On Sunday, I see Sarah Joy’s baby for the first time. This enrages me. Not because of the baby, who seems lovely, and not really because of Sarah Joy herself, who is really nice, but because congratulating other women about their stupid babies is the story of my life. They made a movie once about this guy who was lucky for women because the very first man they dated after him would always be the man they married. I am like that, only with babies. As soon as I make friends with a cool-ish girl around my age, they get pregnant. When I first moved to Virginia, Jen, Dara, and I hung out all the time. We were all working our first professional jobs out of college, were smart and funny and liked to drink. I could’ve lived happily like that for years. Then two months later, Dara’s announcing she’s pregnant. No more drinking, much less joking, much more baby conversation. Dara starts not having any money since she’s got to buy a crib and shit, and Jen starts hanging out more with her husband’s friends and I take up running and contemplate getting a puppy. Then, when my friend Emily’s husband goes on deployment, she asks me to come live with her. We have fun for oh, four or five weeks after he’s gone. We go to the drag show at the Rainbow Cactus, where the drag queens will give you a kiss on the cheek if you give them a dollar, and end up covered in kiss marks, driving around Norfolk at 3am trying to find a McDonald’s and singing along to ABBA. Life is just like I always hoped it would be. Then I come home from work to find an array of white plastic tubes all over the coffee table. They are all marked with plus signs or two pink lines or just the ominous word, “Pregnant.” Emily comes out of the bathroom holding one, the crazed smile of the newly, happily gravid all over her face. “I’m thinking of taking a picture of all of them and e-mailing it to Steve with the words, ‘Call me,’” she says. I  can’t think of anything nice to say, so I’m like, “you want to keep it, right?” Then comes the avalanche, where she tells me she wants to have a huge family and she’s going to go to the doctor in the morning and will I come with her to the first ultrasound? There’s a lot less ABBA in our lives from that point on, and a lot more conversations about whether cloth diapers or G-diapers are better for the environment until I want to just scream, “You know what would be really good the environment? Not hogging up the earth’s precious resources with all your spawn!” I don’t say anything of course. I decorate the cake for the shower, go to the ultrasound (which is actually pretty cool) and start going to a lot more movies alone. Anyway, the same kind of thing happened with Sarah Joy. About three months after I moved down here and met her, and she seems like the only person in the whole freaking city the same age as me, and a possible conduit to other friends, she turns up pregnant. I don’t even want to deal with it this time. I throw myself into my studies and avoid her calls. When I see her at church I smile and ask what kind of crib she got and fake enthusiasm. I think to myself that this can not be convincing at all any more, but pregnant people can never seem to imagine that their baby stuff could ever possibly be boring, so I could probably be literally yawning and rolling my eyes while she’s talking and she’d never notice. I wish I could say I see her and think, “Too bad for her. Her life’s over.” But of course, I’m thinking, “Damn it! And I don’t even have a boyfriend.” It’s not that I want a baby. I just hate feeling left out.

On Saturday, things started to really happen. That was the night I went out with Jenny and Sal. We went to the least dive-ish bar in town, and I decided to get pretty tipsy since Sal was driving, and it had been how long since I drank last? Crazy long. So while I’m there, I see this guy who had been coming into the shop a lot. He came in with this girl who got her clit pierced, and made me take pictures. I always wonder what people do with the pictures we take of their genitals being pierced. It’s not like you can hang them on your wall or anything, and you’ve got the damn piercing to remember getting pierced by. I don’t understand it, but the customer is always right, so while Rhonda tries to hold the clamp and the ring and keep the labia out of her way all at the same time, which is a challenge because she’s got to where gloves and the vagina gets all confused by having so many fingers around and starts slicking itself up, I’m feeling awkward trying to get in there to get a few good shots while this super-hot guy is behind me. Of course, I always assume people are distracted by my huge ass, which I know probably isn’t true because when someone else is having their clitoris pierced in the same room, you could have a third eyeball growing out of your chin and no one would really notice, but still. Anyway, he came in with that girl, and he also came in with another guy who got some sort of stupid-looking evil clown tattoo, and I get really nervous when he comes in because he’s distractingly lovely. It’s my duty to be a hard-ass bitch in the shop and keep the cops on speed-dial in case some drunk assholes try to hassle me or Rhonda, so it’s really hard when some guy comes in who’s all broad shoulders and big brown eyes, and my legs suddenly feel like they’re made out of pudding, and I’m feeling the need to sigh heavily and stare at him from under my eyelashes like an idiot. When he’s at the bar, however, it’s a different story. I kind of move up next to him while I order my drink, and when it comes, I turn around and smile like I’ve just noticed him.

            “Don’t I know you?” I say.

            “Yeah, I’ve seen you at the tattoo shop,” he mumbles back.

            Anyway, we’re off after that. I try to get him started on something. Oh, he’s a football player. That’s a plus-plus. Plus, because now I really want to know what he looks like with his shirt off, and another plus because I can get him talking about football, and he thinks he’s being interesting while I don’t have to worry that I’m scaring him away. Soon, I’m giggling and swearing, “No, really I am a good girl!” and then “I am! Take me back to your car and I’ll show you how good I can be.”

