Decided to continue this one! Devil in Dungeon updates soon for those of you eagerly waiting!
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Lisa gave Taylor money for the bank job. Eight thousand six-hundred dollars and some change. It was mostly hundreds and shoved into a plastic bag with some colorful paper so nobody knew what was inside. Lisa had smirked at Taylor’s look when she handed it over.
“I know it’s not a big sack with a dollar sign on it, but you gotta make it a little hard for the police.”
Taylor couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to buy something and now that she had the money, that didn’t really change. She hid it under her bed, between the box spring and the frame.
Thursday morning, Taylor woke up staring at her ceiling, a crick in her neck from the lumpy mattress. She stared at the ceiling for a while, watched the shadows painted by the curtains and the setting sun dance across the popcorn finish. It was late. She slept longer than usual, like always after using one of her masks.
She heard noises down below and felt herself tensing as she realized that her dad was home. He must have gotten off of work early. It was rare these days, but it happened occasionally, when they just finished up a big contract or work had dried up.
Taylor pushed down the spike of anxiety as it flared in her chest and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was still wearing her jeans, though her shirt had been tossed on the floor. She vaguely remembered feeling sweaty and then cold last night, and realized she must have taken it off while half asleep.
Taylor found her shirt where she’d dropped it, pulling it over her head before making her way to the door. She paused with her hand on the knob, listening. The sound of cutlery clattering reached her ears not long after. Her dad was making dinner.
She could just stay up here. Wait until he called her down, or until the food was ready and the silence became too much to ignore. That was what she usually did. It was easier than going down and facing the awkward conversations that never seemed to go anywhere.
But Lisa’s voice echoed in the hollow space inside her chest.
Feel a little bit.
Taylor opened the door.
Her socks made her nearly silent, but the squeaky third step announced her arrival. By the time she reached the bottom, her dad had turned away from the stove, a pair of sauce-stained tongs in one hand and a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.
“Hey, Little Owl.” He attempted a smile and almost managed to get it right. Mostly, he just looked tired. “I’m glad you’re up. I thought you were going to sleep the whole day away.”
“I heard you cooking,” Taylor said, ignoring the way he grimaced at her tone.
Her dad nodded, turning back to the stove. “Got off early today. Figured I’d make something instead of ordering in again. You still like spaghetti, right?”
“It’s fine.”
There was a stretch of quiet. Taylor stood at the edge of the kitchen, watching her dad’s back as he stirred the sauce in the pot. His shoulders were tense, and Taylor wondered if it was because he could feel her watching him, or something else. She knew things weren’t easy at the Docks; that was why he was barely home anymore. Something about the mayor and permits and a bunch of other stuff that seemed to come up all the time. He was always busy, even when he wasn’t.
“You can sit,” he said without turning around. “It’s almost done.”
Taylor pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat. The wood was cool beneath her palms, worn smooth by years of use. She could remember a time when this table had been alive and covered in her mom’s manuscripts or her dad’s union documents or even just the morning paper, spread across the surface while her parents argued good-naturedly over coffee.
Now it was bare except for a salt shaker and a stack of mail that she was pretty sure she had gotten two weeks ago. Melancholy stirred in Taylor’s chest and evaporated just as quick. Anguish grew a little bit stronger.
Her dad moved around the kitchen finishing the meal and moving to plate. She had woken up at just the right time and soon enough, she had a steaming plate of pasta and a glass of water sitting in front of her. She thanked her dad quietly and dug in. There was a little bit too much oregano in the sauce. Taylor ate it anyway.
They ate in silence. Taylor wound spaghetti around her fork, watching the strands curl into neat spirals. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. Condensation dripped from her glass, forming a neat ring of liquid on the wood around it.
Across from her, her dad was clearly looking for some way to break the awkwardness that had settled between them. She could see it in the way he kept glancing up from his plate, opening his mouth as if to say something, then closing it again when nothing came out. He wanted to talk. She could tell. He always wanted to talk, to make some kind of connection, to break through the wall that had sprung up between them after her mom died and grown even taller after the Locker.
