I.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a man sat in the crook of the sofa. He stabs spent cigarettes into ashtrays and controls the television. It isn\u2019t long before he tires of playing interim father figure to Tess. When she resists his advances, he tells her mother, \u201cI do believe this girl needs to learn the hard way what life is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mom puts Tess out and locks the doors for plenty of days.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s long enough for Tess to meet Brick, the brother of her classmate Adam. Brick is older. She has heard stories. He takes her to a restaurant where she orders a grilled cheese and fries. Tess likes his boots and the way he talks without moving his mouth a lot. He tells her about the three times he\u2019s been down. \u201cThat\u2019s why I eat like this,\u201d he says. One arm curves protectively around the plate, while the other lifts food halfway to his mouth. He moves his head down to meet each bite. She thinks, He\u2019s nice.<\/p>\n
He is her best option when he offers his bed.<\/p>\n
Says he\u2019ll sleep on the floor.<\/p>\n
And he does.<\/p>\n
Soon though he says, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty cold down here all by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tess moves to the floor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
II.<\/p>\n
Later when she peels apart the mildewed pages of a National Geographic<\/em> she\u2019d found in a corner of his apartment in his mother\u2019s basement, he tells Tess, \u201cThat\u2019s old as shit. Ain\u2019t been no seahorses in a hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s sat with just enough room for him and a bottle cushioned where the back and one side of the chair come together. His hand twitches over the buttons and knobs of a controller synced to one of many gaming consoles.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I saw Asian people eating them on a travel show,\u201d she argues. He swats the magazine to the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy you always lying, Tess? Shit. Travel show. For what?\u201d<\/p>\n Tess lifts the magazine from where it lies, pages broken apart, and puts it with the rest of the trash.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n III.<\/p>\n He decided on his name, \u201c\u2019Cause with a Brick, that\u2019s how I roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Tess can\u2019t say how no one says that\u2019s how I roll or how literally everyone knows his name is actually Allan. Or other things. Like, she sometimes skips school and seeks patterns in the cracked ceiling above his brother\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n With Brick she mostly keeps her head down. Mostly keeps her mouth shut.<\/p>\n But he takes her places.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n IV.<\/p>\n They\u2019re on the second floor of the city\u2019s natural history museum. Small and free.<\/p>\n Tess presses her forehead to the wall of glass and her eyes follow the curve of shoreline on to the horizon.\u00a0 Brick next to her is prying up the edges of a scab on his hairless head, varnishing his nails with rusty crusts of blood.<\/p>\n After a minute, Brick presses two of his fingers to the place on her neck where it meets her back and says, \u201cLookit. That\u2019s Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n Tess\u2019 lids quiver with the tension of almost but not quite closed. And there is a shadow, maybe an eyelash, but maybe what Brick says. Maybe she sees Chicago.<\/p>\n Brick pulls away a long strip of wallpaper from along the window frame.<\/p>\n \u201cI see it,\u201d Tess shouts and points like a fifteen-year-old-girl.<\/p>\n \u201cReally? Where?\u201d he says, dropping the curl of paper to the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cOver here?\u201d He puts his face to the window, eyes squinted. He smears the glass with oil and sweat from his nose. He pinches up a corner of his mouth, releasing a sound with his tongue and cheek like Velcro peeled apart. Brick shakes his head.<\/p>\n When she looks again, there is something until she blinks and now sees only her translucent reflection, floating in the blue, blue sky.<\/p>\n \u201cThat ain\u2019t where it would be.\u201d He moves his finger to a few inches east of the splotch he\u2019d left.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t so hazy over there. Right here.\u201d He taps with his stained fingernail. Tess looks at the white toe of her canvas sneaker. Back to the window where she sees it isn\u2019t hazy at all. Digs her shoe into the short-napped carpeting. Kicks at the snail of wallpaper. Checks the window again.<\/p>\n Her insides are icy and slick. Brick stops tapping. She lifts her face. His is close. \u201cYou ain\u2019t seen shit.\u201d He jabs a finger at the skin between her eyebrows. \u201cWhy you always lying? What are you thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n Tess rubs the tender spot on her forehead as a quake and its intent threatens to work from her belly to her voice box, to fill her mouth with words, words to change her fate, to at least say she\u2019s really late for school, but the tremor settles in her shoulders and instead of telling Brick it is her way to invent happiness with ignorance, to search and grab hold of a man, the truth, a skyscraper, to find any way out of this, she swallows hard and shrugs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tess can\u2019t tell Brick how no one says that\u2019s how I roll or how literally everyone knows his name is actually Allan. Or other things. Like, she sometimes skips school and seeks patterns in the cracked ceiling above his brother\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[2604,1111],"class_list":["post-20717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-abuse","tag-chicago","writer-tammy-peacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21185,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions\/21185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}