Crest2023

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Crest 2023

The Crest, known as the Literary Tabula until 1950, has been published since 1893 by the students of Oak Park and River Forest High School.

The editors are proud to present the 130th edition of Crest.

Please be advised, the pieces presented here may contain sensitive or serious content.

Photo by Ashley Brown

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Editor-in-Chief Heidi Enger

Senior Editors Jake DiMaso Riley Sarsany

Junior Editors Ashley Brown Adam Curtis Ainsley McConnell Victoria Young

Sophomore Editors Manuela Pecoraro-Hernández Rachel Sang

Teacher Sponsor Mr. Sieck

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Letter from the editor

Dear reader, Welcome to Crest 2023! We hope you enjoy perusing the artwork of you & your classmates. As always, I was astounded by the talent in the submissions we received this year.

This winter, Crest’s website finally launched, thanks to the help of many new editors. What began as my vision for a digital archive of past Crests has blossomed into a collection of student art we’ve never been able to present before, with film, music, and videos.

The editors would like to thank Kristian and MECK Print, Ms. Eckart and the English and art teachers who encouraged students to submit their work, and of course, our teacher sponsor, Mr. Sieck (especially for providing us with pizza at that last late formatting session).

And of course, thanks to you, the student artists who put yourselves out there by submitting your work — much of which is deeply personal — to a team of peers. I know I said this in last year’s letter, but it still stands: we couldn’t do this without you.

Because I’ll be graduating in a month or so, and because Crest has been a major part of my life these past four years, I’m going to indulge in a little reminiscing here. (Feel free to start flipping through the book now. Still with me? You’re very kind.) I did not expect to find my niche in a literary arts magazine, but Crest has been an invaluable community for me, and I’ll cherish these memories forever. Thank you to the senior editors from my freshman year who helped me realize high school wasn’t all that scary (and who deserved to have a prom. Sorry guys), to the editors who taught me how to use InDesign, over video call no less, during my sophomore year, and to last year’s seniors, who both helped me find my footing as Editor-in-Chief and somehow did not constantly complain about how busy senior year is. And finally, to the current editors: I’m going to miss you all dearly. I can’t wait to see next year’s edition.

Heidi Enger Editor-in-Chief, 2021-23 4

Table of Contents 6 Abby Falkoff 8 Jamari Thomas, Frances Berta 9 Patterson Grant 12 Shea Richards 13 Sofia Contreras 15 Frances Berta, Ashley Brown 16 Jessica Li 18 Rose Kalemba 19 Luke Fougere, Lilah Grove 20 Luke Fougere 21 Kanohi Gurgas 22 Genesis Galloway, Olive Merrill 23 Olive Merrill 25 Lilah Grove, Indigo Field 26 Manuela Pecoraro-Hernández, Salomé Henry 27 Lilah Grove, Micah Nasralla 28 Ruby Drexler 30 Rose Kalemba, Lauren Edwards 31 Rose Kalemba, Jasper Skalla 32 Elora Cianciolo 33 Liam Lesiowski 34 Emma Costello Wollwage 35 Lee Chaloemtiarana, Frances Berta 36 Emma Costello Wollwage, Frances Berta 37 Frances Berta 38 Ainsley McConnell 42 Tommie Unsell 45 Elizabeth Sersen 46 Adam Curtis 49 Ava Lowell 53 Octavia Ickard 54 Elizabeth Sersen 55 Anja Frickz 5

58 Mia Mendoza 59 Clara Dodge 65 Abby Cockerill 69 Teigan Macek 70 Bianca Summers 71 Frances Berta 72 Wami Osikanlu 73 Bianca Summers 74 James Bartley 78 Amelia Hunkele 79 Afton Jennings 84 Clara Ottati 85 Maxie Langenberg 86 Jessica Li 87 Jessica Li 88 Lilah Grove, Ainsley McConnell 89 Maxie Langenberg, Lilah Grove 90 Ben Kerstetter 92 Ben Kerstetter, Bennett Parker 93 Radha Patwari, Margaret R. Dean, Olive Merrill

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Life Like a Poem Abby Falkoff Let us go then, you and I; put on your backpack, walk out the door with me, hold my hand as we make our way; wait for me, now cross the street; brush your bangs away; look up at your new teacher; it is okay to be nervous; take a breath and go inside; school will teach you about the world; listen, let it all sink in; but I will always be back when the day is done; you will tell me all about it; taking chances will give you strength, but people around you will help you when you are lost; questions are important and I will always try to answer questions that you bring me; being scared is normal, remember to use your head; you are smart and clever, just know you will be fine; it will all work out in the end even if you do not believe, trust me; There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; this change in school will be good for you; but what if I can’t make it?; like I always say, you are a kind smart human and will find your path; I am there to help you find your way; big jumps and changes are challenging for everyone; I have made it through before and so can you; if everything was the same nobody would grow; we need to grow for life goes on; meeting people will expand your knowledge more than I can do for you on my own; there is no shame in not having the answer right away; making mistakes helps us become the people we are; I know all the new faces are hard for you, but find the crowd that fits you and it will get less hard, trust me; To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair; longest time away from me; four days to be exact; I am rolling down your window, I know you are afraid, but people want to meet you; turning back is not always the best answer even when there is a challenge; grab your bag and follow me, I see your friend just over there; these four days will teach you a lot, learning where you came from and how your story differs from others around you; why you came into my life, all the way from Guatemala and how not everyone can say the same; but here there are other families that had the same experiences as us; you will connect to them in ways not everyone can; know that we will always be a family; but our family of three is not the whole world 7

even if we both want it to be; just staying within our yellow brick walls or even in our town will not allow you to be the best person you could be; I know that leaving is a challenge, but the other option is far worse; but still it is hard, trust me; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; get out of bed; brush your teeth; put on “real pants,” and head down stairs, where I will have your lunch; say goodbye to me before you close the door; when the school day is done and you are back home say hello to your mother and tell her about your day; do your work; come for dinner; put your napkin on your lap; go to bed, and prepare to do it again; routine is good and beneficial, but someday it will change; it could come out of nowhere; I know you do not like that and neither do I, but life will happen and it’s okay to cry; not everything can be controlled even if we think it can; good and bad can come from change, but do not get so stuck that you need everything to stay the same; nobody can know when something will happen and trying to control it will not let your life happen; if you are open and prepared for the unknown it will all work out, trust me; and I will always quote our poem to you; Do I dare to eat a peach?; missing out because you think you cannot is not how I want you to be; not everything is life and death, not everything will work; not taking a chance will keep you in one spot and not moving forward; yes some things could set you back, but knowing that you did not try is more of a letdown than not doing it at all; we want our lives to grow but treating every choice like it is the end of the world will limit us in the end; it is okay to not succeed, take the chance and what happened after is what matters most, trust me; life will have its ups and downs, and trying something is always better than sitting back and watching life go on without you; take the step and see what happens, that is the best we can do; but most of all remember that you are good enough for me which means the world needs you; so let yourself be free; I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me; I think the mermaids will sing for me; but did they sing for him?

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I’d rather Jamari Thomas I’d rather be engulfed in real hugs, covered in cocoa-buttered kisses, Shouting to Frankie Beverly, and Overusing Sweet Baby’s Rays, than Mariah’s Sweet Christmas, light buds, and the white girl in the corner reading cleverly into praises to a god that doesn’t like black people.

I’d rather be laid down by spices on worked, fried, and jerked chicken, on heavy, cast iron skillets that no matter how much you scrub, the black crust won’t come off. Black baked, not white made Mac-n-cheese make my teeth wanna fall off.

Mid September pity party to celebrate the black kids that have accomplished making white kids feel uncomfortable. “Why are your clothes so dark?” “Why are your clothes so bright?”

Probably cus I’m sittin’ in a premium painted, freshly wooded room full of white people who wanna be allies.

I’d rather wear black, do better, and still be able to step off a pedestal.

Frances Berta

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Pure Slang and Shoe Game Patterson Grant While the morning is dark, and the highway roads are bumpy, I sigh. The red Toyota SUV jerks, swerves and flies me around down highway 92 since I was too lazy to put on my seatbelt. To me, summer is walking down Michigan Ave, window shopping with friends; not driving thirty minutes to the Southside of Chicago wondering what you did wrong to be going here. I shouldn’t dread the darkness waking me up because “correction camp” was at 8:00 am. I wasn’t built in the hood. I wasn’t created for the violence and slang that came with the city.

“This camp will be better for you. It’ll help you connect with your hood side.” Those eight words resonate an echo in my hollow brain. It’ll help me connect with my hood side. A long way of saying: I’m not black enough. The stars are no longer visible - saying goodbye to one another, akin to me and my mother this morning - and the sun is rising, bringing a source of light to this eerie car. Of course, the radio is broken, adding to the greatness of my day, forcing the thickness of silence to clog my ears. I’m spoken to but don’t speak. Instead, I give subtle ‘yes’ to questions I don’t know. I can see my chauffeur, a talkative lady I assume, mouthing her lips; the plum lipstick on her teeth as she smiles words. I envy her smile: I copy the curve of her lips in my brain printer, saving it as my smile for meeting what my mom wishes I was.

If I was given the choice to go here, the curved walls of my room would replace the janky, rusted SUV. My twin bed with green sheets would comfort my body instead of the ripping leather cushion. The chirping crickets I feed my lizards at night is what I am yearning to have again, while I’m instead stuck with two snoring children to the left of me - a snot bubble pulsing in and out of their noses simultaneously, reminding me of The Shining twins. It doesn’t help that there is construction on the road, forcing my legs in the direction of the child next to me as we coast above cracks in the hood. Cement mounts the potholes and 10

the scent slaps my nose hair follicles in the face. Why can’t I be the hole? The cement covering my body would give me a reason to not be in this car which is on the verge of breaking down on the shoulder of the road.

The reflecting sunlight on her phone blinds my eyes as the GPS reads 2 minutes. 2 minutes until I’m surrounded by Jordan Retro Shoes fresh out of the box accessorized with sentences leaving out important vowels; things I am not used to. The stiff silence in my ears is now replaced by screaming children, the thumping of basketballs grazing the cement, and chirping birds bringing me back to my early mornings of Elementary School; a faint sense of peace. The plum purple lips signal me out of the car as the SUV doors automatically open. Overwhelmingly hyper pre-teens laugh as if they are so familiar with each other; this is their neighborhood, so why wouldn’t they be? I get chills on my shoulders from my paranoid eyes as they observe my surroundings. The feeling of comfortability, to me, seems foreign. “This is going to be a piece of cake,” she would say; but the weird stares at my straightened hair, busted air force ones and jean shorts tell me differently.

My feet carry my legs down the narrow hallways as I hum a tune to keep me sane. Remembering scorching hot sand burning my feet, trying to dive to hit the white and blue volleyball that ended up on my face; remembering all the summers that started better than this one. The floors are freshly polished, smelling of artificial citrus oranges, making my head ache as I scan my surroundings. Three children no older than sixteen carry flaming hot Cheetos and cheese, the tiger on the bag joyous to be there accompanied by his black sunglasses, while the girls talk amongst each other. The silhouette in the middle has hair that seems longer than a ten-foot rope and dark dewy, milky skin. Her outfit seemed…boujee, with tight black ripped jeans and a white graphic tee paired with red Jordans. At that moment I wanted to be her. She fit in; she was the blueprint building this camp. The mastermind architect, building her lair. I must have missed the memo since I look nothing like her. I look out of place. Thoughts aside, to please my mother I walk towards the three girls remembering the plum-toothed smile.

