*Fiction — December 1, 2022
The Bone
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After your mother dies, you quit your job because you hate it. You move out of your Chicago high-rise and into your sister’s basement in a sprawling Wisconsin suburb just past the Illinois border. She’s a dental hygienist. Her husband Rob has a dermatology practice. You promise childcare for their eight-year-old twin boys, Harris and Hamilton, in exchange for free rent.
Before you move, you throw out or sell most of your belongings, giving the rest to your roommate. When you arrive at your sister’s house in the dead of winter, you have two duffle bags of clothes and a large suitcase containing dress shoes and bulky sweaters. Liz helps you carry them into the basement bedroom. The bed is made with hotel-like precision, the sheets white and crisp.
On weekdays, you wake up at noon and watch television or YouTube while scrolling social media on your phone. All your friends have jobs, so the updates you watch are mostly of strangers. Three hours later, you make five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and eat one. The other four are for Harris and Hamilton. They are ravenous, chubby little boys. They descend from their bus at 3:30, drop their backpacks at the door, and eat the sandwiches in front of the television. Usually you watch with them, whatever program they want. You like being considered a cool aunt. The show you watch most often features cartoon kid robots that alternate between playing pranks on each other and battling their evil robot classmate Erik, a red robot with a head shaped like a tea kettle. In the episodes with Erik, you like to cheer for him to win because it makes Harris mime strangling a neck, which you think is very funny.
As the live-in babysitter at your sister’s house, you tell Harris and Hamilton their parents expect them to do their homework. They want to play video games. You say, only if you can play too. But you find the game they play idiotic and decide to do their math homework for them instead. The addition and subtraction problems are so easy, they soothe you into a trance. Once you finish the math homework, you move onto geography. You color a map of the United States, draw mountains and rivers. You finish a worksheet about different types of rocks. When Liz asks if the boys did their homework, you say yes. The boys hear you say it; they stand at the kitchen table, eating store-bought cookies. They don’t contradict you.
The next day when they come home, you ask what grades they got on the rock worksheet. They blink. Hamilton tells you the teacher didn’t grade them yet.
You force them to go outside. You put your coat on and stand there. You feel like a real adult, watching children play. The boys pretend to shoot each other, falling backwards dead into dirty snow mounds.
Two months pass. As the weather hints at spring, and the snow starts to melt, you take the boys to the park down the street. They play in the flooded fields, kicking up dirty water as they run. One afternoon, after a morning rain, Hamilton finds a collection of worms writhing around on the paved park path. Without your noticing, he sheds his shoe and sock and puts a worm between each toe. “I have worm foot,” he says, holding up his short leg.
“Worm foot, worm foot,” Harris yells, bunny-hopping in circles.
Sometimes you imagine what you’d be doing at that moment if you hadn’t quit your job. At noon, you’d be walking down Michigan Avenue to buy a sandwich. At three, you’d be updating the page numbers on a pharmaceutical company’s investor presentation while on a conference call with the risk assessment team in Sacramento. At five, you’d be pretending to work, waiting for your bosses to leave. At six, your bosses still there, you’d buy a bag of nuts from the vending machine. At seven, you’d be saving all your files, putting on your coat to go home. At eight, you’d be drinking wine on your couch from the oversized wine glass your soccer teammates gave you as a gag gift one year for your birthday. It fit an entire bottle of wine. You’d fill it halfway, stick your face in the top till it made marks on your cheeks.
One night in March, Liz takes you to dinner. She asks five days in advance as if you have a busy schedule filled with plans. You go to a Mexican restaurant that has red and white checkered tablecloths and sombreros hanging from the ceiling. They rotate slowly, like patient spaceships waiting to land. Liz orders enchiladas; you get a cheese quesadilla. The cheese oozes down your wrist when you bite it and burns your hand.
“Listen,” Liz says, watching you wipe your cheesy fingers.
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” you say automatically.
“Obviously you’re going through something. Both of us are.”
You understand that “going through something” is your sister’s euphemism for Mom dying. You drown a chip in the salsa so you don’t have to look at her. Liz probably thinks what she’s going through feels worse than what you feel. Liz hates feeling uncomfortable.
“But quitting your job, sitting around the house all day. It’s no good. What you need to do is figure out how you can move on. What is it that you want out of your life?”
“What do you want?” you ask her, dapping the corners of your mouth with a paper napkin.
