Emma is gonna be so annoyed when she gets my text. I don’t think Bigfoot lives in Lawrence County, Ohio. But if he does and he’s got a hankering for girl-adjacent flesh, it never hurts to be safe.
Last night, Emma’s face got all screwed up like she’d just sucked a spoiled lemon when I told her Ellis’s offer.
We’d been sitting on her couch. There was some horrible movie on the TV, and Ripley had her head on my lap. When she motioned with her hand, her beer almost sloshed out of the clear glass she’d poured it into.
“I’m glad you get to keep your job. It also sounds like he knows you’re desperate and won’t complain when he gives you shit work. Do you get commission on these projects?”
“They’re pro bono,” I say. “And I’m not at that level yet.”
“Uh-huh. So you don’t get paidandyour chances of being axe-murdered go up significantly? I don’t know, Lou.”
Explaining that the potential danger of trusting Ellis’s word is nothing compared to the danger of losing this job feels too big. There’s notimeto find something else. I couldn’t go from square one in some new company that wanted to start me out at entry level all over again.
Emma’s parents are upper middle class. They’ll retire when they hit sixty-five. Their lives were planned out for comfort. My mom’s life had an invisible ticking timer counting down to the day she had a medical emergency bad enough she couldn’t work anymore.
My mom didn’t have anyone else. She’dneverhad anyone else. It had to be me. If I think about it too much—about how she was born to parents who didn’t want her and into a world that took little bites out of her body and mind every single day in exchange for the ability to pay rent—I can’t move with how it weighs me down.
I had to get to a place where I could support both of us before the timer hit zero—even if it meant keeping a job that might be physically sucking my soul out through my pores.
Emma couldn’t understand, so I didn’t explain it, and then we drank until I was drunk enough to pass out on her couch. When I woke up this morning, she shoved her phone in my face. It was open to the podcast episode she’d listened to as she fell asleep, about some guy going missing years ago in vaguely the same area where I’d be.
“People go missing all the time,” I said, my throat parchedand voice rough. “Especially in, like, parks and woods and whatever.”
“That’s literally the point!”
“So, what, you’re never going camping again? ’Cause I guarantee someone died in whatever national park you pick. If you look for death you’ll find it. I’ll be careful, okay?”
She glared at me, then rolled her eyes and went back to getting ready for classes. Me sending her my location was an easy compromise so that she wouldn’t worry so much. Despite that, she still tried to insist on giving me the hide-a-key her dad had installed behind her license plate.
“For your spare in case you lose your keys in thefucking forest!”
I declined and told her I’d keep them deep in my backpack the whole time.
Ripley stands in the passenger seat, stretches, then sits back down. I crack the windows, then turn off the car and slide into the muggy heat of late-August Ohio. The inside of the car is cold as tits from the AC. Ripley should be fine for the couple minutes it takes me to pee.
Outside, the heat is an oil slick that slides over my skin to settle at the base of my spine. I blow a line of too-long bang out of my eyes, then swipe my card at the pump. I need a haircut. Or scissors. Maybe a knife.
No less than three cicadas land on my pant leg as I walk to the store. I smile vaguely at the attendant on my way to the restroom. The women’s is locked, so I slip into the men’s. If I was going to pick a gendered restroom based on something other than availability, it’d be the one made forindividuals who identify as the human-shaped approximation of a void. The Mariana Trench of people. Other people just say agender, but that’s honestly just not as accurate.
My phone starts buzzing while I’m buttoning up my jeans. I catch it just as it’s about to take a dive out of my pocket and onto the questionable floor.
“Hello?”
“Lou-Lou!” Ellis’s cheerful voice fills my ear. A smile pulls my lips up in answer.
I like my name just as it is. Modifications feel like an insult nine times out of ten. I’m not sure why, but with him it just feels like he’s trying to make me laugh.
I’m met with the glare of the man waiting outside when I open the bathroom door. His expression takes on a disgusted edge when he sees I’m not a cis man. This is when I do something I really shouldn’t: I wink.
Lou, I can hear Emma sigh.
Nice one. The goblin laughs.
He blocks my path. Looms. “You think you’re funny?”
“Yeah. Do you thinkyou’refunny?”
Red spots bloom on his cheeks. He’s wearing khaki shorts and has an assembly-line Great Clips haircut. This man looks exactly like every white middle-aged father in every sitcom that’s ever been made.
