2018 USU CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST EDITION
acknowledgements
CHARLES WAUGH | CONTEST DIRECTIOR
This special edition of Sink Hollow presents the winning entries of the Utah State University Creative Writing Contest, which is open to all USU undergraduate and graduate students from all departments and disciplines. We want to thank all our contestants this year for all their hard work, for making the judges’ jobs so difficult(!), and for helping to create such a vibrant and inclusive writing community here at USU and in Cache Valley. Many thanks for the generosity and discriminating taste of our contest judges: Brock Dethier, Matt DiOrio, Mary Ellen Greenwood, Ben Gunsberg, Shay Larsen, Jennifer Sinor, and Michael Sowder. Thanks also to Sara Johns, Lori Hyde, and Annie Nielsen from the English Department administrative staff, whose assistance in running the contest has been invaluable. And an extra special thanks goes to the Sink Hollow staff who helped to run the contest and who have produced this beautiful issue of the magazine: Jess Nani, Dax Lehman, McKaleigh Rogers, Tyler Hurst, Marie Skinner, Abby Stewart, Kaylee Dudley, Madelyn Bingham, Katrina Funk, Adrian Thomson, Lexy Roberts, Carrigan Price, Annie Foster, Russ Beck, Shanan Ballam, and Robb Kunz. —Charles Waugh, Contest Director
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Contents UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION Value . . ........................................................................................ 6 Liquid.. ....................................................................................... 15 Who........................................................................................... 16 Tension...................................................................................... 27 Just a Sword . . ............................................................................. 28 Flower Child . . ............................................................................. 41
UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY Kingdoms................................................................................... 44 Syntax. . ...................................................................................... 46 Sophisticated Cat...................................................................... 47 Still Life..................................................................................... 48 Cold War Shelter . . ...................................................................... 49 Commonsensual........................................................................ 50 Pole . . .......................................................................................... 53 Heavymetalboy. . ........................................................................ 54 Feather Earrings........................................................................ 56
UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION Elizabeth. . .................................................................................. 62 Firework Pine............................................................................ 75 Marble in the Rain..................................................................... 76 Funeral Flowers......................................................................... 88
GRADUATE + FICTION Dug............................................................................................ 98 Fandoms.................................................................................... 107 The Cavern of the Silver Moon.................................................. 108 Onyx Arms................................................................................. 119
GRADUATE + POETRY A Sister’s Burden....................................................................... 122 Hazel. . ........................................................................................ 124 Shadow...................................................................................... 125 Artemis...................................................................................... 126 See Jane Run.............................................................................. 128 The Lilies................................................................................... 130 Ziggy.......................................................................................... 131 Parable of Pig Tails.................................................................... 132 Blown Glass Sunset................................................................... 133 Synthetic.. .................................................................................. 134 Lukewarm.................................................................................. 136
GRADUATE + NONFICTION On Physics:................................................................................ 140 Redwood Fog............................................................................. 145 The True Horror of St. Ann’s Retreat. . ....................................... 146 Armani....................................................................................... 154 Scrap Metal.. .............................................................................. 157
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UNDERADUATE ICTION
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Value
NATE HARDY | FIRST PLACE | NONFICTION
I stood with the gun broken over my forearm. Two dense shells dropped into its stainless steel gullet and I felt heat rise along with ghostly smoke and the aroma of scorched gunpowder. The barrels gave a hollow thunk when I folded the gun back together and laid my cheek on the cool wooden stock. “Pull!” I said, standing in a used pile of rose-colored plastic and brass shells. Mason sent a clay pigeon whirring through the air like a discus. I hugged the trigger. The gun fought against my shoulder, it’s blast immediately snuffing out my voice, and the clay disappeared into a cloud of dust all in an instant. “Mothafucka,” Mason jeered, cramming bullets into the other gun and snapping it shut. “Watch this.” He slouched in untied shoes and grungy sweatpants clutching my father’s Remington. Pop had hesitantly let him use it because it was the only other skeet shooting gun we had. It had stacked obsidian colored double barrels and a mural of birds engraved into its mahogany stock. The bouquet of pheasants was depicted in flight, detailed down to the pupil and individual feather. They looked as pristine as insects caught in dark amber. As I reached to pick another neon orange clay from the ground, I heard Mason’s thumb slip the safety off, sending a fleeting sense of unease through my stomach.
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When I learned to shoot, Pop’s eyes never left the safety. “Boy, your uncle Scott nearly took my head off,” I heard him say. You’d miss them if you didn’t know the man, but below his right eye were two perfect little scars where lead birdshot pellets had burrowed hot into the flesh. The thought of the sting and jerk of tears made me shake. The pellets moving so fast and silent as to be invisible suddenly finding a resting place deep in the flesh. Still, I envied the marks they left. Those two pinprick scars made him a man. “That fool couldn’t tell a shotgun from a broomstick” I distantly remembered Pop saying before turning and waiting for Mason to give the word. .. It was July when an emerald green hummingbird trapped itself in our garage in Kansas City. My little sister, Claire, and I had been running the hose in the heat. We chased one another around playing dead when we got crossed by its stream. Water fell glistening from the low hanging branches of two wild oaks towering above us in the noon-high sun. The right tree was growing too old and had black snaggletooth branches. Knots from its shallow root system rose above the soil like the backs of serpents and ached to step on. The left was young with a light grey rind and thick plume. A mama bluejay used to roost near the trunk PAGE 9
where the branches were smoothed from having been climbed so often. I’d been scolded by her once for climbing to peek at three skyblue eggs tucked into her nest. The cracked earth smelled musky and ancient in the cool water as we played under the nursery drone of hundreds of hidden cicadas. Claire looked like a pudgy dandelion and couldn’t keep a straight face whenever she tried to play dead. Springing off the ground, she came to snatch the hose from me with a smile-bitten bottom lip and missing baby teeth. I taunted her with it until she pouted at me and threatened to tell mom. I let her take it. Thrilled, she hoisted it with both hands and slung the beam of water at me. Seconds before she soaked me, I kinked the knot and held the bent hose out to her. “Nate!” she yelled silly and broken heartedly. I smiled, looked at her aiming the hose at my face, and unkinked the knot. .. “Pull!” Mason said. I sent the clay flying. The Remington opened the air up and swallowed both of us in the smack of its blast. My eyes instinctively closed as if commanded by the gun to do so. In an instant after the sound had vanished into a distant ringing, I looked up to see that Mason had jerked the trigger too quick and UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
missed the bird. We watched it fall in a waning arch to join the rest of the surviving clays that had vanished into the tall grass. After the sound of the gun faded into the surrounding buttes and enough silence had settled into the fact that he had missed the shot, I asked, “Watch what, mothafucka?” He returned my tease with a lazy eyed “piss off” face. Mason couldn’t lie to me about losing focus; I knew him like a brother. I’ve been watching his lazy eye wander since junior high and, over time, noticed a pattern to its deviance. When his attention split and found a more enticing object, that eye would follow and take me with it. Too many times I found I was curiously along for the ride. More than once it had gotten me in trouble. I wondered if it affected his aim while we shot. “Toss another,” he said in a serious tone. .. My shirt hung thick with water over thin collarbones. I took the squelching thing off with some difficulty and flattened it to the driveway to dry. Claire and I laid on the warm cement and felt heat radiate in soft mirages through our backs. Pop had gotten home from work a while earlier and I could still hear the click and tinkering of his truck’s engine winding down. Even with my eyes UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
closed, I felt the sunlight sting my vision deep into the back of the head. Claire had grown impatient with the brightness and was crouched in the garden, lifting bricks for pillbugs. I felt her stand and drift past me before disappearing into the shade of the garage’s open maw. The heat was soft but heavy on my bare chest. I felt pinned to the cement. I imagined that the driveway was a ceiling and the heat was holding me upside down to it. I was pulled down from the gentle high by the sound of Claire’s voice alight with excitement. She stood in the middle of the open garage door, bouncing up and down in her wet tangerine and honey colored sundress. Trying to translate her ecstasy through a child’s vocabulary she shouted, “A bird, a little bird!” I rose, attempting to look indifferent, and followed her into the cavelike shade. My head swam as my eyes adjusted to the lower light. It was cool. The air in the garage smelled like stale grass and engine breath, humid with the water we had brought in. Claire seemed oblivious to her little body shivering in the presence of the hummingbird. We watched it rage against the ceiling, pulling itself through dingy cobwebs in the corner above an old door that was blocked by burlap cement sacks and broken bicycles. Every few seconds the bird would drop from the rafters and hurl itself full speed at the door’s tea brown windowpanes. The sound was PAGE 10
that of a small, dampened gong. Each time its skull thumped against the glass, the drone of its wings would cut out for a second as if anticipating the bird’s fall. Each time it would wind up and start against the ceiling again. Claire, overtaken with the desire to help something small in the way that only small children get, took off to find Pop. Her bare feet slapped the smooth concrete and disappeared, leaving me alone with the manic little bird in the cool shadow. It sounded like a tightly wound metronome that had lost track of the music trying to correct itself. .. I pulled my glove off and reached for another clay. So there was no risk of it firing, I broke the gun open and laid it gently on its open case. Around Mason I became acutely aware of how obedient to Pop’s rules I was acting. Pop always set the gun gently into its case like an infant into a crib. To him, there was truth in the gun. Keep it bowed to the ground until you’re certain; hold your breath and pull the trigger slow. These were his answers to just about everything and years of shooting without protection had given him a rough case of tinnitus in both ears. I wondered about growing up without guns in the house, like Mason had. He said his dad hated PAGE 11
guns. He and his father fought often. Though we yelled at one another, Pop owned all the firearms in our home and no one argued with him about authority. When I was young he hung the gun, a simple twelve gauge that he’d toted through his college years, above my bedroom door and said I could have it when I was tall enough to reach it. The first time Mason came over, he gawked beneath that gun in the doorway. The way the lamplight whispered off the trigger. The way it hung there with some tempest sleeping inside of it. The fact that he couldn’t reach it. It must have looked like he imagined himself. Untouchable. Powerful. Immortal. I noticed his eye wandering towards the barstools in the basement, curious about bullets. It wouldn’t be hard. He nearly lifted me to the idea until he started asking about when my father would be home from work. .. I heard the slow thump of leather boots from within our house against the hardwood growing near. I straightened up and tried to look like I knew what to do, like I could be indifferent about the hummingbird. I imagined him making a remark about it being just that and telling us to let it go. Claire popped from the kitchen door and pointed up at the droning emerald streak as if it was possible to miss in the otherwise silent room. UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
A few seconds later, Pop’s lumberjack figure filled the doorway. .. A shot erupted a few feet behind my head. My spine instantly jerked attention to every inch of my tensing flesh, waiting to feel the burn of lead. I dropped the clay I held and it instinctively shattered against the ground. A few seconds passed and terror was replaced by rage. I felt my jaw and fists tighten. When I wheeled around to start telling him off, I was met by a clear-eyed and sinisterly giddy expression. A tremor of excitement was bringing Mason’s breath back as a smile opened up on his face: the “I’m guilty but it’s cool” look. He flicked his head upwards. I followed his gaze and met a limp little shadow unable to hold itself in the thin, fall air. It fell below the big blue dusk moon and thumped into the mouth of the field with all the other marooned birds. “I got it!” he said while I tried to stay mad in front of his callow excitement. He looked like he was on his first adventure with a BB gun. I wanted to remind him that he just snuffed a life out but reasoning with Mason always felt superfluous when he was like this. As he took off running through the field with my father’s pretty UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
Remington, I remembered the sad excitement I felt holding the first bird I ever killed. Pop had taken the young bluejay in his leathered hand and, with one stiff finger, pushed its ash-white down aside to examine the hole I’d made. A good shot, he called it. Its head hung limply across the knuckle of his index finger. I saw my reflection in the black eye. As Mason waded into the tall grass, I reached past the broken clay to pick up my gun, and warily followed. .. “Well, what do you reckon we oughta do?” Pop asked, eyeing me for some sign of a plan. “The bird’s stuck in the garage, dad, we gotta get him out” Claire said, innocent and redundantly. “That’s right, Sugar, now how’d ya think we’re gonna do that?” He smiled, turning his gaze on me. I wished I hadn’t taken my shirt off, standing beneath the hummingbird’s steady thump-thumping against the cruel glass. After each hit, the way it drummed the air became more desperate and furious. I felt it exhausting itself. We could wait for it to fall, then pick it up softly and take it out to the garden. It would wake up and disappear back into the rhythm of the cicadas. I had these thoughts knowing that if we waited for the bird to fall, it would not fly again. I looked around the array of miscellany in the garage in search of some escape PAGE 12
from the tiny bird, which had become the biggest thing in the world at that moment. There, by the corner in an old ball-and-boot barrel filled with golf clubs and air-rifles, was a big butterfly net on a broom handle. Bingo. I moved towards the barrel with a sense of eagerness warming my stomach, hoping the bird would not find its way out of the garage.
sure what had taken its place. I remembered Pop tossing my first kill into the garden. Blood ran with dirt, dirt got in its eye, and that’s all it was. A body. I watched Mason and the gun drooping at his side with two empty shells inside of it. The breath that bloomed and clung briefly from his face looked like a small, tired phantom. ..
.. The sun had fallen behind the clouds and it was growing dark. There was still light enough to comfortably see, but there were no shadows in the early night. I watched Mason ahead of me, searching around for his kill. I felt small, like a gnat on a window pane, standing in one field in the middle of the Great Plains. It was remarkably still, except for his sweats ruffling in the shadowless grass. With the evening settled a quiet that made speaking feel like an act of audacity. It was the type of quiet that makes you feel naked. It was cold. Wading through the tall grass, I occasionally found whole or mostly whole clays that had evaded immediate destruction. From high above their still pockets in the beige acre, the sun slowly strips them of their brilliant orange. I looked up to see Mason standing still in a clearing. He looked out of place in the vastness of that field. I could tell his excitement had left but I wasn’t PAGE 13
Fishing the hummingbird down from the stale air was a gangly process. For the most part it stayed up in the rafters above the patch of light coming from the side door. My arms were that of a child’s and not much thicker than the broom handle. The little control I had over the net, which was a few feet longer than I was tall, was compounded by the impossible speed of the little bird. Save the times that it rammed into the window or flew in place wildly against the ceiling, it was an incoherent green flash. As I cast the net, trying to have it fall into the flash’s path without batting it with the iron rim, Claire and Pop traded off giggling and casting judgment. Throwing the net at the tiny bird felt crude each time the rim clattered fruitlessly into the ground. Trying to avoid slipping on the wet concrete, my shoulders ached and I felt that any minute my catch would disappear out of the open garage UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
door. The hunt was becoming as stressful for me as it was the hummingbird but, eventually, my wavering enthusiasm met the bird’s growing exhaustion. Finally I let the net fall, the sporadic hum and thump stopped, and a growing excitement filled the silent shade. .. Walking up from behind, I looked down with Mason at his kill. The brown colored mockingbird stood there, shaking with a primitive tremor. The only thing dead about it was its right wing, which hung lame at its side. Just as still, but sharp with life, were its eyes. They were no bigger than the lead bird-shot that downed it, wet with peril and black as deep obsidian. I wondered how pain clutched such a small animal. What had left two pinpricks on my father’s cheek had taken the sky away from the mockingbird. Towering above it, I noticed it looked at me as if at eye level. I felt half a foot tall. As its head flicked back and forth looking at us, a rivulet of crimson sprung from beneath its cream-colored plume and ran like a hard question down its breast. It knew the answer. Its kind doesn’t last long when confined to the ground. What it wouldn’t understand was the hesitation inside the two animals lumbering before it.
UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
.. Facedown against the dark floor the iron hoop fell, its net folded softly over the jade flicker inside. Even after leaping forward and crouching to get a closer look, I barely had time to examine my catch before Claire was breathing on it. A few seconds later, Pop was crouching between us. We resembled three curious apes hunkered over a candle flame, the tallest of us as if having seen a forest fire before. Claire hardly breathed she was so excited. A bird in a net was new to Claire and I. It wasn’t ordinary to have one so still. So tangible. Until then, hummingbirds had been untouchable even to the eyes. I had seen them appear before the soft open mouths of clematis blossoms, but they would vanish in the same instant that they’d come to focus. Their deep green and pink plume bleeding into the royal purple flowers through the impossible beating of their wings. The butterfly net’s thin nylon bag was weighty enough to pin the bird down in strange angles. Its head was bent backwards, separating the tiny green feathers of its neck and palpitating chest. The black, needle-thin beak was pointed along the ridge of its back and tucked behind one splayed wing. PAGE 14
The fibers of its feathers were translucently fine along the vane, exposing the mathematical structure of its arm. Each rachis gracefully arched away from the wrist like a living da Vinci sketch. It looked silently up at us three apes with one perfectly still eye.
shoulder and held the left barrel an inch from the bird’s head, which could not have been larger than the barrel’s diameter. It looked at me without conviction. In my hesitation I watched the bird tremble and felt the tension behind the trigger aching against the firing pin.
..
..
The humane thing to do with downed birds that do not initially die is wring the neck. Hold the bird by the legs in your weaker hand. Place the back of the bird’s head in the crook between your thumb and index finger. Pull the neck sharply downward, bringing it backward simultaneously by twisting your arm and pushing a knuckled into its back. Its hollow spine will splinter open and the delicate body will cloud numbly. My stomach lurched as I imagined touching the delicate being. I felt guilty. I did not want to see Mason touch it either. I looked at him and the empty Remington dangling condescendingly at his side, remembering the live shell in my gun. God damnit, I sighed, folding the firearm back together so the barrels were flush with the stock. The gun somehow felt heavier. Mason stood there looking confused about how we ended up in a field in front of this broken little thing in the first place. I pressed the stock to my PAGE 15
While Claire sat mesmerized by the little bird, I focused on what Pop was doing in my peripheral attention. He smelled like old musk and mechanic oil with elbows propped on the knees of his stained blue jeans. When he reached forward the bird gave a subtle jolt before stoically accepting its lack of power. His hands were thick with tan skin, tough from decades of work. The top digit of the ring finger is permanently snapped at a sharp angle from a break when he was young. As he scooped from the outside of the net, the bird gracefully unfolded from its crooked position inside of his gentle, weathered palms. I was hungry to hold the little bird. I wanted to feel its weight, its small body heat, how easy it would be to break. He expertly pinched the nylon and inverted the fabric. The bird was hidden from view as it fluttered from one hand to the next. I didn’t reach for it because I knew I wouldn’t touch it unless Pop gave the blessing. He pulled it from UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
the net and let it curl tender and fearful into itself. I could hear its wings brushing softly against his palms. Claire gasped as he let the bird’s head emerge between his thumbs. Its head flicked back and forth in fractions of an inch examining the peculiar situation. Pop leaned over and held the bird before her giant brown eyes. She reached out a finger like a flower stem and patted its head before her face curled into a smile. Pop smiled too. Then he turned to show me the bird, which was looking at me and I could feel Pop looking too. The breakneck pace of the bird’s life had slowed to a trembling halt in Pop’s hands. Moments before, it had tried to lift the house from the garage ceiling and now it was watching us as contently as if from its own key-sized nest. “How ‘bout it?” Pop said, motioning for me to take the tiny bird from his hands. .. The gun pitched against my body. Its blast disappeared somewhere into the tall grass with blunt finality, taking the mockingbird’s head with it. I looked at the remaining body in terror, as if taking its most human features away would make killing it more bearable. Like pulling a tablecloth from under a set of fine china, the head had vanished leaving the shadowless body standing still on its black legs. The body was so motionless UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
that its edges came into sharp focus against the muddy ground. It stood as still as it was quiet in the encroaching night, like a primitive idol. The stump where the head used to exist was cut clean and filling with dark, warm blood. Its life must not have had time to notice its own cessation in the muffled thunder and lingered like a sickly vein of incense smoke rising from the mangled body. I felt the color run from my face as heat rose in my gut. I felt like I would crack, in that moment, under the weight of being left alive. I felt Mason staring differently at the same perverse statue. “Pull,” he remarked before turning to walk back through the field, leaving the body to be gripped by rigor mortis. .. Unlike the hummingbird, the human heartbeat is buried in the chest. Finding it requires stillness. I cupped my hands to make a room. Pop pressed his stiff hands to mine and flattened them, passing the little bird into my grasp. The hummingbird felt like warmth wrapped around only a heartbeat. It was so fragile I could have closed a finger and the life would be crumpled out like tissue paper. I imagined the tremor rattling its bones after crashing against the window. The bird hadn’t meant to trap itself in our garage. I cracked my hands open to let it turn and to see its colors more PAGE 16
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Liquid
LUKE LEMMON | SECOND PLACE | ART
fully. I was met by its sharp black eye, quietly holding my gaze. In the moment, I felt naively like I had an understanding with the animal. Like it knew I had no intention of hurting it. Like it would trade instinct to let me hold it without restraint. Without thinking I let my hands fall open. In the instant that the bird unfolded and came into focus, it flicked from my palm and vanished into the open thrum of summer.
Who
CHELSEA BECK | SECOND PLACE | NONFICTION
You. You, the eldest child born to a pair of young, Mormon newlyweds. You, the neonate gawked at by everyone in the maternity ward due to her mane of thick, dark hair. Seriously, who has ever seen that much hair on a baby fresh from the womb? You, the toddler so enamored with TV ads that, in the middle of sacrament meeting one day, you randomly call out, “Hey! Where’s the cream filling?” You, the mischievous preschooler who finds herself in trouble on a near daily basis for snooping around places she knows she doesn’t belong. Your favorite shows are Sesame Street and Rugrats. By the time you finish preschool, you can already read simple chapter books, and your family is astonished at how clever you are. Four years old, you write and illustrate your first picture book—about talking cats. In the summer you enjoy playing with your cousins in Grandma’s pool; in the winter you build snow forts and try not to slip on the ice. Although it won’t last long, you go through a bug phase, collecting and examining every praying mantis and grasshopper you find. Beanie Babies and Happy Meal toys litter your bedroom floor. You don’t have time to sit around thinking about the meaning of life, questioning whether or not PAGE 18
your existence is an accident, because you’re too busy trying to catch cool prizes at the Fourth of July parade. Hell, you sing songs every week affirming that Jesus wants you for a sunbeam; that God created you good and special, and you have no reason to doubt these assertions, have no reason to believe that you are anything but a perfect little angel to everyone around you, because why would people lie about that stuff? In the mirror you see a girl. The girl is small, brunette, and bedecked with a pair of chocolate-brown peepers. Her skin, sun-kissed and smooth, bears proof of the long days she spends outdoors, chasing bugs and swinging from monkey bars. She wears an overall dress—or perhaps a checkered romper—that barely misses the top of her bandaged knees. In the mirror, you see a girl. She is who she is, and that is all fine and dandy. Nothing more, nothing less. That girl is you. Now, remember, at this point you don’t question things. When Mommy and Daddy tell you that they love you and that you are beautiful, you giggle in delight. You view your body as a wonderful host to a brilliant spirit; the apparatus that allows you to ride ponies and jump rope. You speak to God every night, and you know he listens. PAGE 19
And when people say that things will be okay in the end, they mean it. Clever though you are, what you don’t know at the time is that hope is a privilege. It is a privilege to feel loved, to feel pretty, to never doubt the idea of eternal life. You take it for granted that you can touch your arm, your feet, hug your mother, make a friend, adopt a pet without fearing that everything will…disappear at your final breath. Turn to dust. The feeling of being a waste of space who shouldn’t have been born is foreign to you. In your mind, your life and all that you do with it matters. God loves you and has a plan for you, after all. Dear one, your privilege card is nearing its expiration date. *** You think it’s a game, but you’re not quite sure. Part of you seems to know it’s wrong, and for some reason, you can’t bring yourself to say no. Not that you particularly like it or anything. On the contrary, your tummy feels slightly sick every time he does it—it feels sick, the way it twists into a knot and makes you feel like vomiting when Mommy or Daddy catches you doing something naughty. And this game is naughty. Deep down, you can’t UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
deny it. You don’t understand why, of all the people in your first grade class, Mrs. W has to sit you next to him. It only makes it easier for him. While you try to listen to the teacher and copy down spelling words, he does it. Why doesn’t anyone else notice??? Then again, you are sitting at the very back pod, as far away from the front of the room as possible. Two other girls occupy the pod, but they are focused on their studies. “Can I do it just one more time? Please?” The Boy whispers to you, poking your arm. You want to say no, want to scream at Mrs. W for help. “I guess.” You close your eyes and dream of being back home with your stuffed animals. From underneath your shared desk, he lifts your skirt and touches places you wish he wouldn’t. Later that day, at recess, he will do it again—this time, by coaxing you into the deserted boys’ bathroom. No one sees. The game continues for days until you finally decide that enough is enough, though, over a decade later, you will curse yourself for not taking a stand sooner. You sit your parents down after dinner one evening and explain everything. You know the game must be an even naughtier thing UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
than you thought it was, because Mommy and Daddy head straight to the phone and call Mrs. W. At seven o’clock at night. Words are exchanged, tears are shed, and promises are made. Mommy takes you into class the next day, and she and Mrs. W assure you that The Boy has been moved to another class. You don’t hear from or see him anymore. You, the girl in the mirror, never look at your body the same way again. *** At ten years old, you are further along in your development than most other girls your age. Your throat closes and your heart turns green at the sight of the other fourth grade girls, all of whom are still able to wear tank tops freely. You feel like such a fat, disgusting freak compared to them. Why is it always you? It’s not fair. G is one of your best friends, but she can be blunt. Sometimes, the only reason you tolerate her presence is because you really don’t have anyone else. If it wasn’t for G, you remind yourself, you’d be sitting alone at recess. You wouldn’t have anyone to talk to, to stomp around the playground with. Then you’d really look like a freak! One day in the middle of a particularly warm, rainy winter, G brings her sister’s yearbook to PAGE 20
show you during lunch recess. “That’s my sister, M,” she says, pointing out an older girl with curly black hair and a liberal coating of mascara. “She’s pretty,” you reply.
