4. Megyn
CHAPTER 4
MEGYN
I perused the same newspaper page full of ads for the second time, even though there had been nothing to catch my attention for the first go and another look wouldn’t change things. I just wasn’t ready yet to talk to Maggie, as I was still mad at her for what she had done. If I talked to her, one of two things would happen. Either I’d only get angrier at her—unreasonably, true—or she would find some way to make things better between us and that would be the end of it.
A better person would naturally want to mend things, but in doing so, I would be accepting what she had done and I wasn’t ready for that.
So it was just me and the newspaper, taking another look at a host of job offers I wasn’t suited for. I wasn’t the kind of person anyone would hire to do manual labor, and I didn’t have a college degree for any of the entry-level so-called real jobs. My heart sank a little as I stopped reading the ad and started browsing through my past mistakes. Not only did I not have money to afford going to college, my dream career was one for which there were no courses and lessons.
I just have to do things the hard way, don’t I?
Without really knowing what I was doing, I put the newspaper down on the table and set my head in my hands.
Maggie glanced up from her laptop, which she had brought along to assist me in my search. “Giving up?”
“I’m not qualified for anything else.” Suddenly, I was so tired that I didn’t care what would happen. “I’m mad at you, you know.”
Maggie shut the lid of her laptop and pushed it to the side. “I know you are.”
“I told you I didn’t want your help.”
“Sure,” she agreed, voice soft, “but you needed it. Look, you’ll feel more secure now, as soon as Deacon installs it.”
The “it” in question being the deadbolt lock she’d brought with her, despite me saying I would buy one my next paycheck. She’d come right in through the door and shoved it into my hands like a Christmas present she couldn’t wait to deliver, declaring it to be overstock from a hardware shop where a friend of hers worked—meaning she’d obtained it for nearly nothing. And then she had gone on to say she invited her brother out to my house to install it, that he would be along shortly. While he did that, we could look for jobs together, as was the original plan, before going out, all three of us, as a reward for Deacon’s efforts.
She had gone and invalidated what I wanted, and she had made plans for me without first discussing them with me.
I thumped my fist on the kitchen table, gritting my teeth to restrict a hiss of pain. “I told you—”
Maggie also thumped the table, making a considerably larger sound. Her gaze snapped with an argumentativeness I could never hope to match.
I was inadequate in so many ways.
“You are my friend. Sure, maybe I could have tried to talk you into this first before going and doing it on my own. But you can be so stubborn, Megyn. I’m not going to let you argue your way into being unsafe because of your pride.”
“We wouldn’t have known this was a problem if you hadn’t busted my door down.”
Maggie got up. My heart lurched. I thought she was about to take her laptop and walk out, leaving me truly alone in this world. Instead, she walked around the table and hugged me, stroking the back of my head with her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured into my ear. “I just worry about you so much. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Her voice shook. Maggie wasn’t one to get overly emotional.
I turned in her arms and hugged her, and lay my head to hers. We stayed like tshat for a few moments. My racing heartbeat slowed, my aggravation dissipating like water spilled in a desert. I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “I’m sorry.”
I felt her smile against the top of my head. “Now that we’ve both apologized, can we put this behind us?”
“I’d prefer that,” I agreed.
“For you, me, too. You’ve got enough to deal with.” Maggie sat down in the chair next to mine, pulling her laptop over and opening it. “So, any luck with the ads?”
“I’m not qualified for anything.”
Maggie gave a sympathetic little murmur. Unlike me, she had gone to college, because art was apparently something that could be taught. She turned her screen a little to let me see. “I thought I’d look up events in the area, see if there are any job fairs you could maybe go to and make connections. There’s this…”
Her voice faded out.
“Mags?”
Her mouth opened, like she was about to speak, but it kept getting wider and wider until her jaw hung loose. Her eyes performed similarly, opening up so wide I had a brief, absurd vision of them popping out of her head and rolling across the table.
“Maggie?”
Maggie clicked on an advertisement, which brought up a page colored orange and black, the typical Halloween colors. Huge font at the top of the page read “Carter Bryant’s Halloween Bash.”
“What’s that?”
Maggie ignored the question, or maybe she didn’t hear. “Megyn, we have to go to this party! Damn, they’re trying to find a wife for Carter Bryant!”
The name rang a vague bell, more vibration than sound. “Who’s Carter Bryant?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Maggie swiveled to face me. “Anyway, the most important part is that Brian Holt will be there. I’m totally going and you have to come with me!”
“Who’s Brian Holt?” I asked, totally lost.
Maggie finally turned back to me. “Okay, wow. You aren’t kidding. Look, Carter Bryant is a billionaire and he’s crazy huge in the art world. He’s on the council and everything. And Brian Holt is his super-hot best friend who I totally need to meet at this party.”
“Why do I need to go with you?” I asked, more than a little baffled. I hadn’t seen Maggie fangirl this hard over anything for as long as I’d known her.
“Um, because I need you to be my hype man. And maybe you can meet someone there, too.”
“What kind of party is it?”
“A boy-girl party.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Okay,” Maggie said. “It’s a costume party.”
“And it’s…” I checked the date. “Mags, are you kidding? This is Saturday. How am I going to get a costume ready in just two days?”
“You could just wear some cat ears on a headband like a lot of people probably will, just so they can get in. Or we can go shopping.”
“And I’ll miraculously be able to afford something.”
“Well, window-shopping is free, so… lots of stores will be trying to get rid of their extra stock, so we could find you something cheap. And if push comes to shove, well, there’s always thrift stores.”
