Reaction
She is waiting for Wednesday. That is how Cass is marking time now, an abacus of days, of pills chalking her tongue. She is waiting for Wednesday and she is working, her feet are lead and she has the florescent light blinking, a dying bulb overhead as she pours coffee for a man whose boots are too big, they are tied onto his feet, the toes stuffed with newspaper. It hits the way she remembers the possibilities - Cass calls them that, possibilities rather than predictions, because predictions sound firm and her possibilities never are. All-consuming.
She recollects the heat. It prickles at the back of her scalp, washes warm over her skin that has never been warm, really warm since she came here. She feels the thrum of the beat in her throat, in her chest, the warm creeping joy of participation, of feeling clutched there in the midst of the throng. Of being part of a whole instead of alone. And it's kin, that memory, kith and familiar, even if the prayer is not. She's suspended. In the midst of it, the moment spread like melting butter before the snap, the slam of fear up against rib-cage and the dull hurts collected together.
Her own father is a man of words and disciplines, of quiet disappointment, she has no scars but in that moment, Cass feels the descendent fear climb like lead weight into her stomach. When she comes back, when she's here, instead of there, the coffee pour is jagged, spills over the table and drips to the floor.