She swats like your words are gnats. “I have what I want. I have Rob and Harris and Hamilton. And a career,” she adds as an afterthought. “This is about you. I know Mom and Dad’s shit hit you hard, but, well, you’ve got to move on, you know?” She leans towards you. “It wasn’t easy for me either. Any of it. I was older than you, and that kind of made it worse. But you, you’re not dealing with it.” The waiter comes to refill water and Liz sits upright, silently watching him pour.
Once he leaves, you ask, “Do you alternate which child you name first, or is it always Harris and then Hamilton?”
She sips her beer, rolling her eyes. “What are you going to do, Rachel? Seriously?”
Liz gets this expression when she’s trying to be earnest that reminds you of someone pushing down a burp or a sneeze. Her eyes get wide and she bites her bottom lip so hard it goes white. You want to tell her to let it all out, that no one really cares what you do or do not hold back. No one cares at all about anything. You have learned this more easily than she has. She still thinks someone, someday, is going to give her an award for pulling a regular paycheck, for marrying a nice guy, for being a parent to two average sons. You want to tell her Dad is never going to love her or you like she wishes he would. And it’s too late to wish for anything from Mom. It probably always was, even when she was still alive.
“I’m thinking of applying to graduate school. To become a teacher,” you say. You had not been thinking this at all, but you say it all the same. Liz releases her lip and smiles.
“That’s wonderful! Anything Rob or I can do to help, we will do it. Rob has a fraternity brother who’s a high-school math teacher. Would you like to shadow him? I’m sure I can arrange it.” She rambles on and on, too many words for you to listen.
You only have slight shame in taking advantage of your sister’s generosity. You are ten years younger and a child of divorce. Your parents divorced when you were thirteen and she was twenty-three. Shortly after they split, your father took a job relocation to Guangzhou, China, where his company manufactured auto parts. You were stuck living with your mother, weathering those unpredictable moods alone. You spent most of high school avoiding the house. By some miracle, you had innate athleticism. You played competitive soccer, forging your mother’s signature on checks to pay for the indoor and elite summer leagues. Your father sent alimony and then some, plus money for clothes and food. Mom’s inconsistent waitressing tips covered the rest.
You only have slight shame in taking advantage of your sister’s generosity. You are ten years younger and a child of divorce. Your parents divorced when you were thirteen and she was twenty-three. Shortly after they split, your father took a job relocation to Guangzhou, China, where his company manufactured auto parts. You were stuck living with your mother, weathering those unpredictable moods alone. You spent most of high school avoiding the house. By some miracle, you had innate athleticism. You played competitive soccer, forging your mother’s signature on checks to pay for the indoor and elite summer leagues. Your father sent alimony and then some, plus money for clothes and food. Mom’s inconsistent waitressing tips covered the rest.
At the state university, on a soccer scholarship, you slept around a lot. Since you were on the soccer team, you met a lot of male athletes who weren’t looking for anything more than a hook-up. You’d majored in business because the older girls on your soccer team told you it was easy.
Dad used to call and ask you about soccer and school. “You have enough money?” he’d ask. When soccer and school ended, the calls were shorter. Your communication distilled to cheery, insubstantial emails every other week. “Weather is smoggy here,” he’d write. “I found a new bar with decent burgers.” When Mom died, he flew home for the funeral. The morning of his flight back to Hong Kong, he hugged you once, his body as stiff as a boxing bag.
In your sister’s living room, you stay up late binging television at a low volume. You favor murder documentaries and competitive reality shows.
In your sister’s living room, you stay up late binging television at a low volume. You favor murder documentaries and competitive reality shows.
Sometimes Rob will watch television with you. You don’t ask why he joins you; you assume it’s suburban insomnia. You sit on opposite ends of the couch, arms crossed, recliners elevated, staring at the glowing screen in the dark.
Tonight, you watch a true crime episode about a woman who was raped and murdered, her decaying corpse found in a ditch. You are grateful you have never been raped. It seems like something you narrowly missed, given all the drinking combined with sexual activity you did in college.
You had a high school boyfriend named Vince who would drive you pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. He was nineteen and worked in a shipping warehouse. He was dumb but good-looking and your chauffeur, so you didn’t dump him until you left for college. When you told him it was over, he cried fat tears onto your shoulder, his face all red and ugly. It was the first moment you thought maybe you could have loved him.
