Maria Connour fiction short story Four Women and One Good Thing
Four Women and One Good Thing
by Maria Connour
“Okay. Um, do I just start, or—”
“You can start wherever. Maybe start with when you first met Julia.”
“Right, okay. Well, um, I first met Julia-”
“Sorry, a little louder? Actually, could you get closer to the microphone? Yeah, like that, thanks.”
“Okay. Right. Well, I think it’s important to say that when I first met Julia, her name was Chloe.”
It’s crickets in the recording studio.
“You know, her name was Chloe. She was going by a different name because, I think she didn’t want, like, Reddit weirdos to track her down or whatever.”
Staring at the two women in front of me now, one holding a notebook with a sticker that says “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” under a photo of Jeffrey Dahmer, I realize that I may be in the company of the very people Chloe, I mean Julia, tried to avoid. Still, I neglect to apologize. I do think they’re weirdos. Who has a Jeffrey Dahmer sticker on their notebook? Who has serial killer merch?
Reddit podcaster weirdo number one stares at me through cat-eye glasses, and I focus on the holes in the corners where the rhinestones fell out as I continue speaking.
“My sister had been on dialysis for a while. As I mentioned earlier, her kidney was failing. She needed a new one, but we don’t really have any family that’s close like that.”
Cat-Eye Glasses narrows her eyes and seeks revenge for my calling her a weirdo earlier.
“And you couldn’t donate, right? Like, that wasn’t an option for you?”
I inhale.
“No, that wasn’t an option. As I also mentioned earlier, I didn’t exactly take great care of my body when I was younger. I lived what the rehabilitation center nurses liked to call a high-risk lifestyle.”
“Drugs?”
Jesus, what is her problem? Maybe she can tell I’ve forgotten her name. Was it Liz? She twirls a curl of red hair around her finger, and I stare at the black and white checkerboard print on her nails while she waits for me to respond.
“Yes, that is true. I have a history of severe drug and alcohol abuse, and I’m not ashamed of it. The point is that I could not give my sister a kidney, and things were looking bleak. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a very long list of people just waiting around for a kidney, and it’s always easier if you can get one from someone you know. My sister had been waiting for a long time, like we’d watched every episode of Law and Order: SVU while she was sick. Like, that’s how long she’d been waiting.”
I wait for laughs that do not come.
“And I wanted her to be alive, so we could watch the next season together.”
Still, radio silence. Well, you don’t listen to podcasts on the radio, really. Spotify silence.
“Things were not going great. I spent most of my evenings at the treatment center there with her, but I was working an afternoon shift at the sports bar I work at when I got the call.”
“That they’d found a match?”
“Well, yes, I was getting to that. They’d found a match for my sister, a woman named Chloe, from the area. I was ecstatic. It was how I’d imagine rich little kids felt when they got told they were going to Disneyland. Like, the happiest I’d ever felt. I clocked out early and drove straight to the treatment center to see my sister. You have to understand, this was like, a huge deal. We celebrated with a variety of hospital Jell-Os.”
“When did you meet Chloe?”
“The day after that, in the treatment center cafeteria. She came down to meet us and introduce herself.”
“And what did you think of her?”
“Honestly? I thought she seemed tired. Like, she had bags under her eyes. She had this streak of purple in her brown hair, and I remember thinking the bags under her eyes were the exact same color, like, vibrantly so. But she seemed really sweet. She was really timid, and she was more interested in hearing about me and my sister than she was in talking about herself. She was eating cafeteria vanilla soft serve with only red gummy bears on top. When I asked her why, she said she only liked the cherry ones. I told her they all taste the same, but then I felt bad, so I complimented her silver nose ring. She told me her sister was allergic to red dye, so she always ate anything red her sister couldn’t, growing up. She said she grew to prefer red things. I thought she was kind of odd, but hey, a kidney’s a kidney. Plus, it’s like a super-rigorous system to get approved to donate, so I figured she must be okay as a person. I don’t think they let you donate organs if you’re unstable. They worry about how you’ll recover, I think. I asked her why she wanted to donate a kidney to a stranger.”
I close my eyes for a moment, trying to recall the conversation.
