SKYLER James, a young woman of twenty, busies herself unpacking boxes of frozen chicken and placing the frozen nuggets on baking trays in the basement of an Ottawa kfc. She talks to Rebecca, her girlfriend and co-worker, who has locked herself in the employee washroom.

SKYLER eventually sits on a box of thawing frozen chicken.

SKYLER

Well it ain’t like I killed someone, Becca! How am I supposed to explain myself if you won’t even open the door?

Pause.

Listen, I know you’re probably thinking a hundred and one things right now… those police officers showing up this morning… but I bet none of ’em are even half true.

Pause.

Come on, Becca, I got a buttload of frozen chicken out here and if you don’t come out and help we’re gonna have a soggy mess! Becca?

Long pause.

Wanna know something crazy? I used to think Colonel Sanders was my grampa. My grandma told me he was once. Kids believe that stuff. There used to be one down the street and I’d go there sometimes and I’d talk to him. Talk to the friggin’ Colonel like he was my grampa and I’d tell him all sorts of things. Later found out my real one was like hit by a freight train after getting shit-faced one night. So my grandma had a good reason to make up that story. She lived in this old house, way too big for her. Every day after school I’d go and try to live there. Try to convince her to take me in. And we’d like watch cartoons for a couple hours and eat sandwiches, but when it got dark she’d always say: “All right, time to get yourself home, Skyler James.” And I’d walk back up Power Plant Road, past the kfc, and the Colonel would be there glowing and I’d stop and I’d pray to him. To convince Grandma to take me in. Every night. Isn’t that crazy? And when I figured out I was a dyke, you know who I was most worried about finding out? The Colonel!

Listen, I know there’s a lot of stuff I ain’t told you about. I mean stuff I really, really should’ve told you, but I was scared, you know? Like maybe you’d think I was some sort of… I don’t know, like criminal or something. Budgie? Jesus, Becca, you want Amir to come down and bust this door down? His break’ll be over any minute now.

Pause.

All right. You wanna know the kinda trouble I’ve been in? “My deal” as you call it; you wanna know “my deal”? First of all everything I told you about being in the Army and being from Texas and all that stuff, I mean that’s all true, I never lied to you…

You wanna know where it all started?

Beat.

I was fingered in the local Target.

Laughs.

You have to understand there was only one dyke in Wichita Falls: her name was Lisa and she had a buzz cut and one exco sweatsuit she wore every friggin’ day, no word of a lie. Well like I was just shopping by myself just trying on stuff? Just like jeans and stuff and she was looking at all the underwear they got there. And we sorta nodded at each other; I was always friendly to her and whatever. Not like most people. So we started like talking and it was pretty easy. Wasn’t nearly as pretty as you are. Well we must’ve been talking for damn near forty minutes before she said, “Guess you better try on those jeans.” So we walked over to the change rooms and she said she’d wait for me. And like… I don’t know what it was but all of a sudden I was like, “You wanna help?” I didn’t even know what that meant… Maybe like a second opinion or whatever. But she didn’t ask or nothing. She just walked into the stall with me and that was that. I was a lesbian. Lisa lived in like this Winnebago? With her mom. Her mom was Indian of some sort. We both loved n.e.r.d and Ludacris and Timbaland; oh man, when Soulja Boy came out we thought it was psycho good. She taught me the whole dance and everything. One time we did the dance right in the middle of a Walmart!

Anyway, couple weeks later we were walking through the mall? I’d gone and cut my hair short. I’d started wearing baseball caps. I mean I don’t even know the first thing about baseball! It didn’t make no sense. We were on our way to Dairy Queen when we walked by this recruitin’ station. It was right between the Dairy Queen and Walmart. So you could buy some jeans, join the Army, and get some ice cream. And this place had all those big posters and cardboard cut-outs of helicopters and videos of soldiers saving people from floods and stuff; I mean they had the whole nine yards. So we walked in, sorta for like a joke, I guess. We were bored. Frig all to do in Wichita Falls on a Sunday unless you’re into God and stuff, which is bigger than baseball where I come from. And the recruiter guy behind the counter, he started pulling like this salesman pitch on us, telling us we’re gonna see the world and that they were gonna pay for our college and that if we joined right then they’d even give us this big sign-on bonus. And I was about to say we weren’t really interested or nothing when I looked over and Lisa was already filling out the paperwork. And then, without really thinking about it, I started filling it out too. When it was all done the guy gave us this big, shiny information-package thing and we walked out. You know you’d think we’d start talking about it, trying to figure out what it’d all be like. But we didn’t. We just walked next door and bought Blizzards and that was that. They were really good…

Beat.

