Fiction | July 16, 2014

It is the afternoon before Thanksgiving when my mom asks me to take my brother to the college. Corlyss’s usual aide, a large thick-accented woman who sits through class with my brother and his wheelchair and his service dog, has, like me, gone home for the holiday. Every aide in the world has gone home for the holiday; the agency cannot send another. We are in the kitchen, my mom and my brother and his dog and I. My mom is marinating the chicken. We used to have turkey like normal people, but my mom saw a scare special. Something about spine-weakening toxins. What are these toxins that have holed up in turkeys but not in chickens? No one can say. But our family cannot afford any further spine weakening.

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