[fiction]

It’s getting dark and my arms are crawling with goosebumps. My butt is pretty much asleep at this point too, which makes it nearly impossible to get comfortable in this here stupid tree. The branch I’m on is like Mom’s eggshell mattress topper only the eggshells are more like little rocks. Like sitting on the moon, I bet. But there ain’t no moon tonight and ain’t no way I’m climbing down, so I’ll just sit here on this tree-moon-planet until some spaceship takes me away or until Mom can pick me and Erin up tomorrow morning.

The yard at Dad’s house is cluttered with car parts, so it’s kind of like I’m stuck on a prop in a sci-fi junk yard. The wind is sharp and eerie, so it’s the perfect set for my movie. Dad is the villain on his imperial base and I’m here on my own base hiding from his screaming and bad breath. My character’s name is Princess John because this is my movie and I can be whatever I want to be.

The dress I have with me is a uniform, a cape, a banner of rebellion. I think of climbing higher and letting it flutter like a victory flag. A flag that says, You won’t climb up here, you fat baboon. But instead, I use it as a makeshift blanket when the sun fully vanishes from the sky and the air gets deep-space cold. It’s not a great blanket, but it’s something. More like one of those cloth napkins you put on your lap at fancy restaurants, only bigger and pinker. A pretty astronaut-suit that fans out like an umbrella and carries me to different space-age places, yet can easily transform into a leg warmer.

Before it was a leg warmer, it was the cosmic pageant gown I borrowed from Erin. But then big bad wolf saw me fluttering away in the dress, in the room Erin and I sleep in when we have to visit him. I thought the wolf was going to laugh like Erin was, but instead, he picked me up like he does when he’s going to throw me in the air like a rocket ship, and instead of tossing me upward, he dropped me on the floor and ripped the mystic garment over my head.

My character’s name is Princess John because this is my movie and I can be whatever I want to be.

“Get dressed,” he said with his breath, throwing at my chest the shorts and shirt that were in a ball on the floor. Then he stormed out of the room with thumps and bumps and hammer sounds. The magic was gone.

“You better put your boy clothes back on before he comes back,” Erin said.

I gave her a look.

“I told you not to wear my dress,” she sighed.

“You did so tell me to put it on,” I said.

“Well, I was just joking,” she said, now flicking at the screen of her iPad.

When I put on my clothes and the baboon-wolf came back, I grabbed the dress from the floor and teleported to the back yard where I climbed the tree and became Princess John the Magnificent Space Detective.

I guess I am lucky stink-mouth made me change into my Earth-boy clothes. They are warmer than the dress alone. But the dress is more a type of armor than another layer of clothing anyway. More like a shield of honor in this wasteland of car parts and Miller High Life. Of bad breath and divorce.

If I lean a certain way, I can see the TV in the bad man’s dungeon. I know it’s late from the show that’s on and I wish I was back in bed even if I have to share it with Erin. There’s not much else I can do, so I curl into the moon-rock bark and drape the dress over my head like a veil. Princess John on his wedding day.

I sit there leaning and wiggling and trying to get comfortable. After a bit, I start to drift off to sleep. In and out like it is sometimes.

And then I’m startled awake by someone lifting the veil over my head. Like it’s time for the prince to kiss Princess John. Only it’s not a prince and I nearly shake myself off the branch when I see the alien space-baboon of fatherhood. He’s standing on the little ladder he used to use at Mom’s house to hang Christmas lights, only there’s no glow on his face and December is still three years away.

“Let’s go, kid. You made your point,” the alien says, removing the dress from my head and wrapping it around his neck like a scarf.

Wolf-creature-space-breath picks me up with his large alien paws. Easy, like gravity is practically zero. I want to fight as he drags me to his lair, but I know there’s not much I can do. It’s late and I’m tired and so is he. The moon is somewhere in the sky but I can’t see it. All I see is ground as Dad steps over space junk and walks inside the house.

While I’m in the bathroom letting go of everything I had to hold in out there, I can hear Erin throwing a fit when the monster with shoulder hair tells her to put the iPad away. She’s whining like only a sister can whine, but quickly calms down after she sees me back inside and back on planet Earth. She scooches over to make room in the bed.

Wolf-creature-space-breath picks me up with his large alien paws. Easy, like gravity is practically zero.

After we’re settled, Dad stands in the doorway like the baboon he is with his hairy finger perched on the light switch. He gives us a little smile with his dragon teeth.

“Night, Dad,” Erin says all cutesy, as if there wasn’t a yeti standing in the doorway.

“Good night, princess,” Dad says all dad-like.

And then he looks at me with those baboon eyes and I look back at him with mine.

“You too, princess,” he says to me, and Erin starts cracking up. And that makes Dad crack up, which makes me laugh a laugh so deep in my body it might as well be from outer space.

“All right,” he says. “That’s enough.”

When he closes the door, Erin and I are trapped in darkness, but the darkness doesn’t seem as heavy as darkness can sometimes get.

Erin wiggles herself into the mattress, her face toward the wall. I pivot myself the other way and stare at the light leaking in from under the door. It reminds me of a UFO. A UFO waiting to take us away once the wildebeest falls asleep.

When I close my eyes, I can still see the strip of light behind my eyelids. I stare at it and watch it grow brighter each time I squint. After some time, the light dims and I’m lifted high above the trees. The light intensifies again and I am weightless.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection, Morning Time in the Household, Looking Out (Aldrich Press, 2013), and the children’s picture book, Uma the Umbrella. His work can be found in Maudlin House, The Los Angeles Review, Poet Lore, Sundog Lit, and others.

[fiction]

The gravel churns under the wheels of the boxed-up Peugeot, the sound falling behind them into a quiet that exists where cities do not. Abbey checks her hair with her fingers. She’s learned how to turn it in a twist and secure it behind her head, letting chunks fall from the barrette and tickle her neckline. Céleste’s pale face pushes forward over the steering wheel, her bare arms painted with freckles and her invisible lashes blackened with thick layers of mascara.

“Shit,” Céleste says, turning quickly to check between the seats behind her. “I forgot my crown.”

