Leland Quarterly Vol. 12, Issue 2: Winter 2018 by Leland Quarterly

winter 2018

Nicholas Pez

quarterly Volume 12, Issue 2: Winter 2018 Editors-in-Chief: Nan Munger and Anna Ceci Rosenkranz Financial Manager

Associate Editors

Annie Graham

Rosalie Chang Faith Harron

Riley Jackson Lily Nilipour

Mac Taylor

Layout Editor

Erin Woo

Nan Munger

Zuyi Zhao

This is our last issue as Editors-in-Chiefs! It’s been a great run, and we would like to thank our contributers, staff, readers, and especially our Financial Manager, Annie Graham! Congratulations to the next volume’s Editors-in-Chiefs, Erin Woo and Zuyi Zhao, and the next volume’s financial manager, Lily Nilipour. You guys are going to rock it! Thanks again to everyone! Love, Nan and Anna Ceci

Poetry

“How to Kiss a Ghost” by Julia Doody on 7 “A Love Letter to a Best Friend” by Erin Woo on 8 “Zephyr” by Arielle DeVito on 11 “Canary” by Katiana Uyemara on 23 “The Bridge” by Raga Ayyagari on 24 “Palmistry” by Julia Doody on 27 “Present” by Zoe Clute on 35 “And We Talk” by Jennifer Perry on 37 “The Sea that Bares her Bosom” by Sarah Siegal on 39 “On to the Next” by Marika Tron on 41 “Liberation Under Coliseum Lights” by Wes Annan on 55 “At the Lake in the Afternoon” by Zoe Clute on 56 “Ode to the Comma” by Raga Ayyagari on 59

Prose

“And There Was Dark” by Erin Woo on 12 “B Lunch” by Joe Bourdage on 28 “Handle With Care” by Katiana Uyemara on 42

Art

“Embracing Hope” by Lia Kim on cover “Tibetan Storm” by Nicholas Pez on 2 “Lit from Above” by Nan Munger on 6 Photographs by Mina Mahmood on 8, 17, 40 Photographs by Akshay Dinakar on 10 “Binary” by Akshay Dinakar on 15 “Spaceship” by Akshay Dinakar on 21 “Imagine” by Christina Chen on 22 “Genesis” by Lia Kim on 26 “Hiding Underneath” by Nicholas Robles on 31 “Stripped (Paint Thinner)” by Nan Munger on 32 “Sketch and Laser Cut” by Annalisa Boslough on 39 “Meltwater Composition” by Annalisa Boslough on 39 “2 Suns” by Annalisa Boslough on 47 “Sun Prints” by Annalisa Boslough on 50 “Temple” by Nicholas Pez on 55 “Venezia” by Nicholas Pez on 57 “Crystal Landscape” by Akshay Dinakar on 58

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Nan Munger

How to Kiss a Ghost Julia Doody

First: forget everything you know, or knew, of mistletoe, candlelight, backseat skin—the ten o’clock shadow on your old ’99 Dodge, washed out under parking lot lights. You, too, are washed up, scrubbed newborn pink, blunted fingertips shunting gin to your lips and crushing the brittle skins of bar-top peanuts. Forget her skin. Forget the plough pullers, the muddy crescents of your nails, the dairy cows in their wedding clothes, as the old timers would say. Forget wedding clothes, in general. Forget the railway workers snapping together jigsaw tracks and stepping on the trains of their wives’ dirty white nightgowns. In springtime, she plucked small silver bells from the bushes, heaped them in her cardboard quart basket. In fall, the apple knockers will come to the door, but you won’t let them in.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Mina Mahmood

a love letter to a best friend Erin Woo In Roman legend, they say, Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, and most likely this is no different a story than let them eat cake but I can’t help but wonder if he was mourning his city, if he was grieving in the only way he knew how, if his home was going up in flames around him but by the gods this one thing was going to be beautiful if it killed him. When my best friend’s father died, five days before school ended, I went to her house and she greeted me with a brittle smile and a battered copy of Catcher in the Rye and asked me if I could please return this to the library because she wasn’t sure if she’d make it back to school before the year was over. I told her that yes, of course I would, and only then did she allow herself to cry.

a love letter to a best friend| Erin Woo

This is not cold; this is not heartless. This is shattering into pieces, holding onto one so tightly it slices your palm open, and sweeping the others into the trash, double-bagged because you don’t want the janitors to get hurt. This is red lipstick in the middle of a war zone, neatly stacked rubble after a bomb blast. This is a bow skipping across strings with backup vocals performed by your life burning to the ground. Weeks later, it was summer and it should have been idyllic but everything was bubbling over and sizzling on the pavement and I called her because I could no longer pretend that this mess did not exist. Both of us agreed that this was the kind of night that belonged on the open road with the windows rolled down and the radio blaring loud enough to drown out the thump thump thump of our rabbit-fast heartbeats, but neither of us had a car and so instead I walked to her house and we lay side by side on her bed with the lights off, staring up at plastic constellations because you can’t see the stars in the city. That night, the only station her old clock radio would pick up was NPR, and all they play past ten thirty is classical, so we listened to Beethoven’s Fifth and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at two o’clock in the morning and I wanted more than anything to tell her that she is the fiddle, that she is the beauty in the midst of this chaos, that I don’t need to hang on to something because she is already holding me up even though by all logic it should be the other way around, but I didn’t. Instead, I showed her a meme I found on Tumblr and we laughed until our sides ached and for that one moment that was enough because maybe, just maybe, it is the small things that matter after all.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Akshay Dinakar

zephyr Arielle DeVito it is october, and at home, the sky is so heavy with rain it drips between cumulonimbus fingers down to the ground and pools on your shoulders. words—like flowers—bloom from your veins opening fresh wet petals to the clouds above. today, all the books in the library lost our stories to the breeze, so we sit peaceably in our places, alphabetized by author’s name, me wedged between devereaux and dìaz, and i wonder, if i whisper to the west wind, will she carry my words back to you? i have so much to tell you that my spine bows and swells from keeping it all inside. it is october and here my stories grow leaf-brittle from overuse, so i sit by the fountain and speak to the gust of hot air that always pulls tangles into my hair with agile fingers and ask her whether she came across the ocean, whether her breath is still salty from its spray. the wind draws threads of thought from my mind with her gentle hands, massaging away memories until i am soft and smooth and new. she braids them into long ropes, tied around her wrists and disappears into the sky, trailing raindrops that burrow under my skin, seeds of ideas waiting buried there to bloom.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

And There Was Dark Erin Woo A fish was falling from the sky, and maybe Evie would have been more surprised had it not been frogs last week and locusts the week before that. As it stood, though, with the apocalypse probably two weeks away and absolutely nothing she could do about it, she opened her umbrella and just kept walking. When she got home, Amaar was waiting on the porch, still in the same old T-shirt and sweats she’d last seen him in. “The president’s declared a state of emergency,” he called, shading his eyes against the setting sun. “We’re not supposed to be outside. Told you you should’ve taken the bus.” Evie shrugged, navigating carefully around the rotten spot in the porch steps they’d never gotten around to fixing and probably never would now, what with the impending end of the world and all. “It’s the third one this week. They can’t possibly expect us to care, at this point —” “Beth said that this is it. The last one.” “Beth from work?” She kissed Amaar hello, absentmindedly, and sank down onto the old creaky porch swing. “From astrophysics, yeah. And she’d know, probably —” “Well, I would hope so, because if she doesn’t know then honestly who does —” “What are we going to do?” asked Amaar, quietly. He sat down beside her, running a hand through his already untidy curly black hair. “They’re evacuating essential personnel next week, I think, but the rest of us —” Evie looked at him, silhouetted against an unfairly gorgeous sunset. She didn’t ever think she would get tired of seeing him, even in a future with time for such things. “We’ll survive,” she said, her voice fierce. “You and Beth and everyone down at NASA — you’ll fix this, and everything will go back to normal.” “It’s a gravitational anomaly, Evie —” “I know that.” “— and I highly doubt this is something we can just fix —” “It’s not rocket science,” she whispered, and he almost smiled, both because it kind of was and because that was what he used to study, before. She missed those days. 12

