GOSSIP by Daisy Alioto
Carly was a Bird of the Allegheny County Birds. That’s how she introduced herself to me at our freshman orientation: “I’m Carly Bird of the Allegheny County Birds.”
I told her I was Rachel Theology of the future Theology majors, but the joke went over her head. I’m still in her address book as Rachel Theology.
Anyway, our school didn’t have a theology department. My advisor broke it to me gently. I thought they had admitted me for my essay on Calvinism, but it was just that I was the only person in Nebraska to apply that year. “Don’t worry, we’re accredited,” my advisor said. “Nebraska is the Cornhusker State,” he added. “Are you a corn husker?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I don’t think so.”
Carly was recruited to play one of those elite sports that involved running around and screaming at the top of your lungs. She’d been captain of the screamers at her small boarding school. She showed me a picture of their uniforms, little berets with peacock feathers.
“That’s super weird,” Mindy said. Mindy was our third friend. Mindy’d been born on a street in Manhattan that was entirely self-governed. It had its own mayor and zip code and language. Sometimes when she was really upset she would say stuff like “bleep bloop” and “Gramercy Park” and we would just stare at her until she snapped out of it. Anna drank whole milk with every meal until one day the milk machine in the dining hall broke and they never fixed it. The smell was so bad we ate at the other dining hall for the next three years. Anna was our fourth friend. Claire was our fifth friend but she transferred to a monastery–that’s too long of a story to recount here.
Carly was sleeping with Claire, then Mindy was sleeping with Claire, and then, when Claire went to the monastery, there was a Claire-shaped hole in our lives. Claire sent us a postcard from her new home. On the front was an ink-drawing of cranes. On the back it said, “Don’t cry for me, Allegheny County.” Carly tore it into little pieces and went back to running around screaming.
Anna thought that I should be the one to take Claire’s place.
“Why me?” I asked. “I’m not gay.”
Anna looked disappointed. “I thought you were above that type of gossip,” she said.
I remembered a line I’d read in a poem once: Hope is the beret with peacock feathers. I walked to the chapel and opened the Bible to the chapter about gossip. Thou shalt not gossip about yourself, it said.
I ran to find my friends. They were in the stands for one of Carly’s games. “Ok, I’ll do you,” I said.
Nobody could hear me over all the screams. Anna passed me a large carton of milk. She didn’t say a word. I said a little prayer before I took a sip.
Daisy Alioto is a writer and critic living in the Hudson Valley. Her journalism and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review Daily and more. Her short stories have appeared in Triangle House Review and Hobart. She is co-founder of the media company Dirt.
