Page 50 of Cackle

Something’s not right. The feeling is sudden and palpable.

I meet her gaze, and she begins chewing on her thumbnail. Her eyebrows are low. It’s an unmistakable expression of concern.

“What?” I ask her.

“You don’t trust me,” she says.

“What? No. Of course I do. I trust you.”

“I understand,” she says. “I’m not an easy person to trust. Maybe it’s the way I look.”

“No, Sophie. Why would you say that?”

“You hesitated. Just now when I gave you the apple. Like you were afraid to eat it.”

“No,” I say. But I was, wasn’t I? Why? Why do I feel like something’s off?

“I . . . ,” she says. She doesn’t finish her thought. She stares out the kitchen window.

I can’t let my weird paranoid bullshit ruin this potential friendship. I won’t.

“It’s not you, Sophie. I’m just preoccupied. I had a bad conversation with Sam. He said something that really bothered me. And then I started drinking. I’ve been drinking a lot,” I say. “I keep thinking, what if I can’t do this? What if I can’t be alone?”

Her demeanor changes. She softens, returns to cutting fruit.

“I understand why you’re asking the question,” she says. “But we’ve talked about this. You will be fine. Who initiated the contact? Him or you?”

I falter. Technically he called me, but he was calling me back. “Um . . .”

“So you?”

I nod.

“We’ll have to fix that,” she says. “And what prompted the call?”

“I don’t remember. General loneliness?”

“Here,” she says. She sets a glass down on the table in front of me. “Only if you want.”

“Is it just rum in there?”

“Does it matter?” she asks.

I take a sip. It’s straight rum. I guess we’ve abandoned the punch idea. That’s fine.

“What did he say that hurt you?”

“He said . . . he said something about how he used to have to be home for dinner. Like, there was an insinuation that I kept him on a short leash, something like that.”

Sophie gasps. “What a hideous thing to say!”

“I don’t think I had, like, unreasonable expectations when we were together. But I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I did.”

“Annie,” she says. She pours herself a glass of rum. I notice her hand is shaking. Badly. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong.

The nag of fear is back. The flapping bird of panic.

“Sophie,” I say.