Lakewood - Megan Giddings Page 0,42
country music.
When they reached the office, Charlie got out of the car quickly and walked five paces in front of her. On the back of his arms were five bruises. Perfect circles about an inch apart.
Day 18: You find that someone has left the microwave filthy, but you don’t say anything. You leave it and eat your cold lunch. You accept some deliveries and help do inventory with Ian.
At 10, Lena sent Charlie an email that said only “I’m sorry.” She didn’t mean it and it annoyed her to give in, but she couldn’t handle the silent treatment any longer. Five minutes later, Charlie came over and offered to buy her a snack out of the vending machine.
In the hallway, he pointed to the drawing of a lamp smoking a cigarette on her cast. “Who did that? It’s weird.”
“I think it’s more weird that they gave me a cast.”
“Isn’t it weirder? Not more weird.”
If they hadn’t just made up, Lena would’ve rolled her eyes.
Charlie jingled the quarters in his palm. “I hate that lamp.”
“For your information, I plan on getting it as a tattoo. Across my entire back. Huge. Full fuckin’ color.”
“Sure.” Charlie closed his eyes, as if the overhead lights were too bright. He rubbed his forehead.
“Headache?”
“A little.”
His eyes were on her cast again. She had drawn a bunch of anthropomorphic grapes on it eating smaller, non-anthropomorphic grapes. “You have a future at The New Yorker,” Ian had said when he noticed Lena drawing it. “Just caption it something like ‘Working hard or hardly working.’” Some of her coworkers had signed it or written customary Get Well Soons. She asked a few of the observers if they wanted to sign. One laughed and said, “Oh, Lena.”
“Charlie?”
He turned to the vending machine and bought pretzels without asking Lena what she wanted.
“Is everything okay?”
Charlie handed her the pretzels. He hunched his shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot. “I was visiting my grandparents.”
“What?” Lena checked around, sure there was an observer she had missed.
“My grandparents are getting older and they missed me. You know how it is.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Stop trying to get me in trouble.”
“I’m not. I just thought.”
“Come on, Lena.”
She rubbed her forehead. Couldn’t think of what to say that would de-escalate the situation.
“I don’t know where I was,” Charlie said. “I was at my grandparents’ house, but I know I was also somewhere else at the same time.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” Lena said.
Ian and Dr. Lisa walked into the hallway.
Dr. Lisa was saying, “My favorite queen is the one who sometimes dresses like a combination of a sexy-cat Halloween costume and an anime character.”
“I didn’t realize you were so campy,” Ian said. They laughed.
Charlie shook his head at Lena and headed back to his desk.
14
Day 25+: You were asked to work overtime on a Saturday to coordinate a delayed shipment.
Lena put in eye drops that burned and smelled like rubbing alcohol and old plastic. Haircut set a timer and told Lena she had to keep her eyes shut for five minutes. When the alarm went off, Lena opened her eyes. Winced against the light. The observer held out a mirror, smiling. Lena’s eyes were blue.
“I look supernatural.”
“Well, write that down,” Haircut said, passing her the sheet.
On a scale of 0–10, 0 being not at all and 10 being excruciating, how much do your eyes hurt? Are you experiencing any burning or stinging? How do you think you look? Be specific. With 10 being most attractive, how would you rate your appearance on an average day? Looking in the mirror now—same 1–10 scale—how do you rate your attractiveness? After looking at the mirror for an additional five minutes, how would you rate your appearance now?
“Are my eyes going to be like this forever?” Lena asked while giving her comfort level a 6.
“Put it on the page.”
As she stared more and more, Lena liked how the blue looked so bright against her brown skin. She looked like someone who would be in a magazine, maybe, wearing a big gown, looking a thousand feet tall, incredible shoes on her feet. When she returned the form, Haircut drove her to a bar in the city 40 minutes away.
As she sat alone at the bar, sipping a Dark & Stormy, people couldn’t resist talking to her. A black man who looked slightly older than Deziree started calling her Miss Twilight. He told her that he used to be an artist, liked to paint girls like her when he was