Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Author:Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2020-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

HER breath quickened.

She saw a frog on a rock at the edge of the lawn, heard a bee in a tree overhead.

Things got unnaturally clear.

It was the way she’d said, “Good luck at the Examiner, Benny,” that did it, the way she’d called Jane’s paper by its wrong name—the Examiner, not the Prospect—right before mouthing the fake name Jane gave her.

Like the preacher going on about the sin of pride while she sat in the first pew next to Granny, polishing a painted-gold track medal in her pocket with her thumb.

Grete knew she was a fake.

She’d been caught lying before, naturally, lots of little things. But this was different. This was a challenge to her job, her reputation, her family.

Fine, she thought. She knows you’re a fake. This is good, better to see that. She may pretend to like you, may see something in you. She may even be like you. But she’s your enemy. Now you know it for sure.

These hormones flowing through her body, this almost rage of righteous self-defense, clarified things.

I won’t run, she thought. I’ll fight.

She picked her second copy of the picture up off the grass. As long as the negative existed outside her possession, somebody could call it back, summon the spirit, and everybody could see at any time she was connected to Daddy, who was connected to Vee.

She looked up at the house and saw through a stairwell window that Grete was on her way upstairs, moving fast with that lame foot.

Jane pocketed the photo and walked to the kitchen door, turned the doorknob, and entered the house, no squeaking, no echo, through the entry, the living room, to the kitchen.

She opened the leather bag hanging on the hook, took the key ring from a pocket inside and headed through the basement door, down the stairs, without turning on the light, feeling the wall as she went, so cool and earthy she tasted dirt. At the bottom, casement windows lit her way to the darkroom.

She was scared but excited, too, not at the danger but at what she was doing to Grete, beating her. If she’d looked at it directly that way, she might have turned back, seeing how much of this was unrelated to what she really aimed to accomplish. But things underneath were more powerful than what lay on top.

She tried three keys on the padlock before one worked. Next she hunted for the key to the deadbolt, which she found after four tries. Then she had the door lock open after two keys, and she finally was alone in the darkroom, feeling almost better it hadn’t opened easily. She’d earned her entrance.

She waved her hand in the air in front of her, and when the hanging string brushed her fingers, she pulled it, turning on the overhead amber bulb, and closed the door.

There on the counter were the notebooks. She picked one up and flipped through it. In one section, each graph-paper entry started with a code—SRH0336, OH0135, SH0836. Below the codes were a few sentences, recorded in a tidy, up-and-down script, in pencil.

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