            I’m in the car, showing off my goodness, and then we’re horizontal. Pretty suddenly horizontal, and then pretty suddenly he’s found his way in there. I’m really aggravated. I’m not totally opposed to what’s happening, or I’d be punching this guy in the balls, but I mean, still, hasn’t he heard of ‘yes means yes?’ Also, I noticed there was no familiar thick plastic crunching and moment of silence before entry, so I’m pretty confident that he didn’t bother with a condom. These jerks, why do they just assume everyone’s on birth control? I am, of course, but I’m pretty irresponsible with it, so I like to have that back-up, and frankly, wearing a condom without being asked is really a sign of decency and respect. Whatever. This guy has seriously ruined my whole night. Finish your business and get off me, dude. I’m bored and I want to go home. He asks for my number as we’re pulling ourselves back together, and it really annoys me.

            “Did you even use a condom?” I ask.

            “Well, you’re on the pill, right?” he asked, all nervous now.

            “Get out of my car.”

            Anyway, life goes on. I continue at classes and I continue at work, and I don’t see the guy again. When I switch to my placebos, nothing happens, and I assume that it’s stress. Oddly, I even thought I might be a little stressed about the guy taking advantage of me, but it doesn’t dawn on me for a day or so that this incident might be even more deeply involved in the fact that my period is late…or that’s it’s about to be real real late, like nine months late. Thinking about it later, I know it had to be denial. I’m reasonably intelligent; I knew what the score was, but I didn’t want to think about it. I gave myself a few more days of precious ignorance.

            When I finally did figure things out, it’s in the middle of anatomy class. I’m just sitting there and suddenly it feels like I’ve swallowed a block of ice, just real cold and hard in my intestines, right around where the baby would be.

            “You dumb bitch.” I think to myself, “You’re pregnant.”

            I go to the store, Juno-style, and buy every brand of pregnancy test they have. After I take them, passing two or three at a time through my stream, I lay them out on the table. They’re covered in pluses and two lines and the ominous word “pregnant,” but I’m not happy, and there’s no one for me to call.

            I think about ending it, constantly. But I’m not that great with big decisions. Also, I like the idea of having it, being pregnant with it, having it ride around inside. In microbiology class, we had to grow various bacteria in petri dishes, and I felt really motherly toward my bacteria. I was even proud when my bacteria grew better and faster than my class-mates. I can definitely feel myself being like that about the baby, fetus, embryo, whatever it is. I’m just a competitive person. I bet I’ll never get morning sickness or gain much weight. My baby will be a perfect six pounds if I have it. I’ll be the best at pregnancy, I just know it.

            I’m also smart enough to realize, however, that I would be a horrendous mother. Yeah, I’d be fun. I’d be a cool mom, you know? But all the nurturing, caring, getting the kid vaccinated, doctor’s appointments and such, getting to school on time everyday? Keeping appointments is not where I excel. So, I think about keeping the poor thing, then I think about getting rid of it, then I go back to thinking maybe maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to keep it, etc, ad infinitum. There’s always keeping it and then giving it away, which is tempting, but I like to really keep secrets. It’s kind of all or nothing. I could be the selfless single mom raising a child of (let’s be honest, basically) rape, or just get rid of it and just me a some doctor would know.

            Meanwhile, I do nothing. I narrate my actions in my head to the baby.

“Driving in this town sucks, baby.”

“Always wear shoes when you check the mail or you’ll kill yourself avoiding the acorns, baby.”

“Never, never get a scary clown tattoo, baby. I’m confident that one hundred percent of these clown tattoo jokers are going to regret this one day.”

I talk to myself a bit too. Mostly stuff along the lines of: you’re going to be the worst mother ever in the history of motherhood. Worse than Medea or that lady in Houston who drowned her kids. Just awful.

Then the cramps start. Well, first there’s like a heat, like my intestines have been replaced with a toaster oven. It’s not comfortable though. Then there’s a little pain like a UTI, just a little nagging pain behind my pubic bone, kind of low down in that space. Then the cramps. The cramps are epic. White spots glide around my field of vision like angels when the cramps hit. I try to tell myself it’s diarrhea, and I take almost enough ibuprofen to kill myself, much less a child, but the cramps keep coming like nobody’s business. I know what’s going on, and it’s really no surprise when the blood comes. It’s not that bad either. Really, it’s only a bit more than a normal period. I get a real heavy flow for a few hours, soak a couple of maxi pads pretty quickly, then settle in for a normal period. I look at my stomach the day after the cramps, at the area beneath my bellybutton and above my cha-cha. Seems flatter now, emptier now that I’m sure nothing’s there. There’s no one to tell my thoughts to. I tell a friend, and say that I’m relieved, and I am. I should be. I also tell myself that the kid was wise to jump ship. I wonder if each little soul gets one ‘pass’ and when my poor little fetus saw what it might get stuck with, it decided to use it. I think of the spots in my vision as real angels that came to take the baby away. I think about all the things I’ve let flow right through me.