Chewing red licorice, you think about Vince and those other boys you used to sleep with and the fact that you haven’t had sex with anyone since last summer. You watch a reenactment of the police interrogating the lead suspect. Rob shifts on the couch and startles you out of your head. You feel awkward having thoughts about sex while sitting near him.
“Licorice?” you ask.
“What? Oh, no,” he says, glancing over at you like he’s coming out of a trance. “This is so disturbing,” he says, looking back at the television. “You like this stuff?”
It occurs to you that he’s only ever watched the reality shows with you.
Rob is a Midwestern white male with high cheekbones, pale flesh, and blonde scruff on his jaw. His jawline is not well-defined, but it does not sag with early middle-age fat like some of the neighborhood dads you see. He has a small, friendly gut and skinny, hairy legs that he often crosses, one knee on top of the other. Whenever you see him do this, you remember how your high school boyfriend Vince called men who sat like this pussys. Though Rob is not a pussy, from what you can tell. He lifts weights three times a week and comes home sweaty and smiling, his gray t-shirt stained dark on his chest and underarms. He seems proud of his sweat and stench, which to you seems brave and delusional. Sometimes you think those things are the same.
Since the outing to the Mexican restaurant, your sister has started asking you questions about graduate school. Where do you want to go? Do you need help studying for the GRE? What are the top-rated programs? You make up answers to her questions and she is satisfied. You marvel at how easily she is satisfied. No one—not Liz, not Rob, not any of your old teammates or friends—has sat you down, looked you in the eye, and asked you real questions. Asked you why, after years of coping and surviving in the world, you have crumbled in on yourself. You have chosen to not ask yourself these questions either.
You start to take the boys on longer adventures through the neighborhood. Liz and Rob live in a newly built development. Wide flat roads have been paved, preparing for big houses on big lots, but right now the lots sit empty. Rob and Liz’s house has neighbors, but further down the road, there is a cul-de-sac with just one house. Further down, there is another cul-de-sac with zero houses. This is where you and the boys decide to play one afternoon.
You start to take the boys on longer adventures through the neighborhood. Liz and Rob live in a newly built development. Wide flat roads have been paved, preparing for big houses on big lots, but right now the lots sit empty. Rob and Liz’s house has neighbors, but further down the road, there is a cul-de-sac with just one house. Further down, there is another cul-de-sac with zero houses. This is where you and the boys decide to play one afternoon.
You instruct Harris to stand in the grassy center of the cul-de-sac—what the boys dub the “doughnut hole”—and close his eyes and spin. You tell him he must count to ten before he can stop spinning and open his eyes. As soon as he starts rotating, you and Hamilton sprint away. It is Harris’s job to catch one of you. Whoever he catches must go to the doughnut hole. You never make it to the second round of this game, though, because Harris trips running after you and falls onto gravel, cutting up his hands. You inspect the wounds: surface-level scrapes.
“Really Harris? This is baby stuff,” you say. He ignores your insults. He demands to be taken home. Tears drip down his face. You hate seeing him cry, so you allow him to ride on your back, surprising yourself by galloping when he cracks a pretend whip and says, “Giddy-up horse Rachel, giddy-up!” Hamilton cannot keep up with you as you gallop. With Harris’s solid weight clinging to your back, you feel strong, stronger than you’ve felt in months. You think, maybe you are a horse trapped in a human body. Maybe galloping in the open air is all you were ever meant to do.
You stop galloping and look back to make sure Hamilton is close by. He’s puffing fifty feet back, shuffling his feet so slowly its painful to watch. You put Harris down and both of you silently wait for Hamilton to join you.
One day, exploring, you and the boys enter the trees behind the cul-de-sacs, the borderlands between neighborhood and cornfield. The trees sit close together, thick and expansive enough to hide you from the road. As you walk through it, you come across a rectangular patch of dirt the size of a welcoming kitchen table, where nothing is growing besides a few weeds. It inspires you.
One day, exploring, you and the boys enter the trees behind the cul-de-sacs, the borderlands between neighborhood and cornfield. The trees sit close together, thick and expansive enough to hide you from the road. As you walk through it, you come across a rectangular patch of dirt the size of a welcoming kitchen table, where nothing is growing besides a few weeds. It inspires you.
“Let’s grow a garden here,” you tell the twins. “A secret one.”
“We don’t have flowers,” says Hamilton.
“We’ll plant seeds,” you say.
