Gabbie was on the phone with Dan as she walked into her favorite place on earth: the Michaels on 6th Avenue. She’d been checking her phone obsessively all day, hoping to hear from Delali and Maya, the girls from the weekend, but the group chat they had made to stay connected in the club had gone totally silent. Gabbie was disappointed, but there was nothing wrong with just going home, washing her face, and changing into her pajamas before some TV time. Maybe rewatching The Bold Type could give her the courage she needed to open up the chat and send the first missive to the girls.
Plus, she could spend the night finishing the care package she was putting together for Dan. He’d been complaining about sunburn since he first stepped off the plane in Nairobi, and Gabbie was working on a sun hat to go in the package (along with flaxseed crackers, Dan’s over-the-counter allergy meds, and his favorite mechanical pencils). When she got down to the fabrics section of Michaels, she switched the call to FaceTime.
“What do you think of this one?” she asked, flashing a spool of navy-blue crochet yarn in front of the camera for Dan.
“I like that,” Dan replied.
“Or,” Gabbie continued as she rummaged through the selection. “What about this?”
“That’s really nice,” Dan said.
“This?”
“That’s a great one.”
“Dan,” Gabbie said, half-scolding, half-giggling. “You hate orange. I just held that up to see if you were paying attention!”
“It’s just a hat, Gabs, it’s gonna block the sun no matter the color.”
Gabbie was about to get actually annoyed with Dan when she heard a voice behind her.
“Oh my gosh!” Gabbie turned to face a tall, round-cheeked girl clutching a garland of orange plastic leaves. “Are you Gabbie from Crafting and Coconut Oil?”
“Oh,” Gabbie said. She took a step back, surprised. Crafting and Coconut Oil was the DIY-crafting-and-natural-hair Instagram she’d started two summers ago. When Gabbie wasn’t working on lesson plans or talking to Dan, she was probably baking or knitting or flat-twisting something that she could post on C&C. After Dan left for Nairobi, and before she got her classroom assignment, Gabbie had posted way more than usual—even starting a TikTok—out of utter boredom. But it had never occurred to her to check whether people were actually following along.
“Yeah,” Gabbie said finally, realizing she hadn’t responded. “That’s me.”
“Ah, that’s so cool,” the girl said. She dropped the garland into her basket. “I loved your Elmer’s glue face mask! Totally unclogged my pores.”
“Thanks,” Gabbie said, beaming. Her smashed avocado, Aztec clay, and glue face mask was one of her first ventures into DIY beauty. “That’s one of my faves, too. Oh, wait—” Gabbie turned to her screen, remembering she was still on with Dan. “Hey,” she whispered, “could I call you back in a sec?” She hung up.
“I’m Eliza,” the girl said, extending one hand and reaching into her purse with the other.
“Nice to meet you.” Gabbie swept her hair off her forehead, feeling a little overwhelmed. She liked knowing that someone with powder blue faux locs and holographic creepers followed her little Instagram.
“I’ve been thinking about starting my own YouTube or TikTok thing for-ev-er,” Eliza said, pulling out an iPhone in a furry blue case. “Selfie?”
“Uh, sure,” Gabbie said, but Eliza had already tilted her chin down, turned her head to catch the light, and snapped a pic of the two of them.
Eliza slipped the phone back into her purse and continued as though she hadn’t stopped. “But I have no idea how to, like, get people interested in my stuff. How’d you build your following?”
“Oh.” Gabbie paused to think about it. She had a following? She didn’t even have friends. “Just posting stuff that I’m passionate about? And trying to take high-quality pictures.” She shrugged. “I don’t know really. I always have a ton of ideas, but I only ever post when I have the time.”
“No way,” Eliza said. “I would have thought you were a full-time content creator.”
Gabbie laughed.
“No, seriously. All my friends are totally obsessed with your videos.”
“Really?” Gabbie asked, laughing awkwardly. Compliments always made her uncomfortable.
“Totally,” Eliza confirmed.
Gabbie pulled her phone out of her bright red J. Crew chinos and handed it to Eliza. “Could I have your phone number or Insta or something? To keep in touch?”
“Sure.” Eliza tapped into Gabbie’s phone. “I gotta go,” she said, nodding to some friends who were waiting at the end of the aisle. “But, FYI, you owe the people a new post!”
“You too!” Gabbie said as Eliza walked away, face-palming internally as soon as she said it. When she’d gotten over her embarrassment, Gabbie decided to peruse the shelves a little longer without calling Dan—it would go faster this way, anyway, and she knew Dan would be cranky about her hanging up on him. When she was done, she took her haul up to the checkout. Looking at the dozens of craft supplies in her arms, she realized she had gone a little bit overboard, but everyone knew fall was peak crafting season. Plus, she had a coupon she’d been dying to use.
The line for checkout snaked past the barriers and into the portrait-and-framing aisle, which it always did on weeknights, and by the time Gabbie finally got to the front, her arms were sore. She dropped all her items on the counter, jerking to stop a tube of cerulean paint as it threatened to roll off the counter. Gabbie took in the cashier, a tall, skinny, high school kid with close-cropped hair and a zigzag through his left eyebrow. Gabbie was at Michaels often enough that she knew all of the cashiers by name, so she was always super excited to see a new face.
“Hey!” Gabbie said enthusiastically. She leaned in to read the cashier’s nametag. “OMG, your name is—”
He cut her off. “Michael, yes.”
