Bevin

Bevin was lemony. Not tart or sour but zingy and Spring light. Bevin was Meyer lemony, the roots of her yellow brightness reaching down to fluorescent orange. When she turned fifteen she got a job as a cashier at Wegman's, joining her army of friends ten hours a week ringing up and bagging groceries. On a hectic Sunday she could look down the line of thirty lanes, packed out with moms and their daughters, each manned by a team of two, and not see a person her age she didn't like. When Bevin thought about it she didn't know a person that wasn't her friend.

When the store was busy she tied her sunny hair back because it felt appropriately serious. It made her glad to know how vital she and her young friends were to the success of a given day. They couldn't even drive but they could handle millions of dollars each year. Bevin knew she was doing her job well when she got the sense that she was being watched. She felt the grateful eyes of the customers marveling at her speed and efficiency, whittling down the ceaseless stream to a trickle, and keeping a cool head the whole time. There was a simple relationship between performance and expectation that Bevin took advantage of. She knew exactly how to succeed at this job, and she reasoned that one should excel at everything they were capable of. She wasn't always asked to do things she was good at, and she detested the frustration that came with that. Her friends got bored with jobs that came too easily to them, and Bevin saw them inventing obstacles for themselves, self sabotaging, growing difficult and nasty. It didn't make any sense to her, in Bevin's mind doing her best helped balance the universe.

Paul was a bagger. Chloe and Allie and Lexy noticed that Paul always tried to bag near Bevin, but she didn't think so. Admittedly, because she was friends with everyone, Bevin was not skilled at break room diplomacy like the other girls. She was very Swiss according to Chloe. Her three friends deployed themselves on a fact finding mission to the smoker's pit by the loading dock, and returned giggling helplessly. At 4 on Sundays everything started winding down. The crowds thinned and did not replenish themselves, the end of their shifts crawled closer and for a glorious time the checkout was opulently over staffed. Bevin stood on the balls of her feet, pivoting back and forth. Looking over her shoulder she saw Paul, he smiled and she gave a quiet chuckle. She began to help a customer but turned again at the first pause, the corners of her mouth turning up and her lips helplessly ebbing the shore of her bright teeth. She finished the transaction and turned again, they laughed, too far apart to hear each other, like a silent joke was passed between them.