Maggie gestures at me to take a seat in a nook with a little dining table by the window, overlooking the night.
She’s in her robe, meaning she was on call tonight, and I know that she’s a light sleeper. Just my luck.
I watch her as she scurries back and forth, collecting dishes and forks, and getting the blueberry pie out of the little fridge off to the side.
Maggie is super cute. Short and plump with a mop of curly honey blonde hair, peppered with gray.
She cuts us each a piece and sets one of the dishes in front of me before taking a seat.
“Eat,” she tells me, her motherly face stern.
I shoot her a small smile. She knows how much I love blueberry pie – actually, I love all sweet things – and she always makes sure to save a few pieces for me.
Sliding the dish close to me, I dig in. “Thanks.”
She grunts and my smile gets bigger.
Maggie points a finger at me. “Don’t. Don’t you smile at me. You’re not off the hook yet.”
I bite my lip to keep from smiling and mouth sorry.
She cuts a piece of her own pie. “Now, is this about that guest, Mr. Grayson?”
I gulp the bite I had in my mouth and Maggie raises her eyebrows.
Clearing my throat, I whisper, “Maybe.”
“I told you to stay out of that.”
“Stay out of it?” I ask in disbelief. “Do you even know me? I can’t stay out of it. I won’t stay out of it. He groped Grace. Groped her. He practically groped me.” I gesture to my boobs. “And you don’t grope these without consequences.”
Grace is one of the girls on the cleaning staff. She’s shy and doesn’t like confrontation. So when I caught her crying in the staff room, I forced her to spill her story. Apparently, Mr. Grayson has been harassing her, making lewd comments and patting her butt whenever she walks by.
Motherfucking asshole.
A couple days ago when I felt a brush across my chest while I served him breakfast in bed, I thought I’d imagined it. But Grace’s story had me re-evaluating things.
So I acted. Someone had to.
Maggie studies me shrewdly and I feel my cheeks flushing with warmth.
“And that’s the only reason?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I shift in my seat. “What else could it be?”
Shrugging, she eats a bite of her pie. “I don’t know. Maybe something to do with the fact that you hate this job.”
“I don’t hate this job.”
“Really?”
I slide the pie away. “Yes. I mean, do I like cleaning up vomit when the guests go wild and finding used condoms on the floor? No, I don’t. Do I like dusting off the windows or mopping up the floor until I can see my face on the tiles? Nope. But it’s a job and you know I need it. I need it more than anything else in the world right now.”
Maggie was the one who got this job for me.
In our town, if you don’t go to college, you most probably go here. You work on the cleaning staff or on the cooking staff or whatever staff you seem fit to work on.
My parents were the select few who had other jobs. My dad used to paint houses and my mom used to tutor kids sometimes.
College was never an option for me; I’m not into books and all. But neither was working at The Pleiades.
I wanted to travel the world like my mom used to say when I was little. I wanted to explore it and see what I liked. See where my passion was. I wanted to find myself.
Pity flashes through Maggie’s eyes and I look away. If I don’t, I might start crying and that’s the last thing I want tonight.
Tonight was about tit for tat. It was about the adventure, the rush of it all. Tonight was about feeling alive.
“You know, you don’t have to do this. This job. You could pack up right now and leave this town. Just like you planned. Just get in your car. The blue car that you love so much.” She smiles. “Take a road trip. Send me postcards. No one’s going to blame you, Cleo.”
Okay, first of all: I can’t just get in my car. I can’t.
I won’t.
My blue car that I used to love so much, the car that I spray-painted myself with my dad, scares me now. I can’t touch it. I won’t touch it. Because every time I do, I can’t sleep for days. I get nightmares. Sometimes I throw up, get dizzy, claustrophobic.
But I can’t tell her that. Because she’ll say the same thing that she’s been saying for the past year.
You need to see someone, Cleo. Talk to someone.
“I can’t,” I whisper, threading my fingers together. “I need this job. I need to get my house back.”
My old house. The house I grew up in.
The bank took it away last year because of my dad’s debts. After a lot of pleading, they gave me a second chance, along with a time limit to come up with the money. I only have about four more months to gather it and I need this job to get me there.
