Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Chapter 1

"There's another donation, girls,"

I looked up from the bag of belongings I was sorting through to see my boss brandishing two bulging carrier bags, which she set down before returning to attend to customers. More donations. Today had been unusually busy at the charity shop.

"People sure do have a lot to donate," my friend Poppy rose from her task to check through the bags, laughing. Eagerly, she rifled through them, but turned up nothing of any interest to us.

"Any records in there?" I asked as I applied yet another price label to a shirt.

"Sorry Jasmine, just someone's old phone, some Primark leggings and a couple of books. Nothing 80's, sadly."

I sighed.

"Shit. Maybe next time," 

As much as we volunteered here to help, it was also so we had first pick of all the vintage stuff that came in. In 2020, we were pretty strapped for the good old stuff. Both of us adored anything properly vintage, but there was one decade in particular that triumphed over the rest: the 1980's. And what harm were we doing? If anything, we were guaranteeing the stuff was sold. We were doing them a service.

For a while, the bags sat there untouched whilst we returned to our jobs at hand, but eventually I was the first one to finish, and the job of sorting fell to me, though not before changing the CD we were listening to. Of course, it was Duran Duran, much to the exasperation of the other volunteers. Poppy and I must've beaten the life out of our copy of Seven and the Ragged Tiger for the amount we'd used it. She'd been right about the contents of the bag - I sorted through it myself just to be sure, and nothing in there took my fancy. In fact, we couldn't even sell the majority of it, since somebody had written all over the covers of the books, and there were suspicious stains on the clothes. Lovely.

I dumped the less fanciable objects into the precycle box, with the dog-eared looking book going in last. Why did some people bother sending us this tat? We weren't a rubbish disposal service. Yet something made me pick that book back up again and inspect it. And I was so glad I did. Despite the shabby exterior with indistinguishable handwriting scrawled all over it, the first page had this odd power to captivate me. There was an eclectic mix of names, dates and types of handwriting combined in a messy list, which made me think it might be some kind of family heirloom or diary. But if so, why give it away to a charity shop? Plus, the dates were all over the place, jumping from 1999 to the 8th century and anywhere between.

I was beyond confused.

But when I turned the page a second time, I was faced with something even more intriguing. A set of instructions. What they were for, I had no idea, but they appeared to be in great detail about something.

Nothing about this book was making any kind of sense to me, yet I felt this indescribable urge to read on. But I couldn't do it here. There was one thing I did know, though, and it was that we certainly couldn't sell it; I couldn't let it go to precycle, either. This was a secret I had to keep. Even from Poppy, who knew every detail of my life.

"Hey, I found this half-used pad of paper," I told her flippantly, snatching the book up possessively, "We can't sell that, so I'm just gonna take it home."

Poppy nodded in vague agreement, mumbling something about not telling our boss, and I felt relief wash over me. I stuffed it into my bag.

Before long, 5:30pm came around and our Sunday shift was over. The manager locked up the shop, then Poppy and I were off into Birmingham city centre to browse the record shops we often frequented. As if we hadn't spent long enough looking through old tat already that day. Sadly, there wasn't much by way of New Wave in the record shops that day, and we returned empty handed, par one single I'd found down the back of the boxes - an original 1981 release of Planet Earth. I had to have it.

I bade Poppy goodbye after that, and made my way home to my flat, which I'd sadly be spending another night in without a guy. The lack of interest at the moment was getting me down, and I hadn't had a boyfriend for at least 6 months. The only men in my house were the posters of John Taylor on my wall. Poppy and I thirsted so hard over him it was unreal.