Los Angeles Miscellany Volume 67, 2019

LOS

ANGELES

miscellany VOLUME 2019

67

Copyright © 2019 Loyola Marymount University.

EDITORS-IN- CHIEF

Rainey Lynch & André Enriquez EDITORS

Mila Beliso Katie Calo Amanda Koenigsberg Megan Loreto Charlie Martin Suzanne Swanson ADVISING

PROFESSOR

Chuck Rosenthal COVER

ART

Suzanne Swanson DESIGN

&

TYPESET TING

Ash Goodwin PRINTER

DSJ Printing, Inc.

CONTENTS

writing O N W E A R I N ESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sydney Delaney

10 12

O N L I G H T.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

André Enriquez T H E M O L E O N YO U R BAC K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Carrie Callaway

15

W H E N YO U L I V E D I N M Y C I T Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Carrie Callaway R.E.M. ...............................................................................................................

Hayley Dennings

PROHIBITION....................................................................................................

Rainey Lynch

P R I V I L EG E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Katie Calo

27

28

TAT TO O SO N N ET T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gabrielle Johnsen S E L F- R E L I A N C E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Matthew Gaydos

17

25

SICK ...............................................................................................................

Kellie Toyama

S I L E N T PASS E N G E R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Marshall McKeever

14

34

36 37

D I VO R C E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Caroline Rogers

39 40

G R A N DA D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Caroline Rogers W I T H S TA N D I N G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eva Baudler 3 7 RU E D E L A B Û C H E R I E .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rainey Lynch

53

T H E Q U E E N A N D T H E H O L LOW S U N S H I N E .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nathan Faust T H E R ES I D E N TS O F DA R K P I N E S T R E E T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alexandra Paradzick

73

S P R I N G B LU E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lindsay McConnell

TO DA KOTA.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eva Baudler

74

76

A DECLIVIT Y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

André Enriquez D ES E RT M E M O R I ES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lindsay McConnell

54

68

BO R N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Claire Steakley

M A R K R OT H KO’S U N T I T L E D ( B LU E D I V I D E D BY B LU E ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amanda Koenigsberg

44 46

U N E P R O M E N A D E P LU V I E US E À PA R I S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rainey Lynch

T H E U N S E E N FAC ES O F K I N G L E A R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nathan Faust

42

77

78 80

art T RUST YO U R P E N .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lizzy Mills

13

A N OT H E R G O .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

André Enriquez WA I T I N G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Suzanne Swanson T H E O R A N G E R O O M .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Joseph Rodriguez CO M E BAC K H E R E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lizzy Mills

16

26 33 35

MOON GIRL .....................................................................................................

Brandon Klein

BAC K YA R D M E M O R I ES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Joseph Rodriguez H E U R E D E L A M US É E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rainey Lynch T H E WO R L D’S N OT WAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

André Enriquez M I D DAY M O O N S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Suzanne Swanson

‘A C L ASS I C R O B B E RY ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Joseph Rodriguez

41

45 52

67

LARKSPUR HUE ...............................................................................................

Amanda Koenigsberg P E TA L F L A R E .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amanda Koenigsberg

9

72 75

79

TRUST

YO U R

PEN

•

LIZZY

MILLS

(’22)

ON WEARINESS SYDNEY

DELANEY

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

Keep this closed; the page to cut weighs heavy on the finger.

Lead me in smoothing dust off walls lays bricks in the mind.

Reach for the head while branches are firm, yet pages and walls may fall apart.

And weariness was light a murder/ outside my window, of black birds/ brightening the darkness.

Keep this closed.

A sun shines but winds blow sharp.

Imperatives do not fly south for the winter: (you) keep (you) lead (you) reach but I, the I was wanting breath shallow, avoiding a tender kick in the ribs this is [weariness!] how it smarts.

10

It mortifies to walk to the bathroom, missing that/ loving and food/ the black birds pecked away.

Drag on it hard burning both ends a charring glow to a fool in the dark.

Watch it carefully: the ship in the distance perhaps not an end in sight.

It hath an ageless quality (you) breath (you) drag (you) watch missing elegance yet with so much clarity Patience reads well a practical guide to suffering.

(You) see you can and the weariness, the weariness is enough.

11

ON LIGHT ANDRÉ

ENRIQUEZ

( G R A D UAT E

oh look, these left

overs, these crumb trail expressions of whole things between us; who has been leaving them behind? or are they forward-facing?

I cannot see them properly in this sun, so if I close my eyes: should I expect something?

I want to [but] [yes?]

12

STUDENT )

ANOTHER

GO

•

ANDRÉ

ENRIQUEZ

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

T H E M O L E O N YO U R BAC K .

CARRIE

C A L L AWAY

(’20)

Holding hands is a sorry excuse for an embrace.

Hugs intertwine only arms and simply press torsos together.

At least a kiss adds another one or two minglings of fleshy appendages.

Even in the same twin bed, there is too much liminal space.

I want to unzip your spine, crawl into your dermis sleeping bag and align our musculatures.

I’ll even tie our medulla together using our basilar and vertebral arteries.

Using your (our) hand, I (we) will zip you (us) back up.

Then you (we) can curl up, warmer than ever, two inside one.

14

W H E N YO U L I V E D I N M Y C I T Y CARRIE

C A L L AWAY

There were geese in the courtyard

(’20)

——————

of your apartment complex.

My brother chased them while we sat on the swinging bench.

I loved your strawberry sparkling water, and every time I saw them on the wire shelves of Sam’s Club or Publix I begged my mom to buy them. They’ve been discontinued.

You have been writing me a letter for over five years.

How many years?

How many pages had you written on that day when the geese bit my brother?

In 2013 you had 184 pages.

How many times must it go to the editor?

We crossed over the threshold into your probably one bedroom home.

It looked like the ’80s, or maybe the ’90s, I wasn’t alive for either, so they may as well be the same.

Yellow beams filtered through the plastic on the windows, dust blurring the time.

Your mother sat still in a corner recliner, her eyes gazing glazed over by time.

Your father sat at the abbreviated kitchen table, held there by whatever newspaper he read. I’ve lost his voice, if I heard it.

15

WA I T I N G

•

SUZANNE

S WA N S O N

(’19)

R.E.M. H AY L E Y

DENNINGS

The worst feeling is waking up, knowing you had an intense dream, but being unable to recall it. That is exactly what happened to me this morning. I laid in bed for a moment, with the pillow pressed against my cheek as I racked my brain for any potential clues as to what had happened in my dream. But all I could remember was a red balloon animal and a shrill scream.

My phone’s ringing interrupted my thoughts.

“Hello, this is Lana Park. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Lana, sweetheart. You know the deal.” I instantly recognized my boss’s voice on the other end and I covered the receiver to groan before letting him continue.

“Yes, Adam?”

“I want all three proofs on my desk by one o’clock this afterno-” “What? I thought I had until midni-” “We’re on a time crunch,” Adam chuckled, “see you in a few hours.” The line went dead and I fell back against my pillows, covering my face with my hands. Adam was the worst. But he had paid off all my student loans and I was now in debt to him. So working for him was the least I could do, at least for a few years until I managed to pay him back somehow.

I left my apartment with my usual bag of tools after double, triple checking to make sure I had everything I needed. These types of solo missions Adam sent me on required a level of precision I

(’22)

could not reach without my tools. It was easier to get away with anything when working alone, but sometimes I wished I had a partner to share the blame with incase anything were to go wrong.

By the time I finished my third job, it was nearly 12:30. But my stomach rumbled so hard, I needed to stop for a quick meal. Lucky for me, my favorite food truck was always parked at the park closest to the office and I had enough time to stop by and enjoy a few tacos.

After my first day on the job, I never made the mistake to eat before work ever again. It had been a long night of mentally preparing myself for the task, so when I woke up, I thought I would try and calm my nerves with a nice, soothing cup of coffee and some cinnamon rolls.

Harmless, right? Wrong. The first spot of blood made everything come up and since then, I have stuck to just water in the mornings. By the time I’m done, I’m always famished, but it’s better than puking up my guts three hours into my day.

Now, as I sat and enjoyed my tacos, I people watched. There was a lot of hustle and bustle at the park today, but my eyes were drawn to a bright red balloon animal grasped tightly by a toddler in a stroller next to a fountain. He looked at the thing like it was his life’s greatest joy, which at the age of two makes sense, I guess.

His mother faced the opposite direction, talking aggressively into her cell phone. All I could hear were her angry shouts, but I couldn’t decipher any of the actual words.

17

I got distracted by a man prancing into the park with two neatly groomed standard poodles.

Their trimmed puffs had been dyed pink and I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at how ridiculous they looked. Why couldn’t some people just let their dogs be dogs? Still, I reached my hand out when one of them stopped to greet me, sniffing and licking at the leftover oils from the tacos on my fingers.

“Wow, Ginger seems to really like you.” The man grinned, “She only gives pretty girls the time of day, so you’re welcome.” He winked.

I felt more disgusted than flattered, but before I had time to react to his cringey comment, a loud shriek filled the air, jolting my attention towards the fountain. A small crowd of people had formed around where the woman and her stroller had been moments ago, so all I could see were the wheels and her cell phone on the ground. I stood to get a better view of what was going on, and that was when I saw the red balloon animal floating in the bubbling fountain water.

“Give her some space!” some man shouted.

People began to move out of the way, and I could clearly see the mother doing chest compressions on her toddler, whose clothes had completely soaked through. “Someone call 911.”

I reached for my phone, panicked. 1:03.

I was late. …

When I got to Adam’s office, I was nearly shaking and my stomach churned with unease.

Adam regarded me with a satisfied smirk as he handed my files off to his assistant, “Did Baker give you trouble today? That man is such a dick; he had it coming for him for a long time.”

I resisted the urge to scoff in his face and instead turned to leave the room. But his voice followed me out and sent chills through my body.

“Your time here is almost up, sweetheart.” I knew what he meant, and it should have made me happy. I hated working for Adam because he was a sexist piece of shit that only cared about himself, but he had caught me at a bad time in my life.

A little over a year ago, I was drowning in my student loans, and my parents had just been laid off, so there was no way I could get any money. I started working at a small cafe in addition to my job as a dance instructor, but it was not enough money to cover my rent and all my bills. I had to move back home, which I felt guilty about since my mother was also struggling with money.

I had been on my way back from a night shift when one of Adam’s men stopped me right outside of my mother’s door. He was wearing a neat suit, despite it being nearly one in the morning, and when he noticed me approaching, he smiled. It was as if he had no idea how utterly creepy it was that he was just waiting on my doorstep.

Initially, I backed away, my hand ready on the mace I had in my bag in case he were to attack. But the man quickly introduced himself as Kyle and slowly handed me a business card, “I know you’ve been having financial troubles, and my boss, Adam, would love to help you.”

I had never heard of Adam Goldstein, but after a long shower and a restless sleep, I called the number on the card first thing in the morning. He picked up after one ring and spoke to me in an insanely energetic voice, as if it was not seven am, “Lana Park! It’s so nice to hear from you.” Before I even had time to question how he already seemed to know my name, he launched into a plethora of directions for me, including how to get to his office and the exact time I should arrive that morning.

“Wait? In two hours?” I asked, concerned, “I have to be ready for my first shift in less than thirty minutes and I don’t get off unti-” “Lana, Lana, Lana,” Adam sighed on

18

the other end of the line and I could hear the amusement in his voice. “You won’t need your other jobs anymore. Just come into my office and I will tell you everything you need to know.”

I knew I couldn’t trust this man; I at the very least should not. So I said no, explaining how I couldn’t quit these jobs for just an opportunity at another one. “It’s not just an opportunity, Lana; it’s a job.”

Still, I hesitated and when he didn’t get an immediate response, he upped the ante: “Twenty-five grand up front.”

I gasped.

“Be here in thirty minutes.” Then he hung up.

With no time to process, I threw on some dark slacks and a white blouse and was out the door within four minutes. I called in sick to my two jobs on the way to the subway, unable to cut ties with them until I got a concrete explanation and the actual money itself.

I left Adam’s office with an envelope full of cash—twenty-five thousand dollars to be specific—and a lot of anxiety. He had handed me a thick folder with specific instructions on what I was to do and what I was not to do. I had to sign a contract before he could give me the twenty-five grand, and to this day, I wish I had waited to at least process what it said before I had signed away my life to this man.

Adam Goldstein feeds on the desperate, knowing they will cave for the slightest bit of money and the tiniest glimmer of hope. He has eyes and ears everywhere to protect his people and to scout out more people for his work. He is a very dangerous man even if you are on his good side. I once tried to back out of an assignment and he threatened to expose me to the FBI. I knew the stories of people that tried to run from him and his business. It either ended with them being assigned to another one of his workers, and their throat being cut by the time the day finished, or it ended with them at the

hands of the justice system and a life sentence.

Adam was alway protected because he had people do his dirty work for him and he had people who were willing to sacrifice their lives if it meant that he got to go free.

I remember my first assignment as if it was yesterday. I already knew what to expect since I had been forced to tag along with one of his oldest employees to her assignment. She had regarded me with a sense of pity, which at the time, I did not understand. Then, when she busted down the door of a very nice apartment and tackled its owner to the ground, I began to understand. The session ended with her torturing him until she got the information she needed, then ending his life with a gunshot to the head, as if he was merely a dummy in a shooting gallery. No remorse, no flinch, just aim and shoot.

Adam threatened me when I refused to go into my first assignment. He had that same woman force me into a car and she waited until my shaking hands pulled the trigger before she left. When I got home that night, I couldn’t even type out the information the man had given me, so I sent an audio file of my encounter with him to Adam the next morning. I was convinced I was not cut out for this kind of work and up until I had seen that woman kill that man with no hesitation, I genuinely thought that no one else was cut out for it either. But it just goes to show how people desperate for a way out, or some quick money will do anything.

Now, I took sleeping pills and slept as much as possible when I wasn’t working, to avoid my self-detrimental thoughts and regrets during the day. I told myself that it was better than alcohol, or drugs, but my time still felt wasted, despite all the money that I was making. Most of it, I ended up having to return to the insurance part of Adam’s business to ensure that I didn’t get sold out to the cops. What I was doing was

19

illegal, no matter how official it seemed.

