Sissy flicked her cigarette into the darkness and yanked the door to Video Video Video open. The bells above the door clanged against the glass.
Looking back at me, Sissy said, “Morrison, quit being such a whiny baby, we’ll go next weekend. I don’t feel like driving you to West Palm. I do feel like watching John Travolta’s groin in Perfect, which is what we are going to do.”
While I had absolutely no issues with John Travolta’s groin, quite to the contrary, I had been looking forward to going to West Palm Beach and back to the bar Sissy took us to a few weeks ago.
I followed her into the store with Michelle trailing behind me. The store was cramped with bad fluorescent lighting and smelled like plastic, burnt popcorn, and BO. A TV mounted on the wall was playing Eddie and the Cruisers.
Randy Leonard, the world’s most jaded 22-year-old, was at the counter reading a comic book and didn’t bother to greet us. We were in here a few times a week and I think he was tired of our teenage bullshit. We routinely bickered over what to rent and Sissy usually won, which was only fair since she was paying. I scanned the shelves and spotted Return to Oz in the new releases section. I crept past the box, not even wanting to look at the cover. The heads, shudder.
Michelle’s popped around the corner of the shelf and asked, “What about this one?”
I looked in her hand and she was holding a copy of Just One of the Guys. Sissy wrinkled her nose at her. That was a no.
Sissy marched to the shelf where Perfect should have been. Only it wasn’t there.
“Randy, where is Perfect?”
Without looking up he responded, “Presumably with someone who got here before I was ready to close.”
“You have another copy, right?” she said using her flirty voice.
“No.” Her charms were useless on Randy.
She began stomping around the store, looking at boxes, and throwing them back on the shelves in disgust. At one point she stopped at the beaded curtain that separated the main part of the store from the adults only section. She started to slip into the room when Randy simply yelled, “No.”
Sissy started to say something back to him, but Michelle and I began begging her with our eyes. She had already been banned from the store closest to her house and now we had to drive an extra five minutes to this one. There were only three video stores in town and soon we’d be driving to Avon Park to rent movies if she didn’t stop.
She resumed searching for something to watch, as did we. Sissy wandered over to comedy, Michelle was scanning the new releases, and I headed to horror.
I found the video I wanted to rent. I had been trying to get them to watch Frogs for months. In my opinion, it is the best animal attack movie ever made. First, because the animals win, and second because Sam Elliott is hot. I realized I was going to need a stronger argument. I found a copy of I Spit on Your Grave and placed it on top of Frogs.
We met by a rack of Doritos and Twizzlers, ready to plead our cases. Michelle had a copy of Better Off Dead in her hand. Sissy seemed to recover from the disappointment of not being able to rent Perfect when she found Desperately Seeking Susan. We knew that Sissy would get her way with Desperately Seeking Susan, so it was down to Michelle and me fighting it out. She had a strong contender with Better Off Dead. I presented I Spit on Your Grave and they both recoiled. I pretended to be disappointed. Michelle was all set to go to the counter with Sissy when I said I had a second choice. I presented Frogs, only this time I led with Sam Elliot and his hotness and reminded Michelle he had been in The Yellow Rose. That did it. Michelle returned Better Off Dead to the shelf.
Randy set his comic book aside, scanned the wall behind him for the VHS tapes, and inserted them into the plastic cases.
As he slid them across the counter he said, “There are fines on your account.”
“No there aren’t,” Sissy said automatically.
“Yes, there are. You were not kind. You did not rewind. And you kept Prizzi’s Honor for two weeks.”
“Whatever,” she said as she threw her dad’s AmEx on the counter.
The bell clanged again as we exited the store and went back out into the humid night.
Sinkhole
Genre: Southern Gothic
Release: May 2022
Purchase Link
Humidity, lovebugs, and murder.
Lies from the past and a dangerous present collide when, after fifteen years in exile, Michelle Miller returns to her tiny hometown of Lorida, Florida. With her mother in the hospital, she’s forced to reckon with the broken relationships she left behind: with her family, with friends, and with herself.
As a teenager, Michelle felt isolated and invisible until she met Sissy, a dynamic and wealthy classmate. Their sudden, intense friendship was all-consuming. Punk rocker Morrison later joins their clique, and they become an inseparable trio. They were the perfect high school friends, bound by dysfunction, bad TV, and boredom―until one of them ends up dead.
Forced to confront the life she turned her back on fifteen years ago, she begins questioning what was truth and what were lies. Now at a distance, Michelle begins to see how dangerous Sissy truly was.
An ingenious debut from editor and publisher Davida Breier, Sinkhole is a mesmerizing, darkly comic coming-of-age novel immersed in 1980s central Florida. A disturbing and skillful exploration of home, friendship, selfhood, and grief set amidst golf courses, mobile homes, and alligators.
Meet the author
Davida G. Breier was born in Miami, FL. She’s spent the last two decades in various roles within the book industry and currently works for Johns Hopkins University Press. Davida lives in Maryland with her family, a pack of wee rescue dogs, a rescue tortoise, and two companion chickens.
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