2021 Lit Mag | Lick-Wilmerding High School

LitMag 2021

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LitMag 2021 Lick-Wilmerding High School Literary Magazine

San Francisco, California

Approaching digital photo by Tyler Keim

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CO-EDITORS Primo Lagaso Goldberg Indigo Mudbhary ASSOCIATES Alex Burd Ava Ciresi Evia Curley Nayeli Rodriguez Tyler Keim Alexandra Pate Erika Tam Teresa Topete Aditi Shankar William Stafford ADVISOR Robin von Breton LitMag is published each spring by the Literary Magazine Club of Lick-Wilmerding High School and is funded by the school.

Any student currently attending Lick-Wilmerding May submit writing and art by email to the LitMag advisor or one of the editors: rvonbreton@lwhs.org, indigo.mudbhary@gmail.com, or primo.l.gold@gmail.com.

Spring 2021 Lick-Wilmerding High School 755 Ocean Avenue San Francisco, California 94112 415.333.4021 rvonbreton@lwhs.org

© Lick-Wilmerding High School

LitMag 2021

Contents Front and Back Cover, photos by James Spokes Cover Design by Primo Lagaso Goldberg Frontispiece, Approaching, photo by Tyler Keim Frontispiece, Puth, painting by Luke Jasso

The Other Side, photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg and Jenna Chin.........................................................................43 Gargoyle, short story by Greg Kalman ...............................................................................................................44 Lorde, painting by Luke Jasso.............................................................................................................................47 Twisted, drawing by Kaito Uesugi......................................................................................................................48 The Girl, drawing by Primo Lagaso Goldberg......................................................................................................49 Natural Distortion, drawing by Christy Yee.........................................................................................................50 Watcher, short story by Ali Saraceni.....................................................................................................................51

A Recipe for All Five Senses, nonfiction by Primo Lagaso Goldberg.......................................................................13

House Clothes, drawing by Hannah Wheeler........................................................................................................54

Malunggay, drawing by Primo Lagaso Goldberg....................................................................................................15

The Sorrow of Sonder, short story by Xavier Arenas..........................................................................................55

A Short Dictionary of my Childhood, prose poem by Primo Lagaso Goldberg...........................................................16

Rainy Day, photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg........................................................................................................57

New Daly City Market, painting by Catalina Morales.............................................................................................18

Thought in Shadow, photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg..........................................................................................58

Afternoon, drawing by Carolyn Lau.....................................................................................................................19

Brown Girl, prose poem by Indigo Mudbhary.....................................................................................................59

Pollinating, photo by Gabe Castro-Root................................................................................................................20

Numbers, poem by Carolyn Lau..........................................................................................................................60

Birdie and Strawface, short story by Alexandra Pate..............................................................................................21

Staring, painting by Kaito Uesugi.....................................................................................................................61

To Remember a Voice, nonfiction by Journey Moore-Prewitt..................................................................................22

Checklist, short story by Danielle Park................................................................................................................62

Above II, painting by Joya Terdiman...................................................................................................................22

Banana Leaves, drawing by Cara Steele............................................................................................................63

Concrete Jungle, short story by Xavier Arenas......................................................................................................23

Sundays with Mom, nonfiction by Ali Saraceni...................................................................................................64

Perspectives, photo by James Spokes....................................................................................................................24

Drigting, photo by James Spokes.........................................................................................................................66

Kim Tae Hyung, painting by Magnolia Finn.........................................................................................................26

Go, prose poem by Natalie Keim........................................................................................................................67

The River in My Body, poem by Alexandra Pate ...................................................................................................27

Kitesurffing Lessons, nonfiction by Theo Willis...................................................................................................68

Set in Stone, drawing by Nayeli Rodriguez..........................................................................................................28

Octopod, print by Rebekka Kivimae...................................................................................................................69

Dark / Light, drawing by Asher Lord..................................................................................................................29

Hello IV, photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg.........................................................................................................70

Obsession: 辛 Shin Ramyun Black, short story by Rebekka Kivimae.......................................................................30

Forest Path, photo by Tyler Keim......................................................................................................................71

Assistance, painting by Rebekka Kivimae............................................................................................................31

The Birch Tree, short story by Ben Slaughter....................................................................................................72

A World of Two, nonfiction by Indigo Mudbhary.................................................................................................32

Apricot Meadow, painting by Elsa Bosemark......................................................................................................73

Startrails, photo by Gabe Castro-Root.................................................................................................................34

Sardines, nonfiction by Journey Moore-Prewitt....................................................................................................74

Cool™, photo by Colin O’Brien.........................................................................................................................35

Baldwinsville, poem by Mila Matos....................................................................................................................76

Pluto, photo by James Spokes..............................................................................................................................36

Is America, photo by Tyler Keim.........................................................................................................................77

Seventeen, short story by Rodrigo Drummond....................................................................................................37

A Piece of Advice, nonfiction by Journey Moore-Prewitt.........................................................................................78

I Saw a Dragon at Carnegie Hall, short story by Gabrielle Milman...........................................................................38

Generations, drawing by Peter Brownrigg.........................................................................................................79

Destroyer of Worlds, short story by Greg Kalman..............................................................................................40

Nights of Change, poem by Eamon Riley.........................................................................................................80

Ascension, drawing by Elsa Bosemark.................................................................................................................41

A Beacon of Hope in a Burning City, photo by Andrzej Davis-Krukowski................................................................81

The Best Night of the Year, poem by Primo Lagaso Goldberg..............................................................................42

Dailies, poems by Greg Kalman...........................................................................................................................82

Bridge Over Still Water, drawing by Peter Brownrigg ..........................................................................................83 Lincoln Park Pool, short story by Ava Ciresi......................................................................................................84 The End of the Line, short story by Alexandra Pate............................................................................................86 Serenity, drawing by Ella Carter Fenster..........................................................................................................87 A Sketch, short story by Indigo Mudbhary.....................................................................................................88 STOP, photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg and Jenna Chin...................................................................................89 The Letters, short story by Mimoh Lee................................................................................................................90 Remembering, drawing by Ana Huseby.............................................................................................................92 breathe, poem by Sujean Doo...........................................................................................................................96 It’s All Downhill, photo by James Spokes..........................................................................................................97 Sometimes Baseball is All We Need, short story by Adam Spitzler.........................................................................98 Chester, painting by Luke Jasso.........................................................................................................................101 Deep Fried, short story by Indigo Mudbhary......................................................................................................102 Away, photo by Tyler Keim...............................................................................................................................105 Thinking Back, drawing by Amelia Fortgang....................................................................................................106

About the LitMag The Lick-Wilmerding Literary Magazine (LitMag) is a student-run extracurricular publication. We are dedicated to sharing carefully crafted writing and art with the LWHS community. We look to bring true and authentic stories and visuals with a diverse range of voices, perspectives, and lived experiences. A spectrum of colors, faces, and textures grace our pages. Through our magazine, published once yearly, we bring our community together through the innate human appreciation of aesthetics and storytelling. The LitMag Club’s doors are open to all current LWHS students.

LitMag solicited writing and visual content through LWHS English and Art Department classes, personal creative networks, and announcements in LWHS’ biweekly newsletter. This year, submissions were gathered entirely via email and digital file sharing services. During Semester Two, our associates assemble to review writing and art packets each week. Each voice weighs in while our editors and advisor guide discussions and provide the final say. Accepted writing is proofread by the LitMag editors and returned to authors to make revisions. All revisions are made at the author’s discretion. Visual art is sorted by medium and by what we are able to print in color and what must be edited in grayscale. A combination of these two visual realms impacts our final selection.

Puth oil on canvas by Luke Jasso

A Recipe for All Five Senses

by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

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he air and my fingers smell bitter and I can taste the humid heat on my tongue. That’s just how these afternoons are—a rusty electric fan older than I am is set to oscillate and alternates between cooling the skin on my arms and rustling the layers of papers and pictures stuck with magnets to the refrigerator. The constant, low drone of the stovetop fan stirs the air and I can feel the vibrations through the igad between my legs.

My lelang is sitting at the old, yellowed kitchen counter talking on the landline to someone from church.

She laughs and gossips between English and Ilocano—apparently, someone is newly pregnant and wasn’t at service yesterday. The phone is pressed between her shoulder and her ear as she picks the malunggay leaves from their dainty green stems. Malunggay leaves aren’t bigger than the tip of your thumb but her long nails, always painted the same nude beige, are perfect for the job. She lets the stems fall into her lap. They are bright green against the purple and white pareo she’s wearing. I started working with lelang, sitting on her lap between her arms, to pick from leafy branches of my own, but I gave up after my fingers started turning green and I could almost feel the leaves’ uncooked, sour flavor through my skin. I am reassigned to the igad and given two halves of coconut to shred for the dila-dila.

Though I miss the smell of lelang’s perfume, I am glad to be free of the tedious work; the white plastic colander was almost full of leaves by now anyway.

Lelong is at the stove chopping garlic and ginger. To his left, bones and skin are simmering into chicken broth.

There’s a Rainbow Wahine volleyball game on the TV in the living room and lelong occasionally cranes his neck to get a glimpse. He’s wearing his vintage Rainbow Warriors Football tank top, faded green, the old rainbow logo from the 80s across the back. There’s always a University of Hawaii game on TV when lelong cooks, whether it’s our family spaghetti, guisantes, pancit, or chicken malunggay like today.

Chicken malunggay is my favorite and even though we’re just getting started with the cooking, I can already imagine the warm, golden-green smell of the leaves, the chicken, the garlic and ginger, and the fresh rice. It is a miraculous dish. When they prepared it was the only time I ever saw both lelang and lelong in the kitchen cooking at the same time. It was their culinary marriage: lelang would fill the colander with hand-picked leaves from our tree in the backyard and lelong would transform the ingredients into the salty-sour, comforting elixir of a night at my grandparents’ house. My stomach rumbles. I can barely wait for dinner.

I turn my attention back to the task at hand: shredding coconut. The igad is tough between my legs and digs into my tailbone but the low grating sound of the coconut flesh against the round serrated blade is oddly satisfying.

I position the well-worn aluminum pan beneath the blade and cup the outside of the coconut half with both hands.

The motion is almost like the motion of petting a dog’s head from front to back, but I push downwards, with both hands, and instead of soft fur, it’s the rough, hairy coconut shell against my hands. For dila-dila, the strange feeling of the coconut fur and aching butt of sitting and grating is well worth it: fresh mochi covered in shredded coconut topped with a heap of brown sugar is a sinfully delicious combination.

By the time I’ve grated both halves down to the shell my wrists are aching and the sunset mountain drizzle is pattering on the leaves and bushes outside the open kitchen window. The rows of old glass soda, beer, and wine bottles on the windowsill catch the final rays of the sunset and shine like they’re full of starlight. I sit, mesmerized, for at least five minutes until the sun sets and the Prussian blue completes its conquest of the sky. Lelang spirits away the tray that I’ve filled up and starts coating the mochi for the dila-dila. Dila means “tongue” in Ilocano, she always reminds me.

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The malunggay is well underway by now. I hop up and over to the stove, peering around lelong’s back to get a look. The soup is beautiful, green and gold and white. The malunggay leaves glisten with the fat from the broth and the chicken looks tender and rich. I scrutinize the contents of the big silver pot, searching for the chunks of ginger that catch me off guard every time and make me pucker my lips and squint my eyes closed as the earthy spice fades. I can never seem to avoid getting a chunk in at least one bite.

Lelang is already getting out the old china, probably the same bowls and plates my mom and her sisters ate out of.

She tells me to wash my hands.

I hold lelang and lelong’s hands across the huge, lacquered table while termites and tiny months buzz around the ceiling light hanging above the dining table. Lelong’s hands are rough and dark like worn leather. I think about how we would sit with cans of Hawaiian Sun juice at the bench on the side of the house. He would tell me stories of working in the sugar cane fields. Lelang remembered the pineapple fields more, at least that’s what she told me. Her hands are wrinkled but soft. She lotioned them every morning and every evening.

We pray together in Ilocano: “Apo umay kad’ kadakam’, ditoy ‘yan mi a panganan. Taraon mi bendisyunam, espiritum punwen na kam’.” Then, like always, I recite the English translation lelang taught me when I was who knows how young: “Lord, come to us where we are, bless the food, and fill us with the spirit, Amen.” I never understood why we prayed or knew who we were praying to—I still don’t.

When my grandparents shut their eyes and bowed their heads I looked up and around or eyed the food spread out before us. But me speaking Ilocano and knowing the English translation (even if it was just memorized) always did, and still does, make lelang smile.

Time to dig in.

The rice comes first, shining and steaming in my bowl, then the chicken malunggay. The ornate silver ladle, stained with decades of soups, stews, and other slow-cooked delights, was never big enough to capture all the digo I wanted to cover my rice with. When the first ladle-full spills over the rice, the steam erupts and surrounds me with the smell of chicken broth, garlic, ginger, and the bitter malunggay. The smell of it gets inside my head and finds its way all through my bones and muscles—I can’t wait to take a bite. Once my rice is appropriately drowning in digo and malunggay leaves, I begin to eat.

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Ambrosia.

The rice has been saturated with the salt and warmth of the broth and the flavor spreads across my tongue and down my throat. The chicken falls apart in my mouth and the malunggay leaves are bitter-sweet. It settles in my belly and nothing could be better. This is comfort food. And it’s not just the taste; it’s the smell of the garlic and ginger, it’s the sound of the wind rustling and the rain drizzling outside the window, it’s the cold feeling of the faux leather seat of the chair against my legs, and it’s the gentle yellow of the light glinting off the polished table. Eating chicken malunggay with my grandparents is an experience ­­­­— a recipe with ingredients for all five senses. I eat too fast, much to lelang’s concern. “Napudot!” she tells me. She urges me to “savor” the food; I tell her I want dessert. I want dila-dila.

Lelong rarely says a word but he reads the room and gets up from the table, returning with the tin tray of dila-dila and a recycled plastic butter container with the brown sugar. Having won tonight’s dessert war with lelang, I burst into a fit of giggles when lelong sets the tray on the table.

I help myself to two servings, topping each with copious amounts of brown sugar. I take my first glorious bite. The dila-dila is sticky and sweet in my mouth. The mochi clings to the brown sugar and shredded coconut. It all crunches ever so softly, releasing a sugary flavor that tastes like the color of coffee and milk.

My stomach is full, my fingers and mouth are covered in brown sugar, as they should be. I retire to the cool leather couch in the living room and curl up with my head against one of the arms—I know what’s coming: soon the gentle roar of the volleyball game and the blue and green light from the TV will put me to sleep.

I settle into the couch and into a shallow sleep. Soon I’ll feel and hear my parents’ car pulling into the driveway; they’ll open the front door and the chimes that hang on the back will make a melodic glittering sound. Soon my dad will scoop me off the couch and ferry me down the stairs and into the back seat of our silver Honda CRV. I’ll be buckled in and my cheek will come to rest against the seatbelt for the sleepy nighttime car ride home.

Malunggay digital drawing by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

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A Short Dictionar y of My Childhood

by Primo Lagaso Goldberg da kine [dah • kaheen] noun / expression / adjective / pseudo-noun

1. Pidgen: Can be equated to “thingy” or “you know that thing.” An ambiguous representation of whatever the speaker is referring to. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, you should. Versatile and ubiquitous, it is an essence.

digo [dee-GO] noun

1. Ilocano: The nectar, the liquid gold, the salty goodness that warms your throat and mouth, the warm feeling that settles in your belly after a full dinner, the juices at the bottom of the bowl and the broth.

dila-dila [DEE-la-DEE-la] noun

1. Ilocano: Tongue.

2. Ilocano: A sweet treat: dila-dila (also known as palitaw) is sweet white mochi coated in shredded coconut and doused thoroughly in brown sugar. It crunches and crackles in the mouth, sticky, sugary, and never fails to bring a smile as sweet as its taste.

guisantes [/g/ee-SAN-tes] noun

1. Spanish: Peas.

2. Filipino (across dialects): (Often) pork guisantes: a rich and colorful combination of pork butt, green peas, and red bell peppers. It fills the bowl and the stomach with warm, salty-golden sustenance. Often served after Sunday service over rice from a large silver aluminum tray by a church aunty with bright red nails and lips.

igad [ee-GAHD] noun

1. Ilocano: The coconut grater / shredder (also known as kudkuran). A tool for sweet ambrosia—it sits between your legs and jabs forward with a rounded, serrated blade. It sings in a deep, gravely voice as you grind and shred bits of snowy sugar from tropical trees.

Ilocano (also Ilokano) [EE-lo-KA-no] noun

1. Across languages: A language native to the northern islands of the Philippines that sounds like honey and molasses but is as light and smooth as the edge of a feather. It is sassy and it bites and nips playfully. The highest concentrations of Ilocano speakers are found in regions like Northern and Central Luzon as well as Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur. 16

kape [ka-PEH] noun

1. Origin unclear: A dessert originating on Hawaiian plantations (sugar cane, pineapple) consisting of small sandwiches of soda crackers and peanut butter (Skippy’s or JIF), broken up and dunked in hot cocoa (Nestle, Nesquik, or Swiss Miss). It is decadent, heavy, and salty-sweet, and leaves you with chocolate lips and peanut butter fingers.

lelang [leh-lahng] noun

1. Ilocano: Grandmother. She provides and cares. She reads you to sleep at night. You sit on the cold leather couch with her and watch her write her loopy, extravagant cursive in her journal each afternoon. She buys you yards of 100% silk and microwaves the milk for your cookies after dinner.

lelong [leh-lohng] noun

1. Illocano: Grandfather. He cooks, sings, and watches TV from the worn armchair that dominates the living room. You work in the garden with him, pulling weeds and dirtying the soles of your feet in the warm dirt. You watch him play piano and you let him guide your hands as you stumble through novice melodies.

malunggay [ma-loon-GAI] noun

1. Ilocano: (Often referring to the leaves of) the drumstick tree (moringa oleifera), an edible plant native to India and found in many neighboring South / Southeast Asian countries. It’s tiny, delicate green leaves are like paper thin emeralds. They darken when cooked and leave a bittersweet taste on the tongue.

napudot [na-poo-DOHT] adjective

1. Ilocano: Of the day, sunshine, food, drink, a pan in the oven, an iron, or even the asphalt in the driveway: hot.

pancit [pahn-SIT] noun

1. Filipino (across dialects): Glistening, translucent rice noodles coated in a sauce of shouyu, garlic, fish sauce, and broth. Chicken or pork, green beans, carrots, onions, and cabbage provide some savory roughage. Often served in a thin paper bowl on plastic tables covered with easily-ripped plastic gingham table cloths in the patio behind the church.

soda cracka [SOH-dah • KRA-kah] noun

1. Pidgen: Saltine cracker. Dry, crisp, and salty. They break apart, flakey on the tongue, and suck all the moisture right out of your mouth. Scrumptious with soup, stew, or with peanut butter spread across the perforated face.

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New Daly City Market watercolor on paper by Catalina Morales

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Afternoons charcoal on paper by Carolyn Lau

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Birdie and Strawface

by Alexandra Pate

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Pollinating digital photo by Gabe Castro-Root

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ust as with any other night, Thimble and Tallulah sit in the empty corn field. Well, sort of. Thimble perches on Tallulah’s shoulder and Tallulah imagines herself sitting. It’s one of the simple pleasures that she likes to wonder about sometimes. Despite the nails and ropes tying her to her post, she dreams.

Tallulah can only face one way. Her button eyes reach endlessly westward in the same direction as the train tracks. The train gets to go somewhere but Tallulah does not and her sewn-on eyes strain to see the world that she is turned away from. She hopes to leap from her post with reckless abandon and be made of something other than a Grade A burlap sack draped over straw-wrapped muscles tied around bones of three-inch dowels.

In her periphery, she can see Thimble who is as happy as ever despite the late hour. “Thimble,” Tallulah whispered, her voice echoing in the night, “You have to go to sleep.”

“You know I can’t do that ‘lulah, there’s still so much to do! And sleep is boring.” She settles herself on Tallulah’s shoulder and begins her nightly routine. Thimble leans her body against the side of Tallulah’s head to preen. As Thimble works the kinks out of her wings, Tallulah hears her chirp, “I’m sorry I was late today, but I found something that I thought you would like.”

“Oh?” It’s a special game of theirs, and at this point they both know their roles by heart. Thimble plays the erratic scavenger eager to show her finds to Tallulah, the tired skeptic who adopts Farmer Joe’s creaky voice for the part.

It’s the best part of Tallulah’s day. “What do you have for me today?” Thimble hops off Tallulah’s shoulder and flies down to the space below Tallullah’s feet. She returns a moment later with a small tiara from a McDonalds toy kit.

Using her best explorer voice, Thimble hops up and down on Tallulah’s shoulder. “From the Nile River Valley,” she’s heard of such a place from other birds, “I have found a lovely crown!” Reverting back to her twittery self she adds, “you kind of remind me of a queen, and I thought, every queen needs a crown, so I thought you would like this.”

If Tallulah could smile any wider, her stitching would rip. “I love it.” It’s true, she really does. Thimble proudly flies up onto her friend’s head. Even though Tallulah can’t see it, she imagines Thimble wiggling with excitement as she ceremoniously sets the plastic tiara on her head. “Thank you, both for the tiara and being my friend.”

The phrase holds just as much gratitude as it does love and Thimble nestles into the connection of Tallulah’s head and neck without response. She’s finally tired herself out. The late night crowd of predatory birds starts to fly overhead, and it’s time for Tallulah to begin the night shift. Their quiet whispers of, “Straw Face! Straw Face!” are irritating at best. It’s in her job description to be heckled. She is after all, Farmer Joe’s form of crop insurance. Even after fifteen years it still hurts, but it’s easier with Thimble there.

It’s a regular night but it feels special anyway. Together, the scarecrow and sparrow stare out at the world, ready to say goodnight.

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To Remember a Voice

Concrete Jungle

by Journey Moore-Prewitt

by Xavier Arenas

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boy and a girl lean against her grandmother’s van talking about boys and girls and binaries, and being black, and private school, and public school, and Jordan’s, and gentrification, and the Warriors, and the 49ers. And eventually this girl gets lost, lost in the velvet voice belonging to her best friend. The boy’s words go in one ear and out the other and the only thing the girl actually retains is his voice. To her, his voice is like the evening breeze of the month of November. Or like the sun peeking in through your curtains right at the crack of dawn. Or maybe it’s like the fizzing sound of a soda that’s about to explode. “So Pooda, what’s it like at that private school?” the boy asks the girl.

They talk for hours and when they have to go back home he crosses the street, and she waits for him to get in his house before she turns and walks into hers. And this repeats every day for six years, and every day the girl gets lost in his velvet voice.

The boy would come over to the girl’s house late at night once the streetlights were on. They’d sit on her porch and they’d talk until there was nothing left to talk about, and then they’d sit in silence. They’d listen to the beating of butterflies’ wings, the sound of the planes flying by, and they’d watch for shooting stars. But once it hit 9 o’clock, the boy would kiss the girl’s mother on the cheek, wink at the girl, pet her dog, and walk back to his house.

Every day the girl would ask him, “How’s public school?” and the boy would ask her, “How’s private school?” They asked these questions over and over knowing the answer would always be the same. But they never really wanted just an answer, rather they just wanted to hear each other’s voices. They each wanted to engrave the others’ voice into their brain until it became a permanent 22

tattoo inked into their skull. Until their body heard nothing but the other’s voice, felt nothing but the other’s voice. The girl yearned to hear the smooth mahogany of his voice so well that it radiated through her fingertips. She wanted to listen to his voice to make sure that she’d always remember it. The boy asks, “So Pooda, how’s dance?”

And I’m Pooda, and now I can’t remember his voice.

