Beneath the Shine Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Lisa Sorbe

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design and Formatting: Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae & Allusion Graphics

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9993480-5-5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9993480-4-8 (ebook)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Not every smile is real.

  In fact, if the last three decades on this spinning blue and green ball have taught me anything, it’s that not even half of the smiles people throw your way are genuine. Most are fake, their true intentions camouflaged behind twisted lips and bared teeth.

  People don’t just wear masks. The majority of humans on this planet wear a shine.

  An overlay. A simple smile and nod, lips curved up at the edges, their pearly whites flashing. Their cheeks squeeze up, rosy apples begging to be pinched. The soft, barely-there lines around their eyes deepen, as if to prove they’ve done this before, that they smile all. the. time. man. As if those crinkles aren’t merely cracks in their armor but the actual armor itself.

  It’s all a ruse.

  Most people are simply cutouts, all bogus expressions and hollow sentiments.

  And the most practiced of us, well… We can even make that shine reach our eyes.

  I don’t deserve their pity. But their pity is what I’m getting.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  The man is older, perhaps a little younger than my grandmother, but only by about a decade or so. His expression is solemn, the crinkles around his eyes cutting deep even as he frowns.

  I nod. Smile a small smile, one that turns down at the edges, and press my lips together to reflect a remorse I don’t feel.

  “Thank you.” My voice is equally subdued.

  He is dressed in his Sunday best, a dark suit and a fat maroon tie with a paisley design. His white shirt is pressed and he even has a handkerchief peeking out of the pocket of his jacket. Very debonair for a man in his eighties. Then again, they did know how to dress back then. When he reaches out to take my hand in his, his shirt sleeves slide into view, white rings that frame his frail, liver-spotted wrists.

  “Gladys,” he says, “was a good woman. Takin’ care of us young folk down at the senior center.” He chuckles. “That woman had the strength of two bulls and the energy of a humming bird. Always bustling around, plumpin’ our pillows, pushing our chairs, answerin’ that gosh darn phone at the front desk that never seems to stop ringin’. Volunteerin’ her time to take care of folks younger than her.” He shakes his head, remembering some charming version of my grandmother that I never knew. “She was a spitfire.”

  His blue eyes are kind and trusting. There’s a wetness to them that doesn’t come with age. They don’t see through my façade. They obviously never saw through hers.

  He is genuinely sorry for her passing.

  There’s a scream clawing its way up my throat—chewing away at the muscles, applying pressure to the tendons—and I’m scared that if I don’t get out of here right now, it’s going to erupt. “She did enjoy her work at the center,” I manage to choke out.

  That’s a load of crap. I have no idea if she actually enjoyed her volunteer work. Because we never spoke. In fact, I don’t think I’ve said more than five words to her in the last sixteen years.

  “And which one of her lovely granddaughters are you, dear? From the way she’d go on and on about her grandkids, I almost feel like I know you all.”

  I smile through my grimace. “Betsy,” I say. “Maureen’s daughter.”

  His brow furrows in confusion. “Betsy.” The awkward way his lips wrap around my name, the way his breath draws it out, makes it obvious he’s never heard of me. That she never spoke of me. But he’s just too polite to say it. Now he’s struggling to come up with something, and sympathy for him blooms alongside my own embarrassment.

  For a moment, shame reddens my face. Makes my stomach dip.

  An uncomfortable beat passes before I clear my throat and glance over my shoulder, pretending to hear my name. When I look back, I place a hand on his arm and motion behind me. “Would you excuse me?”

  His smile is sincere, but also filled with relief.

  I make my way through the crowd, out of the dining room and into the living room, pushing through a sea of black to where my mother had me set up an extra table of coffee and cake for the wake. My grandmother’s house is ginormous—an old brick Victorian with more square feet than she knew what to do with, even when her three daughters and husband lived here. It’s a beautiful home: black Cherrywood floors throughout with a matching oak banister framing a split staircase leading up to a grand bathroom and five bedrooms. The front porch is covered and runs the length of the house, with cracked stone steps leading down to a sidewalk that splits the wide front yard in half. There’s a large clawfoot tub in the bathroom, and books from practically every genre are stacked on coffee tables, dressers, nightstands, and tucked into the floor-to-ceiling shelves built into nearly every room of the home. The out-of-date floral print furniture and mahogany dining set are starting to show age, but other than that the house is in near pristine condition.

  There are pictures on the walls, shiny metallic frames nailed and set over faded wallpaper. More famed photos sit on the rustic wooden beam that serves as a mantle over the fireplace. Photographs that tell a story of a long life well lived. None of them include me.

  Despite the home’s charm, I’ve never liked coming here. This is the first time I’ve set foot in the place since I was fourteen.

