Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

I would crawl and roar like a lion or speak out loud to my make-believe dad.

Her Tylenol is not even extra strength. The

I think of myself as a kid while I dry my hands. I think of my mom standing alone behind me.

“You can have a mother and a doll. That’s it.” “That’s not enough.” “It’s plenty.”

I am not well-equipped to discuss skiing, sailing, and whatever other depraved hobbies occupy the time of opulent middle-aged white men. Despite feeling uncomfortable

know what I’ve been ignoring. I feel like the door in my mind has been swung open. I feel like I am looking at the charred remains of what I did.

“Well, he loved you, honey; he was just a bad father.”

I often don’t want to know the truth because I’m worried that it will reveal something I won’t be able to handle. I think that I would rather be ignorant, but maybe that’s wrong. When I’m ignorant, I start thinking I’m crazy. I repress that I start fires and I become

neurotic. I am so worried that I am a bad person. I am afraid of facing that possibility. But I think, if I were a good person, I would face it. Good people want to know what they did wrong.

We both lean back on the windshield. I look at the sky. I think about my dad and feel my throat spasm. I think of myself in my earliest YouTube videos. A weird little girl with a chubby face, saying, “I have a dad, he just doesn’t like me.” I think of myself at seventeen, undoing a belt I once considered killing myself with, while clinging to a boy I didn’t like. I think of myself happy being cruel to people I felt rejected by. I realize as I look up at the green lights in the sky that I wasn’t traumatized by the fire. I was traumatized by my dad believing the first horrible thing he ever heard about me.

“I would like an explanation,” she says. “I’m sorry,” I say. “That isn’t an explanation. Is it that you just don’t like me?” “No, I like you,” I say. “You couldn’t possibly like me if you would treat me like that.” She examines my face. Her eyes dart from my eyes to my mouth and back. “I like you,” I say again. She crosses her arms. “Then what’s your problem?”