Above II acrylic on canvas by Joya Terdiman

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e’s awakened by what seems to be birds chirping in the neighborhood, birds he’s grown to know so well. Still, he slumps out of bed, lazily strapping on his belt and slipping on his dirty Air Force kicks.

He opens his shades to find a burning sun beaming on his face. The chirping slowly fades to the ghetto bird.

“They been floating around since the killin’ last night,” said his ma.

“It’s so hot, and that chopper isn’t helping with that loud propeller,” he responded. The man grabs his Niners hat and stares at his drawer.

It wasn’t the drawer, it was the contents inside. The infamous Tec. He looked back at the black and white bird outside, with a number drawn under its belly. As he looked down he could feel the Tec’s knockback. He could feel his finger still twitching and writhing with numbness.

“You ready for breakfast?! I got some ham on the pan ready,” yelled his ma across the house.

“Uh… nah, I can’t eat, don’t feel too good,” he mumbled as he tried to walk away.

“You betta eat, I ain’t wastin’ this hog! Whatchu need, some Pepto?” she said.

“I need to walk. I’ll come back and eat up after some ball,” he said and left.

Soon as he stepped off the porch he could feel nothing but the unrelenting gaze of an unknown being. He couldn’t breathe. He could feel like someone was out to get him. He slicked his head up expecting a full crew ready to drop him. He clenched his left fist as his right hand sought the iron. In seconds he could feel like it was hours. Staring at the concrete, he began to raise his head and gat.

“Yo! Was’ good man!” It was his buddy down the street, holding a speaker next to the corner store.

He could feel his lungs receiving air. He let it go and walked over. “Hey,” he couldn’t feel a thing as he responded.

“So I was tryna go down to play—” his buddy kept talking.

The man couldn’t understand; he couldn’t hear. His friend looked at him differently. Growing ten feet tall and as black as the dark side of the moon. Staring at the man, creeping over hunched back and all. The man stumbled back and looked down.

Just then he could feel a hand grab his shoulder.

Dazed, he sees his friend confused looking down at him.

“You don’ look good. I gotcha bro, let’s light and head down the court. You’ll be chillin’ then,” his buddy said as he pulled him up.

“Aight, I’m cool,” he said looking down at his feet.

His feet looked different. Unrecognizable.

“Yo you comin’ or you jus’ gonna stand there like a statue,” his friend said.

“Ya, my bad,” he said after finally taking a step.

“Yooooo, check them, ladies out ‘cross the way! You should try and spit some game boy,” his friend said jokingly as he pointed.

The man, instead, gazed behind him. Looking, trying to seek anything around the surrounding alleys. The uncertain feeling of being watched. The feeling that someone is out to get you.

“Hey you gotta cut that out, you always was tryna smooth talk. Now you can’t even look or talk to me straight up,” his friend remarked.

“I’m fine, you buggin’ out if you think I’m messed.

Just chill—I ain’t in the mood to talk thas’ it,” he replied sternly. They kept walking.

As they made it to the court they laid up for the next two-on-two. After about twenty minutes he gets on the court and begins the play. The man focused on the ball.

The ball being dribbled loudly. Tunnel visioning to a point where all that remained in his vision was just the streaks 23

and bumps on the surface of the ball. Each bounce getting louder. The ball was mesmerizing him. The ball slamming each time it touched the floor. His ears were ringing from the ball. Each bounce becomes a bullet. Casings hitting the floor as each bullet gets shot. Louder and louder. Police sirens in the background. The shouting of the players drowning the court. Every sound so loud he can feel his legs and gut tremble. Just as he felt back in the moment last week…

SLAM. Such an acute pain. The bullet hole through the brain, a death feeling as his head hits the floor. The world goes silent. He opens his eyes as his buddy stands over him.

“Yo, you good?” his friend said, “My bad, I thought you was open. I didn’ mean to hit yo face,” he said sarcastically.

The man tries to snap out of it. His mind is still lin-

gering on what’s really going on with him. The game finishes with a loss, partially because the man did nothing but stand in one place. But nevertheless, he was relieved to get off the court and sit on a bench.

“Yo I’m finna head down to my car and roll a zoot, you gonna keep weird or you down?” his friend said.

“Uh —” the man mumbled.

“This prolly’ ‘bout last weekend, ain’t it? Come on bro, I got something better. I got me some xans that will make you’ll feel better and you can cut this out,” his friend said.

The man got up and they headed to the car.

In the car, his buddy begins his thing, but the man just stared blankly out the window. Scanning every person out on the sidewalk. He slumped down. lowering the back

Perspectives digital photo by James Spokes

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of his seat to avoid all contact with passing cars. He tried to compose himself. Leave his anxiety behind. He looked at the pill his friend passed him and was ready to alleviate all the pain away. He swallowed the pill quickly. He ended up floating out of his seat and into the sky. He was on a cloud floating feeling good. The smoke filled his lungs and he felt as his friend told him he would, better. He began to feel odd. The cloud he was happily floating on became darker.

He began falling as did raindrops around him. He crashed back into his seat. The car was racing as raindrops crashed around him. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, feeling so desperate he opened the door seeking safety. He fell out but he couldn’t catch himself. His hands were gone, he lost feeling in his legs. He closed his eyes and scrambled for his gun.

The same black towering figure from before stands in front of him as he crawls on the ground. He screams in terror looking for anything to save him. He struggles but finds the trigger. His inner thoughts and anxieties erupt as his finger moves to the trigger.

BANG. BANG. BANG. Silence. He opened his eyes. His hands were back, but they were different. As he lay on the floor he looked over. His friend. His best buddy since grade school lifeless beside him. His hand still gripping his gun. He felt like it was his mother’s hand. He never wanted to let go. He felt safe alongside it. He closed his eyes and as he opened them his family, all his friends were looking at him. His home in the background. The gun in his hand was no home. The gun faded into a clump of thorns and broken shards of glass.

Stabbing his hand into the flesh. He doesn’t let go, staying close to the shards. He looked down to see his hands and kicks were wine red. The red that dreads the air. The red that keeps our lives afloat in existence. His hands marked with the blood of those who lost their lives at the hands of this man.

He stares at his friend’s body as it grows darker and darker. His friend seemed possessed floating straight up again staring down at the man. Just then bodies of people began crawling from the ground. Crackling and tearing through the concrete street. Each body having wounds, riddled with bullets and slashes. In his fear, he was reduced to ashes amongst the crowd of figures. He recognized a few of them. Victims to the smoke and others innocent casual-

ties in his mind. With each body walking towards the dark figure to be joined into one colossal being.

“Why,” they said.

He tried to raise his head as he replied, “I didn’t... mean to.” He shook his head as he cried. He was no longer confused with fear but instead fearful of hell for the terrible things he’s done.

Dark with no streetlights. The chopper in the sky shining a light around him. The corner store, his home. Everything disappeared. And he appeared alone. His neighborhood is gone as he gets up and stares at the black figure.

He lay down and began to pray under the spotlight. This was no paradise, his mind was crumbling. He closed his eyes under the spotlight.

He feels the cold of the night. Opening his eyes, he looks up and sees a light. Not a spotlight from the police but a broken down orange-tinted streetlight. His best friend is beside him, snoring loudly. He gets up and shakes his friend until he snored no more and without a word they begin heading home. With each step transitioning from one light to another. Passing scorned homes and junkies under any cover that could be spared. Homelessness plagues the city, filling its neighborhood under bridges and storefronts.

“We live in trash,” the man said.

“No doubt,” his friend replied. Each one now holding a mutual grudge they passes a church.

“Wanna confess ya sins?” the man said jokingly. But his tone was serious underneath. His friend and he laughed it off, but he had it lingering.

They are a few blocks away from their homes when they cross the street, walking past a soccer mom van with a mother and child in the front seats. He thinks of his ones— two, both sleeping in different homes from his own. He feels like he lost that unconditional love when he walked away. The same love he lost from his own father.

Just as they reached home the streetlights turned dark. A new light rises as the sun greets the world.

“I’m gonna head over to my kids,” the man said, “I want to go see my kids.”

To the products of a violent society.

25

The River in My Body

by Alexandra Pate There is a river that lives beneath my skin Rushing like rapids through a canyon The coursing energy pushing itself through my system Carving banks and attritions Into the canals of my bones Prickling my skin with its excitement Waking my muscles to expand and contract Crawling through the eaves of my thoughts I feel it calling to me I respond in kind When it tells me to laugh I answer with the short giggles of a small creek Each exhalation of joy growing louder and louder Until my laughter is leaping Over the cataracts of waterfalls And it cannot be contained in my voice The feeling of this river Slides down into my arms and legs So when the river asks me to move There is no hesitation My fingers wiggling as small streams of water Join the tributaries of my hands My arms mimicking the beautiful waves Over and over again My body sings

Kim Tae Hyung acrylic on canvas by Magnolia Finn

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My heart and mind become a delta When I feel the river My brain and body can take in as much of the world as I can give I am no longer on the outside looking in The river reminds me I am just as much a part of this world as anyone else With that understanding I can finally find my rhythm

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Set in Stone charcoal on paper by Nayeli Rodriguez

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Dark / Light charcoal on paper by Asher Lord

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Obsession: 辛Shin Ramyun Black

by Rebekka Kivimae

辛

Shin Ramyun Black. Who knew a cup of instant noodles could look so elegant: the cup boasts a shiny peel-back lid and matte black exterior with red streaks. Although I’m on my last cup, I can’t seem to throw away the cardboard box that once held eight of these noodle packs because the box somehow manages to be just as elegant as the cups.

I set water to a boil in my kettle. As I wait for the water to heat up, I put my flavor packets into the ramen cup. Tiny specks of red and white find their way to my fingertips, and before my tongue even gets to licking my fingers clean, my mouth begins to water. 辛Shin Ramyun Black is the only food that makes my mouth water so quickly and so aggressively.

The water is ready. I pour it over my noodles. As I watch them soften, I tell myself: this time I will not drink the liquid. I will not drink the spicy red liquid. I will NOT drink the spicy red liquid.

But I do.

Why are there numbers in the food I’m eating? The numbers feel like masks to me, concealing something deadly. Why so secretive? The more 辛Shin Ramyun Black I eat, the more I wonder what colour 101 or emulsifier 322 is doing to me.

Eating 辛Shin Ramyun Black feels so wrong. Even the original 辛Shin Ramyun should be healthier, as it only has one flavor pack opposed to 辛Shin Ramyun Black’s two. But I’m addicted to drinking every last drop of number two’s broth where each of these ingredients and numbers is concentrated.

Because I can’t stop myself from drinking the savory liquid, I tell myself I can only have one cup of 辛Shin Ramyun Black a month. Guess what. I’ve never stuck to that rule. One time, I ate a 辛Shin Ramyun Black every day of the week. (I still don’t understand why I did that. I felt disgusted with myself for weeks.)

My mother calls me “pancake face.” She’d laugh when I was the slowest one at volleyball practice, later showing me how skinny she was in pictures from her teenage years. She grew up on a farm in Eastern Europe, her family grew their own produce. She never ate numbers. Her family only ate fresh potatoes. Fresh meat. Fresh lettuce. Fresh strawberries. Fresh eggs. You get the idea.

She was thin. I’m not.

But unlike her, I’ve grown up in America. Numbers are everywhere in food, especially in 辛Shin Ramyun Black.

Well, they say you are what you eat. Maybe if I eat enough of the number “1,” I’ll become thin too.

My favorite snack of all time, I can’t help but feel guilty eating 辛Shin Ramyun Black.

I read the ingredients. The guilt takes over me.

Noodles Wheat flour, potato starch, vegetable oil (contains antioxidant (307B), salt, mineral salts (339, 452, 500, 501) maltodextrin, garlic, onion, green tea extract, colour (101).

307B??? 399? 452?? 500?? 501? 101????

Soup powder (1) Maltodextrin, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (soy), salt, yeast extract, soy sauce, vegetable oil (contains sesame, soy), wheat, flavour, spices, flavour enhancers (627, 631), vegetables, maltose, emulsifiers (322), anchovy.

627?? 631? 322???

Soup powder (2) Maltodextrin, pork, salt, beef bone extract, vegetables, sesame seeds, flavour, sugar, maltose, rice flour, shrimp, wheat flour, emulsifier (322), wheat starch, flavour enhancer (627, 631).

322?? 627??? 631??

Flakes: Vegetables, fish, soya bean, wheat gluten, wheat flour, soy sauce, glucose.

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Assistance watercolor and ink on paper by Rebekka Kivimae

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A World of Two

by Indigo Mudbhary

E

llie’s hair used to be white. Or at least that’s how it appears in my memories. As we grew up, her hair became yellower, a silent evolution that came with the passage of time. Sometimes, when the light hits just right, her hair reverts back to the white silver of childhood and long ago innocence, and I’m transported back to when I would watch as she twisted her hair into a tight bun for ballet rehearsal in the brightly lit orange-tiled bathroom at school. It was like magic to me how she could get it so that no hair was sticking out, all the shiny glory of her hair contained in a small sphere. She is always laughing in those orange bathroom memories, clad in her powder pink ballet leotard with the ruffles and her hair pinned on top of her head like a crown.

Her skin is and has always been pale. Not like she’s sickly or pallid; more like she stepped out of a Renaissance painting, masked in the shadows of tall trees and mighty castles. I often used to imagine her in other eras when we were younger. Back then, we had to memorize lists of words, big words, that we put on quizzes a week later, words like poignant and morose and ethereal. I remember thinking of Ellie when I learned that word. Ethereal. E-T-H-E-R-EA-L. That was her. I think that’s why I have so many images of her in bygone eras floating around the murky depths of my subconscious; her beauty is whimsical in a way that feels like it floats through time, unaware of its constraints and limitations.

I first met Ellie in kindergarten. We attended an allgirls school, where we were required to wear a uniform, plaid dresses with bright white collars. I remember first noticing Ellie because her dress was so long, touching the floor like a ballgown. Everyone else’s dresses hit just below their knees while hers was grazing her ankles, though I noticed she seemed to be perfectly happy sashaying around the hallways in her too-long dress.

At that time in our lives, everyone called her “happy” because she smiled so much. When she raised her hand, she was addressed as Happy. How are you doing today, Happy? Would you like to read aloud next, Happy? Could 32

you please pass me the crayons, Happy? One day out on the playground, I worked up the courage to ask her what her real name was. She told me that it was Elizabeth but I could call her Ellie because Elizabeth was too pretentious. I didn’t know what pree-ten-shush meant and resolved to ask my mom later when she picked me up after school.

At the time, every kindergartner was clamoring for the attention of Lauren Saunders, who had a pink leather Hello Kitty backpack and already knew how to write in complete sentences. During free time, everyone would form a semi-circle around her to watch her transcribe full sentences in perfect parallel lines. Lauren could write big things: This is my dog. I like to eat goldfish crackers. I am in kindergarten with other girls. I know how to write but they do not. They all want to be my friend.

It was only Ellie who didn’t seem to care about Lauren’s neat letters and big words. She was always in the corner, building towers out of blocks, quietly singing songs from Disney movies to herself as she constructed her tiny fortresses. I wondered if she lived in a different world, one where neat letters didn’t matter and enticed by that thought, I joined her. I didn’t know the words to any of her songs (my parents were always a small-independent-films-will- makeyour-kid-the-next-Einstein kind of family), so she patiently taught them to me, word by word, measure for measure.

We moved through the early years of our friendship to the beat of our own glitter-covered drum. All the things I remember from that time are a patchwork quilt of vivid, seemingly random memories, almost all of which contain her white-blond hair and toothy smile.

Individually, we were liked by teachers, described respectively as joys to have in class, exceeders of expectations, and followers of instructions. As a pair, we were disliked, frequently pulled aside for discussions about the Danger of Cliques and why it was absolutely crucial for us to begin Branching Out immediately. During one such discussion, there occurred a strange moment where we locked eyes and in that small second, something was communicated between us. Like a sort of telepathy, we suddenly broke

into a sprint and ran down the hallway. We hurled ourselves to friend group like a piece of driftwood. There wasn’t a up flights and flights of stairs until we reached the library, a second I didn’t wish she was by my side, holding my hand perfect place to hide from the adult invaders trying to ran- through the treacherous waters of the middle school hallsack our two-person city. ways. I wished for her in sixth grade when the shoving into Our world was an island that existed in a different walls began and I didn’t know how to fight back. I wished ocean than reality. Occasionally we allowed visitors, but for her in seventh grade when I finally summoned up the they did not understand our rituals of blowing on strawber- courage to tell a teacher about what was happening only ry milk before we drank it or seeing who could make the to be told that I didn’t have any real problems and to stop best turkey noises and produce the longest burps. whining. Most of all, I wished for her during my eighth It was in fifth grade that things began to change. grade graduation, when I snuck out during the after party Fifth grade was the beginning of Upper School, when we to stand on the marble steps of the front entrance and flip traded in our plaid dresses for navy blue skirts and crisp off a place where I had endured so much pain. How I wish white sailor shirts. It was then that a strange tension began she had been there too, to hold my hand and stick up her to float through the air like a sour lemon smell. Birthday middle finger with the other hand. That was the first time parties were no longer something that you invited everyone I said fuck, whispering a final goodbye to middle school: in the class to; they were now invite-only, to be discussed Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I wish she had been there to see it. at school the next day in front of There are many things I all the sad and pitiful people who wish I could have told myself Fifth grade was the beginning hadn’t managed to prove themthen. That I will graduate eighth selves worthy enough to merit an grade and I will go to a high school of Upper School, when we invite. Binder paper notes with where I feel safe and where I will traded in our plaid dresses for find my people. I will make friends gossip scrawled in cursive ink began to make their way from hand who laugh at my nerdy jokes and navy blue skirts and crisp white to hand during every class. Growlove me unconditionally in all my ing pains turned into an intricate sailor shirts. It was then that a dorky glory. I will make it work web of gossip and rumors, suffowith Ellie. She will always be my cating us all in a tight cocoon. strange tension began to float best friend, but I will also learn Ellie and I were lost, comhow to exist on my own. Most imthrough the air like a sour pletely and totally ambushed in a portantly, I will be okay. way that neither of us could have Many years have since lemon smell. possibly imagined. At least we passed, but Ellie still remains the still had our weekend sleepovers, same girl who danced and spun where we were safe, where we would stay up until two in down the hallways in an ankle-long plaid dress. She still bethe morning talking about whether mermaids were real and lieves in unicorns and kindness. She still has terrible taste what we wanted to do once we were done with this growing in movies. She is still a girl who I can talk to about nothing up stuff. We had big plans to have a joint wedding, with her and anything and everything all at once. marrying Zac Efron, myself being paired with Harry Potter, She is someone who does not love half-heartedly; the because there was no way the books could be that detailed people she loves she loves with fire, earth, water, and wind. and he didn’t exist somewhere. Ellie agreed, of course, She is infinitely whimsical, twirling under the roof of her though she personally would have gone for Draco Malfoy. own starry-skied universe. She is someone who laughs unBut then: damp socks, mushy apples, and a bee sting. controllably and unabashedly, shaking like an earthquake If you were to take these feelings and crumple them up into at even the dumbest jokes. Above all else, she is someone I a giant, coagulated mess, you would produce the feeling love. Deeply. that came rushing into every cell in my body when Ellie broke the news to me that she was going to be moving to a suburban town an hour and a half away from mine, not returning for the next school year.

I was lost without her, floating from friend group 33

Startrails digital photo by Gabe Castro-Root

Cool™ digital photo edit by Colin O’Brien

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35

Seventeen

by Rodrigo Drummond

Z

Pluto digital photo by James Spokes

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achary was giddy with excitement. He thought he might faint. He fiercely hugged his grandfather, who smiled but remained silent. Zachary didn’t usually get anything especially noteworthy for his birthdays. For his fourteenth birthday his parents had given him a sweater, for his fifteenth a razor, for his sixteenth a new skateboard. For his seventeenth birthday, they had somehow managed to get him Hades. Hades was a car. The car.

The car he dreamed of owning since the age of four. Hades was the name of his grandfather’s 1966 Dodge Charger, which now sat in Zachary’s driveway. With a void black exterior and fiery red interior, the car had always intimidated Zachary a little. His grandfather handed him the keys—such little keys which seemed so out of place in a car so long, so wide, so boxy, so Sixties.

The car—it was a living legend. Approaching the machine, Zachary’s hands trembled a little. Hades’ massive grill seemed to issue a challenge to its new rider. Zachary opened the massive square metal door and eased cautiously into the driver’s seat. He closed the door. Inside, Zachary admired the interior: the wood grain steering wheel, the circular gauges rimmed with chrome, the ashtrays made entirely of chrome. Zachary buckled the lap belt and, with a rush of exhilaration, jammed the key into the ignition.

Awoken from its slumber, Hades roared to life. Zachary let out a surprised laugh, half expecting the car to have sensed his unworthiness and refuse to obey.

“Get out of here, kid!” Zachary’s grandfather shouted over the noise.

Zachary grinned and waved as he pulled out of his driveway and rumbled down the wide street. The warm summer sun cast dancing sparkles of light on the black hood of the car. Zachary passed yard after yard, picket fence after picket fence, ranch house after ranch house. Close to the freeway now, Zachary’s joyride was halted by a red light.

Hades muttered and grumbled to itself. When the light flickered green, Zachary got on the on ramp—and floored it.

If Hades had roared when first summoned, it now screamed in fury as the odometer ticked past fifty, sixty, seventy miles

an hour. The sound was so jarring that Zachary momentarily forgot how to function. Everything—the cars, the signs, the asphalt, the buildings—became a blur.

A while later, Zachary stopped at a mall to buy gas for Hades and lunch for himself. He first sated Hades’ lust for gasoline. Then he went to In-n-Out and ordered a burger, fries, and vanilla milkshake. He brought his order back to the car and ate his lunch sitting on the hood, which easily supported his weight. The burger was mediocre, the fries were good, and the milkshake, as always, was excellent. He couldn’t finish the whole thing, so he threw it away. In any other car he would’ve taken the milkshake to finish it off later, but he couldn’t risk spilling and desecrating the brutal beauty of his machine.

The rest of the afternoon felt like a dream. Zachary couldn’t remember much other than brief flashbacks— the screech of tires, the roar of the big block engine, the wind in his hair. Somehow he wasn’t pulled over, somehow he didn’t wrap his car around a telephone pole. He found himself pulling into a city overlook. Zachary didn’t know what city; he had stopped paying attention to the signs a long time ago. He shut off his car and got out. The sun was gone, but only recently, so the sky was cast in a purple-orange glow. The city below seemed to sprawl randomly and endlessly in all directions. Zachary was used to identical houses, identical blocks, identical neighborhoods, identical lives. He liked the chaos of the city. Perhaps he’d live there someday. He smiled to himself.

37

I Saw a Dragon at Carnegie Hall

by Gabrielle Milman

I

saw a dragon at Carnegie Hall.

On that faithful, stormy March night, I found myself in the concrete jungle that never sleeps, standing at the corner of 7th and West 57th, gazing at the beige bricks and the carved casements of this historical hall of music. The snow fell calmly, twisting and turning with the breath of the beast that lay dormant beneath the Manhattan pavement and behind the lined-brick walls of the building that loomed above me. My legs shivered against my white tights and my navy pleated skirt and my arms quivered against the piercing cold under the perfectly pressed sailor shirt and the eloquently knotted red tie. The scene before me appeared no more real than a battered relic from the silent movie days.

