No idea if it would get there. But mailing it still felt like something solid.
She doesn’t watch the news much now. Just enough to track the shape of the storm.
Even the facts feel thinner these days. Like thread pulled too tight. Gas. Groceries. God. Enemies and allies. Numbers big enough to float, detached from math.
“He doesn’t lie to persuade anymore. He lies to wear down the floorboards.”
When Trump said they’d saved 258 million lives, no one blinked. When he called the rioters “hostages,” the audience clapped. When he promised to cut prices by fifteen hundred percent, the cameras didn’t even twitch.
Jane wasn’t surprised. That was the point. To make absurdity familiar. To turn exaggeration into background noise.
The same week, Caleb asked her if they could get strawberries again. She said yes.
He smiled, and she watched his fingers hover over the receipt machine, like he might take it himself.
Instead, she reached for the magnet on the fridge. Another receipt. $3.09. She pressed it into place.
Not out of hope.
Out of record. Out of ritual. Out of the need to say: I was here. I saw it. I’m still counting.
The lies move fast.
But she’s still keeping score.
And maybe, in some future audit of truth, those small slips of paper will matter. Not as proof of what was bought, but of what was survived. A ledger of quiet resistance. A civilian archive.
Bibliography
1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Consumer Price Index Summary.” Last modified June 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm. Provides official inflation and pricing data, directly contradicting claims in the story about grocery costs being “WAY DOWN.” Useful for verifying real-world economic pressure described in Jane’s narrative.
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Egg Markets Overview.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.ams.usda.gov. Offers verified statistics on food price trends like the egg price drop—important context for the discrepancy between presidential claims and Jane’s receipts.
3. Associated Press. “Fact Check: Trump’s Claim on Gas Prices Lacks Context.” April 2025. https://apnews.com. Debunks the $1.99 gasoline claim referenced in the story, aligning with Jane’s own check of local gas apps and her distrust of exaggerated statements.