Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Cora says. Half the things she thinks aren’t even real. Thoughts are nothing at all, they come from nowhere and disappear into nothing and you can’t wade in their river as they pass by—that’s what her therapist said. But Cora knows that her therapist means Cora’s thoughts, not everyone’s thoughts. “How can that not matter?” Harvey says. But Cora doesn’t know how to answer that in a way Harvey will understand, so she takes another bite of the bun.

Her words taste jagged, and she knows she’s talking in the way her aunts don’t like, that her eyes are probably fever bright. This is why Cora is always quiet—when something actually matters, it matters too much, and everyone can taste it in her words. It scares them, how much it matters to her.