Happiness for Beginners

by Katherine Center

I didn’t seem to have any clothes with pockets, and so I kept the list folded up in my bra, relishing both the roughness of it against my softest skin and the vague naughtiness of using my underwear like a pocket.

“You’ll figure it out.” “What if I don’t?” “Then you’ll die,” Beckett said with a shrug. “And I’ll use my one stick of dynamite to make it look like an avalanche.”

“Do you think she can be fixed?” “I think she can be helped.” We lay there in silence for a few minutes as an image popped into my head of Pickle hiding behind the toilet, baring her teeth at me as I held out a treat and said, “Come on! Let’s retrain your neurobiology!”