Great Day to be Alive

by Brigitte N. McCray

About the Author: Brigitte's fiction and poetry appears in Syntax & Salt-“All the Ugly Things” earning an editor's choice award, LampLight Magazine, Devilfish Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Mythic Delirium, and elsewhere. Her work was nominated for a Best of the Net award and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Excerpt

Some people will hug a person they haven’t seen in a decade, like it’s only been three days since they’ve seen them. Not the people in my hometown. I’ve spent the last decade in New York, a place they believe smells of piss and garbage, despite never having stepped foot in the city. They wouldn’t dare leave the mountains of West Virginia.

I’m tainted by association.

And I’m an actress, which makes it worse.

“What TV show do I know you from, girl?” Terry Buchanan asks me in the Mountain Laurel Convenience Store and Deli.

God, I can’t believe it’s him. He has that Mountaineers baseball cap Daddy bought him for his seventeenth birthday. It’s all dirty and stained now. He even has the same smirk and still stinks of Calvin Klein’s CK One.

“Girl”? I’m nearing forty. Plus, he knows my damn name. We dated all four years of high school.

I’m in line holding an egg and cheese biscuit and a bottle of chocolate milk. “I know you remember my name, Terry.”

He’s standing behind me, all gruff and bearded. He’s still slender, and instead of the football jersey he used to wear, he’s in a car mechanic shirt. He’s holding a newspaper under his arm. “Oh, I’m sorry, Patsy,” he says. “Is ‘girl’ one of those words I’m no longer allowed to say, according to the politically correct police?”

I roll my eyes and place my food on the counter.

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