Each week in January, my Facebook group members are helping me create a character to have an adventure in Burberry. They choose the adventure and I write a short story to publish in the group the next day. The pressure is on!
Check out the first character we created. This is Kara. She's a witch and found out someone isn't who she thought they were.
Below is an unedited short story. Enjoy!
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Fifteen dollars and twenty-three cents. Just enough for a
sandwich and a short taxi ride if I needed one. I counted again with a hope and
a prayer that a wayward twenty would magically appear in my wallet. No such
luck.
My nose twitched, and I pinched it shut. Not now.
The elderly lady sitting beside me dug through her purse and
then held out a flimsy tissue. “My allergies are awful this time of year too.
You poor thing. What did you say your name was again?”
“Kara.” My name came out nasally. I waited for the urge to
sneeze to subside before taking the tissue. We’d been seat mates for the last
three hours and she’d asked my name two other times. But she was kind, and I
appreciated the tissue, so I didn’t mind telling her again. “Thanks.”
I pressed the tissue against my nose and stared at my
reflection in the window. Regular pollen allergies would have been nice. My
sneezes were set off by something more complicated.
“She’s just a friend,” a man’s voice said from somewhere in
front of me.
I glanced between the opening of the seats in front of us. A
man and woman argued in hushed tones. One of them would be the reason my nose
twitched. One of them lied about something important. Lies triggered my sneezes.
What came next was even weirder.
The Greyhound bus glided to a stop in front of a brick
building that advertised oil changes in less than ten minutes. The driver stood
and leaned against his seat. “This is the Burberry stop. We won’t take a break,
so only disembark if this is where you want to be.”
I leaned forward to grab my backpack from where I’d stored
it between my feet. Wanted to be here? Not so sure about that. Too late now.
Dayton, Ohio was about ten hours in the opposite direction, and I didn’t have
enough money for a return ticket.
I scooted into the aisle and made my way off the bus. No one
else exited in front of me. I didn’t turn around to see if anyone exited behind
me.
A metal sign on a post near the road pointed me in toward
the “historical downtown.” From what I could tell, Burberry was the type of
town where everything important was in walking distance.
I’d tried searching for information about the small town
before my cell phone data had run out, but not much had come up. Hopefully, I
could find some free WIFI if someone couldn’t point me in the direction of the
building I needed to find pretty quickly.
I pulled the post card out of my back pocket. I’d taped the
half torn picture that my Grandma Rosey had given me at my father’s funeral.
Apparently, the woman I’d been told all my life was my mom in fact wasn’t who I
thought she was.
This woman in the picture was. Grandma Rosey had been sworn
to secrecy, but couldn’t keep up the ruse now that both my mom and dad had
passed. She wanted me to know I might still have a parent out there somewhere.
Lost in my personal drama, I didn’t notice the man standing
on the sidewalk in front of me until I bumped into him hard. Hard enough for me
to drop the postcard and for him to spill his coffee on the front of a
ridiculous tie.
“I’m so sorry.” I reached for the dropped post card, but the
man beat me to it.
“It’s fine. I was hoping to find a reason to trash this tie
as it’s one of the uglier ones my wife has gifted me.” He glanced down at the
tie in the shape of a bass fish. After a few seconds he shook his head and
flipped over the postcard. “Ah, the Berry Brothers B&B.”
“Do you know where it is?” I took the postcard and picture
from him.
“About a mile in that direction.” He pointed toward the way
I’d already been walking.
“Thanks. And sorry again about bumping into you.” I gave him
a small smile.
“Welcome to Burberry,” he said.
I stuffed the postcard in my pocket and trudged forward.
Anxiety bit at my shoulders. I took a deep breath. What if she wasn’t here?
What if she was? How did you confront a woman who’d given you up to her best
friend without a good reason why twenty-three years ago?
It had to be the powers. Dad certainly didn’t have them. I’d
always assumed they’d come from my mom. Or the person I’d thought to be my mom.
Maybe this mom had the answers.
By the time I reached the bed and breakfast, I’d worked
myself up with the worry of both meeting and not meeting the woman who may have
birthed me.
At least I hadn’t had a reason to sneeze.
