To others, the bookstore probably never felt like anything more special than just a random place. To me, though, it was sort of an escape. I simply loved the place for no obvious reasons, I guess. There was nothing cinematic about it, just this little corner of the world where the light felt just right, and things fell in their place. It was old and dusty, and smelled like old paper. And yes, I guess I liked the predictability of it.
Most days were dull, and nothing really happened. People would come in, ask for something obscure, and I'd tell them where whatever they were looking for was. Same old, same old.
But that Tuesday was different.
This kid walks in, and she's around sixteen or seventeen. She had her hoodie up and a backpack that seemed to be loaded with a bunch of lead weights. I mean, I didn't think much of it at first, but then I noticed the way she was moving. She wasn't looking around like most other kids. It seemed to me that she wasn't browsing but hunting.
I'm looking at her out of the corner of my eye as I'm messing around with some invoices, and this kid is looking at the shelf, grabbing a certain book, looking around like she's in a spy movie, and then jamming the book in her backpack.
She wasn't a “pro,” and I knew that because I've seen shoplifters before, both the nervous type and the ones who are too relaxed when they grab a book they don't plan on paying for. This girl, however, was… well, sort of hollow. When she put the book in her backpack, she didn't look around to check whether someone was looking or whether there were any cameras there. She just did it.
I went to her acting as though I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to be the “tough guy,” because honestly, I'm not that type of person. So I just approached her and said “Hey.”
She looked at me and didn't try to run away. In fact, she just stood there, frozen, like a robot whose batteries went dead. Looking at her, I thought maybe she didn't even have the energy to run. Instead, she started crying.
Her tears made me feel like the biggest prick out there for even approaching her and saying anything.
I kept my hands in my pocket, looking like a complete idiot. “Look, just… you know you can't do that, right?” I said, but it seemed to me like she wasn't even listening.
She then started speaking through her tears and said that her mom died a year ago and that book was her favorite. She also said things weren't going well since her mom's passing.
The girl didn't want some shrink-wrapped copy from a big-box store, but exactly that book, because it was exactly the one she and her mom actually read together. As I understood, she wanted to leave it on her mom's grave as some sort of a final message, but she didn't have the twenty bucks to pay for it.
At that moment, the “Employee Handbook” vanished from my memory, because who cares about corporate lists when you have to deal with someone who's trying to say goodbye to their mom.
I told her to stay still, and then I returned to the register, feeling the heat rise in my neck because I knew the cameras were watching, and I swiped my own credit card. It was twenty-two dollars and some change after tax, basically just three hours of my working day, and it felt like the only move I could do.
So, when I handed the book back to her, she looked at me as if I had just saved her life. She didn't say thank you or anything, just lunged forward and gave me this bone-crushing hug. Then, she grabbed my hand and pressed something into my palm.
“It was her lucky one,” she whispered to me. “It'll save you, I promise.”
It was this silver flower brooch, and it looked old, maybe even a little tarnished, but it was heavy. I tried to give it back to her, told her I didn't want it, that it was her only heirloom, but she was out the door before I could even get the words out.
The next morning was as bad as I anticipated it to be. Rick, my manager, whose life was dedicated to the word “policy” was waiting for me to show me the previous day’s tape even before I had the chance to clock in. He didn't yell at me, he was just saying things like “aiding and abetting” or some other technicality like that. He then said “rules are rules” and handed me my final paycheck before he told me to leave the place.
Honestly, I left the place feeling completely numb. Did I really lose a boring, but steady and predictable paycheck just because of a gut feeling about a girl I knew nothing about?
Fast forward a week, I found myself sitting in a lobby, waiting for an interview for a high-end design firm. I was way out of my league, wearing the only nice blazer I have. And because of some reason, I pinned the silver flower brooch on the lapel. When I think about, I probably though it would bring me luck in my search for a job.
Anyway, half way through the interview, this woman across the desk from me, this super smart and intimidating executive type, stops talking mid sentence. She's looking at me as though I did something wrong, and says, “Where did you get that from?” pointing to the brooch.
I panicked, and since I'm a lousy liar, I ended up telling her the truth. And just as I thought that was it, that she'd call security on me, she told me to follow her. Moments later, I found myself at the back on an enormous corner office where a man was starring out the window.
He turned around and saw my brooch, and his face went pale that exact moment.
The man didn't even look at my resume, all he did was stare at the brooch and I felt like he was looking right through me. He then reached out to touch the petals of the flower brooch and said, “Where is she?” That was it, he said nothing more, just kept repeating that same question over and over again.
It turned out the brooch wasn't an antique piece, but a hand-made piece for his late wife. When his wife passed away last year, his daughter, Elena, just… went crazy. I guess we all want to think we'd be okay in the face of something terrible, but Elena just was not okay. She'd gone from bad to worse, ended up on the streets, and then just stopped calling people altogether.
And then I walk in, wearing the one thing he thought he'd never see again.
I felt like a total idiot for a moment, thinking, “Oh, great, while I'm stressing about my rent, my permanent record at the bookstore, this guy's living a real-life nightmare.” So, of course, I told him everything. How she looked, how she was crying, and how she just wanted the specific book to leave at the cemetery. When I said she was at her mom's grave, I think that's when it all finally hit him. He didn't care about the theft or the fact that I'd gotten fired. He just kept going, “You saw her. You actually saw her.”
Right now, I'm working at the firm, and it's a real job that comes with health benefits. I'm still not sure what I'm doing most of the time, but Arthur says he'd rather hire someone who gives a damn about people rather than someone with the perfect GPA. His daughter, Elena, is home too. She's still at a bad place, but at least she's not on the streets.
When I tried to return the brooch to Arthur, he told me to keep it. He said that in his family, they say that things somehow find people who are supposed to have them. He said that I got the chance to bring his daughter home because that brooch chose me.
I don't really feel comfortable having it, but he won't have it any other way, so I just wear it every now and then.
When I think about it, I'm not even really sure if I believe in fate or “lucky charms,” but I do know that those twenty something bucks I spent on Elena's book was the best investment I've ever made.
I still find myself touching that brooch whenever I feel nervous during a meeting because it reminds me that actually being a soft touch actually saved my life. And yes, I'd lie if I tell you that I don't miss that bookstore from time to time.
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