Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[10] Resistance

[10] RESISTANCE 

Jane

On Essex Street, I realized how easy it would be to watch us unseen. It may have been a few days still before Hallowe'en, but so many masks peppered the crowd. It wasn't enough that I knew the face of the man who drove that Buick. In Salem, there was nothing unusual about a hockey mask on the street. Rubber painted eyes bore into me, watching as Bia led the charge to the library, guided by Google Maps.

Roughly fifteen minutes, the app promised. Fifteen minutes walking past themed pubs and apothecaries toting all the ingredients to put together potions.

And psychics.

A chill ran inexplicably down my back as we past a banner: The Salem Witches' Psychic Fair. I reached out for Rhys' hand, his fingers cold between mine. Women promised predictions from palmistry and Tarot readings.

Rhys didn't resemble them at all, something he felt too, judging by the way he shoved his free hand in his pocket and how he made eye contact with no one. He and Natalie were something different. Did anyone on Essex Street get dreams vivid enough to destroy lives? Did they ever consider throwing themselves out second story windows?

There was something unsettling in the salesmanship of it, like a car dealership striking discounts on the future.

If only mine was as simple and fun as a woman tracing my love line telling me to expect a surprise from the man of my dreams.

In the cheerful crowd, my stomach turned. I wanted to love being scared again. I wanted to lavish in the healthy split of skepticism and belief like all the people who traveled to Massachusetts to spend Hallowe'en in Salem. The scariest thing at 11:30 in the morning was the gnawing feeling of being real in a world of make believe. Movie monsters versus something true and sinister.

The cobblestone continued until we turned off Essex to a side street.

"Library looks kind of dull by comparison, doesn't it." Bia stopped briefly in the parking lot. Without even stepping in, the place looked largely unoccupied. No familiar cars parked anywhere near it, not Lucas' canopied truck or a champagne Buick.

"I'll take dull any day." A half-smile ghosted Rhys' face for a second.

"Sure, but I mean, it's kind of anticlimactic," Bia insisted as we walked in.

It looked distinctly like a library. Except, oranger than most libraries. Not even shelves and shelves of books can get away with opting out of the festivities.

I lingered by the children's section, tempted to sit down and read Where the Wild Things Are.

Friendly monsters, not the kind that look like men, leaving black handprints on windows, hiding behind masks both literal and not.

I looked up, Rhys already wandering toward the history section like he was naturally drawn there by an alternative form of gravity. Stocked on the shelves, there must've been hundreds of books dedicated to making sense of the hysteria of the mad witch hunt. And in different circumstances, Rhys would flip through it all for hours if I let him.

Natalie's family ran an antique store, and Rhys had worked at a museum. Maybe the future was fond of people good at remembering the past. 

I drifted back toward the desk, finding a shelf tagged with letters.

M. I thumbed through books jammed between M and N, hunting for a book marked with my name.

Talking with the Dead, the same edition as the one I pulled out back in Boston, though the cover tattered more around the edges. Funny. It probably got a lot more attention than the copy sitting in Boston University's academic library.