“She said she’d always wanted to. Something about a relative who died from kidney failure when she was a kid. Maybe an aunt, or, like, a great aunt? I don’t know. But she said she wanted to do a good thing. Like, one major good thing in her life. I thought that was sweet, although I figured she probably had something sadder going on she didn’t wanna talk about. Like maybe it wasn’t an aunt; it was her mom or whatever. I didn’t press her on it though. People donate kidneys to strangers all the time. It’s called altruistic donation. Jesse Eisenberg did it.”
“The guy from The Social Network?”
“Um, no, that’s Mark Zuckerberg.”
“No, yeah, but, like, Jesse Eisenberg played him. In the movie.”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay, him.”
“Do you think Jesse Eisenberg just donated a kidney so people would talk about that instead of talking about how bad his Lex Luthor was?” Cat-Eye Glasses says to her co-host with purple hair and a name I also forget. Wait, was she Liz? One of them was Liz.
“Maybe,” Purple Hair says, and they laugh.
Cat-Eye Glasses picks up where we left off.
“What did your sister think of Julia?”
“Well, again, we called her Chloe. She thought what I thought. That Chloe seemed kind of heavy, like she was weighed down by the life she had led, maybe. We joked that she should join the club. We both just thought she seemed nice.”
“Do you think your sister is a good judge of character?”
“I think my sister is everything. She’s… she’s like the smartest person I know. She always was smart, in school and life. She always made such good decisions, you know? It was like she was born with a compass in her head pointing her in the right direction. College, career, personal life. I sometimes wonder if I was her compass all along. Like she saw me making all the wrong decisions and decided to turn right everywhere I turned left. I never went to college. I never even finished high school. You probably guessed as much, seeing as I’m thirty-four and still working at a bar.”
“But Bonnie, I mean, my sister, she was the total opposite. She made the right choices. I used to hate her for it; I was jealous, I guess, but I grew out of that. No one’s to blame for where I am except myself, I suppose. I also think that’s why it sucked so much, that she got sick. It was like the universe had hit the wrong target. She had done everything correctly her whole life; she was the one who planned Mom’s funeral since I was high off my ass, and somehow, the universe still dealt her a shitty hand. Sometimes I feel like it should have happened to me instead, I guess is what I’m trying to say. I certainly deserved it more than her.”
“So sorry, real quick, if we could just not use curse words going forward? The distributor we go through doesn’t like it.”
Now it is my turn to narrow my eyes.
“Isn’t this a podcast about murder? Like—grisly murders?”
“Yes, but we still don’t curse. We try to be very tasteful about what it is we do.”
I stare at old Jeff Dahmer’s face on the notebook again.
“Right. Tasteful. I got it.”
Cat-Eye Glasses continues on.
“Did you think it was weird that Julia wanted to meet you and your sister? From what I understand, some altruistic donations are anonymous. Did she say why she wanted to meet you guys?”
I pause. I guess I didn’t ask her exactly why she wanted to meet my sister. To be honest, I didn’t think about it. Hell, if I was forking over an organ to some stranger, I’d probably want to meet them too. I tell them I don’t know, but Cat-Eye Glasses seems unsatisfied with this answer, hemming and hawing to her mousy co-host with the dyed purple hair.
Purple Hair asks, “Do you think she was lonely? Looking back, I mean. Knowing what we know now, do you think maybe Julia wanted to meet you guys because she was lonely?”
“Julia was definitely lonely, but I don’t think she was donating an organ to make friends. I think she was lonely because she wanted to be.”
“So you don’t think she went into this looking for friendship?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“But you became friends. Somehow. How did that happen?”
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I didn’t hate Julia. Still, I don’t hate her. I feel bad airing all of her business for a podcast so people can listen to it while they do their dishes or whatever.
“After everything was confirmed, all of the testing had been done and stuff, you know we had a transplant date, I asked her who would be there for her, during the surgery. By this time I had grown fond of her, I guess. After her tests to prepare for the surgery, she always ate with us in the cafeteria of the treatment center. She may not have been the one in kidney failure, but she was still undergoing a major surgery. She told me she didn’t really have very many people in her life. She said her parents were dead, and when I asked if she had any siblings, she said her sister was dead too. I remember when she was saying this, she was eating a hospital cherry popsicle. It was dripping down her wrist, and she was licking it off her hand when she said her sister was dead. She seemed unfazed saying these things, like she had explained her dead family a million times before.”
