Heather Troyer

      "I can't walk with you any further.  My shoe's untied."  The shorter young woman stood at the edge of the sidewalk for a moment, then let her body down into a crumpled heap on the cool evening grass.  
     "Well, that might be acceptable.  So you're not going to make it to my room with me, but at least you're not going to dis me for your homework, as usual.  Just your shoe."
     "What?  I--I don't--do that.  Do I?  Renee?"
     "Well--um, yes."  The tall curly brunette laughed and sat down beside the sprawling one. "At least you're my sister so I can spend Christmases with you.  Marilyn, you'd better hope there are no dandelion seeds in this grass, or you won't be writing any paper tonight.  You'll just be breaking out in one of those mean rashes."
     "I have to write this paper.  Tonight."  
     Marilyn stared at the sentence in her journal, then flung the slim notebook aside.  Five hours after the conversation was over she had not yet done any work done on her paper past stacking books and notes of similar themes into tidy piles.  The organizational basis of the piles had changed seven times.  Between each of these re-organization sessions she had spent about twenty minutes on such tasks as wrapping an ankle swollen by poison ivy with a mint green washcloth, dusting a CD player, and washing the bathroom sink.  She most recently had been fulfilling an all-consuming desire to record conversations from earlier in the day.  Not that there had been so overwhelmingly many.  Most of the afternoon and eveing had been spent at an aunt's, interviewing her about animal rights activist experience and eating dinner.  Some really applicable material had been gleaned.  Marilyn's most vivid memory of the time spent at her house, however, concerned the ten minutes she had passed staring at a particular hand towel while using the bathroom.  It had been of a pale pink color.  A tragic shade.  Or hilarious.  It was debatable.
     The creak of an opening door interrupted her musings.  Her brother Paul walked in and sat down on the bed.  "What are you doing, closed up in here all night?"
     "I'm writing a paper."  She turned to her blank computer screen and quickly typed a sentence.  "I hate papers," it said.
     "What's it about?"
     "Oh, this and that.  Animal rights."  "What is he doing in here he's really distracting me," she typed.  "What you doing?" she asked.
     "Oh, well, we had a pretty awesome game tonight.  I scored some goals, we won.  Ah, do you know Devin Sanders?"
     "I'm busy and I hate papers," she typed.  "i hate them so much I could just kill them all. yes I'm stupid."  "Um, is he Joel's cousin?  The one from Florida?"
     "Yeah.  Well, I was just going to go over to Smith's for a little bit.  People are going there because he's just here for the weekend and all.  You wanna come?"
     Marilyn entered several more lines into her computer.  "Who is Devin Sanders if he were really worth anything maybe he could have mercy on me because I'm so awful at everything I do. perhaps this is all unnecessary i don't really believe any of it, you know," they read.  "Of course I want to come with you, but I can't," she replied, half angrily, half wearily.  "If I weren't the
biggest failure in the Western World I might have this paper almost done, and then we could do something."
     "Well, good luck.  Oh, um, Mom called me this afternoon.  They're thinking about coming down in May sometime.  Or they might just wait until the end of the year.  Which would be May."
     "Uh-huh.  Thanks.  Okay, have fun."  "I-" she typed as he pulled the door shut behind him, "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII."  "I am jealous," she growled to the luminous computer screen.  She pulled an unopened bag of raspberry Newtons from a desk drawer.  She carefully tore one end open and extracted a cookie.  It was gone in eight careful bites.  She took out the next and finished it in five.  The next six went down in four fast chomps.  Marilyn ran downstairs to the kitchen.  Trembling, she opened the end flaps on a box of vanilla ice cream.  She gouged out several mouthfuls with her finger before succeeding in pulling a spoon from the drawer.  The burning sensation of the cold finger went unnoticed as the rest of her body tensed with a tingling thrill.  She shoveled in about a pint of the box before stopping to catch her breath.
     Back at her desk Marilyn zoned out, staring at the screen-saving fish drifting across her computer screen.  She slouched between her chair and the drawer directly in front of her to take some weight off of her uncomfortably full stomach.  They had certainly used all colors of the rainbow to paint her fish.  There was even a pink one.  She had never noticed.  She couldn't believe she had never noticed the pink one.  She thought of the pale pink bedroom she used to have when they lived on the farm.  It had had three great big windows she had always kept open all summer too, the sound of cicadas mingled with the smell of freshly cut grass often blowing in from the backyard.  Once when she had been picking up sticks out there so her mom could mow she had told her brother to get with the program and shoved him as he just stood there, digging a toe into the ground.  He was supposed to be helping.  And he had called out an insult to her favorite cat as the honorable feline ran by.  He had struck back at her, and she again at him, and he went after her with his fingernails until she broke her vicious stare from his to see angry lines all shades of pink and red criss-crossing the tender insides of her bare arms.  Marilyn stared at the bright blue vein meandering its way down her wrist now.  She hooked the arm around the back of her monitor and placed her chin on the keyboard, eyes three inches from the screen. Who knew exactly what position might be most condusive to that illusive first sentence.  But this was hard on her stomach.  She eased back into her slouch.
     Several hours later the phone roused her from an awkward sleep at her desk.
     "Hi, Marilyn--this is Renee," said a soft voice when she picked it up.
     "Hi," she croaked gently.
     "Um, I'm really sorry I didn't call you--like--an hour ago.  I just fell asleep right when I got home."
     "Okay."  Marilyn cleared her throat.  "That's okay."
     "Well, I'll come over a little bit later. Paul got picked up for drunk driving."
     "What?"  She choked a bit on the word.
     "And, um--well, yeah.  That was right after he took a shoe from Wal-Mart.  They're open twenty-four hours now, you know.  They found it in his car."
     "He stole a shoe?"
     "Yes."
     "Just, uh, one shoe?"
     "One shoe," Renee whispered tiredly.
     "But--he just--bought me a whole bag of groceries the other day.  On him.  He offered."
     "Yeah.  Well, I'll see you soon, okay?"
     "Okay. Goodbye.  Hey, come soon.  I mean, if you can, maybe.  'Bye--Um, Renee--maybe we can go shopping today ."
     "Maybe."
     "I'm sorry I walked through a mud puddle in your shoes that one time, when I wore them."
     "What?  I don't remember."
     "Well.  You were seven years old.  I was five . . . 'Bye."
     Marilyn placed the receiver in its groove.  She picked a ribbed cotton sock off of the floor and placed it on her right foot.  The one without too much poison ivy.  She found her worn Birks lying beside the front door and slipped them on as she went out.  The rising sun cast a faint glow through the row of budding trees across the way.  A white minivan moved her way from the left as she stepped into the street.  Its wheels were rotating quite rapidly, she noticed, spinning into single silver disks rimmed with black.  Though houses fell away behind it on either side of the street, the dusty vehicle seemed suspended in time.  A great curiosity took hold of her.  What a truly intriguing experience it would be to remain right where she was, not swerving from the path of the oncoming vehicle, simply staring at the view through its windshield that grew in detail by the millisecond.  A sudden blast from the van's horn startled her, and she jumped back onto the curb.  The rush of air following the van's passing blew her hair from her face and set the flowering branches of a nearby tree to rustling.  Tiny pink blossoms were heaped upon every inch of its limbs.  Some fell to the ground below, adding to a scattered and pale carpet.  A flowering tree really was a wonderful sort of thing.  She meowed.  It was a compliment to the flowering species that would never be mass-produced for paper mills.  And it was a victory cry.