Emergency Contact

by Mary H.K. Choi

she felt as if saying makeup names out loud set women’s rights back several decades.

What the hell was “Call me”? Only sadists left that message.

There wasn’t even a special trick. You wrote it exactly as you would for a guy, but you made pain thresholds higher since girls have to put up with more in the world and give them more empathy, which makes everything riskier.

“If there was an apocalypse—zombies, the sun explodes, whatever—fiction writing as a job would be the thousandth priority behind SoulCycle instructors.” The class laughed. “It’s a privilege, and part of acknowledging that privilege is doing it honorably. Create diverse characters because you can. Especially ones that aren’t easy to write.

Yet if you breathe life into a character and it comes to you too easily—say you’re writing from the viewpoint of a black man in America and you’re not one? Think hard about where your inspiration is coming from. Are you writing stereotypes? Tropes? Are you fetishizing the otherness? Whose ideas are you spreading? Really consider how you transmit certain optics over others. Think about how much power that is.”

He went to pull out his phone to call 911, but his jeans—his stupid hipster jeans—were too tight. He saw stars and then he died.

Hell really was other people.

If she was going to break up with the guy, she wanted to look good. Maybe her best. Humans were garbage like that.

See, she could imagine it; she just couldn’t imagine wanting it.

What did it mean, “here”? The Anima was always “here.” Where was not “here”? That there was such a thing as “un-here” bore a hole in the Anima’s head.

None of this matters We’re all biding time until we die anyway

With texts there were only the words and none of the awkwardness. They could get to know each other completely and get comfortable before they had to do anything unnecessarily overwhelming like look at each other’s eyeballs with their eyeballs.

why do people go to these things? There was no biological imperative for it. Was there any other species on earth that prized popularity the way people did? Did lemurs hang around preening in a never-ending competition of pretending to be over it? Humans were gross.

You know, I thought you didn’t know me because I was insecure or broken or poor, and then I thought about it. It’s because you never asked. Ever. I want to be with someone I can talk to. I want to be with someone who automatically has a fat folder on me. Someone who feels lucky when I tell them the most unflattering, scary stuff. I don’t think I love you anymore, and I got to be honest, I don’t believe that you love me.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “That’s not an apology,” he said. “You know that, right?”

But I’m glad that whatever led you to me happened. I’m grateful that you’re my emergency contact. Even if you’re super intense and talking to you late at night is as constructive as Web MDing a bunch of symptoms in the sense that I’m almost always convinced all roads lead to death,

I bet I’m bad at death

Lucky I’m great at death

Penny eyed her mother and felt her heart harden. The desire to protect her and the impulse to hurt her were mystifying.

Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.

There was no way to know who was running the show. To be the hero, you had to decide it was you.

“Is everything okay?” she asked him. He smiled. “Everything doesn’t have to be a crisis, Penny,” he said. Penny wasn’t so sure.

I trust you right back. You speak fluent me. I’ve got no complaints. I love . . . I like knowing that you exist. It doesn’t make me feel any less lonely, because life is lonely, but it makes me feel a lot less alone.”

Penny took a half step closer to him and cleared her throat. She was so excited she wanted to punch him.

Finally, if you’re wondering if it counts and it feels like it counts, it counts.