21
" Me and Jason against you and Stacy.” Alana handed Alexis a badminton racket and grinned. “Yay,” Alexis said without even a smidgeon of enthusiasm. “Do you want to serve?” Stacy asked Alexis when Jason and Alana moved to the other side of the net. “Serve you what? There’s no staff here to take care of your every whim, princess,” Alexis said lowly so the others wouldn’t hear. Stacy recoiled at the remark, then her temper flared. “You know what I was asking,” she replied coolly. “You can serve. Here’s the birdie,” Alexis replied and handed it to her on her middle finger. “Shuttlecock,” Stacy corrected. “Butthole…cock.” Alexis shrugged when Stacy glared at her. “That’s what we used to call them.” “Uh-huh,” Stacy said as she prepared to serve. The birdie sailed over the net,and volley began. This went on for a few minutes, then Alexis heard a hard thwack behind her, and the birdie stung her on the back of the thigh. She turned and looked at Stacy with fire in her eyes. “My bad,” Stacy said nonchalantly.Alexis picked up the birdie and hit it toward Jason. He served again. Stacy returned and nailed Alexis in the back of the head. “I’m so sorry,” Stacy said with an acerbic smile. “I’m having a hard time getting my shuttlecock up for you.” ...An intense volley began, and Alana said, “Uh, hey, y’all are
supposed to be hitting it to us.” Jason watched in fascination. “I think they’re trying to kill the birdie.” Alexis finally missed and snatched it off the ground. “We were just warming up.” “Yeah, I’m good and hot now,” Stacy added between clenched teeth...“My serve,” Alexis said as she whirled around, then lowered her voice as she passed Stacy. “You’re about to find out whywe call them butthole cocks.” Stacy held her racket out like a sword. “How about I just waffle your ass now?” Alexis struck a fencing pose, or at least she thought she did. “On guard, biatch.”...Alana rushed under the net and stepped between the two staring daggers at each other. “Hey, we want to be able to use these rackets again. Maybe we should take a break since y’all kind of murdered the birdie.” Alana laughed. “It’s missing two plastic feathers... "
― Robin Alexander , Dear Me
22
" [Charlie is dying:]
After what seemed a long while, but hadn’t been, Marsh gave Paulette’s hand a warm and caring squeeze. “They’re here for him,” she said.
But their heavenly visitors didn’t take him right away. They had to make room for the chaos of modern medical urgencies. To get out of the way of well-trained professionals who had dedicated their lives to holding back Heaven.
Choppers are just as noisy and turbulent as we imagine them to be. One tore in over the hills and shattered every bit of peace Charlie otherwise could have lost himself into.
In an instant the Med-Evac team was all over him. In the midst of that blatant orchestrated chaos Paulette fought to find her peace, and to hold him inside it.
“Hang on, buddy,” techs kept telling him. “Don’t go leaving us now. You just hang in there.”
But they didn’t understand, Paulette thought. It was his time.
The chopper made a horrible racket carrying him off. Marsh, Paulette, and Ailana held their peace as its winds whipped their world into a froth.
Harve’s face twisted with something that might conceivably have been rage.
Then, all of a sudden, the birds sang, as though someone had given them a cue.
“So that’s what it’s like,” Marsha said, very softly.
“The afterlife.
“My God, it’s so beautiful. "
― Edward Fahey , The Gardens of Ailana
28
" You clumsy wench—Gods above! Are you trying to rob me, girl?” The nobleman seizes my wrist and yanks it from his pocket. My hand comes up with the pipe clenched in it. I stare at him, horrified.
“I . . .”
“I’ll have your head for this!” the man rages. “I’ll have you whipped!”
***
“I got the pipe,” I say, holding it up.
He stares for a minute, blinking, and then bursts into laughter. A few curious deer stick their heads through the shrubs to see what the racket is. Aladdin doubles over, laughing loud enough to startle birds from the trees overhead, and after a moment, I start laughing too. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long, long while, and it feels wonderful. We sit on the grass and laugh until our faces are red and we’re out of breath.
“You are the worst thief I have ever seen,” declares Aladdin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got it, didn’t I?”
“My grandmother could pick pockets better than that! Though that’s not quite fair; my grandmother was the best pickpocket in Parthenia. She taught me all her tricks. Drove my mother crazy. "
― Jessica Khoury , The Forbidden Wish