by Sara Gran
“I’m, I’m so sorry, Professor Gold. I was thinking about your question last night and—”
Professor Gold held up one hand to stop her. “It’s OK, Miss Silverton. Just be on time next time. Now, speaking of psychic attack, who can tell me how the Violet Flame meditation works?”
Cynthia shot her hand up, ready to answer. She was sure she knew this one.
“Give some of the other students a chance,” Professor Gold said, with what seemed like some irritation. “We all know your proficiency with the Violet Flame, Cynthia.”
Cynthia blushed to her blond roots. Professor Gold called on Randy Grant instead.
The whole rest of the day seemed to be like that for Cynthia—late and unappreciated everywhere she went! But that night she had an exciting event to look forward to: Cynthia’s fiancé, Dick, was throwing a giant gala for his parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary at the country club!
After school Cynthia had plenty of time to get ready, so she went for a walk downtown. Maybe Miss Elm, who owned the dress shop, would have something new for Cynthia to wear tonight—a new blouse or a stylish piece of jewelry.
Cynthia was strolling to Miss Elm’s, lost in thought, when she nearly tripped! Looking back to see what she’d stumbled on, Cynthia saw it was a long, skinny pair of woman’s legs. Following the legs upward, Cynthia saw they were attached to the old lady who lived with her shopping bags in front of Hamburger Hank’s.
Everyone just called the woman who lived in front of Hank’s the Bag Lady. Looking at her now, Cynthia wondered how the Bag Lady came to be the Bag Lady.
Had she once had a different kind of life? Of course she had, Cynthia chastised herself. No one was born a Bag Lady.
Cynthia had often spoken to the two town heroin addicts who hung around in Hank’s, and now they waved at her through the window of the budget-minded hamburger restaurant. Cynthia waved back at Joanne and Yvette. Cynthia was as much a part of the scene at Hamburger Hank’s as anyone else—detective work made for interesting and unusual bedfellows!
But she’d never spoken to the Bag Lady. Looking at her now, Cynthia felt a funny little flip in her stomach, like she’d seen a secret she couldn’t possibly understand yet—
Cynthia looked at the woman and tried to catch her eye. The Bag Lady ignored her.
“Hi,” Cynthia said. “I’m—”
But just as she was thinking about it, she heard a commotion up ahead and ran to the scene—just in time to see Hal Overton running out of the First Bank of Rapid Falls with a bag full of cash!
Without a second thought, Cynthia gave chase to the seasoned criminal. She thought she lost him when he made a swift left on Maple, but Cynthia knew the streets of Rapid Falls better than her own teeth, and she took the alleyways (and cut through Old Mr. Smithee’s yard) to meet up with Hal Overton over by the slaughterhouse on Route 3.
Cynthia came out of the maze of alleyways just in time to see Overton heading into the slaughterhouse. Fuck. Cynthia’s lungs burned, but there was no time to catch her breath as she followed Overton into the dank, foreboding place.
The smell of blood and shit and the cries of animals hit Cynthia like a tidal wave when the door to the filthy slaughterhouse closed behind her. How often the lama had encouraged her to visit the charnel house to remind her of the brief sweetness of life—and now here she was!
But there was no time to meditate. With quiet stealth, Cynthia weaved through shit and cattle as she looked for Hal Overton. She caught him for a brief second by the pens, but lost him after one quick blow from his fist caused her to slip and fall in a mess of blood. In a moment she was up on her feet again and back on the chase.
She followed Overton back outside, through a horrible labyrinth of caged animals screaming for freedom, and out to the docks beyond.
Stumbling with exhaustion and shock, mind numb and past fear, Cynthia finally had Hal Overton cornered—at the end of the longest pier in Rapid Falls.
The two nemeses stood at the edge of the pier as the sun went down over the Great Unfathomable Lake. Both the detective and the criminal, wet with sweat and blood, smell of death and shit clinging to them, panted and looked at each other.
“Hal Overton,” the charming young detective said, regaining her spunk. “I see that Sheriff Brown has let you out on a technicality again.”