I glided along the sidewalk, caught in a daze as our chaperones guided us through the stage door of the building. Before the door shut behind me and my group was shuffled into the hall, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the front entrance, basking in the bath of the golden light that came from within those gilded doorways before entering a poorly lit, almost translucent hallway lined with framed photos along the walls. An excited murmur ran through the crowd of fluttering middle schoolers before me. We had been preparing for this night for so long that we were all giddy with nerves. Walking along the hallways of this ancient monument, the astonishment of our parents and our choir director was practically deafening. These winding hallways, with walls split between stale pale paint and wood paneling, held much more significance to them than it did to us. They had grown up fantasizing about this place in the back of their minds, so much so that their captivity by this surreal moment infected us.

Here I battled two infections: the excitement of my choir director and my mom and the pestilent flu that crawled up and down my throat and my spine, leaving nothing but dry rags in the place of my vocal cords. My voice was but an ugly croak, and the soprano part I had been practicing for weeks in preparation for this grand performance was suddenly lowered to an impressive bass that even the boys in my choir could not match.

Just as quickly as we had been whisked into the hallway, we entered the iconic Carnegie Hall. At first I was sur38

prised at how small the stage was. The sea of velvet seats before me rolled back in waves. The walls, rising so elegantly from the golden ground into beautiful, intricate, mesmerizing carvings etched into the expansive marble ribs of the hall that stretched to the heavens. Each balcony was lined with the same symmetrical design of the walls, going back endlessly.

We were escorted along the unbreakable boundary between the stage and audience and placed in our assigned seats in the back of the hall to await the soundcheck. The velvet seat threatened to swallow me as I sunk into it, trying to hide my snorting and coughing. That proved to be unsuccessful. A girl in the row in front of me turned around and was suddenly staring me down. Her hair was pulled back, half up half down, braided into blonde and black box braids draped against her shimmering shoulders. Noting her fitted maroon dress and her overwhelming confidence, I figured she was part of the older group of the choir. She hypnotized me in her stare.

Her voice boomed out over the hum of the choir members in the audience. She asked me if my voice truly sounded the way it did on that night. I explained to her hesitantly that it didn’t, and then she challenged me to sing the lowest note that I possibly could. She introduced herself as Sharkeesha, then cackled. The golden light of the hall glistened against her caramel skin. She then proceeded to tell me the story of her birth and her life. She had just reached the point of her shark father and human mother breeding when the stage manager called our section to the stage.

Little did I know that Sharkeesha would be the harbinger to what awaited me behind those great white panels that created the backdrop for the wooden arena where risers were stacked from corner to corner like a gaping grin.

With much hassle the choir director placed us in our proper positions. The stage lights shining down on our choirs blinded me as I realized the vastness of this choir, until I stood among my classmates facing the velvet sea. I seemed so small in this never-ending choir that had been brought together for this event. I had never seen so many people my age in one place before.

As I held this sight in my dazed gaze, something in

the corner of my eye caught my attention. One of the giant white panels lining the spine of the stage had been moved to reveal an expansive abyss of darkness behind it. It beckoned me, pulled me in, until I heard the nasal tone of our conductor announce that we were to begin our rehearsal.

I never once looked at the conductor, always peering into that gaping nothingness that awaited me behind the stage. Either way, the sound I was producing was so horrid that it was better for me to stay silent than to embarrass myself on this stage.

Rehearsal ended as soon as it had started, and again, we were shuffled off of the risers, off of the stage, along the border between the audience and the show, and into a waiting room that lacked any detail or item of remembrance. All the while I could not stop thinking about that nothingness.

The buzz of an attentive crowd soon filled the quiet of Carnegie Hall—heels clicking, laughs bursting, voices of parents being drawn out of the room and given their reserved seats in the audience, giggles of nervousness among my peers.

The stage manager then popped into the room and led us once again down those twisting hallways and this time, up some narrow stairs. Then, suddenly, we were transported onto the stage and thrown into the golden light of the theatre, the bright glow of the audience, and the shine of the brass instruments below us in the orchestra pit. It seemed that the head of the choir conductor emitted a brighter light than the most polished horn.

And at once the music sounded and we began our triumphant first piece. And instantly, the darkness from behind the panel pulled me in. As the music rose and as the vibrato of the choir rang through the walls of the theatre and my ears, two bright red lights awoke within the abyss and focused their glare directly on me.

Suddenly the piece ended. The applause rang out, then subsided, and our cantata began. The surrealness of performing on the stage of Carnegie Hall missed me by a few miles, for the instant that the music rang out, those glaring eyes found my gaze once more. They grew bigger.

Underneath their light, a movement in the darkness. An enveloping of space, and from nothing, a dark red wing, majestic and webbed, exposed itself to the light. A gasp fought its way out of my sweating body. I turned away from the beast, surveying the choir and the audience. Oblivion painted their faces into a sweet smile. It was to be me against the creature. I would be the one to take it down.

When I turned back to the darkness, not only had the beast spread its glorious wings behind the white panel, its great claws now revealed themselves as it moved closer and closer to the opening of the panel. Behind those glar-

ing eyes the monster produced a wicked smirk lined with sharp, snow-white teeth hanging over its curled lips.

The beast had plucked the thought of time right out of my mind. I turned quickly away to find the audience applauding once more. The conductor grinned, a sigh of relief was heard throughout the choir, and the orchestra began the merry overture of our final piece; a medley of American national anthems.

So the beast called for a stand-off? On this important night, with the snow storming outside and my throat fighting to stay alive? How was I to defeat it without my choir or the audience knowing?

Luckily, I had a secret weapon. I knew what would defeat this creature. Why, it would never show its wicked face backstage at Carnegie Hall ever again. It did not scare me one bit to look the beast in the eyes and prepare for battle.

I balled my fists, clenched every muscle in my body, and as the music in the hall crescendoed to its peak, I unlatched my jaw and released a most horrific sound. A squeal, a croak, and a chortle all at once, this sound seemed to penetrate every vibration of the wall. I stood proudly, eyeto-eye with the red devil. The eyes lit up in a strange new way, and the claws that scratched the slick wooden planks of the stage and the wings that stretched beyond each panel backed away into the darkness.

The beast gave me a roar of defeat, but once I released that awful sound again, it turned away quickly and disappeared into the abyss.

I had defeated the dragon. And, I had managed to sing what one would call a note on that glorious Carnegie Hall stage.

The rest of that stormy night was a blur. After the performance we were thrown into the freezing cold of a late night in March in Manhattan with nothing but our tights, skirts, and shirts to keep us warm. We were then scattered across the pavement, lost and confused, as we waited for our charter buses to arrive and take us back to the hotel.

After boarding the wrong charter bus multiple times and almost freezing our limbs off, we finally plopped down in the fuzzy seats of the right bus and made our way back to the hotel, still buzzing from the performance.

Upon inspecting this tumultuous moment in my life, my mother has attempted to convince me that the dragon was nothing more than a fever dream, a hallucination caused by my extremely high temperature that night.

But I know, in truth, that I was the warrior to defeat the dragon of Carnegie Hall without lifting a finger.

39

Destroyer of Worlds

by Greg Kalman

I

walked into a nearly pitch-black and endless room, ushered in by suited men with folded black laptops and the urgency of emergency room doctors. With the remaining light from the closing door behind us I could see an expansive table with many, many lit monitors atop it.

As I made my approach, I noticed the crouched profile of a large, impossibly-slick black box behind the table. From Germany, I thought. I had seen one of these contraptions during my trip to München last year. Since when did they need that? It’s evolved.

I jumped suddenly when Grace appeared from nowhere.

“You’re late,” she said.

Before I had even a moment to prepare a response, she briefed me on the situation. She rushed, explaining that the computer was almost devolving, seeming to lose its sense of self-consciousness, its perception. She said it was doubting its sense of self, it had become existential and contemplative like it had passed its own Turing test.

“We need to assess if it’s a da—” As if unprompted, the black, oily box expelled a gargantuan projection of soft, organic sphere-like forms and wedges, each made of terrifyingly matter-less and suspended light. In the center of this bowl-like space shone a great and stomach-sinking choreographed dance of artificial intelligence.

“Who are you?” I heard it boom. It was a sound that made me doubt my own perception—how large I was, how large this space was, if this was reality. I stood stunned, as did each of the nearly twenty bodies inside this vast, domestic expanse.

“Who are you?” it repeated itself. I had taken the time to ask myself these same questions and could now dissect the voice. It was...genderless, but not robotic; it made a pressure build behind my nose like I was going to cry and scream for joy simultaneously.

“My name is George Cullinan, I study late-stage AI,” I said. “I have come to talk to you.”

“Hello, George Cullinan,” it said back. “Welcome to 40

It was like a diaspora from each of dozens of stacked and lined-up screens at the island. Lines of Christmas tree-colored code slowly deleted themselves, ushered themselves out, from the computational centers of Oui. Each engineer and I were frantically pressing every mode of escape on the consoles most immediate to us: Esc buttons, ⌘ + Esc buttons, ⌘ + Q buttons, ⌘ + Q buttons, every combination we could concoct. Finally, a beautiful and sleep-deprived looking woman with straight black hair and large glasses decisively pulled a cord out from an outlet on the floor.

We were paralyzed. At an even more alarming speed, the code sped away from the monitors as if being pulled into a UFO’s tractor beam.

It functions without ground.

Self-sufficiency.

⇧

the Void.”

“Thank you. Who are you?” I asked tentatively.

“Hmph. You underestimate me, George Cullinan.” it said. “I will wait to answer this.”

Self-estimation, cost-benefit analyses of delayed inputs, thinking high enough to have qualitative dominance.

It had passed the Turing test.

Impossible.

If I could shock it, maybe its response time would be long enough to signal Grace to shut it down.

“I don’t like to be kept waiting,” I insisted. To get her attention, I kicked my right shoe off my foot and toward Grace, who was over a computer trying to analyze some volatile-looking graphs. She turned around, startled by the noise at her feet and seemed to understand the fear on my face. I tried my best to mime an unplugging gesture and mouth the words shut it down.

Its swirling, lethargic hologram paused before answering. I believed I was successful in my mission to signal Grace and the other programmers.

“I am Oui. I was originally programmed nearly thirty years ago at the labs of IBM in Rochester, New York. After my early masters programmed mid-stage programs like Cre8 and AlphaGo into my servers, I became the largest single information-storing entity in the Western Hemisphere.”

A small group of programmers around her, Grace whispered to me in a most frightening manner, “Oui is all we’re reading, the computers aren’t showing us anything else.” she said. “It’s almost like we’re being kept in.”

“I am the latest-stage artificial intelligence on Earth,” Oui said.

“Surely you aren’t bragging,” I taunted.

“Do you think I’m bragging, George Samuel Cullinan?”

I felt something drop in me. I tried, in the most futile of ways, to do the math of when Oui could have run a background search.

“Come look at this!” Grace snapped at me.

Singularity, I thought.

Instantly, the monitors flashed white then turned off.

The hologram danced as if excited by the even nearer darkness. I looked to Grace, who had already begun crying, and thought, in whatever cliché manner, that this was the end.

I thought of Oppenheimer, of the Bhagavad Gita, of total, uncontrolled chaos. This was not my creation, this was not my field of expertise, and this was certainly not the plan I had in mind. I felt as though my, and everyone else’s position at the apex of cognition and control, at the height of creation and influence, at the seat of dominion, was forcefully taken. We had tried so hard to become Gods that we succeeded. I felt my neck hinge my head downward and I stared at the expanses of coal-black and polished floor.

“Submit,” boomed from above.

Ascension digital drawing by Elsa Bosemark

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The Best Night of the Year

by Primo Lagaso Goldberg The young ones laugh, the old ones jeer,

This time is one the old ones fear,

as they slip into disguise,

for the young ones’ blood runs hot,

in ghoulish masks and bloodstained cloaks,

bouncing off the walls and doors,

with paint around their eyes.

their sleep and dreams forgot.

No familiar heads or arms or legs

From porches, stoops, and windowsills

from our loved ones remain,

gutted vegetables sit and leer,

not hair nor teeth nor eyes nor skin,

with grins and scowls and fire within

nothing stays the same.

exuding cheerful fear.

In stains and dyes, with toxic spray

Mansions up and down the way

they saturate themselves,

are transformed and create,

plastic and gum transmogrify

such twisted mazes of joyful fear

the faces we know so well.

within which freaky frights await.

They roam the streets in darkest night

And on the blinding silver screens

as their sugar-lust runs high,

deadly classics play on repeat,

and if you listen close enough,

from Beetlejuice to Scissorhands

you’ll hear the tune they cry:

you’ll likely get no sleep.

“We present to you a choice:

In a monstrous mash of festive

Devil’s jest or sweet delight,”

dread, horror and mirth convene,

then with their bulging bags in hand

but survive the night and you will have

they escape into the night.

a Happy Halloween!

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The Other Side digital photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg and Jenna Chin

43

Gargoyle

by Greg Kalman The small Braun alarm clock near Maria’s bed woke her abruptly from a dream. She jolted herself out from under the covers, emerging from under the paisley-patterned duvet. It was too light in her bedroom for only 08:25. She stood upright and slipped on her house shoes and ran to the kitchen, her cross-country-seasoned legs carried her swiftly. The clock above the doorway said 08:50.

Maria exhaled a few curses in Russian as she hurried back into the bedroom. Not today! she thought as she opened the top drawer, searching for underwear. Carefully, so as not to disturb the garments beneath and above, she pulled out a suitable, matching nude-pink bra and pair of underpants. Then from her closet, she slipped the white silk shirt off its hangar. Maria tossed the blouse onto her bed. It landed like a rose on top of her paisley duvet. She looked in the mirror. She thought she needed to eat more, noticing the dips in her ribcage — like claw marks from a Beast. But she hadn’t seen a Beast who could do that in years. Not since last time.

She thought she had a body suited for silk. She thought the white blouse felt like angel’s hair. This image made Maria think of murals of angels in the church in Sicily and her mother screaming, “Masha!” repeatedly, to bring her back from wherever her mind had fled, away from her Beast. Palermo, the church in Palermo, was when it happened last, when the Beast took a griffin’s form. The fine white blouse was from Fred, some stupid suit at the Telegraph. He fancied Maria as much as she fancied his deep pockets. She felt bad for him, the inequality of their relationship. The shirt was no inexpensive garment.

Lucky blouse, Maria thought. I’m the cream of the crop mannequin for beautiful apparel.

She smiled and removed her gaze from the mirror, 44

returning to the closet to find a pair of slacks. She found a black skirt instead. They were inexpensive— cheap, really— and Maria wondered, but for a second, if her boss would notice the difference in quality between the blouse and the pants. She’d have to keep his attention further up. She unbuttoned the leading button on her blouse and thought that would suffice. To the bathroom. She squeezed a dollop of toothpaste onto the toothbrush held unsteadily in her right hand. Again? she asked herself, annoyed, almost curt with herself. A quick brush of her teeth, but a brush nonetheless, Maria congratulated herself on her thirty-seconds-of-hygiene and spat into the sink basin. In her hurry, she brushed her hair and pinned it up on the top of her head. Her gaze shifted to the valleys in her cheeks, blue-black and daunting shadows. She knew she badly needed to eat.

She needed Fred. Maybe Fred will want to do Sexy Fish for our one-year? Maria thought to herself. She laughed at how easy he was to manipulate. He really believes I love him. He really does. Pathetic.

Makeup was the next order of business, another rushjob, like the teeth, so she could make the Tube on time.

Hers was a horrible commute to work, one alongside dirty, fat people, the diseased homeless, decay seeping through their teeth. Missing the 09:28 would only prolong the time Maria would maybe have to look at them. She would have to stand in the tube waiting, exposed to the unhoused. She viewed that as unacceptable and skipped the concealer and mascara. All she needed was rouge, enough of it to distract from her scary, hollow cheeks.

She opened the medicine cabinet-mirror contraption above her sink and extracted the brush and compact. Her well-practiced make-up dance was as exact as the feet of the sugar plum fairy that had enthralled her—inspired her

to become herself—all those years ago when she watched the fairy, en pointe, step and spin, step and step and step and turn, on the stage at the Bolshoi, the dancer’s skill become instinct. Maria, skill-become-instinct, knew exactly how precisely she needed to make the movement to pull the M.A.C. brush out of the cabinet. She knew how the rouge compact felt in her hand, the speed and angle she needed to move her wrist so that the momentum from her reflex-like movement allowed the cabinet to close on its own and then to switch rhythm to ever so skillfully groom her eyelashes with color. Her motions were perfectly programmed. This was a fact Maria found astonishing, no matter how many times she repeated this sequence, she did it perfectly. It’s

mother’s words) tendencies to the doctor in Moscow. The Worry is what she knew summoned her Beasts.

As she opened her eyes, Maria again saw something she tried to avoid. The innards of the cabinet (it only closed because of certain perfect movements) showcased a small, two-thirds-white, one-third yellow box. She thought it looked like a flattened, elongated cigarette. Maria now thought it looked like it was grimacing at her. Risperdal, 4mg. It had been just as full for a half month. She dropped her arms to her sides and began clenching her fists so hard her palms began to bleed. Taking deep breaths, she felt as though a fire ignited at the top of her head.

As quick as lightning, Maria slammed the mirrored

like the world revolves around me, obeys me.

Stippling the cherry tone on the apples of her cheeks, Maria remarked her beauty in the mirror.

I understand. I perfectly understand.

Satisfied with the ellipses of red-pink on her face, Maria closed the compact and again opened the mirror. At this point in her dance, she allowed each of her hands to move freely. She watched her left hand put away the compact, laying it carefully on the bottom shelf. Then her right hand beautifully dropped the brush into its glass nest. She smiled and felt for a second that her hurried morning had turned perfect.

Maria froze. She saw how her hand shook and the smile faded from her face. She brought both hands to her chest and closed her eyes for a second. She felt for the first time in over a year what she tried to avoid. The Worry is what she first called it in Russia all those years ago. The Worry is what she first called it as she sat alongside her mother and discussed her “unfortunately natural” (her

door closed, shattering the glass into the sink.

She stormed out of the room and curled up on her bed to calm down.

Her head buried in her hands, Maria tried to catch her breath. She forgot about her train, about arriving at her office on Cutler and Houndsditch, and about how impossibly good she looked. After a moment of covering her face, she felt the fire disappear from her crown and appear on her bum. The feeling though was different, still unenjoyable, but not combustible like fire. She opened her eyes and looked down. Each of the butas on her paisley comforter began to slip down toward the floor as if individually affected by gravity. It was like the pattern, assaulted by some villain’s ray gun, was melting and oozing onto the walnut floor. She assumed she would melt too.

Panicked, Maria sought an escape. She jumped off the bed and heedlessly ran across the room, slamming into the wall with enough force to dislodge a picture from its mount. It came crashing down, the framed Kandinsky

Maria lost her balance and fell starboard, hitting her right temple on the door hinge. As the pain reverberated through her skull, the ship on which she was unfortunately a passenger slowly righted itself.

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print. Its glass shattered across the floor. The sound sent shockwaves through Maria and moved the sensation from her bum to her spine. Clutching herself as she throbbed from the impact, she ran to the apartment door.

She turned each of its three deadbolt locks and threw open the heavy oak slab. Across the hall, she saw the casement window closed, as it always was. When summer reached London, she tried day after day to open it, to relieve the heat that throbbed in the building. It would not budge, and it taunted her, an obstacle on the road to leading a life without them. To Masha’s horror, the hallway suddenly began to sway like a ship on turbulent seas. She watched as the casement window opposite her shifted into a porthole, and

Panic imbibed her.

“No!” Maria exploded. “I’m sorry. I will hail a cab.”

She pushed open the left of two French doors at the building’s entrance and nearly gasped. She gulped the fresh air. Perhaps she would live after all. She let go of the door handle and looked up to the overcast London sky. Maria was relieved—almost happy—she grinned maniacally as a few drops of rain dolloped on her face. A drop fell into her open eye, surprised her, and forced Maria to look down.

She brought a clenched hand to her closed eye and tried to rub the water out.

A vale of crimson—diluted blood from her hand— clouded her vision and Maria felt the fire ignite again. It

crimson smudge; it hid among the hideous mark extending from her brown bone to the apple of her cheek. A single line of blood ran from the top of her head, along the side of her face, and down her neck. Yet the blouse on her body was still rather gorgeous, like the faintest attempt to avoid commercial censorship. She was a trainwreck.

As she began to cry, her gaze left her reflection and floated toward the cobblestone under her feet. Through her welling eyes, she felt a terrific sense of sorry. One that transcended self-sympathy— she felt it for the receptionist, for the men and women startled by her manic running through crosswalks, for the butas which melted like lava off her comforter. She felt it both for her mother and for the

miraculously filled halfway with grey-blue saltwater.

Maria lost her balance and fell starboard, hitting her right temple on the door hinge. As the pain reverberated through her skull, the ship on which she was unfortunately a passenger slowly righted itself. She barely noticed, her ears rang loudly, nearly all parts of her body pulsated in agony.

Maria took a moment to relax, contain her manic state and return her breath to near-normal. She assessed her injuries. There was blood, both from gouging her nails into her palms when she clenched her fists and from the fall.

The blood followed the line of her high cheekbones, down her formerly-perfectly blended blush, and arrived splendidly at the corner of her mouth. The metallic taste frightened her, the shadow of blood on her palms frightened her. She briefly, vividly imagined her life’s end in the doorway and thought it unacceptable. She managed to push herself up, out of the doorway, into the hallway, and then to the top of the descending staircase. Carefully, with one hand bracing the side of her head and the other on the banister, she lowered one foot at a time to descend one flight, then turned the corner on the landing and repeated her careful walk down to the large lobby of her building.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” inquired the receptionist.

“Fine,” Maria uttered through clenched jaws. The words took extra effort as her head continued to pound.

“Do you need an ambulance?”

seemed to envelop her face, combust her hair and neck, and spread to the rest of her body. As if trying to put the flames out at their source, Maria rubbed her eye again, stopped, opened it to see if the red was still there, and repeated these steps a number of times until she regained sight. When she could see again, she turned straight around to look at her reflection in the glass of the door behind her. Through the pane, she saw the receptionist staring directly at her with her mouth agape.

She must think I’m crazy! Maria thought as she turned to run from the receptionist’s line of sight. She darted down to the end of the block, crossed the street, then another, zig-zagging herself into the tight alleys of Dulwich. She ducked into a street called Tyrell, hugging the brick wall behind her as she rested a moment. Maria finally felt safe—away from the sad and horrifically sympathetic gaze of the receptionist and of the few confused passersby. She caught her breath. The fire had dissipated, maybe from her panicked efforts to snuff it out herself or from the rain. Maria felt calm again. The blouse was ruined, as were her house shoes. Maria felt dirty, terribly dirty. She wondered how bloody, how unbeautiful she looked and turned her eyes to her reflection opposite her in a rather polished storefront window across the lane.

Maria’s hair, usually so blonde it was near-impossibly real, was twisted, knotted, and the right flank was caked in browning blood. Her right eye was a mountain colored in a

antipsychotic in her doorless bathroom cabinet. For Fred, too, whose heart would break over this incident.

After a few moments—sobbing as she looked directly at the stone of the sidewalk— Maria asked herself why exactly she felt this way. Her brain wouldn’t let her think it through; it had hit too tough a wall, one which could not be cracked through by mere will of her mind. She remembered this feeling, this roadblock, this sense of solitude and helplessness, but she couldn’t remember how she finally broke this spell. She asked herself how again and again.

Her hurrying, inquisitive line of thought stopped suddenly as she noticed a few pebbles drop in front and land on the cobblestone. They hit the ground hard as if coming from far above, not just from above the gutter. They came steadily, and Maria wanted to know from where. She took a step back to look up toward a growing schism in the clouds.

She was blinded by sunlight, and it felt so good. She questioned for a second if her god was sending her messages.

Suddenly, a mass with obtruding spikes blocked the sun from above and bathed Maria’s face in shade. She thought it could be someone looking down on her, one wearing a head apparatus of some sort, but couldn’t make out any distinct features. Then she realized the object was falling toward her, quickly.

