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 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 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.

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 Mia Mendoza

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

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.

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 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?

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, 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.

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.