[fiction]

I am a little man. That’s what Papi always says. Mijo, you are un hombrecito. That means that I must be strong, never ask for help and—very important—never cry. But my teacher doesn’t understand this and wants to know why I punched Manuel during recess. She says that I need to use my words and not my fists and that talking about the problem might help. I don’t want to tell her anything. My dad says that it’s embarrassing to talk about our problems.

Nothing’s wrong, I say, I’m fine, I won’t do it again.

It doesn’t work. They ask my parents to come to school and they both look upset. Mami brings me to the principal’s office and Papi arrives ten minutes later. He sits across from us. What happened, mijo? I stare at my shoes and tell him that the other kid started it. I close my fists—so tight that my thumbs hurt. But that pain is nothing compared to how I feel about my parents being at school—like being squeezed and pushed out. They don’t need any more problems, they have plenty. I keep looking at my shoes wishing that I could be anywhere but here.

Inside the principal’s office, I sit on the small couch with my mom. My teacher, Mrs. Miller, takes the armchair. The principal tells my dad that there are chairs outside, that if he wouldn’t mind bringing one inside so that he can sit. No, no, I’m okay like this. But before the principal can insist, the school counselor, Mr. Gomez appears at the door, Oh, we need two chairs, I will take care of that. My dad wants to say no again but it’s too late. Mr. Gomez offers him a chair with a big smile on his face. Papi just slurs a quick thank you. The principal starts talking but after a few words, she makes a strange face like the one I make when I have forgotten to do my homework. She looks at my dad. Mr. Suarez, I was told that you speak English, is that correct? My dad nods without looking at her. Then she turns to my mom. Mrs. Suarez, what about you? Mami does not respond, her big eyes distant stars sending distressed signals. Okay, I will speak slowly then. Mr. Suarez and Mr. Gomez, could you please fill her in later? Mr. Gomez is happy to oblige, all teeth and cheerfulness. Papi barely shrugs.

I close my fists—so tight that my thumbs hurt. But that pain is nothing compared to how I feel about my parents being at school—like being squeezed and pushed out. They don’t need any more problems, they have plenty.

I get tired of looking at my shoes so I grab a pen I find on the desk next to me. I play with it and concentrate on the click-click it makes when I push the tiny button. I know they are talking about me but I don’t look up. Everyone’s upset at me right now but in a couple of weeks, some other kid will screw up even worse than I did and then everyone will forget about me. I can’t wait for that to happen—I don’t like people looking at me and bombarding me with questions. Speaking of which, I think Mr. Gomez is asking me something. I just shrug.

That’s not going to work, we need an answer. Why did you punch Manuel?

I keep staring at the pen and just say I don’t know, that I was upset, that it isn’t that big of a deal. They go back to talking to each other and I just stay in silence for the rest of the meeting.

*     *     *

Two weeks later, I am at a counselor’s office all the way across town. While we wait, Papi keeps looking at his watch. He’s missing work because of me. Mami moves around in her chair and gives me a tired smile. We go inside and they ask her to sign a bunch of papers. Some lady is translating the information for her. Mami just nods and signs wherever they point. We then talk to another lady who has huge, thick glasses. She is sitting at her computer and talks to the translator lady who then asks my parents tons of questions. Words and tears spill out of Mami, little diamonds falling down her face. I look at Papi. Arms crossed, he moves his head side to side and stares at the floor. What is Mami doing? We don’t tell our problems to other people. She keeps crying. I don’t want to look anymore. I look out the window—at the trees—the leaves rustling in the wind. But Mami’s crying is still there. It always is.

*     *     *

I start meeting with a counselor once a week. Mami has Wednesdays off so that is when we go. Papi cannot ask for more time off work. I meet Rick by myself and sometimes, he speaks to my mom afterwards with the help of the translator lady who always looks like she has a stomachache. I thought the counselor was going to be mean and tell me what a bad kid I am but it turns out that counselors are very much like art teachers. One day he asks me to draw my house, another day, my family, and another one, my classroom. After I’m done with the drawings, Rick asks me to explain them to him and he also asks about the people in them. I like talking about my drawings. I like that this guy does not ask what is wrong with me. He asks easy questions. I now look forward to talking to him so that I can tell him all about my drawings.

One day, Rick asks what made me draw my father far away from Mami, my brother, and me. I tell him that I don’t know. He asks if I am upset with Papi, if I don’t want him at home anymore. I answer no. I tell him he got it backwards. Papi is the one who’s upset. He is the one who doesn’t want to live with us anymore. Rick asks why. I answer that I’m not sure, that maybe he is tired of my mom always yelling at him. Rick asks if I know why she yells at Papi. I tell him no, that I don’t ask because my dad says is rude to ask people about their problems. When they fight, I just go to my room, put my headphones on and play video games. I tell Rick that I can still hear the yelling through the earphones. He asks me how does that make me feel and I say that I don’t know—I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Rick says okay and asks about my upcoming soccer game.

Rick shows me a video. A boy that looks like he could be my age is playing outside his house, shooting some hoops, smiling. Suddenly, yelling comes from inside the house and the boy starts singing to himself. The ball dribbles faster and faster but the yelling keeps getting louder and louder. Then his dad comes out, slams the door, gets into his car and does not even look at him. At the end of the video, the boy throws the ball over the fence and just sits on the porch with his head down, looking at his shoes.

How do you think the boy feels? Rick asks, like he knew a secret I had yet to discover.

I think he is sad, I say, but then change my mind. No, I think he is angry. I can’t make up my mind and I tell him that I think he is both sad and angry.

What makes him sad and angry?

That his parents are fighting, I guess.

The boy’s sad because his parents are fighting?

No, that makes him angry!

Why is he sad then?

I say that the boy is sad because he thinks that it is his fault that his parents fight all the time. He thinks he’s a bad boy and that’s why his parents yell at each other.

What do you think the boy should do?

I say that I don’t know.

Maybe he could talk to someone? Rick insists.

No, I say, that would be embarrassing for the boy.

But if he’s sad, don’t you think it would be a good idea to ask for help?

No! Men don’t ask for help.

Rick says the boy is not a man. I say that he’s a little man and little men don’t cry and they don’t ask for help. I tell Rick that I have a ton of homework and that I need to leave early. He nods and says that’s fine, that he will see me next week.

*     *     *

For a week I can’t stop thinking about the boy, sitting at that porch while the world around him keeps getting smaller—the sky above him slashed with gray clouds. I want to hug him and tell him that everything’s going to be okay. Rick says that it’s very nice of me to want to comfort the boy. He asks me what else I would say to him.

I’m not sure, I answer.

What if the boy told you he thinks it’s his fault that his mom and dad are fighting?

I say that I would tell him I don’t think that’s true. Adults fight all the time about old people problems and it has nothing to do with the kids. Rick asks if I’m sure about that. I say that yes, I think so.

You are right! It is not the boy’s fault. As a matter of fact, children are never to blame when parents fight.

I nod, suspicious. I’m usually never right.

What about you?

What about me?

Do you think your parents fight because of you?

I look down, shrug and say that sometimes I do.

But you just said that it wasn’t the boy’s fault that their parents were fighting. Why should it be your fault, then?

I don’t know. I start lowering my head so that I can look at the floor but Rick stops me.

Look at me! You need to look at people when they are talking to you. Now listen. Your parents are going through a hard time, and they may fight sometimes because that’s how adults think they can solve their problems. But I want you to understand, it is never your fault. You cannot control what adults do or say. That’s not your job. Do you understand?

I nod slowly. I feel strange, like my chest is about to burst. I’m not sure what’s happening.

You can ask for help. It doesn’t make you any less of a man. It makes you human.

And something else, Rick continues, I want you to pay close attention to what I am about to say because it is very important. Always remember, no matter how much they fight, your parents love you very much. That will never change. Your brother and you are the most important people in the world to them. They may not always act like it, because parents are human and they can make mistakes. But they love you with all their hearts and they want what’s best for you.

Something breaks inside me. I try to stop the tears with my hands. Rick says that it is okay, that I can cry. I say no, that’s not true and I tell him what Papi says.

I’m sure your dad means well, but like I said before, parents don’t know everything and they can make mistakes just like everyone else. Crying does not make you less of a man. For example, what does your mom do when you fall from your bicycle and scrape your knee?

She cleans the wound with warm water.

Does it feel better?

Yes, it calms the pain.

Exactly! It works just the same with the wounds we have inside. Our warm tears help wash the sadness and anger away. If we hold our tears and words for too long, the wound gets infected and it will only hurt more and more. I bet your parents have told you that if your brother or you hurt yourselves when playing, you should ask an adult for help. It isn’t any different when we hurt inside. You can ask for help. It doesn’t make you any less of a man. It makes you human.

I nod. I take a deep breath. And then I cry.

I cry for Mami and Papi. I cry for my little brother and for me. I cry for my family. I cry because it hurts that my parents can’t be friends and I don’t want Papi to leave and I’m afraid I’ll never see him again. I tell all of this to Rick and he says that it’ll be okay. That now that I can talk about what hurts, the pain will get better. He says that I cannot control what my parents decide to do but that I can talk to them about my fears and tell them how I feel when they fight. He says to keep in mind that even though my mom and my dad are older than me, they are still learning how to deal with their problems. But that no matter what happens, I have to remember that they love me, that they will always be there for me, and that I should hold on to that.

*     *     *

A few weeks have passed and things have started to get better. My parents talked to Rick a few times and now they don’t fight as much. When they do, they make sure to come look for me, give me a hug and ask me if I’m okay. This isn’t something easy for Papi. At the beginning he didn’t want to meet with Rick but little by little, he’s becoming less uncomfortable when talking about things. He’s learning just like me and he now understands that it’s okay for a man to be sad sometimes and to want to talk about his problems with other people. I am stronger now because I can help my mom and my dad and give them hugs when I see that they’re sad. I don’t look at my shoes or the floor anymore when people ask me questions. I try to look straight into their eyes, answer their questions, and apologize if I have done something wrong.

That makes me brave, not weak.

That makes me un hombrecito.

Melanie Márquez Adams is an MFA candidate in Spanish creative writing and a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship at the University of Iowa. Her short story collection, Mariposas Negras, won Third Place in the 2018 North Texas Book Festival Spanish Fiction Awards. Melanie’s work has appeared in storySouth, Dash, Whale Road Review, Asterix Journal, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.

[creative nonfiction]

Before I talk about Halloween and Corey Fisher and the two of us in the coat closet dressed as toilet paper mummies, let me start with Mom. Mom grew up in Chicago. As a teenager, she worked summers at Brookfield zoo. Head zookeeper of the petting zoo.

All her stories from that time start with “Once we had.”

“Once we had a baby elephant that stole a woman’s purse.”

“Once we had a baby kangaroo that jumped into a woman’s arms”

Once Mom bought me a pop-up book named Mammals of the World. I was five, earning a reputation as the “kissy girl” because I kissed Alfonso five times on the cheek. I asked another friend if I could see his underwear. Big deal. If my curiosity about Alfonso or the underwear had been a zoo, it would be that dinky fifteen acre “zoological park” in Amarillo with the boring Longhorns and Monkey Island.

When I was five, I opened Mammals of the World and saw a red panda. This curiosity was different than the underwear and kisses. It grew and grew until it became the size of the National Zoo. One hundred and sixty-three acres. An enclosure of pandas and Lemur Island. My life’s mission revealed itself. Become a zoo keeper. Live among the red pandas.

Now, I’m ten. Behind my belly button the call of the red pandas still purrs. And I hear it loudest when I steal glances at my friends’ bras and touch the logos on their chests.

The sounds are familiar. Thirty minutes ago familiar, when Corey Fisher walked in on me changing. Corey’s eyes widened as I stood before him, nipples bare as the swinging tits of the Monkey Island spider monkeys.

So what has me pulling at my fingernails tonight is whether or not I feel the purring with Corey Fisher. Corey Fisher who apparently forgets how to knock on a bedroom door before entering. Corey Fisher who said we should TP ourselves, hide in the coat closet, jump out, and scare the trick-or-treaters. He said that could be our act in the haunted house his mom and my mom have put together. Which is why his mom is standing at the front door, ready to greet the trick-or-treaters, while my mom waits down the hallway. And Corey and I are in the coat closet, ribs cage to cage, among my parents’ forgotten winter coats, rain slickers, and church jackets. One of Mom’s shoulder-padded jacket butts against my face. I punch it away. The jacket rebounds from the closet wall, hits my neck.

“Back! Stay back,” Corey says, elbowing a ski jacket. He’s eleven. He’s tall enough to reach the closet’s top shelf, where Mom keeps her animal hats. Flamingos, ducks, and crabs.

Once my family had a dog who liked to raid the guinea pig burial site. When we returned home, she gave herself away by hiding in the bedroom.

Not Corey.

Since the incident, he hasn’t blushed, avoided, or apologized. I huff. Cross my arms and think about the autobiography Mom and I wrote for English homework last night. The paper started with Mammals of the World and ended with me becoming head keeper for the red pandas at the National Zoo.

Once, Corey told me that when he’s an adult, he’s going to own five chinchillas. I raise both my eyebrows at him. A house of chinchillas compared to a life spent among the red pandas—

“Do you hear that?” He says, interrupting my thoughts.

I shake the dust out of my head. “No, I don’t hear anything.”

“I think I hear someone coming up the breezeway!”

The doorbell rings.

