by Meg Collett
I wish they had taken me with them.
8
There were precisely one hundred birdhouses along the lighthouse’s curving, chipped walls. Already, the birds were busy roosting, tucking bits and bobs of straw and grass and sticks into the narrow circular holes Arie had drilled into the wood. Wings fluttering about and harried chirps filled the air above Violet’s head.
Counting them had soothed her tattered nerves. Her head swam from thinking of those words—I wish they had taken me with them. The awful truth had been percolating in the back of her mind, waiting for her to truly see it, or as had been the case yesterday with Arie, waiting for her to nearly say the words, for them to slip off her tongue and into the air, impossible for her to pull them back and hide them away again.
Even though she hadn’t said them, she might as well have. She had wrangled them back behind her teeth, but Arie had seen the truth in her eyes. He knew exactly what she’d almost said.
They’d sat there in silence for a too-long beat while Violet collected herself. Arie had excused himself to go put up the birdhouses, and Violet had listened to his progress from the kitchen’s open window, the sounds of his hammering carried on the breeze. He’d been able to get all one hundred birdhouses up in the single evening, and once it had gotten dark, she’d heard him come onto the porch to say goodbye, but he’d hesitated. He might have been about to knock or call through the screen door, but he didn’t. He’d turned and left without a word, and Violet had tracked his progress down the hill by the crunching and lurching of his truck over the driveway.
Then, she’d been truly alone. Again.
She’d gone back to her parents’ room and fallen asleep.
When the morning rays had cut through a sliver in the curtains, she’d woken and blinked into the light. She’d found her way out here, to the lighthouse, and counted the birdhouses, and she’d watched and listened to the ocean far below, dancing with the cliff edge.
She heaved the lighthouse door closed and locked up. As she turned around to head back to the house, her eye caught on a spot farther down the bluff, closer to her house, where the cliff edge curled up and out over the ocean. Rocks slid free with a suck of air and free-fell down, down, down to the ocean, so far below that Violet didn’t even hear the splash.
The ocean, taking its daily tithe until there would be nothing left to give, leaving Violet and her house and everything inside it on the ocean floor with the mermaids.
Never swim in the ocean, my little spider. The mermaids will whisk you away from me and I’ll never see you again. Promise me, spider. Promise me three times to seal it in fate.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She was settling into that melancholic funk where she lost herself in the whimsy the house dragged her into. She could wander through the halls for hours, talking to the rooms as though they were people and having discussions with pictures and chairs and fireplace mantles. Before she tumbled too far down the rabbit hole, she returned to the house, grabbed a floppy cardigan from the coat rack, and marched straight to her bike.
She needed to go into town and pick up her check from Maggie’s. She could cash it and pick up a few groceries. With the rest, she would pay her bills for the next month to keep the house going a little longer. It would keep her from having to dip into her rainy-day fund, because she might need every cent for her legal fees in her battle against Teller Morgan Group.
She pedaled down the hill, avoiding the ruts by memory. She probably should ask Maggie for a few extra shifts, just in case. A time would come when she didn’t have a nest egg to fall back on.
She let the speed carry her down the road, and as she zipped around the turns, her hair streaming behind her, the thrill of it wove itself through her blood. She wore plaid pants, meaning she didn’t have to fuss with a skirt, and a simple blouse beneath her cardigan. After Maggie’s, she could head over to the cemetery and check on the plants without worrying about ruining a dress.
Once in town, she traversed through the late-season tourists and aimed for Maggie’s. The store was open, the front door propped wide with a ceramic peg to let in the breeze, the little bell above the door constantly jingling out a tune.
Violet parked her bike in the alley and went in through the side door. Suddenly, she wished she’d come after hours to pick up her paycheck. The store was busy with people buying afternoon snacks or placing cake orders for the weekend. A throng of people milled around the displays, sniffing at the air and soaking up the warm sunrays baking the store in honey-crusted warmth.
