By Ellen Skirvin 

My dad warned us that aliens were watching him before he disappeared. He also had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital five times throughout my sixteen-year lifetime. During his last visit to the hospital, the doctors said he vanished in the night. His clothes were left in his dresser. The framed photo of my sister and me left on his bedside table. None of the night nurses saw him leave. There were no tied up sheets found dangling outside his open window. The doctors reminded our family that my dad had admitted himself voluntarily and was free to leave at any time. There was nothing they could do. My mom didn’t seem worried at first. He’d left and come back before. One time he left for almost a week and returned with a pet frog that died the next day. Another time he traveled halfway across the country to tour a NASA museum. He needed space; he’d tell us later. Most of the time he checked himself into the hospital for a long weekend, casually packing his car as if he were leaving for a fishing trip.  

Soon after my dad’s disappearance, my sister Zoe claimed an alien was watching her. She said it would twinkle from the night sky and she’d wave back. No one believed her, of course. She was thirteen and wanted to be like our dad. Then one night, Zoe and I were sitting outside in our backyard lawn chairs. I was stoned and trying to forget about everything, when Zoe stood up, pointed to the sky, and said there he is. A bright light descended on us. A gust of warm air. Static. Zoe floated toward the light. She looked up at her captor like she wanted to go, like it was saving her from this place. I grabbed her foot, not knowing if I wanted to pull her back or travel with her. My hands slipped. I fell back to the ground with her shoe in my hand. Then the light beamed her into the stars. She disappeared. The night returned. It all happened so fast. I wasn’t afraid like I’d expect from such a strange encounter. I was more annoyed. No fair echoed in my head, as if she went out for ice cream without me.  

I told my mom and the police that I didn’t know where Zoe went. This wasn’t a lie. She could be anywhere in outer space. Maybe she was a gazillion miles away. Maybe she was hovering just above earth. Maybe her atoms exploded all over the galaxy. Maybe she was with my dad up there. The police had a theory that he kidnapped her. They told us it was very common, statistically speaking. Zoe probably went willingly. That part was true at least. 

As summer continued and the community searches and police check-ins subsided, my mom stayed committed to finding Zoe in all the conventional ways. Every few days she tasked me with making copies of missing-person posters at the local library where I also read books on outer space, U.F.O.s, and strange encounters. I’d already scoured video blogs and online forums about alien abductions. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find.   

My mom handed me an updated flyer and mouthed “one-hundred copies” early on a Saturday morning. A phone was pressed to her chest. I recognized the automated tone on the other line of the police station. She called every day for updates. She wore cotton underwear and an oversized T-shirt she got free from an exterminator company. It had a roach on the front and a phone number on the back that we called often. My dad used to complain about hearing armies of bugs in the walls. Zoe claimed to hear them too. She validated everything he said. He loved that about her. 

I secured the flyer of Zoe in the waistband of my shorts. My mom followed me outside, without pants or shoes. She hardly left the perimeter of our house, always making sure one of us was home in case Zoe showed up.  

“Don’t throw the flyers around like confetti,” she said, gathering fallen sticks in our yard from the previous night’s storm. “I hate seeing her picture in the gutter.” 

“Door-to-Door,” I confirmed, then biked up the road.  

***

The library smelled like rubber bands and empty rooms. The floor was the color of Saturn, streaky and yellow. Juvenile artwork decorated the walls. A blue sandcastle bucket sat in the quiet section collecting slow drips from the ceiling. The place was nearly empty, except for a person signing a clipboard to use a desktop computer and a woman carrying a grocery bag full of paperbacks.  

I fed the poster of Zoe to the copy machine. It made a noise like breathing and must’ve been low on ink. Zoe looked really pale and each copy grew lighter than the next, like she was disappearing right on the page. 

When Zoe and I were younger, my mom would take us to the library after hours to attend support group meetings. I wasn’t supposed to know the purpose of the meetings, but while searching for books with intricately drawn reproductive organs, I overheard the stories people told about their loved ones who couldn’t keep their minds straight.  

My mom never offered her stories about my dad. His stints at the psychiatric hospital made people assume he was feces-flinging insane, but he was pretty boring a lot of the time. He helped Zoe and me with our math homework, collected rock opera records, and enjoyed landscape puzzles. Only sometimes did he calmly tell a neighbor about ancient aliens or stay up all night listening to radio static for encrypted messages from space.  

