"In 2013" by Jordan Nishkian

Content warning: child loss

I was tearing open my order of chicken strips to temper their heat when my phone vibrated against the counter. A text notification from my ex, the one who smelled like mango and chlorine, lit up the screen. I wiped my fingers on a one-ply napkin. Its white film was stubborn and clung to the ridges of my thumb.

It was 2013: Spring semester of my sophomore year of college, I had a class schedule that allowed time for a meal in the campus diner, and I finally declared my major—both of them (I still couldn’t choose). It was the year Candy Crush took the world by storm, twin pandas were born in China, and DOMA was overturned.

—hey how are u?

Steam rose from the chicken. I took his bait.

Not bad, you?—

—Great! question for u

—How did u get free birth control?

I squeezed my thumb against my forefinger, rubbing up and down till I felt the film roll into small worms.

Planned Parenthood. You went with me.—

—Yeah… we tried that but they still wanted money

Idk what to tell you. I’m not Google.—

—K don’t be rude. I just don’t want what happened to us to happen again

What happened to us. My teeth grated against the nausea.

I pushed the food away. On the other side of the window, a sea of backpacks bobbed in midday sunshine.

It was 2013: two homemade pressure-cooker bombs detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, sarin gas doused Syrian civilians, and George Zimmerman was found not guilty. I had nightmares that punctuated infrequent sleep with loss and blood, and I called her by two names—both of them. I still couldn’t choose.

Jordan Nishkian is an Armenian-Portuguese writer based in California. Her prose and poetry explore themes of duality and have been featured in national and international publications. She has been awarded the Rollick Magazine Fiction Prize and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories. Jordan is the Editor-in-Chief of Mythos literary magazine and the author of Kindred, a novella.