I really don’t feel like being around any of them.
I look at the spread on the table. Pasta, garlic bread and chocolate cake for dessert. Ron would love that. Chocolate is her favorite kind of cake.
Some adults—or perhaps older teens—are working in the kitchen, starting to wash the dishes they used to cook.
I go to one of them, a woman, and ask, “Hey, um, is it possible to take this to go?”
She shakes her head. “Just eat it here and go.”
I sigh and go back to the table. I take a napkin and wrap up several pieces of garlic bread in it and put it in my bag. I take one more piece and eat it as I leave the kitchen, out of the door that doesn’t lead to the tables.
I go back to the cabin and turn on the light. No one. They’re probably having dinner.
I go to my desk. Next to my gloves, someone put a sewing kit, book on hand sewing and some fabric. On the book there’s a note.
“Start studying. —Remy,” it says.
Sighing, I put the tote bag on my desk chair. I put everything inside of it on the desk. I grab the toiletries and some clothes and go to the bathroom. I take a long, hot shower.
And then, I bring the book on meditation, notebook, a pen and the garlic bread up with me to the bed. I eat as I read, underlining sentences that I find interesting.
It’s strange. Things feel almost normal.
Chapter 11
Ron wakes up uncharacteristically early to the smell of bacon and pancakes wafting through the closed door. Ron likes her sleep, and never has any trouble getting it—even in a stranger’s house. She’s been sleeping in strangers’ houses since she was six after all.
She doesn’t feel tired, but still, she wishes she could have slept in until noon at least. She gets up and changes into her second set of clothes.
The room she’s staying in is decorated much like the rest of the house in that strange old lady fashion—an itchy patchwork quilt and lace-lined pillow shams on the bed, a wide wooden dresser with a creepy collection of dolls facing the bed, a tiny succulent on the windowsill. Whose taste is this? It doesn’t seem to suit either of them really, but if Ron has to guess, she’d say Iris did the decorating rather than Giselle.
Ron leaves the room and walks down the hallway to the kitchen. Giselle is already sitting at the table, sipping on a cup of hot coffee, staring into the distance. A steaming pile of pancakes, a bottle of syrup and a folded newspaper are at the center of the table. Iris is standing over the stove flipping bacon and chatting.
“And then,” Iris says, “some sort of three-legged monster chased me down the hall while Carl watched at the end of the hall. I screamed for him to help me but he just stood there and said, ‘Please help me!’ Psh. Like he’s the one who needed help. Anyway, the monster kept getting closer and closer. And just when I reached Carl, just before it caught me, I woke up!”
“You couldn’t outrun a three-legged monster?” Ron says as she sits down. Ron can’t help but admire how quickly she made herself fit in here, as if she’s been sitting down here for breakfast for years.
Giselle gives Ron a tired look, probably annoyed she’s humoring Iris.
Iris transfers the bacon to a plate covered in paper towels. She pats the top of them with another paper towel. “Ron, this thing wasn’t like the kind of monster that’s supposed to have four legs but it’s missing one. It was like the kind that’s supposed to have two but has an extra one!”
“Still, wouldn’t that make it kind of awkward then?” Ron says.
“No way. It was super fast. But honestly, Carl was kinda scarier than the monster itself.”
“How so?” Ron says. “Also who is Carl?”
“Something about his eyes—I don’t really know. Seemed different from normal,” Iris says as she comes over to the table. “Carl’s a guy from the neighborhood. Moved down here last year.”
“Why are you dreaming about that asshole Carl?” Giselle says, her tone less harsh than the words.
“I don’t know. He seemed really out of place in the dream too. Like he wasn’t supposed to be there or something,” Iris says.
Iris picks up the newspaper and puts the plate of bacon in its place.
“Help yourself,” she says.
She sits down and opens the paper. It’s the same one that Ron saw yesterday, The Normal News, but this time the front page headline says, “Healer girl kidnapped by gifted scum!” That newspaper is all text and no pictures—what a bore—so Ron sets her sights on pancakes instead.
Giselle is already quarter-way through a stack.
Ron puts three pancakes on the plate and drowns them in syrup. She cuts them all into bite-sized pieces before she starts to eat—something her foster mother Mary used to tell her was rude. But why would cutting your food up in advance be rude? Ron smiles a little as she remembers cutting up absolutely everything—even mac and cheese, which is quite the challenge by the way—just to drive Mary mad.
Mary was an idiot. She was an idiot about a lot of things, some big and some small. But Mary also had a way of getting in the other kids’ heads and making them believe what she said. She never hurt them or anything like that, not physically at least. It was just words. Words, words, words. Mary had a lot of words, and hardly any good ones.
“Stop reading that junk and eat already,” Giselle says with her mouth full. “We’ve got to get going soon.”
“It’s not junk,” Iris says, folding the paper so the article she’s reading is visible and setting