“They’re here!” Corey sings, squeezing further back behind the ski jacket. I sigh and let the shoulder pad win the fight for my face. Mrs. Fisher opens the front door. There’s a chorus of kid-voices shouting, “Trick-or-Treat!”

She chimes, “Welcome to our haunted house.” She’s dressed as a pumpkin. She’s wearing a blimp, orange pillowcase with black triangle eyes and a mouth that would not get A+ stickers at the dentist.

Last year, Mrs. Fisher was my fourth-grade teacher. I met Corey when his family popped into our house for dinner. Surprise! My mom isn’t any regular PTA mom. Not only did she start up an animal program at my elementary school and organize ferrets, bearded dragons, even a chinchilla into the classrooms, but, then at the end of the school year, she invited my teacher over for dinner.

Mom and Mrs. Fisher became BFFs. Corey’s younger sister and my younger sister Kristin became BFFs. Corey and I are as close to BFFs as I can be with a boy that has cooties.

In the closet, we hear the shuffle of the trick-or-treaters coming inside. “I will be your tour guide for your stay here,” Mrs. Fisher says and lets out a throaty high-pitched cackle. One of the trick-or-treaters proclaims they’re not scared. I think just wait. Last year, Mrs. Fisher caught me pinching my friend Crystal’s butt, and I saw exactly how scary she could be.

“What do we have here?” Mrs. Fisher says. “A T-Rex and… a jackrabbit?”

“I’m a Jackalope,” the kid squeaks.

“Only in Texas.”

Corey starts jiggling his leg. “It’s almost time,” he whispers, even though it’s not. Mom still has her bit of the routine to do. I slump into the jacket’s shoulder pad. Rotate my head and gaze through my left eye at Corey. My belly starts to chatter and trill.

Once we had matching BFF rope bracelets, but now I don’t know what’s going on. I furrow my eyebrows and glare. You listen here, Corey Fisher, I think, I don’t know what zoo this curiosity with you is building, but this kissy girl only wants the National Zoo. I want to feed red pandas their daily 200,000 bamboo leaves. Pet their red fur. Feel my curiosity pop out from the imaginary of books and into the real.

In the entryway, Mrs. Fisher says, “And now, I want you to meet my sister.”

On cue, Mom goes “whoooo” from the hallway. She’s abandoned her baggy khakis and animal shirts and gone rogue, borrowing a red belly dance costume, which she threw over a white turtle neck and leggings. I picture all five feet ten inches of her dancing down the hallway, her long legs like stilts. Permed duck fluff crowns her head.

“Hellooooo,” Mom moans to the trick-or-treaters. “I’m the older sister, Genie.” No one lectured Mom to be scary. We figured the turtleneck was frightening enough. “I want to introduce you to another member of our family.”

Well-rehearsed, Corey and I know now is when Mom pulls a picture frame from behind her back. She slowly rotates the frame to show the trick-or-treaters my dead grandfather.

The audience gasps.

“This is our Dad!” Mom howls.

“Oh, how we miss him!” shrieks Mrs. Fisher.

“He died seven years ago!” Mom wails.

Corey pokes my ribs. “It’s almost time,” he whispers. Excitement runs like static electricity from his squirming arms to the ski jacket to the shoulder pad to my face. My belly starts to chatter and bellow. The sounds are familiar. Thirty minutes ago familiar, when Corey Fisher walked in on me changing. Corey’s eyes widened as I stood before him, nipples bare as the swinging tits of the Monkey Island spider monkeys.

When I was five, I opened Mammals of the World and saw a red panda. This curiosity was different than the underwear and kisses.

For a second, I was lock-limbed. When I snapped awake, I laughed and told Corey to get out. I dove headfirst into a long-sleeved shirt. The door shut. Against the itchy fabric, I heard the bellowing of whatever was caught in my stomach.

And now, with those same sounds whirring in my belly, clarity comes to me as a zoo park map spread behind my eyes.

The chattering—Monkey Island. The bellowing—the long horn cows. My eyes fly open. I see Corey with his hand on the door handle. I step away from him, back into the shoulder pad. No, I think. This kissy girl isn’t going anywhere.

“Now,” Mrs. Fisher says. “There’s one more member of our family we want you to meet. You’ve met my sister Genie…”

“Ooooooooo,” sings Mom.

“Our father…”

Mrs. Fisher inhales. In that pause I imagine all the mummy toilet paper falling away. I imagine stepping instead into a zoo keeper costume. Khaki pants. Green shirt with white National Zoo lettering.

Laura, Keeper of Red Pandas. Kissy girl no longer.

“Now, we want you to meet the last member of our family. Meet our mummy!”

The red panda keeper leaps ahead of Corey. She jumps out of the closet, raises her arms, and screams, “BOO.”

All the zoo sounds from my belly stampeded into the entryway. The shrieks from the children. The high-pitched peals of Mrs. Fisher’s laughter. Corey wheezing as he doubles over on the floor. My mother’s throaty wailing.

In my autobiography, I became a zoo keeper like my mom. I got married. My husband and I moved together to Nepal so I could study red pandas in the wild.

What if your husband just died, Mom had asked while we were writing. Wouldn’t that be so weird and funny? Yes, yes, yes, I’d said, howling. That would be hilarious.

We wrote the scene like this: one day, my husband and I were in the forest, scouting for red pandas. Then soldiers appeared. They shot him.

I spent my life living among the red pandas.

Mrs. Fisher hands the trick-or-treaters their Kit-Kats and Reese’s. Corey snatches a handful of candy for himself and dashes into the coat closet. “C’mon Laura,” he calls. “I think I hear the next batch.”

Instead, I step toward Mom. I take her hand. Mom twirls me under her puffy, red belly-dancer sleeve. I spin in the orange light and know that at the next sleepover, I’ll ask my friends to show me their bras. I’ll ask them to show me their arm pit hair.

The next wave of trick-or-treaters comes up the breezeway. Mrs. Fisher says, “Quick, quick, get in your places,” so I skip over to the coat closet as Mom dances back up the hallway. Corey perches next to the shoulder pad. I stand by the door. I put my hand on the handle. Hear the wild red panda purr of my stomach. “Welcome to our haunted house,” cackles Mrs. Fisher. Laura, Keeper of the Red Pandas, grins.

Laura is a queer writer from the Texas Panhandle. She is currently residing in the Idaho Panhandle, and in addition to cooking with pans with handles, enjoys teaching theater to elementary students and co-hosting Moscow’s first queer reading series: POP-UP PROSE. To read more of her work, check out the NonBinary Review or The Manifest-Station and her Patreon page: patreon.com/lauragould and sign up if you’d like to receive her monthly stories in the mail.

[fiction]

Since coming here, the bright red-orange of my skin has begun to fade into a washed out but stubborn stain. The gold of my eyes, too, has dulled to a yellowish brown.

This place—they call it a school. We’ve been here almost a year now, and on my first day of class, as we sat in the rows of desks facing a woman with colorless skin and yellow hair, I raised my hand and asked, “Why is it spelled with an h?”

She blinked at me. Those strangely colored eyes—blue, they call it. “What, honey?”

I wanted to ask what honey was too, but I knew it was better to go one question at a time. “Why does school have an h in it if we don’t pronounce it?”

She smiled at me as though I’d finally discovered some far-flung moon that she’d known about for ages now. “That’s because it’s a silent letter, honey.”

A silent letter. Who had ever heard of such a ridiculous thing? That’s what I thought then, except now I am beginning to think differently. I like silent letters, how they hide within words and within sounds, the way you cannot see them in speech but you know they’re there. If you don’t know the silent letters in a word, then you don’t really know the word at all.

I have silent letters in me, too, I think. Things I have tucked away in my mind that the teachers and doctors can’t see. I can do nothing about the loss of my red-orange coloring or the golden glow of my eyes, but my memories—I can hold on to them, as best I can, for as long as I can. I clutch at them in desperation, as though my sheer force of will can keep them alive in my mind.

*     *     *

In the dark of our dormitory, everyone is stirring restlessly. The low rumble of thunder drives the fearful youngest girls to me, and I am sitting up in my bed with children in my lap. They are too young to remember that this thunder heralds the coming of the red rains. Too young to recall the time before they came—the colonists from Earth. 

I whisper about the night sky after the red rains—a sky so black and clear and glittering that it kissed the breath right out of my mouth.

“Mar…Mar…” someone whimpers as thunder rattles the building. I hear pattering feet running down the aisle, and a little girl crawls up into my bed beside me. Emily.

Mar. They mean Margaret, which is and is not my name. The school assigned us names when we arrived, sullen-faced, teary-eyed. Fearful, wary. I am Margaret, my brother Harry, and some days I almost forget I was ever called anything else, in a language utterly different from English. But living at school, constantly hearing and reading and speaking and writing in English, I have begun to lose my mother tongue. But I suppose Margaret is not too terrible of a name—mostly because it contains within it Mar. Almost like Mars, which is the name the colonists call this planet. My home. I would like to think that even in unnaming and renaming me, the colonists have failed to erase who I am, where I come from.

A loud crack of thunder startles someone into crying. Lightning illuminates the dormitory in stark, harsh whiteness. In the flash, I see that all the older girls, like me, are sitting up in bed. Their faces are turned towards the window, their faces hungry. Waiting. We remember what the red rains are like.

“Shh,” I whisper to the crying girl, smoothing her hair. The littlest ones don’t speak anything but English now, but when they first came they hardly spoke it at all. I, having the best grasp on English out of all of us, helped them along, and since then they have always clung to me. “Shh. It’s the red rains coming.”

“Red rains?”

I lean forwards and begin to tell the little girls congregated around me about what it was like before the Earth colonists came. In all honesty, even my own memories of that long-gone era are limited and fading into fantastical glimmers, but I do my best. I whisper into the dark about the canals, how they filled to the brim once a year when the red rains came in wonderful torrents, how we all went swimming. This, I do remember. How could I not? The cool water, the splashing and laughing, all of us washing reddish dust from our skin and faces. My mother’s hair fanning out around her head as she floated. My brother spewing a stream of water from his mouth at me, his eyes bright and glimmering with excitement.

I whisper about the night sky after the red rains—a sky so black and clear and glittering that it kissed the breath right out of my mouth. My father and I would stand on the red rocks or climb the crimson dunes to marvel at the stars. They all had names and stories, but I’ve forgotten.

“Mar?” A thin, high voice.

“Yes?” I say.

“Will we get to go and play in the canals too?”

I close my eyes. Thunder calls out again in its booming, commanding voice, summoning me to come outside and dance in the red rains, to soak the color back into my fading skin, and I ache with the longing.

The answer is, of course, no. The time of playing in canals and standing on the dunes is over now. I take the little girl’s hand and stay silent. I don’t have the heart to tell the truth. I don’t have the heart to tell a lie that will only disappoint.

*     *     *

The colonists came without warning, one day, simply dropping out of the sky. I was inside, chattering to my mother about what my friend and I were planning to do for her birthday, when a deafening roaring exploded into the air and there was a crash so loud and strong it swallowed up every other sound. A wave of force, a ripple coursing through the ground beneath our feet, threw us down roughly. Dazed, I watched a great cloud of red-orange dust engulf the world. I remember coughing so hard that tears came to my eyes, the feel of the gentle weight of my mother’s trembling hand resting on my back. I remember the moment I finally drew in a breath and could breathe, remember thinking I’m alive, not knowing…not knowing, not knowing what was coming.

We ventured outside, hand-in-hand, my mother gripping me so hard I thought all the bones in my fingers would splinter and shatter. She had lovely skin, my mother—a deep scarlet, with an undercurrent of bright copper.

The cloud of dust thinned. All our neighbors were there too, gathered around nervous and dusty before a strange thing of metal and wire and who knew what else. A spaceship, later, is what I learned it was called. But I didn’t know that then, and English was strange and foreign, that day when the spaceship came and the hatch opened slowly with a hiss. I wanted to laugh when I saw them, climbing out in bulky white suits, their heads encased in what looked like bubbles.

After a moment, one of the beings lifted a hand in greeting and spoke, a crackly transmitted voice breaking the silence.

*     *     *

From Earth, with peace. That was the first line the Earth colonists spoke, though of course we didn’t understand it then. That is the line now written on our dormitory doors, painted on our classroom walls, and blinking on the screens in the doctors’ offices. But those words were not supposed to be the first ones spoken on Mars, I learned. The first words were supposed to be the same words uttered by some other space traveler from Earth, Neil something-or-other, who had either strong arms or legs. I can never remember which. I asked a doctor about it once when I went for my check-up, and he only laughed at me. The doctors like me, because they like the fading color of my skin and eyes. They like that they have successfully corrected my gait.

Corrected. They don’t know that I only walk the way they want me to so I can avoid having to go back to the physical therapist. But in the dormitory, at night, when the matron has turned the light out and left the room, I loop around the beds to comfort the littlest girls and walk in our usual loping, sloping gait. I refuse to lose that, too.

From Earth, with peace—an improvised line, because the colonists had no idea we already lived on Mars. I, too, improvise, as I tell the girls stories about the stars and give them silly names. I say when the stars cry from laughing so hard, their tears fall down to Mars as the red rains.

“Only once a year,” I whisper. “Stars are so serious that it’s hard to get them to laugh that hard.”

The first rain drops, fat and ruby colored, splatter against the window. My mother’s face swims before my eyes. My brother, howling into the sky with glee, pointing at the churning clouds as the rain pours down.

