Free Sketchy by Olivia Samms Page B

clanging disrupts a gaggle of pigeons on the overhead eaves, and they flutter and poop.
    Crap.
    I find a couple of tissues in the pocket of my new velvet coat and wipe some of the bird shit off my shoulders. God only knows what the top of my head looks like.
    There’s no way I’m ringing that cowbell again. So I pushthe door, hard, using all my weight, and it opens. I’m hit with the strong smell of dust and mold, and sneeze.
    “Willa? Willa, are you here?” I call out.
    The shop is dim, lit by the open front door. I step in a little farther and trip. The heel of my right boot breaks off on an old iron doorstop—a squirrel with an acorn in its mouth.
    Shit.
    I drop the heel of my boot into my oversized flap bag and hobble through the shop with my arms outstretched like a lame blind woman.
    “Willa, answer me!” I call out.
    I walk right into a spiderweb, brush it off, lose my balance, and fall onto an antique velvet sofa. A naked sewing mannequin plops down on my lap.
    Fuck.
    Her blank, glassy button eyes stare up at me as if she were the one surprised with our encounter. I push the naked dummy off my lap and stumble to the back of the shop, open a rusted screen door that’s screaming of tetanus and step into the backyard.
    Willa sits on a huge tree stump. She looks like an ad in a Macy’s catalog, wearing a baby blue velour Juicy Couture tracksuit, a down-feather vest, and smoking a joint.
    I hobble over to a dirty iron bench and sit.
    Willa takes a hit. She holds it in for a second, then releases a steady, graceful, gray stream of smoke—like cool, liquid silver.
    She holds out the joint. “Want some?”
    “You have no idea how much I do,” I answer. “But no, no thank you.”
    “Whatever.” Willa fingers the top of the stump. “They cut off chickens’ heads on this thing.”
    “Well, that’s creepy. Why are you sitting on it?”
    Willa shrugs. “Feels appropriate.” She takes another hit off the joint, squinting her eyes. “What did you say to Marcus?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Willa snaps at me. “He texted me, told me to never contact him again. I asked him why and he said it had something to do with you—something you said to him. And now he won’t answer my calls! What did you say to him?”
    “So you admit you know him.”
    “Why the hell do you care if I do? Just get him back—I
need
him back.”
    “Is he the one who raped you, Willa?”
    “What?” She starts laughing. “Is that what you said to him? Christ. No wonder. No, you idiot, of course he didn’t rape me!”
    “He didn’t, you’re positive?”
    “It wasn’t Marcus, okay? He’s at least three inches shorter than the—”
    Willa catches herself and steps off the stump.
    “I thought you didn’t remember anything—who he was, what he looked like.”
    “This was a mistake, calling you here. You don’t understand.”
    “What don’t I understand?”
    She turns on me. “I’m homecoming queen! I’m dating the captain of the football team! I’m an honor student! I’m going Ivy League! If they find him—”
    “You’ll get found out?” I cut her off like a chicken head on the stump. “Is that what you’re so afraid of, being found out?”
    She licks her fingers, snuffs out the joint, takes a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket, exchanges the joint for a smoke, and plops down on the wet ground. The mud must be soaking through her pants, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She lights up.
    I reach out. “
That
I will take a hit of. I ran out.”
    Willa hands me her cigarette. She wipes her pert nose with her sleeve, settles back, and leans against the bloody stump, staring at me. “So you don’t use anymore?” she asks.
    I take a deep inhale. “No, haven’t for three months.”
    She pauses. “Nothing? Not even weed?”
    “Nothing.” I exhale.
    “Is it hard?”
    “Hard?” I laugh. “You ever try to stop a semi truck coming at you full speed? Like every day? Every hour? Every minute?