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What had I been thinking?
Why had I let loose a monster and endangered this stranger?
Was it the grief?
Had it twisted me into some awful, violent version of myself?
My thoughts were cut off by the screams, and I whirled around, unable to stop myself.
But the screams weren’t coming from Declan. They came from a girl on the sidewalk, her face red, finger pointed skyward. I followed it and froze, staring at the plane that streaked across the tops of the house. It was too low and moving fast. Its engine roared, and I covered my ears, stepping back, watching in horror as its tail clipped the top of a brick home like Ansley’s, its chimney crumbling, roof splitting. Smoke billowed and the girl ran toward me, looking back toward the plane, which slammed into the ground with the force of an earthquake, the impact jolting the ground beneath my feet. A Toyota SUV crumpled behind the nose of it, twin propellers on the wings scraping across the asphalt, and a wave of pebbles and debris peppered toward me.
I backed up, lifting my arms, ducking at the terrible screech of metal against metal, then everything stopped. A long moment of silence, eerie in its stillness. I lowered my hands and watched as the dog sprinted past me, his tail pinned tight to his butt. I looked past him, smoke pluming from the closest propeller and filling the air. Through it, I saw the runner stand, his hands brushing across his shoulder, his head turning to the plane. Had he been twenty yards further down the street, the plane would have killed him. He stood there for a long moment, his hands lifting to the top of his head and then, with no warning at all, the plane burst into flames.
I stumbled backward, my ankle turning, limbs tangling, and when I fell, the impact turned everything to black.
“You have a date?” Five days later, Ansley’s daughter stood in my bedroom, teetering on a pair of my lime green heels, and frowned at me as if struggling with an addition problem.
I eyed her and wondered at the statistical probability of a broken neck on thick carpet and from a height of four feet. “I know. I am also shocked.” I buttoned the top clasp of my dress and stepped back, looking critically at my reflection.
I should have gone shopping. I had assumed that the outfit I wore on my last date—a bright blue jumper—would work for this one. Only I couldn’t find the blue jumper anywhere, and I had the faint recollection of dropping it off for dry cleaning but no memory of ever picking it up. I called the dry cleaner who can’t seem to fuck her husband without having a ticket number, and gave up that hunt shortly before a string of filthy expletives got me blacklisted from Washy Klean for life.
I groaned.
“What?” Ansley wandered around the corner and pointed at her daughter, who was carefully attempting a forward step. “Paige, take those off before you kill yourself.”
I caught Ansley’s eyes in the mirror. “I look like a potato.”
She smiled. “Yeah. Total potato.”
“Who makes a dress like this?” The first issue was its color, a wishy-washy canvas brown. The design was worsened by the small black dots that scattered across it. When you added in the buttons—light tan bumps that looked like warts and ran from the knee-length hem to the bottom of my neck—and you had one giant potato, with my head sticking out of the top. The worse—or best—part of the design was the way the dress came in at the waist and suctioned-cupped itself to my ass. On the upside, my ass was my best feature. Unfortunately, it made the entire ensemble even more ridiculous.
“I think the better question is, who buys a dress like this?” Ansley flipped over the tag, which hung from one sleeve. “Damn, you are cheap.”
“It was on sale,” I defended. At the time, I had been pleased with the purchase. Somehow, the potato sack had looked cool and funky in the dressing room, its seventy percent off sticker too good to be true. I sighed. They should have paid ME to take this thing away. I bet, if I donated this to the Salvation Army, they’d frown at me and say oh. Thank you, but noooo thank you.
Ansley looked at her watch. “What time is he picking you up?”
“In about twenty minutes.” I sighed. “Maybe a belt would make this better. Something to break up the brown?”
She shook her head. “Just go with your usual. Skinny jeans and a shirt.”
“I literally have nothing clean.” I eyed her T-shirt, desperate enough to snatch it off her.
The doorbell rang and Paige shrieked at the sound, her body pitching forward, arms windmilling. I dove to catch her and got a tiny elbow square in my left eye.
