• • •
Amanda noticed, obviously, that Megan was walking up. Why was she with a friend? Who was this poor girl? Didn’t this girl know what it was like to be friends with Megan, and just how fucking horrible that was? Was Megan going to apologize with witnesses around? Amanda prepared herself for anything.
“Hey,” said Megan. “Do you guys know Anthea?”
• • •
Rats and squirrels frolicked in the alleys and yards respectively. Groups of raccoons walked around, crossing between alleys and streets, using the gangways. A drunk girl and her boyfriend were walking to the grocery store to get more alcohol, and the girl noticed two yellow-green disks and mistook them for dog’s eyes, since they were attached to a head that was peeking out between the bars of a fenced-in yard. She thought the dog would be cute and she would say hi to it like she liked to do when she was drunk. As they got closer to the animal, she saw eight total of those yellow-green disks, realized they were raccoons, enormous raccoons, then screamed.
“Ah!”
“What?!” said her boyfriend. He put his arms around her. “What?”
She crouched down and started laughing hysterically. “Those fucking raccoons! I thought they were dogs, oh my god, they’re so fucking creepy.”
“Let’s cross the street,” said the boyfriend.
“Okay.”
The raccoons watched the couple, perhaps understanding that they’d been laughed at. One of the raccoons belched softly.
• • •
The wind rustled the leaves, and the trees appreciated the feeling. A bird who was still awake sat on the branch of one of the trees and felt the warm breeze and listened to the sounds of the trees and the cars and smelled all of that freshness, and he inhaled, puffing up his cute little breast, and felt like he might cry, if only he could cry. If he could, he would, but out of an appreciation of beauty and inevitability, not out of sadness.
• • •
Carrie thought there was something sort of obnoxious about Megan. She’d heard about the fight between her and Amanda, obviously. She’d even heard about the part where Megan was crouched under the porch screaming and crying or whatever. But it was weird, here she was, acting sort of normal. Carrie examined her skeptically.
“Did you guys see the website?” asked Megan. “Randy did it,” she said, pointing to Randy with her thumb. “I think it looks pretty good.”
And now it was easier because everyone was Anthea, and Megan was just riffing.
• • •
Elena was at home doing some needlepoint in front of the TV when her phone rang. She had the window open a crack and the fresh air filled her living room. Her boys were out, all of them (her husband, too), and she was working on a project that would be hung in the church. Everyone seemed to really like her needlepoint. This pattern was a line of interlocking flower branches surrounding a phrase about togetherness and sweetness and how the two were related and equal in the eyes of God. She was so happy about the way her life was sometimes. She had plenty to feel good about. She assumed the phone call would be her husband, and she felt so good she thought she would ask him to pick her up a treat from the store. Maybe a pie or ice cream, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She slipped the needle into her work, set it aside, and reached for the cordless.
• • •
“How’s it going, Carrie?” Megan asked. She smiled. “How was your thirty-under-thirty interview?”
“It went pretty well. Everyone looks great in their photos. So, so pretty. I’m really excited to see the layout.”
“You do design, right? Is that what you went to school for?” asked Megan. “For design?”
“Yeah, that and writing, painting, and photography.”
“That’s cool, like a mixed major. I bet that’s really useful,” said Megan.
• • •
“Hello,” said Elena.
“Hello,” said Jillian, but she said it in a hilarious, gruff Batman voice.
• • •
Megan’s behavior made Amanda uncomfortable. Does she have a gun? Are we all about to die?
• • •
Jillian had a case of the giggles all night, and had to go into the bathroom twice just so Adam would stop asking her what was so funny. What was so funny was, for some reason, she’d decided to demand that Elena give her hundreds of dollars. Jillian believed in the power of Christ and she had promised earlier that she would trust in any idea He gave to her, and this was His idea. When she thought about it, she would laugh, then moan, then feel like she was going to puke, then feel nervous, then feel nothing. Then a few minutes later, the cycle would repeat. Similar to the feeling she’d had before she called Adam’s dad. Like dread, but also inevitability.
• • •
“Yeah, it has been pretty useful,” said Carrie.
“Do you have a preference between film and digital photography?” Megan asked.
“Well, I really love developing film and making prints in the darkroom. That was a lot of fun in school. But, for work, it’s easier to use a digital camera. At first we used digital offset plates, which you just print out from a computer, rather than developing, and now we don’t even use an offset printer. We just have a nice printer. If I used film, I’d have to print it, then scan it, then print it again, so . . . The pictures I get from a digital camera with a nice lens are great. And you can, of course, always manipulate the . . .”
Anthea was looking around, bored.
• • •
“Who is this? Can I help you?” asked Elena.
“This is Jillian,” she said,
