Jenni pulls a friend on an invisible leash, like property.<\/p>\n
\u201cSarah wanted to come. Hope that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenni is 4\u20199, red hair, freckles, limbs too short for her trunk. Sarah is taller, charcoal hair, transparent.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s ten a.m.<\/p>\n
My roommate smirks as we pass. I flip him off. He clutches his imaginary pearls.<\/p>\n
The bed swallows my room. Sarah is asleep in the time it takes to look away and back. Jenni and I sit beside her, me in the middle.<\/p>\n
Jenni talks. I stammer. Start, stop. Painful pauses. She teases, sees me folding inward. Kisses me. My eyes drift to Sarah but Jenni pulls me back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fine. She\u2019ll be like that for hours.\u201d Smile like a spotlight. For a few seconds I\u2019m whole. Easier to be chosen than to choose.<\/p>\n
Shirts off. Her skin cold at first, then hot. Breath heavy and wet in my ear. She moves fast, repeats directions that sound practiced. My roommate throws a ball against our shared wall. Keeping time.<\/p>\n
Sarah shifts. Her hand grazes my thigh\u2014light, static, gone. Awake through the slits of her eyes. Watching. Her lips part, start to form a shape, but there\u2019s only air.<\/p>\n
I want to hear what she was going to say but I pull away. She pulls closer. I stare at Jenni\u2019s hair spread across the pillowcase. Low thread count, rough on my face. I should buy something nicer.<\/p>\n
When Jenni\u2019s done, she pulls the comforter over us with a wave, careful to not flip Sarah off the bed. I fall asleep.<\/p>\n
When I wake, Sarah is spooning me. Jenni\u2019s gone but I can hear the shower down the hall. I try to roll away, but an arm is wrapped tight. I stare at the ceiling fan and listen to the water running through the pipe in the wall. It goes silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to be home for my grandma\u2019s birthday or Mom will kill me.\u201d Jenni holds a finger on my bottom lip. \u201cWanna come?\u201d Drips it like honey.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t but it\u2019s more a command than a question. Sarah stirs. She watches me get dressed, a command there too. There\u2019s a moon-shaped scar above her right eye that doesn\u2019t move when she blinks. A frown when she notices me staring back, but she won\u2019t look away.<\/p>\n
Jenni puts us in the back seat of her car like pets. The world blurs. Bird song at stop lights. Soon, Sarah and I are helping each other out of the car and crawling up steps.<\/p>\n
Jenni knocks and goes in. \u201cWait here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The house has columns. A place where a judge lives. Grass too green, air of lemon polish.<\/p>\n
Mumbling, then a sharp \u201cPlease, leave.\u201d The words yell, the voice does not. The door creaks open.<\/p>\n
I see the silhouette of her mom in a sundress, blacked out by the chandelier behind her. The door closes. Too late. Whatever it was, already over. Sorry, Grandma.<\/p>\n
Jenni\u2019s paler than usual. Her freckles look like wounds. But she\u2019s got a plan. She always does. We\u2019re moving again. Another friend to see.<\/p>\n
The houses get smaller. Yards turn to dirt. Asphalt splits wide. My hand surfs the air out the window. We pull into a trailer park and up to a sagging single-wide. The smell of mold hits before the door opens. A duct-taped window unit vibrates cheerfully.<\/p>\n
Johnny\u2019s younger than us. Skinny, bad skin. Controller in hand. His t-shirt: \u201cWV State Academic Team Champions\u20142003\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey.\u201d He smiles without looking, keeps playing. We sink in around him. He doesn\u2019t make room for us.<\/p>\n
From the hallway: \u201cYou shit! I asked you to do the laundry!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll do it,\u201d half to us, half to the wall.<\/p>\n
Then his mom\u2019s here\u2014loud, wet hair, pulling at clothes. Doesn\u2019t see us even though we fill the space. Johnny drops the controller. His fingers twitch like he\u2019s still playing.<\/p>\n
He mutters \u201cSorry,\u201d says he forgot. She keeps going, voice raw static.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, please, stop. I said sorry.\u201d She\u2019s off planet, performing for someone else. Jenni fidgets. Johnny looks at each of us, pleading.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what I had to do to pay for that stupid game?\u201d She stabs a finger at the Xbox. Johnny crumbles.<\/p>\n
