- Olivia Brooks
- 3 days ago
- 19 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
Ready Rentals
I have my own money, and that basically makes me a grownup. Mom said I can spend my allowance on anything I want, and Mandy said I can spend my allowance on anything I want as long as it’s not freaking stupid. She only said that after I used last month’s allowance on a pair of earrings from the Claire’s in the mall that turned my earlobes green. This month, I’m using it at Ready Rentals, our off-brand Blockbuster, which doesn’t feel stupid at all. But it feels kind of stupid that I had to beg Mandy to bring me here with her. I definitely don’t feel like a grownup when I have to ride in the back seat, or when I have to show Mom the A on my Language Arts project to get my allowance. Even though I’m basically a grownup, sometimes I forget and ask permission for things I don’t need permission for.
“Can I rent something?” I ask Mandy.
“Do you have money?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “Four dollars.” I put one dollar in my savings box, spent the other ten on five scented erasers, and three of them already got stolen out of my backpack.
She stalks into Ready Rentals. Her best friend and her boyfriend trail behind her. “Do whatever you want,” she says over her shoulder.
The shelves explode with possibility. I hope I get enough time here. There are a lot of movies I want to see, but I only have enough money for one, plus candy. And I need to make a plan on how to choose which movie I’m going to watch. Probably a pros and cons list, and then an elimination round. Then I have to make sure I take a nap before Mandy goes out, so I have time to watch it alone.
The movies I like are not front and center. I sneak by Mandy and her friend, who are arguing over if they’re going to rent American Psycho or Scary Movie.
“They never have it in stock,” Mandy says.
“Who cares? We’ve been dying for Scary Movie all week.”
I think all the movies that Mandy watches are stupid and repetitive. The corner where the movies I like live is usually kind of empty. I bet there are other people who like the movies I like too, because a lot of them are usually checked out. But I never actually see people over here.
“The made-for-TV movies are over there,” the clerk says, jerking his head over to the left.
“Go away,” I tell him.
“Here, you’ll like this one,” he says. He hands me Kiki’s Delivery Service. The long edge of the movie’s case is warped, opened and closed a million times, many by me.
“I’ve seen that one like twelve times. Go away. I’m looking for the newer one.” I try and push by him to look at the shelves. I see it high up, a girl in pink against a black background.
“Spirited Away?” he asks.
“Leave my sister alone,” Mandy butts in. “Come on, Jean, we’re leaving.”
“I’m not ready,” I tell Mandy. “Gimme five minutes.” Mandy clenches her jaw.
“Meet us at checkout in three minutes or I’m leaving you,” she says.
“Spirited Away is way too scary for a kid like you,” the guy says, shoving his hands into his pockets. His fingernails are colored in with black permanent marker.
“Leave me alone,” I parrot. The guy paces off. I watch him through the tilted mirrors on the walls above the shelves. I notice a couple of new swollen pimples by my hairline and pull my hood down over my forehead.
Spirited Away is a shelf and a half above my head. I tap my foot against the shelf and deem it stable, so I put one foot, and then another onto the shelf and stretch my left arm above my head. I have to lean in to keep my balance. I feel around blindly hoping I grab the right DVD. Of course, the bottom shelf bolted to the wall buckles under me, and the right side of the whole thing falls onto the carpet. All the DVDs spill to the ground. I get down on my hands and knees and try to rearrange them before anyone sees. I hear Mandy’s voice in my head, klutz.
“You need to vacuum better under those movie cart things,” I tell the guy. “There’s a lot of nasty stuff under there.”
“There’s a lot of nasty stuff right here,” he says, squinting at me.
I pay for my movie, my stovetop popcorn, and my movie-sized box of Buncha Crunch. It’s freezing cold outside, I can see my breath in the glow of the urine-yellow parking lot floodlights. Mandy’s 1992 Chrysler Cirrus, a squat old car the color of a port-a-potty seat, is nowhere to be found. I approach the counter with my best Mandy-walk, hips moving back and forth, but I feel like a moron.
“Hey Marty, let me use the phone.”
“I prefer Martin,” the guy says.