Someone gets up. I hear her feet hit the floor, and as she passes by my bed, I recognize her. Veronica. We were best friends once, before we were turned into Veronica and Margaret, before she stopped speaking altogether when we came to the school. She won’t walk the way they want her to. They send her back, over and over again, to the therapist.

Much of her extended family has managed to avoid the fate which has befallen the rest of us. In the days after the colonists first arrived, the leaders and councils met to discuss and debate, so heatedly it’s a surprise they didn’t spark a wildfire. Some, wary and mistrustful of the newcomers from Earth, wanted us to all disappear, migrating to the mountains or going underground into the ancient tunnels. Some, including my parents, argued that it would be best to coexist with the colonists, who seemed peaceful and harmless enough. My mother pitied them, those poor weak-lunged souls who struggled to breathe our air properly. We ought to help them, and maybe they can help us too.

With horror, the colonists pointed to our red-orange skin, our elongated limbs and faces, our four-fingered hands, the loping gait with which we walked. Discolored. Disfigured. Disabled. Or so they said.

My family stayed. So did Veronica’s, but most of her relatives left to go underground, where cities now unfold beneath the unsuspecting colonists’ feet. We should have gone too, but it was too late by the time we realized that the kind of help the colonists wanted to offer us was not the kind we wanted or needed. They had censuses, registration, numbers to keep track, charts about population growth. We could no longer merely disappear without attracting attention and search parties and investigations.

I watch Veronica make her way to the far end of the room. She stands on tiptoes and unlatches the window as the pane rattles from the rumbling thunder. Her hands are shaking as she opens the window and reaches out to let droplets fall on her palm. A gust of wind blasts in and I draw in a deep breath, desperately trying to fill my lungs with cold, rain-scented air, so different from the sterilized thin oxygen we breathe in here. The wind smells of the dunes, and I think I can even feel some of the dust on my skin.

When the rains come, the underground rivers will swell and overflow, and perhaps there will be dancing and swimming and singing in the tunnels.

Not so for us.

*     *     *

They came to take us away a year ago. Before that, for a while already, we had been going to English classes the colonists facilitated, and although I knew vaguely that ours was an uneasy peace, I was blissfully unconcerned. The teachers were kind and friendly, the new language enthralling, and as one of the fastest learners, I took home spelling and grammar tests decorated with gold stars.

But then something happened, something which knocked every gold star out of the sky of my imagination and slapped the smiles off my teachers’ faces. A doctor happened to test a child for a disease and found, instead, high levels of a chemical in his skin and hair. From lab results, the colonists argued that the chemical was in our water, in our red rain—a chemical that discolored, disfigured, and disabled.

With horror, the colonists pointed to our red-orange skin, our elongated limbs and faces, our four-fingered hands, the loping gait with which we walked. Discolored. Disfigured. Disabled. Or so they said.

There were rumors of children being seized and taken away in the name of sanitation and schooling, a secular sort of salvation intended to ensure that following generations might be whole and healthy. I watched my parents worry and whisper night after night. They kept my brother and me from going to our English classes, and as fear wrapped its noose around my neck, my brother and I took to sleeping huddled up so that if we were taken in the night, we would at least be taken together.

But it was morning when they came, announcing themselves by way of a raucous knocking on the door. My father froze and shouted, “Coming! Coming!” in accented English while my mother herded my brother and me into a cupboard. My hands were sweating and trembling, and I held my breath. I remember my brother pressing a crumbling rock into my palm as though somehow he had known we would be torn from the land we knew and loved, and I brought it to my nose, breathing in the familiar smell of Mars while unfamiliar, unfriendly footsteps stomped around outside. Loud voices. Slamming. Where are the children? The question punched me right in the gut; it slammed its fist into the table, and then the cupboard doors were wrenched open and light poured in. I was screaming, thrashing, as rough hands descended on me in an iron grip. The world blurred through my tears. My mother’s hands, reaching for mine, knocked away. My brother shrieking my name. My father, asking, “Where? Where?” Where are you taking them? I bit my tongue on accident, pain exploding in my mouth, the taste of salt and blood as I choked on a scream.

*     *     *

The rock my brother gave me—I dropped it, somehow, in the scuffle, but it would have been confiscated anyway. At the school, I stood in a line with other girls in the cold inspection hall, shivering. My hands were coated in red dust from the rock.

It took three teachers and a doctor to make me wash my hands.

*     *     *

The rain falls harder, singing a humming song that intensifies. Veronica puts her wet hands to her cheeks.

The dormitory stirs as thunder bellows triumphantly and lightning cracks the world in two. Wind blows rain into the room, and dozens of feet hit the floor all at once as we all run towards the open window. The older girls hold the younger ones, helping them reach the window and cup their hands to catch the rainwater, before they themselves lean dangerously far out to let the rain run down their faces like tears after a long and weary day. Someone is singing, though the rain carries the words away, and from where I stand, I can only hear the ghost of a melody.

I tremble with anticipation as the crowd shifts and I move forward. The silent letters in me stir like desert flowers waking up from the dry season, unfurling shriveled leaves towards a sky heavy with rain. I am so parched. I didn’t know it till now, how much of a desert this place is—I’ve kept my focus on surviving, on holding on to what I can, for so long that I didn’t realize I was clutching dry bones. Everything in me is crying out now, begging for the red rains to pour over them and make them like new, pleading that I sing them out into the storm.

At the window at last, the wind blasts my hair back and kisses my face with rain, welcoming me into its embrace. I cling to the windowsill. I want the storm to tuck me into the crook of its elbow and cradle me, rock me. Is it tears or rain that runs down my face?

I uncurl my fingers from the sill. A door opens, slams. I reach out a shaking hand towards the rain. Footsteps. Cold, lovely drops fall hard and fast into my open palm like gems and I open my mouth to laugh or to weep, I don’t know which, and then someone yanks me back by the shoulders, shouting, “Margaret!” and I am knocked aside onto the floor.

The matron screams, “Don’t you know how dangerous this rain is?” She slams the window shut. The force of it is enough to jolt silent letters out of their places. To rattle them. To cast them on frigid tile and dash them into pieces.

Outside, the rain knocks on the window pane, asking to come in.

Chihye Naomi Kim is currently a sophomore at Brown University studying English. Her writing appears in Post- and Cornerstone, both publications at Brown University. Two of her short stories have been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards with a National Silver medal and a National Gold medal.

[fiction]

January 1

Liz: Happy new year!!!
Alyssa: Not yet here ☹ What’s the future like?
Liz: Wild. People are leaving this party in hovercars. Pretty sure we just achieved world peace. We all have teleportation bracelets now.
Alyssa: Great! So you can come celebrate with me?
Liz: I wish!

“Lyyyssaaa.”

Isaac drops onto the couch beside me. We’re in Nicole’s family’s den along with most of the sophomore class. Isaac swings his legs up onto my lap, and I almost shove him off, but his eyes are drooping closed and he looks almost sweet. As sweet as Isaac can look.

“Who’re you texting? Everyone you know is here.”

“Maybe that’s why I need to be on my phone,” I say, poking his knee. “To get away from all of y’all.”

“More like to get away from me.” He turns his head to the side so his voice comes out pillow-muffled. “Hurts, Lyssa.”

Now I do want to shove his legs off. But I’m pretty sure he’s asleep, all of a sudden. And maybe drunk. He didn’t mean it. He might not even remember saying it tomorrow, and knowing Isaac, even if he does he’ll pretend he doesn’t.

I’m not trying to get away from Isaac all the time. Or any of my friends here—“real-life friends,” my mom calls them. I’d rather Liz be a real-life friend, too. But she happens to live in Connecticut, not north Texas. And I would definitely rather talk to her than maybe-drunk Isaac. So.

I open her video message before the new texts. It’s some girl—I think her friend Taylor—literally dancing on a table. Liz turns the camera on herself making a Can you believe? face. It’s hard to tell if she’s making fun of Taylor or laughing along. It’s hard not to feel jealous.

Liz: So how’s your party?
Liz: Aly?
Liz: Alyssa Rae, are you alive?
Liz: Oh, God. Did Isaac finally try to kiss you?
Alyssa: Hey, sorry
Alyssa: What??? No!!!
Liz: Okay, okay! I’m just saying, that’s happening.
Alyssa: It is not!!
Liz: Suuure. I’m from the future, remember? I can see things.
Alyssa: I like teleporting Liz way better than fake fortuneteller Liz

January 6

I swear I was getting ready for school, but it started to feel like too much. Struggling through math 2, Isaac’s neediness, no-phones-in-class—the only class I want to go to at all is choir, and that was barely enough to propel me out of bed. Now I’m lying on my stomach on the floor, half-dressed.

Alyssa: Uuuuuuugh I don’t want to go to schoooool
Liz: Hmm, how sad for you.
Liz: If only you lived somewhere with snow days.
Liz: Like Connecticut! Random example.
Alyssa: Hey, speaking of that. Your spring break is the same week as mine
Liz: Yeah…
Alyssa: So I was talking to my mom about spring break
Liz: YEAH…
Alyssa: So what if I came to visit?
Liz: !!!!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!
Liz: Are you serious!??? Your mom said you can come??? I’ll ask my parents today!!!
Alyssa: ?
Liz: ???

I push myself up from the floor, pull a sweater over my head, and run down the hall to the kitchen, where Mom is examining a box of Pop Tarts.

“Breakfast to go?” she asks, shaking the box at me. “There’s bananas, too. Your lunch is in the fridge.”

“Thanks.” I grab a banana and turn to the fridge. The blast of cold air steels my resolve. “Hey, Mom. You know my friend Liz?”

“The girl from your choir class?”

“No, the one, uh—the one who watched Grey’s Anatomy with me?”

“Oh, your internet friend.”

I close the fridge behind me. “Yeah, my friend from Connecticut. So, her parents—did you know her dad is a pastor?”

Mom raises her eyebrows at me. “You may have mentioned that.”

“Right, they’re like…good people. Anyway, me and Liz have the same spring break, and her parents invited me to visit them that week, and I was wondering if I can go. Please say yes?”

She takes a long sip of coffee. She’s going to say no. Of course she’s going to say no. I clear my throat and try to turn it into a convincing cough so I can stay home sick to recover.

“I’d like to talk to her parents,” Mom says.

“You—what?”

“Liz’s parents. I’d like to have a conversation with them. Make sure they’re real?” She keeps her voice light, like she’s joking, and I know she’s not really, but it’s okay. She’s just being a mom. A good, great, amazing mom. I feel a smile creeping across my face.

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s not a no. For now.”

I throw my arms around her and don’t even care if she splashes coffee on my sweater and I have to walk around school like that all day. I can do that. I can do anything to make it to spring break.

January 10

Alyssa: So, I think our moms are about to be bffs
Liz: Oh my God, my parents are SO EXCITED. You’d think they were the ones about to meet their soultwin.
Alyssa: But they’re noooot, weeee aaaaare!!!!
Liz: WOOOOO
Liz: Gotta run, but I’ll video call when I’m home tonight and the adults can make their love connection. Cool?
Alyssa: Yep! After they approve the best spring break ever, are you free to watch something? I got a new bootleg…
Liz: omg shut up. What is it.
Alyssa: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Liz: Off-Broadway? Actual Broadway?
Alyssa: You’ll just have to see. Get excited…
Liz: OMG. DO YOU HAVE EVAN HANSON.
Alyssa: Oh, God, no. Not that excited.

*     *     *

“Are you sure she was going to call? Maybe they’re waiting for us to call them.”

I shake my head without looking up, eyes glued to the still screen of my phone. “No, she definitely said she’d call. She must just be running late. They probably thought we meant seven our time, not theirs.”

I want her to understand that Liz isn’t like that, she wouldn’t stand me up or forget about me.

Mom doesn’t point out that I’ve already said that three times or that it’s now 7:26 here. Which makes it 8:26 in Connecticut. It’s cool, I’m sure she just—something. There’s something dumb and we’ll all be laughing about it soon. Any minute.

A little before 7:45, Mom stands and picks her book up from the coffee table. “I’m going to go read in bed,” she says. “Come get me if she calls, okay?”

“I’m sure she’ll call,” I reply, fast. And then, finally, the thought occurs to me, and I look up from the phone screen with wide eyes. “Oh, my God, Mom—do you think something happened? Like, to one of her parents? Medical emergency?”

“I certainly hope not. I’ll pray for them, all right?” She leans down to give me a hug, made awkward by me hunching over the phone. “Love you, Lyss. I hope she calls soon.”

By the time I realize that Mom feels sorry for me, she’s in her bedroom with the door closed. I want her to understand that Liz isn’t like that, she wouldn’t stand me up or forget about me. I mean, one day last year we were supposed to talk after my choir concert and she got invited out at the last minute and did that instead. But she at least texted me about it. And we barely knew each other then, not like now.

I’ll tell her in the morning. Liz wouldn’t do this to me.

January 11

“Mr. Matthews told me you failed the EOC last semester.”

Startled, I look up to stare at Isaac. “What? Did not. Why would he tell you that, even if I had?”

“Because he knew you wouldn’t listen if he tried to tell you. Because you haven’t heard anything anyone’s said to you all day. Because you’re off in Lyssa Land?”

I roll my eyes and shove my phone in my pocket. “You’re such a baby.”

“You’re such a baby,” he mimics in a baby voice.

