Jeraline's Alley

by Becca C. Smith

  Now to put what was in my head onto the paper.

  I knew my measurements by heart, so at least that aspect of the process was easy, but I had to think through some of the more difficult sections of the dress, like the top. I wanted it to be the gown version of fit and flare, but I also wanted long sleeves and a half collar that dipped into a V in front. I was reasonably sure I knew how to pattern this, but I wouldn’t know until it was made (or sometimes, in the process of being made).

  As I sketched out the pattern using my tape measure and my imagination as my guide, my eyes kept veering toward under my bed and what lay beneath. At this point, it was almost like a monster ready to grab my legs if I walked near.

  As if hearing my thoughts, Olivia crawled out of The Gateway to Winterbrook book by my bedside and sat on the edge of the bed while I worked.

  “Thinking about the gun?” she asked.

  “You know I am,” I answered, trying to focus on my dress instead.

  “Lots of heroes use weapons,” Olivia said thoughtfully.

  “I’m not a hero.”

  “Who says? You never know what might happen,” Olivia replied quietly.

  “Heroes have to be brave, and I’m the furthest thing from that.”

  “I had to learn to be brave. I wasn’t at first either. Remember? I may have been looking for a door to another world, but when I found it, it scared the life out of me. I was like you, escaping into books, not accepting my mother’s death. If anyone understands you, it’s me.”

  “I’m not like you. I could never be brave enough to do everything you did. You saved Winterbrook. You overcame your grief. You lived a life of adventure. I couldn’t do that. I want to. I just don’t think I’m capable.”

  “What you’re doing now is a start.” Olivia smiled as she examined the sketch of my pattern.

  “Making a dress? With nowhere to wear it? That’s hardly the stuff of legends.” I finished drawing one of the pieces of the bodice.

  “You’ll find a place to wear it. I have a feeling.” Olivia looked like she knew something I didn’t. “In the meantime, maybe you should think about what your grandmother said.”

  “About the gun? I’m too scared to even look at it.” Though that part of me was turning into a strange kind of need for it, almost as if I would be safe if I carried it with me. Like if I had it in my possession, nothing would ever happen to me. I knew it made no logical sense, but the seed of the idea grew inside of me.

  “You should sleep on it. Maybe you’ll wake up with an answer,” Olivia suggested.

  “Maybe,” I agreed, but wasn’t convinced it would be that easy. “Speaking of which . . .” I looked over at the clock: two a.m. “I have to open in the morning.”

  Olivia disappeared, and I left everything out as I flipped off the light switch and crawled into bed.

  Who knew? Maybe I would have an answer in the morning.

  ***

  I was dreaming.

  I stood inside a grocery store, and I knew with certainty that this was the grocery store. The grocery store where my parents were murdered.

  Customers shopped and walked casually down the aisles.

  It was like any other store, nothing unique, nothing special, no reason to fear for your life.

  My parents turned down an aisle with their cart, and I wanted to hit pause and stay in this moment of the dream forever, because in this moment they were still alive, but I had no control. I was witnessing their death, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Hannah and Paul Arnold.

  My mother and father, who looked almost waxy and cartoon-like as they strolled forward, a cart full of groceries. They laughed and talked without a care in the world. Black mist and mold began to grow on the shelves of food on either side of them like veins pumping in pure darkness.

  I wanted to wake up.

  I didn’t want to see what came next.

  But I was stuck there, forced to watch their murder. This wasn’t the first time, either. I’d seen this hundreds of times in my dreams, in my nightmares.

  The blackness spread over people, floors, ceiling, and food as a young man in a mask walked into the grocery store. I knew he was a young man because they had arrested him quickly, and I had memorized every feature of his face, though he hid it now behind his stretch-wool ski mask. He carried a gun, if it could be called that. It looked more like a machine gun or something a sniper out of a movie would carry. An assault rifle, the news had called it. A weapon that killed efficiently and effectively.

