Chapter 7 #3
The person on the stool flashes me a half smile when I glance at them.
“I’m Arden. You’re replacing me.” The graphite pencil they were sketching with is now stuck behind their ear.
They have sun-kissed white skin, wide brown eyes, and short, messy blond hair with tips dyed an icy blue.
There’s a small hoop piercing in their right eyebrow, and their round face has this permanent expression of mischief.
They’re wearing cutoff denim shorts and a black cropped T-shirt with Kermit the Frog dressed like Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror on the front.
The leather messenger bag propped next to them on the desk has a big pin that reads they/them.
“Oh shit—” I cough to try to mask my NSFW language. “I mean, shoot. I’m sorry.” I kind of want to tunnel into the ground now. This person must hate me. They probably need this job. Maybe I should turn it down. Maybe I should—
Arden seems to spot panic in my face because they quickly keep talking. “I didn’t get fired or anything. I’m trying to graduate a year early, so I’m taking a full load of summer courses at RC.”
I’m assuming that’s Rehoboth College, but I’m not going to make myself look even more clueless by asking. “Cool,” I say instead.
Loretta excuses herself to grab my paperwork, leaving me lingering at the desk.
My eyes drift to Arden’s sketch pad. They’ve drawn an almost exact copy of the full book cart tucked against the wall beside the elevator. “Wow, that’s incredible.” The words spill out of my mouth before I can stop them.
With a sigh, Arden leans back and surveys their work. “You think?” Their head tilts to the side. “It’s…I don’t know…boring, no? Still lifes really aren’t my thing. It’s a homework assignment.”
“I can’t draw a straight line, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s a masterpiece.”
“Fair enough. I’m guessing you’re not an artist, then?” they ask with a grin.
“Not really. I crochet.”
“Ah, so a textile artist.”
I shrug. “I don’t know I’d call what I do art,” I joke. No one even knows about my dolls besides my mom, Taylor, and Nadya. I’m too afraid people will make fun of me. “What about you? What’s your thing if it’s not still lifes?”
Arden sits up a little straighter. “I want to design stuff.”
“Like clothes?”
They nod. “That. And décor.” They flourish their hands at the wall across from them as if they might transform it simply by the movement. “But RC doesn’t have any kind of design degree, so I have to major in art. Which means taking yawns like Still Life Drawing.”
“Well, you’ll at least get an A.”
“Here’s hoping,” they say with a shrug. Clearly, they’re as bad as I am at taking compliments. They swivel in their stool so they’re facing me more fully, and their eyes brighten. “Oh my god. Maybe I can design you something to crochet!”
My stomach drops to the floor. Agreeing to that would mean having to show them my Great Women of History collection, and after what happened with my friends freshman year of high school…I’m not willing to be the butt of someone’s jokes again.
Arden is still staring at me expectantly.
I swallow hard. “I…uh…haven’t really made a lot of clothes.” Only like three sweaters and some hats, and they took me two bazillion years.
“Oh! Like blankets and stuff, then?”
“More like…knickknacks. Things to decorate your shelves.”
“That’s wicked cool. Do you have any pictures?” They scoot their stool a little closer to me.
Crap. I’ll look weirder if I say no. Everyone chronicles their crafts journey.
Even I have a secret social media account with my dolls on it.
“I…uh…Well, this is mostly what I do.” Reluctantly, I pull out my phone and find a picture.
I do my best not to let my hands tremble as I hand it over to Arden.
“So if you want to design a critter or a person or something, I could do that.”
Arden’s eyes scan the photos. Their silence summons sweat to my forehead and the backs of my knees.
Probably, they’re inventorying everything they’re going to mock later with their friends.
My hands do that thing again where they become rocks at my sides, and my heartbeat’s wild thump turns my stomach.
But when Arden looks up at me, there’s only awe on their face. “These are badass. Is that Queen Liz the First? Shit, look how good her dress is.”
My breath gets trapped in my lungs and for a moment I can’t get enough oxygen. When I can breathe again, I say, “It took me a good month to get that gown right.” Do they really not think my dolls are weird? Or that—by extension—I’m weird?
“That’s obvious from the detail.” Arden taps their nose with a fingernail painted deep purple with a chrome overlay. “If I come up with something, you’d really make it for me?”
I nod. The tension in my body loosens and it feels like I’ve taken off a shirt that was too tight.
Loretta reappears with my paperwork before we can say much more. “Let’s give you a little tour and talk hours,” she says.
I wave at Arden.
“I’ll see you next week for your first shift.”
I narrow my eyes. “I thought you didn’t work here anymore?”
“I don’t. I just basically live here now. It’s so much quieter than RC’s library.”
Loretta leads me toward the stacks. “We call Arden our resident ghost,” she jokes.
Apparently everything in Harlow’s Rest is haunted.