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“On a date that isn’t going well? Do you feel unsafe or just a little uneasy? Ask for Andrea at the bar. We’ll make sure you get home safe.”
I couldn’t understand what was happening. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even tell where I was. All I knew was that everything hurt.
I wasn’t wind: I was air. But air could go places. And that gave me an idea.
An hour ago, he had taken everything I had. I didn’t know how, but I planned to return the favor.
He was the kind of beautiful that drew you in before you even considered the fact that beautiful things can be poisonous.
I watched Grandma Rosie’s eyes as ten-year-old-me asked if I could watch TV while we waited for the dough to rise. I watched her mouth form the words, “Yes of course, Bubbelah.” And then, while the younger version of myself hurried up the stairs, I tried to hold onto Bubbie. “I’m sorry I left you to make the bread,” I told her. I felt myself grasping at the edges of the memory. Ten-year-old me didn’t have any more memories of Bubbie here. She just had memories of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Specifically, the episode where Sabrina tells her friends she’s a witch. The threads were unraveling
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The feeling spread through me like sunlight, and for the first time since I’d disappeared into the hills, I felt a spark of joy. “Bubbie? You can hear me?” I’d expected the words to sound choked, like they would if I were trying to squeeze them out through all my feelings if I were alive. Instead, they seemed to drift into the memory with me, perfectly clear, caught by the current that surrounded me and Grandma Rosie.
that the people we love are not gone forever. That everything we ever loved, ever did, ever said, ever read, ever experienced, comes back to us.
“But I’m lost out there,” I told her, the despair sweeping back in. “I’m alone. I don’t think anyone is coming for me. He dumped me in the woods.”
“I think I need to go back for a while,” I said softly, trying to soak in all the love in the room, buoying me up. “I can find you again, here?” Grandma Rosie nodded. “Yes, Bubbelah. You can always find me. Here or anywhere our lives touched. I love you, little doll.”
There were foxes, and there were hounds. And then there were the animals who didn’t fit into the natural order of things at all. Who meant the hurt they caused every time.
On a date that isn’t going well? Ask for Andrea at the bar. We’ll make sure you get home safe.
