Swaying

I'd have never looked at the title on the list had I not received a recommendation to read it. An order, really. When I see the cover, which I am now doing my best to ignore, I falter a little. I look inside and see a digital sort of font and a smell reminiscent of a Junie B. Jones chapter book. My gaze moves from that book in my left hand, 6.99, to the thicker, darker book I hold in my right hand. The second book is 16.99. My mother walks over and asks me if I've found the one I want. I tell her I have and that I also found what was my original choice. I want both. She asks about the prices and I tell her, and immediately she begins attempting to convince me to choose the cheaper book, an attempt poorly hidden by a separate attempt to get me to think I made the 'right' decision on my own. The moment I open my mouth to call her on it, she simultaneously guilt-trips me (a last feeble attempt), dismisses what I was going to say (which included me calling her on her first three attempts), and sends me to parlay with my father. He will not let me get both books. He won't even ask about prices. He expects frugality of us all, and will lie and say nothing's wrong should I pick the more expensive book. So I go to look for him, feeling frazzled and pressured. After seven or eight minutes spent nervously walking around the science fiction section, where I saw him last, I hear my name from the end of the row I'm standing in, reading a book of poetry to calm down. I tell him the situation, and he tells me to pick one, and then he walks away. In his mind, it is a quick decision. In his mind, we can afford to go to Barnes and Noble more than once every year before school begins. In his mind, I'm walking behind him, already having made a choice and placed the deferred literature back on the shelf. I imagine he was irritated when he reached the front of the store and realized I wasn't with him. He will have waited a few minutes, during which time I cracked open each book to get a taste of what I was about to order. The lighter, cheaper book greets me with teenage diction, a character that immediately reminds me of myself, and a few sentences that make no sense in my head, though that is probably because at this point I'm trying to read one book, hold another and a list, and fix my hair (underneath a hood that had better keep its place on my head or so help me) all while maintaining perfect studious dignity because I own this bookstore, I'm a reader and a writer and a literature fanatic who happens to have about three minutes before she needs to run to the check-out line to save her ass and her evening. In short, I look like an absolute fool, but I'm reading so I don't care that much. I close the first book and open the second. It's an older gentleman speaking. He is slow and steady in my head, determined and a little impertinent, toward his children and boss at least. He begins to explain to me how people don't understand how time slips away, how one cannot say 'I am' before it becomes 'I was'. I shift my weight to my right hip, about let myself fall into the book, when my father appears at my elbow. "Are you ready?" he asks. For a moment, I say um, already losing the connection I had just begun to form with the novel, the provoked thoughts growing smaller and smaller in my mind. He has not realized my loss, nor will he until the next time I interrupt him while he's watching Star Trek. He starts composing a monologue on the subject of how he hates shopping and that every decision is simple and should be made quickly and efficiently, and I walk away into the next aisle. I should be in trouble for this. Perhaps I am; I'm highly uninformed in the way of his emotions at the moment. Instead of waiting for him to come lecture me, I look for where this book should be. For the life of me, I cannot find it. I hear him walk away,  or stomp rather, and I take a deep breath to collect myself. I find the spot where I found the book, and I take a second breath and a moment to mourn the ideas that could have filled my mind. The book finds its place on the shelf, and after one last glance, I shuffle toward the front of the store, still finding my balance with the slight limp I have somehow acquired in the last few weeks. I reach my father, and he calls my mother, and together they march ahead of me to the check-out desk, where the clerk gives me a warm smile. Perhaps he senses my sorrow. Perhaps he understands what it's like to lose a book, or to lose time, or to have to shuffle behind one's parents while they pay six dollars and ninety-nine cents in debit for their glorious triumph. I smile back at him, and our little parade leaves the store. I thank my father for holding the door and for buying my book, and I sit shivering in silence as my father drives home, listening to my mother cry about the apparently lost cause that is our family.