“We don’t have those either,” Hamilton says. Harris picks up a large stick and whips it around the air like a sword.
“We’ll steal them,” you improvise. “Each day we’ll steal them from food around the house. We can save them in a plastic bag and hide them in your room.”
“We’ll steal them,” you improvise. “Each day we’ll steal them from food around the house. We can save them in a plastic bag and hide them in your room.”
The word steal seems to make this plan attractive to the twins. “Cool,” Hamilton says.
“Take that!” Harris shouts to the dirt, beating it with the stick.
You have little confidence anything will grow in the garden, but you don’t tell the boys that. Between the three of you, you fill half a sandwich bag with a potpourri of random fruit and vegetable seeds. Four seeds from a half-eaten apple. A sprinkle of seeds from a cucumber wedge taken from a salad. Sunflower seeds, the ones Rob eats like candy. Lots and lots of sunflower seeds. You find trowels in Liz’s garage and march the boys to the garden for planting day. The weather is the kind of April spring day no one likes: gray, windy, cold. The ground feels frozen and is unyielding to your efforts.
“I don’t want to garden,” Harris says, holding his trowel upside down and pressing the round handle into the earth, leaving behind dozens of circular imprints. Hamilton, who has been diligently digging a deep hole, slaps the flat bottom of his trowel on the ground. “Me neither,” he says.
“It’s boring. Boring, boring, boring,” Harris chants.
“Bor-ingggg,” Hamilton sings in his little boy alto.
You glare at them. You grab the sandwich bag and stand up. “Fine,” you say, your voice rising. “Who cares.” The twins go silent and watch wide-eyed as you turn the bag upside down and fling the seeds onto the ground. You make a big show of it, getting every seed onto the ground until the garden plot is freckled with white, beige, and black flakes. When you finish, you pick up the trowels. “Let’s go,” you say in a huff. For once, the twins don’t reply. They follow you back to the house, moping. You can hear them mumbling under their breath, but the wind whips away their words, for which you are glad. You don’t want to hear their selfish complaints.
That night, the twins are sour with you. They ignore you at dinner. You catch Harris making rude faces at you behind your back. You glare at him and stick out your tongue. Usually this softens him and makes you two friends again. But this time, he only laughs meanly and turns away from you to whisper in Hamilton’s ear. You decide, rather than spending the evening lying to Liz about grad school applications, listening to her and Rob’s kind, loving inquiries about each other’s day, hearing the cartoon explosions from the twins’ television shows, you will go back and plant the garden. You fantasize about dragging Harris there the next morning and showing him green sprouts that have miraculously emerged overnight. Unlikely, you know, but the idea makes you feel better. How impressed he’ll be with you.
You tell Liz and Rob you are going for a walk and get a trowel from the garage. The clouds are turbulent; the air is cold. It takes you a while to find the patch in the overcast moonlight, but finally you see the dumped seeds shining like tiny stars among the dirt. You kneel and sink the trowel down. The ground, like earlier that afternoon, still resists you, but your irritation makes you strong. Triumphant, you throw the earth over your back. You place a nearby seed into the hole and sloppily push loose soil on top.
It is calming, to work with your hands. You feel comforted by the darkness, how color seems to have washed away and made the world sepia. You remember how your mom loved to watch old black and white movies. She would say her favorite lines aloud, rewinding parts when she messed up so she could do it over again. She’d have a wine glass in one hand, her bare feet resting on the ottoman, her hair and clothes dirty from waitressing. She’d smell, oddly, like cake batter. You’d sit next to her, still in your soccer shorts and socks, procrastinating showering and homework. Together you’d share a bowl of buttered popcorn. Dinner. Neither of you much liked doing the things you needed to do.
A light rain is starting to fall, peppering the earth with tiny black spots. You look down at the ugly holes you have dug and suddenly think, this is stupid. You lean back on your palms and sit your butt on the wet cold ground. Something white gleams on the other end of the plot where Hamilton dug his unfilled hole. It looks like half-buried garbage, probably a plastic grocery bag or a sales postcard that blew out of someone’s trash. You crawl on your hands and knees towards it, reach down and touch it. It feels hard, like plastic. You are too lazy to reach over for the trowel; you start to dig with your hands, irrationally angry that the earth is holding onto this mysterious thing so tightly. You continue to dig with your hands and fingernails, lengthening the hole. After a while, you’re able to scrape away much of the dirt, and you pull the thing out, an oblong-shaped object that, under the caked-on dirt, is grayish beige. It looks like a bone.
