Gapping

The Words

Indispensable, Antediluvian, Bristled, Amicable, Voracious, Traipse, Stammers into the room, Mind the gap, Face planted, toppled out of the tree, Coconspirator

**


There was this kid who died in high school. They said he killed himself. And it made sense. He was the kind of kid who bristled and caved in like a rat when they called him "Yo, Batty!" The voracious reader who would dig up antediluvian facts and use them like coconspirators. But they always won, and being the indispensable bait he was, they laid him to rest with amicable words over a closed casket. It happened. Or so they thought.

But instead, he toppled off the tree.

He stammered into the room, traipsed behind them like a ghost to the metro, eyed the "Mind the Gap" with a glint of anxiousness, stepped a second too quick as the rest of them watched with faces planted in their horror masks when he fell as the train came.

They never went gapping again.