Free After Dakota by Kevin Sharp

backyard.
    5:48. This basement is the closest thing to a bomb shelter now. Could Bryce, Claire, and their parents all hide down here and be safe? Would they die of starvation before it was safe to go outside? Would they turn to cannibalism? Bryce is the smallest of the family, so they’d want to eat him last.
    5:49. Might as well use this room for a shelter, since there’s no female action going on in here.
    5:50. Is being a teenager a test from God? If so, is everyone tested or just certain losers? Because some people seem to have a lot easier time than others.
    5:53. What’s so bad about graduating high school and still being a virgin? Some kids at youth group have taken chastity vows. But maybe they aren’t horny all the time; maybe they don’t have to be prepared for the boner that could appear without warning at the sight of a female (live, on TV, in a magazine… Bryce’s groin doesn’t discriminate).
    5:56. He could wait to have sex in college, but what if he meets a girl there who has experience and she finds out he has none? Word will get around and no foxy girls will want anything to do with him. His choices will be ugly ones no one else wants, or staying a virgin through college! Then he’ll have to marry a super religious chick who’s been saving herself for marriage. That can be Bryce’s story, too, that he’s been saving himself.
    5:58. But what if everything blows up before then? Sure, they’ll all be in Heaven, but with his parents around all the time. Ugh.
    5:59. Dakota. Not ok, not ok, not ok.
    6:00. I need a girlfriend .

28
    The sky is dotted with hot air balloons, Technicolor holes punched in the blue. Claire watches the skull and crossbones from Meredith’s bedroom window while Meredith talks about how she walks right behind Justin Vance to science every day. Their respective fingernails are freshly painted green; the room shimmers with the scent of polish.
    Two frozen Ding Dongs sit on small white plates, earlier served by Meredith’s mom, Pat (who tells all the girls to address her that way). Pat used to do musical theater in college – she met Meredith’s dad in a production of Oklahoma! – and is always humming or singing, like out in the hall right now, except they’re all old songs nobody’s heard of.
    Meredith lies on her bed, working on a poem for English class. She says lines aloud, then writes them in a notebook. “I dance to their music/I jive to their beat…”
    Claire isn’t writing poetry in her English class; they’re diagramming sentences and working in a grammar book. She tosses Meredith’s pink Care Bear up over her head, catches it, tosses again. Next to the phone on the desk is a Pet Rock (Claire’s dad on that topic: “Why am I working so hard when I could be a millionaire just for thinking of a dumb idea?”)
    “I feel like a marionette/With strings on my feet.”
    Pat knocks on the door. She’s always tan, even in winter, her skin the color of caramel against her white tennis outfit. “Look what I got back from the framer.” She holds up Meredith’s eighth grade promotion certificate.
    “Please don’t hang that up,” Meredith says with a roll of the eyes.
    “Aren’t I allowed to be proud of my little girl? Will you not want me to hang your high school diploma either?”
    “That’s a diploma . Middle school isn’t even a real graduation.”
    “I bet Claire’s promotion is on display at her house,” Pat says.
    It’s not. The students were handed their own certificates on the last day of school and Claire’s not sure she ever even gave hers to her mom.
    Meredith shoves the last hunk of Ding Dong between her lips, chews hard, then says “Fine” through the chocolate sludge.
    “Charming.” Pat takes the empty plates. “I hope you two aren’t going to stay in here all day on an afternoon like this.” On her way out the door she winks at Claire.
    “I’m tired of being guided/I’m tired of being bossed. I must cut the strings…”