You put the object down next to you, undecided. A bone? It’s dark, after all. Eyes make mistakes in the night. After your father moved out, your mother used to mistake you for him when you came home late. She would wake up with a look of disgruntled panic and shout, “What the fuck Mark,” until you flipped on the light switch and she squinted at you. “It’s just me, Mom,” you’d say and pick up the two or three wine bottles on the coffee table while she mumbled about how tired she was, how she’d dozed off watching the news. One time, she shouted and then when she saw you, instead of shame or embarrassment, she burst out laughing. You both laughed so hard tears leaked from your eyes. She looked beautiful, like that.
In the dark, the object could look like a bone, but once in the daylight, maybe it’s just a tree branch, a throwing baton, an old, hardened tube sock.
You are dirty and tired. A bead of sweat, from the effort of the digging, drips down your chest. You stand up, grab the trowel and, after a moment’s hesitation, the bone. When you return to the house, you leave it in the garage with the trowel and your muddy shoes. Everyone has gone upstairs to bed. Liz, you discover, has texted you three times and called once. You shower and are lying in bed when you hear a gentle knock on your door. “Rachel?” Liz calls softly through the door. “Can I come in?” She’s wearing yellow pajamas with tiny cows printed on them. The boys had matching ones, but they’ve outgrown them. “You okay? I was worried, you didn’t answer your phone.”
Liz used to come to some of your soccer games, pushing a stroller, her twin toddlers dressed in matching sweatshirts with your school’s name stitched on the front. Your teammates adored them. Maybe as payment for this attention, you asked to be added to her family cell phone plan. Dad’s plan sucks, you told her.
“I left my phone here, sorry. But I’m fine. Thanks.” You think about the bone you put in her garage. You’ll tell her about it tomorrow, you think.
As you fall asleep, you remember that one time when you went through your mother’s things and picked up a bottle the color of a sunset. You discovered her constant cakey smell was not from the restaurant, but from a perfume.
It turns out, it’s hard to know what to do with a bone. The next morning, you put it on the kitchen table and let Rob and Liz examine it. In the morning light, the bone looks dirtier than it did in the dark. The bottom of it looks like a swinging club, thick and blunted. Liz, at first, says it’s probably an animal bone. But Rob makes the point that an animal bone wouldn’t be buried deep like that.
It turns out, it’s hard to know what to do with a bone. The next morning, you put it on the kitchen table and let Rob and Liz examine it. In the morning light, the bone looks dirtier than it did in the dark. The bottom of it looks like a swinging club, thick and blunted. Liz, at first, says it’s probably an animal bone. But Rob makes the point that an animal bone wouldn’t be buried deep like that.
“It would be if it was old,” Liz says, but she is less certain now.
The best part about the bone, in your opinion, is that it makes Harris like you again. While Rob and Liz talk, the boys run around the house singing, “She found a bone, she found a bow-nnn. A dead man died and we have his bow-nnn!”
Rob asks to see where you found it, so you lead the whole family out to the garden plot. Liz asks what on earth you were doing there at night, but before you can lie, she says, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” She doesn’t hear Hamilton say, “The garden!” when you arrive. Rob walks the perimeter of the garden plot, looking around and not saying anything. “Are those seeds?” Liz asks, staring at the many scattered seeds. No one answers. After Rob’s fourth circling, she says, “What do you think?” He rubs his chin, thinking. Then he shrugs.
“I guess we should call the police.”
The police officer that comes to the house has a toady face with a nose shaped like a mushroom. He speaks with little inflection. Many times you are confused whether he is asking a question or stating a fact. After he has written his notes, he says, “Can you show me where you found it?” You walk again to the trees. The police officer, like Rob, does an observational stroll around the garden plot. Suddenly he looks up at you. “What are all these seeds?” You want to sigh with relief, finally hearing him speak with a hard, inquiring tone.
“I was trying to plant a garden.” You can feel Liz, standing beside you, stare at your head.
The police officer writes something down. “Not much can grow in this weather,” he says.
“It was a dumb idea,” you say. “I was just trying to entertain the boys. My nephews.”
The police officer nods. “My son loves to play in dirt.” Before he leaves, he takes a picture of the bone and the garden plot. He takes the bone with him, sealed in a plastic bag.
