“Do not pull in, Pell.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You.” She laughs a little. Well, maybe more of a scoff, really. But it’s good to hear something other than panic. She was really upset back there in the cottage. Like losing her damn mind upset. I hate Grant. I never really liked him—he walked around in an aura of assholiness. And he did fuck me over pretty good. But that’s not why I hate him. He has no right to confuse this girl the way he did. She’s teetering on the edge. And I guess he knows that, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s filling her head with this bullshit story about not being real.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I don’t care if people see me. They won’t believe their eyes anyway. People believe what they want to believe. And they want to believe there is no such thing as a satyr chimera. So I’m good.” Pie ponders this as I make my way across the highway and pull into the gas station. But then I notice something. “Shit. They don’t have a phone booth here?”
“Phone booth?” Pie looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “There are no phone booths anymore.” Then she shuffles through her purse and pulls out one of those pocket phones. “We have cell phones now. Did you bring me here to make a call?” Then she giggles a little and some of the anger leaves me. “We could’ve done it back on the country road outside the sanctuary.”
I pull up to the gas pumps. “Shit. I forgot. OK. Well, call your parents then.”
“What?”
“I want to prove that this is all real. You’re stuck in the sanctuary with me, and that’s kinda like being in a different world. But this world, it’s still here, Pie. You’re not hallucinating. This isn’t a dream, you’re not dead, you’re not in purgatory. We’re just stuck in a stupid curse. But we still have access to this world. And I’m gonna prove it to you, because you’re going to call your parents.”
She frowns.
“Now what?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never had a father. At least, I never knew him. And my mother dropped me off at CPS when I was nine because I refused to say that Pia wasn’t real.”
“I don’t understand. Your mother abandoned you?”
She nods.
“Oh.” This fucking night. Nothing seems to be going right. But all I can do is shake my head, look out the window, and mutter, “What a fucking bitch.”
“Tell me about it.” Pie sounds tired.
I look over at her and suddenly she’s someone else. Someone who was walked out on. Someone alone in this world, like me. Like Tomas, too.
She interprets my staring as expectation. “I have her number, so I guess I could call her, but—”
“No. Fuck her. Someone else. Call someone else. A friend. Even if I wasn’t trying to prove a point, you have to do this so they don’t worry about you.”
“Oh”—she laughs a little—“trust me. No one is staying up at night calling hospitals and wondering if I’m dead in a ditch anywhere.”
“Well, why not? What the hell is wrong with them?”
“No. You don’t understand. I don’t have… friends. Just Pia.”
“Well, you can’t call her. I don’t know much about the pocket phones, but I’m pretty sure your bird doesn’t have one.”
Her laugh is bigger this time. “No. She doesn’t have a phone. She’s never needed one. She was always just… there. And now she’s not.”
“You don’t have anyone you can call to pull you back from the edge, Pie?”
“Umm.” She looks a little panicked. Like this is a quiz question.
“Look, I’m not judging you. Hell, I don’t have anyone either. But I need you to know that I’m real. And if you’re sitting here with me and talking to someone out there at the same time, that’s how I prove my existence.”
She nods, looking at me solemnly. “OK. I have one person. I was on my way to see her when I got sidetracked by the caretaker job. Jacqueline. She was my foster sister in one of the homes I had to live in when I was a teenager.”
“OK. Call her. I can get out so you can have some privacy.”
I reach for the handle of the Jeep, but Pie puts her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be dumb. You can’t go out there. Someone could pull up for gas. I will pump the gas and make the call.”
I’m very focused on the way her hand feels on my bare shoulder, but before I can make sense of it, she pulls away and gets out of the Jeep. I watch her with a new interest as she walks into the store and interacts with the clerk inside. She comes back out, cell phone pressed to her ear, her mouth moving, her lips curving up into a small smile. And she comes over to the Jeep again, over to my side, and then starts pumping gas.