Excerpt: Sad Tomato

Tomato ground her back into the wall, straining against the mortar as if she had reason to believe it would give way and let her wriggle out of the path of the raindrops falling into puddles around her. She didn’t actually believe that; a break like that never comes your way, not when it’s really needed. But what were her choices, really? Sit in the rain or try to get out of it, if only incrementally. She dug in again, pushing her heels against the asphalt and shoving backward, and she could feel the rough edge of the brick pierce first her slowly soaking T-shirt and then the skin on the small of her back. She pushed till it hurt too much to push anymore, and then she looked skyward and took a raindrop in the eye. Her reward for looking up for answers, she supposed.