Chick-Lit 2: No Chick Vics - Excerpt

from "The Imaginary Wars of Bellford County" by Lucy Hochman

In Bellford County, whole banks and acres of shore are covered with bubbles and beetle-sized hermit crabs, grabbing and swapping. There is a common belief around here, a custom or the belief of a custom, that what children are doing when they dig holes, and children will dig holes if offered some dirt or find themselves on the beach, is digging a hole to China. Have they heard of China? Do they want to be elsewhere? They like the feel of grit on their hands, the way the earth changes temperature, how sometimes water suddenly seeps into the place they've created for it as if it had been waiting for the right moment. Maybe they like being able to make the thing they so routinely stand upon change shape; it goes down where it hasn't before. For now, we'll set aside the way they build a pile at the same time, the way they create an illustration of opposites. In Bellford County, people try to make sense of the way their neighbors behave. They look around, gathering evidence from their surroundings, constructing relationships between disperate elements of their experiences, constructing plains in their minds on which the possibilities they invent do a form of dance, or conversation, or battle. Colloquially, they say they're thinking.