Mud Girl by Alison Acheson

check if she got it.
    â€œI need to lie down now,” she says, and leaves the room. Just like that.
    Dyl watches after her. “Danma sick,” he says. He picks up both of the paper boats and settles himself into a wide upholstered chair as if he is going to wait for his grandmother while she sleeps.
    Some part of Abi wants to sit and wait with him. Instead she says, “I’ll take the bus home now.” When Jude looks as if he might protest, she says: “It’s not far.”
    â€œOkay.” Jude follows her to the door, and pulls it closed behind him. Outside, he kisses her, a quick hard kiss, something that leaves her feeling as if she’s never going to have what she wants.

Sundress
    T he sun is going down. Makes Abi think of being caught in the flush of a tipped-over glass of apple juice, all warm-coloured and yellow. But before the bus comes, the colour is gone and she begins to feel a little creepy out by the roadside in the murk of late summer evening.
    The swing of the bus door sounds almost familiar, though she knows that can’t be: one bus must be the same as the next…but yes, there’s Horace.
    â€œAbi, my girl!” He motions to the seat up front and across from him, where he can turn and talk with her when he has the chance.
    â€œI met your friend Mary,” he says.
    Takes her a moment to remember who Mary is.
    â€œI like her,” he says.
    Abi decides she likes that about him, that he can say it like that, straight out as a little boy would, Dyl even, and it’s not until then that she realizes she thinks of Ernestine as not really having any friends, a sort of island, all on her own.
    He’s looking at Abi as if for a reply of some sort, but then the road calls for his attention. At the next light, he turns back to her. “You’ve had a bit of sun, Mary told me. Are you all right now?”
    She nods.
    â€œThough you’re looking a bit red today.”
    She glances down at her shoulder and sure enough; she pokes at it and the spot stays white for too long.
    â€œYou’ve been having a busy summer,” he says. “Too busy to make it to an old man’s train set. I told Mary to bring you along. She said she’d see how it goes and all.” The wistfulness of his tone catches her.
    How it goes and all.
What was it she said to Ernestine about Horace? Nothing, really. She’d turned her back on the whole subject. Abi never thought she’d be blocking the path of true love.
    Horace stops the bus at the stop that is almost directly in front of her house. He says nothing about it, though; just his usual cheery wave. “Bye now, Abi!”
    She should have known this about Horace – she should have known he wouldn’t care where she lives. Just the same, as she steps down onto the step that causes the bus door to open, Horace peers out his window towards her house front. It’s dark.
    â€œAnybody home?” he asks, and Abi ignores the concern in his voice.
    â€œI’ll be fine,” she says.
    Dad hasn’t turned on a light yet, and again the television is off. The silence is sweet and waiting for someone to say something.
    â€œDad?” begins Abi.
    Has he been there all afternoon? With that coffee mug in hand?
    When she turns on the overhead light, she notices a second mug, and then the cookie crumbs that dot the gold-flecked Arborite tabletop. Dad blinks in the light.
    â€œDid you have a visitor?”
    Dad looks up at her, and his eyes seem blank. It’s as if, inside his head, someone’s packing boxes and is moving out, taking him away bit by bit.
    â€œDad?” Abi asks.
Just leave one piece, just one.
    But his look is still blank, even with a vague nod, and she backs away into her room and closes the door, doesn’t even bother to turn her own light on. She takes off her skirt, slips herbra off from under the T -shirt, and climbs in between the sheets.
    When she closes her