Free The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish

Kristina.”
    “Hey,” Kristina said. “Wow, this place is like something out of a movie. I love it.”
    “It’s nice to meet you,” Molly said, her tongue dry as Velcro.
    “Oh, you too. Hey, you have a brochure or something?”
    “Uh, yeah. Sure. Of course. I’m sorry.” Molly handed her a pamphlet from the counter. Tobias gave her a twenty and a ten.
    “And a map,” he said.
    “Right, of course. Sorry.”
    “Don’t keep apologizing,” he said.
    Kristina grabbed a couple of postcards from the tall revolving rack near the door. “I have to have these, too. Toby says you’re homeschooled?”
    “Yeah.” Molly slid the cards into a thin paper bag.
    “That’s fascinating. You seem normal, but, boy, no prom? No other kids? No boys to look at all day? And you’re okay with all that?”
    “I guess. I never really thought about it.”
    “Who teaches you?”
    “It’s an online school. Sometimes there are videos to watch. Mostly it’s just reading and writing papers. And taking tests.”
    “Fascinating.”
    “Kristina’s a psych major. Everything’s fascinating to her,” Tobias said.
    The girl giggled, on cue, wrapping both her arms around Tobias’s one, which he had planted in his pocket, his elbow bent and winged out like a chicken. “Ayuh. Got that right. Come on, let’s get through. I have E.C.D. at two.”
    They stepped through the black curtain together, and Molly stared hard at the words she’d written in her history notebook, numbered and bulleted with lopsided asterisks and thick dark arrows pointing to key ideas. She would only remember it long enough to take the test, and then it would be gone, disintegrating into the mound of other things she needed to know only for a grade, and it would be on to thenext handful of useless information. She didn’t see any use for history.
    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The George Santayana quote was printed in the front of her textbook, the one Louise had bought used online. But Molly thought both parts of the quote didn’t matter. People held on to their pasts all the time, and it didn’t make the future any different. And people forgot all the time, or tried to, and what did it change? Nothing. The repeat part would always exist. There was nothing new under the sun.
    Her rib cage felt as if someone had wound a rubber band around it, over and over and over, so tight that when she tried to take a deep breath, it hurt. Tobias was back in the museum with that perky girl. He was in college and going places, cool and charismatic, the kind of guy who drew people to him. Molly wasn’t perky. She wasn’t much more than the mop she cleaned the lobby floor with, a pole of wood and dull cotton tresses.
    She wanted him to notice her.
    Silly, silly.
    They came through the other side, laughing about something, and Molly dove into her work, scribbling sentences about Nixon and Watergate. About betrayal.
    “That was fascinating. Thanks. To think I’ve lived fifty miles from this place and have never been here,” Kristina said.
    “No problem,” Tobias told her. “Will it work for you?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Let me walk you to your car. I know you have to get going.”
    “Such a sweetie. Molly, nice meeting you.”
    Molly swallowed. “Yeah, you too.”
    Tobias opened the door, the recorded cackle mocking Molly. Hahahahahahaha. You don’t get him. You don’t get anyone. You’re stuck here forever. She was. She knew it. She’d be thirty years old, selling admissions and living with Louise, and she didn’t think her mother would mind at all.
    She watched them through the window, hugging, Tobias opening the car door for Kristina. Kristina picking something out of his hair. She kissed him on the cheek, and he closed her into the yellow VW Beetle. A new model, not the original. Kristina looked like a VW girl, all bright and tiny and full of character. The kind of girl Tobias would want.
    Stop it, Molly. Stop it.
    She