“’Kay, Martin, can I use the phone?” I shoot him my best picture-day smile and rest my hands on the counter, which is sticky.
Martin raises an eyebrow at me. “Why?”
“Because Mandy left me here,” I say, gesturing to the empty parking lot. “She’s a bitch.”
“Foul language for a kid,” Martin says. I hate when people tell me not to cuss. It makes me feel like a child who has to follow lots of rules. Like when I reach for a pen in Mandy’s backpack and she says, Don’t touch that! Like she’s snapping at a dog. I don’t like her pens with the poufs on top anyway.
“I’m a woman, thanks,” I tell him. “I don’t look like a woman to you?” Martin looks me up and down.
“No,” he says.
“I had my Bat Mitzvah three months ago.” The theme of my party was Under Water. I wanted cool blue lights and some paper sharks and jellyfish hanging from the ceiling. Except all my parents’ lame friends thought the theme was Under The Sea and I ended up with like six Little Mermaid t-shirts. I threw them all in the bathroom trash at school, but I felt really bad about it because some old people are just dumb.
“So, you’re thirteen?” he asks me.
“No. Let me use the phone, please,” I say, tapping my nails on the linoleum counter like Mandy does when she’s feeling impatient. “I need to call home.”
“It’s been five minutes,” Martin says, looking at his chunky black G-Shock. Mandy wants a pink and green one, but dad says she’ll just lose it. “There’s no way she’s home yet.”
I stare into Martin’s kohl-rimmed eyes and scrunch my nose. Then I get up on my tippy toes and reach over the counter to pull the phone closer to me.
“Jeez, bold,” Martin says. “Fine.”
I dial our number. Two-three-nine-six-two-four-one, I sing in my head. It rings for a while and goes to the voicemail. You’ve reached the Quinn family. Leave a message!
“Mandy, you asshole, you left me here. Come get me. I hate you. Bye.”
I slam the phone back into the receiver and go stand in the cold. Ready Rentals isn’t on the mainest of main roads. It’s kind of tucked back next to a neighborhood. Not that I’d ever hitchhike. I know too much about serial killers to do that. Sometimes the encyclopedia entries I read about serial killers make me stay up all night staring at the ceiling. Like, what if some time the East Area Rapist changed his mind, went back into business, and came to Ohio? I usually check a couple times that my windows are closed before I go to bed. It’s called taking precautions.
Martin appears in the doorway, his hands pulled into his sleeves.
“You can wait in here,” he says. “It’s fucking cold out.”
“No thanks.” I hop between sidewalk squares. “If you do a cartwheel I’ll come inside.”
“I’m not doing that. Anyway, whether you live or freeze to death out here is not on my conscience,” Martin says, and goes back inside. I keep hopping and every once in a while, press my face against the freezing cold glass and make a face at Martin. After the third time, he stalks out from behind the desk and does a half-cartwheel.
I pull my hood down over my hair and trudge back inside. It is warmer, but I walk home from school every single day when it’s cold. Martin watches me while I walk to the far corner of the store and stroll down the aisle, reading the name of each movie in my head. Once he looks away, I switch the spots of two movies really quick. I browse up and down the aisles, taking note of the genre. Crime, romantic comedy, drama. Who knew Ready Rentals had a documentary section? I want to tell my dad about it. I switch another two movies. Browse a little, then switch another two.
“Hey! Don’t do that,” Martin says when he notices me messing with his precious DVD arrangements. Instantly I feel guilty. But I won’t tell him that.
“Sorry.” I shrug. It actually probably takes a long time to put the DVDs in their right spots, and there’s probably a guide or something that tells him where to put stuff.
“You’re what, twelve then?” Martin asks.
“Yeah,” I say, picking up a DVD, part one of a documentary by some guy called Ken Burns. “Hey, where’s the back?” I ask.
“What?”
“The back, like the back room, where you keep the dirty movies?”
“We don’t have dirty movies,” Martin says with the tone of a teacher. “Even if we did, you’re way, way too young.”
