Linda M. Bayley
The Cure for Sleep
My best friend Sidney is a narcoleptic: ever since I’ve known her she’s gone to sleep in the strangest places, not just on the bus or in algebra class but I mean like leaning up against her locker or on the street in the middle of a pro-choice rally, or there was that one time she fell asleep in our garden shed while we were playing hide and seek and we didn’t find her until long after it got dark out, and that’s when her parents freaked out and wouldn’t let her play outside anymore.
We used to call her Sleeping Beauty but now we understand it’s a medical condition, not some fairy-tale curse, and we’re not allowed to make fun of her anymore since that day Mrs. Rowe sent Sidney out of the classroom and then yelled at us, but I was never really making fun of her because I thought she really was beautiful when she was asleep.
She was most beautiful that day she pricked her thumb with a needle in Home Ec, which I only took because Sidney made me, because it’s not just girls who need to learn how to run a household, and before we knew it she was down on the floor on a pile of throw pillows the class had made that week, golden hair spread out in a fan around her face like it was the movies.
Well, what would you have done?
So I knelt down and kissed her, real slow and soft, and her eyes fluttered open like a Disney princess, and I never knew what a collective gasp meant but now I’ve heard a whole class sucking in wind all at the same time, and her eyelids stopped fluttering and she stared up at me and said, Did you just kiss me, Jason? and I nodded, still breathless, and she sat up, suddenly all pissed off, and said, Well, if that’s not just one more example of the rape culture that permeates our society and works to keep women down.
There were mutters all around us like Yeah, not cool, dude, and Dude, that’s just cringe, and Sidney pushed me away like a plate of cold, half-cooked Brussels sprouts, and now she’s still sort of my best friend but not really, and we still hang out sometimes, but now, whenever we’re together, she always stays awake.
A Car, A Bank, A Bowling Alley
You are parked outside a bank / a bowling alley.
Your daughter is with you. She is 16 / 23 / 50. You are discussing the weather / the tournament / her painful, poisonous attitude.
When you get out of the car you crack the window so she won’t stifle / turn on the heat so she won’t freeze / let her decide for herself whether she wants to stay in the car. You’d rather she stayed in the car to watch it because you are idling in a handicap space / in a fire lane. You’d rather she got out of the car to go into the bowling alley and roll strikes like you taught her.
But nobody with a wheelchair / fire truck is going to need this space in the next sixty seconds. But the tournament won’t start for another hour. It’ll be fine.
She doesn’t want to get out to go bowling / stay to watch the car. She’s not in the mood / doesn’t drive. Sometimes she argues.
What a loser / nobody / bitch. Fuck it. You leave her in the car.
You could argue that spending your tenth birthday in the hospital with the polio that left you with a bad hip is a good enough reason to park in a handicap zone. You could argue that you didn’t know this was a fire lane. You could argue that your daughter was just about to move the car, officer. See her there, sitting in the driver’s seat?
You leave the bank / the bowling alley without a parking ticket / trophy. You are elated that you foiled the cops. You are furious that your daughter embarrassed you in front of the other parents.
At the yellow light you slow down / gun the engine / honk at the car in front of you. You are laughing / fuming / lecturing your daughter on the importance of being a champion.
She says, Don’t do that to me again.
You apologize / acknowledge her / have no clue what she means.
Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology. Find her on Twitter @lmbayley.