I considered what she’d said. I did like going to pawn shops and the like to check everything out, since the collections were always so eclectic. Maybe I’d find something I could work with. “Okay. Let’s go. But I’m only doing this because you apparently have such a huge crush on this Brian guy.”
“He used to be a lawyer,” Maggie informed me, as if that explained everything. She smiled wide and bounced to her feet, grabbing my hand and dragging me along behind her all the way to the front door. “I’ll go get the car warmed up.”
“Geez, slow down. All I need to do is put my shoes on!”
Undeterred, no doubt incapable of noticing anything past the stars in her eyes, Maggie grabbed my front door and threw it open.
Standing on the other side of the door, fist raised to knock, was a tall and skeletal young man with long blonde hair and curly golden stubble on his neck in the imitation of a beard. He jumped back and clamped his hand to his thin chest. “Jesus, Mags.”
Deacon.
I’d forgotten all about him. It looked like shopping for a costume would have to wait, though if we did put it off, it would probably never get done at all, since that would leave only one day until the party.
Maggie continued to be undeterred. She grabbed her brother by the shoulder and pulled him inside my house.
Deacon looked at me with something like a mixture of fear and admiration. “Uh, hi, Megyn. Nice to see you.”
I smiled at him.
“Okay.” Maggie clapped her hands. “No time to chitchat. Deacon, plans have changed.”
He furrowed his wispy eyebrows. “You’re not telling me I came out here all the way for nothing, are you?”
“On the contrary. Everything’s still going to happen, just in a different order.”
Deacon shot me a confused look. I lifted my shoulders in a slight shrug, telling him I didn’t have a clue about what was going on, either.
“Megyn and I stumbled across a sudden errand we need to take care of. You can still take care of the deadbolt. Megyn doesn’t mind if you stick around. Do you, Megyn?”
“Uh…” I thought about my dumpy little house, its contents. Nothing worth stealing, especially for a guy like Deacon, who had in the past made his opinions of my ancient television known. And I trusted him. He wasn’t the type to steal. And even if he was, well, I’d know right away who was to blame and Maggie would kick his ass six ways from Sunday. “No, I don’t mind. You can watch TV or help yourself to a soda from the fridge, if you want.”
“Cool,” Deacon said.
“Megyn and I will bring back a pizza like we promised. So, it’d behoove you to stick around.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Deacon agreed, waving his hand at Maggie to brush her aside. “I got a book in the car I can read. Just, what’s so important you suddenly have to leave?”
“None of your business,” Maggie said.
I smiled a little and decided to make this whole thing a bit more fun for me, since I had been dragged into it against my will. “We’re going to look for costumes so Maggie can go to this party and see a guy she has a crush on.”
Deacon’s wide lips curved in a huge grin. Now he had ammunition against his sister, who always did her best to seem invincible.
Maggie flushed and snatched my hand, yanking me through the doorway. “Deadbolt’s on the back of the couch,” she yelled over her shoulder.
Deacon’s laughter followed us all the way to Maggie’s car.
Maggie stepped on the gas, scowling at me from out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t believe you! Now he won’t stop until Christmas.”
“Why Christmas?”
“Family dinners give him a lot more people to focus on. He usually finds the most drunk relative and digs into them.” Maggie shook her head and kept driving, taking us from Staten Island to Brooklyn by way of a massive suspension bridge, the Verrazzano-Narrows.
I didn’t say much else on the ride, thinking about family dinners and holidays. My dad and Crystal had come back home for a single visit in the time since they had been gone, for Thanksgiving a few years ago. I had done my best to make a good meal and furnished the house in handmade decorations. Crystal had spent the entire time complaining about how much better the food was back at home, prepared by their personal chef, and called my decorations tacky.
Needless to say, I now spent all my holidays alone, usually eating leftovers from prior meals.
Maggie parked in front of a Goodwill and hopped out of the car. We went in and browsed the cluttered shelves, looking through the disorganized merchandise. There were always plenty of clothes at stores like this and we spent the better part of an hour going through the piles. Nothing really caught my eye, unfortunately. I didn’t exactly want to go to the party dressed as a hobo. That would be a bit too on the nose.
Maggie turned to me and held up a pink dress. “What if you were a princess?”
“Maggie, be serious.”
“I am serious, Megyn.” She held the dress in front of me, laying the bodice against my abdomen. Too small. “It would be easy. And cheap. A nice dress, maybe with some modifications. We can get you some gloves to wear. I’m pretty sure I saw some in a pile awhile back. Put your hair up, wear a tiara…”
She made it sound so simple I actually agreed with her. All of these dresses, hung so carelessly on clothing racks at the rear of the Goodwill, did seem to have seen better days, but I had plenty of sewing skills I could put to use.
Maybe having something to work on between shifts will make me feel better.
Unfortunately, my options were a little more limited than I had expected them to be. The only dress that actually fit me was one in a soft blue color, very old and faded.
“We can look somewhere else,” Maggie suggested. “No one will come along and steal this one in the meantime, I’m sure.”
I stroked the long skirt of the dress and suddenly knew it was meant for me. I could already envision the changes I’d make to it. “No. It’s this one.”
“Okay! Let’s look for accessories.”
We picked up a few accessories and I paid for all of it on my own, despite Maggie’s offer to help. Everything was just cheap enough not to break the bank.
We picked up a pizza to take back to Deacon and we all had a nice, if somewhat awkward time eating. Deacon and Maggie departed soon after, driving off one after the other, leaving me alone with the two bags full of my purchases.
I got up and lifted the dress from the plastic grocery bag the clerk had shoved it in, studying it, reaffirming my plans. I took it to the spare bedroom, the one that used to belong to my parents, where I always did my sewing, and got to work.