The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories

by A. C. Wise

  “Dizzy,” she says again, and the baby smiles.

  “Are you making all this up?” Dizzy asks.

  The question startles me, and I pull my gaze away from the telescope’s eyepiece. Dizzy, sitting in her camp chair, watches me carefully. I rented a cabin for the weekend so we could watch the meteor shower together, far from the city lights. Dizzy’s big into space lately, rocket ships and astronauts; I thought this would be a good chance to bond. She’s growing up fast, my little girl. Already, the baby-roundness of her cheeks is almost invisible. She’s getting too old for faerie tales, and I still haven’t found a way to explain Silvie. To her or myself.

  The telescope balances on the porch between us. We each have a blanket on our laps and a thermos beside our chairs—tea for me, hot chocolate for Dizzy.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Dizzy rolls her eyes, the expression much more natural these days.

  “First Silvie ran away to Faerie, and now she’s an astronaut? The story keeps changing, and it all sounds made up.”

  It does, at that, but Dizzy’s words still sting. She’s far too young for teenage rebellion, but I can see the seeds of it, curled and waiting to grow. She’s becoming her own person, separate from me. Or rather, she was always her own person, but she’s learning to express it without reserve.

  Part of me is desperate to hold on—a mother’s futile wish to keep my baby girl with me forever. The more rational part knows I need to learn to let her go, something I’ve never been particularly good at. Sometimes I think of Dizzy as a seed caught on the wind. I want to see where she’ll land, what she’ll grow into, what kind of person she’ll be.

  “I can stop, if you want.” My voice comes out smaller than I expected.

  I didn’t mean to let Dizzy see my hurt. Now it’s there, raw and exposed between us. It makes me feel like I’m the child. Her expression changes, a subtle and complicated thing. Light slides through her eyes, which are sometimes like mine, and sometimes like Silvie’s.

  “No, I want to hear the end,” she says.

  Maybe she says it because she thinks it’s what I want to hear, but there’s a note of genuine curiosity tucked inside her words. Despite myself, I smile.

  “Where do you think Silvie is right now?” Dizzy asks, giving me an opening.

  “Well, let’s see.” I set my tea aside and lean toward the telescope, adjusting the eyepiece. Night insects chirr. “She should be right about there.”

  I lean back, turning the eyepiece over to Dizzy. She scoots her chair closer, bending to look.

  My phone buzzes, startling me. While Dizzy is focused on the stars, I slip the phone out of my pocket. A text message from Megan.

  We met at the library. She has a son Dizzy’s age, both voracious readers, and we kept running into each other. Accidentally at first, and maybe not so accidentally later on. We’ve had coffee once, nothing more. She knows about Dizzy, of course, but not about Silvie. My pulse thumps, guilty. Another glance at Dizzy, who is still absorbed in the stars, and I thumb the message open.

  Hope you’re enjoying the meteors. :)

  The message is simple, and what else should it be? My stomach flutters on disappointment nonetheless. A stupid part of me wants Megan to say she wishes she was here. I want her to say something playful and a little suggestive, making me blush.

  Disgusted with myself, I slip my phone back into my pocket. I’m waiting for Silvie. I’m following the rules. There’s nothing in the rules about cute women met at the library who are here and now, not impossible and far away.

  I lean back in my chair, wrapping my hands around my thermos of tea. Even without the telescope, the stars are perfect. I try to picture Silvie up there. But the more I reach after her, the more she becomes a ghost, smoke and water slipping through my fingers, an abstract concept impossible to hold.

  Silvie away is perfect. What will happen if she finally comes home, when she touches down on earth and decides to stay? What will I do when I’m faced with the reality of her every day? The sound of her breath, the weight of her body, the way she moves.

  I’ve spent so long dreaming and imagining every possibility, but the woman who comes home to me will be a stranger. Time works differently among the stars. It’s not a matter of light years or distance. It’s a matter of all my days spent left behind while Silvie floated in a capsule among the stars. She’s been weightless, breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, eating packaged foods. Her life is so far removed from mine, I have no idea what I’d even say to her.

