“It’s true!” I protested, shaking my head. “Normally they’re fine. Last night, not so much. But I’ve got to go places today. I can’t look like this.”
“Well, that last part at least is the truth.” Still, she stopped with the questions. Instead, she grabbed a couple of bottles, one that was clearly baby oil, another some kind of makeup remover. A few minutes later, she, too, gave up. “That’s about as good as it’s going to get in terms of removal,” she decided, peering at me. “Your facial skin doesn’t exfoliate as quickly.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m going to put some cover-up on you, and I’m also giving you some to take with you.” She held up a bottle of goop and a little flat disk filled with, I suspected, more goop. “As long as you don’t sweat or rub your face a lot, the primer will hold the makeup on. The sponge applicator is what you should use, not your fingers, nothing with heat.”
She pressed her lips together in a thin line as she worked on me, and I felt a curious fight going on inside me.
Other than Mordechai, I’d never had a friend. Other than Mordechai, I’d never needed a friend. Setting aside the fact that I waspossessed, so it was already pretty crowded in my corner of the room, I wondered, for what felt like the first time ever, what it would be like to have someone else standing with me.
Claire and I were nowhere close to being alike, but in another lifetime, in another place, we theoretically could have been friends. Or at least friend-adjacent. Friendly.
But even as I thought all that, I heard myself rejecting it as well. Rejecting it with anger, too much anger. I was possessed! And I didn’t even know when it had happened—recently? Five years ago? Ten?
Had Mordechai known?
He had to have known.
“You going into work today?” Claire asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I squinted at her. “No. I can’t do that, looking like this. I’d get fired.”
“Doubtful, but okay.” A smile ghosted over her features as she sat back from me again, nodding. She didn’t meet my eyes, but her gaze remained on my forehead as her throat worked, the words looking stuck behind her slender gold cross. I was about to say something rude when she finally spit it out.
“Would you mind—um, can I program a second number into your phone? So you can reach me if I don’t answer the first one? You know, if you need me again?”
That made me blink. “I texted you this morning. I don’t text that many people. That number’s now in my phone.”
“I would feel better, though. I worry. Do you mind? You can check out your face while I do it…”
“I—sure.” I gave her my phone. She handed over the mirror, and I watched my own eyes bug out. “Whoa,” I said, admiring my reflection. “You did a really good job!”
“Oh my God, this phone is old,” Claire breathed, holding it like an ancient artifact. “And I cannot believe you have Find My Friends on this—you!” she giggled, and I grimaced.
“My mom put that on my phone. She died.”
That shut her up, but I didn’t have the heart to say anything else—that the ancient phone was also a sort of shrine to everything that was Mom, that I was afraid of upgrading and letting yet another piece of me fall away. Stupid shit that no one needed to know, and that I didn’t need to think about, not anymore.
I returned my focus to Claire’s makeup job, so thoroughly impressed that I didn’t mind her keying in her digits as I added a little more powder to my forehead and roughed my bangs up. This would work well enough. This would totally work well enough for what I needed.
Still, Claire didn’t let me out of her tiny office without a goody bag of something she called “spa-ceuticals”, and strict instructions to look into every mirror I passed for the next five hours to make sure nothing slipped in the heat of the day. I threw the bag onto the passenger seat, hunching a little as I started Steve’s car, then bouncing out onto the street. I pulled over a half-block away and checked myself in the rear-view mirror. I’d been right. With my bangs over my forehead and as long as I kept moving, it totally worked.
I headed for the bank.
Cashing a $10,000 check was not the easiest thing you might imagine. Max, in his wisdom, hadn’t given me a check-check, but a cashier’s check, which helped, but not a lot. I still had to have a long conversation with a nervous bank manager, who only relented when I gave him Max’s number, which he called.
The sound of Max’s voice, even over the phone, was like a blade sliding between my ribs. My heart twisted in what was, for once, not my fuckhead entity squatting on my guts but my own, honest to God feelings. That was progress, anyway.
Max hadn’t responded to my final text the previous night. The fact that he even picked up the phone when the banker called him was cause for an intense wave of relief. I didn’t want to set up a bank account, so we settled on a safe deposit box. I put the cash in that, minus a few hundred dollars because I’d never had that much money on my person at once before.
Then I headed to the library.
Ultimately, typing Rabbi Mordechai’s fake report proved very straightforward. The Graham family was a God-fearing (if Protestant) group of souls afflicted by multiple levels of demon attack, from infestation to full-on possession. I completely embellished the situation with the older sister, because I knew there had to be more going on with that, especially with good ol’ ex-boyfriend Joe Bell still lurking around. Max seemed as yet unafflicted but given that every other person in his household was affected by the infestation to some degree, it was only a matter of time.
By the time I was done, I’d definitely convinced myself that the Grahams were in some deeply disturbing trouble, so I was hopeful I’d convince whoever read this report. I printed out three copies from the library’s machines and signed them all with Rabbi Mordechai’s scratchy scrawl. I went to the UPS store and scanned a copy for Max as well. He could mail all these off to whoever he wanted and be well on his way to the exorcism he so seriously needed. I’d done everything I’d told him I would do.
It wasn’t remotely enough.
