Page 79 of A Light in the Dark
I accepted the bottle, smiled at Joel, and put it in my purse. “Lois understands my needs.”
“Lois,” Joel complained.
“It could be worse. She could like gutbursters.”
“Gutbursters?” I asked.
The doctor nodded. “It’s a tiny blue berry that grows in Mirage. You either live or you die when you eat it, and it has a nasty habit of causing hemorrhaging of the intestines. One berry has a twenty-five percent chance of killing you. Two will probably kill you. Threewillkill you. Nobody plays with gutbursters. Mirage’s government pays five thousand dollarsper bush found so they can destroy it. It’s a ten thousand dollar penalty to be in possession of a gutburster berry—per berry. The only exception to this is if the berry is bagged per the reporting rules and you are on route to the police station to turn it in. You have to call the police upon discovery, notify them you have a berry for confirmation, and wait at the bush if the bush is accessible by vehicle; otherwise you’re permitted to carry it to the nearest road. Gutbursters are treated seriously there.”
“I’m going to pass on trying gutbursters. I think I’ll stick to strangleberry.”
“You have a good relationship with strangleberry, and monthly exposure will likely mean you won’t react to it at all, even if you decide to knock back a pint.”
“Please don’t knock back a pint of strangleberry,” Joel begged.
I laughed at him. “I will limit my strangleberry consumption to my share of cobbler once a month. But if you come between me and my share of cobbler, we’re going to fight.”
Joel sighed. “Just don’t grow it in your garden, okay?”
“I can promise that I will not grow strangleberry in my garden, but if you go after my nightshade plants, we’re definitely going to have a fight.”
“Your tomatoes are safe,” he promised.
My headache went awayafter an hour, so while I kept the bottle of pills Lois had given me, she toldme not to take it and to enjoy my status as relatively impervious to Stonecreek’s unique perils.
The pills didn’t make me impervious to shit drivers who failed to understand that night store parking lots weren’t a place for them to play and treat their vehicles like toys. In good news for me, I comprehended the idiot had lost control and spun out, and that unless I moved, I would be in a world of hurt—or dead. As sidestepping wasn’t an option due to the parked cars flanking me, I went the one way I could: up.
The next time I went home, I would thank my mother for assuming all little girls wanted to be gymnasts, as her insistence I take lessons until I turned eighteen served me well. I treated the oncoming car like I would a vault, flipped over it, and landed with relative grace, although I would have lost points for failing to stick the landing and neglecting to throw my arms in the air like some idiot. The vehicle, a rusty banger, plowed into the parked cars, sending metal, glass, and plastic flying.
In good news for everyone, the idiot had missed Joel’s SUV, and my boss had been parked on the far side of him.
The doctor and paramedic had come in a sporty car, which was parked several rows down.
In good news for the driver of the rusty banger, Joel, Lois, and Meri jumped into action. Meri handled the calling emergency services portion of the work while Joel and Lois converged on the driver’s side, which had slammed into the other vehicles with enough force I hoped he or she would survive.
I’d been so busy jumping I hadn’t gotten a look at the person.
My boss came over and asked, “Are you okay?”
I did a head to toe check, and as there was nothing left to do, I bowed. “It seems if you vault enough times, it literallydoesbecome muscle memory and can be used in questionable situations involving probably drunk drivers. Because that’s the only realistic reason I can think of for someone pulling donuts in a furniture store parking lot.”
“I’m grateful you seem to have been trained in the art of gymnastics.” He regarded the crashed vehicle with wide eyes. “If you want off work Monday, ask. If you feel like working from home, I’ll authorize it. But I’m not sure you’re going to be able to recover from this with just Saturday and Sunday to work with.”
I waved off his concern. “I’m fine.”
“Valerie, you’re wearing dress shoes. I don’t even understand why you aren’t on the asphalt with a snapped ankle right now. Youmusthave a sprain orsomethingwrong with you after that.”
I stared at my feet, and on second thought, it amazed me I’d stuck the landing as well as I had when wearing kitten heels. “Had I been wearing a skirt, that would have ended in an entirely different fashion. I would have cleared the car but landed on my face rather than my feet.”
“I am banning skirts on any outings to furniture stores in the future,” he informed me in a solemn tone.
I considered his edict, regarded the trashed vehicles, and nodded my head in agreement. “I’m going to look for a dressy pair of shoes that looks to be fancy and appropriate for hopeful attorneys, but in reality, they’re a gym shoe suitable for all physical activities.”
“Just bring a pair of gym shoes into work and stash them at your desk, that way, whenever you leave the general safetyof our office building, you are prepared for anything.” He sighed, took a picture of the crash with his phone, and shook his head. “I had no idea you’re a gymnast.”
“Little girls who grew up in my town were, by default, gymnasts. That is what little girls in my town were useful for. We had to be pretty, agile, and graceful. That means we’re gymnasts. I understand the agile and graceful thing, but I still don’t understand how doing gymnastics makes a girl pretty. It definitely did keep us fit, though. But no girl in town escaped being a gymnast. My mother is a gymnast. My grandmothers? Both gymnasts. Every girl ever to enter my family is a gymnast. It’s so normal for us I forgot it’s something not everyone does.”
“Which explains why you didn’t peep about it. When you’re raised in such a way where all girls are gymnasts, that’s the default so why bring it up?”