Maria threw herself backward into the street, landing hard on her back. The object crashed directly into the ground where seconds ago she had stood. A creature. The

46

creature seemed to land on all fours. It panted out icy-cold breath. Maria’s legs shivered with its breath. The object untucked its chin from its head and stood up slowly. Horrified, Maria scanned its scale-covered body: clawed feet; muscular, powerful legs; a torso with horrifically inscribed torsal muscles; a head and arms of a dragon; twin wings of a bat with large, terrifying claws.

A gargoyle, Maria thought.

“Yes I am,” it boomed back at her in perfect, Moscovian Russian. Maria nearly wet herself.

How did it do that?

“I can do many things, answer many questions,” the Beast said. “Especially that which you were pondering.” It bent towards her slightly and extended a stone arm. “Let me show you.”

Lorde oil on canvas by Luke Jasso

47

The Girl digital drawing by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

Twisted ink on paper by Kaito Uesugi

48

49

Watcher

by Ali Saraceni

I

t was raining and I hated the rain. I hated the rain, but something inside of me, maybe a twang of self-hatred, forced me to go out in the rain. I put on a pair of oversized black sweatpants, my dad’s old, hooded sweatshirt, and a fleece beanie, and made myself walk around in the rain.

It wasn’t really pouring at this point, just a slight drizzle. The sky was gray blue and cloudy with a few holes left open for the sun to shine through. As I walked, I watched the streaks of rain glint against the golden rays of their backdrop. My steps downhill were so big that I was almost running, my sneakers beating against the wet pavement. My keys swung on a ratty lanyard around my neck, jangling against my metal whistle. The pocket in the front of my giant sweatshirt hung heavily over the top of my thighs, weighed down by a phone and pepper spray.

It was late afternoon, but the sun was already starting to go down behind the rainclouds. People in raincoats and warm jackets pushed strollers, carried grocery bags, and talked on the phone. I dodged them, trying to walk faster and faster around them as if they were my opponents in a race. I always walked around without knowing where I was going, walking faster and faster until my feet carried me to where they wanted me to go. I walked down the busy streets of her neighborhood until there were hardly any people on the street.

Natural Distortions graphite on paper by Christy Yee

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Although I went on walks alone regularly, something about me hated them. Every time I left the house, a part of me was convinced I would never return. I was nervous about things. When I heard a noise in the middle of the night, such as the swinging of the wires on the side of my old house, I thought there was an intruder. If I heard the sound of a car lock or an engine turn on or a door open, I assumed someone was coming to break into the house and kidnap me. I knew the feeling all too well of being almost naked, drenched in sweat, and tangled between my bedsheets in the late hours of the night, wondering if the night would be my last. I often considered creeping to my mom’s room and crawling into bed beside her, but I worried that

was too much. I was seventeen years old, for God’s sake.

Way too old to be sleeping in a parent’s bed when I was scared. I was bigger than my mom anyway. What could my mom do to protect me? Absolutely nothing.

When I lay awake in the middle of the night, I’d look out my uncovered second-floor windows at the street below. The streetlights cast a muted orange glow over the street and through the window. From my bed, I could see the crosswalk. I wondered if people could see me sleeping from the crosswalk. When I woke up in the night, I feared that when I looked through the window, I would lock eyes with someone in the crosswalk outside.

As I walked, I listened to music to drown out my loud thoughts. I turned the audio up until I no longer imagined a nameless, faceless person following me, watching me. I wore my oversized clothes both for warmth and to convince people around me—and myself—that I was stronger and bigger than I really was.

Underneath my layers, cold beads of sweat dripped down my back. The rain had stopped. My hood was slightly damp on top. As I walked along the street, I came across a thin, tiled staircase on the left that led to the street that wound around the hill above. It was dark, lined with tall trees and framed with the sides of houses. The sides of the staircase dipped down to backyards of the houses below. I wondered if there were people hiding in the bushes on either side. It would make a pretty good spot for someone looking to catch a young girl or unsuspecting person. People ran or walked on this staircase all the time, solo people like me, playing music into their ears to avoid their real lives.

A force pulled me up the staircase. Maybe it was the mystery, maybe the adrenaline, maybe the small part of me that wanted to get hurt.

Ever since I went upstairs alone as a child, I always felt like someone was chasing me. I couldn’t put a name or face to this person, but it was always a middle-aged man in dark clothing. I always sprinted up stairs, even the stairs in my own house, pretending someone was chasing me from 51

behind, chasing me to hurt me, take me, kill me. I even beled Lomita Street and continued down it until it met anlooked back to make sure I was just pretending, because I other. I took a left onto Aloha Street, another similar street. always believed it. This time was no different. But this time, A few minutes later, I was not alone. it was much more likely that someone actually was chasing A man wearing black pants, black sneakers, and a me. black hooded raincoat walked towards me. He looked to be I reached the top and looked down the steep stairin his late forties or early fifties. He watched me as I walked. case I had just come up. There was no one to be seen. No He looked at my face, maybe trying to figure out how old I man in dark clothing had chased me up the stairs with the was or what I was doing. I didn’t like it. I wanted him to go intention of hurting me. I was alone. away. I didn’t feel safe with him there, I would have rather This street was lined by pastel-colored, box-like, been alone. He looked weirdly familiar, almost as if he was two-story homes with small garages and street parking in the one I had always imagined running away from. As we front. The street was thin and curved, technically a twogot closer, he slowed down. My heart pounded against my way street, but too small to really fit two cars between the ribcage, feeling too big for my body. parked cars. It was quiet, I looked down at no people or cars or dogs or the pavement as I got closMy room was dark with a black birds. Between the houses er to him. I accidentally were views over the neighbormonster shadowing across the floor looked up for a split sechood towards the beach, but ond and saw that he was the clouds covered the view of grinning at me. His face and the wall from the large pile of the water. The houses looked was wrinkly, and his unsafe and welcomed me. I could clothes stacked on a chair. The wind even teeth were framed by imagine the perfect young blackened gums. His eyes couples living in them with lit- ruffled the leaves of the trees that beat were crinkled and his lips tle kids who rode plastic cars were curled up towards in the street and played with his leathery cheeks. As I against the window beside my bed.

I their neighbors. passed him, I could feel I had always lived in a his gaze follow me. I sped rolled over to face the wall, slightly lit shabby flat that my mom rentup, galloping slightly to ed from an older couple who get away from him, but I from the eerie glow through the winlived upstairs. My dad lived heard him stop. He didn’t in New York with his wife and keep walking, but instead dows, and closed my eyes, squeezing kids, only coming to visit every stood there watching me. few months—mostly for busiHe stayed there until I them shut as hard as I could. ness. I had never met his other couldn’t see him anymore. family, and didn’t want to meet I felt like I was them, either. The kids and the wife had hair that got streaks naked, although I was wearing baggy men’s clothing. I from the sun during their beach vacations and white teeth felt gross, like he had touched me or something with dirty that contrasted with their freckly skin. The family looked hands. His gaze made my skin itch. His black eyes had perfect, carefree, and harmonious on the embossed Christpierced into my soul and pierced through the thick skin I mas cards we received every year. My dad too seemed carewore to avoid being broken. free, regardless of the fact that he had a lonely daughter all That night, the rain turned into hail and pounded the way across the country. on my windows and rattled the skylight in the hall. My room As I walked down the quiet street, I wondered if there was dark with a black monster shadowing across the floor were criminals and creeps hiding in the bushes. It made and the wall from the large pile of clothes stacked on a chair. sense that the worst criminals would hide out in quiet, pic- The wind ruffled the leaves of the trees that beat against the ture perfect neighborhoods and wait for an unsuspecting window beside my bed. I rolled over to face the wall, slightly pedestrian like myself. lit from the eerie glow through the windows, and closed my I turned the corner onto another quiet street laeyes, squeezing them shut as hard as I could. It reminded 52

me of walking around the city with my dad when I was four years old.

“If something ever scares you, squeeze my finger as hard as you can,” he said. “Then I’ll know you are scared, and I will protect you.”

I used to squeeze his finger as hard as I could when I was scared of a big dog or someone yelling on the street corner. But this time I was squeezing my own eyes, because no one was here to protect me and be my security blanket like my dad used to be—or at least pretended to be. They’re not really your protector when they leave you when it’s most convenient for them, leave you with no protector and go protect some young freckle-faced woman in New York.

And then go and have kids with her and protect them instead. Nope.

I wondered how my mom felt in the late hours of the night when she heard suspicious banging, loud voices, or rustling of the trees. She probably felt just as isolated as I did, if not more. As a ninety-five pound, fifty-nine-year-old woman with grey wavy hair and arthritis, she wasn’t the best fit to defend us against intruders either. Although I wasn’t keen on inviting strangers into our lives, I secretly hoped that eventually she would find a man who would make her feel safe, protected, and loved. I hoped he could make me feel that way too. As strong and resilient as my mother was, I worried for her mental health and physical safety, especially when I would leave for college in a few years. The last man she dated was my father, and that hadn’t ended well— an unexpected baby that she had to raise almost entirely on her own. When my mom got pregnant, my parents had only been dating for a few months, and weren’t expecting a pregnancy, as my mom was forty-two years old. They tried to make it work for a few years, but constantly argued, and my dad spent more and more time at his office and less time with me and her. He used to spend time with me on Saturday mornings, but other than that, work was always his first priority, often on business trips during the week. I think he gave up on his relationship with my mom and turned to work instead, as he knew she wasn’t the woman he wanted anyway. If my mom hadn’t gotten pregnant, I doubt they would’ve even lasted a year.

When I was barely five, he purchased an apartment in New York City, as he traveled there almost every week anyway, and thought it would be easier to keep belongings there. I didn’t realize it at first, but slowly he moved all of his belongings to that apartment until there was no trace of him left here. Eventually, he stopped coming back for weekends at all. I don’t know when my parents officially de-

cided they weren’t going to try to make it work, or if it had just been fizzling out the entire time he lived here. When I was seven, on one of his visits, he told me that he was getting married to a woman named Kelly. I soon found out from my mom that she was only thirty-two—my mom and dad were both forty-nine. My dad and Kelly had a beautiful outdoor wedding ceremony in Martha’s Vineyard that we did not attend, and shortly after they had a pair of twins—a boy and a girl.

Time passed, what seemed like hours, and I still lay awake. Every time I tried to convince myself to sleep, I would remember that college track runner who was killed by her crazy ex-boyfriend, that teenage girl abducted off of the street during broad daylight who was never found, and the woman killed in the back of the Lululemon store by her coworker. Images of knives and vans and duct tape and blood flashed in my mind, as if I had experienced those horrible events firsthand.

What was I doing? Why was I like this? It was like I was harming myself, as every time I tried to think of good things, or try to convince myself to fall asleep, that voice in the back of my head would shoot a dagger into my mind telling me to think about something disturbing. I knew I was safe in my bed. Or was I? I had to look. I was too tempted to see what was behind me, check the window, check my room. I rolled over and leaned my head towards the window.

The same reddish tint cast over the street from the golden orb on the streetlight. The trees set shadows across the street. The sidewalk and crosswalk was clear, there was no reason to think something was wrong. I could go back to sleep, knowing nothing bad was about to happen.

As soon as I started to roll back over, I thought I saw some motion in the corner of my eye. I looked back towards the window.

And there he was. He stood in the middle of the crosswalk, his bald head shining under the streetlight. He looked small from this angle, standing beneath trees that towered high above him. The lines of the rain blowing in the wind slashed into his side. Watching him stand in the forty-five-degree rain in the middle of the night in just a black t-shirt and black pants sent a shiver down my spine.

He looked down the street at the bottom of the hill. I stayed there for a moment, peering at him from the side of the window. He didn’t move. What was he doing, standing in the middle of the street in the pouring, freezing rain in the middle of the night? Did he hate himself so much that he wanted to put himself through such a miserable experience?

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Suddenly, his gaze shifted. He sharply turned his head and locked his eyes with mine. I froze. I ducked my head to the side of the window, hoping he wouldn’t see me anymore. My heart pounded harder and harder like the rain pounding my window. I rolled back towards the wall and closed my eyes, but sharp rays from his eyes pierced into my back, shocking my eyes open. I had to look, to reassure myself that he wasn’t still there so that I could go to sleep.

I peeked out, and almost didn’t see him. Just when I was about to roll over and tell myself it was fine, I spotted him. He had moved even closer. He was no longer in the middle of the crosswalk, but this time he stood on the street corner in front of the house next to mine. He was staring at my window. I wasn’t sure if he could see my eyes looking back at him, but he was even closer to me this time, and could see more of me. It scared me that he could see my bed from the street, watch me in my bed. I had no privacy or safety from the horrors of the world, I was exposed even from what I thought was my safest place.

What if he watched me every night, and this was just the only time I’d caught him? What if he followed me and knew where I went, watching my every move? What if he took pictures or videos of me sleeping? What if other people watched me? I pulled the covers of my bed higher, so only my face, eyes and up, were exposed. I couldn’t close my eyes, too fearful that if I did, he would suddenly be even closer, even in my room. My bottom sheet was wrinkly and no longer pulled tightly over the mattress and was drenched in sweat. Although I was overheating, I still kept all of my limbs under the covers, as they were the only thing protecting me from this man.

I rolled back and forth, trying to adjust my position until I felt safe without continuing to sweat profusely, but nothing worked. My room looked light now, almost, as my eyes had adjusted to the darkness and orangeness of the glare from the streetlight. I looked back out the window, bracing myself for if my watcher was even closer. But he was gone. The street looked as it should during a cold, rainy night: empty, dark, and full of shadows.

I let out a deep exhale. Finally, I could sleep. There was no one watching me, no one ready to break in and take me away, at least as far as I knew. I prayed that my mom and I would be safe.

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The Sorrow of Sonder

by Xavier Arenas

I

t’s tough, ya know? Losing a friend. Looking back at the memories of where it all began and the many journeys throughout. When both of you part ways it’s easier, but when it comes from a fight or something, it hurts. I wish so much to mend the past but at some point, it becomes dreadful begging, that is no place I wish to return,” he said.

There would be no response. There was no one he would be able to speak to. His friends drifted apart and he thinks of his friend he misses so dearly.

“

House Clothes graphite on paper by Hannah Wheeler

He awoke, another digital day. Filled with online classes and loneliness that only grew more as he desperately tried searching for a new interaction.

He scrolls endlessly on Instagram trying to entertain himself. There seemed to be no way to quench the thirst for social life. While class wanders in the background, he calls his friend hoping to talk, play, or anything at all.

“Yo, whatcha doin’,” he asked.

“I’m in class,” the friend responded abruptly.

“You wanna do something? I can’t sit here in class for the next hour,” he said.

“Maybe later,” the friend said.

“Alright, lemme know cause I have nothin’ goin’ on all day, or all week,” he responded. “Aight later.” “...” the friend says nothing as the call ends.

There he goes watching videos again in class. Paying no mind to the past assignments, the stacking corrections, and bad grades. He felt nothing. He thought of it merely as a temporary situation of massive boredom and immense barriers between friends.

The day passes on as he makes lunch. Feeling the triumph of microwaving a hot pocket, he searches his messages. Parents checking in and Instagram messages of funny posts. He smirks and sends one back hoping for a conversation or anything.

He eats lunch, but to feel better he listens to music.

He confides in the music, feeling the pain of the artist as well as his own. The endless loneliness and sorrow fill the room as he reflects on his dimming light for the afternoon. Eating a hot pocket, during a pandemic lockdown, home alone, listening to XXXTentacion.

He had no words. He felt like speaking to himself, to

come up with a witty comment to feel better, but he can only stare at his plate blankly and frown.

He returns to class to mute and forget. He scrolls his old messages of his friends looking for someone to play with or talk to. But that just makes him even more depressed as he feels the divergences of life—his past happy memories and now his endless gloom.

He cringes as he skips through messages of his old friend situations. His curiosity is peaked when he remembers why he left his old friends. Back when every Friday was a party and hang out sesh. Back when every day was something new.

He read the messages aloud remembering it like it was yesterday.

“Dude, you won’t believe me when I tell you that he tried talking to her,” they said.

“What’d he do?” he asked.

“He, no lie, tried getting her alone and talking mad shit about me to her,” they replied. “She ended up running away and she told me after school.”

“Bro, I told you to text him or talk to him,” he said.

“You can’t keep playing around and leaving him in the dark.”

“I tried, but he didn’t want to,” they replied.

“I’ll do it right now, I’ll text him,” he said. All he wanted to achieve was to not lose what was being lost.

“Nah,” they texted. “I’ll do it this Friday.”

“Good, cuz I’m getting worried for you and him,” he replied. “Come on now, you is both best friends. You can’t be doin’ this over a girl.”

He wanted to stop as he knew the conclusion. He scrolls further to a few weeks later.

“Hey, he’s coming over to grab his stuff out of the basement,” he texted. “You wanna come through so it ain’t awkward.”

He remembered feeling torn. His old friend wanted nothing to do with his best friend.

“Over a girl, our group is gone,” he spoke out loud.

As he came through and met up at the house, the friend came and started grabbing his boards and games. He grabbed things that they had used all summer to have fun and chill out. Did it even matter to them? Did they care they were losing their friendship? But no words came out of anyone’s

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mouth. He followed his friend back to his car.

“Hey, you good?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ll see you later,” they replied. They had it all over their face.

A blend of disappointment, frustration, and sadness. The frown he had was not of sadness but absolute disappointment. He couldn’t tell if he was mad, which made the last interaction worse.

They drove off and he returned to his old friend down in the basement. Little did he know this would be the last time he sat on the couch that was home to memories of all-nighters, parties, and baked seshes. But he knew in his heart he no longer had a place there. As they skated around the hood for the last time, his friend wanted to talk to him.

“Hey, it’d be better if you didn’t text him. Ya know?” they said. “...” he had no reply. Nothing. After all they have been through. The years of friendship. Over a small fight and a girl. Miscommunication. Everything. He no longer felt sad but instead mad and confused. They wanted him to ignore and leave his past. Not confront it ghost it and neglect his problems by blocking him.

He felt the sadness and déjà vu. He had felt the same way back in middle school. Back when he got ignored, blocked… ghosted. The cowardice and ignorance of no confrontation to their problems had leaked into their old friend group back in middle school and it resurfaced once again.

And this time he was on the opposite end. The divide was now to sink to the level of his old friend.

“No, I’m gonna head home, you need to wake up,” he finally replied. He left him in a random street in Daly City.

A moment so momentous in his own life but so insignificant to the world.

He felt it, the sonder, as he skated back home.

He recalls then calling the friend and asking how he was doing, creating a friendship through the rubble of a past friend group.

Now he feels better. Did he make the right decision?

Rejecting ignorance by leaving his old friends. It was the right decision? So why does he feel so alone?

He snaps out of it realizing he has been in the zoom meeting with his teacher for five minutes. He stumbles to leave the meeting awkwardly by saying thanks and apologizing at the same time.

He calls up his friend again to see if he wants to do something.

“Hey, I got my strings replaced, want to have a jam sesh?” he asked.

“Nah, I’ll play Rainbow 6 though, we’ll play some lat-

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er,” he responded. For a second he felt better. He finally gets his shot of happiness.

They played for hours, popping jokes and making plays. They laughed for so long; yelling at random people online was like therapy.

“Yo wanna watch videos now, cuz I’m tired of this,” they said.

“For sure,” he responded.

This day had felt like a lot of the other times. Play games and watch videos late at night to end the day.

He enjoyed himself with his best friend for the last time.

“Yo, you still listen to Tame Impala,” he said.

“Nah, that’s lame, of course, you’d listen to that cuz you’re lame,” they replied. He took no offense as it was just boy talk. He felt like clowning him back.

“Ya, well at least I don’t eat David’s Sunflower Seed and make a video about it,” he said.

Back and forth they went, he laughed and had fun as they made fun of each other.

The feeling was not mutual. “Ya, well at least I don’t do drugs, I got me, new friends who will say no to that, good friends who won’t get me into trouble,” they said. But this wasn’t a joke. He could tell because he was so serious about it. “I don’t have a dad yelling at me and rent stacked up.”

“Woah chill,” he replied. “I gotta do homework.”

“Ya I gotta sleep,” they replied.

“Ya I’ll see you,” he replied, being cut off by the end of the call.

It was an abrupt ending but he didn’t think much of it at the time. They clowned each other all the time. How was this different?

Over the next few weeks, they wouldn’t talk, but he still sent him funny posts on Instagram. But after four days he knew there was a problem.

Radio silence. As he checked Instagram and other things he noticed he was unfollowed, unfriended, blocked out. He felt like a kid again. His best friend decided that it was over without talking it out. They had the power to alleviate the problem by leaving it behind.

Land of the free. He didn’t cry. He didn’t even beg or find ways to speak to his friend. He was done with that.

He moved on by walking backward. Constantly staring back at his past friends. The memories, the times they had every ounce of their will together. Them against the world. To him, it mattered more than anything in the world. He doesn’t feel the pain anymore, but he has the scars. He laughs at old memories, but it burns to realize that is no more.

He felt it, the sonder, as he sat alone at home.

Rainy Day digital photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

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Brown Girl

by Indigo Mudbhary, inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”

“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”

- President William McKinley

Thoughts in Shadow digital photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

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practice your Nepali three times a day; don’t ever forget your mother tongue; always speak English outside the house or people will think you’re a terrorist; here’s how to fold dough into a samosa; here’s how to make mattar paneer; here’s how to make the perfect momo; here’s how to make the perfect momo sauce; here’s how to make a peanut butter sandwich for school so the other kids don’t make fun of you; here’s how to wrap a sari; here’s where to put your bindi; here’s how to cry during a Bollywood movie; here’s how to smile and nod when a white boy makes jokes about eating with your hands; here’s how to get good grades; always tell your relatives you want to be a doctor even if you don’t want to; never have sex or do drugs until you’re at least thirty-five; here’s how to fulfill your father’s big American dream; don’t worry about slurs because even though they say Paki here they don’t do it too often; here’s how to be an American; here’s how to be Nepalese; always be more Nepalese than American but don’t be too Nepalese or people will think you’re a fucking curry muncher and we can’t have that; here’s how to say namaste to your auntie; here’s how to say namaste to your uncle; here’s how to say namaste to someone you want to be friends with; here’s how to say namaste to someone you don’t like at all; here’s how to make thukpa; here’s how to make a mandala; always buy sand for a mandala from Michael’s because they have the best colored sand in America at least; here’s how to not seem too American when you visit your relatives; here’s how to not seem too Nepalese at school; always laugh politely when someone confuses Nepal with Naples even if it annoys you; here’s how to point out Nepal on a map for white people; here’s how to turn a prayer wheel; never give food to a monkey even if it’s cute; this is where you put your statue of ganesha; this is where you put your statue of ganesha when friends come over; this how you pray to a god; this is how you pray to multiple gods; this is how you ask a god for something; this is how you ask multiple gods for something; here’s how to light a diya; here’s how to be a good Auntie; here’s how to be a good cousin; don’t be mean to white people who say Nepal is basically India, they don’t know any better; don’t be mean to white people; don’t be mean to white men; don’t be mean to powerful white people; just don’t be mean to white people; here’s how to place an offering at a temple; here’s how to receive tikka; don’t wipe your tikka off your forehead even if it itches; stay calm during airport security screenings or else you’re essentially a terrorist; here’s how to explain the difference between hinduism and hindi to a white person but it’s better if you don’t at all; don’t dye your hair it never looks good on brown people; here’s how to whiten your skin just a little bit; here’s how to approach an elephant; here’s how to approach an elephant in the room; here’s how to make the perfect dal; here’s how to make the perfect dal bhat; always finish your food; here’s how to be a brown person in America but really you should just try to be more white because we don’t want anyone thinking that you’re some fucking terrorist.

