Private Rites

by Julia Armfield

In Jason’s parlance, Mondays are a fascist rite of passage, commuting a soulless death parade.

The sensation, then, not so much of being misunderstood as of being understood too well at one time and then never again.

The first time you lose a parent, a part of you gets trapped there, trapped less in the moment of grief than in the knowledge of the end of childhood, the inevitable dwindling of the days.

“My mum’s still alive,” Stephanie says, “but the way she goes on you’d think I personally killed her several years ago and have yet to be tried for my crimes.”

I’m going to sleep now, she said to Jude the first time she stayed over, and then proceeded to do just that. I always thought that was weirdly sexy, Jude said to her later. It made me feel like you had your shit together, which obviously wasn’t the case, but you had me going for a while.

don’t know, Agnes said, picking at the skin around her thumb for a moment and then looking away. I don’t know how that could be true if it isn’t what I remember.

You can never just climb down from something, Isla had once told her, you like to treasure up a grudge like something you’ve birthed and fed and sent to an expensive school.