2. Logo tees are overrated (but a crucial status symbol). 3. You just aren’t into people the way other people are into people.
G snorts. “Funny you should say that. I showed her your picture, and she’s all like ‘Eww, your friend is so ugly!’”
The first real sign that something is wrong comes barging through the door alongside the announcement of the seventh grade Christmas dance. This is not to be a formal dance, the teachers emphasize, so don’t take the whole pairing off thing too seriously. Still, class becomes more and more of a giggle-and-whisper zone as the day of the dance gets closer. While you jot down notes on the Pythagorean Theorem, the preppy girls in the row behind you gush about who they’re going with and what they’re going to wear. Though no boy has asked you out, you’re not all that disappointed, because you don’t have the slightest interest in it. You find the math to be tremendously more fascinating.
You don’t know how to respond, so you laugh awkwardly. Laughing has become a coping mechanism of sorts for you. You laugh when you’re bored, you laugh when something uncomfortable happens, you laugh when all you truly want to do is cry, because sometimes it’s better for them to think you consider the whole thing a huge joke as opposed to something that makes you want to violently implode in pain. Storm clouds begin to gather overhead. The downpour hits before you have the chance to make it to safety. ***
That is a concern for some. “What do you mean, you’re not going to the dance?” G demands during gym class one day.
The middle school years do not pass without your arrival at three very important conclusions:
“Just that,” you murmur, narrowly avoiding a flying dodgeball.
1. Silly Bandz are overrated.
“Aww, don’t lose hope! I’m sure someone will ask
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you eventually.” You come out and admit the truth. “I don’t want anyone to ask me. I don’t want to go to the dance.” She stops dead in her tracks, turning to look you straight in the eye. “You—what? Why not?” You shrug. “Just don’t care to.” Word of school events travels fast, and somehow, a week before the dance, Mom walks into your bedroom while you’re engrossed in homework. She holds a flyer in her hand, detailing the occasion that has been shoved down your throat for the past month. “Hey, are you interested in going to this?” “Where did you get that?” you ask, mildly annoyed. “In the mail. The school likes to keep parents updated on happenings.” “To answer your question, no.” She frowns and pats you on the shoulder. “Oh, honey. Didn’t any of the boys…?” “No, it’s not that. I just don’t want to go. Okay?” UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
But Mom clearly isn’t buying it. “Look, I know how hard these things can be at your age, but even if you don’t get asked out, you can still go with a group of friends. In fact, as young as you are, I’d actually prefer—” “Mom! I don’t care about dating. I don’t care about dances.” “Well, all right,” she sighs, letting the flyer slip to the floor. “I just wish you’d get out more. You need to make friends, start meeting people, because one day you are going to want to get involved with someone, you know.” As Mom leaves your room, gently closing the door behind her, your eyes become misty. You know there is absolutely no reason you should be crying, but the whole thing feels so unnatural— you feel unnatural. In every way. What junior high girl didn’t dream of being asked out on a date, of getting married someday? Were you just what they called a “late bloomer”? No, it couldn't be that, you figure, because your body actually went through the change earlier than normal. Earlier than normal, earlier than normal, earlier than— “What a freak,” you choke. This time, because you are in the safety of your bedroom, you make PAGE 22
no effort to stop the crying. For the span of three seconds, you are grateful for your breasts, as they act as a buffer between your tears and your penciled essay on the Renaissance. Mere months later, you will learn the meaning of the word “gay” from an online forum. It is used, you discover, to describe a person attracted to the same sex. But the term does not apply to you, as you are attracted to neither males nor females. What are you, then? Are there really other people out there who don’t desire intimacy in any form? You come to the realization about your sexuality later than normal. *** You only want to have a few friends over for your 16th birthday. Two weeks prior to the party, you’d sent out digital invites to your four closest acquaintances. All of them RSVP'd within hours, assuring you that they’d be there. The day and time of the party comes, and not a single girl arrives at the house. You wait and wait, hovering in the living room and peering anxiously out the front window as November’s fleeting light gives way to its prevailing darkness. PAGE 23
By 6:30—an hour and a half after the party was due to begin—you are all but certain no one is coming, as none of the invitees have so much as called or texted to let you know that they can’t to make it. “I’m sorry, honey,” Mom tells you. Her expression bears a look of genuine pity. Lost for words, you tearfully amble into the kitchen and began stashing away all the paper plates and silverware that had been set out on the table for the “friends” that had promised to show up. As much as the events of that day bruise your soul, you do walk away from the debacle having learned one critical lesson: you are not important, you are not special, and you are nothing but a backup option to those around you. You realize your mistake of thinking that your friends ever truly wanted you around—no, you were just there for entertainment when none of the cool people were available. *** Twelfth grade. The last year you have a real testimony of God, the church, all of it. Six years’ worth of Young Women’s lessons dedicated solely to motherhood and marriage have taken their toll. You start to wonder whether Heavenly UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
Father seriously expects all people to marry and have children, which leads you to question the very foundations of the church, and that, in turn, pushes you even further down the rabbit hole of “anti-Mormon” websites and CES letters. You read about the true history of Joseph Smith and make up your mind that he wasn’t who he’s portrayed to be by those in the modern church. Though you don’t get around to officially taking your name off the records, you stop attending meetings. Shortly after graduation, you come out to your mom and dad as a nonbeliever.
comprehend the vacuum that occupies your being, having lost your testimony of God, the afterlife, and meaning to existence. You want to believe, but belief is not something you choose to have or not have. You pray, but to no avail. Most nights it just feels like you’re having a conversation with the ceiling. Caught up in a state of not knowing, you start to deteriorate mentally, and those around you—particularly hardcore atheists—simply do. not. get. why the need for something greater is so essential to your wellbeing. They, unlike you, have made peace with the idea of nihilism.
They sob. They question themselves as parents. They still love you, but they make it clear how saddened and disappointed they are by your apostasy. To make matters worse, they completely shut down when you try to explain your actions, your findings.
Your parents don’t know that, if anything, you care about them more than you did before because you live in constant fear of them dying. In the old days, you took comfort in the assurance that families are forever; that life goes on after death. Now, you are nowhere close to positive of that notion. The thought of one of your loved ones leaving you makes you physically ill, and as much as you despise yourself, you are devastated at the thought of your long-hated body becoming one with the earth, never to materialize as its glorified self again.
“I won’t have you attacking my church,” Mom tells you. It kills you to know how badly you’ve hurt your mom. For a solid year after your awakening, you spend every Sunday morning in bed, crying until you feel wholly drained of feeling. Your parents probably don’t realize that your leaving the church has caused you just as much pain as it has them, if not more. They can’t even begin to UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
It’s wrong. It’s hateful. Evil. Unfair. Your parents have reluctantly made peace with the fact that you intend to die an old cat lady, PAGE 24
though that doesn’t put an end to the occasional “You’ll change your mind!” sentiments. But the one thing they can’t accept is your rejection of the gospel. You try to get them to understand that it’s not a choice for you—that faith isn’t something you can just hit an “on” switch for. If you could believe in the church, or at least in a higher power, you would. You cling to near-death-experience stories for dear life, trying so desperately to push the criticisms out of your mind. The criticism, the skepticism is always there, though, and try though you might, you can’t totally disregard them. You want to, more than you want that last piece of banana cream pie for dessert, more than you’d even like to receive that Christmas bonus at work, but you can’t. Your mind is engaged in a never-ending war between logic and hope, each side relentless, firm, and refusing to give up. Logic has a slight edge, and with each of its victories the idea of taking your own life becomes more and more attractive to you. Your soul aches, your body screams no! at the grim reality that everything will be for naught one day anyway. Even though you now appreciate them more, you grow detached from your loved ones, as you know your relationship with them, no matter how strong, is but a tiny particle of sand on a beach with infinite, rolling hills. And soon— sooner than you can blow a goodbye kiss—the tide PAGE 25
will come in, fully engulfing the sand particle and carrying it away to a vast sea of emptiness. If there is no God, you reason, nothing really matters at all. *** Things were supposed to be different after high school. At least, that’s you’d been told. The number of likes you got on Instagram weren’t supposed to matter anymore, and ambition was supposed to run hot through your veins, spurring you to get out there and actually do something with your life. Study abroad in Europe, or maybe start your own business. You were supposed to develop the grownup mentality of not putting so much stock into what others thought of you and become comfortable in your own skin. You weren’t supposed to spend hours in bed, bawling because you still felt so ugly, worthless, defective. Most importantly, your family expected that you would regain the “spiritual light" you once had, and maybe even come around to your predestined role as wife and mother. When none of what’s supposed to happen happens, the reality that you are abnormal becomes even more cemented in your head. You wonder why it is that everyone else can function like a regular person, and you can’t. Snapshots UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
of long, thin bodies and Disney World vacations eventually get to be too much, but for some reason, you can’t pry your eyes away from social media. It’s like a drug, and you are an addict. You use it to stay informed about the latest fashion trends and make mental notes of how you should be styling your hair; you use it to keep up with friends, most of whom you lost contact with after graduation. You watch Facebook Friend after Facebook Friend get married in milkywhite temples, but you are not invited, of course, because 1) You wouldn’t be allowed inside anyway, and 2) These people never truly cared about you in the first place. If they did, they would still be speaking to you. They begin a fresh, new life chapter while you remain stuck in a previous one. Oh, and the Ugly Duckling Effect hasn’t happened to you, by the way. Not yet, and probably never. If anything, you’ve gotten even more hideous with age. Regardless of how much makeup you smear on your face, how many hours you spend on your hair, how many calories you restrict, you remain an eyesore. You can’t remember the last time you took a photo of yourself and kept it. You work from home—still with Mom and Dad—as a transcriptionist, but nearly every cent you earn goes towards tuition. Yes, you are in college, and do everything possible to avoid taking classes on UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
campus. If you could stay home and hide every day, you would. You see no point in trying to exist in a world you feel you don’t belong. Confusion consumes you. The names of those who were once a part of your life become blurred in your memory. You remember bits of pieces of who they were, but not the whole story. This is for the best, you think, as most everybody checks out sooner or later. Good or bad or anywhere in between, they all end up leaving at some point, and you don’t get hurt if you don’t get attached. They leave because you’ve abandoned their church. They leave because you’ve purposely removed them from your consciousness. They leave due to circumstances beyond their control but never bother to get back in touch. They leave because life took them elsewhere, to greener pastures. They leave because of death. Mostly, though, they leave because of the simple fact that you are not interesting enough to stick around with. One evening, shortly after you start college, Dad comes home with The Most Exciting News Ever. “Guess where me and Mom are going in February?” he says, beaming. “Where?” you grumble. PAGE 26
“Mexico. With my work. All expenses paid. Just think, this will be the first time you kids are home by yourselves for a week. Maybe we’ll get lost and never come back.” And he doesn’t understand why this brings you to tears. *** You, the girl who once stood strong in her identity. You, the girl who was foolish enough to think she was pretty. You, the girl who asserted that real magic existed in the form of Santa Claus and his reindeer. You, the girl who sang “Princess Pat” at girls' camp until your laughter left you breathless. You, the person who believed all it took was an impassioned letter to Summit Entertainment to land a role in the next Twilight film. You, the person who had a testimony of eternal families. You, the being who cried out for help, screamed in pain for a certain relief that nothing on earth could provide you. You, the collection of atoms that, at one point, thought it all had a purpose. Now, you don’t even remember who I am anymore. In the mirror you see a thing. The thing is pitiful, chubby, and doesn’t even have a PAGE 27
distinguishing feature to make up for it. Most others, you realize, have a special highlight—a dotting of cute freckles, perhaps, or big, oceanblue eyes. But this thing does not. I will forever be ordinary, unremarkable. Soon, it’ll become nothing at all, as is due course for any living creature that exists under a godless sky. It feels it might once have been something, but that was a long time ago. People don’t understand why you have daily fantasies about ending my life, because they’ve never walked in your shoes. It isn’t enough for them to tell you that things will get better, for even if that’s true, things will only get better, be good temporarily. There is no fix to the inevitable absoluteness of mortality, which is the thing that bothers me most at the end of the day. No one understands, but that’s not important. Nothing is important, when I think about it, and nothing even really makes sense. One day, and one day soon, you promise yourself, you will gather up the courage to take control of the only thing I can control. But for now, carrying on will have to do. Maybe God does exist, and maybe he does love you, and maybe I am beautiful and loved, and maybe it is acceptable that you will never be with another person. You don’t hold your breath, though. After all, you are not five years old anymore, and you know that not every story can or should have a UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
happy ending. You, whose number one motivation for getting out of bed is to eat. You, the despised offspring of two folks who really deserved better. I, the school reject. You, the soul who, according to Mormons, will never have true joy anyway, as you do not intend to follow the Traditional Life Script of Temple-Marriage-Babies. You, the sucker who let myself be hurt by others, because you were too weak and pathetic to stand up for your own dignity. You, the wretch who simply stopped functioning. I.
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Tension
LUKE LEMMON| HONORABLE MENTION | ART
Just a Sword
KATRINA FUNK | THIRD PLACE | NONFICTION
It was just a sword. I didn’t even think I cared about it anymore until my cousin, Gary’s, text message popped up on my phone: I don’t remember the sword. If I had it I probably got rid of it in one of my moves. I slide down in my chair staring at the message. My fingertips cool as I tap against the screen of my phone trying to think of some way to respond. Shooting back, “Well it sure mattered to you sixteen years ago!” doesn’t seem like the appropriate response. My teenage self would’ve been all over that, but I’m long past that now. It was a sword. It’s gone. I’m over it. By sword standards it wasn’t all that impressive. It was just a simple sword with a curving silver blade and a wood handle, but when I was a child it felt like so much more than that, like it was a general’s sword or maybe a pirate captain’s. But memory is fickle and the image in my head may be just that: an image rusted over from over a dozen years of being kicked around my brain without a purpose. I mean, it would’ve been fun to show my kids the sword I’d been stabbed with, but telling them about it is almost the same thing. I don’t know why I thought Gary would still have it. To him, it was a trinket without any solid meaning. But somehow, when the battle was fought, he was the one who went home with it. PAGE 30
* The summer sun shone in through the large dining room windows of my childhood home, hitting my back and warming the room in a way that felt inappropriate, a betrayal of the fog that seemed to be pressing down on me. I traced imaginary lines around the outline of my shadow on the surface of the brown faux-wood dining room table I sat at, leaving streaks of oil behind. “I don’t know what I would even want,” my older sister said, verbalizing what we were all feeling. She sat across from me, her head resting in her hand, her long brown hair falling over and obscuring most of her face. She was the oldest and had just graduated from high school, though today I felt we were in some sort of time warp and we were all back to a version of our young childhood selves. She voiced what none of us wanted to say because if we did, we were admitting that we cared we were sitting here in this house. That usually wouldn’t be a problem, but at that moment my mom and all of her ten siblings were next door at my grandma’s house, picking through her belongings, dispersing her possessions among themselves. It wasn’t that we didn’t want anything, rather the opposite. We wanted it all. We wanted all of it to stay exactly where it was, enshrined forever, and maybe in that PAGE 31
we could reverse time and she would be back and none of this would be necessary. It had been six months since my grandma died unexpectedly, and I still felt that if I turned around quick enough I would see her walking down the road, or if I went to her house I would find her in her quilting room creating a new fabric masterpiece. “I want the sword,” my brother said. He leaned against the kitchen island, weaving a piece of string through his fingers as he knotted and unknotted it again. He was like that, his fingers always busy. We were often told we looked alike, especially our red hair. As a young girl it made me proud to be bracketed in with my older brother, but as a teenager, not so much. I don’t know if many teenage girls want to be told they look like their brother. “That’s all you want?” my sister said. “That’s all I can think of right now.” “It’s too much to wrap my head around.” I groaned laying my forehead on the table, not wanting to think about it any of it. “No grandchildren,” my aunt had said the day before. She was the oldest of my grandma’s children, and from California so she always acted UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
as though her words were law. According to her, it would make the process too complicated. But to me it seemed an intentional disregard of my relationship with my grandma. At sixteen, I was nearly an adult and felt I had just as much a claim on my grandma’s life as her children. I had grown up next door, and her door was always open. I had more memories at my grandma’s house than I did of my own. I could almost see my aunts and uncles in my grandma’s large quilting room with boxes spread out with various items that encapsulated her life spilling out. There would be a pile of scarves, dozens of them clumped together on the table, their colors bright with intertwining patterns as they blended together, their soft silky fabric cool and smooth beneath the fingertips. She always wore them when she was outside, the square of silk folded in half on the top of her head with the ends tied beneath her chin, the colorful fabric flowing down the back of her head, her black and gray streaked hair tucked securely beneath it. I drum my five-year-old fingers against the pane of our large dining room window, creating a beat as I tap out a rhythm. Then I see it. A spark of color I instantly recognize: my grandma’s scarf contrasting against the green blend of the mountains behind her. Without a thought, I’m UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
moving. It only takes seconds and I’m out the door, my legs churning as I sprint down the long driveway, meeting her at the road. She reaches out her hand for mine, and I take it. Her warmth transfers to me and spreads until I feel it right down to my toes. I try to match her stride, step for step. She always walks as if she’s in a hurry to be somewhere, and my little legs have to take two or three steps to her every one. She looks at me, smiles and squeezes my hand, and for a moment we walk in silence, content with each other’s company. “Have you ever seen a bear?” I ask her as we approach a section of road between her house and mine, lined on both sides with trees and heavy underbrush. I’m always certain a bear or mountain lion is going to jump out and eat me there. When I’m alone I sprint through this section, praying that if something chases, I can outrun it. I hold her hand tighter as we approach, even though I know the predators would never attack me when I’m with my grandma. “I see them sometimes when I’m up in the mountains” she says. “I saw one just the other day while I was picking huckleberries.” “Did it chase you?” I ask in earnest.
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“No. It just munched on his berries and I picked mine and we let each other alone and then went our separate ways. I did have one that followed me around a few years ago.”
“They’re supposed to be there.”
“Were you scared?” I say pulling in close to her leg.
“Mass extinction,” my sister added and we all smiled, and then stopped immediately because it felt disrespectful.
“Not at all,” she says so matter of fact that I have no doubt what she says is true. “He was a little one, just curious. He followed me for about an hour, and then I got tired of him and shooed him away and he left.” “I would’ve been scared,” I say. “Well, he might’ve been bigger than you so that would’ve been okay.” I stared at the table, my fingers frozen, a dull pain that had been a near constant companion these past few months building and I had to focus to keep it manageable and contained within myself. “Do you think they took the hummingbird feeders down?” my sister asked, and I was grateful for the distraction. She pulled her hair from her face, looking up at us. “They better not,” I said. PAGE 33
“What would all the hummingbirds do? Starve?” my brother said.
I lean toward the open window in front of me as my legs hang straight from my stool, toes pointed as if reaching for the floor beneath me. The windows spread across the entire wall of my grandma’s workroom, creating an almost unimpeded view of the mountains and barn in front of me, but I don’t notice any of that. I’m fixated on the little birds hovering around the red hummingbird feeder in front of me. It hangs just outside the window, a simple bell jar with a red bowl screwed onto the bottom that allows the sugar water to flow down into it. It never seems to overflow and even though I’m curious about the logistics of it, I don’t move, nervous I’ll startle the birds and they’ll all fly off. I follow the birds as they zip about, a strange intertwining dance without a pattern, their wings a blurry haze even when suspended in the air as if they are hanging by a string. Some hover while dipping their beaks into the syrup, while others UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
perch on the rim of the bowl, their wings resting at their sides as they dip their heads up and down, pausing in between to take stock of the world around them. “Why do some have pink throats and some don’t?” I ask. I don’t turn, but I hear my grandma get up, the legs of her chair scraping against the floor as it is pushed back. In a moment she’s next to me, the quilt she’s been working on all morning for the moment forgotten. “Those are the males,” she says. As she says it one of the magenta throated birds dives at another one, the hum of its wings sharp, scolding as it chases the other male off. The light catches their feathers as they fly, the green bright and brilliant like sequins on a costume.
feeder, but they continue on as if she’s not there. “Yep, look. You can see it has a few pink feathers coming in around its throat.” I mimic her movements, trying to keep the birds from noticing my presence, hoping that if I stay close to my grandma they won’t notice me. I slip. I catch myself on the windowsill keeping myself from plummeting ten feet down from the screenless window. The birds dart upward in a hum of agitation and they are gone.
“And what are those?” I point to the ones remaining. A few of them take off and fly toward a nearby tree, but the others remain. My grandma adjusts her glasses as she leans closer to hummingbirds resting outside her window.
Silence filled the dining room, creeping in like dark tendrils, making my thoughts feel heavy. I wondered what my brother and sister were thinking about. If they were, like me, still trying to pick an item sufficient to fill the gaping emptiness? Our mom had asked us what we wanted the night before, and our responses had been the same as they were now. The only concrete thing we seemed to agree on was the sword, and according to my mom that was already claimed, but she said she would do her best to get it for us.
“Two of those are females,” she says. “See how they’re a duller color? It’s so they blend in with their nests better. And the little one is a juvenile – a kid like you. I think it’s male too.” I wait for the birds to take flight as she gets closer to the red
I went through items in my mind, trying to narrow my emotions, my memories. There were her books, whole rooms full of them of all varieties from the most absurd fiction to the most boring science volumes available. I found a four-leaf clover once
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and pressed it between the pages in one of her books and placed it in her front room bookcase. When I went to retrieve it a few weeks later the book was already gone and new books were in its place. I knew the book was somewhere in her house. She cycled through books quickly, but never got rid of them. I spent hours searching the walls of bookcases that lined her basement, but I never found it again. I had one of her books sitting on my dresser in my bedroom, The Princess Bride. I was supposed to take it over before the sorting began, but I hadn’t yet, and had no stirring desire to do so now.
sharp like a firecracker.
“I think mom said she was getting the popcorn pan,” my sister said, breaking the silence.
“Because they had girl babies instead of boys. Kings back then needed a boy baby to grow up and become king after they died.” The last kernel pops and without any hesitation, she lifts the lid. I dump the contents of my cup, and my grandma snaps the lid back on the pan and begins shaking the pan slowly in slow rhythmic motions against the burner. The soft swish swish of the kernels against the bottom of the pan sound almost like waves on a rocky beach with little pebbles rolling back and forth with the ebb and flow of the water.
“We already have one,” I said. She shrugged her shoulders, “That’s just what she said.” I’m in my grandma’s kitchen, not in a single moment, but in dozens wrapped up in one blend of Sunday afternoons. The cabinets are orange and brown with woodland scenes wallpapered along the bottoms of them, little cartoon animals creating a story as the room is circled. The smell of oil tickles my nose as it heats up in the pan and I jump at the first snap of a kernel exploding, PAGE 35
I stand on a stepping stool next to my Grandma’s side, leaning over with earnest, waiting for another pop to indicate the oil is hot and ready. The knuckles of my fingers turn white as I grasp the measuring cup full of yellow popcorn kernels. I hold them far enough out so my grandma can see that I’m ready to dump them in the pan the moment she gives the signal. “But why did he kill them?” I say trying to sift through the story she just told me.
“They didn’t know back then that it’s the men that have a say in that, not the women,” she continues. I don’t understand what she means but I don’t say so. I’m distracted from the thought UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
by the popcorn in the pan. It starts with one snap, and then another and another. It only takes seconds before the inside of the pan sounds like the grand finale at a firework show.
I again don’t really understand what she means. “Did he ever have a boy?” “Eventually. I can’t remember if it was five or six wives before that happened.”
“So he just killed them?” “He didn’t kill all his wives, just a few of them. Some he divorced, but he had to make a new church to do it. He was a Catholic, and they didn’t allow divorce.”
“One of us should get the sword,” my brother said bringing my thoughts back to the dining room and I’ve realized I’ve been zoned out, a whole conversation going on without me. “Gary won’t get the sword,” my sister said.
Just as fast as the popping starts, it stops, and she lifts the pan from the stove, turning it upside down to keep the popcorn from burning against the hot bottom. She dumps the contents into a large metal bowl and then sprinkles salt on top, mixing it through with her hands, fluffing it to blend the salt throughout. She pulls out an empty plastic cool whip container from her cupboard and dips it into the popcorn as if it’s an ice cream scoop. She sets the overflowing bowl in front of me. “That’s sad.” “He may have been crazy. Those royal families intermarried too many times. A lot of them weren’t mentally stable.”
