Page 46

Why am I alive?

It was a loaded question, one every person grapples with at least once in their life, often for most of their life. A purpose. A reason to be.

It was quite possible there wasn’t one, Ami Antolik decided. But she would literally burn this entire town down if her purpose had anything to do with the man standing before her.

“What is this?” he asked, but Ami’s eyes were fixed on the monstrosity that was his Christmas sweater.

On it, a candy cane pointed downward, red and white swirls angling toward the man’s jeans alongside the words “It’s not going to lick itself.

” It already had crumbs on it, though Lord knows how.

The man hadn’t taken a single bite of the snowman cookie in his hand.

“Excuse me?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face, and she forced her attention upward.

“I’m sorry, do you mind repeating the question?” she asked, fully aware of what he said and where the conversation was going, but wondering if he would be stupid enough to ask it again.

He sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperation clear across his face. “I ordered a macchiato. This is obviously not a macchiato.”

He slammed his cup onto the counter and tapped his foot. Not in a fun way, although it did happen to fall into the rhythm with “Feliz Navidad” as it played over the coffee shop’s speakers, but in an “I believe I am always right and the world can suck my candy cane” kind of way.

Ami smiled, prayed it didn't look condescending, and picked up the cup.

Jeremy Donald, as the cup’s name read, apparently did not understand that an espresso macchiato was only a shot with a small amount of steamed milk, even though Ami tried to explain it to him not ten minutes earlier and he insisted it was what he wanted.

Jeremy Donald seemed like a bitter man, having spent the last five minutes in a corner yelling through his phone at what Ami assumed was his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Jeremy Donald’s parents must have hated him, giving him the two first names she knew she would be cursing for the last two hours of her shift.

“You ordered an espresso macchiato?” she asked, knowing exactly how he would respond.

“Yes. Not whatever the hell this is.” He pouted, crossing his arms over his chest.

Like clockwork.

“As I tried to explain when you ordered the drink, the espresso macchiato is just the shot of coffee—”

“But where is the milk? Why is it so small?”

The small amount of milk added to the traditionally made macchiato was divided between the man’s unkempt beard and the floor he had spat it on after taking his first sip.

Ami’s smile tightened. She had absolutely no poker face, never had, and Ole Donald could see her frustration, matching it in what he thought was righteous anger.

“Were you maybe thinking of the macchiato they do at Starbucks?” she suggested. “It has espresso and steamed milk.”

The man sucked in a breath, powering himself up for a full-on, Karen-level bitch fit.

Ami’s smile held, but her eyes flitted to the door as she contemplated making a run for it.

Had it not been for her student loans and the inconvenience of needing housing, food, and wifi to make her life slightly less miserable, she probably would have.

Ami had started working here roughly four months ago, two months after she graduated with a degree in creative writing and a week after being fired as a pool cleaner, which she had absolutely not deserved.

“I want a refund.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to put it back directly on the card, but I can—“ Ami started.

“NOW!”

Ami blinked at the man, then raised a single eyebrow.

He glared at her. She knew what he saw when he looked at her.

“Short and busty” was how her mom liked to describe her.

Not that her mom talked about her often.

No, Ami was far from the perfect daughter her mother had dreamed of having.

Ami had thick thighs and a bit of weight around her middle.

Her brown hair was wavy, often frizzy, and had recently been dyed pink at the tips—the result of a drunken dare from her friend, coworker, and platonic soulmate Rina.

But the bright pink of her hair wasn’t where most people looked, and so much could be told about a person by the way they looked at her.

She noticed the way Donald’s eyes continued to flicker to the scar on her face, the way he had winced when he first noticed, the way his fingers had brushed against his own face, subconsciously tracing his cheek to make sure it hadn’t magically transferred to him.

The jagged line with pink, puckered skin ran from right under her ear lobe to the middle of her pale cheek.

She cocked her head, folded her arms across her chest, and waited. He wilted under her stare.

“Are you not going to give me the refund?” he asked, his voice substantially quieter.

“As I was saying, I can’t put it back onto the card directly without my manager’s approval. Unfortunately, she’s out sick today. I would be happy to give you a gift card for your trouble today, and you’re more than welcome to come in tomorrow to get the full refund from her. Is that okay?”

The man grumbled under his breath, but nodded. Ami handed him a plastic card, and he went and sat down at a nearby table with his sugar cookie.

