Read Hydroplane: Fictions for Free Online Page A

crying, a please-feel-sorry for-me sort of sobbing that lasts,often enough, until something is broken against a wall or against the ceiling above which I stand.
    The hostess walking back to where the last guest is, before I can approach him, before I can even rise from my chair, the hostess taking hold of his elbow, not seeing the fire growing in the kitchen sink, and saying, Have you seen my cat, and him saying, No, and her saying, Let's go outside, trying her hardest to lure this last guest into the rain for a walk through the wet grass as the bedroom is occupied, still, by her two fucking friends, Barefoot, No thanks, Why not, I don't know, Come on, No.
    Setting our science on fire in the boy-looking girl's basement, as neither of us understand science and neither of us care to understand anything quite so confusing as science with all its plants and metals and space and sex, and watching as the pages burn one by one, blackening in her mother's glass ashtray.
    Often hearing the hostess in her bedroom from my bedroom calming herself down, singing softly to herself, the faint squeak of the bedsprings as she sits.
    Both of us too slow to stop a single curl of burning science which has released itself from the corner of a page and floats slow-motion in the air like something holy or something cosmic, scientific, a comet, or a meteor, whichever one burns, if either, and watching it land to burn a strip of scorch in the basement shag before we stomp it out and run to my house unsure of whether we stomped it out completely.
    Often hearing the hostess in her bedroom from my bedroom getting herself off in some way, knowing, always, she is alone doingthis, getting herself off, as there is only one voice, always, if any, her voice, faint, and the sound I know is the bed, the faint creaking of bedsprings, and wanting, always, for her to stop.
    Days after school so dull and nothing after this kid stops answering the telephone, after smoking all the brown cigarettes and destroying all our science with fire and running to my house hoping the fire is out at hers and hoping not to hear sirens on their way to her burning-down-house where her mother will not be until night, and playing in my bedroom a game we call CB radio that goes, Breaker breaker, what's your handle, over, Breaker breaker, what's yours, over, My handle's Kitten, what's your handle, over, Man of Steel here, Kitten, over, Where are you, Man, over, I'm next to you in the blue truck, over, Well, you're cute, Man of Steel, over, Well, so are you, Kitten, over, Well, let's pull over and do it, over.
    Fire spreading from the kitchen sink to the counter, and the hostess seeing the fire and running to the sink and trying to put out the fire on the counter with her dishtowel, and the dishtowel catching fire, and the hostess waving it frantically, drunkenly, screaming, Help me, before she slams it to the floor and stomps it with her heels, not able to put out the fire with those wobbly pencil heels, and everyone surrounding, laughing at her, except the last guest who walks slowly over to where she is, who lifts the burning dishcloth from the floor and, holding it an arm's length from his body, slowly lowers it into the sink and turns the faucet to extinguish the fire before pressing the now wet dishcloth to the fire spreading along the counter.
    Flashing our bodies, one part at a time, me as Kitten and her as Man of Steel, often forgetting who is who, then a dry and lipless makeout, feeling each other up under the bed, eyes squeezed shut.Singing to myself in my room so as not to hear the hostess below me, so as not to have her hear me pressing my ear to the floor, but, rather, so that she hears me singing to myself, minding my own business singing, poorly, faintly.
    The hostess clapping, saying, Yes, as all the fire turns to smoke, and the last guest with fire rising from his hand and no one moving to help him as he walks from the kitchen, holding his burning hand close to his