Saudade

“All right, boyos, listen up because I’ve got a story to tell you.” The storyteller said cheerfully as she settled back in her diner booth and put her feet up on the table.

Her companions simply looked at her with long-suffering gazes. None of them happened to be boys. Or even Australian.

“This one here, I call, ‘The Long Tale of Suffering and Death’. It’s a real classic!” The storyteller continued, trying to flip a butterknife over her hand and failing. The knife clattered to the diner floor with a clang. One of the diner waitresses sent a sharp glare in the storyteller’s direction and she quickly took her feet off the table and picked up the knife. The waitress gave the storyteller another long-suffering gaze and went back to whatever she was doing—it looked like she was waxing a lamp, but that wasn’t what was normally on the list of waitress jobs, so the storyteller wasn’t quite sure if that was true or not.

“You call all of your tales ‘The Long Tale of Suffering and Death’,” The youngest one of the storyteller’s listeners complained. “Can’t you at least change the name up a little if you’re going to force us to listen to these again and again?”

“Nope!” The storyteller replied forcefully, accidentally knocking over a saltshaker. The waitress glared at her again. “It’s called ‘The Long Tale of Suffering and Death’ because it is a long tale of suffering and death!” She paused and considered. “Or at least a long tale of suffering. I’m not sure if anyone dies in this one.”

“And it will inevitably be about four girls named Angie, Kaylee, Frances and Evalyn, won’t it?” The oldest of the storyteller’s listeners asked in an extremely bored tone.

The storyteller looked at her confusedly. “How did you know?” She asked.

“Because they’re always about Angie, Kaylee, Frances, and Evalyn!” the oldest listener just as forcefully as the storyteller had been when she had knocked over the saltshaker. “If you’re going to force us to listen to these repetitive stories, at least get some more creative names other than—” she gestured to herself, “Angie—” she gestured to the youngest listener, “Kaylee—” she gestured to the third listener, “Frances—” she waved her hand around in the air, “and whoever Evalyn happens to be!”

The storyteller winced slightly.

“It gets kind of grating to hear someone named after you die in more stories than you can remember,” the third listener—Frances—interjected in a monotone voice.

“You—I mean, Frances—never died!” The storyteller retorted. “And neither did Angie. It was only Kaylee, and she got better!”

“Oh, good.” Kaylee said in a small voice. She had been worried, because the last story had ended on a cliffhanger, and she had been slightly worried about her namesake.

“And I guess Evalyn did too, a couple of times.” The storyteller said after a moment’s thought. “But she also got better. Most of the time.”

“Most of the time? Got better? Your stories aren’t even realistic!” Angie jumped back on. “What’s even the point in telling us them?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” The storyteller said seriously.

The other three stared at her. The storyteller stared back and slowly ate a French Fry. Establishing dominance was a good way to get people to listen to stories.

“So!” She continued cheerfully once she had finished the French fry, “ready for me to continue?”

Frances sighed and settled into her seat a little more. “I guess.” She said.

“Stupendous!” The storyteller beamed. “All right. Once upon a time, there were four girls, Angie, Kaylee, Frances and Evalyn, who—”

“We know!” Angie groaned. “Angie, Kaylee, Frances and Evalyn were—”

“--members of a covert government team who were tasked with investigating anything paranormal, metaphysical, extraterraneous, or otherwise uniquely suspicious.” The three girls chorused simultaneously.

“You remember?” The storyteller asked excitedly.

“Of course we remember!” Angie complained. “You start every single one of your stories like that!” 

“Oh.” The storyteller said. She had forgotten she had done that. “Well, they were.”

Angie groaned again.

“Just get on with it,” she said while attempting to drown out her misery by eating a French fry.

“Okay.” The storyteller nodded, taking a deep breath and gathering her thoughts. “So, when we had left off last time, the evil Professor Doctor Hammerly—”

“Why is it Professor Doctor? That’s just overkill.” Frances cut in, sounding bored.

“Because Professor Doctor Hammerly was overkill, and wanted everyone to know that she was very smart. We’ve been over this, Frances.”

Frances grumbled a little and ate one of Angie’s French fries. 

“The Evil Professor Doctor Hammerly—” The storyteller paused, waiting for Frances to complain again. Frances seemed content to steal Angie’s French fries and listen, so she went on. “Had constructed a giant machine to erase a person from all memory and had captured Kaylee and was about to test it out on her!”

Kaylee whimpered a little bit and sunk down in her seat until her eyes were just above the table. “Did she escape?” She asked in a small voice.

The storyteller looked the small girl dead in the eyes. “Nope.” She told her. “Angie and Frances were still deep in the Honduras looking for her. And Kaylee had never managed to pass her lock-picking exams with the Covert Training School, so she wasn’t able to pick the locks in time.”

Kaylee sunk down even further. Now all that the storyteller could see of her was her arm as she reached up to grab one of Angie’s French fries.

“What happened next?” Angie asked, not noticing that her French fries were disappearing. “I’m guessing that this is the part when she dies?”

