Twice Shy, Sarah Hogle [100 books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

again. “I liked you a lot better when you weren’t you!” I yell once he’s a good distance away. If he hears, he makes no indication.

Thwarted, I survey the overgrown woods and chew my lip. Fine. I always end up doing the lion’s share of the work in group projects, anyway.

If I were a ridiculously rich person burying treasure (and you’d have to be ridiculously rich to pack some of it away in a hiding place), I’d bury it at the foot of a tree. I follow a trail into the woods, having barely begun but already tempted to write this off as a lost cause. Nearly three hundred acres of possible hiding places, and I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I dig random holes, sweating, the skin on my fingers angry from gripping the handle. I am going about this uneconomically. But if I’m not actively dedicating myself to what Violet wanted me to do, how can I justify accepting the house? I don’t deserve it. I haven’t written, haven’t visited, haven’t cried. I don’t have the right to be sad, either, since I was so flaky when she was still alive. I ran out the clock.

I use the shovel to make a shallow slice in the earth, then hop on and jump with all my strength. Down we sink, about four inches. Every time I hit a tree root I think I’m going to uncover a treasure chest.

I let the shovel drag the ground as I roam, searching for a big red X that marks the spot. That’d be too easy, of course, and if the treasure were easy to find, Violet and Victor would have found it themselves. I know when I’ve reached the part of the woods that has always been here when an old, old tree bursts out of the middle of where two paths fork. It’s gnarled, bark peeling, draped with moss. In a smooth, whorled eye, a heart has been carved. Within the heart, initials.

I trace the engraving with my thumb: V + V. So touching I could melt, lasting evidence of love that’s survived them both. What would it be like, to know love like that? To carve my name on someone else’s heart? Mine has been dropped and broken a few too many times, held together with sheer, dumb optimism, a few ribs, and maybe magic.

The greenery around me shifts, trees shrinking down to houseplants in colorful planters. Yellow birch and blackberries flatten, becoming one-dimensional patterns on wallpaper. Cicadas change their tune, now a low melody wafting out of the jukebox, and my hands aren’t raw and blistering from a shovel but from the spitting oil of a fryer. Between one footstep and the next, I disappear from the woods and rematerialize in my own little world.

“It’s not your fault,” Jack tells me, springing to my side.

My mind always, always misses its footing and lands on Jack unless I’m carefully, consciously choosing my steps.

I sigh, smoothing my hands over the familiar countertop in my café, the red vinyl booths, the cold window eternally spotted with rain. The thrashing sea of my blood pressure calms, settling into a still, waveless lake.

“Your aunt was in here earlier,” he tells me soothingly. “She had to go, but she wanted me to tell you how happy she was to see you yesterday. How much she appreciates your visits.”

A musical chime as the door opens, which another dimension might filter as the sound of leaves crunching underfoot as a woman walks through a forest. Who’d want to be her, though, when I can be this Maybell instead? When here I’m equipped with omniscience to kill the unknown in its cradle, and am the architect of every heart and every heart’s intention?

I smile gratefully up at Jack, who will always listen, always put me first, never reject or betray me. “Thanks, I needed to hear that.”

I serve donuts to friendly customers and chat with the inventor of Check Your References, an app that allows you to rate the accuracy of your exes’ online dating profiles. She introduces herself as Gemma and tells me she can’t wait to come back tomorrow for more of my wonderful cinnamon twists. I can tell we’re going to be great friends.

I stumble over a broken floor tile, which transforms into a twig when I study it closely, and as quickly as I blew into the café, I drop out of it, landing hard on wet dirt and laurel.

In the dark.

“Damn it. Not again.”

I dig in my pocket for my phone to check how long this time-slip lasted but come up empty. My phone’s back at the cabin. And the cabin is . . .

I turn in a delirious circle, pulse thudding. It is dark and the woods are very, very loud all of a sudden. Only moments ago the only thing I could hear was the intro of a song called “Everywhere,” which sounds like wind chimes and feels like opening a well-worn epic fantasy novel. Now I’m being swallowed up in the hoots of barred owls and small, furry footsteps. Bats’ wings. An army of undead gem miners eternally seeking out the treasure, possibly.

“It’s okay,” I tell myself steadily, releasing a low breath that accidentally turns into a whistle. “You can’t be too far out. You’re still on the trail, so . . .”

I’m standing where the trail diverges in two. If I listen really hard, I think I can hear the universe laughing. Along with more twigs snapping.

This is when I remember the dense black bear population in this neck of Tennessee.

My kneecaps liquefy.

I’m imagining the thud of heavy paws, I try to convince myself, regretting that I seem to have dropped my shovel somewhere and can’t use it as a weapon. I’m surely imagining how the sound grows closer. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, as if that’ll rearrange reality to be more to my liking. Taking away one of my senses makes it worse, my hearing sharpening to compensate. I am not