101 Words

He said an artist’s eye is forensic. He specialised in cityscapes, harsh truths. He told her the nicotine color of her hair echoed vagrants’ fingers. Her speckled shirt evoked bubble-gummed sidewalks. Her…

She stood, lifted a hank of hair and waggled it like a painter’s brush. “Caramel,” she said. “Hairdressers call it caramel.” Her Americano toppled as she reached for her coat, the steaming pool a reminder to ghost him.

He wondered again if his soulmate filtering strategy was really working in his best interests.

She skipped handsome guys whose profiles didn’t say much and re-tinted platinum blonde.

Now that he’s gone, the rental hospital bed that dominated the living room for months appears larger. My sisters and I ignore its presence waiting for it to be removed.

When the bed is gone too, we rearrange the furniture into its old layout. We sit side by side on the couch, torn between feelings of relief, abandonment and loss. Then we hear it. Footfalls in his empty bedroom. Leather soles scuffing the hardwood. Strong. Steady. We listen, and for a heartbeat we are young again—three little girls waiting for our father to drive us for ice cream once more.

The aliens came from above. At first, they were just a myth, a folk-tale: someone somewhere heard something. Suddenly, stories began to multiply: witnesses were emerging. The aliens were real.

They started taking us. Their ships scarred our skies. Fear became a perpetual state of mind in which we lived. Still, we tried to communicate; we sang the most beautiful songs, but they fell on deaf ears.

The aliens were brutal, massacring us, using us for amusement, tearing out our songs. Separated, tortured, and poisoned, we lost everything.

Our songs echoed through the ocean with sadness, until we were no more.

We spend the summer resenting each other. His parents hired me to teach him English and follow the dust clouds he kicks up on the road to the beach. We sit on the veranda in the citric glow of sunset. There’s a cry from the yard.

We wade through waist-high weeds, then crouch to watch kittens blindly sniffing the air. But we leave them, thinking of the fox kit his father drowned in the laundry’s cast-iron sink.

He cries until dawn creeps in; then I hold him as he sleeps. Outside a cat slinks past, a mouse caught in its jaws.

A quietness spread within me, and I paced around the library aisles. Their laughter traveled past the shelves. The sounds just seemed so familiar.

His snort. A smack tells me she slapped her thigh. Quiet wheezing. Silence. Then, more laughter.

I knew it all exactly. Still, I knew I’d never be able to talk with them as I did in the spring.

Staring out the window, I watched the leaves of trees fall in the wind. The mixed colors of autumn an ever present reminder of the passage of time. Leaves crumple up, fall off, and get replaced. Just like me.

Justin searched eBay: rings, earrings—there! That necklace. Perfect. $19.50. He could spend up to $30 for Brooke. That would show Marcus—Borman, or Bogemill or Brantly, or whatever his name was—that senior that Brooke couldn’t stop ogling.

Justin bid $22.50.

Someone named MBoggs bid $27.00.

Justin $28.00.

MBoggs $29.00.

Justin bid $30.00. He held his breath.

MBoggs bid $32.00.

S**t!

Justin bid $33. 36. 38. $42.50. Victory!

The next day, Justin heard Marvin apologize to Brooke, “I bid on eBay on a necklace for you, but some jerk bid it way up.” Brooke smiled and crooned, “That’s okay, MBoggs.”