Read The Middle Stories for Free Online

expedition was coming up and they wanted three pretty girls from our town. It was to colonize a new community, somewhere in the middle of the ocean where no people had ever been. I’m not one of the prettiest girls, not even in my school, but I decided I was going to go. If everyone else was going to go.
    Just so turns out I did go, and guess who was chosen? Me and two others! Two girls I didn’t know but who said to me privately, like in confession, that they thought I was the prettiest of the bunch. Well, imagine that! Me with my misshaped tooth and my hair of straw. If that wasn’t the craziest thing I’d ever heard!
    Just so happened that we went and ended up staying three whole years. When we got back Bobby was married to that slut from the prom. Turns out they even had a kid on the way. When Bobby saw me he pulled me by the hand into a little parkette and said, “Look at you. You’re miraculous.”
    I had gotten a bit of confidence in that time, and I said, all cheeky and indifferent, “I know.”
    Now it so happens that Bobby is making me his lover on the side. I’m having a real good time fucking him and all. I learned all sorts of crazy things in the colonies, and one of them is about fucking, about how asses really matter.
    One day I’m going to the moon, and when I go, I’m going to bring back a teaspoon of sugar.

THE PARTY AT HER PLACE, WITH HER PIANO
     
    THE GIRL PLAYED the piano as everyone found their corner, or their spot in the alley out by the house, and the neighborhood women leaned through their windows to yell, lights on, curlers in their hair. The girl had a famous piano-playing brother who she never stopped thinking about, even in moments of relaxation, and never let her friends stop thinking about, even when buying drugs.
    When she went to the front door after her set, climbing over bodies, spilled beer, all that, she met two boys. One she had known from an old friend’s breakup, the other she had never seen before. He was tall and lanky with mystery in his eyes, a cigarette in his hand, and the perfect entrance, and she fell instantly in love and forgot about her brother.
    “Hello,” she squeaked, then scurried away.
    The boy walked in tall and smooth, did not climb over anybody’s legs, and made his way to a wall upstairs to pose against while the other one found a circle of friends to show off his drunkenness to.
    The girl was lost for several minutes. No one knew where she had gone. When the music returned she was found back at the piano with no audience waiting, and the boy she had been preparing for was nowhere to be seen.
    She ran downstairs and out the door. There he stood in the alley, smoking a joint with several guys and two pretty girls, who laughed and huddled; their own little party.
    The boy looked over and she forgot her successful brother, who was not only successful but gay, and successful at that too, and probably fucking right now, and she looked down at her boot and stammered, “Oh, nothing, nothing,” and jolted her body and shook her head and walked inside.
    The drunken boy who had been entertaining was now tired of that and went up to the girl and said, “Hey, come on, play the piano for us. Come on, come on,” dragging her by the hand.
    “Who’s your friend? Is he the one you’re living with now? Is he the one you’re living with?” she asked, sitting down at the piano. “He seems awfully shy or strange or something.”
    “Play!” he demanded, then plunked himself down and put his hands on the keys and began a song, the tedious song that everyone knows.
    “No, come on,” she pushed him off. “Get away.” And she played her own song, and it was not her brother’s; it was low and romantic and moody, and she sang aloud in a halting way. Her voice was into it, trembling and all that, but her soul was looking out for the boy, her heart was searching the room.
    Her lyrics were terrible and finally she stopped. No one was listening anyway. She went