But he didn’t know how. And neither did she.
“So,” her dad said finally, the word coming out slightly strangled. “How’s school?”
The question hung in the air. Taylor’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. Emotions surged and then died just as quickly. Taylor put her fork down and swallowed.
“Fine,” she said.
Her dad’s face fell slightly, though he tried to hide it. “That’s good. That’s... good.”
The silence returned, heavier than before. Taylor resumed eating, though the meal had started to congeal on her plate. Her dad picked at his own meal, his movements mechanical and distracted.
It was always like this. Two people sitting at the same table, eating the same food, existing in the same space, but separated by an invisible wall that neither of them could figure out how to address much less break. Taylor could see the effort her dad was putting in, the way he kept trying and failing to find some thread of conversation that wouldn’t wither the moment it left his mouth.
She thought about what Lisa had said. About feeling a little bit. About letting herself register things before shoving them away.
The anxiety that had spiked when she’d heard him downstairs—she’d pushed it down before it could fully form. But what had it been trying to tell her? That she was worried about having to talk to him? That she didn’t know how to be around him anymore? That every conversation they had since the Locker felt like walking through a minefield blindfolded?
She caught the emotion that surged before it could grow, felt it slip away into the dark corners of her power where it couldn’t hurt her anymore. But just for a moment, she held onto the shape of it, just long enough to recognize it for what it was.
I want this to be better.
The thought sat in her chest, uncomfortable and strange. She wasn’t used to letting things linger. It felt like pressing a bruise, poking at something tender just to see if it still hurt.
It did.
“I made some new friends,” Taylor said before she could stop herself. Across the table, her dad stared at her, eyes wide behind his glasses. Taylor realized that this was the first time she had started a conversation in weeks. That also hurt.
He set his fork down slowly. “You did?” His voice reminded Taylor of when they’d found the racoon living under the porch last year. His tone was careful, afraid that any wrong move would cause it to lash out.
Taylor picked up her fork again, just to have something to do with her hands. She twisted the tines through the strands of spaghetti on her plate, watching them curl around the metal.
“Yeah,” she said. “I met them outside of school. While you were at work.”
Danny nodded slowly, clearly trying to find the right words to respond with after being told his prepubescent daughter was hanging out with strangers. Then again, pretty much everyone was a stranger to her these days. Even the ones she knew, and her dad knew that. Eventually, he settled on, “Are they nice?”
Taylor considered the question as she stirred her spaghetti around on her plate. Were the Undersiders nice? They were villains, making a living off of robing other people. That usually didn’t equate to niceness.
But Taylor thought about Rachel, with her rigid edges that told everyone it was a bad idea to get to close, yet who had been so accepting of Taylor being who she was that the notion of rejection hadn’t passed between them once. She thought about Brian, with his steadfast leadership that reminded her of some of her dad’s friends—a solid rock to lean on if she needed it. She thought of Alec and the barbs that were thrown out so casually yet failed to sting upon landing on her skin, and the smirk that crossed his face when she did something he found funny.
She thought of Lisa. Lisa, who talked to much and asked too many questions and looked at Taylor like she wanted to solve her as much as she wanted to fix her. Lisa, who had brought her into the fold without a second thought. Lisa, who had told her it was okay to feel.
Taylor held onto the emotions as they surfaced, letting them wash over her for just a moment before they drifted away. There was warmth there, something that she hadn’t felt in so long that it felt unfamiliar. It slipped away into the dark, and a tiny piece of her became brighter for it.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “They are.”
Her dad’s face did something complicated. Relief, surprise, hope, and suspicion warred across his features before settling. “That’s... that’s great, Taylor. I’m glad.”
“Me too,” Taylor said, and found that she meant it. She wasn’t sure how she had fallen into the arms of the people around her, or why they chose to stay, but she somehow couldn’t imagine a world without them.
The warmth returned, a flickering lantern that sat just behind her breast. This time, despite her mind screaming at her that it was fleeting, telling her to send it away and let the numbness sink in again, she let it stay.