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“His mom will get it for him,” my brother said. “Why would Gary get the sword?” I said a swell of irritation bubbling beneath my skin. “He doesn’t even live here. He doesn’t even know grandma.” “We know!” My sister said, and it’s obvious I’m treading on ground already covered. “Because he wants it, and his mom’s the oldest so she’ll get it for him,” my brother said, sounding resigned. “That would be stupid,” I said. Gary was from California and his family only came to visit briefly every other year. He was a year younger than me, a brainiac and awkward and I hated their visits PAGE 36
when I was younger because my mom always made me play with him. “You should get it,” I said to my brother. “You played with it the most.” “You were stabbed with it.” “By you.” The smell of dust fills my nose, as well as something sweet and crisp like a hot summer day. I press the side of my eight-year-old face against the side of a yellowing haystack. The gaps between the slats of the old gray barn allow thin strips of sunlight to shine through, which reflect off the tiny floating particles in the air making them glimmer like fairy dust. The haystack stands in the middle of the barn floor, the rectangular bales stacked in a way that makes for easy dissembling, and we’ve pulled some down creating a stairway of bales to the top. The front of the barn is bare and open, and I see my grandma’s house some twenty yards away. A little stream meanders between the house and the barn, patches of green along its bank. I check the big windows that line my grandma’s workroom and don’t see her standing there so I know we’re safe. She won’t see we have the sword.
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I hunch down and press myself against the bales holding my breath as I listen for the scuffle of a footstep or thump, anything that would give a hint that someone is coming my way. I glance around for my older sister, but don’t see her, but that doesn’t worry me. It’s my brother I’m listening for. He’s two years older than me, and today he’s a pirate, my sister and I his quarry: a glorified game of tag with a sword for added effect. There’s a thud. I turn my head around the corner of the stack to the back of the barn. It’s my brother, crouched on the ground. He must have jumped down from the second level. The sword is in one hand, the scabbard in the other. We make eye contact and he smiles. I turn, slipping on the loose hay on the smooth floorboards as I dart to the opening of the barn. I turn the corner of the haystack and meet my brother face to face. His face turns white and I don’t notice any pain until I see the long silver blade sticking out of my hand. I must scream or yell because my sister appears a second later, calling out, wondering what’s going on. As the oldest it only takes a moment for her to switch to mothering mode. She drapes me under her arm as she ushers me to my grandma’s house. My brother follows, an incoherent string of mumbled words coming from his mouth, the sword in his hand hanging limp at his side. We UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
tiptoe to the bathroom and turn the water on to a slow trickle so we don’t wake my grandma who is sleeping in the next room. My sister scrubs my hand as my brother hides the evidence. I stare, stunned as I watch the red blend with the water turning it pink as it trickles down the sink and swirls before going down the drain. I hold back a cry as she digs into the cut with a brush. Any sound from me could doom us. Moments later she’s done. Hand wrapped, we escape the house dispersing before anyone notices the sword was ever missing. The sound of the front door opening startled me. I paused, waiting to hear my grandma call out to ask if anyone was home, just as she always did. The thought flashed through my mind in a fraction of a second, before I could remind myself that it wasn’t her. That it would never be her again. My cousin, Gary, entered the dining room, his steps loud and clunky. His round face, with his black hair and thick eyebrows scrunched together, seemed encumbered with concentration. His breath caught, sharp and heavy as if the short walk to our house was a great physical challenge. Considering the roundness of his shape, it probably was. He found an empty chair next to the table and slumped into it. My siblings and I watched him in complete silence. I didn’t have to look at them to know we were all thinking the UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
same thing: the sword. Our silence continued as he sat there as if expecting us to jump up in song and dance to entertain him. “They’re taking forever over there,” he finally said sounding bored. “There’s a lot to go through,” my sister said, and it pleased me that her tone threaded the line of harshness I felt my cousin deserved. “If it were me I would just get a dump truck and throw it all away.” My hands froze in front in front of me and I took a quick glance at my siblings and saw confirmed on their faces that he just said what I thought he said. He wasn’t looking at me though, rather his focus was out the window watching something beyond my view. “My mom’s getting me the sword. I don’t care about the rest of it. It’s just junk.” I stood, my head fogging as my fingers went cold. Something hot and violent rose in my chest. “What?” I said. I leaned over the table, my fingers splayed out on the surface. Something burned inside me, hot and primal, wanting to be released. PAGE 38
“What would you know about any of it?” He looked at me as though I’d brought to his attention a problem with a solution so obvious it was embarrassing he had to point it out to me. “It’s all just a bunch of garbage,” he said slow and exaggerated as if I had some sort of hearing problem. “Garbage? What do you know about it? You don’t even know her!” Something snapped in me as I threw the words at him. My vision began to spot, black around the edges as I zeroed in on my cousin. He leaned back as if startled at my outburst, his eyes wide. His mouth opened slightly as if he had a response, but I gave him no time for that. A beast was released and I had no way of bringing it back in. The words exploded beyond any grip of my control; they gushed out completely unknown to me. It was as if my hearing had been cut off and I was only dimly aware that the words coming out were my own. My vision blurred. I barely recognized Gary’s face as it paled, but my brain was no longer my own and I didn’t care. My grandma was gone. My grandma, not his. Perhaps she was his grandma in name, but that only extended as far as the paper it could be written on. He didn’t care. But me, I would never see her again. I would never talk to her again. I PAGE 39
fundamental part of my existence was just gone. A black curtain covered my vision and awareness and the next moments blurred in a haze of words and uncontained emotions. The words spewed out, and the more they flew out the less I sensed my environment around me. The phone rings jarring me from my sleep. I roll over to look at my clock. It’s two in the morning. The phone continues to ring, two, three more times and then stops. The answering machine picks it up upstairs. It’s too far away to be anything but a jumbled murmur of sounds. I roll back over, pull the blankets up to my chin and stare at the wall, uneasy as a thought forms and then solidifies in my mind: My Grandma is dead. I push the thought away. She wasn’t sick and we had recently celebrated her seventieth birthday, so she wasn’t particularly old. She hadn’t been feeling well the evening before and the doctors had kept her in the hospital overnight for observations. But it wasn’t because of anything serious. She would be home the next morning. I roll back over, pushing the thought to the edge of my mind and go back to sleep. I wake up again to my mom shaking my shoulder. The faint pre-morning light of dawn filters through my blinds making my room feel eerie and cold. My family gathers in the family room. My UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
mom’s eyes are red and swollen. My dad sits next to her, his head down, and I don’t need them to say anything. I know. I don’t know exactly how I know. A feeling, or an absence of one. There is a bond some people have that isn’t developed but rather something they are born with. It just exists. An interweaving web of connections that goes deeper than anything beyond time and outside forces. I know because that’s what I share with my grandma. I hardly listen as my mom explains the phone call she’d received at two o’clock in the morning. The doctor had tried to revive her for an hour. My siblings are crying around me before my mom can even finish. Some cry silent, a reflection of my mom who fights to hold her voice steady as she relays the information, tears falling down her face in steady rhythm. Others immediately fall into deep broken sobs. I know that’s how I should react. There should be tears, endless streams of them, but all I feel is a hollow numbness.
the old quilt my Grandma made for me when I was ten. I no longer use it, the garish colors that I had picked back then were no longer to my taste at sixteen. I fall to my knees, the quilt crumples on my lap as I trace the outline of cats she’s quilted around the border. I stare at the wall in front of me not knowing how to feel. I’m a foreigner here, and I feel that if I take it in and let myself feel it I will break from the weight of it all, and so I don’t. I eventually move to my bed, spreading the quilt on top, smoothing every corner and fold as my fingers float across the top taking in all the different textures. She designed the pattern, an original just for me, as if it were a canvas and the fabric her paints. I find my box of trinkets tucked back in a drawer and pull it out, searching for a neckless she made for me when I was young. Strands of large gawky beads hang from a string that was once beautiful to my seven-year-old self. I pull it over my head and it presses down on my chest, the weight of it feeling like an anchor.
I get up from the family room and walk to my bedroom almost mechanically, as if it were a preprogrammed task and I had no control of myself. I pull open my closet pushing back clothes revealing a shelf that is rarely used. I shove sheets and books aside until I find what I am looking for at the very back. Pink squares tumble out as I pull
I go to school that day because I don’t know what else to do. I sit in my Biology class staring at the empty white board. I’m beyond hearing as my teacher lectures in front of the class. It is as if I am in a different world, one that didn’t exist the day before and nothing is solid around me. I’m being sucked downward and I feel the threads of my reality unraveling around me. The writing on
UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
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the whiteboard blurs in front of me. I try to hold back the tears as the full weight of my new reality encompasses me.
I stare at my phone disappointment still burning. I swipe Gary’s message away. Instead, I flip to my family’s thread.
My awareness returned and I found myself on the stairs of my families back porch, looking out across the pastures behind our house. My hands shook and the flow of tears down my face felt unstoppable. I didn’t know what time it was, or how long I’d been sitting here or even how I got to where I sat now. I didn’t know if Gary was still in the house or if my tirade had sent him off, but in the moment, I didn’t care. My aunts and uncles were next door going through my grandma’s possessions. The sword had little to no meaning to her. It was some prop or something that someone had left at her house. As my aunts and uncles sat picking away at her things, I felt I had nothing to cling to. No object to hold in my hand and say, “This is her”. The sword was safe. Part of her, but not her. A safe memory filled with joy but distant enough to not feel quite so heavy with the loss. And it was gone, just like everything else. They were taking her away bit by bit, spreading her out between them all until she was spread so thin she no longer existed. I had no say in it. She was gone. No item would ever bring her back.
“Remember grandma’s old sword?” I type out knowing they will support me in my indignation. I push send and wait for their responses. It only takes a minute and my phone is buzzing with a message from my brother. I open the message ready to share my new discovery, but his words halt me:
*
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This sword? A second later an image appears in front of me. It’s unmistakable as it lies on my brother’s living room rug: the sword, exactly how I remember it. I stare at it stunned, almost unbelieving, a feeling that slowly ebbs away as a victorious elation takes its place. It fills my chest and expands through the rest of my body. A hundred questions form in my mind, but in the moment, none of them seem to matter. My brother has the sword. \ I stand up, an undeniable urge propelling me from my chair to my back porch. I settle into my red lawn chair next to my hummingbird feeder. I haven’t seen a hummingbird in months, but I like to leave it hanging just in case any late season stragglers come along on their migration route. I UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
take a deep chest full of the cool fall air releasing it slowly suppressing the urge to call my grandma. That feeling has never gone away, never faded. I want to tell her about the sword and how my brother has it and we’d laugh about how silly it was that my siblings and I cared so much about that hunk of metal. I sit out in my chair next to my feeder and even though there are no birds, I feel in that moments as if my Grandma is sitting there next to me. We don’t say anything because we don’t have to. The moment is enough.
UNDERGRADUATE + NONFICTION
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PAGE 43 UNDERGRADUATE + ART
flower Child
ANNE LACHMAR | FIRST PLACE | ART
Poet U GRA
U GRA P
U N D E RG R A D U A T E
UNDERADUATE Poetry
E p o e t ry
You with your winter eyes Unshimmering Like crater lakes that don’t ice over because they are Too deep
KINGDOMS
DONNA METZLER | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
You were a raven in the last life Or maybe it’s this life I cannot tell You seem to exist in both At the same time You with your dark tangled hair And translucent skin Too thin How many times Have I found you on the shore With your sandcastles Surrounded by narrow winding roads And a moat that gently (and then violently) Fills with foamy water As the sun lowers in the sky Secret entrances That traverse under the soft wet sand to the inside of your kingdom Protected by intricate towers Created by the delicate dance of your slender fingers and winter eyes Monumented by flags of seaweed and beach debris Driftwood at the lintel Of the drawbridge PAGE 46
And when your kingdom is built You sit in the sand Feet curled around mounds of white grains Winter eyes squinting toward the sea Not taking notice Of the people leaving
I watch this And love this I’ve learned not to intervene Although I do recall That one often sees ravens in pairs
With their chairs and children The seagulls descending On everything but your castle Which remains intact Until the tide slowly and then quickly Takes over Crashing and receding Filling the moat Destroying the roads Turning your intricate towers First into smooth remnants of their forms And finally, into nothing at all You watch this Dark hair swirling Amidst the salty breezes Not with remorse But with acceptance Each wave taking more and more PAGE 47
UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
If E.E. Cummings was right she who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you I want to wholly kiss you I want to breathe unmeasured breath
each utterance is thoroughly measured either before or after it is uttered always conscious of the angle
syntax
DONNA METZLER | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
yet
of presentation and perception never in the mood to offend easily prone to defend rarely in the mood to pretend it is difficult to avoid all these at once PAGE 48
silence is easier because what goes unsaid doesn’t need to make sense to the world these kisses these rare kisses
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sophisticated cat
ANNE LACHMAR | THIRD PLACE | ART
I’m all in I’m really all in
UNDERGRADUATE + ART
You sat for me At first with your hand awkwardly under your chin As you gazed out into nothingness Stiff pouty lips But as you got tired You leaned into your palm Scrunching up your cheek
Which shifted onto your lap Or the chair I could not tell
still life
DONNA METZLER | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
And your slender fingers crept lazily toward your eyes
But it was something Instead of nothing And when you did look up at me Your eyes were glassy And your smile was playful and crooked And that’s when I started to draw.
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PAGE 51 UNDERGRADUATE + ART
cold war shelter
LUKE LEMMON | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
Commonsensual
MARK SMELTZER | SECOND PLACE | POETRY
It’s all well and good to talk about what consent is. Or so I’m told by those handy campus flyers. Disturbing that somewhere, out there, you held the door for one of these mythical monsters. Passed them in the hall. Called out their name: your order’s ready. They don’t know what consent is. But that’s too polite. Consent is just the absence of rape. Really they don’t know what that is. Our only hope is that a glossy poster in the men’s bathroom will tell him what to do. How not to rape. I am afraid that this shit can’t be taught. Consent isn’t a list checked off. It’s not a mantra you chant to yourself to keep you from doing what you want to do. If you don’t know consent when you see it you are one sick fuck. If you know and don’t care, you’re something worse. Does a bullet point list of words PAGE 52
on a well-meaning website: • Coherent • Freely Given • Specific • He(should) know the rest really stick in his mind? Thanks for reminding me. This woman I’m on top of too drunk to say yes too drunk to say no might not have consented but here I go. I’m afraid that’s not how it works. It’s just who he is. He doesn’t know or doesn’t care. But I knew I knew I already knew. No one sat down with thirteen-year-old me and told me about consent. I didn’t get a lecture about • How not to murder • How not to rob a bank • How not to steal a car • What if the car’s unlocked? • What if the keys are in the ignition? • What if it’s just begging for a joyride?
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It’s not yours to take none of it. Can that be taught? Consent isn’t just steps to achieving the mission. Some drunk spoiled bro not used to hearing no but not giving up til he checks off that magic box. The key to consent or so he had thought. Consent is a thing of beauty. No universal definition You know when you see it. You know when you don’t see it. You knew. You knew. Consent isn’t an obstacle— it’s a feature You see it in her heart Not from some piss—plastered bathroom poster preacher. It’s not a race against time before she changes her mind. How far you can get before it’s a crime. Consider looking at her for a moment. Feeling her. Not that way you sick fucker. UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
What do you see? Hoops for jumping? Cutting through red tape? Or how to get laid without calling it rape? What does all this mean to you? Sick of all these grown-ass men playing dumb? Me too. I know You knew. You knew. What did we learn from those morbid flyers? Raise your hand if you didn’t know what consent was til just now. Don’t be shy. Step right up and claim your prize. If there’s one thing a rapist knows it’s how to read between the lines. He sees “Consent is...”and thinks But what about this? Not even that? Exceptions, exceptions. Now he’s a lawyer poring over every line, every period. Looking for an out. UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
If he can manipulate the situation at the moment of truth, Why wouldn’t he do the same to some words on an 8”x10” with a rip in the corner, taped next to the brown paper towels? Here you go: If you learned anything from those flyers. If they contained any wisdom you couldn’t figure out yourself. Stay away from me. I’m not your bro. I’m not your safe place to groan “I guess everything is rape now.” Only caring about yourself. Not her. What’s gonna happen to you when she finds out she was raped? (none of this euphemistic sexual assault bullshit). Time’s up. You already knew and now you know.
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PAGE 55 GRADUATE + ART
pole
CHRIS DAVIS | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
Heavymetalboy plays football Rough and tumble, like Judas Priest songs All energy vibrating, excited, spilling out like an overflowing cup Heavymetalboy joins band, plays guitar
heavymetalboy
NICHOLAS RENSHAW | THIRD PLACE | POETRY
Bashes out frenzied phrases one note at a time Can’t push ‘em out his amp fast enough Heavymetalboy grows his hair out Past his ears—it only partially blocks out the sound of his dumb parents shouting But Megadeth takes care of the rest Heavymetalboy gets Ds and Fs But hey, screw school, school always hated him anyway Heavy metal loves him, Heavy metal won’t ever let him down Heavymetalboy draws flaming skulls and pentagrams on the back of his report card Makes what’s on the other side seem smaller ‘Cause Slayer can shred up all his failures (with the power of Satan, bitch!) Heavymetalboy smokes weed PAGE 56
But only whenever he needs to relax for a minute
Heavymetalboy does therapy once a week now
Translation: that’s most days, but man oh man, Black Sabbath has never sounded like this before
Sees a shrink, shouts out the poison that blasts beats and death growls can’t wash away
Heavymetalboy looks at the girls in the halls at school
Talks about before he was Heavymetalboy, when he was just boy-
He’s Beast in an art gallery full of Belles in glass cases Thinks it might be worth a handful of blood and glass shards if it means he can touch one of ‘em, just once
Boy who always got kicked around Boy who was scared of his brothers
But he keeps his distance
Boy who blamed himself every time his mama screamed
After all, this whole provincial town’s afraid of Heavymetalboy
Boy who found a suit of heavy metal battle armor
He sees this and he acts the part— Vests with spikes, ripped jeans, shirts with zombies and band logos that look like they could cut you if you touched them. Heavymetalboy says he doesn’t care what people think of him But every frightened look and every muttered comment just makes him madder Heavymetalboy has had enough of this crap Beats his brother’s face in when he tries to pick a fight Gets sent to a psych ward for 3 weeks Where the only metal is the brushed-steel railings
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And never took it off And forgot he was wearing it And grew into all the crevices He spends the next year taking it off, at his therapist’s request He feels lighter without it He knows he doesn’t need it anymore now that he’s Heavymetalboy Now his armor’s on the inside, on his heart and in his veins And it’s made of Lamb of God riffs and the remains of Ronnie James Dio And he isn’t taking it off anytime soon UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
feather earrings
MARK SMELTZER | THIRD PLACE | POETRY
You and your feather earrings keep crossing my mind.
I’m having a dream where the girl I liked in sixth grade is laughing at me. We’re at the food court in the South Town Mall, holding paper plates filled with my childhood toys I keep trying to apologize for never asking her out but my hands keep shoving LEGO bricks in my mouth and I can’t seem to talk around them. She keeps laughing. She looks like she feels sorry for me. I spit out a mouthful of sturdy Swedish plastic and think about your feather earrings and the way you look when you smile. I’m just about to tell her I’m sorry for never asking her out, But she cuts me off and tells me I broke her heart, PAGE 58
still laughing.
I have to double-check the inside of my mouth for LEGOs before I get up.
I wake up in tears, halfway through dialing your phone number and it feels a lot like how I’ll bet writing a suicide note feels.
As I get ready for school I recite a poem you wrote about kissing.
(not that I would know)
Your wo rds come tumbling out of my mouth like a sermon,
I’m trying to press “talk” but I can’t because my mouth is full of LEGOs again and I’m still
like a hymn or a prayer
picturing your
(but if I’m being honest, church never really felt this sacred).
feather earrings and all the writing on your sneakers,
I wonder if this is the closest I’ll ever get to your lips on mine, and I tie my shoelaces.
and I am pretty damn sure this is still a dream because the girl I liked in sixth grade walks into my bedroom and starts throwing up undercooked pasta all over the carpet
I go to school and I can hear you reciting your poem silently around every corner
and reminding me of why I never get hungry on Sundays anymore. My alarm clock wakes me up for real this time, and PAGE 59
your feather earrings jingling. I want to tell you how incredible I think it is but my friends are talking to me UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
You’re walking down the hall, straight towards us and the girl I liked in sixth grade is talking back using my mouth.
The girl I liked in sixth grade is talking louder now and I’m trying to shut her up but she starts yelling,
She’s telling them all about how I’m selfish and arrogant “Why are you friends with him? and cowardly and hey, remember how he wanted to kill himself last October? He was never really going to do it Remember how you all went to Classic Skating back in ninth grade and he cried afterwards and went home without really explaining why?
Don’t you know he thinks he’s better than all of you? Don’t you know he’s in love with his own secrets and pretends they’re girls with feather earrings to feel better about it?” It almost sounds like it might be true but I don’t even care, I don’t need this right now I don’t need this right now I don’t need this right now
I remember all of it, Idontneedthisrightnowidontneedthisrightnow— eat it and shudder and grimace like it’s cough syrup My friends just swallow it and shrug, smiling.
UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
I hit her over the head with my book bag.
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She goes down.
That look a whole lot smaller now that she’s motionless on the ground.
Hard. and I realize I’ve forgotten just how fragile sixth graders can be.
You’re still walking down the hall towards me and my friends.
She looks dead, it’s ugly and violent and oh God, maybe this is how she’s supposed to be.
You’re not wearing your feather earrings. Maybe you never wore them in the first place. (funny how I can’t seem to
She’s wearing a purple barrette.
recall, now that you’re getting so close)
She has a Band-Aid on her left elbow. She has a backpack with horses on it.
As you pass by, you look at me and smile.
I’m latching onto the details here, but I hope you can see the bigger picture
I smile back.
Man vs. self For now, this is good. Internal struggle Personal demons that look a whole lot like the girl I liked in sixth grade PAGE 61
UNDERGRADUATE + POETRY
FICTI U GRA
U GRA FI
U N D E RG R A D U A T E
UNDERADUATE ICTION
E FICTION
Elizabeth
VIVIAN GATES | FIRST PLACE | FICTION
It’s painful, but I stitch on a fake grin before entering Group Room. Seven pairs of eyeballs pan up to study me, the skeleton in the doorway. They’re statues, not souls—with mouths chiseled into straight lines. My eyes search theirs for recognition. But my silent pleading vanishes into the emotional vacuum of this shithole, and I am alone. The staff already took my things. A moment ago I caught a glimpse of them rummaging through my suitcase behind a curtain. I only saw the hands. Strangers’ hands in latex gloves inspected every sock and laid out every photograph. Now my spiral notebook lies in a trash can somewhere. My blanket has been confiscated. What harm can I do with a microfleece throw? The smile I’ve carved onto my face is twitching at the corners, warning me that it’s ready to buckle. I’m a prisoner, and these freaks won’t smile. “So, this is Group Room. This is where the milieu stays in-between groups and meals. We have a facility rule that as soon as someone sits in a chair, it’s theirs until they say otherwise. Do you understand?” What the hell is a milieu?
UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
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My voice is frozen solid in my throat. It aches. The PCA continues. Her name is Piper, and she’s nice enough. “So something should open up soon for you, since Beth will disharge to Partial on Thursday. Isn’t that right, Beth?” A woman lies curled in the fetal position on a narrow leather couch. I can only see her back—a spiderweb of ribs, shoulder blades, and spine tearing out of her cotton t-shirt.
the size of my fingernail pass each other on the freeway, their passengers rushing to fulfill their tasks. The room reminds me of a dentist’s office. The chairs, artificial fireplace, and pale green walls are uninviting. Forgotten art projects clutter the tables in the back. A white board bears a message written in loud, multicolored dry-erase marker: May 9th Patient Care Assistant: Piper
“Mhm,” she mumbles. On-Call Therapist: David Piper rests her hand on my shoulder. The gesture makes me feel like a child. I’m suddenly aware of the looseness of my sweats, the gaping between my thighs, and the ribs splitting my skin. Disgusting. Will Piper think of me after she goes home at five? After she’ll twist her key, pull off her name tag, and turn on Desperate Housewives? “We’ll head into the bistro for lunch in about fifteen,” says Piper. “I’ll be at the desk.” Limbs calcify as I stand there motionless, my eyes scannning the room before me. Large, floor-toceiling windows overlook the highway beneath us and the city beyond. A grey sky looms over trees below, which are green and blossoming—the first signs of spring. From the eighth floor, I watch cars PAGE 65
Announcements: Remember to cast your votes for movie night Saturday. PG only. Also we have a new addition to the milieu! Welcome to Meals to Heal, Erin! Now I survey the faces of Group Room: the patients, my new peers. Please, God, anyone. One patient’s eyes are closed in sleep. Another squints hers into focus as she knits. One reads. Another colors. One bites her nails, staring out the rainstreaked window. Not one looks at me. I shuffle over to the bookshelf, grab a dictionary, and thumb through the pages until I hit “milieu.”
