I freeze in place. Grace speaks first. “Wait, what’s that?”
“Come on, now,” Mr. Cavadini says, pushing me forward. “Two minutes. Shake a leg. Security will meet you at the ticketing booth to get you set up and answer any questions. If you last a week, we’ll consider assigning you a key to the booth. Otherwise, you’ll have to knock to get inside, because it locks automatically. Good luck and don’t forget to smile.”
And with that, he guides us into the lobby and promptly abandons us.
The museum was empty during orientation. It’s not now. Hundreds of voices bounce around the rocky cavern walls as patrons shuffle through the massive space, heading into the two wings. The café upstairs is packed. People are eating sandwiches on the slate stairs, talking on cell phones beneath the floating pirate ship. So. Many. People.
But the only person I really see is standing against the ticket booths.
Porter Roth. Beautiful body. Head full of wild curls. Cocky smile.
My archnemesis.
His eyes meet mine. Then his gaze drops to my feet. He’s checking to see if my shoes match. Even though I know they do, I check them again, and then want to take them off and bean them at his big, fat head.
But he doesn’t say a word about it. He only says, “Ladies,” and nods when we approach. Maybe this won’t be as bad as last time. Balancing two covered cash tills in one hand, he raps on the ticketing booth’s rear door four quick times before turning toward us. “Ready for the thrill of hot cash in your hands?”
The door to the booth swings open. For what seems like forever, Grace and I stand waiting while Porter enters the booth, swapping out the cash drawers, and two wide-eyed new hires spill out of ticketing, wiping away sweat like they’ve just been inside the devil’s own boudoir and seen unspeakable, depraved acts that have scarred them for life.
Now I’m getting really nervous.
Porter’s pissed. He’s saying something obscene into the radio doohickey on his sleeve, and for a second, I wonder if he’s telling off Mr. Cavadini, but then a shock of white hair comes bounding through the lobby and the other security guard—Mr. Pangborn—appears. He looks frazzled. And way too tired to be doing this job. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, completely breathless.
Porter heaves a long sigh and shakes his head, less angry now, more weary. “Just escort them back to cash-out and watch them count their tills until Carol gets down from the café.” He turns back toward us and whistles, tugging a thumb toward the booth. “You two, inside.”
“Balls,” Grace mumbles. “I don’t remember how to run the ticketing program!”
“You’ll do it in your sleep, Gracie,” he assures her. For a second, he almost seems nice, and not the same boy who humiliated me in front of the entire staff. A mirage, I tell myself.
The booth is small. Really small. The booth smells. Really bad. There are two swivel stools, a counter that holds the computer screen, and a shelf beneath, on which the tickets print from ancient printers. The rear door is centered behind us, and there’s barely room for a third person—much less Porter—to stand behind us and give directions. In front of us, it’s just Plexiglas covered in smudged fingerprints separating us from a line of people wrapped around stanchions. So many people. They are not happy about the delay.
The dude standing at my window is mouthing, Four, and he’s holding up four fingers, saying something nasty about me being an idiot female. That churro cart is looking better and better.
“Green means on, red means off,” Porter’s voice says near my face, a little too close. An unwanted shiver chases down my arm where his wild hair brushes my shoulder. It smells briny, like ocean water; I wonder if he’s been surfing today. I wonder why I care. His arm reaches around my body and taps the counter, startling me.
“Right, yes,” I say.
Dumbly, I glance down at the two-way intercom controls, marked OUTSIDE (to hear the customers) and INSIDE (so they can hear me). Green. Red. Got it.
“You’ll pretty much want to keep the outside mic on all the time, but if you want to hang on to your sanity, you’ll only engage the inside microphone on a need-to basis. Finger on the trigger,” he advises.
They told us that in training. It’s coming back to me now. Grace is freaking the hell out, so Porter has shifted over to her area. The jerk in front of my window is pressing four impatient fingers against the glass. I can’t hold on any longer. I hit both green buttons and smile.
“Welcome to the Cavern Palace. Four adult tickets?”
The computer does all the work. I take the man’s credit card, the tickets print, Mr. Jerkface goes through the turnstile with his jerky family. Next. This one’s cash. I fumble a little with the change, but it’s not too bad.
And so on.
At some point, Porter slips out and we’re on our own, but it’s okay. We can handle it.
I remembered how cold the Cavern lobby was during orientation, so I wore another cardigan. Ten customers into the line, and I now realize why they nickname the ticket booth the Hotbox. No air-con inside. We’re trapped in a box made of glass from the waist up, with the sun beaming down on our faces, lighting us up like we’re orchids in a freaking greenhouse.
I strip off the cardigan through my vest’s gaping sleeve holes, but every few minutes, I have to swivel around to let someone inside the door—Carol, the shift supervisor, the guy from the information booth telling us to retake a season pass photo because the customer “hates” it, sweet old Mr. Pangborn delivering change for all the big spenders who want to pay with hundred-dollar bills. Every time I swivel around to open the ticket booth door, (A) I bust my kneecaps on the metal till, and (B) a blast of freezing cave air races over my clammy skin.
Then the door shuts, and the Hotbox reheats all over again.
It’s torture. Like, this is how the military must break enemy combatants when they want to get information out of them. Where are the Geneva Conventions when you need them?
It gets worse when we have to start juggling other things like pointing out where the restrooms are, and handling complaints about ticket prices going up every year. Is this museum scary? How come we don’t give senior discounts to fifty-year-olds anymore? The wind just blew my ticket away; give me a replacement.
It’s a circus. I’m barely exaggerating. No wonder people quit the first day.
Not us. Grace and I have this. We’re champs, fist-bumping each other under the counter. I handle the job the best way I know how. Avoid eye contact. Play dumb. Shrug. Evade the hard questions. Point them toward the information desk or the gift shop.
If we don’t sweat away all our bodily fluid, we’ll make it.
A couple of hours into our shift, things slow down considerably—as in, no one in line.
“Did we scare them all away?” Grace asks, wiping sweat from the back of her neck.
“Is it over?” I say, peering over the intercom to see around the stanchions. “Can we go home now?”
“I’m asking someone to bring us water. They said we could. It’s too hot. Screw this.” Grace uses the phone to page Carol, and she says she’ll send someone. We wait.
A couple of minutes later, I hear four quick raps on the door and open it to find Porter. It’s the first time we’ve seen him since the beginning of our jail sentence. He hands us plastic bottles of water from the café and gives me that slow, lazy smile of his that’s entirely too sexy for a boy our age, and that makes me nervous all over again.