And There Was Dark | Erin Woo

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, eyes soft. Evie held his hand like it was a lifeline and, squeezing her eyes shut, wished desperately that it would be enough. Later, Evie would think that that last week felt like the eye of a hurricane. Amaar worked long hours in the lab, but that was nothing new. Evie still showed up to the newspaper office every morning, even when her editor said that they would understand if she wanted to spend time with family. Evie bit her lip and thought that Amaar wouldn’t be getting any time off, so she just shook her head, sat down at her desk, and began preparing for her next article. “What do you wish you had known?” Evie asked, all that week. She stared into the eyes of a new mother, an old man, a student. The recorder sat on the table between them. “What do you not want to forget?” Remembrances, she called them, when she was describing the interviews to Amaar. He was half asleep already, lying with his elbow propped on the pillow, but he smiled. “We have to remember why we’re doing this,” Amaar whispered, fervent. “Why all of this matters. It isn’t useless.” Evie frowned. She wasn’t saving anyone, she thought. What she was doing wasn’t irreplaceable, not the way Amaar’s work was. But she pasted a smile on her face to match the soft curve of Amaar’s lips and tried to believe that it mattered anyway. Away from Amaar and Evie, the world proceeded. Riots flared up in cities around the globe, and the news was full of preparations for the impending evacuation. Catastrophic Earthquakes Promised for Western United States, blared the headlines. Coastal Europe Already Underwater. Everyone knew someone who knew someone with a spot in one of the mythical bunkers dotted around the country, although Amaar always argued that a few meters of earth above your head wouldn’t help you once the whole world decided it no longer needed to stay where it was. On the morning that NASA was scheduled for evacuation, Evie filed her article. For a few minutes, she sat at her old, familiar desk, staring at the photographs of her and Amaar tacked to the bulletin board, at the deadlines come and gone. Then, carefully, she packed all of her things away into a cardboard box and left the newsroom. 13

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

It was strange to walk home knowing she might never do so again. Each step felt like the end of something. Somewhere in the depths of the Internet, she thought, there was an archive full of stories marked Evelyn Remnick. She wondered how soon that would be all of her that was left. At home, she cleaned. The day stretched out in front of her — so much time that she might never see again — and there was nothing left to write, nothing left to do. She vacuumed loud enough to drown out the endless drone of the news until it occurred to her that she could change the channel, and then she watched half an hour of a teen comedy about werewolves while eating ice cream on the couch and was briefly, senselessly happy. By the time Amaar rattled up the driveway, it was long past dark. He dropped an unfamiliar key ring and a takeout box on the counter. “Italian,” he said. He did not mention the keys. They ate standing up. Eventually, Amaar said, “NASA’s given us a van.” Evie paused, a forkful of creamy pasta halfway to her mouth. “A van?” she repeated. “Well, they couldn’t give us a spot on the shuttle.” Amaar’s eyes strayed to his phone. “We weren’t expecting one, were we?” Amaar shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. And, the van — it’s specially equipped, apparently. So it’ll still drive.” “Do we have anywhere to go?” “They’ve — they’ve also given us access to a bunker. To try to wait this out.” Evie sucked in a breath. “Should we leave tonight, then?” “One sec.” Amaar bent down to rummage in the spice cabinet, eventually coming up with a single salt shaker. He dusted a generous amount on his food before answering. “Evie, the bunkers don’t mean anything. Everyone at NASA knows that — it’s a severance package for the apocalypse, is all.” “Amaar,” Evie whispered. “That can’t be true.” Amaar bit his lip. “Evie,” he began, and did not finish. “Let’s go in the morning, okay?” she asked, clearing their plates. “We can pack the van tonight.” He nodded, distantly, but when Evie awoke in the middle of the night to find Amaar’s things unpacked and Amaar himself nowhere to be seen, she was not surprised.

And There Was Dark | Erin Woo

She found him still at the counter, face illuminated by blue light. “Evie. Hey. I’m just —” He gestured at the screen. “I’m trying to work something out, okay? I’ll come to bed soon.” “What is it?” Evie asked, peering at the screen: an incomprehensible array of brightly colored code. “It’s for work.” Amaar typed something, frowned, deleted it. “I’m almost done.” Privately, Evie doubted this, but she did not argue. Instead, she made them both cups of tea, and she sat with him until her eyes grew heavy. She did not remember when she finally fell asleep.

Akshay Dinakar In the morning, somehow, something felt different. Amaar had loaded the van while Evie slept, and when she emerged into the kitchen, he sat at the table, maps spread around him. “Do you know how to get there?” she asked, her voice still slow with sleep.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Amaar glanced up. There was an over-caffeinated sort of energy dancing in his eyes. “Evie —” He stopped. He took a deep breath, as if deciding something. “I’ve been thinking. We’ve got a week until all this is supposed to fall apart.” “It’ll take at least two days to get to the bunker. More if the roads are closed.” “What if —” He closed his eyes, briefly. “What if we didn’t go?” Evie felt as if she were watching layers being peeled away in front of her. Watching the years rewind until he was outside her house in the middle of the night with a car and a blanket and half a plan, or maybe just a third of one. “What are you talking about?” she said, quietly. “The bunkers won’t help. My research found that.” “And?” “There’s — there’s nothing left to do. Nowhere left to go. They wouldn’t give us both a spot, Evie, I tried — that was why I was up late, last night.” “Both?” said Evie, and the feeling in her stomach was the drop at the top of a rollercoaster that never came. “We’ve got a week,” he continued, as if she had said nothing, as if he hadn’t. “We always wanted to take a road trip.” It was utter insanity, and both of them knew it, and both of them spent the first few hours of the drive trying desperately not to. They talked about everything except the fact that the world was ending, and for a few scattered moments it seemed as if it would not, as if this were all there was. They had no timeline and no destination, except the end of the world, except west. There was no more Internet connection once they were a few hundred miles in. No phone. No radio. No connection to the outside world. Just Amaar, and Evie, and the van, and a map. They didn’t pass very many people on the road, and those they did pass were usually traveling in the opposite direction. Evie mused aloud, once, whether that meant she and Amaar were going the wrong way. Amaar said that there didn’t seem to be a right way, anymore. Come Saturday, nowhere would be safe.

