HE TOLD ME TO CONNECT THE DOTTED LIGHTS of the highway into maps, shapes of beauty. Shapes of beauty to him. I did not, and let my toes compress the dirt like I was going to imbibe the earth with my soles. My toes were teeth. I began to fill.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about my father falling like that.” He said this a lot because his father fell and hit his head. “I know I am boring you, sorry.” He said this because he was boring, but also because he wanted me to feel sorry for him. He liked to talk about how his father’s blood got on his hands. He didn’t have much else to say.
I indulged him and reached out, pulling my finger between the distant lights. They connected into a sinew of vibrating suns, a continuous star, like I could see it stretching to and from eternity. He smiled and leaned closer. I swished the awful beer he brought with us to the top of the mountain, overlooking our concrete valley.
“Do you get scared about things like that?” he asked. I did, but that wasn’t something I wanted to say. I couldn’t break up with him like I planned, so instead I felt my skin erupt and grow grass, so he would find it hard to touch me. I billowed over in green and he said it to me, like he always did. “Is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?” It dripped from his mouth in little, magma beads and they fell on the picnic blanket he dug up from his closet. It smoldered, because he wasn’t actually, between the two of us, concerned for me.
“No,” I said. It was a special shame to have, to be ready to hurt someone I loved, or thought I did, at some point between a ferris wheel and a pulled-over car. His frown was pulled away from me, because he was, secretly, already angry.
I felt my skin erupt and grow grass, so he would find it hard to touch me.
We began to be surrounded by fireflies, which I hypnotized into my hand. He watched me as I played with them. I played with them until I knew it hurt us both to share company. He clawed. “I think we can work it out.”
He held my hand. I ate the fireflies. Snapped one by one. They threw themselves about on my tongue. I think he understood. He let go of my hand.
It was my mistake, not saying anything to him, not really, wishing he would disappear instead, with everything he was and would be, with his lusting earthquakes and the arches of his fingers. So he did. It was silent, and I thought I could hear him scream, but after hours of watching, he was faded, and dusty, and then gone, no different than the sear of cold breeze on my eyes, making me blink.
When he was gone, I took a long drink. It was morning. Warm light sucked on the back of my neck and I still couldn’t stop shivering.
Jono Naito is a game designer and author. She has work in Longform, StoryQuarterly, and forthcoming from cream city review and Paper Darts. Learn more about her work at jononaito.com
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