With the help of the sleep and the routineness of it all, I grew numb to what I was doing and eventually just accepted it as a way of my life. Adam told me I could leave at any time, but I would most likely get hunted down by someone who wanted to know about him and his affairs, and I would no longer have his protection on my side. So I just sucked it up and let him roll me over with his money. He was right, though. My time with him was almost up.

The time of my contract was dwindling down.

At the end of it, I would have freedom from him ever telling me what to do again. But his eyes, he warned, were forever watching me. And I would never get away with any form of snitching, or secret sharing. It just wasn’t in my best interest.

I didn’t have many people to tell anyway, since I only ever worked or slept. Occasionally, my parents would ask to meet for dinner, which I would agree to, but then it was right back to my daily routine. I promised myself that as soon as the contract ended, I would buy myself a one way ticket around the world and never come back. A part of me knew it was useless; that Adam would find me anywhere I went. But another part of me just wanted to change of scenery and a way to distract myself from all my bad deeds. At that point, I would be wondering if Adam, or karma would catch up to me first.

Now, I sat back on my bed, waiting for the pills to kick in so that I could forget the events of that day. The poor boy had just been fascinated in his balloon and met an unfair demise by that fountain. I suppose it was his mother’s fault, as well; she was too caught up in her cellphone to even notice that he had unclipped his seatbelt and started to lean over the railing further and further until…

Rain fell around me, soaking my clothes until they stuck to my skin. It was too dark to see anything beyond the small circle of light the

street lamps offered. I walked quickly down the sidewalk, head low, trying to keep the rain out of my eyes. I had no umbrella and my coat was not waterproof in the slightest. My destination was still about three blocks away when I stepped in a particularly deep puddle and water came splashing up to my shirt hem. “Shit,” I cursed, dropping my bag in the process. All my belongings skidded across the pavement and I groaned, considering leaving everything behind for a split second. What’s more important: picking up my chapstick and my wallet that only has an expired driver’s license, or getting home before I can catch something from this awful rain? I was being ridiculous, of course, but as I kneeled down to scoop my things into my bag, I noticed a pair of bright yellow rain boots that passed me by. Cute, I thought, returning my attention to my fallen items. Not even a second later, multiple bangs filled the air around me and the person with the yellow boots fell to the ground, just a foot ahead.

My hands stopped scrabbling for my belongings and I looked up to see blood swirling in the water and cascading down the storm drain in the street.

I saw the four bullet holes in the person’s still chest and the blood that poured from them.

The skidding of tires tore my gaze to the street again, and I caught a glimpse of a white vehicle as it turned around the corner and vanished from my sight.

My eyes flew open and I wrenched myself into a sitting position in my bed. It was still pitch black outside and, squinting, I could see that my alarm clock read 4:23am. It was unusual for my pills to wear off like this; it almost never happened. On days that it did, I just got up at whatever hour it happened to be and started my day since I couldn’t take another pill for at least another twelve hours and I sure was not about to fall asleep on my own. For some reason, today felt off. I did not usually dream when on my pills, and I found my surroundings to be eerily

20

similar to the dream I had just woken up from.

It wasn’t raining hard, but there was a soft mist that left my windows moist and darkened the streets outside. Still, I figured that I needed some fresh air to at least calm my nerves. I could go to my mom’s place, which was only a few blocks away, and surprise her with a sandwich from the Starbucks on the way. She usually worked the night shift these days, so she would be getting home in maybe an hour.

I made sure to grab my bag and some tall boots so the water wouldn’t touch my feet. I didn’t grab a raincoat because I welcomed the rain to touch my skin. I hadn’t felt anything in weeks, and knew the rain could help restore at least some of my senses. A large drop went down my back as I stepped outside and a sharp shiver ran through my body. Just as I thought.

The rain picked up as I continued down the street towards the Starbucks. It happened to be one of the shops that opened early, with the doors being unlocked at four am. I would need a coffee to give me energy for the rest of the day since there was no chance of me falling back asleep later. I wanted to sleep, but it never came easily to me anymore. And with how vivid my dreams had been, the idea of sleep became less appealing. I could barely remember this dream, just the screeching of tires and some yellow rain boots that padded past meMy foot stomped straight into a massive puddle, and out of shock, my bag fell right beside it. “Shit,” I hissed, kneeling over to pick up my belongings.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the yellow rain boots passing by me, as if in slow motion. It was like deja vu. I heard the low rumbling of tires rolling over the concrete and everything clicked in my mind.

Three gunshots rang out, just as my mouth was forming the word, “Wai-” But it was too late. The woman had dropped

to the ground, blood swirling around her in the pouring rain.

“Holy…” The word left my mouth in a hushed whisper.

My dream had come true. …

I did not go to my mother’s house that night.

While I was debating whether or not it was in my best interest to call the police, Adam called me and told me to get rid of the body, “You know the drill, sweetheart.” I did know the drill, and I hated it. But this time it was even worse because I had to cover for someone else’s bad job. When I tried to complain to Adam about how this wasn’t my assignment, he told me that his worker who had mistakenly killed that innocent woman was already being apprehended and I would get a bonus for cleaning up after him.

Thank God. But I rolled my eyes at myself, knowing I had become one of those money hungry people, whose morals disappeared whenever offered a check.

Regardless, I got the job done, and then went on with my actual assignment for that day. It was pretty simple; just pulled a couple of teeth to get a confession, then sent the dude away to police custody. I couldn’t help but feel weird every time I called the cops to come and get my targets.

That is, if I wasn’t to kill them. Adam always had very specific instructions and if you killed when you weren’t supposed to, it was over for you. But calling the cops when I am technically one of the bad guys myself never sits well with me. I always feel like they can hear the lies in my voice and when they get around to arresting my target, I fear they might find my prints. Even though I am always careful, and make sure to be out of there by the time they arrive. It still stresses me out.

I tell myself that I am doing good for someone, even if it is a dick named Adam.

21

I managed to stay up a full twenty-four hours after I witnessed that woman get shot down. The pills would not go down, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t smash them up, either because then they lost their efficiency.

So I was stuck trying to force myself to sleep, which never worked. I suppose I didn’t want to sleep, thinking about how my dreams had been becoming real for the past two days. The first one, I could hardly remember so it was difficult to put the dots together. But for the second dream, I was certain about what had happened.

I almost wished I had remembered earlier so that I could have helped the woman (and saved myself some time from cleaning up).

My bed felt hard and uncomfortable; every time I moved, a new lump seemed to form underneath a different part of the bed. Somehow, by the grace of some other power, I overcame the discomfort and faded into a light sleep. A sleep that was so light, I knew that I was experiencing a dream, and began to move around my dream world with complete ease. I never thought that I would be able to lucid dream, considering how heavy the pills I took to fall asleep were. But since I didn’t take the pills, I guess that’s what made this dream so real.

I walked along the edge of a busy street, gazing up at the tall skyscrapers around me.

Most of the windows were spotless and reflected the afternoon sun, but one of the buildings had a window cleaner mounted on the lift at least twenty stories up. I didn’t pay it much attention and continued down the street, soaking in the warm sun. In my dream, I didn’t feel tired, or numb. I felt happiness radiating throughout my system, and for some reason, I could not stop smiling. Well, I smiled until a loud crash startled the people around me into a panicked and screaming frenzy. When I looked over, I saw the cables of the window lift dangling loosely against the building, and the lift itself had detached from

one of them so it hung completely sideways. The man had vanished and it wasn’t until i pushed my way to the front of the crowd that I saw him, lying face down on the hood of a car. …

I couldn’t unsee it. That man’s body splayed on the front of the car was the only thing on my mind as I hurried to Adam’s office.

He had demanded that I get my proofs to him by twelve that day. I had woke up on sheets dampened from my own sweat thirty minutes past eleven and had to skip doing my makeup to ensure a timely arrival.

I made sure that there were no window cleaners outside that I couldn’t help before I entered Adam’s building. How messed up would it be if I saw it happening from inside of his office? Adam’s office is twenty-three floors up, so it wouldn’t b“Hello. Lana, I need you here with me right now.” Adam’s demanding voice brought me back to the present and I blinked the man’s limp form out of my eyes to focus on my boss. He sat with his hands clenched on top of his desk, glaring at me, “Why do you come in here looking like crap and unable to listen to me?” Adam snatched the folder from my hands and began thumbing through its contents to make sure I had included everything, “Sheesh. You act like you didn’t sign a contract to be he-” “I had a rough day, okay.” I said through clenched teeth, “I know human emotions are probably foreign to you, but sometimes people just need a break from reality.”

“Yeah, right.” He handed the folder off to his assistant, then shooed me out of his office.

Outside showed no signs of last night’s rain other than the irregular wet patches in the street and on the sidewalks. But the sky was completely clear, and the sun shone down on

22

everything, raising the temperature to the low eighties. Maybe I would have appreciated the weather like how I did in my dream if I wasn’t so hyper aware of how my dream might be about to repeat itself at any moment. At first, after a sweep of all the buildings in my sight, I didn’t see any window cleaners. Then, as I turned the corner onto a different street, I noticed a man about to climb into one of the lifts with all of his gear at his side.

I couldn’t help myself. My heartbeat quicked as I approached him and grabbed his arm more forcefully than I had initially intended to, “Sir, I am begging you, do not get on this lift-” “Whoa, Ma’am, calm down.” He was a young man, maybe even still in college. It was hard to be positive because of the sunglasses he wore that covered almost half of his face. He didn’t frown at me when I grabbed him, though, and offered up a nice smile, like this happened to him frequently, “Trust me, it’s safe. I do this all the time, but you people really seem to think it’s a death trap.”

“It is a death trap,” I snapped, tightening my fingers around his bicep.

“Okay, if you don’t back off, I’m going to have to call the cops.”

That made me back away instantly. I knew that would only be trouble for me if the cops got involved. Still, I stood my ground as I watched the lift take him up near the top of the building.

Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. In my dream, I had only seen the victim’s back, so maybe it was a different person. But I knew it wasn’t. I just wanted to make myself feel better. When he turned around, I recognized his back and my heart dropped, “He’s going to fall.”

A passerby regarded me with confusion.

It wasn’t until he followed my gaze up to the window cleaner that he laughed and shook his head, “I used to think that all the time, too. But he’s fine. Those things are much safer than they

appear, I promi-” But then it happened. The cable snapped and the man came crashing down onto the car right behind us. I closed my eyes at the impact and when I opened them again, the man was looking between me and the man’s body with a bewildered expression, “Did you do this?” Fuck.

I hadn’t noticed his badge.

I knew it would get messy; cops always made things complicated.

I shook my head and pushed my way through the forming crowd, ignoring his outraged cries as he tried to call me back to the scene. But I was already gone, running back to my house with hot tears streaming down my face.

Whenever I thought of getting away from Adam and ending my numbness, I always thought it would involve something happy, or peaceful. I never thought it would be me, crying in my stairwell, clutching my cell phone in my hand as my mother tried to console me on the other end. I thought I would be done with death, or at least being the cause of death and pain.

But it had taken a hold of me in another way, in another realm that I couldn’t control.

“I’m coming to get you. I can’t understand you. Don’t move,” my mother said.

I blubbered something along the lines of “Don’t leave me,” but I doubt she could hear me.

She never hung up the phone, though, which was all I wanted. …

“She doesn’t sleep. I swear, it’s that job of hers; she’s been working herself into the ground.

Literally! I found her, collapsed, on the floor of her apartment, crying a puddle around herself.”

My mother had been speaking for me to the psychiatrist for the past twenty minutes. I was initially supposed to go in by myself, but when the psychiatrist called after a week of me missing

23

my appointments to tell my mother that she was going to give up my appointment time to a person on the waitlist if I didn’t show up, my mother marched me into the office herself.

I had been laying on the pull out couch for the past couple of weeks and my mother decided that it would be best if I talked to someone. I tried to tell her about my dreams and I woke up in the middle of the night, screaming when they happened, but she couldn’t find it in herself to believe that they were coming true. It began to eat at me and made me too anxious to sleep properly.

When I managed to stay up for days with blinking being the only shut eye I ever got, my dreams bled into my days, like strong hallucinations. At least I could still have a few coherent conversations with my therapist and my mother. Then they told me about the mental facility; that I haven’t been talking, that they’re concerned, that I need this. Wait. Was this all in my head? It’s hard to tell the difference. The next discussion was about sedatives. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to dream. No. This isn’t helping.

“Please,” I begged, through my tears as the doctors eyed me with their clipboards in hand, “I want to go home. I just want it to end.” Sedatives.

It was cold. I was lying on the metal slab, barely conscious. I don’t think they noticed. I heard them speak, “I think it’s time to turn the dose up again. She’s returned to reality. We’ll have to make some changes to make sure the simulation sticks in the brain until this prisoner’s sentence is up.”

I saw a syringe being lifted from a tray out of the corner of my eye. I weakly pulled at my arm restraints, knowing that the sedative would just send me back to the very beginning. From the day I met Adam, to the day that I cracked.

It’s not real, it’s all just a simulation. I tried to keep this in mind every time I came back to reality before they gave me another dose. But by the time I woke up, my mind would have already erased anything from reality.

I sat back, letting the tears fall from my eyes as the needle went into my neck and pushed me into unconsciousness.

The worst feeling is waking up, knowing you had an intense dream, but being unable to recall it. Recollection.

My phone’s ringing interrupted my thoughts.

“Hello, this is Lana Park. May I ask who’s calling?” •

24

SICK KELLIE

T OYA M A

(’22)

My sickly nose cannot breathe in the scent my grandmother favors so.

But the pale purple petals filling the vase is soothing to see through my glossy eyes.

A remembrance of when we could breath— a sweet brief relief.

Other things feel too cold to touch under my frail fingertips.

My skin is draining of pigment, so I think to drain a bath.

I place a cloth over my throbbing head— though I never think to tend to the thoughts inside that sometimes nauseate.

I just pour more tea down my throat

25

THE

ORANGE

ROOM

•

JOSEPH

RODRIGUEZ

(’21)

PROHIBITION RAINEY

LY N C H

(’19)

“To each his own holy water.”