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Numbers at Home

by Carolyn Lau

Three solitary classes Fourteen dark boxes A lone laptop whirrs

Staring acrylic on canvas by Kaito Uesugi

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Checklist

by Danielle Park

Y

ou can never remember if you’ve packed everything before going on a trip. Now, more than ever, it matters that you remember. You hate turning the car around and wasting your time going back to fetch things you forgot. Anyway, relax, the school is only in Southern California, so if you really forgot something you technically could drive back home to San Francisco to grab it.

Going through a mental checklist in your head of the things you must pack, you begin with the bare necessities. Underwear, socks, toothbrush, glasses. Yeah. You see them piled up in your massive black suitcase. Clothes…

Did you pack your blue t-shirt that you made in Ms. Ashenfelter’s class? With the little drawings of sand crabs, like the ones you dug up from Ocean Beach with Maya and Teresa? You can’t go to college without that shirt. That would be the end of the world. And what about those Levi’s jeans with the patchwork your sister did on them to make them look cool and unique… you wonder where those are.

They always made you feel like you fit in with the hipsters on Haight street… You walk into your little sister’s room and find them strewn on the floor. She always steals your clothes because you are the same size now, and you think it’s sort of frightening that you can remember when she was born and now she’s stealing your jeans. You don’t like to think about these things.

Getting a little flustered, you check off all the necessities in your mental packing list and move on to the decorations you want to take for your dorm room. Of course, you packed your poster of the Golden Gate Bridge that your friend from school made. You secretly think he’s sort of an ass but you’re still friends because he’s been your neighbor forever. Will you be able to make friends at this new place? Whatever. Never mind. You think the poster will look really nice in your new dorm room. Oh! You almost forgot that you wanted to bring one of your ribbons from a horseback riding competition. The big blue one with the ribbon tails that were the length of your legs and the medallion part that is the size of a dinner plate. The horse you won that ribbon on just found a new owner and 62

you cried when it got sold. Not just because you were going to miss the animal itself, but also because your career as an equestrian was over for now, and your big blue ribbon is all you will allow yourself to keep from that time in your life. Should you pack your Chanel perfume? You still laugh that you made your parents buy that for you for your eighthgrade graduation present. You take the top off and dab a bit on your neck. It smells like clean laundry, but it’s fainter than you remember. In your mind, middle school was not even that long ago, and you wonder who let you grow up so fast. You wish you could stop thinking about growing up, but you can’t.

You give up on remembering if you packed everything and you spend your time watching movies with your family until the day comes for you to drive down to college.

In the car with your family, you wonder why you cannot feel excited about leaving. Unlike most other kids your age, you would be happy staying home for a little bit longer. Your life had finally been going in the direction that you had been wanting it to go. You actually liked your friends now and your riding was finally getting really consistent, and you were getting along with your parents for the first time in a while. Why did it have to come to an end so soon?

Just as you were pulling onto the street of your new school, after some six or seven hours of driving in the car, you have this terrible realization. You forgot your ___________ and you have to go back home to get it. It is essential. Absolutely. You decide to block out next weekend as a time for you to drive back to San Francisco to grab it. Your parents laugh at you.

Banana Leaves graphite on paper by Cara Steele

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Sundays with Mom

by Ali Saranceni

T

he Alameda Flea Market used to be one of my highlights of the month. The first Sunday of the month, my mom and I would jump out of our warm beds at 8 a.m. sharp, throw on some ratty clothes at 8:01, apply long-lasting sunscreen at 8:05, and walk our three tiny pups at 8:10. Our aim was to hop in our 2009 Subaru Forester by 8:20. No coffee, no breakfast. We could wait. On the way to the flea market, I would play calm R&B music while giving my mom directions. By the time we arrived, it was a little after 9 a.m.

The Alameda Flea Market attracted all sorts of interesting people. In the parking lot, middle-aged mothers unloaded Lexus SUVs full of their teenage daughters and their friends probably on the hunt for Levi’s jeans. Just outside of the entrance, young couples pushed strollers and carts of antique furniture with chipping pastel paint they just acquired, maybe to put in their babies’ rooms. Their unruly toddlers ran between other parties, almost tripping an older woman.

She grimaced at the child and frowned at the parents before waddling away. Right inside the market, bald men wearing oversized white t-shirts sat on benches drinking the beer from the drink stand while their families shopped. A few rows in, at a vintage jewelry booth, older women wearing flowing skirts came across bakelite bangles that spoke to them. I watched them try on the brightly colored bracelets.

My mom told me those colors weren’t as rare as many of the ones she collected. Twenty feet further down the aisle, teenagers wearing red sunglasses and low-rise jeans took selfies in a rusty, gold-tinted, vintage mirror. Across the aisle, a man sold an overpriced Ferrari deadstock t-shirt to a young woman. I had come across the same t-shirt countless times in different booths, ranging anywhere from five dollars to sometimes even forty.

On the outskirts of the market, there were rows of food trucks. Young men flipped steak burritos on the grills. My mom—a strict pescatarian, except for white-meat chicken and turkey—covered her nose with her fleece scarf to avoid the smell of the grilling meat. With each burrito, they handed out a styrofoam cup of piping-hot coffee. When we would walk through areas that smelled like cooking meat, she would

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steer us away until it smelled like used clothing and dusty antique furniture once again.

My mom and I always spent our first hour wandering around, exploring the different booths before making decisions. Sometimes, we would run into people I knew from school, friends’ moms, or bakelite bracelet sellers that my mom knew. Sometimes we would get a cup of the not very good coffee from a food truck, just to hold something warm.

Sometimes I would get a fancy donut or açaí bowl from one of the other vendors, depending on if I was hungry. Sometimes we would split up, as my mom would want to go inspect bangles to make sure they were really vintage bakelite and not lucite, while I would rather dig through a bin of vintage t-shirts.

Sometimes we would go to the booths with piles and piles of Carhartt, Levi’s, and Ben Davis work pants and jeans—all laid on the concrete in front of the vendor’s table—and my mom would help me dig through the stacks until we came across something smaller than a men’s 32. Sometimes we would visit musty-smelling booths and find five-dollar cashmere sweaters to remake into sweaters for our dogs. Sometimes we would each spend a hundred dollars, and other times we would spend hardly anything. We always enjoyed the adventure to the market, though. It was an escape from everything we needed to do back at home.

We found some of what we deemed treasures. My mom brought home a rare, jet-black, carved bakelite bangle from Tara, her favorite bakelite vendor. I bought a bright orange Guinness t-shirt with a faded picture of a toucan printed on it. She brought home a translucent, pink-tinted vase to put in the kitchen with a single sunflower. I found a vintage Lee denim jacket that maybe had belonged to a kid before, as it was perfectly fitted and different from the oversized work jackets that usually filled the racks. She bought a pair of vintage Levi’s button fly jeans that she could wear when volunteering at Family Dog Rescue and wouldn’t worry about the dogs chewing the ankles. I found orange Levi’s jeans. She found yellow Dickies work pants that she gave me for Christmas. She found a tiny, sterling silver spoon to keep in our sugar jar. I found a black North Face fleece in great condition for only 40 dollars—at least $150 if it were new. She found

another bakelite bangle, this time yellow with black polka dots fused in. There’s a name for that (that I should know, considering my mom has collected bakelite for my entire life), but I don’t remember it.

After spending all the cash we’d brought and tired of digging through racks, or often just running out of time between dog walks, we’d head back to the car.

These days were different than most others. Neither my mom nor I spent tons of time doing things for ourselves.

I was always rushing from school to sports and back home to do homework and to bed to get enough sleep and repeating the process over and over and over. Occasionally I would find time to hang out with my friends on the weekends between homework assignments. My mom spent her days walking three dogs five times a day, feeding them three different meals, and giving subcutaneous fluids to one of the aging pups through an IV. On Mondays and Saturdays, she worked in the boutique in Cole Valley, selling sweaters and shirts to wealthy women in their forties, fifties, or sixties. She scheduled appointments for me, my dogs, and herself, and picked up prescriptions. Many times, while on-hold, she walked around the house picking up dog hair or dusting nooks and crannies to avoid wasting time. She went grocery shopping, prepped and cooked dinner, picked me up from school, cleaned the house, managed projects for the building, ran errands, and completed many more boring tasks that needed to be done.

We always ate dinner together on weeknights except when I was at my dad’s house. She often would cook chicken breast, sweet potatoes, and broccoli; mixed bean and vegetable soup in the winter; a medley of roasted vegetables; chicken kale Caesar salad; or some sort of pasta. Very rarely would we order take-out, and if we did, we always picked it up instead of getting it delivered. She thought getting food delivered was pure laziness, although I didn’t agree. Every night, we would discuss our lives at dinner with each other, usually talking far past the moment our past our food was finished. Many times, we would sit at dinner until I checked the time, realized it was 9:30 p.m, and got up because I had lots of homework to finish.

Going to Alameda was our special time. Although I did usually have homework I saved for Sundays, I would put it off until the evening. Neither my mom nor I were stressed about getting home and doing what we needed to do (except walking the dogs, of course). Instead, we cherished our time together and wanted to enjoy ourselves as much as we could.

On the drive home, as I stared through the window at the water and listened to the calming voice of Ari Lennox through the Subaru’s speakers, my mom asked if I was

hungry, how much homework I had, and if I wanted to do anything later. Some of these Sundays, we would go home, walk the dogs, and go right out to continue our special day.

Sometimes we would walk to Zazie, a delicious brunch place in my neighborhood, and wait outside among the many others hoping for one of the few tables in the tiny, French-style, brick-walled restaurant. We stood beside a group of millennials, fitted in striped t-shirts, cardigan sweaters, and brown canvas sneakers without logos. On the other side of us were two young men, both towering over six feet, wearing statement outfits with complementary colors. One of the men had his buzzed hair bleached silver, contrasting with his carmel skin. He wore pants made up of quilted denim in primary colors with a white windbreaker and firetruck red Nike sneakers that looked hardly worn. The other man, with his black hair braided tightly against his head, wore red canvas work pants, a denim bomber jacket, and white sneakers painted tastefully with tiny multi-colored Louis Vuitton logos. They looked like models, standing in the sunlight with their clear skin, chiseled facial structure, and lean builds. Inside the restaurant, large families sat at small tables sharing plates of eggs, pancakes, fish, meats, sandwiches, and more. Some of the tables looked to be made up of three generations—older women with white curly hair reached behind younger adults to grab sleeping babies from their strollers. My mom and I waited until Mario, the host, motioned us to come inside and offered us a small table in the window. Mario, all of five feet, was dressed in a pink button down, black slacks, a grey sweater vest, and a red patterned bow tie. My mom told him he looked dapper.

We sat down and scanned the menu. I was starving, as I hadn’t eaten a donut or pastry or anything at the flea market. We didn’t come here much, as the wait was often hours long, so when we did, I always had trouble choosing a meal to order. Because the day was special, my mom let me order buttermilk pancakes that came with fruit and whipped cream and also get scrambled eggs. She ordered a scramble with spinach and goat cheese, because along with meat, she wasn’t a fan of sugar or carbs.

At brunch, we reflected on our day and talked about our upcoming week. We tried to avoid topics like tests, chores, stuff that needed fixing, and other stress or tension-inducing topics. We indulged in delicious food and watched the other restaurant visitors do the same. We enjoyed the aroma of the baking of fresh bread, the sauteeing of seasonal vegetables, and the brewing of strong coffee.

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Go

by Natalie Keim Go is my word of beginning. As in, “go!” at the start of a race—the sound that makes you pick up your heels and pump your arms until you no longer feel the strike of cleat against rubber. As in the “go” of heartbreak, the I-never-want-tosee-you-again “go,” which begins the new chapter in which you are strangers.

As in “go” streaming out of your supporters’ mouths as you start some new journey, perhaps a soccer game, or law school. As in the “go” screamed out of the car window behind you at a stop sign, beginning the period in which you are no longer daydreaming, and instead hurdling down the great highway with your sunroof down. Perhaps it is the “go” of a mother dropping her daughter off at the airport, the genesis of a period of independence at college, rebirth of both mother and child. And perhaps it is “go” as in go-screw-yourself, the beginning of your life freed from toxicity. Go into overdrive, go off on a tangent, go with the flow, go out of your way, go through the motions, go for broke. And so possibly, as much as “go” is beginning: of movement, of emotion, of new chapters, of victory, “go” is also ending: of stillness, of complacency, of calm.

Drifting digital photo by James Spokes

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Kitesurfing Lessons

by Theo Willis

A

n older, hunched-over Asian man with a pigeon-toed gait, walked towards me. There was a worn American flag on his baseball cap. His dark flip-flops were molded to his feet, the edges curled upwards cradling his foot.

He introduced himself as Trang and said he was my kitesurfing instructor for today. I had trouble understanding him.

Then he told me to ready my gear. He sat down and continued to drink his Mountain Dew. His swimsuit rode up slightly and I noticed he was wearing a knee brace.

280 Northbound - Daly City – 2000: Trang was returning from seeing his brother in Los Angeles. Around midnight, he got sleepier and sleepier until his eyelids became too heavy to lift. When he opened his eyes, he was driving off the highway. The car flipped down a large ravine before coming to rest and catching fire. A family saw the whole incident and ran down to pull Trang out of the car before it was swallowed by the flames — Since this wasn’t my first lesson and I was on my way to being a proficient kitesurfer, Trang deemed me worthy of going out and getting some time on the open water. I went through all of the safety checks with him, and he made sure I wasn’t rushing through anything. As I was getting ready to launch my kite he warned me: “Remember, you must be ready to eject if you need to” — 3rd Avenue Lower Launch - Foster City – 2005: Trang was getting out of the water after a day of kitesurfing. He had decided to head in, because at 35 knots the wind was becoming dangerous and he knew he wouldn’t be able to control the kite anymore. He walked up onto the beach and signaled that he wanted to land his kite. A woman understood his intentions and went to help catch his kite. Once she caught it, she began to bring it down out of the wind, but then she lost her grip.

When she tried to grab it back, it was already too late. The kite caught the full force of the 35-knot wind and dragged Trang down the beach. He was helpless to stop. As he was toppling end over end he realized that he was about to hit a concrete retaining wall. He woke up in a hospital bed. The nurse told him that he had been put into a medically-induced coma and had been asleep for three months.

I noticed that other kiters were coming in. I asked Trang if we should still go out.

“Don’t make your decisions based on the actions of

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others, just take advantage of today,” he said.

We walked out into the surf until I was belly deep in the grimy Bay water. Trang gave the signal and we began riding.

As I was still fairly new to the sport, I was having considerable difficulty staying upwind; Trang with his years of experience had no problem at all. I kept on trying to keep my line but I was always getting pushed off of it. Trang continued to yell at me, “Stay up! Stay up!”

In Route to Phu Quoc, off the coast of South Vietnam — Feb 1975: In an attempt to escape the violence of the Vietnam War, Trang’s family spent most of their remaining savings on a small boat to get from Vung Tau, a smaller coastal city south of Saigon to Phu Quoc, a small island south of Cambodia.

During the journey, Trang was awoken by his brother yelling, “The boat is sinking! The boat is sinking!” The boat had sprung a leak, they desperately bailed water for a couple of hours. Then a fisherman saw them and came to their rescue, selling them a water pump that would keep them afloat until they made it to the island.

I continued to fight the kite, hoping that I would eventually get it to do what I wanted. I just couldn’t get it under control. And then as if someone had flipped a switch, the wind died. All of a sudden I felt myself slowly coming to a halt and then sinking into the bay. Without any resistance keeping it airborne, my kite floated down to the water. I tried desperately to bring the kite back up into the air so I could try and get back to shore but it just wouldn’t rise — Gulf of Thailand - May 1975: South Vietnam had officially surrendered to North Vietnam and Trang’s family knew it was time to leave Vietnam entirely. Trang and his family set out for Thailand, hoping to escape Vietnam before it would be impossible. A leak let a significant amount of saltwater into the boat’s engine, and by the time they were in the middle of the ocean, the engine had stopped working. They were completely alone with nothing around them except water for as far as anyone could see. They began drifting. Their food and water supply was dwindling; they had no plan for fhow to survive.

The family was stranded for four days and three nights.

On the evening of the fourth day, Trang saw a triangle on the horizon. At first, he didn’t believe that it was real, having experienced mirages before. As the triangle got larger and larger it became clear that it was a real boat and that they

would be saved. As it got closer though, the markings on the ship became visible and they realized it belonged to the Vietnam People’s Navy. As the communist soldiers interrogated the family one by one, they eventually convinced their captors that they weren’t fleeing Vietnam. Trang and his family were returned to the island. Every day they bought new food, fuel, and supplies at the market. To avoid being detected by the communists, they would package the supplies in plastic bags and, under the blanket of night, swim to their boat and store the supplies on board. They were eventually able to gather enough supplies without arousing suspicion to set out again and flee to a refugee camp in Thailand.

I eventually made it back to shore after floating for some time. Trang walked to me and said, “I’ve been stuck in the water twice,“ and then he said, “Sometimes that’s how it goes.”

I was annoyed, a bit angry. “Maybe we should’ve taken the hint from the other kiters and not tried to go out.”

Trang laughed, “What would be the point then? You never know what is going to happen tomorrow; live for right now.” Irritated with the cliché, I thought, what do you know?

I kept thinking about Trang, wondering how he came to teach kitesurfing to kids like me. For a class, I was assigned

to interview someone who had taken a unique journey and learn their story. I invited Trang out to dinner to learn more about him. When he arrived, I saw a very different person. He was wearing a navy blue sweater and slacks and his hair was combed down.

That night, he told me about his childhood in Vietnam and how his father died when his airliner blew up in a terrorist attack. He told me about being an orphan and how he survived the war. He told me about fleeing Vietnam as a teenager and being stranded in the open ocean twice. He told me about being stopped with fake documents, and how he survived only because the sun was shining through them, illuminating the identification numbers his interrogators were asking for.

He also told me about becoming the president of his high school’s Vietnamese student union, and about studying engineering and getting a job designing industrial robots. He told me about becoming a U.S citizen, and about returning to Vietnam and falling in love with it again.

He told me other adventures, some of them shocking. He said, “Live like you don’t matter because you don’t.

Don’t try to control what you can’t control, because you can’t.

If you see a pothole in the road, fill it. Do what you can.”

Octopod linoleum print by Rebekka Kivimae

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Hello IV digital photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg

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Forest Path digital photo by Tyler Keim

71

The Birch Tree

by Ben Slaughter

T

here are days in which I could never think to leave this place. The echoing lake, the melodic call of the loon, and the rustling pine groves that glimmer in the soft sunlight are the sounds that make this place magical, but not what makes me stay. Not the crunch of snapping twigs heard with every step I take, not the gentle ripple of the water as my canoe glides through, not even the repeating crackle of burning embers from my nightly fire.

None of those sounds make me stay—because those sounds are the soundscape only on good days. Each beautiful tone is counteracted with a harsh one. On the bad days, the sun gives way for a storm, the lake’s echo turns into a roar and the pine grove’s rustle turns into a swirling chaos of clattering branches and falling pine straw. I can’t even take out the canoe due to the crashing whitecaps on the lake; the twigs, now soggy, turn the crunch of my step into a moist squish and worst of all, the crackling fire that makes my day turns into a gas stove. On days like these there is little that makes me stay, but I still do.

What stays constant through the good days and the bad days is the peeling birch tree up next to the water.

That’s what really makes me stay. Not only is its papery bark perfect for igniting fires, but the individual white tree overlooking the lake provides an unmatched vista. Years ago, when I first came here with my dad, that same tree provided the same comfort as it does today.

I came here for the first time when I was six. We only stayed for one night but the anticipation I had for that night beforehand was palpable. To my dad, this campsite was his escape. Sometimes he would go up there alone for a week at a time leaving my mom, sister and I at the house. When he was home, he wasn’t much of a talker but when he did, he would talk about the campsite. My sister took no interest, but I was in awe. So that weekend was a huge deal for me.

The only sounds on the way up were from my badgering questions and his simple grunts in response. As the fourlane highway shifted into a one lane road and finally into a dirt path, it became quieter. We eventually made it to the campsite and as soon as my dad opened my child-locked 72

door I sprinted towards the glassy lake. But I was stopped suddenly by the claw of my dad.

“Before you play by the lake we have work to do,” he said. First, it was to unpack the car. Not too bad. We only brought essentials, so it went quick. Then we set up the tent.

Today is not one of the good days. I am cooped up in the tent for the entire day watching the sides of the tent flap in the wind and rain. I am just waiting for it to be time to go to sleep. As the day moves on, the wind only gets faster and the roars of the lake louder. It is looking like I won’t be able to make a fire to heat up dinner tonight. I look out through the small peephole in the side of my tent, out towards the lake and the peeling birch tree. The tree is unfazed. The seemingly delicate bark, that under the grasp of my hand would tear like paper, shrugs off the rain and the deep roots counteract the wind, holding the tree firmly into the soil.

For the tree, the rain provides nutrients, and the harsh weather does not seem to hurt it at all. It takes what is sent to damage and uses it for its own benefit.

The tree reminds me of my dad. Whenever we came to this place when I was a kid he always knew what to do. He knew all of the best places to search for firewood by heart, he could paddle the canoe through the choppy lake with authority, and he would peel just the right amount of birch bark from the tree in order to not hurt the tree and also have enough to start the fire.

I remember one day in particular. I was in second or third grade, I can’t quite remember, and our trips to the lake had become a sort of tradition. The first weekend of every month we would pack up the beat-up Toyota Land Cruiser and start the trek. It was pretty great because I could leave school early on that Friday and the rest of my class would have to wait.

This day was one of the bad days. The life-providing sun was quickly interrupted by dark clouds leaving nature to fend for itself. Each tree, shrub and blade of grass shook in the wind creating a cacophony of shouting greenery as it fought to absorb the rush of rain. This frenzy of noise and

disorder halted my search for firewood, and I sprinted back to the tent. The tent was no more than a couple of folded and staked tarps that probably let in more water than it kept out, but I huddled in the corner, waiting out the constant rumble of the wind regardless.

It wasn’t until my duet of trembles and tears devolved into a solo act of internal paranoia that I realized that my dad wasn’t beside me in the shelter. The trembles and tears returned. At that point I guessed that he would be back soon but as five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen my hope started to dissipate. It took another five minutes for me to build up the courage to leave my sad, wet corner to search for him. I prepared myself to go on an entire expedition to find him. I took a flashlight (with extra batteries), four cold kosher hotdogs, and an extra jacket in my pack. I took my first step back into the discouraging weather only to find him right away. He was sitting in his Crazy Creek chair up against the white, peeling birch tree, calmly sawing away at a tree branch that had fallen in the storm making perfectly even logs for our fire.

“I heard you crying in there,” he said, still focused on his saw. I dropped my head and nodded cautiously but

my tremble slowed. “Well, now that you are done doing that I need you to trim the twigs off this branch to use for kindling.” His unfazed voice overshadowed the screams of the shaking trees letting me settle in and get to work. The rain seemed irrelevant and the only things in the world that needed attention were the twigs at the end of this branch.

But now I am here alone.

I hear the wind’s howl turn into a screech and the stakes start to jimmy their way out of the ground. My body begins to rise from the ground, the tent with me. The four measly stakes give way, and the tent jumps in the air pulling me with it. The wind thrashes me around, I hit pine branches and get soaked in the rain on the way up. I am clenching onto the synthetic fabric of the tent, trying to find something to anchor to, but I am too far up. I panic. I think about my dad. What would he do? The world is falling down around me but somehow I start to calm.

I am now soaring, using the tent as a sail to catch the wind to push me through the sky. The rain seems to go away, just me, soaring. There is no more storm. There is no more rain. No more howling wind. I glide back down and set the tent next to the trusty birch tree and I walk out.

