No One Can Know

by Kate Alice Marshall

It isn’t that she’s afraid of the answers. She’s afraid she already knows them.

She’s the kind of person you call beautiful because she is thin and has good teeth and an expensive haircut. Everyone always says Juliette looks just like her mother.

Talk about a thing too much, you’re obsessed. Talk about it too little, you’re hiding something. And no such thing as a middle ground. She could never get it right.

You lose a dream and it starts to hurt to even remember you ever had it.”

When had she decided that it was better to be miserable than to be alone, she wondered. Or had that always been the price she was paying?

For all that they’d fought, that rule was never broken. You didn’t tell. You kept each other’s secrets.

They’re going to look at me and try to judge my grief. Whether I’m acting like a widow should. But it doesn’t matter what you do. If you cry, they call them crocodile tears. If you ever laugh, you’re a psychopath; if you never laugh, you’re, wait for it, probably a psychopath. If you smile, you’re remorseless, and if you don’t, you’re cold and unlikable.”

“Fuck,” he said. “You have changed.” “Adapt or die, right?”