Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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Durall Laundry's mascot was a bubbling washer with thick eyebrows and a winning smile.
The moment the three of us walked in, baskets balanced on hips and totes thrown over shoulders, I was hit with a slap of humidity. The smell of cleaning detergent followed soon after, burning through my nose hairs like I had walked into a swamp.
We moved across the squeaky floor painted some dense baby blue color. It felt both rubbery and not as we ambled down spacious rows of washers and dryers. Dodging hanging carts and bolted tables, we ended up in the children's area. The place was...sticky.
Someone desperately needed to restock the books available here. Mostly-empty baskets lay disoriented in their shelving, and the books inside were not aging with grace. Was that...Carrie Woodlawn? With its back cover torn off?
What child wanted to read something with a Little House on the Prairie vibe while sitting around listening to the spinning of their clothes in these savvy machines?
"You wait here," I said, spilling three totes off my shoulders. We'd brought the sheets and comforters, too.
Our free washers and dryers were great, but they didn't get fixed as often as they got broken. Putting large sheets and fluffy fabrics into such tiny things would only be courting death. Why not take the opportunity while here? I could cough up the money for one day, and then I could get away with looking like a multitasking queen.
Yeah. Right.
Walking down the rows of busy machines made me realize how unused to being around people I had become. Before Kakashi had shown up and made me travel to car dealerships and scary bars, I had grown more used to isolation than not. When was the last time I went out, had social meet-ups, experienced the city life, even if it was just a laundromat or a McDonalds?
Tenna had stopped living with me some two-plus years ago. Rinley had spent her terrible twos screaming in my tiny apartment. We...had not made a habit of going out, either.
So it must have been when I'd still lived with my parents, attending college next door. I'd still had friends, then.
I think.
The swoosh of the door alerted me. Durall's wasn't—not—busy at midday, but it was your average Tuesday. My guess was, the souls here were the clockwork ones. They showed up the same time every week, carving out a special little time so that there wasn't a mass of bodies to wade through.
We were the outliers today.
Walking through the door, Bella the witch accompanied someone in a halter top, a rain jacket, and a head wrapped in hoods and scarves.
Subtle.
As the nearly-blind figure crashed into every inanimate object, Bella's hand reached out, gripping them by the neck like a baby kitten.
