Fiction by Christina Tudor
the wagon tips over and all three of us spill out onto the pavement and the way everyone tells the story later, there was blood everywhere, leaking free from our knees and fat, busted lips. Our mother came running at the sound of our bodies tumbling onto the earth. Because it was primal instinct to rescue us from our father who was just goofing around, lapping the cul-de-sac on rollerblades faster and faster and just a little faster. The three of us, along for the ride, our hands in the air like we were on a roller coaster even though we were not old enough for the big kid rides at the theme park.
It’s all fun and games. Make believe. Mermaids, princesses, witches brewing stew in our mother’s compost. We mistake dandelions for flowers. Make puffy cloud wishes, seeds scattering. Play hide-and-seek. Man hunt. Catch me if you can. Our sharp, staccato breaths give us away. The neighbor boy backs me against an oak tree. Got you, he says and it echoes through the trees.
And we get older. Grow into our bodies as best we can. Bra straps folding over our shoulders. Swiping our mother’s signature coral pink lipstick. Pressing our palms into our sides to prove that yes, our skirts are longer than our fingertips. Did you see what your daughter wore to school today? V-necked. Sunburnt. Like the skin of a ripe nectarine peeled with your teeth. We sneak our father’s whisky, sip it from a rhinestone flask under the bleachers and against the concrete back of the mostly abandoned strip mall.
There’s three of you, the manager at the Dollar General says when he catches us wandering the aisles. With our dirty blonde ponytails and bad teeth. Sisters, he says, his tongue poking out from between his lips, tracing us with his eyes. You look like you’re up to no good.
We nod. We buy cookie dough bites, sour patch kids, Nair hair removal cream, and for June, a pregnancy test that we stash under the other items while we check out. June is the oldest, and therefore, our leader. The prettiest too, even though no one would ever admit it. Callie’s the youngest, artsy and loud-mouthed. I’m in the middle and usually forgotten.
Callie and I anchor ourselves to June.
She pees on the stick in the McDonald’s bathroom across the street while the two of us turn away and face the dirty bathroom mirror. We can’t stand her boyfriend. He’s standing between June and a better future in a town far away. Can’t imagine the two of them as parents until suddenly, we can; they take the shape of our parents who’ve given us a crash course in how much anger can sit within silence.
June picks up the pregnancy test and I cross my fingers. For luck. Negative, she says and wings it into the trash can before we can see for ourselves. We can tell by the way her lips trip over the word that she’s lying. We let her lie. Play make believe for a little while longer. We wander home, pass between us the rhinestone flask that holds the aftertaste of every drink we’ve ever funneled inside its walls. There’s a warning bell in the distance. The gates lower across the railroad tracks.
Soon, a freight train will shuttle through the intersection. We imagine jumping on, gripping the sides as hard as we can.
Christina Tudor is a writer living in Washington, D.C. Her fiction has been featured in SmokeLong Quarterly, matchbook, HAD, Flash Frog, The Citron Review, Funicular Magazine, Best Small Fictions 2024, and more. She has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and was a 2022 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in fiction. Her debut chapbook, CALL MY BODY A CAUTIONARY TALE, will be published by Thirty West this Fall. Follow her on Instagram @christinaltudor and christinaltudor@bsky.social
Arcturus 