Purple Hair’s eyes widen at the mention of Julia’s sister. I imagine her frothing at the mouth with excitement, like a purple bulldog in a spiky collar. I resist the urge to show annoyance on my face.
“I thought that I understood why she wanted to donate. I thought, I don’t know, maybe her life had sucked so bad that she wanted to do a good thing because she had survivor’s guilt, or something like that. I mean, Jesus, my parents are dead too, but at least I have my sister. I can’t imagine… I couldn’t imagine losing all three. I asked her if she wanted to get a burger outside of the cafeteria.”
The two women interviewing me are on the edge of their seats at this point.
“I took her to the bar I work at because I got a discount and, hey, I’m not made of money. She ordered a vegan burger and a Cherry Coke. I remember she got Cherry Coke because I made some stupid anecdote about liking Pepsi better. Which, by the way, isn’t even true. I genuinely just didn’t know what to talk to her about, so I guess I was just saying random shit. Sorry, no cursing. I was saying random crap.”
I’m giving details that aren’t necessary. I guess saying random shit when I’m nervous is just what I do. I should work on that.
“Tell us about the altercation at the bar that happened,” Cat-Eyes says, and the excited twinkle in her eyes makes up for whatever rhinestones she lost in the frames of her glasses.
“Okay. Right. Well, um, so even though I worked at a bar, I was four years sober.”
I wait for them to congratulate me. They don’t.
“Well, sober except for cigarettes. Those don’t count. You don’t crash your car into a tree because you smoked a cigarette. Right. There was this guy, in a red flannel shirt, and the first time he walked past me, he didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was drunk. The one thing they don’t tell you about drunks? How cold they are. You know, they’re always drinking ice-cold drinks, and, this guy, when he walked past me the first time, I could feel this chill coming off of him, frigid, like he was a cold wind or a ghost. He reeked of Miller Lite. I shivered, but I didn’t think much more of it. I work at a bar; I had seen cold ghosts before. I had been a cold ghost. But I always still shivered. He came back though, a second time. We were seated in this little back booth, right near the bathrooms, but he had just used the bathroom, so this time he came over to talk to us. He asked if I wanted a drink.”
I pick a section of black nail polish off my thumb and watch it fall to the carpeted floor. I avoid eye contact with my interviewers.
“I told him no. I told him, I actually didn’t drink. Like, at all. For some reason, this made him really mad. He told me if I wanted to say no, I could have just said that. Although I think, no, I could not have. I didn’t have to make up a lie, and I told him I wasn’t lying, but he didn’t believe me. He grabbed my neck from the back with one hand and my wrist with the other. In hindsight, I’m angry talking about it. Yes, we were at a booth in the back, yes it was dark, but I’m angry nobody came to help. I work there, you know, so I know the people who were behind the bar, and I guess they just didn’t see me. I don’t know. It was scary.”
“That was not your fault,” Cat-Eyes says.
“Agreed,” says Purple Hair. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yeah, I know,” I spit out, “I didn’t say I did.”
I continue, “But Julia, she was like, like a ninja or something. She had a pocket knife, and I didn’t even see her do it, but she took it out, and she stabbed him in the hand, like right there. It was crazy. The guy screamed, but Julia took my hand, and we ran out to the parking lot. It was pouring rain, and I was, like, panic laughing. Like, from the exhilaration. She started laughing too and, honestly, we got in the car and drove away. I asked her if she wanted to come over to my shitty apartment.”
“So you asked her to come over, to your apartment, where you live, but you didn’t really know her?”
“Well, hell, she was giving my sister a kidney, plus I knew she wasn’t a serial killer. Like I said, those kidney donor screening tests are no joke. You know they even make you see a psychiatrist before you can donate? Seriously. I really, and truly, did not think that this girl was a serial killer,” I say pointedly.
“Even though she had just stabbed someone in front of you?”
“In the hand! Not like, in a major artery. Jesus. Okay, I thought, you know, I thought maybe she was a little rough around the edges, but so am I. I’ve been in my fair share of bar fights before.” Why am I confessing? I’m not the criminal we’re here to talk about, I remind myself. “But again, she couldn’t be that fucked up if she was approved to donate.”
I get pursed lips in response.
“What then?”
