It's recess at Christ the King Academy. It's always recess, she thinks. Whenever she comes outside for a cigarette, there are elementary school kids at play. They're background noise to her own recesses from the Department of Licensing. Usually.Today, she walks to the edge of the parking lot with her Salem her eyes sweep the playground. The girls all wear skirts, modestly cut at the knees; the boys, slacks.
There is a basketball game among the sixth-graders, boys against girls. The girls have kicked their sandals to the side of the court and play in their bare feet.
She watches the game. The girls are less awkward and still taller than the boys. They sweep virtually uncontested to the hoop. Their lay-ups find their way in perhaps a quarter of the time, but they almost always get the rebounds.
The boys still appear as children to her, but the girls are in that in-between state. They have the smallest buds of breasts. She imagines what the wind must feel like rushing up their skirts, how refreshing the air must be, and feels yeasty underneath her khakis, briefs, and panty liner.
When does it change? she wonders. When do they turn into the midriff-baring, low-ridered, navel-pierced Driver's Permits that she'll examine? When she has them go through the hand signals--left turn, right turn, stop--why is there no trace of the basketball game below?
The boys, she knows, will still seem like boys, in spite of the peach fuzz they proudly display on their chins as they buckle up. But the girls... when did she herself stop wearing the modest skirts? When did she get the tattoo on her calf that she's careful to conceal at work?
She stubs out the cigarette and doesn't smoke the rest of the day.
At home, she digs through boxes that haven't been unpacked in at least three moves until she unearths her old Bible. Laying it open, she turns to verses she once memorized. She finds no comfort in the meaning of the words, but hunts the air for a trace of what she smelled like at twelve years old.
Untrue Crimes † SmokeLong Quarterly
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