Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle

of Camper City, no idea what I’ll do when I get there. Pull out on the road and try to outrun it, or lock the doors and watch it come. Either way, I’ve got nowhere to go.
    But then I round the back loop, and see them. A ragged pack of boys, weaving through the abandoned booths. They’re passing beer cans, trying to light cigarettes in the whipping wind. They must have hid when the cops came through, first brave, then reckless, defying the lightning. Now they’re swaggering through the rain, invincible. And ahead of me, up on the carousel, girls in wet T-shirts sit astride the still horses, passing a bottle in a wet paper bag. The horses’ nostrils flare, eyes and manes wild, legs flung out, suspended in mid-flight. Behind them, all of the sky is gathering itself up at the horizon, bloodred, feathered. The wind seems to hover above us. “Look!” I yell, pointing, but my voice is snatched away by the wind. The Ferris wheel groans, lamenting. “Get out of here! Go on!” But none of them even notice me. The girls cackle, their hair plastered to their faces, their eyes black with smudged makeup. The boys strut over, swing themselves up onto the horses, and shake the rain from their hair. They’re all laughing, shouting, singing, celebrating as if they know something no one else knows. As if on the other side of that terrible horizon there’s a new world coming whenthis one goes, a world where everything lost will be restored, and everything made whole. One of the girls, dark-eyed and wasted, sees me and reaches out, saying something I can’t hear over the din, and I strain to make out her lips.
    â€œCome on,” she’s saying, “come quickly, come, come—”

Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing
    Shell
    I meet the herpetologist on the bus. Rush hour is in its deepest throes, a snowstorm has clamped down on the city, and the bus is packed with people in bulky coats, impatient and aggressive at the end of the day. Trapped at the center of the crush, I am starting to doubt that I will be able to hold it together all the way to my stop. Then a surge from behind sends me sliding into the man in front of me, and the flaps of a cardboard box he is holding pop open. I find myself looking down at a turtle, its shell mapped with orange and yellow and green. A turtle! I say as he gently folds the flaps back down. Then, shocked to hear myself unlock a door to conversation, Do you mind if I see it again? He opens the box just enough for me to see inside. Are you particularly interested in reptiles? he says kindly. Absolutely, I say, though it isn’t true. I just want to keep looking at the turtle, which has drawn its head inside its shell, so utterly still and complacent in the midst of the chaos of the bus. It’s rare to meet young people with an interest, he says. Oh, yes, I say quickly, thrilled to be considered young. Then I look up at his face and realize how old he must be himself—gray beard, eyes big and watery behind thick glasses. I’m a professor, he says, at the university. I’ve written a book you might find interesting. He pulls a card from his pocket and points to the address with a shaky finger. Drop by any time.
    Classification
    Most nights, I don’t sleep. Instead I lie in bed and page through my list of dread and regret, starting with my childhood and ending with the polar ice caps. Everything in between I file into something like schoolroom cubbies, marked with labels like DISASTER and DESIRE . When my husband left, he told me he hadn’t been happy in years. Happy? I thought. We’re supposed to be happy? I was under the impression that no one was truly happy, given the raw materials we have to work with in this life. Since he’s been gone, I keep the lamp on all night. I’d rather lie awake in the light and keep an eye on his absence than reach out in the dark, thinking he’s there. The fact that I may do this