“Dang, I hoped I might have an answer.”
Two more tables down, Phoebe was now at the back of the store where a bored teenager paid them little attention as she listened to a pair of earbuds. She didn’t appear to want to even be working, let alone give any help to either of them.
Phoebe didn’t pay any heed to the clerk. Instead, she seemed to find exactly what she wanted from the store. She picked up a simple black knitted beret. It was oversized and clearly made for someone with a lot of hair. It didn’t look like anything particularly special, but Phoebe studied it harder than she did her previous choices. She turned it around in her hands more than the two circles of the other hats. Then she put it on her head and pulled her long braids up under it.
“How do I look?”
Ian shrugged. “Honestly, Phoebe, I think you’re gorgeous no matter what.”
Phoebe laughed. It was a loud roar—a rousing guffaw that almost shook the tiny shop. “You are a flatterer, Ian Page. But thank you. This is the one that I want.”
She pulled the hat off and brought it to the girl, who looked up from the Scribblenauts game on her tablet long enough to mumble, “Twenty bucks.”
Phoebe brandished the card. Ian stopped, suddenly fearful that the clerk would ask for the identification neither of them had. But the employee barely looked at them, so it was no real surprise when she didn’t even ask for a signature. Ian silently scolded himself for letting his own fear get too much control over him again.
As they left, Phoebe one again positioned the beret over her head and tucked her blue braids beneath it.
“Do you feel better now?”
“Much,” Phoebe said. “I’ve never been on this world but that doesn’t mean I’m interested in sticking out.” She paused. “Is the idiom ‘like a sore thumb’ correct? That makes little sense.”
“It’s correct and you’re right that it doesn’t make much sense.” Ian glanced back at the store for just a moment. “Back there you said that my memory loss couldn’t be due to the fact that I’m way older than I look. But everything tells me I am, from Ian Page in the thirties to the barrier stopping me to this El Sanguijuelo business tells me that I have to be an immortal. It feels strange using that word about myself, you know.”
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