Mina Mahmood 17

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Occasionally, Evie imagined how they must look from the air. A single van on an arrow-straight road: the American road trip, apocalypse edition. Once, although she would never tell Amaar, she thought about how it would feel to swerve them off the road — to end it, right here, right now. She did not quite know how to exist without working towards something. In biology class, a lifetime ago, her teacher had told her that the fundamental mission of life was to survive, and she wondered what it meant that that was no longer her objective. Sometime during the long, empty afternoon of the second day, Evie said to Amaar, “Yesterday, when you said they wouldn’t give us both a spot — what did you mean by that?” Amaar hesitated. Evie glanced at him, but only for a second. Eyes on the road. Hands at ten and two. These were the things she could still control. Finally: “They were only evacuating NASA, Evie, I fought for you —” She didn’t doubt it. The accelerator was just a hair stiffer than she was used to. “That’s not at all what I’m talking about, and you know it.” “What do you want me to say? I wasn’t going to leave you.” “Amaar.” Evie looked at him, for real. There were circles under his eyes and his hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed for days, although that wasn’t new, exactly — her hands tightened on the wheel, and the car swerved. She turned back to the road. “It’s not about me. You’re essential personnel. That means something.” “They’ll survive,” said Amaar, deadpan. She laughed, then, and so did he. It was all so familiar that she thought she could cry, and then she did, just a little. The road blurred from tears. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Me too,” said Amaar, and his thumb traced circles on her bare knee and she considered the possibility that he meant it. Things fell apart slowly. Huge sections of the road were missing, and Amaar held tight to both thermoses of coffee as Evie navigated carefully through the ruts. Grass and dirt and, occasionally, rain, swirled in the air around them, although somehow the contents of the van remained firmly rooted to the ground. On the third day, Amaar was driving when the birds appeared on the horizon.

And There Was Dark | Erin Woo

They did not think to be scared. Amaar steered the van to a shuddering stop at the side of the road, and, in wordless agreement, both of them clambered into the back of the van. Amaar pushed the sunroof open, and they looked up through the glass. There were more birds than Evie had ever seen in her life. The noise was deafening. They blotted out the sun, after a few minutes, and as they circled lower Evie thought of the descriptions of passenger pigeons she had read in her history books and wondered if this was what it had felt like, to be uncertain on the open prairie as everything turned to wings and eyes and talons all around you. “What the hell is happening?” asked Amaar, suddenly. Evie startled. His lips were inches from her ear, and she supposed that was the only reason she had been able to hear him. She felt, all at once, acutely aware of her surroundings. Her back pressed up against the canvas of her bag, and the van’s carpet floor was rough against her palms. Wings beat against the windows of the van and both of them had seen the movie but she was not afraid. Evie turned to Amaar and smiled. For the next four days, at least, they coexisted with the impossible. “Just watch,” she shouted, voice raised against the din, and he nodded even though it was clear he had no idea what she was saying. Together, wordless, they watched the birds until they flew away. After that, it felt almost inevitable. The world seemed too improbable to last, and Evie found that with every mile her chest hurt a little less at the thought. The wind through the open window was cool on her face. One hand nudged the steering wheel straight, and the other held Amaar’s over the gearshift. When she wasn’t driving, Evie laid her head on the window and stared up at the sky. The air was hazy, full of dust and gossamer filaments of dying vegetation. The sun filtered through in watery rays, and Evie found herself trying to fit it into a story. She told herself that it was too late for that — that there was no one left to read it. But when she found a pencil and a half-filled notebook in the glove compartment while looking for Amaar’s sunglasses, she started writing anyway.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

On the fifth day, Evie was rearranging the bags in the back of the van when a small velvet box fell out of Amaar’s backpack. She knew what was inside before she opened it, and when she did, there it was, glinting in the sunshine. It hit her again exactly how much they were about to lose. How much they had already lost. She placed the box back into Amaar’s backpack. She did not try it on. She did not mention it to Amaar, later, when he asked if she was okay. Better, she thought, not to discuss what could have been. That night, they ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pretended to sleep in the back of the van. There was so little time left that they wanted to be awake for every moment they could. Evie lay pressed into Amaar’s side, head on his chest. She listened to the steady beat of his heart, and for the first time ever it sounded like a clock, strong and solid and irreversible. She sat up, and together they watched the stars fade into morning. At dawn, they drank lukewarm powdered coffee, and they drove. On the morning of the seventh day, they crested a ridge and the earth fell away. Amaar slammed on the brake and they screeched to a stop, bare meters from the end of the road. There was a drop of perhaps a hundred feet and then water, sky blue and sparkling as far as the eye could see. Evie frowned, checking the map. “We’re supposed to be in Colorado,” she said to Amaar. “The ocean’s not for thousands of miles.” Amaar glanced over to the map, spread out on the dashboard. He traced the pale yellow line of the road. And then, like the tide coming in, realization washed over them: it was not the ocean. It was a flood. In wordless agreement, both Amaar and Evie got out of the car. They walked carefully to the edge of the cliff: to the edge of the world, Evie thought. The floodwaters spread out in front of them, picturesque in spite of itself. “Where do we go now?” she asked. Amaar took her hand. His fingers felt familiar laced with hers. “Let’s stay here,” he said, and she nodded. He spread a blanket out on the cracked asphalt, and they sat. “Tell me the truth: did you ever think it would end up like this?” Evie asked. Amaar’s grin was crooked. “You and me against the world? I will admit that the thought did cross my mind.” Evie laughed, and she thought that maybe she could be okay with the fact that this was all that she got: Amaar and this van and this drive and this ocean. Twenty-seven years of memories. It would have to be enough.

And There Was Dark | Erin Woo

As the seventh day inched towards its close, they ate sandwiches and drank the champagne that Amaar had snuck into one of the coolers. The sky was a blush-pink apricot above the false sea. Evie laid her head on Amaarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoulder, and she looked out at the end of the world.

She closes her eyes.

Akshay Dinakar 21

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Christine Chen

Canary Katiana Uyemara As long as loose-lipped girls slip from bedrooms and run across lawns sodden with sprinkler water, sharp star air and yellow-flooded windows the only watchers; As long as their calloused feet sink deep into furred grass, blades bending to cushion quick heels and whisk between bare toes, fabric ruffling against their knees and long limbs sending them through space; As long as wooden unlocked doors welcome them in, brassy scratched doorknobs smoothly click-turning to reveal pleased friends or surprised strangers being busy and busy being; Somewhere will be safe.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

The Bridge Raga Ayyagari Inspired by Officer Kevin Briggs Two pieces of mountainous land separated by one expansive bay Two engineers dared to conceive and construct a connection. Two serrated iron pillars, anchored to the shifting ground, Cables crescendoing to the apex before retreating and rising again: A bimodal steel symphony. Two young people strolling, their fingers interlaced as they gaze at separate sides of the bay, suspended between the looming mountains of expectations on their shoulders and the sea of passion in their hearts. Two middle-aged empty nesters watching young parents pushing strollers, questioning how to bridge the gap between the past they built and the horizons of an unseen future shrouded in the translucent morning fog. Two veterans, restraining their dogs and emotions on leashes As they reconcile the dark tangle of memories from the world they left and step forward to the world That has moved on in spite of them.

The Bridge | Raga Ayyagari

Two seagulls soaring and singing on their peregrination Over the hum of traffic and conversation. One man grips the rail, gazing out into the depths. One terrible voice, one black hole, one vortex Swallowing the moon and the stars in its path. One poor grade, one failed business, one marital fight One small ripple that breaks the levee at last. One, one hundred, one million feet to fall. One moment to end it all. One firm, warm hand anchors on his shoulder. One gentle voice cuts through the cacophony. One star glows in the distance. Two pairs of eyes meet, each swimming with tears Two pairs of ears open, listen to the ebb and flow of the waves, breaking against the bridge. Two pairs of feet plant themselves on the concrete. A small step and then another. Their footsteps echo on the structure of sweat and ore That supports them on their one sojourn to the shore.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Lia Kim

