Window Dressing

The small town of Rossville recently came into a bit of controversy that all began with its newest resident Rachel Steuben. She had come from the city but grew up in a small town not too different from Rossville, bringing her city style with her small town sensibilities. However, Rossville didn’t appreciate city style as much as Rachel would have liked. The town revolved around two things: 1. Main Street, which not only connected the town to the main highway and was dotted with small, quaint shops that drove a good amount of Rossville’s economy. But Main Street also served as a place to have a parade for 2. Rossville’s local high school football team whose homecoming games were a source to many a proud tradition. And Rachel’s presence managed to disrupt the status quo of both of them.

She bought a small property on Main Street and redesigned it as a dress shop with the modern accoutrements of the city. The younger women of Rossville wouldn’t admit it but many of them were saving money to buy one of Rachel’s sleek and fashionable outfits. However it was the storefront that would earn her no end of local critics. Instead of small windows teasing the wares of her store, Rachel opted for the entire store front to be glass. There were floor-to-ceiling windows and a large glass door with the words “Dress Shop” etched just by the door handles. One could see all the way to the cash register from across the street.

“It’s rather vulgar,” some of the townsfolk have said, “You don’t have to flaunt what you have to get business. It’s brash and makes the town look like attention-starved wannabe city-dwellers. Ms. Steuben is making us look bad to out of town visitors.”

“She should be ashamed of herself,” an older couple who is rumored to have owned the building before Rachel was quoted to saying. “If you ask me she’s practically asking for her store to be vandalized. You can see the entire store from across the street for goodness sake!”

And while Rachel’s storefront design had gotten the town worked up, it would be the events leading to the homecoming game that is the center of this controversy. It is a time honored Rossville tradition to give graduating seniors on the varsity football team a night to prank the good townspeople (within reason, of course) on the week of their last homecoming game. On Rachel’s first homecoming week she thought it would be a fun way to put herself in a favorable light by making her store a welcome sight for would be pranksters. She opened wide the glass doors and left all the lights on in the store. For practical purposes, she locked the cash register and all merchandise in the rear storage room. There was even a sign behind the counter that read “Happy Homecoming!”

The following day, Rachel had expected to see her store covered in toilet paper and silly string, maybe colored shoe polish writing on the glass store front. Sure it would be more effort to clean up, she told herself, but far be it from me to look down on tradition. From down the street she could see a crowd had gathered in front of the shop. The fire chief approached her with a stern look in his eyes.

“Miss Steuben,” the fire chief said.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you know this but every year the seniors on the varsity football team--”

“They have prank night every homecoming. I left my store open on purpose for that very reason.”

“You left it open on purpose?”

“Yes. I know it sounds crazy but I had my merchandise and money stored securely away. I thought it’d be a good way to show everyone I’m a good sport about these kinds of things.”

“Miss Steuben, I think you better come with me.”

The fire chief walked Rachel to her store and she saw the shards of glass lying next to an empty space that used to be occupied by one of her floor-to-ceiling glass panes. The shelves were spray painted with Rossville’s school colors. Some of the mannequins were on the floor as if they had been stomped on repeatedly and violently. One of them looked to have been thrown out of the now broken window. In the center of the shop floor there were shredded strips of cloth that Rachel recognized as some of what were her favorite dresses. She ran to the back room that she was sure she locked and saw that the door had been pried open along with the cash register which was empty and damaged. The other dresses were not immediately recognizable as they were now a pile of ash scattered around the charred rear storage room. Tears ran down Rachel’s face as she fell to her knees at looking at the destruction. The fire chief picked her up and arranged for someone to take her home.

Rachel lied in bed and couldn’t fathom the level to which her trust was violated. In an attempt keep her mind distracted from the goings on of the day, she logged on to the internet. What she found was uploaded video of the pranksters in question. It turned out that the only a few members of the football team saw the invitation set up by Rachel and the star quarterback decided it would be more fun to escalate the pranks for Rachel’s store. There were several videos, actually, one of which shows another football player taking a crowbar from his car and mentioning getting into the back storage room. Other footage shows the mannequin being thrown through the window by another young player. And another video even shows the quarter back tossing a flaming newspaper into the storage room right after popping the cash register open with the crowbar and pocketing the money.

Her hand clasped over her gaping mouth as she tried to reach for her phone and call the police. Rachel’s hand was shaking so much she could barely dial but she finally managed to. The receptionist put her on hold and as she waited, Rachel quickly downloaded all the videos she found onto her USB drive. She couldn’t wait to be put on hold for another minute and took the downloaded videos to the police station.

“I want to press charges,” she told the officer.

“Let’s not do anything rash, Miss Steuben,” the officer replied.

“Rash? They broke in to my store, burned my merchandise, and stole my money. It’s all right here on these videos. You’re watching them right now!” The light from the monitor flickered on the officer’s face as he watched, his eyes darting from the screen to Rachel’s tear soaked face.

“It was prank night, after all. And you did practically invite them into this.”

“I welcomed pranks. It’s a tradition to play pranks and yes I left my doors unlocked for them to prank my store but this is not a prank. They broke into the one locked room in the store and destroyed my property, stole my money!”

“So you admit that you welcomed this?”

“I was trying to partake in the town’s tradition. I didn’t encourage them to destroy my property!”

“The door was unlocked.”

“Not the one they broke into! Had this been any other night, they would be taken in for questioning, at the very least! It’s common knowledge that a locked door means entry is not allowed! There are no exceptions to that rule! No means no!”

“So why did you unlock the doors?”

“I unlocked the front doors, not the rear storage room doors. Why are you so resistant? The evidence is right there, I want them arrested.”

“I don’t think you understand, Miss Steuben. These are the star players and this is strong evidence against them. This could mean serious jail time for them especially the quarterback who turned 18 a month ago. A lot of them have scholarships to good schools, maybe even a shot at the pros.”

“They committed a serious crime.”

“You’re going to ruin their bright, young futures.”

“They ruined it themselves when they decided to break into the one locked door in the store, when they decided to throw a mannequin through the window! Please, officer! I would like to have them arrested.”

Reluctantly, the officer got out of his chair and took the evidence to the head of police and after a few minutes they both stepped out to meet Rachel. The head of police reluctantly agreed to arrest them and dispatched a small group of officers to take the young boys in. Rachel would end up pressing charges and the boys would be found guilty of breaking and entering and destruction of private property. The quarterback was also charged with theft as he was the only one seen pocketing the money. Because he was the only eighteen-year-old, he was tried as an adult and received some jail time, forfeiting any scholarships offered to him to play football in college.

“They had so much potential. It’s such a shame to see it all taken away,” some of the townsfolk said.

“Everyone knows what happened. It’s all on tape,” the quarterback’s girlfriend said, “Did you see how she just left her store out in the open? She was just asking for it. The way I see it, that bitch deserved what she got for ruining their lives.”

The following weeks would be even worse for Rachel as the rest of the community would continually chastise her for dethroning the town’s would-be heroes. Other storeowners would actively keep customers away from her stores. The adults and elders of Rossville would sneer in her direction otherwise they ignored her in a very un-neighborly fashion. Students of the high school threw bricks through the windows of Rachel’s house with messages of anger, telling her to leave town. She finally decided to take that advice, even considered going back to the small town she grew up. But instead she opted to go back to the city.

“How did this all go wrong?” she asked herself as she drove away in her car full of all her belongings. She would drive down Main Street one last time, only to get on the highway and never see Rossville again. Destruction does not reside in a narrow mind, but it thrives in the presence of a great collection of them. A lesson well learned by Rachel Steuben, who had every right to feel like a victim.