Bentley Little - The Store

"No," he said.

Shannon laughed.

Ginny saw an expression of understanding dawn in Bill's face. He glanced over at her, and she nodded almost imperceptibly, telling him with her eyes to keep his promise.

"Your mother tells me that you want to work part-time," he said.

Ginny looked at him gratefully.

Samantha nodded. "I'm going to need money for college next year."

"And you want to work where?"

"At The Store?" she said hopefully.

He sighed.

"I know you don't like The Store," she said quickly, "and I understand.

But the pay's good, and it's only part-time. They'll also work my hours around my school schedule."

"You already talked to them?"

"No. I thought I should ask you first."

"Well, in that case . . ." He pretended to think for a moment. "Okay," he said. "I can work there?"

He nodded grudgingly. "I suppose so."

"Thanks!" She gave her father a big hug. "You're the greatest dad in the world!"

"This is getting _really_ pukey," Shannon said.

"He is!"

"Shut up, all of you," Ginny said, laughing. "And wash up. It's time for dinner."

3

Samantha looked up at the front of The Store, took a deep breath, wiped her sweaty palms on the back of her dress, and walked inside, running her tongue over her teeth to make sure no lipstick had smeared off.

She was nervous. She'd expected that job positions would automatically be given to the first applicants, but she'd heard at school that The Store was actually turning people down. According to Rita Daley, Tad Hood had applied for a box boy position, and they'd said thanks but no thanks. Apparently, they were looking for specific qualities in their potential employees and were not willing to settle for anything less.

In a way that was good. It meant that there were still job openings. But it also upped the pressure factor. Maybe she herself wasn't what they were looking for.

Maybe she wasn't good enough.

She thrust that thought out of her mind. She was the smartest girl in her class, bound to be valedictorian, probably prom queen as well. If she wasn't good enough, who was?

The cold air hit her the second she passed through the doorway, and she was grateful for it. Despite her attempt to be confident, despite her pep talk to herself, she was still anxious, still sweating, and she stood for moment just inside the door, letting the air conditioning cool her off.

An older man with a plastic smile on his face, wearing The Store's green vest over a white shirt, was standing near the shopping carts, and Samantha approached him. "Where would I pick up a job application?" she asked.

"Customer Service," he said, pointing.

"Thank you." She headed in the direction he'd indicated, and a second later spotted the words CUSTOMER SERVICE on the wall high above the electronics department.

Shannon's boyfriend, Jake, was at the Customer Service counter, getting his own application, and he smiled at her as she walked up. "Hi," he said.

She smiled back. "Hi."

She'd never really liked Jake, and she wondered what her sister saw in the boy. He'd been a brat and a wiseass when he was a little kid, and even now there was something Eddie Haskell-like about him, some obnoxious smarminess that set her teeth on edge and that she couldn't believe Shannon didn't see.

"What are you applying for?" he asked.

"Whatever's available."

Jake laughed. "Me, too." He looked at her in a way that seemed far too personal, far too intimate, and made her feel more than a little uncomfortable.

"You going out with Shannon tonight?" she asked deliberately.

"Uh, yeah," he said.

"Well, have fun." Smiling sweetly, she turned away from him and faced the young woman behind the counter. "I'd like an application for a part-time job."

"Sales?" the woman asked.

"Yes."

The woman withdrew a form from a shelf beneath the counter. "You can take it home, fill it out, and bring it back when you're ready." She inserted the form into a square featureless machine that clicked loudly. "Deadline's a week."

"Is there an interview . . . ?"

"After your application is reviewed, then you may be invited back for an interview."

"Thank you." She smiled at the woman, took the application, and turned to leave. Jake was walking slowly down the center aisle of the electronics department, pretending to look at boom boxes, obviously waiting for her, but she quickly made a detour around the televisions, through the household appliances, and emerged near the checkout stands.

She glanced down at the application in her hand, quickly scanning some of the questions. She'd look good on paper, she knew. Once she filled in some of the biographical info, the clubs she belonged to, her GPA and extracurricular activities, she'd be in. There was no way they'd find someone better.

She felt good, she felt confident, and she decided to come back later, after she'd completed and turned in the application, to do a little shopping. It couldn't hurt to let her future employers know that she shopped here herself.

Besides, she needed some new jeans.

She looked behind her, toward the electronics department, to make sure that Jake was nowhere in sight, then hurried past the checkout stands and through the exit doors to the parking lot outside.

4

"Every department, every aisle, every corner of The Store is equipped with hidden video cameras that are on twenty-four hours a day and record all activity within our boundaries."

Mr. Lamb walked through the stockroom. No, not walked. _Strode_. His bearing was that of a military man, his gait almost a march, and he moved purposefully past the warehouse shelves filled with crated merchandise toward a white door at the far end. Jake hurried behind him, trying to keep up. He'd heard bad things about The Store from July Bettencourt and some of the other kids who'd tried to get a job here and failed, but so far he'd had no problems.

He'd turned in his application yesterday afternoon, and Mr. Lamb had called him this morning and told him to come in for an interview. The interview had been mercifully short, and now the personnel manager was taking him on a tour of the place and acting as though he'd gotten the job. He didn't know whether he had or hadn't.

And he was afraid to ask.

Mr. Lamb was an intimidating guy.

They reached the white door, Mr. Lamb pulled it open, and the two of them continued down a narrow white hallway that Jake estimated ran parallel to the hardware department, behind the tire wall.

"Here is our monitoring room," Mr. Lamb said, opening a door and stepping inside.

"Wow," Jake said.

Mr. Lamb smiled thinly. "Yes."

The walls of the room were covered with television screens, each showing a different area of the store. Ten or twelve men, none of whom Jake recognized, were seated in front of individual stations at a control console that wrapped around the room. Each man seemed to be responsible for keeping tabs on what was happening on a bank of six televisions that was three screens tall and two screens wide.

"This is our security team," Mr. Lamb said. "Right now, we're utilizing an interim crew from corporate headquarters. They're here to set up shop and assist with training. We hope to have a locally recruited team in place by the end of the month." He turned toward Jake. "You're our first recruit."

He _had_ gotten the job.

Jake licked his lips, nervously cleared his throat. "I'm still going to school," he said. "I can only work part-time."

"We are well aware of your schedule, Mr. Lindley." The personnel manager's voice was cold. "We have three shifts. Yours would be swing -- three in the afternoon until nine at night -- if that is acceptable to you."

Jake nodded timidly.