Spine

​ This is how Jason had always known his mom: perfect posture, a side effect of her unnaturally straight vertebrae. When Jason was six months old, she fused her spine, and a scar—a long, glimmering trail raised pink in areas—replaced the prominent S of her back. It replaced a version of her he would never know.

​​ Jason and his friends were sitting in his mom’s minivan during a detour to Scenic Overlook for a quick meet-up with her dealer. They’d be late to the movies, probably missing it entirely. They were embarrassed to admit they had waited months for this new Marvel film to release. 

​​ The boys were looking through rectangular windows for sheriffs, thrilled at the chance to help again, but Jason was watching a lizard scurry down a cactus when he heard his friends start laughing, “Is your Mom fucking him?” “Oh shit! She’s totally fucking him!” 

​​ Jason watched the lizard avoid every spine with a mechanical precision. There was a falseness to it, a CGI effect. Every few seconds, it stopped—frozen. Why did it keep stopping? Didn’t it know every stop could be its last? But when it stopped, Jason was able to study the white line down its back. A hawk swerved overhead, and he lost sight of the lizard's body. Then he looked for something else to look at. 

​​ The boys were shouting, “Look! Look at her! She’s riding him!”

​​ Jason told them to shut up. He didn’t believe them, but he didn’t want to look either. He hadn’t seen real sex. Only on his phone. Some of the boys bragged that they’d already had sex or at least gotten head. He knew this was probably a lie since most of the girls in their seventh-grade class didn’t seem interested in him or his friends. 

​​ Jason joined in with his own lie, saying that he’d gotten some over spring break with a woman. A real twenty-year-old woman that he’d catfished. The boys were impressed. He wasn’t sure why he said ‘twenty’. Twenty seemed hot, but they’d think twenty-one was a pedophile.

​​ His eyes gravitated to the glare coming off the de-laminated pick-up truck parked fifty yards west. He didn’t mean to look. His mom was rocking back and forth. She’d pause and then start again. Why did she keep stopping? But when she stopped, Jason was able to study the way she tilted her chin up, letting her bleached hair brush her shoulders. He studied the curve of her neck, but her back was so straight. 

​​​ Once, Jason asked, and she told him that if she hadn’t had the surgery, she wouldn’t still need the pills. Jason wonders what the other version would have been like, the version where he’s laughing with his friends at the movie; the version where he isn’t waiting in a van watching another silver-striped lizard climb up a cactus, navigating around the spines, hiding from the hawks under the flowering prickly pears.