Free Catch & Release by Blythe Woolston

mess. And I’ve forgotten the number-one rule of the Vagina American: be prepared. I really doubt Odd or Odd’s Gramma Dot has stashed a supply of tampons in the Cadillac for this possibility, so I reach down and pull off one of my socks and sacrifice it. Come morning I can replace it with a wad of paper towels. That’ll be fun, sitting on a wad of that mess until we hit a pocket of civilization and I can do better.
    Suddenly, for the first time I can remember, I’m afraid of bears. I imagine I smell hot and bloody as an elk roast. My tent doesn’t feel safe anymore. It just makes me blind. It makes me listen so hard my cheeks start to ache.
    I give up, unzip the tent, and crawl out. The stars are bright enough to make me dizzy, but starlight doesn’t open up the shadows. I drag out my sleeping bag and head for the Cadillac. I want a barrier a little more substantial than ripstop nylon. D’Elegance will protect me. When I pull the door shut, all the world has to stay outside. She is my protective quarantine. The backseat is too small to feel comfortable, but I fold my legs up and cuddle my cheek against the velvety cushion. My sleeping bag is warm. It’s quieter inside the car. I can’t hear the constant motion of water and air. All I can hear is the stuff inside my head. I hear the song.
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    Come away, human child
    To the water, and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand
    For the world’s more full of weeping
    than you can understand.
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    I hear the song, but it’s not in my voice. It’s in others’ voices, the voices I heard when my mom played the CD over and over again while I was in the coma.
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    Weaving olden dances,
    Mingling hands and mingling glances.
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    She found it in my room on my desk and decided it must be special to me. It wasn’t. It was just part of a multimedia thesis on Yeats for English. It was all the versions I could find of people singing and reciting the same poem.
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    In pools among the rushes
    That scarce could bathe a star.
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    I know my mom was sitting there, watching me sleep, because her whisper is all tangled up in the song, “It’s OK, Babykid. It’s OK. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here.”
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    We seek for slumbering trout
    And whispering in their ears
    Give them unquiet dreams.

They don’t have what I need at the gas station. They have tampons, but I need pads, with wings. I’m not being picky, it’s a matter of life and death according to Mom. If I use a tampon, I’ll die from toxic shock. My body is a compromised system. A two-inch wad of cotton and string can kill me. Everything can kill me.
    I pay for the gas. I have my sweatshirt tied around my waist to disguise my lumpy crotch. I’ve replaced the sock with paper towels: Absorbent? Check. Comfortable? So not.
    Odd is leaning against the bumper scratching his cheeks. Whiskers itch, I guess. My problem is bigger than his.
    â€œI need to go to real store, Odd. Like a grocery store or drugstore.”
    â€œWe could use some real food,” says Odd.
    â€œThat’s right, food and stuff,” I say.
    â€œAlrighty then,” says Odd.
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    Odd is pushing a shopping cart. I think we could have made do with a little plastic basket, but he’s pushing a shopping cart. If I were on my own with a basket, I could just turn away and hide if another customer comes our direction. I could be stealthy and this shopping trip could be over so fast. But I’m with Odd, and he’s steering a cart down the narrow aisles making squealing-tire noises when he turns a corner. I wish we could just go our separate ways, but I’m the one who’s paying. He picks up a watermelon and starts thumping his knuckles against it. What’s he thinking?
    â€œNo watermelon, Odd. We can’t eat a watermelon in the car. You can have bananas or oranges . . . no juggling the food . . . we could get stuff for