by Laura Ruby
But she couldn’t stand this, either. Maybe she should burn the blanket. Maybe she should make a dress out of it and wear it for the rest of her life.
“Petey?” said her mother.
“I’ll be fine.”
Her mother took a great lungful of air, let it out, as if she were settling into a particularly challenging yoga pose. “If you want to talk about it—”
“I don’t.”
Her mother tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded, worry creasing the skin around her eyes. “I love you, you know.”
An ache gathered at the back of Petey’s throat, and she was afraid she would burst into tears. “Did you need me for something?”
“Oh. Well. If you refuse to confide your deepest, darkest secrets to your very receptive and very cool mom, and if you’re not doing anything else, you can bring Darla at the café some more honey and cookies.”
“I can do that,” Petey said, grateful enough to have some kind of task, something to take her out of her house, away from the beeyard and the hum of the bees and the soft trickle of the stream and the smell of the grass and everything that was telling her that maybe she’d made a mistake. She and her mother hooked the wagon onto the back of the battered moped, loaded the wagon with the honey and cookies. Petey jumped on the moped and drove past the Dog That Sleeps in the Lane, who didn’t bother lifting his head. She stopped at the intersection of the lane and the main road, waiting for a truck to pass before she turned. Her feelings shifted from gratitude to amazement that honey would still have to be delivered and dogs would still sleep in lanes and people would go about their business after a girl had ripped out her own heart and crushed it under her boots. It seemed as if there should be a ceremony to mark such an occasion, a day of mourning, maybe even a week or two during which no one would eat or rest or work, and instead sit sadly wearing black and pondering all the ways that people annihilate themselves.
Describe someone who has had the biggest impact on your life using only adverbs.
Furiously, smoothly, ferociously, surprisingly, deliciously, quickly, slowly.
But instead of finding sad and mournful people pondering all the ways that others annihilate themselves, Petey found the Rude boys lurking around the front of the café. Then Petey found herself pondering the ways in which she might annihilate other people and get away with it.
Frank Rude started in on her as soon as he saw her. “Where’s your boyfriend, Petey?”
“Where’s yours?” said Petey.
Frank flushed and made a sort of jerking motion forward, then fell back, like a dog that suddenly remembered his choke collar.
His brother Derek shoved Frank aside. “Don’t mind him. He’s an ignorant dumbass. You let us know if you need something, okay?”
Petey said, “Huh?”
“It’s not cool, that’s all I’m saying. Right? It’s not cool.” All his brothers except Frank nodded. And Frank nodded when Derek elbowed him in the ribs.
“What’s not cool?” Petey said.
“Stupid Moonface. Doing, you know. What he did.”
Petey’s stomach roiled, as if she could feel any worse. “You mean Finn O’Sullivan? What did he do?”
Derek jammed his hands in his pockets so hard they threatened to burst through the fabric. “It’s just not cool, that’s all. And I . . .” He looked as if he wanted to say something and that it was choking him. “I feel bad.”
“You feel bad,” Petey said.
“You want help with that box?”
Petey looked down at the box she was holding; she didn’t remember hauling it from the wagon. “No, I’m fine.”
“I’m just saying, is all,” said Derek, saying very little that Petey understood.
“Okay,” said Petey.
“Okay,” said Derek. He and his brothers walked away, but not before Frank tossed one last glare over his shoulder.
Petey watched them go, each of them as bowlegged and as strangely endearing as a toddler. Now, what was that about? And what was she turning into, thinking that the Rude boys were endearing?
Explain a moment that changed your worldview, written in recipe format.
Two graham crackers, one square of chocolate, a marshmallow, a jar of honey. Roast marshmallow over a fire, press between crackers, dip into honey, take a bite.
She backed into the door of the café and carried the box of honey and cookies to the counter. Darla stopped chatting with Jonas Apple and hurried over to her.
“Priscilla! Oh, that’s too heavy! You should have asked for some help!”
“But I always bring the box in myself.”
“It’s too heavy,” Darla insisted.
“For who?”
“And it’s honey! And honey clusters!” Darla exclaimed, as if Petey hadn’t been delivering such things to the café for years. “Isn’t that nice, Jonas?”
“Sure is,” said Jonas Apple.
“Here, I’ll take that box,” said Darla. “You want something to drink? Or something to eat maybe?”
Jonas Apple said, “Fries are real crispy today.”
“No, I’m okay,” said Petey. Clearly, everyone had decided that there was something endearing about Petey, a thought that was a little disconcerting. Petey didn’t want to be endearing to anyone. At least not anyone here.
Darla laid a hand on top of Petey’s. “Are you sure you don’t need something to eat or to drink?”
Petey frowned at Darla’s hand. “I guess an iced tea would be nice. To go.”
“You got it!” said Darla. She grabbed a waxed paper cup and filled it with iced tea and a lemon, capped the cup, and brought it back to Petey. “That’s on the house. And let me pay you for the honey and the cookies.” She opened the register and counted out some bills. When she handed the bills to Petey, she said, “Sooooooo,” drawing out the vowel with such forced casualness that a first grader would have been suspicious. “You meeting Sidetrack here today?”