Her waxy red lips like sticky crystals to the flute, the lovers’ kiss that fills the body with bubbles, popping upon contact with rising heat.

Drops of God-only-knows threaten to wrinkle her leather gloves, left on the corner of the bar, soggy, rancid by last call.

He raises his tulip-shaped glass to the girl with lilac-colored eyes that widen like orchids when he blows rummy-breathed whispers into her ears.

The young boy without a girl on his arm waits behind the bar until handed a salty glass that lures him towards the energetic women on stage.

The mistress holds her chin and her cherry-black cabernet above the crowd, careful not to spill or splash as she slides past the gentlemen in white.

One drop would stain the whole ensemble.

27

S I L E N T PA S S E N G E R MARSHALL

MCKEEVER

She drove… usually. This was unusual. He drove. She sat beside him, in the passenger seat.

She looks over at him. I look at her looking at him looking at the road. I sit in the back of the car behind them. Sitting and staring, sitting and staring… is this all I do? Her glance remains, as does his—he is a cautious driver (she is not, but that does not matter, she just sits and watches him, which is what she, at least it seems, is good at). Good at watching. Good at looking. Good at holding one’s attention on a singular subject. A concentrated, attentive gaze. Am I good at that?

I think this as I notice my gaze on them has been unbroken for the past five highway signs, one passes by me now.

Her hand passes across the center console separating the driver from the passenger seat.

Her fingers hover over the man’s right thigh (he is wearing dark blue pants). She runs her fingertips along the length of the leg before placing her whole hand onto his thigh, resting it there, holding it there. The man, for the first time since maybe these past six highway signs, turns his head away from the road, and towards her. His lips curl up. He is smiling. He removes his right hand from the steering wheel and rests it on top of the back of her palm. He returns his attention to the road. She places his hand inside hers, they interlock their fingers. She continues her smiling gaze towards him for a moment before moving her head to the window and staring, as I mostly do, out the window at

(’20)

the passing highway signs and headlights and taillights and their bright in the surrounding dark of the night.

I hold my gaze on those interlocked fingers.

I look down at my hands. Empty. I clasp them together. Still empty. Always empty? Forever empty? How long? How long makes up always or forever? A lifetime I presume. Or maybe not presume, I shouldn’t presume. I presume too often… far too often I believe. Or not believe.

Maybe I don’t believe that. All I believe is that my hands are empty. Theirs are not.

I stare out the window. I have been here before.

Many years back, in the back seat of my parents’ car on the way home from… I’m not sure, but I’m sure it’s night. I sit there. My parents look at each other. They smile. I just sit in the back and watch and stare out the window and think; my thoughts are not fully formed, just simply there, simply ruminations on the night sky. The night sky is always so beautiful.

It’s filled with bright stars, so numerous I can’t count.

But the stars are not there anymore. The night sky outside the window of my current car is empty, just like my hands. Unlike the sky, my hands have always been empty. Why is that?

Why does that make sense for my hands to be filled? To grasp another? No one wants to be empty… that must be why. Are the driver and the woman filling his hand happier than I am?

28

Maybe for as long as their hands are un-empty they are, then they stop being so. Or maybe I just tell myself that.

Last year, I was at a party, or get-together maybe, with people at it (fuck, obviously they’re people, I mean coworkers), and I stood. No window for me to look out of, I admired the walls. Socializing seemed a drag. For the others, not so. They stood around talking about… the weather? I don’t fucking know what people talk about. Anyways, I stood, as is usual at parties, for being seated on a chair with a small plate of food in my lap would seem, at least to the coworkers, strange. Or would it seem strange?

I’ve just never seen it done, at least not where I was. Fuck, what am I even thinking right now, where did my thoughts go? The point is I was there and the coworkers were there and I stood and was silent.

A woman approaches me.

“Hello,” she says.

I stand, staring. I look at her dress, it’s black, and at her shoes, they’re black too, and at her fingernails, fuck why does this woman wear so much black? I forget how long I’ve been staring.

I reply.

She says, “are you new?”

Jesus, she asks me if I’m new. I reply.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to presume. I’ve just never seen you around the office before,” is her response.

I tell her I’m not there much.

She states simply, “that’s a shame.”

I question this. I look at her eyes. Are her pupils dilated? She’s twirling her hair too, with those fucking fingernails painted black. She bites her lip too, it’s not quite a shade of black, but one could say it’s dark enough. I look back at her eyes. Has she been staring at me this whole time?

Are her pupils still dilated? Does that mean something? I reply.

She says, “excuse me?”

Fuck, what did I even say. I open my mouth to reply. She does the same, her words form before mine.

“I’m Evelyn, by the way.” She extends her hand. I reach for it. I hold it. It’s warm.

The hands of the driver and the woman are still clasped. I look at my right hand. It’s cold. I look out the window. How long have I been in this car?

Another highway sign passes us by. The passenger turns to the driver and whispers to him. She whispers softly and with a calm voice.

The words seem to roll out of her mouth like a heavy carpet of fog over a hill. Like the small hills—though they seemed like mountains to my eyes at age eight—near my grandma’s house that I can see from her small porch as I get out of bed early in the morning and wander out the front door and just stand in the brilliant cold and the still dark morning light accompanied by that morning smell—I don’t know how else to describe it except for that—and I gaze over what seems like miles of empty grassland filled with fences and cows. From that porch, I watch the dark slow-moving masses of clouds crawl steadily towards me. From that porch, I focus on nothing else, not even on the smell of bacon coming from inside the warm house. From that porch, I just stand and I stare. How long have I been standing here?

Where did that moment go? The passenger turns to the driver and whispers to him. She whispers softly and with a calm voice.

She says: I love you.

Where have I heard that before?

My mom leans towards me and says those words. My father, too. Maybe even a friend.

A lover? A lover uttering such a word as love?

What is a lover? Have I had one? Who is this woman to this man? Is she his lover? Who were my lovers?

29

The woman named Evelyn ungrasps my hand. I pull my still-warm hand back to myself.

She tells me to follow her and I do. We go into the living room, filled with people all dressed in tailor-made suits and dresses. Evelyn turns to me, and she smiles. Why is she smiling? I smile back.

The men and women in their suits and dresses stare at me in mine. What an ugly shade of gray, what a strange texture, such outdated shoes, how ill-fitting they all might say to me. I should have changed into something nicer. I own nicer things. I dress well. Just not now. Just not in this moment did I dress well. If only they saw me yesterday, or even this morning. If they saw me this morning in my attire and my un-ill-fitting clothes and my very much not outdated shoes… they probably might say the same thing. Or would they? What were they even saying to me?

Evelyn nudges my shoulder. I look at her and at the group around us of men and women and their glaring eyes looking back at me. They had asked me a question? I do nothing. I stare.

I whisper to Evelyn. She whispers back into my ear, and smiles, again with that goddamn smile. Who is she and what is this smile and why is she here and what did she even just fucking whisper? I look at the men and women in their suits and dresses. How long have I been standing here?

I don’t want to be here anymore.

The moon outside the car is full and bright.

I can’t take my eyes off it, so I rest my gaze upon it for the next several highway signs. There is laughter coming from the front two seats. I ignore it. I stare harder at the moon, I shut my eyes, the laughter is still there. I don’t want to be here either. Where do I want to be?

Lying in bed across from her. She smiles at me, again with that goddamn smile. I wrap my arm around her. She places her hand on my forearm and we lie there. She is warm. She runs her fingertips down my forearm and clenches

my hand and places her fingers between mine, spreading out my fingers and gently examining each individual one. She rests her hand inside of mine, interlocking with mine. I am meant to be here, except I’m not. I’ve never truly been here.

Evelyn stands across the room talking to one of those men in a perfectly tailored suit. She laughs, leans forward, and touches his arm. She brushes her hair behind her ear and bites her lip.

The man leans in and touches her shoulder. She laughs again.

I stand on the opposite end of the room amongst the men and women in their perfectly tailored suits and dresses. They are all talking.

I am silent, I have always been silent. Have I spoken this whole night? All I remember is speaking to Evelyn… who is now speaking to not me, but someone else, someone across the room and far away and dressed better. I should go home and change. Maybe she’d stay and talk with me if I were dressed better and wore better shoes. Then I wouldn’t feel so ignored.

The woman in the passenger seat ignores me. I call her name. She glances back at me, but does not reply. Again, I call her name. Again, she only briefly glances in my direction (hardly even a glance, more of a twitch of her eyes in my direction). I sit back in my seat, dejected. I guess my voice does not carry far enough to reach her. I go back to what is familiar, I look at the moon (the stars are still gone… well, not gone, still there. Always there, always numerous… just not always bright, or present. I belong amongst them). I feel I might scream.

HEAR ME. I WANT TO TALK TO YOU. The woman does not turn around. She cannot hear my screams, they do not reach her, or, more accurately, they cannot even form in my mouth. I will never be important to her. I am not a part of her life story except for brief moments where I sit in the background and call out her name.

30

Who were my lovers?

Evelyn stands across the room from me. She was not one.

I wanted the same thing when I was twelve, no, ten, no, five. I wanted the same thing when I was five. When I was a small boy who did not even fully know how to read, I wanted the same, and only, thing, perhaps the only thing I’ve ever wanted. Perhaps the only thing one in my position should ever want. But what is my position?

I’m the same as everyone else. I shouldn’t call myself special… that would be presuming, and I shouldn’t presume. Shouldn’t I? No, I won’t.

So, I guess anyone in any position would want.

But, again, that’s also presuming. I’m being presumptuous. Fuck. So, perhaps the only thing one in any position could hope for? Fuck, that’s the same thing. I’m getting nowhere. Where am I? Sitting in my dark living room. I am twelve, no, I’m ten. I’m sitting in my dark living room and I’m watching… Audrey Hepburn. Who introduced me to this movie? My mom did. At least I think so. After I got home from school that day, my mom consoled me about… I think that girl who stole my lunch, the lunch my mom made for me. It was cheese and ham and white bread and I think that’s it? Maybe chips, who fucking cares. And she called me ugly. My mom called me something else. She called me handsome. “You have strong cheekbones, like your mother,” I listened to my mom say this as I stared at her face. Where are her cheekbones, I thought to myself. I sat and looked up at the TV screen and up at that actress who my mom introduced me to, I could see her cheekbones. I hear laughing.

The man and woman in the car laugh again.

The woman smiles. I look away. Where can I go?

Age five and sitting in the back of my mom’s car. She drops me off at school. I go to class. I sit down in a chair. I look over a few rows. I rest my eyes on the new girl in the class. It is recess. I

walk up to her. I only hear one thing.

The new girl says: I don’t love you.

Or did she say that? Did I tell her I loved her? Did she reply with that? Maybe she just shook her head no. Maybe I did not use words.

Maybe I was unable… well, I was, at any rate… my mom sent me to speech therapy—it was weekly and it was on Thursdays and I would leave class early, always thirty minutes early, to get picked up by Mom and driven down to that one building (I forget the name) and sit in that chair across from that woman (I forget her name too) and read from a book a long list of words, words which my mouth has trouble forming.

My voice disappoints that woman whose name I forgot. She frowns… frequently. Or does she frown? Or are her lips just shaped that way, shaped in a way in which I see a frown? Either way, my voice disappoints. I do not use it.

What was even wrong with my voice? Is it fine now? Is it fine after leaving always thirty minutes early from class and sitting in a chair across from a woman and reading from a book?

I wouldn’t know. All I know is the new girl I saw when I was five did not love me and I was left wanting the same thing and I was left standing and staring… standing and staring. She walks back into the classroom, as do the other students.

Is recess over? How long have I been standing here? I don’t want to be here anymore.

I don’t want to be in this car either. I don’t know where I can be. Amongst the stars? No, that doesn’t work. I’m not an astronaut. I could be. Maybe if I tried hard enough, or were born as someone else, someone who were an astronaut and who were not me. I might prefer that actually, not necessarily to be an astronaut, for existing in space seems as equally lonely, if not more so, than existing in the back of a car at night… well, I guess the astronaut gets to be amongst the stars? Is that any consolation? I

31

guess not. Maybe there are no consolations.

The driving man turns to the woman and he whispers. His words do not reach me, but his lips move and I know what he says. I fix my gaze on those lips. The phrase starts with the corners of his lips spreading and then slowly compressing back again with his tongue bridging the gap between the rows of white teeth and then his lips pursing even more to form a sort of kiss. It’s fitting. For the phrase to end that way, with lips that way. It makes sense. If only I could hear that phrase myself. If those words were spoken to me, for once, I would be where I want.

I stare at Evelyn. Is “stare” the right word? It sounds pathetic, am I using that right either? She is still with that man. She talks to him and her lips move with their dark color that is maybe black, but I can’t tell, not while I was with her and especially not at this distance. I’ll call it black, though. A man nudges me.

I move my gaze away from Evelyn and, after turning my head, I stare right into the spectacled eyes of a stranger. This stranger holds, in his hand, a drink (a detail hardly worth noting, I have one too, so does Evelyn, who holds it gracefully. I think she is drinking a cognac… or maybe a whiskey? I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had cognac… or whiskey, I’m drinking red wine, but it just rests in my hand and I take a few sips, but I wonder how long I’ve been sipping for the glass is nearly empty. Evelyn is on her third, I presume, especially considering she even spoke to me at all. Fuck, I shouldn’t presume.

Maybe it’s her first… at any rate, she holds the cognac (if it is that?) precariously on her hand and I grow nervous of its tipping. How long have I been staring at her? I feel a nudge. Who is this stranger?).

The stranger with the drink in his hand and the glasses on his eyes looks at me.

“Congratulations,” he says.

I twist my head towards him. I reply.

He states simply, “I said congratulations.”

I question him further.

“I admire your work and I just wanted to say congratulations,” is his response.

He places his hand in front of me. I reach for it. I shake it. It’s warm. He releases his grip and says, “It was truly an honor to meet you.” I nod my head and I thank him. He begins to depart, but before he does, comments on my shoes.

“I love your shoes,” he says.

He leaves me.

