Page 4 of Howl Will I Know

The first thing I see when I drive into Screaming Woods is a gargoyle arguing with a parking meter.

He has slate-gray wings folded against the back of a faded denim jacket, two small horns curving from his forehead. He jabs one thick finger at the meter, which flashes CARD DECLINED back at him.

I like Screaming Woods already, which probably says something concerning about me.

The road bends into what the sign calls THE CROOKED MILE. Beneath it, a smaller sign adds MAIN STREET FOR PEOPLE WHO ENJOY KNOWING WHERE THEY ARE.

I laugh out loud.

My car is packed so tightly that I can barely see through the rear window. Two suitcases, four boxes of books, one box of kitchen things, a lamp I should’ve thrown away three apartments ago, and a collection of houseplants that have stubbornly survived the journey.

Screaming Woods unfolds around me slowly enough that I can take it in. Storefronts stretch in both directions, crooked roofs and painted signs squeezed together beneath trees already beginning to turn for fall.

Monsters are everywhere, and nobody seems particularly interested in the fact. That’s what surprises me—not the horns or wings or scales, but the normality.

People are just... living.

My GPS tells me to turn right onto Nightjar Row, then immediately loses signal and spins me in a circle.

“Excellent.”

I pull into the first available space before it can direct me into another dimension. The building beside me has a painted sign shaped like a coffee cup.

LUCKY BEAN

Underneath, in smaller lettering:

CAFFEINE. PASTRIES. OCCASIONAL PROPHECY.

Well, I’ve been driving for five hours, and if prophecy comes with decent coffee, I’m willing to risk it.

I turn off the engine and rest my hands on the steering wheel for a few seconds. Everyone talks about bravery, fresh starts, taking chances, and following your instincts. Nobody mentions sitting alone in a car several hundred miles from everything familiar while your entire worldly existence is wedged behind you in cardboard boxes and one of your plants is possibly dying from travel stress.

For the last year, I’ve had the feeling that my life was waiting for me somewhere else. Not unhappiness exactly. That was the problem. If I’d been miserable, leaving would’ve been easy.

My old life was perfectly fine. Perfectly fine job, perfectly fine apartment, perfectly fine friends I intend to keep. Perfectly fine dates with perfectly nice men who kissed me goodnight and left me wondering why everybody made such a fuss about kissing.

Nothing was wrong, but nothing was right enough either. I wanted more than fine. I just hadn’t figured out what more looked like yet.

I reach into my bag and pull out the little black notebook I’ve been carrying for months. Inside are lists of towns I researched, jobs I could do remotely, rent prices, and places I wanted to see.

But the first page only has three lines.

Someone who sees me.

Somewhere I belong.

A love that changes everything.

I stare at the last one. “Nothing ambitious, then.”

The thing is, I don’t even know if I believe in that kind of love, but I want to. I’ve watched other people fall into relationships as if stepping onto an escalator. Dating becomes exclusivity becomes moving in becomes marriage because that’s apparently the order things go in.

God knows I’ve tried. With good men, attractive men, and one particularly determined accountant named Miles who took me to six increasingly expensive restaurants and looked betrayed when I told him I still didn’t want to sleep with him.

It wasn’t a moral position or fear. I’ve just never met someone and thought, yes. You. I want to give you something I’ve never wanted to give anyone else.

Maybe that’s ridiculous. But I’d rather wait for someone I truly want than hand myself over because an unwritten rule suggests that I should have done it by now.