ONE STORY

ONE

Your name is Clark. You are nine years old. Your favourite thing to do is hang upside down on your school’s monkey bars. You like the world best when the ground is in the sky.

It is early evening in late August: you are holding a picture that you drew with your friend Drew. He said, “Let’s draw our favourite place in the world,” so you drew a boy standing by a lake. You’ve never been to a lake before: but you dream that it would be magnificent, dark blues, indigos, all the colours that you can imagine.

At your lake, there is an eagle. You name him Carl. You would have drawn a phoenix but Drew said that phoenixes aren’t real so you drew an eagle instead. You told Drew that you named him Carl and Drew snorted and said that was a stupid name for an eagle but your Dad’s name is Carl and he said he was coming to see you on Sunday so you decide that Drew is a stupid name for a boy.

When your Mother takes this photo, insistent, out in front of the local pizza delivery truck, her hands shake. You watch her, and don’t understand why. She keeps telling you to smile, but it doesn’t feel right.

She sends the photo by express mail to your Dad.

Story by Anonymous