Chapter 6 — Two Lines

POV: Daisy

The bookstore wasn't the last door that closed on me that week, but it was the one that finally taught me a brutal lesson: stop mentioning Kingston University out loud.

After that, I stopped handing over character letters. I started answering every interview question with as few words as possible, praying that silence would shield me where honesty had failed.

Three days later, I found the sign. It was a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper taped crookedly in the window of Value Foods, its edges curling and yellowed from the harsh sun. The grocery store sat at the desolate edge of Willow Creek, past the last blinking stoplight, right against the highway. Half its customers were long-haul truckers passing through—strangers who didn't know my face or my alleged crimes.

I figured that distance might finally buy me a little room to breathe.

***

A woman was restocking the cigarette cartons behind the register when I walked in. A faded name tag reading BRENDA was pinned crookedly to a red vest that had seen better decades. She didn’t look up until the bell above the door quieted down. When I asked about the sign, she merely nodded toward a clipboard by the door without a word.

I filled out the application at a plastic folding table by the shopping carts, my hands trembling slightly, before handing it back. Brenda scanned the paper. Her eyes snagged on my last name, and something flickered across her weathered face. It wasn't shock—it was recognition settling into place.

Willow Creek was small. Even out here by the highway, the rumors had outrun me. The only difference was that the strangers out here just had fewer reasons to say it to my face.

"Overnight stocking, five nights a week, minimum wage." Brenda didn't look up as she slid my application into a battered manila folder. "Half the town won't take these hours. You show up on time and keep your head down, I don't much care what anybody's been saying about you."

"I'll take it," I said, cutting her off before she could even finish the sentence.

***

The nausea had been stalking me for days. At first, it was quiet—a faint wave of dizziness most mornings that I could escape by ducking into the walk-in cooler for a minute until it passed.

But on Tuesday, three weeks into the job, it changed. It hit me right in the middle of stocking a display of canned soup. It came too fast, too violent to swallow down.

I barely made it to the employee bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I dropped to the floor, losing my lunch entirely, both hands gripping the cold porcelain edges of the sink until my knuckles went stark white.

Bang. Bang.

Two sharp knocks rattled the thin wood of the door.

"Daisy? You alive in there?" Brenda called out. Her voice carried far more annoyance than actual concern. "You're not contagious, are you? Because I can't have you passing a stomach flu to the customers."

I swallowed hard, wiping my mouth with the back of my trembling hand. "I'm fine," I called back, trying to steady my cracking voice. "Something I ate. Give me a minute."

It wasn't the first time it had happened that week. It wasn't even the third. It was just the first time I hadn't managed to keep it quiet enough to hide.

I splashed freezing water onto my face, staring at my hollow reflection until the room stopped tilting. I smoothed down my red apron and unlocked the door. Brenda was waiting right outside, arms crossed, studying me the way she studied a shipment of produce that had arrived dented.

"You look like death," she said. Her delivery was blunt, but her eyes softened just a fraction. "Go sit in the break room for ten minutes. I'll cover your aisle."

"I can finish my shift," I insisted, already trying to push past her toward the stockroom. "I'm fine, really."

"I didn't ask what you wanted," she countered, jerking her chin sharply toward the break room door. "Ten minutes. Then back to work. And drink some water while you're at it."

I sat alone at the scratched folding table, staring at a paper cup of tap water I couldn't bring myself to touch. My stomach lurched every time the fluorescent lights hummed too loudly.

By the time my shift finally ended, the sky outside the loading dock was turning that pale, bruising gray that comes right before sunrise. My legs ached with a deep, heavy exhaustion that had nothing to do with the hours I'd spent on my feet. Brenda gave me a single nod on my way out—a silent agreement not to ask the questions we both knew were hanging in the air.

The walk home passed in a blur of empty asphalt. I kept my arms wrapped tightly around my chest against the early morning chill, counting the passing streetlights to keep my mind completely blank.

When the familiar, weathered porch of my house finally came into view, I let myself in through the front door like a ghost. I slipped past my father, Thomas, who was already fast asleep in his recliner with the television murmuring low static. I crept up the stairs to my old childhood bedroom, locking the door behind me.

I slept most of the day away—a thin, restless sleep filled with twisted dreams of disciplinary boards and flashing cameras. It was evening when I finally sat up on the edge of the mattress. The yellow paint was peeling at the corner of the window frame.

In the dim light, I began counting backward on my fingers.

I did the math three times. The numbers didn't lie, no matter how desperately I wanted them to.

It had been weeks since the university hearing. Weeks since Jace had looked right through me at the rink doors, treating me like a stranger who had stolen his girlfriend's face. And somewhere in the middle of all that suffocating silence, my body had started keeping score.

***

I didn't sleep at all that night. It was my first night off, leaving me with nothing but empty hours to lie awake staring at the ceiling. By dawn, the panic had hardened into certainty.

The regional bus only ran twice a day. I told my father I’d picked up an extra shift at the store, leaving the house before he’d even finished his morning coffee.

I bought the plastic test box three towns over, at a pharmacy where no one knew the name Bennett. I paid in cash, ensuring there would be no paper trail on a bank statement for my father to find. The bus ride there had been agonizing, my forehead pressed against the cool glass as my stomach twisted into knots, but it was nothing compared to the afternoon. I sat in a faded diner booth for hours, nursing a single cup of black coffee I couldn't drink, just waiting for the evening bus back so my timeline wouldn't arouse suspicion.

By the time I finally made it back to Willow Creek, the walk from the bus stop felt miles longer than it should have. I sat on the porch steps for twenty minutes, paralyzed, before I found the strength to turn the doorknob.

Now, I stood in the quiet of the bathroom.

I looked down at the counter.

Two lines.

Steady. Dark. Undeniable. They sat on the edge of the porcelain sink like a final, unappealable verdict.