“Well, uh, then she came over for a couple hours. We talked and FaceTimed my sister for a little bit. I think I was beginning to get curious about how her family died, so I was trying to skirt around that while also kind of leading to it in a way. I went first, and I told her my mom had cancer, but I never knew my dad. She said her family died in a crash, which I didn’t think much of, but then I asked her when it happened, and she was really vague about the whole thing. I stopped prying, and she left a little while later, but I searched for her on Facebook that night.”
“And what made you want to search for her?”
“Boredom. Curiosity. But also, comparison. When my mom died, I wasn’t on the best of terms with her. I wanted to see, I don’t know, if she had any pictures of her family, I guess. If they looked happy. I don’t know, I don’t know. I was just bored, and she was evasive. Really, it was just curiosity.”
“And what did you find?”
“Well, nothing, at first. I couldn’t find her on Facebook or on LinkedIn.”
“That’s probably a good thing. I think LinkedIn tells you when someone views your profile.”
“Wait. Really?”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard.”
“Fuck. I didn’t know that.”
“The cursing, please, no cursing.”
“Right, yeah. Sorry.” Annoyance abounds.
“But her name. When I just searched her name, there were a lot of Chloe Berrys. So many. But I kept looking; at this point I was even more curious. I wondered if she was, honest to God, an angel, existing only to save my sister’s life. I had been praying, actually, before we found a donor. Nothing makes you believe in God more than needing Him.”
“But she was no angel.”
The way they phrase this, I can tell they are saying it for drama.
I sigh, “Yeah, she wasn’t an angel. But she also wasn’t Chloe Berry. Her name was Julia. Julia Vega, and I got this information from a comment on a blog post from three years ago.”
“What did it say?”
“It was a post about Jeanie Vega.”
The name hangs in the air between us three. She’s the reason we’re here, really. The reason I’m getting paid for this. These girls and their followers don’t care about me and my sister. They don’t even care about Julia, not really. If Jeanie Vega is the sun, we are in the room orbiting around her, the comments when this is eventually uploaded, little stars in the background. I pick another chunk of my nail polish off.
“We’ve covered Jeanie Vega’s crimes extensively on this podcast. Did you know who Jeanie Vega was, at this time? I mean, were you familiar with her trial at all? Did you follow any of that coverage when it happened?”
Another chunk of black polish.
“Yeah, I mean, kind of. I had seen her, on the magazines near the checkout at the grocery store. She had curly brown hair and round glasses. She was pimply. I remember thinking she was unfortunate-looking, and I knew she had been some sort of killer, but, like, I didn’t know details. But, you know, obviously, that night, I read a lot more about it.”
I look down at the floor. Jeanie Vega, the homely, unsuspecting girl from some town in Illinois. She had really bad acne in all the photos I saw of her and she looked miserable, even in photos from when she was younger. It was clear she hadn’t been lucky in life. That was why she killed those boys in her town, I guess. I mean, that was why. Somebody had turned her down in a way that had been brutal, and she started putting chemicals in their Gatorade or whatever. She was a weirdo; she stole things from the boys after they were dead, and most internet sleuths seemed to be under the impression she was suffering from a wide range of disorders. What made the case a media spectacle was both the young age of Jeanie at the time she committed the crimes, and the fact that her sister was the one to turn her in. Julia was the one who called the cops. The media painted a real good-sister/bad-sister picture.
When they caught Jeanie, she’d killed four boys in her town and two in the town over, and they all had blond hair and braces. It is the common consensus of commenters that one of them had been the boy who humiliated her and the others were unfortunate doppelgangers. She was tried as an adult, even though she was only seventeen. She killed herself after her trial, but the big serial killers never really die, not as long as there are still people sitting around in rooms and on computers talking about them. Jeanie Vega is the fourth woman in this room right now.
“So Julia had changed her name,” Purple Hair continues, lying down on the tracks in front of my train of thought.
“Yes. She changed it because she didn’t want to be associated with her sister. I can’t say I blame her. But yeah, obviously, people tracked her down. Figured out she had changed her name.”
“It seems odd to me that Julia would change her identity. No one was mad at her. It was the opposite, actually. She became kind of a symbol of justice. I did hear she turned up to her sister’s trial drunk, though. There’s those photos of her leaving the courtroom with these giant sunglasses on. She looked kind of chic for the sister of a serial killer,” Purple Hair says.
“Wait, oh my God, I agree. She looked so chic. Totally on my Pinterest board,” Glasses says.
