Margo worked at the local grocery in the summer months while the rest of her family worked at the lodge. She preferred the beeps and clicking from her register, the bouncing sound of a runaway orange, and the insect hum of wealthy shoppers talking of unimportant frivolities. There was ample air conditioning at the market, and none of the acne scarred teens who thought they were her boss minded when she read magazines during slow moments, one sensible shoe on and the other naked foot wrapped around her ankle. She usually only got through two pages of People before she regretfully slid her foot back into the right shoe.
“Can I go on my break, Chad?” she called out over the express lane. They were all named Chad or Chet or Chaz in that town. Chad waved her on and she plunked down the wooden carved sign that read Closed. She always brought her own lunch, even though she got a discount at work. Even with the 15% off, Margo couldn’t afford the expensive offerings of natural foods. Some days, if she was lucky, a few pieces of bruised and unacceptable for patrons fruit would wind up on the free table in the break room. Today she found an only slightly marred Pink Lady apple.
She hung her apron on one of the hooks by the back door and set off into the thicket of trees that the grocery store purchased to “protect”. No one ever seemed to want to wander much in the clump of trees, wild flowers with thorns, and rocky terrains, but Margo made her way easily to the dilapidated shack that was hidden under a mossy eave of rocks. She found it many summers ago before she was old enough to work and felt fiercely protective of her other home. The other end of the small forest backed into the lodge. Even though she was only eleven, her parents and brothers never much cared for where she went while they made sure their various guests needs were attended to. It wasn’t like any of the family members were exactly close. They brought home money from their various jobs, ate dinner in separate areas, and spoke as little as possible. It wasn’t as if they didn’t like each other. They just didn’t know each other. Besides, they were all pretending to be a family anyway. Not that anyone really believed it.
Brushing aside the branches that covered the small wooden door, Margo ducked into the little shack. She began to eat her apple, bruising and all. She stood quietly in the darkened room and inhaled the earthy smells, listened to the crunching of her apple, and waited for the voices of the bones.
They began slowly, rocking against her body in small lapping hunger. Each voice belonged to a different set if bones, each with a story of her own. Margo held the apple core in her fist, nails slightly denting into the clinging apple sweetness. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness around her in the small, spare space, age saw the bones. They were neatly laid out on rough-hewn wooden tables. Each created a sort of jigsaw of various body parts. Some were merely a piece of a hand, or a skull and vertebrae. All were clean and white, labeled with small pieces of taped paper next to them. In the six years Margo had been bone collecting, she had only just pieced together enough bones to make one small girl with her crushed wrist and broken skull.
Margo breathed into the stillness and thought of names for her only friend.