  Down here on Earth, I have Dizzy and the hundred million new things she learns every day. There are bills and groceries, missing the bus and being late for work.

  When Silvie comes home, I’ll have to spend the rest of our lives together pretending she isn’t a changeling wearing my lover’s skin, as if the same Silvie who left me years ago is the one who came home. Her eyes will have seen the stars from angles I can’t comprehend. I’ll ask her to stand beside me on a porch like this one and look at them through a telescope, and she’ll have to pretend it’s enough.

  “Look, the shooting stars!” Dizzy pulls away from the eyepiece, pointing.

  Silver blazes across the sky. My breath catches. I put my arm around my daughter. What if one of those streaks of light is Silvie’s ship, scattered across the dark, broken into a thousand pieces with Silvie’s bones burning up before they ever touch the ground?

  I hate myself for even thinking it. I try not to wish on a falling star that it will come true.

  I want Silvie safe and back with me. I don’t want her to come home.

  More than one thing can be true.

  I want Silvie never to have left me in the first place.

  Gin’s phone pings, a soft sound like a stone hitting a window. Squinting at the screen’s glow, she reads, 3:41 a.m—Silvie: Meet me at Ames in San Jose.

  Gin’s mouth goes dry. Silvie. Gin hasn’t heard from her in… How long has it been? Where the hell has she been? And what is Ames?

  Even as the thoughts chase through Gin’s head, she’s already pulling on clothes with sleep-thick fingers, looking up Ames and San Jose. Gin stops for coffee, but nothing else, driving through the silver-blue hours before dawn. Her mind made up before she’s even though it through. An hour to San Jose, because Silvie summoned her, and it was never even a question whether she would obey.

  Ames Research Center is fenced-in and has an impressive-looking security gate. Gin parks down the road, climbing out of the car as the sky begins to lighten. There’s a rocket on the other side of the fence, but it’s just wood and plaster, not the real thing. Silvie melts out of the shadows, and Gin starts.

  “Shit. You scared me.”

  Moisture beads the air, not quite rain. Gin steps closer, trying to get a better look at Silvie. In the pre-dawn light, she’s a ghost.

  “What are we doing here?” Gin asks; she hates how breathless her voice sounds. She’s afraid to touch Silvie in case she vanishes, a figment of her imagination after all.

  Instead of an answer, Silvie grabs the fence surrounding the compound. Gin’s heart pulses in her throat, blocking a shout, but Silvie is already up and over. She grins through the fence, features sliced into diamond shapes by the thick wires.

  “I’ll unlock the gate.”

  There should be sirens, a guard, something, but there’s only Gin’s breath as she tries to keep up. This reminds her of something, but she can’t think what. For some reason, she pictures tall trees beneath a wheeling blanket of stars. Have they been here before?

  Gin misses the part where Silvie gets the gate open and suddenly Gin is inside the fence with her, breaking and entering. Don’t worry, Gin. I swear, we won’t get caught. Kids shoplift all the time. Everybody comes here. The signs don’t mean anything. It’s perfectly safe.

  Gin looks up at the sleek length of the wood and plaster rocket. The not-quite-light-not-quite-dark sky transforms it, making it look almost real. Silvie produces a p
ack of cigarettes from somewhere and lights one. Déjà vu nags at Gin, a dizzy feeling so she has to lower her head, breathing deep of the morning air.

  “Could you please tell me what’s going on?” Gin clenches her fingers into a fist at her side. None of this makes any sense.

  “I have to go away, Gin.” Silvie’s words are an echo of an echo.

  “Where?”

  “Up there.” Silvie points at the rocket, trailing smoke. “I’ve been accepted for the mission.”

  “What mission? Silvie, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Top secret.”

  Gin raises her head in time to see Silvie grin. Gin wonders whether she’s the one losing it. Of course Silvie is in the space program; she told Gin about it ages ago. Now she’s been accepted for a mission, a life among the stars. How could she have forgotten?

