Chapter Six #4
I stole the slippers. Even tucked away in my bag now, they call to me, enticing me. But they’re not really mine, and neither is the glory they’re bringing me. I already know my poster will hang out front soon enough. Already know that wasn’t my last standing ovation.
I don’t deserve it, any of it.
That feeling from when I left Bricksbee’s returns, dotting chills up and down my skin. Like someone is watching me.
Sélie waits on the stoop of the sweet shop, waving me in.
Flustered, I take the steps quickly and follow her inside.
The air is yeasty and sweet, like fried donuts.
In the display case, miniature cookies and pastel petit fours are lined up neatly in rows, just like we do with the compacts at our store.
Then there’s the famous dense chocolate cakes rumored to make you relive your first kiss, taking center stage in the display case, dripping with shining ganache.
I’ve never had one, in all these years. I’ve resisted out of sheer, practical protest.
“I’d like a sugar twist, please,” Sélie says, smiling at the girl behind the counter.
“And for you?” the girl asks me.
I answer without meaning to, “I’ll take a chocolate cake. With the ganache.”
Sélie looks at me in surprise, while the shopgirl gives me a knowing smile and places each of our treats in a paper bag.
I pay for our purchase, and as soon as we leave the sweet shop, Sélie bites into her twist, closing her eyes in pleasure, scrunching up her pert little nose, some of the sugar dusting her lip.
“Mmm. That’s so good. Aren’t you going to eat yours? ”
Why did I pick a kiss cake now? Perhaps to prove to myself that it’s still ridiculous. All of it. That there’s no such thing as the fantastical. No such thing as magic.
As demons.
I take the cake out of the bag, feeling the delicate weight of it, noting the fluted edges, the shining ganache, the rich and bitter scent of dark chocolate. Though my stomach turns, I bite into it as we walk.
And there it is: Wil the sailor, pulling me forward by the hand, coy smile on his face, dipping down to kiss me.
As if it were yesterday, the memory comes to me: the pressure of his laughing lips, the swirl of his tongue on mine, the flutter in my middle, the longing, the rush of it.
Once again, for just a moment, I am sixteen.
“Well?” Sélie pokes me. “Anything?”
The chocolate sits like mud in my mouth. I swallow. The memory fades.
“Nothing,” I say, dropping the dessert back in the bag. As we walk, I glimpse Marieta on the butcher stoop, chatting with two women who lean over her. I skip past as quickly as I can without arousing suspicion. She might see right through me. Might notice how rattled I am.
My sister’s face falls. “Oh well. It’s not like I have a kiss to remember.”
“Give it time,” I say absentmindedly, keeping a sharp focus on the people wandering the streets. Will I catch someone staring at me?
“I’ll be an old maid before I know it.”
“You’re only twenty,” I say. “And we don’t prescribe to that ridiculous notion.”
As we near the spot off the square where we usually turn off the town road to head home, I notice a man.
He looks out of place to me, although he’s simply standing on the corner, not walking, or talking, or doing anything at all.
And yet, fear trickles down my spine, freezes in my veins, punches me in the gut.
He doesn’t seem to notice me. Yet I can’t help but wonder, Is he the one who’s been watching me?
I hold my breath, waiting for something to happen.
It’s fine, it’s fine, I tell myself. I keep my eyes glued to him all the same.
The man turns suddenly on his heel and walks away, and that’s when I glimpse the blood, where he stood only moments ago, pooling out onto the street. A group of children kick a leather ball down the road, chasing it in giggles, and it rolls right across the puddle of blood.
“Stop!” I call out as a shrill warning before they run through the red. “Wait!”
“What?” Sélie turns to follow my gaze. “What is wrong?”
I choke back a scream as the children chase the ball, making bloody shoeprints through the street, up the sidewalk.
I bite back further warning, because it’s pointless.
I can tell by the lack of response that nobody sees anything wrong.
The man is gone, as if he were never there.
The children laugh, while blood spatters on them, dotting their pinafores and trousers with bright red.
An omen, maybe. Or a warning. It must be my imagination—all of it—including the echo of the music I danced to tonight, ringing through my brain.
Like the orchestra is inside my skull, pounding away on their instruments.
The red shoes seem to pulsate from inside my bag, begging me to put them on.
I am lightheaded as I force myself to move.
“Corliss?”
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong,” I say to my sister, over the haunting music. Nothing. Everything.
Twisting her lips, Sélie watches me in concern. She definitely knows something is wrong with me, though she doesn’t know what.
Because she doesn’t see anything. Nobody sees it but me. Nobody hears that music but me. I can hardly catch my breath.
Now, standing just ahead, coming into view as people weave around us, is a shadowy figure, face cloaked in darkness.
The figure flickers in and out of focus in the middle of the street, as people move around us, as if everything is in fast motion.
Only the two of us are in clear relief, everything else is a muddy haze.
I can’t see his hellish features, but I feel his malevolent stare.
I know who this is. I know what it is. Something roars in my mind, and I turn from the square in a violent about-face, dragging Sélie along.
“What happened? Why are we walking so fast? And why are you crying?”
I shake my head fast, willing myself to believe it was only my imagination. Not real. “I’m sorry. It’s stupid. I simply felt scared.”
“Of what?”
My fate, I want to say. Instead, I whisper, “I don’t know.”
“Corliss, tell me!” She pulls her arm out from my grip and faces me, expression stern. Beneath it is worry, clear-cut worry.
“Nothing. I…I’m sick. I must have a fever. I need to go lie down. I feel ill.”
She leads me away, and I don’t have to pretend. The sickness wells up inside me, the memory of all that blood, that…figure. Right outside our shop, I bend over and lose my chocolate cake.