CHAPTER ONE
In the words of Mia Wallace,I fucking love this song.I continued to walk around Hugh’sOddity Vaultwith a shit-eating grin like I was the bloody Cheshire cat.I Wonder Whyby Dion & The Bellmonts played on the old record player in the back of the store, the music filling every nook and crevice, shrouding the place in a wave of nostalgia it didn’t need. The place was already filled to the fucking brim with all manner of curious objects. From broken watches to moth-ridden sweaters to a pair of old satin, ruby shoes that, if you clicked the heels twice, you’d end up somewhere better.Somewhere far away.
I’d often wondered when I would finally get bored of wandering around the old antique store. I came in multiple times a week, and it was getting to the point where I considered Hugh, the seventy-something-year-old man who worked behind the till, one of my closest friends. I probably should have spent more time with people my own age, doing things that young twenty-year-olds did. But I was seldom interested in that, unless of course, one of my two best friends was blackmailing me under the guise of it being “good for me.”
But there was something so utterlyenticing about old shit. I just fucking loved it. And I had for as long as I could remember. From old movies to ’50s rock and roll and ’60s swing, from my prized 1979 Walkman to my hand-me-down clothes, from yellow paged books with the paper curling at the edges to my fucking grandparents,they were the best, by the way,there was nothing that made me smile more than something weathered by time.
With vintage as a general theme making a resurgence with more and more people investing in things like old film cameras and blazers with shoulder pads, I was more “on trend” than ever before. And for someone who was bullied relentlessly in high school and still suffered with the aftershock waves of social anxiety, that was becoming an increasingly difficult pill to swallow. I’d had too many internal conversations about my love of old things. I was still very much on the fence about whether it made me more interesting or simply a pretentious asshole.
As I moved about the store, I let my hand trail across the dusty shelves littered with more trinkets than space. Despite the thick, musky and slightly-off-putting-if-you-weren’t-used-to-it odour that either exuded from the mustard-coloured carpet and Hugh, who was utterly poor of hearing,The Oddity Shopwas hands down my favourite place in Darling.
Darling was the epitome of a sleepy, close-knit town in size and size alone. It had a population of around six thousand people; three-quarters of that made up their minds to settle here far too many years ago, and the rest were students attending Aldercrest University.A well-rounded, charming university,as stated on the alumni website. What it lacked in size and students, it more than made up for in sheer volume of cash. Aldercrest was designed to suit the well-off. Theextremelywell off. The kids that didn’t belong with the general population but hadn’t had the drive to push for an IvyLeague place.
Well, that was how it was for the most part. There were two types of students at Aldercrest. The flamboyantly fabulous anddisgustinglywell off…and the rest of us. Our university motto waspulvis et umbra sumus,which translated to ‘we are dust and shadow.’ I know it sounds spooky and interesting, but it wasn’t at all. It was a fucking slap in the face to the rest of us because the dean often spoke about the university pulling the rest of Darling from the wreckage of itself. From dust and debris to whatever else.
There had been a few stipulations about setting up shop in our little sleepy town, the one positioned slap bang in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. The board had to keep spaces reserved for the kids who had grown up in Darling. Our fees were far cheaper, although still wildly extortionate. Whatever benefits we apparently “gained” in reduced fees, we more than made up for by having to suffer alongside our rich counterparts, who saw us as nothing more than the dirt under their nails and the people they shared class with.
And I had discovered pretty early on that I was not in the business of suffering much. I knew that sadomasochism was growing in popularity but there was no amount of small talk I was willing to subject myself to in order to claim I got thereal college experience.Hence, spending every other free afternoon hanging out with Hugh. I didn’t begrudge it though. Not even a little bit.
I walked past a mirror, catching my reflection between flecks of black where the glass no longer reflected any light. God, there was no winning with curly hair.Today is an it-has-a-mind-of-its-own day.I fiddled and tugged at the loose strands, swiping at the stray wisps that had curled upward and were tickling my nose. I pulled my hair into a half-up, half-down style I always defaulted to. Especially on days like today, when my hair was far messier than expected.
Just fucking get it cut.I really ought to do it. I’d had the reminder in my calendar app and ignored it four months in a row. It was waist-length, brown, and relatively healthy as far as hair could go. But I was going broke at the sheer amount I was spending on conditioner. With tuition fees and my poorly paying bar job, my curly hair routine was a luxury that was becoming increasingly difficult to justify.
