Dodging Trains (5 page)

Inside, people mill around, hanging celebratory garlands on the walls, from the ceiling, and arranging enormous bouquets in vases on the array of tables, shelves, and mantels. I don’t recognize half of the furniture.

“We have a grand piano now?” I ask Dad.

“It’s rented for the party. We’ll have a pianist.”

“Nice. Wait… you’ll have the party
here
? For who?”

“The inauguration ceremony will be held at the Civic Center, but afterward we’ll have an open house for all of Rigita’s citizens. Anyone who wants to come by can, and since it’s close to Halloween, we’re making it a masquerade party. With no masks,” he adds when he sees my raised eyebrows.

“What? Dad, this can’t be safe.”

“I’m going to start a new era in this town. One of trust and closeness with the townspeople, and—”

“Dad,” I repeat, holding my hands up.
Save your speech.
“What are you doing for security? Am I here to make sure nothing happens to you?” I partly joke.

Dad huffs. “The sheriff and his crew will be mingling too, and there will be a metal detector at the entrance.”

“How welcoming.”

Ma covers her mouth to hide her amusement. Once she’s managed, she comes to Dad’s defense. “We’ll make it fun, Keyon. You’ll see. It’s going to be like going through an Old West frisking scene in a, you know, a prison. ‘Leave yer weapons here,’” she says in a terrible rendition of a pirate voice.

I snort out laughing. “
You
planned this, didn’t you?”

She nods. “With his new secretary. She’s pretty.” Ma frowns.

“Not as pretty as my wife,” Dad says and kisses the top of her head. She’s immediately appeased.

It’s good to see them both. I’ll survive a week in Rigita as long as I don’t run into any assholes. If I do, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.

PAISLEE

I
think way too much
about the upcoming inauguration. What if Keyon attends? I know he hates Rigita—he’s been pretty candid in the press about his experiences here—but he was close to his mother, so who knows?

The first thing his mom did when they moved back to town was to call
my
mother to ask if she’d be interested in picking up the cleaning duties at the Arias’ house. What nerve, I thought, but then I recalled the ways of Silvia Arias. She was such a kind, caring person. She never did anything to hurt other people’s feelings, and back when they moved, she gave Mom several months’ worth of salary to ease her worries while she looked for another job.

My mother is at the Mansion as we speak. Needless to say, she accepted the offer to return. “What?” she’d asked at my shocked expression. “It’s not like I get rich at Ivy’s. People are stingy with their tips, honey, and the Arias paid me well to keep their home clean. I liked it. I like
them
. Silvia keeps asking about you.”

“Wait, I know you.
” A beautiful, doe-eyed Keyon with plump cheeks bunches his brows in concentration.

“No, you don’t,” I say and cross my arms on the doorstep to his house. “I’m just here for my mother. Not for you.”

“I figured it wasn’t for me.” He pulls a blue lollipop out of his mouth, studies it, and holds it out to me. “Want some?”

“Eww, that’s gross!” I tip my head up and glare at him. “Plus, I can buy my own lollipop if I want one.”

“Do you? Want one, I mean?” He leans his head against the doorjamb and squints at me. I feel my cheeks flame.

“No, I don’t want a stupid lollipop. You know, your mother’s lazy,” I tell him, because I’m salivating over the damn lollipop, and she really must be lazy.

He looks surprised. “No, she’s not. Why would you say that?”

“Pretty obvious, don’t you think? Your mom freaking
pays
someone to clean her house. Or maybe she doesn’t know how to do it, and that’s just sad. I feel sorry for you with a mom like that. She should take lessons from
my
mom, ’cause she’s great.” I sniff, tightening my arms around my middle. “Our house is prrristiiine. Always.” It’s a lie, but he’ll never know.

I’m ready for a fight. Lots of ugly words appear on my tongue, and I’ll spit them right at his gorgeous face on his gorgeous, wide doorstep with the probably also-gorgeous parents in there, who still love each other after having been married since way before he was born. I bet his dad doesn’t spend his money outside of the house so his mother has to take extra jobs.

Keyon’s eyes seem to morph. They grow even bigger, and my mouth pops open over the small flecks of green appearing around the pupils. I wonder if it means I’ve upset him, until he says, “Raspberry, melon, or lemon?”

I suck in a breath. My ugly words don’t fit in the conversation anymore, so I tell him the truth about candy and lollipops.

Raspberry.

Raspberry is my favorite flavor.

And I don’t resist when he takes my hand and leads me into their kitchen.

Lunch
at Ivy’s can be slow, which is why Mom and I are hogging one of their red-checkered window tables. It’s a good place to keep an eye out for the owner. She always parks up front and uses the main entrance, which leaves Mom with time to swipe up her plate and disappear behind the counter before she enters.

“Honey, you should go on Saturday. You don’t have to make a production out of it. Just use one of your old costumes and go. They’re preparing the Coral Mansion to a T, there will be tons of amazing appetizers they’ll carry around for the guests to snack on, and I think they mentioned champagne too.” Mom beams at me, wanting me to have fun.

I shake my head. Now that Mom tells me Keyon is here, the objections parade through my mind. I consider the way I act, my mud-stained status in this town. How I’ve created my own reputation and dug my own grave socially. In bigger towns, I’d be anonymous, one of many “loose women,” I’m sure, but here, it’s not like that.

