Pursing your lips is better than biting them, she remembers, and then she remembers the sting of the lemonade on her adolescent bit lip, that summer when she’d grown a couple of inches so that her long pants became capris. That summer also brought Sean who’d kiss her and run away, something he repeated for years, until he ran way to the Navy and never came back. He was blond and brave, unlike her, she thought.

Last night she and Sheri had spent the evening at a club, pounding 7 & 7s and the dance floor, and now her pounding headache was in its third hour. “Oh well, pale is in…” she said to herself when she looked in the mirror this morning. Still, the white shirt might have been the wrong choice, though she’d an inkling to start anew this day – no more drinking, library and not the club tonight. White shirt instead of black.

Stopping at a store window to look at herself, she shifted her weight, then turned a bit. The corners of her mouth went south. She reached for the the black leather she’d been carrying and covered herself before moving on.

-Danny Grosso