He loves my shoes… he loves my shoes?

I look at my feet. He loves my shoes? My eyes feel heavy, is that the right word? Full? About to burst maybe? I don’t like how that sounds.

It sounds pathetic, pathetic and sad. Fuck, am I sad? I can feel people looking at me, me and my sad, heavy eyes, maybe they are red too, I should go sit back down. People will see me like this. I glance at Evelyn, she’s with that man, not looking at me. Does she steal glances when my eyes are turned away? I look at the ground, maybe she will look my direction now. I look at my feet. He loves my shoes?

It is raining outside the car. The heavy drops hit the slick metal of the hood and the roof and the clear glass of the window, onto which they stick and then roll down, slowly, as the wind forces them. I watch this, as does the woman. Both of us with our heads tilted slightly up looking out the window and, after a moment, our right arms propped up against the door and our chins propped up against our hands.

She turns to the man. She reaches her hand out to him and he places it in his. Their fingers interlock. I watch. I look down at my own hands. Empty.

I look back out the window. I think I can see the stars. How long have I been here? •

32

COME

BACK

HERE

•

LIZZY

MILLS

(’22)

TAT TO O SO N N E T T GABRIELLE

JOHNSEN

(’22)

Tattoos on teenaged limbs glint bright like grins with braces. Rebels of the past got old, and now that ink contorts their wrinkled skin.

Our destiny: to waste, to crumble - fold beneath the weight of what we once could lift; insist that it was lighter last time; look the mirror in the eye; and cry. We shift like some kid’s building blocks, or worms on hooks, between the World that bites our ankles red and worlds that Occupy our bedroom Wall Streets. Keep these things in mind. My friend once said, “America tastes better in the fall.”

And I replied, “Acquired tastes do not exist.” The same cannot be said for thoughts.

34

MOON

GIRL

•

BRANDON

KLEIN

(’21)

SELF-RELIANCE M AT T H E W

G AY D O S

(’19)

she had been a million objects in one reflection, an origin and end, and content with crashing into herself, sparks — shouts flying into the air. she had many children and none at all, countless lives till she had just one. she had bled along with the stars on a night when the red pool in her bathtub was finally calm. but she twitched like a violinist at a concerto she squealed like saxophone and sobbed like trombone she had been a wave crashing into the shore but now she’s swimming swimming towards a horizon she’ll never see, leaving behind bottles with messages in them that ask: “are you okay?”

36

PRIVILEGE KAT I E

CALO

(’19)

You are eight years old and all your things are in suitcases. You leave Philadelphia, where you were born and raised, and move to a suburb just outside of Portland, Oregon. You didn’t know anything about this place before, but you like it here. The air is crisp and the rain makes everything smell good. And even better yet, it’s safe. You hear your Momma say it on the phone, and your third grade teacher to somebody else’s Momma, too. It’s so safe.

Flipping through a children’s book, you see a drawing of a man and a woman kissing. The woman looks like you, with pale skin, while the man’s is dark brown, almost ebony. You turn to your Daddy and ask him if it’s illegal for white people to marry black people. No, it’s not, he says. All that matters is that they love each other. You nod and turn the page.

You make it to seventh grade and all the elementary schools come together in one junior high.

Your class is now five times the size it was the years before. There is one black kid in your grade. One. His name is Keondre.

By November of seventh grade, Keondre is dating a girl in your Language Arts class, Olivia.

Olivia with the platinum blonde hair and piercing blue eyes and skin white as snow, like the princess.

On Friday nights at the high school football games all the seventh graders hang out on one end of the track. You sit against the bleachers with your new friend and watch as Olivia and Keondre walk by holding hands. They don’t look right together, your friend says to you. You look at their intertwined fingers and you can’t understand what she means.

You make it to high school and it’s a public school but a really, really good one. Your classes are challenging but the teachers and the faculty make you feel welcome. They make you comfortable, just like your town itself. Cushy. Comfortable.

After lunch everyday you and your girlfriends pass around sticks of gum, usually wintermint but sometimes spearmint if the student store has it. It’s ninth grade after all, and you can’t afford to have stinky breath. What would the boys think? You stand there in a circle and blow bubbles until the warning bell rings.

37

By tenth grade you have a boyfriend, but he isn’t really your boyfriend. He texts you everyday but he took someone else to Prom. He’s a senior, two years older. To you he is charming and funny; it isn’t until years later you realize he is an obnoxious jackass. When Keondre walks by you in the hallway after school, your boyfriend-not-boyfriend jerks his head toward him and murmurs a slur.

He says it with a grin—he’s just messing around. You know what racism is and you know it’s wrong, but it doesn’t exist here—not in this town, not in your school. He was just messing around. You fix a smile on your face and ignore the twist in your gut and stare down at the carpet.

It’s senior year and girls and boys sit together at lunch and a big circle forms in the commons everyday, the more the merrier. You’ve already finished eating by now and you pop a stick of gum in your mouth and let the minty flavor spread across your tongue. Keondre comes in late after a double late arrival, hair glistening with raindrops and a crease in his brow. A few of the guys shove over to clear a space for him and he sits down and someone asks him what’s wrong. I got pulled over on my way to school, he says. Second time this year. I was driving just fine. You turn to look at him and blow a big bubble, maybe the biggest one you’ve ever blown before. Has this happened to anyone else? He asks. You scan the circle, waiting for someone to pipe up, offer advice, offer a story that relates. No one has one. Your bubble pops. •

In the style of Claudia Rankine

38

DIVORCE CAROLINE

ROGERS

(’20)

It was a house on my chest Like the one that crushed The wicked witch of the west.

But what did I do that was so wicked?

You were always more free With your emotions than me But that doesn’t mean you should have cried When you told me because that hurt me the most.

So from then on I became someone who listens To the knocks at the door but won’t answer it And you wanted me to come out and cry too But I could only stay inside, alone.

Because I didn’t want to be the problem, The nagging fly that buzzes around your head That you can’t get rid of, like he got rid of us.

So instead, I’ll stay silent.

39

GRANDAD CAROLINE

ROGERS

(’20)

Did you know, he built me a wooden swing hung it on a tree from creaking chains and would push me on it for hours?

Did you know, with faded blue eyes fixed on Antiques Roadshow he would sketch me pictures of horses on his tv tray from his customary green chair?

Did you know, in the mornings, between bites of his granola, plaid shirt pressed and belly hanging over his belt, he would tell me stories about magic?

Did you know, those black and blue marks on my Grandmother, that he put them there?

I didn’t know.

40

B A C K YA R D

MEMORIES •

JOSEPH

RODRIGUEZ

(’21)

W I T H S TA N D I N G E VA

BAUDLER

(’20)

Henan is unknown to me, a snowbird kingdom plucked from white rabbit clouds hopping over mooncake beds.

Dumpling skins and egg-yolk beef folded over and over in the freckled dusk of my Chinese mother’s curls.

I hear it calling when I press my ear to the base of her iron heart: thump thump thump— the same sound her mop makes against our mahogany floors between dimsum noons and soap opera nights.

Mama never stops cleaning like she’s digging a hole from Manhattan Beach to the South China Sea. Never mind all the sharks, bleached coral and trading tariffs.

When she picks up a rag, she’s still the same girl who pierced her foot on a rusted nail and disinfected the wound with a sack of rice

42

and tears unshed, because in Mao’s China children died when the floodgates broke and Mama was meant to cross oceans, not drown in them.

I used to resent her domestic footsteps, as if sewing and laundry could be peace and self-worth.

I never knew what to put on school applications when they asked for her job, ashamed of her dragon fruit calluses, pawnshop-eye for turtle figurines and her particular low squat reaching to dust shelf corners.

The young me never appreciated how she made Hell into lotus flowers; their roots enriched her dishes, steamed with a Buddha’s patience and served to mansplaining uncles.

When I wash dishes now, I hear windchimes in the rack see fields and patties marked by hunched backs under waving red banners and an eldest daughter washing her baby brother, the cracked hotpot and God knows how many bean sprouts.

Henan is still unknown to me, but I think of it fondly when Mama thrums her memories down a broomstick, like she’s playing the erhu, after all these years of cleaning other people’s messes.

43

37 RUE DE LA BÛCHERIE RAINEY

LY N C H

(’19)

The bells of Notre Dame remind me of time ringing through the roses and across the Seine, the blood, the lifesource that keeps this city ever moving, ever vibrating as bells do on the hour.

I hear the bells through the crack in my window that nearly broke me, the crack that calls itself climax, the crack that smiles back.

I sit beyond the crack with my back turned towards the cat that hates tourists and purrs when he’s hungry even though you just fed him.

I ignore him while I suck on the pages that are history that are mystery to those who have never dreamed of Paris on the second floor of the English bookstore that the Baltimore girl built for the sake of Paris and stars and sonnets and bellllls.

44

HEURE

DE

LA

MUSÉE •

RAINEY

LY N C H

(’19)

U N E P R O M E N A D E P L U V I E U S E À PA R I S RAINEY

LY N C H

A Good Café on the Corner of Rue Galande and Rue Dante

It was September in Paris so it was still warm enough to sit outside, on the patios of the little cafes that define the streets of Paris, at the tiny round tables that are practically the size of American dimes. But to be honest it never became too cold to sit outside in Paris.

All the cafés have heat lamps and blankets to keep their tiny French customers warm and cozy during the winter, as if the burning butts of their cigarettes didn’t keep them warm enough. It’s never too cold outside when you have to sit outside to smoke, and the Parisians always smoke.

It was September in Paris so I was wearing just enough to keep myself from shivering at the touch of the subtle breeze that swept across the Seine and through the cobblestone streets in Le Quartier Latin. I ran into Alexa, who lives down the hall from me, as we both approached the Librairie Eyrolles on Boulevard Saint Germain to buy the same copy of Gertrude Stein’s Paris France. We remembered that we had both wanted to walk down the street to the little flower shop with the green awning across from the trendy boulangerie that sold good sandwiches for four euros and eighty cents at lunchtime. The florist possessed the charming kind of smile that could only belong to a Parisian florist. Pour vous ou pour offrir. Pour

(’19)

moi bien sur. But she tied them in a little green bow for me anyway. Alexa bought a small pot of purple petunias and I bought a half dozen pastel pink and yellow roses. And a vase.

We traced our steps back to the Librairie Eyrolles and turned down Rue Dante, the street that flows into Saint Germain in between Café Le Quartier Général that serves great chocolat à l’ancienne and that seafood restaurant that has a terrifying display of dead sea life right there on the patio. The top of Notre Dame sticks out of the apartment buildings at the end of the street. It nearly blooms from the top of that pale pink sliver of a building that stands across from that park where I saw those rats that one time.

There is a café at the corner of Rue Galande and Rue Dante. Its patio is covered with a bright red awning and happy hour starts at four o’clock.

Sixteen o’clock if you’re French. Alexa and I sat outside under the bright red awning, letting our new fresh flowers rest on the table beside us.

Typical Americans, taking up too much room.

We sat there for about twenty minutes before the waiter noticed we were waiting. He waited. Deux verres de rosé s’ il vous plaît. We waited. And then we sipped the afternoon away, as the French do.

Two euros for a glass of wine. And only four for Red Apple during happy hour. And only three for un chocolat when it got too cold for even alcohol. But not too cold to sit outside, of course.

46

A False Beginning I was reading in the Luxembourg gardens. It was officially fall and all the leaves were brown and orange when the sun started to set. If only I’d known that they were going to drain the pond later that week, I would’ve sat somewhere with a view of the little French children playing with their sailboats. But I didn’t know. So I was sitting under the brown and orange leaves, by myself and surrounded by other people sitting by themselves and reading books written in whatever language they decided to speak that day. That always impressed me.

He was speaking to me before I even realized that he was there. French men have a habit of just pulling up a chair, do with that what you will. He was speaking French. I was honored that he thought I was French. But the not French cannot simply be French, the French would never allow it. So I hesitated–tu parle le francais? Uh ouais mais pas parfaitement.

Desolé. I was embarrassed. He didn’t mind, he spoke English too, everyone does after all. He had a British accent when he spoke English, which I appreciated of course.

I couldn’t tell how tall he was because he was sitting practically on top of me, but I took the whole being French thing into account and assumed he couldn’t be much taller than six feet.

He had blue eyes, fiery blue eyes that I thought looked nice against the burnt orange background of the garden. He was blonde. Most French men are brunette which I didn’t realize until I got there. He was charming and persistent. His name was Alexandre.

We went to a café near the Pantheon and that church where they filmed Midnight in Paris later that week. It was chilly and rainy but the wine and the heat between us warmed me. I took off my jacket. So there I was drinking wine in a smoky French café, sitting across the table from

this charismatic French man.

He was born in Paris. But his family moved back and forth between Paris and Dubai, probably due to his father’s busy work schedule.

He just started working his new full-time job for a consulting company that shipped him off to Oyonnax every week from early Monday morning to late Thursday night. He hated leaving Paris every week. But he often spent his summers in Geneva, and Oyonnax was close enough to Geneva. So he started spending weekends there too. I listened intently. These types of stories are thrilling to Americans.

We walked across the Boulevard SaintGermain to the edge of the Seine. I love the way the back of Notre Dame lights up at night. We were drunk and steamy and alone. So we were kissing on the edge of the Seine and his hands were on my back and my hands were on his face.

He whispered intoxicating French nothings into my neck. My breath was heavy, so we got a cab.

I told myself I wasn’t going to, but I did.

I couldn’t resist that tipsy Parisian evening tugging on my belt. It’s true what they say about French lovers. Oh mon dieu, c’ était magnifique.

We sweat out all the wine but we were still drunk when we woke up.

Shakespeare and Company Sylvia’s place is right across the water from Notre Dame and down the street from my favorite café and boulangerie. The guys there know my name and they always give me free croquembouches. If you arrive at the right time you can avoid the line that sometimes extends from the front door to the street curb. Those goddamn trendy cafés that popped up on either side of the store and the road construction that funnels pedestrians right into the crowded part of the neighborhood have tainted the storefront

47

with a constant and unpleasant company of tourists. I hate tourists.

