Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn

the kitchen—the house was so small, they could just yell—Sheldon’s mother called out, “Breakfast is ready, dear!”
    A strangulated, broken silence.
    â€œJust trust me, please,” Shiels said. “I’m not face-raking you.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Outside now. For once a plan had unfolded properly. She had just walked out the front door, hopefully unseen and unheard. Wearing the yellow shoes, it was almost as if she had to run, or at least try. What time was it? She was too tired to check her phone. But her parents never slept in. They would be in their cozy twin flannel dressing gowns staring dreamily into their locally crafted pottery mugs of fair trade organic coffee with the Times burning brightly on their respective screens: New York for her mother, London for her father. The sun would be flooding in from the east window.
    Had they checked her room? Probably not.
    Her legs creaked like they were made of wood.
    (Had she really just ruined things with Sheldon? Because she couldn’t face his parents at breakfast?)
    Maybe if she slipped through the front door at home . . .
    Jolt, jolt, jolt went her feet.
    (It would be all right. Of course it would be. After all this had blown over.)
    She didn’t have her key. Probably the door was still locked.
    (So why was she shaking? Why did her insides feel coated with ice?)
    She walked. Too much to think about. Last night . . . last night was one of her weird dreams of late, but come to life. She remembered the shrieking, remembered wrapping herself around Sheldon, being carried around.
    She remembered it as one endless kiss.
    They must’ve done it. At Sheldon’s house. In his bed. They’d been too molten not to have done it. Sheldon was a prince but he was not superhuman. He would have done it.
    She would’ve throttled him if he hadn’t.
    So he had done it. They had done it.
    Finally.
    And it had been late, and they had been drunk—drunk on something. She couldn’t even remember it.
    She’d done it blacked out.
    She’d missed her own party.
    God, God, God, God.
    What did God have to do with it?
    And God said: Thou shalt use a condom, because if not, you’ll become rotund with child and become a teenage mother, bottom wiper, and human milk dispenser.
    And the Lord God said: Teenagers who do it while unconscious do not deserve to be student-body chair, much less be considered for a personal interview with Lorraine Miens who said, “A woman who treats her body like a highway deserves to be paved.” And who also said, “A man who treats a woman’s body like a highway deserves every crash coming to him.”
    Jolt, jolt, jolt. She was walking as fast as she could. But she felt like roadkill, or not quite—like she’d been winged by a passing truck so was lurching along, almost a hop-hop-hop.
    Had it been that bizarre last night? Everyone in black, hopping and lurching? Everyone shrieking?
    It hadn’t been bizarre from the inside. From inside it had been . . .
    Molten.
    Her ears were still aching.
    And she felt . . . raspy down there. She’d done it with Sheldon, obviously she had. She must’ve felt something .
    Maybe she was pregnant. Maybe that was why the morning sky was purple and the grass gray and all her joints felt gritted with sand, including her jaw.
    Her jaw?
    What did her jaw have to complain about?
    She imagined herself waddling in front of Lorraine Miens. The famous black-rimmed glasses would get pulled down for closer inspection.
    â€œYou’re pregnant, Ms. Krane.”
    â€œActually, it’s a thyroid condition. I’ll go on a grapefruit diet during the semester.”
    Those dark-pooled eyes that had seen everything forty times already.
    â€œI want to work on . . . the cultural implications of interspecies hyper-communications.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œI’m the