The joke lands like a lead balloon. Donny’s expression doesn’t change, and I want to bury my face in the asphalt. Why do I always do this? Someone shows me genuine emotion, and I make it weird by trying to be funny.
“Sorry,” I say. “I never know how to respond to people saying that to me, and my mouth goes rogue sometimes.”
“I’d imagine you had a long night.” Donny hands one of the coffees to Nico, and then produces a paper bag from his leather satchel. “Could I offer you a bagel instead?”
“Actually, my dog is alone in my car, plus I’ve got some shopping to do, so I’m going to go.”
“Before I can offer you a position on my team?” Donny asks.
Everything in my head just hits pause.
Nico whirls around to glare at Donny, his jaw clenching hard enough that a muscle bulges in his cheek.
Donny’s smiling at me like he offered me a perfectly reasonable career opportunity instead of the most insane proposition I’ve ever gotten in my life.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I’m having a psychotic episode because it sounded like you offered me a job.”
“In seven years of building my team, I’ve encountered perhaps fifty people in the entire United States who could see supernatural entities without the help of tools,” Donny explains. “I offer positions to the ones I see potential in.”
“What potential could you see in me?” I ask. “All you saw me do was a good job of being strangled.”
“I watched you testify at Stanley Daniels’s trial on television,” Donny says. “You were thirteen years old, and you looked that man right in the eye and told your story without flinching. That takes extraordinary courage.”
The parking lot tilts. I can feel the courtroom pressing in around me—the wood paneling—the harsh overhead lights—Stanley Daniels’s eyes drilling into me from the defense table. He went on to kill five more women after my family. I was his only surviving victim. My hands shook so much I had to sit on them, but I told the jury everything because that fucker had hung my baby sister with her unicorn bed sheet, and Dad would’ve wanted me to be brave.
I remember searching his face for anything that would explain why. Why choose my family when he only killed women afterwards?Why kill my nine-year-old sister and try to kill thirteen-year-old me when all of his other victims wereolder?
Stanley Daniels is rotting in a maximum-security prison now, but there was something so angry in his eyes when he beheld me up on the stand, something that said he wasn’t done with me, even from behind bars.
I guess it was a very public trial, so it’s not weird that Donny watched it.
It takes me a couple of seconds to figure out what to say. “The trial was a long time ago.”
“Bravery doesn’t have an expiration date,” Donny says. “You survived something that should have destroyed you, and you didn’t let fear win. That’s the kind of person I need on my team.”
He’s wrong. I’m not brave. I just feel too guilty to give up. But the words stick in my throat, all tangled up with everything else I’ve never admitted out loud.
Besides, I barely made it through last night. How am I supposed to do that on purpose? Every day?
“I appreciate the offer,” I manage, “but I already have a job.”
Donny nods like he expected this answer. “I understand.”
I give him a nod and turn to leave, but I only make it a step toward Walmart before Donny says:
“We would provide housing.”
I whirl around, narrowing my eyes at his friendly grandpa face. “Why did you say that?”
“Because you’re living in your car,” Donny says.
“How did you?—”
“There are blankets visible through your rear windows. You were in a parking lot in your pajamas after the store had closed, which tells me you weren’t there to shop.” He says it in a gentle voice, like he’s trying not to embarrass me, but my stomach is already twisting itself into a pretzel. “Your boots have concrete dust embedded in the treads, and fresh scuff marks on the toes—heavy labor, maybe construction work, considering the calluses on your palms and the way you move. I also noticed you didn’t go to the hospital last night.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“They would have done a more thorough job cleaning that rope burn,” he says. “Perhaps you didn’t go because you didn’t want to leave your dog alone. But considering you’d have to leave him alone to work, I’d wager it was because you have no health insurance, which suggests day labor rather than a permanent position.”
