Hiders

by Meg Collett

  But she’d ensured Kyra’s cake was beautiful. She’d added a few extra touches because she’d heard Kyra loved fairy tales. They were just special little things people wouldn’t even notice, but Violet knew. She’d poured herself into that cake last night, so much so that she almost wanted to be there to watch as Kyra and Hale slid a knife through the fondant and saw the pink inside.

  The house phone—an old rotary piece her mother had bought at an estate sale—rang once. Then stopped. It shrilled again, and Violet knew it was Maggie. She answered on the second ring, as she always did.

  “Morning, Maggie.”

  “Morning?” Maggie laughed, her low, throaty voice as comforting as a dusty vinyl record. Violet pictured Maggie standing in her bakery, wearing a threadbare concert tee and torn jeans, her raven hair shining in the light. “More like afternoon. I just boxed up the cake. It’s beautiful, V! What the hell were you thinking? That had to have taken hours.”

  “I needed to bake a few extra macarons,” Violet said, hiding the smile from her voice. “I had some bad ones in my batch yesterday, so I had the extra time.”

  “Well, they’re going to love it. I’ll take pictures for you.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Thank you. My old hands just can’t take that piping these days.”

  “Maggie, you’re twenty-nine.”

  “And going on seventy-two. Now, I’ve got to go. Your check is under the counter. Get it whenever you’re around. See ya later, alligator!”

  The phone clicked in her ear and the dial tone followed. Threading her fingers through the damp locks slipping over her shoulders, she hung up the antique phone and returned to her room to pick out the day’s outfit. She should chop more wood; it was barely halfway done. If she’d taken Arie up on his offer, it would already be completed, but she’d been too proud. She shuddered at the thought of pulling on those heavy pants and wooly shirt.

  Putting off the inevitable, she drifted back out into the hallway and up the stairs to her parents’ bedroom. Hitching her robe tighter around her waist, she slipped silently into their closet, toward her mother’s dresses, the special ones meant for extravagant soirées. The space smelled of her mother’s Chanel perfume, the kind her father would buy Mae every Christmas. A staple, he’d called it, but really, he’d just loved the smell of it on her. And Mae had loved the way he’d sniff at her neck, pulling her close, and Violet would giggle when she’d catch them canoodling. The special dresses were in the back corner, next to her father’s suits and his tuxedo, still pressed and in a plastic covering, that he used to wear to award presentations for his inventions.

  If Violet allowed herself to run her fingers over the crisp lapels, the expensive fabric, and the tailored cut, she’d be lost in the closet all day. And the sun was too bright, the air too promising of a nice day for her to lose herself in memories. Before she left, she pulled out a hanger holding an Yves Saint Laurent, blush-colored dress she’d never worn. It was one of her mother’s treasures that she’d purchased from a fancy boutique in Paris. She’d picked it up on a vacation while Hayes had been busy speaking at a lecture.

  In another life, my little spider, her mother used to say wistfully, before Hayes got sick and Beatrice moved in and Canaan became less a haven and more a prison for Mae.

  Canaan had always been home to Violet, but some days she understood how her mother had felt. She refused to let today be one of those days. Feeling determined, Violet carried the dress back downstairs to her room and changed. It was of the strapless variety, with ruffles around the top hem that curved below the cuff of her shoulders, leaving stretches of pale skin exposed. But as she twisted back and forth in front of her dusty mirror, she thought the seventies trend suited her. The bottom was heavy with delicate lace that flowed over her legs and swished around her ankles. Her mother had looked better in it, but Violet managed, even if she did look a bit coltish. The color didn’t wash her out nearly as much as she’d expected, and if she pulled her hair up and wore her strappy sandals, she might feel a smidgen of her mother’s dauntlessness.

  Thirty minutes later, she was out the door. She never wore makeup—it made her look too similar to a cadaver—but she had put some mascara on her lashes. Some days, she hated her eyes for their unsettling color, for the way people gawked at them, for them making her the Ghost of Canaan, and, of course, for the doomsday they represented. Eventually, she would be too blind to even put on mascara.