February 4: How to be Elegant

February 5: How to be Beloved

February 6: How to be Witty

February 7: How to be Beautiful

February 8: How to be Intelligent

February 9: How to be Healthy

February 10: How to be Successful

So join in and read along. You’ll be Princess frigging Diana by the end of the week!

The town of New Berrywich was situated on an island just across a blue-diamond span of from Old Berrywich, on the mainland. New Berrywich could be reached by a jaunty yellow-and-red ferry, by even jauntier and more colorful hot air balloons, or by a narrow bridge, which had to be crossed on foot.

Every Saturday and Sunday in the fall, Elenora Finn crossed the bridge to sell berry jams at the Berrywich market. She carried her wares in a green wheelbarrow, which held jams, a purple cloth to cover her table with, and a little lunch packed by her mother. Crossing the bridge was Elenora’s favorite part of the day. Mist rose so heavily from the water that she could not see the sea beneath her, and she imagined that she was walking through clouds. This feeling was punctuated by the colorful hot air balloons floating by. She liked looking at the jam, as well, sparkling red raspberry jam, cool purple blueberry jam, bright yellow orange marmalade and many other jams of many other colors, all nestled together, each with a bow around its neck. She could see things in the jars that none of the Berrywich tourists that bought them would ever know about. She saw seven Finn sisters picking the berries in the warm June sun, each girl topped with a straw hat over strawberry-colored hair. She saw the sisters singing, humming, laughing, and fighting as they worked in the kitchen, heating the sweet fruit and sealing it in jars. The sweet, sugary smell of Finn jam-making could be smelled as far away as Maywater’s Inn, halfway across the island from their home.

Elenora liked going home as well, although the money she’d collected for the jams didn’t shine like the jars, the wheelbarrow would be lighter, and the sky would be bright peach at the horizon, and purple higher up, and blue with sparkling stars even higher than that. Also, she would be going home, to the warm kitchen, the soft bed, and the six sisters who loved her.

Annabelle waited by altar for Henry, her lover. No one but the priest and the parish clerk, for a witness, was there. At first they had advised her to wait in the back. When Henry came, they would position him by the altar. The clerk would go into the back of the church for Annabelle, and she would come down the aisle to wed. She had waited at the back of the church for an hour, holding a small bunch of flowers for her bouquet, wearing as much white as she could find for herself among the few clothes she had, before going to the front of the church herself to pray that Henry would come.

Their love had not had a good beginning. He was from a ‘good’ family two towns over, and had only come into her little village for a night, to celebrate his engagement to another girl, a good match from another prominent family. On his way into town he had passed Annabelle, walking to the center of the village, innocently going to pick up supplies for her family. He turned as he passed her on his horse, raising his hat in greeting, and she had lifted her eyes to meet his. It was difficult for Annabelle to remember much after that first whirl of motion. He passed by, raised his hat, and then later she was in his arms, lost in them. She would collect herself, most of herself, after their meetings, which followed frequently once they were established, but her heart was lost completely.

Now, his marriage to the other girl loomed, and Annabelle had reason to believe herself in desperate need of marriage. Their secret would soon show. She begged Henry to marry her. Henry, who did truly love her, agreed. Now, however, he truly loved her from far away, from the room of the friend’s home in town. That afternoon he had confessed everything, and begged this man, Samuel, not to let him ruin his own life by tying it up with Annabelle’s. Samuel gave Henry enough drink to knock two men off their feet, and now Henry slept, dreaming of Annabelle, who was begging God to bring him to her.

Three hours from the beginning, when Annabelle had arrived at the church, deliriously happy, clutching the posies she’d picked in the field that morning, round-faced and filled with love, the priest placed his hand upon her shoulder,

“We received a message, child,” he said softly. “Your groom will not come.”

After some pause, during which Annabelle stared at the statue of Mary, dead-eyed, dead-hearted, thinking nothing, and not even really feeling, because pain so intense is beyond sensation.

“You may consider seeking the convent.”

But Annabelle was not considering the convent. She picked up the flowers that lay in a wilted heap beside her.

“It’s not quite over,” she told the priest, and walked out of the church. She walked through the town, not even venturing near the house where Henry lay sleeping. Her simple soul was on fire, consumed with anger and pain. She had not ever imagined this. All other things asise, how could she live now, without a heart? Surely, she would need that, even in a convent. Through the woods she trudged, through mud, rolling dead leaves in her skirt. Single-minded, sure-footed, she followed the roar of the ocean. There was barely hesitation as she reached the cliff and went over, uncurling her fingers as she fell. The flowers floated down more slowly after her.

Henry was devestated when he heard the news the next morning. He lay in bed, wondering what to do, what he could have done. The funeral was held on the same day as his wedding. While Annabelle was put to rest quietly, just outside the churchyard, with only her mother to mourn her, Henry, still thinking of not ruining his life, watched with over a hundred people as his beautiful wife came down the aisle of a different church. The only thing that marred the ceremony was the insistent moaning wind and driving rain. People said it sounded like a woman crying.

Later, sitting by the window as his new wife, a woman he barely knew, lay asleep in her gown on the bed, he thought he saw Annabelle’s face in the rain.

