Micro-Story

“She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.”

-Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

  

Rotten Apple

“It’s fine,” I told them, and I tried to make my mouth form something that would pass for a smile.

“Next time,” Jordan said, smiling. Her smile was real. Not because the smile stood for anything nice or good. But a real smile happens on someone’s face when they are happy, and other people’s pain makes Jordan happy. This time it was mine. My pain.

I told them it was fine, but it wasn’t fine. I wasn’t fine. I used to be, before she got here. I had friends who seemed to like me and they sometimes laughed at my jokes and one time Sara Miller bought the same shirt I had only in a different color. We all sometimes copied each other because imitation= flattery but it also=safety, because nobody wants to stand out too much. Not really.

A long time ago my seventh grade teacher said that Kevin Monroe was a rotten apple. She said it after his family moved to Nebraska and she knew he was never coming back. She told us our class would be better now, because Kevin had been the one to poison everything. I guess she meant his rottenness seeped out and made Joey Walsh and Matt Sanders into bullies, too. I thought at the time that my teacher, Mrs. Adams, was being kind of dumb. Joey and Matt weren’t apples. They didn’t turn because of Kevin. Except then she ended up being right. They both started being almost…nice, after Kevin left. That's when I learned that some people are just poison.

I was fine before Jordan got here. For some reason, she decided to that she didn’t want to copy me—she wanted to take my place. I know that she whispers and she lies. I always almost almost catch her in the act, but never dead to rights. She’s like a snake.

I told them I was fine but I was lying. Mrs. Adams had taught me that the only thing to do with rotten apples was to move them away from the rest. Mrs. Adams had just waited until Kevin moved away. But Jordan’s family had just built a new house here. I couldn’t count on that kind of luck.

Rotten=you smile because you make somebody else cry. It was a simple equation. I understood what came next. It was simple too.