The Green Shirts

My dad tells me today is the perfect time to start selling cookies. I don’t get it—I told him yesterday that we should start because the weather was so warm. He said it was too humid, but I think I like too humid. It makes the air feel alive. 

Today, all the angry clouds have smoothed over, and it’s so cold he drags me back inside to put my coat on. It means I have to take off my sash and drape it over the pink fabric. I wish my coat was green, or brown—proper Girl Scout color. Silly me of six months ago, not considering the future.

“Why is it so cold?” I ask dad as I spread out the tablecloth. He’s putting up a sign that says “Cookies Fresh from the Box”, which also doesn’t make sense to me. If they’re from the box, they’re not fresh, right?

“Because we live in the Midwest, and spring is a myth.” My dad replies. He pulls out small scissors and opens the box of boxes. I can’t help but stop and look at the rows of different colors, a rainbow of boxes, of girls and cookies.

He mentions the Midwest every time I ask about the weather, so I change course. “Why are we choosing a cold day to sell cookies?”

“You’ll see, Bella-bird.” He ruffles my hair, picking up the limp strands at the back where it’s too long. “We’re going to have people lining up around the corner for your cookies.”

I look around, watch the people passing by, but it’s just older people and college students in hoodies. We drove thirty minutes to the downtown campus, but I don’t see the reason why yet. It’s not like they’re in school, when today is a Saturday. There’s no families or kids that I can see, which is weird because we’re outside the library and next to a playground. Either the cold is driving everyone away or Saturdays are quiet in college towns. A gust of wind hits my back, makes me shiver, gives me an answer.

Dad is pleased, though, was whistling and singing to the radio on the drive over, and I don’t want to wreck his mood. “Can we put up my poster, too?”

He nods and props it up on top of his, then moves it so it balances without covering his words. My sign is a bit smaller, the corner bent, but it gets a better message across.

“Scout No More! Girl Scout Cookies!”

I beam at it, and I see dad smile at me. “They’ll love it. All the glitter is going to catch the eye for sure.”

The reason that I used green glitter is that, even after I asked, dad forgot to pick up green poster paint. The green on black would have caught the eye yesterday, when the sun poked out from behind the storm clouds, but not today. It almost looks gray, beside his pink poster board. I get behind the table and start laying out boxes, not able to hold back my huff.

It’s not because he’s a boy that he doesn’t get Girl Scout things, because Kacey has two dads and she never complains about them. The only other person with a parent that doesn’t get it is the troop leader’s daughter, Tanisha, and Tanisha always covers for her mom by saying it’s really hard planning everything. It’s stressful, and that’s why sometimes her mom laughs too loudly at our jokes or yells at us to stay with the group at the museums. My dad’s biggest girl scout commitment is bringing juice boxes to the end of meetings, which he only does half the time. Well, that and selling cookies, I guess. It’s our first time selling cookies and he’s taking it really seriously.

I realize why when he points to a group. “See! Here they come, get ready…”

It’s a group of college boys, tall and broad and all wearing green shirts the same color as my sash. Two of them carry carboard boxes full of cans, and a few of them have water jugs dyed pastel colors. They remind me of the flocks of geese on the playground, before we run outside for recess and they all fly away. When they see my table, they all start to honk. 

“Scoreeeeeeee,” they chant. One of them runs up to me, grinning. He has a backward cap on that crunches all the curls on his head. Eat your heart out, I think about Danny O’Connor, the guy that everyone in school says has the best hair. This guy’s curls are so much fluffier.

“Can I get three boxes of Thin Mints, please?” He asks it a lot more calmly than I expected, like he’s ordering at a restaurant.

“Of course!” As I assemble a bag for him though, I blush at the money. When my dad first saw the price list he said “holy cow!”, stressing the ‘c’ to make the ‘ow’ really sound like an ‘ow’. When I tell him it’ll be eighteen dollars, like I practiced except softer, he easily hands me a twenty. When I go to my little cash register from when I was little to make change, he holds up his hand and shakes his head no.

“Thank you, little lady.” He grins at me, and I grin back. 

The other guys also get their cookies without any complaints. One with a cardboard case stacks his cookie boxes neatly inside. Not every guy gets cookies, some of them milling at the back, but the ones who get them give their money just as easily. Only one guy at the back scrunches his nose up at the prices, taking off his cap and running a hand through his short cut. He’s blonde at the top but darker at the roots. “Damn, Girl Scouts are getting pricy.”

The guy next to him shakes his head though, and tells him off after taking a swig of his water jug. “Says the guy who said he’s dropping a hundred at Union.”

“A hundred dollars?” I cry out. I can’t even picture that much money—that’s like a ticket to the amusement park.

The blonde guy turns bright red, picks out one box of shortbread cookies while his friend laughs at him. Then the friend looks over the options, humming and scratching stubble on his face. He’s wearing green glasses, the kinds with slits through them. I study his shirt while he debates. It has a Leprechaun on it, holding a glass with foam spilling out. “St Paddy’s Bar Crawl.” I read slowly. His grin deepens.

“Rough day for it.” My dad tries to cut in, but I can see underneath the glasses this guy is completley focused on his cookie choice.

“What’s your favorite?” The glasses guy asks me, gesturing to the boxes.

“Me?” He nods enthusiastically. “I like Samoas,” I say, suddenly shy.

