Chapter 17 Raleigh
RALEIGH
“How are we supposed to figure out where to start?” I asked as my eyes swept over the crowded street and the equally crowded park at the center of the town square.
The whole place was packed, with people weaving around groups stopped at booths and others standing still in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at their phones or looking around in confusion.
“How about we just go in a line and work our way around the square, then we can check out the center,” Daddy suggested.
“Yeah, okay,” I muttered as Murry slipped his hand in mine.
“I won’t let you get lost,” Murry said, grinning up at me.
He knew I wasn’t the biggest fan of crowds and why, though I hadn’t had the chance to tell Daddy yet since this was our first big outing and I hadn’t expected the street fair to look like this.
It was like everyone in town was down here, well, except Aspen and Phoenix, who’d volunteered to help him man the shop today while we went exploring with Daddy.
A part of me wondered if there was more to it, which would be awesome, because Daddy had mulled over making the same wish at the wishing tree for Aspen that I planned to make for Phoenix. Maybe the universe would weave our wishes together and make something amazing happen for them.
“Why don’t you two walk in front of me so I can keep an eye on you and make sure I don’t lose you if you stop to look at something?” Daddy suggested.
“Yes, please,” I said, feeling a little less anxious.
I really did need to talk to Daddy before we left for Portland so he’d know that crowds made me anxious; well, it was more like getting lost in them that freaked me out.
“Done deal,” Daddy said, and off we went.
Holding hands with Murry meant we tugged each other closer instead of letting go when people were trying to go around us.
Even when we paused to look at stuff, we kept hold of one another, which was a good thing, because there were tons of things to see.
Along the way we sampled fudge and margherita pizza, gourmet popcorn, and chocolate-dipped cherries, which were way better than the ones that came out of the box.
Then I spotted them, shimmering on black velvet cloth, outside the new age shop I loved.
“Crystals,” I declared, tugging Murry over to the table.
“Uh-huh,” Murry said, letting go of my hand but looping his fingers through my belt loop so I could pick up things and examine them, which he knew I would.
I’d already spotted a wide, circular slab of agate in a deep purple shade that sparked all kinds of ideas.
As soon as I held it in my hands, I knew I had to have it and several other amethyst pieces on the table, including multiple singular points in varying shapes and sizes.
There were baggies of crushed amethyst pieces I picked up too, to ring the agate with.
There was an online shop I’d been scrolling through the other night that had miniature metal moons, crows, and candelabras that could go perfectly with these.
I’d have to order some purple wire too, and stars, to pull it all together, but the whole piece had already taken shape in my head, so I knew exactly what I wanted the end piece to look like.
It would be the perfect project to work on in our downtime.
I just hoped it turned out as amazing as the ones I’d spotted while surfing social media.
As soon as everything was wrapped, paid for, and tucked in the black mini-backpack I wore, we started weaving our way down the block again, not that we got far before Daddy spotted a remnants table outside of the fabric store and started digging through the piles, looking for anything he could work into one of his collections.
Murry and I stayed just to the left of him and out of the way of the flow of people moving up and down the block. We soon discovered the reason Daddy was carrying a large backpack with nothing in it, because soon he was tucking several wrapped packages of remnants inside of it.
“Give the wheel a spin for a chance to win gift cards, discounts, and more,” a vendor called out from where he stood beside a wheel labeled with various prizes from businesses up and down the block.
“I’ll spin it,” Murry declared, making it whirl around several times before landing on a gift card to one of the local bakeries.
Daddy stepped up and spun it next and got a gift card to the new age shop that he promptly passed to me. Then it was my turn to spin, and we all laughed because now we had double credit at the bakery.
“I can see some amazing breakfast treats in our future,” Murry said.
Those wouldn’t be the last gift cards we won before we made it around the square either.
Along the way, there were more samples too.
We donned hippy gear and posed for pictures inside a refurbished hippy van that looked like something right out of the 1960s.