For a long moment, I just stared at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t looking at anything in particular, but sometimes it was just nice to stare. Despite being the middle of autumn and more than a little dreary outside, I looked as though I’d caught a little sun.God knows why, I don’t go outside.My cheeks were flushed, a pink hue dappling my face, just below my eyes, and pairing well with the tanned colour of my skin. I cocked my head to the side, taking in my features before making a funny face at myself the way I used to do when I was a kid. I found myself doing it a lot because frankly, what else were you meant to do when you looked in a mirror?
With my mask for the outside world well and truly reviewed, I turned and found my eyes settling on a can of out-of-date baked beans. I cringed, rearing back, thinking hard,really hard,on why anyone would donate that to the store andwhyHugh thought it would be a good idea to sell it. The can sat on a table below a framed picture of two naked cherubs fighting over a sprig of grapes.
“1952?!” I muttered to myself. “There is no fucking way anyone would…” As I turned, I found Hugh swaying to himself as he dusted off a particularly ominous-looking statue of a hand. It was adorned with black painted lettering and glyphs and other tattooed symbols that immediately piqued my interest.
“Hugh,” I mused as I sauntered over to the man whoprobably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if I put him down as an emergency contact. “What’s that?”
“Eh?”Bloody hell, old man.
“Turn your hearing aid on,” I said a little louder as I approached him.
“Hang on, Quincey,” he said as he stopped and thumbed with the little cream-coloured device curled about his ear. “Ah, that’s better. Hearing aid wasn’t on. Go figure.”
How you run a shop by yourself, I will never truly understand.I thought it was just one of those days when Hugh was in the mood to jam out to his own spectacular playlist. I really should have known better.
“Back in again? What’s this—” Hugh smiled, counting his fingers in an exaggerated fashion before looking at me again, grin inching closer and closer to his ears. “Third time in this week?”
I could feel the violent blushing of my cheeks the moment the words left his lips. He knew as well as I did how much I enjoyed avoiding the company of other people my age in favour of old, inanimate objects.
“Oh, Hugh, I couldn’t possibly imagine a better way to spend my time than here with you, in your glorious shop.”
It really should have been easier for me to make friends in Darling. This place was my home, the place where I’d grown up. Darling was everything I’d ever known, yet I still somehow felt like an outsider. The town was overrun with twenty-somethings, meaning it should have been simple. There were hundreds of people I could have been spending my time with, butIjust didn’t want to. It wasn’t that I didn’t have friends, because I did. Two, to be precise.
But I liked my company. I liked being alone. And more than that, I was content to exist in my own solitude because it meant I didn’t have to be anything more than exactly who I was.
I’d grown up with my grandparents, so for a long time, I wasn’t exposed to other young kids. I didn’t know my parents. They had died a month or so after I was born, and my grandparents had raised me ever since. I’d grown up in Darling. I was the poster child for Darling, really, if it ever decided it needed one.
Well, me and Isaac. I knew he would fight me for the title, so I’ll allocate it to both of us. Isaac has been my across-the-road-neighbour for years. His parents moved here when we were both six years old, and the rest, as they say, is history. A few awkward glances across the road, one timid wave, a box of coloured chalk, and a doodled driveway later, we were suddenly the best of friends. And we had been every day since.
I still thank my lucky stars that Isaac entered my life. He was like the brother I’d never had. Without him, growing up would have been a lot harder. Being the granddaughter of a man who worked in a mortuary meant I was at the bottom of the pecking order. They called my grandfather the ‘Grim Creeper’and used to mock me relentlessly because ‘what kind of fucked up weirdo would want to work in a morgue?’
I’d heard it all. Every mock. Every jab. Every taunting untruth that had me cowering inwards. But Isaac saw past that. He saw past all of it. And he’d decided that life was just as sweet at the bottom of the social ladder if it was me he was hanging out with. And that’s how we spent most of the last sixteen years—attached at the hip and always in each other’s company.
Esme Morgan, the blonde bombshell that she was, transferred to Darling from New York when we were in high school. She was tall and skinny, with beautiful long hair and an unbelievable smile that often had boys forgetting their names and trading their first-born child for a chance to buy her a drink. She was theCher Horowitzof Darling—thedarlingof Darling, if you will. She was the main character in everycoming-of-age film, the popular girl everyone seemed to fall in love with.
