The boys started it. Mark the Bold, of course, was showing off. He climbed up and leapt between ledges shouting “parkour!” with a laugh. He took no notice of the five-story drop between buildings. It was nothing, like skipping a step up the stairs. And it really was easy, this gap was a thin one. Soon they were all doing it. Kimi was the last one to ride the rail, to edge the ledge, to feel the cement a solid block corner hardened into a ninety-degree angle. But she was the first to fall. Not that she jumped even. It had been an accident. First it was drinking, then it was smoking. And Kimi was new to smoking. This was only her second time. And these boys had the strong stuff. To be fair, they did warn her.

“These are dabs,” Rick explained. But he smiled and caught her eye like it was a challenge. His expression read, I go fast can you keep up? And she wanted to so badly. She had to try. She nodded her head as if she knew what it meant, as if she fully understood what she was agreeing to. 

He lit the torch, such a serious tool, he handled it suggestively running the glass out and over the flame letting it feel the heat, then pulling it back slowly, sensually, and then in again this time deeper inside the flame. She could feel herself wanting, watering to taste, but Kimi had always been shy. She blushed and turned away. The only way she could show him was to accept what he offered. To show that she liked it. That she wanted it.

By the third hit she couldn’t feel her legs. She didn’t know his hand was there. But she could feel his mouth, when he blew the hot smoke into her body. She could feel his lips shift up from the corners, into a smile. The skin of his face hovered there, centimeters away from hers, hairs of peach fuzz stood up straight, a shiver from the microorganisms of her body, like this was something deeper than a chill down the spine. This was proton energy. This was cellular stimulation. An atom in motion. The ignition of an atomic bomb ready to go off. She could feel the tick of it. A countdown beat. The flow of hot blood.

An hour later everyone was outside climbing on the roof of the apartment complex. The sky was dark above, at nearly four in the morning, only the boldest and brightest stars could be seen through the florescent glow of the city.

Kimi followed the group, she laughed with them, too high and buzzed to add much of her own two cents, she kept herself close to Rick. He himself did a lot of talking, and then a little showing off too. He got distracted, he seemed to forget about her. He was joking with Mark talking about the time they climbed the water tower mocking a clumsy climb to show how close he’d come to falling.

Someone lit up a joint. The whole group sat down on the ledge, they must have looked like that line of construction workers in that famous old photograph, legs dangling down like on a child’s swing. Kimi reached out for the glowing ember of lit paper. But lost her balance. And fell to her death.

It all happened so sudden, so easily, careless like something falling out of your pocket when you grope for a cellphone, like missing the trash can. 

As Kimi fell through the air it dawned on her; this is it. Times up. 

As Kimi fell her life suddenly rushed up all around her, and past her, like snowflakes caught in a frigid breeze. 

She’d made all these cool friends through Cindy who she’d met in advanced composition class. Through some weird luck, Kimi had ended up at the cool kids’ table when the class got divided into groups. The ones who gave funny answers that left the teacher flustered. The ones who always needed more time because they goofed off too much.

She met Rick at the coffee shop. That’s where Cindy liked to hang out. Her whole crew seemed to loiter there every day after school. She’d just started hanging out with them. They were just starting to get comfortable with her. And she was just starting to get comfortable with them. Now this. Over before it began.

Kimi stretches out her neck trying to see deep into the coffee shop. What if they weren’t here yet? It might be awkward for her to sit alone waiting for them. It’s dark inside. From what she can tell, the bookshelves that line the walls stretch back farther than expected.

Stepping inside the building Kimi tries to ignore the slick slime edged along the glass of the door handle. It’s smeared and streaked, the grease of human fingers. A little bell clinks behind her when the door closes. As soon as she is inside Kimi finds herself immediately standing in a long line of people waiting to order something at the counter. The barista is a girl with bright-colored hair styled big. It fades from a bright blue to a light green. She has a chain that connects the piercing in her right nostril to her right ear.