You remember the first time I saw you? I was coming in here for my interview and you came out from round back, and you’d been cleaning the deep fryer so you were just like totally covered in grease. I remember thinking you were the most beautiful girl in the whole world, even more than that Milla Jovovitch. But I’m more of a brains girl, you know? Like how you can do all those crosswords or like… like when Lisa fixed up that white pickup of mine with a wrench and some elbow grease, now I mean that’s a woman. We drove that piece of scrap metal up four states to Kentucky.

You know Fort Campbell wasn’t much different than high school. ’Lotta concrete, gym class, a caf. I signed up to be a mechanic, don’t ask me why. Not like I even knew that much about cars; I mean I’d only been a dyke for about a month. So when I got to Fort Campbell I worked in the motor pool. Working mostly with Jeeps and lavs… you know like light-armoured vehicles or whatever. Carburetors, fuel injectors, just changing the tires, you know, I’ve done it all. I was good too. I have small hands. Which is good. Lots of guys in the motor pool would talk ’bout Iraq. Lots of ghost stories. Land mines; little kids with grenades. Some of ’em would joke around about crap they’d done over there? Real bad stuff too, like giving people beatings and stuff. One of the grease monkeys, Private Sheen? he’d stepped on an ied and had these big scars all across his face. So um… I mean I don’t really know what more to say about that… it was pretty boring I guess. Lisa got posted on the other side of the base but we still saw each other in the Kfec. That’s the caf. The Army’s got names for everything. We’d eat together. Oh man they had these crazy good spicy fries! It’s all we’d eat.

Listen, I know what you’re thinking. That we were lezing it up; that we were asking for it. Everyone thinks that but it ain’t true. I swear to you we weren’t lezing it up. We made a decision. First or second night we got there. That we’d like never hold hands or talk romantic or nothing. So we never did anything, welllllll… okay that’s not totally true. One night she came over just to like… hang out in my room or whatever. Play some Guitar Hero. And we started making out. And like… well we took some pictures and stuff. I mean how else was I gonna last? It wasn’t a lot, just like eight or nine. Just so I could remember. When she wasn’t around. But other than that we were just two normal girls, right? Just two normal girls who ate their spicy fries together in the Kfec; that was it, end of story.

SKYLER returns to placing nuggets on the trays.

C’mon, Budgie, I got like a million boxes left! I can’t do it all on my own!

Beat. She mutters.

’Sides, I feel like an idiot talking to this door.

Pause.

You know, you can hide all you want but I couldn’t. They were living right across the hall from me. Used to call them the Bud Boys. They were always drinking Bud in their rooms. They’d get it from the gas station, twenty bucks for a pack of thirty. “Cheaper than pop.” The Bud Boys were from Nashville. Their rooms were all covered in these photographs from this like one friggin’ time they went to Coyote Ugly together during recruitment week. That’s the week they send us all back to our hometowns to recruit our friends to join the Army. Most guys just blow their signing bonus on booze. One of them kept playing this Kid Rock cd for like three weeks straight; I’m not even joking, must’ve played it six times a day, seven days a week. So I always kept my door shut. They started calling me Hermit the Crab. And then just Crabs. “Hey Crabs, what’s scratching?” They’d say that all the time. They loved that one.

One night I was coming back from the motor pool and I was real tired and sore and I got to my room and the door’s open. Just wide open. And I walked in and there they were: the friggin’ Bud Boys huddled around my laptop. “Hey Crabs”—but before they could say anything I shouted “Get outta here, get the frig outta here!” “Hey Crabs, nice tits. Which ones are yours?!” And then I realized what they were looking at and I felt like I was gonna puke, like I was gonna spill all my guts right there, and they were laughing and spitting like a bunch of dogs, like friggin’ dogs do when they’re chewing through trash. “get out!” And I went nuts. Like I started hitting them with my fists and they were howling like a bunch of dogs. “get out, get out!” And I slammed the door and I could hear them in the hall blabbing to all the other Bud Boys, and somewhere someone was playing friggin’ Kid Rock’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” And I went over to my laptop and there was Lisa and me on my bed. I started looking through the pictures… I noticed her face wasn’t in any of ’em. I just remember how relieved I felt ’bout that.

