The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

I kept my walking slow, like my brain was a full glass of water I needed to carefully balance down the corridor.

And me? I asked, grasping, for the last time. You? Baby, you’re— I stood still. Waiting. You’re— She smiled at me, as she folded the blue-and-white-checked dish towel. You’re seaglass, she said. The pretty green kind. Everybody loves you, and wants to take you home. It took a while to pick up all the pieces of my train track and put them away in my own bedroom. It was a compliment, I kept thinking to myself, as I stacked the parts; it’s supposed to make you feel good, I thought.

Not an easy day to look at people in their vivid clothes, in their shining hair, pointing and smiling at colorful woven sweaters. I wanted to erase them all. But I also wanted to be them all, and I could not erase them and want to be them at the same time.

Mrs. Ogilby returned my quiz. B plus. I’d missed the past-perfect conjugation of “to go.” Everyone in my quiz was going in the present.

What is good about a Dorito, I said, in full voice, is that I’m not supposed to pay attention to it. As soon as I do, it tastes like every other ordinary chip. But if I stop paying attention, it becomes the most delicious thing in the world.

In conclusion, I said, a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.

Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia.