Sometimes the taste of fruit takes a person back to childhood, to a summer romance, perhaps to a long-lost feeling of warmth. But for Amelia, summer and strawberries were untainted by memory so she decided the sweet taste of red was exactly what she needed.

After a night of tossing and turning and stretching her legs, of throwing the blankets off in frustration and realizing the air was too cold to touch, the covers flew off at the first sign of sun and Amelia’s mission began. Teeth and hair brushed, face washed, cats fed, she walked across the street, down the block and into the corner shop to satisfy her craving.

The shop was small and cluttered and Amelia felt at ease there. The tall shelves and abundance of stuff felt like a warm hug at home surrounded by the peace of familiarity. She’d been to this shop over and over again and although she recognized the owner standing behind the cash register, she had never said a word to him. Instead she wandered, her mind and feet in tandem, and she often forgot where she was standing, who was around her.

She searched the aisles for berries, stopping to notice the gaps in the shelves, letting her mind linger on whatever questions came up, like Should I buy brown lip liner? and How do I fix this unnameable feeling in me? For a moment she thought she had The Answers, but her eyes found the strawberries and revelation escaped her. The fruit was inspected, purchased, and tucked under her arm as she made a beeline home, counting steps, looking for signs from God in the letters and numbers of license plates that passed her by. A mission, but the journey was over in a matter of minutes. 

The perfectly ripe, juicy berries were unloaded into the safety of her fridge, Exactly where they should be, Amelia thought to herself. She admired her bodega-shopping prowess –– finding a carton of strawberries with no berry too mushy was certainly a feat.

Her studio apartment, being a studio, was small (she preferred “cozy”) and falling apart (she preferred “full of character”). The room was big enough for her twin bed, a disproportionately large couch, and a table usually set for one. The kitchen was in its own room with a door that locked from the outside. She wondered why on earth a kitchen would need a door that locked from the outside. Her shelves were overflowing with double-stacked books and trinkets littered wherever there was room. To Amelia, her things were pieces of her soul put on display.

Amelia stooped to pick up her cat, ready to spend hours lounging together, but at the knock on her door remembered she had other plans for the day. 

“Shoot. Five more minutes, I’ll meet you in the car!” she shouted. 

“You sure I can’t come in?” Peter sighed. 

Amelia glanced around at the candy wrapper being used as a cat toy, the dishes piled up on her table, the mound of clothes her other cat napped on.

“No, no I’m almost ready. I’ll be right there!” 

She rushed to put on her skirt, her top, her shoes, her smile, and she shivered in the sweltering heat of the doorway, taking a moment to notice the threshold she was crossing, the line between truth and something else, and she waltzed to his car. 

She knocked on the window and he smiled. Peter looked at Amelia with eyes that matched hers in color, shape, kindness –– but not in love. His shone with it, so bright it blinded her. So bright that every time their eyes met, Amelia hoped and prayed that some of it would float through the air and infect her, travel to the place her soul lived and sneak through the keyhole of the locked door, wearing armor and concealing a sword in order to quietly subdue the evil thing she was sure festered under her skin. 

She smiled, lowered into the car, dropped her bag to the floor and–––

“Thanks for waiting. You know we’ll need to stop for ice cream on the way home, yeah? The zoo makes me sad,” she said.

“Well this one is good, they actually take care of the animals,” Peter replied, Amelia noticing the slightest edge to his voice. “But, yeah, sure, we can grab ice cream.”

He looked over at her sitting in the passenger seat and the face that was usually hidden behind a shadow was for a moment clear, her hollow eyes looking out the window. Amelia’s gray wall of self-protection seemed to be fading into whorls of smoke, and for a moment Peter felt hope. In recent weeks he’d felt something shift in her so he’d begun searching for his place within her inner world. He tried to peek around each corner hoping to run into himself. Turn after turn, he instead came across a fork in the road with one path leading toward enlightenment and the other to a twisted, haunted forest. But the two paths were identical from where he stood and he had an eerie feeling that in the end, no choice he made would actually matter. 

