when he inspected the albums. He would come in everyday, always around 1 in the afternoon. And although he only rarely purchased anything after a good while of searching around the shop, I had grown to get used to his quiet presence, and knew odd and useless bits and pieces about him. He came every weekday, and that’s when I worked; I had the weekends off. On Mondays he always had extra motivation it seemed. He would push the door open with a bit of extra energy than the other four days. But then on Tuesday he was always back to normal, and on the occasion that he did ever buy something, it was always on a Tuesday. Even when he purchased things though, he kept the talking to a minimal, usually nodding in response instead of talking, if he could. Wednesday he usually appeared a bit more tired than the other days. He’d usually come in a bit later, and take his time going through the bins of albums. Thursdays and Fridays he was always there at the usual time, with a normal pace, energy level, and wasn’t too fast at searching through the music, nor too slow. Today was Thursday, but the boy came in 30 minutes late, and didn’t look Wednesday (tired), he looked more sad. And that was an emotion I’d never seen the boy look. It shocked me when he didn’t come at the normal time, and when his hair wasn’t its normal crazy but tamed style, it looked a bit all over the place, and I noticed his sleeves were unevenly rolled up. The boy always looked cleaned up. His style was definitely not the preppy style, nor the church boy look, it was more of a stylish, simple hipster. But he was never, and trust me when I say never I mean it, unkempt or messy looking. His eyes that were usually a soothing green, were dark green and cloudy, and I wondered what could possibly have made this boy abruptly disturb his schedule that’s been the same for months. The boy walked over to the middle row, which he also never did, walked up to a random bin of discs, and began analyzing each one. The fact that he was analyzing each album was about the only thing the boy had done so far that day that was anywhere near his usual self. I decided I should probably stop staring, and looked down trying to act busy so he didn’t suspect I’d been watching him for the past few minutes. As I analyzed the counter in search for something to keep me busy, I spotted a sticky-note that my co-worker, Alice, had left me. It read “Restock Lana Del Rey Born To Die albums” in her loopy yet sloppy handwriting. I was thankful for something to momentarily get my mind off the confusing boy, so I walked into the back room to find the Born To Die albums. On my way there, I had to sneak a glimpse of the boy, and found that he had moved to the far left of the store, and was already looking through a random new bin of CD’s. I quickly found the rather large cardboard box containing the discs I needed, and headed back into the front of the shop. I headed over to the far left of the room, where I could see the empty space in the bin that used to hold albums of Lana Del Rey. Just as I neared the bin, I tripped over my own feet, since the box was obstructing my view of my legs, and fell, dropping the box full of discs. I heard a crash as CD cases fell out of the box and scattered on the floor around me.
“Shit.” I cursed under my breath, knowing there was no way the boy hadn’t heard the crash. I opened my squeezed shut eyes, and sat up observing the area. I sat in a sea of the discs, and before I could even pick one album up, the mysterious boy was by my side holding his hand out towards me.
“You alright?” He asked, still quietly, his green eyes wide. My breath caught in my throat, as I realized this is the closest I’ve been to the boy in the months he’s came here.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I blushed as I took his hand and he easily pulled me back to my feet. There were CD’s covering the floor in a circle around me, so the boy kept hold of my hands, and helped me take a rather large step to escape the wide circle of discs. Once my second foot hit the carpet clear of CD’s, he let go of my hands, squatted down, and began to pick up the discs.
“Oh, thanks for the help, but it was my fault, there’s no need to do that.” I said looking down at him for a moment, before joining him on the floor, grabbing the stray CD’s.
“It’s no problem.” He said, eyes never leaving the floor.
“Oh, well thanks.” I said again, stacking the CD’s from the floor into the bin they were originally supposed to be stocked in. As I turned around to get more CD’s from the floor, I saw him slightly nod in response. In a matter of silent minutes, we had all the CD’s off the floor and into the bin, besides one. The boy stood holding the last CD. I held my hand out so I could place it into the bin, but he shook his head.
“I’d like to purchase this.” He said looking at it as he gripped it in his hand. I must’ve shown a look of shock, (which I was, because I did not think he was the Lana type) because the boy looked up at me with questioning eyes.
“Oh, okay.” I said, and walked back over to the counter. The boy followed me, and set the disc on the counter so I could ring it up. As the computer processed and totalled the purchase, I decided to ask the boy a question I’d been dying to ask since he first came into the shop.
“So, what’s your name?” I asked, hoping I’d be able to refer to him as something else other than ‘the boy’ when I thought about him. He looked up, and he looked surprised that I had said anything other than what I needed to.
“Harry.” He said simply, as he pushed his curly hair out of his eyes.
“Oh, hi.” I said, about to introduce myself. But before I could finally tell him what my name was, my cell phone began to ring on the counter. I picked up the phone that had a black case on it, with a silver letter ‘J’ embellished on it in spikes. I looked at him apologetically, and answered the call. It was Alice, asking if I’d restocked the Born To Die albums. Before I could get off the phone to introduce myself to Harry, he set the exact change on the counter, took his bag, slightly nodded in thanks, and left. The bell on the door jingled as he exited, and when Alice hung up, I stood there looking at the space in front of me he had stood only a moment ago, and realized it wasn’t Tuesday.
