The Blockbuster Chronicles - Chapter 7: A Crying Girl Locked in a Bathroom

Chelsie was in my homeroom in high school. She was pretty, quiet, and almost always serious. I rarely saw her smile, but every so often she wore a short black leather jacket that seemed to fit her perfectly. I noticed her more than once, but I was a dork with no confidence, so actually speaking to her never entered the realm of possibility.

Then one Tuesday evening, Chelsie walked into Blockbuster wearing our blue polo shirt.

Deloris had hired her the day before. New employees usually appeared without warning. Management rarely told the rest of us who had been hired or when they were starting. Someone would simply arrive in uniform, and whichever employee happened to be working would train them.

That night, I was the manager on duty. Chelsie’s training belonged to me.

I could not believe my luck. At school, I was another anonymous face in homeroom. At Blockbuster, I was a manager. I knew the computer system, carried store keys, and could authorize free rentals. For once, I had status. I imagined spending the evening demonstrating my authority and winning her over through the seductive art of explaining late fees.

We exchanged introductions, and I casually mentioned that we shared a homeroom.

“Hey, aren't you in my homeroom?” I asked, pretending this discovery had occurred naturally and not after months of quietly noticing her.

As expected, she had no idea who I was.

I kept my dignity and did not profess my undying love. That alone made the opening conversation a success.

Chelsie was not what I had expected. Because she seemed so distant at school, I had assumed she might be cold or unfriendly. Instead, she was quiet, soft-spoken, and genuinely sweet. She was naturally pretty without seeming aware of it, which made her even more attractive to me.

Most of her interests centered on music and her faith. I was still a Christian at the time and had participated in choir throughout school, so we had both subjects in common. Then I discovered she lived only two streets away from me. The evidence seemed overwhelming. Clearly, fate had placed her in my homeroom, moved her into my neighborhood, and delivered her to Blockbuster so I could teach her how to rewind VHS tapes.

Training went well for the first few hours. Chelsie seemed impressed that I had become a manager while still in high school. Every time she mentioned it, my ego expanded. I felt confident, capable, and dangerously close to charming.

Then my sense of humor ruined everything.

Once I became comfortable with someone, I tended to joke in ways that were sarcastic, inappropriate, or occasionally mean. I assumed everyone could detect when I was kidding, even though I often delivered jokes with a straight face and gave them no reason to believe me.

About four hours into the shift, I told Chelsie she was doing a great job.

“Maybe I can become a manager like you in a few months,” she said.

“You? Yeah, right,” I replied with what I believed was a playful smile.

In my mind, the joke was obvious. I thought the smile made it charming. In reality, I had spent the evening presenting myself as her supervisor and then responded to her ambition by telling her she was not capable of doing my job.

Chelsie did not laugh. She barely reacted at all. I assumed the joke had fallen flat, which was hardly a new experience for me. She quietly excused herself and walked onto the sales floor. I figured she had gone to straighten a section while business was slow.

Half an hour later, I realized I had not seen her.

I searched the aisles, the break room, and the area behind the counter. She was nowhere in the store. The only place left was the women's restroom. I approached the door, knocked softly, and called her name.

“Chelsie? Are you in there?”

“Go away,” she said between sobs.

I still did not understand.

“Are you upset about something? Do you need help?”

“Just go away. You're mean.”

My stomach dropped.

I had never made anyone cry before, certainly not a sweet girl I had spent the evening trying to impress. Whatever confidence I believed I possessed with women vanished. My grand display of managerial charm had ended with a girl locked in the bathroom refusing to speak to me.

I apologized through the door and tried to explain that I had been joking. Chelsie refused to come out. I had no idea what to do. I was technically the manager, but none of the training materials covered what to do when sarcasm trapped a new employee in the restroom.

In desperation, I called Kelly. I explained the entire situation and asked for advice. She laughed at my disastrous attempt to be funny, then suggested Chelsie might be reacting a little dramatically. Her recommendation was simple. Keep the store running, give Chelsie some space, and wait. Eventually, she would finish crying and come out.

I returned to the restroom, apologized once more, and told Chelsie I would leave her alone.

Kelly was right. Chelsie eventually emerged with red eyes and smudged mascara. She did not look at me when she asked if she could go home. I was in no position to refuse. She collected her belongings and walked out looking completely defeated.

I remained behind the counter feeling like an asshole. I had destroyed any affection she might have felt for me, and I was fairly certain she would never speak to me again. There was also a good chance she would quit the next morning. To make the evening even better, I had sent the other employee home early because business was slow. Now I had to close the store alone while contemplating how one stupid sentence had created so much damage.

I did not see Chelsie for the rest of the week. I had no idea whether she had quit, but I was afraid to ask Deloris. I could already imagine the conversation.

