Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“Mm, I’m so comfortable,” Carys said. “Maybe later.”
Then she promptly fell asleep.
***
The next week was the best of Greta’s life. Carys was on winter break, so her days were free, and she only had a couple of ghost tours scheduled so her nights were mostly free too.
Greta went to Muriel’s for morning coffee and asked her if the Garden Gang might be up for helping Carys’ friend Tana’s students build raised beds at their school, and Muriel called around and began planning all the materials they could donate.
Ramona and Greta got stoned and wandered through the aquarium, renaming all the marine life and sending Carys nature documentary-esque videos of their explanations, which Carys found extremely amusing. When they collapsed in a pile of giggles in front of the sea lion display, Ramona told Greta that she seemed happy, and Greta told her, without any irony, that she’d never been so happy in her life.
And that weekend would be Eleventh House’s annual holiday party, so every evening, they planned the food, worked on decorations, and explained their traditions to Greta, who was thrilled to participate, especially since one of the traditions was that you elaborately wrapped up something you had on hand to give as a gift, then everyone swapped back at the end of the night, unless you both liked the trade. That way, everyone got the fun of opening presents without the pressure of having to buy anything.
Two nights before the party, they’d been sitting around brainstorming menu ideas when Carys had come up with the idea of making Veronica and Helen’s signature lemonade into Jell-O shots that they cut out with holiday cookie cutters into festive shapes. That idea was deemed perfect, so they spent the next twenty-four hours making batches of lemonade, mixing it with gelatin, and refrigerating it in rimmed sheet pans.
They began with the cookie cutters Helen had—Christmas trees, angels, et cetera. Then Greta decided to freehand a Star of David, and when that worked, they abandoned the cookie cutters altogether and started cutting out whatever shapes they wanted.
Carys’ pièce de résistance was an octopus, Veronica’s was an owl, and Helen’s was a ghost, because they claimed that every holiday sucked in comparison to Halloween. Greta tried her hand at a menorah, which came out looking suspiciously enough like Carys’ octopus that Greta cracked up and declared octopuses officially Jewish and the new mascot of Chanukah. She texted this to Maggie and Adelaide, along with a side-by-side picture, and Maggie responded Christian hegemony has long kept this secret but the octopus has been reclaimed!!!
Intermittently, as the trays of Jell-O shots firmed in the refrigerator, they made paper chains out of Carys’ old math handouts and strung them along the high ceilings of the living room. They grabbed LaCroix cans out of the recycling and cut them into stars that they strung together on dental floss. Veronica said she’d seen it in the window display of a tattoo shop in Philadelphia once, years before.
The next day, Veronica and Helen kicked Carys out of the house, insisting that they be able to create the party food with no distraction or oversight, so Greta and Carys spent a sweet day wandering through antiques shops in the French Quarter and discussing their dream homes.
Greta’s dream house was a rambling Victorian mansion that she’d once seen on Instagram. It would be painted flat black with shiny black trim and a bright teal door. (The color of the door changed every time she’d recently seen something in a color she liked.) Its entire back half would be all glassed in so that every room was full of plants, and it had an elaborate bathroom with a huge jacuzzi that was tiled in all cobalt-blue glass. She remembered the feeling of being inside a wave in the pig bathroom, even if she remembered little that came after.
Carys’ dream house was a Frankenstein of a Greek Revival mansion, like her favorite house in the Garden District, and a rambling farmhouse, complete with a weathered red barn. She wanted to fill it with chandeliers that dripped crystals, phonographs, fin-de-siècle candelabras, and lavish velvet furniture.
Both Greta and Carys wanted animals that could wander in and out of the house and its grounds, and both agreed that their dream houses needed secret rooms hidden behind bookcases that would swing open silently, revealing nooks covered in pillows with miniature refrigerators for snacks. They would be big enough to read or nap in and would never be revealed to any but the most trusted guests.
They had just left the third antiques store and were about to stop for beignets when Carys froze, and Greta, who’d been walking just behind her, slammed into her back.
“What’s wrong?”
Carys began to turn around slowly.
“Carysanne,” called a loud voice.
Carys swore under her breath.
“That’s my mom.”