Free Jumper by Alexes Razevich

 
     
    Maddie Bresslin called them jumpers even though it made her friend Trish roll her eyes and mutter, “Sweaters,” under her breath. Out loud she’d say, “I’m so lucky to have a world-class shopper for a best friend.” Malls, online, high-end department stores, budget big boxes, thrift and charity shops—somehow Maddie managed to find that One Great Item everyone else had overlooked—and find it on sale.
    The day Maddie found the jumper she and Trish were in a hole-in-the-wall shop of an in-town charity that gave its profits back to the local dog-rescue community. Maddie liked to shop there because the goods tended to come from the wealthy neighborhoods up the hill and be of good quality. The store was clean, well lit, everything hung neatly on hangers. Volunteers roamed around putting back items that had slipped, or been returned to the wrong rack or wrong size area. Maddie loved the place and spent much too much of her meager salary as a barista in it.
    “What about this?” Trish asked, holding up a leather handbag with a well-known designer name stamped on a discreet, but not too discreet, silvery metal circle on the front.
    Maddie took the bag, cocked her head and appraised it. “Little scuffed on the bottom—woman probably put it down on the floor a lot—but not a reason to skip it.” She opened the catch and looked inside. “Needs new lining.”
    Trish took it back and set it on the table where she’d gotten it. “Too bad I don’t sew.” She looked hopefully at Maddie, who did sew, but Maddie glanced away.
    No, she had decided. No more of that. Trish seemed to think Maddie should sew, knit, or crochet any little thing Trish fancied and thank her with nothing more than an air kiss and a “You’re the best.”
    She turned her back on Trish and resumed sorting through the clothes on the round rack. She thought maybe she’d been too harsh; she could redo the lining on that purse for Trish—they were, after all, best friends—when her eye was caught by the glow of luminous peacock blue yarn. She pulled the jumper off the rack and held it at arm’s length, to see it whole.
    The jumper was breathtaking. First of all, the color—a fabulous peacock blue that was her favorite and that everyone (well, Trish) said worked really well with her chestnut hair and hazel eyes. The yarn was medium weight, her fav, and as soft as kitten fur. The double seed stitch gave it a nice texture. The weather had turned cold three days back and the jumper called out to her to be wrapped in its warmth. She checked the tag inside. Hand washable. Perfect.
    She turned abruptly to Trish. “I’m done. Buy the purse. I’ll fix the lining for you.”
    Trish let out a little squeal of joy, grabbed the purse and hugged it to her chest as she skipped toward the cashier. Maddie followed more slowly, the jumper slung over her arm, its hanger weighing down one side.
    “I’m going to wear it,” she told the cashier as she paid and slipped the jumper over her blouse.
    The cashier, an early twenty-something, like Maddie and Trish, wore an oversized sweatshirt with a smiling pit bull on the front.
    “Have a good one,” the cashier said, handing Maddie her change, and then, “Oh. Wait. You have a loose thread.”
    Maddie looked at her chest, arms, and then the hem of her new jumper. The yarn was unraveling a bit at the bottom. She hadn’t noticed that before she bought it. An easy fix, she thought, as the cashier clipped off the tiny, dangling bit.
    At home, Maddie pulled off her new jumper, got out a needle and thread and bound the fraying edge. The thread was a close color match for the yarn. No one would notice a thing, she thought. Finished, she put the thread back into the box. She frowned, then dug around inside, pushing spools of thread around, looking for her favorite antique silver thimble. It always sat in the far back corner. She put it back in the same place every time, but now it wasn’t there.
    She heaved a