Palmistry Julia Doody The sidewalk congregation, in lackluster fashion gathers: girls with kohl-rimmed eyes, dreams of Cairo, and crumpled Missouri IDs, cheeks clotted red in the flickering script— PSYCHIC READINGS. The shop is closed now due to unforeseen circumstances; cardboarded up with the fragments of some kind soul’s old refrigerator box. Some drunks from down the street wander inside the next-door deli, where the psychic would go for pastrami on rye, no swiss, would let the grease drip onto her dime-store ring and polish it with a brown napkin torn from the dispenser, where she would glare at the laundromat loiterers while they watched their socks turn and turn. She left weeks ago, waddled out, frantic— hailing Marys and taxicabs. Left her antique rosary on the table, scattered tarot cards, shelves of the embalmed: tiny pale fetuses, or maybe canned parsnips in mismatched Mason jars. She might have stared at the glinting rings around their glass necks while she read her own palm.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

B Lunch Joe Bourdage When the food fight commenced, about eight minutes into B lunch, Little Billy Jensen became the first official casualty. Several eyewitnesses to the inciting incident corroborated the report of a lobbed mass of mashed potato, which was initially estimated by school officials to have been a helping of approximately ping pong-ball size, though later re-evaluated to have been more like baseball size, based on both the splatter pattern at the point of impact on Little Billy Jensen’s right temple and the amount of time Little Billy Jensen spent crying afterwards (twenty-four minutes). The height and speed achieved by the projectile of mashed starch suggested that the fight’s instigator had used his/her hand, and not the ubiquitous spork utensils, to complete the injury to Little Billy Jensen’s face, self-esteem, and reputation. Two of the cafeteria’s four security cameras were deemed able to have captured video evidence of the instigator, though upon investigation it was revealed that one of the cameras did not function at all (faulty wiring, concluded the school electrician, who was later asked by Principal Stevens to resign) and the other produced an image that was unusable due to a carefully-placed wad of gum. Staff speculation listed junior Tim Parker as the prime suspect for the gum’s strategic placement, but Parker had been expelled from James K. Polk High three weeks earlier and was cleared of all suspicion related to the cafeteria outbreak. As Little Billy Jensen (now commonly referred to as “Spud” by most students and some of the crueler teachers) broke into tears, sophomore Melanie Griswold was seated beside her on-again, off-again boyfriend of two months, Tate K——, along Spud’s side of the table. Friends of Melanie Griswold (of which there were significantly fewer since her courtship with Tate K—— had begun at a home football game in mid-October) told school officials that Tate K—— was likely the intended target of the potato projectile. They noted his recent fallings-out with the three captains of the boys’ hockey team and the unsubstantiated rumor that he had been the senior prankster responsible for the pulled fire alarm backstage at the show choir’s Winter Holiday Song-apalooza, the sudden fright of which had evidently been shocking enough to cause a few underclassman sopranos to spill out clumsily from the stage. 28

B Lunch | Joe Bourdage

Tate K—— was observed wiping Spud’s potato debris off the “Most Improved Award” wrestling patch of his letter jacket and cursing loudly. He picked up one of his two remaining chicken tenders, reportedly the crispier one that was mostly just barbecue sauce and breading, and threw it dead on at head boys’ hockey captain Carter Hendricks. A recreation of the scene at Principal Stevens’ request demonstrated how the tender had sailed over a pack of delinquent and impressionable sophomores (those adjectives being the most commonly-used in nearly all staff-member accounts) at an intervening table, and thus had apparently inspired their ostensible leader, Randy Sears, to rise up, march six seats to the table’s south end, and dump his carton of non-fat chocolate milk over the head of Katherine Hodges, who had recently unfriended him on Facebook after a week-long parade of torments regarding her tragically-public fright onstage at the Winter Holiday Song-apalooza (the video of which Randy Sears still has, if anyone wants to see it). Katherine Hodges screamed (“like a little bitch,” according to a later, unsolicited testimony from former-friend Melanie Griswold) as two paraprofessionals were dispatched from the cafeteria’s southwest corner. Randy Sears, in a gutsy gambit to evade the approaching paraprofessionals, stood up on the table and provided verbal declaration of the food fight he himself had helped foment. In a report to school officials that the two offending juniors would later vehemently deny (when alternatively questioned or interrogated by their coach, Principal Stevens, Vice Principal Boland, two gruff police officers, and an off-putting, mustachioed man from the county health department), boys’ hockey captains Wyatt Oleander and Collin Anderson were the first to heed the call and cast the larger constituents of their lunches indiscriminately at unsuspecting students. Head captain Carter Hendricks, who after being struck by Tate K——’s chicken tender was alleged to have been a logical third member of an offending Hendricks-Oleander-Anderson trio (perhaps also due to the unproved rumor circulating in the junior class that these three had planted the stink bomb under the bleachers at the home football game against Andover in October and had cleverly framed Tim Parker for the prank), was ultimately released from suspicion when footage from hallway security cameras clearly identified him muttering “shit, shit, shit” en route to the 400 Wing boys’ bathroom to remove barbecue sauce from his sole game-day home captains’ jersey. The extent of stain damage to Hendricks’ team apparel remains unknown. 29

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Later, the ignominious report released by school officials over winter break would conclude that the “December 17th cafeteria incident” was brought on by “the confluence of several exogenous precipitating factors.” A mix-up in the lunch menu (which ex-Head Cook Martha Mayer maintains was due to a distribution error with the food supplier) resulted in the lunchroom staff having to prepare French fries and mini corn dogs in the alternate entree line for the second day in a row. These mini corn dogs, of ellipsoid shape and approximately two inches in length, fit perfectly two or three at a time into the palms of incipient food fighters, who with little effort could bombard their intended targets with cornmeal and repurposed pork from several tables away. That the other entree was chicken tenders only “compounded these circumstances,” the report notes. (The last confirmed sighting of Spud notes that he still questioned why, among these two worthy alternatives, and even a second potato derivative, the Prime Instigator had chosen the viscous mashed potato side dish as his/her projectile-of-choice.) Upon the decree of Randy Sears, and the further spark of (Hendricks-) Oleander-Anderson, the paraprofessionals, dodging flying food and student animus, fled for the East Office. Thus Tate K——, whose previous opportunistic exploits included “swooping in” (as Katherine Hodges and her ilk described it) on Melanie Griswold at the Andover football game—putting his arm around her shoulder and so on, her then-boyfriend Wyatt Oleander nowhere to be seen, and finally leading her to the parking lot in the minutes preceding the detonation of a certain sulfide incendiary device that would imminently clear the student section—this Tate K——, armed with one lone chicken tender and what appeared to be Spud’s confiscated tray of corn dogs, found himself in yet another opportune moment. The milk-soaked Katherine Hodges claims to have been the sole target of Tate K——’s mini corn dog arsenal, apparently as retribution for her off-handed remarks on the popular hallway topic of Melanie Griswold being a “two-faced bitch” and a “fat slut,” though given Tate K——’s long list of enemies, it is doubtful— even in the mind and questionably-obtained private notes of Vice Principal Boland—that Katherine Hodges should have been so special.

B Lunch | Joe Bourdage

Nicholas Robles

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

All observers in the cafeteria—including the narrator, who typically took his lunches alone in the newspaper office but that morning, low on time and spaced out on Ritalin, had forgotten to pack his daily sandwich and chips and instead

Nan Munger had spent every minute since 4:30 that morning reciting the names and properties of the first thirty-five elements of the periodic table before an impending AP Chemistry quiz in fifth period—the narrator, like everyone else, became either witness or aggressor to the cafeteria crescendo. No testimony or report was needed to confirm that the narrator was struck by a certain oblong fruit tossed with a certain unflattering and un-ironic epithet by a certain unknown assailant, the full details of which are certainly not important except to establish the narrator’s uncertain role in the overall lunchroom melee. (The narrator will hesitantly claim credit for one of the many mini corn dogs that walloped Tate K—— in his smug fucking face, depending on who’s asking.)