  The boy didn’t say a word. He simply lifted his rifle and began shooting as if he were in some kind of deranged target practice session.

  The gunshots were so loud I thought for sure I’d wake up. I hoped I’d wake up. I prayed I’d wake up.

  The screams became as loud as the gunfire.

  Bodies fell to the floor, disappearing in puffs of black smoke.

  My parents had no time to react, to hide, to move . . . anything that might have saved them.

  A bullet hit my mother’s head, and she died instantly, body falling into my father.

  Then three bullets hit Dad’s back, and the two of them dropped to the floor, holding each other in death.

  The young man walked over to my parents in the aisle. The blackness fully surrounded them, the shelves now molded brick, the ground rotted cement. We stood in the alley. The place where evil lived.

  The shooter spit on my parents’ corpses, then pulled off his mask.

  It wasn’t the young man who looked down on my parents.

  It was me.

  It was morning, and I sat on the edge of my bed. I was still shaken from my dream last night. Seeing my face in the face of my parents’ killer wasn’t exactly what I’d call a good time. I blamed my grandmother entirely, for giving me the gun.

  Space was limited since I left my cutting table out, but I managed to bend down and pull out the dreaded box holding the revolver, without hitting my head on anything.

  Lifting the lid, I stared at the weapon for a good five minutes, not sure what I wanted to do.

  The dream made me want to both carry the gun with me and throw it into a river at the same time. One well-aimed shot could have saved everyone in that grocery store. Not that I knew how to aim, not that I could have been the one to save them, but still. It had my head racing with possibilities.

  Was I really going to carry this thing? Bring it with me everywhere I went? Bring it to work? I didn’t even know how to use it. Grandma was right about that—I’d need lessons. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how the thing worked. The only experience I had with the machinations of guns was television and movies, and they just seemed to pull the trigger. And would I be able to do that? Pull the trigger?

  I didn’t know.

  I wasn’t ready to think about that.

  But I was ready to stuff it in my backpack. Okay, not ready ready, but I was going to do it all the same. Give it a day. Then I would know how it felt keeping a weapon on me. A gun. How I’d feel having a gun with me during my day. If it drove me to nutzoidville (which I was already thinking it would) then I’d ask Grandma to return it. But . . . if I did decide to keep it, we’d make it official and I’d take lessons.

  I sighed in a strange kind of relief.

  Deciding to not decide felt good.

  Test run.

  Yes.

  Good.

  Okay.

  Carefully, I placed the large revolver into the bottom of my backpack and put a cardigan sweater on top for . . . space? Cushioning? Safety? I had no idea, but I decided to wrap it around the gun as if this would somehow stop bullets if I jostled it by accident (knowing full well a flimsy cotton sweater would do absolutely nothing to stop a bullet). Then I put my drawing pad and a few pencils in as well, in case there was some downtime to work on designs. One more thing. I rummaged through the small drawer on my bedside table and grabbed a padlock with a key. If I was going to keep this in a locker at work, I’d need it sealed away.
Dropping it into my backpack, I zipped the bag shut.

  My stomach began sinking at the thought of having a real conversation with Josh, and strangely, it outweighed the sinking stomach for bringing a gun to work. There was a lot of sinking going on.

  Grandma was still asleep, but upon opening the refrigerator, there were two brown paper bags waiting for me. She had placed a note on one that read, “I put in some extra cookies for Hank. Tell him I said hello.”

  Opening up my backpack again, I put the two bags in there more carefully than I normally would, resting them on top of the cardigan and secretly hoping cookies wouldn’t make the gun go off. Irrational, but that was how my brain worked. So far, not looking good for the “keep the gun” argument.

  Checking my watch, I noticed I was running a little late, so I hurried out the door and kept a brisk pace heading for the bookstore.

  The alley snuck up on me like a second unwanted nightmare. A low, deep chuckle vibrated in my ears as I approached it, laughing at me and my decision to bring the gun with me.

