“Wait, what?” I asked following her as she moved to her bike. “On threat?”
“Yep.” She mounted the bike and leaned to one side. “In New York we have this magic power. We just stick our hands out and all of sudden a car will arrive and take you anywhere you need to go.”
“Your sarcasm has been noted.”
She grinned and kicked off. “Come catch up or else!”
“Or else what?!”
“Or else I’ll wake you up at three a.m. just for the heck of it!”
I knew she wasn’t kidding. Shaking my head I took off down the road after her as she stood up in her seat and pedaled as hard as she could, causing
the wind to blow right through her brown curls.
Just like that, I forgot about my scar again.
11. THE GOOD PEOPLE
MALACHI
“Are you doing okay back there?”
I turned around and watched as she glared at me. She’d pedaled as hard as she could when I started to catch up with her and now after almost twenty-five minutes as we neared the edge of town she was breathing harder than me. “I think you commented about me being out of shape a few days ago?”
“How are you barely sweating?” She stopped and allowed her boots to touch the pavement on the shoulder lane of the road.
“I run often and usually much further than this.” And much faster but there was no need to make her feel worse.
“Since when? You’ve been a hermit since I came here. The people in town call you the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
I stared at her completely baffled, a look that she mistakenly took as offense and this time her tone was softer.
“And I told them that was very rude and that you just had a cold.”
“I wasn’t offended.”
“You sure?” She leaned over the handlebars eyeing me carefully. “Because your mouth is saying ‘I don’t care’ but your face is saying ‘what the hell?’”
“How perceptive of you. But both my face and my mouth, as it is on my face, are saying exactly that: I don’t care. I’m baffled because people think the Disney version of the Hunchback is cannon. Victor Hugo was the only one who got one of our stories correct.”
Her mouth dropped open and she looked at me with her big brown eyes ready to unleash a river of tears.
“That was you too?!” She gasped pitifully. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously. Which is why I am not offended.” How could I be? I actually was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. “Disney actually offends me more. They changed the whole story to make it a happy ending, not even a happy ending for Quasimodo, but for Phoebus de Châteaupers, who was the reason Esmeralda was hung. And he didn’t save her when he could have. He watched her die instead and married his fiancée, whom he was with the whole time. That was who Disney made her true love. The Hunchback can’t have the pretty girl even though he’s a good guy because he’s still a monster, so instead he gets a standing ovation from the city. He didn’t need the city, he needed her. So screw Disney and their happily ever afters.”
“Okay, then,” she whispered as she hopped off the bike and walked beside me. Now I was annoyed. I didn’t mean to come off so heavy-handed but…but I couldn’t stand that movie. I couldn’t stand the mockery of it all.
I could tell she was lost in thought. She was quiet. She didn’t stay anything; the only sound came from her bike as the tires spun. This was the reason I didn’t like people either, they didn’t understand. No one understood…no one but her. And I couldn’t go to her.
In town, we walked past the police station. There, four squad cars were parked in the parking lot where a group of officers with their coffee cups stood laughing loudly. One of their faces had gone red and they were completely unaware of us until she yelled, “Good morning, Cobie! Mornin’, Bo!”
Their heads snapped up. One of them—Cobie or Bo—leaned forward to see who we were before he smiled and lifted his coffee cup to her. He was much older than the other boy beside him.
“Morning, Esther!”
“You coming to the festival tonight?” the other yelled.