The back seat is piled high with trays of food, tablecloths, blankets, and bundles of candlesticks. The lacey chocolate chip cookies Abbey baked that morning are wrapped in a plate and wedged at a slant in between champagne bottles stacked from the car floor. Céleste’s parents provided the champagne for the party.

“How sad. The birthday girl has no crown,” Céleste says. She is turning twenty-two.

Céleste’s friend from law school, Sébastien, has arranged for her to borrow his parents’ country house for the weekend. The parents, Céleste explains to Abbey, spend every summer weekend and all of August out there.

“His papa is working on an historical novel set in Brittany’s salty meadows, but in November and throughout the winter the house is empty.”

It’s raining when they arrive. The precipitation falls from a sky the color of paper bags, and as they pull up to the house, gray birds shoot from the slick slate roof as if the slate itself takes off in flight.

“We have two hours to get everything set up before the guests arrive,” Céleste says as she backs the car up to the side door.

*     *     *

Last August, Abbey left her suburban New Hampshire town to attend an American high school in France. She would spend nine months living with Céleste’s family—strangers to her, assigned by her study-abroad program—in Rennes, a small city several hours west of Paris.

All fall, she rode the subway to school, first walking past the low-rise apartment buildings where Muslim women pinned wet laundry over their cement balconies, their muted scarves flapping in the fickle breezes. She exited the subway at the botanical gardens and passed by the hundreds of varieties of roses, their dark green petals trembling under the weight of daily falling raindrops, but it was the dirty, perspiring windows of the city greenhouse—the layers and layers of neglected grime—that made Abbey want to run home just before arriving at her school building and rub off the suffocating city filth from her skin.

The high school was housed in an elegant brick building that smelled of mildew and adolescent sweat. Students laughed their way up creaky stairs to alcoved classrooms where they studied Existentialism and Dadaism and pined away for the familiarity of America, waiting for the mail to be delivered and distributed each day by the program secretary, Madame Dalfine. From what Abbey could tell, however, most of the Americans at her new school transitioned easily to the sophistication of French life; and besides, in the US they attended fancy boarding schools and did drugs and had boyfriends and girlfriends. In New Hampshire, Abbey had worked at a small farm stand, had never held a boy’s hand.

At night, Abbey helped her host mother make mayonnaise or salad dressing, or she sliced pieces of baguette over a plastic tablecloth for dinner while, for hours, her host brother chased the chocolate puppy up and down a narrow hallway running from the front door to the small bathroom at the back of the house, saliva flinging sideways from the dog’s droopy lips and splattering on the walls. Abbey’s host father, Roland, spent an hour with her each night looking down past his swollen, pockmarked nose across the pages of her school notebooks, correcting her French spelling with a blueberry-ink plastic fountain pen and taking personal offense over her illegible American handwriting.

Céleste usually came home late from her law school, sharing news with her mother before folding herself deep into the couch cushions in front of the television set to watch classic black-and-white Hollywood movies, from time to time declaring certain actors and actresses “Genius.” Sometimes Abbey would stand under the doorframe in the living room, listening to the dubbed French jumping over the American actors’ lips on the small television, wishing Céleste would talk to her, acknowledge her in some meaningful way.

*     *     *

The main room of the country house is a cave-like space under high ceilings, built with cool, round stones. Abbey and Céleste move a long, thick-legged table—squat and sturdy like a country workhorse, and prairie-bleached—to the side of the room where dinner will be served; twenty guests will fit there, easily. They move the chairs to clear the middle of the room for dancing.

“I’ll set the table,” Abbey says. She unfolds the tablecloths and lays out the mismatched china Céleste has borrowed from multiple friends. The wine glasses ring hollow and squeak between her fingers when she unwraps them from the crate. Céleste sets up the blankets in the bedrooms, and the smell of a moist, impending winter cold creeps up Abbey’s bare legs and under her nose. They are saving the lighting of the fire for when Sébastien gets there; the large stone fireplace stands taller than either of them.

*     *     *

While Abbey’s friends back home rode shotgun in boys’ cars to keg parties after Friday night football games, Abbey hid under the low-hanging eaves of a makeshift guest room listening to the water heater behind the bedroom wall and imagining a world of experiences just beyond her reach…

Abbey’s high school friends were almost hostile toward her decision to spend their junior year abroad. “You’ll miss everything,” they said at the end of the summer. One of her friends had recently started fooling around with a senior soccer player, meeting up with him after summer preseason practices and laying her body across the damp pine needles that carpeted the woods behind the school.

“I lost my underpants out by Edson’s Pond,” the friend confided, and the rest of the girls pulled her into the Friendly’s bathroom, demanding details. “Well,” the friend said, suddenly shy, maybe coy, “I can’t really say more. Not yet.” But Abbey saw the girl’s smile freeze for a second and her eyes darken before her confidence returned. “I’ll tell you soon! I promise! Let me get used to it first.”

This new development seemed to open up an entirely new social landscape for them for the upcoming school year.

“Abbey, you can’t leave us now,” they said. “Ricky Babson’s parents are headed out of town for Labor Day weekend, and Mike Joncey said we were invited over. Ricky’s older brother is setting him up with beer and everything.”

“I can’t believe you’ll be on a plane. To France! You’ll miss the party.”

“And football season.”

“And the Casino Night fundraiser. My mom promised she wouldn’t volunteer this year.”

“And getting your license! When you get back, we’ll have been driving around by ourselves for a year, and you’ll still need to apply for your learner’s permit.”

*     *     *

“Abbey, coucou, you need lipstick. Let me do it.” Céleste has brought her bag to the dining table, and takes out a gold case. She slips the lid off, metallic plastic popping open a faint suction, and she touches Abbey’s bottom lip with a cherry stick smelling of petroleum and elderflowers. Abbey’s chest rises and falls with a shallow breath, the nerves from her lips radiating warmth below her jawline and out to her ears.

She wears a stretchy green top and a pleated wool skirt, no stockings. In the U.S., her friends always said she had the sexiest legs. Her feet slip forward in heels she borrowed from her host mother. The week before, she bought a glass ring from a Tunisian street vendor in the center of town. It is translucent with cuts of red and blue swirling around the interior. At the time, Abbey had felt very French purchasing that ring, but Céleste’s fingers are bare and adorned only with chipping nail polish, and the weight of the glass bauble is distracting.