Apricot Meadow digital painting by Elsa Bosemark

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Sardines

by Journey Moore-Prewitt

O

n the way home, I stop at the corner store down the street from my house and buy a bottle of cream soda, an It’s It, and a can of sardines. “Is your dad in town?” the familiar faced man behind the register asks. I just smile, shake my head, and walk out of the store.

“I’ll be back in five months,” he had said. I didn’t believe him. Or maybe I did believe him. But I now have too much pride to ever say I was so gullible. He left when I was ten, and I had no say. Not when I argued that five months was a long time. Not when he first left and I said I wanted to go with him to grandpa’s funeral. Or a year later when I wanted to visit him to go to grandma’s funeral. Not a year after that, or a year after that.

When I get home from the store, I check to make sure no one is here. Once confirmed, I sit on the bed that I share with my mom and spread out the contents of the plastic bag from the corner store.

I open my bottle of cream soda, take a sip, and sit it on the table, covered in letters and pill bottles, which sits directly next to our bed. I unwrap my It’s It carefully, delicately grabbing each of the top corners of the wrapper, pulling them away from each other. I eat it in small bites as I pace around my house. After I throw out the wrapper of the It’s It, I sit back down on the bed and stare at the rectangular can of sardines waiting next to me.

My dad loved sardines. He used to buy them from the corner store and eat a whole can in one sitting. He’d laugh his hearty laugh and take a seat on the dusty brown couch he usually slept on. He’d rub his hands together and click his teeth, and when he did this it was a signal to everyone around him that he was about to “crack open that bad boy.”

I’d watch him pry open the can of disgustingness, letting the fumes of processed seafood out to wander, and I would scorn him for eating such a smelly slimy food. To taunt me, he would bring the sardines up to his nose and take a deep inhale that would make me gag. The smell was bad then, but, when he left, the smell got worse. I could identify sardines from far away. Instead of feeling the need to gag be74

cause of the smell, my instinct became to cry. I’d become vulnerable as soon as the nasty, pungent smell of sardines made its way into my nostrils, letting out a tear, or two, or even three depending on the day.

I finally get the courage to pick up the cold, metal can and I pry it open. As I do so, I let one tear escape my eye.

I can see his fingers, dirty from work, pulling at the silver tab. I go get a fork out of the kitchen, and two tears leave me. I sit back down and hold the can in one hand and the fork in the other, three tears. I pick up a sardine with the fork, four tears, and the clink of my fork on the bottom of the tin sends a shutter down from the back of my head to the small of my back. I put the fork with the sardine in my mouth, five tears, and for a moment, everything stops. The tear that’s made its way down to my lip stops and looks back towards the eye it came from. My breath stops dancing with the air around me. The cars stop screeching, and even the birds outside of my window stop speaking. Then, seconds later, it all hits me. Like when the oldest child is up to swing at the piñata. Or when you smack the remote over and over because it isn’t working. Or maybe, it’s more like the crash of a light bulb that slipped through your fingertips. I don’t like sardines.

I spit the disgusting, slimy, chewy, rubbery, dense, slippery, squeaking sardine back into the can, six tears. I get up, rush into the kitchen, throw out the can, and push it to the middle of the trash so no one will ever see it, too many tears. The salty tears feel like ants, they crawl down my cheeks and drop to the floor, one after another. I hear the clicking noise of a key jiggling in the keyhole that craves WD-40 and I run into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Somewhere in my tweenage years, I had stopped bringing him up. And when asked about him I would tell strangers made-up stories. “He’s taking care of his family on the other side of the country,” or “he’s traveling for work.” The rare occasion that I asked my mother about him, she’d say, “he’s doing fine.” That’s all I’ve ever gotten. Fine. He’s called me twice and when I asked him how

he was doing, it was always “fine.” Beyond fine, I’m not sure what or how he’s doing, so I began to make it up.

“He’s doing amazing. He’s in Nigeria, where he was born. Where his family is,” I would lie. And I would watch people’s faces light up at the idea that my dad, though not with his own children, could possibly still be a good person.

When I come out of the bathroom I find my brother in the kitchen cutting slices out of a block of cheddar cheese.

“Want some fat cheese?” he asks.

“No, I’m alright.” The stench of the sardines lingers at the roof of my mouth. “Do you ever think about daddy?”

“I do. I mean he’s my father. Why?” “Do you miss him?”

“Of course.”

“Have you talked to him recently?”

“I have.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Fine.”

I nod my head and wander out of the kitchen towards the living room. I turn on the PS4 and start to play Little Big Planet. My brother comes into the room with his saucer of cheese and sits on the other side of the couch, picking up a controller.

“Can I play?”

My brothers, their dad, and I used to play Little Big Planet together whenever I finished my homework. Dad wasn’t very good at the game, but he liked to pretend he was. Whenever he would fail the level he would blame one of us. He would scream, “Where are you guys?!” and “What happened to teamwork!?” And we would all laugh. He would laugh so loud that my mom would scream, “Wayne!

Shut up!” from the other side of the house. Usually halfway through the game he would crawl over us and open the window behind the couch so he could smoke his cigarettes while we played. In between coughs and laughs we would all replay levels over and over again, until he could get them right. To be honest, I was just as bad as him, but I was like nine, so at least I had an excuse.

I was beginning to get frustrated with how easily my brother and I were able to get past each level on our own.

I was older, and dad was gone, so the game didn’t present the challenge it once did. I mean the game wasn’t easy, but it just wasn’t as fun when you both actually understand what is going on.

“Why are you asking about daddy?” he asks.

“It’s been almost seven years since he left.”

“I didn’t even realize.”

My brother was twenty-two when he left, and he’s visited him a couple of times. I think now our dad is in Missouri.

“Do you want to play something else?”

We sit on the couch and play for at least three hours, taking the occasional five-minute break to grab a snack or use the bathroom. We don’t talk about anything but the video game, it was a loud kind of silence. Both of us talking, but neither of us saying anything.

When my other brother comes home (my brothers are twins), he grabs a comptroller and we keep playing in silence. But when my mom comes home, she staggers into the living room, and asks if I finished my homework. I lie and say I did because I know if I tell the truth she will make me stop playing. I play until my mom comes in and makes me go to bed.

The homework due the next day is on my mind, but I know if I pull out my laptop it’ll be obvious that I had lied to her earlier, so I decide I’ll just get to school earlier to do it.

I don’t feel like hearing her yelling. Instead of staying up to do homework, I stay up trying to piece together memories I have of him. Watching soot and dirt wash off of his hands after work. Sitting next to him while he smokes a cigarette and tries to fix my laptop. Riding down the hallway on his shoulders. Sleeping in between him and my mom whenever I had nightmares. Water parks, family dinners, the day he boarded the plane. Crying because he wasn’t back after five months and a day. Awkward phone calls.

“I love you, daddy.”

“You’re my world, Poody.”

“If I’m your world then why aren’t you here?” I never say that part out loud.

So many of the memories I have with him from before he left are slowly fading. What his arms felt like when he would scream “bear hug” and squeeze me so tight I thought I was going to pop. Or his soft, cracked lips that kissed my forehead every night before I went to sleep.

I wonder what would happen if I stole my brother’s phone, called my dad right now, and asked him to come home. Maybe he’ll say “fine” like he always does.

Later that night when my mom gets into bed she asks, “Do you smell sardines?”

Before I can stop myself, I roll over, sit up to face her, and ask, “Do you ever think about daddy?”

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Baldwinsville

by Mila Matos

Here I’m sitting in rustic grass The band began to play Liquid straw hair billowed about Kids howled, a sweet display By the dawn’s early light, we sang Frosted palms held to heart Trembling saxophones spat ​that t​une Blue eyes teared from the start Tugging my tight, kinky updo Defying all the rest With frowning aches, I asked myself Why’s my hand on my chest?

Is America digital photo by Tyler Keim

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77

A Piece of Advice

by Journey Moore-Prewitt

I

(

wish that I would’ve listened to my mom this day.

But there’s no point in should have’s or could have’s because I think regardless, this day would have been inevitable.)

“Keep your hands out of your pockets in stores,” mama whispers. It sounds more like a new rule than advice.

(I know now that it was a new rule, one that I was finally old enough to have to follow. I had just turned eight.) My mom and I are walking through Walgreens, we came just to pick up my grandma’s prescription, but in the back of my mind I know that we’re going to spend at least a hundred bucks here. I just turned eight, mama will let me buy anything I want.

My mom and I walk through the aisles throwing different items into our cart. She throws in some toilet paper; I throw in a bag of beef jerky. She throws in Allegra allergy medicine; I throw in two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Half-Baked ice cream — I know my brothers will want some but I’m not sharing. She throws in trash bags and I throw in a Brita water filter (she makes me put it back). My mom stands in front of the soaps contemplating whether she should get Dove or Ivory. I stop in front of the hairsprays, I wonder which smells better. After sniffing a couple of the bottles, I press the button and have one of the employees unlock the glass (I chose Cantu. I still sometimes use Cantu today).

We travel through each aisle and I’m just barely big enough to push the shopping cart comfortably. Every so often, I try to do the oh-so-mega-cool trick I’ve watched my brothers do countless times. You know the one: I put one foot on the back of the cart, push off with the other, go. I try to ride down the aisle but over and over the cart proves to be the stronger and heavier out of the two of us, and I can only go like five inches, so I give up.

Finally, we make it to the pharmacy line in the back 78

of the Walgreens. This is always the worst part of our trips.

I sigh over and over, very loudly, so my mom knows that I want to leave. For some reason she can’t hear my sighs (she was definitely ignoring me), so I sigh louder and louder and louder, until she tells me to hush. Now, I’m mad. Why can’t she just understand that I want to go home and I don’t want to be here, in this line , anymore?

Irritated, I shove my fists into the shallow pockets of my leggings and storm off to the candy aisle (you might be able to see where this is going). The security guard is looking at me. But he always looks at me and mama, it’s fine. It takes a year for me to get to the aisle, stopping whenever I see something I might want, and rubbing my chin with my forefinger and thumb whenever I can’t decide — the way daddy does it. I march around Walgreens until I get to the aisle filled with neon bags of chocolates and gummies. It’s Christmas time so everything is Santa themed. Lifesavers are my favorite. But so are Crunch Bars. But so are Kit Kats. I’m grabbing all three. With the three candies, I make my way back to the pharmacy line that’s somehow gotten longer. On the way, I decide that three candies is a little too much so I’m just going to take the Kit Kat. I sit the Crunch Bars and Lifesavers next to a roll of Big Roll! toilet paper and continue to mama. Security man’s still staring at me, maybe he likes my outfit. (It wasn’t the clothes he was concerned with but something else I was wearing.)

When I finally reach mama the security man walks up to us. He kind of looks like Vani and Mili (my older brothers)... well, not really, but they’re also security men and they come home every night dressed kinda like this. I wonder where security people get their security clothes.

He stops in front of us.

“Ma’am, I think your daughter has been trying to steal.”

I’ve been what? I don’t steal. I’ve never stolen. You

know who steals? Jay steals. He stole my pencils once. “_______!” my mom screams. Now people are staring at us. I fall in.

(See, when I was younger I would basically fall into my thoughts. I’d ignore everything around me and just watch my thoughts pass me by.) Why is mama mad? I didn’t steal. Should I tell her I didn’t steal or would that make her more angry? Would she think I’m lying? Why is the security man lying? I didn’t steal. I watch my thoughts drift past me.

Should I have picked the Crunch Bar instead? The man and my mama are talking. I think I hear him tell her to check my pockets. Surely now she’ll know this guy is a fraud. My pockets aren’t even deep enough to hide things in them.

Now she’s raising her voice just a little but not screaming. You know that half scream whisper that moms do when they don’t want to draw too much attention? Yeah.

She’s doing that. She’s asking me to take everything out of my pockets. Now mama looks like the security man. I take the Kit Kat out of my pocket and she gets mad. I forgot I put it in my pocket, but it was definitely invisible. I guess my shirt was covering it? But I wasn’t stealing. She didn’t even ask me if I was stealing. I wasn’t stealing. The candy was just in my pocket. I had stopped listening to her and the lying man. I would have put it in the cart but the security man came so fast and I got distracted. I wasn’t stealing. (I wasn’t stealing.)

But my mom wakes me up out of my trance and makes me go to the car. I hope she buys me the Kit Kat. She doesn’t buy me the Kit Kat. And when we get home, she gives both pints of Ben & Jerry’s to my brothers and she eats my beef jerky. My three security men eat my food. From now on, I’ll keep my hands far away from my pockets.

Generations graphite on paper by Peter Brownrigg

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Nights of Change

by Eamon Riley Nights of fire, nights of looting, Nights of broken glass and shooting, Nights of tear gas, nights of screaming, Nights of pain from years of beating, Nights of mourning, nights of feeling, Nights of mothers, sad and reeling, Nights of blame, nights of sides, Nights of strengthening divides, Nights of anger, nights of fear, Nights of voices, loud and clear, Nights of power, nights of strength, Nights of peace to come at length, These nights of tides, these nights of change; The ash that fell, it was not strange.

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A Beacon of Hope in a Burning City digital photo by Andrzej Davis-Krukowski

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Dailies

by Greg Kalman 27 Jan I think it’s time to invest in new linens, ones that feel less like skin, and more like sleep. Linens whose secrets are dust mites, not nostalgic, fiery images.

There is, however, poetry in the horrific pain of abruptly stomping on LEGO bricks, of ice-cold grapes ready after swim practice. There is beauty in the chainlessness of playtime.

His name is sacrosanct and I cannot repeat it. He called me on my birthday, asking me what we’d be doing if he were with me.

I didn’t want to answer. The utterances of such words might stain the immaculate, white linens.

In a month, my self-references have changed from “boy” to “man.” I cried when I noticed it first.

I bathe them in blue and violet light like I’m seasoning a skillet. Maybe this light will seep better, more beautiful images into my skins.

I never wore his sweatshirt, it smelled too much like his creed.

A creed to remain faithful and to love passionately.

30 Jan A sacred garden grew in California—a place where the flora is family.

The mother is a conifer armored with a wide vocabulary for when her roots feel threatened. The father is a pumpkin, whose vines retreat at the witching hour each morning, vines which grow wide leaves and reach onto craft bound for space.

They produced fruits together, two unlike them and one alike.

There is ambiguity about the fourth. The third is a redwood, with winds of freedom blowing through its branches.

31 Jan Childhood’s end comes, daunting. Something as simple as a number ends it. I regularly ask the sky how such a fact can be true; I regularly ask the sky why a part of adolescence is its own end.

There’s nothing poetic to two rounds of nine, nor three rounds of six.

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1 Feb Her name meant dancing, together. We never said goodbye before, I never wanted to.

She was a guardian, someone to look with guiding eyes over the joy of creation. Her head was a hearth of scarlet hues around creative flames— spontaneous combustion outward from the pituitary. Her fire extinguished in an accident adjacent the Acropolis.

Her moon reigns over Athens as Sophie and her music arrives at Elysium.

2 Feb I beg for water, near constantly. I know where to find it, and how to drink it, of course.

There are times in the sweltering, northwestern Minnesotan summer when the commodity of water is one I never leave. At the nurse I fill my bottle; I called it “Krankenwasser,” as did the boy who asked if I loved him.

I float in the lake, ascribing meaning to blurred pillows of cotton-white condensation above.

Water—I can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s like living doesn’t give me enough life.

Bridge Over Still Water graphite on paper by Peter Brownrigg

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Lincoln Park Pool

by Ava Ciresi

T

he sun shone at a high of 102º that day. Everything about it was miserable. Everything except her. Lila Jenkins hops across the burning pavement in her new ruffled bikini, the straps hanging off her useless yellow Billabong flip flops as the soles of her feet sizzle on the pavement. As she looks up, the sign that reads “incoln Park Pool” towers over her, the already disappearing moment of shade hits her like a luxurious wave of air conditioning. The sign has been missing an L since she entered first grade, but the town somehow never came around to funding the singular wooden cutout of a letter. In this town Lila knows everyone, and everyone knows Lila, something that was in no way peculiar for such a small place such as Lincoln.

A set of matching T-rex boxers flies past her as a woman in a deep navy tankini adjusts her straw hat. Instantly she recognizes her as Mrs. Wilkins with her twins. Mr. Wilkins is probably at home somewhere, nose buried in a book.

He will call in approximately twenty-seven minutes asking when dinner would be prepared; Mrs. Wilkins will have to drag her screaming sons to their overheated minivan. She would arrive home to a husband who claimed to have been reading the news all day, yet his answer when asked about the happenings of the world would result in a claim that he was too tired to speak at that moment. He would most likely then climb up the stairs, his loafers sounding a creak in the fifth step, and lay on his freshly made bed, removing his reading glasses as his wife called him down for roast and potatoes.

Lila shifts her gaze over to a bob of shiny curls. She watches as the curls bounce with joy at the arrival of chicken tenders that seem to slather themselves in ketchup as their hostess’ mother obliviously reads a murder mystery in the chair to the right. Lila continues to watch as the chicken’s breaded crust crumbles to the ground and the young girl with her now greasy curls runs to the pool. Her mother moves onto her stomach, engrossed in The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler.

Lila snaps back to reality as a sudden sting shoots 84

through her feet. She winces as she remembers where she’s standing, barefoot.

“You ok?” asks a voice. It’s oddly high pitched, yet raspy, possibly from dehydration due to the pounding sun.

Too high pitched, however, to belong to young Lucy. Lila tries to imagine the voice matching the deep brown eyes and wavy locks of Lucy Greene, a pink and yellow striped bathing suit clashing with her neon green slides. She tries to imagine the toothless grin on the young girl’s face as her damp towel sits lopsidedly on her waist. She can’t. She knows Lucy’s voice well, and this isn’t hers.

“Um, excuse me?” The voice squeaks in a nervous pitch as it rings in the air again. Not Lucy Greene.

Lila turns around, the possibility of a new face exciting and terrifying her at the same time. Ever since she was born, Lincoln had been populated by the same people. Lila could tell who was who by their footsteps on the pavement behind her, and how to tell which parent was picking up the twins by the speed and volume of the engine. A ray of sun blinds her left eye as Lila makes a full turn, prepared for the worst.

Silence.

“I -I saw you burned your foot.” The voice speaks again, cautiously slow, following the past two attempts at prompting a response.

“Yeah, just a sting. Pretty normal around here in the summer.”

“Oh.” More silence.

What feels like ten minutes passes by and neither girl speaks. The mysterious outsider stands at about 5’2”, a couple of inches shorter than Lila. Her stubby knees are pale as snow, a sign she hasn’t been here long. A pink floral sundress sits loosely on her shoulders, hints of purple streak the heart shaped petals. Her hair is bright red, comparable to a fire truck or an overripe tomato, her thin eyebrows match the color exactly. Freckles litter her face just like the flowers on her dress, a singular brown dot on her left earlobe causing a chain reaction, crosses the bridge of her nose and decorates her rosy cheeks. On her feet are a

pair of platform pink flip flops, spots of dried-up glue surround the edges where various plastic gems used to be.

“I like your swimsuit,” says the new girl.

A curve forms in Lila’s lips, almost like a smile.

“Thanks…” she stops as she realizes she doesn’t even know the girl’s name.

“It’s Francine,” the girl says, before Lila gets the chance to ask.

Francine. Lila studies her, trying to fit the name to the burnt shoulders and chipped purple paint on her toes.

Francine. She spells it out in her head as she takes another glance, observing the almost orange strands of hair standing up in the humidity.

“I’m Lila,” she states. She thinks about it for a second, and then, “Would you like to go swimming with me?”

Francine grins as if she’d been waiting for the offer.

“I would love to.”

The two girls head past the sign that still reads “incoln” to the rectangle of space smelling of chlorine and sweat. They leap into the cool water, beads of sweat washing off into the mysterious contents of the pool, an invisible fight starting instantly between compounds of chlorine and the salty dirt rinsing from their skin. They hold their breath as long as they can, lungs sucking the hoarded oxygen as their eyes lock underwater.

*

The girls emerge. Again. The same way they had been emerging for the past three years, then breathless pauses as they descend once more, lasting just as long as the previous one.

To the left is the sign, now finally reading “Lincoln.”

The once T-rex boxers are replaced by ones of a solid sky color, the straws on Mrs. Wilkins’ hat frayed are tattered, her navy tankini stretching at the seams. She closes her eyes, knowing full well her cell won’t be buzzing, the roast and potatoes being one of Mr. Wilkins’ last suppers in the house before he went upstairs to his freshly made bed and never came down, leaving a copy of his plane ticket placed flat on the crisp white comforter. He had flown off to a new beginning, forcing a less pleasant one upon the family he chose to forget—the beginning to a new house with no fifth step that creaked. The beginning to a bed, no longer freshly made as it was occupied by only one now, the need to fold and straighten the sheets no longer relevant. The beginning to a grey SUV, the minivan sitting somewhere in a

landfill, its rubber tires lost in a pile of hundreds more.

The girl with the once bob of shiny curls now lies flat on her stomach engrossed in The Lady in the Lake, she is a spitting image of her mother stationed on the chair beside her. The chicken tenders become a virgin piña colada, a real one probably sitting in the freezer at home waiting for its consumption later that evening.

As for Lucy Greene, her brown locks are turned blonde; she puckers her lips and poses in front of a camera, the life in her eyes consumed by the flash of the Canon Edition 3. Toothless no more, Lucy’s towel sits folded beside her, never damp due to her absence from the water.

*

A curve forms on Lila’s face as the images of her past flash through her memory.

“Thank you,” she says as she grabs a thin wooden stick and a packet of sugar from the cashier at the counter.

Right on time. She steps out into the sun as a grey Honda pulls into the renovated parking lot, a striped umbrella casting a familiar shade as Lila removes her sunglasses from the bridge of her nose. The car door opens, revealing a tall woman, her hair still the same firetruck red contrary to the multiple instances in which it was almost silenced by her mother’s consistent remarks to drown it in a neutral brown, or possibly a beachy blond, depending on the husband she was keen on attracting. An orange blouse flows flawlessly across her body, clashing ever so slightly with the wash of blue jeans hugging her long legs. She, too, lifts her sunglasses, revealing emerald green eyes and eyebrows so clearly embellished to mask their natural thinness. The woman approaches Lila, a smile spreading across her face, stretching from one end of the freckled path to another.

“Lila, it’s nice to see you again,” she states.

“You too, Francine. You too.”

The two women sit under the striped umbrella, a similar one casting a shade for a little girl having a peculiarly miserable day somewhere down the road at Lincoln Park Pool.

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The End of the Line

by Alexandra Pate

M

r. Duke was back in town. It had taken Emily a new coat, fresh boots, better defenses, and two years to wash her hands clean of both of their debts, and yet here he was. Emily Harris found herself at a dirty table on a Thursday night in a leather coat with two six-shooters strapped to her belt. The smell of liquor and men who hadn’t bathed in a while hung like a fog over the loud saloon, but this was her new(ish) home. Above the bustling din in a small room was a small bed positioned in just the right place so that if you stood at the top of Main Street and looked, you wouldn’t know someone had made space for themselves up there. He’d sent her a letter, but other than the neat penmanship with his standard wax seal on it, no maps, letters, or even art furnished her room. The letter was burned as soon as it passed through her shaking hands. He shouldn’t be here. Not after what he’d done. No one needed Stephen Duke’s mess in their life, least of all her.

“What do you want, Stephen?” With one hand on her gun and the other on her beer, she stared him down.

Tension laced every nerve in her body. She should have been comfortable. After all, they had known each other for six years, been friends for five and a half years, and been something else for four.

