When It Rains In Ocala

24- Remember The Search

Enjoy it. Because it’s happening.
-Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being A Wallflower

Watches, shirts, rings, DVDs, CDs, ear buds, this place had it all.

And I’d searched through it all, but none of it screamed out at me “Birthday present!” And I was stuck.

I’ve been searching for a birthday present for Evan for a week, since we got back from Orlando, and his birthday is in two days. And I have nothing. I tried to ask Jason what Evan might want, but he was useless. I asked Brendon for ideas, too, in hopes of him being a guy and being able to know what another guy would want, but his ideas were stupid. I was not going to buy my boyfriend porn or strippers for his birthday.

“What about that lingerie that you refused to wear at Disney?” Hanna asked, helping me search through the men’s store at the mall.

I rolled my eyes at her. No, I did not use the pink lingerie that she’d bought me like I was supposed to, I wimped out and plus, I was exhausted once we got back to the hotel after the huge day we’d had at Disney World.

“Maybe.” I appeased her and we kept looking through the racks of clothes and through the shelves of anything a guy could want- yet nothing that I think that Evan would want.

“What about underwear?” Hanna asked, walking over to the underwear isle.

“No.” I deadpanned, moving over to where they had their video games. “I wish I knew what video games he liked.”

We continued looking in our separate areas for a while before her phone buzzed. “Hey, I just got a text from Marissa and she’s about to murder Jeremy so I should get down there and protect her from going to jail. You stay here and try to find your boy toy a birthday present, we’ll be back in a jiffy.” Hanna said, coming over to me.

I nodded my head. “Alright, hurry.” I laughed, hoping that Marissa was only exaggerating in her text. I guess we should have thought of the fact that Jeremy might be working and Marissa was still really angry about him flirting with her when he had a girlfriend and me and Hanna brought Marissa to the mall. That was a pretty dumb thing to do.

I continued to search the video games until I realized that I was looking at PlayStation games when I know that Evan only has an Xbox at home. I rolled my eyes at my stupidity and then moved over to the case that had all the Xbox games. I know that Evan likes to play COD, but I don’t know which ones he has and which ones he doesn’t have, so I can’t get him one of those. And buying him a video game would be really stupid considering I know nothing about video games. At all. With an aggravated sigh, I looked around the store for anything else that might be suitable and my eyes found the camera section.

For some reason, I was drawn to the cameras. Evan likes to take pictures, he took a lot with my crappy one while we were at Disney. But how could I pick out a camera? I know as much about cameras that I do about video games. Still, I looked around, the expensive-looking ones were called Digital SLRs, whatever that means, but I noticed it on all of the boxes. Ideas started sprouting in my head with what I could do if I got Evan a camera- I think he’d really like it. Maybe. Hopefully. I guess we’ll see.

“Maggie?” There was a sickingly familiar voice that I never wanted to hear again. What was he doing here?

That voice made my skin crawl, my bones to shake. I turned around slowly to come face to face with the person who that terrible voice belonged to.

“Hello, Dennis.” I mumbled, turning back around, hoping desperately that it would be the end of our meet and greet. Why did he have to be in the exact same store as me at the exact same time as me? Why, why, why?