Page 25 of Cackle

She sets down her coffee, and I see it. A spider. It’s moseying along the ledge toward Sophie.

“There’s a spider,” I tell her, pointing. “There are a lot of spiders here.”

“There’s a lot of nature,” she says, turning to look at it. “Hello, little friend.”

I let the spider crawl onto the discarded lid of my coffee cup, then tip the lid over the edge of the gazebo. The spider lands in a shrub.

“Beautiful little creatures, aren’t they?”

“Eh,” I say. “They’re creatures. I don’t like to kill them.”

“It’s bad luck,” she says. She turns her hand into a spider and creeps it up my forearm. “So, Annie, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“Don’t have any.”

“No plans? Hmm, interesting. No plans,” she says. She’s plotting something. The corners of her mouth slowly curl into a grin.

“What?” I ask her.

“Now you can’t say no to me when I ask you to come over, because I know you have no other plans,” she says, laughing. “I’m in the mood to make pie. Would you like to come over and make some pie?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ve never made pie before.”

“I love to make pie. I find it very relaxing,” she says. “Let’s go pick up some berries, and then we can go to my place, yes?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

She stands up and reaches out for my hand. There’s another spider. A smaller one. Brownish. It’s crawling along Sophie’s finger. I open my mouth to warn her, but she already knows. She leans down, moves toward the ledge, then transforms her finger into a bridge for the spider to cross. I’m amazed that it actually does. It walks in a straight line along Sophie’s finger onto the ledge of the gazebo.

“You’re the spider whisperer,” I say.

“They’re uncomplicated,” she says. “Humans are complicated.”

I follow her out of the gazebo and back to the tents. Everyone we pass smiles at us, bows their head, says, “Good morning. Good morning, Sophie!” or “Sophie! How are you?” I experienced the town’s general friendliness earlier, but this is different. Excessive. The people fawn over her. I watch their expressions as they see her, as her presence dawns on their faces.

I look at her. She is stunningly gorgeous. Superhuman. I should be intimidated. I should feel like a hideous troll walking beside someone so insanely beautiful, but I don’t. I’m just content to soak in her glow. And she’s so nice and open and warm and funny. It’s that rumored phenomenon I never believed in; I feel like I’ve known her my whole life.

So why are these people who know her acting so weird around her?

I turn to her. “Are you famous?”

She laughs. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Seems like you’re a big deal around here.”

She rolls her eyes. “I own a lot of land. Real estate. It’s silly.”

“You’re their landlord?”

She winces. “I don’t like that term. ‘Lord.’ ”

She erupts into whole-body shivers, like saying the word was physically painful.

I mime zipping my lips. “I won’t say it.”

“I hope you won’t think of me differently now,” she says, “or after you see my house.”

We stop in front of a tent where cartons of fresh berries are for sale. Ripe pink strawberries. Chubby blueberries and raspberries. The most beautiful blackberries I’ve ever seen, clusters of dark bubbles shining like satin. Sophie goes for the blackberries. She plucks one from a pile and slips it into her mouth.