Over the next few weeks, a trickle of crime scene investigators comes into the neighborhood to examine the garden plot. They even bring a small backhoe to help them dig it up. The boys, nearly drooling, insist on watching the men operate the backhoe. An officer in charge, not the toady one, says you three can watch as long as you keep your distance. You can’t see much from where you stand, except that they’ve turned the garden plot into a shallow hole. After that day, you don’t see many people come by. None of you receive any updates about what, if anything, they’ve discovered. It is weeks later when you receive a phone call. You had given the toady officer your cell phone number. He tells you the police department contacted an anthropology expert, and she believes the bone, which was indeed human, was likely part of an old family burial ground.
Over the next few weeks, a trickle of crime scene investigators comes into the neighborhood to examine the garden plot. They even bring a small backhoe to help them dig it up. The boys, nearly drooling, insist on watching the men operate the backhoe. An officer in charge, not the toady one, says you three can watch as long as you keep your distance. You can’t see much from where you stand, except that they’ve turned the garden plot into a shallow hole. After that day, you don’t see many people come by. None of you receive any updates about what, if anything, they’ve discovered. It is weeks later when you receive a phone call. You had given the toady officer your cell phone number. He tells you the police department contacted an anthropology expert, and she believes the bone, which was indeed human, was likely part of an old family burial ground.
“Maybe a farmer’s family,” he says.
“Whose body do you think it was?” you ask.
“They believe it’s female,” he says. “We’re mailing her to the anthropologist. Once she gets a look at her, she’ll probably tell us more.” The bone you dug up was identified as the female’s shin bone, the tibia. The body part cats and dogs rub against, the part children cling to when they feel lost or scared.
You thank the officer for calling and hang up.
Many days after Liz and Rob stop talking about the skeleton, after the boys’ enthusiasm wanes, after her bones probably arrive at whatever scientific place bones like that go, you continue to think about her. Or not her, maybe, so much as her bone. You think about the weight of her tibia in your hands, the spider web of dirt crusting along its ridge, matching your grimy palms. Particles of her dirt grave rested under your fingernails until you soaped up and sent them down the drain. She had lived and she had died, yet you held her in your hands.
You didn’t tell anyone this—you don’t think you ever will—but after you dug up the bone and before you went back to the house, you hugged the bone to your chest and lay down on your side, rounding into a fetal position. You curled your body around the bone, holding it against your chest. Tears ran down your face, or was it the rain? With your eyes closed, you don’t know why, you rubbed your nose to the bone. It smelled earthy, like mud, but—and maybe you imagined this—also like something sweet. The sweetness is what you choose to remember.
Rob comes downstairs and knocks on your doorframe. He’s holding a shoebox. They’re running shoes, he tells you. He’d seen your old pair by the door—the ones still covered in mud—and noticed they had holes. He thought you might like a new pair. You take the box, speechless at the kindness he offers. You feel a sharp, surprising pang of jealousy that Liz met and married such a nice person. You thank him. Rob smiles and says it’s nothing. He stands in the room a moment longer, looking around like he’s searching for something. He asks if you’ve been warm enough at night. You tell him you’ve been fine, and he nods, gives you a small smile, and leaves. You think about calling after him, thanking him again for the shoes, but you don’t. You close the door and change out of your jeans.
Rob comes downstairs and knocks on your doorframe. He’s holding a shoebox. They’re running shoes, he tells you. He’d seen your old pair by the door—the ones still covered in mud—and noticed they had holes. He thought you might like a new pair. You take the box, speechless at the kindness he offers. You feel a sharp, surprising pang of jealousy that Liz met and married such a nice person. You thank him. Rob smiles and says it’s nothing. He stands in the room a moment longer, looking around like he’s searching for something. He asks if you’ve been warm enough at night. You tell him you’ve been fine, and he nods, gives you a small smile, and leaves. You think about calling after him, thanking him again for the shoes, but you don’t. You close the door and change out of your jeans.
It’s a little too cold to run in shorts and a t-shirt; goosebumps rise on your flesh within seconds of being outdoors. But once you get going, you feel okay. You don’t feel like a horse galloping, giddy with excitement. You don’t even feel that other, murkier thing that’s been lingering inside you for months, maybe years. The thing that might be rage. You just feel like you. “You can do it,” you say to yourself, and you pick up speed until you are sprinting past houses so fast that no one can make out who you are.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.