“Excuse me? I can’t hear you!”
“Cattleya,” he whispered and hugged her. He’d quickly figured out the one fatal loophole in the Water of Drawing Out True Personality: If you kept your mouth shut, the sancta couldn’t do anything about it. “Cattleya. I hear about all the wonderful things there are outside our island. Things to eat, places to go, people to meet…”
“And adult stores to go to, I suppose?”
“The outside world must be simply bursting with diverse delights that we can’t even imagine within the confines of this island!”
“You’re totally planning to go to some filthy little smut shop.”
“If we can survive the loneliness of being apart, I’m sure joy is waiting for us. When you think of it that way, even being separated seems like a pleasure in its own way, doesn’t it?”
“You can’t wait to go to one of those disgusting places while we’re apart, can you?” Cattleya glared at Bruno and gave him her biggest, most powerful hug—she was probably trying to run away again, but the needle and thread reversed what she did. She looked like she might start bawling him out at any moment, but instead, still glowering, she said, “I want you to know—if you try anything with another girl, you’re dead.”
“I promise, that’s one thing I would never do. I’ve never been truly excited by any girl except you.”
“God, that’s gross.”
They were so close, their shoulders were touching. They gazed into each other’s eyes, aware only of one another. Enraptured by an attractiveness no one else could see, they stood there in an embrace that seemed like it would never end.
Then they filled that brief time before they became adults with beautiful, shining days.
Some people might have called it youth.
“That was quite a fine job you did the other day, MacMillia,” Riviere said, a few days after Cattleya and Bruno had (almost in spite of themselves) gotten together.
It was another day at Riviere Antiques, and once again, we had nothing but time to kill. Riviere spoke of the events of a few days prior with genuine emotion, as if she were recalling a pleasant memory.
“Without you, I don’t think we ever would have cracked that case. Elaina and I failed to see how Cattleya really felt. Didn’t we, Elaina?” She clapped the young woman on the shoulder.
Elaina took the baton and ran with it. “Oh, absolutely. The way you made use of those sancta, I don’t think it would be going too far to say that you might surpass this shop’s very owner, Miss Riviere, one day.”
“Truly, you did a wonderful job.”
“The best. You’re a spectacular employee.”
They showed no reticence in their praise, lavishing acclaim upon my success.
“Aw, gee, you don’t say,” I replied, reveling in the all too uncommon words of congratulations from the two of them. I scratched the back of my head. I was gonna blush. Well, they weren’t wrong—I knew I had done a great job!
“So, spectacular employee,” Elaina said, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Eh-heh-heh,” I laughed, still savoring the praise.
“With all that said…” Riviere clapped her hand on my other shoulder. “We’re going to let you handle this next customer.” They were both grinning broadly.
Me? I fell quiet. Had all this been just to push some work on me? If I could have gotten the two of them to drink the Water of Drawing Out True Personality right at that moment, I was sure I would have heard some very unpleasant admissions.
As it turned out, though, they were right—this was a job better left to me than to the two of them.
“Sigh. Guess I’d better do it…,” I said.
Because the person in front of us had come to Riviere Antiques on account of the last job I had done.
Sitting on the other sofa was a young woman—probably a student, I would have said. About the same age as young Bruno and Cattleya, in fact.
“Uh…” I tried not to sigh when I saw her.
She had red hair and brown skin. Looked like the athletic type. The sort who would be equally popular with boys and girls.
“Sorry,” I said. “Could we go over that again from the top?”
It was Annie, sitting there in front of us.
“The boy I love started going out with another girl,” Annie said mournfully, looking at the ground.
There was, she told us, this guy she’d had her eye on for the better part of six months now. They’d been getting closer and closer, until she was sure that with one more little push, they could start going out. At least, that was what she’d thought. But wouldn’t you know it, he suddenly started dating her best friend!
The story was all very familiar—almost as if I’d seen it happen myself.
“Uh-huh,” I said when she was finished. “And?”
“And…and…I just… You know, every time I see his face when he’s with her, with this other girl, it’s like my heart is in a vise…”
“For sure. I hear you.”
It had to be a shock for poor Annie—the young man she’d worked long and hard to be with was suddenly plucked away from her by someone who swooped in from the side.
“When I see him smiling with my best friend, I just…I don’t know what to think!”
“For sure. I hear you.” I could definitely understand that feeling. I nodded and tried to sound comforting.
“I see them secretly making out in an empty classroom, and my heart, it gets…hot!”
“For sure. I hear you.” Gosh, they got up to stuff like that at school?
“Somehow I just feel this surge in my spirit…”
“For sure. I…hear you?”
What was that?
“I get so excited!”
“I didn’t mean you needed to spell it out.”
It didn’t matter how many times she rephrased it anyway; I still didn’t follow. Excited?
“When I see the guy I lost making out with the girl who stole him from me, I get really excited…!”
Bam! Annie pounded the table in an excess of emotion. Her eyes were glittering.
“I feel like I’m going to go crazy if I don’t do something! Don’t you have some kind of sancta that can help me contain these emotions? Please!” She practically grabbed me by the lapels.
Cattleya and Bruno had been such over-the-top freaks that I’d forgotten, but Annie was a pretty twisted girl herself.
“Sigh… I’m afraid I’m going to lose it at this rate,” she said.
“Are you sure you haven’t already?” I asked.
Annie had seemed to be game for just about anything—and apparently “just about anything” included having Bruno stolen from her. Talk about range.
“Wow…”
“Kids these days…”
Elaina and Riviere tried to look detached as they watched Annie work herself into a lather.
A little obsession that no one else could understand? A proclivity all your own? A beautiful moment when something you had been hiding in your heart suddenly burst into bloom?
Maybe that’s just something else people would call youth.