The Girl Who Would Be King(45)
After two days of swimming laps I decide to try the ocean. I hide my bag in the yard and climb down the rocks, scratching the hell out of myself, but the cuts are healed by the time I reach the bottom and stick a toe in the ocean. It’s colder than I expected. I wonder briefly about drowning – if it could actually kill me, if it would be painful way to die. I can’t decide if it seems horrifying or peaceful. I swim out in strong powerful strokes and am shocked when I look back and can barely see the beach. It’s getting dark and the moon is already faintly in the sky. I lie on my back and float effortlessly. I should feel energized and powerful, invulnerable and potent, but all I feel is lost. I’m afraid of people after everything that happened in Vegas, and I don’t like feeling afraid, it pisses me off. But I don’t have a handle yet on what I should do about it. Every freaking person I’ve ever known or trusted has betrayed me. Not to mention, most of them were idiots and they still managed to kill me and leave me for dead, twice. What if someone not so stupid gets their hands on me? And why can’t I come up with a plan of any sort to get my stone? Turns out I’m a pussy, and one with a puny brain to boot. I think back to my early, naïve, days where I thought I could take over the whole world as easy as snapping my fingers. I’m not even coming close to world-takeover, and it’s ‘cause I’m afraid of everything I don’t know and maybe I’m stupid. For someone so powerful I sure feel afraid a lot of the time.
I swim back to shore in the dark.
My first attempt is not really pre-meditated, and I don’t call it a suicide attempt, though others probably would. I call it “testing my limits.” After scaling the rocky cliff back up to the deck of the house I look back down on the beach – the glistening tips of waves lapping the shore – and I jump.
It must be three hundred feet to the ground, but the rocks don’t fall straight down and I make no attempt to launch myself out from the edge, so my limbs catch on every sharp, jutting rock as I plummet toward the sandy beach. The pain is excruciating – I break several bones, and land badly on my hip and arm, on a large flat stone. My hip feels shattered and when I reach down with my undamaged arm I can feel the hipbone under my skin, smashed into sharp shards. Further up my torso my skin has broken apart and ribs are poking out, white bone under red blood in the moonlight.
I start laughing.
°
When I try to take out enough money for my next week at the motel, the machine spits out my debit card almost angrily and I realize I’ve seriously got to get a second job.
I walk around the city wracking my brain for something I could do and maybe be good at, or at least something I’d be better at than endless half-caff-double-whip-no-foam BS.
The only thing I can think of that I might be a natural with are books, so I go to the New York Public Library in the hopes that something there will click for me. I bound up the massive stone stairs, past the regal lions perched out front and plunge myself into the building, the feel of it immediately welcoming, certainly more so than my coffee shop. It smells old. Maybe the library and I can be ancient together. Maybe I can feel less out of synch with the whole world here – at home with the books. I approach the first person I see with a nametag and try to stop myself from being too excited about this new idea.
“Where can I find out about job opportunities?” I say brightly. The girl sniffs and juts her chin toward a desk with several women moving around behind it. At the desk, a girl my age looks up.
“Can I help you?” She asks with a slightly forced smile. I nod, ignoring the fake smile.
“I was wondering if you had any job openings?”
“We do have a Page opening…is that what you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “What’s a Page?”
“They work with the librarians here – assisting them – re-shelving books…you know, doing whatever they need.”
“Sounds great. I love books so, yes, anything with the books,” I say. She smiles benevolently and hands me a clean application and a pen. I’ve only written my name when she asks what school I’m attending.
“I’m not in school,” I say, and it stings a little as it slides out.
“Oh,’ she says, her voice dropping in register. Something’s wrong and the hairs on my arm stand up. Things are about to go sideways. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you have to be enrolled in a school program of some kind to be eligible to be a Page.”
“Oh,” I say. It stings more now. “Are there, are there any other jobs that I don’t have to be in school for?”