Page 30 of Red Flags Only

“Jove, seriously, I promise,” she says.

“Lyra, seriously, I heard you,” I counter.

“Fine,” she capitulates after a long, long pause. “But I’m doing it at the table. You’ve brought down the value of my bedframe by about 500%. I’m not letting you do any more damage.”

“No worries,” I say, rising from the couch with the trash. I head toward her kitchen to throw it away, glancing at the table as I pass it. “Your table’s looking a little bare. I’m thinking a planet or two might liven it up.”

“That’s antique, you know,” she calls from behind me.

I hum. “You got it for five bucks at an estate sale. If you don’t want it when I’m done, I’ll get you a better one that hasn’t been sullied by the ghost of Granny Past.”

She doesn’t reply as I settle into one of the dark oak, spindly chairs at her haunted table, only eying me as she hovers on the edge of the living room.

“I’ll be right back,” she says eventually, squinting at the flash of my pocketknife in my hand. “I have to get my stuff.”

I nod, and the knife spins its approval. “I’ll be here.”

As long as she’ll let me.

And, possibly, even if she won’t.

Always and forever, I’ll be here for my Lyra.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter titles are hard, and I don’t want to.

Jove

“And here you can see that these ones have a more ovular end, right? Compared to the classic flag, it’s much more homey, much less sharp. The people who havethisflag aren’t rule followers. They’re loose. They’re fun. They’re carefree!”

I nod, captivated – for possibly the first time ever – by a Brianna mail rant.

She does this occasionally. Some new stamp gets released or mailbox height standards in rural areas change and she hasopinions. Opinions that I am forced to listen to if I want to get my mail, which, of course, I do. She once locked one of Lyra’s letters in the cash register until I listened to her full monologue on the overabundance of floral stamps.

Usually, I’m uninterested.

Usually, she’s not talking about flags – red flags to be exact.

This though… this isresearch.

“What would you say people typically gravitate toward?” I ask, eyes roving the catalog laid out on the mail counter. “And which shade of red?”

A wild townie appears with five hundred questionsabout how to ship a package, and I have to wait before Brianna can answer. My thumb taps the counter.

How difficult is shipping a package, really? You slap a shipping label on it and give it to Brianna. Brianna waves her magic mail wand, and it gets where it needs to go. Problem solved. Easy. Why would anyone need to know whether or not their box is going to be “scanned by those freaky red lasers” in the process?

“They’re going to scan it,” I interrupt Brianna’sfourthreiteration of the importance of proper mail tracking to Bill Rugby, the local tire guy. “Ship it or scram. We’ve got more important things to do.” Like pinpoint which shade of red the public likes best so I can forward the information to Mars to give to Frank, our beloved cover artist.

Bill clears his throat, which does nothing to rid his voice of squeak when he replies, asking Brianna to do whatever she has to.

She assures him she will, bids him a good day, then takes approximately five hundred business days in the backroom waving her magic wand before getting back to me.

“The preferred flag color, actually, is fluorescent orange,” she informs me.

I scowl. Absolutely not. “What’s the preferred shade ofred, I asked.”

“Well, it really depends on the color of the mailbox,” she does not answer me.

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