Pack

by Dawn Miller

We prowl through corridors as she scuttles away, shoulder knocking metal lockers. Baggy sweater, lank hair, a zit on her chin—there’s too much to make fun of—and so we snap gum in her ear, snap her bra strap in science, snap photos of her eating homemade pickle-and-cheese sandwiches in the library, then post them online with tags like loser, creep, waste of space.

We are fifteen and glorious, light-filled and honey-limbed. Boys seep through our gel-tipped fingers like the inches of gin, whiskey, and vodka we steal from our parents’ liquor cabinets and funnel into thermoses, then anoint with packets of purple Kool-Aid and call the mixture Jesus Juice.

We lord over hallways as the girl with the zit—Rebecca or Rachel or Rochelle—morphs smaller and smaller, then growl pig, lizard, rat, as she scurries by, the bite of syllables making us lick our lips, hungry for more.

Under black-blossom clouds, we link arms for selfies and tip noses to catch bubble-gum scents in the breeze, scavenge communion wafers in chapel and spit them into our hands. We cross fingers in confession and kiss broad-shouldered boys with our purpled tongues, tangy and sweet. We nuzzle, teeth sharpened, eyes always open.

We wait, shifting like shadows, until Rebecca or Rachel or Rochelle’s spot on the bus sits empty, and classmates offer heart emojis and candlelight vigils, our power a warning, a thirst, a howl echoing in the sky.

At night, cell phones clasped to our chests, we stroke tuffs of down, thick as cream along our ears and throats—then make crosses in the air because we’re not stupid girls, not silly girls, we know about survival of the fittest, the wild terror of existence, and the appetite for flesh that’ll rise again tomorrow.

About the Author

Dawn Miller

Dawn Miller is the winner of the 2024 Forge Literary Magazine Flash Fiction Contest, 2024 winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and Best Microfiction 2024 and 2025. Nominated for Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize, her stories can be found in many journals and anthologies. She is the proud recipient of a 2024 SmokeLong Quarterly Fellowship for Emerging Writers. She lives and writes in Picton, Ontario, Canada. Find her online at www.dawnmillerwriter.com