*     *     *

Céleste ignored Abbey for three months. While Abbey made mayonnaise by beating egg yolks with a fork until they emulsified, Céleste was at the bars with friends. While Abbey swallowed her gag reflex as her host father’s mossy breath spread around her school papers, Céleste watched her favorite movies and then let the front door snap behind her when she headed back out into the late night. While Abbey’s friends back home rode shotgun in boys’ cars to keg parties after Friday night football games, Abbey hid under the low-hanging eaves of a makeshift guest room listening to the water heater behind the bedroom wall and imagining a world of experiences just beyond her reach, in a language she barely spoke.

And then, in November and without warning, Céleste announced to the family her plans for a birthday party in the country. She would invite her friends from law school; Sébastien had just the house for such a celebration. She would cook the food ahead of time and borrow what she needed from friends.

“Abbey, you will need a pair of heels for the party,” she said. And just like that, Abbey saw the door swing open, her life about to start. “Do you know how to make chocolate chip cookies?”

The morning of the party, Abbey baked the cookies without baking soda on papery tinfoil and watched through the oven window as they spread paper-thin to the on-off ticking sound of the gas line. Abbey peeled strips of foil from the backs of molten sugar and chocolate and wondered if Céleste would tell her not to come. But the birthday girl didn’t even look at the cookies when it was time to pack up the car to go.

*     *     *

The party guests arrive all at once: women in short black dresses brimming with silk scarves, men in blue jeans and starched white shirts. They bring into the stone house bottles of wine, chirpy greetings, and a shared sexual bravado. The Christmas lights Céleste and Abbey strung around the room blur under a tobacco haze to dot the air with a magical forest glow. Abbey stands mute amidst the noise, her nose running slightly from the rising body heat filling the room.

A man with deep russet cheekbones and chestnut hair talks with Sébastien by the roaring fire. Sébastien is taller, but the other man swings his hips while he gestures with his cigarette and commands more of the space. Céleste kisses them both on the cheeks and then kisses the man once more on the lips. She takes her time rubbing her lipstick off him. He leans over her, whispering, and Céleste threads her arm through his and leads him to where Abbey is standing alone.

“Abbey, chérie, I would like to introduce you to Paul.” Céleste brushes him gently on the chest. “He would like to try some of your flat cookies.”

Paul takes a long drag from his cigarette and cracks open the corner of his mouth while he looks intently into Abbey’s face. Smoke escapes from his lips in a narrow sheet of white. He is one of those people who make fun through their eyes.

“Enchanté, Abbey.”

“When Abbey first moved in with my family, I told her that she looks like the film actress, Deanna Durbin, but she had no idea who I was talking about.” Céleste taps the tip of her own nose. “Deanna Durbin: the American beauty. My God!”

Paul continues to look at Abbey, and Abbey runs a hangnail across the wool pleats in her skirt.

“But Deanna Durbin moved to Paris when her career was over. So perhaps we should consider her French,” Paul says.

Céleste laughs. “Imbécil.”

*     *     *

Paul sits next to Abbey at the long table for dinner.

When Céleste brings out the food, the guests whoop and holler, and the men bang on the uneven wood with their hands. Céleste pats above her flaming Titian hair, as if to adjust the crown she forgets is not there.

Paul and Abbey find a tiny library at the far end of the house, and in it, an entire shelf of erotica.

They pass around shells filled with Coquilles St. Jacques, the buttery breadcrumbs browned over lumps of sweet scallops. People use slices of baguette to wipe their shells clean, and then clink their forks and knives against plates piled high with bright green lettuce glistening in a mustard vinaigrette. The candlelight reflects on the surface of wine in glasses, tiny tilting windows of moonlight at the table in the country house at night.

Abbey tries hard to understand the rapid back-and-forth exchanges over politics and history. A piece of lettuce falls from her fork just as she opens her mouth, and she snatches it from the tablecloth and eats it quickly with her fingers, glancing at Céleste at the head of the table. A woman is swinging her arms over her head, and Céleste claps slowly, her bright red lips parted against pale skin that glows luminescent like the powdery wings of an evening moth. She doesn’t seem to notice Abbey.

Paul snaps across the table at a laughing friend. “Ai, oh! More wine for the American.” He winks at Abbey. “In France, even the children drink wine with dinner.”

Céleste leaves the table and returns with a tray of cheeses.

“To the birthday girl!” someone shouts, and Céleste addresses the guests, “Dis donc. Ce soir, vous m’appelez la Reine.”

There is dancing after dinner. Paul keeps his hand on the small of Abbey’s back and his nose nuzzled in her hair. When he breathes out, dime-sized circles of moist heat disappear into her scalp. The room pulses with techno music and smells like the subway at the end of the day: a bitter body odor that lingers in Abbey’s throat. Empty champagne bottles roll across the floor.

Paul whispers in her ear, “Let’s explore the farmhouse.”

They pass through the small kitchen where two women scrape plates into a plastic garbage can, their voices sharp with gossip. One of the women looks into a spoon and pinches her cheeks, makes an O with her mouth. Paul kisses her from behind on the back of her neck before he hops through the galley like a faun, holding Abbey’s hand. The spoon hits the linoleum.

“Paul! Shit, you made me drop a spoon.”

Paul shields his eyes and lifts Abbey under his other arm to carry her onward. She scrunches her toes to keep her heels from falling off.

“Paul, be nice to that poor girl!”

Abbey covers her mouth to hide her smile, the attention and wine brewing warmly inside her like the coffee smells that fill the kitchen.

Overnight bags have been thrown into each of the small bedrooms. Paul and Abbey find a tiny library at the far end of the house, and in it, an entire shelf of erotica. The din of the party seeps under the door like an echo while they put their heads together and laugh, Abbey’s head spinning in circles. When Paul sits down on the desk, he pulls her between his legs, his jeans heavy with detergent against her bare thighs. He holds a book of erotica to the side and directs his pointy nose into its pages like a professor.

