Come Up and See Me Sometime by Erika Krouse

Author:Erika Krouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Her First Earthquake

* * *

It’s not what you do—it’s how you do it.

—Mae West

The sixth grade gym class watched Emily’s balance beam routine. It had no grace or reason besides the covering of space from here to there. Another dip, a hurried somersault. The black leotard sagged against her chest and stomach. Her breasts had yet to master their training bra, and the rest of her hadn’t yet learned to negotiate the ground, the odd angles of walls, the bruises of doors.

Then the class scurried to the wall. Emily nearly stopped and watched. The kids crouched down. They covered their heads. Emily thought they were disgusted by her performance, so she tried harder. Dipping, wobbling and leaping, doing somersaults and jumps on the hard wooden railing.

Then it was easy. Her foot found the wood and gripped where it touched. She couldn’t fall. She found perfect balance on her toes. Emily looked up with a smile in the middle of a jump and saw the world heaving and bucking against its own weight. The free weights leaping from their stands. Floor mats shimmying across the room. The ground shaking, easy, loose. Emily stood on her hands.

A high window smashed to pieces. Glass whirled in the designs of tears, of ice. Everything that would happen to everyone else was spelled out like tea leaves, or the patterns of bones. Broken glass cut all around her, except for where she had already landed without noticing. With her arms up in the air, small feet suddenly firm on the dancing floor.

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