Everything seemed to go wrong in Henry’s marriage from that day forward. He and his wife agreed on nothing. They did not like each other, which is normal-enough in a marriage, but soon they grew to hate the very sight of each other. Worse than that, accident’s befell Henry continuously. As soon as his leg, broken by a fall from a horse, healed, he broke his hand in a fall. Although he told no one, Henry was beset by visions. He had pulled back the reins of the horse to avoid running over a woman who looked like Annabelle, as he was passing her on the road. He thought he saw Annabelle’s green eyes meet his as he fell, but the apparition blew away in a whirl of leaves, and he was later told that no women ever walked that road. He saw her face at the foot of the stairs when he was halfway down, felt a delicate hand reach around his ankle as he tried to lift his foot, heard a tinkling laugh over the crunch of breaking bone.

He took to drinking, became pale and nervous very quickly. His wife cursed those fools who though she would be a good match for such a drunken mess of a man. Finally, in desperation, he told Samuel of the visions he saw and of the guilt he felt over Annabelle’s death.

“It’s right that you should feel such guilt,” said Samuel. “Perhaps you will never feel happy in this life.”

Later, Samuel would not really be sure why he said that to his friend. It seemed as if a haze came over him, and he felt compelled to speak that way. He’d been distracted in that moment, anyway, by a whirl of white cloth near the floorboard as the outer door slammed shut. It was very strange, especially as the two men were the only people in the house at the time.

Then Annabelle appeared one night, standing silently in her wedding dress, dead flowers in her hands, in the corner of Henry’s bedroom. He knew she could not be there, so he said nothing to her, but her accusing eyes bore into him whenever he was there. She shimmered at times, but never faded away completely, and Henry sometimes found himself on the floor fore her, bowed down, as if she were the Virgin Mary. He pleaded with her silently, “Leave me. Leave me. Leave me.” She answered silently, the vows she should have been able to give on her wedding day, “Never. Never. Never.”

At last Henry bought a rope, and lined a chair up beneath it. He wore the suit he’d been married in, and at last made it to the ceremony he’d missed. They are buried beside each other now, just outside the churchyard. Some brides must wait longer, but those meant to be together someday will be.

Instead of thinking “What if they hurt me?” or “Where are the police?” or even “Is there anything I could do to stop this crime?” as one of the thieves snatched up her purse, she thought, “Ha! Jokes on them. All they’re going to get out of that is a bunch of gum wrappers and old lipsticks.” She had only been comng to the bank to beg them to take off two or three of her overdraft fees.

The thief shook out her old, battered purse, gum wrappers falling like confetti over the marble floor, took up her wallet, and, seeing that there was no cash inside, threw it on the ground again. She could hear another robber hustling money out of the tellers. “Put it in the bag! Do it!” She wasn’t sure how many robbers there were. When she heard “Down on the ground!” she had immediately gone to the floor, like she’d been expecting it almost, without a second look at anyone in the bank. She wondered if there were more than two; then she wondered if this would make her very late getting home. She hated things that threw off her schedule, and she had wanted to be home in time to watch Oprah.

She did kind of remember the two tellers. One had been a faded older woman with short, gray hair,. the other was a younger man, sort of brighter and trimmer, with one of those beards that doesn’t cover the whole jaw, but is more like a circle just around the mouth. Before the robbery started, Matha had been hoping that the line would work out so she could get the older teller, who she thought might be a little more sympathetic.

She heard shouting now, coming from the counter. The robber who had been telling the bank tellers to put money in the bag was now shouting about the vault. The guy teller was saying he didn’t know the code for the vault. The robber didn’t believe him.

“What about you?” the robber’s heavy voice demanded.

“I don’t know it!” the older lady teller shouted. She sounded like she was at the very edge of hysteria. “He knows it!”

Martha imagined the woman’s shaking finger pointed at the other teller.

“I don’t know! I swear to God I don’t know!” the man’s voice echoed off the walls and the marble, and sounded almost painfully loud.

The lady teller screamed, not a high-pitched, girlish scream either, the deep kind of scream of someone truly firghtened. The hairs on Martha’s back stood up. She hadn’t expected this. She’d seen plenty of movies with bank robberies and the people almost never got hurt. Until that scream, she’d been more worried about having to talk to the police (there was speeding ticket on her record that should have been paid a year ago) than about any actual danger.

“I’ll fucking kill her!” the robber screamed.
“No! I don’t-”

There was a bang. It seemed to have been surrounded by a sort of wet sound, or maybe that was just Martha’s imagination. The woman wasn’t screaming anymore. Martha knew she was dead. It was an almost palpable sense of one person having been in the room, and then gone out. To her surprise, a lump formed in Martha’s throat. She thought of her daughter, far away with her own kids. She hoped her daughter was safe right then. It suddenly seemed like a very dangerous world.

“Oh my god! Oh my god!” the male teller was shouting.

“Shut the fuck up!” the other robber, with a slightly higher voice shouted back.

