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24. Good God, they are howling. What’s so funny? Or sad? I turn the radio on. I, who never wants to call anybody, now want to call someone. It’s late in Boston but my younger sister, age twenty, is of course awake. Von Trapp has a new girlfriend, she reports. He has asked her father for her hand in marriage, but so far no ring.
25. Strange for this time of year: The weatherman says, “It’s going to be a wet weekend,” and chuckles, like it’s the name of an amusement park. The rain continues into Monday, and at lunchtime I remain in the classroom, considering my sack lunch and staring at my blank daybook, when without my noticing the fifth grade teacher enters.
26. He has a word problem for me: A grocery store has a sale on bananas. There are 636 bananas. Buying a bunch of six gets you the sale price. What will you do you do with all your ass-cheap bananas? “Banana bread?” I try. “Affirmative,” he says.
27. After school he walks me home. “A hospital has thirty-three patients in need of heart transplants,” he says while we wait for the Walk signal. “Too many steak frites?” I say. “Heart failure,” he nods. He starts to say something about donor hearts but before he finishes I interrupt with the answer.
28. “Disaster?” is my best educated guess.
29. “Not at first,” he says, before he lets himself inside, and I follow.
Rachel Khong lives in Gainesville, Florida. Recently, she documented the process of brewing chicha, the ancient Andean chewed-corn beer, for a forthcoming issue of McSweeney's. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Florida.
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