4. Chapter Four #2
“Well, I just read the card and tried to figure out if it meant anything but couldn’t. I left to get a drink of water, and when I came back, there was Pearl.”
Rosa looks at me silently for a moment.
“Did you spill anything on the card? Did you say anything? Any spell words?”
“No, I didn’t spill anything. I don’t even know any spells. ”
“Did you say anything at all?”
My face heats to about a zillion degrees as I look briefly at Pearl and find her watching me intently. I look back at Rosa and swallow thickly.
“Um. I just said I wished I had a girlfriend that likes baseball as much as I do.”
Pearl’s face lights up.
Rosa nods. “That’ll do it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She ignores me entirely and turns to Pearl. “Honey, what do you remember about how you got here?”
Pearl’s gaze drops to her folded hands. “At first, I didn’t remember anything. Then last night while I was sleeping it all came back to me.”
She tells Rosa about Brigley, how he started off kind, then turned cruel.
She then tells her everything she told me last night.
Everything about the disappearing girls and Valentina hiding them.
Even about accidentally swallowing her gum and hiding the fact.
When she’s done, Rosa sits quietly for a moment in thought, pink pen tapping her chin, before she speaks.
“Why was Brigley making the girls disappear?” she asks .
Pearl pauses for a moment to think. Just when it seems like she isn’t going to remember, she gasps.
“He was mad that we were more popular than the Wonder Balls. He owned their team, but not the stadium, and he wanted both. The Wonder Belles all lived in Ghostlight Falls full-time, did tons of charity work, and we packed the stands every game. We were making so much money for the town, that they weren’t in any hurry to put the Balls back in, or to kick us out.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone loved the Balls, and they would have been back in eventually, I’m sure!
Things were just going real well for the Belles at the time and there was only one stadium.
” Pearl looks back and forth between Rosa and I, eyes pleading for understanding.
“You get it, right? We weren’t being selfish. We only wanted our chance to play.”
I look her deep in the eyes and take both her hands. “Pearl, you really don’t have to worry about that. You didn’t do anything wrong. This is not your fault.”
“Keep going, honey,” Rosa says with a consoling nod .
Now more confident, Pearl continues.
“Brigley had closed his gum factory shortly after returning from overseas and announced he was focusing entirely on baseball. He tried and tried to buy out the Belles, but we were self-owned and determined to stay that way. It wasn’t what anyone else was doing at the time, but with the problems some of the ladies had with men, we knew we were better off keeping our money and power to ourselves.
Besides, it was clear Brigley just wanted to shut us down and put his Balls back in.
Well, rather than trying to figure out a way for both teams to play, or using diplomacy to get us out, I guess Brigley took a different route. ”
“What a piece of shit,” Sharon says from a shadowy corner on the opposite side of the room. Pearl and I both startle, only now aware of the fact that she was lurking there.
“That’s for sure,” Rosa says, twirling her pink pen between her fingers.
“Alright, let’s break it down. Piece of Caca Brigley went to war, and either he was infected with some nasty creature, or something else entirely came back pretending to be him.
He started making women disappear. My beautiful grandmother, may her soul rest peacefully, saved some of them using a strange cobbled together spell I’ve never seen.
Brigley erases all memory of the women’s team from history. He gets everything he wants.”
Rosa stands up and begins to pace back and forth in front of her desk, still twirling her pen.
“Many decades later, Delia trips over a brick, finds one of the spelled boxes, wishes for love, and out comes Pearl. Unfortunately for Pearl, she is two-dimensional, probably because she did not spit out the gum like my grandmother told her to.”
“It was an accident!” Pearl mumbles.
“Rules are rules!” Rosa says sternly, pen pointed at Pearl, before returning to her pacing. “According to Pearl, some of the women may still be hidden in boxes in the stadium. Is that everything?”
She stops and looks at the two of us. We nod.
“We’ll have to get rid of Brigley—you know that, right?
He’s not going to let witnesses come back to out him.
” Rosa taps her pen on her chin again as it dawns on me that she means it is the Brigley I know.
Not his grandpa. Yikes . She sighs. “It’s unfortunate that it took this long to get you out, Pearl, but love is like that sometimes. ”
“Love?” Pearl says at the same time I say, “Get rid of Mr. Brigley?”
Though, to be honest, the love part is first on my mind too.
Rosa holds her hands up.
“I’ll answer what I can. Brigley has been around since I was a child, and he looked the same then. As far as I know, he was the same before I was born. I don’t know anything about what he was like before that.”
“Then it must be the same Brigley from my time,” Pearl says with a frown. “He’s a real piece of work.”
“I don’t know what he is,” Rosa says. “But he’s not the normal human he pretends to be.
That I’ve always known. Which is fine, of course.
We accept all kinds here. But whatever he is makes the spirits nervous.