“No,” said Petey.
“Well, that’s probably for the best,” Darla said.
“What is?”
Darla’s lips pursed. “Not meeting Sidetrack.”
Petey tucked the bills into her back pocket. “And why is that for the best?”
Darla unpursed her lips, repursed. Glanced at Jonas.
Jonas said, “That boy’s a few Froot Loops short of a full bowl, you know what I mean?”
“No,” said Petey. “I really don’t.”
“He’s not right in the head. He’s never been right. You don’t need a boy like that playing you.”
“Playing me?” said Petey, a lot louder than she’d intended. Anyone in the café who hadn’t been paying attention was now paying attention.
Write about the moment of your most dishonorable intentions in the form of a fortune cookie.
One tumble in the weeds will never be enough.
Petey repeated, “Who said he was playing me?”
“Uh, no one exactly,” Darla stammered. “I mean—”
“Is that what you all have been talking about? Is that why the Rude boys were so nice to me just now? The Rude boys?”
“Well,” said Darla, “you know we’re not ones to gossip. We’re just concerned, that’s all.”
Petey gritted her teeth. “No one is playing me.”
“Whew! That’s good to hear!” said Darla. “Isn’t that good to hear, Jonas?”
Petey said, more to herself than to anyone, “He said he loved me.”
Darla caught it. “Oh, honey, is that what he told you? That’s what they all say.”
“Is it?” Petey said. But she wasn’t really asking. She left the iced tea on the counter and ran out of the café. She hopped on her moped. A half mile away, she saw the paper festooning the trees and bushes in front of Finn’s house. How many rolls of toilet paper had they used? Dozens? Hundreds?
Sean was outside, hands on hips, surveying the mess. Petey dumped the moped in the middle of the drive and stomped over.
“Finn here?”
“No,” Sean said. “Left in the middle of the night.”
“You know where he went?”
Sean shook his head. “I figured he was with you.”
“No.” She nodded at the trees. “Rudes?”
Sean shrugged his broad shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
A murder of crows had gathered on one of the trees, cackling and flapping. “The crows like it,” Petey said.
“I guess that means they’re not going to help me clean it up,” Sean said. He kicked a rock. If this weren’t Sean O’Sullivan, Petey would have guessed that the man was annoyed. But Sean O’Sullivan didn’t get annoyed. Not outwardly.
Sean kicked another rock.
But maybe he did now.
Sean started tearing paper from the branches, bunching it, and dropping it to the ground. After a minute, Petey joined him, pulling the paper off bushes and out of flower beds. The flowers looked sad, drooping and dispirited. Petey could sympathize.
Would you rather be a robot, an alien, or a wolf?
Wolf. All the better to . . .
“These flowers don’t look so good,” she said.
“They haven’t since . . .” He trailed off.
“Since Roza?” Petey said.
“Since Roza,” said Sean. Petey wondered when he’d last said her name out loud. All those drawings in Sean’s sketchbook flipped through her head, and her cheeks went hot. She bent to scrape the paper into a tighter ball.
“You don’t have to do that,” Sean said.
“I should help. Whoever it was, I think they did it for me.”
“Oh yeah?”
She yanked some paper off a prickly holly that didn’t seem to want to give it up, threw the pile of paper to the grass. “People think Finn’s playing me.”
Sean stopped tearing and bunching. “Which people?”
Petey’s turn to shrug. “People. Suddenly, Bone Gap is full of concerned, chivalrous types with lots of extra toilet paper. Who knew?”
Sean made a little sound. A laugh? Then he touched his mouth.
“Wait,” Petey said, taking a few steps closer to him. “Is that a fat lip?”
“No.”
She stepped closer to him. He was large, sure, and not half as pretty as Finn, but handsome in a different way, handsomer now because of the puffy lip. Made him look human.
She said, “Did someone hit you?”
“No.”
“Someone hit you. Who would be that dumb?”
Another little sound.
“Finn hit you?”
Sean glanced down at Petey, the tiniest, barest hint of a smile playing on the bruised lips. “He was a little pissed.”
“About what?”
Sean hesitated. Then: “Turns out he’s one of those chivalrous types.”
Petey took a step back. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” Sean said. “He was . . . I mean, I know how he feels. And I was wrong. About a lot of things.”
Compose a haiku in honor of a person you admire.
You are spiky spring,
humming summer, wings that beat
back ghosts of winter.
They unwound more of the toilet paper in silence. Then Petey said, “So I guess he told you about his condition.”
Sean frowned. “What condition?”
Petey stopped unwinding the paper. “Oh. Nothing.”
“Did the doctors find something at the hospital?”
“No. Forget it.”
“You need to tell me.”
“You can ask Finn when he comes back. You guys should talk anyway.”