B Lunch | Joe Bourdage

Curiously, many sources have suggested that, prior to the cafeteria escalation, the feuding parties of Tate K—— and the boys’ hockey captains had settled into an unspoken detente. From the windows of the newspaper office, the narrator had recently noticed that head captain Carter Hendricks had stopped sneaking out into the parking lot during study hall to empty the contents of nearby trash cans into the bed of Tate K——’s truck, a misdeed that Tate K—— was reported to have at one time wrongfully attributed to Randy Sears and his crew of sophomoric miscreants. Even Wyatt Oleander had seemed to have moved on, readily telling teammates and the narrator (oddly) about a girl from Kennedy High he had started seeing over Thanksgiving break, this unknown girl being by his rote testimony way, way hotter than Melanie Griswold and not nearly as stuck-up or prudish. Vice Principal Boland must have entered the cafeteria unnoticed, as she reportedly escaped unscathed from the whole ordeal, without a speck of gravy in her graying hair (which, according to her private notes, she gets cut on the second Thursday of every other month at the Village salon, possibly by the same stylist as the narrator’s mother, now that he thinks of it). The less-impish underclassmen—who had waited until they got the go-ahead from Spud’s assault, Tate K——’s retaliation, Randy Sears’ declaration, and Oleander-Anderson’s further provocation to so much as look up from their trays and vapid conversations to join the fray—tried to make for the doors, which by that time had become blocked off by three paraprofessionals and several wide-eyed custodians. At thirteen minutes into B lunch, Vice Principal Boland shouted “Enough!”, causing the room to go near-silent (Spud being the notable, audible exception) and the narrator alone to laugh, Vice Principal Boland’s word choice being too acutely archetypal of a ruffled TV-movie principal for him to maintain composure. (A subsequent fifth period meeting in Vice Principal Boland’s office regarding the untimely outburst would not convince the administrator of the narrator’s innocence. The narrator’s readily-apparent recreational Ritalin use didn’t help his case either, as he spent most of the meeting staring into Vice Principal Boland’s candy bowl, trying to determine the ratio of yellow Starburst to red, and as it stands now the narrator has resigned to failing first-semester AP Chemistry, despite knowing everything there is to fucking know about magnesium, a highly reactive alkaline-earth metal.)

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

All students in B lunch were escorted out of the cafeteria, except for the narrator, who was singled out for the initial meeting with Vice Principal Boland and her approximately 3:2 yellow-to-red jar of sweets. The report notes briefly that parents were called, the most egregiously splattered students were sent home to change, and the district was notified. But among nearly all participants, there was a certain sense (albeit officially unreported) of culinary justice amidst the chaos. When questioned over the following days by school officials, usually in groups of two or three in a conference room in the West Office with a laminated sign outside the door that said “Food Fight Interviews” and everything, students in B lunch offered verbose, contradictory information. Spud started crying during his interview, forcing a weary Vice Principal Boland to wave her hand and dismiss the other two students, who relayed this development to their second period geometry and government classes, respectively, which only led to more bad news for Spud, who hasn’t been seen at James K. Polk High since before winter break. After the boys’ hockey captains were summarily interrogated and Tate K—— meted out a detention for “vandalizing school property” (perhaps for the damage to Carter Hendricks’ hockey jersey, though this is unclear), normalcy returned to James K. Polk High. Some sources have reported recently that Melanie Griswold has broken things off with Tate K——, though many more have cautioned the narrator to like honestly just wait and see. When the narrator presented the first draft of this account to Tim Parker, the expelled junior thought the whole situation was hilarious. (He also liked that the narrator didn’t blame him for the Andover game stink bomb.) He asked the narrator between puffs of a pilfered cigarette who had really started the fight, as if after all of this the narrator couldn’t know. “Dude, no one did. I made the whole thing up.”

Present Zoe Clute How easy it is to feel trapped here! How soft the trappings, How careful, Wrapped in sugar and ice.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Annalisa Boslough

And we talk Jennifer Perry There is no resolution tonight, nor will there ever be. Night air dancing, it does not settle smoothly on our skin as it would any other night; it is an uneven cloak of discomfort that, despite its outward appearance, can shield us from nothing. There is a feigned distance in the conversation. From our voices, it would seem that we are calmly surveying the shape of the moonlight or the heat as it lifts from our clothes. But upon closer inspection, the tension cannot be ignored. The conversation is everything and nothing at all. We both know nothing will come of it. Meanwhile, we are breaking.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Annalisa Boslough

The Sea that Bares her Bosom Sarah Siegal If man exists he lives in a crevice fracture at the bottom of Marianaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Trench. A challenger, deep beneath waves; soothing destroyer, he will kiss a girl goodnight with a drop of blood between her slicked thighs; she heaves a wracking sigh as the earth bursts open and the ocean becomes a salt penny. Hot iron taste, served with sanguinary wine; a three-course meal, set on stained linens.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Mina Mahmood 40

On to the Next Marika Tron

On to the next I used to think there would be more to my existence than this plasticwrapped vacuum-sealed factory-ordered inhale-exhale On to the next I used to dream of a life longer than eighty-years stopped drinking when I turned thirty quit smoking when I turned forty started praying when I turned fifty send my grandkids five dollars a year until the day I die On to the next I used to believe I could make some goddamn change in a world that keeps spinning backwards then forwards then upside-down a rollercoaster in space where can I go if not up who can I speak to if not God On to the next I used to look at my peers, those kids with headphones shoved down their throats and condoms snapped around their hands and think I could be one of them On to the next I used to hope they’d lift a lighter to those holes in their heads, see what it means when the rivers swell and drop and all that’s left is a couple of tequila bottles and a manuscript with a half-finished dedication page On to the next I used to want to come home to see a brother and a sister and a dog in the backyard a sparkling kiddie pool a plate of hot dogs not a cloud in the sky now I don’t give a shit if I’m surrounded by four walls ever again if it means the words in my veins stop threatening to burst out and just do it already On to the next I used to think my mother threw me into this world, screaming and covered in blood, and that I would leave the same way, with leaking scabs and a throat hoarse from a rage that wouldn’t quit, that this fucking world would do more than chew me up and spit me out it would consume me digest me and shit me out without a second thought On to the next I used to know there would always be a tribe for me, paintbrushes hanging out of their mouths like Camels and typewriters where their hands used to be, hearts slamming against breaking ribs, mouths open to taste the light chests open to feel the truth On to the next 41

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Handle with Care Katiana Uyemara

Kristen resisted the urge to ask the grizzled cashier if he could let her be the one to bag the groceries. That was a carton of eggs he was handling like a football. She rubbed her cheek, remembering last night’s argument she’d had with Bill when he had been annoyed by the results of her shopping trip, then took a scratched plastic pen from her purse and began twirling it from finger to finger. Where was it she’d heard that carbon emissions from producing one reusable bag necessitated two thousand plus uses before it could break even with a plastic one? She’d forgotten to bring her own bags. She could’ve saved ten cents per load of groceries plus the environment, but instead was doing neither. The cashier mumbled an incoherent number and Kristen pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. She smoothed them out before placing them on the counter, counting under her breath while the cashier picked at the pimples beneath his beard, waiting with the long-suffering patience of a man watching trees grow. When Kristen glanced at the total on the cash register, she realized she’d been overcharged $5.57. That was too much to pretend she hadn’t seen. By the time the manager had been called and she’d explained three times that the scrawny rotisserie chicken had been on sale and the two sixpacks of beer were buy one get one free, Kristen’s cheeks were seared with shame and the people behind her in line had left. I’m sorry, she wanted to say to their retreating backs, aware of the picture she made. Frizzy blonde hair twisted into a greasy, grey-streaked bun, dirty sneakers of an indeterminate color below an ill-fitting pair of jeans and oversized t-shirt, a thickening middle that she would’ve loved to blame on having kids because that would’ve meant she had some, and a pair of thickrimmed glasses that made her look like a bewildered insect. She apologized to the cashier as she pushed her cart away, but he was caught up with squeezing a particularly ripe pimple and didn’t hear. At least the eggs weren’t broken.

