Whitney by Jade Parker Page B

asked.
    He steepled his fingers and tapped them together. “I’m glad you asked, because I have a bit of a problem.”
    I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that. I was a little surprised that he was telling me, but I decided that maybe he saw me as a problem solver — a creative thinker.
    “I’m short an employee in the Treasure Chest gift shop. I’d like you to fill in. I know you don’t have any cash register experience so you’d just take care of, uh, you know — - answering questions and helping customers.”
    “You mean, like a sales associate?”
    “More like a helper.”
    “But what about parties? On Friday we’re usually swamped.”
    He cleared his throat. “Well, when you were AWOL the other morning, Lisa found a couple of people to help her. They helped yesterday, too, so we moved them into parties.”
    “Oh. But I wasn’t really AWOL. She told me to leave.”
    “I think she meant for you to leave the situation alone, not to leave the area.”
    “But —”
    “Whitney, I need you to work in the gift shop.”
    His words stung. And it was so unfair. I’d rather clean toilets than work in the gift shop. Okay, I wouldn’t rather clean toilets. But still, it would be so boring in the gift shop.
    “You know, there is, like, a major party happening on Sunday,” I told him.
    “The Spencers’ party. Marci with an i. Yes, I’m aware of that.”
    “Am I going to help plan it?”
    He cleared his throat. “I think Charlotte and Lisa are working on that. Your responsibility now is the gift shop.”
    He had always been so nice to me, but right now, he seemed mean, unreasonable even. I almost told him that I quit, but part of me wondered if that’s what they wanted. Yes, knowing that Marci was coming to the park made me a little paranoid. Making me miserable seemed to be her purpose in life. But she didn’t know I worked here, so maybe I had just taken it too far when I’d walked away from the parties on Wednesday. I angled my chin defiantly and stood up. “Okay.”
    I headed for the door, stopped, and turned around. “Did Charlotte tell you about my ideas for the luau?”
    “Yes, but they’re a little more than we want to do for this event.”
    “If you don’t give Marci Spencer something special, she’s not going to be happy. Trust me, you don’t want an unhappy Marci.”
    “We’ll take care of things.”
    The tone of his voice dismissed me as clearly as if he’d waved good-bye. I was once again tempted to call David, tempted to go home. It wasn’t as though I needed the job. Besides, Dad was coming home this evening. I wanted to get an early start on spending some time with him.
    But I didn’t go home. Instead I headed on over to the souvenir and gift shop. The window display of the shop had sand along the bottom and a treasure chest on its side, with its top open and trinkets spilling out. Not bad. It looked like someone here actually had an imagination.
    I walked inside. It was a large shop. The square counter with a register on each side was in the middle of the building. Four people were inside the center, each manning a cash register. I counted six people wearing Paradise Falls uniforms standing around the shop. I knew their jobs weren’t so much to help customers as to make sure that none of them walked out with items that they’d“forgotten” to pay for. The park lost a lot of money because of shoplifting. I used to think that with most of the customers wearing bathing suits, shoplifting wouldn’t be a problem. I mean, really, where were they gonna hide stuff? But they managed to make off with a lot. Maybe it was because people often came in here with their tote bags in tow.
    A guy walked out of the back, spotted me, smiled, and hurried over. He was probably in college. He was tall and slender. I imagined that he could walk down the crowded aisles and never knock anything off the shelves.
    When he reached me, he said, “I’m Zach. You must be Whitney.”
    “Yep. I’m