Free The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma Page A

after a few bites, I had to push the plate aside. I checked my phone: it wasn’t yet time to walk back to Pen and Parchment; Kurt wouldn’t leave for another hour. I stared at my hand; the bandage I wore reminded me of the silk cocoons we’d been shown in China, our tour guide narrating the miracle of it all. I wished I could feel my finger aching or throbbing instead of what was coming on: an emptiness, a loneliness, a kind of rising panic, the fleeting sensation of what I had felt in Kunming right before I shut myself in the bathroom.
    I checked my phone again. The time had barely budged. I stared out the window and prayed for the hour to pass.
    K urt, the manager, left at five minutes after six. From the corner across the street I watched him lock the front door. I scooted around to the back, and Katie let me in while Niall turned off the rest of the store lights. The summer fog hadn’t yet reached this part of the city, downtown and close to the Mission, and late-afternoon sunlight brightened the store near the windows. Pads of creamy paper and pens of every color filled the long shelves, beckoning to be handled. Far back from the windows, the center of the store was dark, but the glass cases up front that housed the fine pens glowed faintly like displays in a museum. I wandered down the aisles looking at the prettiest things, the handmade papers and the silk-covered books. Katie called me over to the children’s department, where she had pulled up four stools in primary colors and the low art table we used for rolling joints.
    â€œThis is Drue,” said Niall. “She works in the art department. This is Ari. She used to work here.”
    My eyes adjusted to the dim, and I saw a blonde girl standing next to a children’s easel. I said hello, and she gave me a tentative smile. She wore a flowered dress over frayed blue jeans. Her face had the petaled look of the unsexed. Behind her, Katie rolled her eyes at me and pointed to the box of a large jigsaw puzzle, the lid showing kittens and puppies, but Niall stayed standing next to Drue until Katie pulled him down and demanded that he start rolling. By the time we were done—and the four of us, laughing, had traced ourselves against the easel and then jostled our way toward the back door—Niall’s tanned arm was glued around Drue’s shoulders.
    Katie O. tripped, cursing. It was after eight, and the fog had rolled in, so that even the fine pens department had disappeared into gloom. In the darkness, I got confused and turned toward the paper department while the others went straight. I heard Katie laughing and calling, “Ari, you dumb shit, where are you going?” I stuck out my good hand and tried to feel my way to the others. The friendly feeling of the earlier hour had collapsed, and I felt the black center of the store yawn wider.
    When I had jumped on the bus to escape to Pen and Parchment, I suppose I had been thinking in the back of my mind that I might spend the night with Niall, but in the end, with nowhere else to go, I rode the bus back to the marina and crept into the apartment. Charlie was asleep. She’d left me dinner in the oven. I had a few bites and then stretched out on my bed, strangely wired. Despite my exhaustion, despite the pot we had smoked, I was wide awake, because in Beijing it was the middle of the afternoon. I thought about calling A.J., but she’d be full of questions that would send me stumbling further into the dark. Then I thought of WeiWei, and before I could stop myself, I texted, hey , and waited five minutes, then ten, then longer. We hadn’t talked for many months—her time was precious, her orbit crowded—but maybe, seeing my name, she’d know, as she always had, that I needed someone to talk to. I sent a second message, just in case she didn’t see the first one. The bed was too soft after my thin mattress in China. My eyes hurt from the glare of the screen