  Now, just an hour after her funeral, after we planted her soon-to-be-decaying body into the frozen ground (something, a symbolic gesture maybe, I thought I’d enjoy more than I did), the main floor is filled almost to bursting.

  I plunge the spoon in the sugar bowl again and again, dumping four scoops into a Styrofoam cup before filling it with copious amounts of cream. By the time I’m done, the cup is over halfway full, and after adding coffee the entire conc
oction looks more like a velvety cup of chocolate milk than a caffeinated beverage.

  Okay. So I’m not exactly a sophisticated coffee drinker.

  I can feel the guests at my back, the buzz of their conversations humming in my ears like annoying horseflies. If I could swat them all away, I would.

  I move to the big picture window, the one that looks out onto the expansive porch, and quietly sip my drink while pretending to study something beyond the glass. When my eyes fall onto the house across the street—an old bungalow with a weathered basketball hoop affixed to the detached garage—my stomach clenches, and I immediately turn my attention back to the living room.

  Over in the corner, the weight of her body bending the seat of a fold out chair to the point that it looks like it might collapse, my cousin Andrea is crying into her coffee. She’s a year younger than I am and, along with her one brother and three sisters, was one of my grandmother’s favorites. She’s been sobbing all day, can barely keep it together. Her face burns bright red against her brassy blonde curls, like she’s spent the entire day outside under a summer sun instead of inside a cold church with creepy stone walls and vaulted ceilings rising to meet a bleached winter sky. Fat tears leak from her eyes, slide down her fleshy cheeks. I watch as a steady stream disappears into her mug and cringe when she lifts it to her mouth.

  Taffy, her sister and the apple of my grandmother’s eye, sees me staring and shoots me a dirty look. Her body is wrapped in a formfitting navy dress, her recent boob job practically bursting from the too-tight bodice. Only one year older than me, she’s already on husband number three, the product of said union sitting on her bony lap and drooling all over its onesie.

  I cross my arms, balling my fist so tight that my fingernails bite into my palm, and slide my gaze away. A memory of the last time I spent the night at my grandmother’s hits me, so visceral I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath in order to swallow it back down.

  It’s so hot in here I can feel a sheen of sweat forming on the back of my neck, pooling between my breasts. The heavy black dress I’m wearing certainly isn’t helping matters any. It’s new, something I bought specifically for the funeral since nothing in my closet would have been appropriate to wear. For example, my favorite little black dress made of lace that hugs me like a second skin and shows off the peony tattoo cascading down my shoulder?

  Yeah… No.

  For a minute I picture myself wearing it, strolling through the throngs of guests—my cousins that she loved so much, the volunteers she worked with who thought she could do no wrong, my horrid backstabbing aunts who can’t wait to get their greedy hands on her money—and bite back a smirk.

  And Gladys Wakefield herself, if she were here in body, would most definitely not approve of that get up. Thoughts of her rolling over in her casket during the service because of my outfit and freaking everyone out has me feeling better than I’ve felt since the start of this long, horrible day. Now, back at her house, surrounded by the smell of coffee and baked goods and creamy casseroles and the stench of people’s bullshit, I wish I’d had the balls to wear the skank-fit.

  Still, the dress I’m wearing now is sophisticated if not cute, a sleek sheath with adorable bell sleeves and a hemline that falls to my knees. Soft pink satin trim lines the collar and cuffs, providing a striking contrast to an otherwise somber ensemble. In fact, the pastel hue almost matches the color of my hair. The pink hair that I wound into a tight French twist this morning and now, at close to six o’clock in the evening, the pull of it against my temples is starting to give me a headache.

  Or maybe it’s all this pretending.

  Pretending to be a grieving granddaughter.

  Pretending to be sad that my mother’s mother is dead.

  Pretending to know these people—these people who share my very blood—and feeling entirely awkward, drowning in their sea of familiarity like I’m an outcast at sea who lost her grip on the last remaining piece of driftwood from a downed ship.

  Pretending, pretending, pretending.

  Sinking,

  sinking,

  sinking.

  It’s all fake. This whole freaking funeral has a horrible, twisted shine over it: a family that’s acting close but isn’t, three sisters who do nothing but fight while in private but are now acting like the close-knit siblings they never were, cousins who actually loved my grandmother because she showed them love back. And then there’s me, who seems to be the only person in the entire room who’s happy the bitch is dead.

  Maybe happy is too strong of a word —

  and maybe bitch is, too

  —because I don’t feel happy, exactly. Instead, I feel… Indifferent. Yeah, that’s it.

  Her death has me feeling indifferent.

  As in… I don’t give a shit.

