Hello! This is the second installment of the twenty-one chapter debut novel In the Pines by Wells Thompson (that’s me). I’ll be publishing one chapter a week on Substack until it’s all up, so if this is the first one you’re seeing, you can find the previous chapters in the Newsletter backlog. I hope you enjoy the ride!
This was somehow more comfortable than being at home, Sarah thought as she huddled into the corner of the couch, a well-dressed stranger staring her down. A professional stranger, a well-known stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. She wasn’t doing anything to make Sarah nervous, which was nice, but her big brown eyes were frantic, taking in every twitch of Sarah’s fingers and her notepad sat uncomfortably on the table beside her. They tried with the decor, at least; all Earth tones and fake plants, with a couple of paintings of sailboats and cliff sides. The brown suede couch Sarah sat on sank considerably under her weight as the doctor seemed to float on her easy chair.
“How are you feeling today, Sarah?” Dr. Skinner asked. Sarah wondered if there was a rule that forced her to start every session that way.
“I saw a dog today, so pretty good, I guess.” Sarah bit the inside of her lip, she knew where this was going to end up.
“Ooh, what kind?” This was Dr. Skinner’s method, Sarah had realized when they’d met, she was supposed to be a cool kid, a buddy. It didn’t feel fake like when old men tried to pull it off either. Dr. Skinner wasn’t too much older than Sarah, maybe in her early thirties at the most. Even though she’d like to think that was a lifetime away for her, Sarah was approaching twenty-four; realistically, they weren’t that far apart.
“An Arkansas Brown dog,” Sarah said, smiling. Dr. Skinner looked confused.
“I’m not familiar with that breed.”
“It means a mut, it’s just what we call them where I’m from.”
“Oh, I get it. That’s cute! Where was it?” Sarah was impressed with Dr. Skinner’s restraint, any other therapist she’d seen would have seized on ‘where I’m from’ and tried to force the conversation, kicking and screaming, to the source of all her traumas as expeditiously as possible.
“I saw it coming into the building, it was being walked outside. When it saw me, it pulled on the leash to try and get to me, but the owner tugged and moved it along. Breaks my tender little heart.” Sarah noticed her shoulders drop, her arms loosen, her feet flatten out on the floor. “I’m guessing you’re wanting me to talk about something real now, right?”
“You can talk about whatever you want. I’m here for you, not the other way around.”
“You aren’t frustrated that I haven’t once brought up any weird anxieties or tragic childhood incidents yet? I mean, this is our third session, even I’m starting to get annoyed by how aloof I’m being.”
“Sarah, I cost over a hundred dollars an hour, if you’re here, you probably need to be. I’m sure you have reasons for beating around the bush and, as far as I’m concerned, we can get there as quickly or slowly as you’re comfortable with.” She crossed her right leg over her left and folded her hands over her knee. Her smile never faded, it was bordering on obnoxious.
“Whenever I try to stack my thoughts in a little pile, I wind up with a scattered heap of nonsense. Why am I like this? I wind up thinking about the grocery list. What am I doing tomorrow? No idea, but remember that cringy thing you said in second grade?” Sarah looked down at her feet, she was still wearing her work shoes. For the first time she realized there was a split on the big toe; soon the sole would come undone and she would need a new pair.
“We don’t need to organize our thoughts all the time, sometimes word vomit is just as effective as a five paragraph essay. Why don’t you just tell me about the first thing that comes to mind, the first instance you can think of and we’ll start there.” Sarah filled herself up as much as she could until her back straightened out and the bottoms of her ribs touched the inside of her elbows.
“Okay,” she finally let out, “about a year ago, I was staring at the bedroom door…”
***
The hush was uneasy in Sarah’s one-bedroom apartment, the hardwood floors weren’t creaking and no words had been spoken for several days. As Sarah changed into sweatpants and readied her whispering brain for sleep, she listened intently for Kayla’s familiar hum, although it never came. Her stomach felt sick, if only for a moment before she sat down on the couch. Here, despite her best efforts, she could watch the front door, sick with the need to see it open and dreading the moment that it did. She tried to pry her eyes away from the knob and focus on the other details in the apartment; the twin pairs of sparring gloves hanging above the TV, the tank full of sticks and leaves that somewhere contained Harry, Kayla’s ill-tempered corn snake, the twinkling Christmas lights that lined the ceiling and stayed up year round. But always, her eyes snapped back to the knob, motionless and stiff. She laid her head down and noticed the cushion was beginning to indent. It had been eight days since Kayla left and she hadn’t been able to sleep in her own bed since then.
