Shelby watches the books burn. She wonders if words are pouring down on other people’s houses, sad words, like beast and mourn and sorrow and mother. She pokes at the cinders as the paper turns black and flaky. A few sparks fly up. There goes her childhood, nothing but ashes. Shelby slips out of the backyard with Buddy curled up near her breastbone inside her coat, then walks along the path that sparkles with snowflakes. She’s reminded of the time when she would get lost on purpose and her mother would look for her, shouting her name as though calling for a lost dog. Now she burns with regret when she thinks that she hid from her own mother. She should have leapt up and waved her arms. She should have gotten into her mom’s car and said, Thank you for rescuing me.
On a whim she stops at the mailbox before she heads off. It is a Sunday evening, there’s been no delivery, but she opens the box. Inside is a postcard. It’s blue and it looks like a piece of ice. Shelby reaches for it. The front of the card is an illustration of heaven in blues and black and silver. There are constellations she recognizes: the archer, the crab, the fish, the lion. There is a shooting star in the sky and a tiny photograph of her mother from a yearbook back when she was the school librarian. Shelby’s eyes smart with tears. It is so cold they feel frozen. She flips the postcard over. Remember someone.
She folds the postcard into her coat pocket and heads off. She has a trembling feeling. She wants to believe in faith and trust, but she doesn’t think she can. The snow is starting to collect, and it crunches under her boots. She heads over to the 7-Eleven. When she steps inside, the heat of the store is overwhelming. There’s loud music playing. Elvis’s “Blue Christmas.” It’s almost Christmas, not that Shelby cares. She hasn’t even noticed that decorations are going up or that most of the houses on her block are strung with colored lights. At the counter there is an electronic Santa who cries out Ho Ho Ho every time someone passes by. He does it when Shelby asks for a pack of Marlboro and a Bic lighter. She hasn’t smoked for some time, but what’s the difference now? At the last minute she buys a pair of striped gloves displayed beside the counter. They’re purple and black and look like they’d fit a toddler, but the fabric stretches and shapes to each individual’s hand. There’s a No Dogs sign, but the guy at the register doesn’t notice the bump under Shelby’s coat. Or maybe he thinks she has a tumor and is too polite to ask.
Shelby lights up in the parking lot. The smoke and the cold air hurt her lungs. Her father won’t notice her gone. He never came to search for her when she was missing as a teenager, calling her name like a dog’s. Shelby perches on the concrete stoop outside the store. If Helene were here she’d do something silly to cheer Shelby—she’d throw her arms out and spin in a circle, she’d tell a joke, or just sit beside Shelby and sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” or some other nursery song. Shelby opens her coat so Buddy can see out. He doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere. He’s probably the kind of dog who doesn’t like to get his feet wet. Shelby leans up against the brick wall and blows the smoke away from Buddy’s head. When she was in high school the wild kids hung out here. Shelby never came here. She was a good girl with a 3.8 average who planned to go to NYU and study history. Now the past is the last thing she wants to remember.
There’s one lone teenager in the parking lot tonight. He has a gold ring in his nose and his hair is long and messy. He’s stomping his feet against the cold. He wears a light jacket, no gloves, no hat.
“Hey,” he says to Shelby.
“Hey.” She nods dismissively.
“Cold out,” the kid says.
Great, Shelby thinks darkly. A conversationalist.
“What you got there?” He nods to Buddy.
“A dinosaur,” Shelby says. “Tyrannosaurus.”
“Hah. Looks like a dog to me.”
“A poodle.”
Shelby hopes this bit of information will be enough to satisfy this lurking kid. He’s just about the last person on earth she wants to talk to.
“My friends are late,” he tells her. “They were supposed to pick me up.”
As if Shelby cares.
“Are you twenty-one?” he asks.
So that’s the reason for all this friendly conversation. He wants something.
“Do you really think I’m going to buy you beer and put myself in criminal jeopardy because you’re too young and stupid to get yourself a fake ID?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” the kid says.
Shelby laughs. She hadn’t expected a sense of humor.
“Well, I had to try,” the kid tells her.
“Leave me alone,” Shelby says. “My mother’s dead.”
She’s started to cry, so she turns her head away. The snow is really coming down now. Everything is white. Buddy has settled and his breathing is more even; maybe he fell asleep. He’s a teacup poodle, which means he weighs less than six pounds.
“I believe in reincarnation,” the kid informs her. He just doesn’t get that Shelby wants him to leave her alone. Clearly, he’s not going anywhere till his friends come for him.
“Good for you,” Shelby says. “What are you, a Buddhist?”
“Nah, it’s common sense. We’re too fucking complex to just disappear. We get recycled. We do it all over again, only different. Better.”
The thing about crying is, once you start it’s not easy to stop. Shelby sits there crying, while the kid goes into the 7-Eleven. He comes out with two steaming cups and gives one to Shelby.
“So we don’t freeze to death. The coffee looked like crap, so I got us green tea.”