But if you go at the right time on the right day of the week, the tourists will be off paying too much for their drinks and taking up room on the wrong metro. Then the only people with whom you have to share your sacred space are those who also found themselves in the lost generation.

You can find the lost generation on your left right as you walk through the door and trip over the stair that nobody sees until it is too late. I usually shuffle my way through the downstairs rooms of the store, that is where they keep all of the books that they are selling. Sylvia’s gotta make a living. And then there are friends like me who can’t afford to buy her books. So we sneak our way up the backstairs that read I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being — Hafiz. I thought it was tacky at first, but Sylvia talked me into it.

I don’t know who started it, but Sylvia has a growing wall of letters on a mirror that rests at the top of her stairs. These letters are written on scraps of old newspaper, old metro tickets, old crumpled up baguette bags, and whatever other kind of crap we all find in our coat pockets when we don’t have a decent piece of paper on us. I finally caved in and wrote one about a week ago.

I am in the midst of a love affair. Sylvia thought it was romantic.

There is a piano in the room on the right. I wish I could play but I never learned so I prefer the room on the left. There is a window in that room anyway, so I like it better. If you sit in the corner of the room, across from the worn leather chair and next to the small wooden desk with the tiny red chair, you can see the face of Notre Dame peering through the window. What I wouldn’t do to rent this place from Sylvia and spend all my nights and all my days tucked away in this corner. She keeps a box full of bright red

flowers hanging on the window sill all year long.

She thinks it’s romantic.

The room smells like my aunt’s house, old and warm and dusted with cat dandruff. I’m allergic to cats but as long as I don’t touch him I’m mostly fine. His name is Aggie and he likes to sit on the worn leather chair on the other side of the room. I can’t quite tell if he is overfed or underfed, but anyway we are not supposed to feed him. He likes his naps and he hates tourists too. At least I don’t hiss at them like he does.

Every once in a while I will find myself completely alone on the second floor of Sylvia’s place. Alone except for Aggie the cat and the characters in the books that Sylvia uses to decorate the walls instead of wallpaper most of the time. Sometimes I feel like I am not even there, like I am just another character in one of her books.

On Americans in Paris I am not the first American to live in Paris, nor am I the only American living in Paris. My neighbor is American. She grew up in Michigan but her mother lives in Florida and she lives in New York when she isn’t in Paris. But I guess that’s not saying much because I have another neighbor from Chile and another neighbor from Lebanon and another neighbor from Italy. Everybody comes to Paris at some point in their lives.

Everybody is here but I am here alone, everybody is here alone. We sit in cafés alone, we walk through the rain soaked streets alone, we drink alone. Nobody comes to Paris to waste their days with more Americans. Plus, we give ourselves away when we travel in groups. And nobody wants that.

I feel like a stranger here but I enjoy the strangeness. Why else would I be here? I need to understand what it’s like to be simultaneously on

48

the inside and on the outside looking in. That’s why writers come to Paris, that’s why American writers come Paris, to relate to or perhaps to find or even to become the characters about whom we write. We are lost, so we come to Paris to get more lost in the hopes of somehow finding ourselves in the lostness.

But the longer I am here the less lost I feel.

I know Paris and I know myself in Paris. But the not French cannot simply be French, so even when I feel like I belong I know that I never will.

But that’s why I’m here, to exile myself for the sake of experience.

I am most lost when I attempt to speak French. No matter how hard I try to pretend I am French to fool all these so called locals, I give it away the second I open my mouth. I am getting better. Once, in a café, the hostess truly believed that I was French for a moment, until I hesitated before responding to a simple question, and then she knew. But usually they can tell right away. I’ll use the incorrect tense or the incorrect gender, or for crying out loud they’ll just catch the American accent. They’re like bloodhounds. I love the language and I wish I spoke it better. But I am also American, I can’t deny it, and I speak English, I write in English, I have built my career on my passion for writing in English. And to be perfectly honest, when I practice French, I feel like I am cheating on English, like I am having an affair with a much older man. And when I come home, I know that English is going to taste French on my tongue and know that I lied when I said I was drinking alone.

A Night at the Folies Bergère I went to the theater tonight. I had to take three metros to get there and I’m surprised that I didn’t get lost. I usually don’t know where I’m going until I get there.

The facade of the theater is magnificent.

Fluorescent white lights frame the golden dancing figure that watches over the entrance to the theater. People stand on the other side of the street just to absorb its grandeur. I threw back my shoulders and tilted by chin upwards as I waltzed past the security guards, flashing my ticket as if I had been here a thousand times before. Upon entering the lobby, I suddenly wished I had come dressed in an elegant gold ball gown, adorning the arm of some important statesman. The interior was much more dramatically glamorous than I had imagined. The turquoise walls frosted with gold and lit with radiant red accents would have been tacky in any other setting, but they gave this theater the sense of timeless history on which it thrives.

I stood on the edge of the room, observing the elderly couples whose attires, like mine, were not fit for such a room. I tried to imagine what this room would have looked like, smelt, like, felt like before an opera during the Belle Epoque. The characters that started to populate my imagination floated in from the walls and filled the room with elegant French whispers and rumors about Madame Beaumont’s butler’s nose.

The bell tolled twice, notifying us that the ballet was about to begin. So we filed into the dingy auditorium lined with red carpet and squeaky old chairs that have been hosting visitors for decades before I even knew this theater existed. It smelled like a library you would find in your grandparents’ house, and it had been filled with just as many characters.

The lights dimmed as I sank into my seat.

Smoke poured from the stage as the curtain rose, and visions of Nick Carraway and Meyer Wolfsheim danced across the scene. I thought it was romantic. Tears ran down my cheeks as the entrance faded into Act 1.

49

Five Stops on the RER B I start my mornings and end my evenings with five stops on the RER B. Stop one. The brothers who own the crepe stand outside of my building wave at me every morning on my way out. Sometimes they offer me green tea if it’s cold outside. I cross the street quickly to avoid the crowd of people I can see getting off the tram and heading towards the station for the 8:20am rush. Look both ways before you cross the street, and take a second to look at the sunrise if you have a moment to spare. There are always vendors outside of the station, handing out newspapers, cooking corn in a shopping cart, roasting chestnuts in giant metal bowls. I hate the smell of roasting chestnuts.

If it’s the first of the month you will have to shimmy your way through lines of people who forgot to refill their Navigos before the end of the month. If it’s raining, the floor will be wet and slippery. If there’s a strike which there often is because the French are very unhappy people you might as well give up and walk down the block to the bus stop and get on Bus 21 heading towards Les Écoles. But the bus takes twice as long and smells twice as bad as the RER B. Cité Universitaire is a nightmare when I head out for the day, but when I am heading home at least it lets me know that I am close.

Stop two. I like this stop because it is not underground. Sometimes you can even smell the dewy green grass that tucks the tracks into their own urban valley. The time it takes to get from Cité Universitaire to Denfert Rochereau feels significantly longer than the time between any other stops. From there you can take the four or the six. I prefer the six because if you wait long enough, you’ll be rolling over the Seine with a view of la Tour Eiffel.

Stop three. Nobody ever gets on or gets off at

this stop. Hell I’ve never needed to get off at this stop. Apparently Alexandre lives near it though.

Stop four. This stop seems cleaner than most stops. And there are never as many people in this stop even though it seems like a pretty popular place. I guess you can’t make any transfers here.

Luxembourg is loyal to the RER B. The garden is on your left when you exit the station. The gates are open as long as the sun is up. It’s pretty in the spring and the summer and the fall–children playing with sailboats, ducks paddling around the quiet pond on the side, boys playing tennis, girls reading books, couples lounging in the sun, flowers blooming in the pots and in the beds, and water flowing through the fountain. But they drain the fountain in the winter when it’s too cold and rainy for children to play, for couples to lounge, or for flowers to bloom. I sometimes still read there though.

Stop five. It took me about a month to understand the ins and outs of this station.

Everything is yellow and the RER B north is on your right when you arrive but the RER B south is on your right when you depart.

Everything is right but you will most likely always be wrong. Unless you are here everyday like me. When you arrive, if you turn right, you will climb up two escalators, weave in and out of slow Parisians in the mosaic-tiled tunnel, and climb another set of stairs to get to the street where Saint Michel and Saint Germain intersect. There is always a woman sitting at the top of the stairs selling crochet shoes for babies. I cannot tell if she lives there or not.

There is a man who lives in the bus stop down the street from that intersection. He doesn’t bother anyone and nobody bothers him. If you turn left, you have two choices. You can either continue straight towards the two sets of stairs that spit you out across the street from Notre Dame, or you can turn left again and take the

50

escalator to the C that’ll take you to the Musée d’Orsay or the Champ de Mars or Versailles, depending on the final destination of the car that you board. I cried on the C, once.

And that’s just one way.

La Vie en Rose Sometimes I leave Paris, just for a day or two, to see other parts of the continent. One weekend I met some friends in Venice to ride through the city on boats and drink spritz along the canals. After a few drinks we decided to wander through the streets of venice, talking about the humorous possibility of drinking too much and falling into the canal. They ran into a friend of theirs so I walked on without them. I’m used to being alone, a stranger in an unfamiliar setting. I enjoy walking alone, observing the way the bottom of my feet mold to fit the shape of the cobblestone on which I am stepping, memorizing the way my ears are tickled by a taste of unfamiliar languages. A gust of wind tugged on my scarf and drew my attention to the lit window on my right. The window was filled with melting clock sculptures inspired by Salvador Dalí. I smiled and silently expressed my appreciation for beautiful minds.

Suddenly my ear was pricked by the sound of an Italian accordian player practicing behind me. Sylvia would have liked it, I thought.

He was playing La Vie en Rose. Isn’t it romantic? I tossed two euros into his hat as I melted into the slow bustle of the street.

I arrive back in the States. Will they see me as a foreigner? Will I project the aura of a sophisticated French woman? No, to them I’m just another American who disappeared into Europe for a couple months. They will never understand how I wandered through the rainy streets of Paris.

My only wish for the morbid trip back to the states was to sit next to a charming french woman who could tell me stories about her long lost Austrian lover or her summers in Italy or her petit studio apartment in Montmarte where she painted garden landscapes every Tuesday afternoon. I waited eagerly to see this figment of my imagination gliding down the aisle until she reached our row and asked puis-je m’asseoir ici before settling in to what would be my last romantic European encounter.

But my imagination failed me. A big southern boy, probably from Georgia or Florida, plopped into the seat next to me. He had a haircut that only a conservative southern military man could ever think looked good. He called me ma’am. I quite frankly was offended.

After a few minutes he took off his jacket to reveal a horrendous American flag tattoo covering the entire surface of his right forearm with the words live, love, fight, die underneath it in calligraphic black ink.

So began my shocking reentry into the land of the free and the home of the brave. Welcome back, ma’am. •

A Strange Enough Ending I am heading back to the States today.

I was a stranger to Paris when I arrived. But now I predict that I will be a stranger when

51

In the style of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’

THE

WO R L D’S

NOT

WAYS

•

ANDRÉ

ENRIQUEZ

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

THE QUEEN AND THE HOLLOW SUNSHINE N AT H A N

FA US T

(’19)

Look at you, Queen of the World, standing out in the autumn wind.

You could kick the ground until you find honey and still feel empty under the hollow sunshine, clay hands coming from the earth to mold an opening in your chest for the water to rush through.

A silver spoon on a china plate the feeling of silk on your bronze skin and still the hollow sun breaks through the hole no matter if you fill the void with iron or glass.

Eyes flickering diamond blue like the murmur sea then simple brown like the life-giving dirt out of which came you and me and all of creation, even the dog living down the street curled up by the fireplace while the crisp apple wind rolls through the town like flowers peaceful on a silver stream.

With a single breath, one that spanned from the beginning of time to the weeping willow end, you waved your hand and the curtains softly closed; the lights went down and there was no applause.

53

THE RESIDENTS OF DARK PINE STREET ALEXANDRA

PA R A D Z I C K

O. THE FOOL Beginnings: Lilliana Keeper.

I first met Lilliana at midnight, when I tried to go for a walk and ended up in front of her house staring at a light in the window. She asked me what I was doing out at midnight, I asked her the same question, and she laughed. “I like you,” she’d said. “Your family just moved in, right?” And that was our first meeting. She’s small, rather slight, with bright orange hair and freckles that cover her entire body. In the dark, I thought her eyes were brown, and in the light, she constantly wore perfectly circular sunglasses tinted the same color.

Lilliana wore colors that matched her hair and a thick red knit scarf that always covered her neck.

Out of all the Keeper girls, she was the sixth oldest, and the most annoying. Since that midnight, she sat on the porch of the Keeper manor, and would watch me bike home from school. Every once in a while, when I saw her, we would wave to each other. I passed by her one Saturday night, and asked her if she had noticed the sky.

“Did you ever realize,” I asked while pointing up, “that you can never see the stars when you walk on Dark Pine Street?”

“Never have,” she said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” I didn’t know her that well, so I couldn’t tell if she was lying. That was the first time I’d seen her without the knit scarf or the sunglasses, and I saw that under it she was wearing a choker with a small metal charm on it. The charm was a jester. Her eyes were as orange as her hair.

(’22)

Her room in her family’s manor is a simple bedroom with slips and slips of paper all over the place. All have words on them, all in different handwriting. All of them lies people have told.

Mine. Yours. I found a slip of paper that had two sentences written on it in orange ink. “Never have. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I haven’t trusted a word out of Lilliana Keeper’s mouth since then.

I. T H E M AGICI A N Manipulation: Ayden Spencer.

My father wasn’t around long enough for him to live on Dark Pine Street. He was a city man, and would have rotted in the small town of Dark Pine. Would have hated the street that shared the same name even more, since it was so far from the meat of the town. He needed noise, he needed light, he needed speed. This town has none of those things. It is quiet in an unnatural way, the sky is the shade of oil at night, and the air makes you sleepy.

He’s here only in memory, if that counts for anything at all.

