The Loop

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

Lucy pictured the way boys’ faces would change when they were in a group together. It happened with girls sometimes too. Whatever was wrong in them, it was lined up like dominoes. Only took one falling over and the rest went bad.

My girlfriend says I’m classist as shit, but she grew up with decent money.

My mom always says, ‘The only constant in life is change.’ When I was little that made me feel scared. But now… things have got to change, right? Because if it feels like this forever…”

sometimes, she’d learned, you need to shut the fuck down.

Lucy wondered where she might be at that exact moment if she hadn’t spent so much time trying to be the right version of herself for those around her.

Looking straight ahead, she had forgotten all about the stars above.

And Lucy learned a lesson: if you ever want a loadie to go one way, point the other way and say, “Cops.”