The train station happened a few years before Keyon and I became best friends. He never learned of it, because back then I was letting the secret fester. After he moved, the loneliness and fear fused into a black glob inside of me, and it was only when it became too hard to breathe that I faced it.

“He asked about you,” Mom says, eyes skimming my face. “Keyon did,” she continues. “He’s taller than his dad now and very sporty-looking. You should see his hands. They’re like…” Mom closes an eye, considering. “Like a lumberjack’s—huge. Goodness, I would’ve never guessed. Remember how little he used to be? He was a head shorter than you, Paislee, and you weren’t even tall for your age.”

“You didn’t tell him anything, did you?” I blurt out.

Mom straightens and puts her fork down. “What do you mean ‘anything?’ I told him you’re in town, that you’re doing fine and working at a factory. He was about to ask more, but then his coach came.”

“I don’t want to see him.”

Now I have her full attention. “What in the world? You were best friends for years. Couldn’t detach you from him if I wanted to.”

“I know. It was a good time.” I pick crumbs off the tablecloth and deposit them on my plate. One by one, they keep me from having to meet her stare. “But things are different now.”

She leans in. Air sieves from her in a quiet hiss as she narrows the distance between us. “Paislee. Honey. You’re ashamed, aren’t you?”

“So what if I am? I have a good life and stand by whom I am—it’s okay. Doesn’t mean it’s always right to mix the past with the future. I’m not the girl from back then anymore.”

Mom knows when to ease up and let me be. She’s conscious of her own shortcomings, and she accepts others’ as small elements that form the complexity of each person. It might be Mom’s best trait. I rarely judge people myself because of her. With one exception. The monster who trapped me at the train station and changed the trajectory of my life.

“Remember Keyon’s lollipops?” I smile.

She chuckles. Lifts a napkin and dries mayo from the top of my lip. “Always with his lollipops. Always blue ones.”

“Raspberry.”

“And he used to bring extras for you.”

“He did.”

“Just go tomorrow, okay? It’s a masquerade ball. You can hide. Be the mysterious Southern Belle.”

A Southern Belle in polar-bear country? “Right, good idea, Mom. Wait, where did I put my crinoline?”

“Funny girl. You can rent hooped skirts and petticoats at ACME’s. But listen to me. You’d get to see your friend. Then you could reveal yourself dramatically.” She reads the horror on my face and adds, “Or make yourself completely unrecognizable and flee like Cinderella at midnight. You look nothing like you did when you were sixteen so that should work.”

Bitterness and sweetness mesh in my memories. Soon they intertwine, and old film clips push to slip out. I don’t want them to.

I stand slowly so she doesn’t see that I’m shaking. “Old-Man’s waiting. I gotta go.” My job. Yes, I have work to do.

“So you attending tomorrow
?” Mack asks as he steadies
Heaven
, the latest of Old-Man’s creations. It seems like our boss has a theme going. I take my gloves off and run my fingers over its sunny surface to feel for abnormalities.

Smooth, cold, still wet from the hose-down we gave it, this mirror is irregular perfection like the rest of them. I open my hands, spread my palms fully so they move over the top part of the mirror in subtle caresses. Mack sees it. He’s reverent during this stage of the process too. It’s when my heart swells with having been admitted into Old-Man’s inner sanctum.

“No, I’m not going to any inauguration,” I murmur, concentrating. There’s a small rift at the top left corner, and Old-Man’s not going to be happy. I squint at the jagged millimeter-long opening. We’ve brushed green paint over the back of the glass, then added a few layers of copper. When I stare hard, I glimpse the green through the crack.

“Not the inauguration, per se. To the party, I mean. You used to be the queen of dressing up.”

“Yeah, that was before,” I reply. “I grew up. Crap, Mack. What do we do? This thing is beautiful. Just…” I lower my voice. “There’s a rift. Old-Man’s going to be in a funk. I don’t want him in a funk on a Friday night and leave him to stew in it all weekend.”

“Where? Show me.”

Mack and I swap positions. I hold onto the top of the mirror while he sidles in front of it. My finger taps right above the imperfection that will be too much for Old-Man to digest.

“Shit, you’re right.” At thirty-five, Mack has been with Old-Man for eighteen years. He knows him better than anyone. We’re quiet for a moment as he deliberates. Then, his gaze slides up to meet mine over the mirror.

“If we’re lucky, most of it goes under the frame.”

“It won’t,” I shoot him down instantly, because I know.

“Right, but it’ll touch it. And Old-Man’s eyes are getting worse.” He sinks his teeth into his lip as he considers his own suggestion, to not be honest with our employer for the sake of our employer. “Fuck, I hate this. But yeah. I think we can pull it off. He can’t be stewing all weekend over the last piece we made this week.”

I reach out and touch the indentation Mack’s teeth leave behind on his lip, and he looks up from the mirror, meeting my eyes. “Frisky?” he asks.

I shrug and smile. “What’s it to you?”

After we dry the mirror and secure it in its frame, we say goodbye to Old-Man. Then Mack takes me upstairs and shows me what it is to him that I am frisky. Because that’s what friends are for.