Part Twenty Six of You Will Find Your Way
After a long two days, Dallas drowns out her musings with wine.
“That is a lot of alcohol.”
Dallas looks at Giselle over the rim of her oversized wineglass—one from the set they bought off Amazon when they were both, yes, very drunk and stargazing out in Blythe—stares as she drinks and drinks and drinks.
When the glass finally empties, Dallas swipes the back of her hand over her mouth, “Can we figure out a way to go back in time so the last two days never happened?”
“Unfortunately my expertise does not lend itself to advancements in that area,” Giselle flops on the couch next to Dallas, grabs an open bottle from the sea of many open bottles that are clustered in a haphazard circle in the middle of the coffee table, doesn’t bother searching for a glass as she takes a sip. “On the positive side, you know his name now.”
“Oh yes,” Dallas feigns enthusiasm. “That is absolutely the best outcome of today’s mess. Of all the mysteries and questions and the fact that I still can’t feel my toes, at the very least I know the name of the man I picked up at a seedy college bar. And he dated my big. Whoever the hell my big was. I only vaguely remember anything about the so-called sorority life I wanted to spend my four years of college living.”
Giselle looks at Dallas, huffs, “Would you prefer that I tell you your life sucks and then hand you more wine?”
“Yes.”
Surveying the impressive selection, Giselle plucks a bottle from the middle at random and thrusts it in Dallas’ face. She takes it in one hand, grabs the remote with the other.
Between the two of them, the television doesn’t get much use, except for the cycle of pictures from Getty Images on the ChromeCast input, and for about a second and a half Dallas lands on TMZ’s live show.
She winces, drinks more.
TMZ.
They would definitely care about a college student that was used as a human sacrifice and accidentally spent over a hundred years waiting to catch up with time.
Dallas presses the Channel Up button so hard the television skips, skips, skips until she settles on one of the many criminal dramas marathoning on USA. She settles deeper into the cushions and brings the bottle back to her lips and drinks until she feels the burn of Giselle’s eyes on her, drops it back to her lap, “What?”
“What do you mean, what?”
“I’ve had a shitty day, so can you come out with it?”
They both go quiet for a while before Giselle huffs again, gets up and snatches another bottle, takes a long drink, “What do we do now?”
Dallas snorts, “Hell if I know.”
Unfortunately, the drama playing out on TV is running as part of a marathon and Dallas has seen them all about a hundred times before—both first-run and re-runs. She lets out a displeased mumble when they show cuts to commercial during the middle of a pivotal cliffhanger, but instead of reaching for the remote, Dallas’ left hand drifts across her body, where she digs her fingers into the skin below her shoulder.
By the time Giselle notices, she’s deep into her second bottle, and when she flaps her hand at Dallas, she ends up smacking her in the cheek, “Stop that.”
Wrinkling her nose, Dallas does as asked, but instead of wrapping her fingers around the bottle like she wanted to, they end up around the leather cord around her neck. She rolls it over and over between her fingers as a buzz settles into her skin.
“Don’t do the thing, I hate your arm.”
“It’s not really my arm.”
“It’s attached to you and listens to your brain when you want to operate it, it’s your arm,” Giselle almost slurs. “And it’s gross.”
Dallas whines, “I know.”
But her fingers slip against the knot until it unravels, and Giselle gags.
“Oh the positive side,” Dallas mocks and gazes down to the interconnected bones on her palm. “You’re not sitting next to it.”
She peers closer to the carvings in the bones, at the way the insides of the furrows are dark like they’re crusted with dirt. There’s no pattern to the markings, whatever the symbols and things that might look like letters are supposed to mean, and Dallas curls her fingers into a fist.
“I am going to be sick,” Giselle groans. “Put it away, would you please?”
Before she can, someone pounds on the front door.
“Quiggle!” They hear. “I know you’re home! Open up!”
Dallas looks at Giselle.
Giselle looks at Dallas.
“Crap.”
You Will Find Your Way continues with Part Twenty Six on Thursday, March 9
Start You Will Find Your Way from the beginning.
Like what you read? Want to see more?
-Kathryn, the Fake Redhead
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