You Go First

Every Friday night after that Mum wore lipstick and disappeared with Carl. I sulked in front of a television resurrected from the basement and had permission to eat whatever I wanted, which made me want to eat nothing at all. I turned up the volume to block out the sound of Jason in his driveway whacking a tennis ball against the crumbling brick side of his house with his palm.

My mother asked me why we weren’t friends anymore.

“Because he showed me his thing,” I said spitefully.

“Well,” she smiled sympathetically, “it’s perfectly normal to want to explore your bodies.”

“Maybe I don’t want normal! Maybe I want things to be like they were before!” I shouted. Everything was wrong. Dad was gone, my feet were giant, and I was afraid of the cemetery now because I knew someone who had died on the couch next door. It was like there were suddenly dead people on this side of the cemetery wall; everything was flipped around.

My mother looked down, took a breath. “Things weren’t very happy before, Meg,” she exhaled. “Just familiar.”

The following Friday evening I stared out the kitchen window and watched Jason heave his not-inconsiderable bulk over the cemetery wall. He was clutching a plastic bag in one hand. I followed, hoisted myself up and over, and found Jason crouched by his mother’s grave, planting flowers where we’d used to rip them from the ground.

“Hey,” I called out.

“Hey,” he said back.

“You could bury this,” I said hesitantly, hand outstretched.