Cackle(70)

I’d forgotten.

I’m not thrilled to be reminded in this manner.

The halls are unceremoniously undecorated in my wake. Tape unsticks. Streamers rip. A cardboard cupid gets decapitated.

Several students and a custodian bear witness to this mysterious instantaneous destruction.

“Looks like they, uh, need to use better adhesive,” I mumble as I do my best to pretend my subconscious is not wreaking havoc on the hard work of the student council.

I take shelter in my classroom, locking the door while I interrogate my emotional state.

I’ve always fancied myself a gold medalist in mental gymnastics. If there’s something that’s difficult to process, I’ve typically got no problem split leaping right over it. But that’s not going to work anymore, at least not if my avoidance manifests itself in very public supernatural tantrums.

I sit at my desk, running the sleek, blunt ends of my hair through my fingers. I close my eyes.

I grant myself permission to think about Sam.

I think about our first Valentine’s Day together. We decided to stay in and order Chinese food. He said it’d be romantic to spend it at home, where we were most comfortable, but I wondered if he’d waited too long to get a reservation. I wasn’t disappointed. Not really. I liked to be home with him.

After we finished eating, I went to dive into the box of chocolates he got me, but he insisted we have fortune cookies.

When I cracked open the first cookie, I realized why.

He’d written the fortunes. They said things like I love your smile and You’re the funniest person I know.

“How’d you do that?” I asked him, amazed.

“There’s this thing called the Internets,” he said, grinning. “You can get anything on there.”

I saved the fortunes. I still have them. They’re in an envelope in a folder. Also in that folder are my passport, birth certificate, and Social Security card. It makes me sad that I ever chose to store those fortunes alongside the most crucial pieces of evidence of my identity, to think that I once considered them of equal importance.

I don’t anymore. I really don’t.

“I bet I’m still the funniest person he knows,” I say.

I breathe into the thought. It’s the sweetest peach. When I open my eyes, I find a small crystal bowl of gummy peach rings there on my desk right in front of me.

I pop one into my mouth.

Now that I’m thinking about it, Valentine’s Day doesn’t scare me.



* * *



—

I spend the week planning my solo Valentine’s Day. I decide to make myself beet salad, mushroom risotto and a chocolate layer cake. I decide to wear my comfiest pajamas and watch the Anne Boleyn documentary that’s been in my queue for months.

I stop in the Good Mug every morning, interested to see if Oskar is consistent with his latte art. He is.

On Thursday, he asks, “Do you have plans for tomorrow?”

I inspect him for the slightest hint of emotion, for the anticipative twitch of an eyebrow, a nervous slip of the fingers, something, anything. Any microscopic clue to his motivations.

I get nothing.

I decide to be honest.

“Yes,” I say.

Still nothing.

“I’m making dinner.”

Nada.

“How about you?”

“Alone?” he asks, sweeping some coffee grounds off of the counter with the heel of his hand.

“Sorry?”

“You’ll be alone?”

There’s no pity in his tone. Only mild curiosity.

“There something wrong with a person choosing to spend Valentine’s Day in their own company?”

He looks up at me, his eyes so blue I’m defenseless against them. They demoralize me. Hold my exhale hostage.

My insides pickle as I wait for him to speak.

Is he going to ask me out?

“Sophie,” he says. “I didn’t know if she ever let you be alone.”

Seconds pass, flat and colorless. I listen to the slow clap of my heart.

Oskar does not relent. I seem to have unwittingly entered a good old-fashioned staring contest. His eyes are merciless.

The understanding expands, and with it my embarrassment, occupying every last crevice of my existence.

Oskar was never flirting with me. He doesn’t give a shit if I spend Valentine’s Day sobbing into a self-bought Whitman’s Sampler repeatedly viewing The Notebook or having an orgy with street magicians I met on Craigslist. His interest in me is purely related to my association with Sophie.

He’s engulfed in his vendetta. I see it now. It hangs around him, a red agony.

“Sophie is my friend. My best friend,” I say. I’ve never said it out loud before.

I travel back to the moment I met her, across the street in Simple Spirits. I remember how gorgeous she looked, how I was in awe of her. If someone had told me then that she’d become my closest friend, I’m not sure I would have believed them. I definitely wouldn’t have believed the rest.

But . . . who knows?

Maybe the hardest thing for me to believe would have been that Sophie would want to be my friend. That she would take a special interest in me, take me under her wing. Maybe that was the most severe bend in my reality. After that, it was easy to believe in magic, to accept that ghosts are real and to play with cute spider accomplices.