“Oh là!” he says, quickly shutting the book with a loud smack. “I don’t know if you’re old enough for this pornography.” And shaking his finger, “You Americans lead sheltered lives.”

His eyes flash amusement, and then, very slowly and holding her gaze, he draws a long line from the base of her neck down her spine to the split in her behind. Scaly goose bumps blossom in waves under her dress. She draws a quick breath.

“On second thought,” he says, smiling, “this is part of your French education, no?” Abbey raises her eyebrows and makes a face she’s never felt before. “Maybe I’d better translate it into English so you don’t miss the good bits.”

The author is Anaïs Nin, someone Abbey’s never heard of, and it is the dirtiest book she has ever read. The words slurp up from the page through his accent and cover her with slowly running liquid metal.

Pierre’s mouth gathered the fresh foam between her legs, but he would not let her reach her pleasure. He teased her.

Must from the books tickles the air. Abbey’s underpants are still twisted from when Paul carried her under his arm, and now one half bites painfully between her cheeks.

He held her legs apart. His hair fell on her belly and caressed her. His left hand reached for one of her breasts.

Paul turns the page. He fingers the edge of Abbey’s sleeve, separates her fingers with his, slides off the glass ring. The ring knocks twice against the surface of the desk where he places it.

 She was completely under the spell of Pierre’s fingers, awaiting pleasure from him. When finally his erect penis touched her soft body, it was as if he had burned her.

Building energy vibrates from down the hall, interrupting their reading, and there are cries of “Un… Deux… Trois!” and then the slow, mournful drag of Bon Anniversaire sung tuneless in the anarchy of merrymakers.

The barrette in Abbey’s hair springs open, and she grabs for the twist.

“No,” she says. She stumbles back and trips out of a heel. “No, they are singing.” She points to the door. “I have the cookies in the kitchen.” Her loose hair falls over her shoulders.

Paul clicks his tongue, shaking Anaïs Nin at her. “We are just getting to the interesting part in our book.”

Abbey stands with one bare foot on the cold floor. The room is not heated, and she starts to shiver. Her glass ring looks like a cube of ice on the desk.

“Céleste will be angry if we don’t sing to her.”

Paul watches her with his mouth open, his tongue curled behind his teeth. Abbey turns her ankle while stepping into the loose heel, takes a further step away from Paul, and her cheeks warm with embarrassment. She feels like a child in dress-up shoes, mistaking a real house for a playhouse.

Paul lets out a slow whistle, drawing circles around the deep sound with his chin. He stands up. “Come on, then. The birthday girl is waiting.”

*     *     *

After the cake and cookies, Céleste offers Abbey a cigarette and holds open the front door. They step outside, and the night breeze folds over them, soft as a blanket but cool like running water. For the moment, the rain has stopped. Music from the party flows in tinny muffles into the darkness.

Abbey has never wanted to be a girl in the pine needles behind the high school with a soccer player. She’s been getting letters from home, other friends taking off their clothes at parties, giving blowjobs in parked cars, puking their guts out on peach schnapps and orange juice, and then making the same mistakes again the next weekend when another kid’s parents go out of town. The giddiness of gratitude her friends show to do the same thing week after week after week mystifies Abbey. She sits with herself—in the US, in France—alone, lonely, restless, disgusted, bored, teased into hopefulness by the faint promise of a world that lies all around her, waiting for her to awaken into something more, someone more.

The Paul in the farmhouse library in France scares her a bit, and yet, he could be her more, he is what she is not waiting for back home. Maybe.

Abbey has never wanted to be a girl in the pine needles behind the high school with a soccer player.

“Coucou.” Céleste nudges Abbey’s foot. She points the red tip of her cigarette toward the sky and looks away from Abbey over the dark fields. “You know, when you first arrived, I didn’t like you. You seemed kind of stupid. Besides, it was my parents’ idea to host an American student, not ours.” She swallows a short cough. “They bought that puppy so we wouldn’t resent your coming so much.” Céleste leans her shoulder into Abbey’s. “Now look at us. Drunk on champagne at my birthday party.”

Abbey adjusts her cigarette to hang between her two fingers just like Céleste’s does.

“I’m sorry the cookies were so ugly.”

Céleste laughs through her nose. “Did you see how people ate them? ‘Real American chocolate chip cookies,’ I told everyone.” She drags on her cigarette and exhales. “They tasted like air.” And then she says, “I see that Paul likes you.”

An owl crows like a rooster down the road they drove in on earlier that day. The air stills and the temperature seems to drop, as if, with great speed, someone has built a wall of ice around them.

Céleste grinds her cigarette butt into the gravel and dusts off her hands.

“Watch this. I learned it from a Hollywood magazine.” She leans forward and scoops her breasts out of her bra. In the light of the country house windows, in the crisp fall air, one of Céleste’s nipples flashes tight and pink from her cupped hand. She stands up and shakes back her hair, her breasts spreading at the top of her dress. “Et voilà, maximum cleavage.”

*     *     *

Back inside, Abbey looks for Paul in the party room. The round stone walls draw shadowed hollows in the dying light of used up candles. The long table is littered with dessert plates and rumpled tablecloths. Sweat and coffee and sweet marijuana smoke, and something new to Abbey—the scent of desire and coupling—thicken the air; humidity hangs over the room.

For some time she sits at the table, dizzyingly watching the darkened scenes play out around her like a movie. Two women stagger and trip, arm in arm, their scarves intertwined around their shoulders. A man follows behind them, one fist pumping the air against the techno beat, the other hitched to his belt like a cowboy. Sébastien dances in slow circles with a man in a purple hat whose hands hide in Sébastien’s back pockets.

Someone walks into Abbey’s chair. A pain knocks inside her heavy head.

“Oof!” he grunts. He peers down at Abbey and points. “Who are you? Are you lost?”

“I live with Céleste,” she says.

The man pulls on a thin goatee.

“You are mistaken. It is I who lives with Céleste,” he says. “And you talk funny.”

Abbey crosses her legs and grips the edge of the chair, trying to think of what to say. Maybe he knows where Paul is. She brings her eyes to focus against the nubby texture of her skirt. She speaks into the texture.

