Chapter 6
On the weekends the library closes at EIGHT in the evening rather than at ten at night, and so the sun is just beginning its deep orange descent into the dark silhouette of the landscape as Anise and I exit the building when she asks me, “What are you doing tonight? Want to get a drink and something to eat at Lost Souls?”
I am so startled, I nearly fall onto the parking lot asphalt. “Whoa,” she laughs. “It’s just a question.”
“Right. Of course.” I shake my head and pretend it’s totally normal for someone who is not a blood relative to ask me to hang out. “Um.” I honestly don’t know what to say.
Anise leans on her hip and points her car keys at me.
Her outfit is gorgeous as usual, with a white pinstripe blazer and a navy silk blouse over dark-wash jeans.
Thanks to Teal forcing me to get my whole “sexy librarian” wardrobe last year, I think Anise and I are the best dressed of the whole library, which makes it ironic that almost no one will ever know it, considering we work in virtual isolation.
“Look. That lasagna was the best thing I’ve eaten in a month.
And you always bring extra food, and you don’t have to. Let me treat you now, as a thank-you.”
I shift my weight on my feet, barely having the courage to make eye contact with her. “And…Dennis doesn’t mind?”
She snorts. “Tonight’s poker night. He won’t even notice if I get home late. He’ll be having too much fun.”
I shrug and nod and say, “Um. Yeah. Okay.”
We agree to meet there, and on the way, it hits me, what I’ve gotten myself into.
I’ve just agreed to have a drink in public. At the very place where I know a group of people were going to laugh at my being sexually pranked. I have to pull over into the Burger King parking lot and take a few long deep breaths to get the feeling like my skin is crawling and detaching to stop.
This morning I went to the store to pick up eggs, milk, and cheese, and you know what happened while I was waiting in line to check out?
An old white woman behind me said, “You know, I really hate liars,” to literally no one while staring at me in the face.
Because the whole town thinks I actually ran away for eight years and came back and just said I woke up in the woods.
I remembered my promise to myself to be sharper. Be the pinecone.
So I turned around and hissed at her, like a cat. It was a good hiss, too. I rolled my eyes in my head, scrunched my eyebrows as deeply as I could, and bared every single tooth in the process.
It was so satisfying to see her eyes widen as she jumped back.
But then it kind of backfired. Because she threw her hands all around and screamed, “This woman is possessed! I just looked into the eyes of the devil! Jesus protect me!”
In the end, she looked way more foolish than me, because the small crowd that gathered found a woman screaming about demons to be the only commotion.
I couldn’t help the feeling of despondence that came over me like the deep gray clouds Teal pulls into town when she’s sad.
My grand idea to be just as mean back to these rude bullies, to be the pinecone and all that…
all it ended up doing was drawing more attention to me.
More attention to the fact that I am the town’s number one outcast. Maybe they were looking at her this morning.
But all day today, I am the one who is going to be gossiped about by inadvertently adding to my own rumor mill.
Not everyone will think I’m possessed when they hear what happened, but they will think to themselves, What is that lying freak going to do next?
I open my phone to text my sisters but stop when I see that Teal still hasn’t gotten back to me.
I can’t double-text my sister, can I? That is literally the one person you shouldn’t have to double-text.
I probably wouldn’t have hesitated to write her again even a year ago, but now the fear comes over me that Teal will see my name in her notifications and roll her eyes. I toss my phone back in my purse.
I take one last long, deep breath. I can do this.
I can. Who cares if people at the bar think there’s a demon residing in my body?
Maybe they’ll leave me alone for once. And on that thought, I should probably just roll with the rumor.
Dress in all black. Put on vampire fangs with a hooked tail attached to my ass under a long, velvet cape.
Get some contacts in the color of hellfire.
If they’re scared I’m going to devour their souls, they’ll stop being mean to me, right?
I turn the car back on and check the time.
That freak-out only took four minutes, so I’m not too behind Anise.
I’ll just tell her I caught all the red lights if she asks, that way I won’t have to explain anything about this morning or why people are going to start crossing themselves and tossing holy water my way once they encounter me now.