  I didn’t feel a thing when my mom called to tell me she passed in her sleep five nights ago. I didn’t feel a thing when I walked by her casket and peered inside, noting the features that are so like mine—high cheekbones, pointed chin, green eyes (if they were open and seeing, that is). Even the spray of freckles that she managed to keep throughout her life, peppered across her nose, over her cheeks. I have those obnoxious dots, too.

  I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother when she was younger. We could have been twins.

  How strange it is to look like someone, almost a carbon copy, yet be so different.

  So yeah, I’m indifferent about her death.

  Just like I am about most things in life.

  Scooped out and hollow.

  But no one would ever suspect because, well, I’ve got the shine.

  Fourth of July – 14 Years Old

  The screen door behind me opened with a screech, the scream of metal on metal slicing into my solitude like a blade. My shoulders tensed, hunching up around my ears, my neck sinking into my collarbone like a drowning ship. I trained my eyes on the page I’d been reading for the last hour, focusing with a new determination on the words.

  Across the street, the thump of a basketball hitting the pavement matched the thundering beat of my heart.

  “Do you like that guy or something?”

  I felt the question in my gut, little ripples of nerves wrapping around my middle, the sensation making my breath stick in my throat. Looking up from my book, I made a face, screwing my features into the sort of dramatic grimace I hoped would fool my cousin. My eyes didn’t even stray across the street. “Who Josh? Um, no. Ew.” I faked a shudder and ducked my head, burying my nose back between the pages and praying that would be enough to discourage any further conversation on the matter.

  I was a burgeoning teenage girl with raging hormones. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed to admit that I liked a boy. Felt weak in the knees every time I saw him. I mean, I knew it wasn’t a big deal to have a crush. I just wasn’t the type of girl that guys crushed on back. And therein lied the problem.

  I silently counted to ten. Nervously licked my lips. Tasted sweat. Sent a silent prayer to the god whose very existence I had been questioning as of late, promising selfless acts and hundreds of good deeds if He’d just do me this one solid: open up the earth and let it swallow Taffy whole.

  As usual, my prayer went ignored.

  The earth didn’t open. My cousin was still there, leering over my shoulder, her Verve perfume joining forces with the sticky humidity and making it difficult to breath. Of course getting her to leave me alone wasn’t going to be that easy.

  Taffy was bored. And a bored Taffy was never a good thing.

  Sometimes I wondered if God found humor in my suffering. Of all the weekends for Taffy to decide to spend at our grandmother’s, it had to be this one. Then again, Taffy spent almost every weekend here, probably to avoid her own house across town, where my aunt kept pumping out more kids than she could handle. I assume Taffy liked the privacy (I know I would), not to mention all the extra attention our grandmother gave her.

  Okay. So maybe it wasn’t God’s fault. Exactly. But, then aga
in, if God did exist, He created Taffy. So, in my mind, He was guilty by default.

  She just snorted, like she knew I was lying, and fell into a sit beside me on the porch. “Whatever.” She sighed, tilting her head back, golden locks freshly permed and curling down her back in tight, corkscrew waves.

  I let my own muddy blonde hair fall forward, allowing the stick straight tresses that could never hold a curl form a barrier between us.

  “Fucking shit, it’s hot out.” At fifteen, Taffy was only a year older than me. But the bold way her tongue wrapped around the foul word made the chasm between our ages appear wider than it really was. She stretched her long legs out against the stone steps, crossing her feet at the ankles, her black platform sandals glistening under the hot July sun.

  I tucked my legs in closer, sliding my feet together and staring down at my own shoes. Brand new Tretorns, the swoosh a cheerful yellow against the bright white canvas, the laces tied into neat bows. I’d wanted a pair forever, begged and begged my parents for months before my mom broke down and bought me the expensive tennis shoes that half of the girls in the eighth-grade had already been wearing for most of the year. She’d given them to me for my fourteenth birthday just last month, with the stipulation that I saved them for the new school year in August. I’d agreed—whatever it took to get my hands on them, I didn’t care. And it wasn’t like I had anywhere to wear them before school started, anyway. My summers were spent in the water, where I learned early on in life that the only place I wasn’t a complete klutz was in the pool. From June to the end of August, I swan for a swim team called The Sharks, competing against other teams from surrounding cities and states. When my feet weren’t bare, they were clad in flip flops.

  But after a few days, I started sneaking them out of the shoebox at night and wearing them around my bedroom, falling back on my bed and kicking my legs up to admire the way the trendy sneakers curved just under my ankle, the way the white canvas accentuated my tan. And when my parents dropped me off at my grandmother’s house that morning for their annual Fourth of July getaway, the first thing I did was scramble upstairs to the guest room and switch out my flips flops for my new shoes.