2 stories by Beth Sherman

Flawed Anatomy

I was born with one lung. It collapsed like a tiny water bottle and my 17-year-old mother, who missed Prom for my birth, told the doctors to take the damn thing out, no one would ever notice. Turns out people can live with one lung or one kidney or half a brain. The body overcompensates. Other organs work harder. Still, my breathing always feels too rapid though my mother disagrees that my wheezing sounds like an asthmatic pug. That’s why I hate sports. Too much running. 

At Royal Palms in Brooklyn, I play shuffleboard ironically. It wasn’t a schoolyard pick. I paid $165 to be a member of the Shuffle Puffs. For six weeks, I have friends. Young men and women shouting Keep the biscuit out of the kitchen, when it’s my turn to shoot. A singing fish on the wall belts Yacht Rock songs. I nurse an Espresso Bob – vodka, cold brew, coco, cinnamon and a dash of vanilla. With each sip, I feel my remaining lung, who I call Nora, expanding beneath my sternum. A trapped helium balloon.

Why won’t you date? my mother asks.

Because everyone lies on the apps. And I can barely walk up the stairs at work. 

Take the elevator.  

Easy for you to say. You have two of everything. 

Why are you so focused on an invisible abnormality?

Why do you think love is a Band-Aid?  

She’s on Husband Number Four, a tax attorney who favors loud Hawaiian shirts and vaping.

Shuffleboard was her idea. 

It’s an easy game to learn. You take a stick and push a wooden disc (the biscuit) down the length of a relatively small court, trying to rack up as many points as possible. When it’s my turn, I imagine Nora gasping with exertion. Squeezing and contracting feebly, till my brain loses oxygen and I collapse in a heap. Instead, my biscuit lands on the line between nine and ten. No points! My teammates eye me with contempt. 

Are you sure? my mother says later on the phone. I thought everyone is there to have fun.  

No, everyone wants to win.  

Today is the League Championship. My mother is in the stands – bleacher seating with cup holders. She’s nibbling sliders from the indoor food truck and drinking something called a Mango Pigeon. She’s talking to this guy named Harry, who, if I were a normal person, I might possibly be interested in. I’ve never gotten up the nerve to say hello to him. But in ten minutes, they’re chatting away like they’ve known each other forever. She has that effect on men. I learned the word MILF in middle school. 

Come here, honey, my mother calls. Have you met Harry?

Up close, his eyes are flecked with grey, his nose dusted with freckles. 

This is my daughter.

No way, says Harry. You look like sisters.

I like him a little less now, though Nora is flopping wildly like a bird that’s been hit by a car but doesn’t know it’s half dead.

I only have one lung, I tell Harry.

Harry looks confused, changes the subject. Something about Royal Palm opening a second shuffleboard club in Chicago, with a sauna and a plunge pool.

Then no one can think of anything else to say and Harry drifts toward the food truck. 

Really? says my mother. You couldn’t have mentioned you’re an architect or you like Billie Eilish? 

The Shuffle Puffs didn’t win but everyone gets a participation trophy and a coupon for a free game. I join my teammates in a round of air kissing and a perfunctory exchange of contact info. I know I’ll never see any of them again. While my mother is calling an Uber, Harry comes back with margaritas.

What’s it like, having one lung? he says, handing me a drink.

I’m used to this. The curious. The morbid. People who feed on others’ misfortunes.

Like you’re gulping air all the time, only there isn’t enough. Like you’re always on the outside looking in. Coming up short. Behind.

I feel like that and I have both lungs. 

We stare at each other, puzzling this out.

I’m Harry Scanlon, he says. Do you want to play shuffleboard sometime?

Nora is struggling to expel the next breath – a puff, a whisper, a shimmer of air. 

Or maybe that’s my heart.  

Did you hear about Miss Feathers?

Our new history teacher is young. Twenty-three, she announces, as she turns her back on us and writes her name on the board in loopy, cursive letters. Miss Feathers. She is so lovely we boys don’t even laugh. Lake blue eyes. Cheeks like the tender part of a peach. Hair that swishes straight to her bottom. Tight white blouse. A skirt that grazes her thighs, higher than what the girls are allowed to wear. We squirm in our seats, imagining secret places beneath. 

After school, we look her up. Katherine Feathers. 17 Allendale. Nights, when we’re supposed to be doing homework at the library, we hide in the bushes outside her house. Watch Miss Feathers vacuum a rug, eat soup from a pot, change into a short nightie and brush her hair hard, 100 strokes. Later, alone in our beds, we undress her again and again, touch ourselves furtively. 

In class we can’t concentrate on Vietnam. When Miss Feathers speaks, it’s like hearing a song. When she moves, we suck in our breath, hoping she’ll lean forward so we can glimpse her bosom rising.  

One Saturday, a man rings her bell and she lets him in. We can’t see his face. He’s a pair of jeans, a motorcycle jacket. The curtains aren’t closed tightly enough. Their bodies flail, two snakes trying to get inside each other’s skin.    

The next day, we talk while Miss Feathers is speaking. Loft paper airplanes across the room. Bang on our desks. There are too many of us to send to the principal’s office. Miss Feathers looks puzzled. Then angry. 

Shush, the girls warn. But we won’t. 

We sneak into the girls’ bathroom and write Feathers is a Whore. 

We call her number, breathe heavily, hang up.

We start six different rumors. 

We tell our parents she’s such a bad teacher we’re going to flunk and our parents call the principal to complain. 

When she’s fired a month later, we whoop and holler. Focus on the girls. Their braces and pimply chins. How they treat us with disdain.

The day before Christmas, we’re in the mall parking lot, doing wheelies, when we notice Miss Feathers, laden with shopping bags. She walks over, her face dark as boiled cherries. We jump on our bikes and pedal away.

Beth Sherman’s novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here, will be published in July 2026 by Ad Hoc Fiction. She has had more than 250 stories featured in literary journals, including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and Smokelong Quarterly, where she’s a Submissions Editor. Her work appears in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025. The author of five mystery novels, she can be reached on social media @bsherm36.