When I step into Lost Souls, for about seven seconds, no one notices.
I can take a moment to take in the décor—the realistic skeletons pinned on the walls, grinning at me.
The tealights lighting the skull candleholders in the middle of every table, the way the flickering flames wink in the eye sockets.
I can pretend, for one moment, what it would be like to be seen as a normal, boring woman who just stepped into an establishment oddly obsessed with bones.
Who I might’ve become if I hadn’t fallen eight years ago.
At the time, I wanted to become a radiologist at the local hospital.
I wanted to do ultrasounds on pregnant people and see their happy faces when I told them the baby’s sex, or how wiggly and cute their baby looked that day.
I had planned on marrying Ramón and having a family of my own.
I imagined getting together with my sisters and watching the little cousins all play while we sipped margaritas or some equally fancy-sounding alcoholic beverage to my teen mind.
Teal was the only one of us who didn’t want kids. Sage and I have always wanted them.
I smile, thinking of little Oak and all the rolls on his chubby little legs. I need to see him and Sage this weekend. Maybe I’ll surprise her and bring something good to eat, and maybe the buffer of food will stop more weird suggestions from Sage, too.
By the time I’m done with these internal musings, I realize that everyone is either directly staring at me with scowls on their faces, or they are trying and failing to pretend not to notice me.
I close my eyes briefly and scan the room once more.
Anise waves her hand at me from the way, way back.
Good. Maybe in the shadows, people will forget I’m here.
First, I order a blueberry-flavored beer at the bar, which makes the men next to me laugh and laugh about “girly drinks.” The bartender, a gorgeous woman with Swati on her name tag and intricate tattoos going up and down her arms, yells, “Shut up, assholes,” at them as she hands me my frosty glass.
I keep my eyes down as I make my way toward Anise, who is drinking a martini with extra olives. She hands me a menu. “Want to share the loaded chips?”
I glance down the long list of appetizers. It doesn’t hit me how hungry I am until I realize that literally everything looks good, from the garlic Parmesan tater tots to the deep-fried mac and cheese balls. “I didn’t realize they updated the menu so much.”
“Oh yeah, they expanded it months ago. They got a new chef and everything.” Anise laughs. “It even made the news. Where have you been?”
I try hard to make my laugh as lighthearted-sounding as hers.
Where have I been? One of two places: the dusty basement of our work building, and my bedroom—the upstairs attic room Sage occupied until she moved in with Tenn.
That’s it. That’s where I have been. Either below the ground, surrounded by old creaking bones and the old creaking earth, or way above, looking down at the cliff jutting right up toward the back of Nadia’s two-story home like a sea-sharpened claw. And that’s how I like it.
“Let’s get the chips,” I say instead of answering the question.
Luckily Anise doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she pretends otherwise.
We begin with awkward small talk about work.
Well, it’s awkward on my end. Anise is warm and friendly as usual, updating me about the ongoing feud she has with the FedEx guy (the man keeps leaving packages in the muddy grass, and Anise has been printing progressively more passive-aggressive signs to direct him to the nearest dry concrete spot by the door).
She never seems to question each word and sentence before saying it, like I do.
Because of that, small talk is exhausting for me, and so when the chips arrive, I focus mostly on eating and listening.
And eventually, I realize…this whole outing is…
actually fine. I didn’t need to have a panic attack on the way here after all.
I genuinely laugh a few times with her, rare for me since I’m so hypervigilant in public, and I’m smiling as we make our way toward the front door after we finish our meal and pay.
I wonder if this kind of connection would be possible not just with Anise, but the whole town. Or at least, like, half the town would be amazing. Maybe a whole bunch of people will forget they hate me, eventually. Maybe—
“Hey! Hey, Bird Girl!” a ruddy-faced, sloppily dressed man calls to me as I pass his table. “You gonna call your little birdy friends to scare me away?”
“What the hell?” Anise mutters. She places her hand at my forearm and we increase our speed toward the front door.
“Well, guess what? It’s not going to work.” The man lowers his voice, both in volume and tone. “I will strangle each and every one.”