A hand reached beneath the upper part of Martha’s arm, and closed too tightly. She squeaked, a pitiful sound, as she was roughly brought to her feet. She thought for a second that she might not be able to stand. Then, staring into a ski-mask over hate-filled eyes, she thought she might actually pee on herself.

“What is this?” she thought. “Why me? Is it Pick on Old Ladies Day?”

“C’mon,” the robber said. It was the gruff-voiced robber, the one who killed the other woman. The guy began dragging her toward the vault. The other robber was pushing the male teller along, his gun digging into the teller’s back. As they passed the little door that lead behind the counter, Martha saw a red spray on the marble wall and two sensible shoes attached to swollen ankles lay one on top of the other, very still. She flipped her head away quickly, squeaking again, and closed her eyes, just let herself be lead along. It was strange what she noticed. The robber’s grip on her lessened; he had large hands, and he smelled of nice cologne.

She didn’t think the robber had a gun on her, but once they reached the vault, the robber stepped away and she felt metal against her temple. She opened her eyes and saw the teller, madly typing in the vaults code. She realized the deal: if the teller didn’t do what the bank robbers wanted, she would die.

“Don’t they watch movies?” she thought to herself. “This is terrible! They never hurt the people! And this never turns out well for the robbers.” She just hoped they’d let her go before they went out the bank’s doors to die in a hail of bullets.

The vault door swung open. Only one robber went in. The other kept his gun on her. The bank teller didn’t look at her. He just kept staring into the vault at the robber throwing stacks of money into a bag. His hands were open at his sides, frozen in space and useless.

“Hurry up!” the man with the gun to Martha’s head shouted. “Hurry the fuck up!” the gun at her temple shook and dug into her skin. Martha closed her eyes again, shutting them tight, like she did when she was a little girl watching the scary part of the movie. She felt the warmth of tears on her face, sliding down like a lover’s finger trailing against her cheek. Her mind went off again. “Silly you,” she thought, “to think like that at a time like this. It’s been years.” She thought of her dog, Minnie, waiting at home. Hopefully, if they killed her, her daughter would be informed and be able to come quickly. Martha hated to think of Minnie starving because some nutjob felt like proving his point during a bank robbery.

“I’m hurrying!” the robber with the lighter voice said.

“You’re taking too fucking long! Hurry the fuck up!” Now the robbers voice sounded hysterical, ringing against the wall. Martha could feel his anger and fear and tension flowing against her like waves. The gun was shaking now, and Martha shook too. Their combined movement made the gun knock painfully against her skull.

“Fuck it,” the low-voiced robber said. “Let’s go.”

The other robber shut his bag and ran out of the vault. It was fairly full. “At least they got something,” Martha thought. Strangely, she hoped her robbers were good at what they did. It would be even more horrible if she was being harrassed by bank robbers who weren’t even good at their job. Martha’s robber grabbed her by the shoulder again. He swung his gun to the bank teller.

“Run,” he said. “Back door.”

The higher-voiced robber ran ahead, the bank teller behind him, and the low-voiced robber was last, dragging Martha by the arm as she stumbled along. Down a long hallway, with white walls and floors, they ran. Martha thought she might be imagining things. This cheap-looking hallway lit by fluorescent lights was so different from the marble and expensive-looking wood of the lobby. She wasn’t too sure of anything, really. She wasn’t breathing too well, and shook so badly that she was surprised she could even move. Her throat felt completely closed, like not matter how hard she pulled, she couldn’t breathe enough air into her lungs. The bank teller’s back seemed to get further and further ahead, further away.

She heard a door bang open ahead of them. Even brighter light, daylight, was coming in. She saw the dark shape of the bank teller go through, barely human and uneven-looking in the slanting sunbeams. A car was waiting. They were screaming at the bank teller to get in, just get the fuck in the car. He was shouting something. When Martha and the second robber came through the door into the sunlight, she saw the teller’s feet hanging out of a small van. She wasn’t sure if they’d thrown him in alive, or killed him and thrown him in. She was only sure that she didn’t want to get in the van, either way.

“I’m an old, fat, frumpy woman, ” she thought. “They’ll let me go. They wouldn’t kill me. Only beautiful women die in the movies.”

It didn’t make any difference. She couldn’t exactly fight anyway. As they crossed a short space of grass to the truck, her sensible shoes slipped. The robber dragged her across the ground a few steps before dropping her arm, and she tumbled into the dirt and weeds.

“Get up!” he screamed. “Get in the fucking van!”

“I can’t,” Martha said quietly, just telling the truth. She couldn’t, of her own will, follow them in. She stared up at the robber, but she couldn’t see him very well with the sun behind him. The sun’s rays extended around the man, enfolding him. Then blackness fell, like someone poured black paint over the whole scene. Van, robber, and even the sun itself disappeared.

When she came to, under the flourescent hospital lights, with the police waiting just outside her room, all those things were still gone, long gone.

“Well,” she thought to herself. “That didn’t go at all the way I expected it to.”

Alyssa pregamed afternoon tea (even though there would be champagne there) because she really wanted to be chatty and friendly with the women that would be there.

