These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf

officer will stay and take care of him.”
    “I feel like I’m going to throw up again,” Claire admits with embarrassment.
    “It’s okay.” He nods at Claire. “I’m sure you got a doozy of a concussion. Vomit away.”
    When Claire arrives at the hospital and is wheeled into the emergency room, Jonathan is already there, standing at the door, waiting anxiously.
    “Claire?” he asks as the gurney comes to a stop. “Claire, are you okay?”
    “Joshua,” she says. “Where’s Joshua?” She sits up quickly and pain shoots through her skull as she lifts her head to search for her son.
    “He’s fine,” Jonathan assures her, tears welling in his eyes as he looks down at his wife. “An officer is bringing him here right now.” He runs a hand gently across her head. “How are you? What happened?”
    Claire tries to describe the robbery as the EMT rolls her down the corridor, Jonathan holding her hand as they move, but her eyes are heavy and keep closing. All she wants to do is sleep but she fights the urge. “You should have seen Joshua,” she says, her voice filled with awe and pride. Claire glances down at her wrist, the one that Joshua had held so tightly while they waited for help. She feels a surge of panic when she sees that his fingerprints have faded from her wrist. For a moment she has the sense that Joshua is gone, torn from her forever. But then she hears the familiar cadence of Joshua’s steps coming near and then he is at her side.
    “My brave boy,” Claire whispers, and reaches for him before finally surrendering to sleep.

Allison
    A t group meetings I’m trying to decide whether to speak up or not. We each have the opportunity to talk about relationships that may have played a role in our poor decision-making. I mull this over. I don’t think anyone in the history of Linden Falls has fallen as far and as fast as I have. I was the perfect daughter to perfect parents, but looking back, I don’t know. My parents fed and clothed us and made sure we had everything we needed academically, athletically, socially. We even went to church every Sunday, but something was missing. Between swim meets, volleyball tournaments, the SAT prep courses and church youth activities, there wasn’t much there. We didn’t really speak to one another or laugh together, and I can’t retrieve one memory that wasn’t scheduled into a one-hour time blockand marked on the calendar that hung on the wall on our kitchen. So I could talk to the group about my parents and our lack of communication and how I didn’t feel like I could tell them that I was pregnant, certainly.
    But really, the source of my very steep downfall was Christopher.
    I met Christopher by chance, at St. Anne’s College. I was taking the SATs again, trying for an even better score. My goal was a perfect 2400. Only about three hundred students per year scored a 2400 and I was going to be one of them.
    It was a Saturday afternoon and I walked out of the classroom into the bright sunshine after taking the test in a daze, my mind whirling with exam questions and answers. I was tired and hungry and sick with worry over how I had done. Now came the hardest part, the waiting. I had to wait a month to find out the results. My stomach flipped at the thought and I froze in place, just stood there. I must have looked lost or sick because the next thing I knew a boy was at my side, peering worriedly into my face. He was taller than I was—that was what I noticed first. Not very many boys are taller than I am. The second thing I noticed was that he was older. He had to be twenty-two or twenty-three. He had copper-brown hair that curled around his ears and sharply angled features that were only softened by his eyes, which were such a deep brown and so beautiful ithurt to look at them. He wore a Cubs jersey and I later learned he was a huge fan.
    I was used to guys looking at me, boys from school with their idiotic sexual comments that were for the benefit of