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“What is that? It looks so soggy and gross.” If impressions were getting an F in History class, I would have done so well. I’m not religious, never will be, but I pray zip ties are holding my mouth shut. I pray my guardian angel will sense helplessness. I pray I was never here in the first place since if I vanished I would not have been asked, “Why you sound like that?” I quickly translate her vocabulary mistakes to why do you sound like that, for better understanding. “Sound like what?” I choke on my words as they form a hairball in my throat. All itchy and irritated.

“White.” White? I double-check the fronts and backs of my hand, having no other choice but to do so considering I’ve never been this young experiencing teenage girls making fun of how I talk. Weakness fills my bones and I do nothing but internally cry. “Well, if I was from Australia and moved to America then I would sound different.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. If you were from Australia… really? You’re not from Australia, you’re from Oak Park. A white town. It feels as if the Joker threw laugh gas directly at the three musketeers in front of me.

The green and purple smoke replaced the brightness of the cracked lights above me, and all I can do is think about how many more times I have to come here. Approximately 36 days. 5.14 weeks. Too long.

The crinkling of the flaming hot Cheetos bag haunts my soul as I support myself back outside to hopefully catch my chauffeur. The whirring of the engine lets me know I’m stuck here for half my summer.

The woman who insisted on conversations about God-knows-what is taken away into the abyss, leaving me isolated. I regret not listening to her stories and questions because maybe, just maybe the Toyota would have stayed for 10 extra seconds and I would have had an escape. Yet, instead of window shopping, I stare out the window; my breath and remorse creating warm fog on the window sill. While I could be with friends, I’m stuck with being the outcast because I have not a single pair of Jordan shoes. I don’t know slang. I don’t know how to prepare comebacks in my head after being called white; I don’t know how to be black.

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The Hindenburg

Shea Richards

A man lies on a brown leather couch in his dull, paralyzed living room. He breathes from his mouth, for he can’t seem to feel his nose, or rather, most of his face. The quiet, ear-splitting whir of his oscillating fan two feet from his eyes bullies the curls of his hair, but it can’t drown out his thoughts, and his head harasses him. He barely hears the chatter of frogs in the humid summer night over the pounding of his own mind.

Slivers of silver moonlight crawl through the window onto the floor and glare back at him. The metronome behind his bloodshot eyes thumps louder.

Louder. He groans and holds his head in his hands. Walls he can’t see close in on him. The sofa under his legs becomes enormous. He feels as if he was balancing on top of a zeppelin, the wind crying in the voices of a dozen people he knows, he thinks he knows. The moon on the floor cackles at him. He screams.

Something knocks furiously on the door of his mind.

Something wants in.

It wants in.

He obliges.

Rusted hinges of thought creak and are then blown open as an overwhelming surge of watercolor floods his mind. The walls

retreat, only to flash and transform into a complex fractal of shimmering mirrors and prisms. Rainbows scatter throughout the room and into his eyes. The moonlight on the liquid floor stands up and hugs him with milky arms before vanishing into a bright vanilla cloud. The rotating fan melts into the floor right in front of his eyes, and the deafening, awful noise it once made is 13

replaced with an ethereal lullaby from the frogs outside his window. The man touches his face. He can feel every groove in his fingerprint caress his cheeks. The ceiling fades into dust and the night sky appears. The Milky Way

smiles at him and the stars applaud. He feels weightless, and looks down to see his disco ball room floating in a sea of liquid mercury. The indigo colors of Neptune dance in the ripples of the ocean. And yet, he hears a faint cry from his tangled imagination. As the night sky begins to swallow him whole, the pounding returns. Fragments of the air around him become stiff and fizzle out. The edges of his vision blur and redshift. The lullaby is slowly replaced

with a long, choleric sigh. Stars start to stumble from

the sky and he is suddenly again

surrounded by pitch blackness.

As the whir of the fan returns, he panics, for a forbidden thought has crossed his mind.

A Toast to the Never Ending War

Sofia Contreras

The days seem to pass in a Roar It announces itself in an applause Of disappointment Regret doesn’t seem to come these days It sticks to its trees Because the leaves have already come off 14

You told me Words That I can’t seem to remember, We shared lives That now feel like a distant trench That I can’t walk to Because my feet are shattered glass And The Gringos have already bought the land And if I try walking there alone Not even the crow and its enemies could look into my eyes And whisper, “You are the world you have built for yourself.”

“You are the child of the golden sun.”

Aphrodite’s love letter doesn’t erupt from a tree of bees and blossoms Persephone did not build her sky from the land of freshly popped tulips and emerald vines No, these vines cascade into veins and turn our ambrosia red wine That always seems to leak And snake down And cry In the moments that your body bows down to freedom So your chains keep it standing instead Here’s a toast to freedom A concept that fails to project itself In every wall, face and ceiling Anywhere, but in our heads Our heads that hold the blood of a beating heart that can’t stop pounding Because these days words give up the will to speak So now we are left to roar 15

Frances Berta

Ashley Brown 16

Jessica Li

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Jessica Li 18

Rose Kalemba 19

Luke Fougere

Lilah Grove 20

Luke Fougere

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Kanohi Gurgas 22

Genesis Galloway

Olive Merrill 23

Olive Merrill

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Olive Merrill

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Indigo Field

Lilah Grove

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Manuela Pecoraro Hernández

Salomé Henry

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Lilah Grove

Micah Nasralla

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Ruby Drexler

Ruby Drexler

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Rose Kalemba

Lauren Edwards

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Rose Kalemba

Jasper Skalla

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Elora Cianciolo Bonjour, mon ami

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On a Day in Merry England Liam Lesiowski Flame roared across the fields at day, And smoke had cleansed our lands.

The fire warmed my foolish bones, And magic left my hands.

Afar many a beast does stir, And o’er the land they run, Many pipes and drums are sounding, And embers at dusk are flying, In the light of the evening sun.

But the city is always bright For the flame never got to town, The land where there is no night.

For that which took ev’ry man’s sight, The choking smog, the city’s blight, Cannot be pierced by the sunlight That’s quickly setting down.

In the streets there cries the sound of a horn And men flock to the lights Lamps shine over as red as morn Factory walls do they adorn And workers to work go there forlorn To make such feeble flights.

The heralds sang of the future, Trumpets sounded their dreams They promised food and work for all And o’er the lands their lights did sprawl Twas the coming of machines.

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Garfield

Emma Costello Wollwage

Driving home tonight, I chose to ride down my favorite street in all of Oak Park. This street runs along a highway about thirty feet down. The view is everything. Whether it be a seemingly silken and woven sunset, a bright and creamy blue sky, or the pitch black and dotted night, the outline of the Chicago scrapers is almost always visible. Thick metal gates rope around this spectacle, and as the 290 is always jam-packed with cars, bright multicolored lights illuminate the underground highway’s walls. Bridges run across these highways to connect the town.

I’ve heard kids at school describing where they live as either across the bridge or on the school’s side of it. The highway splits Oak Park, something very simply used at school to make connections with other people. It’s a lovely little phenomenon here. I make it a point to drive down Garfield at night. Watching the cars and trains zoom past from all the way above gives somewhat of a perspective into how enormous this world really is and how truly impactful people have been and can be over time. It’s a motivation, something to lead me to work hard and yet to stop and think more often. Taking perspective from time to time is detrimental for a person’s progression into life, a skill that makes it so much harder to take the simplicities for granted. I find that Garfield does that for me. While driving down Garfield tonight, a couple ran across Euclid Street in front of me to the metal gate. I slowed and watched them race to get to the edge of the street, where they stood and watched the cars drive past. They stood there to take in this magical and hidden light show as I do so often. They took in the resplendent spectacle together. They held hands, united and focused on the world around them, each other’s presence a comforting factor on such a cold night. I wished at that moment that in the future I’d be as fortunate as they were today. I would hope I could leave the warmth and safety of my place of living to stand by the very edge of the street amongst the light hail and freezing chill of January. I would hope to clasp someone’s hand, connected and absolutely encapsulated by the thrill of life. I hope for many moments such as that to come.

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Seventh grader Lee Chaloemtiarana There was a girl.

Young and ambitious, personality crafted from pages of fiction which she so admired.

She shifts in her seat, anxiously awaiting her turn to read a line of a poem on the whiteboard.

She rereads her essays thrice before submitting.

She is terrified.

And so this girl.

Picturing a picket fence with her husband twenty years from now, two kids.

Seven years of schooling and grades so pristine they’d endure monsoons without rusting Neatly cut lawn supporting a freshly-painted porch.

She’ll be perfect.

More perfect than she is now, of course, shivering in her neat black shoes Yellow cardigan, black dress, barely daring to smile or laugh if it were to crumble her posture.

Carving out a future destined for her by swiping through colleges in the fifth grade.

She is terrified.

Frances Berta 36

Meridian

Emma Costello Wollwage

Adhere to the idea of a warm escape, the masquerade of a seemingly affable embrace.

Raise your head to the sky, where an enticing pareidolia in the clouds is drawn to portray what once was.

Allow stretch marks to etch down the backs of your thighs like arrows.

Markings that can be a guide, A map that indicates the stress your body has undergone.

Ingratiate yourself with a pilot.

Allow him to pay for the tickets as you travel from hemisphere to hemisphere, Searching for that season you so crave, an aspired cure-all.

Cease to acclimatize yourself, as chasing after consistent familiarity leaves no room for adaptation.

Consistent heat will suffocate, You will welcome it.

Frances Berta 37

Frances Berta

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Drosera Ainsley McConnell He had strayed too far.

He could tell, from the way the scalding gusts of toxic gas pushed harder against his dust-streaked spacesuit, from how the burnished aluminum of his ship faded into a haze of scarlet. He was close — so close — to the point mapped out on the inside of his helmet, marking his location in a tiny dot of white.

The plant could feel it too. Its roots pushed against the teflon ties holding it to his back, striving for the dust of its home - the dust that made the engineers back in Florida have to put extra filters in his respirator to keep it from the astronaut’s lungs. They seemed so distant now, the aeronautical engineers who showed him how to manage the ship’s controls lightyears away, his own family resigned to an unfathomable distance. And yet he was close. So close.

A stab of melancholy nearly made him double over as he neared his goal, realization striking harder than even the gathering winds. Once those roots found their home, he would never see it again. The lustrous purple leaves that had sat beside him while he copied the day’s data into spreadsheets would never again lend their color to his monotony. It was selfish, but for a moment he wished he had never came. He wished he had never found that seed sitting in a crater in his tomato garden, never answered its call to his curiosity. Watching the first violet leaf unfurl under the glaring lab lights had been the happiest moment in his life, and yet it had landed him here. Staggering under the blazing skies of a planet that wasn’t his own.

The dust swept across the landscape in lonely trails, whipping past his visor. Above him the sky faded to a dark purple - the planet’s atmosphere wasn’t thick enough to shield it from the looming void of space. There were no stars. Hazy red clouds blotted them out like water on ink, diluting their familiar glow in harsh brushstrokes. In the ship he had spent hours, perhaps even days, in front of the only window looking out into the abyss, trying to find the one dot of light he had looked upon 39

every single day not so long ago. He had refused to believe it was too far for his eyes to see.

If he closed his eyes, focused on the heat permeating his insulated layers, he could pretend that it was summer in Florida. The humidity was high. His daughter’s hair always tangled on those days, and it would take Margaret close to an hour to braid it for school. He could hear her grumbles even from across the stars.

“One of these days I’m going to cut it all off.” She would say.

Little Lily would squirm around in protest, earning her yet another aggrieved sigh.

“No! No, I like my hair!” She would — His feet stilled. He knew the words, knew the way Lily always argued, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the sound of her voice.

