The Casquette Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

idea of walking through a heavily devastated area wearing a six-hundred-euro dress nauseated me, but there weren't really any better options. At least it was lacking embellishments.
    I tied the matching silk sash around my waist and dug through my luggage for shoes. Thinking about the amount of rubble and broken glass we had seen the night before, I tossed aside ballet flats and dainty booties and went back to my closet for my deep-burgundy Doc Martens – my shit-kickers, as Brooke called them. My feet slipped easily into the molds of the worn boots, making me instantly happy. Familiarit y .
    I rebandaged my wound, grabbed a small blue-fringed bag, keys, and sunglasses, and was out the door.
    The shrill of a power tool unscrewing the boards came from the side of the house.
    “Dad, I’m going for a walk! Be back soon!”
    The drill stopped, and my father’s head popped through the side gate. “Please be careful. Call me if you need anything, and be back before lunchtime.”
    “Uh, okay.” My father hadn’t told me to be back home by lunchtime since I was about nine years old. In fact, he was rarely awake before lunchtime.
    Two blocks later, signs of life began to emerge: a lady walking her dog, a couple of gutter punks kicking a can, an elderly man shouting expletives while taking photos of his property damage. I turned onto another residential block and came across a shop hidden among the boarded-up homes. The doors were propped open, and the sign for Vodou Pourvoyeur gently swung in the breeze, making a faint creaking sound. Incense wafted out to the street. I’d never been inside the shop, but I’d referred many tourists from the café where I worked part time. Now, for no real reason, I found myself crossing the threshold.
    Inside, everything was so bright, colorful and foreign, I couldn’t decide what to focus on first. The front room was filled with tourist thrills: make-your-own-Voodoo-doll kits, spell books, premixed bottles labeled “Love Potion #9,” vintage Ouija Boards and bright rabbit-foot key chains. To the right was a painting of Marie Laveau affixed atop an altar of flowers, melted candles and prayer cards. Visitors had adorned it with cigarettes, coins, candies, and a plethora of other small tokens to please the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
    The smell of incense grew more pungent. I couldn’t pinpoint the earthy scent – floral, with a hint of something sweet like vanilla. The shop was very long, probably a former shotgun house, and the deeper I walked, the more exotic the inventory became. Alligator skulls. Necklaces made of cowrie shells, bones and claws. Statues of Catholic saints carved from wax, wood, and ivory. A variety of other oddities that appeared to have originated from the local swampland, the Caribbean, or Africa. Both walls of the next room were covered by a sea of rainbow-colored Voodoo dolls decorated with neon feathers, sequins, and Spanish moss. The back of the shop was lit by candles and reminded me of an old apothecary.
    How have I never been inside this place befor e ?
    I stood mesmerized by the floor-to-ceiling shelves of antique books and jars of all shapes and sizes, filled with herbs, powders, salts and oils. Indigo. Ylang Ylang. Wormwoo d . I recognized some of the names on the labels, but most completely escaped me.
    Two women were near the rear of the room: one, a very old lady in a sleeveless, white, linen dress, sat behind the wooden counter. The old woman’s wild gray curls were half-tied up into a traditional head wrap. It was obvious she had been a beauty in her time. A tall girl with straight, black hair stood in front of the counter, her back turned to me. She was trying to coax the old woman into eating something from a bowl and was growing increasingly impatient.
    To give them some privacy, I shifted my gaze to a shelf displaying an assortment of gemstone-encrusted daggers next to a “Do Not Touch ” sign.
    “Fine, Gran, don’t eat. I’m still not