Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

“The world has raised its whip,” I read aloud when my turn came; “where will it descend?”

That was it! seventeen-year-old me had thought. That perpetual alertness! Watching the skies, sniffing the air, bracing for calamity. That’s me.

A need for order, even amid the densest chaos, was something I understood.

“A silent phone brings out the very worst in us,” he said. “All of us.”