Clothed in our grief

Chapter eleven

The kid didn't suffer, physically that is.

The student died by suicide, found hanging in her dorm. Her name was Elise, but you knew her as Elly. She was a classmate of yours, you weren't her friend but you knew her. So yeah, her death shocked you. She seemed fine, happy all the time. Smiled a lot. Her dorm mate found her, screaming so loud it brought the attention of every girl in the dorms to the room.

There was no school the day after it happened, so you spent the entire day at the bookstore.

Birdie Bookstore, keeping the same name your grandfather called the place when he ran it with your grandmother. Even keeping up the tradition of Bird day, so when April first was going to eventually roll along, anybody who would like to, could paint a bird on the side of the building.

Elise actually came to the bookstore once or twice, she mostly liked mystery books. And now? You can't go back in that section without having to cover your mouth with your hand. And when your mother caught onto this, she would go and grab a book back there for a customer that couldn't find what they needed. Instead of making you do it.

Lately Julian's been sick, and upon coming to Gotham? You found out that his boyfriend didn't feel safe moving away from their apartment in Portland. So he stayed, and they're trying to work something out long distance. So Julian hasn't been helping out as much as he promised, but with the so sudden changes? Who can blame him. He's family, an your mother and you are going to give him as much time as he needs to wait for him to be ready enough to actually work for more than an hour or two. It's understandable, really.

Your stepfather has been working graveyard to help with rent money, but he isn't working at the bookstore. Actually got a job at Arkham as a security guard. Light stuff, usually just watches over live camera feeds. God, if only you had a camera to get the look on your mother's face when she first found out he was working at an asylum. It would totally be put on this years Christmas card to Grandmother and Grandfather. And very other living relative you have. With a little photo editing of a red nose on, and some antlers. It'd be perfect.

The Bookstore isn't in the middle of Gotham. It's in a bit of an outskirt of it, it's a safe place. There's little to no crime in the area, and next door is a neighborhood park. Lots of kids there, usually. This isn't really a good place to go trick-or-treating, due to the lack of so many houses in this area. And the houses that are in this area are small and cute little cozy places. In the area, there's a gas station, and there's an abounded dance studio that's now really just an empty warehouse filled with broken mirrors. You decided to sneak in once, out of curiosity only. IT wasn't really creepy, plants overgrowing through the walls and wrapping themselves around posts and through the cracks in mirrors. It was quiet, and sometimes on your break you would take a cup of coffee and a book down there and just sit in silence with a flashlight. Why? It felt like it wasn't suppose to be safe, but it's probably one of the safest, to you, places in Gotham. Yet it doesn't look safe. It's an aesthetic appeal, one you can't seem to figure out.

Despite the bookstore being out of the way from most places in Gotham, it still got the average mount of customers. The cafe' is where you mostly worked, baking goods and making the coffee. What's most popular around this time of year is anything that has pumpkin in it, so the cake case is usually loaded with pumpkin spiced cookies or cake pops or things like that. One thing that kids who come in seem to like is the ghost shaped vanilla and chocolate cookies. Now, for October which drink is most common? Pumpkin Spice Latte, so of course it took some time to figure out how to make and all, but eventually? You got it down.

After practice you come home, drop your things off, get changed into some clothes, and head to the bookstore. Almost everyday. Of course, not everyday. But the bookstore is literally a second home to you. You've nearly fell asleep here several times, living off the coffee here. One time you were just so tired, you used the coffee pot as a mug. OF course, you got yelled at by your mother for this and had to go wash the pot out and make a new batch of coffee.