Byte Me by Pauline Baird Jones

Author:Pauline Baird Jones [Jones, Pauline Baird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9960566-0-1
Publisher: Pauline Baird Jones

Phoebe woke around noon feeling like she’d been chewed up and pooped over a cliff. It had only been a few hours since she said goodbye to Jake, but it felt longer. After they got to their new place in a seedy section of Denver, Dewey had insisted she try to sleep for a couple of hours. To her surprise, she had dropped off almost immediately, but now that a mental open season had been declared on her past, it was running amok through her dreams. She’d waded through blood and dodged Peter Harding for most of the night. And those were the good dreams. She struggled free of sheets she wasn’t sure were clean and headed straight for the shower.

It was almost as bad as her dreams. Dewey had chosen their new digs for anonymity, not amenities or décor. To call it gnarly was to imply it had at some time been gnarl-less.

The single window was so crusted with dirt, light couldn’t penetrate it, which was a positive thing since the small pane of glass looked out on an alley that was a home for the fund-free and displaced. A lone light bulb struggled to produce minimal wattage, which was also a plus. It was better not to know how not clean the green tile was as she stepped under the languid stream of tepid water. After a time, the water warmed up enough to fog the mirror over the sink.

Phoebe dried herself, then wrapped the towel around her hair and faced the mirror. Between fog and age, the mirror reflected her in pieces.

Through a glass darkly.

She didn’t know where the phrase came from, but it seemed to fit the here, the now, her present reality. Hadn’t she lived her life in pieces? In the shadows? Didn’t she reinvent herself almost daily as the game demanded? Wasn’t she about to do so again?

Even without help from the mirror, she was able to turn her brown eyes blue with the contacts Dewey had picked up for her. She released her hair from the towel, the wet ends starting a chain reaction of tiny chills where they touched her bare skin. She rubbed the strands until most of the water was in the towel, then dragged a comb through section by section until the tangles were gone. The bag Dewey had packed yielded a pair of salon scissors as well as some sassy, sexy lingerie.

She discovered she could still smile, even ankle-deep in angst-ville.

With a comb, she separated out a section of hair. The scissors sliced smooth and deep, releasing damp pieces to fall to her shoulders. They slid down her body where they curled into dark question marks against the green tile. When they surrounded her, she stopped and fingered the butchered ends. Amazing how it changed her look. The old chess queen Phoebe was dead. Long live—she couldn’t remember the new name.

She dug out the new driver’s license. Polly?

She wasn’t surprised when the bag also gave up a shirt in parrot colors of green and yellow to go with the ragged blue shorts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.