"What happened?" A voice called.

At twenty-three, Rina Ikeda was a year younger than Ami.

The two had been friends since Ami’s senior year of high school, Rina’s junior year, bonding as members of the school’s newspaper.

In sharp contrast to Ami, Rina was a tall Japanese woman with black hair dyed violet at the tips and onyx eyes that flickered to a warm amber in the sunlight.

Rina’s hands fumbled with the apron strings behind her back as she walked behind the counter. Ami spun her by the shoulders and tied the strings into a tidy bow before spinning her back around.

"How come the angry assholes always come when you're on a bathroom break?" Ami complained after filling Rina in on the still-glaring Donald.

Rina grinned. "He sounds like just your type. You do like them crazy."

Ami winced. She had given up on dating after her last three partners had included a man who called his cousin the love of his life, a man who licked his cats like he was one himself, and the one who passed her mom his number on a napkin after meeting for the first time.

"You know, we could just get married. I'd never have to go on another first date again." Ami waggled her eyebrows suggestively while Rina laughed.

She was only half-kidding. In addition to her three partners, her last date was with a man who insisted she call him "father" in a posh British accent when things got spicy.

Ami could respect a good kink, but he had kicked her out when she laughed after trying to say it.

He had texted her a few days later, apologizing for making her leave and asking if she wanted to “make more memories for his spank bank.” Any man who unironically used the words “spank bank” deserved to lose the ability to reproduce.

“I’m actually kinda seeing someone,” Rina hedged, placing her hand over the drive-through headset she was wearing.

Ami spun around, a teasing grin on her face and a pitcher of steamed milk in her hand.

A face stared back at her, mere inches from her own.

She jerked backward, and the milk sloshed over the edge of the metal pitcher, coating her hand in the boiling liquid. She bit back a scream, her teeth plunging into her lip, the copper taste of blood dripping onto her tongue.

Rina turned to her, eyebrows furrowed in worry, and Ami jabbed her hand into the pocket of her apron.

“You okay?”

Ami hummed and nodded. Rina’s attention flicked to the ghost in front of her, and she laughed.

“You know, you’re the only person I know that still avoids them.” She gestured at the ghost. “Everyone else just fucks with them.”

Rina waved her hand through the hazy form, causing it to dissipate as smoke does. Ami didn’t move, just stared as the ghost’s body drifted back together.

To Rina, it was just a blurry form, an unknown figure that could neither be touched nor heard.

To Ami, the ghost was a lot more. She could see them much more clearly, features still a little foggy but discernible—all except the mouth.

No matter how close she got to the ghost or how hard she focused, she could never see the ghost’s mouth.

It remained a black, empty spot on their face.

She knew that wasn’t what others saw, though. She could only see the features in person. The pictures and videos she saw on TV or social media were all just hazy halfway-shaped forms, figments under sheets, as the first sighters described them. According to everyone else, that’s all they were.

“How’s your hand?” Rina asked, noticing how the liquid had soaked through the gray apron.

Ami removed it from the fabric and waved it at Rina. “It’s fine. Milk didn’t even get me. Scared me more than anything.”

Rina poked her tongue into her cheek and shook her head.

“That’s weird. I could’ve sworn…” she mumbled under her breath, taking Ami’s pale hand and examining it carefully.

Ami shrugged, pulling her hand from Rina’s scrutiny and changing the subject. “Got big plans tonight?”

Rina pouted. “I was supposed to have a date tonight, but he canceled. He’s doing a family thing instead. What about you?” “I’m doing a family thing too,” Ami groaned. “Mom wants us to start a late-night biweekly family dinner.”

Donald stood from his seat, taking a few steps toward the counter and leaving both his trash and a mountain of crumbs on his table. He cleared his throat, and Ami turned to him.

“Halloween was last week, you know,” he said, a satisfied smirk on his face. “Isn’t it a little late to be Scarface?”

Ami reached behind her back and untied her apron before turning to Rina. “I’m going on break.”

She thought about hopping the counter, but was sure her 5’2 frame wouldn’t clear it.

Instead, she smiled wildly, her hand wrapping around the bat they kept behind the counter for safety, and pointed at Donald.

His eyes widened and he stumbled backward.

Ami set the bat on the bar, and he scampered out of the store, only stopping to steal a handful of honey pockets from the milk station by the door.