His brows furrowed. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her, had it? Only a few months. And he had been busy the months before that, studying the plant. But he had seen her, right?

He blinked. His shoulders ached with the weight of the plant, the straps digging into his flesh even through the suit. Perhaps he should put it down for a while. Just so that he could rest. It would put him at ease, he thought, to see those purple leaves, a remnant of a life’s dream in a life that lived too far away. Perhaps it would help him remember why he was here.

Distantly, he noticed that the white dot on his helmet had moved past the designated drop point. Some other interface projected on the glass might have been flashing angrily. Maybe something was wrong.

“I should go back,” He said to no one. Or perhaps he was wishing the plant heard, understood, forgave him for his conceitedness. He found his feet wouldn’t turn.

He had strayed too far.

The roots dug into his spine through the plastic. Even through layers of carbon fiber and teflon, the plant’s homesickness bored holes into his bones, filling his lungs with longing. He felt, strangely, that he could hear crying. Layered deep beneath his thoughts and his breath and the wind howling an elegy, someone was grieving.

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He blinked. Something cold stole a path down his cheek. Closing his eyes, he tried to manifest that humid morning again.

“One of these days, I’m going to cut it all off,” said Margaret.

Her voice seemed quiet. Behind him, a single quiet crack. Something dug harder into his back, pushing painfully against the shoulder muscle.

“One of these days, I’m going to cut it all off,” said… someone. Margaret. That was her name, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t he picture her face?

His breath was coming faster, the clamor of cascading air drowning out the voices in his head.

“One of these days, I’m going to —” The popping of broken plastic was lost in the din of the planet’s winds, yet he could feel that there was now nothing else keeping the plant from leaving him. Only space.

He wouldn’t give it. This he thought with more conviction than his curiosity had ever mustered. Foot dragging in front of aching foot, he pushed against the otherworldly winds. He could no longer tell the difference between the roar of breath dragging through his respirator and the gale’s aberrant howling. It didn’t matter. Every moment more that he could feel the roots on his back, see the brilliant leaves in his periphery, he felt like he was living his entire life’s dream over and over again. He wouldn’t leave it here alone. He couldn’t. He had strayed too far, much too far, to go back now.

And yet, it was never his decision to make. In that way it was foolish to have tried to defy it. In that way he could have expected the weight on his back to grow heavier, pulling, dragging him into the dust.

The engineers in Florida were hardly more real than a dream to him as the filters in his suit cracked on impact. He had never had a say in what the plant did, not even under those glaring lab lights far, too far, away.

“One of these days —” said a voice he could no longer recognize, from a place he could hardly recall. But he knew why he was here.

He was here to set it free. It was all he had, and yet he would set it free.

I’m sorry, he thought, as he carefully took out a pocket knife, placidly sawing through the last of the straps holding it to his back, not quite knowing who he was apologizing to. He wanted to face it. He wanted to see those violet leaves unfurling in a different light, before he had to leave it.

He would never leave it. He needed to leave it. He couldn’t leave it. He had strayed too far. And yet there was nowhere else, no stars with their worlds and the worlds with their own worlds, that he could possibly have strayed from. There was no place in the entire unfathomable universe he would rather be.

Carefully, he undid the final straps and turned to face its splendor. Leaves like the very last moments of a sunset. And in the center - a bud, the color of dawn, the color of the scalding earth beneath his feet.

He watched absently as the roots anchored themselves into the dust.

He couldn’t help but smile. Who wouldn’t? He was home.

Whose cheeks wouldn’t drip with water that had rained and evaporated and rained again millions of times on foreign soil? Whose knees wouldn’t hit the same dust, hoping perhaps, that he too would take root and flower and never see blue skies again? The only colors he knew were the red sky, the red soil, the red unfurling bud, and those transcendent purple leaves. When he looked down at his hand he was happy to find that it too was stained red. The unnatural white of the glove drained away under its spread.

He could hardly even feel the roots puncturing his chest, and yet he was grateful for the connection they provided as he watched the bud bloom. The heat rushing in through the holes — that was love, wasn’t it? Something that makes your heart ache and your mind spin and your insides scream with a message unheard. Petals of sharp scarlet unsheathed in elegant jaws, and it really did look like a sunset. The leaves looked like clouds against the rusted, fading sky. If the moment in the lab was two hydrogen atoms fusing into helium, the sight before him was an entire star, a supernova of incomparable beauty.

The astronaut closed his eyes. He inhaled one last breath of hot, humid air through his broken respirator, smiling as the plant took him home.

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Trader Joseph’s

Tommie Unsell

On his hourly shelf inspection, Trader Joseph’s employee Michael Abrams found something odd. After searching 27 cans of Joe’s Os for parasites, disease, or anything else that could result in a class-action lawsuit, his 28th can yielded mold. Red, mushy mold. He rushed back to his superior, Jesamine Lucina Rosalyn Smythe. “Madame Smythe, you have to see this! It is really important!!” he said in his submissive retail worker voice.

“What is it, peasant?”

“I found mold on the pasta, it was disgusting and made me feel abstract emotions.”

Without further hesitation, Jesamine gestured to her attendant, who proceeded to pull out a pistol and put Abrams down. His lifeless, unfulfilled body dropped to the floor, oozing several fluids of varying density. “We shall observe this mold.” The two went off.

After the 3 minute walk, they arrived at the canned goods section. The attendant retrieved her looking glass and observed the can of mold. “Miss, he was wrong. The ‘mold’ he spoke of was just the pasta sauce that it came with.”

“Oh.” The next day at 8 o’ clock, the Trader Joseph’s opened again. The aisle home to dry beans, wet beans, and canned goods was sparkling more than usual, and nothing was out of the ordinary.

There were 108 cans of Joe’s Os on the shelves, (which were also TJ’s brand), warmed gently by the patented Cherenkov light fixtures.

Behind the scenes, the break room was a sight to behold, with the employees exiting their daily prayer. As always, Jesamine had led the prayer with the ferocity of a rabbit in heat: always multiplying and the subject of many similes. Michael’s corpse was propped up near the corpse pile, adjacent to the “01 days since last employee mishap” sign. He was a man taken before his time, a man whose pockets were never lined. Nobody cared about him, least of all his fellow employees. They were too concerned with the men who complained about 43

how hot the freezers were or how cold the coffee bath was. The real enemy of Jesamine, and by extension Trader Joseph’s, was human stupidity. The customers don’t know that freezers work by pumping out heat, or that hot coffee led to the downfall of McDonald’s.

Even Michael Abrams didn’t know what spaghetti sauce was. Nevertheless, his fellow employees abided by the company motto, “Quid futuis, cur apud me es? Exi nunc,” and avoided the same mistakes as their counterpart.

At 1 o’clock, there were 97 cans of Joe’s O on the shelves.

The food court was packed from the lunch rush, with thousands of people of all shapes and sizes lining up for their meals. Ever since Trader Joseph’s was given government funding, it had become an oasis of commerce that outshined even the famed “In-N-Out Burger” of the American Southwest. Everyone in a five mile radius was hoping to get the famous BLTJ (bacon, lettuce, tomato, and Jerusalem artichoke) with a side of unleavened bread. This Trader Joseph’s in particular had become famous for a combination of Barq’s root beer and coffee creamer, a concoction known as Coffee Beer by the locals.

At 1:30, the bell rang and all the diners stood up to sing the pledge of allegiance. Singing it in schools had fallen out of favor after the war, but Jesamine found it to improve morale. After all, the people making food for the troops should be filled with the spirit of free America!

At 3 o‘clock, the personal shoppers in service of the irradiated and bedridden 1% were interrupted by a mild to moderate ruckus in the southeast section: vegetarian and gluten-free options. Jesamine was taking her afternoon nap of approximately 47.5 winks, but her attendant was wide awake, fully prepared to cause grievous bodily harm to anyone that interrupted her liege. She heard the noise, however, and decided it could perhaps be important. She crept into Jesamine’s room using the password, RudyXD69. Even though she made frequent visits in the night, the room never ceased to amaze her. The wallpaper was complex without being tacky, and it paired excellently with the decorations. There was a colonial era theme, with several paintings of former US presidents like Abraham Lincoln and 44

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Rutherford Birchard Hayes (her personal favorite). Jesamine herself slept on a bed of peacock feathers, with the bedspread patterned to look like the redesigned American flag. She was stirring in her sleep, although it could have been from the dreams rather than the explosion.

“Miss, wake up. I think there was an incident.” Jesamine slowly rose up, bending only at the waist, in the fashion of a vampire. She appeared as if she was never asleep in the first place.

“Ah, the horse must have gotten in. Or was that a dream I had… it gets hard to tell these days.” The attendant just stood there with a dearth of bewilderment; she had become used to these kinds of conversations. She resolved to just walk out of the room, expecting Jesamine to follow her. She did.

The journey was quick, as the only aisle separating them was filled with pallets upon pallets of mayonnaise. The scene they came across was quite demented, dubious, and/or droll. A large man wearing jodhpurs and a pleather jacket lay tied up with expired red vines.

Around him were two employees and three customers. The customers were clearly spooked, but Jesamine’s loyal workers were trained to handle anything from an intelligent hamster to an unintelligent hamster. Jesamine was not new to intruders; just last week a swarm of shrimp found its way into the fountain. It took hours to stop them from leaping out and attacking customers’ eyes. Jesamine was wondering not how, but why such a man would come here. She said, “I wonder not how, but why you would come here.” He stayed as quiet as a corpse. She leaned in closer to deliver her monologue. “Any one of my enemies could have sent you, as I have made many in my life. What sets me apart from every other manager is that I have passion in what I do. I have faith in myself. Even though my employees range from idiotic to barbaric, I have faith in them. You have nothing in your life.

Even as you sit here in my store, tied up with edible BDSM gear, you are not the cornered predator. You do not have nothing left to lose.

You never had anything in the first place.” As she backed away, her staff knew what to do. They picked him up and carried him away, and by tomorrow he’d be on the corpse pile. On the walk back, Jesamine’s attendant spoke up.

“Miss, that man back there, I think he was dead before we got there. He wasn’t breathing or struggling when they took him.”

Knowingly, Jesamine responded, “Of course he was, dear.”

“But I thought-” “Don’t think. Thinkers don’t last very long.”

Elizabeth Sersen 46

Jester’s Macabre

Adam Curtis

The Jester waited patiently, flipping a freshly sharpened, pearl-hilted dagger idly in his gloved hands, catching the razor-sharp steel as it flew towards his flesh. Ever since he was a boy forced into an ill-fitting motley, he’s become familiar with this type of feeling, the taunt of steel so close to his flesh. The fear of slipping, of the wealth-ridden blade falling just a hair too close to his wrists, was all too similar to working in the center of power for thousands. For nearly as long as Jester had known, their laughs rang hollow in his ears.

But the Jester knew his job, and completed it with the practiced grace of a master of his craft. He was allowed to be at the center of one of the most powerful kingdoms the world had ever seen, walking the same walls and under the same bricks that sheltered powerful nobles for centuries.

I am powerful. The Jester lied to himself, his face contorting into the ghost of a snarl. I am seated at the table of gods.

But that wasn’t the truth, and deep down, he knew that. Just hours ago, The King made that fact very clear. The Jester paused and closed his eyes.

Bells jingled playfully from his hat as The Jester pushed the heavy, gold-inlaid, oaken door open, revealing an old, frail man hunched over a table, bathed in candlelight. As The Jester walked in slowly, the man made no sign of noticing his entrance.

“Your Majesty?” The Jester called out into the darkness. “You called for me?”

“Come over here.” His gruff voice ordered. The Jester obeyed immediately with practiced loyalty. “Tell me: how long have you served me?”