“You aren’t? ’Cause I was at Mandy’s boyfriend’s house with her and they went to the corner store and I found a dirty movie in his closet. And you guys are in the same grade.” Martin just stares at me. “There’s no back?” I stretch my neck to look for the little doorway with the blue curtain. I’ve seen it in movies, there’s always a back room with some dim neon lights and sections that are marked with weird names like Schoolgirls and S&M. I don’t know what S&M actually means, and I make a mental note to look it up in mom’s encyclopedia or on the computer when no one’s home. Dad always stands over my shoulder when I try to use the computer.
“It’s storage,” Martin says.
“Prove it.”
§
The back room is dusty and full of cardboard boxes stacked in cityscape towers against the wall. There are no neon lights or handwritten tabs. It’s disappointing. I peek into a box and find various VHS tapes.
“Where are these going?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Martin says. “I really shouldn’t let you back here. Let’s go.” He flips the lids back over the boxes and a puff of dust rises in the air.
“Oooh,” I say, peering into a box full of candy, all wrapped tightly in clear plastic film. All this candy, on top of my leftover Halloween candy, could last me till next Halloween. It would probably all fit under my mattress too.
“Come on,” Martin says. “Seriously.”
“Where’s the Buncha Crunch?” I start opening boxes again, digging my fingernails under the clear packing tape. Ew, Twizzlers.
“If I tell you,” Martin says. “Will you leave?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“There.” Martin points to a box in the corner, half torn open. Inside there is boundless Buncha Crunch. I reach in and grab two boxes, one for each back pocket, and two more for the pocket of my sweatshirt.
“What the hell?” Martin says, hurrying over and reaching for a box in my sweatshirt pocket.
“Don’t touch me!” I say, staring at him. He backs away with his hands up.
“You’re a brat, you know that?”
“Mandy says that too,” I tell him.
“Your sister kind of sucks,” Martin says, steering me out of the back room with a single finger on my right shoulder.
“Yeah, I know.” I shake my shoulders like there’s slime dripping down my body and Martin drops his hand. I think he’s weird but I can’t one-hundred-percent tell.
“Go over there,” Martin tells me. He points to a circular stool with a brown pleather seat that sits behind the counter.
“Fine.” I climb up onto the chair. It’s so tall that my feet dangle. The weight of my knockoff Doc Martens pulls down at my legs. Martin climbs up onto his own stool, newer, in much better shape, not rusty or peeling at all. It’s definitely more boring behind the desk. I glance over at Martin and wonder if Mandy hates him for real, or if she’s just a bitch to him at school for fun. Mandy hates some people, really hates them, like her ex-best-friend Tess. And some people she just pokes at because she can. I don’t think I hate anyone yet.
Martin does something useless on the computer while I stare into space, listening to the bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz of the neon OPEN sight. O-P-E-N, OPEN, it buzzes. Its endless blinking has made the sign below it start to fade. DOORBUSTER DEAL’S!, the sign yells. BOGO DVDS, BOGO VHS, CANDY 50% OFF!
Martin turns to look out the store’s front windows. A couple of cars are pulling up front, shining their annoyingly bright headlights in our faces. I have to shield my eyes with my arm. “Here we go,” Martin sighs deeply and runs his hands through his hair.
“Don’t trip,” I tell Martin. He raises an eyebrow at me, and I feel kind of embarrassed again. I don’t totally know what it means, but I know Mandy uses it when she thinks someone is like trying too hard or overreacting.
“What’s up, brother?” A jock pushes his way through the door first and claps Martin on the back. It makes a loud smack. “You got anything with Heather Graham?” He waggles his eyebrows at Martin, and then he notices me. “Who’s this lil’ jailbait?”
“She’s twelve,” Martin says.
“I’m twelve.” I wonder what jailbait means.
A short brunette with braces comes through the door next. Her cheeks are bubblegum pink from the cold. That’s Tess, Mandy’s ex-best-friend.
“Oh hey, Jean,” she says, smiling her sparkly metal mouth at me. “You work here now?”
“No,” I say with a pout. “Freaking Mandy left me here. She’s such a bitch.”
“We can agree on that,” she smiles. She is actually really nice and cool. She would let me come over with Mandy and let me play on her computer while they hung out. I kinda miss her, actually. She’s like if Mandy was nice for a change.