The storyteller looked down at the table, fiddling with the knocked over saltshaker. “Yeah. She did. Professor Doctor Hammerly used her machine on her and erased her from everyone’s memory—even her friends’. Suddenly, the world had no idea who Agent Kaylee was.”

“Great.” Angie said. “So how are you telling a story about her then? Because I hate to break it to you, but you count as ‘the world’ too.”

“Oh, I know.” The storyteller replied sadly. “She was totally gone—except that the people who saw what happened remembered her.”

“People, plural?” Frances asked. “I thought you said only Professor Doctor Hammerly was there.”

The storyteller shook her head. “No, one other person saw what happened. Evalyn had managed to stow away beneath Professor Doctor Hammerly’s Jeticopter and was hidden in the lab when it…when it happened. She saw her friend get erased from memory, so she remembered her friend even though no one else besides her and Professor Doctor Hammerly did.”

“Okay, now that’s just bad science,” Angie interrupted. “How in the world could—”

“It’s just what happened, okay?” The storyteller shot back, accidentally knocking over the pepper shaker too. “I can’t tell you how the machine worked, I can only tell you what it did!”

Angie and Frances looked startled by the storyteller’s sudden outburst.

“Sorry.” The storyteller said. Angie nodded and reached for another French fry, only to find they were all gone.

“Evalyn managed to strike a deal with Professor Doctor Hammerly afterward. Hammerly couldn’t just bring someone back, but she could have two people switch places. Evalyn agreed to let Hammerly erase her instead to bring Kaylee back.”

“That was extremely nice for someone who was willing to experiment on a child our Kaylee’s age,” Frances said sarcastically.

“It wasn’t out of niceness,” The storyteller said. “Hammerly wanted access codes to their base’s research database and holding cells. That was the other end of the bargain.”

“And Evalyn just let her have them?” Angie asked incredulously. “She would just give up her own team’s safety just like that?”

“Would you do anything for your Kaylee?” The storyteller asked back. Angie and Frances looked awkwardly at the top of Kaylee’s head, who was still hiding beneath the table and eating the rest of the French fries she stole from Angie.

The storyteller decided to continue before they answered the question. “Not that it mattered anyways. Evalyn knew that once she was erased, her own access codes would be nullified. So that’s how the other operatives are still safe and sound.”

“What about Kaylee?” Kaylee asked, popping up from beneath the table. “Did she get better?”

“Yeah, she did.” The storyteller said gently. “Evalyn switched herself for Kaylee, so Kaylee came back, and she lived happily ever after.”

“Yay!” Kaylee said. She had been quite worried.

“And Evalyn?” Frances asked.

The storyteller frowned. “What about her?”

“What happened, obviously? You said she switched herself to be erased for Kaylee. Did they rescue her?”

The storyteller tried to flip her butterknife over her hand again and succeeded only in dropping it on the floor—again.

“Nope.” She said. “Evalyn’s teammates, friends, and family forgot she existed at all, and you know...it’s kinda hard to rescue someone if you don’t know they exist! But I guess that it was good that it happened because apparently Professor Doctor Hammerly had only become evil because she thought Evalyn was her science rival or something.” The storyteller laughed a little like she was telling a joke.

“And what about Angie, Frances, and Kaylee?” Angie asked, a concerned expression on her face. “Were they okay?”

“Yeah, they’re fine.” The storyteller said. “They just forgot that they were secret agent people and all that, because apparently that was Evalyn’s fault too. And so everyone lived happy lives ever after, except Evalyn, who got to live with the crippling guilt that she had caused the existence of one of the worst villains of all time and apparently forced her friends into a dangerous job that teenagers definitely should not be doing. The end!”

The three girls stared at the storyteller, their expressions ranging from shocked to appalled.

“Girl.” Frances began, “You need to lighten up a little.”

The storyteller shrugged. “Hey, I don’t make ‘em up. I just tell them. You wanna hear the story about how Evalyn, Angie, Frances, and Kaylee saved the mayor of Paris from three circus ghosts?”

Angie was the first to snap out of it and answer. “Maybe next week,” she said, “I told Kaylee’s mom I’d get her home by four.”

“Oh.” The storyteller said. “Okay.”

The three girls got up and started walking out the door of the diner.

“Thanks for the French fries!” Kaylee called back.

“Anytime, Kaylee!” The storyteller told her. “I’d do anything for you, you know,” she said in a lower voice.

The waitress came over and handed the storyteller a bill.

“That’ll be ten bucks for the fries, and five for making me clean up the salt and pepper shakers,” she said in a nasally voice.

The storyteller sighed and paid her. “Sorry about that, Ms. Hammerly,” she said.

The waitress smiled sarcastically. “Anytime, ma’am.”

“My name is Evalyn,” the storyteller told her. “I told you that last week.”

“If you say so, ma’am,” the waitress said, turning back to go check on another table.

Evalyn shook her head, sadly. If she didn’t know better, she never would have guessed that the waitress was a former supervillain.