And even if it hadn’t been, she was in no position to assess something like this. She’d never experienced anything like it. Everything about it was probably perfectly normal for casual acquaintances, and her simultaneously romance-starved and romance-addled brain was just turning it into something it wasn’t.
Calm down, she ordered herself.Remember what happens whenyou start fantasizing about things.You end up thinking weird stuff, like writing stories is making creatures crawl out of your walls and the telephone that doesn’t work on the wall talks to you. And what happens then? Your dad decides you need to spend some time in the hospital.
And, true, her dad had been an asshole to do that.
She knew he had been an asshole, thanks to her mother apologizing for it after the divorce.
And the years of therapy, of course. The years of rebuilding her self-worth.
But even so, she remained wary of reading too much into things, or going on any wild flights of fancy.Just in case, she always told herself, whenever she let her imagination run riot, or went to pick up a pen to write anything more than a grocery list down. And not just because of the scarier consequences.
It also made her zone out.
“Hey, kid, you okay?” he said, through the fog she’d descended into. And for just a second, even this seemed familiar in that disturbing old way. She remembered picking up the receiver on that clunky phone, left behind by the family before them. An antique almost, heavy as anything and the color of bubble gum.
Sure, down to her bones, that she had heard it ring.
Then even surer that some voice spoke to her over a crackling and hard-to-hear line.You don’t have to be afraid, I won’t let anything hurt you. I’m always here even if I can never be more than your guardian, someone had said. Though of course she knew now they hadn’t really. And not just because it was mad to believe a broken phone could suddenly work.
Nobody had even known, then, that she was terrified of nonexistent monsters.
Nor would they have had any desire to save her, if they had. It was all just nonsense, and anyway, she was normal now.Tell himyou’re normal, she told herself. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m totally fine,” she said, with a laugh she’d practiced and perfected over the years. People always let it go when you let yourself seem happy.
Only he didn’t, exactly. He didn’t even seem embarrassed to have asked.
“Because for a second there, you looked a little out of it,” he said, as grave as the first time. Like he took this very seriously. Like if she told him all about what she’d been thinking, he’d say,Well, you just tell me if those imaginary monsters come back, okay? I’ll look out for you, like the spooky ghost phone voice said.And that idea was so compelling, she had to actually shake it off.
“I guess I just… I mean, that was kind of a lot to deal with.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Of course it was. Ofcourse. How didn’t I get that?” He slapped his forehead. Started to stand and sort of back away. “I should get out of your hair so you can rest, and eat, and get back to normal. Maybe feed that little dog of yours, because I’m pretty sure I can hear him whining upstairs.”
“He’s fine, he has a feeder. You really don’t need to go.”
“Sure I do. You’re all set now.”
“But I haven’t even gotten your books yet.”
That got him. She saw him freeze and redden a little.
But his eyes flashed wide and eager at the same time.
And it took him a second to shake that off.
“You can’t be hobbling around, looking for stuff for me.”
“All right, so I’ll point and you can get them.”
He chuffed. “And risk me messing up your neat-as-a-pin store?”
“I don’t think you’re going to do that. Nothing got knocked over last time.”
“Yeah, but you need to realize how much effort that took,” he said, with a pretty healthy dollop of rueful weariness. “Every time I turned around I thought I was going to obliterate a fancy lampwith my enormous butt. Or somehow crush a paperback in one massive meat hook.”
“You saymeat hookandenormouslike they’re bad things.”
“And by that you mean you somehow think they’re not.”
Careful, Nancy, she thought. “I mean that most women like me wouldn’t. They would just see that you’re big and solid, and probably enjoy that. And especially when they realize that you’re also good at scooping people out of wrecked cars and bandaging legs.”
