Chapter 6
E very single person in the entire diner stopped what they were doing and turned their laser focus on Celeste. She wasn’t shy, but she had been taught to be wary, to blend in, to try and disappear. So to be in the spotlight now was so uncomfortable she momentarily froze, one foot in the air like a startled doe.
And then it was as if someone passed the memo at the same time to resume normal activity and ignore her. Because that was what everyone did at once. Eyes dropped, forks picked up, chatter resumed.
“There’s an empty booth. Feel free to take it,” a disembodied voice said from somewhere inside. Celeste didn’t try to figure out where. Relieved, she sank into the booth and picked up a menu, inhaling deeply. At least it smelled promising. A short time later a waitress appeared at the end of the table, tall and willowy with a baby resting on one hip.
“Hello, and welcome to Paradise. My name is Avery. Have you had time to decide what you’d like or do you need longer?”
She seemed so sweet, so utterly normal after the nonsensical morning that Celeste relaxed and even managed a smile. “Are you eighteen?” It seemed to be the town commandment to be a teenage mother.
“Yes, plus a lot.” Avery hadn’t seemed to find the question odd. In any case, she was still smiling.
“I thought it was in the town charter that you had to be a teenage parent. I’ve encountered a few of those today.”
“Oh, I am a mother, and I was much past my teens, but this one’s not mine. I borrowed her from the Reeds.” She turned to nod at a couple in the corner and Celeste flinched. There sat the plastic-haired-pearlescent-toothed man from the grocery parking lot, along with a stunningly beautiful blond. He waved frantically at Celeste and pointed to the woman beside him mouthing, “ This is Chloe!”
“Uh, huh,” Celeste said. “Is he delusional?”
“Who, Fletcher?” They turned to survey him in time to see him holding his bicep aloft while his wife poked it and shook her head. “Yes.”
“Right. What do you recommend, Avery?”
“Beef,” Avery said. “In any form, beef will make a good first impression.”
Since she was the second person to recommend beef, Celeste didn’t argue. She chose the pot roast and handed Avery her menu.
“I’ll grab a water and be right back,” Avery said. Celeste watched as she handed the baby back to the Reeds, guessing she took it in the first place so they could free their hands to eat. After depositing the baby she walked to the counter where a ridiculously handsome man handed her a plate with a smile. She delivered the plate and brought Celeste her water.
“What is up with the men in this town?” Celeste asked her.
“What do you mean?” Avery asked.
Celeste waved her hand toward the diner, encompassing Fletcher and the man behind the counter who, if the way his eyes followed Avery was any indication, was somehow attached to her. “You don’t find it unnatural how pretty they are?”
“Oh, that. You get used to it.”
“Really?” Celeste asked.
“No, but it definitely helps to have something nice to look at during the long winters.”
Celeste snorted a laugh, causing Avery to smile and several people to turn their heads and gawk again. She smoothed her expression and picked up her straw wrapper as Avery wandered away, retrieving dirty dishes from the table next door.
She finished her meal in surprising silence. No one accosted her and, if her senses were to be believed, no one gawked at her. Avery stopped by a few times to check on her and refill her water. She was friendly, but not in a prying way. Celeste left her a good tip and began the long drive home.
It would be easy to zone out here, to become too comfortable with the long silent drive. Celeste smacked her cheek a couple of times to stay with it, to remain alert. In her previous line of work, complacency ended in disaster and often death. Situational awareness was something she could never lose touch with, even here in the middle of nowhere. Safety was an illusion. It was something her childhood taught her early and her career confirmed again and again. Nowhere was ever completely safe. She had to remain alert and on guard, even here in the boonies.
To help with brain fatigue she turned on the radio, grimacing when a country song blared. So far the only music she’d been able to find was country. It wasn’t that Celeste had particular tastes in music. Maybe she enjoyed country, she had no idea. She’d never been in one place long enough to listen to any one thing. But so far the twang grated on her nerves. She knew enough about the genre to understand not everyone who sang it hailed from Nashville, nor even the south. Wasn’t it sort of hypocritical to sing about the woes of rural American life when you were from Australia? Nonetheless it was country or nothing so she left it on, using it as a diversion against brain fog.
She arrived home, took out her gun, and swept the house. Everything felt normal when she opened the door, but she had learned not to ignore her routine in favor of her gut. Her life worked best when the two things went together, a balance between training and instinct. Things might feel okay, but she couldn’t be certain until she performed her nightly inspection, checking each room and closet for intruders.