Amelia felt his piercing stare and turned away from the window. She searched his face for its usual softness as she forced the smoke around her to harden again and surround her body, mind, soul. She kept waiting, every day, for the moment when they looked at each other and she could finally breathe. Slowly. In and out. But their eyes met and she knew this moment would not be that moment. 

“Everything okay?” she asked, relaxing into the chair.

“Yeah, sorry, everything’s fine. I just planned today especially for you. I didn’t know the first thing you were gonna say is how sad the zoo makes you.” 

“It doesn’t actually make me sad sad. Just…Sorry.” 

Peter didn’t reply for a moment, letting the air grow heavy, then said, “No never mind, that’s a dumb thing to be annoyed about. Let’s just go have a zoo-per fun day,” he said with a dry smile that quickly turned genuine when he saw Amelia’s dramatic eye roll. 

Her face feigned playfulness as a lifetime of dread, aching, agony, ripped through her and split the chasm in her soul just a bit wider. She was sure that with each bad joke he told, Peter was preparing to stitch her soul together with rusty knitting needles and corroded fishing line, then stand back proud of himself for being the self-appointed answer to her unheard prayers. She, however, wanted someone to stumble across the ancient, ivy-covered cottage tucked away in the dense thicket of her mind, then bring the softly glowing candle sitting in the window to her wounds and let the warmth of the flickering light be the thing that mends them.

The radio played while his hand rested on her thigh. Her skin felt like it was covered with spiders. They arrived at the zoo. It was hot. And humid. And Amelia wished she loved Peter enough for those things not to matter. But they did.

II

Peter and Amelia sat on a bench making up stories about the people passing by, eavesdropping on tour guides, trying to conceal their laugher as a child interrogated his mother about why the tigers in front of them were “wrestling.” Amelia admired how the animals did exactly what they were expected to do and their roaring and fighting and aggression were all excused simply because of who and what they were. “It’s just their nature,” the mother explained to the boy. 

They walked hand-in-hand, fanning themselves with the zoo’s map, finding refuge from the heat in the amphibian exhibit. Amelia watched a poisonous blue frog hop from plant to plant, let the artificial rain sit on its skin, then land next to its poisonous blue frog friend. Their home was filled with the right plants, the air was the perfect temperature, so Amelia wondered if it even mattered that they were stuck somewhere so small. Would they be sad to know there was so much more of the world to explore? Might they try to escape if they found out there were others like them, hopping from plant to plant, letting real rain sit on their skin, landing next to each other in another world under the canopy of an endless forest?

Peter noticed Amelia’s quiet moments lost in thought, could tell she wasn’t standing where her feet were and tried to bring her back to herself. He pointed at the frogs and said things like “I love the colors on this one” and “I wish someone would bring me fresh bugs to eat every day.” Amelia heard him, remembered where she was, gave him a small laugh and for a moment really did see Peter as someone who loved her instead of someone who wanted to conquer her. 

Eventually the couple found a faraway grassy hill to lounge on, excusing themselves from the crowd of families and tourists below. Pre-made sandwiches, sparkling lemonade, and enough snacks to fill the picnic blanket were unloaded from Peter’s backpack as he asked Amelia,“What animal would you say you’re most like?”

Amelia, soaking up the warmth of the day and distracted by the fluttering of windswept napkins, answered Peter’s question honestly and without thinking. 

“I could definitely see myself as some sort of herding dog, but one without any sheep to herd. Or maybe I’d be a turtle somehow born without a shell, walking around my whole life missing something fundamental and never knowing it.”

Peter stopped organizing their lunch and stared at her blank-faced. He’d been waiting for something, anything, to guide him further into her world. He wanted to ask her what she meant and hear every thought that crossed her mind. He wanted to hug her and let her hug him back. He wanted to wear every word she said from then until forever like a shield and protect her from all the things he didn’t understand. If Amelia was a herding dog with nothing to herd, Peter would be her flock of sheep. He already watched the way she walked, the way she held his hand, the way she bit the inside of her cheeks and in that moment he realized just how much he relied on her to know how to simply exist. 