  Even in the daylight it was dark and foreboding, mocking me, telling me I wasn’t good enough, that I’d always be living in terror, that it would always be here, waiting for me. I wondered if light itself had been sucked into its grasp, like a portal leading to some kind of hell dimension. Holding my backpack closer, as if somehow the gun could protect me through the bag, I ran the rest of the way to work.

  I wouldn’t let it win.

  I wouldn’t let it take me.

  Running set me free.

  Running made me forget.

  Catching my breath, I walked into the store to a resounding frown from Rachel (shocker), but I hurried past her and went directly into the back room. I took the two paper bags out of my backpack to put in the fridge, and the gun toppled out of the bag, hitting the floor with a frightening impact.

  Boom!

  A bullet shot through my gut, blood pouring through the wound. I tried to hold the blood in, but there was no stopping it. I was going to die.

  Shaking out of my day-nightmare, I found the gun was safe inside the backpack still covered by my cardigan.

  No wounds.

  No gunshot.

  I needed to stop doing this to myself.

  Shoving my backpack into a locker, I locked it with the padlock. No one was getting in there without my key. Tucking the small key into my pocket, I sighed in relief.

  Rachel appeared in the doorway, blocking my way out.

  “What’s in the locker that’s got you all worked up?” She eyed me suspiciously.

  “My backpack,” I answered honestly, but my hands shook.

  Rachel walked over and inspected the padlock as if she may find something there.

  “I always put it in there,” I defended myself lamely.

  “Uh-huh.” Rachel watched me with mistrust. “You’re sweating.”

  “I ran all the way here, and it’s warm back here.” All of which was true.

  Rachel didn’t seem convinced. “Listen, Jeraline, you haven’t heard anything about Josh’s stolen picture, have you? It couldn’t have fallen into your backpack, could it?”

  “No.” Why wouldn’t she let the picture go? Because you stole it.

  Oh yeah.

  “Then why so nervous?” Rachel asked carefully.

  Because I have a gun in my backpack. “Too much coffee?” I glanced at the clock on the wall next to us. “I’ve gotta get out there.”

  Before Rachel interrogated me more, I skirted around her and walked toward the front counter.

  Only one customer was in the store as I reached the main cash register, and he arrived at the counter the same time I did. As the man handed me the book he wanted to purchase, Josh walked in and gave me a little wave.

  There went the knees.

  I nervously looked away to really cement that I was a jerk in Josh’s eyes.

  Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice as he headed to the back room.

  I took the customer’s book and saw that it was Jane Austen’s Emma. One of my favorites. “It’s a good one.”

  The customer handed me the cash. “I have to read it for class, but thanks.”

  One thing I’d noticed about working in a bookstore: people usually only bought classics for school, that or they were trying to do some sort of reading challenge. Either way, I hoped the guy would enjoy the book.

  Josh walked back out until he stood in front of me. Me. I didn’t think my knees would hold me much longer.

  “Hey, I saw you used a padlock on one of the lockers. Would you mind if I put my jacket in there too?” Josh asked politely.

  He talked to me.

  Did this count as a conversation?

  Only if I said something.

  I handed him my key and said, “Sure, no problem.”

  Josh smiled sweetly. “Thanks.”

  I shockingly smiled in return, silently patting myself on the back as Josh left to the back room once more.

  That should totally count as a conversation. Technically we didn’t talk about work at all.

  Emma Woodhouse from the Jane Austen book Emma appeared next to me, dressed in the height of 1800s fashion. Emma glanced in the direction Josh disappeared to. “‘Sure, no problem’ is not a conversation. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Grandma didn’t give me any rules except ‘no work talk.’”

  Emma shook her head, staring at me with disappointment. “Really? This experiment is supposed to help you fall in love.”

  “I think I prefer liking from afar. Interaction is overrated.” These were the commandments I lived by.