When she lay still long enough, her mind went to the closet, where a ball of clutter had grown and become impenetrable over the years. Clothes, trash, old cat toys that the neighborhood strays refused to play with, photos and decorations and keepsakes bound together in a mass that made each individual component indistinguishable from the whole. It was both their faults, the clutter made up of equal parts of Sarah and Kayla trash, but Sarah felt responsible for it, or she assumed that she felt more responsible than Kayla did. Still, she dare not face the prospect of breaking it down and throwing anything away, it felt overwhelming; Where would it all go? What might they find? Of the things they could still use, what if they couldn’t decide which one belonged to Sarah and which to Kayla? Did it even matter?
Sarah tried to think of the last time she was apart from Kayla for more than an afternoon. They’d clung to each other for the last six years, intentionally or not. There were a few times, but Sarah kept going back to the same instance, early on in the grocery store, when they had been apart in any significant way. It seemed silly now, the drama of it all, how much they acted like stupid little girls fighting over nothing. This current disappearance came from nowhere—Kayla left without notice and promised to come back, saying everything would be okay. It felt dissident and cold, at first like a vacuum, but then different, like she’d never left at all but was haunting the house, watching Sarah wither with anxiety. Sarah was insulted at first—not that Kayla would leave, but that she felt the need to promise. Not that she stole from her, but that she hadn’t thought to ask. But gradually there wasn’t any anger, just a deep, smoldering worry that Kayla had done something reckless and stupid and might not come back. Outside, the green line train rolled by and the glass on the coffee table vibrated in time with the tracks.
The noise never bothered her until now. Even when the landlord showed them the apartment and warned them they’d need to get used to the noise, that the train rumbled by every 8 minutes during the day and 15 at night, she knew it wouldn’t matter. Her home was full of noise—no, that wasn’t it, sound. Music and shuffling and small talk that was actually real talk in disguise. Kayla hummed during the day and snored at night and the house felt alive and breathing and it never mattered that the street outside got noisy. But now it did, because the table stopped rattling and all that was left was Sarah in the silence of her own thoughts.
We aren’t kids anymore. Haven’t been for a long time. The thought rang in her head, but she couldn’t identify where it came from. She pictured Kayla, lean and strong, her curly hair bursting in wild bunches and curls. She saw the tattoo on Kayla’s right forearm and felt the familiar shame that she hadn’t been brave enough to get one with her. And she saw her nose, Kayla’s beautiful hooked nose, which Sarah had been jealous of since they’d met. When Sarah stood next to Kayla, she leeched that confidence, that strength, that stunning beauty, and felt it as her own. But in her absence, Sarah was left with only herself, and she was disgusted. How could she compare? She was wet bark and Kayla was a forest fire.
When the mechanical clank of the lock shattered the quiet of the room, the hair on Sarah’s neck stood up and her hands clenched into tight fists. On the dark wall, she saw a sliver of light shine in from the hallway with a shadow behind it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought of a movie she’d seen when she was young, where the bad guy sneaks in to kill the victim in their bed and all the audience can see is their shadow. She couldn’t remember the title, not anymore, but she remembered that when she did all of her chores, and then, later, when she’d gotten A’s on tests and school projects, her mom would stay up and watch movies with her. They watched tons of movies before she ran away.
Sarah shut her eyes and threw her body around to put her back to the door. A stone formed in her throat as she listened for the door to shut, and after soft footsteps approaching. She forced herself to hold her breath when she felt the couch dip behind her and a warm hand wrap around her stomach and pull her back against Kayla’s familiar shape. Fingers ran through her short, silky hair, pulling softly and curling the strands. It was the same way her father used to when she was small and couldn’t get to sleep. She held this moment as long as she could. In a few short moments, there would be anger and tears and demands and questions and nonanswers—but for this exact moment, Sarah was home with Kayla and everything could be okay.
On the back of her head, through her golden hair—it seemed suddenly gold to her—she felt a nose and lips press against her and the hot air on the back of her neck calmed her down. She smiled briefly and reached for the hand resting on her belly, tracing the arm it grew from and feeling for the subtle lines of the tattoo, and the less subtle lines of the scarring. Sarah grabbed hold of two fingers and gripped them to make sure they didn’t go away. Kayla’s voice, barely a whisper, finally broke the days-long stalemate of silence in the apartment.
“It’s alright,” she said, “everything’s alright.”
Sarah’s throat swelled. Wouldn’t it be simpler to believe it? To turn around and bury herself in Kayla’s warmth and just let it go? Sarah listened to Kayla’s intoxicating hum and tried hard to fall asleep and accept it. Wouldn’t that be nice? Then her nose filled with the hazy smell of smoke and she knew, in some place quiet and cold, that Kayla was wrong.
This story is considered a work in progress for legal reasons.
© 2024 Wells Thompson
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.