“I’m from the United States.”

The man looks over his shoulder, scratches his crotch.

“Where’s the rest of the champagne?”

He walks away without waiting for an answer and disappears down the hallway to the bedrooms.

Paul is not in the big stone room. Couples sit in corners, limbs knotted over limbs. The fire embers glow orange like cats’ eyes at the bottom of the fireplace. Rain begins to tap on the windows.

Abbey puts her fingertips to her throat and feels the buzz of Paul’s accent reading words like pleasure and erect and burn. The buzz moves between her legs. She stands, soberer now, thinking she will find him in the library.

She will kiss him. When the weekend is over, she imagines sitting knee to knee in a café back in the city. He will help her with her French and tell her she’s beautiful, say to everyone she’s got sexy legs. They will discuss politics while walking through the rose garden holding hands. She will write to her friends about her older French boyfriend.

One path to the library is through the kitchen. Abbey stumbles on the step up. She is caught by a sound that reaches her first as isolation, then as a question mark.

A man, his shirt hanging over his bottom, his pants pooled at his feet, stands by the sink with his back to Abbey. His pale legs are washed in the dim green light from the oven clock, legs as stiff as pencils and groomed with soft hair. His breath is barely audible, like a whispered confession that comes rapidly and is without ending. There, on his pinky, is Abbey’s glass ring.

Facing him, a woman leans against the wall. Her hair is the color of carrot juice, and she wears a makeshift crown of pinched and molded tinfoil. Between raspy moans, she laughs in quick licks of air.

Abbey digs her nails into skin just below her pleated skirt, unwilling to make a sound. There is nowhere to go but around the couple or retreat. Céleste opens her eyes. Her cherry lips part, and she winks at Abbey.

She lies down on the hard, cold floor, bunching up her skirt like a pillow, then closes her eyes. She wishes she could sleep for months.

“Paul, coucou,” Céleste whispers, watching Abbey. “You are my birthday present.” Paul moans.

Abbey trains her eyes downward, backs up shakily, returns to the party room. The techno pulses but the only guests around are passed out on the floor. She is all alone, standing in the stone room. The candles have burned out. It’s very late. Céleste’s wink is a slap.

Abbey steps out of her heels. She walks over to the fireplace. The embers still glow, and heat radiates against her bare shins. She crouches down and dangles her host-mother’s shoes over the coals. They tilt precariously on the tips of her fingers.

As she stares into the embers and feels the listing weight of the shoes, Abbey forces away the scene from the kitchen and begins composing a letter to send home to her friends. She’ll address it to all of them, a group letter. Hey guys! I met a man, she’ll write. A law student named Paul. The heat from the embers strips the inside of her nose. During the week, I meet him after school when his classes are done, and we get coffee and talk, and he helps me with my homework. He taught me to like cigarettes.

The letter bores her. She takes one shoe and pushes the toe into the embers, twisting it back and forth. Orange sparks shoot into the air and Abbey leans out of the way. Shifting her weight forward again, she uses the other shoe to scoop hot ash around the sculpted toe, burying the satin vamp. She starts again on the letter.

Guess what?! I met a man. His name is Paul. He has the cutest accent when he speaks English. He’s the best kisser, and he takes me out with his friends and holds my hand.

Abbey lets go of both shoes and twists her hair into a knot. It comes undone right away and falls into her face. The shoe that is already half-buried begins to smoke.

Dear Ladies, I’ve met a man named Paul! He’s very romantic, and things in France are so much more mature than in the U.S. He takes me out to dinner with his friends, and I spend the weekend nights at his house. He lives with his parents because that’s what people do here, even when they are in law school, like Paul. I have to lie to my host family about spending the night out, but Paul’s parents treat me like a grown-up, and it’s just like we have our own apartment when we are alone in his room.

The smoke thickens. Abbey puts a finger in the ash around the edge of the fireplace. The ash there is cool and she touches it to the tip of her tongue.

Bonjour, les amies. I met someone! My host sister, Céleste, introduced us at her really cool birthday party out in the country. He read to me from a book by the famous French author, Anaïs Nin, and he read with the sexiest English accent, and we slow-danced by ourselves while everyone else sang happy birthday and ate cake. He’s such a good kisser. It’s been a few weeks now, and we meet up every afternoon with his friends, and they are so fun, too. Last weekend, he took me away to a hotel. Sex is No Big Deal here, but he still wanted our first time to be special. Céleste helped me make up a lie to her parents about going away on a school trip so that I could be with Paul. Oh, his name is Paul.

Both shoes continue to smolder, and a few transparent flames jump from the ashes and disappear. Abbey takes off her stretchy shirt and drapes it over the shoes and embers. In just seconds, the shirt starts to wiggle and shrink, the green material blackens as it melts into the form of the underlying high heeled shoes. Green flames leap up, grab hold of the two shoes, and they begin to come apart, sending out the smell of burning hair.

Abbey turns away from the fire. She’s in her bra and skirt, which looks stupid. She takes off the skirt and leaves it in a pile on the floor. One of the tablecloths hangs over the end of the long dining table, and Abbey shakes it off—knocking around empty glasses and dirty plates—and wraps it around her body. She lies down on the hard, cold floor, bunching up her skirt like a pillow, then closes her eyes. She wishes she could sleep for months.

Two people walk past her, their sharp heels clicking on the old stones.

“Is that the American?” one asks.

“She’s lost her clothes, poor puppy,” says the other. “Perhaps Céleste should have brought a babysitter.”

Abbey won’t send any letter to her friends. There is nothing to tell them. She wonders why she can’t just start with a kiss. A kiss would be enough for her, she thinks.

Tomorrow, she will help Céleste clean up from the party and they will drive home. Céleste will act like nothing happened, and Abbey will apologize to her host mother for losing her shoes at the party.

Author’s note: The Anaïs Nin Trust has given permission to include quotes from Anaïs Nin’s short story, “Runaway.”

