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[Little Degradations](

**Chapter 1: A Little Handbook**

Two snoozes and my first-to-office streak is at risk. I drink a half liter of water for breakfast – instead of my usual parfait – shower, dress, and make it to my Prius in fifteen minutes. It’s five red lights until hitting the freeway, partially clogged at 7. Door-to-door is twenty-five minutes.

On the elevator, I step on a pocket-sized, purple book. There’s a light stain of some kind, and the edges have lost any crispness. A line-art silhouette with exaggerated chest and hips shows a woman with a ponytail leaning against a wall. The title: A Little Handbook.

I get off on floor 12, go straight to the bathroom. The water is hitting me sooner than anatomically efficient.

I flip open the handbook to a random page as I sit.

*Article 5.6.*

*Little has no choice in what she wears.*

*Infractions: Five lashings for putting on clothes without checking with Daddy. One hour in the stocks for disobeying outfit instructions.*

Someone has written in the one-eighth-inch margin, *Daddy says even if it makes me look bad.*

I fan through the rest of the pages and see the white space is filled with annotations. A note on the inside of the cover says, *If found, please text 443-700-1919 for a $100 reward.*

I discover myself typing, pressing send. A whoosh sounds. That’s when I realize my phone recognized the number. Of course.

Reeva fucking Thompson.

She texts back seconds later: *Oh God. No!!!!!! Clara…I’m so embarrassed lol.*

My mind goes to the office party where I accidentally walked into the stall she was changing in. For some inexplicable reason, she was wearing no pants, no panties, no shoes or socks. Sweater only. I whipped around before my eyes could focus. When she came out of the stall, her opinion was, “Whoops.” And then, “Fucking office parties. I’m so hot.” I wasn’t sure if that was some sort of explanation or an unrelated observation, but I didn’t press. She washed her hands, then leaned against the wall and asked me about my plans for the weekend. I remember how slow and even her breathing was.

I doubt she’s embarrassed.

Before I can respond, the bathroom door opens. There’s a tap and a grunt. A thump on the counter. Nails roll across the granite. I’m sure there are lanky legs swinging like pendulums.

“So. Good morning, Clara. Seems like I beat you to work today.”

The stall’s wooden door has become fifty pounds, but I stand and pull it back to face her. She hops from the counter. Her body — she’s half a foot taller than typical thanks to her pumps and a pile of pineapple-styled hair — cocks at the hips. Her skin is the charcoal shade of the black counters, and the midnight black of her double-breasted blazer matches the bricks. Her pants are high-waisted, gunmetal. She’s accented the look with purple, smokey eyeshadow, matched by a similar purple in her pumps. Dim lights from milk-orange, Himalayan-salt sconces sharpen the shadows. She’s directly between me and the mirror, and together our contours show like flower and vase.

“My boyfriend and I — we’re pretty fucking kinky.” She waits for it to sink in. As if it hadn’t crossed my mind. “I’m sorry you came across this at work.”

I run a broken nail along the cover of the book. She bites into her lower lip with her blindingly-white, slightly-gapped front teeth. I hear myself say, “Okay,” and, “the elevator.”

“Huh. Well shit.” She looks and nods at the book.

“Oh, yeah. Here.” The book exchanges hands, and she narrows her eyes. I regain composure. “One hundred dollars?”

She opens her mouth to speak, then stops. “You ass hole.” I step in her direction as I smile, my left dimple visible to the side of Reeva in the mirror. “I really want, though, for you to know –”

The opening sound of the door cuts her off as my assistant Jan comes in.

“Well aren’t you two sharing the most sordid of secrets.” Jan glances at the book. They have a gift of discernment for the mood in a room. We swivel in unison, me with what I assume looks like terror back on my face, Reeva showing curious surprise. “Far be it from me!” Jan’s hands go up and our three voices laugh in cool harmony, two of which are easy.

​

When I get to my office, I close the door and pull down the blinds.

Before my move from Brooklyn to Baltimore, an all-knowing Google ad took me to Etsy. Item: lighter. Style: Zippo. Color: matte black. Size: medium. Custom gold engraving: “Smell in. Blow out.”

My niece was the inspiration. On a Sunday evening one month before that purchase, my niece asked me what I do to stay calm when life gets “stressed full.”

“I remember that emotions will be different tomorrow,” I said, trying to convince myself. She gave a twisted frown.

“Let me teach you the best way.” A Mormon Sunday college lesson, I assumed.

But she shaped my hands into a cup and pressed her toothpick first-finger in the middle. She blew her fire-red hair, a brasher red and straighter than mine, out of view. “That’s a candle. Do you see the flame?” The stare that followed — kid was serious. “Now, breathe in through your nose, like you’re smelling. Then breathe out with a little puff from your mouth, like you’re going to blow out the candle, only don’t, just make the flame move.” Her little brows furrowed until I did as directed, and I furrowed mine in response. “That’s it.” Deepening her voice, she rehearsed, ready to lead class. “Smell in. Blow –” she elongated the vowel “– out.” We did this five times.

The method was courtesy of Miss Needle. Kindergarten teachers are gurus I can get behind.

Now she asks every Sunday on FaceTime whether I’m doing “the candle breathing.” Her face opens with my consistent yes. My sister says we have the same smile down to the extra lift in the right cheek. Says it’s the kind that makes people feel like they matter.

Since moving to Baltimore, I have started every workday with this lighter in hand, facing my harbor-side glass wall, breathing for five to ten minutes. I finish before everyone else gets here, except sometimes Reeva. (In past lives, my punctuality for work has been questionable at best, but I’m killing it.)

I set my timer to fifteen. A red-orange sunrise reflects on the water, engulfing the flame. My eyes soften into my breath, and I settle into a steady cycle of in and out.

Halfway through my ten minutes of breathing, I jerk my arm and body out of position, singeing a couple of my chaotically-loose wine-red curls. I was almost asleep, but there’s a muffled mezzo, volume ten, that commands attention. Reeva is singing.

“All along the Western front,” she drowns out her Spotify accompaniment, “people line up to receive, she got the power in her –”

I take a few more breaths. I’m gonna talk to her, tease her about the singing, reassure myself that this book will not make our budding friendship awkward. As I’m rounding the corner to her office, the performance is replaced with a ringtone. Her door is cracked open. The ringing stops and a man’s croaky baritone, the sort of croaky that lasts for two minutes after a morning alarm, sounds past the door.

“You’re fucking depraved. A slut. You know that, right? You really think you’re deserving of more gold?”

My feet catch on the hardwood — add another scuff to these flats — and I fall as the door clicks closed. When I get up, I expect her to be staring at me through the interior glass wall, but she’s looking into the harbor. Her voice and the caller’s are unintelligible muffles.

The interior glass shows my reflection. Mascara, a rarity, magnifies the whites of my eyes. My dark green, long-sleeve waffle knit has three buttons at the top — the first is open, and I can not flatten out the left side of the shirt. I’ve paired this with baggy, leather pants. I congratulate myself on the famous pants.

She pivots in my direction, and my heavy feet resume walking — straight for the water cooler. My lighter is still in my hand. There are grooves imprinted on my palm.

Slut. Those consonants ring through my mind.

Smell in. Blow out.

[Continue with chapter 2 on Wattpad.](

NSFW: yes

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