Sean took both her shoulders in his hands and turned her around to face him. Petey wasn’t short, but she barely came up to his chin. “Priscilla. Petey. What are you talking about? What condition?”
“I don’t know if he has one. I don’t know if I’m right about it. And he should be the one to tell you.”
He let go of her. “The trash. He was reading a bunch of stuff and he threw it in the trash. I didn’t even—” He jogged away from her and ducked into the house, the screen door slamming behind him.
Propose a theory to explain one of these eternal mysteries: Mona Lisa’s smile, crop circles, or Velveeta.
Here is a theory of love:
you find a sister, you gain
a brother, you lose
a sister, you lose
a brother, you lose a cat,
you find a girl, you kiss
a girl, you find the cat,
you hope
that there is nothing left to lose, and
all there is, is there to find
Petey pulled more paper from the tree trunks, the bushes, the flowers, whatever wasn’t strung up too high. She looked up at the canopy of yellowing, even crumbling, leaves. How did they get the toilet paper all the way to the top the way they did? Sean was going to need a ladder.
Just then, a crow darted down from one of the branches, a streamer of paper in its mouth. Soon, another crow was doing the same, and another, and another. The crows darted and dived and cackled, the streamers of paper raining down upon Petey’s shoulders, and on the lawn and on the flower beds all around her, the birds helping her with this one small task, and telling her with their shining wings and knowing laughter that the truly impossible ones were yet to come.
Roza
SLAUGHTER
AT FIRST, SHE FOUGHT. SHE JERKED AND SQUIRMED AND screamed. But there was no point. Her feet were stuck fast, the way the lamps in the suburban house had been stuck to the floor so she could not use them as weapons. Her feet were never going to be weapons. They ran when they shouldn’t, and stuck when they should run.
And then she saw the others. She had no idea where they’d come from, all these people hanging upside down. No ropes held them either, but they didn’t bother to jerk and squirm. They didn’t even seem to be conscious.
But of course they weren’t conscious.
They were dead.
Or close enough.
She might have thought she was dead, too, but she knew she wasn’t. The blood rushed to her head, making her woozy, but not woozy enough that she wasn’t aware her dress fell around her waist, exposing her legs, her underthings, her body. She fought the dress, too, couldn’t help it, fought to keep it in place, but her arms got tired, and soon she let her hands dangle, fingers reaching for the cloud beneath. How was it that cloud was beneath her? Why was it that she kept asking how when the man could do anything with this place, including turn it upside down when it suited him? The more time passed, the more powerful he got.
Would it be better or worse to be dead? Even if it was better to be dead, she had nothing with which to kill herself. Maybe hanging here would kill her.
Her fingers toyed with the clouds and she imagined Sean striding up to her, releasing her from this horrible prison. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him too much, because thinking of him made her sigh and the man would ask her about it, and he would touch her and she would remember the way she had touched Sean, and the sadness would grip her throat the way the icy-eyed man gripped her throat, and the touching would get mixed up in her head until the thought of anyone touching her ever again would make her want to rip off her own skin.
Sean had never told her he loved her. He’d given her his drawings, he had eaten her food as if he had been taking Communion, he’d trembled when she kissed him, but he had never said it. And neither had she, the two of them hiding behind their mother tongues as if there was no way to bridge the gap.
She was sorry she hadn’t been braver when she’d had the chance.
Nearby, a body swayed and her gut clenched, her pulse pounding in her ears and temples. He was coming, and he wouldn’t bother to ask questions anymore, because what and who she loved didn’t matter. But she had already decided. She would still say no, even though she could not escape, even though the world was flipped on its axis, even though her feet were bare and un
lovely and useless, even though she was practically half naked and so humiliated there wasn’t a word to capture it, even though she couldn’t be sure if Sean had ever loved her, even if this was the end of her, or just one of many terrible ends, she would say no, no, no, no, no.
“No,” she said. A low hiss came from one of the hanging bodies. Her left foot felt loose, and she peeled it from the grass above her.
“Roza!”
She opened her eyes. Someone was pushing through the sea of bodies, coming toward her, someone tall and dark and . . .
“Finn?”
“Roza!” Finn fumbled with the hem of her dress, pulled it up to cover her. “I knew it was you. I knew it. I saw your hair, and I thought . . . maybe? But it was your hands. I remembered that drawing Sean did. The drawing of your hands. Isn’t that crazy?”
It was more words than Finn had ever spoken to her at once, all shooting from his mouth in a heated burst, and she understood almost none of them. “Sorry?”
“Never mind.” He tugged at her leg. “How the hell are you stuck like this?” He stopped tugging at her legs and yelled, “I found her! You hear me, you creepy shit? I found her. Now you let her go!”
Whatever force was holding Roza’s sole to the earth above suddenly gave way, and Roza would have dropped headfirst into the clouds had Finn not caught her, setting her on her numb feet. Then there was another sickening flip of grass and sky, and the world was right side up again. The people, the thousands of people who had dangled so peacefully and quietly, now surrounded Roza and Finn, crouching like animals, needle teeth bared.