By Dan Crawley

Edina and I partnered up for a dance routine in the Spring choir show. She was thorough, demonstrating all the right moves for me. She’d taken lessons; she’d competed in pageants early on. I’d thought we rehearsed with an appetency I haven’t experienced since. Later, our bare arms and necks gleamed under the bright lights.

That summer my family planned to move away. So my choir friends threw a party for me at Edina’s house. In no time at all she led me out to her backyard and positioned me across a chaise lounge by a curtain of flowers.

Edina counted off. We performed a slow-slow-quick-quick-slow, slow-slow-quick-quick-slow. She paused, gazing deep into my eyes.

“You’re not joking, right?” Edina wanted to know. “You are really moving away? I mean, it’s not like you’ll show up for school next year, surprising everyone? You’re gone for good, right?”

“Yep, for good.”

Edina dipped me off the lawn furniture. She clipped a nearby rose and placed it between my teeth, thorns and all.

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Dan Crawley’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Lost Balloon, JMWW, Best Small Fictions 2023 & 2024, Variant Literature, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. His recent collection is Blur (Cowboy Jamboree Press).