I didn’t sleep that night. Didn’t leave my room. Played lots of Guitar Hero. You think I play a lot now? You have no idea; got so I could play almost any song perfect, no joke. Next morning I went straight to the motor pool, didn’t wanna eat nothing, didn’t want to see no one in the Kfec. ’Specially not Lisa. I was changing tires when the guys came in. They were just messing around by the loading bay and I heard Private Sheen saying something about carpet munching. I just kept my eyes to the tires. They started working, no one saying nothing. They were doing something on the exhaust. I was thinking good, no big deal. And then all of a sudden I was in the air. I looked down and Private Sheen was holding me, right above his head, and all the guys were laughing, and he started like shaking me and saying, “Look, boys, I caught me a dyke. I caught me my very own dyke!” And I started kickin’ and he dropped me. Dropped me right on my back on the friggin’ concrete. I couldn’t breathe. I just lay there gaping like a fish and they were laughing. Then the sergeant piped up. Started shouting for everyone to get back to work; told me to get up off the ground, didn’t even ask why I was limping, didn’t even ask why they were all laughing. You know what I think? I think he was there the whole time. He knew. And either he knew and didn’t care, or he knew and was in on it.

At lunch I saw Lisa in the Kfec. I sat down beside her and I told her; I said, “We can’t do this anymore.” “What you talking about?” she said. “I mean we can’t sit beside one another, we can’t talk to one another, we can’t do nothing together anymore, you hear?” I told her ’bout the Bud Boys and the laptop. “But don’t worry, none of the pics have your face in ’em.” But I knew if we kept hanging around together they’d start going after her too. So I picked up my tray and walked away. It wasn’t like I started crying or nothing. We didn’t have one of those Hollywood romances. We were just trying to survive.

Pause.

Nothing like you and me have.

I got back from the Kfec and found like a sticky note on my door? When I got inside I like read it. It said “Fort Campbell’s got no room for dykes like you.” I started taking meals in my room after that. And every night I got back from the motor pool there’d be another note on my door. Lisa and I talked over msn almost every night. But I still didn’t tell her. Like I told her everything but I didn’t tell her about them notes. I guess I was afraid she’d say something like, “Oh they’re just joking” or “They’re just dirty words.” But there were ideas tied to them words. Real, ugly ideas.

When I wasn’t playing Guitar Hero, I’d spend a lot of time by myself on the Internet? And one night I come across this website some guy had made for his buddy. This buddy of his was named Barry Winchell; he’d been a private at Fort Campbell four years before I got there and had already seen two tours of duty over in Afghaniland. Well when it was found out he was gay, another private named Calvin Glover beat him to death with a baseball bat. Right in his bed. You can google him yourself. Private Barry Winchell. The Army did a probe? And the report came back saying there wasn’t any “climate of homophobia” on the base. And then a month later, Fort Campbell’s very own General Robert Clark was promoted to lieutenant general. And you know the crazy thing about it? Both boys were in my unit. One hundred and first Airborne Division. Whole thing happened eight doors down! I walked by the room every morning and every night from the motor pool! One of the Bud Boys lived in it now. Had a big Nickelback poster hanging on the wall.

So I emailed this guy who made like this website for Barry Winchell or whatever? I think he lived in Topeka. I told him who I was and where I was and all about the sticky notes. He emailed me right back, like an hour later, with all this information on like war deserters. I didn’t know what to think about it. It scared me so much I closed the email. Like I was watching porn or something. I felt ashamed even looking at it.

The notes kept coming. For two whole months. Whenever I’d see Lisa in the halls we’d like smile or whatever, but soon she was sitting with other girls in the Kfec. She started liking it more, you know? The drills, the food, the outings. Started going to more functions and stuff. So we began talking less over msn. Then once a whole week went by and we didn’t talk at all. After I beat all the songs on Guitar Hero I got real into this zombie game. I ever show you that one? Where you wake up in this shopping mall and you’re all alone. And you got like this gun, right? And basically you just go round shooting all the zombies and picking up ammo and grenades… But oh man if you blew a zombie’s arm off they’d pick it up and start beating you with it! Can you believe that? They’d start beating you with their own friggin’ arms; oh man it was so funny. And whenever I’d get bored of running around the shopping mall I’d open up that email. The one about the war deserters? And all the people helping them across the States? It felt like they were, I don’t know, like wizards, and everyone else in the world were muggles. Like only other wizards knew they existed, you know what I’m talking about, right?