“Wow, Isaac, I forgot how much fun you are to talk to,” I snap. “You’re totally right, I should pay attention to you all the time.”

Isaac opens his mouth, closes it again. He takes a fry off my paper plate. He wants to call me a bitch, because I’m being one. He won’t, though.

“You’re being kind of bitchy,” he says. Quietly, mumbling, around a mouthful of soggy potato, but still. It surprises me.

And it gives me an excuse to get out of here. I shove my chair back from our cafeteria table.

“Hey, hang on, sorry.” Isaac pats my empty seat. “No more fry stealing. No more name calling. Stick around.”

“No, thanks.”

“You’ve just been weird all day. I get it, I know you’re worried about Lacy.” He winces right away because he knows I know he knows her name is Liz; who’s the bitch?

I leave the fries. He doesn’t try to call me back again as I exit.

*     *     *

Alyssa: Starting to get worried. Please call me or something?

*     *     *

Ten minutes left of lunch. I sit against the wall next to the water fountain between the gym and the science wing, where I can stay hidden if I skip my next class, and consider the possibilities.

One: Liz’s phone died/broke/got stolen. Only she would have gotten in touch with me some other way.

Two: Liz is mad at me. That would be new, her being so mad at me that she would ghost me like this. But it can’t be anything we wouldn’t be able to fix.

Three:

The sixty-second warning bell rings. I jump to my feet and run for my next class. No reason to skip unless something was happening, some major, life-changing thing. And it’s not.

*     *     *

Alyssa: If I did something to make you mad, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to.

*     *     *

Nicole comes up to me before the bell rings for choir to start. I’m slumped in my rehearsal chair, arms crossed over my stomach, giving off the strongest leave me alone vibe I can manage. I don’t look up as she approaches, or when she stops a foot or so away, or when she clears her throat like maybe I’m ignoring her by accident.

“Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“Did Isaac get you to ask me that?”

She doesn’t answer, which means yes.

“Tell him I don’t want to talk to him, either,” I say. To her credit, she not only takes the hint, she spreads the word. No one comes near me for the rest of class.

*     *     *

Alyssa: Was it weird, inviting myself there for spring break? That was too much, right? Did your parents think it was weird? I’m sorry. We don’t have to…whatever. Anything.

*     *     *

I stare at my face in the grimy bathroom mirror. Nothing’s wrong, I keep reminding myself. I don’t know what happened, but that doesn’t mean something Happened.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Mirror Alyssa nods.

“She’s going to call you soon.”

Mirror Alyssa nods again, but she looks a little skeptical.

*     *     *

Alyssa: Please text me back.

*     *     *

The third time my mom suggests it after dinner, I give in. I’ll video call her. She has an Android, or maybe even like a Windows phone or something, and I know it gives her problems sometimes. Maybe she’s receiving stuff but can’t send anything, so an incoming video call would go through, in theory.

There’s half a ring and then it disconnects. Her phone isn’t even turned on.

January 12

Alyssa: Is this like the time I trash talked Captain America on my blog and you stopped talking to me?
Alyssa: I went back through my blog and I haven’t really ranted about anything lately, so I can’t figure out what it could be. Maybe I said something harsh on a video call?
Alyssa: If it’s something like that, you can tell me, okay?

*     *     *

Isaac asks if I’m free after school and there’s no reason to say I’m not. Plus, he says we can do whatever I want to do. He feels bad about yesterday, even though he was right, mostly.

We watch my bootleg of Anastasia. It’s not awesome, but I pretend to be super into it every time Isaac gives me a sideways look to see if I think it’s awesome. It’s like I’m punishing him, even though I invited him over to try to make up for being the way I was being at school. I can’t decide what to feel about him.

He falls asleep on my shoulder. I wake him up for the final number. I don’t tag along when my mom drives him home.

I feel so guilty about watching the bootleg without Liz, I throw up in the toilet.

She still hasn’t texted by the time I fall asleep, sometime after one in the morning. Sometime after two, in Connecticut.

January 13

Friends of Liz,

I don’t know how to write this post. I almost didn’t. But that seemed too shitty, so. Here’s something shitty that I hope will at least be better than radio silence.

Liz passed away the night of the 10^th. I don’t think she suffered, it was fast, from what I heard.

Her blog is going to stay up because I think she’d want that. She loved a lot of weird shit, so this is kind of like…a memorial to all her weird obsessions. It won’t be updated after this, obviously, but it will be here. If that helps.

If you were friends with Liz irl, there will be funeral details and everything posted to her facebook as soon as that’s all sorted out.

I’m sorry there’s not more to say. I love her. I miss her.

-Taylor (Liz’s friend)

I keep refreshing the page and it keeps staying the same. The pastel orange background, the icon of her standing by the ocean in a hoodie. The post. Every time I refresh.

January 14

I can’t go to school. I can’t even get out of bed.

Mom bugs me about it—“What’s wrong? If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t do anything about it.”—until I show her the post on my phone. She gets really quiet. She runs her hand over my hair and I don’t shake her off. I think she cries; I hear her sniffle. I haven’t cried, still.

After a while, she puts the phone down on my nightstand and leaves, because it turns out she can’t do anything about it no matter what.

January 15

Alyssa: I swear to God Liz if this is a prank or some kind of “joke”
Alyssa: I know some of your friends there have awful senses of humor but this is too mean
Alyssa: Was it Taylor’s idea?
Alyssa: Do you know that what I keep thinking about is her being the one who knows your blog password?

The tears that haven’t come for days are waterfalling now, and it feels unfair because they’re not even the sad tears she deserves, they’re hot huge angry tears because I am so angry at Isaac, and that Liz’s tears showed up for him instead just makes me cry harder.

January 16

Mom says two sick days at the beginning of the semester is enough. She’s right, and she sounds sorry, but I still slam the door when I leave to catch the bus. It makes me feel better for two seconds.

Isaac is all over me as soon as I walk through the front door. He’s all, “Oh my God, where have you been, were you sick, you look fine, well actually you look really tired, sorry I’m not trying to be an ass, but you didn’t answer my texts, what happened to you that you wouldn’t tell your best friend,” and I just open my locker and pull out my books because I don’t have the energy for him right now, and when I close the locker he’s looking at me like I am so stupid, and it makes me take a step backward.

“It’s your imaginary friend,” he says. “Right? What, did you like, have a fight about which guy on whatever TV show is the hottest and she set her status to offline?”

The last couple of words die out and the look on his face says that the look on mine is bad. The tears that haven’t come for days are waterfalling now, and it feels unfair because they’re not even the sad tears she deserves, they’re hot huge angry tears because I am so angry at Isaac, and that Liz’s tears showed up for him instead just makes me cry harder.

“Hey,” he says. “Lyssa, no, I’m s—”

“Don’t.” I smack away his hand when he reaches for me. “You’re not sorry. And I hate ‘Lyssa.’”

“What? No you don’t. I’ve always called you Lyssa.”

“I’ve always hated it!” I’m screaming, having a full-on meltdown in the sophomore locker hallway, and I can’t stop. “Alyssa is my name, and I like Aly, which you should know if you love me so much. But you don’t, Isaac. You’re just here.” The word breaks my voice, breaks something in my heart that was holding on by a thread. “You’re not my best friend. You’re just here. You’re still here.”

*     *     *

Isaac: Alyssa, please pick up. Your mom told me about Liz. I’m so sorry.
Isaac: Come on. Please. You know me. I have a big, stupid mouth. You know I didn’t mean it.

January 18

Alyssa: I tried to video call you again. Dunno why. Your phone is off.
Alyssa: Tried to find your parents, like on Facebook, but you know what? I don’t know your last name. Mine is Robinson. I’ve been trying to think of who I should tell that, in case…whatever. I can’t think of anyone.
Alyssa: I checked your blog but the same post is still the most recent thing. I don’t even know how to get in touch with Taylor.

*     *     *

There’s a text from Mom on my phone when I check after first block. She loves me so much and she’s praying for me. She sent it right after I left the house, but my phone’s been on silent. She’s worried about me. I’m worried about me, too.

I don’t want to feel this bad anymore. But I’m also afraid of who I’ll be when I start to not feel this bad.

January 21

Alyssa: Was your funeral nice? Is that a good thing to wish for a funeral? Is your mom doing okay? I don’t know if my mom would be. She’s barely okay now. I wish you were here to talk about it. If you could just skip the dead thing for a while? I’d be okay with haunting.

January 25

Alyssa: I really miss you, Liz.

January 26

The look on Isaac’s face when I sit down at our table almost makes me laugh. If I wasn’t still mad at him and also so sad forever.

“Mind if I sit here?”

“Of course.” He grimaces. “I mean, of course not. I don’t mind. Of course you can sit here.”

“Chill, God.”

We spend most of lunch in silence, him watching me, me watching my sandwich. He asks how the semester’s going; I shrug because I haven’t really been paying attention. He tells a story about something Nicole did in P.E. I laugh in the pauses. I try to figure out if I missed him or just couldn’t spend another day sitting in the corner of the library. He doesn’t mention Liz.

Until the bell rings and we file out toward the lockers.

“Ly—” He cuts himself off. “Alyssa. I really am sorry about your friend. I want to… Just, I don’t know. If you need anything, I’m, uh. Here.”

I nod, perform something like a smile. “Thanks. I know.”

He lifts his arms in my direction, and I’m surprised by how relieved I feel when I step into the hug. I rest my cheek on his shoulder and just breathe, and I feel better. Not good. Definitely better.

As I pull away, Isaac starts to turn his face. Toward my face. With his eyes closed and his mouth doing something that looks like—

“Oh, my God! You are not trying to kiss me!”

He jumps back like I’m electric, and I might be. “No! I mean, maybe, but only because—I thought, I don’t know, you seemed…”

“Sad,” I provide after he trails off. “Really fucking sad because my friend is dead and my other friend is acting like a jealous asshole about it.”

He’s the one who walks away from me. Good.

*     *    *

Alyssa: Dear Liz. You were right, you bitch. Isaac tried to kiss me today. Basically because I’m sad about you. Did you know that would be part of it, in your super special fortune telling?
Alyssa: I have to stop being sad about you. I mean, I’ll never stop being sad about you. But I can’t keep doing this thing where I visit your blog all the time and keep checking for texts from you in the middle of classes and, like, don’t pay attention to my life. My Texas life. You know? So. I’m writing to say goodbye.
Alyssa: It sucks so much that I didn’t get to say goodbye to you.
Alyssa: Or tell you about stupid Isaac and his stupid kiss face. How did you know? And what am I supposed to do now?
Alyssa: I love you. Bye, Liz. <3 Alyssa

January 28

One (1) New Message: Liz

I can’t stop staring at my phone. It’s out on my desk, which is not really allowed in this class, but I can’t put it away. If I don’t check every couple of seconds, the message will disappear. Or I’ll wake up? Neither of which I want. Both of which I want. I feel sick.

It’s Liz’s number. I checked. Double-checked.

Two (2) New Messages: Liz

I get yelled at three times to put my phone away. I spend lunch in the bathroom, staring between myself in the mirror and the name of the ghost on my phone. Can’t open it. Can’t leave it sitting there. Finally, I lock myself in a stall.

Liz: Alyssa?
Liz: Sorry to text you from this number, I know that’s shitty. I’m finally going through some of her stuff, and I saw your messages. This is Taylor.
Alyssa: Liz’s Taylor?
Liz: Ha, yeah. That’s funny. She called you her Alyssa.
Liz: Not funny, I guess. Sorry. Sorry, this is so weird, probably.
Liz: I just wanted to…I don’t know. Can I text you?
Alyssa: ???
Liz: I mean from my phone. Instead of this.
Alyssa: Oh. Yeah. Yeah, please.
Liz: k. I’m in class now, but I’ll text you later.

January 29

Isaac is getting annoyed with me ignoring him through lunch to text. Pre-failed-kiss Isaac would ask if I’d moved on to a new imaginary friend already. New Year’s Isaac would whine that I would rather talk to literally anyone than him. This Isaac just eats his chicken nuggets.

It’s weird. Texting Taylor. Like we don’t really have anything to say to each other that’s not about our mutual dead friend, and neither of us wants to bring it up. But there’s only so much hey, how’s it going I can take.

Alyssa: Hey, so, I don’t mean to be a bitch, but I just need to ask. What happened? To Liz?
Taylor: Car crash. She was in the backseat. Her parents are okay. Well, they’re not, but you know what I mean.
Alyssa: That’s it? A car crash? Some drunk asshole running a red light?
Taylor: Sober asshole. But yeah.
Alyssa: That’s…so stupid.
Taylor: Weak, right? Don’t you feel like she deserved something cooler than that?
Alyssa: Or, like, to not die.
Taylor: Or that.
Alyssa: That is seriously unfair, though. She would’ve been so pissed.
Taylor: I know, right?

January 30

Taylor: You know Liz was a writer?
Alyssa: Um. I was her first reader for every fanfic she wrote.
Taylor: Right.
Taylor: I mean, I read her stuff, too.
Alyssa: k.
Taylor: Anyway. She was working on something. A fic for one of the superhero shows, I think.
Alyssa: I know.
Taylor: I figured you knew. I’m trying to, like.
Taylor: I can’t find it.
Alyssa: What?
Taylor: She never posted it, and I looked for it on her computer but her file names are so random, and I can’t find it. And I need to read it. You know?
Alyssa: I have it. I’ll send it to you.
Taylor: Really?
Alyssa: Yeah, of course. Give me a sec
Taylor: Thank you.
Alyssa: It’s really, really good
Taylor: Of course it is.