Maggie hustled about, her tanned arms grabbing up bags of cookies or balancing pies. She wore a Phish shirt and torn jeans, her feet were bare, and her hair was wrapped up in a bandanna.
She’d owned the store for almost a decade now. At the age of nineteen, after dropping out of college in Texas and moving away from her Dallas-elite family, Maggie opened the store. Back then, the island was just a dot off the coast of Georgia and hadn’t been discovered as a tourist hotspot. Now she lived above the store in a simple apartment with a one-eyed dog and a penchant for vinyl records.
The store always played a range of music, selected by Maggie that morning from her collection, unless the local radio station DJ named Tooty was sitting on the counter next to the player, thumbing through records and playing one song after the other the way he was today. He looked up, his brackish-blond hair tufted up in the front where he constantly shoved his fingers through it.
“Violet!” His voice was constantly tuned to an excited, high-pitched decibel, as though words spilled out of him uncontrollably. “You’ll never guess what I just found. Maggie has been sitting on a rare Elvis record. Can you believe it? She won’t even let me play it.”
Maggie bustled over and took the spot behind the antique register to ring up some customers. “So help me God, Tooty, if you open that plastic wrapper, I will drown you in your own mucus.”
Tooty rolled his eyes at Violet. “Can you believe how mean she is? I’m helping her customers get their jam on.”
“If you’re here,” Violet said, slipping past Tooty’s perch to hang up her cardigan on the hook next to the wall of counters that served as a divider to the kitchen, “who’s running the radio station?”
Canaan’s only radio station was Tooty’s love child. He called it his baby every time someone asked about the little red barn with all the probes and dishes on the roof on the outskirts of town. He was the only DJ employed and ran the thing pretty much twenty-four-seven.
“I put a loop on,” he said, flipping through the records, his eyes flashing back and forth as he read and flipped, read and flipped. “Oh! Violet, listen to this. This is gonna be good.”
He spun a record on his fingers and switched out the one on the player, flipping the dials and swinging his legs and bobbing his chin to a beat before the needle even hit the track. Bob Segar rolled out, voice thick and rumbling. Maggie’s favorite, and Tooty knew it. His efforts earned him a front-row seat as Maggie danced, her slim hips swaying back and forth, her shirt riding up over the waist of her tight Wrangler jeans, revealing a swath of pale skin.
Violet swallowed a giggle. Those two were hopeless. Tooty tried his best with Maggie, but she was almost thirty and he’d only turned twenty-one this year. Much to Tooty’s complaint, Maggie thought she was too old for him.
Violet left Tooty and the record player behind to help Maggie. She began with restocking the displays and bagging sweets for shoppers. She fell into the rhythm, nodding politely as people pointed out what they wanted and wordlessly handing them their wares. Throughout the store, she moved so her footsteps were barely a whisper, and she imagined herself as a wisp of smoke, trailing in and out of people’s sights. By pretending to be invisible, she could almost believe no one saw her behind the glass. It helped to get through times when the store was busy and she had to deal with customers, though she much preferred doing the cakes late at night, with no one around.
More people came in and Viol
et looked up in time to see the new arrivals were Kyra and Stevie, their cheeks flushed and their hair windswept from the ride over. Given that the day was oddly warm for October, they must have driven in Kyra’s Jeep with the windows down. Violet imagined they probably rode around with their arms out the window, music blaring from the speakers as they laughed and shouted over the wind. She wiped her hands on her pants and pushed the thought from her mind so she couldn’t picture herself in the backseat, laughing and smiling with them.
It would never happen for too many reasons to count, not the least of which was the fact she had to imagine herself invisible around crowds.
They spotted her almost immediately and came over to where she stood behind a display, removing the cookies that hadn’t sold yet so she could bundle them in a bag and put them at a discount on the main counter.
“Hey, Violet!” Kyra said, smiling brightly. “How have you been? I was so excited you got to come to the shower.” She put a hand on the tiny swell of her belly. “I don’t think I got to thank you personally for the cake. It was beautiful!”