“Your parents wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”
“Well they’re not here, are they?”
I was trying to be snappish. But I guess, I sounded more… forlorn, like the orphan that I am.
Sighing, Maggie sits back. “Fine. I can’t make you do anything that you don’t want to do.”
My chest feels heavy but I still manage a trembling smile.
“But,” Maggie says, sternly. “I don’t want you inside the mansion after your shift’s over. Do you understand?”
I straighten my spine. “Yes.”
“No matter what happens. No matter how tempting it is to take revenge. You’re not a vigilante.”
“You mean like Wonder Woman?” I grin.
“It’s not funny.”
I shake my head seriously. “It’s not.”
Maggie nods in approval. “You will not set your foot inside this place if you’re not working. I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if someone else had found you loitering around instead of me. So no more nightly excursions.”
“Got it.”
Maggie looks me over. My navy blue lipstick, my blue hair and my black attire.
I’m used to such looks from people. Back on the south side, no one cared. But here, on the other side of town, people look at me with judgement. My blue, wavy, messy hair is the first indication that I’m not sophisticated enough. My navy blue lipstick means I don’t know a thing about fashion.
But coming from Maggie, it kind of hurts. It makes me self-conscious.
“It’s not a secret that you don’t follow the rules and Nora doesn’t like you very much for it.”
Nora is Mrs. Stewart aka Mrs. S and yup, she hates me.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“It is. You can still quit and leave this town but since you don’t want to, let’s not flaunt how much we don’t care about the rules in her face. Let’s not try to get fired.”
“I wasn’t trying to –”
“Save it.”
I go quiet and tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear as Maggie continues, “Now, empty your pockets and give me whatever you had in there.”
Looking at her for a few seconds, I decide to just hand her all my goods. I fish out the pack of itch powder and the key and put them on the table.
Shaking her head, Maggie takes them into her possession. “Cleo. Cleo. Cleo.” She sighs. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Love me, maybe?”
Maggie chuckles. “Finish your pie and go home.”
Twenty minutes later and a lot of turning around to see if I’m still being followed, I’m in my cottage.
Servants’ cottages are located a little farther away from the main house. There are about five or six cottages in total, arranged in a semi-circle with woods at our backs.
I live in the smallest one with my best friend, Tina.
We’ve been BFFs ever since we were kids. A few guys stole her pink bike and I punched them to get it back.
Like me, Tina’s on the cleaning staff. College wasn’t for her either but unlike me, she always planned to come work at The Pleiades.
My room has a twin bed, a small dresser and an even smaller closet. The walls are white in color, which I’m not such a fan of.
When I first moved in, I thought I’d paint it blue with my dad’s paintbrushes; I saved a couple of his brushes among other things from my old house. But then I realized, I didn’t want to make it blue.
This isn’t home.
The north side, The Pleiades, they are not home. They are not my safe place. These are not my people.
My people – the people I can really call mine – are dead.
They’ve been dead for a year and I wonder how long it takes for the grief to go away and an orphan to not feel like one.
I put on my mom’s nightie, made of cotton and lace, and blue. My mom was a huge fan of the color blue. In fact, she had blue hair like me.
I’m just getting under the covers when something flashes in my peripheral vision.
It’s a falling star.
I scramble up on the bed and clutch the bars on the window. When I was little, my mom and I would always make it a point to wish upon a shooting star, if we saw one together. It was just one of the things we did.
And like always, I close my eyes and make a wish.
Please let me get my house back.
When I open my lids, the star’s gone like it wasn’t even there. Strangely, it makes me sad.
But then, a second later, I don’t have the time to be sad.
Everything inside me comes to a screeching halt when I notice something else in my peripheral vision.
It comes and goes so quickly. Quicker even than a shooting star, that I could’ve imagined it.
But no. I saw it.
I saw the corner of a shoulder. A flash of an elbow. A long, muscular thigh encased in dark jeans.
Someone walking down the dirt path that cuts through the woods.
The feeling of being watched that I’ve been experiencing all night comes back in full force. In fact, it brings on other things.
Things that I’d forgotten about.