CONSERVATION STATUS OF LEAST CONCERN
(Winner, Backwards City Fiction Award)
B.J. Hollars

As if things weren’t bad enough, my son comes home from school and informs me that we’re losing California.

“Losing it how?” I ask. “Like off the face of the planet?”

“Like into the ocean, Dad.” He’s annoyed that I can’t fathom this. He’s eleven and annoyed with most things I do. He’s small with ripe blonde hair, dirty fingernails, and the kind of eyes that you can’t help but want to believe.
I tell him to take off his book bag, take a seat at the table, and let’s talk this thing through. I grab us some juice boxes from the fridge and scoot a few of the packing boxes away as we sit down in our house. Once, it had belonged to the three of us, but then Nancy went insane and threw the alarm clock, and Jeremy and I took a vote and decided she should go. She’s in transit now, her belongings scattered around the living room in cardboard to remind us of how we’ve banished her by a vote of 2-0.

“So who told you this?” I ask him. “About losing California.” Jeremy says Ms. Ribson did, and she can be trusted.

“What kind of credentials does she have?” I ask. “An M.A., Ph.D.?” He doesn’t know, but he takes another sip from the juice box and declares that so far she’s been right about gravity and the solar system.

“So you think you can trust this woman because she knows all the names of planets?” He shrugs, and I scoff, lean forward, tell him that there’s much to learn about discerning between reliable and unreliable sources. I reach for the phonebook.

“Ribson, like how it sounds?” I ask. He says he thinks so, and I flip through the white pages, move my index finger down the line as I mumble. “First name Cathy?” He says he doesn’t know, just that she’s big. Bigger than Mom is. Nancy’s a twig. Weighing in at 120 pounds of pure fury and vim, somehow I don’t doubt that Ms. Ribson’s got her beat.
I call up Ms. Cathy Ribson and explain the situation: that my son just walked in the door and has the idea that the state of California is drifting into the Pacific.

“And he seems to think that you told him this,” I say, pausing to allow for her wrongs to sink in. I expect a bit of laughter from her, something, but she offers nothing. “Well, obviously,” I continue, “as a father, I was concerned...”

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