Interesting Facts about Space

“Yes.” She smiles. “I love weird little bugs, remember?”

I hear an alarm going off. I think a fire exit was just opened.

She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Yes. How do I look? Can you tell I have a parasite?”

I laugh. “No. Can you see mine?”

She smiles. “Nope.”

Looking through this box feels like revisiting a murder story that I first heard as a kid.

I think if I don’t restrain myself, I become selfish, opportunistic, and dishonest. I am pretending to be someone normal, but I’m not. If I let my guard down, I am liable to hurt people.

“Yeah,” I say. “My mom knits. She makes me sweaters. I remember seeing all the sweaters she knit me. I thought of her finding me in there with them, so I stopped.”

Sometimes now, when I blink quickly, I still see the burned image of her crying on the insides of my eyelids.

She interrupts me. “Did you turn to her when you were upset or scared?”

I consider the question.

I think of myself in my bedroom, lying under my blankets, muffling the sound of myself crying into my pillow.

“No.”

The truth is that knowing there are photos of bald men in my possession makes me feel like I possess a cursed book bound in human flesh.

She listens intently. When I stop rambling, she says, “No, you’re not being insane. That is strange. Let’s get to the bottom of it.”