Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Charliegh: Revelations

(Charliegh: unedited)

“What’d you think?” He lingered just behind her, close enough for the heat of his skin to catch upon the back of her flimsy jacket.

Charliegh pivoted, straining to take it in, straining to see more than this. When nothing appeared beyond the ragged hedges of the cornfield, the dull, shabby sameness of her surrounding blending into the cracked blue pane of the sky, she stopped and turned to face him.

She couldn’t say, lovely, because there was nothing remotely lovely about an abandoned greenhouse caving underneath bands of long-fingered weeds.

“This is where you go?”

“We.” He gave her a lazy smile. “You didn’t think I had this whole place to myself, did you?”

It hurt to smile in return. Faking this casual, careless distraction was taxing, the renewed cheapness of her words, of her empty actions, setting heavily upon her shoulders. The lies squeezed up painfully past her lungs. “No. It’s quite a discovery.”

The butterflies were conspicuously absent as he moved to take her hand, propel her forward. She wasn’t interested in discovering anymore of this wretched, barren hideout – her week had been too full of awful discoveries to accommodate another.

It had been almost a week since Price flailed into the tattoo studio and attacked Nolan. It had been a week of baited breath and sleepless nights, of tasteless cereal and sour skies. It wasn’t that Price had been her source of happiness – it was the fact that she had seen, so clearly, how alike Earnest he truly was. And it scared her. Much, much more than she cared to admit. How could her body withstand the bruising of another fostered relationship, forged over the promise of familial connections?

It couldn’t.

That was that very fact that had propelled her into isolation, ignoring the missed messages, the phone calls from Sylas. She gave lackluster answers to his worried questions, dodging his whispered conversations at school. As indifferent as she tried to pretend, she couldn’t help but scan the sea of faces for Price. She drove past McGowan Markets agonizingly slowly, trying to find that black beanie, the long spidery line of metal carts that rattled with the force of his strong hands.

As Nolan tugged her towards the greenhouse, she couldn’t manage to suppress the flicker of indignation within her. She felt used – yet hadn’t that what she wanted, for all her talk of using Nolan? She needed a pacifier, a gaping space between her reality and her tortured thoughts.

And this, this looked like the perfect space.

It was an abandoned field just off an old runner’s path, set close enough to the street to hear the grumble of cars, but far enough back to be hidden by the half-grown forest. Two long, canvas greenhouses met catty-corner at the edge of the field. They were both gutted, innards spilling onto the yellow grass, plastic covering ripped and riddled with enormous holes. Tables, watering cans, smashed pots, and garbage littered the ground.

The building caught her eye, though – a hunched grey shack, more of a shed than anything else, windows boarded over, door strung with a red plastic tablecloth. A few dirty folding chairs lazed around near the door, weak sunlight catching through the tablecloth and filtering dimly onto their broken, white arms. Nolan pushed the tablecloth aside, revealing an empty keyhole the size of his fist. One swift kick to the bottom of the door, and it shuddered aside.

“Almost as nice as the graffiti studio. Almost.” He grinned again, too proudly, and his bloodshot eyes glittered at her. “Nothing as nice as you’re used to.”

“I live in an apartment.” Charliegh reminded him softly. She nudged a pile of crumpled beers cans aside with her toe and stepped further inside, trying not to gag at the smell. It was permeating – a mixture of mold, dirt, sweat, beer, and cigarette smoke. The floorboards were coming up, chunks of dusty earth settling amid the collection of coolers and chairs.