Knox
“Hey, I forgot I wanted to get some—” I grab Sylvie’s upper arm so quickly she startles, turn her around, and start leading her back inside the store. I’m afraid I’m being too rough but even more afraid of Dawn seeing me.
“’Munk?” Dawn calls after me. “Dude, ’Munk! What happened to your arm?” At her side is a guy I don’t recognize. He’s skinny with white-guy dreadlocks, a predatory stare, and a tattoo of a spider on a spiderweb entirely covering his throat.
I pretend not to hear her and keep leading Sylvie inside.
Dawn calls after us. “Your mom is gonna freak when she finds out you’re here.
She was pissed when you left.” She sounds gleeful at my obvious distress but doesn’t seem to even remember Sylvie.
She doesn’t follow us inside the store. If I had to guess, it’s because some Walmart loss prevention associate circulated her photo to every location in America and told her she’s not ever welcome in a Walmart again and if she sets foot inside, they’re having her jailed.
We get deep inside, by the fishing gear.
“Hey.” Sylvie wriggles from my grasp, eyes ardent. “What’s going on?”
“Yeah, that girl seemed pretty nuts.”
“Don’t gaslight me, Knox. I know who she was. And she acted like she knew you. Why? How does she know to call you ’Munk?”
I’m still searching for some explanation while the blood drains from Sylvie’s face. “Sylvie,” I say quietly. My face burns as shoppers rubberneck, surreptitiously raising phones, probably to film what looks like a lover’s spat by the stink bait. “Can we talk about it outside?”
“Where she is?”
“Where all these people aren’t.”
Sylvie exhales angrily and speedwalks toward the store’s entrance, and I struggle to keep pace. She stops short at the doors. “Go out and make sure she’s gone. I’m not leaving if she’s out there.”
I obey and report back. “No sign of Dawn.”
“‘Dawn’ is her name?”
“It’s how I knew her. It probably isn’t her real name.”
“Very cool, that company you kept. All using bogus names.” Sylvie shakes her head and makes for the van, eyes fixed to the ground. She climbs in and slams the door. “I’m surprised she didn’t steal my whole van and Winslow too while we were in the store. The windows were down.”
I get in and sit beside her. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“Oh you don’t say.”
“You’re right to be angry. I deserve it.”
“Well, thank you for that permission.”
“Can I explain?”
“I don’t know, ’Munk, can you? And I’m not saying that like how your English teacher says ‘I don’t know, can you use the bathroom?
’ I legitimately cannot imagine any explanation for why you would sit there and listen to me relate what was pretty obviously a traumatic experience and keep totally silent about your very close connection to said experience.
And then you let me find out like that?”
“I’m—”
“What is your name, even? Knox? ’Munk? None of the above?”
“It’s Knox. That’s my real name.”
Sylvie laughs a cold and bitter laugh. “See, how can I even believe that? How can I believe anything you tell me ever from now on?”