Member-only story
A Summer Afternoon
by Michelle Montoro
She stands leisurely off to my right side. She wears a short plaid skirt with a heather gray tank top and green flip-flops. I can only see her from the corner of my eye. She is petite and natural and her toes are dirty from playing in her garden. She lazily spins her yo-yo up and down methodically like she has been doing it for years. She says that she is not that good at it. She switches the yo-yo to her less dominant right hand and makes the attempt to yo-yo that way. She’s not so bad although she fumbles a little with the toy. She keeps practicing with her right hand trying to get it as perfect as she was with her left.
The boy leans nonchalantly against the sturdy wooden porch rail absent-mindedly drumming his fingers on the hard, dry wood. He taps out a beat that seems to exist only inside his own head. No one else can hear the tune. We can only hear the evidence of it through his fingers tapping out a beat. He dons a tan wool cap although the air is warm and heavy.
On the other side of the faded plank deck, the thin man works on repairing something with an electric drill. I cannot see what it is that he is fixing. All I notice is the repetitive tune of the drill. Zzz. Zzz. Zzzzz. Zzz. Zzz. Zzzzz. Every few seconds, the tune repeats itself. Somehow the sound reassures me that I exist. The humming of the drill reminds me that we all…
