Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
“What the fuck?” I look around, wondering if someone is doing this.
Doing what, though?
I don’t understand what’s happening. I stick the picture of me back into my bustier, crumple up the paper from the bulletin board, and I’m walking out, ready to toss it into the trashcan, when I don’t.
I keep it in my tightly-balled-up fist and get in my Jeep instead.
That’s when I see the writing on the outside of my windshield.
I get back out and stand in front of my Jeep, scanning the words.
One last chance, the choice is yours.
You have your ring, you have your door.
“What?” I look down at my hand and sure enough, there’s a ring on there. A ring I do not recognize. I look back up at the words on my windshield.
Leave the magic, leave the curse
Live your life, it won’t get worse.
But he is waiting in a place you know,
Where moths have eyes and fireflies glow.
A horn honks and I look up at a man in a car parked behind me. “Are you done, lady? I need gas!”
“Sure.” I nod and smile, then get in my Jeep and pull out of the gas station, thoroughly confused.
Someone is playing a trick on me.
That’s the only answer.
The only one, Pie?
I pull over on the side of the road, needing a moment to pull myself together. What could it all mean? I should’ve written that first verse down because—
But then the words are spilling out of my mouth:
“No cakes, or cookies, only Pie.
Moths and fireflies in the sky.
You must go back, you must relive
Accept, and honor, and forgive.”
I suddenly have an urge to make a phone call. I fish though my purse, find my phone, scroll through my contacts, and before I can even make sense of this urge, I press send.
She answers on the first ring. “Pie?”
“Mom?”
I hear a breath of relief on the other side. “I tried calling you yesterday. Halloween. You always did like Halloween.”
For a moment, I am filled with rage. I don’t actually have any particular fondness for Halloween. It’s just another stupid fucking holiday where I was always reminded that I had no family. Oh, good old Mom is still here, obviously. But she put me in foster care when I was nine. Said I was crazy because I had an imaginary friend. Who I grew out of two years later, so way to fucking hang in there, Mom.
I want to say all that. I’ve said it before. I don’t even know why she keeps trying. I’m not interested in having any kind of relationship with this woman.
But my head still hurts, and my mouth tastes like Jell-O shots, and I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, and someone is fucking with me using poems, so, for reasons that are mostly a mystery, I sigh and say, “I just wanted to let you know I’m OK.”
And in this moment, my world goes black.
I sit in my Jeep, inside emptiness, and then, just as suddenly, there is light.
I watch it grow.
And I remember.
You must go back, you must relive. Accept, and honor, and forgive.
I don’t have to go back to where it all started.
I only have to go back to the place where I was tricked.
And that was in that gas station when I saw that flyer.
Because I never had a real home and that’s all I’ve ever wanted. And I don’t have to love her, or spend time with her, or even have any thoughts at all about my mother.
I just need to forgive her.
Because that is the only way to start over.
So after I end the call and pull back on to the road, the choice to be cursed is all mine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - PELL
There is a moment of nothing and then there is a moment of realizing there is nothing.
It’s kind of like waking up from a deep, dreamless sleep. One moment you are still, and quiet, and part of infinity, just drifting. And in the next, you are… you. And not only are you you, but all that comes with being you.
I open my eyes and stare up at a sky the color of a bruise.
There is an ache in my heart when I see this sky. Because it is not the sky of Saint Mark’s, which is always a perfect summer blue.
A red leaf blows past me. Then a gold one, and a brown one. And more and more.
I sit up, looking around.
Trees and grass. But that’s it. I’m on a hillside looking down at an empty field.
A flock of geese go over me, honking about their journey. The wind blows the trees and more leaves go tumbling by.
And I’m cold. Naked. But… “At least I’m not human.” I mutter this out loud because I’m the only one here and I don’t want to think about that yet.
I get my hooves under me and stand up, turning slowly in a circle and then stopping when the lake comes into view.