The Girl from Maple Street
The alarm went off at five, but Emma had already been awake for an hour, lying in the dark and listening to her mother's breathing through the thin wall between their rooms. It came in shallow pulls, then a catch, then a wheeze that settled into something like rhythm. She counted the pauses the way other people counted sheep. When the breathing steadied, she finally let herself close her eyes again, just for a moment, just to rest them—and that was when the alarm shrieked.
She dressed in the dark so she wouldn't wake anyone, though there was no one to wake but her mother, who slept lightly and badly these days, and the neighbor's cat that liked to sit on their fire escape and judge the world. Her uniform smelled of bleach and old grease no matter how many times she washed it. She pulled her hair into a knot, splashed water on her face, and looked at the girl in the cracked bathroom mirror—dark circles, chapped lips, eyes that were too awake for five in the morning.
On the kitchen counter sat her chemistry notes, dog-eared and coffee-stained, exactly where she'd left them at one a.m. She'd fallen asleep twice at the table studying for the scholarship exam, jerking awake each time…
