Alien by Guy Yasko

Edith sticks to the barn walls, watching the dancers and asking herself
if there is anything, anything at all, to like about this
place. Perhaps. She finds warm feelings for the library’s flaking yellow
paint and its shabby stuffed chairs where she reads between morning and
afternoon chores. She even likes the books, even if she finds them
suspicious. It isn’t their contents, but the other campers and staff who
make the books dubious — although, come to think of it, she hasn’t been
able to let herself be amused by Parkinson’s Law.

The barn itself is the site of near-nightly folk dancing, something she
finds affected and anachronistic: “We’re not folks. Why should we dance
like that?” All the same, she lingers at the dance because she would
rather avoid her cabin’s smell of mould, pines, and outhouse. She
decides the only way to balance the two repulsions is to decamp to the
dark field between the barn and the cabins.

Away from the fiddling and stomping she can hear her footsteps in the
grass. At the same time, she notices that as the sound recedes, the
music and voices become comforting. Sufficiently reassured, she turns
her back to the barn and its yellow light and looks into the river of
stars across the night sky’s middle. “There. That is my home.”

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