UU NN DD ER ER GG RR AA DD UU AA TE T E+ +F INCO TN I OFN ICTION
Milieu | noun | mil • lieu : the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops.
food, exercise, or family.” What the hell do I talk about?
I want to laugh. This room is many things, but it is not a Petri dish of growth. I slide the book back into the shelf and ignore the others beside it. I sit down cross legged on the linoleum, wincing as my pelvis bruises my skin like an anvil. Leaning my head back, I close my eyes, and cry. *** A turkey sandwich cut into triangles, a glass of chocolate milk, and a small bowl of apple slices sneer at me from the plate. I haven’t eaten in three days. I have to try anyway. This wasn’t always me. I’m tired of lying to people I love. I hate that I’m eighteen but require the babysitting of dieticians and therapists. I’m sick of weekly blood-draws and weigh-ins. I’m ashamed I dumped my boyfriend to have an affair with starvation. I’m disgusted when I look in the mirror and see only a shell. I start with the fruit, nibbling shyly as I study the room. A laminated sign on the wall warrants an eye-roll: “Meal conversation will not include numbers, politics, religion, sex, books, education, UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
The timer’s been running for five minutes when the bistro door opens, and a girl walks in with dragging feet. Her therapist follows closely, smiling as she rolls an IV stand so it doesn’t catch on the chair legs. The girl sits down at my table, and I trace the tube from the from the IV stand to where I expect it will hook up with the girl— perhaps a needle in her arm? But the tube snakes all the way up through her right nostril and down into her throat. Not an IV after all. The feed bag hangs above us like mistletoe, it’s contents concealed by a pillowcase decorated with a huge Sharpie smiley face. I can hear it’s obnoxious, motorized churning. It pumps liquid feed into the girl’s stomach as mechanically as gas fills up a tank. “Great work today, Elizabeth. I’ll see you tomorrow for Group, okay?” says the therapist. The girl nods and turns to her plate. The pillowcase’s cotton smile grins at me.
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Hilarious.
years. Girls who see no point in recovering, since nothing waits for them on the other side. ***
Elizabeth is strange. Her hair is buzzed short like a boy’s and her skin is whiter than Wonder Bread. She wears a foam headband above her brow which makes her look like Olivia Newton-John in the music video for “Physical.” She’s silent. Therapists occasionally coax her into participating in Group, but the most they’ll get from her is a grunt, shrug, or an, “I don’t know.” I think she’s close to my age, maybe nineteen. They talk to her like she’s five.
No degree in pyschology can give a therapist an eating disorder. Years of experience can’t make a therapist feel what it is to be a caged bird like me, or an indifferent slave like Elizabeth. Therapists may understand psychologically why Martha squeezes her stress ball with every bite, or why Kelly jams a sharpened pen cap into her flesh under the bistro table. But they’ll never feel it. The barrier between us and them is so thick you can taste it.
“What do you think, Elizabeth, is that a value you’d like to have in your life? Do we need a refresher on what ‘authenticity’ means?”
Usually when asked a question, Elizabeth blinks a few times but says nothing. Her mouth opens slightly as if she’s going to speak, but soon she looks like a fish caught and ready to be disemboweled. Wide, dead eyes and full, parted lips. Half the time she looks extra-terrestrial. Her silence wins. The therapists give up.
“Elizabeth? Anything you’d like to share for your Committed Action today?”
“What about you, Erin, what’s your victory for today?”
“And do you have anything you want to process, Elizabeth?”
Sometimes I feel bad for these therapists. It must be hard trying to “crack” girls like Elizabeth. Girls who don’t mind uncomfortable silence because it’s all they’ve ever known. Girls who haven’t slept in their beds, taken the bus, or shopped at the mall in PAGE 67
*** I’ve been here three weeks now, but I have to ask Piper for the date to realize. The minutes, hours, days, and weeks blended together after just a few UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
days. I’m growing more comfortable. Maybe I’m just bored by it all. Either way, I’m a machine. 6:00. Piper wakes me up. I stand in the cold while she takes my blood pressure. 6:30. Leah weighs me. I shiver in a purple gauze gown while she reads the scale and scribbles the number onto a spreadsheet. 7:00. Breakfast is served. I’m redirected for cutting my food into small pieces. I’m redirected five minutes later for talking about Neanderthals, and the PCA gestures to the poster on the wall. Apparently homonid-talk doesn’t fit the parameters of meal-time conversation. 7:30. We crowd around the med window while the nurse prepares Miralax cocktails. 8:00. Bathroom break. Delores examines the toilet bowl before I flush. She checks the Bristol Stool Chart for which shit is mine and records it on a clipboard. 8:30. Snack time. Fifteen minutes. Slug down the sixteen ounces of water first. 9:00. Group. Therapists ask idiotic but good-natured questions such as, “And is that a helpful thought to have, Erin?” Every tick of the clock means I’m more of a prisoner. And yet in spite of that, I am brighter; fuller. Sometimes I feel human here. The four feet of love-seat Beth left me are my home now, the sticky faux leather charming in its own way. Lack of privacy requires some adjusting. UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
A bedroom beats a couch, but since mine is locked during the day, I make do. I’m reading a book about a Somali woman’s journey to New York when the couch squeaks. Another body settles in beside me. Elizabeth. She stares at me with those vacant blue eyes. “Hi,” I say. Silence. I keep reading. The Somali woman holds a pencil for the first time. “You read a lot,” she says. I’m startled by her voice. It’s deep for a girl our age—velvety and monotonic. The four-word observation is the most I’ve ever heard from her. I dog-ear the page and turn to face the alien on my couch. “Not really. My dad reads much more,” I say. Then I realize she’s trying to compliment me, so I backtrack awkwardly. “I mean, I guess I read more here than I did at home. There’s only so much you can do here,” I say. She looks confused. “Reading takes me away from Group Room, you know?” “I guess so. I just sort of sit around,” she says.
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Yeah, I’ve noticed. “Well, maybe you’d like this book,” I offer. “Want to borrow it?”
baring a suitcase full of books. By no small miracle, they were approved by my therapist. I guess as long as I’m participating in Group and completing meals, I’m permitted to read about wars and plagues and child brides.
“I can’t read.” She says this casually. Before I can think of a response, Piper’s squawking saves me. Dinnertime.
I’m reading Man’s Search for Meaning aloud to her when she asks, “Why do they do that?” “Do what, Liz?”
*** “Why do they kill them?” Elizabeth and I now cohabitate the sticky couch. I read, and she watches me. Sometimes I’ll get out my journal and fill a few pages. Elizabeth watches. I’ll draw shapes and shade them in, or make bucket-lists, or ask Piper to bring out the nail polish. Elizabeth watches. Now she breaks the silence.
“Because they’re Nazis. And the Nazis hate the Jews,” I say. Elizabeth doesn’t understand. She furrows her brow and closes the book in my lap. “But why?” I tell her that the world is intolerant. She doesn’t understand the word, so I explain.
“Teach me to read,” she says. “Elizabeth, am I different from you?” “Okay.” She nods. We start with what she knows. I have her read children’s books aloud, helping her with unfamiliar words.
“And do you hate me?” She shakes her head.
Two weekends ago Dad arrived for visiting hours PAGE 69
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“Right. But there are a lot of people in the world who hate others because they’re uncomfortable with differences. That’s intolerance,” I say.
continue reading.
She asks how many people died in the Holocaust, and I lower my voice to tell her. Then she points to the book and asks, “But, the world has good people, too?”
It’s a Tuesday morning in June and time for team rounds. Beyond the confining glass windows of Group Room, summer hums. Cars zoom down the highway hauling kayaks and mountain bikes. Here in Group Room, freedom is a fantasy. PCAs call us back to the conference room one-by-one, and our mouths water with anticipation.
Ashamed by her question, I realize I’m the bridge between Elizabeth and the world. “Liz. Totally. Where there is bad, there is also goodness and beauty,” I say. She doesn’t seem convinced, so I go on. Time to sell her the world. “Elizabeth. I got sick and came here. But before that, I had a different life. I went to college, I had friends. I picked my own bedtime. I had a plan—to be a teacher one day. And I believed I could do it.”
***
“Erin, you’re up,” says Leah.
“And no one hurt you?” she asks.
The couch squeaks a farewell to me as I leave. Leah leads me to the conference room, where I’m greeted warmly by my therapist, dietician, and doctor. Sunlight streams through the east-facing windows behind them, illuminating their faces like gods and goddesses. A smile spreads across my therapist’s face as she pulls up a chair.
“Right. No one hurt me.”
“Have a seat, Erin,” she says.
Elizabeth is quiet for a moment. “You want to get better and go back.” It’s a statement, not a question. But she waits for a response from me all the same.
My doctor straightens in his lab coat and pulls out a clipboard. “Erin, we’ve reviewed your progress over the last five weeks. We’re very proud of you.”
I don’t have one, so I pick up the book and UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
I never know what to do with compliments. I used to think they were some sort of sick joke. PAGE 70
“Thank you,” I say. The words taste good in my mouth.
“Are we done here?” ***
“We have some exciting news for you,” says my doctor. He tells me I’ve reached 80% of my goal weight, and that Partial is the next step. Only twelve hours of supervision, meals, and Group per day. A new treatment team and new peers. The transfer date is set: a week from tomorrow. “Some of your new peers you’ll remember from when you first arrived. So it’s not like they’ll all be complete strangers. Like Beth! You remember her, don’t you?” Beth. Right. She was a ball of sunshine. “Yes, I remember.” Relief. The end is here. I want to run back into Group Room and scream at Elizabeth, “Yes! I am getting better, and I am going back!” But tears gather in the corners of my eyes. My gaze lands on the friendship bracelet she tied to my wrist, the rainbow of colors blending
We just ate afternoon snack. Some of the other patients are back at the Boosting Table. Defeated, they guzzled down the protein-rich, corn-syrupy sludge as penance for their incomplete meals. “Boost is a tool, not a punishment.” Right. That’s why they make Boosters stay in the bistro, seated at a separate table as they sip the liquid failure. That’s why they must endure the walk of shame back to Group Room when finished. The rest of us return to our home base single file. Elizabeth gets caught somewhere in the back. By a miracle, she completed her yogurt, and now she’s in one of her moods: unresponsive, slow moving, and blank-faced. We’re almost to our destination when I hear what sounds like a dog whimpering behind me. I look back. Elizabeth has pressed herself against a wall. There she rocks with her hands over her eyes, whining and moaning softly. I fight against traffic to get to her, but the PCA grabs my shoulder. “I’ll take care of it, Erin. Just go to Group Room.”
together in a teary mess. PAGE 71
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“We’re friends,” I say. “I want to help.”
takes her usual seat next to mine.
The moaning increases in volume, louder and more shrill. Now she thrusts her forehead into the wall.
The meal passes with some difficulty. I sift through the anxiety in my head—I have a family session scheduled for this afternoon. I’ve probably gained fifteen or twenty pounds since I saw them last. Anorexia whispers to me that my weight is all they see.
Bang. Bang. Bang. It dawns on me that the Olivia Newton-John foam sweatband is protective. “No. Really,” she says. Her eyes widen as she motions for another PCA’s help. “Just join the milieu, please.” Behind the closed glass doors of Group Room, I watch Elizabeth in the hallway. Three staff members surround her: a brawny nurse, Piper, and another PCA. They corner her shuddering body and press ice packs to her neck. They help her to the ground and hold her there like a tranquilized beast. After they put her to bed, Piper enters Group Room and leads evening reflections as though it’s any other night. *** Today at breakfast Elizabeth seems perfectly normal. She shuffles in with the rest of us and UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
Sometimes I wish I could tell my family to stay home. I wish I could avoid their disappointment. Every bite is a punch to the stomach. The food tastes like cardboard. I want to scream, throw my chair across the room—give up. But I can’t. Chew. Swallow. I complete right before the thirty minute mark. Elizabeth holds my snot-stained hand in hers. You can’t find tissues here unless you ask for them, since the boxes can hide food and harmful objects. Our hands double as handkerchiefs. “Good job,” she whispers. “Please keep mentions of success to yourself, girls,” cautions a PCA. “Thanks, Liz.” PAGE 72
She points to the specs of food remaining on my plate and smirks. “Oh, I’m gonna have to Boost you for that. You forgot some crumbs,” she says. Sarcasm oozes from her voice. I take the bait. “Yeah?” I say. “Well. Looks like you forgot a sandwich.” The bistro is silent as a graveyard. PCAs glance at each other helplessly, not knowing how to reprimand me for my remark. Elizabeth’s Bolus feed churns above us, the only sound in the room. Until she explodes with laughter. The foreign sound that exits her throat is somewhere between a wheeze, cough, and hiccup. It’s completely contagious. Thank goodness someone can take a joke here. I’m not that nervous about seeing my family today. *** I’m reading Max Ehrmann to Elizabeth now. Dad sent me a small paperback collection of his poems in the mail. I want her to enjoy poetry. I want her to envision herself somewhere beautiful.
know. “Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul,” I read. “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” I close the book and smile at her. “It’s pretty, right?” She ignores the question. “Do you believe in God?” “Yes.” “Is that why you pray a lot?” she asks. “I guess so. Just helps me.” She takes the book from my hands and fans the pages with her fingers, her nails painted the sparkly cerulean I dared her to try. “I don’t believe in God.” “That’s okay,” I say. We’re quiet for a long time so I change the subject. “I like your hair short. Why’d you cut it?”
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Elizabeth tells her story the way someone tells you the color of their toothbrush. “I used to have hair longer than yours. Like right here,” she says. She hovers her palm just below her waist. “But it was used against me.” She picks at her cuticles while I piece together the rest on my own. “I used to have my mom shave my head over the sink every night so my hair wouldn’t touch my neck,” she says. “I’m a lot better about the hair thing now.” My eating disorder developed as a coping mechanism for a broken heart. Her nail polish falls in flakes onto the couch, and I feel small, stupid, and selfish. My struggle seems petty compared to Elizabeth’s. But this isn’t a competition. We’re fighting the same war on different fronts.
Elizabeth rocks in the corner. She won’t answer me when I call her name. Her palms cover her face. I lock eyes with the PCA behind the glass, who then shuffles around in the desk drawers for an ice pack. She’s not fast enough. Elizabeth stands up. She charges forward stiffly, like a robot. The nasogastric tube is yanked out of her nostril and Bolus feed squirts out, drizzling the pale yellow liquid over the coffee table. She walks straight toward the glass, deaf to my shrieks. Adrenaline burns in my veins and tickles the tips of my fingertips. I spring forward and grab her, clenching my fists together tightly, as I hold her back from the glass. She can only swing her head into it one time before I pull her to the ground. The PCAs hit like a swarm of insects and buzz around me with their ice packs and walkie talkies and jingling key rings. They pull Elizabeth out of Group Room and slam the glass doors shut.
“I’m glad I’m not alone here, Liz.” “I’m glad you came,” she says. She makes a face and laughs. “Not glad you’re sick, but glad you came.” Elizabeth turns and peers out the window shyly, avoiding my gaze. “Everything is better with you here.” *** UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
Every patient leaves their reading, their crocheting, their brooding to watch the chaos beyond the glass. Elizabeth thrashes against the swarm twenty feet down the hallway. Therapists explode from their offices, waving their arms. They speak in high pitched, soothing tones, but their body language is panicked. Nothing is getting through. She’s in her head, moaning and wailing PAGE 74
and whimpering. I want to help her. I have to help her. But I’m a fish inside a tank and no one can hear me. I look away briefly, just long enough to miss the moment Elizabeth pushes through the heavy doors under the red exit sign. Alarms sound. Nurses, PCAs, therapists, dieticians, and doctors run in packs down the hallways after her. Later I’m at the med window watching a nurse put vitamin D, Calcium, stool softener, and estrogen capsules in a cup. She stirs the Miralax with a coffee straw and pushes it onto the counter. She notices my splotchy, tear-streaked face.
Silence. My heart is in my throat. “Sweetheart, we just don’t—“ she shrugs, turning away from me. “We just don’t have here what Liz really needs. I promise she’s in a better place.” That’s what folks say whenever someone dies. It’s the morning of my transition into Partial. A van is parked at the curb eight floors down, waiting to take me miles away from here. I’ve pulled down the drawings and poems from the windowsill above my couch. Nothing remains. Patients sit in a circle on the floor of Group Room, passing around the recovery rock. It’s corny, but I’m too emotional to care.
“Sweetheart,” she says. “What’s the matter?” I speak so quietly the nurse has to lean in to hear me. “Please,” I whisper. “Can I please just say goodnight to Elizabeth before I go to bed? She’s my friend.” The nurse runs a hand through her hair and sighs. “Erin, Elizabeth is gone—she… ran off the property. They found her. She’s safe and everything. But she’s being transferred to the trauma unit at St. Francis’ Children’s.”
“When you came in here, Erin, you were so sick. You tried to hide behind a smile. That’s over now. I’m excited for you to be a real human.” “I remember the first time you cried—like, ugly, blotchy, snot all over your face cried. Looked like hell. Ever since then you’ve grown in ways you probably can’t see. But I do.” “Don’t forget that time you and Liz made fart noises during David’s therapy session.” “Ha! He ran out like a little girl.”
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“Slammed those doors behind him, too.” “Best day of my life.” The mention of her name forces the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes to trickle down my cheeks. The others continue to share their own anecdotes, but I don’t hear them. I wonder where she is—if she has friends, if she has things to read. I wonder if they’ve scribbled a smiley face onto her feed bag at St. Francis.
I hear her voice gently knock at the back of my skull. “You want to get better and go back,” she says. A statement, not a question. Again, she waits for my response. Yes.
Elizabeth. She pulled out the stiches of my smile. She sat in the awkward therapy-induced silences stubborn as a mule. She was unashamed of her strangeness. She never told a lie. She shook free in me the capacity to hate things: toilet-checks, failure, David, anorexia, Group. It’s good to hate things. Elizabeth shattered the glass cage that was holding me from flight. She gave me wings. I can’t see her, read to her, or feel her body next to mine on this God-forsaken couch. I don’t know her last name and never will. I glance at the bracelet now fraying at the edges. UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
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PAGE 77 UNDERGRADUATE + ART
firework Pine
ANNE LACHMAR | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
Marble in the Rain
NATALIE FJELDSTED | SECOND PLACE | FICTION
I stretch my legs beneath the dry, crisp sheets. The morning sun glows through the blinds and my husband, Justin, snores next to me. A smile flutters on my face as I stare at his hanging lower lip and twitching nostrils. He looks like a teenager while he sleeps. I stretch again, then freeze. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no…. I spring out of bed and rush to the bathroom. I squeeze my eyes shut as I flip on the lights, the cold tile floor chilling my bare toes. After blinking some spots from my vision, I yank down my shorts. Crap. They’re clean. I fumble through the second drawer under the sink before plopping on the toilet and holding the stick between my legs. I’m careful not to hold it too high or too low. I try not to shake. I snap the cap back on and lay the stick flat on the counter. Just one stripe. Just one stripe. Justin’s boxer, George, shuffles into the bathroom, whining as he nudges my knee. I try to ignore him. Justin and I made a deal before we got married that he could bring the dog as long as I had zero responsibilities for it. Justin would take care of everything, including giving it attention. The dog stares at me with his big black eyes, his mouth drooping like tar on a hot day. I think he’s actually pouting at me. PAGE 78
“Go to Justin,” I whisper, nudging him away. One stripe appears on the stick. Please don’t show two. Please don’t. I push George a little before he pads out of the chill bathroom. I stare at the stick, holding my breath. Just a little longer. I sigh with relief. “Carmen?” Justin says, coming to the open door and squinting at the bright light. “What’s going on?” He sees the stick on the counter and his eyes open. “Are you pregnant?” A smile twitches at his lips. “No.” I drop the stick in the trash and pull my shorts up. “My period must be late.” I scrub my hands under the sink. “Oh.” He looks down at George nudging his leg and scratches behind his ears. “I’m going to take George out.” He throws a sweatshirt over his head before letting the dog out the front door and shutting it behind them. I sigh and hit my palm against the counter. What is with him lately? We agreed, before we got married, no kids. I told him when we were dating, I reminded him after he proposed, I don’t want children. And he said, word for word, “that’s totally fine.” But he’s changed his mind, clearly. I PAGE 79
turn on the shower and wait to see steam billow from the nozzle. He totally changed his mind when Scott’s wife got pregnant back in June. I guess there’s something contagious about seeing your best friend so excited to have a baby. Or maybe guys have their own inner clock, and Justin’s went off when he turned thirty. Either way, now he wants a baby. I can tell. When we first got married, we felt so in sync we practically mirrored each other’s every move. We tried to arrange our schedules so we could maximize time together. He’d meet me on my lunch break. I’d see him after work to grab a snack and chat until he had to get back to school. We took turns cooking dinner, always trying to surprise the other with something new and delicious. We stayed up late and watched funny movies or played card games while we listened to the radio. Now he chats about his day while I pretend to listen and plan out my own day. About a year ago, I realized our marriage had swallowed me up. I went to lunch where he wanted, even when I hated it; I watched the movies he liked, even when they bored me; I painted the landscapes he asked for, even though they made me feel empty. I realized what was happening when he tried to convince me that I would only make it as an artist if I painted country landscapes. I almost believed him. UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
When I texted my friend Mary about Justin’s new attitude, she said we probably just hit a rut. Deep down though, I know I’m avoiding him. Lately, the conversation always manages to turn to children: when will I get pregnant. It exhausts me, fighting with him about it all the time. Justin shuffles back inside and we get ready for the day the way we always do; Justin rambles about his plans for the day while I ignore him and think about my own plans. Justin makes breakfast for both of us: egg-white omelets with tall glasses of green spinach smoothie on the side. I slump at our small kitchen table and stare at my most recent painting framed on the wall: a watercolor of the Logan river. Justin asked me to paint it for him as a Christmas present. I already see things I want to change. For starters, I wish it wasn’t the Logan river. After eating, I pour myself a glass of water and take my pills: one for depression, one for birth control. I stare at the birth-control case, soft pink and round with only three more pills inside. I should pick up my refill today. “Are you sure those are working?” Justin glances at the container in my hand as he rinses out our cups.
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“They work fine. I’m just late,” I answer, putting the pills back. “Do you want me to get pregnant?” Justin pauses. The hot water runs over our blue ceramic dishes. “I want whatever you want.” “All right then,” I say, grabbing my bag off the hook on the wall. “I’ll pick up my refill this afternoon.” He doesn’t respond as I leave for work. I throw a “see you tonight” over my shoulder before slamming the door behind me. I drive through Downtown Logan to get to work. These four or five blocks of historic Logan haven’t changed since they were built sometime between 1920 and 1960. People in Logan think it’s so quaint and classic. I think it looks like a ghost town. And it practically is, the way businesses keep closing. I’m pretty sure about half of the buildings downtown are empty right now, sitting there like sepia-tinted floor shows. I drive the last seven blocks to the mall and park. I work at a small boutique called White Slate. I’m the assistant manager, and I’ve hated it ever since I got the job. I hate the pay, and I hate that I’m a college graduate working retail. My father warned me if I chose to major in art this is where I would end up. But it’s not for lack of trying. I constantly work to sell my art. I enter all the art contests PAGE 80
and apply for every art fest and local sale within a 2-hour drive. But no one’s buying. The boutique smells like peonies, and rows of clothes cover the floor. Mornings are always slow, so only one sales girl and I work. I let her help the customers while I restock the merchandise. I need time to think. Does Justin really want me to get pregnant? Maybe there’s just a lot of pressure at grad school, and this is some kind of distraction for him. Justin’s writing his dissertation on the benefits of mindfulness, specifically relating to depression. His desire to help people was one of the many things I fell in love with. He also wants to specialize in self-harm and eating disorders, which are pretty intense. Maybe that’s just it. Everything feels intense right now, like when your car tires hit black ice. My manager arrives for her shift, and after asking me if I’ve completed the schedule for next month and restocked all the perfume, she says business is slow and offers to let me call it a day. She says I seem “distracted.” No kidding. As I leave, I text Mary asking if she wants to eat lunch somewhere nice, instead of the cheap place in the mall like we originally planned. We’ve been so busy with work and life that we haven’t seen each other in over a PAGE 81
month. The chill February air pricks at my cheeks as I hurry across the mall parking lot. Grey clouds shield the sky, suggesting snow. I kick a block of frozen slush off my back tire. It falls to the ground, and I stare at the grainy, textured snow. It looks like an abandoned granite rock. I kick it one more time before sliding into my car and driving out of the parking lot. Snow lines the roads, peppered black with dirt. Soggy, muddled slush gathers by the curbs. Snow isn’t pretty this time of year—it’s depressing. Bare, spindly tree branches scratch the chalky sky. The valley sits enclosed in white brushed mountains spotted with soft navy pine trees. Everywhere I turn I can see the mountains. Growing up, I thought I lived in a bowl. Now they feel more like prison walls, trapping me in a valley that fosters a cultural expectation, a social law treated like gospel, to marry and breed young. I heard from friends I met in college that this only exists here. When I arrive at the restaurant, the host escorts me to a table where Mary already sits. Soft jazz music plays over the speakers, and I can smell the garlic bread sizzling fresh on the table. Mary likes to eat at nicer places—places where entrées cost more than twenty dollars and the waiters wear white button-down shirts. Her husband’s a doctor, UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
so she can afford to have expensive taste. Mary stands to give me a hug, and I can’t help but stare at her stomach bulging out of her baby blue dress. “You’re showing,” I say, half in shock. I knew about her pregnancy, but this makes it so much more real. “I know,” she says with a grin, rubbing her growing bump with a glossy, manicured hand. Her large diamond ring shimmers on her hand like a small crystal ball. “Isn’t it great?” I feign enthusiasm as we sit. It feels about as great as finding an expired $20-off coupon in my couch cushions. “You still want to be in charge of the baby shower, right? Some of the other teachers are practically begging me to let them take care of it.”