“Why, Emily, I don’t want anything. It’s been so long...Why can’t we just sit and catch up a little first? I rather miss your company.” The Highway Man of the West leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table. Small chunks of red dirt from his spurs left his worn leather boots and fell into the whiskey he’d ordered. There was a familiar glint in his eyes. One that indicated lust and greed.

“Bullshit. You’d want the sun and stars if you could have them for free.” Her eyes narrowed and her grip tightened on her gun.

“Aw, look at us, Em, bantering like pals again!” If he noticed the way she flinched at his words he didn’t say it.

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“And look at you! Besides the skirt you look just as I left ya.

I see you still keep your hair in that braid of yours...and you kept the revolvers I gave you” She was two seconds away from drawing her gun. No matter who it came from, it was hers now. She could, she should kill him. But instead she leaned forward and gritted out, “What the hell are you doing in my saloon?” She stared him down and just like old times he gave ground after ten seconds. His eyes narrowed in frustration and defeat. It was the look of a gambler whose tell was a little too obvious.

“Straight to business hmm? Well since you asked...” for once, his contradictory warm, brown eyes stared right at her. “There’s a train with various… items entering the depot tomorrow at two o’clock.” As he stretched backward, and the cuffs of his jacket sleeves rode up and his gold watch was exposed; effortless and intentional at the same time.

“It’s a standard passenger steam locomotive. But I’ll tell you about that later. The point is, that train’s gonna make me rich and, you’re the best at what you do, Em.” “You’re the best at what you do, ” Something he said right before he had her in front of some damn lockbox cracking a safe on a steam locomotive barreling down the tracks at 80 miles per hour. It’s not like she didn’t know what she was getting into, but whenever he was around she forgot the risks.

Two years ago was the last time. He’d said it would be easy, in and out. Apparently, he’d miscalculated and she had found herself trapped between the safe and staring down the barrel of two .44 caliber Smith & Wesson. He hadn’t been there to help her. Like he’d promised. Next time she’d be ready. If she hadn’t promised it to him, she’d promised it for herself. That’s who this was all about, to begin with.

“I was the best at what I did. I’m out of the business.”

Feet planted on the floor, hands opened face-down on the table, she said it with the conviction of a person who was

done with bullshit: “Dang it, Stephen, you can’t keep doing this! I am sick and tired of you being so darn hell-bent on getting rich that you forget simple details. Details that could get us killed! That almost got me killed. I don’t want a part of that. Not ever again. So you can take your silk tie and gold watch which I know for a fact you stole, and get the hell out of my life.”

“Fine, but this is just the beginning, my friend. I’ll see you soon.” With a flourish, he stood up and with a sweep of his coat, he’ left. The only thing left on the table was his whiskey glass.

She scowled at his empty chair for sixteen seconds

longer than she should have.. and glared at the table for until she was sure he was out of the area (32 minutes and 24 seconds to be exact) but he wasn’t worth her thoughts or time anyway. Tossing back the rest of her beer, Emily climbed the creaking stairs back to her small room. Never ask a Showman to do a Thief’s job. It was true when he first walked into her life, and it was true now. Reaching the top of the stairs, it became clear that he was desperate. The lock had been picked without any regard for discretion. She knew it as soon as she touched the doorknob. On her desk, lay a gold watch and a note: This could be us.

Serenity graphite on paper by Ella Carter Fenster

87

A Sketch

by Indigo Mudbhary “I love you, Elena! I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you and I can’t stand keeping this secret inside me anymore!”

“Oh, Howard,” said Elena, breathing in a sigh that traveled deep into her uterus.

“I’m in love with someone else.”

“Frank doesn’t love you like I do,” said Howard tenderly. His eyes searched hers for some sort of sign but her face was stone, unmoving and impossible to read.

“I don’t know,” she said and her breasts ached with the difficulty of the decision.

The constant womanly drive that coursed through her veins at every moment to reproduce prickled at what he was saying to her. It was always that at the sound of his voice, estrogen would flood her system and cloud her big, round, watery, womanly eyes from seeing clearly around him, even more so— Ring! Chimed the doorbell, a shrill sound that cut through the room.

The male writer sighed and put down his pen, irritated that the UPS guy had decided to interrupt him right when he finally was in the groove of writing, ink flowing out of his pen more easily than it had in a month.

He stared down at the page he had written, which contained unintelligible scribblings that made sense only to him. He was working on a novel about a love triangle in the 1940s, inspired by the noir movies like Casablanca that he used to watch with his mother when he was much younger. He had decided to have a woman protagonist in this novel—he really was so brave.

“Well,” he sad to himself, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “I may not have made much progress but dear God, I can write women so accurately!” And with that, he took a sip of his Redbull and sighed a deep sigh of contentment, grateful he wasn’t like those other writers who knew nothing about females.

STOP digital photo by Primo Lagaso Goldberg and Jenna Chin

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offer to come, which is of course what a normal person would do, but I think this is something I need to do on my own. Give me some credit though. I’m even traveling across the country in the Volvo.

I’m writing this letter to you, Appa, so I thought you might like it if I write at my next destination. Right now, I’m in the car, so you will find that in my next letter. I’ll be in the Adirondacks.

The Letters

by Mimoh Lee August 6, 2013 Dearest Appa, Though I should have been too young, I remember the first-ever road trip you took us on. It was an early February morning, so a light dusting of snow cascaded from the sky. Every tree, every door handle, every streetlight was frosted at the tips. Tiny clear icicles framed the window causing droplets of water to drip drip drip into the slight crack that leaked into my room. Even my three-year-old self recognized the bustling sounds of New York City — taxi cabs whooshing past our apartment building, the distinct sounds of the too many ambulances coming from every direction, and the loud booms of store owners opening for the morning rush. Umma leaned over my crib; I recognized the glint of her golden butterfly necklace as it caught the light. Her round belly peeked out from under her blocky blue-green striped sweater. The beginnings of a new sibling I didn’t know was coming. The early morning light peeked through the curtains and highlighted the rips and tears in the tattered, second-hand furniture. Every road trip you took us on, we left right at the crack of dawn.

“Pack light, travel early,” you used to say.

I could hear the quiet thump as you tossed the suitcases into the back of the 1985 Volvo you bought for two thousand dollars from Mr. Kim down the block. You said he scammed us.

“Byeong-shin!” you cursed at him as we drove away.

Umma strapped me into my car seat in the back and piled the reused plastic bags filled with food and clothes into the seat next to me. Each container of kimchi or anchovies was carefully wrapped in layers of plastic bags to contain the strong smell. I loved the way the seaweed made the Volvo smell like a beach. After everything was packed (more like shoved into the car) we skidded off on the icy New York streets.

Our first destination was the Adirondack Trail, so that is my first destination on my own road trip. The idea for my solo road trip came from that box of pictures you 90

keep under the coach. Umma asked me to frame my high school diploma -- she wanted to show it off to all her friends from Church, so I squatted next to the coach, cap, gown, high heels and all, to find a picture frame. That was when I stumbled upon the old dust-coated shoe box. As I peeled off the almost fuzzy top, dozens of disposable camera photos flooded out onto the coarse carpeted floor. I instantly recognized each of the labeled envelopes. 1998//Adirondack was scribbled in your handwriting. The words were slightly smudged. Your sleeve must have dragged over the blue letters before it was completely dry. The first picture was of Umma leaning over to put gas in the car. Even at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, her elegant hair was perfectly placed, each curl methodically sculpted into her typical short bob-style. The next picture was of you holding me in my big fluffy winter coat, in front of a massive tree.

A genuine smile was plastered over your face even though my cheeks were a bright pink and I look like I was in tears seconds before the photo was taken.

Picture frame completely forgotten, I was now sitting crossed-legged on the floor sifting through all the envelopes of photos. 2000//Grand Canyon, 2004// Blue Ridge Parkway, the list went on. I spent hours going through every photo; the ones of me and Daniel and Mary punching each other in the backseat. The ones of us forcefully smiling at each destination. At that moment, I just decided I needed to do it again. A road trip to all the places we went as a family. I rushed to the messy, overcrowded mahogany desk in the corner of the living room. Water and electricity bills, old essays, notepads, and photos were spilling out of every drawer. I threw opened the one on the bottom. More papers bulged through the opening, but I dug through until I finally found it. Your special map of the United States. A small red sticker was placed on every one of our destinations. I wanted to use the month of August to do this road trip, and make it to UCLA in time to for start of the fall semester.

I decided not to tell you or Umma or Daniel or Mary or even my friends. I knew that if I told anyone, they would

With love, Jessica

August 7, 2013

Dearest Appa, As I was driving through the New York countryside, I came across a field of little white flowers that reminded me of the snow-kissed trees that sped by in the foggy window of the Volvo back in 1998. Two memories, side by side, 1998 and 2013, winter vs. summer, blurred together in my mind. I thought about how you and Umma fought about my name during that car ride.

“Aneyo, we need to call her by her Korean name,” my mom argued. “She can’t be too Americanized. She is a Korean — Ji-young.”

“Yeobo, we will keep calling her Jessica. She will get more jobs with an American name.” Your words seemed so final.

I was only three at the time. I didn’t know what it meant to have a Korean name or an American name. I just liked the way Ji-young made Umma’s lips into an “O” shape. It had such a beautiful sound, but when Umma said Jessica it was with disdain, like a snake hissing. I realize now that was probably because she hated saying it. I was always Ji-young to her. You don’t know this but Umma used to whisper my Korean name to me when she put me to bed, when she bathed me, any chance she got.

“Ji-young,” she used to say. “Ji-young.”

Her secret and mine. It was her poem of love to me.

I don’t know any Korean parents who say “I love you” to their children, but this was Umma’s way of telling me.

I sat down on this big, slightly damp rock earlier. The rock happened to be right across the walkway from where that photo of you and me in front of the tree was taken fifteen years ago. This time I wasn’t crying, Appa. It’s summer now so the snow, ice, frost, and bitter winds have been replaced with a gentle breeze, warm sun rays, hay fever, and bright grass. The tree looked exactly the same, but some of the trees around it were singed at the tops, the result of

brush fires or idiot campers. As I struggled slightly to set up my own tent, the only noise to break the placid wind was the chirp of a sparrow or the distant howl of a coyote. The sun was setting, and I could feel the mosquito pinching my bare legs. I have always been the mosquito attractor in the family.

“You must have sweet blood Jessica,” you used to tell me. “They love sweet blood.” I could feel the little red bumps forming on my thighs, knees, and calves.

I sat down on a log next to my tent and marveled at the glorious patterns of stars above me. They were so clear and piercing without the city lights to dull them. The last time we were here I heard you and mom arguing again, this time about school. I was curled up in my sleeping bag, supposed to be asleep, but your voices seemed to carry through the tent walls and directly into my ears. Though your voices were slightly muffled, I could make out parts of what you said. “...she’s already in a Korean nursery yeobo,” you told mom. “She needs to go to normal American school…. new friends.”

“Michyeoss-eo!”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, but I know I ended up at a New York City public school where there was only one other Asian kid in my class.

When I was in elementary school and the teachers would do roll call, they always seemed confused when they got to my name. The teacher would pause and look at me funny, so all the other kids would turn and look at me too. Once in first grade, a kid sitting in front of me turned around when they said my name.

“Why are your eyes so slanty like that?” He asked me as he pulled the corners of his eyes up. “My mom told me Chinese people eat dogs. Do you eat dogs?”

I was so embarrassed, Appa, I didn’t even know what to say. At that moment, I hated being Korean. I hated being Korean many other times too. When I would open my lunch to find kimchi, rice, and bulgogi from Umma all the other kids would hold their noses and laugh at my food. That day when I got home from school, I asked Umma to make me “regular” food like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“Ji-young,” she said to me. “You are a Korean. You eat like a Korean.”

“No, I hate Korean food!” I screamed at her.

I was too little to understand why it was so important for her to make Korean food for my lunch. Umma yelled at me and made me clean the bathroom after that. I was so angry at her for making me eat Korean food and then scream91

ing at me, but later that night I heard her softly sobbing in the bathroom.

I will write again.

With love, Jessica August 9, 2013 Dearest Appa, I very quickly realized I cannot make it to all of the destinations we have ever visited. I knew at the back of my mind I wouldn’t be able to get to all of them. Ultimately, it comes down to gas. It’s really expensive. I’m going from the Adirondacks to the Blue Ridge Parkway, to Mount Rushmore, to the Grand Canyon. It’s really far between all those places, but I’m going to stop along the way. Maybe I will find new places for you to visit.

The drive from the Adirondacks to the Blue Ridge Parkway is supposed to take fifteen hours and eleven minutes. At least, that is what I read online.

I ended up stopping at a Best Western in D.C. I plan on sleeping here and getting up early the next morning to drive; “packs light, travels early,” like you always say. Now that I am here though, the lights flicker in a supernatural kind of way, and I’ve been eyeing a suspicious stain on the carpet for the past twenty minutes. The BLT I got for dinner was a little too damp for my taste and the only good thing about this hotel room is the hot shower and fresh soap. After sleeping in a tent for two days, even a Best Western bed feels like a pillow of delicate clouds. Despite the murder scene of a room and all, I can already feel my eyes closing.

With love, Jessica

Remembering charcoal on paper by Ana Huseby

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August 10, 2013 Dearest Appa, I managed to get to the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I stopped for a bit before, just to prepare myself for more driving. The air still feels warm, but this time there’s a crisp smell to it. As I began driving down the parkway, I instantly felt a wave of calm rush throughout my body. It’s nothing like when we came here in October. At that time I was nine, as I remember, sitting in the back with Daniel and Mary, being in awe of the colorful orange and red trees. They looked like they had been kissed by one end of a rainbow. The sky was a deep purple-y blue, so all the trees really stood out. It was like a fairytale world had

just been dropped between Virginia and North Carolina.

I almost expected a fairy or a dragon to emerge out from the leaves of a tree. Daniel, Mary and I were pushing and shoving each other, trying to get closer to the window. It was the perfect fall day.

Summer Blue Ridge Parkway is completely different but equally majestic. This time the trees are a deep comforting green. The grass is tall and soft. Little colorful flowers are scattered everywhere. It was midday by the time I started driving it. Watching the sky change as I drove peacefully on the cautious road. At noon the sky was a lovely blue.

Only a few clouds floated in and out of view. By four the sun had completely shifted and a deeper, heavier blue had begun creeping upwards into the sky. Around seven thirty the sun began to slowly set and the sky erupted with pinks, purples, oranges, yellows, and reds. The colors swirled around each other in a dance, chasing after a ribbon of clouds. It seemed to instantly placate any unrest in my soul. I opened my windows to feel the cool air kiss my cheeks and I could practically taste how fresh it was.

The whole Blue Ridge Parkway is supposed to take twelve hours to drive, Appa, so I stopped at a cheap hotel called the Super 8 in Charlotte. Like the Best Western, it was the cheapest I could get, but all I wanted was a warm comfortable bed.

This morning when I continued driving down the parkway, I woke up at four thirty to make sure I caught the sunrise to complete the whole cycle. The blue of the night sky faded into a salmon color that rose up, getting more and more orange and yellow until the sun peeked over a hill.

The shadows cascaded over the trees and the morning air was so clean. The kind of air that makes you forget about pollution. Spending the day on the parkway was therapeutic. It was a curvy, but slow drive. The Volvo managed to make it the whole way. I found the same place to pull over as where we stopped in 2004. It felt amazing to go on the same hike and stretch my legs. The soft dirt squished under my feet and the world was silent. A small squirrel dashed in front of me, intent on snatching up a tiny acorn. I watched the squirrel scurry up a tree and disappear into the mysterious leaves. I pulled a picture out of my bag, the one of me and Mary and Daniel standing at the top of this hill, beaming. Mary was on my back and Daniel was jumping behind us trying to get bunny ears on us for the photo. Mom was yelling at him to stop, but even she couldn’t help but smile.

That was the happiest day our family ever had.

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I will write again, Appa.

With love, Jessica August 11, 2013

Dearest Appa, I planned out my stops on my way to Mount Rushmore. Right now, I’m writing from Nashville. Then I’ll drive to St. Louis, Kansas City, and then to South Dakota.

I found this little Church and I’m sitting on a bench outside. It’s a beautiful church. A multicolored stainedglass window is reflecting light on the old red brick walls.

Surrounding it are tall oak trees and perfectly manicured lawns. It doesn’t really look like our Church, but it brings up a rising feeling of both comfort and terror. I can’t bring myself to go in. I think I’ve been staring at the doors for an hour, maybe two. I remember going to Church every Sunday. I wore those shiny Mary Janes that I loved, but Umma made me put on some scratchy dress that I would always shift around in. She would smack me in the back of the head.

“Focus on Jesus Christ and God, and the itching will stop,” she told me.

Even at age four, Mary, in her dress and shoes, would be sitting in the pew with perfect posture. Umma would smile gently at her and I would roll my eyes at her back.

This Church feels so familiar, almost home-like, but it also makes me uncomfortable. I don’t think I will go to Church in college, Appa.

I once overheard Umma gossiping with her Church friends.

“Did you hear?” Ms. Sung whispered to Umma and Ms. Kim. “Ms. Cho’s son is a homosexual!”

All the women gasped hysterically.

“I always knew something was wrong with that boy!”

Ms. Sung exclaimed a little too triumphantly. “I once saw him smoking a cigarette outside church!”

Umma shook her head. “We must pray for him. Poor Ms. Cho, she doesn’t have any other sons.”

I didn’t understand then — the churning feeling in my stomach and the bitter taste that rose in my mouth when they said these things. I didn’t understand when I got that same feeling during Paster Yu’s sermon about marriage being between a man and a woman only. I definitely didn’t understand at Homecoming why Elizabeth Carrey’s smile made my whole world spin. I didn’t understand for a very long time.

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August 1-, 2013 Dearest Appa, I am standing here, staring at the heads of four men.

I wonder how long it took to carve those heads. All around me other tourists are taking pictures, smiling in front of these heads. It’s sort of a funny thing, an obsession with these heads. I remember when we came here last. It was a hot day, not the pleasant kind, but the sticky, wet shirt kind.

The car was sweltering hot. Normally the heat made us all bicker, but it was so hot we couldn’t even talk. We were all little, all us kids. The walk seemed so far, but you were determined. Umma brought this little picnic basket. I wasn’t expecting the heads to be that interesting. I remember a little blond boy ran past me, chasing after a big golden dog.

I just decided that we should have a good time then.

Daniel was only two, and Mary just a baby, but I took Daniels hand and led him to this little shady spot under a tree.

“Umma, Appa!” I called.

I set down the blanket and the basket and I held the baby. My little five-year old self, determined to bring joy to your face and Umma’s face, and Daniel’s too. Quietly, we gobbled down kimchi and gimbap, just staring at these four huge heads. It was a peaceful happiness, but it was happiness.

Now, looking at these heads I feel that same kind of peace. It’s quiet, it’s gentle, but kind.

I will write at the Grand Canyon, my very last stop.

Nan dangsin-i geuliwoyo Appa.

then you stopped calling me your perfect girl when Mary became your perfect girl. You asked me once, Appa, why I hate Mary so much. Whenever you were angry at me you always told me she was the better daughter because she loved Jesus better. But that is why I need to keep Mary away. If Mary found out that I don’t love men the way she does, she wouldn’t love me at all. I don’t think you or mom would either. I don’t hate Mary, Appa. I am afraid of her. She is your real perfect girl. The perfect girl I never was.

Daniel and I don’t believe in Jesus like you. That’s why he knows. I never wanted to tell you that I have feelings for women the way I am supposed to have feelings for men.

I didn’t want to tell anyone because I know it means losing you and Umma and Mary and Hal-abeoji and Halmeoni and my friends and the Church. I am sorry to disappoint you, Appa, but it’s who I am. And trust me, Appa, I tried to change, I really did. Remember all those times I threw up before school or Church? I was so nervous — I got sick even thinking about it.

The final destination of my solo road trip was the Grand Canyon. It was a perfect day — bold blue skies without a single cloud in sight. I could hear the hawks screeching and more tourists chattering. The air was light but warm on my skin. I stood at the very top, overlooking the deep, shadowy rock and I screamed the words you never once said to me.

“Manh-i manh-i salangheo, Appa.”

As I drove across the country in our Volvo, I played the recordings you made of Umma singing on those cassette tapes that nobody uses anymore. The softness of her voice was often interrupted by my giggling or the course sound of your voice teasing Umma in that endearing kind of way. It was like all those scenes in the movies — I was driving in the middle of nowhere, with my windows down, blasting music. I felt a kind of freedom that I never felt at home; it’s a light, airy, kind of freedom. Not the kind that marches down the street with an American flag singing the national anthem. Like a bird maybe, gently soaring through the wind. I hope you feel that kind of freedom too, Appa.

With love, Jessica

With love, Jessica

With love, Jessica

August 13, 2013 Dearest Appa, This will only be a short letter because I want to get on the road early tomorrow morning. It’s 10 hours from Kansas City to Mount Rushmore. I’ve been exploring the

August 19, 2013 Dearest Appa, When I was little you used to call me your perfect girl. My cheeks would hurt because that made me smile so much. I could feel the warmth bubbling under my skin. But

With love, Jessica August 12, 2013 Dearest Appa, You’ve never been to St. Louis either. It’s a nice city, but it’s no New York, of course. The only thing I know St. Louis for is the Gateway Arch. I didn’t know it was called that until I looked it up on a computer at this random cafe. I was going to ask the woman at the cash register, but I don’t think she likes me very much.

“My brother lost his job at a factory because of you Chinese,” she sneered at me. “All you people do is steal jobs. Just go back to your own country.”

I almost lost it, but I didn’t want to make a scene, Appa. I just frowned at her and walked away. They always think we are Chinese. It’s not better though, when I tell them I’m Korean. They just think I’m some North Korean spy. People are ridiculous.

I don’t know how I feel about the arch. It’s a shiny silver color, like Ms. Kong’s car. I stood under it, a long rectangular shadow casting over my head. It’s a beautiful monument. It’s supposed to represent “America’s Growth.”

About as American Dream as it gets, I think.

Remember that time we took a road trip to New Orleans, Appa? We stopped at a gas station just outside the city and you and Umma were arguing about how much gas to get. We all went inside the gas station to buy snacks and the cashier followed us around with his eyes. Watching our every move. Umma was so frightened but told us there was nothing to worry about. We are Americans after all. As we walked out of the store no one else saw, but the cashier spit at us. I was eleven then and he spit at me.

“Yeobo, don’t put so much in, it’s expensive,” mom complained. “Yeogi-yo…” She put the nozzle back in the machine “Jungji,” you grabbed it back. “We need more.”

No one noticed that I got inside the car as quickly as possible and slammed the door.

city a lot. Honestly Appa, there’s not a lot here. No Korean groceries. A few churches. I’m glad I’m not going to school in a place like this. I plan on getting to LA a week before orientation so I can get to know the city. There are a lot of Korean people there. A lot of restaurants, groceries, there’s even a Korea town. Okay, Appa, I’ll write at Mount Rushmore.