“Did Chelsie quit?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Umm… well….”

From there, I imagined confessing everything, losing my management position, and possibly being forced to explain to the district manager why a new employee had spent her first shift crying in a locked bathroom.

Chelsie was scheduled to work Saturday, so I decided to wait and see whether she appeared.

That afternoon, I heard Deloris answer the telephone.

“Oh, hi, Chelsie.”

There was a pause.

“Oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry. Are you all right?”

My stomach began performing acrobatics. Deloris' concern was genuine, which convinced me that Chelsie was describing what I had done. My face grew hot, and I thought I might throw up.

Deloris listened for another minute, then hung up and stared across the store. I kept myself busy scanning tapes in the corner, trying not to look at her. I assumed she was checking whether business was slow enough to take me into the office and fire me.

Finally, she turned toward me.

“Brandon?”

“Yeah?”

“You remember Chelsie, the girl you trained the other day?”

My heart skipped so many beats that I considered checking for a pulse.

“Yeah.”

“She was in a car accident earlier today. She's fine, but she doesn't have a way to get here for her shift. I told her I would send someone.”

The relief that washed over me was immediate and probably inappropriate. Chelsie had been in an accident, but at least Deloris was not preparing to fire me.

“That's terrible,” I said. “I can pick her up. She lives a couple of streets away from me.”

Deloris looked grateful. “You will? Thank you. We're too busy to go into the evening without her.”

That foolish smile returned. I felt as though I had escaped execution and been handed a chance to make things right.

Ten minutes later, I pulled into Chelsie’s driveway. She emerged looking concerned but otherwise fine. She climbed into my truck, thanked me with a small nod, and stared ahead while I backed into the street.

The first half of the drive passed in complete silence.

Then Chelsie thanked me for picking her up. A mischievous smile appeared on her face.

“You owed me at least one ride,” she said.

I laughed, mostly from relief. I knew then that we were going to be all right.

Chelsie and I became close friends. We were both quiet, slightly strange, and more comfortable with a few trusted people than with a crowd. That shared introversion gave us an easy bond. She had a boyfriend whose relationship with her shifted constantly between together and broken up, so I understood that romance was unlikely and learned to value the friendship instead.

This was during the long period when I was still trying to gather enough courage to ask out the girl from McDonald's. Chelsie became the person I consulted whenever I needed advice about women, which was often.

One night, she wanted to leave work early. I told her she could go if she first explained how I should ask the McDonald's girl on a date.

Instead of giving me a strategy, Chelsie began listing my good qualities. She told me I was kind, funny, dependable, and better than I believed myself to be. Then she said that if she were not with her boyfriend, she would date me.

It was the nicest thing a girl had ever said to me. I stood there realizing I would much rather date Chelsie than the girl whose attention I had spent months trying to earn through repeated trips to McDonald's.

Our friendship eventually became more important than any crush. When I began questioning my faith, many of the Christians around me treated the questions as a threat. Some avoided the subject entirely. Others acted as though doubt itself represented a failure.

Chelsie responded with compassion. She brought me a book and offered to have her father discuss the Bible with me because he knew more about it than she did. She never treated my uncertainty as something shameful. Of all my Christian friends, she was the only person who seemed willing to meet doubt with kindness rather than fear.

That told me more about her faith than any argument could have.

We talked constantly for the next couple of years. Somewhere beneath the friendship, part of me continued waiting for an opportunity to ask her out. I disliked her boyfriend and believed she deserved better, which was a convenient belief for a young man who wanted to be the alternative.

The opportunity never came. Chelsie married him, and I later married the girl from McDonald's. Both marriages eventually ended. By coincidence, our divorces happened around the same time and for similar reasons.

When I originally wrote this story, I described both marriages as mistakes. Time has made me more careful with that word. A relationship can end badly without every year inside it being worthless. We made choices based on who we were then, and both of us became different people afterward.

By the time Chelsie and I were single at the same time, the possibility I had once imagined no longer felt like something either of us needed to pursue. Life had moved forward. So had we. I did not regret leaving that old question unanswered.

Chelsie and I still connect online occasionally. She remains one of the few Blockbuster coworkers I have kept in touch with over the years.

When I remember our friendship, I sometimes think about how close I came to ending it before it began. I wanted so badly to impress her that I forgot to be considerate of her. Then, because of a car accident and one awkward ride to work, I received another chance.

At seventeen, I thought confidence meant proving that I was funny, capable, and important. Chelsie taught me something better. Sometimes repairing a mistake begins with admitting that you were cruel, even if you intended to be charming. Sometimes the person you hurt decides to forgive you, and sometimes the girl you made cry on her first night becomes one of the few people who still remembers who you were all those years ago.