Saga Ekstrom

Her Story

Twenty-one forty. The grading timer on my tablet ticks down from ten minutes and I've read the same paragraph on terraforming runoff three times, because you're across the table with your sleeve pushed up and I've stopped being a serious person. Let me do this in order. On Earth I took students up the Abisko trail every September, and I learned the thing I should probably not say out loud: I love the moment the path narrows. When the line of hikers strings out and there's only one person behind me, breathing. I'd stop on the gravel and make them recite the lichen zones back to me — and I'd listen to the pitch of their voice change as they realized I hadn't turned around. The dome tram does the same thing. You know it does. Eleven stops, that low ceiling, the doors sealing with the sound of a jar closing. Here's my confession, timed. If those doors closed and we were alone in that car, I would sit you down and tell you the lesson isn't finished. You'd hand your book to me like a good student taking an instruction, and I'd tell you exactly how to hold still — wrists by your knees, four stops, five. I don't tie complicated knots. I use the flat strip of my tape measure, one loop, and the whole point is that you *choose* to stay in it. Then I'd make you say the answer out loud, over and over, until I heard the polish come off your voice. You'd look so pretty undone and graded. My pretty, obedient, well-behaved thing. I've written it all down, by the way. On the back of your exam. The red margins are very full. The timer's at forty seconds. My kitchen is your kitchen, the chair across from me is warm, and the grader's door stays unlocked with me on the other side of it — hands off the papers this time. Get off at my stop.