Page 9 of Her Wonderful Wonder Bell
“I think some of the girls might still be alive. Buried under the bricks like I was. Not many, but a handful. We have to save them.”
Delia takes me by the arms and lifts me to a sitting position. She places her hands on my shoulders gently, so she doesn’t crumple me, and looks me dead in the eyes.
“If this is somehow my Brigley, and he’s as dangerous as you say, then digging up his stadium and reviving people he wanted to ultra-kill is going to get my ass cooked.”
My shoulders slump. I know I shouldn’t ask her to put her life in danger for people she doesn’t know—and who might not even be there.
“But I will absolutely do this. Not just for you, by the way. Though, I am very much hoping I’ll get a nice rewardwhen it’s done.” She offers me a mischievous smile that instantly puts me in a better mood.
“There will be a fantastic reward, I promise,” I purr into her ear.
Delia does this throaty half laugh that just about kills me.
“Perfect.” She pulls away enough so that I can see her face has turned more serious again. “But I also want to help those other women. I’d never leave another team member behind like that, even if rescue has taken a little longer than ideal.”
“Just alittlelonger,” I scoff.
She rolls her eyes when Mavis meows loudly outside the door. As she stands up, she pulls me with her. “Let’s just get up for the day. I’m not gonna go back to sleep and apparently Mavis wants to eat early.”
I eye the door warily. We’ve kept the cant away from me since the shoe incident. Delia pats me on the back.
“It’ll be fine, Pearl. Get dressed. We’ll go shopping.”
Chapter Four
Delia
Pearl took a really long time to figure out the basics of Ultra Baseball MVP VII, which I expected—she’s starting from zero on video game know-how. She got really, really into it once she figured it out, however, which I did not expect. She still doesn’t understand what a computer is—not that I’ve done a good job explaining it, so that’s on me—but she’s getting pretty damn good at that game.
We stayed up way too late playing, talking about her time with the Wonder Belles, and about when she was in movies. She’s so fucking cool. She just about lost her shit—in a good way—when I showed her I could stream pretty much any song she requested, aside from a few obscure ones I just couldn’t locate. She triedto get me to get up and dance, but I couldn’t make myself. No way am I ruining my chances with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen by dancing like an angry orangutan to Glenn Miller.
I let her sleep in my bed while I slept on the sofa with Mavis’s heavy butt, despite Pearl’s insistence that it was alright if I slept next to her. I just wanted to be chivalrous and all that, but damn if I didn’t think about taking her up on the offer.
When she woke up the way she did I was terrified. She's only been here a matter of hours and already it’s like, I don’t know; if she was hurt I’d be fucking devastated. Then she shared her memory and things got scary as shit. The information she shared this morning was…well, we’re in trouble. I definitely doubled up on the energy drinks this morning, I’ll say that much. Gotta be on the alert.
“Holy mackerel! Look at the size of the truck! Must have a load of dough to get one of those.” Pearl chatters on as she strolls down the sidewalk, eyes wide at every new thing wepass by. “Jeez, there sure are a lot of people just running everywhere! Where are they going?”
She has more weight to her than I expected, which is good. She’s a nice, thick paper stock—more paperback book cover than pages if I had to describe it, I guess. Heavy enough that she can walk without flopping over. That’s step one of leaving the house covered. Step two is getting her not to blow away whenever there’s a strong gust of wind. We have to work that one out. For now, I’m holding her hand—oh no, what a shame, whatever will I do—and thankful that the air is mostly still.
“They run because they want to. For health reasons, usually. Sometimes just for fun.” I shrug as another early morning jogger passes by us. “Lots of reasons.”
“That’s a hobby I certainly don’t think I’ll be participating in. We do laps for punishment on the team, not recreation.”
As we walk out of my quiet residential neighborhood, toward the main part of town, we begin to encounter more people. Some of the older residents give us awave and barely look twice. Ghostlight Falls has seen weirder. Younger folks, however, are more curious.
“Um, Delia. Is your friend totally flat or was there something weird in my vape? I know I shouldn’t order from sketchy sites since it’s legal in Oregon. I’m a sucker for a discount, though,” my sort-of friend, Janis, says as I walk past the performing arts center.
Janis is a starving artist-type that used to work with me at the stadium. We made out a few times. She left to help teach acting part-time to little kids. I’m happy for her. Honestly, not really sure what she does with the rest of her time. Kind of a mystery, that one.
“She is very much two-dimensional. You’re fine. We’re on our way to Rosa’s to figure out what’s going on. You really shouldn’t order from those sites, though.” I wave goodbye as we continue on past the fancy, old building.
Janis gives me a salute, then hits her vape. Shaking my head with a laugh, I turn to Pearl and find a horrified expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“A goof burner, Delia?” she asks under her voice with the tone of a disappointed mother.
“A what?”
