This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks

over—”
    â€œI’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. No one told me Mr. Zendler was batshit insane, okay?” Robin jerked up out of the plastic chair Mrs. Halstead had offered her. “How would I know that? How would I know you all knew?”
    â€œSit down, Honey.”
    Robin fell back into the chair, bent at the waist with her arms wrapped around her stomach.

    â€œYou couldn’t. I suppose you couldn’t.”
    Robin leaned her forehead against the edge of the desk, and her voice floated back up to Mrs. Halstead from the floor. “I feel really stupid now.”
    â€œDon’t. I’m sorry I didn’t know what was happening.”
    â€œYou won’t tell him?” Robin asked, turning her head so her cheek was resting on the table, her eyes looking up at Mrs. Halstead.
    â€œCharlie?”
    Robin nodded, her head still pressed against the desk.
    â€œNo, I won’t tell him.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œNo need, Honey. No need.”
    â€œThis weekend,” Charlie said that night over Scrabble, “I thought we could maybe get out of town. Go south to visit your parents. Stop in Battle Creek and go to Cereal City, or this Historic Seventh-Day Adventists Village I read about. Since the Fungus Fest sounds like it isn’t worth waiting for.”
    â€œI don’t hate it here, Charlie.”
    Charlie didn’t say anything, just put down his tiles. He made H-I-T-S and Robin wanted to tell him, No, save the S for later. Add it to something with an X or Z. “I don’t hate it here. I want to be here with you. I’d sell saltwater taffy at the Salty Dawg’s in Wharftown all summer, okay? I’d re-apply at the Pirate’s Booty.”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that. My dad said you’re the steadiest girl he’s ever seen with a nail gun. You can work for him again next summer, if you want.”
    â€œI’m just saying I want to be here with you. I’m in love with you, and I just want to make that clear.”
    â€œOkay. I’m in love with you, too. And I’d like to take you to Cereal City.”
    â€œI went as a kid. You have to wear hairnets. But I could never pass up a Historic Adventist Village.”
    â€œThey have costumed re-enactors who lead singalongs.”
    â€œOf what? ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall’?”
    â€œNineteenth-century hymns.”

    â€œYou have been holding out on me.”
    â€œWe can leave Saturday morning,” Charlie said, and Robin pictured them throwing their backpacks behind the seats in Charlie’s pickup. She’d hosed out the bed after taking Mr. Zendler’s garbage to the dump, and the water had frozen in a sheet of cloudy ice across the bottom of the truck, pine needles and leaves caught in the flood and freeze. They’d drive to the Historic Adventist Village in Battle Creek, and try on buckle shoes and goofy hats and bonnets, and they would sit on the hard wooden pews of a re-created clapboard church, and they would sing Happy Day, Happy Day, and there would be no doubt in her mind that it was so.

Steal Small
    I live in a good house now, with an attic where the roof makes a triangle and the heat collects. I stand up there and look out back to the barbed wire where our property meets the neighbor’s, and past that the highway. The neighbor still farms, soy planted right up against the fence. We haven’t planted anything, unless you count the animals. That’s what Leo does, what he grows. From the attic you can see the kennels laid out in a half circle in the backyard, all figured so the mean ones don’t fight, the sweet ones calm the fussy ones down, and the bitches can’t get puppies. Leo can hold them all in his head, who needs what and eats what and is looking sick and should probably be sold on before it looks any sicker. He’s got a good mind for organization. I’ve got a good mind for keeping stuff tidy,