II. THE HIGH PR IE STE SS Disconnection: Madeleine Spencer.

My mother moved us to this town because she needed a change. “This city is just too much for me, I’m too old for such nightlife,” was how

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she explained it to us. My mother is thirty, and she mostly didn’t want it to be easy for father to visit. The house she bought was cheap and easy, and by all accounts, on a beautiful street. There was a forest that bordered the end of the cul-desac, and fog rolled in when the sun came up. The air was fresh and it wasn’t too sunny.

She did not dote on me as much as she did my younger sister, but I think she cared in her own way. I still remember, when it all started going to shit and even the more ignorant townspeople started to realize something was wrong, the warning she gave me and my sister both. “Now kids, I want you to stay away from the manor and the woods, you hear me?”

One of her children went into the manor, and both of us went into the woods, but only one of us came out. I wonder if it’s the one she loved the most. I wonder how much she loved the one that didn’t come back.

III. THE EMPR E SS Innocence: Sophia Spencer.

I love my sister with all my heart, which is ironic to say, because if she saw me now, she’d probably carve mine out. She was another reason we moved out to Dark Pine, because “fresh air is supposed to be good for the body.”

Sophia was broken, physically, with a twisted leg that had to remain in a brace. She had crutches that attached to her arms, she could not run, she could not climb stairs, and she could not straighten that leg in the slightest.

Sophia has been homeschooled all her life, and has a wonderful imagination because of that. When we first saw the Keeper manor, she suggested that it might be haunted. When Beatrice told me to stay out of the woods, she suggested that there were possibly werewolves inside. She’s my little sister, and a pain in the

ass, but I love her anyway. We share the same brown hair, and the same blue eyes, but she acts much different. She gets along with everyone, she can calm our mother down, she never managed to make any of the Keeper sisters mad, and she has a love of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I will never stop being sorry for the pain I have caused her.

I V. T H E E M P E R O R Dependence: Myself.

My name is Jake Spencer, and I moved to Dark Pine Street at the tail end of August. I was set to start my senior year at the local high school, I had no car, and no friends either. The only friend I have is a girl by the name of Beatrice Keeper, who I watched walk out of the Keeper manor every morning at 11 AM sharp. When I first introduced myself, she told me to fuck off, and then woke me up at 6:30 AM with her truck horn. She took me to the local diner, bought me breakfast, and called me a friend for the first time. I was surprised, but then again, I think she was too.

I’ve always had trouble in crowds. People, large groups of them at least, make me feel trapped. It shouldn’t be a surprise then, that Beatrice was my only friend during my time in Dark Pine. She didn’t have any other friends either, just her sisters and her mother. She asked me once why I didn’t confess my anxieties to my mother. “She’d try to help, wouldn’t she?

That’s what mothers are supposed to do,” Beatrice said. I’d shrugged in response, and Beatrice knew not to push it. Really, my mother already had to deal with Sophia and her leg.

Did she really need to take care of a kid with anxiety? No. I could live with it. So, I did. Did I need to go to therapy? Probably. Was I going to get the help I needed?

Probably not.

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V. T H E H I E R O P H A N T Belief: Willow Keeper.

Willow, or Willa if she permitted you to call her such, was quiet. She had dark hair and gray eyes and a tilt to her head that let you know when she was thinking. Willa is quiet most of the time, but vocal when she thought you were being an idiot. Around her neck was a pendent of the goddess Athena, and she always had yarn looped around her fingers in a rather complicated game of cat’s cradle. She offered it to me once. I got my fingers tangled in it, and she had to help me out.

I met her in the town library, which was far too small and empty to be considered a proper library. I felt the need to ask her why Dark Pine was the way it was. I felt in my gut that she would have the answer, but she simply told me that not asking questions was the wisest choice I could make.

Her room in the Keeper manor is full of books and tools and what appears to be a tapestry made out of hundreds and hundreds of games of cat’s cradle. Hanging on the wall is a belt that contains multiple throwing knifes.

I asked her about them the next time I saw her, and she winked at me. “Wisdom is truth, and the truth is often sharp, but I’m sure you already knew that,” she told me. Those gray eyes hold years within them, years of truth and knowledge I would rather not know. She is in the middle of the Keeper brood, but I fear her more than the others.

Doesn’t everyone fear the truth, in some respect?

V I. T H E LOV ER S Imbalance: Lila Keeper.

When I first met Lila, I was worried for her. She is pale, unnaturally so, and her hair is a mix of colors. Its natural color (or so it appears) is a light silver, and she dyes streaks of

it pink and red. She is tall, but without weight.

No muscle or fat to speak of, Lila appears as something that is only bone. If she is looking at you head on, it is like looking into the eyes of death. Her cheeks are sunken, her collar bone is totally and completely visible, as are her ribs, and when she bends over you can see each individual notch of her spine. Lila’s skin is tight over her body, and she wears revealing clothing, as if that would be attractive to anyone. Her eyes are a clouded white, as she was born blind.

Around her neck sits a pendant on a choker, just like all the Keeper girls wear, this metal figure a rendition of Cupid drawing back his bow. I asked Beatrice about her thinness, if perhaps Lila should be taken to a doctor, and Beatrice just shrugged and said she would fine if she wasn’t such a picky eater.

When I had to traverse the Keeper manor, Beatrice made me promise to close my eyes when we walked through Lila’s room. She said we had to be as quiet as possible, and she kept one hand wrapped tightly in mine the entire time.

It smelled like roses, chocolate, and blood. Lila was silent and then asked if Beatrice had brought her a meal since she was so terribly hungry. “If you’re so hungry, go out and get your own food,” Beatrice said to her.

“No one would want me like this,” Lila said, and I heard a sound I can only describe as bones shifting and rearranging while still confined by flesh.

“They all want you, Lila,” Bea said, while still pulling me along. “You’re just picky, get over the Victorian age and move onto the modern one.”

“Back then people knew how to love. This new age...it’s wrong.” There were layers to her voice. I knew, in that moment, that there was a monster in that room. Something old and ancient, something that was quite terribly hungry.

“Says you. I’m inclined to disagree, and I know much more of the world than you.” I didn’t doubt Beatrice’s words, but I feared Lila

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all the same. That’s what she was, something to be feared, something horrid and starving.

Something that didn’t know how to move on.

I think she’s still alive only because some people believe true love exists.

V II. THE CH A R IOT Control: Beatrice Keeper.

Beatrice Keeper is a bitch. She’s rude, smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, curses like a sailor, and has a habit of telling half-truths. She is a bitch by all definitions. Beatrice Keeper is also my best friend. She is the oldest of all the Keeper girls, and it shows. When she talks, she expects you to listen, she walks with a purpose, and she isn’t used to being told “no.” Bea doesn’t look like she belongs in Dark Pine. She’s tan, too tan since she lives in a town that’s constantly overcast, and nearly everything about her makes me think of some beach girl. The skin, the long blonde hair, her boldness. The thing that I really noticed about her, and still do to this day, is the color of her eyes. Gold, like melting sunlight. Around her neck is a pendent of an angel, and she constantly wears an olive colored jacket styled after a high school letterman. The only thing that marks it as hers is the thread art of a pair of gold wings that spans the entire back. The same day she first called me her friend was the same day she told me to stay away from the woods at night.

A funny thing about Beatrice I learned very early on in our friendship was that she didn’t own a phone. “Why would I need one? Everyone I know is on this street,” she told me when I asked. I offered to buy her a few burners, but she turned it down. From then on, whenever she needed to tell me something, she left a note. My bedroom window was right on the front of the house above an empty flower bed. Bea would stick her notes half in half out the window, letting the frame itself pin the paper down. At

the time, I did not question how she got the window open without tripping the alarm.

Beatrice was the one that lead me through the Keeper manor. I remember that day, at the very beginning of December. The sky was black even though it was two in the afternoon and it was pouring rain. I had sprinted to the door and was banging on it, and Bea answered. I explained to her in a rush that someone had left a note for Sophia, telling her to go into the woods.

Beatrice’s name was signed at the bottom. “This isn’t my handwriting,” she’d told me.

“I know it isn’t your fucking handwriting!”

I’d yelled. I was worried sick at that point, about my sister, and Bea’s warning about the woods had been at the forefront of my thoughts. “Your family is big enough to form a search party,” I’d told her. “Come on.” I’d yanked open the front door of the Keeper manor and took one step in.

Bea tried to stop me, but she didn’t quite make it in time. My foot hit air, I tumbled forward, Beatrice grabbed the collar of my shirt, we were both falling, it sounded like something ripped, the air smelled like a wet animal, and we hit the ground. When I came to, me and Bea were on the floor of the most majestic library I’d ever seen, there were gold feathers stuck in my hair, and there was no door to be seen.

“Well, it let you in,” Bea told me. I have never seen such sorrow in her face until that moment. She was looking at me like I’d thrown my life away. “Pray to Mother it lets you out.”

The look on her face was enough to make my throat close up. My breathing became labored.

Never, if you can help it, have a panic attack. I was shaking and hiccupping out small breaths of air, and Beatrice was trying to calm me down by telling me it was all going to be okay. I pushed her away and ran for the only door I could see, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The library of the Keeper manor is large and full of books in languages long forgotten

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and not yet written. It is the biggest room in the entire house, and it is Beatrice’s room. She has read nearly every novel on the shelves, but more keep springing up. She needs help sorting them all out. She’s told me this. I think it was the first completely true thing she told me. Beatrice Keeper is a bitch who tells half-truths, has a white knight complex, and doesn’t know how to introduce people to her family. She’s old. She’s powerful. She’s my best friend. She lied to me, but I forgive her. She dragged me into this mess, but I forgive her. I hope you understand why I do. I hope you understand why I stayed. And if you’re going to blame anyone, blame me.

It was all my choice.

V III. STR ENGTH Compassion: Whitney Keeper.

There’s a high school in Dark Pine. It’s shitty and full of people that I made no effort to know, but it’s there. In the very back, past the parking lot and the dumpsters, is an old baseball field. I think Dark Pine had the idea of creating a baseball team, but it didn’t work out for one reason or another. Still, they paid for the sand and the fence. They just don’t mow the lawn.

This old baseball field, full of weeds and vines, is where I met Whitney Keeper.

She’d dragged out an automatic ball thrower, and was using a metal bat to practice her hits.

Each dirty baseball she hit would fly into the overgrown grass, but she didn’t seem to mind.

Whitney is tall and muscular, with a pixie cut dyed red at the tips. Her eyes looked brown that afternoon, but they felt off in some way. When I say muscular, I mean she could probably knock me out with one punch. I only called out to her because of her jersey, which had “Keeper” on the back in large white letters. “You live on Dark Pine?” I asked. Her focus never wavered, and she kept hitting home runs no matter what I said.

“Obviously,” she’d called back. “You too?”

“Yeah. Just moved in.”

“Well,” she’d said, hitting her last ball into the weeds. “It’s a pleasure to meet ya.”

Her room in the manor is a mix between a gym and an armory. When me and Beatrice walked in, she was sitting at a table polishing a hunting knife, and she looked at me with fear.

Around her neck, unlike when we first met, was a pendent of Ares. “You brought him in here?”

“No, he walked in himself,” Bea told her.

Whitney had raised her eyebrows and whistled.

“Got some balls on you, now dontcha? You can pass on through,” she said. She used the knife to point to the door. Above it, in a gilded frame, was a painting depicting Michael slaying Lucifer. Bea’s face soured at the sight of it.

“I’ve always hated that. Last I saw, it was in Lilliana’s room,” she commented. I looked at the painting.

“Guess I never thought of angels as violent,” I told her. Bea sighed. Whitney just laughed.

“I’d hate to be an angel. Just imagine: always having to listen to a higher power, living your life with one wing dripping in blood,” she said. Her eyes never left Beatrice as she said this.

Bea was glaring at her.

“You hungry, by any chance?”

“You know I’m not one to go hungry, sister.” Bea grabbed my hand and dragged me from the room. She looked mad, while we walked between the two connecting halls. I realized, in the back of my mind then, that Whitney’s eyes hadn’t been brown back there.

They had been red.

IX. THE HERMIT Isolation: The Man in the Woods.

Around October, I started to hear an urban legend. I’m sure you know the idea behind small towns, there’s always got to be something fucked

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up from the past. I only heard it in passing, since I didn’t have any friends, but it was enough to pique my interests. When I saw Beatrice later that day, I told her about it. It was an odd story.

According to local legend a man had went into the woods long ago. The very woods that Dark Pine is named after, supposedly cursed.

Deep in the foliage there were all sorts of signs that something hidden lived there: animals bones arranged in the shape of doorways, dream catchers hanging from the trees, cursed words carved into the rock. This man, according to the stories, went into the woods and met a monster there. It devoured him whole, so the town let the trees where he had died keep their roots in what they considered blood drenched earth.

Hence, why the forest started right behind the Keeper manor. No one had been brave enough to cut them down. When I told Beatrice that, she laughed and lit up a cigarette. “What’s so funny?”

“That’s just not the story I was taught,” Bea said.

According to Beatrice Keeper, what had lived in the woods was not a monster so much as an old god. The man had gone into the woods, but this old god hadn’t eaten him. This old god had children that it wanted to bring into the world, into the woods, and it wanted the man to help. I asked what the god was called, and Bea went quiet for a moment. “The All Mother.

Though, it’s said she didn’t look very motherly,” she said. The All Mother took a corporeal form and brought forth different beings, children, that fed off the different forces of humanity.

All the heavy hitters. Reality, Love, War, Lies.

All just feeding and growing off of the worship humanity gave them from action alone.

“So, the man wasn’t eaten in your version?”

I asked her.

“Oh, no,” Bea said, and took a drag off her cigarette. “What happened to him in my version is much worse.”

X . W HEEL OF FORTU NE Destiny: Keeper Manor.

When I first saw Keeper manor, I thought it was abandoned. It is a two-story Victorian style mansion, with a large porch in the front and back, and windows all over its face. The roof is falling apart, with some of the tiles laying shattered in the dirt. The wood looks gray and rotten, and the windows are covered in cracks and cobwebs. The front door opens sideways just slightly, and the backdoor was replaced the moment they invented screen doors. The yard is a simple ten-foot span of dirt between the back porch and the start of the forest. The only things in this yard are a white pickup truck driven by Beatrice Keeper and a motorcycle driven by Tiffany Keeper.