“Sure. And I hear you’re on a big case, kid,” the villain said, making a smirk with his horrible, swarthy, lips.
Cynthia wondered how Hal Overton could have found out about her big new assignment. But she didn’t dare ask, for fear of giving the criminal any advantage.
“No bigger than the dozens I’ve cracked before,” Cynthia replied, perhaps a bit haughtily.
But a curious smile overcame Hal’s lips.
“Sure kid,” he said. “But don’t forget. I owe you for getting me arrested again. And I’ve got my new ray gun to help me get my revenge!”
Suddenly Hal reached into his pants pocket and pulled out what looked like a miniature machine gun with a curiously ovoid barrel.
Cynthia wasn’t scared, though. She’d been training in Tibetan martial arts since she was a toddler! Thank Freya she wore her slacks today! With one swift kick she knocked the ray gun out of Hal Overton’s spindly, spidery hands.
The villain lost his weapon but not his will, and he threw a punch at the junior sleuth that connected on her left shoulder. Fighting back tears, Cynthia replied with a powerful jab, this one right to Hal Overton’s windpipe. The cruel man lost his wind and fell to the ground, gasping for air. Finally, before Hal could recompose himself, Sheriff Brown came running over to help.
“Cynthia,” Sheriff Brown said with a somewhat embarrassed smile, vodka on his breath. “You’ve saved the day again. I sure wish this guy didn’t have such good lawyers.”
Cynthia agreed. The legal system in Rapid Falls had a lot of technicalities, and Hal Overton and his team knew every one.
But instead of joy, Cynthia felt a curious and unpleasant feeling as she watched the sheriff arrest the criminal. Like she was stuck in a movie, with the same silly scene playing over and over, until it became grotesque and lifeless.
Why, Cynthia thought, it’s almost like we’re insects—all part of some kind of horrible, unconscious swarm! Cynthia didn’t like that thought at all. No wonder Professor Gold had warned her off this case!
Cynthia supervised Sheriff Brown to make sure Brown remembered to read Overton his rights and put him in the police car without injuring him. Then she went back to the police station to make sure the paperwork was properly filled out. Sheriff Brown was a bad alcoholic, which didn’t help matters one bit. Ever since the Case of the Broken Wheel, he just couldn’t stop drinking, and Cynthia was pretty sure he’d stopped trying.
Cynthia was just checking the locks on the holding cells when she remembered—Dick’s parents and their party at the country club! She was already late! Cynthia rushed to the country club without changing. Surely, she thought, it would be better to make an appearance, even not looking her best, than it would be to miss it altogether.
But as soon as she walked into the gala affair, Cynthia saw she’d been horribly wrong. Everyone else was wearing their best cocktail attire, some of the older folks were in formal wear, and everyone stared at Cynthia when she walked through the door in filthy dungarees.
Dick came rushing over to Cynthia before she even got to congratulate his parents, and pulled her right back out the door.
“What the heck?” the handsome young pre-med student said, eyes flashing. “How dare you show up to my big night like this?”
“I’m so sorry!” Cynthia said. “Just let me explain!”
“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” Dick said, disgust curling round the corners of his lips.
Cynthia Silverton felt tears spring to her eyes.
“But Dick,” she said softly. “I thought you loved me for me.”
Dick looked at her with disgust on his face.
“I did,” he sa
id. “I loved the old Cynthia. The one who made such special fruit punch! Now you’re like a different person. Showing up at my parents’ big party in trousers—and with a tooth missing!”
Cynthia poked around in her mouth with her tongue—he was right, of course. Sure enough, tooth number 5, upper right, was gone and forgotten.
“I can explain,” Cynthia rushed to explain. “I was fighting Hal Overton, and Sheriff Brown had been drinking again and—”
Dick gave her another withering look. Cynthia felt like she was shrinking under his eyes. Just last night she’d felt so big and strong—now she felt like a speck of dirt.
