Free The Weather by Caighlan Smith

 
    The convenience store smells like Solarcaine and orange soda. Lolly’s bubble pops and gum plasters over her mouth while the delivery man smooths a Band-Aid in place on his elbow. The door rattles shut behind him and the mini cathedral bell from the dollar store clinks. Lolly picks the waxlike bubble gum off her chin. She remembers she needs to get a new razor, because in a week or so she’ll have to shave her legs.
    A woman comes in, her skin the color of caramelized onions and her hair a dark cocoa pulsing with yellow highlights. The flesh of her face is stretched taut, as if she’s pinned all the wrinkles back behind her ears, except for the crow’s feet at her eyes, which are more like sparrow’s feet. She’s wearing a billowing coat of brown leather, lined with mustard yellow fur, that doesn’t particularly match her slinky turquoise scarf.
    Lolly doesn’t realize the woman’s brought the boy until he pops out from behind her cavernous coat. His skin is a shade lighter than his mother’s, his hair a shade darker, his sunglasses framed in orange, hers, leopard print.
    Lolly scrapes the gum off her upper lip so roughly it tears off a few overgrown hairs. The woman goes to the cooler in the back of the store, where they keep the alcohol. Lolly can just see the green of her scarf between the bags of tortilla chips on the chip rack. The boy shuffles over to the counter, gaze scanning the rows of colorful lotto tickets he’s too young to buy. He puts a candy bar on the counter and Lolly waves it under the bar-code scanner once, twice, staring blindly at the image of milk chocolate pieces with white chocolate centers. A streak of fluorescent light catches across the metallic candy wrapper, cutting the chocolate image in half and blurring the bar’s name.
    Beep . A price flashes on the cash register in bright green.
    Lolly drops the bar back on the counter, and the boy hesitantly tugs it toward him by the end flap of the wrapper, which crinkles between his fingers. More crinkling as he uncovers the chocolate. More beeping as Lolly voids the item from the cash register, using the manager code. The first time the woman and the boy came in Lolly charged them and almost got fired. Ever since then, she’s been tempted to charge them again.
    Through the radio static that crackles around the store, an announcer starts to deliver the weather. Lolly fishes the remote out from under the cash register and changes to a station playing bluegrass. The boy winces and the woman opens the cooler so sharply it slams against the wall. Lolly knows the woman doesn’t like country or hip-hop or classical. She adds bluegrass to her mental list and returns the remote to its resting place next to the dusty medical kit. It hasn’t been opened since Lolly started working at the corner store. Whenever someone gets a scratch or a cut they just crack open a new box of Band-Aids, fresh off the household necessities shelf.
    The woman’s boots squeak aggressively as she marches to the front of the store, six packs clenched in both hands. Her engagement ring flashes in the store lights like a dewdrop dangling from the tip of a weed.
    Lolly can’t make out the woman’s eyes through the sunglasses; she never can, but she knows when the woman pauses like this, in front of the counter, she’s glaring at Lolly. Or maybe she isn’t, but she’s definitely staring, and it’s definitely a dare. “Gonna charge me again, bitch?” It’s what the woman said the second time she came into the store, and she hasn’t said a word to Lolly since.
    The woman leaves and the door clatters. Lolly breathes out a gum bubble to critical mass and lets it hover, blotting out all of the boy except for the stray hairs of his bedhead. Alone like that, the hairs almost look black. As black as his eyes look through the sunglasses.
    Lolly’s bubble pops and the boy is gone, the