“Right.” Rebuffed, Gabbie stood in silence as Michael rang up her items.
“That’s one hundred eighty-six twenty-eight,” he said after what must have been five full minutes of concentrated scanning.
“Oh, I’ve got a coupon!” Gabbie placed her phone on the counter, barcode up.
Michael picked up his scanning gun and pointed it at the phone screen, but the machine responded with a red light and a disappointing beep. “Expired.” He slid the phone across the counter to Gabbie.
“Oh, no,” Gabbie said, sliding the phone back toward him. “It’s not.”
Michael scanned the coupon again. Red. “Expired.”
“I think maybe the angle isn’t right? If you could just maybe . . .” Gabbie mimicked how she would scan the coupon if she worked at Michaels—something that she had, in fact, fantasized about before.
Michael could barely contain his contempt. He angled his arm dramatically, his elbow pointing to the ceiling, and scanned the coupon, all while maintaining eye contact with Gabbie. Another red light and lackluster beep.
“That must be an error,” Gabbie said. “The coupon says it expires next week. The thirteenth. It’s Saturday the second. It says that pretty clearly on the top. It’s right there.”
“Miss, you watched me scan the coupon. Thrice. It’s no longer valid.” Michael’s volume had risen a notch, and the people who had been shuffling and sighing behind Gabbie now started to openly stare.
Gabbie could feel herself getting flustered, heat rising to her face and staying there. Usually she’d do anything to avoid confrontation, especially in public. But she couldn’t spend two hundred dollars on crafts just to avoid conflict. She had to draw the line somewhere.
“Do you think, maybe, you could consider calling your manager or something? Maybe Suzanna would be able to help.”
“Are you trying to get me in trouble with my boss? Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than attack a retail worker on a Friday night?”
“No! I mean yes—” Gabbie stuttered. “I do have something better to . . . that’s not what I meant, I just thought . . . you’re new, and—” Gabbie could see it now, her face plastered over Twitter as “the Michaels Karen.” The first ever viral Black Karen. The hypothetical shame was overwhelming.
“If you want a discount,” Michael interrupted, “maybe you should put some of these items back.” He held up a packet of glass beads she’d planned to use for a counting exercise. “Would plastic not suffice?”
Gabbie took a step back. She hated that Michael thought she was the kind of person who would try to get a guy fired for not scanning a freaking coupon. “I’m sor—” she started, but then stopped midsentence feeling the involuntary sting of hot tears. She was definitely about to cry in public, which, admittedly, would not be a first for her. She steadied herself and looked up from the counter to try again, but as her eyes met Michael’s, his face changed. It softened, and he took a slow step back, blinking as if his eyes were adjusting to the light.
“You’re right,” Michael said, sounding slightly dazed. He lifted Gabbie’s phone from the counter, slowly. “It says right there, September thirteenth.” He laughed as if he couldn’t believe how foolish he’d been.
Gabbie scrunched up her face in confusion—what? “Yeah . . . it does,” she said.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, the coupon’s totally valid. I’m not sure how I missed that. Really—I’m so sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Gabbie said.
“No, really, it’s not. I’ve totally ruined your experience at Michaels today, and that’s just not fair.”
“I—”
“Let me enter this now.”
He typed in the code and the light blinked green. The machine beeped happily. Valid.
“Sixty-two thirty-three,” Michael announced, triumphant.
“Sorry to be annoying,” Gabbie said. “But did you make sure the googly eyes were two for one?” The googly eyes were not two for one, but she wanted to test Michael’s sudden attitude change.
“Shit,” Michael said. “Sorry, ma’am, I missed that.” He looked concerned for a moment, then perked up. “You know what, if Suzanna were here she’d give this to you on the house. Just for how much trouble I’ve caused you.”
Gabbie was bewildered. She knew Suzanna well enough to know that she would absolutely not authorize such a thing. She watched as Michael swept her items into a jumbo plastic bag, too stunned to ask him to put it all in her environmentally friendly, turtle-patterned canvas tote instead. Gabbie grabbed the bag and moved out of the way for the next customer, but then she stood by the checkout, utterly confused, watching as Michael shook his head like he’d just been dumped in a bucket of cold water. She had no idea know what had just happened—but she did know it was somehow connected to her and Michael’s weird moment of eye contact, the one that she had felt down to her toes.
“Excuse me,” she called to Michael, and he looked up from the customer who had just taken Gabbie’s place. She made eye contact again now, deeply and purposefully, just to see what would happen. Like before, Michael’s reaction was instantaneous: his shoulders relaxed and he stood straighter. In his eyes, eerily opaque and unfocused, Gabbie could see her reflection. She just stood, her eyes locked on his, kind of . . . holding him there. Then, suddenly, Michael reared back from the counter and threw up all over it.
“Oh!” Gabbie cried. “Oh my god!”
She hurried to the door. What in the world was that? she thought to herself, for the second time since her birthday. The memory of the phone and the flash of light outside The Bar popped into her head again. What were the chances that these two things had nothing to do with each other? She wasn’t a math teacher, but she would bet it was zero. It was obvious from the silence in the group chat that the other girls were having normal weekends. Was it just her? She sighed and allowed herself one more peek at her phone. And just as she did, it started to vibrate, “Delali” flashing up on the screen.