fiction
Copyright Jessica Mehr, 2018.
May not be reproduced without written permission.
astronomy for the lost
Published in Silent Voices II.
Spring 2006
Copyright Nasa.gov/hubble.
December 15, 2011
The first thing I know for sure is that they are trying to pull me from the car. I am lying on my left side, pressed against the driver’s door, and the road has broken in through my side window, leaving a framed square of pavement that is littered with chunks of dirty snow. If I could just move this airbag I would be able to breathe much better. I am spinning still, almost awake, but not really. It reminds me of when I had my tonsils out as a boy, and the doctor put a rubber mask over my face and said to count backwards from a hundred. By ninety-five I was sleeping, but my eyes still open, as if I were watching myself while the doctor spoke in long, groggy syllables, go to sleep, go to sleep.
Glass breaks above me and a rush of cold air shoots in through the sunroof. Someone cuts my seat belt and pop—the airbag deflates with a hissing sound. Two yellow sleeves reach in, lock onto my arms and try to lift me, pulling me sideways towards the center of the car where Katie is missing completely and the door is crushed in over her seat. It is exposed in a mechanical diagram of levers and pulleys and locks, and this would really interest Katie if she were where she is supposed to be.
My father used to say that bad things happen when you’re where you’re not supposed to be, like if you go someplace you wouldn’t normally, but I’ve never believed in that.
dear old boy
Awarded Residency at Byrdcliffe Artist Colony
2011
Copyright ca. 1999. Delmar, California, usa. royalty-free/corbis
On Friday afternoons, Isabelle’s dad took her to the Monmouth Race Track, where she sat at the bar picking ponies and her dad smoked pack after pack of Pall Mall Reds. It was August and they had rented a house on the beach in Point Pleasant, too far from Atlantic City to get there and back without being missed. Izzie was supposed to be at swimming lessons, which her mother was forcing her to take at the Community Pool. She preferred the smell of horses to chlorine, the way their shiny calves kicked up small explosions of dirt. The bar her dad drank at was VIP only, a bright but windowless room where they gave her free food and sodas. She liked being alone with her dad, who was spending more time down the shore that summer than he usually did. Before he worked at a big law firm in Secaucus, but now he had stopped going to court and instead wandered up to Trenton once or twice a week to look for cases.
“I need a horse for the fourth,” her dad said. He’d cashed his entire pay check. His face was red and his hair was white.