Betsy pregamed Passover with her new boyfriend becuse she wasn’t Jewish and she worried that all of her boyfriend’s family would hate her.

Caroline pregamed Spanish class because it made her nervous to have a fake conversation with a classmate while twenty other people watched.

Dina pregamed her father’s funeral because she knew it would make her more likely to cry.

Ellie pregamed her wedding because her shoes hurt and the dress was too tight and she’d gotten a text from her ex-boyfriend the night before.

Faith pregamed the beach because the beach made her feel fat.

Gwen pregamed her own baby shower (just a nip!) because her mother-in-law would be there, and her mother-in-law was pressuring her to name the baby after her husband’s grandmother, Gay.

Helen pregamed the pregame party because she knew Derek always bought that gross beer.

Isabel pregamed an important job interview because she secretly didn’t want the job.

Jill pregamed before going to the opera with Diane because she hates the opera.

Kandi pregamed the bachelorette party because she was worried that someone might cut her off before she drank as much as she wanted.

Laura pregamed work every Friday with a jigger of whiskey because it just made the weekly progress meeting more bearable.

Maya pregamed before going to the gay club with her friends because she wasn’t so sure she was just going to dance.

Nicole pregamed her first date with Bradly because she thought he might be boring and being a little drunk always made seeming interested easier.

Olive pregamed practically her whole high school senior year because, even though she’d ignored them since the fifth grade just like her mother told her, they still hadn’t stopped bullying her.

Penny pregamed the tailgate party because “Whatever! Game day is drunk day and that’s normal with a capital NORMAL!”

Quiana pregamed the fishing trip because, oh sweet god, she did not want to go.

Remy pregamed her trip to the abortion clinic even though they advised her not to drink before the procedure.

Shannon pregamed Christmas Eve at her grandma’s because her uncle Rob usually tried to get her alone and grope her and she wanted the courage to slam her knee into his balls this year.

Tabitha pregamed the football game because it made her really embarrassed to be a flag girl, and she only did it because it made her mom so happy.

Umi pregamed the frat party because all the other girls were doing it, and she was afraid to drink there because everyone said that the Alpha Phi Alpha guys used roofies.

Vera pregamed the rap concert because she was nervous about possibly being the only white girl there.

Wendy pregamed going to Donna’s house because she just knew they were going to get in a fight.

Xiang pregamed her son’s birthday party because she knew that kid Zach with the untreated ADHD would be there and he just made her nervous.

Yvette pregamed the weekend away with her husband because she knew he was going to play Grizzly Bear for the entire five hour drive.

Zoe pregamed the marathon because she read that the first guy to win the Olympic marathon drank wine the whole way through. Vodka must work differently though because she ended up throwing up and dropping out at mile five.

This idea was horrible to Edie, who was extremely beautiful.

She was the kind of beautiful that all men stared at helplessly, and even made women look twice, or even three times, and still blinked their eyes as if sun-dazzled once they were able to look away. Edie’s exquisite nose, rich pink mouth, and high, delicate cheekbones made up the kind of face that even the most cruel and angry people could not say ‘no’ to, and her eyes held a sweetness and intelligence that she herself did not really have. Her body was nearly universally-pleasing, neither too thin or too heavy, and her hair was so soft that strangers were often compelled to sweep it with their fingertips when they thought she might not notice.

Like many beautiful women, Edie was not unaware of her effect on people. Long eyelashes often gained her free drinks, upgrades to first class, and offers to write her essays for her. These were all things that just happened to her. The handsome boyfriend seemed to have simply appeared in her life. Acceptance to her top-choice college was inevitable from the moment she strode in the door to her interview, and her tests always seemed to be a letter grade higher than what she’d actually earned.

Since her looks always did her work for her, and better and more quickly than she could have done it herself, she became quite afraid of work. She slid out of its way when it seemed to be heading toward her. However, this discovery of the zygomatic arch disturbed her. It made her uneasy that such a flimsy thing was all that stood between this life of ease and a life of struggle and toil.

After class she gathered her things and headed back toward her dorm, which was the best, nicest one. She was surrounded by her admirers and smiled idulgently at them, like a queen, as they vied for her attention. Today, however, she couldn’t even pay them the pittance-worth of attention they were used to. She’d just stared at the face of potential doom. All around her, she saw only skulls.

This might have been why, crossing the street before her dorm, she didn’t see the truck that hit her, sailing through a stop sign at fifty miles per hour. She was used to cars stopping at the sight of her. She’d caused more accidents that way, with cars stopping when they should have gone, than she ever had with cars going, not seeing her, when they should stop.

She sailed over the asphalt, books flying forward from her arms as if they intended to reach home without her if necessary, and landed on the pavement facedown, breaking the frontal bone, one parietal, dislocating the mandible, and crushing both nasal bones and maxillae. Of course, their was nothing left of either zygomatic arch, and the beautiful girl’s funeral was a closed-casket affair.

It came in a flat, rectangular box that came to her shoulder, and dragging it up the stairs had been difficult. She had to bend almost double, with her arms stretched to practically their full extension, and pull it up, the heavy bottom bumping along each step. It was a delicious chore though, another act of suspense against herself.