“I’d just be any kind of animal with a purpose hardwired in its DNA, but for some reason it’s  unable to do the one thing it was born to do,” Amelia continued. “Anyway, what about you?” 

Amelia locked eyes with Peter and realized immediately what she’d done. She had handed him the map with the door circled in red, given him the armor and the sword he needed. The grey wall was wrapping itself around her. Suffocating her. Transforming into an impenetrable bramble bush that pricked her skin and squeezed her limbs tighter and tighter together until she found herself cemented in place, no different from the statue of a lion sitting mid-roar at the zoo’s entrance. 

But her eyes remained calm, her breath even, a soft smile encroaching on her face as she awaited Peter’s reply. And Peter was beaming. His eyes shined brighter than she’d ever seen them, trying to burn away the mess of thorns. For a moment she thought he’d succeed, break through at last and become the crusader he was born to be. As Amelia sat helpless under the summer sun, her stomach tight, her palms sweaty, her cheeks red, she remembered that all she had to do was take a breath. Her mind was and always had been her own. No one could know what she was thinking if she didn’t say anything aloud. So the brambles become tighter, the wall higher, the thorns sharper and the map scrambled. Maybe this moment could have been that moment, but again it wasn’t. 

“Hmm. I’d say I’m like a coyote. Or a wolf. But I don’t really have a reason why,” Peter said with a toothy grin.

“Well I guess we’re almost the same then. Who’d have thought,” Amelia smiled. 

They finished their lunch mostly in silence, comfortable for Amelia and uncomfortable for Peter. The two were each lost in thought about the other, wondering separately but together about how to hold on to their relationship, a relationship that to Peter was blossoming and to Amelia was succumbing to inevitable decay. 

The crowds thinned out, they packed up their picnic, meandered back to the car. As they walked, Amelia noticed the cracks in the sidewalk and the yellow flowers peeking through. She wondered if she’d ever know that feeling herself. Peter watched the gradual darkening of the sky; the clouds dispersing with the last remnants of a warm breeze; the sun falling with ease as it has done since the beginning of time, knowing that tomorrow it will rise again.

III

Peter drove Amelia back home. “Slip Slidin’ Away” played on his car’s speakers. The full moon followed them through town until the three of them reached Amelia’s apartment. She went inside alone, locked her door, and cried until her eyes were puffy. He parked at his house and sat in the driveway listening for the silence between the sounds of his neighborhood. Eventually he walked inside and fell asleep with the window open, cool air flowing steadily over him. The moon watched them both from her place in the sky.

Amelia couldn’t understand why there was a barrier between her and real life. In conversations she would think What would an interesting person say to this? and then say whatever she imagined an interesting person would say. She would walk through the park and the whole time be thinking about the fact that she was walking through the park. Her world felt small and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why. 

Seconds or minutes or hours passed and Amelia remembered the strawberries. Red! Ripe! Sweet! The taste of something delicious! She peeled herself off the floor and opened the kitchen door, this time crossing a different kind of threshold. Amelia found the berries right inside the fridge, exactly where she had left them. She could already feel the juice running down her arms, the sweetness settling in on her tongue, a few seeds getting stuck between her teeth and for the first time in months, she was looking forward to something. 

She picked up the carton, took a few steps toward the sink, opened the lid, and––mold. Now all she could feel was the white, fuzzy, hairy surface getting stuck to the roof of her mouth and the back of her throat. Like chewing a cotton ball or a chunk of cat hair. 

How the berries became moldy since that morning she did not know. Amelia remembered reading once that mold can grow for days before the spores finally become visible. The fungus lays dormant, then spreads so slowly and so deep within the fruit that perhaps it was already contaminated the moment it was picked off the vine. Her perfect strawberries, she tells herself, were already inedible before she even spotted them. There was nothing she could have done; even if she ate them right away, she would’ve been eating moldy fruit. She sighed, threw the carton away. Decided that tomorrow, first thing, she’ll pick up a fresh container. This time she’ll freeze them, so the mold can’t spread.  

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By Rahnie Harris