Page 3 of Tangled at the Root
Ten years to this very day. My mother would call it serendipity.
My lips part, though I have no idea what’s about to come out of my mouth. My head is scraped clean, smooth and empty as a calabash. Like she’d been waiting for something to break the moment, her expression shutters.
“No—” I take a shaky step forward before I can stop myself. Immediately, I’m flushed with shame, cringing at my obvious desperation and lack of self-control, at my brief amnesia of all the reasons for our parting—for why I’d let her leave. Forgetting, for a brief moment, why I’m even here in the first place.
She matches my step with one of her own, stumbling back even though she’s standing well out of my reach.
“What are you—how did you—?” She stops. Inhales and exhales slowly. I let her. “What are you doing here?” Her hair is dyed a dark ginger orange, and is in cornrows in a gorgeous pattern; spirals and loops and a straight plait in the middle of her scalp, and hearts on the sides. She’s wearing a plain dark blue tank top and black, loose-fitting basketball shorts, exposing her shapely legs. She’s thicker, too, her body corded handsomelywith muscle, her warm, light brown skin a shade darker—sun-kissed. Plain diamond studs glitter in her earlobes.
“I—” I swallow, and suddenly, I’m taking in too much air, too quickly.
Through the few years we’d been best friends, I’d never grown brave enough to tell Genevieve I’m an oerhwu. Despite the call I’d gotten leading me to this house, where my ex-best friend has just appeared out of thin air like an apparition from my past, I’m still afraid.
It would’ve been inevitable, if I’d been candid; one secret would’ve led to the reveal of another—and another, and another, and another, until all of them had toppled at her feet like a line of dominoes.
There are so many parts of me, tender and bruised and buried so deeply unearthing them would practically unmake me. The possibility of how I could be hurt—how I’vebeenhurt, and in so many ways—has always been too great, far eclipsing whatever depth of feeling I have for her.
“I got a call,” I say vaguely, timidly. “For my … holistic services.” It’s not exactly a lie.
A trail of sweat trickles down from underneath my chin. Her gaze snags on the traitorous drop of moisture, following its path as it slides its way between my breasts. Her eyes are unnaturally dark, but her expression doesn’t change. Heat burns in my gut at the shameless, almost distracted perusal.
She wants to ask for clarification, I can tell, but instead says with a frown, “I didn’t call you. And I’m the only one here. It was either a wrong number, or they gave you the wrong address.”
I glance pointedly at the trees towering over us on every side. “Somehow, I’m not so sure that’s true.” Wrong number? Maybe.Infinitesimally. But wrong address? “Perhapsyoudidn’t call me, but—”
My mouth snaps shut and I glance up, toward the window where I’d spotted the old woman.
Shannkshin. It’s my knee-jerk assumption. A shade—a vague impression of a long-dead owner of a house, left behind by eshé and time. But I’m sure it’snota shannkshin; shades can’t communicate, let alone interact with the wider world. It has to be a shannko—a lingering spirit who died here, or a wandering spirit who got stuck when they were passing through.
But why go through the farce of pretending to be a real person? I would’ve still responded positively had it been honest from the start, but perhaps it hadn’t known that.
“Like I said, I’m the only one here,” Genevieve says, crossing her arms. It’s my turn to stare at those defined muscles, the pushed up curves of her breasts, a flush—thankfully hidden underneath my dark skin—heating my cheeks as I frantically—obviously—tear my gaze away. “And I didn’t call you.” She’s not looking at me now, her jaw clenched.
Ten years. A single heartbeat. Not nearly enough time for me to forget anything about her; it could’ve been twenty, thirty—aninfinity, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’d been fooling myself; she’s a brand on my soul, previously cold and ignored, but sparking back to life now that she’s in front of me, newly pressed and flaring sweetly with a soldering burn.
She’s staring off toward the left, her body deliberately lax despite her crossed arms, like she genuinely could not give less of a shit.
She’s nervous. My want is a vicious, desperate thing. I squeeze the handle of my bag even tighter, the strap biting painfully into my skin.
“Sorry you came all this way.” She jerks a hand behind me, glancing purposefully at—
I turn and nearly topple over my trunk, the duffel bag sitting innocently on top. I glance at the open gates, frowning. Maybe,in my daze at hearing Genevieve’s voice again, I hadn’t realised I’d dragged them along.
When I turn back to face her, she’s managed to edge her way around me and make it up the front steps. She disappears into the house and doesn’t once look back.
The last time I’d seen her, at what had been the sputtering end to our friendship, my heartbreak had been neither immediate nor overwhelming. Her mother had just died; of course she needed space. The denial had held strong until graduation.
When I’d waited and waited, my heart thumping with every car that drove into the Founder’s Square. When the ceremony had begun and she still hadn’t shown, and I’d brought my phone out, ready to send her an innocuous text.
And somehow, as I’d opened the chat box, I’d known.
If I’d texted her, she wouldn’t have responded.
That single moment of devastation somehow doesn’t compare to this one. I spin away from the house like looking at the closed front door is what’s causing the pain in my chest. I’m swamped with an unfortunately familiar swell of loneliness, one whose sting I’d thought had since blunted. It’s back to feeling especially sharp, like my skin has been peeled off and I’ve been rolled in a sheet of salt.
I clench my eyes shut, forcing myself to focus on the air easing its way into my body through my nose, into my lungs, and back out through my mouth.
I should go. I should leave. She doesn’t want me here. My feet refuse to move.
