She’s so endearing. So thoughtful and generous and beautiful . . . I mean, so what if she just so happens to be able to control spiders and curse obnoxious teenagers? So what if she dabbles in some dark magic and is over a hundred years old? I like her, and she likes me. She’s my friend.
It’s hard to make new friends, especially as you get older.
I need her.
“You could sleep over again, of course. If you like.”
I flash back to the guest room, to the way the bed canopy sagged under the weight of something. To the face in the mirror.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything,” she says. “I’m an open book.”
“Is your house haunted?”
She sets the cake down on the coffee table and reaches for the bottle of rum.
“No,” she says. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what the rules are.”
“Rules?”
“Like, if you can make spiders do stuff . . . if you’re . . . different, what else is different? What else don’t I know about?”
She tilts her head to the side, confused. “I’m not sure what you mean, darling.”
“Are there ghosts? Vampires? Werewolves? Like, what else is out there?”
She takes a swig of rum and pats me on the leg. “You have nothing to fear.”
“Sophie,” I say, “that doesn’t answer my question.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” she asks, passing me the bottle. “Trust me.”
“So your house isn’t haunted?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay.”
“It’s just old.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You would know, right?”
“Yes,” she says. “Of course.”
“Okay. Cool.”
“Cool.”
I give her back the bottle and pick up the cake. I take two bites in quick succession.
“Is there anything else, pet? Anything else you’d like to ask me?”
“Umm . . . not at the moment,” I say.
“You’re a very accepting person, Annie,” she says. “I appreciate that about you.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s good for me, especially considering . . . But I do worry with other people. I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“I wonder about how much you’ve accepted that maybe you shouldn’t have. What you may still be accepting.”
I finish the cake and slide off of the couch onto the floor. The rum has gone to my head.
I don’t feel good.
“More specifically, I mean with Sam,” she says. “You told me what he said to you, but what did you say back to him? You should have told him to fuck right off.”
“Should I have cursed him?”
She looks wounded. I’ve hurt her feelings.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That sounded mean. It was meant to be a joke.”
She sighs and begins to examine her nails. They’re painted black. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”
“I’m not going to curse my ex-boyfriend. Sam is fine. Everyone can be a jerk sometimes.”
“All right,” she says, “I’ll leave it alone. For tonight. I’ve put you through enough, though I did bring cake. And liquor.”
“You did.”
“Does that even things out?”
“Sure.”
She laughs. “I’m convinced!”
Maybe it’s the rum, or maybe it’s the truth, but right now all I can think about is how much I love her. She’s my lifeline. I don’t have a single other person whom I can confide in, who cares for me the way that I know she does. She has my back.
I don’t know why. Why she wants to be friends with me, hang out with me. I’m not special. I’ve always been realistic about who I am, about my perfectly average, unexceptional trajectory. I’ve always been fine with it.
But as she moves her fingers through my hair from behind me on the couch, humming some tune I can’t identify, I wonder if maybe I am special, and it only took someone else special to point it out to me.
“I should go, pet. Let you sleep,” she says. “Shall we meet at the market tomorrow? Around eleven?”
“Mm. Yeah,” I say.
She’s carrying me. She’s carrying me to bed.
I don’t know how. I’m taller than her. I’m all limbs. I’m heavy.