After the Witch Hunt by Megan Falley

Author:Megan Falley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-935904-64-9
Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing

COCONUT VERBENA

My father gets discounted tickets for being a senior citizen at Six Flags Great Adventure. The theme park assumes, because of his age, he will skip out on all the rides and hold the colas. My father is always the oldest person in line for every single coaster. He will wait the extra hour for a seat in the last row, for the car that makes the rider feel closest to death.

There is a repertoire of games we no longer play: “Who Can Fall Asleep First”—a contest I never found out the winner of, the “Cold Feet Game”—where I’d place my popsicle toes on his space heater calves, and “Snow White”—where he would bring me a juicy red apple and a tiny bite was the only way I’d fall asleep. In the morning it was “Sleeping Beauty”—a forehead kiss from him was the only way I’d wake.

Once I ran into the Green Acres Mall fountain to collect the pennies at the bottom. He tried using his voice as fishing line, but eventually had to follow in after, pretending to be mad until the laughter found us—soaked and ridiculous in the elevator.

Before I could read, I’d crack open the fat legs of a fortune cookie and ask him what they said: “Megan is the most beautiful girl in the world.” Every time.

He would always come home with shopping bags full of different scented shampoos and tell me to close my eyes. He’d pop open their heads and I’d guess their flavors. I imagine him walking through fluorescent-lit stores he needed nothing from just to play this game with me, picture him smirking at scents he knew would stump me: Coconut Verbena, Key Lime Pie. I can see the perplexed convenience store clerk selling countless bottles of hair product to a very bald man.

He no longer spends the time to pick out a scent. This Christmas, my father handed me a gift card to a store famous for its perfumes and soaps, signed for the both of them in his new wife’s cursive. No present says “I no longer know you” more than that.

I didn’t see him this Father’s Day. He went to a ballgame with his nonbiological granddaughter. He’s excellent with children. It’s just hard to watch them grow up when he has spent the last fifty years staying the same age.

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