*     *     *

“Is the chicken that bad?”

I’ve barely touched dinner, but Mom’s smiling when I look up. I still say sorry and set the phone down.

“You and Isaac are getting along again?”

“Huh?”

“Isaac,” she says, pointing her fork at the phone. “Your thumbs are flying. Friends again?”

“Because I only have one friend who could possibly text me?”

She gives me a look that’s somewhere between rolling her eyes at me and afraid she’s actually upset me. “I just noticed he hasn’t been around lately.”

I chew until she breaks eye contact. After I swallow, I say, “Texting a girl in my bio class about homework.”

Mom makes a joke about hoping she’s helping me and not the other way around. I don’t know why I lied. It’s a little embarrassing, maybe, hanging onto my dead friend’s friend like a lifeline. Maybe a little scary. And maybe I want to keep this for myself, for a while. Just to be safe.

*     *     *

Taylor: Still awake over there?
Alyssa: It’s earlier here, ha
Taylor: No, I know. 1:30 is still on the late side. Unless you’re more of a party animal than Liz said.
Alyssa: Not a party animal. But yeah, awake. Hard to sleep lately.
Taylor: I get that.
Taylor: I don’t want to make it weird…er, but I just feel like I should tell you, in case you need to hear it, that Liz really loved you.
Taylor: She talked about you all the time. You meant a lot to her.
Taylor: Alyssa? Sorry, if that was too much.
Alyssa: No, that’s. Thanks. I did need that.
Taylor: Okay. Cool.
Alyssa: Same for you. I could tell how important you were to her even without, like, being around. If that makes sense. I mean, I’m sure you know.
Taylor: I do know. But it still helps.
Taylor: This helps too.
Alyssa: Yeah.

January 31

“Anastasia sucked.”

Isaac ignores me. Or he didn’t hear me, since I’m whispering from the row behind him. No talking in choir rehearsal, even if Ms. Brush is working with the sopranos across the room. I kick the underside of his chair.

“What?” he mutters.

“I said Anastasia sucked. The bootleg sucked, you couldn’t hear half the dialogue, and the show itself was like—weird and bad.”

“I thought you loved it.”

“So what?” I poke him between the shoulder blades. “You obviously didn’t love it. Why would you act like you did?”

“I don’t know.” A small shrug. “I was trying to be nice to you.”

“I don’t want you to be nice to me. I just want you to be a person. A real person. And treat me like a real person. A person who has other friends and feels sad when they die and watches bad musicals for fun. Stop making this an imaginary friendship.”

“I’m—not trying to.”

“I know. Prove it.”

It comes out a little too loud and Ms. Brush finally looks our way. “Ms. Robinson,” she snaps, “you and Mr. Siegel can talk later, when I’m not directing my choir. Yes?”

“Yes,” I call back, with my best apology face. “We can talk later.” I tug the hem of the sleeve of his T-shirt, and he exhales in a way that probably means we’ll be fine.

*     *     *

Alyssa: Can I ask you another question? Sorry, lots of questions.
Taylor: No worries.
Alyssa: What was Liz’s last name?
Taylor: Walsh.
Taylor: Did you want the link to her obit?
Alyssa: I’ll look it up. Maybe not today.

*     *     *

I last 35 minutes before I Google for Liz’s obituary. It sucks.

Elizabeth Caitlyn Walsh passed away on January 10. She was a junior at Lakefront High School. She is survived by her parents, Mr. Stephen Walsh and Mrs. Joanna Walsh. Elizabeth was a joy to all who knew her and will be missed by many friends and loved ones as she joins the angels.

Then, for the first time, I type Liz Walsh into Facebook’s search. Her profile picture is a side-profile selfie, black-and-white, intensely dramatic in a way that may or may not be ironic. It’s so Liz. It hurts.

The posts on her wall hurt in a really different way.

Lizzie girl can’t believe you’re gone!!!! You were my best friend, don’t know what I’ll do without you!!!

the world and fourth block aren’t the same without you…rip

BFFs 4 life (and after) R.I.P.

thanks for the sunset yesterday!! Don’t know how you know I needed that xo

There’s one post from a Taylor, but it’s a grainy picture of a rainbow with some fake-cursive text about smiling from heaven. Definitely not Liz’s Taylor. Of course, there isn’t a post from Liz’s Alyssa, either.

*    *     *

Alyssa: The facebook…
Taylor: Oh, God, no. You saw the facebook.
Alyssa: Who even are those people? I mean, I obviously don’t know them, but…who are
they?
Taylor: “the world needs to know I was the dead girl’s bestest friend”
Alyssa: As if that wasn’t you.
Taylor: It was YOU.
Alyssa: We can totally go BFF halfsies. It’s what angel Liz would want.
Taylor: Maybe she’ll send us a thunderstorm to confirm.
Taylor: My last name’s Burke, by the way. Just so you know.
Alyssa: Alyssa Robinson. I like Aly.
Taylor: Nice to “meet” you, Aly.
Alyssa: Nice to meet you, Taylor Burke.

Catey Miller lives with her wonderful husband and hound dog in Wilmington, North Carolina. She received her BFA and MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Aside from writing, she enjoys making cards, experimenting with eyeshadow, playing bass in her church band, and watching and tweeting about lots of TV. You can read more melancholy YA short stories from her in Youth Imagination, Young Adult Review Network (YARN), and Hunger Mountain.

[fiction]

Mā explained over the phone: a violist sprained his wrist, tumbling after a volleyball, and the octet needed to practice with a replacement before Chinese school celebrated chūnjié tomorrow. She had a habit of molding requests into commands after several hours, so I saved time by consenting. It did excuse me from the January 2003 SAT post-mortem in Panera with my friends. Grace, thoughts on the last analogy in the second reading section? Sorry, can’t answer, my mom’s here to pick me up, have a good Saturday.

The building wasn’t reserved—Chinese school was as Sunday as church and football—so mā drove me to someone’s house as I stared out the window for thirty minutes. Not to look at anything—staring to seem preoccupied and insulate myself from conversation. She wasn’t talking anyway. For the past week, my parents had exhausted all their words; bà flinging accusations and mā with her guarded style, arguing about why they had been arguing, because neither remembered that Jake blowing off his seventh grade history project had set off this latest fight. I stayed out. It wasn’t my job to play couples therapist, ask why they chose each other, and hear, “I made a mistake.” Maybe things changed when they immigrated; I was too young to recall Beijing as home, not as a vacation. My joke was their marriage lay in the difference between the Chinese-American and average U.S. divorce rates, and they waited for a special occasion to narrow the gap: when we were in college, or in med school, or trying to survive on-call. They might accelerate the process if it helped my college application essays.

Framed on the wall was my favorite photo of her: a black-and-white shot of a man in a tunic standing next to his bicycle, in which teenage mā wearing pigtails had wandered into the upper-right corner by accident.

Last week, my viola teacher had grasped my shoulder and asked, “How long will this slump last?” and I had promised to work harder for my next seating audition, skirting what he meant. This week, a gig for fun. The event became thrilling, redemptive even, when framed that way. It sounded like the fluff some seniors wrote to colleges, a salute to the Western canon like it was a compendium of Chinese-American national anthems.

I didn’t suspect our destination until we rounded the corner and the faded cyan paneling slid into view. In the breeze, the lawn’s one tree waved with familiarity. We hadn’t visited shūshu’s house in six years, and my parents hadn’t mentioned him since. My mind had left him behind with blacktop recess and chocolate milk cartons.

I didn’t understand.

“Grace, dào le,” mā said, without explanation. “I’m going to be shopping, so call bà to pick you up.” Meaning he didn’t object to us being here.

Mute, I grabbed my viola case from the trunk and dragged it along the twisting pathway sheathed in ice. Where other boots had cut across the lawn, grass limped out from beneath the snow. My fingerprint melting in the doorbell’s frost made me realize my gloves were in the car, but before I could go back to grab them, the door opened, mā drove off, and the draft nudged me into the warmth, my feet tiptoeing around the scatter of shoes and instrument cases.

His plaid dress shirt, his silver-stained smile, his leisurely posture. Only the wisps of gray in his hair proved shūshu hadn’t risen from my memory. Shūshu wasn’t actually my uncle; we just called him that, and I had never learned his name.

“Grace, nĭ zhǎng zhème dà le! What grade are you in now?” I mumbled I was a junior and stepped into his embrace. “It’s been that long since you switched from violin? How is viola going?” No trace of hesitance or estrangement inflected his voice.

“It’s okay. Doing New Jersey Youth Symphony right now, had All-State in the fall. I’m not first chair or anything like that,” I said, eyes lowered as I unfastened my case.

“Are you enjoying it? As a kid, you hated playing away from the melody.”

“Oh, I guess I grew out of that. I’m happy playing the viola.” I hurried into the living room where the rest of the musicians gathered, all of them Chinese: two adult violinists including shūshu, two teenage violinists I had met through All-State, one adult cellist, a teenage cellist, an adult violist, and me. Before the teenage violist’s injury, the group had been made of teachers and handpicked students, to mimic a passing down of legacies.

“This is Grace. She was one of my best and favorite violin students,” shūshu said. Not knowing whether to bow or wave, I did half of both, a habit picked up from mā. A round of introductions and gratitude, another bow-wave-smile, then gravity sank me into the spot where I once sat for lessons and the music resumed.

I didn’t expect classical music for a Chinese New Year performance crafted around the idea of inheritance, though not having to foray into a new genre helped. Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4, Movement 1, doubling up on each of the parts. It wasn’t in my repertoire, but my sight reading impressed in auditions and the start of orchestra season, until others overtook me after enough practice. I delivered notes on cue, in rhythm, like a machine directed by the sheet music. Except sometimes I overpowered the first violins, shūshu in particular, or overcorrected into timidity. His and my sounds leapt into the air and crashed heads, screeching to the ground, or we’d both defer, stiffening the music. Solos were easy with no one else to worry about, and the momentum of an orchestra washed over individual stumbles, but a quartet or octet had to balance every person’s voice and present it as effortless to the audience.

After rehearsal, people complimented my technical proficiency despite the late notice. They were too polite to mention my lack of artistry or my uninspiring tone—a functional sound, as my viola teacher put it. The adults left while the teenagers waited for their parents and talked about school, our music instructors, how we celebrated Chinese New Year. The cellist had aunts, uncles, cousins, and even grandparents living in America, so every year they gathered in Houston, Texas; Irvine, California; or Edison, New Jersey, to see each other.

I had mā, bà, and Jake; no one else. Sometimes we passed the holiday by ourselves, and sometimes we attended a family friend’s party, but either way I read a book in the corner to wait it out. Red envelopes and karaoke, feasts and CCTV specials—it didn’t mean much, the people were the same as the other three hundred sixty-four days. The big family reunion Chinese New Year only happened in third grade, when we flew to Beijing. There was one hour, my favorite memory of mā, when she held my hand as we guided firecrackers out of her family’s apartment window and, with giggles and mischievous smiles, dropped them six stories into the car alarms caroling on the road. Framed on the wall was my favorite photo of her: a black-and-white shot of a man in a tunic standing next to his bicycle, in which teenage mā wearing pigtails had wandered into the upper-right corner by accident. I pointed it out. She smiled and pretended not to hear. I didn’t know that was the final picture of her brother, or what the Cultural Revolution was. She didn’t tell me; no one in our family would. Her English-speaking friend visiting from Michigan had to help me understand.

Gradually, shūshu’s living room emptied, and he emerged from the kitchen with a mug of tea, which I declined.

“Grace, I want to ask something,” he said. Me too. “Why did you quit the violin? Was I too strict?”

“No, nothing like that. Our lessons were fine, my interests just changed.” He held his palm above the vapor rising from his cup, withdrew it, and blew across the liquid jasmine surface. We sat on the couch where mā had been whenever she attended a lesson. Relics of those days decorated the room: a ragged and stiff teddy-bear, reams of sheet music, the four toy pendulums suspended in a row.

“How’s school?” he asked, after a while.

“Busy. You know, junior year, it was probably like that for David, too.” Shūshu’s son was old enough, in high school when it happened, so maybe he could help me understand what was going on. What I was doing here. “He’s in college, right? Is he coming home for Chinese New Year?”

Shūshu took a long sip of tea.

“He has a medical school interview in Michigan, so he’s spending it with his mom and stepdad in Ann Arbor.” I used to love David’s sketches and paintings, which still hung in the hallways.

I waited for the next question that never came. We weren’t going to talk about it; he probably didn’t suspect I remembered there was something to talk about.

*          *          *

Around fourth grade, the volume of my violin swelled to a deafening level. Shūshu diagnosed it as budding narcissism. After one lesson, he cooked me dinner because mā was working overtime that day, lectured about vanity, and warned me not to take music for granted. I nodded as if he was right, but the habit had grown from drowning out mā’s and bà’s arguments. They were worse in my childhood, and if I was gentle, their shouts invaded my practice.

Mā arrived mid-meal—hair tangled, face drained, and breath laced with her fifth cup of coffee—and asked if I wanted to keep eating. The two were gone when I finished. I waited with as much patience as a nine-year-old could muster before curiosity guided me toward the laughter bubbling from upstairs.

Mā was happy. She lay on the bed, her fingers draped around shūshu’s back. He was in his boxers; Mā was clothed. When she faced me, her smile became shock and his ease turned to alarm. “Grace,” they both said. “Grace.”