  Silvie is still talking, but Gin can’t hear her. Her voice is like a radio caught between two stations, words from each ghosting through. Gin shakes her head, trying to clear it.

  “Training starts tomorrow. I’ll have to follow all these crazy rules, a strict diet, exercise, but tonight I want to celebrate. With you.”

  The last words are pointed. The way Silvie is looking at her makes Gin’s stomach drop. Silvie’s eyes are wide and full of starving light. She’s looking at Gin in a hungry kind of way, a way she’s never looked at her before. Gin always hoped, but now Silvie’s attention makes her want to squirm. It all feels wrong.

  “Didn’t you…” Gin starts to say, but she doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Didn’t you go to live with the faeries? But that sounds ridiculous. Weren’t you sick? Didn’t you have a baby and that’s why you had to go away? You tried to kill yourself. You succeeded. None of this is real. Every variation she tries sounds just as wrong. Silvie is here, with Gin, and she wants to celebrate.

  Silvie pulls a flask from her pocket and takes a long swallow. Her free hand catches Gin’s, the twin points of their pulses beating in time.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Silvie says. Her smile is genuine.

  She hands over the flask, and Gin drinks, nearly choking. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Only the finest rotgut.”

  She pulls Gin closer, the suddenness of it stealing Gin’s breath. There’s a roaring when Silvie kisses her, like the wood and plaster rocket firing as it lifts into the sky. Silvie’s hands slide under Gin’s shirt, cold against her skin. She bites down on Gin’s lip, hard enough to draw blood.

  “Ow! What are you doing?”

  Gin pulls back, but Silvie catches the back of her neck, resting her forehead against Gin’s.

  “I want to drink you in. I want to remember every single moment of this.”

  Then Silvie is kissing her again. Her mouth tastes like rotgut and ash and the salt tang of blood. All Gin can think is smoke, alcohol, and blood, over and over again. The words beat against her closed eyelids, crowd her throat and make it hard to breathe. An offering, a spell, something to keep Silvie by her side, or a way to open the door so she can run away again. Smoke, alcohol, blood. Air, fire, water with salt, earth.

  Everything spins dizzily. The rocket fires. The sky swallows Silvie whole. There are tears on Gin’s cheeks and she is alone again.

  “Sleep tight, my little moon-faerie.” I tuck the covers under Dizzy’s chin and plant a kiss on the tip of her nose.

  Her eyes shine in the darkness, an argument building behind them—she’s not sleepy, I didn’t tell the story right, I need to start over again—but the storm never breaks. It only grumbles, low thunder as Dizzy rolls over, pulling the covers with her as she turns her back, murmuring, “G’night,” into her pillow.

  I stand in the doorway, watching her back. Her breath never evens and deepens, but she doesn’t speak again. I’ve tried to do the best I can by her. I’ve tried to give her as much truth as I know. But there’s no clear path to follow through the woods, no map between the stars. I’m making all of this up as I go along. I can only hope Dizzy grows into someone who can find her own way.

  As I double-check the locks on the windows and doors, a shadow at the end of the driveway catches my eye. I’m halfway down the steps before I realize the shape is all wrong. The woman is too tall, her hair is too long; she doesn’t look a thing like Silvie. But now curiosity has me, and a little bit of fear. I approach her cautiously.

  “Got a light?” The woman holds up a cigarette.

  “Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Pity,” the woman says, but she smiles.

  There’s something familiar about her. I can see her more clearly than I should; there are no streetlights on this stretch of road, but a soft glow surrounds her. There’s a scent, too, like honeysuckle, and electricity, like standing under a confluence of wires. The hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “You’re…” But I stop. It’s just a story. Pretty words to heal a broken heart.

  I blink. There are moon-white flowers in the woman’s hair. I blink again and her hair is twisted into an efficient bun. She holds an astronaut’s helmet under her arm.

  Light that isn’t quite a wink slides through the Faerie Queen’s eyes. I stumble half a step and catch myself on the garbage cans waiting at the end of the drive.

  “What…” I swallow, start again. “What are you doing here?”

  She’s impossible, but she’s standing in front of me.

