Jinx by Kalliste Hardy

Aurora was the name of the bones I broke. I can only recall her now in shattered ossicles: fifth metatarsal; cuboid; lateral cuneiform.

It happened when I was fourteen and she was fourteen and seven months. That’s how she always announced it — the same way mothers describe the age of their babies, in infinitely swelling months.

I was jealous of her name that came from the sky and the way my tongue had to haul itself forward to say it — Aurora, Aurora, Aurora — and because she walked to school with the two-syllabled celestial girls, Luna, Stella, Astra.

When we still had candy-apples for cheeks, her parents would let me swim in their pool — a pear-shaped thing, with a mosaic of the Ursa Major crusting the bottom like coins stuck to a dragon’s belly. She acted her seven months elder even back then, catlike on the lip of the pool in jelly slippers, while I dove after neon rings filled with sand, picturing a comet tearing through her stomach like a toe through a sock.

This is how I came to discover her only flaw, a charcoal chink in the constellation of Aurora. I had never heard of someone being born with fragile bones — Oh, isn’t it awful! — her parents chimed at me with stiff mouths, Our poor little shooting star. When the chlorine had finally sucked my fingers into cellophane, perhaps that’s when I decided it, a prophecy of my envy, a tar.

It was a perfect sound, like the first snap of a glowstick. The scream warbled through her body, but I barely heard it. I was back in her pool, legs goosebump-warm from fresh sun, watching Aurora chew bubblegum in her left cheek, wishing I could slot my finger into the hollow that appeared there the way dawn does — with a bite down.

Kalliste is a Greek-Australian writer living on unceded Gayamaygal land, currently pursuing a Master of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney. Her work has been published in Voiceworks, miniMAG, Notch, Two Thirds North and more. She can be found on Instagram at @applebottomreads or on X (Twitter) at @umkalli.

Photo by Han-Hsing Tu on Unsplash

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