Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

by Clare Pooley

right now she just wanted to sit quietly and imagine herself in a world where she still mattered.

The only thing Iona had never been accused of was being forgettable.

Did all that shock and grief seep into the soft furnishings?

and their suffocating concern only made her feel weaker and more pathetic. More of a target.

“Well, what would be the point of saving your life if I didn’t try to make sure you made the most of it?”

Things just seemed to happen when he was around Iona, without him having any control over them whatsoever.

Sometimes fate just shows you the way to go and you have no option but to follow. And if this is your fate, it will happen. Just you wait. It’s absolutely not over until the fat lady sings.”

“Good God. Since when have you wanted to fit in?” said Iona.

The thought lodged in his brain like a festering splinter.

relentlessly cheerful as possible, as a counterbalance to their individual grief.

“They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”

wasn’t sure if she should find this reassuring or terrifying. Was

salubrious.

Which was most irritating, because the “emergency five-minute makeup routine” could not withstand light drizzle, let alone copious tears.

We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.

And as Iona spoke, she felt lighter, as if the weight of years of slights and slurs were being removed from her shoulders.