still as a body in a grave.
VISION
My father guides the truck over the land through the town to the big cemetery. Here, the strangers are buried. The sun is fat and hot in the blue sky.
“You ready to play our favorite game?” my father asks.
“Yes! Let’s play it!”
He stops the truck and we climb out. The steel black gate lets out a low moan when he unlatches it. We step into the cemetery, long green grass sprouting up between the headstones which jab up out of the ground like strange granite teeth.
“And... GO!” my father shouts.
I work my way through the cemetery, weaving through the graves. I get lost in the names, the small tombstones.
My father is always faster than I am. He starts shouting his numbers. “1913! 1908! 1898!”
I shout mine back once I catch up, heart pounding. “1916! 1884! 1911!”
“1879!” my father yells, and he is the winner.
We climb back into the car. He puts a very sad song on the stereo and hums along as he drives us to the ice cream store, the second part of our ritual.
“I’ll still buy you one,” my father says.
We both buy vanilla. We don’t speak on the drive home, just listen to the very sad song again and again as he navigates us home.
ONE AFTERNOON IS DIFFERENT FROM the rest. Sophia and I are alone in the house, which is quiet. I like the silence like that, a blanket.
“I want to teach you a new game,” Sophia says. “I learned it from Jarred. Let’s go into your bedroom.”
In the dull afternoon light, she climbs into my bed with me.
She slides her knee between my legs.
“This is called rocking horse,” she says. “Jarred loves this game.”
Then she moves her leg until my face flushes and my body trembles, until pink sweetness explodes from between my legs and floods my veins.
AT LUNCH, I CHEW A SANDWICH. JARRED does the same. His eyes catch mine. We lock gazes until he slams his sandwich down on the table.
My pulse quickens as he walks to my table. He gets close enough to drop his head to mine, his lips near my ear.
“Stop looking at me, you fucking freak,” he whispers. “You’re disgusting.”
He walks back to his seat and sits down. I keep my head down, fill my mouth again with bread.
VISION
I go straight for my father’s tools. I find a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The tools are heavy and cold in my hand. I trust metal.
In my bedroom, I strip off my clothes. The pliers in my right hand, the screwdriver in my left. I wrap the mouth of the pliers around the first twist of the knot. Ijam the screwdriver into the knot’s crevice.
I pull with all of my might, my teeth grinding against each other. I want the pliers and the screwdriver to splinter me, I want to undo myself. Blood rushes from my knot in thick red streams.
My bedroom door opens, and my mother fills the doorway.
“What are—” she starts. Then she is on me, ripping the tools from my hands.
“What is wrong with you?” she demands.
“I want it gone!” I scream. “I want to be like Sophia!”
My mother puts me into the bath, both of us silent, only the pink water making sound. Soon I’m surrounded by the warm water, eyes closed. Then my mother’s hand is on my cheek.
SOPHIA LIVES CLOSER TO THE SCHOOL. She takes me home one afternoon. At her house, everything is proper.
Her mother is in the den. Her mother is a thin, sharp woman. She is precise as a knife. She says, “No sugar, remember,” and hands us carrots to eat.
At Sophia’s house, there are rules about sugar, screaming, laughing too loud. We go to Sophia’s room, which is pristine and pastel pink. We sit on her bedroom floor. I confess again.
“I feel so sad some days,” I whisper.
Pain has been welling up inside of me: My knot makes me other.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I run a hand over my stomach. I feel as if I am from another planet.
“I just want someone to take it away,” I say.
Sophia nods. In her eyes, I see a big warmth which expands. She reaches out and touches my hand. My pain becomes a bit smaller. We don’t play rocking horse at Sophia’s house, but there is this.
I WALK WITH MY BROTHER INTO THE Acres. The land stretches all around us. My brother carries his mallet and shovel. He’s meant to test my instinct.
“How do you know where the meat will be?” I ask my brother. “Teach me how to sense.”
“Dunno,” he says. “It’s like I have a magnet in my gut and it pulls me there.”
“Find one then,” I say.
We keep walking until a small hum comes from my brother’s mouth. It sounds like the thrum of metal.
“Here,” he murmurs.
The ground is nothing but sparse dirt. I stomp a foot to be sure. It feels no different than any other land under foot.
“No, no. Don’t do that.”
His breath quickens. He stands strong on a certain spot. His fingers move to the buttons on his shirt and he undoes them one by one. Bare chested, he lifts his mallet into the air above his head and brings it down to the ground.
The earth shakes with the puncture. The mallet leaves a deep dent in the dirt.
“Let’s take a look,” he says.
We bend over the new hole, stare down into the deep dirt.
“See, the dirt gets redder at the bottom. Step back.”
He lifts the mallet again and drops it once more into the same hole, driving deeper this time.
We lean over the hole again, which slowly fills with red liquid. Blood rises up from the meat below to the upper crust of the