  On other days, like today, she saw her eyes and thought they were pretty in their own sort of way, and she highlighted them with dark mascara to tame the thing that scared people—and terrified her.

  She retrieved her bike from the front porch and arranged herself on it, careful of the hem and the pedals. With one last pat of her hair, she was off. Momentum carried her down the drive, and she knew all the holes and ruts to avoid. Within a minute, she was on the main road, rocketing toward town. All the roads on the northern part of the island sloped down, winding back toward town and the other residential areas of the island.

  She kept her speed up without much exertion and maintained a manageable wobble in her front tire—though she always felt one pothole away from flying over the handlebars. Imagining she was just a blur of lace and ruffles and silver hair, she streaked through town and straight out the other side without catching too much attention. She passed the cemetery, the scraggly landscaping in need of her attention, and arrived on the outskirts of town before she even had to fix her dress.

  Within another ten minutes, Gardenia Street emerged from the residential, beachfront properties, and she was barely sweating. That was the lie about ghosts: people often thought them frail, barely there, incapable, but beneath Violet’s pale skin and perpetual dresses, her muscles were wiry and more than capable. Her palms were calloused and her back could carry its fair share of heavy things. She wasn’t weak in that sense.

  But as she drew up a few houses away from Kyra’s, one foot on the pedal and the other on the street for balance, a surge of panic washed over her. What had she been thinking? There were seven cars parked along the street. She’d pictured the party in her mind countless times based on the details Kyra had provided, but it didn’t match the scene in front of her. Her careful planning about how she would slip inside, say hello to Kyra and Stevie, nod at Hale and Cade, skirt around Arie without making a fumbling, blushing fool of herself, and watch the cake cutting all flew out the window in the face of reality.

  No matter how many times she’d mentally walked herself through that front door, the task remained impossible in real life.

  You should’ve known, she told herself. You were never going inside.

  Laughter and country music swirled out from the mint green house’s backyard. A million sounds all packed into a tiny space with no room to breathe and so many faces looking at her, wondering why she was there, what was wrong with her, why she was wearing a musty old dress. Two people per car, fourteen people, plus Kyra and Hale and Stevie and Cade and others who had walked or carpooled and she hadn’t considered carpooling, which meant there could be more than two people per car, so maybe twenty—

  “You creep around here often?”

  She almost fell off her bike. On the sidewalk next to her, Stevie stood, one hand on her cocked, curvy hip and a jug of lemonade in the other. She wore an emerald romper with long pants and an off-the-shoulder sleeve that set off her pale, freckled skin and mossy-hued eyes.

  “What?” Violet choked out, panic clawing up her throat and closing off her windpipe.

  “You’re being creepy. Why are you being creepy?” Stevie’s eyes brightened. “Oh! I love that dress.” She became all reachy, grabby hands, pulling at the back of Violet’s dress to see the tag. Violet tried to wiggle away, but Stevie was faster. “Yves Saint Laurent! I would ask to borrow it but my boobs would fall out.” She eyed Violet’s chest then her own, adding a slight up and down jiggle as though she needed the bounce to gauge their size. “Yeah, these suckers wo
uld definitely fall out.”

  Violet swallowed. Sometime between Stevie calling her creepy and then watching her shake her boobs in the middle of the street, she forgot about the panic attack she’d been bringing on herself.

  “So . . .” Stevie dragged out the word, her attention turning away from Violet’s dress. “Whatcha doin’?”

  What was she doing? Now she was stuck. If she’d just ridden away before Stevie had found her, she’d be halfway to town by now and nearly home. She could’ve taken off this dress and put it away where it belonged and just hid. She should be hiding. Her throat was closing up again.

  “My grass touches her grass, you know.”

  Violet’s mouth hung open, ready to form the hasty goodbye she’d been about to say. She readjusted with a confused blink. That was the way with Stevie Reynolds: lots of readjustments. “Um, pardon me?”

  “Mine and Kyra’s backyards.” Stevie shrugged a freckled shoulder. “I mean a fence separates them, but it’s basically the same yard.”

  Violet decided not to say anything. The tactic was normally the best course of action with Stevie. Not that Violet had discovered any other method for handling the sassy redhead.