She hurried me out of the room and back downstairs. She went back up briefly and came back down. She held my hand walking to the car and helped me get in, retrieved my violin after she realized we had forgotten it, shoved it into the trunk, and drove off. I held onto the image of mā, radiant, as long as I could.

When it dimmed away, I asked, “Why was he in his boxers?”

“He wasn’t.”

“But—”

“No, Grace, you saw wrong. He wasn’t in his boxers.” I believed her for months, maybe years.

The red glow of the stoplight bathed the car interior as mā turned to face me. I mistook the white in her skin as fury, and it was only years later that I understood it was terror. “Grace, what you said was very wrong. You shouldn’t say it again. Do you understand?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, just don’t say he was in his boxers again. Don’t tell me, or bà, or anyone.” Scoldings had always made me cry, but for the first time, not one sob escaped into the silence. The red light receded into a distant green dot.

“Okay.” I kept my word.

I don’t remember the rest of the day. We continued with violin lessons until the end of elementary school, when I switched to the viola. There was no sight, no mention of shūshu after that, as if he had never existed.

*          *          *

Bà called me when he arrived. He didn’t come to the door and meet shūshu; he never left the car, whether he picked me up from a music lesson or a friend’s house. The neighbors’ trees masked the moon and the streetlamps, so there was nothing to illuminate the icy path as I slipped toward the car. I almost climbed into the backseat, before he asked what I was doing, and I pretended my intent had been to place my viola case there instead of the trunk.

Sometimes a car’s headlights pierced through the night and a familiar street name or shop flickered, a memory flashing by. My eyes used the light to search bà’s face. The weariness of a day playing tennis and the impatience of a long drive home; frustration with the truck in front and a forward stare hardened from days spent yelling. Nothing unusual. It had been easy to ignore with music to be played and Chinese New Year to complain about, but with my bow and viola locked up, I had only the windy breaths of cars passing by to distract me from wondering what bà knew, or if he knew. I waited for him to ask, mention, say anything about shūshu.

After ten minutes he asked, “Did it not go well?”

“Go well at the lesson? Rehearsal, I mean.” The heat from my face could have melted the snow stuck on the window.

“The SATs. You haven’t mentioned them.” His face was stoic, focused on the road. He lacked the tension or surliness I had expected to hear in his voice. “Mā said you didn’t talk about the SATs to her, either.”

“Oh, yeah.” It felt like days had passed since I had sat down for the test. “It was fine. Math went well, reading section was harder. Still good, I think.” I launched into a detailed explanation to alleviate his worry.

If bà had found out, it would’ve been around the switch to viola. There was arguing back then; there never wasn’t. It was a constant buzz in the background, like city bustle or fans on a summer day. I couldn’t pinpoint which of it happened when I was ten and which at thirteen; it blurred into a single period of time. The phrases I could recall—”There’s nothing to talk about!” he shouted—were my cues to hurry into my room, not stay for the rest.

For the rest of the year, Angela would go back to tap and jazz, the girl onstage would return to the piano, but at least they presented something Chinese for Chinese New Year. What was the octet passing down? Beethoven with mā’s ex-lover now and Beethoven in concerts later and Beethoven forever.

For dinner, the four of us folded bāozi together. The activity had lost its luster for me years ago, but Jake had continued to wrap them with sloppy enthusiasm, until now. He was the same age as I had been, and I saw his excitement waning. Twelve was a special age for the zodiac after all. At the table, our parents spoke frequently to us and rarely to each other, as was common when a fight had dragged on. They passed the eye contact test, though, which was my version of Groundhog Day: an early spring, or six more days of quarreling.

“You’re using too much water,” bà said. My dumpling unraveled on the yellow foam tray. My next one was too dry, and without a word, I surrendered my mess to mā. In one motion, she swooped the meat into a new wrap, brushed her finger against the water’s surface, swirled it around the wrap’s edge, and folded. She had breezed through the night with a serenity untouched by her usual caffeinated trembling. There were no questions about shūshu, not a single word or acknowledgment.

“Are your hands okay?” mā asked as she plucked another mangled dumpling from my palm. “They must be tired. Kǎoshì all morning, viola all afternoon.”

“I’m okay.” Almost a mention, but no one paused, and the conversation moved on, leaving me to fumble with another dumpling until it tore. Bà feigned interest in Jake rambling about the NFL, and mā continued acting like she was through a second glass of wine. “Sorry, can I go upstairs?” I asked. “Shūshu’s—the recital—it’s been half a day since knowing, about playing this piece. I need more time to practice. Can I go upstairs and eat later?”

“Okay,” mā said.

“Can I go, too?”

“Stay here, Jake.”

In my room, I steadied my hands through a section of the score while pacing through my observations of mā, bà, and shūshu that day: words, tones, gestures, facial expressions; mā’s weariness, bà’s brevity, shūshu persevering through his interrogations; anything that might hint what bà knew, what mā wanted, shūshu’s intentions, mā’s intentions, mā’s feelings, my role. If mā and shūshu had hid the truth from bà, or if the three believed they were keeping a secret from me; if tomorrow served as an excuse to reunite, or if I had been volunteered as a peace offering. All plausible, nothing convincing.

Jake’s fist bashed against my door three times, and without waiting, he creaked it open, as if he was going to leave after delivering his message, but over the course of his sentence, “Mā and bà want me to tell you that you’re playing too loudly,” he slid into my room and closed the door behind him. “Sorry,” I said.

“You never practice anymore.” He said it like an accusation. My bow jabbed toward the door, but he didn’t budge. “I heard shūshu’s playing too?”

Jake had been six when I quit violin, so he probably had a couple memories, shūshu driving him to a doctor’s appointment or bringing him candy, that he had forgotten until today. Curiosity, not concern. A week from now he’d forget again, unless I wanted to say guess what, mā cheated on bà when we were kids, and keep him remembering for the rest of his life. Secrecy ran in the family.

“I have to get this right by tomorrow,” I said. “Go work on your history project, you can’t take an incomplete forever.” He left, and I worked through the music until mā came in and placed a plate of fresh bāozi on my desk.

*          *          *

“We’ll be back around eight. Turn the TV off when you hear the garage open,” I told Jake before we left, guessing he would flip on the Super Bowl and ignore his schoolwork. My slot wasn’t until after intermission, so we sat in the audience for the show’s first half. Mā led our way into and through the room, walking past the surprised waves of several schoolmates who hadn’t seen me at Chinese school since sixth grade. I spotted shūshu stranded among a crowd of empty seats in the far back corner. We cut through one of the middle rows and stopped near the end, next to bà’s friend and her family, with shūshu’s presence lurking five rows back. “Chūnjié kuàilè,” all of us said. It wasn’t really for another week.

Bà swapped rumors about high school seniors and college applications, and it reminded me that next year, my name would join the gossip of dinner parties and Chinese hair salons among parents I never met, in towns I never visited. Mā usually participated, but she remained quiet. Not at peace, like yesterday. Her quiet had the quality of paralysis.

For the first act, costumed children shuffled around and recited three poems bà had me memorize too, as a kid. This was the first time I parsed their words and understood them; from my own mouth it had felt like a song I was too busy playing to hear myself. Dancers lined up second, crouching with their backs facing us, but as the music began and their red gowns spun, the face of my friend Angela beamed at the crowd. When I asked her about it later, it turned out she went every weekend, even after graduating Chinese school, to help instruct the younger dancing classes.

Mā left to find the bathroom. As she walked behind, I locked my head forward, terrified she and shūshu would catch me if I turned back, and counted the seconds until her return: ten, twenty, one hundred. I reached two hundred before giving up. She didn’t know where the bathroom was; it could take her twenty minutes. Bà snoozed in his chair, his head limping toward the right.

A girl strummed an instrument I had never seen outside China, with the sound of a harp and the shape of a keyboard-sized guitar neck. In my program, all the acts were written in unrecognizable Chinese except mine: Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4, Movement 1, printed in English. A blurb underneath presumably mentioned the inheritance theme. People probably saw that and snickered; I would have, too. For the rest of the year, Angela would go back to tap and jazz, the girl onstage would return to the piano, but at least they presented something Chinese for Chinese New Year. What was the octet passing down? Beethoven with mā’s ex-lover now and Beethoven in concerts later and Beethoven forever.

Mā came back and whispered into my ears, “Shūshu wants you to go warm up with him and the others after this one. He says to meet by the back corner.”

I was the first one there. “Ready?” he asked as the lights dimmed and the girl bowed. “Let’s do a couple scales together, to help us play in tune.”

That was probably the moment, the two of us shielded by darkness and our voices cloaked by applause; the moment to dust off six years of silence; a moment flitting past Earth before it slung off into space—gone.

“Sorry, I don’t say much when nervous,” I said. We exchanged a few words during warmups to make adjustments, but for the most part he left me alone after that.

Onstage, my mind split off my viola. My thoughts drifted as my bow and fingers assembled the music on autopilot. How my seat was too up front and center, and people were watching my nose scrunch and my cheeks puff out, and some of them would take pictures or tease me at school. How the intensity of the light made me sweat, and a bead of sweat rolled down my neck into my dress, and this dress felt tight and scratchy today, and there was an itch on my side. How I wasn’t angled in a way I could sneak a glance at mā, to know which of us she looked at, or if bà monitored her for the same thing.

I didn’t hear the performance until the final note, when it rushed into my ear as a whole. Decent enough for the ordinary template of compliments. Not amazing, like I had hoped, or disastrous, like I had expected. Nothing worth remembering.

Our family lingered at the end for food and talk. My friends found me first, to congratulate each other, while shūshu spoke to a circle of parents and children too young to stray away. Mā stood on his left, and bà stood next to her. When our conversation turned toward the SATs, I tore myself from my friends and approached my parents’ backs.

“Before the schools closed,” shūshu said to one kid, “my goal was to enter college and study chemistry. Music wasn’t serious for me. But people heard Mozart coming from our basement and raided it and shredded the sheet music and took my violin away. Western music was counterrevolutionary, for capitalists.

“After we were sent to the countryside, I met Lí Rúhàn.” He spoke to the entire group now as he gestured at mā. She raised her right hand and wrapped her left around bà’s. I couldn’t see their faces from behind them. Either I hid in their shadows and listened unnoticed, or I could stand on the other side of the crowd and watch them as they watched me.

“She snuck her brother’s violin with her to the village, because he was the only one in her family who played; no one checked her stuff. And she brought books, too. Textbooks, even Western sheet music. She’s so smart, she knew the Cultural Revolution wouldn’t last, and she was determined to prepare. So nighttime we snuck to the river or muted a room by stuffing rags in the door gap, and we studied with moon or candlelight, and took breaks for music. Beethoven and Lí Rúhàn became my best friends. She gave me the violin when she went home.

“I studied and practiced in the morning, during meals, in my dreams. For ten years, until the gāokǎo came back. Chemistry didn’t interest me anymore; I had to become a musician. The Shanghai Conservatory admitted me, and several years later, so did Brooklyn.

“I’m not working in an orchestra, but there’s music every day of my life because of your support. Many of you chose me as your children’s violin instructor. Without you, the musicians of the past, and these young musicians of the future, I wouldn’t be here. Thank you.”

Mā’s right hand moved toward her head. I imagined it brushing tears from her eyes and concealing her smile. Bà’s impassive face was as stiff as their hands, gripped together in a lock.

Later that night, with my viola clamped between my chin and collarbone, I raised my bow toward the ceiling, pivoted toward my bedroom mirror, and forced my neck and shoulders to relax. “I live a good life,” I said, fingers shaking as my bow slid across the fourth string. My viola hummed the first note of Beethoven’s String Quartet. No. Four, but the E fell flat.

Morgan Song lives in Seattle, sneaking in time to write stories while pursuing a PhD in the sciences at the University of Washington. This is Morgan’s first published work, in either fiction or the sciences.

[fiction]

“Who did you pick?” my mom calls from the kitchen where she is chopping, knife against wood. Something sizzles and smells meaty—spam and rice. I wiggle my backpack off and it lands with a thud. I try to sneak off to my room but Mom asks, “Who did you pick for Secret Santa?” Her voice has an edge, as if she’s prying away an opening.

My bad for ever mentioning Secret Santa, a stupid tradition at my school, Longman Preparatory Academy in Los Altos. Mom keeps every one of their pamphlets with the photos of white buildings reminiscent of Southern mansions, redwoods with branches stretching towards the sky like arms in homage. She doesn’t believe me when I complain about the smell—a humid odor of life growing on top of old life, on top of dead things.

Before my time, exchanging presents was this huge ordeal. The super-rich kids swapped concert tickets and video games, while scholarship students like me spent way more than they should have. Ms. Voclain, the principal, put a stop to it. No more exchanging gifts on school grounds. Instead, everyone had to participate in a Secret Santa. A ten-dollar cap. Feel free to make something, bake cookies or wash a car. Parents ate it up.

I enter the kitchen and watch my mom dry her hands on a transparent towel, which she refuses to throw out. She is at ease when she cooks, her face soft and prettyish with a coffee-and-milk complexion. She has a squashy nose, a mat of black hair, and is a bit on the heavy side.  Everyone says I look just like her.

“Laila Thorinsen,” I say.

“Not one of your friends, huh? It will be a chance to get to know someone new. See what she’s like.”

