Abigail Rath Versus Bloodsucking Fiends

after all.
“Okay,” I said. “Everything’s beginning to make sense now. You would never have punished me for Ned, except I’m in an alternate universe where you want to go to the mall.”
Mom navigated the car onto the street. “I thought you’d want to buy some new clothes. Girls like to buy clothes, right?”
I couldn’t believe my mom taking me to a mall for shopping. Because my mom? Total fashion plate? Not so much. We’ve already talked about her strangle bun and her glasses on a chain. I’ve seen my mother’s neck once in my whole life. She’s always wearing a high lace collar or a turtleneck. And tweed? Both my parents have punch cards at the Monster Hunters House of Tweed, which isn’t a real place, but if it were, punch cards.
I heard the mall is full of Technicolor clothing. I’ve seen some of the things girls wear at the roller rink. For me, jeans and a t-shirt usually do everything I want them to if I’m not in a school uniform. I have some monster hunting gear that emulates what Mom and Dad wear, but that’s more for dressing up, rather than dressing down. Nothing off the shoulder. Nothing in lime or orange. Nothing tight or low cut. None of that stuff.
I don’t think my mother realized what was at the mall.
“Mom, are you sure about this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you thought this through? What it’s going to be like at the mall?”
We macheted a swath onto the freeway. Traffic was thick. We’d be out here for an hour, and we’d go about five miles, another reason not to go to the mall. “What’s it like, Abby?”
I smiled. “There are going to be a lot of people at the mall. By people I mean teenagers.”
Mom blended the car into traffic like a tributary into a river. “Are you implying I can’t handle teenagers?”
“No. It’s just that I’m not a typical teenager.”
“You can say that again.”
“I meant I’m easy on you.”
“How soon they forget.”
“I am. I’m not loud. I’m not shallow. I don’t go in for fads.”
“Nothing the average mall teenager does can top what you did last week.”
“All righty then. Trying to look out for you is all.”
Mom’s brilliant plan was we would snag dinner at In-N-Out Burger, and then we would hit a couple of stores. I would buy some clothes. Her treat. She would feel like she had done a normal mom thing. She climbed the parking ramp with grim determination. To be frank, I was a little scared of her.
The first obstacle was parking at the Glendale Galleria. We climbed higher and higher up the parking ramp. My mother’s jaw worked and I clutched at the cloth seat. After a couple of near accidents, we parked and clambered out of the car into the concrete garage.
The mall was a temple of light compared to the gloominess of the concrete garage. My mother blinked. She was not about to admit culture shock. People swarmed all over the place, on the plastic chairs eating stuff identifiable in the vaguest sense as food, in front of stores, sitting on benches, leaning on railings. Two captured indoor birds flew past.
“Well,” said my mother, her tone a bit too bright, “dinner then. Maybe there are some fun shops nearby?”
We both looked at the monolithic kiosk, the map diagramming the locations of major stores, and areas marked with letters. We were in area E.
“Um...” I scanned the list of stores. We were close to Sanrio and In-N-Out, but I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would consider shopping at Hot Topic. My mom wasn’t the kind of person who would take me for burgers either. She was really making an effort to turn me into a teenager.
Here’s where my mother could have used a reality check. At thirteen years old, raised by my parents, interested more in Von Frankenstein over Versace, how would I know about what stores were any good? For Mom, I had to try.
I took a pamphlet from the kiosk, and let Mom navigate me through the crowd as we went to In-N-Out, her steering arm growing more and more tense on my shoulder. That’s how, after we’d ordered our food and sat down, I opened a gambit.  Around a French fry hanging from my lower lip, I said, “How’s about Macy’s?” Macy’s floated giant balloons at Thanksgiving. They were cool, right?
Mom latched onto Macy’s like a woman clutching a life preserver. “Yes! They have clothes there. We’ll do that!”
Across the restaurant sitting at a table were William and Coral Petrova. They were enjoying In-n-Out burgers in a very normal, good-looking person kind of way.
William smiled at me as he and Coral walked across the dining room.
“Hi Abby,” Coral said. “How are you?”
“You know,” I said. “Good.”
“Shopping?”
“With my mom,” I said. Look, I know it’s not cool to say you’re hanging out with your parents, but I like my parents because they are cool. I wasn’t about to get all fidgety because someone caught me with a parent.
“Abby,” said Mom, “Maybe your friend has some recommendations on where to shop?”
“I doubt it, Mom. She just moved here from Portland.”
Coral laughed. “We have stores in Portland. I have bought clothes in them.”
William smiled at me. “Hi, Abby.”
Cue the slow romantic rock song in my head. “Hi, William.”
“Abby?” said Mom. “You know a boy?”
“Mom,” I said. “What is Vince?”
“I’m Coral Petrova. This is my brother William.”
I hadn’t introduced them. Like a dork. Get a little flustered by sparkly Austin Von Trapp and your manners go right out the window.
“Nice to meet you,” said Mom. “Coral, where do you buy your clothes?”
“Oh, there are some really cute shops here.”
Goodbye safe and secure