Page 9 of Red Flags Only

Social media, clearly, was not yet a Thing.

At nine, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of forced friendship. I had Mars. What more could I need? Still, I loved to write, so I wrote the letter, handed it in to my teacher, and hoped my pen pal didn’t bore me to tears through the minimum ten required letters to get a decent enough grade to pass the class.

Lyra did not bore me.

Her first letter arrived packed full of butterfly stickers, character shaped erasers, and the skinniest chocolate bar I’ve ever seen. She wrote about her favorite butterflies – commas – and her favorite plants – ferns – and how she didn’t have a lot of friends, but thought she could make a good one if she really put her mind to it. She told me that she didn’t have any siblings and that she was jealous of me because I had Mars. No one had ever been jealous of me before.

It made me sad for her. I’d never been sad for anyone not directly related to me before either.

I reread her initial letter over and over again the week after I got it, nibbling at my quarter of the chocolate bar as I did. I’d given Mars the bulk of it, and he was in seven-year-old bliss – all thanks to sweet, lonely little Lyra.

I wrote her back, accepting her offer of friendship and sending her the only stickers I could get my hands on: smiley face ones from the Jumbo Mart and a couple of cartoon princess ones Mars had stashed away, which he insisted were a fair trade for the chocolate.

Twenty years later, our snail mail goods have gotten slightly more advanced and our letters a whole lot more familiar. Instead of grocery store freebies, I special order stickers and notepads and the like to XB Crafts, our local craft store. Special orders that she, on more than one occasion, has bribed Margaret, the owner, into selling to her before I can go pick them up. I’ve never been able totell her that I’m the one ordering them. Not when she finds so much joy in fleecing someone out of their goods. It’s just too cute. She’s too cute.

And she’s my best friend outside of Mars. But, then, he’s my brother, so that’s an entirely different level of friendship. Mars is a part of me, sharing in my blood. Lyra is the music in my soul, a sweet melody of love threading through the cells I share with my brother. No less vital, no less loved, but very much different.

Vital, loved, different, and standing ten feet in front of me, contemplating lengths of rope in Brotherhood Hardware mid-morning on a Saturday, when the store is practically dead except for the two of us. And Oliver, who works the counter on the other side of the store. When I walked in he was sitting down with his feet up next to the cash register chewing on a pen and fiddling with his nicotine patch while he worked his way through a sudoku book. He didn’t even glance up when the bell above the door rang. Attentive worker, he is not. Which might not be such a bad thing…

Except.

Lyra and I have never spoken in real life.

At first, when we were kids, it was a combination of nerves and inaccessibility. She lived across the county from me, and I was terrified she couldn’t live up to her letters in person. I’d come to rely on them as a source of comfort and peace, particularly at times when I missed my mom and needed a spot of brightness in my life. I didn’t want to meet her and find that she was actually like every other girl I knew – loud, annoying, and seriously needing a lesson in manners.

Later, when we graduated from our separate elementaries and assimilated into the same middle school, I quickly learned that Lyra was not like the other girls Iknew. Or, more likely, she wasexactlylike the other girls I knew, but my boy vision made the other girls out to be all things stupid and icky. Presumably, already being friends with Lyra gave her special boy vision immunity.

Not that it mattered, because she avoided me like the plague. All of middle school and through high school, if we even so much as made eye contact, she’d panic, looking away and pretending she hadn’t seen me while a blush stole over her features. It was adorable, in a wow-she-really-doesn’t-want-to-be-seen-with-me kind of way. I don’t hold it against her.

I was, and still am, considered to be somewhat of a miscreant by the townies. Miscreant being the nicest thing I’ve been called, actually. Not to my face, of course, but I’m not deaf, and Harriet at the gas station does not whisper as quietly as she thinks she does.

I know my reputation here, though, and I don’t regret it. If people don’t want to deal with my brand of justice, then they shouldn’t do things that invoke it. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Don’t be an idiot, and your tires won’t get slashed.

Lyra, in comparison, is a good, upstanding citizen who does things like pay her taxes on time and put money in the charity jar at the grocery store checkoutevery single timeeven though we all know that the store manager takes that money and uses it for her hair appointments, not to save little cancer children. And still, Lyra donates.Just in case, she says.

Her heart is pure. Goodness. Compassion. So full of love and kindness, it could make the Grinch reconsider his stance on life –preheart growth scene. She could’ve cut that movie down to about three minutes. Cindy Lou Who could never.

Which is to say, it makes perfect sense that Lyra wouldwant to stay away from me in public. It’s hard to be an angel on Earth when everyone avoids you for hanging out with the devil. I don’t take it personally. I get a side of her that no one else does – therealside of her. I get to read pages-long rambles about comma butterflies and the benefits of different types of potting soil for different plants and the best romanceable characters in Stardew Valley. Everyone else gets a painfully polite, painfully considerate, painfully watered-down version of my dear Lyra-love.

So, no, I’m not sad for me that I don’t get her in public. I get the best of her. To want more would be greedy and selfish.

I tilt my head, contemplating that as she stands before me, a mere twelve feet away, comparing lengths of rope.

She doesn’t want to be seen with me in public.

We are in public.

There is no one else in this particular public right now.

Her last letter to me was dappled in tears.

My head straightens along with my shoulders, decision made. Today, I am greedy and selfish.

Chapter Five

Do not spook the man with the ax.

Lyra

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