Chancing a glance at my sister, I saw the same expression that I knew was on my face – blank, completely blank. When she said nothing more and no one else spoke up, I gave in. “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds…” like a road system? Like a route diversion? Like something a spy would do? What I went with instead was a diplomatic, “Serious.”
Apparently, this was the right thing to say. “Serious? Oh, yeah, darlin’, it was serious. They took blood vessels from his leg and chest, cut him right down his center, and sewed the grafts in where they were needed. Fortunately, they kept his heart beating and didn’t reroute his blood through a heart-lung machine like they sometimes do, but what he had was still major surgery. You ever see that Alien movie where the thing bursts out of the guy’s chest and you see the open cavity?” The world had begun to spin when she’d first started describing what it was, but at this last question I tilted slightly and bumped into Dave. I was a pussy when it came to things like the inside of the human body, so much so that when I’d gone to see the movie she was talking about during a Festival of Gore celebration six years ago, I’d puked on the guy sitting in front of us. Her describing it like that she had didn’t do good things to the contents of my stomach.
Steadying me with an arm around my shoulders, he leaned over and looked at me, frowning when he saw how pale I was. “You ok, Jose?”
That got Ellis’s attention, and he moved so that he was standing in front of me, passing Liv over to Tabby. “I totally forgot about your issue with this shit,” he muttered, tilting my head back. “Any of you got water or something to drink?”
Linda stepped forward and passed us a small bottle of water from her purse. “Drink that, I’ve got more in here if you need it,” she told me and then looked at Ellis. “Is she ok? Is it the heat?”
A flash of humor crossed his face as he opened the bottle and passed it to me. “No, she just doesn’t do well with gore and graphic descriptions of operations.”
Taking a large gulp of water, I lowered it and caught sight of a couple people watching us closely. I also had issues with things like this happening. It hadn’t been unusual for people to stare because of Mom’s reputation when I was a kid, and after that it had felt like Piersville was staring at me when I was married to Larry on the rare occasions that I left the house. Now that I knew what he’d been up to behind my back, some of them more than likely had been, so them seeing this as well was humiliating.
Trying to push away from Ellis, I muttered, “Can you let me go? People are staring.”
Of course, everyone last one of our group, including Liv and Hurst from his perch in the air, turned to look at the people all at the same time. When they quickly looked away, trying to pretend that they hadn’t been watching everything, Hurst turned back with a grin on his face. “You need to sit down, Jose girl. And I know just the place for you.”_______________
Put this on – he’d said.
It’ll be fun – he’d said.
No one will stare at you – he’d said.
We’ll get you down before it starts moving – they’d said.
All. Fucking. Lies. Why? Oh, because Hurst’s brilliant idea had been to put me on the leading float for the Piersville Pirate Festival – the one that was a massive glittery pirate ship. There were even holes for the fake cannons to point through on the sides, and every thirty second they’d make a poof of smoke like they were firing cannon balls. Jack Townsend was standing at the wheel of the ship dressed like the Captain Morgan dude from the rum bottles, and behind him were various Townsends dressed up as Pirates. To make things even better, because the festival had been canceled for the last three years in a row, people had come from far and wide to see it this year. It was apparently a pirate phenomenon. This also meant that there were more people to witness my humiliation as we traveled down the road. For some reason, the family around me could pull off the costumes and absurdity of it all and look flipping awesome. But me? I was the beer addicted pirate hooker, who’d accidentally caught the tiny skirt of her costume on a random parrot perch as I’d tried to run past the ship’s occupants to where the stairs were when it had started moving. Who puts a parrot perch on a pirate ship float? And then adds a real live parrot to boot. So, I was currently standing here, stuck fast to the damn prop, with a big parrot pecking at my hair. “That’s Logan’s granddad’s parrot,” Tom Townsend told me as he waved at people and threw eye patches and bead necklaces at them. “Last night, Gramps beat him in a race, and the prize was riding on the horse,” he nodded to where Hurst was eating up the attention as he trotted beside us, whirling his hat in the air, “and the parrot for the day. Apparently, both of those are the coolest accessories for the parade, so Gramps knew what he was doing.”