Di pauses, looking inquiringly at Beddy. Void stays hovering where he is, and she pulls the door closed, but in that space of time before it does he says, “Go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back. I’ll always be here.” Beddy looks back at the door. Out of the corner of her eye,…
It’s him. The opportunist. The leech. A damn traitor, really. Void. Turn around and he won’t be here. Turn around and he won’t be here. He is just a voice in her head. His body is in her head, too. She turns around. Void is there, holding a fork in front of his face, looking…
Void first visited Beddy in the fall of second grade, the day after she accompanied her mother to the clinic. It was a long walk from their house, and Beddy trailed behind. “Ma, how much further?” “As further as it takes. Brian’s at work, otherwise I’d have him take me. It should really be him.” Ma…
Beddy awakes feeling spiritually jetlagged, her senses gray as an Osmond morning. The clock reads 10:43 AM but you couldn’t tell from inside her room, which when her heavy denim curtains are drawn is oblivious to light. “Like a crack den,” Connie likes to say when she sleeps over. Beddy thinks that’s how rooms should…
“Good night, Carrie,” she says. She does not sleep long. Like always, her eyes flash open when they close in the dream. The shutting of a door to one world behind her, and the opening of another. She shivers. Her sheets and comforter are damp and she swims her naked body through them. She must…
Beddy opens her eyes. She is normal size again. The crowd is all looking toward the stage, and she follows their gaze. Wade Scherer, a fellow sophomore, steps onto the stage carrying a folded piece of paper, his tuxedo pants slung low on his waist, his top too small, making his torso and arms seem…
When she reaches the twin doors she pauses, paralyzed by awe. Most of that awe is for the terrifying unknown, sure, of what lies beyond those doors, but some of it is reserved for herself. She got here. Ambushed. Delayed. But she’s here. She throws open both heavy doors, tearing the lid off the music…
The barrier gate arm lifts and she drives onto the pier wondering what catastrophe had at last befallen someone other than her. It’s only after she passes the tourist storefronts shuttered for the night, their wares swaying like ghosts on a clothesline, and draws closer to those anxiously circling red lights that she wonders “who”…
Todd or no Todd, the dance goes on. And even if she makes it in time for only one song, she is going to dance to that one song. She throws open her door and marches down the hall to the single upstairs bathroom. Turns on the water in the shower and steps in before it gets…
“I clean my mouth ‘cause froth comes out,” Ms. Phair commiserates. “Send it up on fire. Death before dawn. Send it up on fire. Death before dawn.” She squeezes the arms of her chair. How could Todd do this? After she’d done practically the whole report for him. After she gave him years of love in her mind, never…
Bedelia Albert dresses methodically, laying clothes over her chair and bed with tender detail, like a nun preparing the sacrament. She handles each piece gently, like the fabric might bruise. Music pumps from a tape deck above her desk. “We are strong,” Ms. Benatar reassures her. “No one can tell us we’re wrong.” The door…
Osmond is a surf town, but the sun is a cruel flirt. She rarely bares her face. Fog often wreaths the day in gray parentheses, leaving a narrow early afternoon oasis in which to perform any number of sunborne tasks and recreations: the furtive tan, the car wash, the picnic tryst. It necessitates windshield wipers,…