Feather Stone
Feather/Stone was published in Offset (Fifteen) and was awarded the Best Prose Award for that collection.
Feather/Stone was republished by Cardiff Review (Wales), and you can read the full piece on their website.
And you lie because you’re fourteen, and your best friend is Tilly and you hate how you are always the one who hasn’t, who doesn’t, who just isn’t. And when you lie, it comes out easy, it makes things easier, and you can see that he is looking at you differently. And right then, with the slimy taste of the avocado juice behind your teeth, that’s what you want more than anything. You feel like you did when the swell came up, and your body weighed nothing in the water. That is you, that weightlessness. For once, you want to come down heavy, you want to hit the shore and explode. So you lie, and you say it isn’t the first time.