For the first five minutes of the ride, I was silent. Brandon had called the garage to let them know he was bringing my car in, and he didn’t know what was wrong with it. I stifled a laugh when he tried to imitate the sounds my car was making when I tried to start it. Then he whistled for a few minutes as I sat there… stoic.
“So,” he began. “This is kind of messed up, isn’t it?”
I looked at his hands. He held the steering wheel loosely, letting his hands just barely touch it as he turned the wheel. His manner was gentle. “Totally messed up.” I cleared my throat, “Brandon, I—”
“Do you know the story of that place?” he asked while pointing to a restaurant called The Grand View as we sat at a stop light.
“Yeah. Isn’t there a ghost or something that haunts it?”
He looked at me. “I’m impressed, Marissa.” My name sounded like chocolate melting on his tongue, warm and gooey. “The original owner’s wife died while cooking in the kitchen. And they say at every dinner service she’s still there, making sure everything runs perfectly. Her specialty is the crepes suzette. The rumor is that whichever chef makes them, they always leave out the cinnamon from her recipe. But then almost every customer who tastes them always comments on the amazing cinnamon flavor.” His voice fluctuated high then low, in an animated way.
“So they think the ghost is putting ghostly cinnamon in the crepes?” Why did he know this?
“That’s what they say.”
I felt my heart palpitate, and I shifted my gaze out my window. He went back to whistling, and that was how we spent the next ten minutes until we got to the garage.
Brandon introduced me to the mechanic who would be looking at my car. Brandon wasn’t a mechanic, he just helped out with odds and ends here at his uncle’s shop: C.A.R.S. — Customer Automotive Repairs Specialized. Not catchy, but cute, I suppose. I stood awkwardly in the middle of the garage while Brandon talked more with the mechanic about my car. Other men in coveralls were bustling about with tools in hand and grease on their faces. Standing there, I felt completely awkward and totally out of place, and I wished I had an invisibility potion to drink. No wait! A transport potion to take me straight home.
“You don’t have to wait here. It may take a while. I’ll bring you over to the office area,” Brandon said.
I followed behind him. His long stride doubled my own pace. He led me to a small office with a sign that read “Carl” on the front door. “Is that your secret identity?” I pointed to the name.
The corners of his mouth rose up halfway. “You’re kinda funny. You know that?”
My face instantly turned fuchsia. “Carl’s my uncle. I always hang out in here if I need to do homework or something when things are slow.” I watched him get two tiny cups of water from the dispenser, and he handed me one.
“Do you work a lot?” I found a chair near the desk and sat down, spilling some of my water on my pants.
“Just a few days a week. It helps my mom out a bit. Expenses and stuff.” He gulped his water like a shot and refilled it.
“Oh,” I said lamely. What did he mean by helping out with expenses? I scanned the desk and saw a stack of schoolbooks. Amidst the collection of standard biology and algebra, there was a large book titled Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. I sipped my water. “Do you have to read that for English or something?”
“What?” He looked to the stack of books I was pointing to. “Poe? Nah, that’s my copy.”
Somehow my body forgot how to swallow, and I choked a bit on my water. “What do you mean?” My voice sounded hoarse, and my eyes were welling with tears. Stupid water!
“Are you all right?” He raised an eyebrow at me. I nodded my head and took another small sip of water. “Poe is kind of one of my things, I guess.” My face must have looked like it was covered in question marks. “Like, I’m really into Poe.” I could feel my eyebrows scrunching together. “Like, I’m part of a Poe lover’s group. Wow, I can’t believe I just said that. That sounded asinine.” He plopped himself down on the desk chair across from me.
A few things now were blowing my mind about this guy. One: that he said the word asinine. What teenager says that? And two: that Edgar Allan Poe was one of his passions. Since I was about ten — that’s when I got heavily into poetry — Poe has been one of my top favorite poets. My all-time favorite poem is written by Poe. And now, Brandon Carter was telling me that Poe is “one of his things.” My mouth was gaping again, and I couldn’t make the muscles in my face close it for some reason.
“You’re looking at me like I’m an idiot.”
I remembered how to function again. “No, it’s just… Poe is one of my favorites too.”
He moved forward in his chair. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
“Favorite short story?” he asked.
“Mesmeric Revelation.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Wow, impressive. See I would have known you were lying if you said The Raven.”
“Because The Raven is a poem, not a short story.”
“Exactly, but to say Mesmeric Revelation, now I know you’re a Poe Head.”
“A what?”
“Sorry, that’s what we sometimes call ourselves on the forums.”
“The forums?”
“Yeah, just an online community.