Stevie laid her head on top of the display and pressed a finger against the glass, pointing to the white chocolate chip macadamia cookies. “Get in my belly,” she crooned.
Kyra sighed. “She was having a sugar meltdown. I’m talking Marshall Law, state of emergency kind of meltdown. It was so bad on the way over here that I didn’t think we’d make it.”
Violet smiled in spite of herself. She tugged at the hem of her shirt and said, “How many will it take to pull her back from the brink?”
Stevie spread her hand wide on the glass, leaving finger smudges behind. “Twenty. Maybe thirty.”
Kyra pried Stevie’s hand off the glass. “They only come in dozens, you goober.”
“Hey, ladies!” Tooty called from the back of the store, waving above the heads of other customers. He’d put on Journey after Bob. “Congrats on the bun in the oven, Kyra!”
“Thanks, Tooty. How’s the barn loft reno coming along?” Kyra asked. She moved away from the display to chat with Tooty about Hale’s latest job renovating the station’s loft into an apartment.
“Okay, fine. I’ll take four dozen,” Stevie said, still talking about the cookies.
Violet’s brows rose. “Are you sure? That many cookies will probably kill you.”
“We all gotta die sometime, Violet. I choose death by cookie. Give me. Givemegivemegiveme.”
Violet counted. “We only have thirty-six.”
“Fine. Just hurry. I’m barely alive.”
Violet chuckled a bit and scooped out the cookies in question. Stevie watched Violet place every one in a baker’s box.
“Quit drooling on the glass,” Violet admonished. “I have to clean that.”
“I can’t stop myself. I think I’m dying. Is that the bright light at the end of the tunnel?” Stevie asked, gaping in wonder. “Is this how it happens? Are you there, God?”
“That’s the display light.”
“Oh. Well, that was close.”
Violet closed up the box and handed it across the display before Stevie chewed off her own hand. “Why are you having such a sugar craving?”
Stevie cradled the box in her arms and carefully extracted a cookie, inhaled its scent, then crammed it into her mouth. Around the crumbling mess in her mouth, she said, “I helped Hale move into Kyra’s house today. I had to lift boxes and stuff. It was awful. Do you have any icing for these? Like to dip them in?”
Violet closed the display from the back. “I can get you a few different flavors. Just come up to the counter and you can tell me what you want.”
Violet slipped toward the main cash register, where Maggie was still ringing up customers. The kitchen was just behind the front counter, and as Violet came out from behind the display, a group of three young teenagers came into the store, laughing loudly and pushing at each other. Two were guys in beanies, with one sporting a Hollister shirt, and one was a girl wearing a tight shirt and no jacket. They all smelled of smoke, most likely having come from a bonfire on the beach, even though lighting fires down there was illegal.
Violet angled away from them and kept heading toward the refrigerator in the back that contained some icing flavors she thought Stevie might enjoy, like strawberry, lemon, and a French vanilla. Maybe custard cream and the new raspberry Violet had concocted last week too. She was focusing on her options when she heard the first remark.
“Oh my gosh. Do you see her?” the girl asked, her voice hushed as though she’d meant to whisper, but with Violet’s better-than-average hearing, she easily caught the words.
She hunched a little farther into herself and tilted her chin down, her eyes on the floor in front of her.
“Who?” one of the boys responded.
Violet sensed the moment their attention all turned to her. She’d almost reached the counter, but the teenagers closed in around her, the store thankfully too crowded for anyone else to notice their attention. In her experience, if one person noticed her, then everyone else in the immediate vicinity was also drawn in, whether they wanted to be or not.
The boy in the Hollister shirt came around the bread display and stepped in front of her. Violet lurched to a stop, her eyes trained on the floor.
“Hey,” he said too sweetly. “We have a question for you.”
Wincing at the sound of his voice so close to her, Violet tried to step around him. He blocked her path.
“You work here, right?” he pressed. “Then you have to answer our question or else you’ll get fired.”