  Emma shrugged as if I were a lost cause. “Well, if Josh jostles your backpack around too harshly, he may shoot himself by accident and you won’t have to worry about having a conversation at all.”

  Emma disappeared as my stomach dropped and my eyes widened.

  Boom!

  The sound of my gun was deafening.

  Everything moved at a snail’s pace.

  I ran from the counter toward the back room, but my legs wouldn’t move fast enough.

  Rachel grabbed my arm, annoyed. “We’ve got customers, Jeraline.”

  “I have to pee!” I practically screamed.

  Boss lady let me go with a grunt of disgust.

  I threw the door open to the back room.

  Josh was there, alive, unharmed, no bullets.

  But . . . he was about to open the padlock with the key.

  “No!” I yelled as if he were about to set off a bomb.

  Josh turned to me, shocked and surprised.

  I took hold of the padlock and Josh’s hand. “Let me, please.”

  His eyebrows crinkled in outright confusion. I needed a reason. I needed an excuse.

  I blurted, “It’s just I have some personals in there.”

  Always with the freaking period. What was wrong with me?

  But it worked. Josh’s whole demeanor relaxed as he assuredly remembered yesterday’s proclamation of my monthly cycle.

  “You know what? I’ll hang it up in one of the other lockers. I don’t need a lock. I think it’ll be okay.” Josh snapped the padlock closed, and I self-consciously took my hand off of his.

  I hadn’t even taken a second to acknowledge that we’d been touching that long. I had been so worried about the bag, I barely had time for my belly to do flip-flops from our close proximity. Okay, yup. There were the cartwheels.

  He handed me the padlock key. “Thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome.” Um, what was that? What did that even mean?

  Smiling, Josh left, and I hit my head with my fist after he was gone. “You’re welcome?”

  Emma popped in, leaning against the lockers, smiling. “Now, I don’t know about that counting as a conversation, but the hand touching was definite progress.”

  Rachel peeked in, and Emma disappeared. “Finished?”

  I nodded and hurried out to the store, not wanting to face the wrath of Rachel
any more than I had to.

  Before embarrassing myself any further, I grabbed the wheeled cart full of books next to the counter and pushed it into the stacks to return all the books to their rightful places. After I cleared the first row of returns, there was a tap on my shoulder.

  Fully expecting it to be Rachel with some sort of critique on how I was shelving the books wrong, I jumped slightly when it was Josh.

  “Sorry,” he apologized.

  I eyed him nervously. “It’s okay. I guess I was just really into this.” Good. Words. Progress.

  “It’s dead in here. Let me help,” Josh suggested.

  Excuse me? What? Help? Would that require talking? Which I was technically supposed to do with him today, but now that the opportunity was here, all I wanted to do is run. “What about the counter?” Good. Make him run, much better.

  Josh’s demeanor was friendly and carefree. “Rachel’s got it.”

  Oh, good. Now I was stuck with him.

  Taking a deep breath, I took a book from the cart and placed it onto the shelf.

  So far, so good. I could do this.

  Josh grabbed a novel and read the title. “Ooo, The Gateway to Winterbrook. I love that movie. It was the only movie my mom bought on iTunes and was pretty much my babysitter most of my childhood.”

  My fear of Josh vanished as my heart began to race for an entirely different reason. Could it be? Could I finally have found it? Barely able to hide the shake in my voice, I asked, “Is there a gold-leafed door on the opening page?”

  Josh opened the book and shook his head. “Nope, just black and white.”

  Everything deflated.

  Fail.

  No dice.

  I sighed in disappointment. “It was a long shot anyway.”

  “Something rare?” Josh raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

  Nodding, I explained, “The author, Sofia Blackmoor, originally only published three hundred copies in 1907. No one would publish the book because back then publishers didn’t think readers would buy fantasy from women, so she published it herself by selling her house. It was picked up later by a pretty big publishing house when they saw how successful she was on her own, but they were too cheap to print the gold inlay. It’s like my Holy Grail.”