The house has twelve set rooms, a number of collective hallways, a room that appears as She demands so, and a basement. These twelve set rooms (in the correct order) are as follows: the grand library, the abandoned room, a combination graveyard and greenhouse, Lila’s room, Lilliana’s room, Sabrina’s room, the combination gym and armory, Willa’s room, an 18th century courtroom, a music room, an art studio, and a computer room.

I have walked through all twelve of these rooms (in the correct order) as well as the basement.

The Keeper manor has stood for a hundred years, and it will stand for a hundred more.

Things walk its halls, and the rooms move at the house’s will. If you do not have a guide, you will get lost, and you will die somewhere in those ever-changing rooms.

Do not enter the Keeper manor unless you know for certain that you can get out.

X I. JUSTICE Law: Olive Keeper.

I saw Olive around town, but I never put together that she was part of Beatrice’s

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family. Honestly, she just looked too plain.

The Keepers have a certain air about them, but Olive didn’t carry it when she walked around the town proper. She wore baggy clothes, her black hair was trimmed short in a bob, and she was pretty in a forgettable kind of way. As far as I know, she’s the only Keeper with naturally brown eyes. I would see her frequenting the old bookstore in town. I nearly always saw her enter, but only ever saw her leave once, carrying three books about the size of her torso and thick as hell. At the time, I was just impressed she could carry them without looking winded.

When Beatrice pulled me into her room, which mimicked an old court room, I was surprised to see her. I had her filed away in my mind as “the girl who carried the books that one time,” and had never considered her to be anything different. In fact, I was so surprised that I let out a strangled “You?” when I saw her.

Beatrice had glared at me, but Olive didn’t seem to mind. She was throwing a necklace between her hands, the pendent moving too fast for me to properly see it.

“So, you made it in,” she addressed me.

“There are rules to this, you know?”

“There are?” I asked. At that point, after falling into a library and running through seven other rooms, I couldn’t really be surprised anymore.

“Yes. I should know, I helped write them.”

There was gleam in her eye, something that was proud.

“Good for you,” I said, because what do you say to that? I looked around the room. Pointed to the necklace she was still tossing back and forth. “Lady Justice?”

“Good,” Olive said, holding it up for me to see. Indeed, there the famous figure was, sword and scales in all. “You’re starting to learn.”

X II. THE H A NGED M A N Resistance: Sabrina Keeper.

I pity young Sabrina Keeper. Maybe a thing like her doesn’t deserve pity, and she technically isn’t young by any means, but I do pity her. Out of them all, she’s the one that acts the most like a homebody. I never saw her in town, or in school, or even walking around her own property. She never went outside. It made sense. Dark Pine is a little town. I doubt anyone knows sign language.

She isn’t deaf. I asked her that when I first met her in the manor, but she just smiled at me sadly. She dresses like a homebody, all large sweaters and leggings and slippers. She seemed nice enough, with simple brown hair in a braid and wide violet eyes. Around her neck hung a pendent of a human figure clasping its hands over its mouth. Her room was well lit, it seemed sunny even though it was raining outside.

Bottles of every kind hang from the ceiling, supported from silver wires. Soda bottles, liquor bottles, wine bottles, milk bottles. All contain strips of rolled up paper. They are all so high that she cannot reach them. When we entered, Beatrice said “Brina, hi,” in the softest tone I’ve ever heard. Sabrina’s eyes lit up when she saw Bea, but she looked scared when she saw me.

“Hello,” I’d whispered, because this seemed like a place that deserved quiet. Sabrina moved her hands in shapes. ASL, I think, though I’m not entirely sure.

“She says hello,” Bea told me. I’d nodded, shook her hand. She grabbed my wrist and started tracing letters into my palm. It was slow going, but she managed to spell out sentences.

Bea told me, much later, that Sabrina was always trying to find new ways to communicate. w-h-y a-r-e y-o-u h-e-r-e ?

“I was looking for my sister. I think she went into the woods. I fell into your library.” o-h. i-m s-o-r-r-y.

“It’s okay. Bea’s helping me get out.”

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g-o-o-d. y-o-u d-o-n-t d-e-s-e-r-v-e t-o b-e h-e-r-e.

“Why?” y-o-u s-e-e-m n-i-c-e. b-e-a l-i-k-e-s y-o-u.

“Thanks.” I wanted to offer some advice to her, an idea. “You know, they could probably get you hearing aids at a hospital,” I said. Sabrina just smiled and shook her head. She opened her mouth and showed me the stump of what used to be a tongue. I had stood there stunned, a certain part of me numb and another part wanting to scream. And there I was, thinking she just knew how to read lips ridiculously well.

Yes, I do pity dear Sabrina Keeper.

X III. DE ATH Transformation: Daisy Keeper.

I met Daisy by accident, but I would have met her eventually anyway. Bea had left me a note in the window, telling me to meet her in her backyard. I’d been looking out into the woods when I’d heard the back door open and turned to find Daisy standing there.

We’d talked for a bit, she’d asked me what I thought was in the woods, and then Beatrice had interrupted. She’d leaned over the railing to toss Bea her car keys, and her necklace had slipped out from under her shirt. The reaper, of course. I didn’t think much of it, at the time, because Daisy dressed as close to goth as you could possibly get.

The next time I saw her was in the manor, in the room she shared with her twin sister.

That was where I had run when panic had overtaken me, I had just bolted for the first door I could see. I ran from the library because of that small spike of fear, and the house lead me to a greenhouse cemetery. It was a large space, with circular little plots. Statues of creatures rather spindly in stature and with somewhat grotesque faces and feathered wings coming

out their back, with tombstones at their feet.

All with the last name Keeper on them. Daisy was sitting in front of the plot that contained a statue of something resembling a corpse. The marble was modeled after a figure, male or female I couldn’t say, that was a mix of flesh and pure bone. It looked as if the being had been shot and stabbed and strangled. She was sipping tea, looking at me with hooded eyes. “My sister isn’t here,” she said to me. I was still scared then, still afraid that Bea’s sisters might hurt me.

“Don’t come near me or...or I’ll-” “Kill me? Yes, alright, but I have one request. Bury me shallow, it’s easier to come back that way.” I had just stared at her. Daisy just kept sipping her tea. “Be happy it’s me here.”

“Why?” “Because my sister is quite difficult. What’s the saying ‘life’s a bitch,” she laughed. She traced the rim of her cup. “Yes, my sister is difficult, but...I hurt.” I swear her hand turned to bone in that moment.

When you meet her, you’ll have to check for me.

X I V. T E M P E R A N C E Balance: Lily Keeper.

If Daisy was a goth, Lily was a prep. Every piece of clothing she has is either green or pink, the only physical difference between her and her twin being the eyes. Lily’s are a light green, while Daisy’s are almost black. Lily first met me when I passed her and greeted her by Daisy’s name. I hadn’t really taken her all in, but she didn’t mind. Lily was ecstatic, in fact, she thought me and Daisy were dating. She jumped to conclusions a lot, if you can’t tell. She talked fast and never let me get a word in edgewise.

The misunderstanding only got cleared up when Bea pulled onto the shoulder of the road and told her sister to leave me alone. Lily had let

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out a frustrated sigh and made a remark about how Daisy needed to take after Bea and get a sidekick. I’d climbed into the passenger seat and looked over at her. “I am not your sidekick,” I told her, while tugging on my seat belt.

“Sure, you aren’t,” Bea teased. Then she pulled back onto the road, and Lily was just a colorful dot walking alongside the gutter. I didn’t see Lily when I went to her house. Daisy, sure, but you already read that. I see Lily from time to time, but she avoids talking to me.

Beatrice told me not to get offended, it’s just that people in my...situation make her a bit nauseous.

I am something in between, not belonging to her or her sister. Belonging to someone else entirely.

Make of that what you will.

X V. T H E D E V I L Detachment: Regina Keeper.

Regina Keeper was the only one to run away from the manor. I asked about Beatrice’s family once, about all thirteen of her siblings.

She responded with “Thirteen? There’s only twelve of us, Re hasn’t been back in-” and then she cut herself off. Beatrice doesn’t like talking about Regina, and she was mad enough at me that day to give me the cold shoulder for a whole week. I saw Regina in town, but I didn’t know it. A person in a black hoodie had been hanging around the town proper, and eventually made their way to Dark Pine Street. Me and Beatrice went into the woods one day, and the figure was there. I chased after it, fell into the creek, and Bea drove me home cursing about a “her,” the entire time. I got the flu after.

Her room in the house is neat and clean and obviously hasn’t been used in a very long time.

It was perfect in an unnatural way, and was too bare to really belong to someone, like it was out of a catalog. The only thing that marked this room as Regina’s was the necklace on the dresser. “She

left it when she ran away,” Beatrice told me. The pendent was of a demon, and I think that says all it needs to about her relationship with Beatrice.

I only ever faced her in the woods. Bea had finally led me out of the house, the rain was pouring down, the sky was dark, and I heard my sister scream. I ran out into the woods, Bea yelling after me, when someone tackled me. The figure had a gun, I got hit over the head with it.

I was barely up when I heard a pop, saw a flash, and watched Bea’s blood splatter along the trees.

I never saw Regina’s face, but Bea told me later that she had been smiling.

X V I. T H E TOW ER Chaos: The Thing in the Woods.

“So, what did happen to him, in your version?” I asked. Beatrice blew smoke into the air, took another drag.

“The man got tired,” she started. The man got tired of having to deal with these fledgling gods. All of them, though Beatrice wouldn’t give me a set number, were very powerful. The man acted as their father, and tried to convince them to help with a “surprise.” The oldest, they wouldn’t, because they suspected wrongdoing. The next in line though, they were convinced that Father was right, and agreed to help. They all got split down the middle, some siding with the oldest, some with the second. In the end, the surprise went as planned, and Father bound Mother to the forest, so that she could never leave. Bound the children as well. Naturally, Mother wasn’t going to stand for this, so she turned the man into something.

Something fast and horrid looking. Something with horns and teeth and claws that could only eat the flesh of man. A creature of the forest that could only live in the forest, only live in the Dark Pine, just like Mother and the others had to. As punishment, the eldest fought the next in line in what was supposed to be a duel to the death. The

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betrayer ran away, into the forest, and vowed to help Father feed.

“So good beats evil, huh?” I’d commented.

“Guess it takes after lots of other stories.”

“Maybe,” Bea said. She hadn’t looked over at me since she’d continued. “Or maybe all the other stories took after this.”

X V II. THE STA R Hope: Stacy Keeper.

Stacy knew how to make noise. She made noise and she didn’t care who heard or took the time to listen. I never talked to her before that night, but I had heard her. Every Wednesday morning, just when the fog was starting to fade, she would walk along the street and sing.

Different songs, but the tune was always haunting somehow. None of the neighbors seemed to mind, or at least, none of them told her to stop.

When I did finally talk to her, she was pleasant as could be. Her entire room is a music studio, and full of instruments hanging from the walls. Flutes, guitars, trumpets, saxophones, there was even a piano and a harp against the wall. She was playing a violin when we came in, and she paused to greet us. Stacy’s smile was bright and her blue eyes were shining with intrigue and joy. Around her neck was a pendent of the muse Euterpe, which I only know because I asked her. When Bea tugged me towards the door, she waved goodbye and said she was going to write a ballad about this and then went right back to the violin.

I’ve heard it since then, and it’s really quite better than you think it would be.

X V III. THE MOON Subconscious: Andrea Keeper.

Andrea was another one of the Keeper sisters that I never saw around town. It wasn’t that

she was a shut in, she just threw herself into her work. She was a painter, Bea told me, and that was even more apparent when I went into her room…no, that’s too simple a word. Andrea’s room was an art studio that was bordering on becoming an art gallery. It was covered in canvases, some in frames and some not, which were covered in a number of images. The manor, the town at night, a family portrait. In the middle of the room, with a new piece in front of her and a brush in hand, was Andrea. She has the darkest skin out of all the sisters, and she’s not exactly slight but not exactly plump either.

Her hair is a curly mess, and her skin is covered in brightly colored tattoos of birds. A golden eagle, a pink dove, a gray owl. Her pendent is a tarnished rendition of Apollo. The canvas in front of her was covered with a sheet, and I was left next to her when Beatrice left to clear the next door of some canvases leaning against it.

I’d been looking up at a rather realistic portrait of Beatrice in Victorian attire when Andrea said “Would you like to see it? It’s a selfportrait.” I’d looked at her then, one of her hands gripping the sheet that covered the canvas. Her eyes were captivating, simply because it seemed as if her irises were little mini color wheels.

“Of course,” I said, and she pulled the sheet back. On the canvas, from the waist up, was a figure. Its skin was a chalky white, and its fingernails were black. Its ribs seemed to be sticking out of its skin, but upon a closer look it appeared as if the thing’s skin was supposed to be canvas and the bones were pencils. Ingrained in its skin, at the hollow of the throat, almost like it had been stabbed there, was the pendent of Apollo. It had no nose, but it did have a mouth. The lips were pitch black, and the blank sheet of the face was covered in hundreds and hundreds of eyes; all of which had no pupil or iris and was each a unique shade of a different color. The hair seemed to be a sheet, hanging

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low past the waist, and mimicked the color of a rainbow. From the back of the creature expanded feathered wings like those of a parrot. “This is supposed to be you, Andrea?” I asked. The smile she gave me mimicked the one the creature was wearing in the portrait.

“Of course,” she said. “I suppose this face is a bit different.” She poked her own nose, as if to point it out.

“Just a bit,” I choked out, my voice cracking.

“It’s okay,” she said. She pulled the cloth back over the painting. “We all wear masks here.”

X IX. THE SUN Positivity: Tiffany Keeper.

Tiffany Keeper was a legend at the local high school, though none of the kids seemed to settle on what her actual name was. Some said Tina, some said Tatiana, some said it was simply T. No one knew what her last name was, but I did. She was mostly a legend because she was the only one in town with a motorcycle. She certainly dressed like a biker, and even more outrageous was the fact that her head was half shaved. The half that still had hair, that half was dyed bubblegum pink. Her eyes were dark green, and she had so many piercings I was surprised she didn’t attract fridge magnets.