Milena Nigam is a Pittsburgh-based writer and a 2016 fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She was a finalist in Cutthroat Journal’s Rick DeMarinis 2014 short story contest, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in YARN, Pithead Chapel, Slice, Full Grown People, The Fourth River, Lunch Ticket, Hippocampus Magazine, and elsewhere. Milena is currently an editor at Halfway Down the Stairs and is working on a novel set in northwestern France.

[fiction]

All the food is kept in the house kitchen. Yon and I, like all the kids but Symboline, aren’t allowed to go there. Symboline, the oldest of us all, brings out bread for children who’ve been nicest to her and flicks crumbs at the others. After she saw our first kiss the other week, she began tsking at us. We tried to be nice to her by shining her shoes and braiding her hair, but after each task, she tsked. Now, when she brings the bread out, she doesn’t even bother hitting us with the crumbs.

Since we started getting no bread, the longest times of the day start at noon when my stomach lights up with hot gnawing. It slows my thinking and pulls me into naps that I hate. Yon doesn’t let on so much that he misses the bread, but he was born in the house, unlike me. I was left here when I turned five. My non-house life taught me to expect food and complain about midday starvation.

If it weren’t for the breakfast and dinner oatmeal Symboline leaves in our assigned wall alcoves, I’d be dead by now. At breakfast one day, I say I’m going to figure out how to have a talk with the adults on the other side of the house, and Yon says that even if I make it through the kitchen to the other side, which I won’t, they’d just ask me to figure things out with Symboline.

“Don’t they care?” I say.

“I’ve never seen an adult on this side, but that’s what Symboline’s for,” he says.

“Does that mean you’ve seen an adult on the other?” I say in wonder.

“Not that either. You know no one ever goes there,” he says.

I imagine beyond the kitchen door. I conjure up a man in an apron who prepares the food for Symboline to carry out. Beyond him, a hallway that leads to the rest of the house, not only hidden from us inside, but also outside. If you walk around to the back of the house, the towering evergreen trees grow thick, and no one dares to push through them.

“Why is Symboline in charge anyway?” I say.

“She’s been here forever,” he says.

“And later, if we just go to the kitchen for more food?” I say, the daily lack of bread making me daring.

“Don’t you remember the boy who never came back?” he says.

“But at least we wouldn’t have to be here anymore,” I say.

“Speaking of, we have to go to work,” he says.

Breakfast over, we head up and grab our bundle of The News, the newspapers we print in the attic at night. About a month ago, we said it would be nice to make something. It was our first close conversation. On a walk soon after, we headed higher and higher in the house, into dusty parts no one bothered with, and found a trove of computer equipment and stacks of paper. We hadn’t used a computer since the one in the rec room died the summer before, but we got it all working in a few days.

In the garage we set the stack of papers in the box in the middle of the unwieldy tandem bicycle. Anyone could use the bike, but we were the ones who got along enough to make it work. Each day we bike to Marty Square to sell our news for a quarter each. We tell Symboline and the others that we give the newspapers away. They don’t care because everyone has to make up some kind of fun in a house with no books but our lesson texts. Though since Symboline told everyone about the kiss, Jerome does rub his index fingers together at us and pretend to gag.

At the park we smell hot meat and peanuts. We lick our lips when someone holds an ice cream cone while giving us a quarter for a newspaper. The headlines are always like today’s: “Alien Elected US President—Again.” We don’t get many repeat customers, though the woman we call our veiled editor has started to bring back copies with marks on them. “I’m a school teacher,” she says through her flowing cloth. Her eyes live in a rectangular panel bordered in bright oranges. “The article on dogs causing all of our pollution was original, but the word ‘pollution’ was spelled three different ways.”

I take the newspaper, and, as with the other times she’s handed us one back, we try to give her a quarter for it. She laughs in delight once again, though this time for a shorter period, and waves away the small money.

“How old are you?”

We don’t answer, and we shake our heads at the offer of lunch.

She tells us to read her comments, to give them to our editor. She’s our one editor, though, and we know she doesn’t mean that. When she’s gone, I read through what she’s written. Sometimes she’s placed a star in a margin and written “Good word choice.” The rest is full of suggestions like “More research needed to aid believability.”

“Maybe today we don’t return to the house,” Yon says. He places a hand on my rumbling stomach.

“Do we have enough money?” I say.

I remember my mother towering over me, my last memory of her. She seemed the size of the sky and I was a feather from a sparrow’s wing.

He shakes his head, so I say, “The adults would find us. And then one of them would stomp on us.” He frowns and nods. A vision of a giant foot squishing me the way my mother’s car once squished a hare fills my thoughts. When Mom and I got out to see what we’d hit, we found two piles of jackrabbit: the outsides, and, a foot away, pounds of insides. I imagine one of the adults lifting a foot to find my outsides compressed. A second later, he sees that his stomping has forced my insides to squirt out and land nearby.

“Gross,” I say.

“What is?” Yon says.

“My brain.” I shake the images away.

I remember my mother towering over me, my last memory of her. She seemed the size of the sky and I was a feather from a sparrow’s wing.

We continue to sell our newspaper, but I can’t concentrate very well. In the morning, the oatmeal felt like it stuck to my stomach’s walls, but it has slid away. “What if I take a fist of our quarters to buy us those hotdogs they talk about?” I say, even though Yon knows as well as I that the house adults can smell all food.

“It’s not just the adults who could tell,” he says. “They’ve taught Symboline to smell any food on us too.”

“When did they do that?” I say.

He scrunches up his nose. “I don’t know, but everyone knows it,” he says.

“I didn’t know,” I say, and he tells me that now I do.

Stomachs still on fire, we pack up the last of the newspapers and return to the house. When no one’s in our long boys’ room, Yon slips the quarters into one of his bedposts, and I burn the leftover paper in the room’s fireplace. We kiss.

Beyond Symboline and Jerome, the kids in the house don’t care that Yon and I kiss, including all the boys who share our room. They only get gaggy at the thought of kissing when it’s for themselves. Every brave attempt at spin the bottle has ended in terrified screams.

And it’s not that we make out in front of anyone. Symboline saw us because she opened our bedroom door when she wasn’t supposed to. Yon says she can do what she wants, which is common knowledge, but it’s also common knowledge that girls aren’t supposed to open boys’ bedroom doors as much as we aren’t supposed to open theirs. Even Matt, who says he was always really a boy and sleeps in our room now, isn’t allowed to open any girls’ doors anymore.

