Firefly by Philippa Dowding

Author:Philippa Dowding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BISAC: JUV039140 JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Self-Esteem Self-Reliance JUV039070 JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Homelessness Poverty JUV013000 JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General
Publisher: Cormorant Books Inc.
Published: 2021-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

There’s Always a Guy in a Gorilla Suit

After Charlie leaves, I spend the rest of Saturday helping in the shop, and it’s busy. Aunt Gayle says the store will stay open until 8 p.m. and it’s been fun watching people get dressed for a Halloween party.

After a while, though, people get a little desperate. Around 7 p.m., Aunt Gayle tells Edward to stop the line from getting any longer, and there are still twenty people waiting outside in the rain. So she lets them all in, but no one else.

And I help people find police uniforms, Dracula costumes (which I personally think are a Halloween fail if you’ve gone to the trouble to go to a costume shop with seven million pieces in it) and a lot more. There are four twenty-somethings who choose sixties clothes, like those pants Aunt Gayle was working on for the Summer of Love, 1967. Long wigs, long striped pants with vests, flowery shirts with long leather boots, chains, and peace-sign necklaces.

They really do look great. Aunt Gayle takes their photo, and Sadie posts it on The Corseted Lady Instagram account.

When the last customer leaves around 9:15, Aunt Gayle orders a huge feast of Indian food, and we all collapse onto the couches and in the kitchen to devour it. I’m starving.

Once I eat, I take another bath (maybe I should keep it to one a day soon), then Aunt Gayle and I watch the first episode of a British show called Downton Abbey on Netflix. Aunt Gayle says she’s addicted to it, mostly because of the period costumes.

I just can’t believe people ever lived like that, in castles with servants.

I couldn’t think of a more different existence from my life with Joanne-the-mother.

On Sunday, The Corseted Lady is much quieter, although Aunt Gayle opens the store, in case anyone wants to return or rent anything.

I get up late. My sleeping arrangement has now settled into a regular thing: me on the floor and Juggers on the bed. This morning though, interestingly, I don’t wake up with a terrible dream. I don’t think I dream in the night, either.

Probably just too tired to dream after working all day, but I’ll take it.

I get dressed in a clean pair of purple track pants. They say “Queen’s” across the butt, and I put on the Pink Floyd T-shirt again. I like it, but I can tell it’s barely socially acceptable after twenty-four hours wearing it. My pits stink a little. Nothing like they have stunk in previous months; now that I can access laundry and hot baths whenever I want, I don’t actually have to stink.

Stinkiness is a choice, at least at the moment.

I take off the shirt. I put on a plain light blue shirt with a Nike swoosh over the heart.

Then I drift downstairs for breakfast just as Aunt Gayle is opening the front door at 11:00 a.m.

There’s a guy dressed in a gorilla suit standing there.

I stop. How often do you see a guy in a gorilla suit at your front door? I mean, maybe it happens now and then.

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