Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

If only you’d listened to us, none of this would have happened.

Children turned men into heroes and mothers into lesser employees, if we didn’t play our cards right.) “I

But Sloane knew she was terrible at keeping up with mental reminders. Her life was empty water bottles rolling around on the floorboards of her expensive car. Unopened mail on kitchen countertops. Thank you cards written but never sent. In the back of her mind, she was already moving on, adding this mental reminder to the detritus of unfinished tasks to be recycled into background stress, where it would serve as fuel for her spotty and unexplained bouts of insomnia, chin acne, and stomach bloating.

(Because we knew this logic: we were always supposed to be thankful when anyone thought we were pretty.)

On Mondays, we were bitterly aware that we had long since outgrown summer vacation, that the monotony of work flowed straight through the four seasons without stopping, that a weekend was, at its core, only one real day off followed by a day of steeling ourselves for the coming onslaught of the week ahead,