Marietta: переводы

→“Oh, Lauren, you’ll know,” Mrs. Moffat said to her daughter. “How do I know the name Steph Landry?”

→Whatever. I can’t be expected to read the name onevery credit card someone hands me. Besides, there are like hundreds of Moffats here in Bloomville.

→And I realized, belatedly, who I’d been talking to.

→But my relief turned out to be short-lived. Because a second later the bells over the front door to the shop tinkled, and Lauren Moffat herself—wearing the same white Lilly Pulitzer low-rise capris I’d tried on at the mall the other day, but had been unable to purchase due to the fact that they cost the equivalent of twenty-five hours of work behind the cash register at Courthouse Square Books—was coming into the store, holding a Tasti D-Lite from the Penguin, and going, “Mom. Would you hurry up? I’ve been waiting for you for, like, ever.”

→“I guess it is,” I said to her. Not without some relief. Because she was leaving. Finally.

→“Oh well,” the lady said, taking her bag and her receipt. “I guess it’s just one of those things.”

→And not in a good way.

→I was just going to have to face the fact that, just like the red Super Big Gulp that wouldn’t come out of Lauren’s white denim D&G skirt—even though my dad tried. He used Shout and everything, and when it didn’t work, finally went out and got her a brand-new skirt—my name was going to be forever stained on people’s memories.

→But I knew the customer would never fall for it. Grandpa’s last name isn’t even the same as mine. He was afflicted from birth with the unfortunate moniker of Emile Kazoulis…although he’s done pretty well for himself, despite this handicap.

→It also means my mother isn’t speaking to him, because the Super Sav-Mart, with its reduced prices, is probably going to put all of the shops along the square, including Courthouse Square Books, out of business.

→Which means he’s been in the local paper a lot, especially since he spent a chunk of his money building an observatory that he plans to donate to the city.

→Her credit card was approved. I tore off the slip for her to sign and started bagging her purchases. Maybe I could tell her that the reason she might know me is because of my grandfather. Why not? He’s currently one of the most talked about—and richest—men in southern Indiana, ever since he sold some farmland he owned along the proposed route of the new I-69 (“connecting Mexico to Canada via a highway ‘corridor’” through Indiana, among other states) for the construction of a Super Sav-Mart, which opened last weekend.

→Not.

→But certainly close enough that she’d been over to my house (okay, well, once. And she didn’t exactly have the best time. I blame my father, who was baking a batch of homemade granola at the time. The smell of burnt oatmeal WAS kind of overpowering) and I’d been over to hers (just once…her mom had been away getting her nails done, but her dad had been home and had knocked on Lauren’s door to say that the explosion noises I was making during our game of Navy Seal Barbie were a little too loud. Also that he’d never heard of Navy Seal Barbie, and wanted to know what was so wrong with playing Quiet Nurse Barbie).

→I could understand her frustration. What’s especially upsetting about it—if you think about it (which I try not to, except when things like this happen)—is that Lauren and I, up until the end of fifth grade, had been friends. Not close friends, maybe. It’s hard to be close friends with the most popular girl in school, since she’s got such a busy social calendar.

→“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “That’s not it, either.”

→Which I know doesn’t sound like much. But Courthouse Square Booksis the only independently owned bookstore in Bloomville. If you don’t include Doc Sawyer’s Adult Books and Sexual Aids, out by the overpass. Which I don’t.

→“It’s probably,” I said to the woman as I ran her credit card through the scanner, “because my parents own this store.”

→It’s actually sort of surprising how many people in Greene County make that mistake. With the lemon Joy, I mean. According to my friend Jason’s dad, who is a doctor over at Bloomville Hospital.

→And while I’m in mostly AP classes, that’s not because I’m an honor student or anything. That’s just because if you grow up in Greene County knowing that lemon Joy goes in your dishwasher and not your iced tea, you get put in AP classes.