Iona

The bedsheets scratched at Iona’s skin, raising faint red welts on her shoulder blades and the sides of her belly. Everything did that—irritated her, raised her skin. When she was younger she’d gone to a dermatologist. He’d called her sensitive. That had irritated her too. He’d been pointing at her skin when she said it, but she could hear it in his voice. It wasn’t her skin that he thought was the problem.

Once, in what felt like another life, she’d had a set of sheets that felt soft on her skin, like sleeping on a cloud, but Asteroid, her dog, had torn them apart. She’d named him that because he ruined everything. Replacing them would have cost money she didn’t have, so she’d gone back to the cheap, scratchy stuff.

Now she stared up at the ceiling, waiting out her alarm, in her hot, itchy, uncomfortable bed. Asteroid huffed and stretched, pushing her leg off the mattress. She sighed. “You know, most people have their dogs sleep on the floor,” she said, pointing.

Asteroid looked down at the floor and back at her and blinked.

“Yeah, exactly.”

He huffed again and jumped toward her face, knocking the wind from her lungs and tickling her cheeks with his whiskers as he sniffed her ear. She felt her phone buzzing on the windowsill. “Alright, I’m up,” she said, trying to forget that she’d been awake for several hours.

Scratchy bedsheets off, scratchy clothes on, she thought, pausing before she put on her shirt. She turned to the left and right in front of the mirror, noticing the way her skin sagged. Her eyes drew back toward the empty half of the bed. She smirked, pushing away whatever it was that she was feeling. Black polo, khaki skirt, yellow apron, feed Asteroid, lock the door. Up and out and gone before the sun had even peeked above the horizon.

The car door slammed, jolting Iona’s mind from its half-sleep haze. Her keys jingled against her side, then her wrist, then the steel frame of the door. The bolt sliding into place shook her palm with a satisfying thunk. She craned her arm into the dark and flipped a switch. The fluorescent lights buzzed, bathing the back room in unnaturally blue light. She pulled seven bananas from the freezer. They’d be brown mush before long, but it was summer, and everyone loved brown mush blended up with their artificial flavors and colors. She stacked those and all the premade pastries and plastic-wrapped microwavable breakfasts between her arm and her chin. Making her way to the boxes of oatmeal, she kicked one, just so, and it tumbled off the shelf and fell gently open. Empty. Her eyes darted to the schedule on the wall. “Sven,” she whispered, with a loathing most would reserve for a sworn enemy. “Of course.”

With the bananas and breakfast burritos and everything else still pinched between her chin and forearm, she tried to squat down to open a new box. She dropped lower, and a banana shifted. She froze, then adjusted her chin, sliding it back into place. Grabbing the edges of the cardboard, she pulled, and . . . It’s that thick tape! she thought, her fingernail catching on the strings laced across it, which made it impossible to open.

The tower of food tucked beneath her chin tumbled and clattered to the ground, leaving only a solitary bacon sandwich in her outstretched hand. “Sven,” she repeated, this time louder than a whisper. The bells attached to the door jingled. Iona looked at the clock. We don’t open for another ten minutes, you asshole, she thought.

“I’ll be right out!” she said, forcing a smile across her face in the hopes it made her sound happier. She tossed the bananas and pastries in the trash, scooped up the individually wrapped meals and brought them out into the dimly lit café.

Iona froze as soon as she saw that it was her. Smooth, jazzy saxophone filled the otherwise silent space between them.

The air was filled with the sounds of students on the common, muffled through the brick and mortar. The building wasn’t old, but it was designed to look it. They thought it gave them prestige, being surrounded by books and leather and walnut.

The board stared at her, hunched, mustached, pale skinned and spectacled. They remained silent, fixed in their decision regardless of what she said. It was quiet enough to hear the scratching of one of their pencils.

Her body burned with fury. She took a breath and let her mind trace upward, through the clouds and atmosphere, pushing through to what lay beyond. She was no longer a person, on petty earth with its petty concerns.

She was a micrometeorite, the size of a fist, drifting aimlessly through the endless void. Small enough to be completely invisible. Large enough to shift the cosmos. Galaxies illuminated before her, each containing multitudes. Stars, those forges of creation beaming out their light, burning, in a moment more than the sum creation of humanity. The spaces between them were vast enough to be incomprehensible. But there were so many. In each of them were planets, and on each of those planets innumerable mountains and valleys, each enough to be their own discovery, their own adventure. She drifted onward, mindless,infinitesimal. A shadow loomed above her, blotting out the sun.

All of this was meaningless in the face of that scale. All Iona, and every other person in that room, would ever be was one tiny blip of light in the darkness. A single pixel illuminated for a fraction of a second, forming a fragment of a fragment of a frame of a picture. A grain of sand in a mandala, soon to be wiped away. None of it mattered, so why did it matter so much?

“Iona?” Nora said, and her voice landed on Iona’s heart like an autumn breeze. There was confusion in it, which was earned, and a trace of judgement, also fair, but none of it diminished its warmth. “It’s good to see you,” she added, and she meant it.

“It’s good to see you too.” Iona reached underneath her sleeve and scratched her upper arm.

Neither of them spoke. In another life, they had known each other, tasted each other’s lips and everything in between. They had loved like only the young can love, wild and with abandon, without the sense to protect their own hearts. Even then Iona had known that, to Nora, she was an academic fascination, something to be learned and experienced and set aside. Yet Iona had let herself fall completely, hurt ruinously. The part of her heart that still felt hope still hoped for Nora, and here she was, looking as radiant and beautiful as she remembered. Age only heightened the things about her body that made Iona’s mouth water with anticipation and delight.

“How have you been?” Nora asked, her eyes sad and curious. That she had stumbled upon Iona here, rather than anywhere anyone who knew her would have expected, answered the question well enough.

“I—” Iona started. The bells attached to the door jingled.

“Nora, what’s going on? We need to get going. Look, see? I told you, they’re not even open. We’ll get some food at the airport, okay?”

Nora looked back over her shoulder at Iona once again. She smiled a sad, friendly smile, and then she left.

The smooth, jazzy saxophone played louder. Iona looked down at the individually wrapped sandwiches in her hands, only just now noticing how cold they were. She sighed and put them in the refrigerator under the display stand, then made her way back to the beaming fluorescent light of the back room and into the freezer, where she sat down on a half-empty box. She took a breath and let her mind trace upward, through the clouds and atmosphere, pushing through to what lay beyond. She was no longer a person, on petty earth with its petty concerns.

She was a micrometeorite.