by Beth Sherman
I study Leila’s body as she swims to the raft. Her strokes smooth and sure, her tan arms a promise. Her body zigs away from the shore, her legs a fluttery moth. She is 13, her head filled with Taylor Swift songs and some boy she met at the mall. September. The ash trees around the lake have not begun to shed their leaves. Leila takes in too much water and glug, comes up for air, treading. She’s lucky that way. When her friends ask about me – she has four best friends, each one sillier than the last – she shows them the photo of us in our matching dresses with the strawberries sewn on in neat, precise stitches. Our mother prized details. And one of the friends says, cool, she looks just like you and Leila casts her eyes down, tries to remember.
We were five, in the backseat of our mother’s blue Toyota Corolla. Our mother was driving us to kindergarten and we were late. She’d slept through the alarm. She was speeding on Route 25A, although does it really matter if you’re late to kindergarten? If you make one less macaroni necklace? Read one less story about a talking pig? The truck was speeding too, crossing the double yellow line. The road curved. There was the sound of shattered glass, the screech of metal on metal, a burning smell. I think something like that would be hard to forget.
Now Leila has reached the raft and pulled herself up onto the worn wood planks. She likes to tan without putting on lotion. Even though the sun can kill you. I give the raft a shake, but Leila ignores it. The movement could be waves from the nearby jet ski, could be the wind, could be nothing. She will stay here for hours. We’re alike that way. I have nowhere to be either. I study her body and imagine me in it. The thought makes the place behind my eyelids ache. Being Leila. I sigh and the raft rocks some more. I lie down next to her, watch the egrets overhead, the way they loop and dive. There’s room for both of us on the raft. When my fingers brush hers she doesn’t seem to mind.
Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and the upcoming Best Small Fictions 2025. She’s also the winner of the Smokelong Quarterly 2024 Workshop prize. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she can be reached on X, Bluesky or Instagram @bsherm36.
January House Literary Journal 
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