My mom seemed more preoccupied with the free snacks at the group meetings and always had a full napkin on her lap. Zoe would sit quietly in the reference section, pretending to read gigantic books cover to cover. On our car ride home, she’d tell me pretend facts she learned. Did you know crows can read Japanese? she’d ask me. Then, I’d punch her in the boob. 

As the copier continued to spit out flyers, I made my way toward the section in the library on astronomy. I opened a book and skimmed a passage about the Milky Way. It said our galaxy was average sized, dusty, old, and warped. It seemed so unremarkable. The most interesting part was the dark matter with a black hole at the center, completely invisible to us. 

“Hailey,” a voice whispered. 

I slapped the book shut. Ms. Sharp, the librarian, stood behind me. She had grey cropped hair and earrings that reminded me of outer space. “Sorry,” she breathed and handed me the warm stack of missing-person posters. “Your copies are finished.”  

I took them and nodded. She didn’t leave. 

“I hate to gossip but I discovered a new lead,” she whispered.  

Ms. Sharp loved to gossip. While most people assumed my dad kidnapped Zoe, Ms. Sharp relayed a new theory to me about my sister every time I visited the library. Someone checked out a reference book about crime in the area. Another person only read mysteries about missing children. Immersed in too many Agatha Christie type books, she was always on the lookout for clues and suspicious people. She never asked me why I read books on space and alien abductions though.  

Ms. Sharp scanned the aisle. “Do you know Mr. Collins?” 

I shook my head. 

Her breath smelled of sour coffee as she moved closer to me. “He comes here sometimes to use the computer. He’s very old. Farts without knowing it.” 

“Okay.” 

“Yesterday he came here and asked me to print out articles about local missing people, including your sister. Well, that got my antennas up.” Ms. Sharp straightened her index fingers above her head. 

“People are curious, Ms. Sharp.” 

“I asked him, very casually, if he had any theories about your sister. He told me he knows exactly what happened to her. He knows where she is.”  

“Uh-huh.” 

“He pointed to the sky.”  

I felt heat jolt up my body as I pictured Zoe floating up and away from me. I looked at Ms. Sharp. “He said she’s in the sky?” 

Ms. Sharp must have sensed this detail interested me. Her eyes widened. She fiddled with the top button of her cardigan. “Well, he pointed to the ceiling, but I think he meant beyond that. Heaven maybe.” 

“Maybe.” 

“Isn’t that strange?” 

I returned my outer space book to the shelf. “Very strange.” 

“Maybe he knows something. Should we call the police?” 

“I’ll look into it.” 

She put a finger to her nose. “I have his address on file if you want it.” 

***

When I left the library, I squatted in a peeing position behind the shrubs in the parking lot and smoked a bowl. Then I biked up the road catching flies in my mouth like the town idiot. This is how I spent most of the summer after Zoe disappeared.  

Zoe and I weren’t very close. Before she idolized our dad, she followed me around like a balloon on a string. Sometimes I’d pretend to play hide-and-go-seek with her then leave the house to hang out with my friends while she stayed hidden for hours. Eventually, she stopped following me and gravitated toward our dad. Her loneliness made her a faithful listener, which probably made his condition worse. 

I stopped at a wooden telephone pole and tacked a flyer of Zoe to it. The wood was soft from the previous night’s rain. The paper easily stuck.  

The wet whisper of a car rushed past.  

“Slut,” the passenger yelled from the window. A slurpie exploded at my feet. The red juice splattered up my calves. The riders howled as they disappeared up the road. 

I biked along the swelling Jones River and made my way toward the address Ms. Sharp gave me for Mr. Collins’ house. He lived down the hill from the old tuberculosis hospital. Calf-high Japanese knotweed ravaged his front yard. Red mushrooms sprouted on the front porch like fresh acne and intricate chimes hung dead in the windless, wet afternoon. It looked like a house where children were eaten for dinner. 

I laid my bike against a pile of wooden planks on the porch and avoided territorial carpenter bees as I approached the entrance. I knocked. Mr. Collins emerged, hairless and pink as ham. He looked too old to be alive. 

He pointed to the red sugary web on my calves. “You’re bleeding.”  

“It’s slurpie,” I said.  

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” 

I told him who I was and handed him a flyer of Zoe. “You know anything about her?”  

“Oh yeah, I know where she’s at,” he said, as if Zoe was a gas station up the road. “Come on in. I’ll give you something to stop the bleeding and tell you what I know.” He turned back into his living room, disappearing down a hall.  

