Page 45 of Offside Angel

Then someone screams.

I jolt so hard my knees almost buckle before I realize the woman at the sunglasses hut isn’t screaming; she’s laughing at something the man at the perfume cart said.

Jemma and Rachelle are a few paces ahead, so they don’t notice. But Taylor grabs my elbow. “All good there, Mimi? You’ve got your newborn baby deer face on again.”

“Fine,” I squeak out. “Just jumpy.”

Which is true.

I’m also jumpy when one of the teenagers next to us drops their phone on the concrete.

I’m jumpy when a bird caws in the ornamental trees separating the sidewalk into right and left.

And I’m jumpy when anyone decides to dare exit through a door I happen to be walking past.

By the time we make it to the other side of the plaza where the shops we want are, I’m not sure my nerves can handle the long walk back. I’m like one of those fainting goats: one more scare and I’m going to go stiff-legged and hit the ground.

“Pathetic” might have been an understatement.

“Leggings or glasses first?” Jemma asks, holding out her two hands like she’s Morpheus in The Matrix.

I want to ask for a third pill—one that poofs me back to the condo and dresses me in Zane’s boxers.

Rachelle chews on the corner of her lip. “The bumblebee glasses are really hard to find…”

“Weirdly specific juice glasses, it is,” Taylor decides, leading the charge and dragging me along with her.

I cast a quick look over my shoulder and Evan gives me a wave as he follows us through the door.

He’s watching over us. We’re fine.

Until we walk inside and into the middle of what has to be a mosh pit.

People are jammed in shoulder to shoulder. There’s a line from the registers at the back of the store all the way to the front doors. And people are still shopping, cutting back and forth through the line and winding around intricate displays.

“Oh, no!” Rachelle groans. “It’s the house and home sale.”

“What’s the house and home sale?” I ask as a woman reaches past my face without so much as a glance in my direction to grab a set of dish towels with dogs printed on them. “Is it a cult?”

“No, but it means my juice glasses are probably gone.”

Taylor whispers in my ear, “Definitely a cult.”

I manage a laugh, but then a new wave of people pushes through the doors and we’re washed into the crowd. I can see Jemma above the crowd because she is a walking, talking goddess amongst us mortals, but Rachelle and Taylor are nowhere to be seen.

“Hey! That’s my teapot.” A woman lunges around me to snatch a floral teapot from the shelf behind me. She only avoids elbowing me in the ribs because I dodge out of the way.

“This has got to be against fire code,” I mutter.

There’s a loud whistle, and I spin around to see Evan waving an arm over his head. He has eyes on me, and he points towards the back of the store.

The last thing I want is to go deeper into this chaos, but there’s no way to tell him that without crowd surfing over the heads of people willing to maim for home goods. So I duck my chin and head towards the back corner.

But with every step, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I feel like someone is watching me.

It’s absurd, because I’m surrounded by people on every side. Of course someone is watching me. Evan, for one. My friends are in the crowd somewhere, too. They could be watching me.

But the sensation trickling down my spine is specific and unrelenting.

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