Free Jumper by Alexes Razevich Page B

where she’d woven in the yarn looked shoddy. It wouldn’t do. The jumper was too nice to have eight inches of mess in the hem. She slowly unwove it all. She hated to cut off more yarn, but there really wasn’t anything else to do. The scissors snip-snapped loudly as the blades did their work.
    The yarn was too nice to throw away, she decided. Not that eight inches would make anything, but maybe she could knit a small afghan, incorporating the peacock blue in with other end bits of yarn she had lying around. She threaded a small needle with blue thread and once again bound off the end.
     
    *
     
    Brendon called her in the morning. All the employees had each other’s numbers, but she was surprised to see his name come up on her phone screen. He never called except for one reason.
    “He better not want me to cover his shift,” she muttered before swiping her phone into life.
    “Maddie,” Brendon said, his voice breathless and low. “I’m at work. In the gents. I had to tell you.”
    “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out, “Oooh kay.”
    “That story we heard on the radio yesterday, it’s true. That town in Nebraska is gone, poof, vanished off the face of the earth. It’s all anyone can talk about in the store this morning. People here thinks it’s aliens for sure. And Maddie, guess what else?”
    Her hand tightened around the phone. Brendon wasn’t the type to joke like this. Crocket, who sometimes worked weekends, he was a jokester, but not Brendon. Brendon was the kind who took advantage of people with kind natures. Maddie’s mind spun wondering how it was possible for an entire town, even a teensy tiny one with only fifty-three inhabitants, to just disappear.
    “I can’t guess what else,” she said. “Tell me.”
    “One of Pluto’s moons is gone.”
    Her hand relaxed. Now she knew he was having her on.
    “That’s impossible.”
    “No, really. Nix it’s called. The moon. NASA announced it this morning.”
    “Nix,” she said, not at all sorry for the sarcasm in her voice. “Listen, I’m not coming in early or covering your shift today because one of Pluto’s moons has vanished, so don’t ask me.”
    “I wasn’t going to ask,” he whispered furiously. “I just wanted you to know. See you at two.” He paused. “Don’t forget that you did promise to cover my shift tomorrow.”
    He hung up. Maddie thought for a moment, turned on her computer and clicked through for news.
     
    *
     
    She couldn’t stop thinking about it—the disappearances. If the thought left for a moment, a customer was sure to bring it back. Brendon had been right—it was all anyone was talking about. She made lattes and mochas and cappuccinos, served up slices of banana bread and chocolate muffins, all the while wondering how the vanishings were possible, were they over, was she safe? Were any of them?
    “You’re hanging loose,” Brendon whispered as he slid by her, a double whipped cream hot chocolate in his hand. He glanced at the hem of her sweater.
    “Damn,” she muttered.
    Nico let them dress however they wanted in the store, but he was adamant that clothes be clean, shirts pressed, shoes not scuffed, hair freshly washed, beards kept short and neat, no facial tattoos. “Think like this is your house,” Nico had said at orientation. “You’re giving a party. These people are your friends who’ve come by. You wouldn’t be sloppy.”
    She was sloppy now—eighteen inches of peacock blue yarn dangling down beside her leg. Maddie rushed into the employee lounge—such as it was, little more than a big closet really—pulled off the jumper and stuffed it into the oversized houndstooth fabric purse she’d found at a swap meet.
     
    *
     
    The night air had bite in it as Maddie walked toward the bus stop, and the moon was so full it looked like moon babies would pop out of it any second. Brendon had offered her a ride home, but she didn’t like to accept favors. People always seemed to think you owed