Excerpt from Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Once a client is set on a color, it's difficult to change their mind. And, besides, we don't like to disappoint them — if their heart is set on a color, it's going to be that color.

Noi doesn't need to know this yet. She has big wide eyes. When you talk to her, they get wider, as if she takes the whole world in through the space her eyes provide. I try not to tell her too much. Hasn't got the kind of head to hold it all in. For now, she just needs to know the bottles have to look full.

"You see this?" She nods.

"The bottle's face has to look forward. All lined up against the wall, it looks neat and new this way."

After we are done painting, we bring the polishes back. Don't leave them lying around. It looks a mess. And we don't want mess here. Neat and clean. My index finger shoots up and glides along the air to demonstrate a straight line.

Every client who walks in is told to pick a color. Remember to tell them that. Get them to come to this wall and pick. One for their hands, one for their feet. Sometimes they pick the same color, and that's fine.

"Pick a color," she says in a quiet whisper to no one. We walk back to the front desk, facing the door. I open the cash register there and say, "They'll use the machine to pay, but if they use cash put it in here."

I tell her there should be one hundred dollars in the till. Any more and end of the day we deposit that at the bank. If we get robbed, they'll only have one hundred dollars.

"Robbed?" she asks, innocently. "That happens here?" I can see she hasn't thought of this, working in a store that has cash.

I tell her, coldly, "A few times." And add, without any worry, "Just give them everything. We can make one hundred back easy."

I press the button on the credit card machine.

After a moment, I tell her, "Takes a while before it starts." We want to have this machine ready to go for the client to pay, otherwise they tell you they'll come back later because they're in a hurry, and then they don't.

"What happens," she worries, looking around, "when we run out of paper?" I like that this matters to her. It should. Receipts are our birth certificates. It's proof. Proof that we were there that day and with whom and at what hour. Proof that someone paid and that tip was ours. Without a receipt, who knows what really happened? Someone could say we were never there at all. To do work, and to not have a receipt? Might as well not exist.

Here.

I open the top desk drawer and take out a new roll. Underneath it are some children's drawings. They are pretty close to the real thing, if you ask me. Children notice one thing and exaggerate it on the page. Arms and legs are never the same length and height. Everyone is always standing, never sitting down. Always facing the page with their whole face. They are never turned to the side. Hair is a squiggle of circles or curls or blunt bangs. Or none at all. I notice they never used the gold-colored crayon. I guess nothing ever calls for being gold.

Those kids liked drawing us.

One Susan they drew had a large chest — that must be Mai. Another had a nostril bigger than the other one. Maybe that's their mother. And when it came to me, it was easy. I was the one with the nine fingers. I was a single line in the middle. My arms and legs were splayed out. I had a letter O for my mouth. Dots for each eye. And one nostril not much bigger than the eyes.

They got all our hair right. Black.

Nok's kids gave me these drawings at the end of one of her shifts. I put them in here. Seemed cruel to throw their drawings out. I even kept their coloring. When they didn't want to draw, they wanted to color. We had nothing to color so I drew something. Just a giant circle. And inside the giant circle were other little circles.

I gave them rules for our coloring game. You can use the same color, but it must appear somewhere else, and at least one circle apart. No circle is to be surrounded by a circle of the same color. That kept them busy.

Excerpted from Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Copyright © 2025 by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.