I saw the pictures they were talking about, of course, on the night I did my deep dive. I’m sure Julia was going less for style with her sunglasses and more for privacy, but I keep this thought to myself. The conversation turns back to me.
“If you’re able to now, please, go ahead and talk about the night you went over to talk to her about all of this. Take your time. I know it must have been a difficult night for you.”
My eyes glaze over now, and I blink back tears as I try to recall the night. I didn’t tell my sister that Chloe, the kidney donor, was true-crime it girl, Julia Vega. For a little while, I didn’t think I even needed to bring it up. I thought maybe I could just pretend she was Chloe. I didn’t want to scare her off from me and my sister. We still needed a kidney. I think before I speak, something new I’ve been trying lately.
“At first, I thought maybe I should just pretend I didn’t know what I knew, but then I started to think about why she was donating a kidney for seemingly no reason. I thought of the weird feelings that must come with knowing someone you loved did horrible things. I began to think Julia was donating her organs to make up for the things her sister did, and that made me sad for her. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted that kidney, but I also wanted Julia to know she wasn’t responsible for the things that Jeanie did. I remembered my own sister, Bonnie, being horrified at some of the things I did when I was in active addiction. I can’t imagine finding out your sister has been killing people. I decided I was gonna tell Julia that I knew who she was, and that what happened wasn’t her fault. I thought, obviously, she needed to hear it. I picked up a pint of vanilla ice cream and gummy bears and texted her I was coming over to drop off a gift. I remember… It’s so stupid. I pretended the gummy bears were talking to me on the drive over, debating if this was a good idea—it’s more likely they were screaming in agony over the summer heat melting them together.” I say this last part to myself, and I snort at my own joke.
“Okay, yeah, so, I went over there, and we ate the ice cream and watched Law and Order: SVU even though I had seen all the episodes. Once my ice cream melted, I looked at the gummy bears left in the bowl, all the colors except red, which she took, and pretended I was speaking to them. When the credits on an episode rolled, I told her, quietly, that I knew what she did.”
“I remember her face when I said this. She turned her head slowly to face me, in a way that was honestly pretty creepy, like an owl or a Tim Burton character.
“She said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she didn’t blink at me once.
“I said, ‘I know who you are. I know you’re Julia Vega, and I know about your sister. I wanted to tell you it’s okay.’ This seemed to make her angry.
“She had begun to cry angry tears. ‘It’s okay? Really, is it okay?’
“I continued to try and console her.
“I tried to sound soothing. ‘Yes. It’s not your fault, Julia. None of it is your fault. I know all about the murders. You did the right thing turning her in. I know that must have been difficult.’
“That set her off—‘You don’t know shit,’ she spat. ‘Don’t talk to me about the right thing.’
“She was talking louder and louder at this point, and she began to seem increasingly hysterical.
“She pulled at her hair from her scalp, and said, ‘You think you know the story of the Vega sisters, huh? You and every other internet detective can go to hell. I can’t believe you’re here, now, talking to me about this.’
“I said, ‘I’m sorry; I just wanted to say it wasn’t your fault.’
“That’s when she said, ‘I knew.’
I pause and swallow.
“Julia said: ‘I knew. I had been seeing one of the boys, Lew, before he died. Jeanie didn’t know. He had this yellow Walkman that I thought was so cool.’
“She laughed to herself at this point, and then continued, ‘Yeah, well, after he died, I found that stupid Walkman in her desk. It was broken, a little bit, but, yeah, I knew it was his.’
“I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at her, trying to absorb what she was saying.
“Julia went on, ‘The thing is, Jeanie was always fucking weird. She didn’t have any friends, except the ones she shared with me. I used to do all this stupid shit, I always tried to set her up with boys. I wanted her to be normal. I loved her, but I worried about her.”
In this, I could not relate to Julia. I thought then of my own sister and of my erratic behavior in my youth. Drugs that led to fights that led to suspensions, then expulsion and time spent in jail. I was not the worrying sister in childhood. In childhood and adolescence, I was the one to worry about. Now I worry about my sister because she is sick, but I never had to worry about who she was as a person. It is a privilege I’m not sure she can claim about me.
“Julia continued, saying stuff like, ‘I don’t know what I thought, I thought…’
“She was fully crying now, but her voice was steady. I could tell as she spoke, she was back in that moment. She sounded like she was in a trance.”
