Stella Patella
an excerpt

I’m lying on my back in a field of prairie sunflowers. As I look up through the green leaves and yellow petals silhouetted against the turquoise sky, it’s hard to believe anything bad could ever happen. If I just stay here, I think, everything will be all right. If I just lie here where the autumn sun is painting little checkerboards of light and shade on my skin, I’ll be OK. I’ll be OK. I squinch my eyes tight and say it out loud. “I’ll be OK.” I don’t know why, but I sit up. I sit up in time to see my dad slam the door of our yurt and stomp up the red clay driveway to our old VW bus and get into it and drive away. I sit up in time to see my mom look out the screen door, her long blond hair disheveled, in time to see her crumple to the stoop and start to cry. I lie back down. I don’t want to be involved. I just want to lie here in the sun and pretend my world isn’t crumbling around me.