“I thought you’d say that.” She pulls a folded piece of paper from her purse and hands it to me. “Here are the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone to invite. Oh, and my mom offered to have it at her house, since our house isn’t finished yet and your apartment is so small.” It seems like everything works out perfect for Mary. Her husband’s a doctor, she got a job as a kindergarten teacher, they live in a nice apartment with two bedrooms while they wait for the building on their house to finish, and now they have a perfect little bundle of joy on the way. Just thinking about it makes my gut clench. Mary and I have been best friends since the first grade. We’ve always been able to tell each other everything. We want what’s best for each other, but part of me feels like her pregnant belly is glaring at me— judging me. “So, how’s work going?” Mary asks.
In a serious lapse of judgement, I offered to throw Mary a baby shower after she told me her good news. I think it was all the excitement, like “it’s not me, it’s you!” But with all the pressure I’m feeling lately to have my own baby, I probably should say no and let her work friends take care of it.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I answer before taking a long swig of water. She laughs. “I like White Slate! Let’s talk about your art then. Brad and I bought one of your pieces yesterday, that cool ink one of the bare tree. We’re hanging it in our living room.”
“Totally,” I answer. UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
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“Thanks,” I say. I hope she’s not the only one who’s bought something. “The show goes through the rest of the week, so tell your work friends.” I continue to trace my finger around the rim of my glass, staring at the dots of perspiration forming on the curved surface. “I always do,” she answers. She stares at me for a moment. “Is everything all right? You seem upset.” I stare at the basket of garlic bread. The stiff fibers weave together like mail armor. “Justin is still hinting at children,” I answer. I rub my fingers against my temples. “He said, no he promised me, he was fine with never having children.” “Maybe he lied,” Mary said, her eyes widening at the suggestion. “You know I’ve heard of guys doing that. They say it’s fine because they assume the wife will change her mind.” “I hope that’s not the case, because I’m not changing my mind,” I reply. I take a long drink of water. “Because of the tiny-house dream?” she asks. I’ve always dreamed of owning a tiny house and using it to travel all over the country, painting, never really being tied down to one place. In college, PAGE 83
Mary and I made a collage of what I thought would make the perfect tiny house. I think I still have it in a folder somewhere. “That, and I’ve just never felt the desire to be a mom,” I answer. “You know how most women see a baby and think, ‘I can’t wait to have one!’ and all they want to do is hold it and never let it go? I’ve never felt that.” “Yeah but you’re only twenty-five. A lot of people our age find kids annoying. You’re not crazy to feel that way.” I remember an email I got from a college friend last week. She moved back to Boston after graduation, and she thinks I’m “out of my mind” for even considering kids right now. She said, “You’re in your prime! Don’t throw that away just to give your man a baby. You have plenty of time to have kids, if you want to. But if you really don’t, don’t let anyone change your mind. This is your life, and there’s nothing wrong with not having children. That lifestyle isn't for everyone.” I wish I lived in Boston. “Do you think you’ll ever change your mind?” Mary asks. I shrug. “I doubt it, but even if I do, I don’t want UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
to give him, or anyone else, false hope.” I tear off a piece of garlic bread. “I’d rather people think I’m never going to have children so they leave me alone, instead of telling them ‘who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind,’ and have to endure everyone pressuring me to do it immediately.” Mary nods, chewing a piece of garlic bread. The waiter brings our lunches, and while we eat we chat about places I should go if I ever get my tiny-house. Mary thinks somewhere closer, like Los Angeles or Portland, might be best. I think I should forget the tiny house and go somewhere far, like India or Ireland. We finally agree that Rome, with all its romance and grand artistic works, would be the perfect place to start. I can always come back and get the tiny house when I’m done. I wish I could go right now.
station and watch some elderly people shuffle through the front doors, their coats swallowing them up. As I enter the station, I notice an elderly couple in knit sweaters. They buy an oil painting of an autumn forest. Not one of mine. The station, originally built as a train depot, is no bigger than a small stage—one room currently lined with panels full of art. I shuffle towards my own work: impressionist themed watercolors of cityscapes, romantic couples, and dancers, as well as a couple ink sketches of trees and flowers. A majority of the pieces at the fest are landscapes or animal paintings, as is popular in Cache Valley. I notice an older lady as she examines a pastel of a sleeping cat. Again, not mine.
Mary and I hug good-bye at the end of our lunch, and I decide I should probably stop by the art fest. Mendon, a small town just outside Logan that nestles against the Wellsville mountains, decided to start holding a celebration of local artists by displaying their art for sale at the Mendon Station. Since my parents live in Mendon, they managed to sneak me into the art fest. I’ve been trying to sell my work in Logan for the past three years now, and I’ve probably sold about ten pieces, total. Mary is my most loyal customer. I pull into the
As I approach my art, the nice Mendon resident who has volunteered to help greets me. I scan the panel. My watercolor of a street dancer glares at me, like it’s my fault it and the many works surrounding it don’t have a permanent home. The artist I share this panel with hasn’t sold much either. This makes me feel a little better, since we have similar styles. He likes to sketch gritty portraits and paint wispy expressionism pieces. I like the chalk piece of a waterfall. The cascading shades of blue, purple and silver calm me. I met the artist at the beginning of the week when we
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set up. He’s a business professor up on campus. He said art is more of his hobby. “How are things?” I ask the volunteer. “Not bad,” she answers. “You’ve sold five prints and one painting.” Well, I know who bought the painting. I hate that I know that. My sales feel so much smaller when I know who bought what. I want my art to sell so fast I can’t keep track of purchases. But I don’t want to do it their way. As an artist, I would feel like a sell-out if I did that. As I stare at the street dancer, his frozen extensions alive in watercolor, I wonder if I’m even good at what I do. But I love it, and nothing can make me give it up. As I’m leaving, I bump into my mother, heading past the purchase desk to see my work. Her green knit sweater hugs her motherly curves like a teapot cozy. We hug, and she clutches her purse hanging from her shoulder as she apologizes that she won’t be able to buy any of my work this time around. I try to shrug it off. “Any luck so far?” she asks, tucking a short lock of soft brown hair behind her ear. My mom’s hair always reminded me of a baby bunny.
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“Not really,” I answer, sighing. “Don’t tell Dad.” She presses her red, wrinkled lips together. “Have you given any more consideration to going back to school? Getting your master’s? You could teach painting at the college.” “We’ve been over this a thousand times, Mom. I don’t want to teach.” I fold my arms across my chest, pressing tightly. “I know, but you could do so much to help other kids with art, the same way art helped you.” She offers me a smile, but I don’t take it. In middle school, I lost my older brother to suicide. I had no idea how to deal with it. I felt an emptiness so raw, like when your bare flesh rubs really hard against a clean gymnasium floor. Nothing made sense. But then my counselor recommended signing me up for an afterschool art club, and I finally found my healing mechanism. Art became my way to cope with everything, and the deep connection I felt with it has only grown since. My brother didn’t get to live his full life, and I feel like I would dishonor us both if I live my life doing something I resent. “It’s not the same thing,” I answer.
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She shuffles her feet, rubbing her lips together some more before changing the subject. “So, your sister already wants another baby. Can you believe it? She just had little Henry a couple months ago, and she’s already planning on baby number three.” I plaster a smile on my face. “Good for her.” I remember when I met my sister’s baby for the first time. The family gathered for the holidays and of course they all wanted to see the new baby. After breast-feeding him, my sister asked me to hold Henry while she fixed her shirt and traded the blanket she used to cover him for a burping towel. As soon as the baby touched my hands, I felt everyone stare at me, like they expected to see my heart melt out of my pores. But as I stared at the bald, monkey-like boy resting in my arms, I felt nothing. I knew I was supposed to feel some kind of nurturing, motherly instinct, but I just wanted my sister to hurry up and take him back. When she did, she burped him over her shoulder, and he spit up all over her hair. A man with a grey beard and rectangular glasses jumps up from his metal folding chair next to a now empty panel. “I sold my last painting!” he says. A smiling couple walks past him. They hold a pastel of a wolf howling on a rock. The people nearby, including my mother, clap for him. I shove my hands in my pockets. UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
I decide to go home to paint. Painting usually makes me feel better, more secure. George bounds up to me as I walk through the front door. I push past him and drop my things on the couch. He gives up begging for my attention and curls up on the dog bed in the corner. I pull out my watercolors and brushes before resting my most recent piece on the kitchen table. Our basement apartment is so small, the kitchen is the only space I can work in. The front door opens up to a small carpeted patch where we have our couch and TV. Straight through that stands the kitchen which is barely big enough for our table the size of a small desk. Our bedroom has just enough space for our queen-size bed and one dresser and basically nothing else. With Justin going to grad school and me working retail, it’s all we can afford. The money I make selling art rests in a separate account. My art doesn’t make enough to be considered helpful when paying the bills. I like to think I’m saving what I’ve made for something special, but I mostly use it to buy more supplies. I paint a couple walking side by side down an empty street in the rain. Everything has a dark, grey tint to it except the couple’s skin which is marble white. They each hold their own umbrella, his green and hers blue, but they’ve reached out PAGE 86
to each other, pinkies locked. I like the presence it gives of being independent but together. Most people don’t paint love that way. I work until six, when it’s time to order in Chinese food because Justin will be home soon, and he likes dinner ready when he arrives. I clean off the table and move the painting to our room, making sure it’s dry before I lean it against the wall. I look out the window and smile a little. I like when the sun sets in the winter, and the whole world turns blue. The food shows up right before Justin does, and George jumps around like a drunk frog when he sees him. Justin fills up George’s bowl and gives me a quick kiss before we sit down to eat.
“We talked about my tiny house idea,” I say. “Remember that?” “Oh yeah,” he answers, nodding. “I’m glad we’re not doing that. That would be so stressful, especially when we have kids.” I stare at him as he scoops orange chicken onto his plate. The pieces of chicken fall out of the box like bloody knuckles. I don’t know how he eats that stuff. “Made any other art sales?” he asks. “I don’t know,” I lie. I shove the egg roll in my mouth, letting my words fight the food.
“How was work?” he asks. “Boring,” I say, taking an egg roll. “But I finally got to see Mary. She’s been so busy. It feels like I haven’t seen her in ages.” “You saw her at the New Year's Eve party,” he replies. “Yeah but that was over a month ago,” I mumble. “Well then I’m glad you got to see her,” he says. He digs into the carton of orange chicken.
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He makes a neat pile of rice on his plate. “You know, I was talking to one of my friends on campus today, and he knows a guy who’s getting his masters in opera singing.” He doesn’t look at me. “He’s working to be this big, famous singer but he wants to stay in Logan. Guess how successful he is.” I can feel my face warming. “This is different.” I grab another egg roll. “I don’t plan to stay here forever.” I swirl the egg roll in the soy sauce on my plate. Justin chews his chicken and stares at the orange sauce staining the white rice. I sip my UNDERGRADUATE + FICTION
water. “Why don’t we get out of here?”
“We need to talk about this, Carmen.” He looks at me again.
Justin looks at me. “What?” “Let’s get out of here.” I drop my egg roll on my plate. “I hate it here. I want to see places. Let’s go, get out, see someplace new.”
I swallow. “We have talked about this. We agreed, no kids.” “Well I think I’ve changed my mind.”
“You know we can’t do that, Carmen,” he answers, setting his fork down. “I have school and work. And you have a job.”
I can tell. I reach for the carton of chow mein. “Well too bad. We agreed.” I can feel his eyes on me as I scoop out some noodles.
“Who cares, let’s just go.” I can practically smell my desperation mixing into the ginger scents like spilled bottles of perfume.
“So, I don’t get any say in this?” he asks.
He looks at me sternly, not blinking. He picks his fork back up and spears another piece of chicken. “My mom called today. She wants to know if we plan on having kids any time soon.” I pick up my egg roll and shove it in my mouth. Justin’s mother called at least twice a week, and she only ever mentioned me to ask if I was pregnant yet. Justin is an only child, and while I understand the bloodline will end with him if we don’t have kids, I don’t care. My breath sticks in my lungs at the thought of bringing a grandkid into the world just for my mother-in-law.
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“It’s my body. I think it should be my decision.” I pinch the noodles with my chopsticks. “I disagree,” he says, his voice rising. “We need to talk about this. I want kids now, Carmen. I’m your husband. We’ve been married for five years. You can’t just ignore that.” “I’m not.” “Then why won’t you talk about this? Why don’t you want kids?” I slam my chopsticks onto my plate. “Because I don’t. I want to travel, I want to make art, I want to live my own life, and I don’t want kids.” PAGE 88
“I don’t see how having kids gets in the way of any of that,” he answers. A smudge of sauce clings to his upper lip like a scab. “You don’t have school, you can quit your job at White Slate, and you can paint and take care of a baby. I want children. My parents want grandchildren. I know your parents would love more grandchildren. All of our friends either have children, are pregnant, or are getting ready to be. We’re not getting any younger. Let’s just go for it!”
I slam the door shut behind me and lean on it, my hands shaking. What am I doing with my life? I hear Justin’s voice muffled through the door, probably swearing to himself. I stare into the dimness of our bedroom. The sun has already set. I feel cold, and I can’t see very well, but I don’t switch on the light.
I hold my breath. George shuffles up to me, whining for food. I push my chair back and step past him, staring at the bedroom door. I can’t look at Justin. I focus on walking: left foot, right foot, left, right, left, right.
My laptop lights up from its place at the foot of my bed. I gravitate toward it, not sure what else to do. My mind feels blank, buzzing with peppered static, like when you stumble onto a blank TV channel. My email icon bounces at me at the bottom of my screen. I click on it and an email from Mary springs up, glowing at me in the darkness. It’s a link to a cheap airline that could take me to Italy. I click on the link and continue clicking until I’m staring at “checkout” with a single, one-way ticket to Italy staring back at me. My mouse hovers over the “buy” button. Can I really do this? Am I really trying to do this? What am I doing with my life? I can barely see the glow of the couple I painted leaning against our bedroom wall, their locked white pinkies slicing through the black gap between them. I hear the fizzle of the sink in the kitchen. Justin must have finished dinner. He’s probably washing both of our dishes.
“Carmen,” he mutters. “Carmen come back. Carmen!”
I click “buy,” and the confirmation and receipt screen pops up to greet me.
I stare at him, our eyes locked. “I don’t want to.” He throws his hands up. “What else are you doing with your life right now?” I let my hands fall into my lap. He stares at me, his cheeks flushed and his chest rising and falling. His eyes flicker wider as he waits for me to say something.
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Funeral Flowers
ABBY STEWART | THIRD PLACE | FICTION
Marguerite made dresses out of flowers. It was delicate work. Each petal had to be stitched together with a needle smaller than the top joint of a pinky finger. Sometimes the petals tore through, slipping off the table and shrinking to the floor in defeat. Sometimes the petals dried before they could be sewn, cracking and shriveling into themselves, turning into a brittle skin. Sometimes the work made her fingers ache and her vision blur with colors and veins and thin scraps of flowers. Once the petals were sewn together and the dress in place, Marguerite hung the creation upside down, pinned delicately by the bottom of the skirt. Only then were the petals allowed to dry, crinkling and withering but staying together, held by thread thin as a spider’s web. The tiny dresses seemed more appropriate for fae folk than human folk, but they weren’t meant to be worn. On occasion, patrons requested a wearable dress, and then Marguerite had to delve into other material. Tulle and satin and such. The flower petals ended trapped between translucent layers or used to stain the fabric. Marguerite considered it a waste of petals, but it made people happy.
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That’s what Marguerite liked to do. It started with flower crowns when she was a child, dandelions pulled from the earth and tied together in clumsy knots, thrown over wispy hair and around thin necks, encircling tiny wrists. But as she aged and her hair grew paler and wrists knobbier, the dandelion crowns turned into projects more complex with flowers not from backyard lawns. Wedding and bridal party bouquets, prom corsages and banquet centerpieces, Marguerite loved them all. Each had a different feel, a different kind of sentimentality, a different kind of joy. She bought them from bridesmaids, stole them from dumpsters, and bribed event coordinators to leave them behind in an inconspicuous pile by the back door. Sometimes people brought them to her with a specific request. She was not well known, but some found her. They saw pictures of the tiny dresses of dried flower petals, or the people in her town asked her husband why she could be seen carrying armfuls of discarded flowers. When people came asking, it was a welcome surprise. Usually. The woman at the door to Marguerite’s home had heavy eyes. They turned down, dark and thick-
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lashed. Her hair curled out around a round, welltanned face. She had a withering arrangement cradled in her hands. Lilies. Marguerite didn’t like working with lilies. Lilies were funeral flowers. “I should have called ahead. I realize that now,” the woman said. Her fingers curled against the browning stems. The open door let in the November chill, raising the hairs on Marguerite’s forearms, exposed by her rolled up sleeves. “I’m sorry about that.” Marguerite nodded. She still held a needle and two petals in her hand. Roses from a wedding. A gift this time, not stolen or bribed. “I was wondering… that is, I heard you take flowers and turn them into… dresses?” The woman looked down at the vase in her hands. The water at the bottom was murky. “Annalise Harding, my neighbor recommended you.” “I do,” Marguerite replied. Her voice sounded like overturned earth. “What’s the occasion?” “These were a get-better-soon arrangement, from my mother, to my daughter.” Hesitantly, the woman extended the flowers to Marguerite. Hesitantly, Marguerite took them.
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“They… weren’t much help.” A twitch turned Marguerite’s wrist. She almost dropped the vase. The woman didn’t notice. “Can you make them into a dress?” Marguerite ran her long, folding fingers over the drying petals. “Maybe. These are a bit far gone.” That wasn’t the issue. Marguerite could sew these petals together just fine. Lily petals made excellent material for skirts, falling easily into the shape and tapering into a lovely point. Already she could see the smooth shape of the skirt, the petals she could tuck and fold to create sleeves, the different directions of curling veins and fibers after dried. Yet Marguerite had issue with the principle of it. She didn’t work with lilies. None of her work featured them. She tried not to touch them at all. Not everyone knew that lilies were funeral flowers, that they represented departed souls, that they were always filled with sorrow. But Marguerite knew. “I guess I don’t need an answer now,” the woman said. “I’ll pay whatever you want.”
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Still unsure of what to say, Marguerite nodded. The wind blew sideways, tapping a flyaway strand of gossamer hair against her creasing cheek. She stared at the lilies that had been transferred into her hands, hardly noticing the woman in front of her nervously shoving her hands into the pockets of her pea coat and shifting back and forth on booted feet. “Will you consider it? I know you don’t do client work all the time…” Nodding again, Marguerite glanced back up. The woman was struggling not to cry. Without the flowers in her hands, she clutched at the arms of her coat with desperate fingers. Marguerite felt her mouth forming words, and said, “I’ll take a look.” “Oh, thank you.” The woman smiled and loosened her grip on her own arms like she wanted to pull Marguerite into an embrace. Then she seemed to think better of it. Her fingers curled deeper into her sleeves. “Let me know when you decide. I’m Victoria, by the way.” She patted the pockets of her coat, producing a pen and a notebook no bigger than a cigarette box. “When you decide, will you please call me? I live a while away, but I can come back.” She scribbled a number on the pad of paper, ripping out the sheet in a clean swipe. PAGE 92
Still not fully aware of what she’d agreed to, Marguerite took the paper. “I’ll let you know.” “Thank you,” Victoria said again. She smiled that sad smile, gripped her own arms, and left. The flowers sat dead in her grasp. Their fading, dying scent rose to fill Marguerite’s lungs and coat her airways. She closed her eyes. Usually, there was some hint of life, of knowing that they served a purpose, a happy memory attached to the cells. These flowers were just dead and heavy, bricks instead of petals. Marguerite stared at them long after the woman left. They felt stolen. Flowers from a grave. Not hers to take and remake. She set them on the table in the front room, to forget about them until she could form a decision. “Where did you get the flowers in the front?” her husband asked. Lucas had kind hands and eyebrows that extended too far over the sides of his face. The small dinner table separated them, cluttered with a pot of stew and a basket of bread. An empty candlestick teetered at the edge of the table.
“That’s good, Margie!” Age had pushed his teeth together, making his grin even more crooked than it had been when they first met. “It’s great when people recognize your work. It’s beautiful, and I’d love for you to do this as often as you can. It makes you happy.” Marguerite knew Lucas understood his wife’s solemnity was hardly sorrow, more caution and reserve. But she also knew that he liked to see her smile. Really smile, with her teeth showing and eyes crinkling up and even the hint of a laugh. “I don’t know if I’m going to.” He rested his wrists against the table as he looked up at her. “Why not?” “I can’t.” “Why not? You’ve never turned down flowers before.” “They’re funeral flowers.” Lucas’s knobbing hands curled into fists. “I know you don’t like lilies, Margie. But someone might want—”
“A girl named Victoria,” Marguerite said. “She wants me to make a dress for her.” Her hands tore at the bread she held. PAGE 93
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“They’re for her daughter.” Marguerite dropped the last bits of her roll, the plate now covered in crumbs. She avoided her husband’s eyes. A long pause stretched between them. Lucas’s knuckles tapped against the table. “Oh.” “I can’t take them.” Her arm wrapped around her stomach. She felt the ghost of a swelling abdomen, a sharp pain, spots of blood. Lilies at a funeral, brought by Lucas, with only the two of them in attendance. Shoulders that hunched and remained hunched since. “I… I understand,” Lucas said. Marguerite looked up at him, eyes too dry to cry. “I know you don’t want to work with something that will bring those memories up. I wouldn’t either,” he continued, reaching across the small table, weaving between the basket and the pot, taking one of her thin hands in his. “But someone wants comfort. And maybe you can give some to them.”
enough for a newborn. It was the first dress she had sewn, and the only time she’d used lilies. He switched the subject, commenting on the new neighbors moving in down the street. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Her mind still sat on a shrinking display of funeral lilies she couldn’t bear to touch. It hurt just to look at them. Marguerite brought the flowers into her workroom at the back of the house, sitting for hours in the straight-backed chair Lucas had made for her and staring at the lilies on the table. The light faded from the small window in front of her. Her bowed fingers rubbed two discarded rose petals together. Lucas didn’t come in, though the door was open. She didn’t allow him in her workroom. He walked too loudly, breathed too heavily, existed too solidly in her space. Her workroom was hers and only hers. She did the work she liked, and she did it well. Now, she couldn’t bear the thought of picking up a needle and pressing it through the delicate skin of those petals. It hurt.
She nodded. Her head pounded. She had one dress that she had sewn entirely, selfishly for herself, one that sat at the back of her closet, made of white lilies that had faded over the years, big
The woman on her doorstep had the same lilies for nearly the same reason. As much as Marguerite wanted to give someone else the comfort she wished she’d gotten, she knew a dress made of
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dying petals wouldn’t do much. All it had left her was an empty room. She picked up the lilies. She hung them up to dry. She picked up the wrinkled scrap of paper from the corner of the table and left the room to find a phone.
memories. “I just can’t work with these.” Anger flared in Victoria’s dark eyes. She snatched the lifeless bundle of flowers from Marguerite’s heavy arms, a few petals shaking loose and falling to the weathered wooden floor of the porch. They landed without a sound. Neither woman looked down.
“I’m sorry.” The wind had calmed. The next morning’s sun brought some warmth. The woman stood again on her porch, wearing the same coat, clutching her sleeves again. Refusing to extend her arms to take the dried lilies back. “I began to dry them, so you can keep them,” Marguerite said. “Hang them upside down when you get home. But I can’t work with these. I’m sorry.” She held the lilies out, waiting for Victoria to take them, wanting them to be gone from her home. Her arms shook. “Did I do something wrong?” Victoria asked. “Did I bring them too late? Did I not take care of them properly? Was there something more I could have done?” “No,” Marguerite said. Victoria had done nothing wrong, except bring lilies weighted down with PAGE 95
“I thought you could help,” Victoria said, her voice sharpened like a blade. Though rage colored every vein under her skin, the corners of her full lips dropped and trembled. “It was something little, and I thought you could help ease the pain, even just a bit.” Marguerite shrugged. She never said much. She had even less to say now. The floorboards of the porch creaked as Victoria’s stance shifted. She leaned back. Then forward into place, straightening up to her full height, the same height as Marguerite. “I thought you could help.” Clutching the withered blooms to the breast of her coat, Victoria stared a moment longer before stepping away. Her back remained stiff and unyielding as Marguerite watched her walk down the crooked and overgrown path and into the car idling at the curb.
