Supermarket - Bobby Hall Page 0,66

visit again. And doing it just for the reader.

It’s kinda fucked up, right?

Call it closure, call it whatever you want. All I know is that whatever happens to me at the end of this, deep down I know I can’t bullshit you, the reader. I can’t cut corners. I have to tell you exactly what happened. Every detail, every memory.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it had been a while.

“What do you need, darlin’?” said the woman behind the counter.

“Just checking out a book.”

“Is that so?” said Frank, standing up from behind the counter dressed as a woman—lipstick, a wig with curlers, and a lit cigarette stuck between his lips.

“Oh, shit!”

“Ssshhhhh,” Lady Frank said, gesturing to a sign that said Quiet in the Library!

“You can’t be here!” I said.

“What do you mean, Flynn? I’m clearly here, man.”

“I need you to leave me alone,” I pleaded. “I need you to get out of my head.”

“Flynn, baby,” Lady Frank said in that fucked-up country accent. “You’re just gonna have to accept the fact that you can’t get rid of me . . . cuz we’re the same person. We’re in this thing together, to the very end.”

“Bullshit! We aren’t the same, Frank! I’m real, Frank! You don’t exist!”

“If I don’t exist,” he said, his voice now dark and serious, “then why does this hurt?”

He smacked me across my face: smacked me so hard my bottom lip split and started to bleed. Shocked, I raised a few fingers to my lip, revealing the blood on my middle and index finger.

“This doesn’t make sense!” I yelled. “You can’t do this because you aren’t real!”

“Flynn, you fucking idiot, how many times am I going to tell you this . . . I am real!” He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a silver Zippo.

“Then . . . tell me your last name!” I demanded.

Frank stared down at the floor, then up at me, about to answer . . . and paused.

“Is this real?” I asked, looking down at the blood again.

“If it is,” Frank replied, “then how can I not be?”

I looked at Frank, then at the blood on my fingers . . . and then back at Frank.

Only he was gone, like a ghost.

“You say Frank did this to you?” said Olivia, gripping my jawline with her left hand and dabbing a cotton swab on my lower lip.

“Yes. Twenty minutes ago. Right after breakfast.” Dr. Cross looked at her watch.

“This happened after breakfast?”

“Yes. Olivia, listen—”

“Explain what happened,” she demanded.

“I was in the library and—listen, this is gonna sound weird, but . . . Frank is real!”

“No, Flynn. We’ve been through this. You made him up in your mind.”

“Yeah, I know, but . . . my mind has made him real.” I winced as she put her hand on my lip, dabbing the wound again.

“Red said . . . ,” I muttered under my breath, then paused before continuing. “Frank is real,” I said with determination. “Because I’ve made him real.”

“So what?” said Olivia. “You think you can physically extend your hand and touch Frank? Is what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I do,” I responded, my tone serious.

“Flynn,” she said, throwing the cotton swab in the trash. “Come with me.”

She turned and headed out of the room. I spit into the can and followed her.

As we walked, I saw Joe drinking his coffee, and I saw Red walking in the garden through the window. As I followed Olivia down a hallway toward a wing I’d never been to, I extended my hand, tracing the wall with my fingertips as I walked behind her.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Here.”

She swiped her key card in a door and pulled it open. Inside, the room was dark but illuminated by dozens and dozens of monitors.

“Hey, Henry,” she said. A middle-aged, heavyset, balding man in a white security outfit turned around.

“Hey there, Dr. Cross. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Henry, I need you to show me surveillance footage of the library from around one thirty p.m.”

“Right to the point, I see, Doctor.”

“Look, Henry, just pull up the footage,” she told him, putting both palms on the surface of his desk. “I’m not fucking around.”

Henry began typing on his keyboard. After a moment, he pulled up the footage.

“Here it is,” he said.

“Can you show me the checkout area, please?” Olivia said.

Henry typed on his keyboard and the camera moved around, showing different parts of the library.

“Right there!” I said.

The video showed me in the checkout