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

She had only unloaded a couple bags into her trunk when she heard her name. “Kris?” the voice repeated when she didn’t reply, and then the familiar scent of sun-warmed grass and sharp citrus hit her. She turned. New laugh lines outlined the corners of Eric’s eyes, a stark-white scar now bisected one of his eyebrows, and short scruff had replaced the black waves that once fell to his shoulders. But he still radiated the kind of joy you would want to paint or photograph before realizing you might as well pet a soap bubble or relive the future. All this she noticed before being enveloped in a hug. All she could think about as she stared dumbly into the distance was how she wasn’t even surprised. She always daydreamed about unexpectedly running into him; therefore running into him could never be unexpected. Hell, she’d chosen the town because they’d years ago made fun of its status as the “Hub of the Universe” in a particularly boring geography class. “How are you?” he exclaimed after releasing her. “It’s been so long! My God! What are you doing here? Where have you been? Imagine seeing you here in Boswell, Indiana of all places!” And again: “How are you?” As ever, her mouth curved up to mirror the happiness in his. A part of her cringed at her outfit, her hair. Why hadn’t she bothered to put on a nice blouse and a pair of earrings this morning? Her contacts? Couldn’t she have spritzed her wrists with the sample perfume bottle a generous mall employee had let her take home, which even now sat forlornly on the edge of her dresser? At least she’d showered. But the other part of her greedily drank in the sight of him, a mirage made real, knowing he wouldn’t have cared if she was decked out like a queen. “I’m good,” she said. She cleared her throat and coughed, tucked a flyaway behind her ear. Resisted the urge to hug him again. “I was just—” a gesture towards the automatic doors—“grabbing some groceries. I live here,” she added. “Not at the store, I mean. In town.” “I’m surprised. You always talked about going to the east, to a big city like Boston or New York.” He was already lifting bags into her trunk. He handled the eggs like they were made of mist and glass and tucked them safely to the side. “Well? Do you like it here?” “It’s fine. I like it just fine.” She couldn’t keep the tinge of bitterness from her voice and rushed ahead so he wouldn’t press further. “What about you? How are you?”

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

He paused to think, trying to remember when they’d seen each other last. “I’m not sure where to start, Kris. Wow. You know, it’s been a while.” He said the last with a hint of accusation, and Kristen lifted her chin. Pushed the guilt away. “How many years has it been again?” Nine, she thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “A lot.” “When was the last time we were together, was it at the wedding?” “I’m not quite sure.” Yes. The ceremony had been unendurable. In traditional bridal parties, the woman picked women for bridesmaids and the man chose men for groomsmen. Nobody accounted for female friends of the groom or male friends of the bride. So she’d sat in one of the back pews as he fidgeted and straightened his bowtie. She waited for him to look in her direction and when he did, she gave him a thumbs up and crossed her eyes. He chuckled, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. Then the sanctuary doors opened. He looked behind her and forgot entirely about her and everyone else. Even Kristen teared up after she stood with the rest of the audience, twisted around, and saw Molly. Christ. Only he could deserve a woman like that. Kristen had spent so long on her makeup and hair that morning, determined to look her best. She had nodded with satisfaction at her reflection in the mirror, sure she was pretty. Next to Molly she was a light bulb next to the sun. Intricately detailed lace traced elaborate designs from Molly’s wrists to her throat. Folds of milk-and-cream-colored silk cascaded from her waist. Diamonds sparkled proudly at her ears, and not a disobedient strand of hair thought to escape the simple twist at the back of her head. And her smile. Oh, her smile. Later, Kristen’s body did an impressive job of carrying her through the nightmare that was the reception, dancing and chatting with friends. Kristen herself floated above it all and wept until invisible rain pattered down on guests’ heads and ruined all the food. She was being selfish, she knew that. For almost as long as she could remember, Eric had been the one sacrificing for her. When they were in second grade, Eric had remarked on how she would often leave the lunchroom and not return until the teachers allowed them to go outside for recess. “Aren’t you worried about germs?” he asked as they waited their turn to zoom down one of the metal slides baking in the sun. 44

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

“Why?”

“No,” Kristen said, startled this skinny boy was talking to her.

“Since you’re eating your food in the bathroom. It’s dirty.” She was still off-guard because a stranger had noticed what most of her friends didn’t, so she didn’t think carefully about what she said next. “I’m not eating there!” she said. “That’d be gross. I just get real hungry in the lunchroom.” Another child flew shrieking down the slide, and the two of them moved forward a couple steps. “Then eat your lunch,” Eric said. “So you won’t be hungry.” “I can’t,” she said. “Dummy,” she finished as an afterthought, hoping it would dissuade him from any more questions. She turned back towards the front of the line and moved onto the metal steps leading to the top of the slide. Eric followed quietly. The next day he, along with his friends, sat next to her and her friends. Each group stoically ignored the other, well aware of the unspoken elementary rules governing casual communication between the sexes. “Hey,” he said. She mumbled something that may have passed as a greeting, embarrassed a boy was speaking to her in front of her friends. “Are you going to the bathroom again?” he said. “What?” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She squinted at him, defensive. “What’s going on? Why do you wanna know?” One of the girls snickered and elbowed Kristen, who tore her gaze away from Eric. “Eric likes Kris,” the girl sing-songed. “Eric likes Kris. Eric and Kristin sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—” “Stop,” said Eric. “Stop it, I don’t.” The girl kept singing with greater glee until a boy at a nearby table choked on his milk and snorted some out his nose. Then her attention was devoted to hooting at the red-faced boy, who coughed and waved off the hands pounding him on the back. “It’s just I have PB&J today,” Eric said to Kristen, who was studiously avoiding eye contact with him. “I don’t like PB&J. I was gonna ask if you wanted it, but if you’re gonna be in the bathroom, you might drop it in the toilet.”

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

“Would not,” she said, indignant. “You might.” “I wouldn’t!” “So you want it, then?” She hesitated warily, trying to ignore the dull ache in her stomach. Her mother had been too tired to pack her lunch again. And the milk in the fridge that morning had been sour and old, so there only had been dry Fruit Loops for breakfast. “Otherwise I’m just gonna throw it away,” he pointed out. Before either of them could change their mind, she held out her hand for the sandwich. He passed it to her and smiled. “Only because you weren’t gonna eat it,” she said, before taking a bite. Almost every day afterwards, there was something in Eric’s lunchbox he hated and was planning to get rid of, except he would run into Kristen on his way to the trashcan. Kristen stopped spending lunch in the bathroom, even started playing with this strange skinny boy after school. They loved playing make-believe. They would collect piles of pebbles and pop them into their mouths because they were squirrels storing nuts for the winter, rip off their coats and lie bare-armed in the snow because their plane had just crashed in the mountains, plop garden snakes and worms into their backpacks because they could speak to animals. He started inviting her to his house because her mother would take so long to pick her up. They would watch movies together, play video games, race their bikes up and down the block. By middle school, they were best friends. By high school, they were inseparable. Kristin was even more aware of their differences than she had been when they were young. He had a big, clean house in a nice neighborhood, two doting parents, a fat friendly beagle named Scotty, and a silver Jeep he’d been given for his sixteenth birthday. He volunteered at the local hospital, was smart enough to be an engineer, and was friends with almost every person in their eightyperson class. Kristen spent most of her time working as a waitress at a local diner to save up for a used station wagon, avoiding her tiny, cluttered house because of her mother’s sharp tongue, and counting the days until high school would end and she could work full time, leave Kansas and its endless wheat fields behind. People were friends with her because they were friends with Eric, but that was okay. They belonged in the same sentence. KristenandEric. 46

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

And though she knew he would never love her the way she wished—she wasn’t pretty enough, classy enough, smart enough, nice enough, good enough—he did love her. That was precious. But worse than nothing would have been to have the look directed at her. The one of pained sympathy given to girls who tried for him without realizing he didn’t have feelings for them, who would have seen that if they knew him the way Kristen did. So she was careful, so careful, that he would never know how she felt, that she would never be lumped in with the rest of those girls.

