Free My Abandonment by Peter Rock

another chair loose from under the table and push it hard sliding so it hits her knees and knocks her down and right away I'm over her. When she tries to stand I push her back to the floor.
    "Stop," I say. I put my hand on her neck.
    "Bitch," she says, after a while, once she's crawled over the couch where Taffy's been watching. "Bitch," Valerie says, rubbing her neck. "I'm not talking to you again. I'm never going to be your friend now."

    It is important to always remember that at any time you think of it there are people being kept in buildings when they want to go outside.

    "I'm going to show you ten pictures again," Miss Jean Bauer says.
    "Were there ten the first time?"
    "Yes."
    She pushes down the red button on the tape recorder.
    "I didn't keep count," I say.
    She takes out the blue box and a booklet and she is partly talking and partly reading to me.
    "It will be easier for you this time," she says, "because the pictures I have here are much better, more interesting. You told me some fine stories the other day. Now I want to see whether you make up a few more. Make them even more exciting than you did last time if you can. Like a dream or fairy tale. Here's the first picture."
    "There's snow all around a house," I say, "and the two windows are like round eyes since there's lights on where it's warm I think and it's cold outside and frozen and windy. And there you can see a black kind of ghost swirling over the roof by the chimney with two eyes and up there there might be another ghost but that might be another ghost or it could just be another cloud about to snow some more. It's cold. The snow there in the front is drifted and frozen up like a jagged kind of wing."
    "Do you believe in ghosts?" she says.
    "Yes," I say.
    "Have you ever seen a ghost?"
    "I don't know," I say.
    "So," she says and touches my hand. "If a stick leaps up and strikes you or if you see a stone rolling uphill, is that a ghost that does that?"
    "You've been reading my journal," I say. "That's not right. That's not a polite thing to do at all. Where is my backpack and my things?"
    "You'll get them back," Miss Jean Bauer says. "And I'm being careful, I just am trying to figure things out. Your writing is beautiful. You should keep writing, Caroline."
    "Most of that is homework, anyway," I say.
    "We know," she says. "It's very impressive."
    "And Randy?" I say.
    "Who?"
    "My horse," I say. "You shouldn't be reading my journal."
    We sit still and not talking and our faces looking at each other without saying anything. I am not going to talk first. Miss Jean Bauer's mouth is smiling the smallest smile and at last it shifts and then moves.
    "So far," she says, "you've really only described the picture. Remember, I want you to tell a story. What is happening? Are there people in this picture whom we cannot see, Caroline?"
    I look at the picture on the card and I know that fighting with Miss Jean Bauer will not help me.
    "There are two people inside that house who are sitting next to a fire and they're warm and maybe playing chess together. They can hear the whistle of the wind and maybe that ghost hugging down on the roof but they're safe in there. They get up and look out the window at the storm since it's scary and beautiful and everything that they need they have even if the storm keeps up. They are listening and trying to hear what the ghost is talking about and he is saying I wish I had fur all over my body and I was a person too who died and his words are all frozen and slick. Or it could be that the house is out in the storm and there are cold people lost in the snow and scared. Their feet are almost frozen off and their faces hurt from being cold and they are almost crawling because of the deep snow and one looks up at the lights and sees the house. But they see the ghosts too. Or what it is is that the first people look out, see in that window maybe that's someone looking out by the blurry curtain and see the frozen people crawling in the snow