  “So we can hang out on my back porch and technically still be at the party. I mean, it’s so close we can still talk to people, or not, since I know you’re the strong, silent type. It’ll just be me and you and whoever else we allow in our fort. Unless they bring cake or those macarons Maggie said you baked. If they bring those, I say we let them in. But we should go because Mrs. Walker is staring at us, and I almost accidentally set her fence on fire last week with a blowtorch when I was welding this metal sculpture, so we aren’t on the best of terms. Also, there might be a restraining order involved.” She darted a glance over Violet’s shoulder and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Yep, we should go. Now.”

  She bounded across the street like the pavement was lava and her feet couldn’t touch it. Violet glanced back, and sure enough, an elderly lady had her wrinkled face pressed against the glass of her front door, her mouth twisted in a sour scowl. Quickly, Violet turned away and pedaled after Stevie, who held her front gate open.

  She parked her bike at the bottom of Stevie’s front porch while Stevie took the steps two at a time, wrenched her front door open, and threw a glare in Mrs. Walker’s direction. Violet hurried in after her.

  Safely inside, Stevie heaved out a long exhale. “That was close. Pete let me off the hook the last time she called him after I got too close to her house, but he said he’d have to report it the second time. It isn’t fair. That first time I was just trying to make her see reason. Technically, her fence is fine. Like, it’s only a little crispy. You know?”

  “Who’s Pete?”

  “Oh.” Stevie waved her off as she led Violet through her house. It was modern and open, with dark colors on the walls and lots of silver and glass accents. “He’s the cop assigned to all the calls about me. Something about him drawing the short straw, but I see it as having my own special police officer. Here we go.”

  She pulled open the sliding glass door to her patio and stepped outside. The back of Gardenia Street was entirely different from the prim and proper street side often featured in the annual Georgia Gardening Club magazine. Back here was just ocean for miles and beach and sea grass. A few gardens poked out the back of some houses, the scant amounts of grass turning quickly to sand just a few feet beyond the fences. Seagulls squawked overhead and tourists walked the beach. But next door, Kyra’s shower was just beginning.

  “Are you sure you want to be over here with me?” Violet asked, still standing next to the back door, ready to run for it.

  Stevie paused mid-cleanup of the patio. “Well, yeah. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be over here. Just don’t make eye contact with Emilie.” She pointed not so subtly at the petite, heavily tattooed woman standing off by herself and scowling at anyone who came too near. She was the producer from Reno Reality who had helped Stevie get out of a tight situation a month ago. “I might have pissed her off earlier after asking if she needed to borrow my vibrator because she looked so glum. It got heated. Long story short, she’s not allowed in our fort. I don’t care how many macarons she brings. Hey, did you bring any extra?”

  “Um, no. I apologize.”

  “That’s okay. You can still stay here with me. You did such a great job on the cake! Kyra almost pooped her pants when she saw it. Seriously. That baby is squishing her insides or something. But Maggie said you did all those little flowers yourself. I ate one. Have a seat. You shouldn’t hover.”

  Violet took a seat on a wicker glider chair and carefully arranged her dress around her legs. “How much sugar have you had today, Stevie?”

  “Hmmm, what? I can’t hear you. There’s a ringing in my ears. Hey, Hale!”

  Hale Cooper, barrel-chested with tattooed arms the size of Violet’s torso, looked up from his position at the grill and glared. “Shit, Stevie,” he said in a normal voice. “Can you keep it down? We can’t have the cops called on the baby shower. That would just be embarrassing.”

  From Kyra’s back porch, Kyra herself stepped into the sun, her blonde hair glinting. She wore faded overalls that accented her little baby bump. Her feet were bare, and a beaming smile was on her face, appearing permanently in place. She raised a toned, tanned arm and shielded her eyes against the sunlight. “Stevie? What the heck are you doing?”

  “Can Hale come get this lemonade?” Stevie waved the jug for emphasis, sloshing the insides. “I’m hanging over here with Violet.”

  “Oh!” Kyra’s beam ratcheted up another notch. “Hey, Violet! I couldn’t see you behind Stevie’s hair.”