I sink into the couch. Sarah is crawling out of her body beside me. Jenni\u2019s giving us the same look she uses when she needs to be rescued in a club.\u00a0 She points to the door. Whispers something I don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n
Johnny\u2019s crying, pushing his mom back toward the hall, shaking apart. The whole house rattles. I rattle too.<\/p>\n
We slide out. Jenni says \u201cCall you later,\u201d to the screen door slamming behind us. She lights a cigarette twice, blows smoke sideways. A few inhales and her mask is back, cracked at the edges.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s get out of here. I\u2019ll figure out someone else to buy from. Can we hang at your place?\u201d I keep my mouth shut.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was fucked.\u201d<\/p>\n
First thing Sarah has said all day. Her head\u2019s on my shoulder. Tugging on me like gravity.<\/p>\n
Jenni makes eyes at us. A puppy in mourning. We bend and bend. She flicks cigarette ash into the weeds and jiggles her keys. We spend the rest of the day on her errands.<\/p>\n
Tired now. Hours later, the low sun hums orange. We\u2019re somewhere else. Maybe back where we started. Sarah\u2019s looking at me, her mouth starting to open again. I turn toward the window.<\/p>\n
Mine or her place? Same carpet. Different windows. Something strange in my blood. Fingers numb.<\/p>\n
The stereo\u2019s on, but I can\u2019t tell what song\u2019s playing. It\u2019s all bass. Just a vibration in my chest. No shape.<\/p>\n
Skin tingling electric. Hard to breathe. Jenni\u2019s devouring Sarah on a couch that looks like it\u2019s upholstered with an orange muppet. Wounds lit up, freckles on fire now. That smile.<\/p>\n
The door is open. They\u2019d forget about me until the morning. Time to walk away. It\u2019s cold out there though. Thinner air. Too many choices.<\/p>\n
My legs don\u2019t move, the room does. Everything touching me, cutting, holding.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m on the orange couch, part melted muppet, drowning in Sarah. Jenni above us, mouth floating between ours like she\u2019s feeding baby birds. No orchestration, just drift, caught in the tide with us. I let go of me.<\/p>\n
Sarah\u2019s hand finds one of mine. Squeezes. I try to squeeze back.<\/p>\n
A hand on Jenni\u2019s hip that looks like mine but I can\u2019t feel it. Then another, and another, until I\u2019m all hands, pulling myself apart. Freckles swarm, crawl across skin, burrow in. Half of me tries to run away. The other half wants to melt, sees the safety of it. A fast breath, then a slow one. Keep going. Keep going.<\/p>\n
No. Try to climb back to myself. Too late. No one missed him. Pool of flesh, filling up the room. No edges left. Flash of light. Heat of the sun. Then we\u2019re sliding deeper and deeper into black.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s later. A million years. Five minutes. No frame of reference. Something screams that we\u2019re lost. But there\u2019s warmth all around. And heartbeats. I follow them to the surface.<\/p>\n
Cracks in my lips burn and stretch. Sunlight sneaking through the edges of the blinds. Jenni and Sarah are knotted around me. I slither free.<\/p>\n
Stumble to the bathroom. Pictures of smiling people on the walls. Pill planner on the vanity. The man in the mirror walks away.<\/p>\n
The girls where I left them. I cover them in a blanket and Sarah\u2019s eyes open.<\/p>\n
She mouths “Stay”. A hand reaches out.<\/p>\n
Not sure who she\u2019s talking to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Easier to be chosen than to choose. Jenni knows this. She pulls us through the day on an invisible leash\u2014her grandmother’s birthday, a trailer park, a couch that looks like an orange muppet\u2014until there’s no edges left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":25296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-chris-dodds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24280","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=24280"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25297,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24280\/revisions\/25297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}