“She’s a rich snob, Mom. Her money is what she’s like. Besides, you just hand the present over. It’s not like you talk to the person.” It’s a fact, but a part of me wishes otherwise.

Laila is legendary, and not just for her huge blue eyes, pouty mouth, and edgy clothes, but because she says cool stuff like, “Being girly isn’t a crime” and “Fashion doesn’t have rules.” And she’s known outside of Longman. She was named one of twenty-under-twenty to watch in the Bay Area, basically for being the kid of Silicon Valley gazillionaires. The California Weekender website displayed a big photo of her in a thousand-dollar blouse, her blonde hair swept back and a bored look on her face. Passing Laila in the hallway is like living next to a famous actor. You want to appear natural and cool with it, but you end up acting like a dork.

My mom eyes me. “I wonder if I should pull you out and put you back into public school.” I half-listen because she never means it. “Jacie, I did want to discuss something.” She directs me to the kitchen table and puts her hands over mine. I feel sandwiched and pull myself free.

“We’re not visiting Grandma Keahi this year,” she says.

“What?” I yell. I’m overreacting and I know it. “I thought you bought the plane tickets in August.”

“We thought the prices would drop but they never did, sweetheart.”

“Can’t Grandma help out?”

“You know she can’t. Things are getting so expensive on the Big Island. She’s barely managing.”

I fling myself out the front door and trip over the faded Aloha mat.

She yells, “Jacinta, come back here!”

I see Jacob waving at me from down the block, where he must have been at a friend’s house, but I ignore him too.

I’m bummed. It’s a social boost, bragging about Christmas in Hawaii like every other Longman kid. But it is more than that. I am sick of being embarrassed.  There is a reason why my school friends have never stepped foot in our apartment.

I get that we’re not rich; I consider us brown and we have to take favors as they come. But no one has offered my mom a job for a few years, even though she works harder than anyone I know. Then there’s my dad, who comes home worn out and smelling like the oily, black grease smeared on his crew shirt. And me. I’ve been handed a huge promise in the form of Longman Prep. All I have to do is act the part and keep my thoughts to myself. Faking it is a slow leak, though. It’s hard not to feel like I’m losing little bits of myself.

A stream of traffic whooshes by like a swift conveyor belt that would slow down only if I were to trip and fall in, messing up the forward movement. The thought of someone in a car recognizing me makes me pull down my hood. Street lamps buzz on and wet, frail leaves slime my heels. My hoodie is warm, but the cold penetrates my uniform khakis and locks around my ankles like cuffs.

I walk past the Shop & Go. Jacob and I used to hang out there on dull summer afternoons. In the toy section, we combed through the cheap plastic cars and dolls. We occasionally found a loose rubber ball or a lone die, and would pocket it.

Another trick was at the library with the old vending machine. We would spot a candy bar ever so slightly askew in the machine coil and pretend to insert change. Then we would find that kindly adult and ask politely for help, saying that the bar didn’t come out. Most times we received coins and candy. We said thank you, tiptoed out until we were a block away and ran, hooting.

I head into Dollar Mart with its rows of canned vegetables, Christmas wrapping, and bottles of bleach. I bet Laila has never stepped into a store like this. I choose the spice aisle and examine a vial of vanilla extract, remembering we ran out about a year ago. I clench the bottle in my hand and saunter away. As I pore over toothbrushes, I slip the bottle into my hoodie pocket and then leisurely walk toward the exit. I feel a tight nervousness in my middle and my right knee buckles a little when I pass through the sliding doors. I make it to the parking lot and clutch my loot in my left fist. When I’m a block away, a surge of relief spreads over me. It’s like a liftoff from everything heavy, everything that weighs me down. I inhale the cold night air until my lungs feel like they could burst.

I head into Dollar Mart with its rows of canned vegetables, Christmas wrapping, and bottles of bleach. I bet Laila has never stepped into a store like this.

I don’t want to go home, and so I watch bus 22 rumble toward me—destination: Palo Alto Paradise Mall. It rattles to a stop and swings open its door. The driver seems annoyed when I pause so I jump aboard. I’m not surprised to find a half-empty bus with drooping passengers. People who ride buses don’t shop at Paradise. They work there.

I’ve never been to Saks Fifth Avenue, but Longman girls talk about the prom dresses, little backless outfits, exposing blocks of perfect skin. The department store smells bright and teasing from the perfume and new clothes. A Laila Thorinson kind of smell. I finger a cashmere turtleneck that seems to melt at my touch. The clerk with sleek hair glances at me for a millisecond and returns to her folding. She makes me want to buy something, just to show her.

Suddenly, I think I hear Laila and my stomach drops. She has a low voice and pauses on I as if she expects everyone to give her a moment to unwrap her thoughts. I follow the voice and it turns out to be a plain college student with her Stanford friends.

Back on the bus. It is 7:39 p.m., no gift, a voicemail rant from my mom, and a text from Jacob saying Mom is taking it out on him and would I just come home. I’m in for it, grounded, no doubt. Two lost hours meant for homework. I want a break from caring. I’m supposed to have a bigger life than this. If only I had been born beautiful, or with an exceptional talent, or the adopted daughter of a US president, I would have fresh dewy skin, cashmere sweaters, and bras that fit. I close my eyes and dream of a thinner version of me in a snappy Longman jacket and people calling my name, Jacie! The automated announcer enunciates my street and I wrench myself awake.

*     *     *

Laila! Greg Myers calls out and sidles up to her in the hallway. He has a hawk-like nose, slightly off-kilter eyes, and stiff, brown, gelled hair. He smells peppery like pot, which could either be neutral or gross. With Greg, it’s gross.

Laila leans into her locker right next to mine. With an aggressive jerk on the handle, she pulls open the door and a pink giftbag spills out. Earrings, bottles of lotion, and lip gloss scatter, and people stop to help her. I grab a package of foil-wrapped bonbons and a pink watch still in its box.

“What is all this crap, Laila?” someone asks.

“Teen Choice Awards sent it. You want that stuff? Keep it. Except for that.” She plucks the watch from my hand and I clutch the chocolate to my chest.

“Thanks,” I say.

“No prob,” she answers. She glances at me and her expression isn’t condescending. It’s like she’s seeing me, not in a good light, necessarily, but not in a dim one either.

“How generous of you, Mrs. Claus,” Greg says and scans me quickly. You’re not one of us, his face seems to say.

He reaches for Laila, but she dodges him and says, “Bite me.” She locks her teeth on a sleek pen, one of those calligraphy ones from Japan. Even with all the high-tech gadgets designed right down the road, Los Altos girls still love pretty pens. I watch Laila and Greg walk away.

*     *     *

I’m not the only person fascinated by her. On the library computer, I find she has a huge Twitter audience and her blog is full of comments. Who are all these people? Probably other high school girls, pimpled and quiet, who study her string of selfies taken in San Francisco, Maui, Los Angeles. I decide to follow her.

“Hey,” says a voice behind me, which makes me jump.

I swivel and find Greg standing there. I edge over in my chair and try to block his view of my computer monitor, but he catches sight of it and exhales a small snort.

“So, I heard you’re Laila’s Secret Santa. Would you be willing to trade?” he asks.

“Who did you get?” I ask.

“Roger.”

“I don’t want Roger, I’m friends with him.” I surprise myself by saying, “Besides I got Laila a gift already. It’s kinda hard for me to return it.”

“Like what, a kit for her period?”

“Um, no,” I say carefully.

“C’mon, I don’t know what to buy another guy.”

“Laila will have great ideas. Ask her.”

“She’s not exactly talking to me. Will you just let me have her?”

“No.” My answer suspends in the air.

“You stalking her or something? Are you obsessed?” he asks.

I scowl my best East San Jose don’t-mess-with-me glare.

“Jesus,” he says and steps back.

I wonder who will leave first; he finally does.

When I push through the heavy library doors and head to Biology, I think I see Principal Voclain watching me from down the hall.

*     *     *

My foot keeps jiggling the next day as I eye the clock. By lunch, I’m in no mood to respond to Roger and Anahita’s chitchat. I tell them I’m kind of out of it and will be skipping Newspaper Club. In my head, I calculate if I have enough bus change to get to Artastic in Palo Alto.

Artastic is a shop that has been around for as long as I can remember. When I arrive, I find it exactly the same—racks of paint tubes, brushes, charcoals, mat boards against the walls. It’s dusty and I sneeze. I wander through the aisles until I reach the specialty pens. The ones I want sit elegantly with the Japanese stroke-lettering on their silver tubes. No sensor tags.

I backtrack, walk from aisle to aisle, and probe for hidden cameras. Nothing. The collar of my old wool coat feels unbearably itchy around my neck. My palms sweat. I’m in a state of alertness, and I can see and hear everything around me. I return to the pens and touch the silkiness of the polished aluminum. I want them and there is no turning back. I won’t leave without them.

I make sure no one is around before selecting the red one. I ease my hand into my pocket and finger the pen until it drops through a hole that feeds into the lining of my coat. Green, blue, gold, and purple follow. I consider taking the orange but I can’t decide. I stop. I walk calmly to the sketchbook section and pretend to browse.

I return to the pens and touch the silkiness of the polished aluminum. I want them and there is no turning back. I won’t leave without them.

“Can I help you?” A clerk startles me. My face is hot and I turn casually. The pens feel bulky as they hang against my thigh. I wonder if they make noise. Is he trying to catch me? I whirl up explanations—a friend gave the pens to me. I bought them in LA. I borrowed this coat.

The clerk’s large brown eyes are friendly and his dreads poke up like fingers. He wears a slim black T-shirt and a badge that says, Hi I’m MITCHELL. His eyes and brows have the same happy arch.

“I was just looking for a sketchbook,” I say, and hold up a small spiral-bound one. My hand trembles. I stammer an explanation about Secret Santa and the ten dollars.

“Secret Santa—nice. You came to the right place. We have a lot of things for under ten bucks.” He shows me the glitter pens, the cute wooden stamp-blocks, the paintbrushes.

“Wow,” I coo, and pick up one item after another. He makes little jokes and when he smiles, his dimples look like quotes. My stomach, which felt like a rock, starts to soften. How can I possibly be admiring him at a time like this? And yet I can’t help it. I know I’ve got to get out of here so I say, “I think just the sketchbook.”

“Cool,” he says, as if not minding the time he spent with me. “You go to Longman, don’t you?” My coat is half-zipped and he must see my vest with the Longman crest over my heart. “I used to know some kids who went there. Sure you’re ready? Need anything else?”

“Um, I’m okay,” I mumble.

At the counter, he scans the notebook. The register bleeps at him. He scans it again and it does the same thing. “Hmm,” he says and frowns. “I think I have to get my manager. Hold on.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m kinda in a rush. I can come back.”

“It’ll take a sec.”

He steps through an Employees Only door and I take a deep breath. My head is fuzzy. Why did I throw out that other half of my sandwich at lunch? I rub my forehead. I imagine Mitchell’s shock after he discovers what I did. I should dump the pens in one of the aisles. Hide them in an endcap. Throw them in the bathroom trash.

A balding older man and Mitchell emerge from the office. The man chews on his pen and taps a few keys, before swiping the notebook again. It rings up and I give him cash. The man hands me change and the receipt. Is he studying my face? Will he report me to the police?

I thank them and Mitchell says, “Happy Holidays!”

I wave goodbye and walk toward the exit. I imagine him calling out, “Wait!” It is too late. I can’t turn around.

I’m almost at the security pillars. I can’t see outside; the shop interior is reflected in the dark windows. My heart whomps faster. Another step. A car alarm peals behind the glass. Two more steps. One. And I’m through. The chill air hits my heated face. I stride rapidly for a couple of blocks, and then I jog to the bus stop but the bus rolling by isn’t mine. I turn to see if anyone is following me. The sidewalks are empty. Through my coat, I grasp my prize.

*     *     *

A week later, Voclain announces an all-school assembly. “It’s got to be about Secret Santa,” Roger says. “People are ignoring the ten-dollar limit again.”

Anahita is sure it’s about guidelines, because people are swapping whom they picked. “Kids barter to get the person they want.” She rolls her eyes. The piece of paper with Laila’s name is taped on the inside cover of my English journal. No one has bought me out yet.

Voclain steps onto the stage and begins. “Our administration has recently been informed by Palo Alto Police that one of our students might be involved in a shoplifting incident. The security camera at the store caught a student in a Longman uniform. As we hope you know, we take pride in the ethics of our students and were shocked by this allegation. Rather than keeping this a secret from you all, we thought it would be best to have it out in the open. We are hoping that the student will either come forward or someone will supply us with information. There will be consequences but far lighter if we figure this out among ourselves.”

This cannot be happening. My body grows cold and I shrink in my seat. People gape, open-mouthed, and turn to each other in shock. I can’t absorb what Voclain has to say about honesty and conscience. Afterwards, speculation echoes throughout the auditorium. I head straight for the restroom. Whatever is in my stomach inches its way up and out.

*     *     *

It’s 1:45 p.m., two days later. Voclain’s office smells like leftover lunch and dry-eraser pens. I see the shadow of Voclain’s grey head through the frosted glass of the door. I’m cold and dampness settles under my arms. I think of my mom, her cheek against the phone as she starts to cry. And Jacob’s silent look waiting for me at home. My face lands in my hands and it is hard to breathe.

“Are you friends with Greg Ahern or Laila Thorinson?” Voclain solemnly asks. “Have you ever seen them do anything that doesn’t seem right?”