Once it was upstairs she pulled the cardboard off with her hands, shredding it around the places it had been stapled. And then there was the frame, a shining silver easel, heavy, sturdy, important, and all hers. As she pulled the pieces out of the box, she imagined herself putting up the empty canvasses on its bottom bar, and taking them off again, covered in her art. She could smell the acrylic and oil and linseed, imagine the pleasant days spent in this well-lighted studio, just her and her muse and the sunbeams. She could almost feel the brush sliding heedlessly along the path she directed. She would be the Queen of Art, and this heavy frame would be her castle.

Of course there weren’t any instructions. Some assembly was required, indeed. “Some” was putting it mildly. She snapped what she thought must be the feet to what she thought must be the legs, a little grumpily. The frame had not been inexpensive. It should have been an elegant, sophisticated, simple experience to put the lovely thing together, but she found herself still on the floor three hours later and wondering if the little black rubber pieces were really the feet after all.

She took them off.

After another two hours of work, she’d constructed some sort of a triangle. It had the potential to become an easel, she felt, but then she had a very creative mind, so it might be as hopeless as ever. She was grateful for the distraction when her cell phone rang. Mark, her boyfriend, wanted to go out to dinner. No place nice, just…you know, out. Anne Marie was slightly annoyed with him. He had caused the destruction of her last easel. She rarely invited him up to her studio, mostly because he didn’t really care. It seemed that no matter what she showed him, no matter how deeply personal and emotional she felt a piece was, he usually looked at it for less than a second before lifting his eyebrows with false enthusiasm and saying, “Yeah, it’s awesome!”

He was nice though, really. She liked him. He was interesting without being a know-it-all, and consistently attentive but not smothering her. Not everyone likes art. People can care about each other without being into the same things. No big deal.

His crashing her easel had pissed her off though. It was such a strange act too. She’d brought him upstairs to show him a particularly violent piece she’d been working on. He really enjoyed action movies and crime fiction novels, so she thought he might be into it. He’d looked at it for the required half-second, but instead of grunting something non-specific, he’d suddenly grabbed her waist and tried to start kissing her.

“Hey- ! What-?” she’d sputtered, pushing away at him.

She wasn’t averse the the kissing or even the grabbing, but it seemed so strangely-driven, so unaccountable to her, that she wanted an explanation before continuing.

“Wait a second!” she’d gasped when his sloppy lips went from covering her lips to dampening her neck. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I just-” he stammered as he came up for air. “I just…you know…I really like you.”

The lameness of it. She had to stop him. She tried to gently pull his soft, sweaty hands, the fingers of one of which was already underneath the waistline at the back of her of her jeans, off her body. He made another sudden movement; she wasn’t quite sure what it was meant to do, and in the darkened room, they fell. She’d landed on her behind; the old wooden easel had been propped, legs closed, against the wall and cracked apart as their combined weight had fallen against it.

That sort of ended that little encounter. Mark sat on the floor beside her as she lay on her stomach on the couch for the rest of that night with ice against her back. The brusing had still been tremendous, and she could hear the wood snapping clearly, if she thought about it, as clearly as if her skull bones were breaking.

Now the new easel was here, and he wanted to buy dinner. She was excited about the evening.

Several uneventful days later, she still had not managed to properly set up the easel. A couple of times she’d gotten its pieces to appear to be something easel-shaped, but there were always big, important-looking pieces still strewn around the floor. So she’d take it all apart and start over again. She began to think she’d never get it finished, and sometimes she found herself working on it, running her fingers over familiar pieces happily, half-hoping she’d never succeed.

Strange feelings began to occur to her around the frame as well. She felt almost as protective of it as her art. When Mark had offered to take a look at it, adding that he probably owed it to her to set it up, she suddenly felt uncomfortable.

“I’ll take care of it,” she’d said lightly. “I feel like I’m almost there anyway.”

Things that at first had seemed frustrating were now charming. She liked the way all the pieces seemed to fit perfectly into all the other pieces. When she had first been trying to set up the frame, that had been a horrible thing. How could she know what was right without anything being wrong? Now, she relaxed and enjoyed this aspect of the strange contraption. Once, she’d even gotten all the pieces into a strange, many-sided geometric shape on the studio floor. If the pieces wouldn’t be a frame, she could at least enjoy herself deciding what other things it might be.

Soon, she began to feel as though she herself changed while she worked on the frame. One afternoon she would’ve sworn she saw her hand, reached though an opening in the frame, five feet away from her grabbing another piece, with at least two elbows in the arm that snaked away from her. Her back seemed to stretch longer, and her fingers had more traction while she worked at the frame. She set her left foot through an opening one day and was suprised to look down and see that it was wearing a shoe, one of her favorite shoes actually, which she did not remember putting on. The toes on her right foot only wiggled innocently when she’d looked at their nakedness.

Meanwhile, Mark tried to be more attentive. It seemed he was asking her to dinner all the time now. He had lovely bright blue irises sent to the house one morning. He asked her where she saw the relationship going.