Her room was covered wall to wall in computer screens: HD, widescreen, along with a number of keyboards scattered all around. She greeted Beatrice with a big smile and offered her a handheld console. Bea waved it away and introduced me, and Tiffany greeted me with a few questions. Once I had explained why I was there, she answered with a number of “damns” and “bummers.” She’s the youngest of them all, if that wasn’t clear. She waved goodbye, and I noticed then that she had used a black cord to turn her pendant into a complicated bracelet.

It lay on her forearm like a gauntlet, that little

metal Hephaestus. “Nice to meet you, Tiffany,” I’d said to her.

“Please,” she’d said, and winked at me. “Call me Tech.”

X X. JUDGEMENT Absolution: Ms. Crothers.

Dark Pine is an old town. First it was home to a tribe of Native Americans, then a mix of natives and white settlers, then just white settlers. The Keeper family has been around for longer than that, always switching out masks so that they blended in. Beatrice has been here the longest, and in that time, she’s made a number of friends. I can safely say that out of all of the Keepers, Bea’s the most human. Or, at least, she has the most curiosity about humans. That’s why, after she actually ventured out into meager town of Dark Pine, she’s kept wearing the mask her first friend knew as “her.” Kept the same name too.

Margaret Crothers is another one of those friends, the one right before me. She lived right next door, and she explained the Keeper family to us. “Thirteen girls, most of them adopted,” she’d told me and my sister. She knew what the Keepers were of course, that “adopted” was just an excuse, all of Beatrice’s friends figured it out eventually. Ms. Crothers was the old woman next door who showed me a photo of her and her best friend in the golden year of 1945. She was a teenager, her hair was dark brown instead of gray, and Beatrice was standing right beside her.

Same blonde hair, same tan skin, same gold eyes.

Same necklace. Ms. Crothers made a comment about the knee-high trench coat Beatrice had, which she was wearing in the photograph. Olive green, that had the strangest addition of gold wings sewn into the back.

Margaret Crothers died at the age of ninetyseven due to heart failure, and she had never

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left the town of Dark Pine. Why would she?

Her best friend was here, and Beatrice paid her a visit every Saturday. When she died, Beatrice picked me up and drove out into the woods and punched an old pine until the skin on her knuckles split and she wore gloves of blood. She brought me with her so I would stop her. Silent tears dripped down her cheeks the whole way back. I brought her to my house to help with her hands, even though I knew she didn’t need it.

Say what you will about Beatrice’s soul, but she has a human heart.

X X I. THE WOR LD Closure: Mother.

I never met their Mother. I saw a glimpse of their Father, but I was knocked out before I could really see him. I saw the basement though, me and Beatrice had to go through to get completely out of the house. I remember her opening the cellar door, and the rain hitting the concrete floor. Finally illuminated by the moonlight, I could make out symbols etched onto the floor.

They seemed burned into the foundation of the place. After all, if your mother was bound to one area, wouldn’t you want her to be comfortable?

You might even build her a mansion.

It’s not that Mother didn’t want to see me, it was that Beatrice didn’t want me to meet Mother. “She can’t be as bad as you,” I’d told her. Bea had started at me and simply explained that while she and her siblings had all the masks in the world, Mother had none. She was faceless.

There was nothing there. I asked Bea if maybe she could take off her mask for me, and she said maybe one day.

“You have a...choice here. Humans aren’t really supposed to come in,” Bea had told me, when it was all over. We were standing on the back porch in the early morning light, and water was dripping off the pine trees. The air was full

of petrichor. Do you know what that is? It’s the smell of dust after rain. That was in the air, with the faint metallic scent of blood right under it. “And you certainly aren’t supposed to leave.

Your sister is here, one of you could leave. It’s a loophole I made Olive write in.” I remembered then, all the Keeper sisters who had looked at me with sadness and pity. Last night, Daisy had found my sister, and I was worried when I heard, but Bea told me there was a way to fix it. The manor was all about balance, she’d explained, since balance was what ruled everything.

“What do I do?”

“You could just walk back to your house and let Father feed, like Regina intended. You could... you could stay,” Bea said. “I told you, I need help sorting the library. The twins are with your sister.

She’s...she’s missing a bit, but it’s still livable” “Are you sure she’d live?”

“Can your family afford a prosthetic leg?”

She asked. I tensed.

“As long as it’s the left one. Is it the left one?” She couldn’t live with two broken legs. I couldn’t force that life upon her. I just couldn’t.

I could not make her out to be the weak lamb Regina had made her out to be when she lured my sister into the woods.

“According to Lily, yes.”

“Then...okay. Okay Beatrice. I’ll stay.”

Beatrice had looked at me with a mixture of happiness and sorrow. I knew she was glad that she would not have to watch another friend die, but she could see the tears pricking my eyes. She cupped my face in her hands and kissed my cheek, right below my right eye. It stung, and then a warm sensation crept over me. Like comfort and love and heat. Later, when I looked in a mirror, I would see that my right eye had turned the same gold as Bea’s eyes. It was a marker for beings like her. To some of them, a warning.

That settled that. Sophia made it out of the woods, but not without new scars. Father is not

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a gentle being, and well...she has a prosthetic now instead of crutches. I take great pleasure in the fact that Father did not get to devour her whole. One sibling for another, both of us different now that we’ve come out of the woods.

In Dark Pine’s eyes, I am missing and presumed dead. I watch the street though the windows sometimes, when the house lets windows into the library. It’s still the same it’s ever been: foggy and quiet with absolutely no stars in the sky.

The siblings change faces from time to time.

Sometimes women, sometimes men, sometimes

people in between. Name changes are rare, but they do happen. Only Beatrice is a constant element, in face and name. I help her restock the library, and when my face finally fades from the town’s memory, we can start getting breakfast at the local diner again. Now, I’ll settle for meals on the library floor out of take out boxes. The company’s still good, even if the dining situation isn’t. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, take a detour to Dark Pine Street.

Beatrice and I will give you a warm welcome. •

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M I D D AY

MOONS •

SUZANNE

S WA N S O N

(’19)

T H E U N S E E N FA C E S O F K I N G L E A R N AT H A N

FA US T

(’19)

I knew this would not last, Cordelia, that death comes calling for kings, as well.

You will marry and I will die and you will find my eyes in your son’s.

Tell me you love me, my darling. hello Lear how are we today Years ago, I saw a man on the battlefield empty eyes swallowing the moon, gaping cavity in his chest, foxes and ravens tearing flesh from his inner walls.

I understand the pain now, daughter mine, abandoned on the battlefield, you and your own realizing that the god promised to you is no longer on the way. young ambitious king of this age the world is vast and it is yours

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The storm tears my skin, Cordelia, takes out my eyes, and I wish these aged hands could reach into the sky and corral the lightning.

Rain lashes my body and my withered arms cling to the wind.

If I could hold your heart in the palm of my eroding hand, i would tear down the walls of this gilded home conquer the hall with burning flame and steel blades sit on their throne and ride into battle at your side, my love, old hands clutching the reins sword in hands burning towns alongside foreign knights, your knights, fleur-de-lis on their breast goose-fletched arrows piercing iron into battle against my own.

Pride for you, my love, head held high to face the day.

Lances down, charge, and you’re

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wading through the world Lear boots filled with blood expanding lands the lips of feudal lords upon your signet ring adding more earth to your map high atop your charger you stare across the plain at the sons of childless mothers boys who barely know how to hold a sword inch by inch you fight and they scream yet their screams pale in comparison to those of goneril regan and Cordelia daughters pulled squalling into the world by your hands Lear those hands by which the world turned and fathers died and you sit on the throne your own hands built clawed out of stone and holding on to your golden crown but enter Lear with Cordelia in his arms

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place your still frame on the ground, as if you sleep and the slightest touch of a blackbird’s wing will bring you back to me.

Your body lies before me, Cordelia, close your eyes with trembling hands.

My worst fear comes softly through the door.

Break, heart, I prithee break.

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LARKSPUR

HUE

•

AMANDA

KOENIGSBERG

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

BORN CLAIRE

STEAKLEY

I told her I left my taillight broke.

Drove from Texas to LA with it out.

She was scared when hers was out.

It’s only a fix-it ticket I said but I didn’t understand.

I would say things once in a while and she would make this face.

I didn’t understand why dudes would harass her like they owned her or why she wasn’t “black enough” for BSU. I got mad every time making things worse.

Sometimes it was all I could do.

I couldn’t make it stop.

She would grab my arm to calm me down when she should be the one upset.

I didn’t understand how there are a million little things every day that I don’t have to think about cause I was born white. cause I was born rich. cause I was born lucky.

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(’20)

S P R I N G B LU E L I N D SAY

MCCONNELL

(’21)

Our hands are the same size.

The moment you discovered this you drew your palm from mine.

You said that you hated your small hands almost as much as your crooked teeth, that your fingers were too stout.

I’d always seen them as slender.

You hated putting your hand to another, it always made you feel small.

Small in the way you feel when you’re the first to arrive at the restaurant waiting in a cracked booth all alone.

Now your hands sit folded, searching⇒ You told me that as a boy you hated to sleep, afraid to miss a beat, scared to see yourself as anything but strong.

You became the boy that never slept, but when you did it was with one eye open.

I want to show you what it feels like to look in your cautious eyes, the ones that watch drip coffee and my mismatched socks.

Your eyes give you away— that spring blue you couldn’t change if you tried.

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P ETA L

FLARE

•

AMANDA

KOENIGSBERG

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

M A R K R O T H KO ’S U N T I T L E D ( B LU E D I V I D E D BY B LU E ) AMANDA

KOENIGSBERG

wind on your neck while falling

acorns spinning

STUDENT )

hearing the word no

the sounds of hands on tarps

the cavern of glass between waves

( G R A D UAT E

grinding peppercorns

empty jars on window sills

out of tune pianos

taste of wooden spoons

cologne

walking sideways in wet sand

______________________________________________________________________________

ice shards budding in basins

texture on alabaster stone

bicycles in rivers

aprons leaning on old trucks

the way cows look at you at 5 am

kyanite and moonstone

leaving the house at dusk

remnants of muddled paint

walking on scored rooftops

wearing white next to a lake

I’m too sad to tell you

bread dough on countertops

empty galleries

sheets in water

broken kettle whistles

alone with salt air

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A DECLIVITY ANDRÉ

ENRIQUEZ

( G R A D UAT E

STUDENT )

tow the sick dogs to the thickets that thrive when thirsty for trodden places of beaten peat and bled roots, where pooled in the fresh and ugly handprints of four-legged fires scurrying blind across sapling campuses, they may rest their bulks in the salt mire to sink into rivers who fled underground to petrify, s l o w l y, into marrow.

——— I’m so sorry, young boy, this is a disturbed area on holiday. your trees are vessels of summer air hallow-harboring the shades of clipped wings. press your ear to their bark and hear them flutter themselves into dust rhine.

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DESERT MEMORIES L I N D SAY

MCCONNELL

(’21)

Life, meant wandering around barefoot, feeling warm gravel pinch my pink toes.

Dusted in dirt & purple mountain silhouettes.

My fingers tease the spikes on a saguaro against the backdrop of growing up.

Pebbles collect in my tangled hair, dancing under the bright rain of bougainvillea petals.

I find my dad and run into the sour smell of beer and old sawdust.

I hug my grandpa & his oil-stained aura.

A man once lived in the alley behind my house.

He made a home with Palo Verde branches & prickly ground.

I never saw him, I had a friend who did.

Come summer all that was left were dusted twigs beneath the shadow of our cactus.

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‘A

CLASSIC

ROBBERY’ •

JOSEPH

RODRIGUEZ

(’21)

T O D A KO TA E VA

BAUDLER

i.

Sugar water streaks down muddy fingers, red stick held up in warrior triumph under a sea glass sky.

We are maybe children, cherub cheeks and hole-punched teeth— and Little Prince, you are disgusting for savoring every last filthy cherry drop.

The world has never wanted for more sunshine, our scene unfolding like the smell of rain on dry autumn leaves, the warm earth a sleepwalking turtle feeding on pond dust and snow cone dreams.

For this is how my memories of you begin, somewhere between a popsicle and a gaping heart pinned open by pine needles and absence.

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(’20)

ii.

The night launches like a star-streaked raven as a spotlight cues the Christmas party, hot dogs shoved down festive sweaters, pseudo-Santa waving from his candy cane throne.

You abandon yours, can’t win against the rose birthed in your brain, stabbing your every thought.

So we remove ourselves from the people, white powder breaking underfoot, marmalade overhead a heatless halo.

As you run me in circles snowballs glancing off my vest, the patchwork of your scarf twists in the wind, fastened like a noose that, at any moment, could clip your wings and swing you into the jaws of a snake.

I lie to us, keep the memory of your face drawn in shadow, stock-still in the palm of the universe, unreadable but surely happy.

You must be; if I believe otherwise, it will hurt more to recall that you aren’t a French storybook prince from some purple clay planet, but another human boy who couldn’t outrun his alcoholic parents.

I would rather look back

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giving meaning to that which will never speak again.

Is this what you wanted?

For me to write maggot-words into your mouth?

My midnight muse. iii.

Our final happy hour was a domesticated fox, a wild thing confused by its injured condition, slipping down the snow and finally dissolving into holiday sewage, back to the ocean’s great garbage womb.

You are burned into the backs of my eyelids with a branding iron, every sleepless night spent listening to ghosts whisper that we were supposed to be children consuming winter, not six feet under it.

When the call came, I knew that God had begun with you, and now God had died with you, and there was nothing but rock and debris with which to rebuild myself.

I curled into my chest like my flesh had been caught in the core of a kaleidoscope, rotting off into the shape of an hourglass that had buried you alive in its hot sands.

But I linger in the pain because I love you.

Even when you came home with a broken nose and

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no excuse, I love you.

When you woke up in pieces, inconsolable for hours, I love you.

When you held my hand and looked around me, as if searching for someone else, I love you.

Little Prince, you don’t belong in words, in sugar water, snow or sorrow.

You belong to tomorrow.

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