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A Short Story : A Story?

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He closed his mouth, kept his head to the ground and June concentrated on the tiny cracks in his lips. He never bothered with chapstick or vaseline. “It feels like a disease, doesn’t it?” he said. “We try to hide it, walking around school, the same outfits every week. Same sneakers since I was fourteen, but everyone knows we got nothing.” June looked at the white Sketchers he wore. She remembered the day he got them. A birthday present her parents gave him two months later. He had been so excited he didn’t take them off even when he was in the house. Home from school, he walked through the kitchen before starting his chores, heating up a hotpocket, tracking mud across the wooden floors. Now, the shoes had turned a shit brown. They were too small— his toes about to bust through the front. “But Dad will figure it out,” he said. “I can't imagine not smelling cow shit every morning anyways.” They laughed at the same time. The sound of it surprised June as they crumbled beside the wheelbarrow, wiping at their sweat, looking out and into the bright green fields where she knew clumps of stone waited. Silence June had come home from class early. It was her second year at a community college. Before she knew it, she would have an English degree. She would be searching for a job that was the opposite of what her family had done their entire lives. A white truck sat in the driveway. When she walked closer she saw a blue four digit number stamped above the handle on the

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