Free Snap by Carol Snow Page A

worthwhile left, you can move on to jeans, shorts, shoes—whatever.”
    â€œBut I need everything!” I blurted, forgetting for a moment that I was too good for used clothes.
    â€œGrab some shirts and then head over to the shorts,” she counseled. “You’ll be fine.”
    â€œMorning, Delilah!” A tall, heavy woman stood over us, blocking the morning sun. Bobby pins held back brown hair threadedwith gray. Her dress was green with enormous pink flowers. She looked like a walking couch.
    â€œHello, Mrs. Voorhees.”
    â€œYour mom here?” Mrs. Voorhees peered around. “I was hoping to make an appointment.” Her voice was high and childish; it didn’t match her body at all.
    â€œShe didn’t come this morning. But she should be in the shop this afternoon if you want to stop by.”
    â€œRose has been guiding me toward a transformational experience,” Mrs. Voorhees told us. “And I’ve been meditating on my own every day, but I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I need Rose to help me unleash my inner energy.”
    â€œShe’s good at that,” Delilah said, her face neutral.
    To keep from cracking up, I looked away and concentrated on my breathing.
    Mrs. Voorhees’s voice turned sad. “Also, I wanted to tell your mother that Francine Lunardi died yesterday morning.” She leaned toward me, forcing eye contact. “Francine’s the one who introduced me to Rose.”
    I nodded.
    Mrs. Voorhees gazed into the distance. “Francine never would have held on so long, but last week she finally set things right with her daughter. That gave her the inner peace she needed to let go.”
    I nodded as if this made sense, my face hurting from politeness.
    When the thrift shop’s front door swung open, Delilah grabbed my arm and pulled me after her. The store was bigger than it had appeared from the outside, but not by much. Shirts, dresses, andpants were crammed on racks, dishes and glassware jammed on shelves. Dust danced in the rays of sun that sliced through the windows.
    Delilah hadn’t been kidding about the elbows. Two-dollar shirts turned Sandyland women into animals. The girl with the zebra hair reached for a black T-shirt at the same time I did, but, revved up by the competition, I held tight. We locked eyes. She said, “What. Ever,” and released the shirt. She moved on to the next rack, the smell of cigarettes lingering behind her.
    Trying on the clothes was out of the question; I just had to hope for the best. I thought I was doing pretty well, having snagged the black shirt, but Delilah scored so much stuff she had to stash it behind the counter so no one would take it.
    â€œLeave some for the rest of us,” the girl with the zebra hair grumbled from behind a rack of jeans.
    â€œLighten up, Jessamine,” Delilah said.
    By the time we finished, I had three T-shirts (one black, one white, one dark purple with a swirly black design) and two pairs of jeans, one black and one blue.
    And Delilah? She’d spent almost fifty dollars without knowing what, exactly, she had bought. “Summer’s the best time for the thrift shop,” she told me as we trudged toward Main Street. “When the summer people get here, they go through their clothes and decide that everything needs to be replaced.”
    Psychic Photo was closed, a sign in the window promising an eleven o’clock opening. Delilah led me to a back alley, pulled a key from the pocket of her overalls and jiggled the knob of yet another purple door until it gave with a creak. The door openedonto a little hallway. There was a closed door straight ahead and a set of steep stairs to the right.
    â€œI’m home,” Delilah called up the stairs, shrugging when no one answered. She put another key into the door in front of us.
    â€œYou live here?” I asked.
    â€œUpstairs,” she said. With a grin she added, “Though the