Their apartment was hideous. To the girl, it reflected where her choices had taken her: through nasty fights with her parents, disapproval from her friends, and isolation within her church. People had thought it was wrong, what she was doing. But she had been so sure, so achingly sure that this, Kennan, was what she had wanted, that she had shut her ears and packed her bags and embarked on a journey that she still didn’t understand the consequences of.
The kitchen was ramshackle, and the two bedrooms didn’t have doors, the windows didn’t have shutters. The wallpaper patterned with blue flowers and the ground was plywood. Last week something had happened – a bloodstain, a scream, a rift – and the carpet had to be hastily evacuated. Staples were still stuck to the naked floor.
“Your tree.” Kennan said, with a mocking flourish. He leaned it against the living room couch. When the girl looked at him she tried to remember what she had seen at sixteen. But the rose-tinted glasses were gone; now, everything was a study of black and white.
“Are you leaving?”
“Night schools. Exams. Remember?” He hugged the girl, hands loose, too loose, on her shoulders. Walked out of the apartment without so much as a glance back. This sent a subtle message: it was all up to her now. To decorate the tree. To fix things, and to make life beautiful once again.
YOU ARE READING
Misunderstood Miracles
Short StoryMairi wants a miracle for Christmas. But the things she has taken as miracles - Kennan and his love, eighteen and its freedom - have only been prelude to a misunderstood pattern: the nature of life is not that it gives, and that it takes away. It...
