Fum

by Adam Rapp

  Brill consults his watch and slowly stands. He then leans across the small table, relevés onto his toes, and kisses his daughter on the forehead.

  “Good-bye, Corinthia,” he says. “I love you.”

  She squeezes his hand firmly and smiles, but remains silent.

  After her father passes back through the door of the wigwam, Corinthia looks down to discover a small, perfectly constructed, yellow origami crane. She takes it in her hand, admiring its meticulous folds and corners. She sets it beside the hourglass and then reaches into the pocket of her robe and produces the small wooden wolf that she found in Channing’s room some months earlier. She places it beside her father’s crane. And then she arranges her mother’s lanyard beside the wolf. She stares at the small keepsakes for a moment.

  She can briefly feel the story of her life shifting, turning away from its beginnings. Her hometown, her school, and the house she grew up in on Stained Glass Drive are more and more remote now, like when a distant silo becomes smaller and smaller in a rearview mirror, until it becomes a figment of itself, a pinprick, and then nothing.

  Corinthia knows she may never see her father again. Deep within, underneath all of that mysterious tissue and fluid, she feels a dull, revolving ache.

  But it, too, will pass, she tells herself, just like everything else.

  “Need another minute, Fräulein?” Corinthia suddenly hears.

  Corinthia didn’t even see Phyllis enter.

  “No, I’m good,” Corinthia replies, clearing the origami crane, the wooden wolf, and the lanyard off the table. “Send the next one in.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Adam Rapp

  Cover illustration copyright © 2018 by Timothy Basil Ering

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2018

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com