Excerpt of Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
(Page 5 of 5)
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Kevin turned and ran out the door of his apartment. His feet
pounded one hundred separate steps. He didn't know about the
laws of gravity or physics. He imagined his brother hung suspended
in the air. He thought if he could just make it down in
time, he could catch his little brother before he hit. He ran down
the stairs and out the door: his gaze aimed at the sky, his arms
outstretched.
After the trial, I couldn't sleep at night. I stopped working on
my dissertation and stopped answering phone calls from my
friends. I stayed up thinking how I should have done things differently.
When Hannah called, I should have taken a movie over
to her place, and some tea, and told her our old jokes until she
laughed. At night I should have lain in bed next to her and stuck
my feet between her legs and asked if she remembered how mad
she used to get when I did that. I should have wrapped my arms
around her and talked about places we'd lived and games we had
played until she was wrapped up in the comfort of who we used
to be. Where was she? I wondered. In those days I lost weight
and watched my parents suffer. I should have spent that night with
her, I thought. If I could have done it differently, I wouldn't, no
matter what, have said nothing and let her go.
Excerpted from Forgotten Country
by Catherine Chung. Copyright © 2012 by Catherine Chung.
Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
