Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

She knew all these people but she couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to them. She had an irrational fear that no one would remember who she was.

Betty’s first term in UCD passed in a mad rush of stress, drinking too much, eating too little, insecurity, and anxiety that would years later, somehow, bake and cool in her memory as happiness.

“Ugh. That’s so cliché.” “So’s penicillin for pneumonia. Take the damn cure.”

She expended a paragraph on extolling her own skills, assets, and virtues, which felt like rolling a cheese grater over her soul.

“Why do you think that?” said Ashling, with the air of someone about to get into an argument with a flat-Earther.