The jock comes over and throws his gigantic arm over her shoulders. He’s so huge and she’s so small, she could be a doll that some kid drags around by the wrist.
“Jean, this is my boyfriend. He just transferred from St. Charles,” she notes with a twinkle in her eye. “This is Mandy’s little sister.” The guy gets a blank look on his face. “Mandy,” she says, with a little more of an edge.
“Ohhhh,” he says with some recognition. “Yeah, cool. Ay, dude!” Another group of meatheads come in the door.
“Heeeeey Marty,” a girl with long braids coos.
“Hi,” Martin says without looking up from his computer. I feel like that’s kind of rude, not to look up when you say hi to someone, and I want to nudge Martin to make him look up. But I’m kind of afraid too, because he weirds me out, but I don’t know why.
The teenagers all disperse to different areas, yelling obnoxiously loudly to each other about which movies to rent and what candy to buy. I watch one guy slip his hand into his girlfriend’s back pocket and she squeals like a mouse in a trap. Pretty sure if a guy touched my butt like that, I’d tell him to screw off. Is it supposed to feel good? Because it’s gross to watch.
A jock drops a huge stack of DVDs on the desk and produces his card. Martin slowly scans every DVD, leaving the guy hanging with his card in his hand.
“Bro, take it,” the guy says, shoving the card into space. Martin looks at him, and then back down to the stack of DVDs, scanning and placing them in a stack at a glacial pace. The guy slaps the card down onto the desk with a loud snap. Then Martin picks up the card and scans it. The space around the three of us feels like ice, like someone left the door open.
“I can’t rent these to you,” he finally says.
“The fuck?”
“You have too many movies already rented out, you have to return some. Bring some back, then I can rent you these.”
“The fuck, dude? Come on Marty, just let it go this time.”
“I can’t,” Martin says through clenched teeth. I know he can’t, because the computer keeps flashing a red rectangle that says OVERDUE next to the guy’s account number.
“Come on, dude,” the guy says again, banging his hands down on the counter. Then he looks at me. “What are you, the manager?” He laughs at his own joke and Martin scoffs.
“Sorry,” Martin says.
“Yeah, sorry,” I tell the guy. “I’m the manager and that’s the rules.” The guy ignores me and leans over until he’s six inches from Martin’s face.
“Jesus Christ, you’re such a pussy.”
“Leave him alone,” I say. “You rented too many movies. You’re annoying anyway, buy your candy and go home.” I surprise myself with the guts it takes to say that, but he’s mean, and I want him to leave now. The desk is my big safe barrier.
“Jean, don’t,” Martin says.
“Come on, Marty!” the guy says, loud enough for everyone else to hear. “Marty, Marty, Marty! Marty! Marty!” Soon everyone joins in chanting. The girls come up behind the boys and smack their hands on the counter.
“Marty! Marty!”
Martin’s face turns bright red, like he fell asleep at the beach, and he scrunches his nose up in ten thousand wrinkles. One jock reaches over the desk and musses Martin’s hair, making it stand up in a lot of directions, like in a way that would be cool if it was on purpose. Martin swats his hand away and scoots back in his chair.
“Oooh, sensitive. Give me your card,” the guy says to Tess. His voice sounds like what a cop on TV sounds like. Tess silently hands her card over and doesn’t smile. Without saying anything else, Martin scans the movies and waves them all away.
“Bye, Jean. Good to see you. Tell your sister she sucks.” Her words are all wet because of her braces.
“You shouldn’t let them be so mean to you,” I tell Martin after they leave. “They’re just assholes. Like Mandy. They’re all full of crap.”
“You don’t know shit,” Martin snarls.
That kind of hurts my feelings, because I feel like I actually know a lot. And I just don’t want people being mean to Martin. He might be my friend, I don’t know, maybe, but either way those people were mean. And it makes me a little sad that Tess didn’t say anything, because I thought she was the kind of person who would. Whenever Mandy would tell me Fuck off forever, Jean, Jesus, she would tell Mandy to stop being so uptight and just let me hang out with them for ten more minutes. Maybe she doesn’t like people who are uptight, and that’s why she didn’t say anything about everyone being mean to Martin.