“I think we need to admit this is over, Cynthia. If this is the best you can do—”
“I can do better,” Cynthia whispered. But her words sounded pathetic to her as soon as they came out of her mouth, and she knew she would regret them for the rest of her life.
“And, Cynthia,” Dick leaned in to whisper, as if to a child, as if she didn’t know, as if it hadn’t happened in the course of saving this town’s sorry ass one more time, “you smell like shit.”
Dick turned and walked back into the party. Cynthia fell to the cold, wet, sweet-smelling earth of the country club.
She felt like half of her had just been burned away.
I thought I’d always have Dick, Cynthia thought as tears fell from her eyes to the impeccably cut grass. First a feeling of rejection overcame her, then shame, and finally fear.
Without Dick, Cynthia thought again, who am I?
* * *
That night Cynthia went home alone. The house was dark and quiet. It was Mrs. McShane’s night off and Cynthia had the house to herself. The junior detective was acutely aware of Mrs. McShane’s absence. Cynthia wondered where the kindly housekeeper was.
It fell on her, as it sometimes did at unpleasant moments, that the person she was closest to on this earth was someone she paid.
The emptiness of the house felt frightening to Cynthia, and she was tempted to take one of the pills the doctor had prescribed her for nights like this. If she took the pill she knew exactly how she would feel: first tense; then hungry; then, after an odd and unhealthy snack, relaxed and drunkenly content. Then she’d fall asleep, probably within arm’s reach of a bowl of ice cream and the TV, playing trashy crime dramas or romances.
But Cynthia wasn’t so scared of being scared. Not yet. Life had not yet taught her just how fearful fear can be.
For now, Cynthia skipped her pill. Instead, without washing up or even fixing her hair, she took off her clothes and looked in her full-length mirror again, as she had the night before.
Her face was smeared with dirt, made worse by humiliating tearstains. Her eyes were red and puffy. When she forced a smile, she saw blood on her gums. A fresh set of bruises bloomed around her left breast, arm, and shoulder where Overton had attacked her.
A shiver went up Cynthia’s spine as she realized how much she now looked like the Bag Lady. How easy it could be to end up living in front of Hamburger Hank’s.
Even worse, she saw how little there was to anchor her to this world, and what a worthless world it was.
So who was she now?
Cynthia shook the question off, put on a clean nightgown, and went to bed.
* * *
The next day Cynthia sat desultorily through her school day, barely raising her hand once, even in Professor Gold’s criminology class. She could tell she was getting on his nerves lately. When she finally did blurt out an answer to a simple question on forensics, Professor Gold practically bristled, and after class made an unkind remark—
“Cynthia, if I were you, I’d be working on my assignment rather than showing off my knowledge of Bullets 101.”
Well fuck you too, Cynthia thought about the attractive tenured professor. Fuck you too, Professor Gold.
* * *
After school Cynthia had her monthly appointment to speak with the lama about her spiritual training. As she drove up to the monastery in the high redwood-studded mountains she had to admit she was thinking less about how to dedicate her merit and more about all the personal problems she wanted to talk about with her illustrious and blessed master.
Cynthia had expected the lama to be sympathetic to her trials with Dick and the professor. Instead, after she told him all about her horrible week, he seemed just as mad at her as Dick was.
“Too old,” the lama growled, shaking his head. “I’m done playing with foolish children. No romantic problems. Go write Dear Suzy.”
Cynthia’s face fell. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I know how valuable your time is—”
“And I have too little left of it,” the lama said. “Go. If these are your serious problems in life, we’re done.”
Cynthia stared at him.
The lama stared back. And he didn’t ask her to leave again.
Instead, he stood up, and left the room himself.
* * *
That night Cynthia understood fear a little better than she ever had before.
She didn’t want to know it any better.
She took the pill.
She soon found herself in the familiar television/ice-cream haze. But instead of the slightly intoxicated contentment she was expecting, she felt lonely and confused. She tried eating more ice cream, but the stylish junior college student still felt like the witch in a fairy tale who shows up uninvited, and ruins everyone’s life.