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With Victoria out of sight, Marguerite brushed the fallen petals off the porch with her foot, turned around, and closed the door. It ate at her. She didn’t touch any other projects. She avoided her workroom, spent her days while Lucas was gone trying to read, often in the room the farthest away from her workroom filled with unfinished projects. The flowers withered and dried incorrectly and uselessly while she did nothing. Days passed. Weeks faded away. One morning Marguerite found herself standing at the door of her workroom, wringing her hands and staring at the crumbling bits of flora she had left on her table. Before her hair had turned white and her flower dresses needed a space to be born, this room had had other plans. A cherry wood cradle used to sit where her table now did, a walnut wood rocking chair by the window, an oak mobile of stars and tiny faeries hanging from the ceiling. Lucas had made them and then taken them all away. Marguerite had stepped into the empty room with wilting lilies in hand, fingers twitching with the desire to create when she’d just lost.
Since then, Marguerite hadn’t gone a day without stepping into the workroom, filling the walls and shelves with pieces of things she had given a new purpose, flowers with life still attached to their fading cells. Every day of her life since those lilies had been occupied with tiny needles and invisible thread, silken rose petals and leaves smooth as sanded stone. Even now the urge to find a daisy bloom and a needle pricked at her fingertips. For the first time since Victoria had left, Marguerite stepped into her workroom. Whereas the room had before been pristine and orderly, with the transition it had become a place of work. Little scraps of torn petals littered the floor, roses and gardenias and hydrangeas. The only furniture in the room was the long, low worktable and a straight-backed chair, made by Lucas, in his own workshop closer to town. The closet door was open, revealing shelves of supplies, boxes of thread and needles, spools of ribbon, and finished dresses, hanging out of the sun to dry. In the back of the closet sat a wooden frame, slanting against the back wall. A dress made of lilies hung inside. This dress had taken every petal, every leaf from those lilies. The dresses she made now spanned
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the height of her hand, but this first one she had made large enough for a baby. A newborn. Marguerite lifted it reverently off the shelf, encased in its heavy cherry frame. The weight surprised her. She staggered ever so slightly, backing out of the closet into the center of the room and leaning the frame against the table. Her hands trembled. Marguerite had been sitting in this room, with the ghost of the flowers buried in the back of her closet for too long. The paper with Victoria’s telephone number and address still teetered at the edge of the table.
Marguerite barely left the house, especially without him. She spent her days cooped in her workroom, tucked away and comfortable. “I needed to drop something off,” she said. He didn’t ask. She knew that he knew. He raised his overgrown eyebrows in curiosity, nodding a little, before turning back to sit straight in his chair. Marguerite slipped off her shoes, then came to join him, sitting in her own highbacked armchair of cornflower-printed fabric. His hand fell over the side of the armrest, palm up. She entwined her fingers with his.
She returned not an hour later. Lucas was home by then, book in callused hand, the afternoon sun sloping lines across his back as she entered the room. “Where did you go?” he asked, looking over his shoulder. The creases around his eyes shifted as if he were smiling. Marguerite shucked off her coat, hanging it on the coat rack just inside the door. “To the woman whose dress I couldn’t make.” Lucas shifted in his chair, turning to face her as much as his creaking bones allowed. “What for?”
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FICTI G DUAT
GRA F
G R A D U AT E F I C T I O
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ON
Dug
CHRIS DAVIS | FIRST PLACE | FICTION
“So, Dug, we’re going to need the box stocked as soon as you can, all right? Thanks a ton!” Steve called in from the doorway of the walk-in freezer. Before Dug could respond, the wall-sized door slid closed with a sound like a stone sliding over a grave. Dug stood there, alone under the dim yellow light and drone of the fans. Dug literally just walked in and already knew the shelves needed stocking—it’s not like it wasn’t blatantly obvious. He’d just walked right past the front of the box after clocking in and, as usual, no one had stocked the shelves since early that morning. There were gaps in the yogurts and orange juices, and even more noticeable gaps in the milk, where customers liked to shove the gallons at the front aside to reach the back where the later-dated jugs were. He faced the shelves from inside the box, so he wouldn’t have to go out on the floor where customers could more easily bother him. The smell of mildew and yogurt tinged every moist breath he took. Organizing and stocking the shelves became his only function, and he let himself slip into the mechanical rhythm of it – stand, push the buttermilk up, grab a new box, put it on the shelf, kneel, push the cottage cheese up, grab a new box, put it on the shelf, stand, push the almond milk up, grab a new box, put it on the shelf—no thinking involved.
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“Excuse me,” a voice said from the outside. Between the top of the Organic Unsalted Butter and the shelf above it, Dug could see a woman’s eyes looking in at him. As she leaned in toward the shelves, Dug could see thick strokes of cobalt blue makeup caked on her eyelids. “Do you guys have any more of your organic soy yogurts?” “I’m sorry, we’re out of those at the moment,” Dug replied. “Are you sure? I was just here on Tuesday, and you had it then,” the woman’s eyes said, her mascara crusted lashes blinking at him. “We sold out on Wednesday, and it didn’t come in on the truck yesterday, unfortunately,” Dug said, attempting to feign interest. “Well, may I talk to a manager?” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yeah, just a second,” Dug said. He stepped off the milk crate and caught a glimpse of the brand “Hollister” plastered across her shirt, and grimaced. Why did everyone have to advertise one thing or another on every piece of clothing PAGE 101
they owned? What exactly did identifying with the Hollister brand do for this woman? She looked exactly like thousands of other people who shopped there—congratulations. Dug walked over to the juice section, slid the shelf panel open, and waited. The scuffed, matte-black doors to the back stockroom swung open and Steve wheeled out a stack of Organic “Power to the Greens” lettuce boxes on a hand truck, whistling cheerfully. “Hey Steve,” Dug called. Steve stopped whistling and looked in through the juice. The fluorescent white light that gave the box products that fake heavenly glow shone off the top of his bald head. “This lady by the yogurt wants to talk to a manager.” Steve wheeled his stack next to a register and walked briskly toward the yogurt. Dug noticed the gap on the bottom shelf where the Tropical Carrot Juice Blend should have been, and grabbed a box to fill the empty space. Dug took his time, dreading going back to the stocking the yogurts before “the big charade,” as he called it, had ended. Trader Joe’s employees were all taught the same way of dealing with these situations: be overly-apologetic and please the customer at any cost. They’d blither through a dramatic apology about how they’d essentially failed the customer, fault the store for the “inconvenience,” and then GRADUATE + FICTION
offer just about anything to make it up to them. It sickened Dug to watch. “Hey, Dug?” Steve called in from the other side of the box. Dug sighed and walked back to the yogurt section. “Yeah, Steve?” Dug said through the shelf. “Can you please check for this beautiful lady if we have any more organic soy yogurts, back there?” “Just a minute,” Dug said, and sat on an empty milk crate. Steve knew they were out of the yogurts, and he knew Dug knew that better than anyone, being the only full-time “box boy,” as he was referred to by the other employees. He waited about thirty seconds, then stood back up. “We’re out of those, Steve,” Dug said, almost inserting the word “still” into the sentence.
told the woman she could try any other yogurt at a discounted price. He finished stocking the carrot juice, and Steve’s legs came into view. “Sorry about that, Dug. I know you told her we were out, but sometimes customers just need us to go the extra mile, and we have to oblige.” The high-pitched inflections of positivity in his voice sounded like a violin string being wound too tight—Dug practically winced as he listened. Steve finished his optimistic “the-customer-isalways-right” lecture and walked off, resuming the chipper whistling. Dug fell back into the rhythm of stocking for a while, until he heard the sound of the door dragging open and closed again. He watched Justin’s curly brown hair bounce toward him as wheeled stacks of deli trays rolled out of the way.
“I’m so sorry about that, miss! Let me take down your information so we can contact you as soon as they come in!”
“What up, Duggy?” Justin said, the usual stupid grin plastered across his face. His wide and slightly crooked teeth protruding out from under a mess of long brown hair gave him the look of a cocky caveman, clashing with the baggy jeans hanging six inches below his waist. Mikey stood behind Justin, his eyes so red that the smell of weed he’d tried to cover with Febreeze became unnecessary in alerting everyone to the fact that he was high.
Dug walked back to the juice section just as Steve
Dug said, “Hey,” and continued stocking the
Dug watched the top of Steve’s shiny head tilt to the side dramatically.
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Mango Coconut puddings. Justin grabbed a strawberry milk from off the shelf, sat on a box of half-and-half, and took out his phone, while Mikey dug through the deli trays, looking for the prepackaged sandwiches. Dug went back to stocking, trying to tune out their conversation. Dug couldn’t stand the types of conversations that Justin and Mikey had. He went back and forth constantly between wanting to be a part of the conversation, and not wanting anything to do with it. He wanted to be able to talk for hours about phones and television shows like they did, but he also couldn’t stand it. Is that what life was? Just years and years of talking about the ways you entertained yourself? It seemed like they were in a blissful state of selfishness, and Dug almost envied that. But on the other hand, he despised their lack of interest in anything other than themselves. Literally nothing mattered to either of them but their own entertainment. An hour passed uneventfully—Justin and Mikey ate, talked, and stared at their phones, while Dug stocked the shelves alone. They paid little attention to him, content to pass the time as if he weren’t even there. Dug welcomed their choice to ignore him, but it did him no favors in terms of the job, itself. Dug was the so-called “head” box boy, which meant nothing other than the fact that PAGE 103
he spent the most time in the box. His job was to keep the box stocked and faced during store hours, and then completely stock the box to full capacity before the store closed at 9 pm. Justin and Mikey had actually been hired to help Dug finish it out before closing, but both of their shifts ended conveniently at 8 pm. This left just enough time for customers to deplete the shelves until the store closed, leaving Dug to stay an hour late to finish it out nearly every night. Of course, the timing didn’t really matter either way, since neither Justin nor Mikey ever did any actual work. Dug had learned early on that asking either of them for help was pointless. Once, during the extremely busy holiday season, Dug couldn’t keep up with the number of customers pouring into the store and depleting the box shelves. Justin had used his shift that particular day to see if he could fall asleep in the box on a row of milk crates. Dug had finally asked Justin for help. “Look, I know you don’t give a shit about this job, but we’re fucking slammed, and I actually need your help, so can you please put up a box or two?” Dug said. The stupid smile returned to Justin’s face.
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“Sorry, Bro, but I’m off in twenty minutes,” Justin said and spent the remainder of his shift staring at his phone. Dug had never asked either of them for help again. As Dug unpacked a box of Kerrygold “Pure Irish Butter,” Justin slid open a shelf panel to grab another drink. “Damn, you guys gotta check this chick out!” Justin whispered, without taking his eyes off the girl he stared at through the sour cream. Mikey put his half-empty tub of Belgian Chocolate Pudding on a shelf, and highstepped over some boxes to peer out at the girl. Together, the two of them stared through the gaps in the shelves, murmuring vulgar things about her, and sliding the gray shelf panels to follow her when she moved. This only made Dug more annoyed with them. Maybe this was what life was—following your genitals whatever direction they pointed. Dug felt the lust like every other male he’d ever come into contact with. He couldn’t turn off the crude thoughts constantly plaguing his mind, couldn’t look at an attractive woman without thinking of what she looked like naked. However, instead of it being an enjoyable—or at least entertaining—fixation, like most men he knew, it annoyed him more than anything. It made him feel like a creep who didn’t deserve to be in close proximity with any woman. He hated GRADUATE + FICTION
the sexual dynamic between men and women. He didn’t want to spend every second of every day thinking about sex. Was he really destined to go through his entire life thinking only of this one dirty and selfish thing? He continued stocking the milk on the bottom shelf, only able to see Steve stocking coffee on his hands and knees across the aisle. Justin and Mikey followed the girl toward Dug until they nearly knocked him off the crate he sat on. Dug couldn’t continue filling the milks with Justin and Mikey practically sitting on him to stare at the girl, so he looked out at her with them. Dug couldn’t see her face, but the girl’s legs were crammed into jeans with frayed holes above the knees, where her fleshy thighs bulged out of them. Every time she bent to examine a product, her intentionally-exposed cleavage hung between the shelves, and a thin silver necklace with “Jessica” written on it dangled off her neck. When she stood back up, the chain hung down between her breasts. “I’d give my left nut to be that fucking chain,” Justin muttered. “I’d give my bong,” Mikey said, as the girl finally walked off toward the registers. “Well, maybe my old bong,” he corrected. PAGE 104
Mikey simultaneously interested and infuriated Dug. On the one hand, Dug almost envied the drug-intoxicated state of bliss Mikey seemed to live in every single day—he did what he liked and, despite the fact that it was illegal, he appeared consistently happy. On the other hand, Dug loathed Mikey’s lack of being present. Why did he need to be high all the time? What was wrong with sober life? It was the same thing with Justin and frankly, everyone, with their phones or televisions or whatever their vice was. No one lived in the moment. Every second people weren’t talking about themselves or complaining about something, they just stared stupidly at Youtube or Facebook or numbed themselves into drunken stupors. He couldn’t comprehend how people lived their lives that way. Justin and Mikey started bickering over which of them would have a better chance of getting with her. Dug attempted to tune them out again by stocking milk, until Justin asked, “Duggy, who would that chick get with first, me or him?” Dug stared back. He’d wanted to say, “You’re both fucking idiots, so neither,” but that seemed too PAGE 105
rude. In terms of looks, he guessed Mikey won, but that may have been simply because of Dug’s perception of Justin as a caveman. In terms of conversational charm, however, he honestly had no idea. He’d never personally understood the skill of bridging the gap between silence and conversation. He resented the fact that some men tried out lines on women; it made them look as stupid as most of them actually were. But he also couldn’t stand the men he knew who simply had the gift of smooth-talking. Dug tried to imagine talking to the girl. What the hell could he possibly talk to her about? She had a mind of her own, and he didn’t know what it was like, or where it was. He could be thinking of taking her to a movie and she might be thinking about whether or not a colony of robots lived on the far side of Jupiter. It seemed impossible. Again, he felt like something was wrong with him—like he wasn’t a regular human. “So, me or Mikey?” Justin asked, furrowing his brows. “Never mind, we’re out of here in ten minutes anyway. By the way, Steve asked us to wrap some pallets earlier, but we never got around to it, so you’ll have to finish it for us. Thanks, Duggy!” Mikey nodded at Dug, and they exited. The door slid shut, and the fans whirred on, the lone source of sound inside the box. GRADUATE + FICTION
Dug shelved the last few cartons of two-percent, and walked out—at least wrapping pallets didn’t involve talking to anyone else. He waited by the door until the sound of employee conversation died out, and he went out. Squinting under the bright light of the back room, he lifted the heavy loading-dock door and hopped down into the warm air of the California night. Milk crates lay scattered around the wooden pallets, and Dug could smell rotting food from the dumpster and stale cigarettes. Soft yellow light poured long shadows down the alley from fixtures mounted high up the dirty brick walls. Dug took in a breath of the warm night air and looked up into the sky. The stars were concealed by smog and the glow of the city lights. He gathered and stacked the milk crates in head-high towers on the pallets, and picked up a roll of plastic. While trying to un-stick the edge of the plastic roll, he heard the crinkle of plastic by the dumpsters. Dug turned to see a golden-brown and black-striped tabby cat strolling out from under the fence around the dumpster, licking its lips casually. “Oh, it’s you, Errol Flynn,” Dug said, kneeling and holding his hand out. He’d named the cat after the famous actor a few months back while despairing about the lifelessness of his own name. It suited the cat well; something about its golden-brown fur and handsome green eyes gave it the look of GRADUATE + FICTION
a romantic swashbuckler. The cat rubbed the top of its head across Dug’s hand, and he stroked it affectionately. He stood up and the cat jumped onto the picnic table where employees took smoke breaks and began cleaning itself. Dug unspooled the plastic around the bottom row of crates and started a circular walk around the pallet, pulling the crates tightly together. Thoughts of the day spiraled around in his head as he walked circle after circle around the inanimate plastic cubes – the yogurt lady, Steve, Justin, Mikey, “Jessica.” Dug felt nothing but scorn for all of them— Steve’s optimism, the yogurt lady’s skepticism, Mikey and Justin’s blatant selfishness, Jessica’s self-parading. And yet, it hurt him just as much. He again wished he possessed Justin and Mikey’s indifference toward anything other than their own desires, wanted to take on every shitty day as positively as Steve did, wanted the confidence Jessica had. But he wasn’t any of those people, and he hated them, as well as himself. Tears swelled in his eyes as he finished wrapping and tore the plastic from the roll. His chest felt as if it had crumped in on itself, his breathing harsh and difficult. He sat on the dirty ground with his back against the pallet, trying to suppress the tears. “What the fuck is wrong with me, Errol?” He asked, not looking up from the ground. PAGE 106
“Why is everyone and everything so horrible?” The cat jumped down, and Dug thought for a moment it would lovingly sense his pain and come to his side, but it simply walked off down the alley. Dug almost laughed, but the feeling of his heart sinking to the bottom of an ocean within him curbed any chance of laughter. He dried his eyes and walked, as casually as he could make himself appear, back through the stockroom and into the box. The tears returned just as he slid the massive door closed. He stumbled ungracefully through the trays and boxes and collapsed onto a crate in front of an open shelf panel. His breath gushed out of him in great wisps of steam, and he couldn’t hold back the pathetic sniffling and choking sounds of true crying. “What the fuck is the point of any of it?” Dug gasped to no one. “Why am I here? What the fuck am I living for?” He paused, taking in a couple rough breaths. “Is putting milk on shelves really what life is about? Or am I just supposed to become a selfish, shitty person, like everyone else?” He felt like his mind was breaking—not in half but into hundreds of pieces. He wasn’t trying to be negative or hate everyone. Really, he didn’t even know why he cared. He wished he could just be happy, no matter what happened around him. But he just couldn’t. For some reason, he cared about the way that people he knew lived. And PAGE 107
it bothered him that no one else seemed to. He simply couldn’t live happily when no one seemed to care about anything or anyone. Perhaps the most upsetting thing was that Dug didn’t know what it was life should be. He didn’t want to be some kind of religious martyr, or “do unto others” pupil, or anything like that – he just wanted to see some good in the world. “Are you okay?” a quiet voice asked. Dug knew it came from between the shelves, knew it was a child’s voice, but he didn’t care—it didn’t matter in the least who it was. “Why am I here?” Dug asked, head down, tearblurred eyes unfocused on anything in particular. The kid paused. “You put in more milk when we run out,” the kid said. Dug heard a hopeful tinge in the kid’s obvious explanation, as if when he told Dug this, it’d instantly make him feel better. “But it doesn’t matter, I don’t matter. I have no one. I am no one.” “You’re someone,” the kid said, and paused. “What’s your name?” GRADUATE + FICTION
“Dug.” “See? You’re Dug! You’re someone!” “Look kid,” Dug said with a sniff. “I know you’re trying to help, but—” Dug couldn’t even finish the sentence—another swell of tears hit him. A moment passed in silence, and just as Dug wondered if the kid had gone, he noticed a movement above the milk. The kid’s hand hovered open between the shelves. Dug considered it through tear-filled eyes. He knew how it would look, knew the societal implications, but it was the first sign of true kindness he’d been shown in a long time. He took the kid’s hand and held it in his own. The moment lingered, like a single musical note reverberating in an empty room, and Dug felt his breathing slow a little. He wiped his eyes and turned to say something, just as the kid’s mom began yelling and yanking the kid away.
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fandoms
TAMBI CLARK | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
The Cavern of the Silver Moon
RICHARD BLAKE | SECOND PLACE | FICTION
Damian was twelve years old when it happened. Nobody goes out on a normal day thinking something bizarre is going to happen to him. At least the early part of the day had been normal. He’d gotten up, helped his father sweep the house and clean the yard and then visited the market to buy some bread. Every third day of the week was like that. It started out as a sunny day, but the clouds rolled in around three hours after noon, bringing a light shower. But then, even that wasn’t too unusual. When one lived on the coast rain came and rain went year-round. In the late afternoon, while there was still a drizzle of rain coming down, he decided to head toward the hills. A place he and some friends often visited was on the other side of a few hills. Though the grass was wet and the dirt quite muddy, he wanted to walk around some of the old stones that lay there. Most of the parents in town didn’t like their children going there. All kinds of funny stories existed around the place. Some of them certainly were designed to scare children away. At one point a lot of stone buildings once existed, or so the story went. Now there were just a bunch of collapsed stones with the occasional one standing, which could once have been a wall.
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It was the strange pictures and writings on the walls that the children found the most fascinating. Damian among them. In the center of the scattered stones was a pillar about six feet high, though the top had broken off so nobody knew for certain how tall it had been in the past. This stone had more images, scratching, and writing on it than any other stone in the area. He had never been taught to read, but those who could told him that the letters used on it were different than the ones used to write his language. The notion of some strange language being used in his home area was strange. He had never heard of any other language ever being spoken there. Nobody in the village could read it. Most people didn’t even care, but Damian did. It was this location that he wished to visit. Normally it took him about an hour and a half to reach it. A couple of the hills he had to pass were steep, so basically, he took the long way around. He had no desire to try any kind of hard climbing. The mud was thick, but he had walked through thicker stuff than this many times. The rain stopped, and it remained that way for the next hour. Then a sudden storm came out of nowhere, and he ran as fast as he could toward the nearest cover he could find. It was a hole in PAGE 111
the side of one of the hills. It only went five feet inward; something he would never tag with the designation of “cave,” but it sufficed. His whole body was dripping wet when he was able to get into its cover. The storm lasted for a while. He lost track of time while deciding what he should do next. Should he turn around and head back home? It was getting late. While deciding what to do, he noticed another niche in the side of one of the nearby hills. Something about this one was different. The opening was almost a perfect halfcircle. Like someone had gone in to create it. The entrance had a flat stone above it with a faded picture he couldn’t make out. It was the shape of a circle. That was about all he could tell. Something about it seemed familiar. It fit the description of something he had heard in a story once. He decided to go in. The first part of the cave was about ten feet high and followed in a straight line. It went about twenty feet, then it branched off in two directions. In one direction it looked like just any old cave one might find. The other was a little lower, but on the ceiling, there was a white circle that momentarily glowed. The next thing he knew, he was walking down that tunnel. It started as something he could just walk in, but then slowly, it GRADUATE + FICTION
declined, so that he had to crawl for a bit. The next thing he discovered was another split. He decided to take the one on the right. After crawling about ten feet into the tunnel, it slowly began to rise up, so that eventually he was able to stand up again; first bent over a bit, then finally to stand up straight. Then it got larger and larger. Deeper into the cavern he realized that the light that had been seeping through some place was almost gone. He might have to turn back after all. That was too bad. This was getting interesting. Then he remembered the candle he had purchased the day before. It was still in his pocket. He’d forgotten to give it to his father. Pulling it out, he cracked two stones together as his father had taught him. One spark and then another came up. Finally, a flame ignited the wick. Taking a deep breath in relief he moved on. This cavern he found himself in was large. The candle couldn’t show him how high or wide it was. Again, he hesitated. Where was he going? Wandering around by himself in a cave he didn’t know was dangerous, and he could get lost. The other side of him was too curious. What was there, and what did the white circle on the walls mean? It only took another moment’s thought before he shrugged and decided to continue on, just a little. That image of the white circle meant that people GRADUATE + FICTION
had been there before. They had come for some reason. And who knew? Something interesting might’ve been left behind. The next thing he knew, he was standing in front of a wall. The top of the cavern still couldn’t be seen, nor could he see how far it went from left to right. The wall itself was a bit jagged, but not sharp. Moving his hands across the wall, he headed to the left. Why the left, he could never explain later. Perhaps because of the slight curve noticeable there, or some odd scratch that didn’t exist on the other side. His hand moved over the rough surface until it came to a spot that wasn’t jagged. It was smooth and circular. The same kind of half circle he had seen at the cave entrance. This stone shape was half the size of the entrance to the cave. While thinking about what that could mean, he looked down and found the first sign left by any people traveling through before him. There was a pick with a broken off handle and the blade of a shovel. Bending down to touch it, the handle to the pick crumbled beneath his fingers. All that remained was the blade. The metal of those tools themselves were a little rusty, but still firm in his hand. Lifting up the metal end to the pick he turned back to the wall.
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The candlelight made the shape of this smooth, stone surface obvious. At one time, there had been a tunnel through here, but someone had made a perfectly-shaped stone in order to cover up the opening and hide the fact of the tunnel’s existence. A fairly good job, if one didn’t touch the two kinds of stone and see how different they were. As hard as he could he thrusted the pick’s point against the smooth stone. There were chips of stone that fell down but nothing more. Five more whacks against the stone had the same result. A thought then came to him. Picking up the shovel blade he noticed that it had a slightly different shape than a usual shovel. It was almost the same shape as the stone in front of him. Lifting the shovel blade, he flipped it upside-down and pointed it toward the stone. A bright silver circle lit up above the stone, then the stone in front of him vanished. Excited, he crawled through the opening. With the sight of these glowing circles, he suspected that he knew where he was headed. He was going to the Cavern of the Silver Moon.
