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“Seems like that’s what he wants,” Eli spat. I inwardly flinched. The first thing Eli said to Vic had been inflammatory. Lennox glanced at Eli and back to Vic, then rolled her eyes.
“I was all set to watch Netflix and eat junk food and then I come downstairs and find Grace scared out of her mind and two dudes about to fuck or fight. What the hell happened?”
“This fucker,” Vic said, stepping up to Eli and poking him in the chest. “Is bringing his shit into my house and endangering my family.”
His family? Is he calling me his family? I didn’t have any time to ruminate on that because Eli growled, knocking Vic’s finger away. “You got no idea who this fucker is and what this fucker does.” That single act unleashed more aggression than anything I’d ever seen before, and I’d seen a lot of aggression in my short life.
Vic got up in Eli’s face. “I know you sold drugs for Zero.”
“You don’t know shit Cali boy,” Eli spat back. Vic and Eli were nose to nose, their glares matching in aggression and intensity. Lennox hung back, fingers at the bridge of her nose.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Just stop it! You have no idea what you’re talking about Vic! If you’re going to beat him up for being Zero’s henchman you may as well throw a punch at me too.”
Vic stepped away from Eli and narrowed his eyes at me. “Excuse me?” Stepping back, Vic waited for me to respond. Lennox opened her eyes and released her nose from her fingers’ grasp. Even Eli waited for my response. I quirked my head to the side, feeling defeated. I wanted all my skeletons to stay in the past, dead and buried, where they belonged, but that didn’t seem possible.
“I suppose I’m not such a damsel after all.”
SIX MONTHS BEFORE
Potatoes. I was getting potatoes. Mama needed potatoes to cook that night, and that was why I left the house to come to the market. I kept repeating the words like a mantra in my head: Potatoes. I’m getting potatoes.
Healing happened with time, that’s what people said. The past two weeks had been a slow, torturous reminder that despite how much people waxed on about the swiftness of time in their later years, time did not change. The Earth orbited the Sun at a torturously constant rate. Now, I hadn’t paid as much attention as I should have when Eli was teachin’ me about physics, but I knew sometimes time does wonky stuff. I knew sometimes time is relative. I knew sometimes it isn’t as cut an’ dry as time equals the Earth’s orbiting.
For the previous two weeks though, you could be sure the Earth behaved accordingly, because those two weeks moved at exactly the length they were supposed to, and not a minute less. I knew. I counted.
I counted each hour of each day like it was my own personal rosary. The hour hand ticked by with slow precision, each tick getting me further and further away from my armageddon. I watched the second hand tick tick tick a constant, mocking rhythm. I prayed for a miracle, for divine intervention, to move the damned minute hand faster and make time move forward.
My miracle never came.
Wandering the produce section of the supermarket, I heard
the distinct tick tick tick of the second hand. Somewhere in that supermarket, a clock did its duty, reminding me that I was never, ever far away from Hell.
I fingered the tomatoes, wrinkly and near death. All the produce was either dead or dying, just like the town. Just like me. There hadn’t been a good shipment of produce in months. The only thing our town shipped any more was drugs. As I touched another dying, decayed piece of fruit, I felt a tug on my arm and was pulled aside before another breath left my body.
“Where have you been?”
“Eli.” His name passed my lips like a prayer. Seeing him now, it was so much harder. It wasn’t his fault what had happened. It wasn’t his fault our baby was dead. I knew that.
“What’s wrong, Bug? Why haven’t you been at the tree? I’ve been so worried.” Eli clasped my hands.
“I’m getting potatoes,” I murmured. “We’re out of potatoes.” I’d been talking like that lately, in blunt, laconic one-liners. It was all I could do to state the obvious. I felt if I dug deeper than what was right in front of me, I would suffocate.
“When you weren’t at our spot these past weeks I really started to worry. It was only when I saw you at your dad’s funeral that I knew you were okay.”
“We can’t…” I eyed the boxes of pasta on the wall to our left, as if they were going to grant me enlightenment. I noticed that a few of the boxes were expired, but that didn’t really surprise me. The old supermarket was hanging on its last legs. Everything in the town was dead or dying.
The boxes had probably been there since the first time Eli said he loved me.
“I can’t see you anymore.” I kept my eyes trained on the pasta boxes, willing the tears to stay locked behind the lids. It had been bound to happen. Eli was going to go to college and I was going to stay there. That had been the end goal when I’d taken his place. Now…now I was just speeding up the process.
“What?” Eli grabbed my hands. “Grace what are you talking about? Baby, what’s going on? What the hell happened to you these past two weeks?”
Baby.
I’d lost our baby. I’d nearly died. Daddy had a heart attack and actually died. I’d sold my soul to Zero. For you.
“What?” Eli pressed. “Dammit Grace, what is going on?”
