Page 58 of She’s a Doll

There was something deeply cathartic about that.

“That’s an ugly doll,” a kid with a skateboard, oversize kneepads, and no front teeth said to Nicola as I skidded to a stop at her feet, drawing a lopsided figure eight on the ground.

“The ugliest,” she agreed.

“Is it full of spiders?”

“It’s full of something.”

“I like it.”

“Ten bucks.”

He only had $4.50 in cash.

That was a joke, right? I asked as she carried me, still wedged into the remote-controlled car, back to her much bigger, much less pretty car. You wouldn’t sell me.

“Sure,” she said. “Why would I ever want to get rid of you? The haunted doll who tells me to go fuck myself and who hasn’t yet thanked me for buying her a new set of wheels.”

You wouldn’t sell me, I said again, more confidently.

“No,” she admitted after a pause. “I’m committed to the bit.”

I love you too, Nic, I said, sickeningly sweet.

She rolled her eyes. “Shut the hell up, Lu.”

20

A new mall was being built on the edge of town. A luxury shopping experience, the billboard promised. Right then, it didn’t look like a luxury anything. It was a square of bulldozed dirt, haphazardly dotted with scaffolds, a few slabs of cement, and a Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted sign zip-tied onto the fence.

Nicola wasn’t the first person to ignore that sign. The chain mesh had several human-shaped holes cut into it.

Is this where you buy pot? I asked, leaning out of her backpack to look around, the plastic jaws of the open zipper digging into my duct tape.

It was night, the light on Nicola’s phone aimed at her feet. With every step she took, the shadows jerked and wobbled, dancing off the scattered pieces of construction equipment.

Not that I was scared. No. No way. I was the haunted doll. I wasn’t scared of the dark. It was the dark that should be scared of me. But I’d admit I was . . . apprehensive. This wasn’t a breed of dark I was used to, the edges of it sharpened by Nicola’s light, the depths of it made deeper, and darker.

“I buy my pot from Paul,” Nicola said, unbothered.

Wait, Paul? As in your boss Paul? Comb-over, bifocals, and suspenders? That Paul?

“I don’t know any others.”

Oh . . . I thought he was, like, Mormon or something.

“He is.”

And a drug dealer?

“Humans are funny like that,” she said.

Complicated?

“I was going to say hypocritical.”

She stumbled over a small pebble, the light from her phone swinging suddenly to the side, making the shadows rush forward.