Like everyone would be happy if she left, and no one would miss her if she were gone.
* * *
The next day Cynthia woke up determined to shake off all this new, silly negativity she’d acquired over the last few rotten days! She took a long hot bath with Florida Water, styled her hair flawlessly, and made an appointment with the town dentist, Lou Frost, for a new tooth. She remembered to ask after Dr. Frost’s disabled son and felt good when he told her the long story of trying to get little Herb in special education. She could tell he really needed a good listener, and she was happy she could be that listener for him.
One benefit of being an A-plus student was that Cynthia had rarely missed a day of school, and could afford to skip a day now. Instead of rushing to campus, she had a long, leisurely breakfast of Mrs. McShane’s wonderful poached eggs, and insisted that Mrs. McShane join her for coffee and poppy-seed cake afterward. They had a nice chat and after breakfast Cynthia dressed in casual dungarees and a button-down blouse, topped it off with her mother’s pearl amulet necklace, and went for a walk through town.
As she stopped at the bookstore to pick up some titles she’d ordered on astral projection, Cynthia was starting to feel like her old self again. So what if she didn’t have Dick anymore? A man wasn’t everything! And Professor Gold and the lama would come around and if not, well, who needed them?!
I know who I am, Cynthia thought, confident and in her element at the bookstore, enmeshed in cultural signifiers and paperbacks. I’m Cynthia Silverton, teen— But she stopped herself. In a mere few months, she wouldn’t be a teen anymore, but a young lady of twenty.
She wouldn’t be Cynthia Silverton, teen detective, anymore.
Cynthia shook off her temporary let-down and bought her books after chatting with the bookstore owner, Mrs. Washington, for a few minutes about advances in alien technology and the government’s hidden programs of reverse engineering. But when she left the bookstore, and stood in the hot sun, blinking, on the paper-thin edge of a good mood and abysmal sorrow, deciding what to do next, the Bag Lady across the street caught her eye.
Again, Cynthia couldn’t stop her bright and nimble mind from studying the ragged older lady. Was the Bag Lady blond like Cynthia? Had she grown up in Rapid Falls? Had the Bag Lady once had a boyfriend like Dick? Had she, too, once been a junior college student?
With trepidation, Cynthia crossed the street and approached the older woman, nestled in her usual spot in front of the hamburger restaurant among her many bags of garbage.
The Bag Lady didn’t look up.
The Bag Lady still didn’t say anything.
“Can I grab you a burger?” Cynthia asked. “Maybe some fries?”
Now that she was close, Cynthia saw that the woman was indeed blond like her. But her face was so weathered and brown and wrinkled she looked about a million years old. And yet, to Cynthia’s surprise, she didn’t look unhappy. If anything, there was something in her eyes that almost made Cynthia forget her problems altogether—
But before the older woman could respond, or Cynthia could collect her thoughts, Cynthia heard a piercing scream!
“Sorry!” Cynthia called out to the lady, and ran toward the scream. It seemed to be coming from around the corner, toward First Street. Cynthia always felt good on a case, and this time was no exception. Her blood was pumping and her lungs were full of oxygen as she ran. I know who I am, she thought again as she ran—
Then why do I keep telling myself that? she immediately thought next.
But her insight was cut short when she heard another scream, this one from even farther away!
Cynthia ran down to Third Street, didn’t see anything, and kept running. But she couldn’t find the source of the scream. She looked down alleys and side streets and poked into doorways, but found nothing unusual.
Finally she stopped running and stood in the middle of the block, panting.
She looked around. No one was around.
No one was around at all.
“Shit,” said the teen detective. “This is not fucking good.”
Cynthia felt Hal Overton before she saw him—felt his aura as he pulled up beside her in his late-model Creamsicle-orange Cadillac.
Everything seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time Cynthia turned and started to run back to town. But before she got twenty feet she heard the bang of a pistol and a bullet sparked the concrete next to her spotless tennis shoes.
She stopped running.
Overton came up behind Cynthia and pushed his .357 Magnum into her back.