The Berry Brothers B&B was a two story building that
looked like it’d been built a hundred years ago. I pushed through the front
entrance and immediately tripped on the edge of a rug.
Before I could hit the ground, a pair of strong arms caught
me and helped me stay upright.
The arms belonged to a man with shaggy blond hair and a hint
of mischief in his smile. “Careful around these old rugs.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Sidney!” A gruff voice yelled from the front check-in desk.
“Those light bulbs won’t change themselves.”
“I’m on it, Gerald.” Sidney answered back. He gave me a
wink.
The gruff-voiced man wore a red checkered flannel shirt. He
adjusted his glasses before running a hand through his white hair. “Can I help
you, miss?”
“I hope so.” I pulled the postcard from my pocket. “Is this
postcard from here?”
I knew it was but I wanted his confirmation.
His gaze flicked from the postcard to my face. “Where else
would it be from? It’s a picture of the same building you walked in to.”
I bit back a retort and instead flipped it over to show the
picture. The neat script on the back said, “Give her a kiss for me. Love,
Lainie.”
“Do you know this woman?”
“No.”
He said it so quickly that I didn’t have time to react to
the nose twitch.
I sneezed hard. All over him. Glitter everywhere.
Glitter sneezes were my superpower. The glitter always
covered the liar.
“What the—?” He shook the front of his shirt and glitter
fell to the counter. “Are you one of those glitter bomb terrorists?”
“No. Um, I’m really sorry about that.” But I wasn’t. He’d
lied about knowing the woman in the picture.
“Do you want me to call the police?”
“No! Please don’t do that. I’ll clean it up.”
He shook the rest of the glitter from his shirt to the
floor. “You bet you will. Get the broom and dustpan from that closet and it
better be spotless when I return from changing my shirt. Then you need to
leave.”
I grabbed the broom and dust pan from the closet that Gerald
had pointed at and started sweeping.
Dad had never explained why I glitter-sneezed on a liar. He
said it’d started when I was three years old. He’d had to take me out of
daycare after explaining that I must have shoved some craft supplies up my
nose. From then on I’d been homeschooled until I could feel the sneezes coming
and pinch my nose closed until the feeling passed. Even then, having friends
that could handle the truth about me were few and far between. Not to mention,
dad had moved around and changed jobs a lot too.
He’d only told me that my late mother had witch powers and
that this weirdness was passed down from her. And because I’d loved him so
much, I hadn’t pressed for him to tell me more. I should have.
I bent over and brushed the glitter into the dustpan. When I
stood up a man with thinning hair and a frown hovered in front of me.
“Are you telling me that my brother has once again hired
someone without my say so or approval or even input?”
“I, um…” I guessed this man to be the other Berry in the
Berry Brothers.
He shrugged. “Well, you’re here now. I bet he didn’t even
have you fill out the new hire paperwork. Did he?”
“Nope.”
“Go into the office and there’s a blue packet on the left
hand corner of the desk. I’m in the middle of delivering fresh towels, so get
started and I’ll walk you through it.”
“Okay.”
My heart pounded with the thought that Gerald could correct
his brother about my job status at any moment. Until then, I had access to
their office where I could possibly find information on my biological mom. If
that’s who she was. I still needed confirmation and the only way to do that was
to find her.
I left the dustpan on the counter. The large office had two
desks facing each other. One impossibly neat and the other looked like someone
had emptied a garbage can on it.
I found the new hire packet on the corner of the neat desk.
Now where would I find the registration for the guests? Gerald had recognized
her. Why would he lie about it? And if he did recognize her, that most likely
meant she’d stayed long enough to make an impression.
The neat desk had an opened laptop and I sat down in the
chair behind it. I clicked on an icon that said innRoad. The program opened on
the screen and I quickly clicked on Reservations.
I used the magnifying glass icon in the corner to search for the name Lainie.
Two possibilities popped up. A Lainie Howard with a home
address in Florida, and a Lainie Phillips with a home address in Colorado.
Which way did I go? South or west? And where would I get the
money for the tickets to go to either?
I glanced over at the new hire packet. Looks like I’d be
spending a few weeks in Burberry. If I could pull off being the B&B’s
newest employee.
And if I could keep my sneezing under control.
The end! (for now, maybe!)