I thought about leaving. Ms. Sharp seemed to think he might be dangerous. But I had no other leads, and I was curious. When I stepped inside, I felt itchy all over. The windows were closed and heavily curtained. The furniture was the color of cheap corn snacks, a spectrum of orange not seen in nature. Books were stacked against a wall like bricks. I followed Mr. Collins into a kitchenette. His unusually large midsection appeared burdensome, making his labored steps a waddle. He wore loafers, a white T-shirt, and suspenders that held up stained dress pants.  

He handed me a dish towel that had crumbs stuck to it and a toolbox filled with loose band aids and nails, unlabeled liquids, and a hammer.  

I wiped my calves. “You live alone?”  

He stared into a lit microwave. “Ever since He took my wife from me last month.” 

“Who took your wife?” 

“Our Creator.” 

“Oh, right. Him.” 

The microwave beeped. He retrieved a plate of bacon and made room for it on the counter. Newspaper clippings covered his kitchen. It looked like a hamster cage floor. The headlines were all about missing people. 

“Looks like you’re making a scrapbook,” I said, thumbing through the papers.  

“I like to do research. It keeps me sharp.” Mr. Collins pinched a slice of bacon, then lowered it into his mouth like a sword swallower. He breathed through his nose as he chewed. “I’d offer you some, but this is my last perishable. I’m savoring it.” 

“You said you know what happened to my sister.” 

“That’s right. He took her.” 

I pointed up. “Him again?” 

Mr. Collins nodded. 

I crossed my arms. “So you think she’s dead.” 

“No, I said He took her. Just like He took my wife.”  

“Look, I’m not religious.” 

“Was your sister good?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on me. His pupils were small. 

“Good?”  

“Was she a better person than you?” 

“I don’t know. We’re teenagers.” 

He stuck his pinky in his mouth, digging for stuck food, then spit in the sink. “My wife was good. That’s why He took her and not me.” 

“How do you know?” 

“She made me eggs.” 

“I mean, how do you know she was taken?” 

He lowered his chin. The edges of his mouth were slick with grease. I thought he might belch but instead he said, “Because I watched her disappear into the sky.” 

***

When I arrived home, my mom was staring into the refrigerator packed with sympathy casseroles. She cut slices of pie filled with ground beef from an aluminum container and microwaved them.  

“Careful, it’s hot,” she said, handing me a steaming plate. I could tell she enjoyed microwaving dinners for me, as if she made the food from scratch. I think it made her feel more like a mom. She never prepared homecooked meals for us growing up and we hardly ever sat down together like a family unless eating at the hospital while visiting my dad.  

“Who made this one?” I asked.  

“The neighbor around the corner.”  

“The one Dad hates?” 

“It’s free food, Hailey,” my mom said, then emptied a ketchup packet over her dinner. She collected a whole closet full of single-serving condiments and plastic utensils over the years, mostly from the hospital cafeteria. We probably had enough oyster crackers and plastic sporks to last several lifetimes. “Find out anything new today?” she asked. 

“Every religion predicts there will be some sort of apocalypse, even Buddhism.” I swallowed a glob of food. It scorched my mouth. 

My mom looked at me. Dark hair and scarecrow skinny. The skin under her eyes was the color of vomit. We looked almost exactly alike, unlike Zoe and my dad, who had healthy complexions and gigantic movie star eyes. 

“What’s all that about?” she asked. “You sound like your dad.” 

I spat into my napkin then said, “I had some extra time at the library.” 

Mr. Collins had informed me that “Our Creator” was gathering all the righteous people into heaven before the world ended. He listed apocalyptic possibilities like fire, flood, beast, volcano, and plague as if they were names of his grandkids. As he finished off his microwaved bacon and farted aggressively, he showed me articles, calendars, and excerpts from religious texts to prove his case. Although he described a bright light abducted his wife, I didn’t tell him I’d also seen Zoe beamed into the sky. Not yet. I wasn’t sure I wanted to align myself with a religious fanatic who had no internet access and smelled like artificial cheese. I also felt like confessing what I’d seen made it more real. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.  

My mom poured the remainder of a half-used salt packet on her meal. “I was wondering if you learned anything about Zoe.” 

I shook my head.  

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, folding her hands and straightening her posture. This meant she was about to discuss my dad. “It’s not the worst thing in the world if Zoe is with your dad. He’s not a monster. He’s just. He has lots of ideas. You know your dad.” 

