“Yes, thank you,” Ron says.
The woman rings her up. “That’ll be five twenty-four.”
Ron hands her a ten dollar bill.
As the woman opens the register and counts out change, she says, “Ya here because of them gifted people?”
Ron’s heart almost stops, but smoothly, she says, “Yes.”
A simple answer, open to interpretation. She’ll let the woman’s response guide what she says next.
The woman hands her the change. “Figures. We get a lot of people searching for them coming through here. Damn so-called gifted. I wish someone’d take out that camp already, if it even exists.”
Ron puts her money, water and Pop-tarts away, careful not to change her facial expression. She’s had a lot of practice being a stone.
So that’s how it’s going to be here, huh? Then so be it.
She’s had a lot of practice trying to fit in too.
“Yeah,” Ron says, “I heard they’re around here.”
The woman flips her braid back. “Unfortunately so. Can’t get a good lead on them though.”
“I think I have one,” Ron says, playing off the woman. Back when she was a pre-teen, when she was still small and innocent-looking, she used to tell people she was a medium. They’d give her money to speak to the dead. But it was all a ruse. She was just cold reading them and chomping down on any information they handed her.
“Really?” the woman says, delighted. “Giselle would love to hear it then. She’s my wife.”
Ron is silent for a moment, considering her next move. She can sidle up to these people easily. She found herself doing it naturally, already. But is that wise? Chrys always used to tell Ron to stop acting on instinct and think a little.
“What?” the woman says, voice rising. “You think a small town hick can’t be a lesbian?”
Ron holds her hands up, placating, and says quickly, “No, no. I was just thinking ‘bout something—about something. I don’t care about all of that.”
Maybe it isn’t wise, but what other options does she have?
“You see,” Ron says, “this is sort of, well, it’s important intel, you know? And I don’t know who I can trust here.”
She points at herself. “Us! Definitely us! We’re good at keeping secrets.”
Ron rubs the back of her neck. “I don’t know…”
The woman comes out from behind the counter. She towers over Ron but looks down at her like a puppy excited to go on a walk.
“Come on,” she says, “I’ll take you up to Giselle real quick.”
“But what about the store?”
“I’ll just lock the door for a bit. Come on. It’s just upstairs.”
“Alright, I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
The woman leads Ron out of the store and up the stairs on the side of the building. Ron follows with an almost imperceptible smile on her face.
Chapter 7
“Giselle!” the woman calls out after opening the front door. “Elly!”
She steps inside, leaving the door open. Ron follows and closes the door behind her. The woman must have disappeared into another room. She’s in the living room. It’s decorated like an old woman’s house—a plush blue sofa covered in plastic, a regal-looking red armchair next to it also in plastic, a grandfather clock tick tick ticking where a TV should be, a coffee table that’s just a tree stump, a cluster of pictures in large wooden frames hung on the wall.
Ron goes closer to the pictures. All of them are of two women together. One is that ginger woman from the store and another is a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with thick, straight eyebrows. She has big eyes and a small, heart-shaped face. She wears her hair down just past her shoulders, parted in the middle where her widow’s peak is.
One photo is a full body shot of the two of them at the beach in bikinis. The ginger woman is all flat and like a rectangle, no shape to her at all. But the other woman, a head shorter than the ginger one, has a full bust and a cinched waist and hips larger than her shoulders. Knotted, scarred skin covers her legs and the lower half of her stomach.
“I found her,” the woman from the store says.
Ron turns toward her voice. The woman is heading toward the sofa. The dark-haired woman from the photos is following her, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She’s in a satin camisole dress that ends just past her hips. Her legs are scarred just like in the photo.
They sit down on the sofa and it groans as the plastic shifts under them. The woman gestures to the armchair.
“Have a seat,” she says.
As Ron walks over, the woman places both hands on the sleepy woman’s shoulders and says, “This is Giselle.”
Ron takes off her backpack and puts it on the floor and then sits down, the plastic hot and sticky under her bare legs. “And you are? I didn’t catch your name.”
“Oh, sorry.” She giggles. “I’m Iris.”
Ron nods. “Ron.”
Iris claps her hands in front of her. “Ah, would you like something to eat or drink?”
Ron’s throat and stomach tighten. She would very much love that. But, she doesn’t want to be too indebted to them, so she says, “Just some water please.”
“Tap okay?”
“Of course.”
“Ya want ice in it?”
“Yes, please.”
Iris gets up and heads to the small kitchen that is separated from the living room only by a square dining table surrounded by four chairs.
Giselle, still looking kind of out of it, says, “Coffee for me. Instant is fine. Cold.”
“Sure thing,” Iris calls from the kitchen.
Giselle stretches with a loud groan and then turns to me. “So I hear you have a lead.”
“Yes,” Ron says.
Giselle nods, lazily gesturing for her to continue.
Ron thought about what to say as she walked up the stairs, so she’s ready now. She would lie, of course. But the best lies have a sprinkle of truth in them.
“Before I came here, I was in the forest,” Ron says. “Like you, I’ve heard there’s some sort of camp out there. While I was there, I came