“A long ways,” she’d said with a smile. He smiled back and took her hand. She wasn’t sure if he really was falling for her. Maybe he was concerned that she was pulling away from him. She spent a lot of time with the frame now. She’d kind of meant what she said about their relationship, although the fact that he’d asked her that after a nearly wordless dinner at a cheap chain restaurant made her wonder what both of them could have been thinking.

“He’s a nice guy,” her mother told her over the phone one day (Anne Marie hadn’t told her about him breaking the old easel. “But I mean…he’s not the most fascinating guy around, is he?”

Anne Marie sighed. Her mother had been married four times. Didn’t she deserve at least one husband? Really, Mark could be a lot worse things than boring and a little awkward. Her mother’s third husband had zero interests other than golf. Every Christmas and birthday, the family bought him golf shirts, golf mugs, funny golf bumper stickers, anything with grass or a ball or a tee on it because there was simply nothing else to get for him. Her mother really had no place to judge how interesting a person’s significant other might be.

She distracted herself with the easel, shaping and re-shaping it. She walked into the room one day to see the sunbeams reflected from the window to the frame bounced off it’s empty middle and onto the opposite wall as if the frame held a mirror.

“Delightful,” she thought as she began to work on it. She wasn’t even sure any more what it should finally look like, what it was meant to be.

One day Mark dropped by. She wanted to show him a little painting she’d done during a brief respite from the frame. She’d painted one of the irises, propping a tiny canvas in the windowsill. She thought she might give the little painting to him. When he walked in and saw the unfinished frame, he snorted haughtily.

“You still haven’t finished that thing?” he said.

“It’s almost done!” she answered defensively. What did he know about putting these things together, anyway? This might be the exactly correct length of time to be at that particular stage of progress.

“It’s been weeks, baby,” he laughed.

He began striding over to look at the frame, which was in a fairly easel-like shape at the moment. He went right past the picture she’d painted for him. Feeling very protective of the frame, she darted across the room to put herself between it and him.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “I won’t break it.”

“Very funny,” she said, gingerly taking the frame in her hands to move it a little further back into the shadows as Mark was backing off.

It was heavy and tall. As she went to turn it, she tucked her head beneath the metal beam over the frame’s open space. She noticed there were spots on the floor near where Mark was standing. She’d never noticed them before. Also, Mark was looking terrible, sort of worn and gray in the evening’s fading light. His hair was looking thin too. She’d have to make him change out of that musty jacket before they went out.

The stains caught her eye again, such a familiar shape, almost like the print of a behind and legs where someone had sat on a dusty surface, and splotches and lines all near the wall.

“What’s she doing?” Mark said softly. “More importantly, what am I doing?”

“What’d you say?” she asked him, confused. Who was he talking about?

“I didn’t say anything,” Mark told her.

“This is pointless,” he said then, more softly.

“What is?” she asked, pulling her head out of the frame and leaning it against the wall.

“What is what?” he asked. He looked genuinely puzzled.

They stared at each other in silence for a moment before he continued.

“I think you really might need some dinner.”

“Maybe so,” she said. She felt a little better than a moment ago. You couldn’t really see those stains at all, and Mark’s jacket wasn’t really that bad.

A few days later, and no closer to finishing the frame, Mark proposed to Anne Marie while they walked along the lake after a movie.

“Yeah,” she said, looking down on him as he kneeled in the dust. “Okay.”

It sounded good. It was reasonable. They were both smart people with good jobs. They were at the right age and they’d been dating a long time. There was nothing not to like about the engagement. Her mother had been very excited to hear the news, and she drove down a few days later to help start the planning.

They went out together, drank wine, had a nice evening. Anne Marie felt very warmly towards her mother, towards all married women now. Before they’d annoyed her a bit. She didn’t really like people knowing about things she didn’t know, being a part of something nice that she hadn’t yet been able to be a part of.

Now that she was joining them her mind felt clearer. She felt like she might be on her way to the right thing. The giddy happy feeling she felt was a relief more than anything. The only thing that ever really brought her down was Mark, who was making arrangements to leave his apartment and move in with her.

“Hey,” her mother asked as they were driving home. Anne Marie had been staring dreamily out the window at the town’s lights bobbing by. “Did you ever get that easel set up?”

“No,” Anne Marie answered. “I couldn’t figure it out. I threw it away.”

(Disclaimer: Potential first lines are sometimes inspired by writing prompts. They may or may not make sense out of context.)

 - On Tuesday, I paid off all my debts.

 - “This is bullshit!” I screamed. “Katerina, Evan, and I have been working on this caterpillar costume for weeks!”

 - I decided I was never wearing rings again.

That morning, October woke up from a very strange dream.

 - Jealousy is a weapon.

 - Waiting in line at the bodega, Charlotte starting talking to one of those people who have super-long fingernails. As in, the ladies’ fingernails were several feet long, and her thumbnail coiled like a huge, heavy snail.

 - The ship wasn’t supposed to make land for weeks, but there it was: a strip of green and brown innocently hugging the horizon. Uncharted islands are rare these days, and the sailors felt obligated to land there and explore. Mysteries often lead to trouble in this way.