This is the 49th installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
The near-death experience brought new ideas to light. First, if she wanted to wear polka-dot pants, she should do it. What did it matter what other people think?
Second, Perry Hatfield did not deserve to live.
The latter occupied her mind all throughout her recovery. Laps around the nurses’ station—Perry. Daytime soaps—Perry. Wilting flowers—Perry. Her friends and cousins and coworkers visited, but she barely noticed. Perry Hatfield did not deserve to live.
Three months passed before the doctors let her leave. A group of friends received her and brought her home. The clock ticked away hours, and then they left her with a fridge full of prepared meals and assurances they’d return in the morning. As the sun dipped behind the skyline, she grabbed her keys.
She found Perry smoking on his backyard porch—always smoking on his backyard porch. Since they’d met in geometry, she’d never known him any other way. A decade later, she was a lawyer—or would have been, anyway, if first responders hadn’t been cutting her out of her car when she should’ve been taking the bar exam—and he was still smoking on his backyard porch, reigning over a wasteland of filched traffic signs.
She spotted the sign that had turned her against him for good: “Do Not Enter.” She wondered if she could leverage it as a weapon.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Perry Hatfield did not deserve to live.
Miles Away 