Page 83 of Our Elliana

He sighs, dropping his fake expression. What replaces it looks bleak. Desolate. “In his room.”

“Why is he in his room?”

“Because he’s crushed, Elliana. We all are. Crushed to the point of being fucking gutted. I mean, Christ, it’s like you just slugged us in the stomach while simultaneously kneeing us in the balls.”

“But that’s not what I intended. I would never—” There’s a knock at my door, and the only one to ever do that is my BFF. “Hang on, let me go send Andre away.”

I set my cell down on the bench and cross my workshop feeling a million things at once. This isn’t how I pictured this going at all. I was supposed to be home with the three of them couching everything in terms where they could understand my overall objective, even if putting myself on the line like that would be hard to do.

Since I’ve been keeping this door perpetually locked during business hours, I have to flip the deadbolt before I can open it. During that second and much more thorough security update, the company installed a peephole, but I’m in too much of a hurry to bother using it. I have to return to my conversation with Jackson ASAP, so I fling the door wide, already speaking.

“Andre, I...” But I trail off into nothing because it’s not my best friend standing there. It’s a woman with a pale complexion, sleek dark brown hair, huge sunglasses, and a parka-type coat. “I’m sorry. Customers aren’t allowed—”

“I’m not a customer, Elliana.” Her voice sounds familiar, but I’m having difficulty placing it. “What? You don’t remember me? Does this help?” She drags her hair down—hair that proves to be a wig—to display a blonde buzzcut underneath. The woman looks militant and unhinged, and only then does it click for me.

“Tanya Brubaker?”

Tanya and I had gone to high school together. When I first met her in choir, the girl had acted as if she couldn’t stand me—even jeering the name “Elephant” at me and holding up my ponytail of braids like it was a trunk—only to do a one-eighty and act friendly toward me later that year.

I’d been a freshman when Tanya had been a senior and yet she’d dropped out a semester before graduation. I never knew why. All that had been well over a decade ago.

“Elle?” echoes the tinny sound of Jackson’s voice from my phone. I forgot about him being on the other end of the line.

“Look, Tanya, I’d be happy to catch up with you sometime, but now isn’t ideal.” I glance down the stairs toward the public restrooms. We have a sign that says no patrons beyond the bottom step, but she must’ve overlooked it.

Maybe we should get a gate added, too.

“Aww, poor wittle ting...” Is she using baby language with me? She must be because Tanya has her mouth pulled into a full pout. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make it ideal.”

She yanks down her sunglasses, and her eyes send a shiver up my spine. They’re so devoid of feeling they remind me of a doll’s or maybe of a dead animal’s. Movement below her chin draws my gaze as she raises the barrel of a small pistol in her hand. It’s tiny enough to be easily concealable beneath the voluminous fabric of her winter coat.

Sweet baby Jesus.

“Don’t make any noise,” Tanya continues, pivoting her head to the side like a curious dog. With those dispassionate eyes of hers, the effect is android-like. “I set a little charge down there at your register. Don’t want your tall, dark, and handsome cashier blown to smithereens, do you?”

I wish Tanya was bluffing, for this all to be some ill-conceived joke. But who jokes with a gun and a threat to someone’s life? That’s when the epiphany skids into place.

“You’ve been sending me cards,” I surmise.

“I have. Did you like them? I thought that last one might’ve been a bridge too far, but then, I’m not always the best judge of such things.” Tanya tilts her head to the opposite side and nods at some point above my shoulder as if gesturing at someone. Fleetingly, I take a jerky peek at the space behind me but detect nothing.

No one’s there.

This woman is not okay.

“I uh, I did like the cards, but I have a phone call on hold so...”

Tanya pushes my door closed and snatches my cell from the workbench beside her.

“Elliana?”

I hear Jackson shouting my name as Tristan demands, “What the fuck is happening?”

Even Noah calls out to me more faintly with a worried, “Elle?”

From the tension of Tanya’s posture, I can read what she’s about to do, and the only thing I have time to do is yell, “I love you guys. I love you all.”

Before I can even finish my sentiment, Tanya covers the butt of her weapon with a knit scarf and slams it down onto the screen.

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