Free The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker

if this Greg was as bad as we feared.
    We’d heard he had a bad temper. Of course he also had a car and a job and the money to take Darlene out on real dates.
    When Jason finally called on Friday afternoon, I said yes before he’d even told me what movie we were going to see. Of course I still wanted a boyfriend. Even tainted love sounded better than sitting home, eating too many potato chips, and watching Saturday Night Live.
    Plus, the movie theater would be air-conditioned.
    When I told Mary Beth about the date, I made her promise to be done with all her customers by three o’clock on Saturday. I needed time to prepare. And I reminded her of that promise that morning—but when three o’clock came, she was still downstairs in her office with who else but Holly.
    I waited until almost four, partly because I didn’t want to bother them, but mainly because I didn’t want to walk around downstairs with Tommy and risk running into our landlady Agnes. She loved to speculate about Tommy’s background, never with Mary Beth though, only with me. So far she’d guessed that he was African, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Greek, and Egyptian. Usually I didn’t say anything, but the last time I said, “Hey, I think you’re right. He’s really a pharaoh!”
    Luckily before we hit the bottom step, Mary Beth and Holly were out of the office and headed to the front door. I grabbed Tommy’s hand and we made it to the porch in time to see Holly getting in her blue Chevy truck. In all the times she’d been here, I’d only caught glimpses of her. Most of Mary Beth’s customers came upstairs at some point—to get a drink or use the bathroom or just say hey to me and Tommy—but Holly never did. My sister said she was shy, and she certainly looked it. She was a good ten years older than Mary Beth, but she had the slumped-over shoulders and downcast eyes of an awkward kid. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, no heels, no jewelry that I could see. The overall impression you had looking at her was of someone trying hard not to make any impression at all. She was skinny, she was pale, she was in every way forgettable, except for her hair. It was thick and shiny and the most beautiful red, and it came all the way down her back, much longer than mine and even longer than my sister’s.
    Mary Beth was walking slowly, clearly exhausted, but I didn’t care. I was tapping my foot on the porch and pointing at my wristwatch.
    “Oh, my God, I completely forgot!”
    “You sure did.”
    “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
    I told her it wasn’t necessary, but she insisted. First, she said she had to get me something brand new to wear—to build confidence. I told her there wasn’t time, but we hopped in her Ford and hurried to Penney’s, even though it was so hot Mary Beth could barely hold the steering wheel and Tommy was in a bad mood because I’d been too distracted to put him down for a nap. He darted around opening and closing the dressing room doors while I tried on shirt after shirt, finally settling on a soft black jersey with a scoop neck and cap sleeves. Mary Beth said it made me look sophisticated. “Which you are, of course,” she said, standing behind me in the mirror and smiling.
    When we got home, she gave me a little packet of expensive shampoo that had come in the mail, stapled to a coupon. After I washed and blow-dried my hair, she brushed it and then twisted the front locks into perfect little braids. She had me sit right by the fan, so I wouldn’t sweat on my new shirt. When I was all ready, she went into the back of her closet and pulled out a dusty shoe box. Inside were what she called her “magic shoes.”
    Tommy said they were “sparkly.” They were shiny red with little straps around the ankles. I looked at her, wondering why I’d never seen them before.
    “Wear these shoes,” she said. “They will give you your center. If you forget who you are, look straight down at the