Carter was getting sick of Gatorade. It was what football players drank, he knew that well. But it was such a tacky, high school sort of drink. He was in college. He'd heard somebody say that once you played on a college team it was Gatorade or drugs. If you did Gatorade in college you did drugs after.
He watched the bottle move away from him on the belt towards the cash register along with his ham, hot dogs, collared greens, white bread, four cartons of milk, eggs, and fake muesli cereal. You knew muesli was the real deal if it came in a smaller box and was produced somewhere other than Kansas. But the shit that came in the same cardboard as Cap'n Crunch was cheaper.
The man in front of him, a runty, sad sort of guy who sort of reminded Carter of an underclassman kid he'd gotten into shit with back in Catholic school, picked up his plastic bags and left the aisle. In the heat of June, Register Five was the worst. All the other ones had fans above them, but Register Five's had broken down and nobody had cared to fix it. It'd been like that last summer and it was like that now. Carter's food moved into the hands of the cashier.
Carter was treated to a view of the back of the cashier's head as he punched the items into the cash register. His hair was a shiny, unnatural sort of gold color beneath the dark blue baseball cap all the market's cashiers wore. His skin was too pale, and his apron of the same shade as his hat that read 'Joe's Market' in red, cheerful font seemed to be practically swallowing his body. Carter felt bad for the poor fuck, in that heavy apron in the heat, assigned to the aisle where every customer was a sweaty, tormented mess by the time they reached the register. Then Carter saw the name tag.
Archie.
It was too fucking coincidental, it couldn't be. How many blond, tiny kids named Archie were there in the state? The scarier thought was that there was some sort of doppelgänger who was a totally normal guy who had a girlfriend and a dog and was the apple of his parents' eye. And Archie the cashier would look at Carter and his eyes would be chocolate brown and not blue and his face round and not bearing what the girls called supermodel cheekbones. And this Archie had lived never knowing someone out there with his hair and his build had done terrible things.
I'm seeing shit, Carter thought. I've gotta get out of high school. I left that shithole behind. The Vigils were just a bad dream.
Archie the cashier turned around. Pale blue eyes like the dead eyes of a porcelain doll. Supermodel cheekbones. He had developed a coffee-colored mole near his lip and his bangs were shorter, but it was him. Bagging groceries. Archie Costello.
"Can I go put back a carton of milk?" His mouth was moving without his brain dictating it to. He needed some kind of excuse to get away from seeing The Assigner scanning his collared greens at fucking Joe's Market.
"Sure." The voice sealed the deal. Except Archie Costello wouldn't have said "Sure," he would have said "Of course."
Carter walked over to the dairy aisle, sweating. But maybe Archie wasn't the movie villain Carter remembered him as. Maybe underneath all that there was just a normal guy. The kind of guy who'd work at a grocery store. He remembered the black marble. Carter put down the carton of milk. He took a deep breath and turned around, back to Register Five.
"Sorry for the wait," Carter said. He stared at the assorted candy and trashy magazines by the register. He remembered Renault. He grabbed a bar of chocolate from the rack. "Can you add this to my cart?"
"Absolutely." His tone was too flat, his affect not cunning enough. It couldn't be Archie.
"Hot day," Carter remarked.
"I always liked the heat," the cashier said. "The chocolate's two for five dollars. In high school we'd sell them for less."
Carter's heart was beating in his ears. "You know, my school sold 'em too. Crazy, right?" He added another bar of chocolate to the plastic bag Archie was assembling. Two could play at his game. If Archie was gonna pretend he didn't know him, that wasn't gonna get under his skin. Archie could only get under high school Carter's skin. College Carter was different.
But he's already gotten under, Carter thought. He's already won. Carter picked up his grocery bags.
"Tell Obie I say hello," Carter muttered under his breath.
"Pardon?" Fuck him. Fuck him and damn him straight to hell. He just had to make Carter break the façade in their conversation and then have the nerve to say "Pardon?"
"You remind me of somebody I went to school with. Didn't like the guy."
"Funny, you remind me of somebody I went to school with as well. I liked him alright."
"I guess we just see things differently, huh?" Carter said. He made the first step to leave the store.
"Have a nice day," Archie called after him. Carter quit the football team that week. Told the coach he didn't want to drink any more goddamn Gatorade.