Page 38 of Until the Sea Runs Dry

As she must have done a million times before, Jane reached for her purse before remembering that she didn’t have one.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have my purse on me…”

Prom Queen gave her a knowing look that made her feel about two feet tall. Loki flopped to his side, stretching out his too-big-for-his-body paws. The name tag on his collar dangled down, giving them a perfect view of it.

The girl’s eyes went wide.

“Wait… Is that… Loki? Is that Logan Steel’s dog?!”

Her question came out in a rush. She started breathing quickly, almost as if the man himself was there instead of his dog. Hearing his name, Loki sat up.

“I should have noticed straight away. I’m a huge, huge fan of his!” Prom Queen clutched her hands to her chest, overcome with excitement.

Jane observed the girl, whipping herself into a frenzy for the dog of a famous movie star.

The girl started talking, rambling about which of Logan’s movies she loved the most and why, going into so much detail that Jane would have been overwhelmed from the sheer volume of words gushing out of her mouth if she had actually been listening to any of it.

Instead, she was trying to understand this strange phenomena of fandom.

“You can have it,” Prom Queen said suddenly, thrusting the book at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Take the book! Give it to Logan… as a gift from me!”

Her eyes went even wider as a thought came that almost made her lose her mind.

Grabbing a black marker that sat beside the till, she tugged off the cap with her mouth, opening the book to the title page. She had already started writing on it when she stopped, her eyes sliding across to Jane.

“You’re not seeing him are you?”

Jane answered, “No. Not at all.”

Prom Queen flashed a relieved grin, then scribbled the name CLAUDIA in letters so big that a blind person could have read it. Beneath that, she wrote her phone number and “CALL ME!” — not concerned in the least by how presumptuous she was being.

Adding enough xx’s and oo’s to cover the page, she finally presented the book to Jane with a flourish.

“I’m going to have to dock the price of it from my wages, which isn’t much anyway, so please make sure that he gets it. And don’t forget to tell him how much I love him.”

So much light flashed out of her feverish eyes that Jane wasn’t able to say what she was truly thinking. It felt wrong to diminish her excitement, no matter how ridiculous she found the entire thing.

“I will… Thanks. Come on, Boy,” Jane gestured to Loki, tugging gently on his leash as they started out of the store. Before they even reached the exit, Jane heard the girl tapping into a phone.

“OH MY GOD, you will NEVER guess what just happened!”

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