“I have always served the crown to the best of my ability,” The lie came easy, like a leaf drifting peacefully down a river.

“Though I have served eighteen years in this position, your majesty.”

“Hmm.” The King grunted, looking up into The Jester’s eyes.

For a split second, The Jester’s smile faltered, noticing The King’s 47

suspicious glare, like a thousand daggers piercing his back. “Then tell me, boy, why would a man like you need to leave the castle tonight?”

The Jester’s throat screwed itself shut, choking away any words that could’ve escaped his traitorous lips. He swallowed nervously.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play coy with me,” The King snarled, sitting up in his chair. “The woman you’ve been seeing. Do you have the slightest idea who she is?”

The knives in his back drew closer, their sharp tips brushing against his spine. “I—,” “I know your plan. You wanted to sneak her into the castle tonight. You were planning on letting this girl, a common peasant, walk in the halls of kings,” The king explains. “Am I correct?”

The Jester, fearing the blades at his back, bowed his head.

“Y-Yes, your majesty.”

“You should consider yourself lucky,” The old man sighed, and held his head in his hands. “Treason is a serious crime. If my guards didn’t catch her first, you’d be facing the same punishment.”

“Treason?” The Jester croaked in silent realization. The question tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop it. “What happened to Anne?”

The King’s face drew itself into a cruel, grim line. The Jester knew his answer before the old man’s condemnation exited his cold, cracked lips.

The Jester opened his eyes, stopping the knife in an instant.

Carefully, he lifted the knife closer to his face, and gazed into his reflection, trapped within the blade. On the other side of the steel mirror, a man stared back at him, his face contorted into a frown, with dark, strained lines drawn across his face, hidden behind a layer of white make-up. The face looked almost exactly as The Jester remembered it. He could imagine a kind, playful smile curling at the corners of the image’s mouth, and the twinkle of harmless mischief in its eyes.

But he didn’t see a playful smile on the image’s lips. He didn’t see mischief in the image’s eyes.

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He saw murder.

The Jester was patient, though. He could wait like a coiled snake playing the part of a rabbit. He had faced a thousand injustices in his time. He could wait, living on the fact that this one he’d faced would be the last The King would ever commit again.

“You killed her,” The Jester said.

“I did no such thing,” The King said firmly. “I punished a criminal for a serious crime. A crime you nearly committed yourself.”

“You killed her,” The Jester repeated, quieter, and to himself more than his love’s murderer. “She was innocent, and you killed her.”

“I am growing tired of this folly,” The King snarled, standing from his seat. “You think that the peasant was innocent? Are you willing to take her place? Even so, nothing will reattach her head to her shoulders. Accept it. There’s nothing you can do.”

But The King was wrong. There was something he could do.

“I am powerful.” The Jester whispered, barely louder than a strained snarl. “I am stronger than you could ever imagine.”

The Jester wasn’t powerful in the normal sense of the word. But that didn’t matter. He had his knife, and he had his knowledge.

The Jester smiled softly, and closed his eyes. Oh, the things he knew. He could topple empires with that kind of information.

In fact, he might as well indulge in a little chaos himself.

The Jester thought of himself as a fair man. He did his part as any other subjects did. He danced. He sang. He told jokes. He smiled and bowed as they laughed, the bells in his hat chiming playfully.

Every man has their limits, though, and his were crossed a long time ago. Now, it was his turn to return the favor.

He smiled softly at the mirror version of himself, in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes, as he heard The King’s meeting come to an end. Gently, he tucked the blade into his waistband, and pranced up to the great hall’s oaken door.

The Jester was used to being on the sidelines, but it was time for him to enter center stage. Today, he would make his last performance: “The Jester’s Macabre.”

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Tethered to the Night Ava Lowell As she stepped out onto the balcony, the glow of the warm summer sun cooked her skin and her hair gleamed. There were dark splotches in front of her eyes, or maybe behind them. The birds were talking and the dog walkers mindlessly scrolling through their phones. The parents struggled to get their kids in the car, and teenagers chattered on their way to school. She felt as if a chill was washing over her. As the traffic whizzed by, each driver and each passenger couldn’t predict what was about to happen. She was bathed in the night, even as the sun burnt through her flesh. But she blinked, and the heat wasn’t so painful anymore.

They didn’t need to predict anymore.

Shaking off the strange coat of black that she had been drowning in, she stepped back inside. Found the two things by her bedside that would’ve alarmed most people and stashed them away. You aren’t allowed to know where, because then maybe she could be stopped, but we have to let things play out the way they’re supposed to.

She proceeded to go through the motions of a regular life. The man still in her shower, who was he again? Brush the black dust away — right, her “husband.” She had vowed to be with him through anything, but she didn’t know if that was a promise she could continue to halfheartedly fulfill anymore. What would happen if he had pretended to really notice her the way she had to pretend to love him, would he have found out? Probably not.

He barely even tried to look at her how a normal husband would, like she thought he did in the beginning. She could still remember the moments when she thought she loved him. She could still remember feeling her heartbeat out of excitement, not fear. She knew now, though, what it felt like to know he was watching her not out of love but objectification. Examining her, observing her. Uninvited eyes in uninvited places. He bored holes into her skin with those eyes.

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Anyone that knew them probably thought it couldn’t be a healthier, more loving relationship, their constant smiles, his arm wrapped around her anytime anyone saw them, whispering who knows what into her ear, sharing a kiss every time someone glanced at them sideways, in retaliation for their doubt. But every time they smiled, her jaw ached. Every time his arm touched her, she had to force herself not to pull away, her own arms protectively crossed over her chest and her hands in fists, scars on her palms. She knew, every time, what he was whispering in her ear even before he’d brushed her hair away from it, to touch his lips gently to her skin before the pain spilled out through one breath and pierced her eardrum.

As she made the bed, her movements jerky and her mind afloat, the water shut off into sudden silence and she hurled back to consciousness. The bed was poorly made, and somehow her side seemed to crease and her pillow to sink every time she fixed it. But his, not a single fold, almost as if it were brand new, no destruction from a body collapsing it ever so slightly each night.

She had hoped to leave before he was out, but now there was no avoiding him. Every drop of water that he slipped over with his towel slowly plinked to the floor, one by one as he emerged, and with each one, her shoulders rose ever so slightly, her chest tightening, and her feet, unnoticeably, even to her, turning towards the door.

He was talking to her, something about visiting his mom, but his words were jumbled in her mind, so she inserted thoughts into the conversation that she knew weren’t her own.

Walking to the bathroom, she avoided each droplet of water that he had let fall to the floor. She couldn’t move her eyes above the sink, instead rummaging through a drawer for a brush. She found it, picked it up, and heard something drop, hitting the tile with a crack that echoed through the apartment.

A moment later she realized it was the brush, and using the hand that wasn’t still on her shoulder, he bent down slowly, picked it up, and silently started dragging it through her hair, humming a song she knew all the words to, softly, into her ear. Raising her eyes to the mirror, she only stared at him, fighting back the urge to get away.

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She knew what would happen if she insisted on doing it herself.

Just like when they were fifteen, when she wouldn’t respond to him the way he hoped for. Since then, she had silently obeyed.

When he was finished, she dutifully let him kiss her on the cheek, slipped on her shoes, and left, her wallet and phone clutched in her hand, her fingers white around them.

When she arrived back at the building that night, it loomed over her, its shadow dancing, taunting her, even in the dark. This place was supposed to feel like her home, but she hesitated behind the door before turning away. She stood there for several minutes, then sat down on the jagged pavement and tucked her head into her hands. She was constantly battling her mind, but tonight it was different. The sky was a blanket, suffocating her, each star a hole in the fabric she couldn’t quite reach.

She pictured the two things that could hand her an escape, but she’d never be able to bring herself to do it. Her mind always followed her back to the constant warning. I’ll kill myself if I lose you. In other relationships, couples said that to be sweet — “I’d die without you!” When he said that, she could see the black that sat before his eyes, threatening to break free and engulf them both. She couldn’t bear to be his reason for leaving. No matter how miniscule she felt around him, how meaningless, how much of a toy, she couldn’t let herself carry that, even if she were to go along with him.

Hearing the click of the lock behind her, she bolted upright, jumping to her feet, with her quivering fingers in her pockets, her fist wrapped around her keys. The door creaked open, sliding heavily along the floor to reveal his face, eyebrows furrowed. He asked her what she was doing, the slight lift in his voice that she knew too well. She told him she couldn’t get the door open and that she didn’t know if he was home yet too, so she decided to wait outside for him. Stepping inside, she tensed up as her side brushed against him inside the doorway. She walked up the endless stairs, aware that he was watching her, but in anger or longing, she didn’t know. She couldn’t tell the difference anymore. They reached the top, and he gently placed his hand on the small of her back, shifting her out of the way to unlock the door.

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Following her in, he started to do something, but she didn’t know what. She couldn’t focus on him, her eyes blurring if she stepped towards him, or glanced in his direction.

Instead, she started boiling a pot of water, sprinkling in salt, remembering her mom’s voice when she was in high school, gently reminding her when she managed to forget every time. Her mom’s voice echoed in her head now, and she knew she would have told her to leave.

More saltwater dripped into the pot. She hurriedly brushed at her face, not wanting him to see.

Leaving it to boil, she went to her bedside, grabbed a book that if you asked for the title, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you, and stepped out onto the balcony. No warm sun cooked her skin. No people were lingering outside, talking away. The cars going by were slowed, the traffic, she was sure, making every person inside their car angry, wishing they could be home. She wondered what it’d be like to be in one of those cars.

Tonight, there was nothing to stop her desires. She knew they were selfish, but after so many years, she wished, more than anything, to live in a place that didn’t make her feel heavy the moment she stepped in the door. She wanted to be able to see her mom, to talk to her friends. She knew she couldn’t reach the pinpricks of light poked through the blanket of black. Stepping closer to the ledge, she leaned over, resting her arms on the cool, black, railing.

A moment later, he called her name, and she turned around, bracing herself to walk back inside. She barely noticed her book tumble over the ledge. He appeared in the doorway to tell her the water was boiling, and she responded, meaningless words floating out of her mouth.

With his hand rested on her shoulder, he guided her back inside, past their bedroom where her secrets lay hidden away, in the place you’ll never find, past their bathroom where she wasn’t allowed to get ready in the morning by herself, past the front door where she wished she could turn to, into the kitchen where the pot was bubbling, saltwater spilling over the sides into the flames. She longed to be back on the balcony, following the book.

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Lesson on Men Octavia Ikard

Being friends with men always ends because of how it started The womb Where a man learns how many parts of a woman he can devour How easy her flesh glides through his knife Whether or not her struggle salted the breast milk which he drinks with no acid refluxed thank you I am not a woman And yet I wonder How you managed to boil me down to syrup in the bottom of the pot

When did your perception turn(ed) enzyme, begin dismantling me Into parts I am and parts you could suck cartilage out of to fill up your belly What about my art didn’t inject home into you?

Am I that complicit in the binary, slack-tongued in the arts that my personality wasn’t portfolioed in the first page of your esteem I guess I just wanted you to choose me over stomach growls nurture a friendship That won’t cave into Your small intestine 54

Elizabeth Sersen 55

Liminally Bubblegum

Anja Frickx

The thrum of her AC unit forced the muscles in my arms to contract, causing goose pimples to form on my arms even though I had a thick sweater on. The red glow of her lights soothed my blue addicted eyes as it bathed the room in a light that would have seemed dangerous if we hadn’t been sitting together.