SKYLER gets up, crosses to the bathroom door, and slides to the ground with her back against it.

I can hear you breathing.

Beat.

Do you want me to stop? Just say it and I’ll stop. Tell me to go away and I will, I’ll walk right outta this basement.

Long pause.

I’m tired, Budgie. I don’t want to do this no more.

Long pause.

You ever been so tired you thought you were a ghost?

We were doing training exercises behind the base. In this big field. Weren’t allowed to sleep for four days straight. They kept us running through mud. Sitting. Watching. Waiting. Until we lost our minds. They’d light flares and we’d have to run to them. Drills all night. Snake in the Grass. Never been so cold in my life. There were like knives in my lungs. I found myself leaning up against this big boulder. I hadn’t heard anyone shout for hours. Maybe they forgot about me. I was sitting there when I swore the sky got a shade brighter. So little I bet no one in the world noticed but me. And then it started snowing. It started snowing! At first I thought I was imagining it but I wasn’t; I mean I could feel it on my face. I’d never seen snow before. Like I’d seen like pictures and stuff but never the real thing.

Beat.

I never felt so far from home in my life.

SKYLER stands and walks slowly back over to her box of melting chicken.

When I got back there was another note on my door. I just ripped it down, went into my room. I was too tired to sleep so I played my game for a few hours before I got a headache. And I was in the middle of changing when I reached into my pocket and found the note. I took it out and I read it. And that’s when I knew I had to get out. You wanna know what it said? “We’re gonna give you a dicking tonight to turn you straight.” And then right below: “ps We stole the keys to your room from Sarge’s office.”

I was so tired from them four days in the field, don’t know how I was thinking straight. I sent a text to Lisa. “Take care of yourself.” And I just started like grabbing crap and stuffing it into bags. Clothes, cds, my tv: I stuffed my whole tv into this duffle bag. I didn’t know what to take or what to leave: my clock radio, my photographs, my blanket, my shoes… I was just like cramming in as much as I could. I felt like I was missing stuff; missing bags, missing clothes. And I was making for the door when I heard a knock. I froze. “Who is it?” I heard Lisa’s voice. “It’s me.” I grabbed the door, pulled her in, and shut it. She looked around the room and before she could even say something I started telling her about the notes and about how they were planning on coming that night and raping me, and I’d never said the word out loud like that before, but there it was and it just thudded on the ground like a big pile of dirty laundry. “You think they’re gonna rape you?” I could tell she didn’t believe me but it didn’t matter. My mind was made up. She asked me where I thought I was going and I said, “Canada, I guess.” Well my Spanish wasn’t so hot so I really didn’t have any other options. I asked her to help me carry my bags to the pickup. She thought about that one for a real long time, so long I thought maybe she didn’t hear me ask. But then she grabbed the duffle bag. “Jesus, you got a tv in here?” I told her if anyone asked we were just getting it fixed, which was crazy ’cause it was damn near past midnight.

We snuck into the hall, tried our best to avoid them cct cameras, and bolted for the back doors. Nearly ripped the bags open dragging them across the parking lot. It was cold out. Felt like a rain was coming on. I chucked everything into the back of the pickup. Lisa asked me if I was going to be driving past the twenty-four-hour Walmart and I said I would be. So we drove out and the whole time she was trying to tell me this was a bad idea and that I should just tell my sarge and all this stuff. I just drove, not saying nothing. When we got to the Walmart it was drizzling so I went in with Lisa and bought a tarp to cover up all my stuff in the back. I don’t think she even bought anything. Maybe she just wanted to spend a little more time together. ’Cause like I think we both knew this was gonna be the last time. In the parking lot we threw the tarp over the back and she helped me tie it down. And then it really started to rain. I asked her how she was getting back and she said she’d wait for the shuttle. I kissed her. Real gentle right on her nose. And then she started crying for real. I told her to promise not to tell anyone and she promised.

I pulled onto the highway around like two in the morning and I slipped in some Biggie.

She starts reciting “Long Kiss Goodnight” by the Notorious b.i.g.

Oh man, Budgie, back then I knew all the words. I kept telling myself I was going on a holiday. Like maybe to Disneyland. I love Disneyland. I never been to Disneyland but I love it. I was shouting along with Biggie to keep myself awake. Well I hadn’t slept for four days, what would you do? I was driving and I’d start looking at like the white lines on the road flashing by: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. A car’s headlights would flash by and I’d think it was the cops. I’d stop breathing. I’d hold my breath till they passed. I was holding my breath more times than I wasn’t.

