Grief was an ocean inside her, a bruise on her heart, and as Holt had told her, to poke it ached. She never knew where the poke might come from — the same woodsmoke smell from her neighbor’s yard that comforted her as she slept had made her nearly choke on her tears as she sat cross-legged on the chair beside her alleged front door one evening, remembering the times she had assisted her father in the forge.Someday these memories will make you smile.
An oldies song they had always sung together at the top of their lungs whenever it came on in the car had forced her into the grocery store’s parking lot, basket abandoned on the floor of the frozen aisle, her shoulders heaving.You’re going to sing this same song with your kid or with Morgan’s kids someday, and you can tell them that you used to sing it with their grandfather.The bruise ached as bruises were wont to do, but grief, she reminded herself, was a gift, and her heart was a resilient thing.
“You okay?”
The girl had been leaning on the side of an older model car that had seen better days a decade earlier in the Food Gryphon parking lot, barely able to hold the butt of the cigarette she was smoking down to her fingertips. She looked to be Harper’s age, perhaps a few years older. She wore a fishnet top beneath a black tank, a frayed smoke-colored denim skirt, and thick soled combat boots. Her eyes were heavily lined in black; her hair dyed the same, with the exception of her thick, candy apple red bangs. The overall effect was haphazard, but Harper appreciated the efforts of a fellow goth, no matter how on point.
She nodded after a moment, sucking in a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Thanks. Real life got a little too real there for a second.” The girl nodded as if she understood, and perhaps, Harper considered, she did. “I love your bag. Did you get it around here somewhere?” The black tote was embroidered with the phases of the moon in luminous silver, and beneath it was a spray of soft green Luna moths.
“I made it.” The girl fished in the bag with her free hand, coming up with a card that she passed to Harper a moment later.The Black Veil ~ Occultist Artistry.She looked up in surprise.
“Are you from the coven?”
One last pull from the cigarette, the butt deposited in the empty water bottle on her dashboard. “Nope. Should I be?”
“Yeah,” she chuckled, eyeing the glyphs on the card. “Probably. Well, hold that thought. I’m not from the coven, they kicked me out. But I guess a new one is starting soon? I can give you a call when it does.”
The girl smiled, and looked at least a decade younger when she did. “Nice. I’ll definitely check it out, especially if it’s the misfits club. For a weird town, there aren’t nearly enough weirdos around.”
“Agreed. I’m Harper, by the way.”
“Lex. I guess I need to head in there. Wish me luck, there’s usually a panic attack waiting somewhere around the cereal aisle.”
“Good luck. Don’t let real life get too real.”
“Yeah, you too,” the girl laughed as she pushed off the car, making for the automatic doors.
Grief was a bruise on her heart, but her heart was still capable of doing other things.
Depression, on the other hand . . . depression lied. Depression was that little lizard voice at the back of her consciousness that was always quick to cut her down and remind her of her shortcomings. Depression was losing half a week to her bed, believing the hateful, poisonous things Ilea said, that she wasn’t a good enough witch, a good enough sister, a good enough daughter.
Depression was a blanket that cocooned her, but when the melancholy passed, it left her body writhing like an exposed nerve, and she was desperate to be fucked. Fucked and licked and fucked again, held down and used, over and over until she was exhausted and sated and finally felt as though she was not going to go mad from her inability to sit still.
Her body was like a live wire as she stared in shock at the cards that day in the tearoom, and she was unable to sit still without unconsciously canting her hips, seeking the friction she desperately needed. Harper stared down at the blissed-out look on the illustrated woman’s face, the lips of her sex parting for the head of her toy, and she wondered if she ought to go home and do the exact same thing, putting distance between herself and the sinuous shadows.
“How is our divination study going today?”
She jumped, blood draining from her face as she squirmed in her seat. They never made any sound on their approach, but normally Harper was able to discern a brief ripple of movement through the shadows that denoted their approach. Not today, clearly. Not when she was so distracted.
“It’s, um, it’s” — she swallowed hard, willing herself to control — “going well?”
Beside her, Azathé huffed. “I see you have found one of the erotic decks.”
“I did. It’s quite . . . instructional.”
They harrumphed again, and she squirmed “What are you reading today?”
“I’m not really reading anything,” Harper shrugged. “I tried picking something at home, but nothing looked good. And there are too many choices here. I was just going to study the cards. I pulled a few books with new spreads that I haven’t tried yet, but I don’t know how much work I’m going to get done. I guess I’m a bit distracted today.”
The shadows rustled beside her, and for the briefest moment, Harper was certain they were about to pull into a physical form.
“Too many choices seem preferable to too few, does it not? A wide selection of choices is what light walkers prefer, I thought? Why, just look at our menu, we have more than a hundred different looseleaf options that you might pick from —“
“Yeah, and it’s about eighty-five too many on some days. At least for me. You’re right, a lot of people love having a big selection to pick from, no matter what it is — books, tea, brands of crackers, the exact same flavor of soda from eight different brands. I’m not one of them, though. Too many choices are overwhelming.”
They were flummoxed. The little noises of offense coming from the corner were like bursts of electricity across her skin, crinkled paper and a staticky radio. “But — but that doesn’t make any —“
“It doesn’t need to make sense to you. That’s just how I am. Some people like choices. I like being told what to do. Pin me down and take all my choices from me, that sounds like a perfect afternoon.”
