Treehouse

a brief encounter by Megan Fowler

My old roommate was always high and making Harry Potter wands. They were beautiful, all twisty and knotted, each one whittled down to a science. I thought she could sell them on ebay or something but she just did it because her hands always had to be busy. When she wasn’t whittling she was holding her pet snake Albie. When she was drunk she’d yell and scream and poke him in the eyes—but the indifferent Albie just glared in unimpressed disbelief as he slinked between her armpits until they finally fell asleep on the couch together. That was before she sold the couch for grocery or drug money, before she pawned the wii and playstation to buy her boyfriend an anniversary gift (the same boyfriend who made her put her fist through our cheap paneled wall, the same boyfriend she would eventually marry). I was furious, enraged and burning with the flames of hell, but the flames fizzled and dispersed like the tiny candles on the ugly neon birthday cake she made in February when no one else remembered it was my birthday.