The Huntress

Chapter Three

The Huntress

Chapter Three

"Do you ever get tired of lying to people?" I asked dryly, my legs folded underneath me as I perched on the sofa. I was scrolling through the photos on my camera, deleting the blurry ones from my photoshoot with Jocelyn the day before.

My mother sighed, "this is my job, Mordy, it's how I afforded that camera and your school supplies and the food we eat."

I frowned at a shot that was not color balanced. Delete. "Jocelyn's mom is an accountant," I informed her, "that's how she affords her life."

My mother sighed as she replaced a spent candle with a new one on her alter. I eyed the small statues with disdain—they were the reason I had never been able to invite friends over. Why my classmates sneered at me and came into my mother's shop to find ammunition to tease me with.

"I'm glad for Jocelyn's mother," she said, her dark eyes patient, "for she possesses gifts that I do not. If I was great with numbers, Morda, then maybe I would have been an account but I'm—"

"Only good at lying," I said bitterly, "at being weird."

"Morda," she sighed my name, as she had many times before. "I help people."

"You tell them fake fortunes," I corrected, "you look at their hands for a few minutes and make up lies about how long the lines and what that means for their income, their love life. It's wrong."

She folded her bottom lip into her mouth. "Morda I should tell you—"

"More lies?"

Hurt flashed across her face, stinging me deep in my chest as guilt started to blossom. It was complicated with my mother, as it always would be. A part of me wanted to be proud that she was different, that she didn't care if she never fit in. But the larger portion of me wanted her to be like Jocelyn's mother, like every other parent. I wanted her to be normal so that I could too.

"Your Aunt Robin is coming to stay with us for a while," my mother informed me stiffly, smoothing out the tablecloth on her rickety reading table. "She's apparently done with Stewart and needs a place to crash for a while."

"That lasted long," I replied sarcastically. I wondered how long my erratic Aunt would be staying with us this time. She had remained for a year last time, spanning the eighth grade for me. Now I was in the tenth. Would she hang around until the end of the year? Until I graduated?

"Your Aunt has never had success in love," my mother mused.

"Neither have you," I added under my breath.

My mother turned on me, not angry, never angry. "One day you will understand, Morda, that life and love are not simple. They are messy, complicated, wrought with tough decisions. Life and love will pull you in two different directions, make you question who you are and who you wish to be. One day you will understand and you will feel foolish for assuming otherwise."

I shut my camera off. "And one day you will understand how hard you've made my life by all this bullshit."

"Morda!"

Tears brimmed. "I have one friend—and only because she's weirded than you. No one else will sit with me, talk to me...you've separated us from everyone else by owning the shop, telling old ladies their futures. You've made the other kids hate me."

"Morda," my mother said, drawing in a long breath through her gritted teeth. "You have more friends than you know, sweet girl, a whole family of—"