You'd Be Home Now

This is the best time of our lives, or so everyone keeps telling us

I’m an alternate, Maddie. I suck. I sit out most of the time anyway and when I am in, I’m in the back.”

I’m pretty sure I only made the team because Mom made a call, to be honest. “I never liked dance team anyway. That was just Mom trying to make me Maddie 2.0.”

leaving so soon? if you lived here, you’d be home now!

Of course. I can’t miss today. We’ve got a deposition. Maddie’s

And then he’s gone

want Joey. Please, get me Joey.”

I should be sleeping, but I’m floating again instead. Night is my favorite time to float and soon, when fall comes, it will be too cold

then and there, my lungs bursting, that I will spend the rest of the summer underwater, weightless and unharmed and silent and safe.

Sometimes I stayed in there longer than I needed to, just for some peace. It’s hard all the time. Pretending.