Words and Their Meanings by Kate Bassett

wanted to lean down and touch one. I wanted to stand on an island of yellow paint, a thing whose only purpose is to keep people moving forward, in the right direction, a safe distance apart.
    So I stepped onto uneven asphalt, pocked with filled and refilled potholes. Cars honked. Swerved. But I never flinched. Not once.
    Yes, Mom. I remember.
    And no, we don’t need to talk about it.

11
    T he rest of today hasn’t been much better. I stayed (un)locked in my room cranking Patti’s record “Piss Factory” until I heard Mom scream. I ran downstairs just in time to see her pull Bea out of the washing machine. She unfolded my drenched little sister like a beach chair with busted hinges.
    And then I had to go to Liza’s office, and she wanted me to tell her a story about Joe. Any story, she said.
    So I told her about the time when he was ten and I was seven, and his appendix burst. He had to have emergency surgery. Gramps came to babysit but he never found me because I was hiding in an oven. At this point, Don’t-Call-Me-Doctor Liza stopped to say I needed to tell a real story, not one with bits recycled from Bea’s perpetual games of hide-and-seek.
    â€œFine,” I snapped. So I told her about when he came home from surgery—he really did have a burst appendix—and Dad bought us a tent to set up in the living room, and Mom let us eat bright-colored Popsicles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We stayed up late watching movies. At some point he looked over with his goofy grin and said my mom and dad got married all because of him. I didn’t believe it, because my parents were the lovey-dovey kind, so I yelled for Mom.
    â€œIt’s true,” she said, and beamed at Joe like he was Cupid or something. Then she hummed, kissed my dad extra, and everything was warm and perfect and right.
    â€œIs that good enough?” I asked Liza. “Because that’s how it went with us. It sums up everything. Joe was the universe. And he made us all stars, twinkling and sparkling like we’d never burn out.”
    â€“––––
    The shrink said I did well, but I’ve spent most of the minutes that followed our session staring at the words on my arm. You can’t let emotions consume you.
    Bea is standing in my room while I get ready for work. She looks so innocent it makes me want to smack her for pulling what she did this morning.
    â€œWhy do you keep putting yourself in these idiotic, dangerous places? I mean, you could end up seriously hurt, or worse, hiding this way. Haven’t you ever heard stories about cat s who end up—”
    â€œThe cat stories are always about dryers. I was in a washer.”
    â€œI’m not kidding around, Beatrice.”
    She stares at me with hollow blue eyes. The same as our mother’s.
    â€œI just needed to take a break.”
    I’m still searching for the right words to tell Bea that I understand when Dolores shudders up the driveway.
    â€œNat’s here,” Bea says, her head tilting toward the window. Dolores’s stereo is blaring the last song off the Wicked soundtrack.
    â€œYou better go,” she adds, not looking at me.
    Nat doesn’t come to the door this time. She doesn’t even honk. She rolls down all the windows, opens the sunroof, and cranks the music so the words of Glinda the Good Witch, singing about people who come into other people’s lives for important reasons, echo right into my room.
    â€œComing!” I shout into the open window.
    The music follows as I move down the stairs.
    â€œBea, stay out of dryers and dishwashers and anything else that spins, heats, or potentially suffocates!”
    Mom is walking out of the garage just as I get in the car, and Nat slams into reverse before there’s a chance to strike up a conversation. She gets something like stage fright whenever there’s a reason to be near my mother for longer than two minutes. Mom and Dad