I didn’t know my dad. Growing up, I adored when he told me how things worked like phone lines, sneezes, and organized religion. He seemed to know everything. Then, I grew tired of his lectures, and found he was often wrong, so I learned to ignore him. Living with my dad was like living next to a train. I didn’t notice until a friend would point it out. Is that your dad on the roof? Why is he holding an antenna up like that?  

“I think Zoe has always liked your dad more than me,” my mom said, rubbing her neck where a rash was forming. 

I shrugged. “She worshiped him.” 

“It’s hard to compete with someone like him. I mean, I get it. I love your dad too. But I worry she has some of his tendencies.”  

We never talked about my dad’s illness. Not directly. When we visited him at the hospital, he walked us around the grounds, telling us the history of the century-old buildings without acknowledging the reason we were there. 

“They’re both pretty spacey,” I said. 

“Exactly. Spacey,” my mom agreed and gnawed on her plastic fork, her eyes focused on her meal she wouldn’t eat.  

*** 

I returned to Mr. Collins’ house the next day. He wore the same outfit. His T-shirt hung loose around the collar, revealing a tussle of salted chest hair. The weather channel played at full volume. A woman swept her hand over a red blob that gradually enveloped a map of our town. 

Mr. Collins acted as if he was expecting me, and I’d been there a million times before. As I entered, he fell into his armchair and replaced a jumbo container of mixed nuts in his lap. An alarm sounded on his wristwatch. He pointed and said, “My pills are in the kitchen.” 

His cupboards were half-open, filled with canned soups and mixed nuts. I found a weekly pill container next to a coffee pot and filled a cup with tap water. I checked the freezer for ice. It was empty and not cold. I returned to the front room and emptied the day’s pills into his palm.  

“Why take meds if the world is ending?” I asked. 

He swallowed and held the cup with both hands as he drank. He took a large breath when he finished. “I don’t want to be gone before the end. I intend to survive as long as possible.” 

“If you’re not chosen for heaven, what’s the point?” 

Mr. Collins shrugged. “He might change His mind at any time. I don’t want to miss that chance.”  

I sat cross-legged on the floor beside him and scanned the house. Water stains on the ceiling. Loose papers with shoe prints on the floor. “This place is supposed to survive fire and flood?” 

 “Beast and plague too,” he added, raking his hands through the jar of nuts. His chair whined as he leaned forward and offered me a cashew. “A rare find.” 

I held it in my palm like communion. It looked red. “Are these expired?” 

He crunched his face together. “Nuts don’t go bad.” 

The cashew was soft, oily, and dissolved immediately in my mouth. I swallowed. 

Mr. Collins looked back at the TV, smiling. “I told my wife I hated cashews, so she’d enjoy them guilt-free.” 

I noticed the impressions of his wife in the room. Gardening tools filled a basket beside the front door. Porcelain figurines of kittens wearing pilgrim clothes sat on every surface. Next to his armchair was a modest sofa, where I imagined she would sprawl out after working in the yard all day.  

“You ever get mad at your wife for leaving you behind?” I asked. 

“She didn’t leave me. He took her.” 

“Against her will?” 

“Of course not.” 

I leaned back on my elbows. “You’d think she’d come back for you.” 

“It’s not up to her.” 

“What if something else took your wife?” 

Mr. Collins rocked slightly, clutching the arms of his chair. The mixed nuts container placed firmly between his knees. “Like what?”  

“Like aliens.” 

“Aliens,” he repeated, his voice swampy with phlegm. “What would aliens want with her?” 

“I don’t know. Experiments.” 

Mr. Collins poured another handful of nuts in his mouth then lifted his hands in exacerbation. “Experiments! What do they need to know?”  

I scooted myself closer to him. “Maybe there’s nothing special about the people they take and nothing wrong with us. We’re not good or bad, chosen or not. It’s random.” 

He clapped salt from his hands, lifted himself, and went to the window. “Don’t make stuff up just because you’re afraid.” 

“Isn’t that what religion is?”  

“I saw what I saw. I don’t care if you believe me.” 

“I believe you.” 

Mr. Collins peered out his window. He outstretched his fingers. It reminded me of how a baby flexes its body. “Something is coming. You feel it, don’t you?” 

I looked at my palms, made fists, then stretched my fingers. I felt nothing.  

“Yes,” I said.  

***

“Maybe you blocked something out,” my mom suggested. Her hair was wet from a recent shower, where I imagined she rehearsed this interrogation. Rain pattered softly at the kitchen window. “You were the last one to see Zoe. You must remember something that would help us.” 