Kimi moves past all these people and starts scanning the tables. College kids, hipsters at a variety of stages in life, some first gen hippies, a wook. She doesn’t see them. Her heart starts beating faster. A guy at the counter half turns his head to look at her. She can feel his eyes. He is making judgments.

Kimi walks back around the crowd.

“Excuse me.” She says very quietly in order to be let through the queue to the other side. Her voice is so low nobody hears her. But at least a few people notice and part for her to pass.

She rounds the corner and releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. There they are. And they’ve got the couch and coffee table. It’s like anywhere Cindy sat magically became the coolest spot in the room. 

“Kimi!” Cindy yells with a tone of excitement. As if they’d been best friends who hadn’t seen each other for years. Kimi’s cheeks burn hot as she hurries over to join their group.

Some cool looking strangers scoot over to make room for her in the middle of the couch. She has to sit in the center of the love seat, extra close, with Cindy to the left and-

“Kimi this is Rick,” Cindy introduces just before the girl sat herself down.

“Hi,” Kimi said in a quiet voice. Rick has dishwater blond hair. It’s shaggy, some formerly neat cut now grown out. He has a thick stubble on his face. He’s basically unkempt, but Kimi doesn’t mind. The way he had been sitting there seemed so natural and comfortable, like the embodiment of chill. And in the moment this suddenly feels like everything Kimi could ever want to be. She wants to pick up on this energy, to absorb him. That and he does have a handsome face. Seems tall.

Of all the people in their group of five that Kimi was introduced to Rick is the only one she can’t quite look in the eye. And yet his name is the only one she remembers by the end of two hours. 

Later, after talking enough to everyone in the circle Kimi is starting to feel comfortable. She relaxes her guard and sinks back into the couch laughing. Rick had said something funny. It’s natural for her to look at him. It is then that Rick catches her eye. They lock on. Sync up. Even though he’d already been laughing Kimi swears she can see his smile grow even bigger. They hold their gaze. Rick’s laugh winds down into an unconscious ahh.

“Oooo!” Cindy squeals, catching their moment. Kimi can feel the hot flush across her face matching what her eyes can see spreading across Rick’s hollow cheeks. “We have to hang out tonight! After this let’s go to my place?” Cindy asks the group looking around for anyone opposed. Her look circles back around and lands on Kimi.

“You down?” She asks gently.

“Yeah,” Kimi’s voice comes out weak and hoarse, but her pulse is strong, it’s racing.

“I’m going to die a virgin,” Kimi moans tossing her high school uniform violently down onto the stiff pink carpet of her best friend’s bedroom.

“No, you’re not,” Karen is sitting down doing her makeup from the bright glow of her vanity. Her voice becomes muffled as she smooches her face in, puckering her lips to paint them red.

“I’m not going to senior prom. I’m a loser.”

“You chose not to go! Jon asked you!” Karen barks.

“Ew,” Kimi said.

“He’s not that bad,” Karen sighs. Looking through the reflection on the mirror Karen’s eye connects to Kimi’s and she can feel the sad on her face. There is a weight to it. Suddenly doesn’t have the strength to hold it back any longer. Pain bleeds through her eyes leaking out. Streams of salt water. Gasping for air her breathing hitches, hiccups that only get worse and worse the more she tries to suppress.

“Roland why you not do science fair this year?” The big man barks entering the living room. Roland is Kimi’s younger brother. But with little over a year between them they were close. In age at least.

“You can’t win two years in a row Dad,” Roland said from the couch where he lay spread out, not once bothering to look up from the glow of his cellphone screen.

The father grunts taking up his usual seat, a worn down recliner positioned center like a thrown, at an angle clearly intended to obtain the best view of the television. Kimi sits on a bar stool at the counter that lines the edge of the kitchen. It’s an open floor plan so she can still turn her head to see the males of her family. 

“Kimi got C in Math on her last report card,” The mother announces unexpectedly from a stiff wooden chair pulled out several feet away from the kitchen table. She has it pulled up to the edge of the carpet but with the legs still on tile. 

