Chapter 6

"The sun's scorching," Anush said as we stepped into the yard. "I get tired too fast under a hot sun."

"Hold on a minute," I said, ducking back into the house and grabbing the top hat from the hook.

"Where’d you get that?" Anush asked, spotting the big hat I was twirling in my hand on my way back.

"Found it in the cupboard. Put it on - helps against the sun."

Anush put the hat on. Yesayi grinned slyly and said, "Man, this girl is beautiful in every possible way."

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or just teasing her. She clicked her tongue, but I glimpsed the faintest shadow of a smile tugging at her lips.

We closed the front door and wandered off. Where now? We had no idea. Everything felt foreign and somehow distant. Anush started scrolling through her phone, searching for the nearest restaurant, while I - and probably Yesayi too - scanned the town.

The houses all looked the same - same roof design, same window layout, and identical front doors. Some were bigger, with creative lawns and fences, some well-tended, others not so much. Cars were scarce here, and people even more so. Maybe three to five passersby at any given time. Larkwood was a tiny suburban town, maybe even smaller than half of Yerevan.

The road out of town stretched along one edge of Larkwood; the rest of the town was boxed in by thick maple woods. Beyond the woods flowed the Alameda River, which, from what I’d found out, ran deep in places. We hadn’t had a chance to see the river yet.

"There’s a buffet in the town center called Charlotte's Bakery," Anush said, interrupting our quiet observation. "And another one just on the town's edge. Two small cafés near the center too."

"I say we hit the buffet."

"You must be starving, Yesayi," Anush said.

"No one else hungry?"

I heard a stomach growl. Anush and I exchanged glances and burst out laughing.

"See? My stomach’s furious at me!" Yesayi said. "How do we get there, Anush?"

Anush pointed at the map on her phone, and we started walking toward the buffet.

The town’s streets were short and narrow, crisscrossed by frequent intersections. They stretched for a block before being cut off by another crossroad. The only wide street was the main road, which split the town in two and led out of Larkwood. Rows of trees lined the road outside of town, where you could spot the Alameda River. We hadn’t noticed it when we arrived last night - too dark to see.

No tall buildings in sight, just modest structures no higher than three or four meters. Streetlights lined the main road, but as we found out last night, they didn’t do much to light the streets, casting only narrow, yellow beams here and there.

The whole way to the buffet, Anush had her head buried in her phone, zooming in and out on the map, checking out the town. She found this: there were a few grocery stores, two of which could pass for mini-supermarkets, two motels - one in the residential area, the other on the outskirts - a hotel in the center, two bars, a school, a music college, a couple of small cafés, a monastery on the outskirts, and of course, Charlotte’s Bakery, the buffet we reached after fifteen minutes of walking.

The buffet was a rectangular building with a roof made of striped scarlet iron tiles. Orange lights glimmered "Charlotte’s Bakery" on the eaves, though it looked hilariously like "Carlos Bakery" at first because of the missing letters, probably extinguished by frequent rains.

“Cute place,” Anush said, snapping her phone shut and pocketing it.

“I’m so hungry I’ve temporarily lost my ability to appreciate cuteness,” Yesayi said. “Come on.”

Anush walked toward Yesayi, and I followed behind, my eyes fixed on the asphalt. I got ahead of them, and when I turned around, I saw Anush standing frozen at a light pole in front of the buffet, her gaze locked on something.