I feel like I’m in a trance myself as I relate her words for the audience.
“Julia said, ‘I thought maybe Jeanie had killed those boys. That she had killed Lew, my Lew, but I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself all these lies, that she was odd but not crazy, that she was cold sometimes, but still had morals. I made myself believe what I wanted to be true. I put the Walkman back, and I went to bed. I…’ She suddenly stopped talking in the middle of it all…”
“Then Julia said in this choked voice, ‘Jeanie killed someone—that night, when I was asleep. She killed someone that night, and I could have stopped it, if I’d called the police that night.’ Julie was saying she was so fucking stupid— oh, sorry for cursing. She said, ‘God, I was so f—ing stupid. He would still be alive if I’d called the police that night. All the other ones, all the other deaths, those were entirely her fault, but that last one… I could have stopped it.’
“I asked Julia, ‘When did you call the police?’
“She said, ‘The next day. As soon as I heard another boy was killed. I swear. I called them, and I told them I thought maybe my sister should be looked into.’
“At this point, Julia was crying and sobbing. She told me. ‘Jeanie never spoke to me again, after she was arrested. Up until she died. I wrote to her while she was being held in jail. She never wrote me back.’
I recount this conversation, now, in the podcast recording room, but I am unable to look my interviewers in the eyes while I do so. I cross my legs and stare at the faded mermaid tattoo on my ankle as I think. The mermaid was supposed to be green, but it turned out blue. Colored tattoos never turn out the way they are supposed to. Now, the mermaid has begun to look like Julia in my mind. This better not turn out to be a recurring issue. Tattoo removal is expensive.
After a long pause, Glasses pushes forward with the interview.
“What did you say to her, when she confessed this to you? How did you react?”
I think for a moment.
“At first, I didn’t. I kind of just sat there, taking it all in. But then, and I’m not proud of this, but I got angry with her. I called her some really harsh things. I was mad that she was using me and my sister to clear her conscience. I told her we didn’t need her apology-to-the-universe-kidney. Now I know, this was not the right thing to say.”
I break eye contact with Miss Mermaid Tattoo to stare ahead.
“She had this kind of guttural laugh. Like she was mad, but she was laughing, but she was sobbing. But, yeah. Yeah, she took a knife from the kitchen, and she stabbed herself in the stomach.”
I collect myself before I continue.
“She said something about how we had to take her kidney, because she was gonna take it out right now, so we had to take it. I don’t know, we were just yelling back and forth at each other. I don’t know. I called an ambulance, but by the time it got there, she was already gone. She cut herself really deep.”
The women in front of me nod in acknowledgment, and I know they understand what I’m saying. They understand that Julia killed herself in front of me because she couldn’t handle the guilt, but they don’t really understand, because they weren’t there. They don’t understand that Julia bled guts and cherry flavoring all over my shoes, and they don’t understand how I vomited on top of it. They don’t understand the interview with the police officers that night, and the styrofoam cup of ice chips I sucked on because I was too freaked out to talk. They don’t understand how guilty I feel—how if I’d waited to talk to Julia about this, my sister would have a working kidney by now. These girls don’t understand anything, really. They sit up here in this podcast studio in their rockabilly clothing, drinking iced Starbucks black coffee and recounting other people’s tragedies, followed by an ad for a meal subscription box. Nothing says “use my code for ten percent off” like manslaughter.
Yet, although these women, one of whom is named Liz, I’m sure, make a career out of airing other people’s dirty laundry for people to listen to while they do their actual laundry, at this moment I can’t pretend to be better than them. Here I am, talking about true crime, in a cushy room with lowlights to set the right mood. I’m only doing this interview because I’m getting paid and I need exposure for my sister, who still needs a kidney. I don’t know all the names of Jeanie Vega’s victims—I only know her and Julia, but all the same, I’m making money talking about what happened to them.
I zone out as the two women in front of me launch into a detailed background of the crimes committed, reading from an iPad, and I think about how I’m right back where I started. My sister still needs a kidney, and after that night, I need rehab again.
Jesus Christ.
Maria Connour is a recent graduate of Ohio Northern University, where she studied English and Art. She now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she works for the Cincinnati Public Library System. Her work has appeared in The Awakenings Review, The Afterpast Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Girls Right the World. Follow Maria on Instagram: @mconnour.
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