“Oh, uh,” the father stumbles as if he had never stopped to consider this other child. As if he’d forgotten about her. “Try harder.” He said without once looking back.

“Don’t you want to know how she is doing in hom-ech?” The mother asks through in a quiet whisper of Hungarian. She held it low under her breath so only Kimi could hear. “Nowadays, everyone has to work. Kimi will have to.” She looks at her daughter and their eyes meet. It is a hard stare, it feels like a stern pleading, voice raised, serious. If only she could have ever spoken it out loud. 

Chalk squeaks across the board. The teacher at the front of the room is writing out a series of numbers to be divided by another series of numbers.

Kimi isn’t paying attention. She’s looking down at the cellphone before her. She has it partially covered by her notebook, and half covered by the page of a textbook.

Kimi is scrolling through Instagram. Brad is off on vacation with his family. They look like a nice family. It looks like his mother and father might actually love each other. And, oh wow, his sister is so pretty. They went snorkeling but it doesn’t look like they saw too much. Oh, here’s a picture of Brad on a jet ski how cool!

“Kimi,” Mrs. Appleton’s voice is a calm and gentle reminder. A nudge.

Kimi is shocked to attention. She stares into the worn brown eyes of her instructor. A middle age woman, thin yet soft. Kimi notices in that moment the deep purple, carved crescent moons, circles under her eyes. She can’t help but wonder is it because Mrs. Appleton has an extraordinary amount of patience or is it because she’s been broken for such a long time?

“You are a woman now,” Kimi’s mother announced. It’s one of the rare few things she ever said in English. Kimi stares up at her, eyes expressing more than words could ever sound out. Embarrassment. Fear. Her mother’s lips stretch up trying to force a smile. But her eyes glisten, a string of white Christmas lights, melancholy.

“I wish you didn’t have to grow up,” she whispered in Hungarian. As if she wanted to keep it secret, to hold deep within herself. As if it’d only slipped out by accident.

Kimi doesn’t like the purse her mother picked out for her. It looks too serious, it’s too dark, it feels too heavy. She turns away. Kimi can barely look as her mother carries on explaining various things, models, makes an example, how to use pads, and then tampons. They blush the same fluttering shade of pink.

Kimi steps up to the group but remains several feet away. As if she’d been stopped by some invisible force field. Staring at the other three kids, then down at her feet, pink, shoes laces over tied, three knots built on top of each other, stretching long like a clumsy braid. She starts to shuffle her legs back and forth, alternating a bob in the knee.

American kids all dress the same, it is as if there were some unspoken dress code nobody had warned her about. She stood out compared to them like some sort of alien creature. Kicking out her pink shoes spark an explosion of bark chips up into the air. A sheet of wood falls down around her like a flash moment of heavy rain.

“What are you doing?” A boy asks. Kimi closes her eyes and bracing herself. She pretends she’s somewhere else, far away, Narnia.

“Aren’t you in our group?” A girl’s voice. She speaks softly, gentle, an invite. Kimi looks up. This other girl smiles. She has warm brown eyes.

“My name is Karen,” She introduces herself like an open hand, but Kimi does not take it. She stays put. She stands in place swaying back and forth like a rope in the wind, connected to nothing. Scoffing at them under his breath the boy turns away. But Karen remains. She watches Kimi for a moment longer. The shy girl lowers her head studying the ground as if interested in the abstract shapes, and variant sizes of chips. As if she cared about a single strand of wood, those brittle hairs coming loose, as that fibrous material that broke beneath their feet.

“Are you good with scissors?” Karen asked. Kimi nods her head looking up eagerly. Karen smiles. “Come on we need your help. I want lots of rain drops for our explanation of the water cycle.” Red faces, big eyes, smiles on chapped lips, little fingers got to work. The other kids didn’t learn her name until it was all done, when she falls in line of signature, on the back of the poster board they’d decorated. K-I-M-I.

“She’s my mother,” the father explains. “You only met her as a baby, I’m sure you not remember.” He looks down at her then. Kimi sees, where the whites of his eyes should be, a painful shade of pink. It looks sensitive like something sore.