He had heard of the cavern before him. It was exciting, finding it like this. Many of the children from his town had left home in search of it—a place of much wonder and riches. With just one swoop of the hand, his family would not go without food for a long time. It might even be possible to buy a boat or many other things his family always wished that they had. The possibilities were endless. The next thing he knew, he was crawling into the hole. This hole went no further than five feet before it opened to another cavern. One much larger and glittering with small, bright lights. He pushed up against one of the stones at the end of the tunnel before pulling himself out. The stone he’d touched a moment before lit up, lightening up in the shape of the moon. Now he was certain. Hurrying in, he had eyes only for the stones lying on the ground. Scattered all over the place were gemstones and jewelry of all kinds. Piles and piles of them were visible as far as the eye could see. The light they emitted made it so he had no need of his candle. He blew it out. His hands dug into the piles of stones about him. Shoveling many of them into his pockets, his eyes caught the movement of small shadows. First, they were uncertainly shaped, like shadows that moved up and down and changed shape. The next
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thing he knew, he was confronted by several small figures. They almost looked like little men and women, except for the depth in their eyes, with large ears and fingers. They also had no hair on their heads.
“But you were going to rob us?”
“Come here for riches, have you?”
“You have heard of us?” the spokesman asked. “And you clearly have heard of where you are.”
The voice was light and flowed like the wind. It was light-hearted, but there was something almost like an edge to it. The speaker sat on a stone that rose above the many stones laying around. This one had its hand lifted up as he stared at his fingers. At the ends were long claws.
Sweat began to trickle down his face. “I didn’t know they belonged to anyone. I didn’t know anyone was down here.”
“I think this is the Cavern of the Silver Moon,” the boy said as he glanced around at the crowd that surrounded him. “I’ve heard of the Knockers, but I didn’t know the two went together.” “What do you know about the Knockers, boy?”
“Who are you?” he asked with a shaky voice. He remembered other legends about the Cavern of the Silver Moon. Like those concerning people never returning or that those who make it are driven mad, so that when they return home they’re never the same. “You know us as the Knockers,” was the answer. “This is our home, deep in the depths of the hills and mountains. At one time there were many more, but time has not been kind to us; neither have the humans we’ve met.” “What do you mean?” Damian asked. “I’m not going to do anything to you.” GRADUATE + FICTION
“Well, only that you lived underground. Sometimes you’ve helped people and sometimes you hurt them. I never did understand why you did that.” The speaker lowered his claws, then altered his position on his podium to face the boy. “Those things you said are true. Do you know why those things might be?” Damian shook his head. The crowd of little people stood still, then began sitting down. He knew that a story was coming. There was nothing he PAGE 114
wanted to do more than leave there, but he could tell there would be no leaving before this one was done saying what he had to say. Finally, he decided to sit as well, avoiding any creatures or stones. With a smile on its face, the creature began, “A long time ago, the humans who lived around here were miners. These mountains are full of precious things. All along the hills and mountains they toiled. For hundreds of years this went on. The Knockers regularly interacted with these miners with each helping the other. Many times, we would help them find their ways through the tunnels or occasionally lead them to wealth, then in return they would bring some of their ale or nice things they made for us. Then large groups of humans migrated from elsewhere to settle here, and things changed. “When they came, we continued on as we always had, but these new people saw things differently. They learned about what we are and the things we knew. They had a sense of awe and respect for a time, but then some decided that we were their hope for riches. They took advantage of our kindness. Rather than working with us, they tried to capture us in hopes of finding riches, or they feared us because we had powers they couldn’t understand. Many of our kind were captured or killed by the humans who mined this area. PAGE 115
“After this happened for several years, we decided it was time to stop it. We needed to choose a time best suited to make our move. When the Days of Chaos came, that was when we decided to do so. The earth shook, destroying many things that the humans had built. The rising tides swarmed in to drag many humans out to sea or kill them in their homes. Using our powers, we drove many of them mad, some killing their fellows in madness with the others fleeing the land. Those who tried to hide in the tunnels were also driven mad or made to be lost where they could never escape. It was for this reason we created the Silver Moon Stone. Touching that stone made one lost forever in the tunnels and unable to reach the tunnels that led out of the caverns. Eventually humans were almost completely gone. Only a dozen or so of those people remained when others migrated to the land. These humans were fishermen, so we left them alone and they mostly had done the same for us. The only knowledge of the Knockers is what was told to the newcomers by the few who remained of the last generation.” Damian stared at the speaker, not knowing how to understand what he just heard. All of these terrible things were done a long time ago by people who no longer existed. So, what were they going to do?
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“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “I’m just walking through the tunnels. I didn’t know you were down here and I didn’t know these belonged to anyone,” the boy said. He started dropping the stones he had picked up from the floor. “I promise I won’t tell anyone where this place is.” The speaker among the Knockers looked Damian up and down. There was some kind of speculation on his face. The other Knockers sitting around came to their feet and, the circle backed up slightly. “Boy, you cannot leave the tunnels.” He stared at the speaker in shock. “You’re going to kill me?” A hint of pity came to the Knocker’s face, “No, we wouldn’t kill you. You’ve done no harm. Even if you had those stones, we wouldn’t care as much.” “Why can’t I leave?” “You have touched the Silver Moon Stone, Damian. You can never leave.”
and out of here as they pleased,” the speaker said. “After the Days of Chaos, a stone was created to protect the Knockers and our homes. We created it in the shape of the moon in honor of our people. We called it the Stone of the Silver Moon. You touched that stone when you came into the cavern here. Anyone who touches it can never return to the surface. There is no way to break the spell upon the humans who touch the stone.” “You’re going to leave me here to starve?” “No boy, we aren’t that cruel. The Knockers shall make sure that you have the food and water you need, but the caverns and tunnels are now your home.” After these words, the speaker vanished from the makeshift pedestal he had been standing on. The other Knockers backed away and then vanished somewhere. The gems had lit the chamber brightly, but the creatures still disappeared somehow. Damian yelled to them to come back, but they were gone. The next thing he knew, he was back in a tunnel. This one was different from the others he had seen, and he was facing a deadend wall.
“The Stone?” “At one time, humans were allowed to come in GRADUATE + FICTION
He began pounding on the wall and started crying, “Please, let me out. I want to go home.” His words PAGE 116
echoed through the tunnel, but there was no response. In front of him was only stone. The way he’d come into the tunnels was blocked. He could only go the other way. The way that would take him deeper into the hills. The tears wouldn’t stop as he continued to sob, then he ran off in the only direction he could go. There had to be some other way into the tunnels. What he had heard about the mines that used to exist here was that there was more than one way in in case one entrance should collapse. Running down one tunnel and then another, he thought he recognized a cavern, but the exit was all wrong. Time had been completely lost to him. He had run so much that he was exhausted and still had no idea where he was. Sitting down against one of the chamber walls, he thought he should get some rest. Then he could get moving again. The next thing he knew, he was waking up, and there on the floor was some bread, cheese, and water. He had forgotten he hadn’t eaten for a long time, but seeing this food, he realized how hungry he was. Devouring these things, he got up and began searching again. This time he wasn’t running so much. His legs and arms were sore from all the running and climbing he’d done earlier to find the way out. After thinking about it, he realized that a lot of PAGE 117
passageways could be hidden in spots he might just pass by if he didn’t take a closer look. Forward he moved, looking here and there at places that looked different than others. The entrance to the Cavern of the Silver Moon had a stone that was different than all the others around. Just when he found himself getting hungry again, he followed the tunnel around a corner and on the ground was food for him to eat. Grateful as he was to be fed, he was disturbed that the Knockers were clearly keeping an eye on him. That could mean that there truly was no way out, no matter what he did. He didn’t know how long he wandered before he sat down and started to cry again. Days passed. It was obvious with how many times he had been left food and water. At least he had required no candles or other extra light. Somehow, despite the obvious darkness around, he had little trouble seeing, though it was like seeing dim light all around. Cavern after cavern, he was able to encounter and navigate without trouble, but there was still no way out. Every cavern had five or six entrances and exits. None of them had the glowing stones he had seen before or were shaped like the ones he’d seen. He never seemed to see the same cavern twice, even when he backtracked to take a different route. There was nothing he could do. What was the point of him constantly wandering GRADUATE + FICTION
all over the place and tiring himself out when it really didn’t matter where he went? One day, he couldn’t tell how many had passed, he had stayed in that chamber for at least a couple. The tears had returned. He constantly thought of his family and friends he would never see again. All because he had insisted on crawling through some tunnels to see what he could find. The tears finally stopped after a while when he looked up and saw another one of the Knockers in front of him, sitting on a small ledge next to his position. This one was a woman. She was the first of the Knockers to appear to him since he had been blocked from the cavern where all this had started. “Hello Damian. I hope you’re not hurt.”
in the past. He’s saved several miners who were trapped when mines caved in long ago, but then other humans had captured his brother, then had him killed when he didn’t bring them the desired riches soon enough. The Knockers live a long time, and we will always remember the bad things. The number of bad memories are greater than the good, regardless of who may or may not be responsible. “I, and a few others, do believe you deserve this choice. You have not harmed us, and I believe you shall not betray us. To take this way out will require sacrifice. Are you willing to make a sacrifice to return home?” “Yes, anything. Please let me go home.”
The boy shook his head, but then turned his face away. As much as he wanted to have someone to talk to, he didn’t want it to be one of these Knockers. “What if I told you there is a way out, but it won’t be easy, and you’ll never be the same?” These words of hers brought his eyes back to her. “There’s a way I can get out? Why didn’t they tell me that?”
The Knocker nodded. “Very well. You still have five stones in your pocket. Keep them. Here are five more.” Saying this, five more gemstones were handed to him. “You shan’t leave destitute here. But when you exit these hills it will be to a different place than you entered, and it will take you several days to return, but you will return. Soon, you will discover the sacrifice you have agreed to.”
“Because many don’t wish you to leave. The one you spoke with before was hurt deeply by humans
Saying this, the Knocker pointed her finger toward the corner of one of the walls in the cavern. A
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light flickered, then a half circle tunnel opened up similar to the one that brought him to the Cavern of the Silver Moon. A moon-shaped circle momentarily flared up above the entrance, then it disappeared. Damian quickly got to his feet and ran for the opening, fearing it could close at any time. Relief flooded in when he made it through. Looking backward, he saw that the Knocker was gone. A brief thanks he gave out to her, though he never knew if she heard him. Racing down the tunnel, he came to a curve that led to another large chamber. From there, he could see an opening on the far side with sunlight shining through it. On the floor before him was more food and water. Picking this up, he ran toward the sunlight. Going through this tunnel, he found himself outside, standing on a hill facing eastward toward a small town. From the looks of it, he thought he knew where he was. The Knocker was right. He was many miles away from his home and it would take a while to get there. After a moment’s thought, he decided not to go to the town. There was nobody there he wanted to see and he had enough food and water to last him a few days. Heading west, he began to realize what she’d meant when she said he would never be the same. Inside, he felt different. Like a weight was on him. PAGE 119
A darkness that hung at the back of his mind. His body moved mostly the same, but his head kept seeing the darkness that had surrounded him when banished from the Cavern. The Silver Moon Stone shone as a beacon. A beacon to drive one back rather than draw one forward. Walking through the hills, he paid little attention to anything else around him. At least three times he passed through the ruins of ancient cities similar to the one he’d visited before. They didn’t matter. Finally, after four days he could see his home. As he walked into town, many people called out and ran up to him. “Damian, where have you been? Are you alright? Your parents are so worried!” Then they got a closer look and added, “What’s happened to you. Are you sick?” The words brushed by. He did not want to talk to anyone. All he wanted was to get home and stay away from everyone. His mother ran out of the home and gave him a hug. It was the best feeling he’d had in days. She held him back to look at him more closely. “What’s happened to you?” she asked with a look of fear in her eyes. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he GRADUATE + FICTION
demanded, a bit more harshly than he’d wanted. Leading him inside, she handed him a mirror. What he saw shocked him. His face looked about five years older, with his hair a pale white and his eyes a strange, glittery green color. They had been brown before his trip. A heavier weight came down over him, causing him to sit down on the nearest chair. Tears returned to his eyes that he quickly wiped away. A moment later, his father ran into the house. He’d just heard about his son’s return home.
the tunnels or the great cavern. It was another ten years before he would tell anyone exactly what happened. And that was his wife he married that year. Damian was largely recovered and able to work with his father but did not speak much. The gems he’d given his father allowed them to live more comfortably and own their own fishing boats. The family was happy with their good fortune that turned their lives around, but Damian would never forget what happened in the Cavern of the Silver Moon or the Knockers who’d changed his life forever. The weight and emptiness inside him would remain for many years to come.
Before his father could say a word, Damian pulled the ten stones from his pocket and set them on the table. Whatever his father was about to say died on his lips. Swiftly, he lifted the stones and his eyes opened wide. “Where did you get these?” he asked. “The Knockers,” was Damian’s reply. The shock on his parents’ faces was apparent. Before any more questions could be asked Damian stood up and went to his room. The following day he was sick with a fever. The illness remained for a month before he could sit up and eat normally again. After he recovered he wouldn’t discuss what had happened to him. There was no mention of GRADUATE + FICTION
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onyx arms
LUKE LEMMON | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
poet G DUAT
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ry
a sister’s burden
CAMILA SANABRIA | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
Today I awoke with the taste of my brother’s death dancing on my lips. A bitter residue like dried lemongrass teases my tongue, trapping her in a waltz of secrecy. She swells, and swells, and swells with silence, pink flesh throbbing in the darkness inside my mouth. A drought arrives, and I expect her to shrivel— like raisins in the August sun— but instead she ripens, full and round— a grape that bursts and a stream of iron and salt surges for miles, and miles, and miles PAGE 124
down my throat, drowning me in silence. My lungs behind my teeth, I part my lips and release a sea of screams red, like the blood I imagine pouring from his wrists; red, like his grip as he considers an expired bottle of Prozac; red, like the tie he wears on Sundays, a noose against a blue throat; until air runs out and the present sinks in, reminders of his neck rising still with quiet breaths, a steady dance between lung and flesh, ease my heart. So I hush my cries and allow my silence to rest.
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On Tuesdays he’s like chocolate dripping off my fingertips and his laughter melts away the chain that barricades my insecurities, even for only a moment
blinding him to the steam billowing out my ear drums, a steady pulse of half-baked promises; I blink and suddenly it’s April, and he’s green like the vine sliding out from its hiding spot underneath the smirk and between the inside jokes he mutters to me in our favorite corner, tucked back where there are no witnesses
Hazel
CAMILA SANABRIA | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
before he turns grey like thunder rolling along in the middle of January, when the golden flecks of his charm are like my grandmother’s glaucoma,
to his split-second amusement, and I forget about the thorns poking out on Thursdays, piercing the scabs left from his wit and irritating the flesh of my patience I wear so vulnerably; Sometimes he changes depending on his audience and sometimes he accepts the invitation to remove a mask so carefully constructed from false expectations and puffed up reputations. PAGE 126
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UNDERGRADUATE + ART
shadow
LUKE LEMMON | HONERABLE MENTION | ART
Mostly he’s hazel, and not because it’s the color of his eyes or hair, but because he refuses to make up his mind.
With the summer she rises and illuminates the sky, inviting us to celebrate her arrival. Winter’s shadow melts into the night, her glow burning— a chandelier in an abandoned ballroom. Despite the welcome, I feel like a trespasser. The others seem not to worry.
Their laughter echoes off the banks where they shed the chains of mortality, and she smiles down upon them. They accept her call.
Artemis
CAMILA SANABRIA | FIRST PLACE | POETRY
They stride into the river, confident as if they know she’s expecting them.
But my chains keep me safe— safe from the penetrating eyes of wanderers and safe from the dangers of freedom. I watch from the shore, warning bells ringing through my mind. The others splash and squeal and shine like the stars above us.
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And while every thought in my head screams for me to stay, my heart knows to not keep her waiting.
The first step shocks me. Not because it is cold, but because of its warmth. The current is tender, a whisper whose gentle tide anchors me in place, until I fully accept the moon’s invitation. The others beam at my decision. Their welcoming arms beckon me to follow them and together we sink into the river’s embrace. She hangs above, a mirror and reminds us of the beauty of our creation. And while fears and doubts continue to creep, ebbing waters drift them away. Under her glow, my soul begins to float. We become goddesses.
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GRADUATE + POETRY
In HBO’s miniseries Big Little Lies, Jane Chapman, played by actress Shailene Woodley, sprints down a beach, heels in hand, blue cocktail dress feathering behind her. The scene cuts to a gun, aimed and cocked.
down her cheeks, black hair caught in the corners of her open, shocked mouth. A door closes. The man is gone. His wake is
See Jane Run
KATHRYN CHRISTIAN | SECOND PLACE | POETRY
Cut to a hotel room. A man stands over Jane. His buttondown is white. Cut to Jane’s face. Mascara cascades in rivulets
footprints on a beach, and his poisonous seed rooted inside of her. Six years later, she runs obsessively, listens to Martha Wainright’s “Bloody Motherfucking Asshole” each lyric pounded into the sand by her Nikes. She stamps herself into impermanent surfaces—a fist in the wall, a scream thrown into the wind— dreams of flinging herself off Monterey cliffs into the spitting sea. See Jane run. Cut to summer of 2011. I dreamed of shadowy places, like the cold, shocking silence of a riverbed, my mouth filling with silt and drowned crane flies. Cut to one dream, in which I was buried beneath a corn field, the roots and rotting husks
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my pungent cradle. Underground and underwater was where I wanted to be, away from his eyes, his hands that formed like claws, scraped me raw. Just like Jane, I ran until my heels blistered and bled, until I threw up on the side of the trail, the vomit curdling in the hot red sun. See me run. Faster, until my feet are pounded into submission. Faster, like I wish I could have run from that farm house in Twin Falls, into those open fields, away from hands that did not ask. Faster, until my body finds the road, the car beams swing across my naked legs, and the sirens scream empty.
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For J. Perennial, we wait with our breath caught in throats— curled in the cocoon of spider web roots, our limbs snake around the most vulnerable parts of each other—wrist, navel, an open mouth.
hungering to burst. Our nearest neighbor is the mole, nosing blindly through soil. Are we just as eyeless— coiled in hard earth, locked
The lilies
KATHRYN CHRISTIAN | SECOND PLACE | POETRY
Fetal, we are buried beneath a skiff of snow, two bulbs
in the mercy of the season, probing for a time more gentle? Frozen, it is hard to believe in the sweet kiss of beaded dew, the rush of the meadow lark’s wings, or the cut of fuchsia and burgundy that bleeds light over spinal Wasatch dawn. My dear, do you remember when the sun turned your hair white-
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gold? Do you remember the resurrection— emerging slick, emerald and ivory from the tomb, our faces turned to cobalt sky, innocent as newborns?
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ziggy
CHRIS DAVIS |FIRST PLACE | ART
Do you remember when we unfolded as lilies?
GRADUATE + ART
Parable of Pig Tails
JULIA PRINCE | THIRD PLACE | POETRY
With the spike of a rat tail comb, I draw a line from the soft wrinkle between small blonde eyebrows up over porcelain skin forehead hairline crown interrupting a sea of brown uncontrolled curls – lived-in, free. One inch above the nape of my neck I meet a matted clump of hair, mangled it entangles itself around the base of the comb to synthetic black Carbon Fiber or plastic? an undiscernible mess me, the comb – an understood extension of myself. Perhaps that girl wonders what shoes she should wear today penny loafers, saddle boots? to impress the boy who shouts too loudly on the playground who pulls her hair because that’s what boys do when they like you.
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blown glass sunset
CHRIS DAVIS | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
My brow furrows and I yank, rip chaos from my scalp. Twiddled wires fall to my feet and there in the mirror’s reflection I see part of
GRADUATE + POETRY
Carefully I remove them from my bed and say the names the store gave them
Synthetic
JULIA PRINCE | THIRD PLACE | POETRY
Hugh Textured Throw Jaxton Print Decorative Drew Embroidered Block Rupert Striped Lumbar
my pillows, my pillows, I place them individually, gingerly, correctly, in the right corner of my bedroom furthest from my bed. Embellishments on my carpet aggravate me, each one ornately contrived, small square within smaller square, hundreds of them organize my floor, evenly placed impeccably spaced but each raised a millimeter too high. They push my souls’ flat arches up and my feet? I ache.
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Beauty is pain, my mom tells me toes out, shoulders back, chin up, boobs to the sky. I listen never ask why. Light sneaks into my room from a crack in my blinds, and I rip false lashes from my eyelids. Clumps of mascara, nude shadow, glue gum the synthetic hairs, no longer wearable I throw them gunked, mangled towards Rupert Striped Lumbar, lounging comfortably at the top of the pile crushing Hugh Textured Throw below.
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Lukewarm
JULIA PRINCE | THIRD PLACE | POETRY
Black hairs pepper the lower half of your face except for two dime-sized spots below each corner of your mouth where olive skin peaks through and hair doesn’t grow. There I glimpse a younger you. I push my cheek against yours and hundreds of pins prick my face, your hair my skin my skin your hair knives? I sharply inhale with your cry, our sudden convulsion, my fleeting satisfaction. You grab a half damp towel from the bathroom, and from here, I see all of you – eyes you look at me then throw it halfway across the room, the rag – water flicks from fibers mid soar until violently it slaps my stomach. Paralyzed, incapacitated, I try my best to remember the night we parked the car and split a burger – no sauce – just meat, lettuce, cheese PAGE 138
you fed me. And then you saw it – a rogue streetcleaner at the end of the lot. Orange lights flashed furiously as whiskers of two tire-sized brushes frantically turned round and round. Attractive chaos! this bizarre machine almost hit my car, uncontrollably weaving in and out of parked vehicles, throwing up dust, leaving brown clouds wherever it traveled. We watched as the dirt settled back down again and laughed Are these the mysteries of the night? I cup my hands underneath the faucet and watch the water spill over thumbs, knuckles, wrists halfway up the forearm and down the drain. I hate washing my face in this sink, it never gets hot enough. Hairs on my face rise when water hits my skin wet and foolish face, stomach, skin they seem to cry lukewarm is no good.
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G TE NO
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on physics:
PETER HAUGEN | FIRST PLACE | NONFICTION
An exposition on the discipline of physics and how it interacts with lives.
Take a moment and think about some of the technology in your life. Your contact lenses are a subtle application of visible wavelength optics. Your computer and phone rely on the quantum mechanical behavior of electrons in a finite square well. Your car wonderfully illustrates numerous clever elements of rigid body rotation, thermodynamics, and should it have a navigation system, relativistic physics. It’d be understandable to conceive of scientists dedicating their lives to unraveling these mysteries of the cosmos so that your computer can store 400 thousand silly pictures instead of four thousand1. But put that way it does sound awfully absurd, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s not how we figured out any of this, it’s not how physics as a discipline works. In general, the things that impact our lives are these monumental technolo- gies: refrigeration, digital electronics, cars. We experience them and rarely are their histories advertised or we 1 This is admittedly only about a 10 gigabyte hard drive, which is now considered to be tiny, but historically, holy cats. PAGE 142
are made aware of the decades or centuries of explorations, half starts, wrong turns, alternate attempts, convoluted explanations, tears, anguish and drunken bets that preceded any engineering and industry that produced that sleek iPhone that is all but surgically attached to your hand.
