Page 95 - TheBridge_Vol16
P. 95
ATLAS
Laura Fredd
because if I don’t then plunging spastic school halls. The other boys chuckled, some
neural nagging and desire salivating, it’s without the machismo their letterman jackets
been eight months since and five months coerced, only because they knew how it’d
out I didn’t know he’d be around, I thought look if they didn’t react to the alpha. The girls
maybe Mom’d cleaned out my toolbox cringed at the thought of unwanted body
but I guess by some destiny I hid it well in hair, some because it represented their own
the closet crawlspace, what d’you know, I involuntary demotion to that pair of tits, that
left myself a clean pack; the flimsy plastic round ass, those pouty plump lips that’d be
package crinkles and my trusty sterling better off fellating than talking. She walked
bumps against the shallow wooden wall of faster away as those words regressed to
the box, it was only a little he didn’t even memories of second grade.
charge, just the surging sorrow his voice
provoked when I heard him come in through “So soft, like baby down,” the bus driver had
the front door, not sure when the assembly said to her several years before, calloused, worn
became robotic but, just like Dad taught me, hands caressing. The school bus smelled like
it’s cooked and packed just sitting there, my wet metal and melted cherry lollipops. Friday
thumb’s tender from catching on the flame, afternoons, driving just slightly faster in
I didn’t want to come back here but I wasn’t camouflaged anticipation, he’d take the dirt
sure I didn’t. road down to the old water treatment plant.
He never took so long that anyone would
― suspect anything; but then there wouldn’t
be anyone waiting for her to get off the bus
She often said she was doomed. anyway. Mom and Dad were busy.
She first learned the word from a movie, That was the thing about grass on the
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. field. The blades sprouted before the grass
Mom and Dad had it on VHS. It was her would start flowering dandelions. Pubic
favorite in the trilogy. hair, fledgling curves of breasts and hips,
all before the age of ten. Bases loaded to
“What’s doom, Daddy?” she asked. third on the field.
“It’s when there’s no hope, baby.” ―
― Mom and Dad fought a lot. There was love,
but there was chaos, and drinking. She
“If there’s grass on the field, play ball,” she thought there really was special water in
overheard a boy say in a small cluster of Mom’s glass one weekend afternoon when
seniors as she passed by them in the high she was six. Mom usually got really happy
Vol. XVI | 83