“She’s too young to understand,” Kimi’s mother said in hushed Hungarian from the couch where she holds Roland in her lap. He is four years old. He understands even less.

“Daddy’s mommy?” He asks.

“Say hello Kimi!” The father voice begins to raise as he repeats himself for the third time. Kimi is hiding behind the calf of her mother, pudgy fingers clinging to the thick material of blue jeans. She digs for a grip but her fingernails can’t catch hold, all she can do is pinch at the fabric but it never feels like enough, never feels secure.

“Hello there,” the strange voice speaks only in Hungarian. Kimi opens her eyes to the murky hazel gaze of a stranger. The woman had bent down and lowered herself for a better look. This face is strange and scary. Kimi starts crying. Suddenly the woman’s head disappears. There are only hands. She is gone. Kimi stops crying. The hands move revealing her face. She is back. Kimi is too surprised to be upset before the woman raises her hands and disappears again. It becomes a game. Kimi laughs and laughs. 

She is laid down next to him. Backs lined up in a row on the ground as their mother turns the two babies to face each other. The eyes of her brother are a dark cloudy blue. His mouth puckers tasting the air, legs kicking, he bounces fighting against the tight swaddling of his small body. Tiny red fingers grope through the air, as if so eager to seize his life, ready to take.

“Kimi this is Roland.”

Kimi is gently moving up and down listening to a familiar sound. The beat beat beat alongside an airy wooosh, wooosh. But she is outside of it now. There is distance. Everything is blurry. She’s so cold. 

“Hello,” Kimi looks up and the only thing she can see clearly is this beautiful face. Green eyes, wide, sparkling. 

“My first child,” Kimi’s mother’s voice is cracked with emotion as she turns to a nurse who had been standing by to take vitals. 

The beautiful face has disappeared! Where have the green eyes gone?! Kimi starts to cry. The face returns. Kimi stops crying. The mother and the nurse both begin to laugh. Kimi likes this sound they are making. She likes the way it bubbles through her mothers chest causing her to bounce.

For a flash she sees the ground rushing up. Grey asphalt, old, cracked, worn. Just a flash. It’s so sudden. It happens so quick. Kimi is back inside now. Swimming through a warm glow she follows a soft pink light further and deeper as if looking for something, a door maybe. There is a natural flow which takes her up and up until at last there only a dark tube before her. It is impossible to tell where this leads.

Kimi wishes she could stop this forward momentum and hide, for a moment, to hold still in one place, to feel ok, just a small pause until she might regain an understanding, a sense of what was happening, to feel grounded. But the pace of time is unstoppable. Beat beat beat beat. The rhythm continues. And it’s all moving too quickly. And she doesn’t feel prepared, she doesn’t feel ready. This is embarrassing. It’s all too much. It’s all too fast. It’s nothing new.

Kate E. Lore is an award-winning creative writer, artist, and freelance creator. Kate is openly queer, with the preferred pronouns she/they. Kate is legally neurodivergent with diagnosed autism, ADHD, and PTSD-related anxiety. Born to a single widowed mother and raised in a low-income household Kate is the youngest of four, the second to graduate high school, first bachelor’s degree, and the first MFA in the family.

Kate E. Lore has had many publications for fiction, creative nonfiction, and graphic narrative featured in various literary magazines including Under the Gum Tree, Longridge Review, Bending Genres, Door is a Jar, soon to include Black Warrior Review.

A jack-of-all-trades Kate splits their time between fiction and nonfiction, screenplays, flash prose, full-length novels, painting, and comics.

Kate strives to appreciate the small things in life but has been known to throw down hard at an EDM rave if the place is well-lit.

For more information, see: http://Kateelore.com, https://www.tiktok.com/@kate.e.lore?_t=8h1iuBvLcw2&_r=1, https://www.facebook.com/writerlore, @kateelore (Twitter) @kate.e.lore (Instagram and Threads), https://www.patreon.com/kateelore