fwriction

I have adored this story for some time, and meant to post it as Story of the Day several times. Finally, it seems, today is the right day. Julavits is a killer writer: her books, The Mineral Palace, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Uses of Enchantment are worth your time (and, of course, there’s The Believer).

Enjoy this story, from Zoetrope:

“‘It’s the most natural of selections,’ Mitzi said naughtily, twirling her now-gone finger in the tamed ringlets by her temple. Everyone laughed, even Frances, even me, though I found myself looking uneasily up into the tree at my bare nail, and at the four white gloves that fluttered there like trophies from a dove-hunting excursion. Outside the western gate I heard the trolley begin to grind up the hill with its load of soft-bodied husbands and fathers coming home from their menial jobs of stapling invoices and making lunch appointments. When I was a kid, I used to hold my breath until the trolley reached the summit, signaled by the dopey dinging of its bell, because then I knew that I would grow up to be a woman that men compared to planets and flowers and bodies of water. Now I know that fate and games are ways that the unknowing dispel the mysteries of the world. Now I am twelve.”

(Bonus: Bookslut interviews Heidi Julavits)