Likes by Sarah Bynum (electronic book reader txt) 📕

mesmerizes one infuriates the other; their developmental stages appear mortally opposed. I shuttle between the two of them to neither’s satisfaction. Like a bad employee I tend to hang back and dawdle, taking longer than necessary in the bathroom, surreptitiously checking my email, drawn helplessly to any window to watch the smooth, indifferent functioning of the seductive world outside. There’s usually not that much to see. A couple of guys from the power company checking the lines, or the older husband and wife from down the road, walking in single file and not talking, intent on their exercise. The mailman, of course; or in our case, the mailwoman. More rarely, the brown UPS truck. But every once in a while I’ll look out the window and see someone who doesn’t belong there, like an overweight girl wearing enormous headphones and jogging miserably, or a woman dressed in city clothes who tramps along the side of the road with a faint frown on her face. I have no way of knowing who she is and where she’s off to, but she looks so unlikely out there among the gravel and the weeds, and so impractically dressed, that I briefly wonder if her car has broken down. I think to open the door and call out to her, asking if she needs help, if everything’s all right, but to do so seems altogether impossible, as impossible as one of those huge prehistoric fish half hibernating at the bottom of the tank knocking on the glass and mouthing hello! to a bright, quickly moving visitor on the other side. To our mutual embarrassment, though, she sees me, our eyes meet, and after automatically glancing away she looks back at me again and lifts her hand in a tentative wave. I wave back at her, electrified and sad. And then my daughter, in the far distance somewhere, lets out a long howl of frustration, and by the time I’ve gotten down on my hands and knees, rescued the wooden mixing spoon from under the stove, rinsed it off in hot water, hurried back to the window—the woman walking down the highway has already moved on, innocent of what waits for her, and passed out of sight.

MANY A LITTLE MAKES

Mickle. I hope I’m texting you at the right number. I tried sending you a message on FB but it seems you don’t go on there anymore. Good for you! I keep meaning to close down my account but then I see a photo of someone’s kid at a march and I get sucked in again. Speaking of which LOVED the video of Rose’s cello recital. I know it was from last year but literal tears when I saw it bc of listening to Bach suites with you when we couldn’t fall asleep remember?

Rose is such a beautiful poised creative young woman and I just wish the kids could meet her they would love each other. They are all so big I can’t believe it. Life out here agrees with them but the bus can feel very small at times and especially when they’re fighting hahahaha. Bark beetles continue to decimate in nightmarish fashion but silver lining my study has been extended six months. Big hole in the canopy now sadly and so much more light coming through so collecting new data on red squirrels and snowshoe hares. Kids complain my hands always smell like peanut butter!!! I tell them not bad as far as occupational hazards go.

Jon busy doing online portion of reiki certification and fingers crossed will get license when we go home next year. Strange to write that bc here has started to feel like home and I am tbh kind of dreading going back. Quite amazing the resources out there for people in our boat (hahaha BUS). Homeschooling community … wow! Impassioned. Kids are learning Japanese! They wrote a tanks about blue spruce I want to show your mother. TANKA sorry clearly phone doesn’t speak Japanese

The texts arrived from a number Mari didn’t recognize. Even the area code was unknown to her, and it didn’t help that she thumbed through the messages backward, in reverse order. But there were only two people in the world who called her by that name, and Imogen’s various phone numbers (N.Y. cell, D.C. cell, office, home) were already saved in her contacts. So it had to be Bree.

In the sixth grade, on the subject of Bree, Mari’s mother had this to say: Three can get complicated. She was talking about the dynamics of female friendship, a topic that Mari did not relish discussing. In general she found her mother’s warnings reliably wrong but also impossible to forget, like shampoo slogans or the songs sung at camp. When, one Friday afternoon in November, she discovered herself lodged between Imogen and Bree in the back seat of a car heading swiftly to the mall, this earworm wriggled up to the surface and she thought at her mother: HA.

They were fine.

A thin stream of air flowed over them, and the radio played a song they knew most of the words to. Bree was saying that they should buy their tickets before they got food in case the movie sold out, and Imogen was saying that a dog waiting at the corner to cross looked a lot like a larger, fluffier version of her dog, Hamish. They all craned their heads to look at the dog. Mari could jump in at any moment with a funny or pointless comment if it occurred to her, but if it didn’t, she didn’t have to say anything at all.

Imogen had befriended Mari at the beginning of second grade, back when Mari was the only new girl in the class. Years passed and then Bree arrived, along with an assortment of other sixth-grade girls. Out of all of them Imogen chose Bree, for reasons not obvious to Mari. Bree wore eyeglasses with tinted plastic arms that swooped downward in a secretarial way. She