Wherein the bearded lady gives thanks and makes a wish

Coins.
Curtains.
Hydrogen peroxide.
Hot roasted chestnuts from Benji at the gates.
Thirteen years of normal girl memory; a before.
Ramojah's tiger eye, open even as he dozes.
Novels and other tunnels.
Candles that smell of home.
The payphone ringing home.
Home:
A hearth, a shedding cat, a boyfaced man, and a cupboard full of brushes.

The rules of lying

When you gotta lie it’s better to lie for real. Like use the truth, you know? She makes an o with pink lips and pops pink gum out between two fingers, smooshes it between two magazine pages. Her eyebrows are bolts of concentration, but her eyes are casual and distant as napping cats. So, if someone asks questions, the answers are right there and I don’t have to make up stories and look guilty. I’m Lucy Trujillo and I’m looking for stuff for my little sister’s birthday. I just found out I’m pregnant. I have money from a car crash that I want to spend. It’s true, but it’s true for someone else, and if they ask I’ll tell them someone else’s life, not mine. It’s like I become everything I know about other people, I’m anything anyone’s ever said to me. I’m the history of the whole world or something, lying, but really I’m inside it, getting whatever I want and going wherever anybody else could go. She shrugs, stands, tosses the magazine back onto the rack. The two cats awaken, hungry.