The Method Physicists do not structure their goings about to try and make new technology that makes the world better; we’re really just very curious about what things are and how they work. The goal is to produce a description of the phenomenon in such detail that it can actually predict what will happen in the future and what happened in the past. In this way, physics is a science about describing narratives. Looking very closely at the subject and telling its story. For example, when we were starting with Newton’s metaphor for gravity a lot of things were matching up very well with what we would have expected. Except for Uranus. It was deviating enough that we couldn’t chalk it up to bad 1800’s era telescopes. But one guy played around with some math thinking to himself, “What if there was another, 8th planet that we couldn’t see? If it were large enough, and in so and so a spot, it would account for why Uranus’s orbit
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behaved like it does.” They looked very carefully2 where Newton’s metaphor for gravity would demand an extra planet, and that’s almost exactly where they found it. Now, the use of the word metaphor may be jarring, as technically we group scientific ideas into things like hypothesis, theories and laws. And distinguishing between them is important so we can talk about ideas that have varying levels of confidence. But it should also be emphasized the level of approximation in science. Nobody has ever seen The Universe in actuality. You aren’t seeing the paper or screen in front of your face, not in its entirety anyway. The infrared light it’s emitting is completely missed. The fact that it’s 99% hollow isn’t immediately obvious. The fact that it’s not one object but in fact so many objects associating together that they outnumber how many kilograms the Earth weighs could easily be over looked. All of the ideas we have about the universe are intrinsically going to be approximations, 2 Keep in mind that as good telescopes were harder to come by then slightly more robust arguments were needed to justify time for observing. The mathematical deductions were carried out separately by a Briton and a Frenchman, which must have made for interesting reading for the citizens of those ancient frenemies. GRADUATE + NONFICTION
or in literary parlance, metaphors. It is part of a physicist’s life to understand the metaphors people have used before them, and pick apart underlying assumptions, and look for observations that show obvious metaphor shear. One conveniently illustrative case of metaphor shear is the orbit of Mercury. Newton’s metaphor for gravity quickly shows that objects orbiting each other form ellipses3. A slightly more subtle observation shows that not only do they form ellipses, but the axis of the ellipse rotates, or precesses. The troubling thing with Mercury was that this precession was faster than Newton’s metaphor would predict. This was shortly after the discovery of Neptune so the idea that the math was just plain wrong could be ruled out. It was nearly 60 years after initial ponderings on the Mercury Problem when Einstein developed his own metaphor for gravitation. The accuracy of its description of Mercury’s behavior was one of its early excellent tests. These metaphors and stories are written in 3 Early work on some principles of orbital mechanics was done by Johannes Kepler. While his final results describe very elegant relationships between the planets in our solar system, having a student reproduce his original chain of reasoning would be malicious bordering on comical. GRADUATE + NONFICTION
the fundamental language that ev- ery culture discovers when they can stop worrying about starving for long enough, Math. China, Greece, the Mayans, the Egyptians, everyone did it independently and all came up with the same results. Notation may have varied slightly, but the subject matter and the nature of them did not. The Pythagorean Theorem is one of the world’s most famous theorems because it’s among the oldest proofs in mathematics and incredibly powerful4. Math allows us to describe our metaphors and observations in ways that we can actually describe how closely or poorly our ideas match with our observed surroundings. One good example of how much math can amplify even simple tools is Eratosthenes’ attempt at measuring the diameter of the Earth. Using what amounts to a shovel, a ruler and trigonometry, he determined the diameter of the earth within 3% of what we determine using satellites, rockets and calculus. Combining the observations with an extremely descriptive universal language just happens to leave engineers and business types with a large corpus of knowledge that they can leverage to make the modern world, as a side effect of generations of physicists doing what looks like 4 Note that I am using theorem instead of metaphor, that’s intentional, the reason why is left as an exercise for the reader. PAGE 144
futzing around. It certainly didn’t look like it was going to change the world at the time, I assure you that.
The Madness So why bother with this if it isn’t “useful” for decades after the fact? No one motive exists independent of others. This is a much more honest approach than saying all sports people are obsessed with fame or investment bankers are driven by money5. Some of the motivators are pragmatism, artistry, curiosity and com- pulsion. Pragmatism is fairly straight forward, and perhaps best illustrated by an anecdote. A retired admiral is sitting on his deck in the evening and he calls for his butler, he says to the butler, “Tomorrow we shall plant some black walnut trees.” To which his butler replies, “Sir, Black Walnuts take 50 years to bear fruit!” The admiral thinks on that for a moment and says, “Well then I guess we’d better plant them tonight.” Basically, just because physics won’t make anyone’s life better tomorrow is no reason to not pursue it today. If the benefits come ten, thirty, a hundred years down the line, that timer will only start when somebody actually 5 Regardless of how much recent history may suggest that this is actually true. PAGE 145
sets to the work of exploring that corner of the universe. Artistry is somewhat subtler. A common luddite complaint about science in general and physics in particular is that it kills beauty. Like the old adage that explaining a joke is much like vivisecting a horse, you know how it works but it has lost most of its use6. This is patently untrue for many people, myself included. Seeing new depths in natural phenomena is one of the joys of knowing how they work in a general sense. I don’t just see streaks of lightning flash through the air, I see the pressure wave made by the thunder. I see the matter-antimatter particle pairs produced by the rapidly changing electric fields. I see the charge redistributing in the clouds where the bolt started. Seeing this deeper beauty in the world is a powerful motivator for many.
6 A favorite example of mine where increased explanations lead to more humor/intrigue is the case of the electron. In 906, J.J. Thomson got the Nobel prize for proving the electron was a particle. 31 years later, his son, George Thomson won the Nobel for proving the electron was a wave. I sometimes like to imagine George Thomson’s scientific career was a protracted campaign of passive aggressiveness aimed at his dad. GRADUATE + NONFICTION
Perhaps the most publicized drive would be curiosity. All the peculiar hap- penings in the world and their mysterious causes. Why will a bowling ball and a marble take the same time to fall the same distance? Why does a feather take so much longer? Why does the sun make so much light? What is light? In some regards, physicists are children that have never been taught to stop asking questions and accept the answers given to them by authority figures. This is the kind of mindset that people think of when they consider Einstein or Newton or any historical physicist at all. But curiosity and compulsion aren’t separated by a very thick line. When driven physicists stop eating because they’re busy trying to figure something out, people see less of Einstein and more of Lex Luthor because it frightens most people to see that kind of focus. But it’s not sinister intent, or ambition to take over the world. It is just that curiosity manifesting strongly is fascination in the literal sense of the word. They’re just using their brain so much to think about this one thing they don’t have the time or the brain cells to pay attention to silly things like stomach rumbles or phone calls.
humanity lives its life.
Going One Step too Far Is there an end to physics? Max Born said it was over in 1928, there have been others before and others since that shared the sentiment. Some models are getting incredibly precise, but there are still large fundamental holes, and entire fields of emergent properties to observe and think on. We’ve come a long way in the last 23 centuries, and there’s still only more to go.
These motivators and others are what drive physicists to dedicate their lives to untangling the mysteries of the universe, and, often on accident, bring about monumental changes to the way GRADUATE + NONFICTION
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redwood fog
CHRIS DAVIS | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
The True Horror of St. Ann’s Retreat
KEOKI KEMP | SECOND PLACE | NONFICTION
I studied the Bear River Mountains. Summer had given way to fall, and a cold rain dusted the mountains with snow. It was warm enough at the mouth of Logan canyon that I could don a light sweater, but I regretted not wearing something heavier when a stiff canyon breeze brought a winter chill with it cutting through its meager protection. The white mountains contrasted sharply against the crimson and mustard colored leaves swaying in the boughs of aspen and maple trees. Mixed in with hues of red and yellow, I spied the noble green of limber pines and blue spruce trees. It was October, Friday the 13th. The day I would visit the haunted nunnery. I waited for my ride and tour guide in the US Forest Service’s parking lot at the mouth of Logan Canyon. Adventurous teenagers looking for a scare will break into St. Anne’s Retreat, the name of the allegedly haunted nunnery. I wanted to go there legally and have the help of someone who knew the property. Having heard tale that the new owner prosecuted anyone he caught on his security cameras because of the costly damage they wreaked, I’d made the necessary calls. I talked to the realtor selling the property and the owner, and they both agreed to let me look at the property – the realtor even offered to give me a tour. So, I waited.
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Folklorists at Utah State University have recorded several tales about the haunted nunnery, and I reflected on them as I waited for my ride. The tale goes that St. Anne’s Retreat, the name of the haunted nunnery, was a getaway for nuns who’d broken their covenants with their God, gotten pregnant, and needed a place to lay low till they could figure out what to do with their bastard children. In one story, the convent’s mother superior would take these babies born out of wedlock and drown them in the pool out back. Other legends say that the mother herself, under duress from the mother superior, drowned her child, and then killed herself out of guilt. Another tale is more explicit. The mother, after drowning her child, would hear the persistent wailing of her dead child in her every waking moment until she could no longer take it and drowned herself in the pool. Some teenagers, in their trips there, have seen the ephemeral outline of a nun holding her swaddled baby pacing near the edge of the now decrepit pool. Logan, Utah is a secluded valley community near the Idaho border. One poll suggests that 86.7% of the 50,676 people who live there are Mormons or members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can’t help but think that folklore surrounding the nunnery is a byproduct of Mormon’s fear of the unknown and their fear PAGE 149
of other religions. How many Mormon mothers told their daughters not to act like the nuns who’d forsaken their God’s commandments? How many fathers used the ghosts at St. Anne’s retreat to frighten their children into good behavior? Smalltown America isn’t known for accepting diversity, and even less so if it’s a religious community. And as a Mormon, I struggle with this loathsome behavior that alienates people of other faiths and creeds. The realtor, Steve, pulled up in a large red Ford Explorer. Steve wore a sharp cardigan and purple button up dress shirt which paired well with his quick smile. His goatee was precision cut to the exact dimensions that’d most flatter his face. “I assume you’re waiting for me?” He said. He stuck out his hand and let me into his large SUV. I mentally tallied the added features in his car: leather seats, a sunroof, Bluetooth Bose speakers, and controls up and down his steering wheel. I’d find out later from him that Cache Valley was currently a sellers’ market and he’d had success upselling properties. “So, I’m sure you’ve heard some of the legends surrounding the nunnery?” “Oh, of course. Growing up in Cache Valley how could I not?”
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Steve sounded intelligent. Every time I asked a question he’d pause long enough to think out an appropriate answer before giving me a response.
emanating from the fireplace. The men rooted around the hearthstones and found one loose. Beneath it they found a baby’s skeletal remains.
“Did you ever go up there to look for ghosts as a teenager?”
“Have the stories kept people from wanting to buy the property?” I asked Steve.
Steve chuckled and rubbed the back of his shaved and balding head. He pushed sixty-five around the winding corners of the canyon which are recommended to take at thirty-five, and the speed limit is set at fifty. I tried not to judge a working man who has taken an hour and a half or more out of his busy schedule to take me on a tour.
“It’s the exact opposite actually. If anything, most of the interest comes from the legends.
“You know, I never did.” Another legend goes that a group of girls went to summer camp up at the retreat. They played in the pool during the day enjoying the sound of the wind rushing down the canyon, the chirrup of ground squirrels, and the white-throated sparrow’s twittering. At midnight, the sound of a baby crying woke them up, but they couldn’t find the source of the wails. After several nights of this torture, they told their adult leaders and they left. A group of men, disturbed by their daughters’ tales, decided to night up at the retreat and see from themselves if the stories were true. Sure enough, at midnight they heard the telltale crying GRADUATE + NONFICTION
The real problem with selling the property is that you’re not actually buying the land, you’re leasing the land for ten years from the forest service.” He looked at me and raised his index finger for emphasis. “On top of that, you’re not even allowed to renovate the buildings. They’re historically preserved. If you want to fix it up, you have to fix it up just like it was when it was originally built.” The canyon drive just stunned me with its beauty. I was no fan of fall because it heralded winter and signified the end of summer, but I couldn’t deny its charm. The maple’s jagged broad-leaves created a contrast against the scotch pine’s green needles. Falling leaves cascaded onto the road only to be launched back up by air currents and the pressure of passing cars. When I first heard of St. Anne’s retreat, I imagined a dilapidated mansion with creaking boards and dark shingles all standing out in stark relief next to the canyon’s PAGE 150
austerity – some cliché I’ve internalized from horror movies. A group of teenagers from Hyrum swear that when they went rutting around the property they saw a plethora of tiny hands grasping at them from the pool’s shadowy recesses, trying to pull them into the depths. A group of hunters claimed they saw a pack of red eyed Doberman up at the cabin and when they tried to kill them with their rifles the bullets passed right through them. Several tales talk about how they felt compelled to leave the property when they stepped foot on the bridge that leads up to the retreat. Some of these stories go as far to say their cars died and unseen hands beat on their hood, roof, and windows. Even though it was Friday the 13th, I didn’t feel scared, not with the bright fall sun warming my skin as a sat in Steve’s comfortable leather seats. The fallen leaves carpeted the canyon’s forest in a layer of smooth gold. I wanted to believes these legends. I wanted to see real ghosts. I wanted to believe. I yearned to see something terrible, scary, or even ghastly. Something to reassure my faith in a world beyond our own, to know that my struggle to obey “the rules” had some sort of eternal, and not just temporal, consequence. PAGE 151
We’d finally arrived at St. Anne’s Retreat. Steve parked his SUV in front of a triangle gate covered in warning signs. “KEEP OUT!” threatened an orange lettered sign. “NO TRESPASSING,” read another. Past the triangle fence we could just step over, another 4’x4’ sign was set into the ground with images of surveillance cameras, and warned “NO TRESPASSING” in white letters set in a red square. “24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE. VIOLATERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. FINES START AT $750 & 3 MONTHS IN JAIL.” Everything bolded and capitalized. I was grateful I’d decided to come here legally. I stepped over a section of the bridge covered in flimsy plywood because I spotted a foot shaped hole in it. Steve joked that he’d never drive his truck over the bridge. I didn’t blame him. The river below was not deep, but if the bridge failed the fall would total a car. The river travelled fast enough to fill my mind with its noise. On either side of its banks, oak trees rained down their yellowing leaves. Maybe late at night the clatter of water over rocks and wind rustling through these trees would create the right ambiance to make hair stand on end, but nature’s sigh calmed me. “The owners hired a caretaker to maintain the property,” Steve said. “Originally, he wanted to GRADUATE + NONFICTION
buy the property but couldn’t get the right deal with the Forest Service, so he had to bail out.” Steve then pointed at all the boards on every single window and door. “He’s the one who puts all these up.” When I saw the cabins for the first time I realized that the property really was a rich family’s summer home. At the property’s center squatted a large lodge, and surrounding the lodge were a series of smaller cabins spiraling outward. The cabins melded into the landscape unlike the haunted mansion I’d visualized. The Hatchs built their kids a playhouse bigger than my bedroom and living room combined complete with its own fireplace and kitchen. Next to the children’s playhouse lay a home for the maids and servants, which wasn’t much larger than the children’s playhouse. Many of the cabins featured a foundation of rocks that looked like those used to build Logan’s Mormon temple and other older barns around town, all quarried further up Logan Canyon at Temple Fork. Paths between the main lodge and the outlying cabins were set with the same stone. The mortar that held all these rocks had started to crack and lichen and clover had started to grow in its crevices. Perhaps this really was hallowed ground. I prayed again to see something, anything to confirm the urban legends. GRADUATE + NONFICTION
If there existed ghosts and evil spirits, then an opposite must exist as well. Steve pointed to a shed right next to the pool, the pool where all the supposed drownings had happened. “There used to be a set of steps up to the top of that shed. Vandals destroyed them. You could go up there to watch the canyon.” The pool was about six feet deep at one end and two at the shallow end. The lip of the pool was colored a faded blue. Next to the pool I saw a hastily made fire pit filled with the charred remains of beer boxes. Outside the lodge’s veranda, vandals had impaled beer cans on sticks in the ground, and the twinkle of brass shells caught my eye. Amongst the rusted remains of beer cans, I spotted a used condom and wondered what stories the security footage would tell. Time and time again Steve would repeat the phrase “well this is new” or “this wasn’t broken last time.” Every building had its windows boarded closed, some torn open again by a saw’s crude hack job or breached open with a crowbar. Some of these damages he pointed out to me, others he mumbled to himself making a mental catalogue. Maybe the true horror here was not any ghost or goblin ready to leap out from the pool, but the very real monster of human destruction. The wonton, careless behavior of those who believed PAGE 152
they were above the rules. I contemplated the word vandals. The word Steve used to describe those legend trippers who felt it their civic duty to explore their mild-mannered town’s one haunted house. The word vandalism means the willful destruction of something beautiful. The word originates from the Vandal Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 455. The Vandals destroyed many beautiful public buildings, statues, and other works of art – not because they had to but because they could. These cabins with their large sunlit porches were awe inspiring. Celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe would retreat up at the property to get away from the rigors of life. Now defaced and broken, I could only imagine the sort of people who felt it their right to trespass on this property because of its place in local folklore. I imagined overweight men with more guns than teeth in their head. I imagined people who thought the world owed them everything and in return they gave back nothing. I imagined teenagers whose parents had no idea their perfect babies were sneaking out at night to drink and fuck where ghosts and goblins played, replicating the same promiscuity entrenched in the nunnery’s folklore. Or maybe they were jaded Mormons like me, seeking a PAGE 153
reassurance of their faith. Perhaps hiding in one of the Retreat’s shadowy corners they could find a bridge to gap the disconnect between the church’s doctrine and those who professed it. One thing was for certain, we all tarnished the beauty that once resided here. The beauty of the buildings, the beauty of the lives who lived and visited here, and the beauty of people devoting their existence to pure faith – those nuns. “You want to see the inside?” he asked. That was why I’d come. Steve had brought with him a power screwdriver, and now I knew why he’d needed it. To get into the main lodge and the other cabins we had to remove five different screws from each door. The electricity in the main lodge still worked, which came as a surprise, but many of the lightbulbs had been broken or stolen. The main hall had an eighteen foot ceiling with wrought iron fixtures set into it. Whenever the spiraling fixtures met at a right angle, the owners had decorated the wrought iron with green swooping geometric patterns. I noticed holes had been punched in the walls, where people had started fires instead of in the
hearth. A hearth made of stones imported from GRADUATE + NONFICTION
Europe, Steve informed me. The porcelain in the bathrooms had been smashed to bits. The copper wiring that connected the water heater to its electrical source had been stripped. Cabinet doors ripped from their hinges left holes looking like screaming mouths. The wooden stairs felt scalpel thin and bowed under my weight. “The second time I came up here I brought a friend who’s a little bit more spiritually inclined. She’s not a medium, but she can feel things from the other side.” I stared at the macabre assortment of furniture carted in here by frequent visitors. “She told me that she felt a very angry man here.” He’d neglected to tell me this fact until we’d left the confines of the lodge. He didn’t even want to go up to the second floor where this spirit apparently resided. He didn’t say as much, but he gave me his flashlight and told me to go up there on my own if I was so inclined. But I saw nothing. I did not feel the presences of some spook. I did not see a nun lamenting the depths of her promiscuity and depravity. I did not feel a temperature change or my hair stand on end. I did not see mirrors break or blood written on walls. I did not see the apparition of tiny hands or hear a murdered baby’s cold cries as it sought the warm embrace of a nurturing mother. What I felt and saw was an old and dilapidated house that GRADUATE + NONFICTION
didn’t deserve the treatment it got. As I stared out of a small window on the second floor I looked out at the shifting leaves. I could hear the Logan river colliding down the canyon, its incessant course purifying the house from any spirts or fae creatures. This made me feel sad. This sadness felt still and quiet like the eerie moment when all the canyon’s chatter died out. The wind stopped the constant clatter of leaves, the crows stopped cawing, and even the river’s babble seemed to hush. It was an empty feeling. Surrounded by so many things with so little meaning was a lonesome feeling. If there was no evil here then all the ghosts were manmade legends. Legends to create an “other,” to isolate a minority, and to alienate another faith. Before I left, I took one final look at the pool. It was here that a horrific scene did unfold, but not a preternatural one. A group of 38 teenagers, who came up one Halloween to explore, were caught by three, armed security guards who tied them up, shot weapons off near their heads, and sexually assaulted some of the young girls. I wondered, looking at the now cracked and crumbling pool, how 38 people could fit inside. I imagined kneeling in the pool tied by rough rope like a hog next to my friends and anytime someone fidgeted or sneezed the cords dug deeper into my skin. PAGE 154
Perhaps the security guards wanted to deliver a message to other would be trespassers, but they went too far. “If you want,” Steve said, “I can leave you here and pick you up tomorrow morning if you’d like.” I thought of the all the broken windows, steps, window frames, toilets, glass, and porcelain. I thought of the pool. I thought of the gold spray paint message “Erica loves Tony.” I thought of the hundreds of spent shells littering the lodge’s veranda. I thought of the scorch marked walls. St. Anne’s Retreat was trying to tell me a message. This message was not one of spiritual violence, but the very real violence of human nature. I supposed that some of these vandals must think that if they’re not harming anyone then they can’t be doing anything too heinous. Earlier I asked Steve how much he’d estimate the cost of the property damage. “At the very least a quarter of a million dollars.” Half the property’s value. But I think the damage done to this place is more than physical, there is a cultural and societal damage that cannot be so neatly summed up.
home was downwind – not here. For a split second, I almost took his offer. It was Friday the 13th of October. I wanted so much to see a ghost, but St. Anne’s Retreat bore testimony of reality. I decided not to camp out, not because of any legends, but because of the very real human threat I suspected would come tonight. The threat of human destruction from individuals who thought they weren’t doing harm to anyone.
We stopped between the main lodge, the pool, and one of the cabins as he waited for my answer. I heard the wind cutting through the canyon. It seemed to be pushing me, reminding me that my PAGE 155
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Armani
CAMILA SANABRIA | THIRD PLACE | NONFICTION
The first act was a blur. Not because it was the first time I had worn my glasses all day, but because of the emotional glaucoma threatening to spill over as I sat in a dark theatre with my left arm completely exposed. I know, I know. Crying over a boy? Talk about a cliché. But I wasn’t crying over him, per se. I have this abnormal emotionally-biological condition where my embarrassment directly connects to my tear ducts. Thankfully it isn’t life threatening. While there have been some close cases, no one has actually died of embarrassment— at least, not yet. But I digress. In essence, the cause of tears stemmed from a combination of an overactive imagination, slight disappointment, and a shit ton of personal pride. More so out of the pride. The thought of having to explain to my friends and family that the boy I had invited to go see a play with hadn’t shown up, was absolutely mortifying. I’ll admit, it was partially my fault. If I hadn’t made such a big deal out of it—freaking out over having to ask him out, actually asking PAGE 156
him out, him saying yes, rereading his text a hundred and forty-two times just to double check it was real, showing said text to my friends, trying to figure out what shade of lipstick to wear, deciding to keep my hair in a ponytail so he wouldn’t get the impression I was trying to impress him—maybe I wouldn’t have cared that he had stood me up. But there was more to it than just the probability of pitying looks from everyone who knew about the date. And no, it wasn’t because I sort-of-maybe-kindaliked him. It was the fact that by standing me up, he had proven me right. Right in me thinking my wide hips and frizzy curls were no match for the matchstick, blue-eyed blondes sprinkled all across campus. Right in me thinking my Chilean tongue and Colombian lips stood no chance against these leftovers from the Barbie factory. Right in me believing my brown skin could never be anything more than repulsive. But with intermission came acceptance. By not showing up, he friend-zoned me and that was okay. Because I didn’t really like him that much anyway. So when Gina—my roommate who rushed out of class, probably breaking a few traffic PAGE 157
rules on her way over, and bought a last-minute ticket so that I wouldn’t have to watch my favorite Shakespeare play all alone—asked me if I was sad because he hadn’t shown up, I could honestly say I didn’t care. Because I didn’t. I didn’t care that he couldn’t have bothered to say, no, when I had initially asked, saving me three dollars and some painfully pathetic embarrassment. I didn’t care that he couldn’t have bothered to text me sooner than just an hour before the show was supposed to start, sparing me the hour’s worth of anxiety. I didn’t care that he couldn’t have bothered to take his test earlier in the day, so he wouldn’t have had to miss the play. I didn’t care that I had been wrong about him— his secret smiles, his lingering glances, his singling me out. It had all been a figment of my imagination, and I just didn’t care. But then, right as the lights dimmed and the curtains rose, he arrived and all I could do was smile, looking like a clown in my dark lipstick. I knew I should’ve just worn Chapstick. The fourth act brought forgiveness.
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So he showed up an hour and a half late. At least he came, right? After all, he had texted me to let me know he would be taking a test. Was I rationalizing this? Probably. But it was finals week—I had no choice but to be understanding. And so, while half of me laughed and enjoyed the show, the right side of my brain slowly began to piece together its own Midsummer’s Dream. Every time he leaned over to whisper an inside joke, my mind painted a picture of possibility. Every time his eye caught mine, every time he smiled at me, another fantasy made its way into the tapestry. Pathetic, I know. But I blame it on the cologne—that sweetly intoxicating scent of overpriced department store cologne. It was fresh, too, like he had just sprayed it on before walking in. His cheeks were flushed and his forehead glistened—leftover reminders of his sprint from the testing center to the seat next to mine. He was supposed to smell like sweat, but all I got was a whirlwind of citrus and jasmine. It was absolutely hypnotizing and it sent me on a trip as wild as Bottom’s. And maybe that’s why his cologne was the first thing I noticed when he showed up and it was the last thing I thought of when the curtains dropped. GRADUATE + NONFICTION
I was high. He got me high. I was under his influence, an influence which vanquished any ounce of resentment I may have harbored towards him. The empty seat, the extra ticket, the bloodshot eyes—they were all masked by his scent. He laughed, so I laughed. He smiled, so I smiled back. He leaned over, so I leaned over. Who cared that he had shown up an hour and a half late? If he didn’t care about me then he wouldn’t have bothered rushing to show up at all. Clearly there was something there. “You’re analyzing his cologne?” Gina asked me incredulously. The night had ended and all I could do was twitter about, still in my haze. Of course I was analyzing his cologne. I’m an English major—overanalyzing is what I do. Searching for meaning in every nook and cranny was one of the degree requirements, right after dropping obscure literary metaphors in everyday vernacular and reciting Shakespearean quotations in front of my bathroom mirror each morning. It was how we English majors survived because mercy knows our degrees weren’t going to provide enough for us. I looked for meaning in any place I could find PAGE 158
it because the thought of emptiness absolutely terrified me. The thought of being indifferent to this boy, with his kind smile and intoxicating cologne, was one I couldn’t accept—at least not yet.
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scrap metal
ANNE LACHMAR | HONORABLE MENTION | ART
After all, who wears Armani to take a test?
UNDERGRADUATE + ART
SINK HOLLOW + CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST
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DESIGNED BY JESS NANI + DAX LEHMAN