Page 82 of Rachel Weiss's Group Chat
The next day at noon, my phone pinged.
It was Amy: “It’s gone. The video is gone.”
I typed back quickly, “What? But that’s impossible.”
Amy McDonald 12:08 PM:
Go try to watch it. It’s been removed.
Rachel Weiss 12:09 PM:
But videos don’t just disappear from the internet. How can it be gone?
Amy McDonald 12:10 PM:
I have no idea. Could it have been Jane’s employer?
Rachel Weiss 12:11 PM:
Maybe, but I doubt it.
Amy McDonald 12:12 PM:
Well, you lucked out, I guess. Maybe someone’s looking out for you.
I spent the rest of my lunch break looking up all the articles about the video. They were still there, so it wasn’t as if it had never happened. But they all showed a black box saying, “This video has been removed.” Shaking, I texted Jane to tell her that it was gone. She didn’t reply.
CHAPTER 27
IT WAS BOUND TOhappen eventually. I was bound to snap. No better day of the year to do it than Halloween, I suppose. I’d felt it coming on for a while. Heartbreak and loneliness didn’t suit me; it was like trying to squeeze my voluptuous body into a pencil skirt. It just didn’t work.
I knew my friends were enjoying the hallowed day with their significant others. Amy and Ryan were cozily ensconced in their home, handing out candy to tiny devils and sprites. Eva and Jasmine were off winning best couple’s costume at a gorgeous costume party downtown. (Eva had sent us a photo. They were sexy Gandalf and sexy Bilbo Baggins. Simply superb.) And how was I spending this Samhain?
I went to work. I wore the same dress, tights, and boots that you might see me in any day of the season. No fairy makeup this year; no gag fangs. The year before last, I’d hidden a pellet of fake blood in my mouth and punctured it while talking to Kenneth. I have reason to believe that I made that man pee his pants at the sight of blood pouring out of my mouth. At the very least, he cried. Anyway, there were no hijinks or costumes for me today. I just wasn’t feeling it.
Kenneth snuck around the side of my cubicle, an expectant look on his face, his hands balled in front of his mouth like he was preparing to scream.
“Oh.” He let his hands drop. “Rachel, it’s Halloween.”
I swiveled around to face him, sighing. “Yes, Kenneth, I know.”
“You—you didn’t dress up.” He had on a pair of glasses with spring-loaded bloody eyeballs. They bobbed dejectedly at me.
“Nah. Not this year. I thought I should look professional, you know, for the lecture this afternoon.”
Unfortunately, I realized once I arrived in the classroom that Kenneth must have given the participants a heads-up about my proclivity for Halloween shenanigans, because they were all in varying states of costume: there were bunny ears, zombie makeup, a witch’s hat, and one fully inflated T-rex who barely fit into her chair. I had to run out of the room and steal Sheryl’s bowl of Halloween candy to hand out to my students.
I stayed late at work—shocking, I know—and then ambled over to Mr. West for a drink. I didn’t relish the idea of going home alone while everyone else in the city was reveling with friends and loved ones. Why I chose Mr. West, the one place sure to remind me of Sumira, well, that would be for the anthropologists to decide. The old me would have ordered a whole bottle of rosé and started a one-woman party, making best friends with the staff and other patrons. Instead what I did was drink a solitary gimlet, hunched over a table in the back of the café, and try not to think about the last time I was there with Sumira. Finally I threw in the towel on the worst Halloween of my life and caught the bus home.
Well, if I thought waiting until after dark meant Fremont’s revelers would all be safely indoors, I was wrong. I stepped off the bus into a mad swirl of humanity. Parents and children incostume scampered down the street, holding hands and shrieking with joy. Teenagers and twentysomethings trooped this way and that, kicking up a ruckus. I stood in the middle of it all, alone with people pressing in on all sides. Alone on one of my favorite days of the year. Alone, feeling like someone had taken a chisel directly to my heart:crack.
It sounds terribly dramatic, but the ache in my chest was such that my limbs felt heavy; walking felt like a trial. But I forced myself to move, and I headed down a quieter street. It wasn’t my usual route home, but I needed to escape the crush of people. The street was lined with sweet houses, their windows glowing jewel bright. Some of them were decorated with skeletons and plastic gravestones. As I walked, my heart rate slowed and I took deep, calming breaths. One of the houses on my left was so beautiful that I stopped to look at it. It was one of those old Colonials that have been lovingly maintained for the last hundred years. The deep front porch and steeply gabled roof were soothing to the eye, and the warm yellow light in the windows made me think it must be comfortable inside. I noticed that the magnolia tree in the yard had little handmade ghosts hanging from its branches, the kind we used to make in school with tissues and Tootsie Pops. For the first time in hours, I felt myself smile, wondering what kind of family lived here, wondering if the parents had taught the kids how to make the little ghosts.
As I was about to walk on, a knot of trick-or-treaters bobbed down the path toward the pretty house. They were so cute—small and chubby—that I paused to watch them collect their candy.
“Trick or treat!” their little voices chorused when the door opened.
“Wow! A mummy! A flower! And is that… an otter? Incredible!” The man knelt down to let the kids choose from his candybowl, and my blood froze. I couldn’t breathe. I could only stand and stare as Christopher Butkus let the children take fistfuls of candy, a huge smile on his face as though he was having the time of his life. “Happy Halloween! Have fun out there,” he called after them. And my heart—oh, my heart was having a strange day. It seemed to be swelling, or melting, or—I don’t know. All I knew was that when Christopher Butkus closed the door of his beautiful house, I wished he would come back out. My entire being longed for him to open the door again, to see me, and to call out my name with that big smile on his face. And this was a confusing sentiment, since the last time I’d seen him I had been yelling about how much I despised him.