“Yeah, actually I do,” I tell Martin, trying to sound mad.
“Go call your mom,” he says, and pushes away from the desk, stalking onto the floor to rearrange the movies that the jocks messed up. Fine, be like that. I duck down to snoop under the desk. It’s mostly a bunch of crap. Cobwebbed boxes of staples and paperclips, stacks of damaged movies, a plastic basket with all the employee badges in it, a boom box. I dig through until I find a badge that says MANAGER in label maker print, and I drape it over my neck. Then I turn the radio on and move the dial, the phone rings, but I focus on the radio until I get what I want.
Good gracious, ass is bodacious, Nelly sings.
“This job is way more fun than you’re letting it be!” I yell to Martin over the music. He could’ve been playing music this whole time? He ignores me. I stand up on my stool, put my left foot on Martin’s chair, and shake my hair. “Come on Martin, I bet you love this song!”
“Jesus, get down, you’re gonna fall and crack your head open,” Martin says.
It’s getting hot in here, so hot
I jump up onto the desk.
“So, take off all your clothes,” I sing into my badge. “I am…getting so hot…I wanna take my clooooothes off…” I lay down on the desk.
“You might actually be more annoying than your sister,” Martin tells me, switching off the radio.
“I know about good movies,” I tell him, because it’s true.
“The phone rang and you didn’t tell me?” Martin asks, pointing to the voicemail button. When he presses it, all we hear is the click of a phone being put down. “If you’ve only seen Studio Ghibli, then you kind of know nothing.”
“That’s not true.” I shove his arm. “You’re lying.”
“Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade?”
“The what, what?”
“Millennium Actress?”
“That sign is wrong,” I tell Martin, pointing to a window display.
“Now you’re stalling because you don’t know anything I’m talking about,” Martin says. “Watch those movies and get back to me.”
Now Martin’s the one being a big jerk. The guidance counselor at school comes to every classroom once a month and she says people who are mean to others are mean because someone else is being mean to them. Plus, boys always have to act like they know everything. Like they always have something to “teach” me. I never learned anything important from any boy except my dad. He taught me how to ride my bike and how to clean a cut when I fall off it. And where apostrophes go.
“There shouldn’t be an apostrophe in deals. They don’t belong to anyone, and it doesn’t mean deal is…so that makes zero sense. Anyway, if you were just like, stoned, they wouldn’t bother you. They want to make you mad, so just don’t get mad.”
“Stoned?” Martin looks at me like I’m an idiot. I know that look because I get it from Mandy every day of my life and it makes me want to pinch her arm. Which I do, sometimes.
“You know,” I say. “Like, you don’t show emotion.”
“Stoney? Stone faced?”
“Yeah, whatever, anyway, I have to pee. Where’s the bathroom?” I hop down from my stool and head toward the blue curtains.
“Why do girls always announce it like that? Just say you have to go to the bathroom.”
“So you know I’m not pooping,” I tell him. “Back here?”
Martin follows me into the back room and points to an unmarked door on the left side, hidden in a shadow.
“Why are you following me?”
“Because I don’t trust you not to steal more candy.”
“Leave me alone, I have to pee. And all my pockets are full anyway.”
Martin huffs and goes to stand on the store side of the blue curtain. I can see his feet while he stands there and waits for me.
§
When I step back out of the back room, Martin is still there. He’s looking up at himself in the mirror, trying to flatten his hair back down. I stand next to him and look up at our reflections. I self-consciously pull down at my hood again.
“You’re tall for a twelve-year-old,” Martin says.
“I know, people tell me that all the time.” I look over at him. He’s probably only two or three inches taller than me. “You’ll probably hit another growth spurt,” I tell him.
“Thanks, Dr. Jean,” he says. He looks me up and down. “Oh, you, uh, X-Y-Z.”
“Thanks,” I say, and then I realize there’s only one way he would notice that. Something weird moves in my belly, so I step back from Martin, pinch the zipper between my fingers, and pull it all the way up.