I felt like I was on a loop, sitting with my mom at our kitchen table, talking about my dad and sister, and eating a casserole that would never end. I took my plate to the sink and switched on the garbage disposal. It gurgled my food down its throat. When the noise subsided, she continued, “Please just talk to me.” 

I turned to face her. “All I do is talk to you.” 

“You talk, but you don’t talk.” 

The kitchen was dark except for the soft glow of an empty amphibian tank my family had bought after my dad returned from one of his trips. It was a time when he asked us questions. Responded to our answers. I believed what he said. It didn’t feel like he was choosing his mind over me. Life felt quiet and simple for a while.  

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I said.  

My mom laughed like a stranger. “You think I want to be here?” 

“You never leave.” 

“I’m waiting.” 

“We’re always waiting.” 

My mom put her hands over her eyes. “I’m just so tired of being in the dark.” 

“I saw Zoe get zapped into the sky. That’s what happened. That’s what I saw.” 

My mom took a long breath and stood. She emptied her plate in the sink after mine. “Okay, Hailey. I get the message. I won’t ask you again.”  

That was the last time we spoke to each other. 

***

The copier made more posters of Zoe, while I sat cross-legged in the theology section of the library. I skimmed books about miracles, visions, divine providences. The Plagues of Egypt, Joan of Arc, The Three Witnesses. I studied paintings of saints with outstretched arms toward a bright sky. They looked calm, accepting, and ready.  

I didn’t have much experience with religion, except for the handful of times my mom made Zoe and me go to Sunday school to eat free dinners in the chapel basement. The menu consisted of buttery spaghetti, beef jerky, and lettuce drenched in milky dressing. The pastor smiled like a Christmas ornament and rambled about his estranged sister who lived in Michigan. While the other kids played board games, I convinced Zoe to stand guard outside the choir room so I could fumble in the dark with a chubby boy who lived with his grandparents. Though Zoe hated doing it, she always gave in. She even lied for me if an adult asked where we’d been. I wondered if that made her a good person. 

“There you are,” said Ms. Sharp, peering at me from behind the aisle. Her fingers clutched the edges of the shelf. “I looked for you in section 500. Never thought you’d be in the 200s.” 

“Just killing time,” I said, closing the books around me. The sandcastle bucket stood nearby. Drips from the ceiling accelerated as rain picked up outside.  

Ms. Sharp approached noiselessly in her ballet flats and handed me the fresh posters of Zoe from the copier. “Did you talk to Mr. Collins yet?” 

I nodded. “He’s just a lonely old man.” 

She cleaned her glasses with the corner of her sweater. It had sequin stars on the breast. “Lonely old men can be dangerous, Hailey. Young men too. We need to be smart about this.” 

“He’s harmless. Really. Doesn’t know anything I don’t know.”  

She returned her glasses to her face and pushed them up her nose. “I did some digging after we talked. You know Mr. Collins’ wife went missing last month?” 

“I know.” 

“He never filed a report about it. Police didn’t know she was gone until her church group got involved. Thank god they found her.” 

The air conditioner kicked into a higher gear. Cold air spewed from a ceiling vent. 

“They found her?”  

“Poor thing was wandering the woods without any pants. Some hikers found her. She had severe untreated dementia.” 

“Oh,” I said.  

Ms. Sharp pressed her fingers together in a tent shape. “She’s at a nursing home now. I hear Mr. Collins never visits her. That’s why I don’t trust him. How can someone abandon their wife like that? Something’s not right there.” 

In the aisle behind her, I watched the sandcastle bucket overflow. A woman approached it and looked inside as if it were an endless well. Then the power cut out. 

*** 

Of course, I considered I might be crazy. A disturbance in my brain chemistry. Lesions that resembled clusters of faraway galaxies under my skull. My mind might not be my own. A flickering, faulty lightbulb running the whole show. I pushed these thoughts down. They settled in my stomach and made it turn. My father never spoke of visions, but he certainly had delusions of grandeur. My mom said all men had those. Their problems were the center of the universe. The rest of us pulled into their orbit whether we liked it or not. 

The rain pelted down on me as I left the library. My purple bra showed clear through my shirt. When I arrived home, the kitchen window was wide open. A basil plant had fallen from the sill and broken in the sink. Junk mail and flyers had flown from the table and flapped like dying fish on the floor. A mug of coffee sat with a dash of cream unstirred. I shut the kitchen window and peered outside. My mom’s car sat in the driveway as it had been all summer.  