We were both doing separate things, her playing Animal Crossing, the soft clicks of well-used buttons echoed her words, maybe I’d pick out a sound effect or two. As she played, sometimes my eyes would stray towards her screen as she went around that make-believe island, distracting me from my own task, drawing character outfits on my phone. My cold fingers kept skidding across the warm screen, messing up a line here and there as I got used to the new software, but those mistakes were easily fixable, a simple slightly violent tap undoes my messed-up line. Two fingers will do, she tells me.

The thing that united us was my laptop, covered in stickers, one made of paper with the signature of one of my friends, an axolotl happily swimming, a glass of whisky with a dumb pun, with its fans cycling away by our socked feet, New Game! flashing across the screen, our faces illuminated by the girls on the screen trying their best to get a video game out on time, as we talked about anything and everything.

From character stories to hated game mechanics, music we liked to text-to-speech bots trying to sing, our legs were practically overlapping as time passed, documented by the light disappearing from the window right by her head. We hadn’t met in person a lot, the smell of chlorine was still prominent in her hair, only talking over texts and a rare voice call when both of us were free. The two of us were incredibly socially shy, but we grew comfortable around each other.

Our conversations about 3d modeling, inspired by the show we were watching, filled the air with organic noises, unlike the only other noticeable noise, which was the mechanical buzzing of the AC keeping it cold by the standards of a sticky early August, no cicadas with their lullabies, nor crickets chirping keeping us up. Even the wind with her eternal presence had stopped blowing that night giving us the silence we 56

so desperately desired.

The show we ended up watching, New Game!, was found after a long road of searching, like trying to get to Southern California with a map of northern Wyoming in hand. Our heads pressed together, crowding the screen as we hunted for a show to catch our eyes, switching from one website to streaming service, to another website, back and forth, looking, hunting, cutting through their offerings faster than a hot knife through butter.

It had to be something special, something neither she nor I had watched, interesting enough to keep our attention, but boring enough that it could become background noise to our conversations. Our eyes darted around the screen, our minds jackrabbiting around trying to sate our desires to watch, know, and do.

What really can you do at 2 am as two fifteen year olds?

We breathed the air of freedom, no one else was home. Only her and I left to roam the halls.

Time continued to pass as it typically does.

Our next course of action was decided by the growling of our stomachs, loud, and begging for food. The route they charted was downstairs to the kitchen, bumping our shoulders together, letting out quiet bursts of laughter, hearing the thumps of our feet on the stairs as we rounded the corner and turned on the kitchen’s overhead lights.

The white LED bulbs forced a head rush, slightly blinding me, leaving me a bit disoriented and consequently waking me up on the sleepiness induced snack run.

The lights gave the room a liminal feeling, unlike the seemingly violent, yet comforting red glowing throughout her room. Evangelion posters, and Hatsune Miku littering the pink walls gave the room character, almost its own personality, not far from the slightly unsettling kitchen, only up the stairs and to the left.

The kitchen when illuminated at night seemed sterile, almost like an IKEA room model rather than a home. It felt more like a room in an old video game with outdated graphics, no entities created by code. The items scattered around the room tried to tell a different story: they screamed someone had lived here, the mix and match glasses, the 57

plant that sat soaking up the sun, the calendar marked with important dates, and the notes stuck to the fridge.

The space left me unsettled, like I was intruding on something, until she grabbed my arm and asked me what I wanted to have, the list sitting in our heads, as we chuckled and started to find and take.

We hurriedly collected our prizes from the fridge and cabinets, waiting for the microwave to hit 29 seconds, so the loud beeping didn’t give us away to the ghosts lurking around the house. Snacks securely in hand, we took off running up the stairs, giving pirates running back to their ship, treasure in hand, the government at their heels, a run for their money. The fingers holding the food, getting colder or slightly burnt, switched the lights off as we ran.

We curled back up in her bed, the air mattress lay long abandoned a few feet away, no sheets had even been put on it, and a singular sad blanket sat on top of it, thrown to one corner.

The two of us reveled in our bravery, New Game! was left silent, abandoned, as we stuffed our faces. The tanginess of warmed-up orange chicken, the sweet styrofoam taste of the fortune cookies, the scratchy feeling of the fortunes on our tongues spelling either our doom or a philosophical quote that left us in stitches trying to figure out what it meant.

The show was restarted with a simple press of the space bar, shoulders impossibly close, our calm breathing interjected with speech, the reacquisition of her Switch, she played then I played, back and forth like a pendulum lulling us to sleep. We kept this calm repeating cycle up until we heard the loud bang of the door downstairs and the murmur of her parents getting home at a late hour.

We scrambled to shut everything down as if we were a front for spies who had gotten sold out by one of their own, the clumps of shoes climbing the stairs spurring us to go even faster. The door opened as we curled up against each other, the laptop barely had been closed in time which contributed to the silence filling the room as one of them turned the corner and saw us and assumed us to be asleep, our breaths previously racing with adrenaline schooled to be calmer, mistaken for sleep, so they closed the door leaving us alone as they went upstairs to their room.

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Soft giggles permeated the air as we had gotten away with what we thought was the perfect crime. Yawns soon overtook those giggles, goodnights were whispered, eyes were closed, and I left the waking world behind, her not far behind me.

That night I dreamt of the ocean, on a rainy afternoon, the blue of the rain and the ocean replaced with the comforting red shades of her room, and all I could do was smile.

Virgin Devil Only virgin bodies can wear tutus and tiaras Crowns only seem august on golden locks Pink tutus don’t belong on brown baby girls’ bodies But old men do?

A passion for dance is only a passion if you can afford it I pirouette with the devil at age 8 Pretty women with picturesque bodies Composed with Painful pasts and pushy men I wanted to run but you cut off my legs Is my body just a status A bid A reward When my tutu And tiara crumbled Like my castle did So did my desire to dance And The only desire That I had as a child was to Shed off My Skin You say my memories are ammunition But i’m in your shooting range I’m sorry that I can’t let this go 59

Mia Mendoza

The Lake Clara Dodge Snow slumbers in heaps, bickering with my yellow rain boots.

They gnaw at the frozen sand like teeth on stale bread. My eyes ache, the sky blinding me as it blends into the lake. Geese bend into letters across the coastline. Stragglers.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday.

Alice stomps, splinters the frozen reservoirs pinned into pockets of sand. I shudder at the reverb, louder than snapped bones, press open palms to my ears. My tendons thrum like untuned piano strings and she shouts something I can’t hear. She beckons me to race her. Vibrates with giggles and her grin. I stay where I am. I like watching her run, another dark goose in the gray light.

Her bare feet leave marks like lipstick-stained kisses as her arms flutter. Butterfly wings. Cold air chafes her arms into goosebumps.

She abandoned her coat in the pickup. Her feet are pale purple. Dusty eyeshadow. She kicked off her shoes, peeled off her socks. Her leather sketchbook convulses with her footfalls in her overall pocket. An essential.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday. I am half their life behind them and they don’t recall being eight.

I collect stones, my raincoat pockets soaked with them. I sieve through the sand for more. I am a sandpiper, sauntering with wild hands. I sit on a flaking log and line them up. Divided by shape.

Smooth to irregular. Horizontally, smallest to largest. Vertically, light to dark. I chew on my sleeve, swing my legs. Inspect the dappled reflection of the sun on the icy lake. Molten sunflower petals seeping. In July I crashed into the clear tide, my own moon. But it is December now, and mom demanded I dedicate a wide berth to the water’s edge. A plummet through ice as deadly as gravity.

Still, it allures me.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday.

They are sixteen now. Our mother’s eldest and my father’s dismay. My lovely curiosities. Soon they will leave me and molt into tangible creatures.

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Whitt races against Alice. Long muscular legs panting. Auburn hair burning against the soot sky. He crackles with triumph as he passes the boulder they set as the finish line first.

“That’s not fair!” Alice whines. “I should have had a head start.

You’ve had so much more practice than me.”

Whitt shrugs. “Join track with me if you want practice.” Their conversation fades, drowned in the frozen lake. Sculpted of mirrors, fragments of fleeting reflections. The sun, the sun, the sun.

Alice perches beside me. I don’t notice until she speaks. “I think I should use that canvas you gave me to paint the beach,” she says. “It’s even prettier than last year!” I smile as she taps my nose. She always does that, as if in place of my name. Su-zie. Su-zie. She vigorously flips the pages of her sketchbook to a blank one. Hungry. I observe, motionless, as she defaces the page with charcoal scribbles. It wrings into a scene. Rough, angular. Then flawless.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday. The beach breathes, serene and callous and beautiful. My present to Alice was a canvas taller than me. She will paint it with this afternoon scene, my acrylic figure inconsequential in the corner.

I run to the fringes of the ice, crouch down. Crumble it like broken glass with my fingertips. Lacerating. I have no gloves.

Whitt takes a photo of me while he thinks I’m not looking. The click captures my attention. Later he has the film developed and leaves the photograph in an envelope between pages of my bird-watching guide. I am camouflaged in the portrait. Feathery blonde hair lost in the snow. A transparent girl in a neon coat.

Alice completes her sketch, fingers darkened with charcoal. A streak on her cheek stark against the monotone. She shivers. A child of December who feels a kinship with August. She revels in heat and vibrant colors. In winter her exposed skin quivers in the embrace of the daggered arms of winter. Lined with ice like shrapnel.

“Come on,” Whitt huffs, taking her hand and pulling her to the truck. “Be reasonable.” She rolls her eyes.

“It’s not that cold.” Crosses her arms.

“It’s almost time to leave anyway.” He turns to me. “Why don’t 61

you come with us, Suzie?” I shake my head without looking back.

Whitt sighs. “I’ll be back for you in a minute.” I watch as they climb up the slope and out of view.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday. I study my reflection on the ice. My cheek leaks, wet with melted snow.

Snowflakes encase my fingers. Lace patterned gloves. I study them as they dissolve. Droplets race down my arm. I am a May baby but the winter loves me.

I take off my treasured rain jacket. I remove the boots that hang loose on my feet. I shed my socks and fold them neatly. My bare feet burn like cold skin submerged in a hot bath, feverish and frozen.

Warmth’s wrath.

I skirt the edge of the lake. Entertain venturing into forbidden lands. I skate out a little, eyes on my dragging feet. Numb. I look up and observe nothing. The creak of the ice is floorboards in the night. A lonely sound whose only companion is the wind. And the sounds of me, my breaths and squeaking muscles and skidding feet. I am singular in this expanse of emptiness. Void. Extraordinary. I am an infant and the ice cradles me.

I pirouette, like how I dance in my socks in our living room.

Whitt snaps photos of my routines. He conceals them for me in hidden places to discover. Sealed in envelopes. Protecting me with his spit, a painless blood oath. He and Alice are only half mine, fathered by a shadow. I wonder if Whitt remembers when he braids my hair, entwining my youth into his.

A buzzing noise crescendos above me. An airplane. I bounce with excitement. My toothy grin infects my body, a seagull swooping for crumbs. I dart after the sound. Soaring on the ice. Slipping. I am every levitating thing. A wandering umbrella. A dandelion seed. I search for the silhouette of the plane’s wings peeking through the cloud curtain.

The ice ruptures.

It splits, torn stitches, jagged. I submerge to my waist. Seething seeds, sprouts breaking my skin like the earth. Seething seething seething. My jeans slurp thirstily at the lake. My heart oscillates. Do seagulls crash and drown? Do they freeze and forget their buoyancy?

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I scramble out of the water. Crawl backward away from the glacial canyon. Peel off my jeans. My thighs and calves are scarlet like blood and the rust on the pickup. Blushing at the betrayal. My toenails are blue the way the sky should be. There is no sensation in my feet.

