My Life in Dioramas by Tara Altebrando

waited.
    â€œKate!” my mom called out.
    â€œBe right there!”
    And waited.
    â€œCome on, Bernie,” I said softly.
    I could hear my mother coming up the stairs.
    The car still wasn’t pulling out.
    I thought the whole thing was going to end with me in major trouble for sure, but finally the car started moving.
    Bernie’s head went out of sight.
    I opened the window and hooked the bag onto the hinge again.
    Just in time.
    â€œIt even smells in here.” I fanned the air in front of my face when my mother arrived at the doorway. “I just opened the window so hopefully that’ll help.”
    â€œYes,” she said, sniffing. “It does seem to be fading, though, doesn’t it? Anyway, why did Stella take off in such a hurry?”
    Maybe this was my chance to explain about troupe. About how we couldn’t move yet.
    â€œOh, she’s doing private dance classes now,” I said. “She’s going to do that dance troupe thing and also compete as a soloist in the competition in June.”
    My mother sighed and sat on the bed and I thought maybe she’d ask me about troupe—what the details were, whether I wanted to do it, whether there was a way to make it work, whether I wanted to compete as a soloist, too, and how much it would cost.
    She said, “I know you feel like you’re the only one this is unfair for.”
    That’s it? Really? That’s all you’ve got? She was trying to tell me I shouldn’t be sad and mad and everything —and she wasn’t even doing it well!
    She seemed done.
    â€œYou and Dad,” I said. “You need to, you know, make more money than you do or something.”
    â€œOkay, Kate.” She got up and drifted out of my room. “We’ll do that. We’ll go out and become millionaires any day now, just you wait.”
    I lay there for a while, looking out where the balloon on the FOR SALE sign bobbed in the wind. I reached out the window and threw the bag of turd into the front yard, then went downstairs and out the front door. I picked up the bag and walked around the back of the barn, where I hurled it into the woods. A few kittens I’d startled took a few leaps to another spot and settled again. “Sorry!” I said. They were already starting to get big.
    I stopped at the FOR SALE sign on my way back up to the house, and untied the balloon. I let it go and watched as it went way high into the air, where it got so very tiny and then, finally, popped and disappeared in the sky’s blue oblivion.
    My stomach felt all twisty so I went inside to find my mom. She was lying on their bed, staring up at the way-high beams overhead. My parents’ room, their walk-in closet, and their bathroom had walls that ended at normal height but no proper ceilings, just the peaked underside of the roof. All of which meant there wasn’t a ton of privacy since it all just opened up to one big space and the stairs down to the living room. Even with the door to the bathroom closed,you could pretty much have a conversation with someone down in the kitchen.
    When I was little, I’d wake up and climb into bed with my parents and we’d find owl faces and birds and deer with antlers in the knots in the wooden beams overhead. I climbed up onto the bed now and stared up at it with Mom, spotting some familiar shapes. The knot that looked like the man on the moon.
    By the quarter-circle windows up near the ceiling, two flies were banging against the glass. “You think something is rotting up there?”
    â€œProbably.” My mother rolled over onto her side, curled up some, and pulled a throw over her legs.
    â€œAre you going to try to find out?” I asked. The flies were pretty gross.
    â€œWhatever it is will disappear eventually.”
    â€œWhat about the wasp’s nest by my window?”
    â€œEvery time we have it taken down, they just build a new one.”
    It’d be nice