When she left that night, her grandmother gave her the keys to her Cadillac so she’d have a vehicle for the next few days. Maddie could only pray that the vandal didn’t come to her house and craft more art on her grandmother’s cherry-red Caddy.
She was making her way back into town and opted to cruise by the bakery before going home. It was closed today, but she liked to check in and make sure everything looked all right.
As she rounded the corner, Maddie frowned. The lights were on inside the shop. She knew for certain she’d turned off all the lights when she closed up on Saturday afternoon. Curious, she flipped off her headlights and pulled into the parking space out in front of the salon next door. If something was going on, she didn’t want to tip anyone off to her arrival.
Her heart started pounding nervously as she climbed out of the car and started toward the shop. She could be interrupting a burglary in progress.
Standing at the edge of the brick wall, she peered around the corner to see into the shop, but most of the light was coming from the kitchen in back. Had Gertie told someone that she sometimes kept the deposit in the freezer?
Maddie caught a blur of movement inside. The person moved past the doorway too quickly for her to see who it was. But then they came back around and stood facing away from the door. The motion, and the white-blond ponytail, were unmistakable. She was rolling out dough on the counter.
Gertie. What on earth was she doing at the shop at ten on a Sunday night? She had school tomorrow.
Maddie reached for the front door and found Gertie had left it unlocked. That was dangerous if someone knew she was in there alone. With a frown, Maddie stepped inside, being careful not to scare her. “Gertie?”
Her employee’s head popped out from the kitchen, a look of panic on her face. “Miss Maddie! Hi, um . . .”
“Gertie, what are you doing here so late? You’re not even supposed to be working today. I gave you your own key to make things easier, but I never expected to find you here in the middle of the night.” Maddie took a few steps toward the kitchen and realized she was rolling out a batch of cinnamon rolls.
“I thought I would come in tonight and get a head start on a few things for tomorrow. I like being in the shop after hours, when I can bake and not worry about things.”
Maddie didn’t like the sound of that. “Worry about what things? Are some of the customers giving you trouble when I’m not here?”
“Oh, no,” Gertie said with large, pale eyes behind her dark frames. There was a smidge of powder on her nose that nearly blended into her pale skin. “Everyone’s been very nice to me. I’m not used to that; I like it.”
Gertie shifted her gaze down, away from Maddie’s eyes. Her movement revealed gray circles under the young girl’s eyes. She looked like she wasn’t sleeping much. Something was bothering her.
Maddie flipped the lock on the bakery door and walked over to Gertie, taking her hand. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to the tea room.”
“Why?” Gertie asked as she was half dragged up the stairs.
At the top, Maddie flipped on the lights, revealing the large open space she hoped to develop one day into its own tiny restaurant. “For tea,” she said at last. She plugged in the electric kettle and filled it with water at the sink in the small kitchen to the left. “Have a seat.”
Without argument, Gertie sat down in one of the chairs circling the nearest table. She waited there silently until Maddie came back to the table with two cups of tea. She handed one to Gertie and sat down in the seat beside her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Gertie avoided her gaze for a minute, stalling by taking a sip of her tea. “I’m having some trouble at school,” she said at last.
“Trouble with classes?”
“No, trouble with some of the other girls.”
Maddie immediately felt her stomach sink. Grant had hit the nail on the head. She might not be roaming the halls of Rosewood High any longer, but some new, popular, and unpleasant girls had taken her place. “Are they being mean to you?”
Gertie nodded. “It started with giggles and pointing in the hallway. Then one day, a girl complimented my shirt and asked where I got it. When I told her it came from a thrift store, she said she wasn’t surprised, and all the other girls started laughing. Then one day, one of the girls called me Gertie the Ghost—I guess because my hair and skin are so pale. They got a laugh out of it, but the name stuck. Now, nearly everyone calls me that. I get heckled on my Facebook wall. They post pictures of Casper the Ghost there, but they put big, chunky glasses like mine on him. There’s some photoshopped picture of me going around on Tumblr where I’m all in white and floating across the football field.”
Maddie felt awful for her. She could see herself in the cruel taunts of the other girls. “I’m sorry, Gertie. That’s not nice of them.”
“Well, at first I couldn’t care less what those little divas thought of me. But since it spread, it’s almost constant. Hardly anyone talked to me before, but now the only people who do are just setting me up for a laugh. I sit alone at lunch. I walk home alone after school, then just sit on my bed and rehash all the things I could’ve said or done differently. I just feel so . . . isolated from everyone and everything. Your bakery is the first place I’ve found where I don’t feel like that. Customers talk to me. They never tease me or call me names . . . I know I’m not supposed to be here longer than I’m scheduled and I don’t expect you to pay me, but I like being here. I like to just get away.”
“Is your house not comfortable for you, either?” Maddie asked.
Gertie shrugged. “My house isn’t very peaceful lately. My parents fight a lot. I think they’re going to get divorced soon. I heard my mom say she was going into town to talk to Logan Anthony about something. I know he’s a lawyer; he’s got the big sign up on the side of Grandma’s shop. I think my dad is trying to hold out until I graduate high school, but I don’t know why. They just make everyone miserable by staying together.”
Maddie felt worse with every word that came out of Gertie’s mouth. She didn’t have any safe place to be except this shop. She hated that for her, but she was glad that Gertie felt happy here. It had wounded her to hear Grant accuse her of being the kind to pick on Gertie, because it had been true. She wouldn’t dream of it now, but it hadn’t been long since she was that mean girl. She just hated it for her. Gertie was too sweet a girl to go through all this.
“Well, Gertie, you can come to the shop whenever you like. You don’t even have to work while you’re here. If you just want to come up to the tea room to do homework and listen to your iPod, you go right ahead. Maybe after a while we can look at increasing your hours, if that’s what you want. But for now, if you need to get away, just come on over. Or if I’m home, come see me at my house.”
“Really?” Gertie perked up in her seat.