I collapse, a deflated birthday balloon. Labored breaths. Stationary in time like the waves that solidified on the shore. Infinite like Alice’s footprints with no fear of the waves. I close my eyes to the gray sky. The wind screams. I become the water. The sky. I blur away. It feels just the same as flying in my dreams.

Arms gather me like dried weeds, a wild flower’s corpse.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt birthday. I am the December bouquet I always gather at the end of our escapades.

Whitt heaves me onto the beach. Driftwood. I blink, disoriented. His face is taut. “What the hell, Suzie!” No half-anger for his half-wet half-sister. No half-concern. Everything is full. Vaster than the number of grains of sand on the beach. “Are you okay?” he pants.

I nod. He rubs my legs dry with my coat. The sand encrusts my skin like lichens grasping onto tree limbs. The grain’s invasion on my skin is suffocating. Sandpaper on wooden planks. I squirm away. Wince as I pull my legs to my chest. “What’s wrong?”

There’s a gash on the back of my left knee. Skin mangled by ice. Sand mingled with blood. I maneuver my leg to show him. He delicately traces the wound. His finger comes back red, liquid he wipes away on his corduroy pants. Even my blood doesn’t understand vividity.

Cardinal feathers plucked into veins of brown. He ties one of my socks around my knee. “We’ll clean you up when we get home.”

My teeth chatter. I burst out laughing nervously, unbridled as the cracked ice. He groans, “Oh my god.” Throws up his hands, surrendering to my vexing nature. Weeds are notorious for their persistence.

“I am never taking you to the beach again.”

He gathers my jacket, wraps it around my waist. He folds my pants, my sock. Doesn’t offer my boots back. He knows I will refuse, sand between my toes. He stuffs my things into his elderly backpack, threadbare graying hair.

“Here, I’ll help you up.” He extends a hand. I hobble to my feet, 63

my leg stinging. He steadies me, then crouches down. “Now, come on,” he sighs, waving me close. “I’ll give you a piggyback to the pickup.” I mount, sucking on a stray chunk of my hair like a spiral lollipop I beg for at the fair every fall.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt birthday. I ride on Whitt’s back, a horse trotting through the wildness.

This year I am his rounded wound, the world Atlas bore. We are silenced. His hand shakes as he pushes hair out of his eyes, a buzzing cicada wing. It doesn’t occur to me that fear smothers the words from him. I grip him tighter than muscle leeching onto bone.

We arrive at the truck, Alice still barefoot and coatless. I smell her smoking before I see her. Breathe into my sleeve. She smokes at the picnic table near where Whitt parked. Glaring at the bright and absent sun. Grinning broadly when I wave to her. Untamed. I want to be her.

She is whole. Whole to a brother and mother, no fragments sunk in blood.

“Alice, put that out,” Whitt grunts as I slide off his back. She drops the cigarette on the ground and bends down to pour sand over it. Buried. She gets into the truck. Passenger side. Scoots over to make room for me. I hobble in behind her.

She notices the bloody sock. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She smooths my hair. I stare out the frosted window, finger the glass. I want to go back. To the beach that is like the sea. To the place that sees me whole. The way the stars watch us above, silently.

Whitt slams the driver-side door behind him, punctuating his sentence. “Idiot.” Idiot idiot idiot. “She swam in the lake.” The ignition lights.

Alice chortles, leans around me to press my nose like a stone I smoothed in my palm. The cigarette smell envelopes me. Su-zie.

“Sounds exciting,” she sighs. She breaks down in laughter. I smile with my teeth over my bottom lip.

Whitt backs the truck out onto the road, silently fuming. “Lighten up, Whittier.” She leans into him and tousles his hair. “Just a bit of water.” Just a bit of water. Just a bit.

He slams the brakes. “It’s not funny!” he shouts.

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I turn my eyes to the metal bed of the truck. We are frozen.

“You can’t be careless.” I think he is lecturing me until he adds, “You prance around coatless, she’s going to copy you.” His eyes melt down his face. His cheeks burn red. “She could have drowned.”

My voice is barely audible. “Sorry.” He shakes his head. Doesn’t accept it. The words meaningless from the wrong mouth.

We are suspended in silence. His breaths are the loudest. Finally, “No, I’m sorry.” He wipes his face with his shirt, a reset record. Play it from the beginning, maybe the story will speak differently. Maybe his sorrow won’t sound the same.

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday.

Whitt drives, the road whirrs past us, drones. For once he doesn’t play the radio. For once Alice is silent.

I lay my head in Alice’s lap and suck on the end of my braid. I drift into dreams. I wake in a field of amber grass. Golden sun. Speckled lake in the summer. My reflection is not my own. My hair is dark and my eyes are warm. Alice’s face. I blink and the water freezes. I fade back into myself. Alice calls out to me in the distance. Suzie. We hit a bump and my eyes jolt open. Half-awake.

“Suzie, wake up. We’re almost home.”

Today is the same as every other Alice and Whitt Birthday. We get home and I find a new photograph taped to my bedroom door. I’m at the playground, oozing up an oak like sap. I’m in motion, a blur. Half in the frame. Half out.

65

The Window

Abby Cockerill

Maybe it’s their first date. They were college students who always glanced over the top of the macbooks they could barely afford to steal glances at one another. She had finally built up the courage to place a sticky note on his notebook that week, a small message placed neatly on the paper. He smiled while he read it and wrote his number in handwriting that appeared illegible compared to her beautiful cursive words. She texted him immediately and they made plans for that Friday afternoon. He took her out to a movie. They made small talk as they sat down in the uncomfortable chairs, quieting only when the lights dimmed. If you asked them later what the movie was, neither of them would remember. They were too busy staring at each other freely and accidentally brushing hands when reaching for the popcorn. They went to dinner at a small Italian restaurant. The kind that brought hot bread out before the menus. It wasn’t too fancy, but she found it incredibly charming. They went for ice cream. She saw the ice cream shop glowing down the street as they exited the restaurant and insisted they go. He got mint chip and she got chocolate. They each stole bites of the other’s cone as it melted down their hands and face, sharing laughter when a big drip of chocolate spilled down his floral shirt. She wiped it with a napkin even though it didn’t help. In fact it made it worse. They sat down as the conversation lulled into comfortable silence, only breaking when a golden retriever trotted by. Many people passed by as they watched the setting sun, finishing up their cones. When the sun had finally disappeared from the horizon, they started the walk back to her apartment hand in hand.

Her roommate would be watching through the window of her room as they said their goodbyes. That night they would both lay in bed thinking about every detail of the date and smiling as they drifted off to sleep.

Maybe she’s had that dog for a long time. She got her as soon as she moved into her new apartment. The paint was chipped 66

and faded and the floorboards creaked with every small movement.

It was too big for just herself, filled with boxes labeled in sharpie piled in every corner. It was lonely. Her dad convinced her to get a dog after she complained over the phone for the fifth time about the apartment. She was hesitant at first, worried about the responsibilities it would hold. She decided to at least go see some dogs at her nearest shelter. The moment she locked eyes with the 2-year-old golden retriever, all of her worries dissipated. She could swear the dog smiled, tongue out and tail wagging. The dog, her dog, ran up to her and climbed into her arms. That was the first hug of many to come. They shared memories of long car rides to her dad’s house in Massachusetts, spilled cups of coffee paired with the shirt stains to prove it, and morning runs where the air felt just right and the sun was just waking up. She’d had a long day of work typing away on her computer, and the night was perfect for a walk. Her dog knew before she even said the word. So slipping on some sneakers and clipping her dog’s favorite leash to her collar, they set off down the street. The sun was setting, splashing warm colors across the sky and sidewalk. The streetlights illuminated her face as she strolled down the block, passing a man with a large brown stain on his shirt and a girl holding a half-eaten ice cream cone who shared an “awwww” as the girl and her dog walked by. Emboldened by pride she smiled as they continued on. They sat down on a bench a couple yards down, across from an old man with wire-rimmed glasses sitting at an Italian restaurant who offered compliments to her dog while glancing over a large menu. They watched as more people came and went as the sky got darker and the street got brighter. When they had both caught their breath, they got up and continued on down the familiar street, walking side by side.

Maybe he is a regular at that restaurant. He’s lived here since he was young. Even though the storefronts rearrange and the paint on houses chip and change, the streets stay the same. Just like him.

He wakes up at the same time every morning, eats breakfast and 67

turns on the 8 o’clock news. He goes on a short walk most days, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays he switches it up and walks until his feet hurt and his knees cramp. He drives to work in the old Honda Accord he got in his 30s. The engine still hums the same melodic tune it did back then. The bells above the door jingle as he pushes it open, going straight to sit in the old armchair behind the counter. He picks up a book seated on a small table hugging the side of the chair, lifting his glasses from around his neck to frame his face. A couple of customers wander in, glancing around, purchasing some small items, offering some kind smiles, trying to meet his gaze. He doesn’t so much as glance over the top of the wire-rimmed glass. The old grandfather clock in the corner strikes out its familiar six chimes and he stands up, groaning about his knees before the last one rings out.

He locks the door back up and makes the short walk over to the little Italian restaurant in which he spends his evenings. With no need to walk up to the hostess table, he makes his way to an empty table. His empty table. He picks up the menu as a habit, although he already knows his order. He looks out to his crowded street with women walking golden haired dogs, families enjoying some time out of the house, and couples out on dates making heart eyes towards each other at every opportunity. He ends the night the same way. Walking back to his car alone, his legs creaking with every step, leaving his street the same way he always has.

Maybe they’re visiting this place as a family vacation. The boy was hoping to go somewhere more exciting for his last week of summer before second grade, but this will do. The hotel room they are staying at has a really bouncy bed, and he bets it’s the bounciest bed ever. They are going to have dinner with some family friends that live in the area, and his parents tell him to put on his shoes because it’s time to go. He wonders why. He’s never even met these people. His parents finally get him off the bed, setting his brand new sketchers down beside him. He rips the velcro back and slips them on his feet.

He runs past his parents holding the door. He feels so much faster 68

when he wears them. His parents quickly get him buckled into his carseat, glancing at their watches before they pile into the front.

They slip an old CD into the car, bringing it to life. The boy is kicking his shoes on the back of the passenger seat to the sound of the music. His parents are singing along to the lyrics blasting through the speakers. He doesn’t understand what they are saying, but it sounds really cool. His parents pull over the car to park about a block away from the restaurant, leaving the rest of the distance for them to walk. The boy is wriggling in his carseat straps, and knocking on the window until his parents open the door. He hops out of the vehicle as his parents lock the doors with a satisfying click. They fuss with his shirt and his hair, pushing it out of his eyes, but as soon as they look away he undoes their work. He grabs both of their hands as they walk down the busy street. He’s still humming the melody of the song by the time they reach the restaurant.

“Hello?” says a familiar voice I can’t quite place. The boy is smiling at everyone they pass. He sees so many interesting things and he decides this place will definitely be a good vacation. His parents spot their friends sitting at an outdoor table covered by an umbrella. They wave and look expectantly at him to do the same.

“Hello?” The voice questions a little louder, more insistent.

My gaze falters, snapping me back to the present. I glance back over my shoulder at the table. Four pairs of eyes all locked on every movement I make. I shift my body back to face the people, offering a shy smile and looking anywhere but their eyes. Eyes say everything they don’t. I blink a couple of times, still a bit disoriented from the change of lighting.

“She asked how school is going,” The voice said, my mind finally recognizing it as my mother’s. I flick my eyes over the woman’s face, on which sat a polite smile that looked slightly uncomfortable. I couldn’t really blame her, seeing as I felt the same. My mind ran through millions of scenarios in the span of five seconds.