“Mom,” I called. 

My voice hung in the air with no reply, a little girl’s in the night. Covers under the chin. Eyes not yet adjusted. Like when Zoe would whisper my name when we shared a bedroom. Our house creaked, a disturbance in its bowels. Hailey, she’d say from across the room. I’d let it hang. Let her think she was the only one awake in the dark. I don’t know why I did that.  

“Mom,” I repeated, checking each empty room.  

She was gone. I was alone.  

I found a garbage bag and pushed my head and arms through it. With the power out, I knew the sympathy casseroles would spoil soon. I took one from our fridge and balanced it on the front of my bike, along with a bin of single-serving crackers and condiments. Then, I made my way to Mr. Collins’ house.  

The Jones River had overflown into the street and the posters I’d hung of Zoe earlier in the week were floating in the gutters. Lightning flashed white and thunder responded.  

The chimes on Mr. Collins’ porch clanged with urgency. Red mushrooms split open like popped boils. Branches broke free at the mercy of the wind. When I knocked on his door, Mr. Collins waddled from behind the house, drenched through his clothes, hammer in hand.  

“I’m securing the perimeter,” he said. I brought him a plank from a pile on the porch and held it in place. He hammered. It took him several tries to sink each nail in the wood. His breathing was labored. He held his side as we moved through the rain. 

After we finished boarding the windows, we returned inside where his ceiling leaked in several places. Mr. Collins collapsed in a kitchen chair and closed his eyes as he caught is breath. “I was right. The end is really here,” he said, then opened his eyes. “What’s that smell?” 

“I brought food.” I placed the casserole on the counter. “I thought you might want it.” 

“It smells like a foot.” 

“I also brought these.” I showed him the bin of crackers and condiments.  

Mr. Collins snatched a package, tore it open, and shook the cracker dust into his mouth. 

“My mom is gone,” I said. “She’s not home and she’s always home. Something’s wrong.” 

“No, that’s a good thing. He saved her. She’s with your sister, I bet.” He threw the empty wrapper on the floor and looked around his house. “I probably have enough supplies for the both of us, but you’ll have to carry your weight. Crank the radio. Empty the sump pump.” 

“Tell me about your wife,” I said. 

“What about her?” 

“I heard she’s sick.” 

He struggled to open another packet of crackers. “No, she was taken.” 

“You could visit her.”  

Mr. Collins slammed his fist on the table. His weak arms made it a feeble gesture. “I told you what happened. She was saved.”  

The storm quieted, except for a soft wheezing. An inch of water collected at our feet, a porcelain cat wearing a bonnet floated on the surface. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Then the hail started, slow at first, until it sounded like TV static. Mr. Collins whipped his head back and forth, overwhelmed by each disaster. He was unprepared and afraid. 

I grabbed his hand and pressed another package of crackers into his palm. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I believe you.”  

He nodded trance-like.  

“Tell me more about her,” I continued. “You said she liked cashews and made you eggs. What else do you remember?” 

Mr. Collins opened the package, eating slower this time. “Well, she liked to read. She wrote inside every book she owned. Underlined what she liked and added notes in the margins. A book wasn’t complete until she wrote in it.” 

“What else?” I said. 

He removed the aluminum foil from the casserole and picked the edges. “She curled her hair every day, even when we stayed home. It made no sense to me. She’d sweat in the garden with her hair all done. She liked growing all types of tomatoes and left a bowl of little ones for me next to my pills in the summer. I’d eat them right away. We never spoke about it. It’s just something she did.” 

“You miss her.” 

He focused his gaze on a boarded window and swallowed. “What about your people? What were they like?” 

The storm had picked up to full force again. Leaks from the ceiling turned to constant streams. Wind whistled through a weak spot in the walls. Planks flew off the windows and joined the storm. Mr. Collins didn’t react. He chewed and listened as the world poured in and I told him all I remembered about the people who were gone.

---

Ellen Skirvin teaches and serves as the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Penn State University. She also serves on the Board of the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a volunteer-driven non-profit organization that mails free books and provides educational support to people incarcerated in the Appalachian region. She co-edited the book This Book is Free and Yours to Keep (2024, WVU Press), which encompasses a collection of letters and artwork by people in prison. Her fiction appears in the Baltimore Review, CutBank, The Forge Literary Magazine, and other places.