Safe in the Dark
The girl detective goes to the gem and mineral show with her mother and father. It is a special excursion, it is a jaunt. The girl detective is nearly twelve. In three years, she will be kidnapped.
Yesterday, the girl detective was given an honorary deputy’s badge in a ceremony at the town hall. Her mother, in one of the folding chairs, clapped politely. Afterward, they stopped in the restroom so she could reapply her lipstick, smooth her eyebrows with her fingertip. The girl detective held her hands under the automatic faucet until the water came out steaming hot.
Don’t, said her mother, and the girl detective took her reddened hands away. She had a thin-strapped pink purse that her parents had gotten her for Christmas; she tucked the deputy badge in the inner pocket. She thought of it safe in there, safe in the dark.
The girl detective’s father couldn’t make it to the ceremony — busy, you know, he said, work, work, work — but he planned the trip to the gem and mineral show, for his girls, eh calls them sometimes, all the pretty, shiny things.
It’s nice, he says, isn’t it? and the girl detective nods, and her mother nods, and there is soft music in the background that sounds, somehow, like the chirping of birds.
On the ride to the gem and mineral show, the girl detective rode in the back seat. She looked out the window from time to time, took notes in her notebook. Something is coming, she writes from time to time, something long and dark.
The week before, she had identified a serial burglar from the curve of his instep.
It’s you, she said, coming up from the ground where she had been crouching, it’s you, and his eyes went narrow and hard.
Girl detective, he said, girl detective, and it sounded like a curse.
After he was taken away, the sheriff shook her hand, gripping her small fingers tightly in his.
Congratulations, he said, and somehow that sounded like a curse too.
At the gem and mineral show, the girl detective falls behind her mother and father. The girl detective is always doing that, falling behind; her mother has long ago stopped waiting. Her mother told her, once, a joke with three tomatoes on a walk. It ended with the father tomato losing his tempter, it ended ketchup.
Do you see? said her mother, but the girl detective didn’t see at all.
The girl detective has an Instagram account and 15,000 followers. The girl detective carries a magnifying glass in her backpack to school. She rides a yellow bus, sits alone, smooths and smooths the creases in her uniform skirt, listens to the hum of the other children’s conversations.
She doesn’t think they are ever talking about her.
The girl detective lags behind her mother and father, lingers at damask-draped tables. All the signs say Don’t Touch. The girl detective’s fingertips tingle. She stops at a blue-covered table, thinks everything is blue today, the table, the sky, the gems, her mother’s eyeshadow that she applied and reapplied until it was just so, perfectly right, how do I look? to her daughter, and the answer, always, the only right answer: You look pretty.
What are these? says the girl detective, points at rocks that looked wrapped in silk threads, petrified cocoon rocks.
Desert Rose Selenite, says the vendor, and the girl detective thinks no, they don’t look like roses at all, they look like eggs.
The girl detective thinks of cracking, thinks of hatching.
The girl detective hands the vendor five dollars from her pink purse; her thumb brushes against the edge of her honorary deputy badge, hesitates there.
Be careful, says the vendor, handing her the rock. It’s soft.
The girl detective thinks yes, eggs always are.
That was nice, wasn’t it, her father says on the ride back. He has the window down and his words blow away so that the girl detective and her mother don’t have to answer. He never seems to expect an answer anyway, talks as if his voice is the only thing his wife and daughter want to hear.
The girl detective’s mother looks out the window, one hand on her chin, the other pressed against the window
Thinking of escape, the girl detective decides.
At night, her mother plays records and drinks glass and glass and glass of wine from bottles the cook opened with dinner, sits in front of the vanity table in her bedroom, stares into the mirror as if there is something there she has never seen before.
The girl detective sees her from the hallway, the listless lift of her mother’s hand, brush-holding, to her long, dark hair.
You don’t have to watch, her mother says.
You look pretty, says the girl detective. She never knows what else to say. You look so pretty.
In the car, she watches her mother looking out the window. In the car, she listens to the sound of her father’s voice, thinks of the weight of her honorary badge in her purse, how it is somehow light, somehow heavy. In the car, she cups a tender Desert Rose Selenite in her hands, thinks hatching, thinks flight, thinks free, free, free.
Cathy Ulrich has a rock shaped like an eighth note at her house. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Pigeon Pages NYC and Sundog Lit.