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“It’s going pretty good,” I decided simply, as a smile placed itself on my face. The woman nodded and smiled at me once more. I glanced over to where my mom sat next to me.

“Why can’t you just hold a conversation? It’s not that hard,” her eyes said to me. I stared at my shoes under the table. The familiar mud stains and creases calmed my mind as the conversation picked up again. They continued telling stories of little to no importance. My minute in the spotlight of the ornate light fixture above the table was over. I turned back around to face the setting sun out the window framed with light blue wood. With the light on my back and my thoughts drowning out the conversation behind me, I looked back down to the crowded street.

Maybe he’s good at talking to people.

Teigan Macek 70

Where Are You From?

Bianca Summers Well, I’m from my mother’s arms and my father’s laugh, of course. I am from a rainbow tutu and pretend weddings at the top of the stairs.

I am from the green stand which held the image of Max and Ruby and Wonder Pets. From the white stripes and pocket doors. I’m from the fish-tail braids that never quite worked with my head shape. I’m from rolling down the hills with Dip-n-Dots. From the ledge of my basement window with those sweet hands on my back. I’m from the voice of Charlotte, The Spider, by my first grade teacher and raising my hand to use the bathroom when she asked who the lefties of the class were. From “Lemon Meringue” and “dairy bananas.” Dinosaur stairs and John Deere brownies. I am from fuzzy socks because “we’re sorry you’re sick.” From helicopters to the fish store. The creak of her white porch swing and The Little Red Schoolhouse. From the girls night for the women. I’m from laying between them to stop the volume but only becoming closer to the speakers. I’m from talk radio on a sandy car seat.

From the bubble maker that doesn’t work. From the tipping of the lamp and descending on my butt. A parrot envelope opener and a Coors pool towel. I’m from Toys R Us and those damn robot bugs. Strawberry milk spinning on a chair. The yellow book in the black corner of the Macbook. I’m from Earth hour and racing mice to the kitchen. Calico Critters Critters I never had. Patches of violets and Ravinia tadpoles. I come from a four-piece kingdom and bee pee. A radiator to find comfort in and a whisper to be returned with a shout. I’m from PVC pipe telephones and her silly photo cards that would one day make sense.

From black and white ink sending me over the edge and from loafers with a little snake skin. Bookshelves made into a home and sound effect buttons in tiger costumes. From her frog collection and the closet’s woody scent. I am from popcorn and a tire swing. A flower bed and a “b” bowl. Fairy dust and revenge cartwheels. I’m from cookie-ookie and “Who’s your real best friend?” From a journal that is vinegar and scribbles.

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The Jimmy John’s all the way over there. From spinny chairs, grilled cheese and a paper cup of yuck. Those adorable slippers and stripes with polka dots. I’m from a house that looks just like the one next to it. I’m from a Lolly Barbie and “but they have girl toys.” A pink floral guitar and love. I’m from love, life, falls, and leaves. I’m from the veins that are my roots and the roots that hold my tree.

Frances Berta

72

Sonder Wami Osikanlu (definition: “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”) do I know you? do I really know you? you tell me your name who are your parents and siblings your friends and foes how you like to listen to the songs of the birds to the friends and watch the sun creep up behind your neighbor’s house in the morning how you love to chew on the sweet tapioca pearls at the pit of your drink and pull a cheeky grin from ear to ear at the people you pass by but I can’t help but wonder what you really see what you really think are the colors in that painting swirling for you as they are for me? what runs through your head when you lie still at night waiting for the blinds to close over your eyes? when you look at others do you think the same as me? do you feel the same as me? do the daggers of the crimson yellow smile in the sky pierce through your skin like mine? does the whistle of the wind make your skin feel like caterpillars crawling from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?

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how can you prove that you are like me? my mind pounds, the person running round it going too fast I can’t seem to fathom it all or is it all a lie? am I the only one who can see? feel the smile on my skin on a bright day? feel the caterpillars from the whistles of the wind?

I race in circles in my mind for an answer but now, all I can ask is “do I even know me?”

If she knew the peace out this window Maybe she would stop looking through that mirror She has yet to understand the joy of telling the truth When speaking of a cat that scratches And carry on after a night of singing that sweet song Compared to the fights that persist all night long

Untitled Bianca Summers

She doesn’t know that the birds sing Because all she hears are the sirens She can’t see the stars Because she only sees the fires It’s when she takes the step that she learns Mirrors reflect light And from war comes lore That scars will have stories And hurt results in lyrics The alarms are apart of the symphony And a flame is where it begins She will recover And she will discover 74

Bullet of Sand James Bartley Two people sat by the flames of a roaring campfire. A slight wind pushed through the warm southern air, swirling the smoke above their heads and through the fields of Southern prairie grass. One of them was a child, a girl, who stared intently at the yellow and red petaled flower of fire. Her legs, as crossed as the burning logs, bounced as she listened to the cracks and pops of the blaze.

Beside her, with an aged beard and eyes as black as coal, was her father. He was staring, up towards the stars, following the smoke of the fire and the fumes of his cigar. His hat, an old leather stetson, was tilted onto his forehead, shadowing his eyes ever slightly. He had a pistol slung around his hip that swayed in the breeze.

The girl, with eyes of emerald green, turned to him and asked through the midnight air, “Pa, could you tell me a story?”

For a moment, her father stayed still, dragging in from his cigar. Then, from behind a mask of smoke, he said, “A story? Huh, let me think of one.”

He dragged his eyes back down towards the embers of the campfire like the slow anchor of a ship. He thought to himself, listening to distant coyote howls and whispering winds. A small breeze passed over him, and with it he began to speak.

“Well, there once was a man. He was born from the sands of a desert, with nothin’ but the clothes on his back and the hat on his head. He wandered without rhyme nor reason in that desert for quite some time. Didn’t know what he was lookin’ for, but he was lookin’ for somethin’.”

“Did he find anythin’?” the girl asked.

75

“Why yes, yes he did. He found a woman, wanderin’ the desert too.

He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, even though he never near saw one before. Some say they had a burnin’ fire between the two, and wasn’t long ‘fore they started wandering together.”

The girl crossed her arms and said, “Another love story? I’ve heard all these ‘fore.”

Her father darted his eyes towards her. “Hush now, I ain’t done. Now this woman, she said she was from a town far from the desert, down south, and they began to make their way to her home.”

“Did they make it?”

“Yes ma’am, they did. It took some time, but they found it.

Down a hill, ‘round all the water of the desert, was a small settlement.

Her home.” The man tilted his hat up before continuing, “The people there, they welcomed the man with open arms, and soon he was makin’ friends, a whole life there. In fact, he and the woman fell in together. Probably each other’s first loves.”

“What happened? After that?”

“Well, after some time there, he started missin’ the desert.

Now there ain’t nothin’ wrong about missin’ home, but the townspeople didn’t think so kindly about it. Least of all the woman he met.

She got mighty jealous of that desert.”

“What’d they do to him?”

“Not much, at first. They talked about him, cursin’ him under their breath and behind closed doors. He didn’t notice, or didn’t care to notice at first, but as he started listenin’ to what they were sayin’, he started to see what they were doin’ too.”

“What were they doin’?”

Her father paused in thought, then said, “At night, well past when they thought the man was asleep, the townspeople would go down to the lake. They would drink from the water while talkin’ ill of him. In fact they were talkin’ ill of each other too, when backs were turned and the water was being swilled.”

The girl sat there, her eyes and ears focused on her father.

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“Fights sometimes broke out, but most was hot smoke from a small fire.

Thing was, every night, always at the center of the fights, always casting the words of stone, always the first to drink from the water, was the woman.”

The father shifted his feet towards his daughter, his boots dragging through the dirt.

“Now the man, he was terribly upset by this, but he didn’t want to believe that she was to blame. So one day, when nobody was around, he went down to the lake, cupped his hands with the water and took a drink. It tasted like tar, like the hateful words the others spoke of him, and it drove him damn near mad. While the water coursed through him, he would pick fights just like the rest of them, say things he would come to regret. Eventually he started pickin’ fights with the woman too, but some part of her looked like she wanted it.”

“Why would she want that?”

“Don’t know. Maybe she wanted him to fall into some sorta trap, wanted him to hurt for missin’ his home and wantin’ to leave her. Now he was already hurtin’, but the fights just made it worse an’ worse. But no matter how bad it got, she never let him leave. She would always find a way to get him back to the water, with the rest of them, and make him watch as the woman he loved cursed his name, and made kind eyes with other men. She was enjoyin’ it, the fire in her hand, the chaos she controlled and the eyes she drew from it all. It was like she became gospel to those folk. And ‘ventually she didn’t even need the water to do it.”

The father took his hat off of his head, resting it on the log beside him while a cool air flowed through his long, silvered black hair.

“But one day, she took it too far for the man. While at his lowest point, he found her, with another man. And she was wearin’ his hat while they were makin’ hateful love. She told the man of sand to sit there and take it, but he couldn’t. No matter how much of that water she forced down his throat, how much she tempted him with that same evil love, it wasn’t enough to keep him.”

“Did he leave?”

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“Oh yes he did. He marched through the town square, his hat placed firm on his head, and took leave soon as he could muster the strength. While he left, he watched as familiar faces from all across town cursed him with all their might. They left all manner of scars on him, takin’ out chunks of his skin of sand, but he did make it out.

He never said it outloud, but in his mind he knew he’d be back. For what, he wasn’t real sure.”

“Did he go back to the desert?”

“For a while, yes. But eventually he made his way to other towns, where the people were friendly to him. Was nice for him, but unfortunately the woman would often send some of her folk after him, followin’ to make sure no town would stay friendly for long.

Eventually, though, he lost ’em. Made a nice life for himself real far away.”

The girl, inching towards her father, asked, “Did he go back?

To the woman?”

“After about ten years, yes he did. But in that time he picked up a thing or two; tobacco, gunslingin’, and what love was really like. On the night of that tenth year he reached the town, revolver in hand, when all the townsfolk were gathered by those evil waters.

He had only one bullet in his chamber, forged from the sand that birthed him, and he knew ‘xactly who it was for. Nobody recognized him at first, wearing all sorts of foreign clothes and a face unscathed by their foul mouths, but the woman knew who he was. How could she forget the one that got away? How could she forget that hat he had placed firm on his head?”

“What’d he do?”

“He parted that crowd with just a glance, silenced their voices with the strength of his will. All fell quiet, and from within that there silence the woman spoke. She said, with a voice of seductive hate and evil, ‘so you finally come back to me?’. For a moment, he stood there, unmoved by her words but lettin’ them ring in his head.

Then, from his leathered hip, he drew his revolver fast as lightnin’ and pointed it at the place ‘tween her eyes. Held it there, for all her folk to see, until a single gunshot rung.”

78

The daughter, with eyes wide, asked, “Did he shoot her?” But her father didn’t say anything. He just grinned, tobacco smoke flowing through his teeth.

“No ma’am, he didn’t. He shot the water.”

The father, placing his hat back onto his head, took a final drag from his cigar before flicking it into the campfire.

“From that day on the waters slowly drained away from that lake, and he left that town for good. Eventually, just like that water, the people drained away too.”

The girl was stunned, and with her thinking eyes she asked, “Did he look back?”

“Well, the part of him that drank from the water did, but the part of him that shot it never gave it a second glance.”

Amelia Hunkele 79

During The Strike Afton Jennings Context: In France controlled Algeria, a war has broken out. Algerians, who are tired of the colonization of 130 years, are fighting back against the French. Taking control of this war is the National Liberation Front, or FLN. They have little ground against the French, who have full armies and planes for their bombs, and who have been taking Algerians and torturing and killing them. In return, the FLN and other Algerians have to turn to guerilla tactics, or what is now called terror.

