“The book or the character?”
“The character. The book is fine.”
Georgia leads the way to the front desk, announced by the echoing clangs of the water bottle she always carries as it collides with bookshelves and chairs. Georgia’s mom waves from across the store, headphones on as she does inventory.
“Why is Emma annoying?” Georgia asks.
“Because she’s manipulative,” Chloe says. “I don’t think she really makes up for everything she does to everyone else by the end.”
“The point of the book isn’t for her to make everything right. It’s for her to be interesting,” Georgia says, slipping behind the desk for her things. “And I think she is—she’s this girl trapped in the same place she was born, so bored with what she’s been given that she has to play around with people’s lives to entertain herself. It’s a good character.”
“Sure, okay.”
“Also, it’s romantic. ‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’ Best line in Austen’s entire body of work. And I’ve read them all, Chloe.”
“How many of them have you read?” Chloe deadpans.
“All of them.”
Chloe laughs, eyeing the books behind the counter.
“Anything new in the ol’ CMFC?”
While Georgia rereads Regency classics, Chloe’s favorite stories are the ones where the headstrong young woman on a cinematic journey to master her powers falls for the monster who’s been antagonizing her all along. Georgia knows this, so she curates a stack of books behind the counter for Chloe and adds to it every time they get something Chloe might like. She affectionately calls it Chloe’s Monster Fucker Collection.
“One,” Georgia says. She plucks a battered paperback off the top of the stack—one of those ’80s high fantasies with a loinclothed, mulleted elf on the cover. Her mama has a million. “Fairy princess on a heroic quest ravished by evil elf mercenary. Straight though.”
Chloe sighs. “Thanks, but I’m maxed out on male villains for the month,” she says.
“Thought so,” Georgia says. She chucks it toward a box of secondhand books to be shelved. “Still on the hunt for the megabitch of your dreams.”
“It doesn’t have to be an evil queen,” she says. “It’s just preferred.”
While she does like boys, she generally finds the traits of a compelling villain—arrogance, malice, an angsty backstory—tedious in a man. Like, what do hot guys with long dark hair even have to be that upset about? Get a clarifying shampoo and suck it up, Kylo Ren. So your rich parents sent you to magic camp and you didn’t make any friends. Big deal.
“If the girl’s going to end up with a dude who’s a monster,” Chloe says, “it needs to be—”
“Phantom,” Georgia finishes for her as they head outside, because she’s heard it five hundred thousand times.
“Monster on the outside, but on the inside, he cares about her career goals!” Chloe says. “Call me old-fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.”
“You are as insane as the day I met you,” Georgia says. “All I want is a nice girlfriend in a cottage where we have philosophical conversations over scones or something.”
“And I support you,” Chloe says, “in making that your retirement plan when you’re like, thirty and tired of living in New York with me.”
“Thanks so much,” Georgia says, sliding into the passenger seat. “God, I’m starving.”
“Same,” says Chloe, whose appetite has made a quick turnaround from turduckens.
“Taco Bell?” Georgia says, like always.
“God, my left boob for a Shake Shack,” Chloe says as she cranks up the engine. “This town is so depressing. I bet nobody in city limits other than you, me, and our parents even knows who Jane Austen is.”
“My parents have kept a bookstore open here for twenty years, so I’m pretty sure the average False Beach resident isn’t that illiterate,” Georgia points out. “You know, Shara Wheeler came in for Emma a couple months ago.”
“Ew.”
“I can say her name. She’s not Beetlejuice.”
“She’s not,” Chloe agrees. “She’s worse.”
* * *
In terms of popular after-school locations for social gatherings, the Taco Bell three minutes from campus is Willowgrove’s Met Gala. It’s where you go to see and be seen. It’s where every sophomore gets their first after-school drive-thru when they score their license. Last fall, Summer Collins and Ace Torres were rumored to have had an explosive breakup in the parking lot that ended in a Baja Blast to the face.