“Sorry,” Martin says. His eyes are super wide. I look up at us in the mirrors again, and we kind of look like we could be the same age. I’m tall and I’m a woman, and Martin is a man, if teenage males can be “men.” He tilts his head up, and we look at each other’s mirror-selves. When I look at real-Martin again, he’s staring at my face, maybe my chin, with his eyebrows making wrinkles in his forehead. Up close, he’s not as weird looking as I thought.
A voice in my head says, this is your chance, and without thinking, without considering anything, I grab Martin’s stupid sweatshirt with dandruff on the shoulders by its zipper and crush my lips against his. His whole body stiffens. I’m having a first kiss, I think. I don’t really know what to do. I can’t decide if I like it or not, I might need a minute to consider that. Right when I start to pull away, though, Martin puts his hands on my shoulders and shoves me back, so hard that I knock over a display of plastic popcorn buckets. His face is splattered with disgust.
“Jean?” Mandy is standing in the doorway. “Martin? What the fuck are you doing?”
Martin puts his hand out to help me up, but I lurch back into the doorframe and take off past him.
“Don’t ever touch her again,” Mandy says, her mouth rigid and angry. “Come on, Jean, I’m taking you home.” She throws her arm over my shoulders and leads me back to the Cirrus, which is sitting across two parking spots. I silently climb into the passenger seat and buckle my seatbelt.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” I ask her.
“Did he touch you anywhere else? Did he try to touch your boobs or anything?”
“Ew, no,” I say. A smile is tickling my mouth. “No way.”
“Don’t let older guys do that, Jean. Seriously. It’s not funny. You can let other twelve-year-olds kiss you, not sixteen-year-olds, okay? Marty might be seventeen, even.”
Seventeen, I think. I can’t decide if that’s cool or gross. Mandy starts her car and applies lip gloss in the side mirror. Tess pulls up in a boxy red hatchback, smoking a cigarette out the window.
“What are you doing here?” Mandy asks, as if we’re not at the only video rental store within three towns. She leans her head out the open window.
“Jean was here with Martin. Alone.”
“I know,” Mandy says with the same voice she uses to tell our mom to leave her alone, forever, please. She’s the one who left me here.
“I was going to bring her home.”
“I’ve got it,” Mandy says. “He was beating her up when I got here and—”
“What?” Tess asks. Her face gets really red. I try to decide if I should tell the truth really fast, but then Tess launches herself out of the car and into the store, leaving her hatchback spitting exhaust into the night. Through the window I watch her berate Martin, stabbing her finger into his chest, gesturing fiercely and pointing at me, too. I hope she doesn’t hurt him. My bad, I think, but really loud. She stamps her cigarette out on the checkout desk. Halfway to the door, she turns around, walks up to Martin again, and socks him. Then she goes back to her car.
“Thanks.” Mandy pauses. “But I still kind of hate you.” She flips Tess off with a grin, and I do the same. Martin walks out into the cold and ducks down to Mandy’s window. He’s rubbing his jaw.
“Don’t leave your sister here again. That’s a dick move.”
I think really that it’s brave that Martin came to try and talk to Mandy even after Tess beat the crap out of him. I decide that someday, I’ll tell him that.
“Fuck you, Marty,” Mandy says. She swings her fist and it grazes his collarbone, but I think she was going for his mouth.
I actually kind of want to thank him for letting me hang out with him. But it would probably sound lame, so I just stick my own middle finger out the window and into the blistering cold. Someday, I’ll tell him that, just not today.
“He prefers Martin,” I tell Mandy. “Bye, Martin! Fuck you!”
MARLANA BOTNICK FIREMAN (she/they) is a queer and Jewish writer and editor in New Orleans. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans, where she was awarded the Joanna Leake Prize for Fiction Thesis. Marlana’s work can be found in Reckon Review, The Hooghly Review, Sad Girl Diaries, The Good Life Review, and elsewhere. They are a former Associate Fiction Editor for Bayou Magazine. Marlana was born and raised in central Ohio. When not reading or writing, Marlana can be found crafting with their partner or playing with their goofy dog, Dill. She can be found on Instagram: @firelightdisco