5 – The Forest

Reed Marion stared out the window at the forest. It was so close, the forest. The trees, they were right there. They were calling her name. They were looming in her mind.

She was home. But she wasn’t safe.

Her phone rang, and her reverie broke, allowing her to look away.

She pulled the phone from her pocket and answered. “Hello?” she said, pulling the drapes shut to block the view, but giving up halfway to hold her free hand to her head, which had been pounding since the night before.

She’d hoped sleeping would fix it, but she hadn’t gotten any. The nightmare had come instead, leaving her more tense than when she’d only had a pounding head. She already had to go back to work at the bar, and she’d barely slept at all.

“You’re late,” Sage whisper-shouted into the phone.

“No,” Reed said. “No way. I still have…” She looked at the time and saw Sage was right. She was late. How had that happened?

“Oh no,” Reed moaned into the phone. “Cover for me?”

“Already done, just hurry.”

“Yeah, be right there.” She hung up and booked it through the room, moving as quietly as possible. Habit. She grabbed her keys and purse and tip-toed to the door of her apartment. The woman in the apartment below her was her landlord, and her landlord hated her for no reason Reed could see. So Reed tip-toed.

Reed heard a pathetic, desperate, grinding meow from beyond the closed sliding-glass door leading to her balcony.

Wiz! He’d come back! She hadn’t seen the stray cat in a few weeks, so long that she’d stopped putting food out for him. She had two minutes to pop him open a can. She regularly put food out for all the stray cats the hung around the apartment building, hiding them on the far end of the building so her landlord wouldn’t know, but Wiz was the only one with the audacity to come right up on her balcony.

Reed headed for the door, trying to see her balcony without seeing the forest beyond. The forest was there, green, bold, and unapologetic, and it seemed to speak to her. To tell her things. Reed shook her head and tried to scrub the thoughts clean. Forests, any forest, had always both fascinated and repelled her, but since last year, that fascination had begun to border on obsessiveness. Her hands shook as she tried to control her own mind, tried to remember where the cat food was.

Reed muscled her crazy under control, not knowing what else to do, besides stuff it all down and deny anything strange was happening. Because acknowledging that something serious was wrong with her wasn't an option. She was embarking on a new life and her forever career in a new city, and she had no time to pop a few screws loose. She found the cat food. She slid open the door and pet the cat, smiling at him.

He was a rare male calico, with a two-tone black and orange face and a white body, and he was old and grizzled but the sweetest thing. He reminded her of a cat that she’d had when she’d been young, he’d been a stray, too, and her mom had always called him, Wizard the Cat because he showed up out of nowhere. Her mom had let four-year-old Reed feed him on the back porch sometimes. Those were good memories, and that alone was enough for Reed to name this stray, and to keep her feeding him, even though she’d gotten in trouble a few times for it.

Green caught Reed’s eye.

Reed turned and stared, her mind lapsing until her phone rang in her pocket again.

This time, Reed didn’t even look at the forest, or Wiz.

She just got the hell out of there, running for her car, unable to believe she’d done it again and scared to look at how late to work she really was.

***

Reed parked her car behind the bar and rushed to the building in her utilitarian waitress shoes. The only question was if she was already fired or if she would get one more chance. One more chance, she hoped. Good waitresses were hard to come by, and she’d seen others forgiven for worse than being late a few times. Reed started her new job on Friday, her dream job that she’d gone to years of schooling for, but she wouldn’t get paid until she’d been there for two weeks. Reed still needed this paycheck. Reed still needed these tips.

The back door to the bar and grill was open and Reed could see Sage through the screen, standing at the setup table, braiding her thick dark hair into open ended braids to keep it out of her face and off her neck. She finished the last braid and bent to her work at the setup table again, her famous Sage-smile fixed on her face.

Reed felt a rush of affection for Sage, who shared Reed’s birthday and age, she’d even been born in the same hospital. They’d become fast and easy friends since the day they’d met, six weeks before, when Reed had first come to work at Mugshots. Reed never made friends quickly, and she relished what she had with Sage.