  Stevie hissed and patted down her wildly curly locks. “If you weren’t pregnant, I would throw you in a thorny bush again for saying that.”

  Violet forced herself to wave.

  From a group of twelve people mingling around a picnic table beneath a string of paper lanterns, Cade Cooper peeled off and jogged over to the fence line. He easily cleared it with a casual hop. His long legs loped over to Stevie, a goofy grin creasing his face into dimples. “Hey, babe. I can get that for you.”

  “You know it turns me on when you jump over things.”

  Cade reached up for the lemonade. Stevie leaned over the porch railing and planted a smacking kiss on his lips, her breasts practically smothering Cade. Judging from the delirious look in his eyes when she pulled back, he didn’t seem to mind. He peered around Stevie, his hair slightly rumpled. “Hey, Violet! Glad you could come. Arie mentioned he was doing some things around your house to pay you back for his leg. That was really kind of you.”

  Violet felt her entire body go red. She managed a tight-necked nod.

  “Talk to you girls later.” Cade jogged back off, jumping over the fence with extra flair. He winked at Stevie over his shoulder and ducked inside Kyra’s house to put the lemonade up.

  “Isn’t he really hot? I mean, like, take his clothes off in public hot?” Stevie slumped into the couch across from Violet and fanned her face.

  Violet’s body turned hotter. And people thought she was odd? Had no one in this town met this kooky group of friends? “Um . . .”

  “Speaking of hot, Arie will be here soon. I’m sure you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” Violet coughed out the words and blushed harder. She’d hoped Stevie hadn’t caught her subtle checks of the small crowd over in Kyra’s yard. She’d been looking for him, of course, searching for his dark hair and scratchy beard.

  “Sure, and I’m not plotting how to steal that dress from you later, boobs be damned.”

  Violet couldn’t help it. She chuckled a bit, and Stevie’s smile stretched wider. They sat for a while, with Stevie doing most of the talking as she pointed out all the guests and added super-special Stevie side notes to each person’s description and relation to Kyra. As more people arrived, they waved and said hello to Stevie from across the fence as if it wasn’t weird at all, and
they even spared Violet a kind nod most of the time. Sitting on Stevie’s porch, she was less the Ghost of Canaan and more a person at a baby shower on a Saturday afternoon. After almost an hour, two glasses of lemonade Cade trotted over, smiling the entire time like Stevie was his queen, and a few vanilla cupcakes, Violet actually relaxed enough to prop her feet up on the ottoman and add in comments to Stevie’s endless conversation stream.

  During it all, Arie had arrived, and she’d watched him skim through the crowd, searching for someone. Possibly her, if she allowed herself to think that way, but she didn’t. She forced herself to look away from him, clad in jeans and a sleeveless shirt that showed off the muscles in his shoulders and arms, which were almost as big as Hale’s. Not that she was comparing.

  She certainly wasn’t still checking him out.

  She turned back to Stevie, who was explaining, “. . . and then I was like, ‘Well, Mrs. Walker, if your fence wasn’t coated in thirty-six layers of glow-in-the-dark white paint, maybe it wouldn’t be so flammable.’ I mean, as old as she is, that paint probably has all sorts of shit in it. It’s probably giving us all unfathomable diseases. I told her I was doing the community a favor and if she would pull her face out of Mr. Henderson’s ballsack once in a while, she might realize white picket fences went out of style in the fifties and she’s making the entire street look bad anyway. You okay there?”

  Violet had choked on her lemonade somewhere around the mention of balls and sacks. “I’m fine,” she managed. “Thank you.”

  “Politeness is wasted on Stevie.” Arie stood at Stevie’s back porch steps, one boot propped on the bottom stair, his hip resting on the banister. He was smirking up at them.

  Stevie twisted around and glowered at him. “Says who? And besides, Hulk Hogan called. He wants his tank top back.”

  Arie’s brows lowered. “It’s not a tank top.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “A shirt that keeps me cool.”

  “Right,” Stevie drawled. “I’m sure that was the only thing you had in mind when you picked it out.”