Diavola

by Jennifer Marie Thorne

There was a time when they’d seemed fun, when all of this, the city, the nightlife, city life in general, felt like exactly what she was meant to do. But somewhere along the line, her life had become compacted into work, apartment, art, takeout once a week and frugal home cooking the rest of the time, managing Josh when there was a Josh to be managed, calling her family, getting up, doing it all over again, and she wasn’t sure it was worth the price of rent and a MetroCard anymore.

Her heart jumped, thinking it was a text from Benny, but no, just a push notification—Duolingo, wondering where she’d been, why she’d stopped studying Italian. That damn owl looked so disappointed in her.

The Duolingo owl congratulated her on her three straight weeks on top of the Diamond League Italian charts. Anna laughed, mouth hanging open. “The fuck?” Her computer lit up across the room.

“This is what most people spend

their lives trying not to face. The pointlessness of it all. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold because there was never any center in the first place.”

You were looking for the weak one in the flock, right? The one you could draw aside and push over the edge. Isolate from everyone and feed upon, but see, that was the first flaw in your logic: I’m not a lost lamb. I’m a black sheep. These are two very different things.”