Annalisa Boslough She was his most discrete confidant, his fiercest defender, his most loyal friend, even knowing he’d use the same bowl for spaghetti in the afternoon that he’d used for oatmeal in the morning, that he’d once put a pencil so far up his nose he spent weeks insisting everything smelled like eraser shavings, that he always drove like he’d just robbed a bank, that he had a mortal fear of squirrels, and of course never picked up his toenail clippings. The day of his wedding, she reminded Eric of what he was like growing up, making the kind of comments that doubled him over and made him howl with laughter. She repeated “I’m so happy for you,” so many times he told her she’d had too much champagne. They had a dance-off to “Billie Jean” that had the whole room cheering and stomping, mostly because Eric had the coordination of a paraplegic foal and Kristen’s moonwalk could have taught Michael Jackson a thing or two. 47

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

I promise to love you for as long as we both shall live, in sickness and in health, ‘til death stops me fast. You need but ask and anything I can give is yours, though you are not mine to have or to hold, to cherish or to chide. We will never be one and always be two, but as long as your soul is complete, then mine will be too. But she couldn’t say the words because they were already festering, turning into the exquisite agony that made her move out of town, change her phone number, and take up with Bill before the honeymoon was over. Bill, who had mooned after her for years and doggedly refused to be deterred by her flippant rejections. Bill, who said and did all the things she wished Eric would with roses and words and smiles. Bill, who never noticed she turned her head to avoid looking at his face while her hips rocked back and forth beneath his, that she screwed her eyes shut when they kissed. He would fall asleep with his arm cinched around her waist, and Kristen would squirm from his sweaty heat behind her, missing her best friend. Eric had slept beside her, once. The night of senior prom, because wasn’t that when such things happened? He offered to be her date because nobody else asked. I’m not interested in asking anybody, anyways, Eric said. We’ll go as friends and it’ll be a blast. They did, and it was. Kristen felt like she was skipping across stars. After the dance they split off from the main group to bowl because Kristen insisted she could do anything in a gown she could do outside of it, and Eric wasn’t keen on spending the night cleaning up after friends drunk on being young. Once the game was over they went to his house, watched a horror movie, and stayed up late talking before he left her sleeping on his bed. She woke up panting because of a nightmare, and he heard and rose from the living room couch to make sure she was okay. He sat besides her and played with her hair and murmured soothing nonsense until she drifted away. In the morning he was still there, sleeping, hand resting on the curve of her waist and even breaths warming the back of her neck. He was seventeen, she eighteen. She wondered if Molly had nightmares too, and if he comforted her the same way. Kristen loved him enough to want his happiness at any cost, but it was not love she needed to stand by and watch that happiness.

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

“I have two boys,” Eric said in the present. “Molly wants to try for a third child, a little girl, but there were complications with the last pregnancy and I don’t want to risk it. Our family is perfect as is.” He closed the trunk with a satisfied thunk. “We’re actually on a road trip right now. The office let me go for two weeks and Molly got a huge commission for some murals, so we decided to take a proper vacation. It’s funny, I wouldn’t have chosen to stop except I remembered that one time in Ms. Dawson’s when we learned how this place was ‘the hub of the universe—’” he made air quotes with his hands “—and I had to see it for myself.” Kristen laughed, loud and easy. “It’s about as exciting as we expected it to be, if I’m being totally honest. What was that about an office?” “A non-profit,” he explained. “One of Molly’s friends thought they could really use me. The hours are strange and the pay is—not ideal, but I love it. They do some really amazing work.” He beamed, and she almost leaned in to draw closer to that warmth. “What kind of work?” she said, curious. His hands jerked into the air then dropped, as if he’d considered demonstrating its importance but realized that was impossible. “Smuggling Bibles, mostly,” he said. She quirked an eyebrow and he laughed. “It’s true. You wouldn’t believe what some countries will do to keep that book outside their borders.” She shook her head in disapproval. “That’s dangerous. You should know better. Are you the one that goes out there?” “Of course. Well, not all the time. But I go when I’m needed.” “It’s foolish. You have a family.” “I know.” He studied her and she looked away. “I’ve missed you,” he said. “You were always scolding me for everything and anything. Like a sensible older sister. You still don’t believe, do you?” She scoffed, thinking about the only thing she’d ever asked God for. If he was up there listening, he was laughing his ass off at her. “No. If God is real, he can very well tell me so himself.” Eric cocked his head. For a moment they were twelve year olds again, spending another summer day underneath the broad boughs of an oak tree and arguing about good and evil as she wove a crown of dandelions and he switched the blade of a pocketknife open and shut.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Annalisa Boslough

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

Then the years collapsed back together. They were adults, the silence between them filled with all the things they’d known about each other and all the things they no longer knew. “Where did you go?” he said at last, unable to continue smoothing over the strange rift of their separation. “Why didn’t you call? I missed you. I tried getting in contact with you, but you never responded. I thought maybe I’d done something wrong. Or that you were in trouble.” She found herself inspecting the crumbling asphalt next to her feet. Exhaled. “No, of course not. It wasn’t you. Things were—” She was never good at lying to him. He compelled truth from her the way gravity compelled falling and exhaustion compelled sleep. “—hard,” she finished lamely. Generalities were safe. “I didn’t want to interfere with…you know… you’d just gotten married. And then I got busy and time went on and then it seemed too strange to call you up out of the blue, you know?” The pen was back in her hand, dancing between her fingers. His eyes flicked down to the net of plastic she was weaving in the air, and she stopped and clenched his old pen in a fist. She cursed herself for keeping it, even though it had long ago run out of ink. He’d been the one to teach her how to flip it back and forth across her knuckles. He made no sign of recognition, and she tucked the pen back into her purse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I always meant to get back in touch—” I always dreamed about hearing your voice again, “but the time never seemed right—” but the pain was bad enough just imagining speaking to you, “— and I didn’t want to be a bother.” “You would never be a bother,” he reassured her. “Anyways, I guess now is the right time.” He said it with such naked confidence and easy forgiveness that she hated herself. Then Molly walked up next to him, two neatly dressed boys trotting behind her. The older one wasn’t even nine but carried himself like a miniature adult. The other was only a toddler, clutching a shiny green robot to his chest as he held his older brother’s hand. “Sorry,” Molly said. “The kids somehow got one of their shoes wedged into the crack between their seats, and it was really difficult to get out, and then they insisted they didn’t need to stretch their legs or get snacks and wanted to keep watching the movie and then—” She squinted. “Kristen? Is that you?”

