Jackson Ford - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

“Stop calling me Ms. Jameson. My name is Teagan Frost.”

I hang up.

I expect her to call back to demand the last word, but she doesn’t. I sit for a while, face turned up to the sun, letting the afternoon wash over me.

I need to be careful. Just because Tanner is fallible doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous. The cage I’m in is bigger, but it’s still a cage. If I’m going to break out one day—live my life, own my restaurant, be more than what my parents made me—then I’m going to have to watch what I do.

Look at me, planning ahead. See, Reggie? I’m learning .

Speaking of which…

They’re in the living room when I come down off the roof. Annie and Paul are on the couch, holding hands, talking quietly. It’s the first time I’ve seen them do it, and I kind of hope they don’t stop. This place has had enough secrets for a while.

I can’t stop myself looking towards the kitchen, as if Carlos is going to be there rooting through the cupboards for the coffee. His absence feels like a missing tooth. After what he did, I should be glad he’s gone. Where is he now? Still in California? Did he go back to Mexico? Is he even alive? The thought of him still out there… I can’t even begin to figure out how I feel about it. It’s too much.

Reggie is off to one side, tapping at something on her phone. She looks up as I come through the door. “Oh, thank God. Someone to distract me from these two lovebirds.”

“Please,” Annie says. “You been playing Clash of Clans for the past ten minutes. You don’t even know we here.”

“So you didn’t know?” I ask Reggie, nodding to Annie and a sheepish, grinning Paul.

“About them? Uh-uh.” Reggie shakes her head. “Well, I had my suspicions. They were pretty good at hiding it.” She gives me a sly smile.

“Hey,” I tell her. “I never said. Thanks for your… well, what you did at Nic’s apartment.”

“How do you mean?”

“The fake seizure.”

“Oh!” Her eyebrows shoot up. “I’d almost forgotten. You’re welcome, dear.” The smile returns. “You should come see one of our performances some time. I do a mean Blanche DuBois.”

“I… I don’t know who that is.”

“You can’t be serious.” She turns to Paul. “How does she not know that? Haven’t we been teaching her right?”

Paul looks embarrassed.

“You don’t know either ?” Reggie says. “You’ve come to my shows before!”

“Yeah, but that was Shakespeare. I think. I’m into more modern stuff. Arrested Development , that kind of thing.”

“Modern my ass.” Annie rolls her eyes. “He watches that shit on DVD, if you can believe that. Refuses to get streaming.”

“Not true. I don’t refuse, I just like having my own copies.”

Paul gets to his feet, dusting his hands off, even though all he’s been doing is sitting on the couch.

“So I was—” I start.

“Well, I don’t about the rest—” he says at the same time.

We stop, and I gesture to him. “You go.”

“I was going to say, we’ve actually got a job lined up this afternoon. A moving job, not a Tanner job,” he says as if trying to reassure me. “Just a small one. Some boxes for an old guy up in Santa Monica. Annie and I could do it, but it’d be great if you wanted to join us…”

“Actually, um, I’m kind of gonna head home,” I say. “Something I gotta do.”

“Oh.” He looks a little crestfallen. “Right. Of course. Sure.”

“Hey.”

I meet his eyes. “I’ll be there on the next one. Don’t worry about it.”

“Take your time,” Reggie says quietly. “We’ll be here.”

Annie’s phone is still in my hand. I’m about to pass it back to her when a thought occurs. “Actually, can I make a call real quick?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

A few moments later she looks up to see me still staring at the phone. “You OK?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.”

“You don’t know his number in your head, do you?”

“No.”

“Don’t worry,” Reggie says. She spins her chair, heads for the door leading to her Rig. “I’ll find it for you. I don’t what you’d do without us.”

Neither do I .

Two weeks at the LAX facility, which means two weeks since I’ve been at my house. The thought of sleeping there again—assuming I can sleep the whole night through—is almost too much to think about.

Two weeks. Jesus. At least I don’t own a cat.

Nic is waiting for me when I arrive. This time he doesn’t bother parking around the block. It’s around 2:15 when I pull the Batmobile up to the kerb behind his blue Corolla. He’s wearing dark jeans, a pair of old Tims, a grey button-down with the sleeves folded to mid-arm, leaning on the hood with his eyes hidden behind big Ray-Bans.

I climb out of the Batmobile and just stand there for a second, savouring how normal it all is. The quiet Leimert Park street, middle of the day, sun beaming through the jacaranda trees. Distant traffic. A retiree walking her just-as-ancient Dalmatian on the far sidewalk. The air smells of jasmine with just the faintest hint of wildfire smoke. The world has that amazing hot, liquid light you get at around two o’clock on a summer’s day.

A clinking, clattering noise from the far end of the block: Harry, pushing his shopping cart full of bottles, black bags bulging off its sides. He’s still wearing his blue raincoat, despite the heat. I lift my arm in a wave—automatic even now—and he returns it, his grin visible even from where I am.

Same street, same Harry. It’s like I never left at all.

My first instinct is to hug Nic. Wrap my arms around and just never, ever let go. But as I approach, his body tenses ever so slightly. The movement is like a very thin needle plunging into my heart.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“Thanks for coming. I…” I take a deep breath. “I didn’t know if they’d let you out of work, but—”

A smile plays at the edges of his mouth. “You do know it’s Sunday, right? They work associates hard, but we do get some time off.”

“Um…”

He peers at me. “You don’t know what day of the week it is, do you?”

“I’ve been kind of busy. And by busy, I mean unconscious.”

“Fair enough. Although I probably could’ve got out of work anyway. My boss is terrified of me now.”

“Why?”

“When they let me come back in, it was with a couple of dudes in black suits. They told her that I’d been seconded to the government for a special assignment, and that under no circumstances was I to be fired or laid off.”

The silence stretches out for a second too long. “Hey, can we go inside?” I say. “I mean, if you want to…”

“Right. Yeah.”

The house is dark and very slightly stuffy. Everything is right where I left it, although there’s a little more dust than normal. Seeing my possessions calms me, just a little—my records, my books, the spices in my tiny-ass kitchen. For the first time I stop feeling like this is a dream.

We sit on the couch, a few feet apart. I’m just getting comfortable when I think I should draw back the curtains, half turn to get off the couch, then decide not to. A shaft of sunlight lies across the leg of Nic’s jeans, dust motes turning in the still air.

“So—” he starts.

I interrupt him: “Shit. I never actually told you.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry, I totally spaced, with everything that happened—”

“Tell me what ?”

“My real name. It’s not actually Teagan Frost.”

Nic raises an eyebrow.

“It’s Emily. Emily Jameson. Although to be honest, I don’t really like that name any more, but I totally understand if…”