Daddy purchased a packet with different-sized photos, including ones small enough to tuck in our wallets as well as one big enough to hang on the wall in the loft, and then we all headed inside the counterculture museum to take a break from the crowds of people outside.
Wandering past monitors with speeches, rallies, protests, and old news reports playing on the ones mounted on the walls was cool.
So were the colorful clothing displays of dashikis and bell bottoms. There were neon posters, album covers, and a whole room where music played from a turntable while scenes from Woodstock played on a screen that took up an entire wall.
The history of the event was depicted on the other displays, so we took our time reading everything while swaying to some seriously mellow music. I loved the Grateful Dead, but I’d never heard them on vinyl the way their music sounded in the room.
“Talk about a chill vibe,” Daddy said. “I could use some of this on my playlist.”
“Haven’t you ever heard the Grateful Dead before?” I asked.
“Probably,” Daddy said. “I’m sure I have with all the stations, hoping I did back before Bluetooth. I just didn’t recognize what I was listening to. How are you so familiar with them?”
“Murry used to play them all the time,” I explained.
“My grandmother loved them,” Murry explained. “She was a true Dead Head. When I introduced Raleigh to them, he couldn’t get enough, so we’d listen to them on YouTube over and over until we finally started moving on to other things.”
“I still love them though,” I said, shoulders swaying as Casey Jones filled the room.
And because I loved them, we got to stay and listen to the whole song before moving on to the next exhibit.
When we finally stepped back outside, the crowd on the sidewalk had thinned some, making it easier to finish the last street on the square.
That’s where we almost lost Murry. He spotted something in a window, and if I hadn’t been holding on to his hand so tightly, he’d have pulled free in his haste to get in there.
Daddy wasn’t so lucky and got cut off from us by people who’d been trying to leave the store as Murry rushed in, so we waited, just inside the doorway, for him to catch up.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped, narrowing my eyes at him.
I hated that it made some of the excitement in his eyes fade while his bright smile thinned out before he started pouting.
“The shop’s not even that big,” he complained. “You’re not going to lose me in here.”
“Sorry for not wanting to take that chance,” I shot back.
“Raleigh…”
“You promised you wouldn’t let me get lost,” I reminded him as I curled my fingers through his belt loop so he could pick things up in here the way he’d done for me at the crystal table. “You can still see everything.”
“You’re right,” Murry said. “I’m sorry. I got excited when I saw all the games in the window.”
“Well, we could always use a few new games to add to the collection in the loft,” Daddy said as he stepped around a woman so he could join us. “But I have to agree with Raleigh about you not doing that again. We have time to see everything, I promise. We don’t need to rush and get separated.”
“Sorry,” Murry muttered, ducking his head.
Daddy placed his hand on it and mussed up his hair. “All’s forgiven.”
I loved that when Daddy said something was forgiven, he never brought it up again.
Growing up, my folks were constantly rehashing old arguments and blaming each other for things that happened before they’d even had me.
It was exhausting, listening to them be so bitter and hurtful towards one another.
Murry and I never have fights like that, which was a relief because I doubted our friendship would have lasted this long if we had.
I hated meanness. It was so ugly. Not to mention how gross it felt to listen to it and see it play out.
My stomach always felt like it was filled with twisty rocks that churned and rolled around in there.
“Depending on what we find, we might need to make a pit stop back at the loft to unload before we head over to the park,” Daddy said. “With all of the options in here, I can’t picture us leaving empty-handed.”
“Have you ever played an RPG?” Murry asked, already leading the way towards the new expansion set he’d spied through the window.
“Played them and run them,” Daddy said. “Aspen and I had a regular gaming group in New York when we still lived there.”
“Sweet, Aspen plays too?” I declared. “So does Phoenix; he and James helped us make our first characters. Up until last year, we had a club game night every Tuesday where a bunch of staff and dancers would get together to play through a campaign.”
“Why’d you stop?” Daddy asked.
“Everyone’s real lives just sort of got so busy that it stopped being fun because we didn’t really have enough players for a quest,” I explained.
“Do you have any materials of your own to start a game with?” Daddy asked.