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Before Kristen had the chance to reply, Molly swept her into a hug. “Honey! It’s been so long! We’ve missed you!” Annoyingly, she meant it. She was like that. Generous with her love and quick to find the virtues of anyone around her. She never forgot a face, because she never forgot a person. “Boys,” Molly said, pulling away. “This is your Aunt Kristen. Daddy’s old friend! Say hi.” “Hello,” the older son said gravely, holding his hand out for her to shake. “Nice to meet you.” Kristen obliged, and the younger boy watched the exchange and offered his hand, too. He still held the robot, so she ended up gingerly pumping the toy up and down. It was strange, to see Eric with his family. For an instant she pretended the boys were hers, that it was Molly he had unexpectedly run into at the store and Molly who was the outsider. But no, even then this scene was not right. The four of them were happy, and you could feel the love threading them together as surely as she could see the potato chips crumpling underneath the weight of the carrots in the trunk. “I knew your father from when we were kids,” Kristen said. “We were friends for a long time.” “Have been friends for a long time,” Eric corrected. He smiled cautiously at her and she glanced away, ignoring the feeling that curled inside her stomach. “Have been,” Kristen agreed. “I hear you all are on a road trip?” “We sure are,” said Molly, ruffling the hair of her youngest. He scowled and squirmed away. “Imagine running into you here. What are the chances?” “What are the chances,” Kristen echoed. “I was just going to invite her to grab dinner with us,” Eric said. “Catch up a while. I know we were planning to cross one more state before nightfall but—” “No, no, of course,” said Molly. She laid a soft hand on Kristen’s arm. “You absolutely have to come, honey. My husband never stopped wondering what you’ve been up to. He still sends Christmas cards to your parents, hoping you might decide to call.” How uncharacteristically thoughtful of her mother, to spare her the sight of those. “That’s so kind,” said Kristen. “I’d really love to, but I can’t.” She gestured to the closed car trunk. “I have to get this stuff home or it’ll spoil. And I really should get home to Bill.”

Handle with Care | Katiana Uyemara

“Oh, wonderful, bring him along too!” Eric said. “I’d love to see him again. Are you guys married?” Kristen thought of Bill sprawled shirtless on the couch, tufts of hair poking out from the curve of his beer belly. “No,” she said. Bill was too lazy to do something as bothersome as propose, or perhaps he suspected she didn’t want to say yes. “And he’s not always, um, very good company.” Disappointment flashed across Eric’s face and Kristen wished for a hole to widen beneath her and send her to oblivion. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. But I don’t want to interrupt your family trip, anyways.” Something in her tone caught Molly’s ear, and she glanced critically at Kristen. Comprehension dawned, followed by pity. The years had made her wiser. “We don’t want to be a bother, dear,” she said. Eric opened his mouth to object, but his wife cut him off. “Here,” she said. She scribbled down a phone number and address, then handed the paper to Kristen. “Call us when you get the chance. We’d love to have you for a visit, if you can spare the time.” “What?” Eric said. “No. I mean, yes, of course you’re welcome at my house whenever, Kris, that goes without saying. But come on. Bill will understand. You and I are old friends.” “Don’t pressure her, darling,” said Molly. “If she could come, she would.” Eric turned to Kristen. “Kris?” he said softly, and she took a couple involuntary steps away from him. She’d tried to smother her feelings for him, waited for time and distance to do the work common sense and shame couldn’t, and failed. That was clear now. But why not? she thought. Why not go to dinner with him? Nothing would happen. All those years she’d feared losing him, and in the end, she’d let him go anyways. One meal with his family, what could be the harm? Dinner with her oldest friend, her best friend, the friend she’d missed the most, didn’t she deserve that? And afterwards he would drive away and their separate lives could continue. Bill would be furious. His instinctive hatred of Eric was unrelenting and unreasoning, fueled by the wistful tenderness he’d heard in her voice the few times she’d mentioned him. It was the sense of something Bill could neither articulate nor understand, something that had confused him those first months when he’d tried to make her love him, convinced

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

him there was some other reason lying behind her distance. But he loved Kristen, in his own way. For her, being an unattainable object of affection after so many years aching after one was reassuring, nearly priceless. “I don’t know,” said Kristen. “We should really get on the road anyways, darling,” Molly said to Eric. “The boys don’t want to sleep in the car again tonight.” You could stay with me, Kristen thought, but she was as reluctant to show him her shabby home as she had been when they were young. “I’ll call,” she said aloud. “I mean, this really is just a terrible time. But I’ll call, I promise.” “Sure you will,” he teased, but his expression shuttered. “I will,” she insisted. “When did I ever break a promise to you?” She willed him to remember the time they’d sworn to never reveal the results of the investigation of what Mrs. Franks locked away in the topmost left cabinet in their classroom (it took a lot of wheedling for Kristen to reveal where she’d learned how to pick a lock), or the blood oath made one solemn morning to keep Eric’s hair braiding skills a secret. All the whispered conversations and inside jokes that stayed between the two of them. “Never, I guess,” he said, but she knew she’d broken the one promise that was too important and too obvious to say aloud. “I will call,” she said again. They exchanged a few more pleasantries, and after they all hugged goodbye and the family trailed into the grocery store, Kristen slowly drove away. When she got home and opened the trunk, yellow yolk was pooling in one of the bags. Where, Kristen wondered as she squeezed the piece of paper Molly had given her, had she heard that breaking eggs two days in a row was bad luck? But it wasn’t. Bill was in a good mood because of the beer, even agreeing to watch one of the documentaries she’d recorded on the DVR after dinner instead of another rerun of a favorite football game. He didn’t get upset at the eggs, only wondered aloud at the carelessness of youngsters nowadays, and when Kristen stood up to go to bed, grabbed her hand and said he loved her. She smiled and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night,” she said. The next morning, while Bill was still asleep, Kristen pulled out the piece of paper she’d secreted in her nightstand and stared at the looping whorls of Molly’s cursive. Maybe they were still in the area. A chat would be harmless, probably. But then Bill curled closer to her in his sleep, and she hesitated. Maybe not yet. Perhaps later, when she was more ready. When she knew she wouldn’t have to see him again so soon. She dropped the paper back into the drawer and lay back down. Bill put his arm around her waist. The heavy weight of it was comforting, and she sighed and closed her eyes. 54

Nicholas Pez

Liberation Under Coliseum Lights Wes Annan It is a noticeable repression, the jarring of a corrupted cortex, distress barred by innate compensation, the sweep of obscure thoughts to a vertex. Before the masses there can be no flaws, cemented are the truths consciousness leaves. Signed in blood is the in terrorem clause: â&#x20AC;&#x153;There will be no pinning of hearts to sleeves.â&#x20AC;? From the peak flows passion soundly constrained, poured into the soil of a vast chalked cage. Here the pact is kept, irked instincts maintained; spoiled sentiment soaks the roots in rage. Here alone travail finds courage to speak, here is shed the shield that preserves the meek.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

At the Lake in the Afternoon Zoe Clute When we sat cross-legged in the clovers And talked about kissing other people, My shoe pressed a red outline into my leg All zipper, all cloth fold, all shaved smooth, And you touched it. I didn’t expect kindness from you again Not this cotton candy filament kind, Thinner than dental floss, stretching and stretching. I didn’t expect the way we are structurally unsound now. Didn’t anticipate this fragility, these eggshells, the question “are you thinking about me?” hidden under the tongue.

Nicholas Pez 57

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2018

Akshay Dinakar

An Ode to the Comma Raga Ayyagari An ode to the comma, To the fallen possessive apostrophe, To the tail that dangles from a period of certainty, To the little breath that breaks the text, the curve that connects what came before and what comes next,

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