During the Battle Of Algiers, a prominent battle the French would eventually win, the Algerians hold a strike to convince the United Nations that they care about their independence. In Europe, a majority white and European council is ready to decide whether Algeria belongs to the French or not.

I stare out of our window at the Casbah. The streets are empty — those that weren’t requisitioned for work are still obeying the strike.

The strike will be broken tomorrow, or at least that’s what Father said when we watched our neighbor’s son get forced into a truck. He’s nearly the same age as me, and Mother says I should just be glad it wasn’t me.

I work in the European quarter, for a nice enough French woman. She won’t discuss the FLN with me, and I refuse to mention my family to her. Sometimes she’ll use my name and almost freeze, like she’s forgotten I’m Muslim like the rest of them. She hasn’t seen me for five days. I might be out of work after this strike.

If I’m out of work, I’ll probably try to join the FLN. I don’t like guns, and I don’t really trust the FLN - not since I saw the quiet girl who lived near us taken away for prostitution - and that’s probably the one reason I haven’t joined up so far. I want Algeria to be free as much as the rest of them, I just don’t know if I could stomach killing a man.

Of course, it’s something that I can learn to stomach. We’ve all learned to stomach bombs and the checkpoints to get to work and being called names for the crime of being brown in the country that belongs to us. I’ve learned to stomach the sight of bodies.

80

“Basem,” my sister says, cutting through my thoughts. I’ve been listening to her moving around behind me, clearing up cups and dishes.

“Are you going to help, or are you going to dream?”

I roll my eyes, moving to help her gather up the cups for washing. “I’m thinking.”

“About what? There are thoughts in that head?” she flicks my forehead, laughing all the while, and I laugh too. It’s a bit forced. “Is this about the strike? Did Baba get to you when he talked about Pierre firing him? Are you worried about Jeanette?”

“No, I don’t mind if I lose my job.”

“That’s also a problem.”

I frown at her. “I’m not thinking about my job, Samia. I’m thinking about the United Nations.” Samia sighs, taking the dishes to the sink and setting them down. “Do you think they’ll understand the strike?”

“Are you asking me if the strike will work?” Samia says, “because I don’t know. The United Nations doesn’t know us. They know the French. They trust the French. But the strike is big.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I told you I didn’t know, Basem. What do you think that means?”

I sigh, leaning back and watching her wash our dishes. When she notices that I’m not doing anything, she throws a rag at me and gestures to the wet dishes. “They took away Hakim the other day,” I say as I pick up a plate and start to dry. “He probably won’t be coming back.”

“He won’t be. Don’t be a dreamer. We only need him to stay quiet before they kill him.”

“Who even gives them the authority to do these things?” I ask, but I know it’s a foolish question before Samia even scoffs. She shoves a cup at me.

“Sometimes I can’t believe you’re older than me, you’re so dumb. No one gives them authority. Do you think we gave them authority one hundred thirty years ago? Do you think we went ‘you seem nice, Frenchmen. Rule Algeria for us’? No, idiot! They decided they were in charge, then they went and made a bunch of rules that benefit them.”

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She grabs the rag from my hands for the sole purpose of swatting me with it, and I recoil from her. “Alright, alright. You’re so smart, Samia, please forgive me, Samia.”

“Do you think the strike will work? You’re asking me, but you didn’t ask yourself.”

I falter. She’s right, it’s a hard question to answer. Why do I expect her to have the answers when I don’t? “It’s big. It’ll show the United Nations that we’re serious,” I finally decide, “they can’t ignore all of us, and they believe that people should be free.”

Samia clicks her tongue. I don’t understand what she’s trying to say, but I know she’s saying it. I can also tell she’s going to change subjects. Samia is easy to read, or at least I know how to read her easily.

“What would you even do if Jeanette fired you?”

“I don’t know. Join the FLN, I guess.”

Samia scoffs. “Do you even know anyone who’s in the FLN? Do you plan to parade down the streets declaring your intentions?”

I feel a rush of hot blood flow into my cheeks. “No one here would turn me in,” I bluster.

“You’re too cocky, Basem. You’ll get yourself into trouble. I know you’d throw up if you had to pick up a gun, and no one’s entrusting your clumsy fingers with a bomb.”

“And you? Would the FLN want you? You’re a woman, and I don’t think you could handle a gun either.”

“I could! I could handle a bomb too, if it came to that! No one would look under my chador if need be.” Samia huffs and turns her head away from me.

“So you’re going to join the FLN, Samia? Risk yourself like that?” I know I sound ridiculous, expunging the risk of the FLN when I just said I’d join myself. But there’s a difference between me and Samia.

She’s my younger sister, I’m not going to let her run around and play with bombs. I say as much, making Samia scoff again.

“Maybe I’ve helped out before. You don’t know everything I do, Basem.”

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I grab at her shoulder, spinning her around. She exclaims in protest, trying to stomp on my toes. “Don’t tell me you’ve blown something up.”

Samia wrenches out of my grasp, grabbing a cup and scrubbing at it furiously. “Don’t you want to be free, Basem? You’re a dreamer, don’t tell me you think Algeria is going to be free just because we didn’t go to work. France fought in Indochina and lost. We can win here, but they have bombs and soldiers and they kill people indiscriminately. They’ve given themselves the right to murder. Marvel at the empty streets all you want. It won’t bring Hakim back.”

I stare at her turned back as it dawns on me. If Samia knows the FLN, she can get me in! I can’t have her doing stuff to help when I go to work every day for French people who pretend nothing is happening and call me slurs in the same breath. “If you’re in the FLN, you can get me in with the FLN.” “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Samia! Please, I can’t let you do this alone.”

Samia scoffs, again. It’s a rough sound, the same as when I do anything she deems as stupid. “They’ll catch and torture you, Basem.”

“Not if I’m careful.”

“You’re as careful as a cow. They’ll notice you, the Arab boy, and take you in, and then you won’t come back. Do you remember what they do to people who they don’t trust? Farid did nothing but lose his papers, and now his wife cries every night. She’d be happy to see me shoot a policeman in the head.”

“And they won’t catch you?”

“Do you honestly think the French can tell Algerian women apart?

I look religious and suddenly I’m the same as any religious woman to them.

That’s how Hamida gets guns to the leaders.”

“You seriously want to go out and give guns to people who have killed?”

“That is the point, Basem. I don’t think I could even consider putting you in contact with the FLN if you react like this to the mere idea of guns. Do you misunderstand what the FLN does?”

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“They fight back!”

“They kill people who break their rules. Could you ever put a bullet in another Algerian?”

I stumble over an answer. Samia looks at me with a self satisfied smile. “Could you?” I ask.

Samia turns away from me, dunking a plate into water. “Come here. You have more dishes to dry.”

I approach her, taking the wet plate and running the rag over it. I look at her profile, noting that her eyes are turned away from me.

“I’m sorry, Samia.”

“Let’s just pray the United Nations listens to us.” There’s something about her tone that says she doesn’t think they will. She’s probably right. I can’t bear the thought of my sister with a gun in hand, and if the United Nations doesn’t appreciate the strike, that’s surely where this will go. That or the French will kill us all.

“If they ask you to bomb somewhere, would you?”

“The French have already bombed us,” she says, which is a nonanswer. I don’t like it, but she won’t answer any more of my questions, so I’ll stop asking them. I dry the dishes and pray that it’ll be alright in the end. Maybe we’ll win this battle. Hopefully we’ll win the war.

84

That Girl

Clara Ottati

she’s an easy girl. a never drives over the speed limit girl. a type to dye her hair blond kind of girl. she’s an astrology girl. bitches believing in scorpio horoscopes kinda girl. she’s an animal girl. she’s a dog girl she has a pet dog named billy she’s a pet girl. she’s more at homewith peoplewho don’t exist, in places that neverwere, girl. she’s an awkward girl. she’s a biting her lip ‘til it bleeds kinda girl. she’s a flusteredwithout the flirty girl. she’s a slutty girl. wears skirts so you can see her thong kind of girl. sexy nurse on the night of halloween girl. she’s a quiet girl. she’s a moody girl, never cleans her room girl, doesn’twrap her used tampons in toilet paper girl. she’s a runner girl, a track star girl, a thighs that could flatten your head girl. she’s a sweet girl. a blond curls girl, awhite lace girl. blush swept across her face girl. she’s my girl. she’s his girl. she’s the cooking girl, apron girl, knees on the carpet teary eyes kind of girl. she’s a dead girl. she’s a search party orange vests kind of girl. she’s the blood making her hair a mess kind of girl, an under the sticks kind of girl, a missing her clothes girl. she’s a never been found girl. she’s a remembered girl, a ghost girl, a draft that feels like her voice girl. shewas that sweet girl, that smart girl, that light up the room with her smile girl. girl girl girlwe’re gonna miss that girl oh yeswe will.

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Maxie Langenberg 86

Jessica Li

Paola Campuzano 87

Jessica Li

88

Lilah Grove

Ainsley McConnell 89

Maxie Langenberg

Lilah Grove 90

Ben Kerstetter

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Bennett Parker

Ben Kerstetter

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Radha Padwari

Margaret R. Dean

Olive Merrill

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Editor Bios Heidi Enger Likes: the first day of spring, Tristan from Gilmore Girls, lavender lattes Dislikes: senioritis, Southwest airlines, leaky water bottles Quote: “You don’t have the female gaze!”

Knives Out role: The lawyer who reads the last will and testament

Manuela Pecoraro-Hernández Likes: black chunky boots, cutting your hair at home, InDesign by Adobe Dislikes: the smell of chlorine, leeches (slimy swamp creatures or people), InDesign by Adobe Quote: “I don’t know, maybe I’ll just lie.”

Knives Out role: The renowned investigator

Jane DiMaso Likes: filmmaking, a good turtleneck sweater, this year’s Knives Out theme Dislikes: nothing (Jake is a lovely person) Quote: “Quaker? I barely know ‘er!”

Knives Out role: The one with the suspicious photo

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Ashley Brown Likes: New York Subway, Chai, driving motorcycles Dislikes: Grey’s Anatomy, The Great Gatsby, Grammarly Quote: “Oh my god! The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog??”

Knives Out role: The social activist

Adam Curtis Likes: suspiciously long writing projects, almost all types of music (sorry, stadium country), unsweetened iced tea Dislikes: overly pretentious video essays, bad novels, centipedes Quote: “Oh we’ve hit rock bottom!”

Knives Out role: The mysterious side character

Rachel Sang Likes: sweater vests, the giddy multitude, Jacob Collier’s (at home) tiny desk concert Dislikes: clay, semicolons, “business casual” Quote: “I’m locked in.”

Knives Out role: The grandma

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Ainsley McConnell Likes: Biking home in the rain, room temperature water, hiking in foggy weather Dislikes: The state of California, bees, car-centric infrastructure Quote: “Do you want it… back?”

Knives Out role: The hermit living in the garden shed Victoria Young Likes: Jewel sugar cookies, twilight, romance novels Dislikes: pole splitters, loud chewers, tail riders Quote: “It’s fine.”

Knives Out role: The nosy aunt fishing for tea Riley Sarsany Likes: Buying tap shoes, girlhood, building ikea furniture Dislikes: Having a messy room, spending all her money at Starbucks, lack of an Oxford comma Quote: “Is there a person inside of that?!”

Knives Out role: The murder victim Editor portraits by Maxie Langenberg. Cover design by Jane DiMaso and Heidi Enger. Set in Ibarra Real Nova and Denver Serial Heavy.

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