Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Writing for Young People
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Admissions: Part II

October 25, 2019/ Louise Rozett

The attic ladder unfolds from the ceiling, groaning as it settles into place. It’s late at night but I smell sunbaked wood, and sawdust and old cardboard boxes—my old cardboard boxes. My parents have been kind enough to store the things I cannot part with but didn’t have space for in my Brooklyn apartment, and later couldn’t afford to move across the country to Los Angeles. I’m not a packrat—I don’t hold onto stuff—but years of notes, journals, papers, plays, and stories do not qualify as stuff. It’s possible that these boxes contain everything I wrote from elementary school on, with the exception of work I lost when my Macintosh Classic died my senior year of college, before backing up hard drives was a common practice.

As I climb the ladder, my mother hands me a heavy flashlight and asks if I’m okay in my clogs. It’s not the smartest move to wear clogs on a ladder—or in an attic with exposed, 40-year-old bright pink fiberglass insulation on the floor—but I’m already up, shining the light on my dusty boxes, searching for my handwriting—Scripts, Notes, Books, Grad School, College. I’m looking for High School. I find it quickly. We’re an organized bunch, my family. We label things; we keep things in order. I open the box.

*     *     *

Since writing Admissions: Part 1—an essay about sexual misconduct I experienced during a college interview when I was sixteen—I’ve tried to find out the name of the interviewer by contacting the admissions office, enlisting the help of a family friend who’d been an administrator at the university, and reaching out to women in my high school class who applied when I did. These efforts didn’t yield any significant information. Instead, they left me feeling paranoid.

When I talk to people about the process of trying to get the man’s name, I’m convinced a few of them are thinking that I must be remembering wrong, that I misread the situation, that I’m viewing what happened through a contemporary lens rather than an it-was-a-different-time lens. When people ask what I plan to do with the man’s name, I hear suspicion in the question. I say, “I just want it,” or “I think I deserve to know who he was, don’t you?” “Of course,” they say in a tone I perceive as placating. I come out of these interactions confused about my intentions, and my needs.

I asked the family friend and former administrator to help me communicate with the admissions office, and he did. For a while, he and I had a dialogue. Then, in his last email, I learned that “a lot of records are destroyed after seven years” and that “there don’t seem to be any other records that would help.” This email was carefully worded, perhaps designed to discourage further action while being vague in case the correspondence ended up in the hands of a journalist or a lawyer. The family friend ended with, “take care and be well,” which felt more like, “I’m done helping you.” In an earlier exchange, he’d said he was going to check with the university’s general counsel to see if it was possible to get information about lawsuits or complaints filed against the admissions office at the time. Maybe the general counsel told him he never should have been talking to me in the first place. I didn’t ask.

*     *     *

Inside the High School box are carefully labeled folders for every subject I studied. I have notes from calculus, physics, philosophy. I have programs from concerts, newspaper clippings from the local paper, notebooks full of backstories about the characters I played in shows. At the bottom, there is a folder with report cards, recommendations, and acceptance letters from colleges. The rejection and waitlist letters are missing—I must have thrown them out.

I’m hoping to find my Day-Timer from senior year. Instead I find a journal. It starts in September, and it’s all about the horrible breakup I suffered over the summer, and the boy I’d liked in a secret for a few years who asked me out after the breakup. I can barely make myself read these entries, not just because the writing is awful but because I can tell that, at the time, I thought it was great. I have affection for this version of me though I don’t recognize her as myself. However, I’m impressed by her output. Pages and pages and pages… until the entries stop at the end of October. They pick up again at the beginning of December. My interview was in November.

*     *     *

In the days before the first part of this story was posted, I told my parents about what happened. I was dreading this conversation, worrying that they would be upset—or perhaps even angry—about my not coming to them at the time. So I planned to lay some conversational ground work and ease us all into it. On the phone with my mother, I told her I was writing a piece about applying to college. I asked her to think about whether there was anything in particular she remembered about my interview for the university. There was a pause, then she said, “Well, I remember what you told me when you came home from your interview.”

