Black Fox Literary Magazine Issue #13

Lois returned to her car for the last of the groceries next door. Everything about her looked rehearsed. The bounce in her walk. Curls teased to look the right kind of nappy. Fake nails curling around the air.

“Wanna help me get the rest of these bags?” she asked, opening her car’s back door.

“Nah, looks like you’ve got it all together.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you take it to mean.”

Lois closed the door, careful not to let it slam.

“Why’s everything always a struggle with you?

Everyone’s not the enemy. You don’t get points here for being the rebel.”

Raynah flicked ash from her cigarette onto Sir’s porch.

She used a fallen branch to scratch the sock inside her shoe.

“I don’t know what happened to you out there,” Lois continued, staring at the patch of yard between their parents’ houses. “Honestly, I don’t know what else to say anymore.”

“You knew what to say to Tony.”

“That’s what this is about?”

Lois let out a wry laugh.

“Tony and I have a kid together. That means, relationship or not, we’re bound forever. And, if you must know, we are together again.”

Jealousy and regret gripped Raynah as misery darkened her sister’s face. It had been nearly three years since Quentin’s 71