  More than one thing can be true.

  “I had to see for myself,” the Faerie Astronaut says.

  “See what?”

  “She came back to you.” There’s a touch of bitterness in her voice, but there’s a lift to the corner of her mouth as well.

  “I offered her everything, but no matter what I gave her—the world under the ground, or all the stars above, she kept coming back to you.”

  My head buzzes. The woman doubles—bare feet, long hair, the smell of honeysuckle; a suit, a space helmet, a clean scent like soap and talcum powder.

  The woman snaps her fingers. Fire blooms between them, cold and pale. She touches the flame to her cigarette.

  “I tried to hold onto her, but she was like water, smoke.”

  “Always leaving,” I say. “Always drifting away.”

  The woman nods. Her gaze flickers to Dizzy’s window, open to the warm evening air, then back to my face.

  “Love isn’t like it is in ballads. It isn’t something you win or keep by holding on tight enough.”

  Her expression is hard to read. She’s watching me intently like she expects something, like she’s testing me, but I don’t know what to say. It isn’t fair. I followed Silvie’s rules, even though I never understood them. I waited for her, all this time. I stayed on the path. I never strayed.

  My throat tightens, eyes hot and dry.

  “How do I…” I start to say win her back, but the Faerie Queen already told me—it doesn’t work that way. “How do I learn to let her go?”

  I lower my eyes, ashamed, hot tears slip down my cheeks.

  “It isn’t easy,” the Faerie Queen says, breathing smoke and looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “It took me years. It may take you longer, a lifetime even, but it can be done.”

  My heart thump-kicks back into rhythm with the world. My whole life, my whole story, has been Silvie up until now. What will I do without her? What will I do if this time she doesn’t come home?

  I close my eyes, lashes frosted with tears. The earth turns, the stars turn; I can feel both of them. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I can see the path.

  The Faerie Queen’s touch startles me, her fingers cool on mine. She squeezes my hand, briefly, like a blessing, the honeysuckle and smoke scent of her heavy in my nose.

  Upstairs, my little girl is waiting for me. My little girl who is flesh and bone and real, all questions. Just thinking about her fills my heart to cracking with love. She needs me. Maybe there is no map for this kind of situation,
but we can draw one together. Maybe it’s time to tell a new story.

  “Next time you see Silvie,” the Faerie Queen whispers, “give her my love, and say goodbye.”

  I open my eyes, and the Faerie Queen is gone. A curl of smoke lingers on the air, so faint I might be imagining it.

  I climb the porch stairs, closing and locking the door behind me. At my daughter’s room, I check in on her one more time. A nightlight casts a soft glow on Dizzy’s sleeping form. Her limbs are slack, dream-loosened, her breath deep and even. I kiss the tips of my fingers and wave them in her direction. It’s time to start over again. It’s time to let go.

  “I’ll get the story right this time, baby-girl. I promise.”

  She’s not what you expected, Alma May Anderson, the last survivor of the Great Sexbot Revolution. For one thing, her eyes are bluer. She must be a hundred if she’s a day, but her eyes are the blue of puddle-broken neon, and a postcard ocean, and the sky at noon. They are all the things you thought were only metaphor, because nobody’s eyes could really be all those colors at once. But there they are, watching you over a teacup as thin as an eggshell filled with jasmine-scented tea.

  You didn’t expect her to be in plain sight, either. All your careful research, chasing down obscure references in mostly forgotten histories, and here she is. She’s not hiding, and if she’s not proud of her part in history, she’s not ashamed, either.

  She makes you want to sit up straighter. She makes you want to tuck your shirt in, and smooth your hair. She makes you want to say please and thank you, and may I instead of can I. And all that after you tumbled, panting, through her window in the middle of the night. She didn’t ask your name, or question your presence in her home. She made you tea.

  You sip to cover your nerves, because Alma May has been watching you with her poetry-eyes since you arrived, never once looking away. The tea is more intense than you’re used to, real leaves—you can almost feel the ghost-weight of them on your tongue.

  “I suppose you want to see my sexbot,” she says.