Then my cellphone rang. I looked at the clock. Three in the morning. “Hello?” It was Lisa. I told her to stop crying. “Just stop crying and tell me what’s the matter.” She said she didn’t mean to. She said she did it for me and all I could hear was Lisa crying on the other end. She’d told the sergeant on me. She’d ratted me out. She kept on blubbering about choices and making hard choices and I shouted, “You don’t think this was a hard choice?!” and I hung up on her.

I looked and saw a dead deer lying up ahead on the road. It looked like a truck’d run right over its head. I tried looking for its eyes; I do that, I look for the eyes in roadkill… “They’re going to hunt you down.” I was looking in its eyes. “And they’re gonna find you and they’re gonna destroy you.” Hunt you down like an animal, and I got to thinking they were like a wolf, like they were like this wolf chasing me, their mouths all full of rabies and I was running and it was just there, just behind me in the darkness and if I stopped for just a second it would jump on top of me and rip me to shreds, and I got to a stop sign in the middle of the highway and I just started screaming! I was just sitting there at the stop sign, no cars in sight, just screaming.

And then my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. First from my sergeant; he was so mad I thought he was going to bite my head off like a chicken. He said, “Git your ass back here, Private James.” Then he said he’d kick my ass. And then he said my ass was grass. And you know what I said to him? “If you like my ass so much, why don’t you try licking it, Sarge?!” And then I hung up! Can you believe that?! I mean I never done a brave thing in my whole life before that. I started laughing. Like I’d gone crazy or something. Just then my headlights hit the big green sign for Ohio and I get another call, this time from the general. The friggin’ general! And he starts playing all good cop with me, saying that he understands people make mistakes and I just turn off my phone and crank up Biggie.

After a while the sun started coming up and my eyes were just burning. I had this fever I swore would split my head from ear to ear. Just crack it right open like an egg. The windows started fogging. Towns started flicking past: Slabtown, Beaverdam, Bluffton, Rawson… When I opened my eyes I was at a truck stop. I couldn’t remember how I got there. I tried looking at the licence plates to figure out where I was. Michigan. I looked around… made sure nobody saw me sitting there, slumped at the wheel. I pulled back out onto the road and made it past Toledo and right up alongside that big friggin’ lake into Detroit. Just a big city of turnpikes. I headed over the bridge and into Windsor and then I remembered the border. Like I’m serious, I actually forgot all about the border and all the checkpoints and stuff. Thought I’d just keep driving until it got cold and snowy and I’d know I was in Canada. I drove up and told the woman I was going to visit friends in Toronto. And she let me through! And you know what I did? The second I got over I jumped out at the friggin’ tourist attraction or whatever and I danced! I’m serious, like I did this little dance and I was just laughing and laughing and laughing; people must’ve thought I’d lost my mind.

And I just kept driving, up past Guelph and Kitchenette and Toronto, and I would’ve stayed in Toronto but I got there real late at night and I got mugged so I said “screw this” and kept on going. And I was driving around and around Kingston for like two hours looking for a pawnshop, you know, so maybe I could sell my tv or something for some gas money, but they didn’t have one! So of course I ran out. In some crap part of town, nothing but warehouses all around. And I was just like sitting there on the side of the road feeling like an idiot, you know. Like worthless. I listened to the radio. I listened to it until the truck battery died. And I sat there crying, the sky getting dark. Frig. I watched some crows doing something over on some power lines. Friggin’ crows. They started circling above the truck. Just circling and circling like I was dead or something and they were just waiting to swoop down and eat up my carcass and I started shouting, “I ain’t dead yet, you stupid birds!”

And that’s when I remembered that email. That email from Barry Winchell’s friend.