“Two of those and two Tag-a-longs, then.” After he pays, he tries to hand me one of the boxes back. I blink at it until he presses it into my hand.

“Take it.” He points at his friend hovering close by. “For roasting my friend.”

“Oh come on, she has a full supply, man.” The blonde-haired, red-faced guy drags the cackling sunglasses guy away. It’s silly, because you’d think I would have a full supply, but I’d have to buy them myself too. Dad had already told me that we’d have to see if I could, how much we made. I clutch the box to my chest, then gently tuck it behind my poster.

When I stand again, I see Dad was right. There’s a line of green shirts, a lot of them wearing green necklaces or glasses or leprechaun hats. “Holy cow!” I yell.

“You see?” My dad says slyly. I nod at him, realizing that for all he doesn’t know, he knew about this.

Shirts just keep coming. Soon the whole walkway is buzzing with them, pooling around the restaurants and bars. The girls in my line look very professional, with makeup and their hair done. They wear pretty short skirts and boots, despite the cold, or stylish jeans that drape off them and sneakers. Unlike the boys, they’ve cut their shirts in a bunch of different ways. Freeing their shoulders or their bellies or making a tank top, a top with no sleeves, a long sort of dress with a short skirt underneath.

“How did you do that?” I ask one of the girls who cut cool lines along the sides, but she just laughs and pays and runs to catch up with her friends.

“Don’t get any ideas,” my dad says, shaking his head. I know he’s thinking of back when I tried to turn my pantsuit into a dress and bite my lip. Maybe I’ll learn it when I’m older. It’s something you somehow pick up by college.

The groups just keep coming around, and at least one or two at every group stops by to pick up a box. I see them standing, laughing and talking in their lines. Some of them are smoking, which makes me crinkle my nose, and a lot of them smell like smoke or something sweet that I can’t place. It kind of reminds me of when someone accidentally shoved me to the floor at Chuck E Cheese, a dusty and sweaty smell that somehow becomes sweet at the back of my throat. Especially the girls later on with the smeared eye makeup, who I can tell have Bath and Body Works on top. Warm vanilla sugar over the bulk of that industrial scent. I love Bath and Body Works. I’m glad that college girls still buy them, too. I’ll tell Kacey and Tanisha, because they were worried we were too old to walk around and smell all the free samples.

The crowds are only growing when we run out of cookies. I can’t believe it, both because I don’t want the lines of people to stop coming and because I never pictured selling that many. I’m extra thankful that guy got me that box. Before school one morning when my dad was sleeping, I took his phone to use the calculator and tallied up how much that would be. We have a lot more than the one boy’s hundred dollars.

“Oh my gosh, dad!”

“I know.” I thought he would be more excited like me, but he’s typing really fast on his phone. Then he looks up, eyes wide. “How’re you doing, Bella? Hungry?”

My stomach rumbles on cue. “Can we get McDonalds?” I ask. There’s no way he can say we can’t, not when I see him counting all the twenties.

“Of course, sport. We’ll get lunch, and then,” he checks his phone again and nods. “We can come back and sell more.”

“Really?” I squeal, feeling the excitement swell inside of me.

“Yep! We just have to stop by Tanisha’s mom’s and then boom. We’re back in business.”

“Wait, can we just leave this here?” I point to the table. I don’t want anyone to take it, or, horror of horrors, another Girl Scout taking my spot.

He laughs and reads my mind. “No one is going to steal our stuff, Bella-bird. They’re not thinking about that right now.”

“Why not?” I scrunch my nose. I can tell he means the college kids, he’s not thinking about the Girl Scouts at all. But college frat boys steal our pumpkins every Halloween. Why not now?

Dad hesitates, scratches the back of his neck. “Oh—they’re busy with the… crawl. That’s all. They’re trying to go inside, not stay outside and sell things.”

A part of me gets it, because it is cold outside and with how long those lines are I bet they’re eager to get inside. I also can tell that, like when I overhear him watching loud movies with gunfire when I’m in bed but not asleep, that there are some parts of this that he’s saving for when I’m older. This annoys me in a way that also makes me sad, the sting of a skinned knee on my heart. Why can’t I know now?

But I trust him, because while he doesn’t know much about Girl Scouts he clearly knows about these crawls. I only take my box of Samoas from behind my poster before we leave. He switches with me, says that I should hold the money. “You earned it,” he cheers. As we walk though, I have to clutch it tightly. I don’t want it to fly away back into all the crawlers’ fingers. As I look down at all the bills, worn and sticky on the edges, I feel both strong and empty, like a box for this money. I wonder if that’s how Dad feels after he gets his paycheck.

“Dad?” I ask as we reach the street where he parked the car.

“Bella-bird?”

“Why did you let me join Girl Scouts?” I had begged him to join a school club since first grade, knowing that we couldn’t afford ballet or pottery at the park district. But he said an after-school commitment would be too tough, because then he wouldn’t be able to pick me up before his second grocery store shift. This held for choir rehearsal and band and the running club, but Girl Scouts was different. I didn’t know why until now, holding all the green in my hand. I want to hear him say it.

His mouth hesitates slightly, but then he’s busying himself with the keys for the door. “Earliest you can get employed is with a troop.”

Its lucky green is my favorite color, anyway.