After the quiet of holding each other, we go down to the dining hall and find our dinner oatmeal in our wall alcoves and shovel it down. Afterward, I hold my aching stomach and cry. The other kids finish their bowls and leave us in the dining hall. “Tomorrow, let’s not come back,” Yon says.

“We’ll have enough to leave?” I say.

He says he guesses maybe not but soon. He rubs circles into my back and says it’s time to head to the attic to print the next day’s news.

“We’ll write a story about her,” he says.

“Symboline?”

“No. The veiled editor,” he says, and I agree.

The next day in the park we set up with our printouts. “Do you think she’ll be here today?” I say.

“I hope so,” Yon says, and sure enough, about an hour into selling, the veiled woman, clothes rippling in the wind, walks up to us. I wonder if her eyes were always green. She buys a copy and reads.

“Clever, this,” she says as she taps the headline, “Veiled Avenger Solves Case.”

Her cool tone surprises me. Yon thanks her, and she pulls a loaf of bread from her bag. “Do you want any?” she says.

The bread is in the same red-and-white packaging as the loaves Symboline has at the house. I step back and hide behind Yon. He tells the woman thanks but no thanks, and she apologizes and slides the bread back into her bag.

“We can’t do wheat,” Yon says.

“Oh, okay,” she says, and she says sorry again and walks away.

“Did you see what bread she had?” I say when she’s gone.

“I’m sure that bread is everywhere,” he says.

We sell the rest of the copies in the next two hours—a record for us—and bike home with quarters filling our pockets. At the house, we sneak through to the empty bedroom and Yon fills the bedpost with the quarters.

For a few moments, we have enough without the money.

“Do we have enough yet?” I say.

He shakes his head and pulls me into a hug. In the past weeks he’s gotten taller, so he rests my cheek on his shoulder and squeezes me. For a few moments I forget I’m hungry. For a few moments, we have enough without the money.

The next day as we put our morning bowls and cups in the stacks next to the water jugs on the long table Symboline says we’re not to go to the park with our papers. One of the adults is coming over, and we have to head to the rec room.

In the rec room, Yon and I sit by the stage on two of the many costume boxes donated to the house after a local professional theater shut down. The younger children sometimes put on skits, though I haven’t seen one in months. After all thirty of us kids have gathered, Symboline nods and leaves the room. As one kid yells out that if we’re not good the adult will squash us for sure, the adult walks in. She’s clutching a loaf of bread. She has flowing black clothes on. We can see nothing but her eyes through the cutout in her headpiece. The adult is our veiled editor. After being so nice, how could she be one of the adults who would squash us?

She tells the room that there are reports of two boys in the house who are not following all the rules. She says the two boys go out every day and work, sell things, and horde the earnings. “And they are extremely good friends,” she says. The woman never focuses on anyone, but she doesn’t have to. By the time she says she’d like the issue resolved soon, everyone is staring at Yon and me.

The veiled woman leaves, and bodies stir in the quiet. Everyone stands, unsure of what to do, since the woman didn’t ask anyone to do anything in particular. People start to whisper and point, so Yon and I move for the door. People part at first, but Jerome makes kissing fingers at us and blocks our way. “Kissers,” he says.

“Not for you,” Yon says, and he tries to push past Jerome.

“Give them ten minutes to leave,” Symboline, suddenly standing with us, says.

“You have ten minutes,” Jerome parrots as he lets us pass. No one protests about any of it. No one in the house has great friends—no one but Yon and I have ever tried to be attached, it seems—but now I feel like we’ve been living with strangers.

We leave everyone behind, the buzz of their voices churning after us. I start up the steps, but Yon yanks me back. “No—we go to the garage,” he says.

“But the money,” I say.

“No time. I don’t know what they’ll do to you. We’ll figure something out later. Sneak in or something.”

We bike to the square, the place we know best outside of the house, though our latest edition sits in the attic. The sun flashes on and off of the pavement, blinding us in some moments, guiding us forward in others. At the park, we roll the bike into some trees and find a stone bench.

Sneaking back in for the money will be the last time at the house, but I don’t feel freedom. We don’t have enough sold yet. I smooth my hand over the stone and worry about sleeping. I like my bed and the pillow that stretches just right around my neck. And though I am always hungry, I eat twice a day at the house. Yon pulls me to him and rubs my hands, even though they are not cold. Yon tells me we’ll be okay. I rest for a moment, and when I open my eyes, I smile because Yon’s already smiling at me. But then I focus beyond him and see the veiled woman heading for us.

Yon pulls me up and we skip past the bike-hiding place for the painted sidewalks. We step on face after face. “We left the house like she said to. Why is she here?” I say.

“I don’t know,” Yon huffs.

We bump into a woman pulling a wagon and call out that we’re sorry. She swears at us, but we’re already too far away to respond. I look back to see how fast the veiled woman can move with so much covering, but I don’t see her.

Yon grips my hand and slows us. I can feel his fear. I twist about and find the veiled woman a body length in front of us. “I haven’t run that fast in years,” she says.

“Why are you after us? We left the house like you wanted,” Yon says between breaths.

“Left the house? What do you mean?” she says.

Before either of us can answer, her eyes grow distracted at something behind us. She pulls herself taut and we swivel around. Standing back at the start of the painted sidewalks is another veiled woman. As she gets closer, we see she could be the same woman—with the same fabric, nearly the same bright embroidery.

The first veiled woman says, “What is this?” and the second one tsks and says, “If you don’t show me where the money is, the adults will start hurting the ones who are left.”

I check on the woman behind us. She takes a look at each of us and shakes her head, backs away. She reaches the opposite end of the painted sidewalks and turns out of sight.

“Let’s go after her,” Yon says.

“Can we?” I say.

“No,” the remaining veiled woman says. “After all I’ve done for you, you must return one more time.”

Yon puts an arm around me and walks us past the woman, past the bike, home. I struggle on the way, but Yon holds me tighter and says things will be fine, and what do I have but him?