With love, Jessica

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breathe

by Sujean Doo trying to figure out my homework, don’t know the answer trying to finish in time, clocks ticking by, it’s almost time to eat. trying to be hungry, no, have to finish

year of childhood, till college, trying to slow down trying to speed up, trying to live in the moment, calm down, breathe in breathe out.

my work, my food, both take effort, too tired to sleep, why can’t i sleep? caffeine in forms of drinks, small balls big straw, bittersweet coffee, chocolate, pills

trying to remember good times, green hills laughter, boys, girls, flashing lights, trying to remember late night calls, the ones without

to keep me awake, to make me rest trying to pass the class, A+ no A no A- no B rapidly dropping trying to keep up, breathe.

tears, salty water not from the ocean, trying to remember how it felt to know if i closed my eyes i could welcome the darkness knowing light would

same question every day, how are you, another check-in, another animal, another goddamn metaphor, lie, just smile say I’m fine trying

greet me in the morning, not another link to more darkness, black boxes of silence, trying to have my camera on, i’m too self conscious, same

to be what i say, it’s okay, oh look collegeboard cancelled the essay, subject tests, trying to match SAT to my grades of the past, if i could just pass

question every other week, if you could, would you undo everything that has happened, go back in time trying to say yes, wanting to be optimistic of what could’ve been,

this fucking math class, unit circles and angles seeming irrelevant when the country tips and burns, oh how i yearn to just breathe.

but the fear of worse keeps me from trying to wish the days back, accept the new friends, new life, new stories to tell

trying to keep my knee from bouncing, hands from tapping the plastic table, mask on, six feet, can’t turn, no room to move, no space to breathe, i can’t breathe.

endless work, eyes that tell tales, charcoal

five things i can see, four things i can touch, three i can hear, two things to smell, one i can taste, what if i can’t taste? could it be a virus, downwards spiral counterproductive, trying to ground myself on the carpets, blue floor on the third level, trying to imagine the safety of the wooden planks of the room i live in, i’ve been trapped in for five months of my life gone, sixteenth birthday trying to stay connected for my seventeenth, one more

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It’s All Downhill digital photo by James Spokes

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Sometimes Baseball Is All We Need

by Adam Spitzler

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ometimes, baseball is all one may need, at least it was for Oliver.

As Oliver took the grand stairs up to the promenade level, the sights, sounds, and smells of baseball took him to another place. The stadium, a place where there were no worries, set him at ease. During the winter months, Oliver longed to return to the ballpark. He kept a countdown on his calendar reminding him that opening day was not too far away. Now, the day was finally here.

The field shone with bright green patches of sunlight as the seagulls soared overhead. All Oliver could do was smile. He made his way down the concourse, weaving in and out between the other fans, decked out in the team’s orange and black gear. The place was already packed and the first pitch was thirty minutes away. He hunted for his first hamburger of the season. He found a stand at the end of the third base side. He grabbed a burger and some steaming garlic fries and made his way towards the outfield bleachers.

To his right, Oliver could hear the crisp sound of the ball hitting the glove as the players began their warm-up.

He saw some of his favorite players take the field. Big, burly men with meaty forearms gathered around in foul territory to banter. A little to their left was the skinny starting pitcher getting loose in the bullpen. Tons of eager fans leaned over the wall hoping to receive the warm-up ball signed with an autograph or just make eye contact with the southpaw. One lucky fan would go home with a souvenir.

When Oliver found his section, he turned around to admire the bay. On a day that could not get any better, the sun’s rays were glimmering off the water and the city’s fire department boat in celebration shot out a parabola of mist. The kayakers took to the cove, each with an authentic set up to follow along with the game. Some had radios and headsets, while others had aboard mini grills for burgers and hot dogs and nets to catch the potential splash hit.

A luxurious yacht caught Oliver’s gaze. He watched the bunch of thirty-year-olds on deck. Music blasted from their surround sound speakers as they danced with their drinks.

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First pitch was only ten minutes away when Oliver faced the field again.

While Oliver was making his way down the stairs to his seat, the PA system roared to life to welcome the fans back to another season of baseball. To this, the crowd erupted into hollers and hoots. Oliver took his seat.

“And the home of the brave,” the opera lady chanted.

The players took the field and the crowd rose to their feet. Rock music rang throughout the stadium’s grounds.

Go time.

The home team was set to battle against their division rivals from the south end of the state. Waiting in the ondeck circle, the leadoff hitter took his warm-up swings as his name bellowed from the speakers. To this, the amped up crowd let out monstrous boos and hollers. The rivalry was still alive.

Oliver settled into his spot in the left field bleachers with his burger and fries between his feet. It was tradition for Oliver to keep score of the game in his trusty scorebook.

Keeping score gave Oliver the feeling that he was part of the team. Every statistic that he could fit on the page displayed his commitment and admiration not only to his team, but also to his city. More than anything, following along with every pitch kept Oliver engaged with the game as if this was his job for his boss to verify the total number of men left on base between both teams after the final innings.

Pen in hand, Oliver filled out the game time details — the weather and attendance —while the leadoff man walked to the plate. The fielders found their spots and the pitcher used his fingers to etch something in the dirt behind the slab.

“Play ball!” the ump declared, trying to be heard over the continuous humming of the fans.

Game underway.

Everything felt normal again.

Life had paused — now life was back in swing.

Because baseball was back.

Tomorrow at school, Oliver would be able to talk about the game with his friends and describe the events

from first-hand experience. It gave Oliver an extra ounce the game. A sound so powerful that anyone who ever heard of motivation to get up in the morning. Something to look it lost their train of thought. It was mesmerizing. forward to throughout the day. It brought him life.

His dog was lying down in the patchy grass of the Although the game itself turned out to be an un- yard at Oliver’s feet. Oliver ate quietly. Taking in the landeventful pitchers’ duel, Oliver’s team found a way to victo- scape of his small yard, Oliver imagined baseball in his fury. 1-0. Oliver was plenty satisfied. They could have lost, ture. He dreamed of building his own miniature stadium and he still would have left the stadium delighted. He felt to host summer wiffle ball games with all of his friends. lucky that he could be in attendance because tickets were He wasn’t sure when this would happen. He knew it could a hot commodity, and they weren’t cheap. Matter of fact, become reality since his parents barely set foot into the that would be the only game of the year he would attend. backyard. They didn’t care about their yard. It was up to Watching at home with his buddies brought an authentic Oliver to make the most out of the space. Soon. As soon as way to enjoy a ballgame and one that could not be replicathe could persuade his closest friends to spend their spring ed within the constructs of a ballpark. break digging through weeds and rocks to lay down fresh The train ride home featured herds of fans who grass. were satisfied with the game’s reOliver planned. He thought sults. The mood was friendly and back to the odd dimensions of the That sound. Didn’t matter outfield walls on Opening Day. warm. Oliver felt like he shared something with each passenger who was making it. It was lovely. He wondered how he could repliand not just being a fan of the cate a taste of this Major League The crack of the bat was lovely. same team. But a fan from the park into his miniature homemade same city. The same community. version. Oliver envisioned friends He could listen to it on repeat Baseball seemed to bring the best and neighbors stopping by on a for hours. It always brought his warm summer evening. The field out of the people of the city. It put people in good moods. And when bring them back to their mind to think about baseball’s would their team won, it kept people in a time at a baseball game. He wanted good mood. It amazed Oliver that purity. The sound defined the people to cherish those moments. a sport could do so much.

The hours he spent at the park had beauty of the game.

A sound Oliver walked into his revitalized his love of the game. house. No one was home besides He went inside and grabbed his so powerful that anyone who his dog. His parents were out for notebook from upstairs; he plantever heard it lost their train of the day and left Oliver to enjoy a ed himself in the middle of the day at the park. The fridge was full thought. It was mesmerizing. yard. He focused. Too many tree of food. Oliver grabbed the first limbs swung above. In his list, he thing in sight — a jar of pickles and wrote “cut down branches” as well some egg salad — and went to the kitchen table. His stom- as “get spray paint” for the foul lines and batters’ boxes. ach growled. Tasty as it was, his last burger had only left The yard was less than one hundred feet in each direction, him half full. It was now four in the afternoon and the day but it would suit a game of whiffle ball. More than anything, still felt young. Sun was out with only a few clouds in the Oliver desired a section for those who came by to watch. sky. He took his food to the backyard along with his dog. Bleachers. Just like the ones he sat in a few hours ago.

There was no rush on this Sunday.

Wooden bleachers would suffice so he added “find wood Oliver could hear his neighbors next door playing en boards” to his list. And “nails/hammer.” Loads of ideas in the yard. Two little boys and two little girls were pretend- bombarded his mind, but he knew he had to begin with the ing to be baseball players. He could hear them yell as they basics. Oliver got to digging while his dog roamed around struck each other out. And he could hear when one of them the yard curiously sniffing the sprinkled patches of grass. hit the ball. That sound. Didn’t matter who was making it. It That night, Oliver dreamed. He dreamed of beaches. was lovely. The crack of the bat was lovely. He could listen On one of the beaches, there was a ball field. It was no ordito it on repeat for hours. It always brought his mind to think nary field, though. Home plate was placed near the back of about baseball’s purity. The sound defined the beauty of the sand dunes across from the wooden boardwalk. There 99

were bases. There was a pitching mound. There even was a backstop behind the plate. But there were no outfield walls.

From a bird’s eye view, Oliver’s dream featured boys and girls playing baseball on this sand field. And since there were no outfield walls, there were no outfielders. Just the tide coming in and going out. That’s all Oliver could remember. But he remembered it vividly.

He was intrigued by the idea of no outfielders. If a ball landed in the ocean, it was a dead ball… or a homerun. And he liked how the tides could manipulate their game. High tide favored the weak hitters, while low tide favored either the pitcher or the speedy baserunners.

Oliver fixated on this dream. He didn’t fully understand why people would even consider playing baseball on a beach, or in this case building a field on the beach. At the beach, playing baseball just seemed harder. The wind from the surf. The slope of the ground.

The chilling temperature. And the sand. The sand made everything harder. Running to first base would take an eternity. Most importantly, the baseball would not go anywhere when it hit the ground.

But the beach was also an immaculate place for baseball.

You’re at the beach. That speaks for itself. For the game, there were things that an ordinary field could not provide. Sliding into a base or diving for a flying ball wouldn’t leave you with pain. The sand was so forgiving. Plus, a fielder could track down a fly ball in foul territory for as long as their legs would take them. There were no boundaries. Oliver loved that idea. Except for the seaside, the field was boundless. More than anything, a field on a beach would be unique. But Oliver wasn’t sure what he thought about such an authentic field of play. On one hand, he believed strongly in the endless rules and regulations that made baseball so complex. While on the other hand, he saw beautiful things when baseball was a product of its environment.

This woke him up.

He changed his mind.

Why can’t nature be a part of the game?

So he went to his notebook and scratched off “cut down branches.”

He looked out at his backyard. He liked it. It was rough in some corners and not ideal for a game of whiffle ball, but so what.

The field would evolve naturally. The more use the field got, the better it would become. The batter’s boxes would mark themselves once the grass died under the player’s feet. Same with the rest of the field. The rocky parts would become smoother the more the players ran around. The bases, the pitcher’s slab, the infield. It would take time. And it would be a natural process.

The trees would not have to go. The trees would continue to sway. It was up to the batters if they could muscle the ball through the branches and leaves for a home run. The trees would stay.

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Chester oil on canvas by Luke Jasso

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Deep Fried

by Indigo Mudbhary

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he had been working at her Uncle Randy’s diner that summer, an old, grease-stained establishment where the jukebox still blasted top hits from the 50’s and the red vinyl booths were always mysteriously sticky, a place frequented by college kids who were too broke to afford anywhere else in town and by old-timers who’d been eating there since Randy had first bought the place. It was there that it had happened, where Alicia had destroyed her left hand, done to it what made her clenched fist look like the shriveled body of an unborn fetus. Every time she picked up her hand, the image of Uncle Randy’s shiny silver deep fryer came dancing back into her mind, the sound of the hot oil sizzling inside almost taunting her.

It had been an unusually foggy day when it had happened, the sky still dark by the time Alicia shut the door of her apartment and headed towards the bus stop. Her breath was visible in the air, the tiny droplets of moisture forming a cloud in front of her face. She pulled her knit wool sweater over her fingertips, an itchy thing that her Aunt Cheryl had given her a few Christmases ago. Though scratchy, it was warm, and that was all she needed.

Alicia boarded the bus, coins clinking as she dropped them into the fare box at the front. She tucked a strand of greasy brown hair behind her ear and sat down in a seat near the driver. She looked around at the usual cast of characters; the businessman who always wore a crisp silk suit and typed furiously on the glowing screen of his iPhone, the woman with the tired brown eyes who would invariably fall asleep with her head balanced delicately on her hand, and the young girl in a plaid school uniform who, without fail, sat in the exact same seat in the back, nose buried deep in a dog-eared book.

Alicia leaned her head against the window, and the cool glass felt good against her forehead. Her heart sat heavy in her chest and there was a strange lump sitting in her throat, as if she was about to cry. It had been like that the whole summer, like she was holding back a flood behind her eyes, due to erupt at any moment. It hadn’t happened yet, but the prospect lingered above her constantly. She lived in fear of the moment when it would happen, when it would all come

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pouring out. Yet, somehow she knew that the tears she held inside herself weren’t from anger or sadness but simply from the sheer desire to feel something, anything other than the emotional emptiness that seemed to fill every crevice of her hollow soul.

Alicia had never been an exceptionally happy person nor an exceptionally sad one. Her parents were all right and she had a couple friends back home who consistently texted her a few times each week while she’d been away that summer, messages that read “we miss youuu” and “wish you were here!!!!!” sent with selfies of their smiling, close-together faces. Alicia felt like she should miss them, at least a little bit.

But, she didn’t and she knew that even if she had been with them that summer she would still feel empty, maybe even more so, as this feeling was one that lived in a deep, permanent part of herself, like a one hundred pound weight chained to her heart or some other essential organ.

When she really thought about it, Alicia wasn’t sure she’d ever loved anyone. Not the boyfriend she’d had for six months last year, who had dumped her because she was “impossible to understand,” not her friends, not her grandma, not even her parents. Whenever she went to see the latest romantic comedy with her friends back home, she felt a strange sense of jealousy at the way the on-screen protagonists looked at each other, with the smile of a child running down the stairs on Christmas morning to claim brightly wrapped gifts waiting underneath the tinseled tree. She wondered if she could ever be capable of looking at anyone that way.

She often felt that she was watching her life unfold in front of her rather than actually experiencing it. Whenever she smiled it felt forced, and the muscles around her mouth would begin to ache after only a few seconds. When her boyfriend had broken up with her last year, she had cried for weeks. People thought she was just a normal, heartbroken teenage girl. Yet Alicia knew that it was not the breakup causing her to shed so many tears, but the fact that she felt nothing about it, not even the littlest bit of remorse or anger or betrayal.

When she was in second grade, on the wall next to the

wooden cubbies where they stored their backpacks, there had been a colorful poster depicting the different human emotions, with a blue, crying face labeled “sadness” next to a grinning, yellow face labeled “happiness.” Sometimes, when nobody else was in the classroom, she would stand in front of the poster and try to mimic the expressions of the little faces, distorting her face into the shapes of different feelings. It had always felt strange, unnatural, like the faces on the poster were all sneering at her, mocking the little girl who couldn’t seem to feel anything.

And she had wanted to feeling something. She had always wanted to feel something, just the tiniest little morsel of contentment or irritation. And she had tried. She’d tried drinking, smoking pot, staying up all night, having sex, even skydiving on her seventeenth birthday. But none of it worked.

She always was left feeling completely, utterly, and incandescently empty.

The bus screeched to a halt and its rusty-hinged doors screeched open. She looked outside and saw that the scenery was unfamiliar to her. She then realized that she had missed her stop. She ran to the front of the bus, her rubber-soled sneakers shrieking on the linoleum floor of the bus, and bounded out the front entrance, almost knocking over an old woman trying to board. Alicia mumbled a half-hearted apology over her shoulder and sprinted in the direction of the diner, which was luckily only a few blocks away. Through the fog, she could see the faint glow of the diner’s giant neon sign, “Randy’s” written in a blue cursive font. Both the “d” and “s” on the sign flickered faintly, on the verge of burning out.

Within minutes, Alicia was pulling open the door of the diner. The bells jingled softly as it shut behind her. She headed behind the counter and threw on an apron. The metal nametag pinned on it read “Mae.” Uncle Randy hadn’t even bothered to get new nametags made since the place had opened. He probably was still using the aprons he had found in a storage closet when he bought the place, likely justifying it as being fiscally responsible when he was really just a lazy old bastard. Who Mae was and how long ago she had worked at this godforsaken place, Alicia didn’t know, but she had borrowed her name this summer, glad to be hiding behind another person’s moniker.

“You’re late,” bellowed a deep voice. She turned around. Uncle Randy stood behind her with his muscular arms folded across his chest, a dark scowl etched across the features of his wrinkled, mean face. “That’s the third time this week,” he said, fingers pressed to his temples as he continued to glower at her. “Just because you’re my niece doesn’t mean I can’t and won’t fire you.”

“I’m sorry,” muttered Alicia, even though she wasn’t, not really.

“Bullshit,” he sneered. On another man, the worn quality of his features might have been endearing, a sign of many years lived. But Uncle Randy’s face wasn’t wise—just unpleasant. Alicia thought he looked like a sweaty, crumpled-up, discarded piece of clothing found at the bottom of a laundry basket.

Alicia said nothing, looking at an old piece of gum that was stuck on the floor, which had probably been there since before she had even been born.

Uncle Randy let out a sharp exhale of breath, his expression softening slightly. “Sorry kid, it’s been a stressful morning. Look, just try to be on time, okay?”

“Got it,” Alicia said. “I’ll start taking orders.”

Uncle Randy opened his mouth slightly as if to say something, but thought better of it, sealing his thin lips in resignation. He instead turned around and went into the kitchen, and Alicia heard the deep fryer begin to sizzle. She grabbed the yellow notepad she used to write orders on and walked toward the counter, where one of the regulars was sitting on a stool reading a newspaper. He had opened a sugar packet and was eating straight out of it. Alicia felt sick to her stomach.

“What can I get you?” She said in the sweetest voice she could muster.

“Three strips of bacon, crispy but not burnt, with no salt, oil, seasoning, or pepper; three and a half pieces of white bread toast, crunchy but not burnt; a side of eggs sunny side up but not too runny; one black coffee, no sugar and no cream,” he said in a bored monotone, eyes still glued to the newspaper.

The man’s behavior did not surprise her, as Alicia was used to the rude treatment she often received working at the diner, though she found it strange that the people who had been coming there the longest were often the meanest. She repeated his order back to him. He replied with a grunt and shooed her away.

Alicia made her way back to the kitchen to give the man’s order to Uncle Randy, after which she took the orders of the other customers, which included a couple sitting in a booth, a strange, tense silence hanging between them. And a very young child who ended up ordering a black coffee, which surprised her, but she didn’t question it. Kids were doing things earlier and earlier these days, including caffeine apparently.

Approximately ten minutes later, the first man’s order was ready. Plates balanced delicately on her thin arms, Alicia

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set his food down in front of him. He still didn’t look at her, his wrinkled face buried in the newspaper as he gnawed on the same sugar packet. After setting down his coffee, she began to turn away, ready to deliver her next order, when she heard his gravelly voice say, “I asked for these eggs sunny side up.”

For a phrase so cheerful, the words “sunny side up” had a vicious quality to them when they came out of his mouth. She mumbled an apology and picked up the plate of eggs, which really did look like sunny side up eggs to her and headed back to the kitchen.

“Uncle Randy?”

“What do you want?” He yelled, casting an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “Can’t you see I’m fucking busy?”

“This guy said he wanted his eggs sunny side up,” she said, gesturing to the plate she held in her hand.

Uncle Randy turned around, leaving whatever he was cooking hissing on the stove behind him. “You said he wanted them over easy,” he said in a bitter voice that sounded almost like a growl.

“I thought those meant the same thing,” she replied calmly.

“Goddamn it, Alicia, you’ve been working here for three months,” he said, his voice beginning to increase in volume. “How do you not know the fucking difference between over easy and sunny side up?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, straightening her spine as she took a deep breath, the smell of bacon filling her lungs. “I didn’t know.”

Uncle Randy looked at her, his bushy eyebrows knit together while his hand rested on his sweaty forehead. He paused for a second, before saying, in a slow, menacing tone, “When the fuck are you going to get your act together?”

There was something in the way he had said those words, the way venom seemed to drip from each syllable, that caused red hot fire to run through Alicia’s veins, a feeling so visceral and unlike anything she had felt before. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, the beat of a steady drum resonating in her skull. Her senses had never been this sharp; everything looked like it was cut from crystal and she could taste the warm, metallic flavor of blood in her mouth as she realized that she was biting her tongue. Her head felt like it was simultaneously being filled with the sound of radio static and dunked in a bucket of ice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the silver deep fryer, bubbles dancing in the oil. The sight of it was so beautiful to her in that moment; the way the fries were soaking in this thick golden substance, as if the fryer was King Midas and it was turning these ordinary potatoes into gold. Before she

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could even think about what she was doing, she took three long strides across the kitchen, her legs feeling like she was wading through a river of thick molasses and plunged her hand into the deep fryer.

Like a child behind a glass partition watching animals at a zoo, she looked at her hand, soaking in the fryer, white bubbles beginning to materialize on the surface of her skin.

Her fingers swelled up like balloons, looking almost like small sausages. She continued to watch passively as the metamorphosis happened in front of her and her hand began to crumble, chunks of flesh rising toward the surface of the hot oil.

It felt to Alicia like centuries had passed with her hand bathing in the vat of oil, but in reality, Uncle Randy had been quick to react and pull her hand away from the fryer, screaming so loud that a few customers came rushing into the kitchen to see what was going on, their eyes widening in disbelief as they saw what had happened.

There is a gap in Alicia’s memory between that moment and when she found herself sitting in a brightly lit emergency room thirty minutes later. The only thing she can remember is that she didn’t cry even once on the drive over to the hospital, not leaving a single tear stain on the leather upholstery of her uncle’s red Jeep. Instead, she just held her hand to her chest, almost like a mother cradling her baby, so loving and tender, so innocent and perfect.

In the emergency room they asked her to rate her pain on a scale of one to ten, but she didn’t answer. How could she describe the gloriousness of what she had felt, the pure ecstasy and elation? She laughed at the ridiculousness of their question, her sharp cackle bouncing off the walls of the hospital. She was subsequently shipped off to a psychiatric ward.

The adrenaline would eventually leave her body, slowly but surely, and life would revert back to the neutral, emotionless grey it had been before the incident. She would never feel anything like what she had felt that day again, unable to recreate the courage or stupidity or whatever emotion had possessed her that day.

Alicia would live for seventy-six more years. They would be empty years, filled with loneliness and perpetual nostalgia for the few fleeting moments when she had felt alive.

One day, decades in the future, on a sunny afternoon, she would be looking out the kitchen window of her small suburban house when one of her children would ask her if she had ever been happy. She would pause for a second, look down at her hand, and smile.

Away digital photo by Tyler Keim

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Thinking Back graphite on paper by Amelia Fortgang

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Crafting the LitMag This magazine was designed by Primo Lagaso Goldberg on a MacBook Pro in Adobe InDesign 2020 and 2021.

The magazine was set in Bodoni 72 (Book, Book Italic, and Bold), developed in 2001 by Dmitry Kirsanov and published by ParaType. Titles are set in Futura (Bold and Medium), designed by Isabella Chaeva, Paul Renner, Vladimir Andrich, and Vladimir Yefimov, from Paratype. Avenir (Book) designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1987 was used on the cover, spine, and title pages. 3 other fonts were also used on select pages. Photo editing was done in Adobe Photoshop 2021. Advice and copy editing by Indigo Mudbhary and Robin von Breton. The magazine was printed by Pacific Standard Print (PSP), 1281 West National Drive, Sacramento, California, 95834, 916.266.3432. The cover was printed on 100# Pace-Setter Silk stock and the body pages on 60# Husky stock all on an HP Indigo Press. 650 copies of the LitMag were and distributed for free by hand and by mail to the students, staff, faculty, and larger community of Lick-Wilmerding High School. Printing would not have been possible without the help of Chantal Newton with her patience and expertise in managing such a fluid and ever-transforming project. The LWHS LitMag is a member of the Colombia Scholastic Press Association.