Reed had been born in Serenity, but her mom had moved them away when she was very young. She’d moved back two months ago, fresh out of college, choosing to move to Serenity because she’d dreamed of it. She’d been confident she could get a job as a Speech Language Pathologist, the field she’d just received her degree in, but she’d been wrong. She had already exhausted most of her savings when she’d walked by Mugshots on her way to somewhere else, seen the Help Wanted sign, asked about it, and been hired on the spot. That night, she went home with $122 in her pocket, and the eye-candy hadn’t been bad either. She would never actually date a cop, but they were nice to look at. All those muscles, but it came with all that attitude. Reed didn’t stand for attitude in her men. She liked her men neat, and compact, the kind of guy to carry a briefcase and always use his inside voice. These cops never used their inside voices. They spoke to everyone like if they didn’t see your hands in the next two seconds, someone was getting body slammed.

Reed reached the screen door and pulled it open. Sage raised a hand in greeting, shaking her head slightly to the left and right, meaning Linda, the boss, was close and pissed and Reed should keep quiet.

Reed nodded, pointed at the setup table and mouthed, “Sorry!” She was supposed to be helping, and now they would be behind all night long. A fresh wave of regret and confusion hit Reed. She wasn’t a flake. She wasn’t a fuck-up, so why was she being so flaky and fucking up so much lately? She put a hand to her head, which was still throbbing in pain. Maybe she actually had a brain tumor instead of just a headache. Wouldn’t that be a fun thing to worry about?

Linda had heard the screen door. “If that’s Reed, she better get in here,” Linda yelled.

Reed raised her head, steeled herself, and filed into Linda’s office for her reaming.

***

Exactly twenty-two minutes of ass-chewing later, Reed escaped her boss’s office, closed the door to it, and joined Sage at the setup table, setting in to work as fast as possible. There were only ten minutes left until the dinner rush started.

Sage shook her head and spoke softly, her ever-present sweet grin that hid a savage sense of humor, fixed firmly on her face. “I can’t believe you’re not fired.”

“You and me both.” Reed kept her voice pitched just as low.

Sage peered at her, while her hands did the work of wrapping silverware in napkins automatically. “You’re looking a little tired.”

Reed put a hand to her face, imagining black luggage under her eyes. Had she even brushed her hair or looked in the mirror that morning? She disappeared into the restroom for a quick check, then returned to the table.

Sage gave her an amused but concerned look. “Couldn’t sleep again?”

Sage knew about her nightmare, in fact, Sage was the only one she’d ever told, except her mother. The necklace. The pendant. The dark forest and the evil wolf. It wasn’t like the nightmare was clear or that there was much to tell, but it was consistent, and coming twice as often as it used to, waking her and stopping her from sleeping for the rest of the night. The lack of sleep was seriously starting to mess with her brain.

Without warning, the ground rolled under their feet, setting hanging pots into one another, making them clang. An industrial-sized container of Bisquick fell off a shelf and floofed onto the floor, sending white powder everywhere.

“Get back to work!” Linda shouted from her office before the earthquake had even stopped. It wasn’t a big one, but it was the second one Reed had ever felt, and it had come so close on the heels of the first one she’d ever felt that she had to wonder if the earth was going to collapse. She grabbed onto the table and had the same thought as she had the night before. Should she run outside? But then it was over. When the ground stopped rolling, her head started pounding even harder, like something was screaming between her ears.

Sage came around to her side of the table. “Damn,” she swore. “I hope that’s not a new thing we have to deal with every day. Earthquakes make customers feel stingy, like they need to save their money for propane.” She put a light hand on the back of Reed’s neck and tried to peer into Reed’s face, which was mostly covered by Reed’s hands. “Seriously, are you ok?” she asked.

The pressure of Sage’s hand on her neck had an immediate effect on Reed, seeming to leak away some of the pain, enough that Reed thought she might be able to stay standing.

Reed rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck a little, then grabbed up some rolled napkins and loaded them onto a tray. “That headache came back, like last night, but it’s… better now. Maybe earthquakes change the barometric pressure or something.”

Sage nodded at her, grinning, her voice amused. “I’m sure that’s it.”

Sage tossed Reed her black waitress apron. Reed strapped it around her waist quickly, adjusting her nametag, which looked like an oversized police badge, with the name, “Benson” on it. When she was at Mugshots, she was Olivia Benson from Law and Order. Sage was Jane Rizzoli from Rizzoli and Isles.

Reed checked her pockets, grabbed her tray, and headed out for the night’s work. Despite the headache, despite the earthquake, despite the ass-chewing, she had a feeling she was going to have a good night.

She could use one.