Hope Coppinger

Hope Coppinger was raised in Boston, but has since lived a whole lot of her life in New Jersey. She has been published in Bluestem Magazine, Qwerty and North Dakota Quarterly. She likes to play with fabric and yarn when she feels like language escapes her.

Let the Boy Be (Short Fiction)

Let the boy be young, but old enough to have an opinion. Make him small, but not fragile.

Let the boy be angry—frustrated, feelings hurt, ready to explode. Make the boy decide to take a chance on a new solution.

Make the boy leave the house. Let him not tell his mother out of spite. Let him hate her and hope she worries, if only for a moment. Let him slip out while she’s upstairs, look both ways to watch for cars and a nosy neighbor. Give him a beat for his regret toward thinking hateful things about her and enjoying it.

Once the first wave of anger wears off, let the boy pause. Make him entertain the idea of turning back—as we do sometimes when we get out into the fresh air and open sky—but make him see the possibilities ahead of him. Make him want to wander out of sight of his house on his own for the first time. Let him feel it on his skin, in his scalp, from deep in his gut: the freedom and the fear.

Give him a short span of time where he considers every single step he takes so we feel it in our own shoulders and ankles and hips, but then distract him with a bird or a breeze. Draw him out a little more until he reaches a point where the trepidation wears off, like he’s out of its range. Let him feel it in his muscles and bones as it releases him. Straighten his posture and make his movements more fluid, then let his stride lengthen again, but not with anger. Make it the stride of a boy who is sure of himself.

Give us a space here to worry about the moment his mother discovers that he’s gone. Let us worry about her panic, her regret for shouting at him for something so minor, for forgetting that he’s just a boy with a tender, loving heart and a busy, messy mind.

Don’t give her too much space, though. This story is for the boy.

Let the boy lead us. Let us feel his hesitation turn to rebellion, then excitement, then a kind of awe. Let everything else fall silent. Show us that sense of wonder at small details: the cracks in the pavement that resemble a face, a bumper sticker, a ceramic animal nestled in a flowerbed, a stone glistening from the curb. Let us remember what it felt like to look at everything without the adult’s framing of danger, without being guided toward what to admire or avoid.

Make him choose a destination, and let it carry him with a new purpose.

But first, stop. Give him an interruption, an obstacle, a small delay. Make him hold his breath for just a second, put something within his view, a glimpse of the world he’s trying to leave behind: a school bus, a neighbor kid who asks too many questions, even a siren in the distance. Let us feel afraid that our adventure with him is ending before it even began and let us beg softly for it to continue a while longer, because we, too, hesitated. We also kept our hopes in check and let our wiser, more cautious minds lead for a while, but we’re ready, too. Maybe we smell the freshly mowed grass, or imagine a childhood pet, but we’re with this kid step for step.

Let us go.

He’ll have to run—there will be an open space, a gentle rustling of leaves as he takes that last sprint toward where he’s never been before.  

When he gets to the place he’s curious about, let us stop to catch our breath. Let us feel the cool metal fence post, or the smooth bark of the beech tree beneath his fingers, even the twist in his ankle when he’s distracted by a toad on the narrow trail he’s found. Give us that moment of being airborne when he trips on a root or a stone.

Let us understand that the boy is no longer angry as he turns into the woods.

Don’t wait too long before you give the boy a choice of where to go—one way will seem scarier than the other, more shadowy. Maybe the other choice has more to offer, like a rocky stream or a decrepit building covered in vines to explore. Let him wander and scramble and crouch and jump. Let him lose track of time. Let us all forget for a little while.   

Let the woods fall silent except for a breeze in the leaf litter or the knock of woodpecker. Let the boy sit at the edge of the stream and listen to the water make its way over and around the stones as his breath quickens and his ears ring and his stomach takes a little dip that could be both joy and fear. Let him take deep breaths to keep from worrying and notice the pain in his ankle or the sting from a thorn near his knee. Let him miss his mother, and let him worry about the scolding he might face when he returns home. Let him crave her hug and her voice and the things she does for him when he’s upset: a blanket, a snack, a bath.

Make the boy stand slowly, shaky now, and let him make his way back the way he came. Give us a bird or a squirrel to cheer him up, give us another breeze to cool the sweat on the back of his neck. Make the boy hungry and tired and let him daydream about what he loves: grape popsicles, his cat, the blanket with the robots on it. Let him grab a big stick for support and protection.

Let the boy go.

Let the boy be.