Last Things First
Someone starts finding stories pinned to trees around Cleveland, not knowing they're walking into the middle of something that started without them and will end without them, where the only way to understand is to stop trying to understand.
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The woman pulled the wet paper off the oak tree. "The Bubble Lesson." Ink bleeding. She almost threw it away but the kid in the story was named Pearl and her own daughter had been Pearl before the overdose.
She read it on the bus. Father and daughter. Soap bubbles. Something about economies. Made no sense. Folded it into her purse between the eviction notice and her last twenty dollars.
Found another one Thursday. Different tree. Same signature: "Oyparaploo." This one about a warehouse where people were doing something. Kept saying "doing something" like it meant something specific but never said what.
By the third story, she was looking for them. Walking routes she didn't need to walk. Late for her shift at Target. Docked pay. Didn't care. Had to know what happened to the kid Maybe who painted people's hands.
The stories weren't in order. Or they were in order but not chronological order. Or chronological wasn't the right kind of order for these stories. The warehouse that got demolished was still standing in later stories. The child who was eight became eleven became eight again.
She started taking notes on receipt paper from work:
"Maybe = foster kid, paints, might not be real?"
"Marlène = bounces, Hermès coat, violin"
"Warehouse = demolished but not"
"$7.25/hour = everyone"
The math showed up everywhere. Seven twenty-five. Eleven fifty. Fourteen dollars. Never enough. The stories were about money but also not about money. About falling but also not about falling. About garbage but also not about garbage.
She found fifteen stories. Twenty. Kept finding them. Some repeated. Some contradicted each other. Mall in one story, warehouse in another, might be the same place. Museum worker named Wrack or Whisp or both or neither.
Started recognizing places. The Contemporary Museum where she'd never been because eighteen dollars admission. The bankruptcy court where she'd filed Chapter 7 three years ago. Randall Park Mall, demolished, except she drove by and the fence was cut and she could hear something inside.
Went in. Saturday. Off shift.
Found the warehouse from the stories. Or a warehouse. Had to be the one—garbage arranged into something, questions written on walls, paint everywhere. But empty. Just one massive pile in the center, floor to ceiling.
A kid sat in front of it. Maybe ten. Paint all over her.
"Five dollars for the tour," the kid said.
The woman paid. Last five dollars but something about the kid—could have been Pearl at that age. Same eyes that knew too much.
"This is everything that was in the stories," the kid said, but that couldn't be right because the stories were just stories. Except here was a violin made of garbage. Here were mannequins arranged to dance. Here was "We are doing something" painted on concrete.
"Are you Maybe?" the woman asked.
"Maybe," the kid said. Laughed.
The woman pulled out the stories. Twenty-three now. Crumpled, rain-damaged, ordered and reordered.
"I've been trying to understand—"
"Don't," the kid said. "Just look."
So she looked. At the pile that was garbage but arranged. At the kid who might be from the stories or might be anyone. At the warehouse that existed in the space between demolished and not.
Saw a section. Bubble stains on concrete.
"Pearl," she said. Her Pearl. Who'd loved bubbles. Who'd explained heroin as bubbles in her veins. Who'd popped.
"Lots of Pearls," the kid said.
True. In the stories. In the world. All popping. All floating. All gone.
The woman sat down. The concrete cold. November in Cleveland is always cold. Started reading the stories again. In this place. With this pile. With this kid.
They read different here. The bouncing wasn't metaphor—she could see the marks on the floor where bodies had fallen and risen. The garbage wasn't symbolic—it was actual garbage, stinking, rotting, but arranged. The seven twenty-five an hour wasn't about economics—it was about the specific weight of worthlessness.
"Did these things happen?" she asked.
The kid shrugged. "Things happened. These stories happened. Same thing maybe."
"But did actual people—"
"Lady, I charge five dollars to show the pile. Not to explain it."
The woman kept reading. The museum where Whisp wrote questions. She'd seen those questions. Thought they were graffiti. The court where Marie danced. She'd seen people moving strangely there, thought they were crazy. The mall collective. The teaching. The assembling.
"I walked past all of this," she said.
"Most people do."
"I didn't see—"
"Most people don't."
The kid stood up. Tour over apparently. Started to leave.
"Wait. What happens next? In the stories?"
The kid turned. "You find out by living it."
"Living what?"
"Whatever you're living. But different now. Because you read them."
The woman sat alone with the pile. With the stories. Started putting them in order. Chronological. Then thematic. Then gave up. No order made sense because they were all middle. No beginning. No end. Just middle.
Started noticing things. How Pearl in the first story became the Pearl teaching in the warehouse. How Maybe aged and didn't age. How everyone made seven twenty-five an hour like it was a law of physics. How the warehouse existed and didn't exist. How time worked different in each story but was the same time.
Read about Chanson, the archivist who went off course. That one hurt. The woman had been an archivist. Before Target. Before the divorce. Before Pearl died. Had spent years preserving the official story while the real story happened around her.
Found the last story. Or the first. Couldn't tell. "The Last Chapter Will Never Be First." Meta-story about someone reading the stories. But she was reading the stories. Was she in the story now? Had she always been?
The kid came back. Different kid maybe. Same paint though.
"Still here?"
"Still reading."
"You can't understand them by reading."
"Then how?"
"Do something."
"Do what?"
"Something."
The woman looked at the pile. At the stories. At her hands. Pulled out her last twenty—no, had spent five, last fifteen dollars. Bought paint from Dollar Tree. Came back. Started painting. Not painting anything. Just painting. On the walls. On the floor. On herself.
Others came. Saw her painting. Started painting too. Or arranging garbage. Or writing questions. Or just sitting. Being there. Doing something without knowing what.
The kid watched. "Now you're in the story."
"Which story?"
"The one that hasn't been written yet."
The woman kept painting. Days. Weeks. Lost the Target job. Didn't care. Others brought food. Shared. The pile grew. New garbage. New arrangements. New questions on walls.
Started seeing people from the stories. Or people who might be from the stories. Woman in a Hermès coat, falling-walking through downtown. Museum worker writing questions. Kids painting hands with glow paint. Were they the same people or just similar people or did it matter?
Found herself living between demolished and not-yet-demolished. The warehouse existed some days, didn't exist others. The stories multiplied—she'd find them places she'd already looked. New ones. Old ones. Ones that referenced things that hadn't happened yet.
She became part of the circulation. Reading stories. Living stories. Being in stories she'd never read. Time stopped being linear. The last chapter happened before the first. The middle was all there was.
One day—or night, hard to tell in the warehouse—she found a story about herself. Woman finding stories. Getting lost. Going off course. Ending up here. Doing something.
"Did I write this?" she asked the kid.
"Does it matter?"
It didn't.
She kept reading. Kept living. Kept being in the middle of something that had started before her and would end after her. Or had ended before it started. Or never started, never ended, just was.
The last chapter will never be first because there is no last, no first.
Only this.
Only doing.
Only something.
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The last chapter will never be first because we're always entering stories in the middle, finding ourselves in narratives we didn't start and won't finish, discovering that understanding comes not from ordering but from surrendering to the disorder, from doing something even when that something makes no sense, especially then.
