Camille DeAngelis

You ain’t never gonna feel nothin’ other people ain’t been through a million times before.

Things couldn’t be too hopeless if somebody was still bothering to wash the sheets.

“But I don’t see what the point of it is, if you’re not going to finish it.”

“Can’t you say the same for livin’? Just goes on and on, and no reason for it.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Suddenly the days and weeks and months stretching out before me looked even bleaker than they had yesterday or the day before.

Man, I thought, his acne is really bad. I turned back to my sneakers. I hate it when there’s something wrong with somebody and you end up thinking of them as the girl or boy with the problem, as if the hundred extra pounds or the lazy eye is the only important thing there is to know about them.

Lee reached out a hand for the radio dial, and I batted it away. “Do you mind?” I said impatiently.

He rolled his eyes. “Forgive me, Sister Maren.”

Lee stifled a burp. “Well said.” I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

“Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Lee asked as we stood in the doorway.

“Yup,” I said. And we ran across the thick beige carpet and leapt into the air, giggling like little kids as we landed heavily on a comforter made to look like it had been quilted by hand.

He took hold of my hand, squeezed it, and released, and after that I didn’t know where to put my hands.

A woman in a wheelchair was knitting a scarf with blunt-tipped plastic needles. The scarf seemed to go on for yards and yards, changing colors and folding itself into piles in her lap before disappearing into a large floral-patterned handbag on the floor beside her. She plowed on with competent, listless movements, not even looking at her needles as she knit. A scarf for a giant, or a scarf for nobody.

Mama didn’t love me anymore.