Page 91 - Vol. VI #1

them on their royal decrees. Off with their heads. But
not her. She herself was the point of continuation—or maybe breakage. Yes, that was it. She would not let the rippling layers within herself disrupt what she was—a hiatus between one kind of fortune and another entirely new kind, of her own creation. Losing her virginity was just the first step. Last night, she googled Atlanta, and saw blue and violet skyscrapers, squiggles of neon, a brash sky.
Spanish and English, feasting on guacamole and triple leche cake while outside, police cars clus- tered, throwing red and blue strobes across the space. Rachel spied her mother, bobbing amongst the jeweled guests. She would go down to her and insist that they leave right away, that they set off for Atlanta that very night. They would plunge through the darkness, that was the plan. They would be there by morning.
Perkins’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including Fiction Southeast, The Watershed Review, The Raleigh Review, Big Muddy, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Forge, Emrys, and others. She is a ction editor with the journal Sliver of Stone and an English faculty member at Indiana University East. She is currently working on a collection of interlinked short stories.
She went to the railing and looked down at the mix of people. The waxy, hot-house smell of the floral bou- quets rose to her face. No one had gone home. If any- thing, there were more people at the memorial buffet than before, like bright plastic roses, all chattering in
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