FICTION — SHORT STORY

Photo Prompt 3 — Her Wish

(Or One of Joni’s Times)

Joni sat on her bed against the backboard, paying little attention to the knocking at her bedroom door.

“Joni!” someone shouted from outside the door. “You in there?”

Joni sighed.

“No!” she shouted back. “I’m not.”

“Let me in, please!” the visitor shouted as she continued to knock. “I’ve been texting all day.”

“I threw my phone away,” Joni grumbled.

“What?” Why would you do that? Why in the heavens would you do that?”

“The heavens?” Joni repeated. “Yes. You are right. That is why I did it.”

Joni finally stepped off the bed and walked across her cluttered room to unlock the door.

“What is wrong with you?” her friend asked as she pushed inside, stepping over piles of clothing on the floor.

Her name was Eugenia, and being one of the few friends Joni had, her arrival was somewhat predictable after avoiding phones for half a day. After entering the room, she lifted one of her feet and rested the heel of her boot against a cluttered desk chair beside her.

“Look at this!” she complained. “Brand new ankle boots, and now the toes are scuffed from kicking at your door.”

Joni returned to her bed and sat at the edge, looking down at her empty hands.

“Maybe you shouldn’t kick things,” she suggested.

Eugenia turned her head toward Joni and winced as if struck by something.

“Are you having one of your times?” she asked.

Joni sat there in silence until a dance beat rattled her friend’s phone.

“Shoot,” Eugenia said, looking at her messages. “I forgot to let my mom know I found you.” She tapped at her phone with long nails. After finishing, she looked back at Joni accusingly.

“Why weren’t you at school?” she asked.

“I’m sick,” Joni answered.

“You’re not sick,” Eugenia argued. “You’re having one of your times. Get up, get your shoes on, and come with me.”

“Come with you where?” Joni asked.

“Just come with me,” her friend insisted.

Joni reluctantly slipped on her shoes and tied the laces.

“But I’m sick,” she protested. “My parents will notice I’m gone.”

“Not if we hurry back,” Eugenia said. “And not if you move a little faster.” She took hold of Joni’s arm and pulled her up from the bed.

Joni growled her disapproval but still followed Eugenia out the door and down the stairway to the exit.

“So really,” Eugenia said. “Where’s your phone?”

“I told you,” Joni said. “I threw it away.”

“Here?” Eugenia asked. “Or somewhere else?”

Joni thought for a moment. “Somewhere else,” she said. “The wastebin at the pharmacy.”

Eugenia slapped her own forehead with the palm of her hand.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll take a bus to the city.”

Joni made a noise as if she was being tortured, but she followed Eugenia all the way to the bus stop. Along the way, Eugenia tapped again at her phone and giggled, showing photographs to Joni that she politely acknowledged with a nod, though she saw nothing but sunlight flashing against the screen.

“I’m getting you a new phone,” Eugenia said as they boarded the bus.

“Please don’t,” Joni pleaded.

“Too late,” Eugenia said. “We’ll be there in six minutes.”

They stopped in front of a strip mall and walked across the parking lot to a mobile phone shop on the corner. But being several feet behind her friend, Joni stopped when something drew her attention to the adjacent window.

It was an art studio, and a small group of about a dozen students were making sculptures out of clay. As they sculpted, an older woman walked slowly between them, looking at their work. Some made faces or figurines, while other items were more abstract. One student, a young woman, was sculpting a pregnant torso with no head or limbs, and Joni watched her closely as she worked.

Initially, it was the woman’s hands that Joni found intriguing. They were like delicate little worms in the mud of the clay, moving together across the round belly of the torso in repeated flourishes that seemed almost presentational. Joni imagined she could hear the sliding of the wet clay between the woman’s fingers as she pushed against the figure’s contours and smoothed out the top of the neck.

“Cool sculptures,” Eugenia said, standing now beside Joni at the window.

Joni nodded as she stared through the glass. Though she had never before given much thought to the arts, she was mesmerized. She watched as the woman with the torso poked a small hole in its belly for a navel, taking so much care that it could have been the only navel in the world, a dimple in the round and bulbous belly of a newly sacred artifact.

Very slowly, the woman’s hands moved over the belly and down each buttock to its flat base then back again to the top, smoothing out the shoulder blades along the way. Never once did the young artist look up at Joni in the window. Her eyes were locked on her work, and as Joni watched her, she could feel her own life in the woman’s hands. She could see herself in the days ahead, sitting in the same class with her hands on the same clay as the same instructor watched from the edge of the table. She saw her own figures full of life, and she saw herself over a dish of spinning clay, its dampness cool to the touch and its colors rotating in the light as it shimmered like a dark mirror beneath her.

“I’m going to be an artist,” Joni said.

Eugenia, still standing beside her but looking in the opposite direction toward the phones in the window next door, responded with a single breath of laughter.

Joni turned toward her.

“Why is that funny?” she asked.

Eugenia looked at her with bright eyes and a straight face.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “Do you want me to join the class with you?”

Joni blinked a few times then smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “I would like that very much.”

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