Class Party

Keri-Ann was wearing her mama’s yellow dress, the one from some party before the bad-luck days.

She slid her socks across the kitchen tiles, quiet as cotton snakes. She pressed past the pipes and bottles scattered on the counter and eased open the cupboard. Way at the back, in the dark where she almost couldn’t see it, was the last clean cup.

Keri-Ann turned the tap on low, filled the cup from the gentle trickle, and drank the water down in slow gulps. She wouldn’t wake the bear.

There were no more crackers; she didn’t bother looking. She’d wait till second period and sneak a granola from the box in Mrs. Harriet’s drawer.

Mama wasn’t much for shopping anymore.

Keri-Ann pulled up on the closet door so it wouldn’t scrape the floor while she opened it. There was a mirror on its inside surface, and Mama’s reflection swung into view. Mama’s face looked sweet and peaceful as she slept on the living room floor, the way Keri-Ann remembered it from the good-luck days. Mama always looked more familiar when she wasn’t awake.

But Keri-Ann didn’t have time for sore thoughts. The school bus was on its way. She got busy digging in the closet, and she didn’t hear Nana sneak up behind her.

“Where you goin’ out to, looking like that?” said Nana.

Nana didn’t know it was Halloween and the other kids would be wearing costumes their mamas sewed up, because those mamas weren’t out drinking like Keri-Ann’s was. Nana didn’t know much of anything anymore. Her brain had gone mush from too much living.

But Keri-Ann knew how to make a plan. She slipped on some canary gloves from winter, smashed her feet into last year’s duck boots, and she was done. She had become The Sun, and her rays shot straight out of the front of her dress.

With hot hands and hurt feet, she ran out of the house quickly, before Nana could make a fuss.

The school bus came screaming down the side road, and the doors smashed open. Keri-Ann hopped up the three big steps and, for the first time that year, she felt warm in her chest.  She knew she looked perfect and good times were coming.

Shawn Kelvin, his new horns poking straight out from his forehead, hollered from the back:

“Hey, Yo-yo, you a friggin’ banana, or what?”

Titter, choke, cough.

Keri-Ann didn’t care. She stood up on the front seat of the bus and stared backwards at all those demons and kittens. She moved her hands like two slithering rattlers, and the crazy asses stared and laughed. But Keri-Ann knew folks who looked directly at the sun would go blind, so soon they wouldn’t be able see her. She stayed there, shaking—all the eyes eventually looked past her, and before long, she was the only one who knew she was on fire.

KATE FELIX

Kate Felix is a writer and filmmaker. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, Litro, and Cream City Review, among others. Her short films have been selected for over fifty independent film festivals worldwide. Find her online at www.katefelix.com or @kitty_flash on Twitter.

Honorable Mention: 2020 Flash Fiction Contest