Once that was completed, she sat on the couch and picked up her pen. So far the evenings had been the biggest source of angst in her new life. She had never watched television. When she was a child, it had belonged to whichever grownup was currently in charge. She had found other things to do in order to avoid said grownup. As an adult, she’d been too busy traveling the world, doing her job, to indulge in mindless entertainment. She had never been a reader, either. She’d actually tried, the first week of her retirement. She went to a store and bought an assortment of fiction books from the recommended display. She got as far as the first three pages with each. For some reason her brain wouldn’t calm down and engage. She’d found her mind wandering to places it didn’t want it to go. Somehow, in an effort to avoid all the things she didn’t want to remember, she had decided to consciously make herself remember. And so she started to journal.
At first she’d felt like an idiot, like one of those self-involved twenty somethings on social media who believed the entire world should be treated to their untested grand insights. The difference in this case was that she knew for certain she had zero grand insights. And she would rather die than have anyone read what she wrote. This was, to her, a way to try to understand all the ways her life had gone wrong, from the very beginning. Though only a few months in, she was already nearing the end of her third journal. Coincidentally she had reached third grade. She paused, pen held aloft.
Third grade was the year she met Sasha. They sat across from each other at the lunch table on day one. Celeste prepared to eat whatever free meal the school provided for kids like her. Up to that moment she believed everyone ate the same thing. And then Sasha opened her Minnie Mouse lunch box, removed a little metal tin, and began unearthing an assortment of the most beautiful food Celeste had ever seen. Fruit cut into the shape of stars. Cheese cut into little crescents. Homemade crackers cut into circles. On top of the food was a note. I love you to the moon and stars! Mom. Celeste knew what the note said because she stole it, stuffed it into her pocket, and took it out that night when she went to bed. She had stared at the note seemingly for hours, pondering. Had Sasha’s mother really made her that food? Was that a thing mothers did? She found no answers that night, but she tucked the note under her pillow, feeling a strange mix of yearning and anger. She wanted what Sasha had and felt angry over the lack.
That was the first inkling Celeste had that she was different from other kids. And it was the first time she began to resent them for the difference. In the beginning she and Sasha were friends. The girl was a source of fascination for Celeste in all the ways, from the clean, good smelling, and matching clothes to her hair that was always properly combed and arranged into some interesting updo. Heart braids for Valentine’s Day. Shamrock braids for St. Patrick’s. Their friendship was a glimpse into another world, one that felt like a fantasy. Sasha had her over a few times and Celeste couldn’t get over her awe. They ate supper together at a kitchen table. And her mother cooked. The family held hands and prayed before the meal began. Sasha had her own room with her own toys. Her clothes were in her closet. She had sheets on a bed with no bugs. Trash went into the trashcan. Their car didn’t make a rumbling noise, had no apparent rust. It always felt a bit like she’d stumbled onto the set of some movie and was merely paid to stand in the background and observe.
The friendship lasted until fifth grade. By that time anger had overtaken the awe. Celeste started her period when she was nine and enjoyed her status as the first of her friends to do so. She held it over them, she who had so little to uphold. That was around the time when boys began to take notice of her. She began to tease Sasha for her flat chest, for her continued love of playing baby dolls, for the fact that boys didn’t notice her at all. These encounters usually ended with Sasha in tears and Celeste in the hallway getting a lecture from the teacher. She remained smug, however, because smugness was all she had.
Eventually Sasha stopped eating lunch with her, stopped talking to her entirely. And then Celeste’s ninth grade “boyfriend” found out she’d been telling people about him and beat her up, insisting he would never have a girlfriend in fifth grade, that he’d been merely using her because she “put out.” All in all it had been a confusing time. But instead of seeking help, she leaned into the confusion, found another boyfriend, learned more ways to torment the other girls with her newfound notoriety.
Celeste stared into space a long time, pen aloft, thinking. Laying it all out this way made her see key moments where her life flew off the tracks. She saw all the ways someone might have intervened and saved her. What if a grownup had stepped in to protect her that summer before fifth grade? What if someone kept predatory boys away, informed Celeste that ten was way too soon to lose her virginity? Would she have listened? Would it have altered the course of her life in better ways? Or was she already too far gone at that point, too long without care, affection, and direction?
As ever when she finished writing, she was exhausted. Weary now, she tucked the pen and book back on the shelf, climbed the stairs, and fell into bed.