Violet studied the pattern stamped onto the store’s concrete floor until her eyes blurred. “What’s wrong with you? Are you diseased?” The boy snorted. From the corner of her eye, she saw him glance back at his friends to bolster his courage.
“Is it contagious? Will I catch the ugly?” He poked her arm.
Violet jerked back. “Don’t touch me,” she said too quietly. Always too quiet.
“What was that?”
“Don’t touch me.”
“It can speak, you guys! Hey, answer this. Why are you so pale?”
She tried to move again, but the boy blocked her path once more. “Come on. Just answer me. Do you ever go outside?”
“Ask her about her hair,” the girl chimed in, chortling. “How much did that Halloween box dye job cost?”
“Yeah,” the Hollister boy said. “How much did it cost? What about those clothes? Did you get them for a quarter at the thrift store? I bet you have lice from buying poor people’s clothes.”
“Fuck off,” Violet hissed, raising her eyes to his.
The boy started when he saw her eyes. His mouth hung open and he shot another glance back at his friends.
“She’s a total freak!” he laughed, his attention darting between her and his friends. “Got a nasty mouth too! How ’bout you do the fucking, freak? I bet you want it weird.”
Violet shoved past the Hollister boy once and for all, but suddenly, his head ripped backward and he stumbled onto a knee. The girl gasped. Violet lurched back.
Behind the boy, Stevie had a handful of the kid’s hair and was wrenching him down to the floor. “What did you just say, you little asshole?”
“Let me go, you bitch!”
Over Stevie’s shoulder, toward the back of the store, Tooty was standing on his counter, glaring in their direction. The music had stopped. “Are those kids bothering you, Violet?” he called.
Maggie was already moving toward them, along with Kyra.
Stevie pushed the boy again, and he sprawled on his ass. “I’m calling my parents!” he howled. “They’ll sue you!”
“Apologize,” Stevie commanded, “or your parents will be digging bits of my shoe out of your ass for the next twenty years.”
“Fuck you!”
“What’s going on?” Maggie said, barreling into the group. She grabbed the second boy’s shirt to keep him from turning and running. The girl took her chance and hightailed it out of
the store. “Do I need to call the cops?”
“It’s fine, Maggie,” Violet said. Her arms were wrapped around her middle. Wishing she hadn’t taken off her cardigan, she imagined pulling it around her, cocooning herself up tight, and disappearing.
“They were being pricks. I heard them.” Stevie glared down at the boy cowering on the floor. He still hadn’t attempted to get to his feet.
Maggie bent over and dragged him up. He slunk to her side, his glare locked on Stevie.
“Bitch,” he mouthed when Maggie wasn’t looking.
“Oh,” Stevie crooned. “You got me good. Maybe your penis can be half as big as your mouth. Then it can be, what, like, half an inch?”
“You wish—”
“Okay!” Tooty, having pushed his way over during the exchange, took the boy’s arm from Maggie. “Better stop now, dude. You wanna call the cops, Mags?”
Maggie looked to Violet and raised an eyebrow. Violet shook her head.
“Call the cops? I’m the one getting harassed!” the boy whined. He turned to Tooty and looked up at him with idol-worshipping eyes. “Come on, Tooty, man, this ain’t cool.”
“Don’t tell me about cool, you twerp.”
Maggie met Tooty’s eye before turning her attention to the boy. “You and your friends better not come in this store again. Understand?”
“Whatever. You—ow!” the boy finished in a yell.
Tooty eased up his grip. For a guy who sat at a radio booth all day, his only form of exercise coming from running around in first-person shooter video games, he had pretty impressive muscles. He was also nearly two feet taller than the kid, but then Tooty was two feet taller than practically everybody.
“Try again,” Tooty said. “And add in a little respect.”
“Understood,” the boy said quickly, not wanting to look any worse in front of Tooty.
“Was that so hard?” Tooty asked.
“Now apologize,” Stevie said, inclining her chin toward Violet.