It’s around five forty when I amble up, and I guess her shift starts at six because she’s idling in front of the bookstore. The sun is just low enough to bring out the blaze in her sunset streaks. She’s still wearing her pom-pom jewelry and navy sneakers, this time with faded green overalls and a black tank.
“Hi,” I say, and get a skittish glance in exchange. “Is it okay if I talk to you?”
“The Mad Roulette Rejecter. My friend Drew told me you’ve been hanging around.”
God, I love her voice. Husky and somehow violet. “Yeah,” I say. “Is it wrong that I think you look like someone I want to know?”
She looks me over. Definitely with a critical eye; such open, curious, alive hazel eyes. That huge soft mouth purses, and it carries a wallop of adorable skepticism.
“You intend that as an expression of sexual-romantic interest?”
That makes me laugh. “Sure. But, like, we could just go get burritos?”
Her mouth almost spreads into a smile, but not quite. “You do know that clueless hotties typically go for other clueless hotties, right? So your attraction to me seems like an aberration. Unless you’re looking for a girl who can magically make you more interesting. In which case. Can’t help you with that.”
At least she admits I’m good-looking. And, for all that her words sound like a dismissal, she’s still turned toward me, her wariness already vanishing. Her stance is forward, engaged. But why would she assume I’m uninteresting? All at once I’m hyperconscious of how clean-cut, new-clothes I look compared to her, with my black button-front shirt and crisp gray jeans. Basic, that’s the word for it. The stone pendant Lore gave me might shake up that impression, but it’s hidden under my clothes. I can feel the silky glide of it on my bare skin.
“I can handle clueless,” I tell her. “Coming from you. But I’m actually fascinating.”
That gets me a real, shining grin. “I don’t have time for burritos now.” Her head dips as she checks the clock on her phone. “But I’m prepared to entertain the possibility that you aren’t as boring as you look for the next ten minutes. We can walk around the block. So, what’s your deal?”
Oh, she’s her. She’s so, so, so her. The sass and the brains and the aggressive edge: all so perfectly her.
“Angus Farrow,” I tell her, picking up her blunt tone. Digressions will only annoy her at this point. “Nineteen. Recent high-school graduate, taking a gap year before college. I work as a stock boy in a warehouse near here.”
Her eyebrows twitch up at that; it’s not the job she expected me to have. Good. The more I surprise her, the better.
“Where from?”
“Clayton, Missouri. It’s a suburb of St. Louis. Dad in finance, mom in internet publishing. Self-help and wellness stuff.” It’s funny how the information pops into my mouth, even though I wasn’t conscious of it until I said it. Oh, internet publishing? Okay.
We’re rounding the corner now, heading down a block of brick apartment buildings. Her nose wrinkles. “Finance. I knew you had rich-kid stink.” A sidelong glance. “So, this warehouse job of yours. You’re just slumming?”
“Not exactly. They’ve basically disowned me.” There’s a pause as she takes that in. “My great-aunt Margo is going to help me with college, but my parents are pretty much done. Hey, am I going to get a chance to ask you anything?”
Am I trying to deflect her? There’s no reason her questions should make me uncomfortable; it’s not like I have anything to hide.
“You don’t get to ask me a single, solitary thing,” she announces. But hey, is that a hint of teasing in her voice? “Because you’ve already made the arbitrary decision that you want to know me, despite having not the slightest hint of who I am. But I have no idea if I want to know you. We’re on this walk so I can figure that out.”
“Okay,” I say. The blocks are so damned short here and we’re already rounding another corner. I get a few more minutes to seem intriguing, and then that’s it? What if I bomb?
“It sounds to me as if your childhood was rich in material things, but emotionally and imaginatively impoverished. Do I have that right?”
It seems like a reasonable guess; like, hey, I’ll buy that for a dollar! “I mean.” It takes me a moment to sort through the odds and ends of memory fluttering around my head. So many days, each one made of so many haphazard sensations and words and facts. A vast heap of disassembled limbs, with no way to ID who they originally belonged to. “Except for Margo. If it wasn’t for her, you’d be totally right.”
“Tell me about Margo.”
Margo is a better topic for me. The images that come up around my parents are sparse and patchy, like dead grass on a trampled field. Margo, though: I feel like I can access more information. Deeper information, somehow.
“Like, a lot of people assume that old ladies are stuffy or dull or whatever. Right? But Margo used to know how to get to this secret zoo—like, not the regular zoo, but one with talking pangolins and stuff? And on Christmas she wouldn’t just get me some chocolate Santa. She’d bring me rock candy with these tiny baby dragons curled up inside the crystals. It was actually kind of sad? But then I learned that if you sucked the sugar off them really carefully, instead of just biting off their heads, once in a while you’d get one that would revive. The first time it happened I got my eyebrows fried clean off my face.”
Corner.
I made the mistake of looking off at the sky while I was talking; spectacular mackerel clouds dot the blue. When I turn back her face is working through a series of expressions ranging from quizzical to indignant. Shit.
Then she cracks up laughing. For an extended period. I really wasn’t trying to be funny, and I almost say something. But no. It’s better if I just go with it.
“Okay,” she says, her voice still a little wheezy with fading laughter. “Okay. You’re on for burritos. Assuming you haven’t changed your mind.”
Wait, so I passed my not-boring audition? Relief blossoms in my chest. Especially since we’re turning our last corner, already nearly in front of the bookstore. “When?”
“Say, Saturday? I work the afternoon shift then, so I can meet you here at six.”
I’m smiling so wide my cheeks hurt, looking down into her quirky-beautiful face. “And a movie?” I say.
“Don’t push your luck,” she says, but she’s smiling back. “Sure, a movie. Something ludicrous. Either elves or explosions.”
“Exploding elves,” I assure her. “I’ll get tickets.”
“And babbling, pseudo-scientific explanations of how their detonation reverses the space-time continuum?” God. She’s actively flirting with me!
“I’m pretty sure they create tiny black holes wherever they are at the time. Like, if your spaghetti suddenly sucks into oblivion before you can eat it? Elf-blast.”
“Elf-Blast 3 it is. I heard it’s complete shit.” But now her gaze is more cautious. She’s wondering if she’s made a mistake. “I’ll see you then, Angus.”
Don’t ask for her number. Don’t hang around Bluebell’s all night. She’s letting you know this is as far as you go for now. “Can I ask your name, anyway?”
“Geneva,” she says, and I repeat it. Geneva! Glorious name.
I force myself to turn away, though all I want is to slide my hands through her lush, messy dark-and-sunset hair. I force myself to keep walking and not look back, but my consciousness sticks to her in long, gluey filaments. When she opens the door to Bluebell’s I can feel it, when she swings herself onto her stool behind the counter, when she gives the roulette wheel a morose little spin.
So what if my relationship to the past is possibly shakier than normal? I’m really, really good at detecting subtle disturbances in the present, and that seems more important.
Something inside me seems to scream with laughter at the idea. Like, Hah! Disturbances? It’s disturbances you want, pal?
Takes one to know one. If you know what I mean.