I jumped outta the truck and started running, looking for like an Internet café or a library or even someone with one of those friggin’ BlackBerrys or whatever. And if you thought finding a pawnshop in Kingston was hard, I looked for three hours before I found this dingy little place. I called the number in the email and this woman answered. It sounded like I woke her up. I told her where I was and she said she’d send a guy named Joel Hardin to meet me and that I was to meet Joel Hardin at the Tim Hortons. I had no idea what a Tim Hortons was. You know what I thought? I thought it was like a furniture store. So I hung up the phone and just started running. It was raining real hard at this point and I was shivering. And I still had that fever cutting through me. I ran till I thought my heart was like going to blow up or something and I was shaking. What if Joel got there and I wasn’t there? I ran a half-hour straight till I found it. I ran in and it was empty. Second I stopped moving I felt like I was gonna throw up. I ran to the washroom but before I got to the toilet I blew all over the stall. I just started dry-heavin’ and pulling out all this toilet paper and cleaning up the mess, and I was crying thinking Joel’ll’ve already come and gone. And I was crying ’cause I didn’t even have enough money for a doughnut. And what if I’d gotten the wrong Tim Hortons; I mean why do you people have so many friggin’ Tim Hortons!? How many doughnuts do you people need?! I stood up, all shaking, spittle on my face, shirt all caked in puke, and I walked outta the washroom and there was a man standing there. In a leather jacket. Nice eyes. He had really nice eyes. I walked up to him and he handed me a doughnut. It was a really nice doughnut. And he just kept saying over and over, “I’m not a cop, I’m not a cop.” I looked into his eyes. He could see I’d been crying. And I said, “You’re like… the lesbian underground railroad.” And then I threw up all over him.

SKYLER crouches down, her back against the door.

You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?

Pause.

They want to send me back.

Beat.

But I’m going to fight them. You never met a tougher girl than me, Budgie. And I can do this alone… But I’d rather do it with you.

Beat.

Come on, Becca, I know I ain’t been square with you but I’m putting it all out there now; I mean, this is it!

Pause.

That woman who keeps calling the apartment? Colleen? She ain’t my aunt. She’s my lawyer. Joel set me up with her. She says it’s gonna be an uphill battle. Well, ’cause we don’t have those notes. But how was I supposed to know to keep ’em? I wasn’t thinking ahead. Second I’d get one I’d just crumple it up and throw it away. Well wouldn’t you? She kept grillin’ me about them; she told me if there was a single hole in my story they’d rip it apart. I mean they’d just rip me to shreds. She said she wasn’t gonna have me make a fool of her, that this was a high-profile case and our story had to be airtight. She just like friggin’ dragged me through the coals, Becca. Four hours, five hours, six hours, over and over. “Where are they?” “How many were there?” “What did they say?” “That’s not what you said the first time.” And then all of a sudden she leans back in her chair and says, “There weren’t any notes, were there?!” And I just snapped. I mean I slammed my hands down on the desk and shouted, “Even if I was lying, okay, even if I made up the notes, does it matter? I mean, even if I was lying, it was so bad, it was just the friggin’ worst; you have no idea what it’s like to be hated like that, you have no friggin’ idea.” That’s when she closed my file. She said we were all done for the day. “Wait! I guess what I’m trying to say… is like… even if they didn’t write those notes… which they did… But like even if they didn’t, they said those things, they thought ’em, they… you know, like… all the time too, not even a little bit of the time, it was like all the time. Okay? So you don’t know.” And I started crying. “There were notes, there were, every single day; I lost count there were so many!”

Beat.

What do you do when your own lawyer don’t believe you? I told the story so many times over… gets to the point where I don’t even believe myself.

I just wish things could get normal again, you know? I mean I’m normal. I think sometimes I’m like the most normal girl in the world: not skinny, not fat, not tall, not short, not pretty, not ugly, not smart but not too dumb… When the cops were looking for me I bet they asked the sergeant, like, “What’s she look like?” and he’d say, “Real normal. Like the most normal looking girl you ever met.”

SKYLER walks back over to the door, pressing her hands and forehead against it. She whispers to Rebecca through the door.

Budgie, every time I come home, and I look around our apartment, I look at those chairs we bought from Ikea that we put together ourselves, and we were laughing at all their silly Swedish names… I mean who names furniture?! It’s crazy! And I look at the paint on the walls… We chose that paint. Midnight Plum. Summer Blush. Willow Breeze. Like porn-star names! And then we got cats! I mean we like have cats! You know?

Beat.

There are things you say… there are ways you say it… that open up like these… windows… in my head. Things you like do with your hands. The way you like always jiggle the faucet or whatever to get the water to stop dripping, even though it never does. I even like the way you fart; I’m serious. I love it. Hey.

Beat.

You crying? Ain’t no reason to cry. I ain’t gonna let them send me away. You hear me? I said I ain’t gonna let it happen!

Beat.

Why you crying?! Why aren’t you saying nothing? Why won’t you let me in!? Let me in! Don’t you get it, Budgie!? It’s you!

You’re my home.

What am I supposed to do?

The door to the bathroom unlocks.

Blackout.

End of play.