IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You Read Free

cameras,” she says.
    The manager looks curiously at the woman. “You want to buy a camera?”
    “Oh, no,” she says, laughing, placing one hand on his chest in an obviously flirtatious gesture. “Not for me, for my husband.”
    “Oh, sure, we’d be happy to help,” he says, looking around for you, but you’ve already taken your cue and walked away, leaving that conversation behind thanks to the momentary distraction of the flirtatious wife. And you certainly aren’t supposed to know very much about cameras anyway, so you feel safe walking away like you’re all excited to get back to work.
    You mentally thank the woman for the moment’s peace and the grace of the exit she granted you. You spend the rest of your shift staying as far away from potentially threatening customers and your manager as can reasonably be expected while still appearing to perform a worklike function.
    LATER, THE LAST CRABBY CUSTOMER has finally wandered out of the store, your team members are gone, the store is locked up, and you are alone in the storeroom, finishing up some inventory work your manager gave you.
    You are rushing to get everything put away in its proper place when you hear a voice coming from somewhere back past the shelves of printers. You look at the rows and rows of towering metal shelves, each packed tightly and chaotically with different boxes and bins of consumer electronics. You peer into the place where the storeroom recedes into shadows.
    “Um, hello?” you call. There definitely should not be anyone here. You’re probably imagining it. You go back to sorting boxes of SD cards.
    Then you hear another noise. A box being slid along a shelf. And humming? Maybe?
    So you are definitely not imagining it.
    You start walking, stepping quietly toward the back in your standard-issue black sneakers. It does occur to you to wonder why you care so much whether there’s someone else in the store with you. Honestly, you should probably run in the other direction; the company doesn’t pay you enough to risk your life for consumer electronics. But after that interaction with your boss . . . ugh. One more thing and you are definitely going to get fired, and then you’ll have to tell your boyfriend, and he’ll look at you all pitiably because you know he thinks it’s dumb you work at Best Buy, anyway. And it is, maybe! But also you suspect that he imagines this life where you’re married and you don’t have to work, you get to just stay home and take care of his babies, and what if getting fired was the trigger that shot the bullet of the rest of your life coming at you? These are things you think you want? Maybe? But having this job is a way of having more time to think about it. Not that you think about it. You actively do not think about it.
    But getting murdered in the storeroom of the Best Buy in the next five minutes would definitely prevent that decision from getting made. It would solve a lot of problems, actually. You wouldn’t have to work this job anymore. You wouldn’t have to wonder whether the feelings you think you feel for your boyfriend are real or not. You wouldn’t have to feel insane for wanting things you can’t even name.
    You get to the back of the storeroom, and it’s totally empty and dead and quiet. So great, another sign that you’re completely insane. And maybe your boyfriend was right; maybe meds would be a good idea. It’s time to get out of here. Time to go home and crawl into bed with your probably already-asleep-and-snoring boyfriend, and lie there unable to fall asleep, and then move tothe couch and watch that TV show you always watch, about the man who experiences difficulty but it causes him to learn something about the world and also about himself.
    So you turn around to leave, and standing there in the shadows in front of you is a dark, hooded figure.
    You shriek in surprise and the figure reaches out, plaintively, saying, “Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!