it down his back, find a thin ribbon and tie it there. We’d get matching tattoos, some inside joke we hadn’t even dreamt up yet, but when we got to the tattoo place it would come to us and the tattoo would always remind us of that night, that summer, that year, that specific gauzy feeling watering our eyes and warming our cheeks and numbing our tongues and tingling our faces when we were together.
If we were feeling violent, we could go to Mandy’s house and beat the shit out of her asshole brother. Ask him if he knew what a pussy was. Take him to the bathroom mirror and tell him he was looking right at it. That’s what a pussy was.
If we were feeling sad, we could sit in the rocky grass by the tracks and ask questions about God and why the world was the way it was. We could talk about evil. How it’s inescapable and endless. How it’s like death.
I could kiss Milo’s neck or ask him to kiss mine. Have sex with him and get pregnant and be one of those moms I never wanted to be.
I could watch Hannah and Claire kiss their boyfriends and wish I had one. I could ask Hannah and Claire and their boyfriends if they wanted to kiss me. I could tell Milo I thought about him once in my bed. Under the covers. Okay, twice. Okay, three times. Fine, every night.
I could do it. I could do anything. We could do anything. Anyone could do anything. We didn’t need to escape from anything in order to escape. Escape for escape’s sake. We could run and run and run and run and run. We could be running. We should always be running.
* * *
The train was coming when we saw Claire’s dad walking toward us through the grass. The train was coming when I heard Hannah say shit and when Milo put out his second cigarette and kissed me on the mouth before hopping the fence. The boyfriends were running right behind him. Claire’s dad didn’t seem angry. His face was calm. He looked like an oil painting, the colors around him both bold and dark—the amber glow of the lamps lining the road, the pitchy midnight sky, his beaming white T-shirt and whatever color pajama pants. The orange tip of the cigarette he was smoking. That moon, that full moon, bewitching us. I even thought I saw him smiling. Or maybe it was the train making the lights flash his face. I was between the girls and we were holding hands. Claire was crying; Claire was always the first to cry. Her dad motioned for us to come toward him. His arm, a wing spread wide for us to hide under. We felt most like sisters with Claire’s dad. He treated the three of us like a one-hearted girl. The boys were probably halfway across the neighborhood already; boys were always running. Claire said, Daddy. Hannah said shit again. Claire shushed Hannah and I resisted the urge to tell Claire it was too late to shush us. It didn’t matter anymore. Claire’s dad’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The train was too loud, too violent.
The Lengths
Kieran was bottle green in her mouth—the taste of wilted, salted kale. Sometimes she convinced herself she could still hear the popping Morse code braille of his tap dancing, a kaleidoscopic map of sound leading the way back to him. Even when he was home in Ireland. Even when he had shows in New York. Even when he had shows in New Zealand and she was in her American bed alone with a steamy mug of tea and clover honey, reading historical fiction about dashing warriors thundering the ground on leviathan, shadow-black horses.
They were a romance novel come to life, only Kieran usually wore a too-big sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. God bless the sexy superhero mysteriousness of a half-covered face. He also danced on street corners, in Irish pubs, restaurants, places where people sat down for foamy black-brown pints of Guinness, fried fish and chips with thick wedges of lemon. Cottage pie, bangers and mash. Cheese and chive fritters, beef stew. Irish whiskey steak, soda bread, butter. Sticky toffee pudding.
The first time she saw him, someone at the table next to them said Kieran’s quick feet cast a spell. Hypnotized. His legs, his muscular, wood-strong thighs—they were magic wands. Her friend snorted, she blushed.