AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I like listening to you talk,” I say. “And I’m almost never being sarcastic.”
She still squints at me, suspicious. “Was that sarcasm?”
I laugh. “Lulu.”
She digs for a bit before speaking again. “Audrey is doing something groundbreaking. She’s found the perfect balance betweenAncient Aliensand legitimate historical research. Her course makes people excited about history. Whereas I look at the witches, and listen, were some of them actually witches? Probably.”
I snort in disbelief and she pauses.
“Real witches?” I chuck a pebble out of the soil and avoid making eye contact with her after the sound I just made.
“Like, notreal. They’re not making covenants with the devil and dancing around topless. At least we don’t have evidence of that. Think more like, folk healers and midwives. They weren’t magical. But that was the perception. Although, by the eighteenth and nineteenth century there was a theory advanced by a German scholar that there was a cult of witches with pre-Christian origins but that’s likely hogwash.”
“Lulu,” I say, a gentle redirection.
“Sorry. Most were just old, or lonely, or childless, or unmarried, or too loud, or too weird. They were people operating outside of the societal and gender norms of the time. Yes, there was a legitimate and intense fear of the supernatural, or evil and the devil, of magic. But what people were really freaked out about was the concept of people living outside the norm. People created magic, or co-opted it, to use it as an excuse for violence.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Not as sexy.” She sighs.
Despite the heat, the buzz of bees, and the chirp of birds in her dad’s trees, it’s not hard to imagine Lulu behind a podium at the school. Her excitement for the topic is contagious and the soft tones of her voice are a substitute for the music I’d usually play while doing yard work.
“Anyway.” She huffs. “I don’t think they’d let me teach my class if they already have hers.”
“What if you taught it together? Like a combined class.”
When she looks at me, her eyes snag on my chest and I decide that I don’t care that I’m warm from the work and the fabric will stick to me, I’m putting my shirt back on. It’s weird if I’m the only one half-naked.
Lulu waits, watches as I pull my red T-shirt over my head and flatten it against my stomach. Once I’m settled back beside her on the grass, I say, “I don’t know how academia works. Maybe that’s a stupid idea.”
Lulu bites her lip to tamp down her smile. She flushes, her eyes taking on the excited gleam she gets when she talks about historians and gender theory. In the short time I’ve known her, I have met Lulu in a dark bar and the bright sun, seen her upset, sad, flustered. Horny. Excited. I have yet to find a moment when she isn’t beautiful.
Immediately, I look away from her. I stare at the rosebush planted alongside the pergola, follow an ant as it climbs from my glove to my wrist, anywhere but back at Lulu, so she won’t have to see the thoughts on my face. Those are not the kinds of thoughts friends should have about each other.
Lulu stares off into the distance over my shoulder. “You’re a genius, Jesse Logan.”
“Well, I don’t know...” I flush outwardly, but inwardly I am warm and liquid.
“Look how much we got done. You should have let me help hours ago.”
I sit back on my heels to survey our progress. We only have to finish this flower bed. Lulu stands, brushing her hands off on her apron.
“Yeah.” I stand slowly, stretching my back after being curled over the dirt. “We make a pretty good team.”
Lulu tips a bag of mulch over onto its side and pulls a wood-handled knife out of another one of her apron pockets.
“Whoa. I can do that,” I say, but she waves me away.
“I got it,” she says. “You should know that Audrey would probably joyfully beat herself with her own chewed-off arm rather than co-teach a class with me.” She smiles down at the bulging plastic bag, the look on her face in total conflict with the absolutely wild claim she’s just made. Lulu looks up at me from across the lawn. “But it’s a good idea nonetheless.”
It happens in slow motion. Or at least it feels that way. She’s still smiling at me as she grips the knife in one hand and holds the bag in the other, as she stabs the blade into the corner of the bag farthest from her and pulls.
Her smile stays as I watch the knife slip, the blade carving a deep line into the fleshy part of her palm at the bottom of her thumb, leaving an angry red line. It takes a moment for her mouth to make an O, for the blood to stream from the wound. For me to get across the grass to her side.
“Crumbs,” is all she says, staring down at the gash, holding her wrist so tightly with her other hand, her fingers would be white if they weren’t already stained with her blood. She leans into me. “I can’t... I don’t like...blood,” she stutters, her face losing all color.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
