7 #2
Burnt, cheap coffee.
Probably came from one of those brew pots, rather than a true machine and a nice blend.
Still, I throw it back, like it’s a shot of cheap tequila and I’m lost in a maze.
‘Thoughts of home will be your enemy.’
Serena rolls her eyes.
“The town,” she says, firm, moody, always moody. “It’s nice. Isolated. Quiet. What’s the population again?”
That mum brain has affected her.
I tug out a piece of paper from my jean pocket, then unfold it. “Two hundred and four as of five years ago.”
Serena pauses as the waitress sets down the bowls and the breadbasket. Then, when she’s gone, “It’s impossible for them to update the numbers? Five years is a long time.”
I shrug. “Maybe it hasn’t changed since the last time they counted everyone.”
I don’t know how population counts happen, but I get the funny image of all the towners lined up in the street, being ticked off one after the other on a clipboard, maybe by the mayor.
“Let me see the listing again.”
I hand over the second folded print-out.
Then, as Serena skims it, I start on my salad. And I rush it, in strategic order. Parmesan, then croutons, then tomatoes.
Sal might be happy right now, but he’s an unpredictable ticking timebomb, and at least one of us needs to be done eating if he starts crying again.
“There are no photographs on the listing.” Serena’s slender hand reaches my bowl—and she steals a strip of cheese. “What time is the showing?”
I check my phone screen. “Soon.”
“I’ll stay here with Sal. I still feel nauseas.”
“You don’t want to see the place?”
She shakes her head. “Do you have enough cash to make payment upfront?”
I nod, mouthful of lettuce, and let my teeth crunch down on that healthy goodness.
It should be funny, how desperate I am for a Ceasar salad in a small town, when it’s actually quite sad when I think back to dining out, to the restaurants and fusions and cafés I would go to.
My family wouldn’t be caught dead in a diner like this, or a town like it.
But that’s the whole point.
I grab my backpack, tug it over my shoulder. “Be back soon.” I leave the keys on the table. “I’ll walk.”
Without a word, she’s starting on her pumpkin soup, now that the steam has settled.
The bell jingles above the door as I leave the diner and start up the main street.
Buildings border the road, only a few truck-like cars parked along it, and the walk is quiet.
I pass a handful of people huddled out front of the hardware store.
Locals.
I know because they pause to look at me, watch me pass them by, and then whisper about me.
A new face among them.
Doesn’t bother me.
I’m used to stares from my days at the academy. Those stares weren’t so nice, most of the time.
I almost smile at the contrast.
From the wainscoted walls and hardwood floors of the academy, nestled in the white landscape of the alps, to here, a fishing town on the coast of Maine.
My family would have a fit if they saw me now. Strolling up a street that stinks of fish, in a place that whispers its existence in the world, wearing dirty old jeans and a t-shirt that’s been stretched by the grabby hands of a fussy baby.
If they could smell me, the stale food, the mustiness from motels and the car, the faint stink of baby sick…
Grandmother would cane me for it, for all of it.
If she got her bony, strong hands on me, I’d be welted and bruised.
But if Dray got his hands on me—
That one sends a shiver down my spine.
I wrestle the thought of him out of my head.
I try to avoid thinking about him. Any time he pops into my mind, I focus on my surroundings until he’s gone.
But that strategy fails me now.
Because I pass the post office with an old phone booth out front—and it steals me back to the phone booths at Bluestone.
I blink, and a swarm of memories attack me.
The strongest one lingers.
Oliver pulling me into the booth as Dray storms for me—and his hand comes swiping through the air.
I shut my eyes, tight, and my shoes scuff to a stop on the pavement.
Dray has done so much to me, but hitting me was a whole other thing.
It’s something I never really saw coming.
The fear rose in me sometimes, but I don’t think I ever truly believed it would happen.
That he would just backhand me.
It was hard, too.
Sent me flying to the floor. Cracked my cheekbone and cut my lip.
I shouldn’t open my eyes and stare at the phone booth—like I want to draw closer, pick up the receiver, dial in a familiar number, and call home.
Yet, a part of me wants to.
A na?ve part of me—a little pocket of delusion that throbs in either my brain or heart—wonders if my father would still hand me over to Dray.
It’s not certain that he knows about Dray striking me. That depends on how much the others said.
But if he does know, and he knows how far I’ll go to escape Dray, between the article and running away, then surely he would at least question the arrangement.
And yet, I don’t feel convinced.
I push onwards, until I’m turning the corner onto a quieter street—and an older man wearing a bucket hat is leaning against the nose of a truck.
I called ahead to arrange a time, and I’m late.
Just a few minutes late, but the sourness wrinkles his already weathered face, and I think he should take a moment to consider injections and retinol.
Not even men should let themselves go, not like this.
But he is at least amiable as he shows me the house. If it can be called that.
More like a shack than anything, really.
Metal weatherboarding, a rotten porch that’s leaning to the side, chipped paint on the door and window frames.
It’s no better inside.
The carpet is old. The kitchen, brown and stained, and the flooring is sort of soft, but it looks like tiles, which baffles me.
The bathroom—on the bright side—has a tub. But the shower is… Well, it’s an apparatus of some kind. An attachment that sticks onto the bath tap.
I’ve never seen anything like it before.
But it’s two bedrooms.
And it’s a place to just stand still for a while.