I laughed, startling myself. It was instant, uncontrollable. “I told you?”

“You told me he hit on you. We had a long conversation about it. You were furious.”

What a thing to hear, when all I’d been able to remember about my feelings that day was fear and shame. It made me giddy to think that sixteen-year-old me was furious by the time I got home. I wish I could remember that drive, the transition from fear to fury. I wish I could see my face transform as the new me was born, the one who would insist on seeing only female doctors, and who would imagine the violence I’d perpetrate against anyone who touched me without my permission.

As we talked more, I realized I’d only told my mother half the story—I told her what the man said, not what he did. Had I told her the whole story, things might have gone a different way—we might have reported him. But instead, she and I talked about protecting my reputation and keeping my options open for college. Neither of us told my father. All these years later, she, like me, questions our decisions. In this cultural Klieg-light moment, when girls and women no longer hide their stories out of fear, shame, and deference to the established social order, my mother and I wonder what might have happened had we spoken up, and try not to think about the obligation we had to do so.

*     *     *

As I close the box, I’m struck by a concern that is out of character. I worry I’ve disturbed the spirits of my past, tricking my notes, stories, scripts, and books into thinking that they are finally leaving the attic to take up their rightful place with me. It’s not time for that yet—I still don’t know where my rightful place is. But I’m grateful for every piece of paper I saved, each one reflecting who I was as a child, as a teenager. These are the records that tell me who I am. These are the records that matter.

I make my way back down the ladder and, for some reason, try to fold it up quietly. But it will not be silenced, creaking and wailing as I push it back up into the ceiling.

Louise Rozett is a YA author, a playwright, and a screenwriter—the order depends on the day. She’s the author of the Confessions series (Confessions of an Angry Girl, Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend) published by HarlequinTEEN, and wrote a pilot based on the series which won best half-hour original script at the Austin Film Festival. Her play Break, about the effects of the 9/11 recovery effort on the recovery workers and their families, was a finalist for the Stanley Drama Award and was workshopped at New York Stage & Film. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA acting program at The Theatre School at DePaul University. Visit Louiserozett.com for more.

Photo credit: Ericka Kreutz

Friday Lunch Archive

  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/jason-briscoe-VBsG1VOgLIU-unsplash-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-10-07 23:55:352022-10-07 19:31:09Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/image2-scaled.jpeg 2560 1920 Kirby Chen Mages https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Kirby Chen Mages2022-09-23 23:56:162022-09-23 21:56:42The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

Abyssinia

August 26, 2022/in Midnight Snack / JP Goggin
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Goggin-headshot.jpg 1422 998 JP Goggin https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png JP Goggin2022-08-26 23:55:342022-08-27 17:46:29Abyssinia

More Midnight Snacks »

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/827C31B5-92AE-4C32-9137-3B4AED885093-scaled.jpeg 2560 1920 Daniel J. Rortvedt https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Daniel J. Rortvedt2022-10-31 11:59:312022-10-30 21:59:49Still Life

Litdish: Writing About Grief: An Interview with Jenn Koiter

October 24, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Interviewed by Gail Vannelli
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Koiter-Headshot.jpeg 1983 1586 Interviewed by Gail Vannelli https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Interviewed by Gail Vannelli2022-10-24 11:55:162022-10-24 10:10:07Litdish: Writing About Grief: An Interview with Jenn Koiter

Dawn from Buffy Learns About Climate Change

October 10, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Alyson Mosquera Dutemple
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Dutempleauthorpic_2022.jpg 1389 1466 Alyson Mosquera Dutemple https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Alyson Mosquera Dutemple2022-10-10 11:48:192022-10-10 14:29:12Dawn from Buffy Learns About Climate Change

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instalunchticket on twitter
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2021 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top