The broken family lasted one day or so. Her father began fixing up the house, to get ready to sell, he said. But her mother cried, she fought, and she fucking fought hard. The next morning the family sat together and had a recovery meal at IHOP. The pancakes were much sweeter than the strawberry cake. Megan’s mother asked if she would like to celebrate her birthday the following day.
Megan would move in with her mother to a little two bedroom townhouse. Her brother would be there twice a week and they would have to share a room, the way fish did in a tank. When she started high school, she’d sneak out of her window onto the roof, and shimmy down the adjacent tree. She would grow calluses on her palms until her hands became indistinguishable from her brothers.
Megan’s idea of romance was built from years of Disney and Nicholas Sparks. She knew nothing more than the fairytales that the media fed her. She felt a disconnect between those and her parents, but she couldn’t help but search for something interesting. Perhaps someone interesting—as she would say now: a back-flipping, skydiving, exploding motherfucker. As a high schooler, Joshua was this.
Megan would no longer believed in romance. She would believe in a false sense of hope that creates a temporary euphoric feeling— called an orgasm. She would learn this too early in life. High school would teach her how to smoke a cigarette and her breath would taste of burnt rubber. She’d like to hide it’s bitterness with spearmint gum.
Joshua was the pisser in the fountain, the surfer on the treadmill, and the kidnapper of freshmen on the lacrosse team. And to him, Megan was a back-flipping, skydiving, exploding motherfucker. She was the biker chick riding a Ninja 250 into school, a 5:1 setter on the volleyball team, and a mysterious art freak. Yeah, they were both each other’s first kisses in middle school and some shit like that, but high school was something different. They were adults, to a degree, and knew exactly what they were get-
She would meet Jeremy on the swings behind the school. They would both be out for a cigarette break. But after this cigarette break, Megan would never buy cigarettes again. Jeremy would always have one in hand, ready to light before she even got to sit down next to him. Jeremy would be less than perfect but more than dead. He just would be. Megan would be the only female who had attracted him. She would be masculine in a sense, and he’d appreciate the Chuck Taylors, and ripped jeans. He’d like the way
SANTA CLARA REVIEW | 58