Page 4 of The Wicker King

August craned his neck to see.

She was kind of small, Indian or Pakistani, and wore a glittery dress with small pink barrettes in her hair and gold heels. She had wild dark eyebrows that made looking at her face feel like one was looking into a storm. And she wore entirely too much makeup, but applied with an expert hand.

“Hi, everyone, I’m Rina Medina and I’ll be reading my poem: ‘Random Word Generator Input #17’”1:

blusness knocle nextboarted naurnel,

scouslaved rassly shagion waille

hanling buckspoods seaged violities,

stinings arfulbring scratic stael.

grapprose lerankers dinessed ressiations

visuseelling astelly concticing extrine

manonloccut leeses, bravon gistertnes

repulatauting mysteerly thumspine Valeen.

“Thank you.”

The entire café erupted into confused muttering and halfhearted snaps as she slowly got down from the stage, teetering dangerously on her stiletto heels.

Jack whipped around to grin at August.

“Shut up. You’re right, Jack. She’s fucking great. But shut up.”

ROSÉ

Rina pushed through the crowd.

“Jack from the library.” She dug around in her giant red purse for a bit. “I have your card,” she said as she pulled it out and handed it over. Jack shoved it in his pocket.

“Thank you so much. I really appreciate—”

“Your poem was great,” August blurted, like he had no control of his mouth whatsoever. He pressed his thick lips together.

“It’s a bit abstract for this crowd.” Rina shrugged. “I’ve been trying new shit, you know? They don’t really like me here…”

She said some other stuff, but August was too busy staring at the chunky glitter all over her eyelids. What would even happen if that got inside your eye? Something awful, no doubt.

“Can you guys go somewhere else if you have to talk? There’s a performance going on right now.”

The barista and half the people there, including the person on stage, glared at them.

“Sure. Yeah. That would be best,” Rina replied. She turned back to Jack. “Thanks for the card. See you never again, probably. It’s been great.”

She turned on a heel and was gone before August could even say “nice to meet you.”

* * *

“She’s perfect,” Jack said as they were driving home later that night. “She’s even mean, just like you like.”

“I don’t like mean girls, Jack.” August leaned his head back on the car seat and closed his eyes.

“You like Gordie,” Jack said pointedly.