I haven’t bothered to find out what he is; what people are is normally none of my business.
If we’re going to get rid of him however, we first have to know what we’re up against.”
“I’ll go to the bookstore,” Sharon says. “The owner loves me. She always has piles of obscure shit waiting when I visit. Terrible for my wallet, great for research. Then I can hit up the library. The restricted section hates to see me coming.”
How she can make every word, no matter how intriguing, sound just completely devoid of emotion, I have no idea. Used to drive me absolutely insane when we dated. I mean, she’s a really cool person, she’s just not—
I look over at Pearl, whose blue eyes are somehow glistening in the soft light.
No, they’re not really wet, but the emotion on her face is so strong they might as well be.
Yet, even with all the stress she’s under, she turns to me, squeezes my hand, and offers me a little smile to try to make me feel better about our situation.
Even with the shakiness in her voice I can tell she’s trying to brighten my mood when she says, “It’ll be alright. We’ll get him, Delia. Whatever the heck he is.”
Fuck, she’s amazing . She returns her attention to the Candy Witch. Her hands are now folded in her lap as she leans toward Rosa. Her voice shakes slightly when she speaks, the fear evident.
“Can you fix me?” Pearl asks. I can see the shine of tears in her eyes; my heart breaks.
“I don’t know.” Rosa finally sets down her pen and taps a finger to her lips. “Delia, have you tried going inside of Pearl?”
Pearl and I look at each other with confused expressions before turning back to Rosa.
“I’m sorry, inside of ? Like entering a building?” Pearl asks.
“As in, has Delia attempted to put any part of herself inside you?”
“What? No. She’s flat.” I say, words tumbling out of me quickly.
“Don’t be so stuffy,” Rosa scoffs. She waves Pearl toward her. “Here, I need to test something.”
Pearl stands, looking nervously over at me, before looking back at Rosa.
“I have a feeling you’re gonna stick your hand in my mouth, aren’t you?” she says with a resigned sigh.
I cough. What?
“I’m going to try to, yes.”
Pearl bends over the desk and Rosa does just that. To my surprise, when Rosa slides her fingers against Pearl’s mouth, they disappear inside of it. It’s like the police box ship in that sci-fi show from the U.K.—the one that’s been on the air for decades.
She’s bigger on the inside .
“Holy shit. How does that work?” I ask as I scramble to my feet, desperate for a closer look.
Pearl gags as Rosa pulls her hand out, something pink and stringy coming along with it. Whatever the pink stuff is continues to stretch out of her throat in a long rope, much like hot mozzarella cheese. She whines and gags as the strings wind out.
“Just a little more, sweetie,” Rosa says softly to Pearl.
After several more seconds, the pull is complete, and a fat, sticky, pink blob rests on the desk before Rosa. Pearl coughs and strokes her throat.
“What was that?” she says on a rasp.
“Bubblegum. I assume it had the magic in it. Remember, you’re supposed to spit gum out. This is a big problem.” Rosa shakes her head. “ Don’t you listen to what your parents tell you? Don’t swallow gum !”
“I had terrible parents!” Pearl snaps grumpily as she sits back down. “And, again, it was an accident!”
Rosa shrugs.
“So, can you fix me?” Pearl asks again with just about the saddest puppy eyes anyone has ever had, and it takes everything I have not to scoop her up and squeeze her.
“I don’t know. With how long you’ve been in the box, it may take a while—if I can even do it at all, considering I don’t know the spell to begin with, and it’s been messed up with the gum swallowing.
” Rosa settles heavily back in her chair and folds her hands on her lap.
“I’m so sorry I can’t be more optimistic. ”
“It’s alright. I’d take harsh truth over pretty lies any day.”
I stroke the top of her hand softly and send her a reassuring smile.
“We’ll figure something out. Ghostlight Falls will accept you however you end up, and I’ll teach you about modern stuff. I know it’s probably not how you imagined your life being, but I’ll help you make it the best it can be. I promise.”
Pearl begins to cry, tears falling down her face. Her tears are odd. They do look at first like they’d be wet, but they stay flat, just pictures on her slightly glossy paper that disappear when they reach her edges. I wonder where they go. Another one of her mysteries.
She sniffles softly. “Thanks, Delia. Can we go now? I’m worn out.”
“Yeah. I’m tired too.” I turn to Rosa as we stand and shake her hand. “Thanks so much.”
“I’ll work on trying to get Pearl into her original shape and finding the other girls.
Sharon will work on figuring out what Brigley is.
If we can do anything else, let me know.
” Rosa walks us to the front door but stops us right before we exit.
“And my grandmother was right; stay away from Brigley.”
As we walk out, holding hands, we’re mostly quiet. Too many things are weighing on our minds. The thing itching at the top of mine right now is that Rosa never answered Pearl’s question about love.