At the house, she brings us back in front of the househeld, all the kids. Jerome makes his finger-kisses and soon everyone is. “They have agreed to bring the adults their secret money,” our captor says.

“And then they’re done for good,” Jerome says.

“For good,” a girl cries.

“Bring me to the money,” Symboline says from behind us.

I search for the veiled woman, but she is no longer in the room.

We lead Symboline out of the room. Out of earshot of the other kids, she says, “The adults just need the money and then you can go.”

Yon pulls me up the stairs and along to the bedroom. Inside, Symboline says, “But after you left I searched in here.”

Yon settles me on his bed. He kisses me, and Symboline tsks. He unscrews the wooden ball at the top of a bedpost and tosses it next to me on the bed. I roll it around. It’s not hollow. It’s heavy.

Symboline stares down into the hiding place. “The money’s in there?”

I pick up the bedpost topper and test its weight.

“Yes, it’s down in there,” Yon says. “All quarters.”

“I know that,” she says.

Yon yanks a duffel bag out from under the bed. He pulls up on the post and says, “Hold the bag open.” Symboline anchors its mouth wide as he slides the post away from the bed and tips it to rain coins into the bag.

“All this in just under a month?” Symboline says in the most hopeful voice I’ve heard that year. “And you worked together? Imagine how much bread this could buy.”

“No, not all this,” Yon says, and tells her to bring the bag to the other rear post. He repeats the same moves and another stream of quarters joins the first. “That’s what we made in just under a month,” he says. “With your help too, of course. The quarter you used to buy the newspaper is in there too.”

I realize he’s right but keep my surprise to myself. Symboline tightens her slack stance and tosses her hair back. “How did you know?”

“At the park earlier, you sounded like you. I didn’t catch it when you bought the paper, but with the real woman there, it was obvious. And I don’t know how you found such close-matching clothes, but you couldn’t be her: The real woman was nice, didn’t hate us,” Yon says.

“The costume boxes are helpful, and I don’t hate you,” she says. “I made sure you kept getting oatmeal. It’s just that for the kids to survive, things need order.”

“Did the adults tell you that?” Yon says.

“The adults,” she says. “Yeah, they tell me.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us to leave right away?” Yon says.

“It takes a little while to make outcasts, to feed the disquiet that people don’t even know is growing. If the househeld think they’ve kicked you out, they won’t think of leaving too.”

“But why pretend to be the veiled woman?” he says.

“I followed you to the park after you started going out every day. I followed you to see how close you’d gotten. I was shocked to see you were making money—and talking with an outside adult multiple times. Pretending to be her seemed a perfect way to make you stop trusting an outsider.”

I step up on the bedframe and with a wild swing, I slam the bedpost ball against Symboline’s head. She slumps forward, and Yon catches her. “Took you long enough,” he says.

“I wasn’t sure if that’s what you meant,” I say. I’m grateful she’s breathing, and we move her up on the bed. I can’t imagine moving again if she weren’t breathing.

Yon shoulders the bag and says he hadn’t thought it would be so heavy. “It’s enough though, right?” I say, and he says we’ll have to make it be.

“Let’s get back to the park and the bike,” he says. “I didn’t want to risk having it back here and something happening to it.”

We head for the front door, but we find Jerome and ten other kids. They start finger-kissing at us, so we back away and go for the rec room. It has lots of windows—but kids are standing in our way there too.

“Get them,” echoes between the groups.

We reach the stairs again, but going up means fewer ways to get out. Besides, Symboline is that way. Instead, we opt for the dining room and aim for a door that leads to the front hall. Before we reach it, Jerome slams through it. We veer right and find ourselves in front of the kitchen door.

“Kissers,” they say, and they have us. The swinging door behind us might as well be a drop off a cliff.

“At least we’re together,” Yon says, and he pulls me through the door. No one follows, and no one cries out. No one’s invented a sound for what we’ve just done.

No one follows, and no one cries out. No one’s invented a sound for what we’ve just done.

Or for what we see. Grime covers the kitchen. One set of towering metal shelves holds rows of oatmeal silos, though most are missing their tops. Next to the silos, our house bowls rest in stacks. Other shelves hold a few loaves and countless empty bread bags. We look in cabinets and the refrigerator, but we find no other food. On the stove is a large pot crusted with oatmeal. On the wall opposite our entrance, a white door waits.

We squeeze each other’s hands. Yon grips the handle and pulls it open. The excitement of discovering the hallway to the other side of the house, to the adults, quiets away fear. We run into a dim grass-covered room that has trees for walls. We race around a bench and push into a gap in the farthest trees. The bag of coins gets stuck for a moment, but we ease it free. And come to a stone wall. It’s just low enough for us to press ourselves up to look over it. The park we bike to lies out and below. Between Marty Square and us is the slope of the city—yards and houses and streets and stores. We leave the wall and push through the trees in other directions, but we end up in the neighboring yards.

“This whole time it’s just been a backyard,” Yon says, and I feel guilty that I struck Symboline.

We return to the kitchen and ease the door shut. Yon puts the duffel on the closest counter. We look at the scant supplies of food. “What kind of teacher do you think the real veiled woman is?” he says.

“A nice one?” I say.

“Do you think if we sell newspapers in the park again that she’ll buy one?” he says.

I shrug. “That would be nice,” I say.

We read the prices marked on the bags of bread and boxes of oatmeal. We have money to buy plenty more.

“Do you think they’re waiting out there for us?” I say.

“Maybe, but they’ll see we were able to go in and out of the kitchen. But we can say the adults made us like Symboline.”

“Symboline,” he says.

“Our first change could be to get hotdogs,” I say, and Yon hugs me close.

For now, we leave the bag of quarters on the counter. We push the swinging door out to find the house gathered. I catch Jerome’s face, and he mouths a “Wow.” He calls for people to get back, that we’ve done the impossible. When the room is full and silent, Yon kisses me in the doorway and again in the dining hall.

Todd Wellman is former fiction editor for cream city review. He received his MA from UW-Milwaukee. His writing has appeared in The James Franco Review, the Indie Next Lists, The Missouri Review blog, and more. He implores all to shop at indie bookstores.