Free Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell Page B

hallway, the wheels squeaking softly. “Trash Man?”
    I fell in step beside him, our way lit only by the after-hour security lights glowing a soft orange. “Do you prefer Garbage Guy? Rubbish Rescuer?”
    He groaned.
    I fingered the edges of his scarf, which still hung around my neck, noting that this one, too, had a lopsided red heart stitched onto one end. “How about Junk Hunk? Debris Dude?”
    “You’re a warped soul, Chloe.” He didn’t laugh, but that half smile curved his mouth. Mission accomplished.
    Duncan ducked into the next office in search of more garbage, which he sorted into the two circular bins on his cart. He worked quickly, efficiently. Duncan Moore was a guy who knew his garbage. He also seemed more at ease here than at school. On the ride from the hospital parking lot, he’d been stone still, but here in the office building, his face no longer looked carved in granite.
    “You’ve been doing this a while?” I asked. When I rescued Duncan and his broken-down bike on the side of the road, I’d expected to take him home. Instead, he directed me to a commercial office complex north of the hospital.
    “A few years. I have six office buildings where I handle trash.”
    “Must take a while.”
    He poured the contents of another trash can into his bins. “I’m home a little after eleven.”
    “Which explains why you sleep through econ.”
    “Doesn’t everyone sleep through econ?” He tilted his head, his gray eyes sparking with silvery bits.
    “I kind of like econ.” I took a small waste basket of paper and emptied it in the bin marked Recyclables. “All those business models, market analyses, supply-and-demand charts. It’s fun.”
    Duncan grabbed another trash can. “Like I said, Chloe, you’re a warped soul.” Yes, he was definitely different with his garbage. Almost relaxed.
    In a communal office area, he emptied a trash can and something clanked. He dug around and hauled out a dinged box with a frayed cord and said, “Yesssss!”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “A treasure.”
    “Uh, Dunc, it’s a pencil sharpener.”
    “Same thing.”
    “Exactly what are you going to do with it?”
    “Fix it.”
    “Why?”
    He stared at the scuffed, dented box, then me, clearly not understanding the latter. “Because it needs fixing.”
    I pictured Duncan working on the transmitter, the lights, and the clock. “You like to fix things, don’t you?”
    The trash cart’s wheels jangled and squeaked as he pushed them out of the office area. “Yeah, I guess so. After school I work in a thrift store fixing broken appliances.”
    “You have two jobs? No wonder you have no time for fun.”
    “It’s not bad.” He didn’t seem upset, more resigned, as if working two jobs was a fact of life.
    “So what kinds of things do you fix at the thrift store?” I asked.
    “Everything. Radios, dishwashers, old movie projectors, snow skis. And toasters. Bet you never met a guy who’s fixed a hundred toasters.”
    “I’m impressed. I bet you can fix anything.”
    The squeak of wheels softened as he slowed. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
    Like friendships broken by lies and frosty pink slurs. The thought slammed me. Could I fix the growing gulf between Brie and me? Did I want to? I slid my pin curls behind my ears. Of course I did. Despite the horrible words and flying tamale, Brie wasn’t a villainess. I believed that with all my heart because I knew I could never be friends with someone who had an evil heart. We were still connected.
    Long ago I figured out the BF connection, the invisible thread that linked friends. This thread was responsible for the times you finished each other’s sentences or showed up to school wearing the same color shirts or your hair in matching messy ponytails. Sometimes this invisible connection woke you in the middle of the night and demanded you text your BF. That was when your BF texted back: Mom gon. I’m @ d hsptl. I nd u. Merce . I’d been connected to