I’m so taken aback I can’t think of what to say. “No, never,” I stammer.

Voclain puts her hand on my arm and says, “Have you ever seen any expensive items in Laila’s locker? Any drugs?” Voclain shakes her head. “Of course not, dear.”

I’m ushered out and I slowly walk to class. My disappointment surprises me. The drama isn’t even about me, but about Greg, Laila, and whatever it is they do that draws them more attention. I’m a bystander again. A bystander who doesn’t need counselors or anyone asking me if everything is all right.

*     *     *

I wait for her. Laila’s note, wrinkled in my hand, reads: Meet me on the soccer field by the bleachers—12:15. It’s sprinkling, which makes the ground smell earthy, heavy. She is small in her glossy down-coat and black boots that pad on the grass like the feet of a lost animal. Her makeup can’t cover her bewilderment.

“Greg told me it was you. These are… nice,” she says, gingerly pulling the pens from her purse. They line up like five missiles in the palm of her hand. “Where did you get them?” I shrug and say nothing. “Did you order them online?”

“No, I… I got them from this store,” I say.

“Where?” she asks.

“I can’t remember. It’s been a while. I never used them.”

“You didn’t steal them, did you?”

Shock runs through me and I blink. “What makes you think that?” I watch her carefully. She tries to read my face, which I don’t expect.

“Why are you giving these to me?” she presses.

“I thought you’d like them.”

“So, you can’t return them?”

“No.”

“I can’t take these.”

“Why?” My face is flushed.

“I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s not what people are supposed to give each other for Secret Santa. These are too expensive.”

“It’s what I’m giving you.” I can’t meet her eyes. Why was this blowing up in my face?  First Voclain follows me around like the manager at Shop & Go, and now Laila refuses my present.

She takes a breath and says, “I’ll get in trouble. Voclain is monitoring my every move. She asked me to show her exactly what I give and get for Secret Santa. I can’t plop down two hundred dollars’ worth of pens. It’s just another reason for her to try and kick me out.”

“You’re right.” I glance around the field, grab the pens, and shove them deep inside my backpack. “I’ll bring something else tomorrow.”

“Jesus, just forget it. It’ll be too late. I’ll tell her you’re washing my car.”

I feel a small shape in my hoodie pocket. “Here, take this.”

She studies the label. “Vanilla extract?”

“Yeah, it’s less than ten dollars,” I try to joke. She cocks her head. “That and cleaning out your locker at the end of the year. I’ll make a gift certificate.”

“Okay, that’ll work,” she nods. “Can you slip it into my locker by three o’clock?”

I promise I will.

“Did they ever find the shoplifters?” I hear myself ask.

Laila is quiet and I’m sure I’ve given myself away. She says, “They are questioning a couple of freshman guys who were at Saks Fifth that night. Why do you ask?” Her eyes look guarded.

My head bursts with confusion then clarity. Saks Fifth? Not Artastic? “Which guys?” I wonder out loud.

“Look, I don’t know,” she says flatly. She stares at me, probing, waiting. It’s like we both hold a question that can’t be asked. What’s weird, too: close up, Laila smells like anyone else.

“Good luck,” I manage to say.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

*     *     *

That night Jacob walks into my room and holds up the pens. “What are these?”

What’s weird, too: close up, Laila smells like anyone else.

“Why the hell are you digging through my backpack?” I whisper harshly, and he’s taken aback. I never swear at him.

“Mom said to check it for any leftover lunch. You’re lucky it was me and not her.”  He knows how to make me feel guilty. “Are these expensive? Are they from China?”

“Japan.” I handle them like they are breakable. I stare at Jacob’s face. It is losing its babyish roundness and he is starting to smell musty, mushroomy. His solid jaw and intense eyes resemble my dad more every day. My parents have been scheming for Jacob to attend Longman in a few years.

“We’re going to Palo Alto tomorrow,” I announce. “I’ll tell Mom we’re Christmas shopping.”

*     *     *

The next day we take the bus north and Jacob keeps asking, Where are you taking me?  When we walk into Artastic, the balding owner is alone behind the register. He nods and chews his pen.

“I was here a few weeks ago,” I say.

He removes the Bic from his mouth. “Glad to have you back.”

I take a deep breath and pull out the pens. “I stole these. I’m returning them.”

He freezes in shock. He blinks and glances at Jacob, whose eyes are popping out of his head.

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Fourteen,” I say and my voice cracks.

The man examines Jacob again. “This your little brother?”

I nod. “Yes, but he wasn’t with me. He has nothing to do with this.”

Jacob’s mouth hangs open and he stares at me.

“You’ve committed a felony, you know that, don’t you?” the man says. “I could call the police right now and you could have a record.” There is no humor in the set of his mouth, but the corner of his eyes dance. “What the hell am I going to do with you kids? You don’t get it, do you? You just waltz in here and think if you take something, it’s all a game, a bunch of free stuff.” He glares at Jacob. “I have rent and overhead and decent employees to pay. I’m just trying to make a living here. It is people like you who steal that’ll put me out of business.”

He pauses and I look down at the counter; my face burns. He isn’t done. “What’s your home number? Where I can reach your parents? And I want your name and your school.”

My stomach plunges. I had hoped he would stop at a lecture. I slowly take his gnawed Bic and write down my name.

We exit the store and Jacob does something he hasn’t done for a long time—he holds my hand. His hand is slimmer than mine and the warm curl of his fingers makes me want to cry.

He takes a deep breath. “God, that was dumb, Jacie. You better never ever steal again.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I tell him and sniff.

At home, we are quiet and wait for the phone call from the owner. We both pick at our dinners. “What’s the matter with you two?” my mom asks while scraping our plates over the trash. “You getting sick?”

Jacob and I hang out in my room until my dad yells at us to go to bed. Before he leaves, Jacob asks softly, “So why’d you do it?”

“I guess I was trying to impress someone.”

“Was it a guy? Was he worth it?”

“It wasn’t for a guy,” I say. “And she didn’t think she was worth it.”

The phone call never comes.

*     *     *

The New Year arrives and the old year is dismissed, as is Laila. Whispers about the Saks Fifth incident swirl in the hallways. Honesty and conscience, Voclain reminds us.

No one witnesses it, but Laila’s locker is searched, and my present splatters and drips on the tile floor. The first day back, I notice the brown sticky stain. For a while, it smells like a bakery but that gives way to the odor of Pine-Sol and sour sneakers. As I spin my combination, I still tuck in my elbows to make room. And for a long time after, the scent of vanilla, its syrupy sweetness no longer homey but strong and sharp, reminds me of her.

Jeune Ji has been a modern dancer, arts administrator, and product marketer in high-tech. She grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, and has lived on both coasts. She writes about life in Silicon Valley, where she resides with her husband and son. Her favorite place has always been the public library.

Photo by Deepa Mallik

[fiction]

To the person who took my GOLDEN CREEPING JENNY PLANT
at 2:13 a.m., I saw you on our lawn! That plant was a memory of
my mother. I can’t bring her back but you can bring back my plant.
We’ll leave the windows unwatched tonight so you can return it
without shame. DO THE RIGHT THING!

That was the sign Mom stuck in the lawn that Sunday morning. I thought she was insane, and told her so. First, there was no way the thief would see that sign. You’d have to be an incredibly incompetent thief to go back to the scene of the crime the next day, after you’ve gotten away with it. Then, of course, even if the thief was stupid enough to do it, that did not mean they would also get uncontrollable pangs of guilt over the death of a total stranger. And on top of all that? “We’ll leave the windows unwatched tonight.” Really? The thief would probably just say thanks for the favor and steal our potted yucca as well.

“Your cynicism chills my heart,” said Mom, straightening up and brushing a few fallen oak leaves from her shoulders.

“Just because you’re an incurable idealist doesn’t mean everyone else is a cynic,” I said. “I’m just being logical.”

We walked up the path to the front door, crunching leaves, weaving our way between ornamental frogs and huge clay flowerpots. The windchimes clinked in a sudden gust.

“Well, Erica, you wait and see,” Mom said, pushing the door open and smiling that maddeningly optimistic smile at me. “You just wait and see.”

*     *     *

What Mom didn’t know was, lately I hadn’t been acting very logical at all. There was this new guy at school, Trevor Wolcott. Most pretentious name imaginable. But he had these bright green eyes that gave me the shivers. And he went by Trev.

“Backwards, it spells vert,” he told me, the first time we spoke. “Green, in French.” We were in lunch detention, just the two of us, it wasn’t a big deal. I had talked back to Mr. Svensson, as usual, because he’d said something racist, this time about the Aztecs; Trev had been late to homeroom four times in a row. It was actually surprising we’d never met at lunch detention before. “Thought you as a plant person might appreciate that,” he added with a smile.

“Yeah, definitely,” I blabbered, like an idiot. I didn’t appreciate it at all. Also, I had never told him I was a plant person. I didn’t consider myself one.

Brief side-note to clarify: my mom’s a garden lunatic. It runs in the family. Let’s just say you have to duck seven hanging bromeliads on your way from the front door to the kitchen. But she’s actually a pretty mediocre gardener. She’s the first to admit it. It’s me who’s always had a way with plants. I did the propagating for her, and the difficult pruning, and got things to grow that she couldn’t. Mom said I had a gift, like her mom, and her mom’s mom, my namesake. Mom would look at our tomato beds, plump red fruit growing in almost full shade, and she’d mutter, “It’s magic. I swear.”

But I couldn’t care less about it. I did it because that way Mom didn’t make me do the dishes. I loved particle physics and playing the electric bass and I was going to be a physicist one day, with a rock band called Collider on the side. And I would live in a studio apartment with a surround-sound stereo system and if I never wanted to eat another tomato in my life then I wouldn’t.

“You have a beautiful collarbone,” said Trev.

I hated him. What gave him the right to talk like that about my collarbone? Especially now, of all times, when I was trapped in lunch detention? And what did my collarbone look like, anyway?

I cast around for some question with which to keep him talking to me. Mrs. Nguyen, our homeroom teacher and the detention supervisor du jour, would be back from her bathroom break any minute. “So why are you always late to school?”

“Homeroom is pointless.”

“Wow, what a rebel.”

“I just don’t like wasting time.”

“You must be very busy.”

“I am.”

“I’m sure.”

“I work half-time at a community garden in a subsidized housing block.”

My face heated up. “Oh.”

“See?” he said, smiling. “You are kind, I knew it.”

“What?”

“You remind me of a girl I was in love with, in a past life. Her name was Erica.”

I stared at him, sure he was making fun of me.

“She was the gentlest, sweetest girl I’ve ever met. She even had compassion for plants, because she could talk to the souls inside of them. She was an earthwitch, of course.”

“Sorry,” I said. “For a moment there I’d thought we were actually having a semi-intelligent conversation.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed you can do things normal people can’t. You’ve probably made cooked seeds grow, haven’t you?”

I pushed my chair back, my hands shaking.

“Where do you think you’re going, Erica?” said Mrs. Nguyen, sauntering back into the classroom.

“Out of here,” I managed, and out I went.

*     *     *

All through breakfast that Sunday I wondered whether Trev had stolen the creeping jenny. He seemed to have a weird thing for plants. And it was obvious he was at least a little bit crazy. I could even see it being some messed-up attempt at flirtation. The way a boy in third grade steals a bracelet or something from the girl he likes.

He seemed to have a weird thing for plants. And it was obvious he was at least a little bit crazy.

I’ll admit that I don’t know much about guys, though. I don’t have siblings. Dad left when I was seven. And I’ve never had close guy friends. All the boys in AP Physics who you might think I’d be friends with hate me because I get all the hardest test questions right. And don’t get me started on the guys who think they’re musicians.

But the fact was, Trev knew things he shouldn’t have known.

“So what do you think?” said Mom, interrupting my thoughts. “Bronze, granite, or bronze mounted on granite?”

I should have known. While I’d been wondering about Trev, Mom had been leafing yet again through the Eternal Glow catalog of gravestones and memorial plaques. The fact that such a thing even existed kind of blew my mind. Especially because I was pretty sure Eternal Glow was also a brand of organic skin products. Mom wanted one of the plaques with a built-in metal flower vase, because she thought Grandma would’ve wanted that. She was supposed to let the cemetery know the exact order by Monday, the end of the one-week “grace period” after the funeral that they were generous enough to provide us.

“Bronze mounted on granite mounted on bronze,” I said. “Just to be safe.”

She looked at me for a moment, then back down at the catalog. “You need to figure out what it means to honor those who came before you.”

Maybe I was a terrible person for it, but I couldn’t care less about Grandma’s grave marker. She was already dead. It’s not like anything we could do would help her anymore. Mostly, I just wanted to go upstairs and play my electric bass and not think about her at all.

“Mom, do you want to play a board game?” I had no idea where that had come from.

“Erica,” she said without looking up, “you can see I’m busy.”

“Yeah, I can,” I said, standing up and shoving my chair back with a clatter, leaving my dirty dishes for her to clean up.

*     *     *

I loved my grandma because she wore enormous hats decorated with flowers. I loved her because she sent me text messages when she couldn’t sleep at night that started with “Dear Precious Erica.” But most of all, I loved her because she believed in a lot of things no one believed in anymore. She believed our imperfect country was still a land of opportunity. She believed there would always be coral reefs on this planet. She believed that each of us has our own destiny and that if you never compromise on your dreams then you’ll reach them. She believed in true love. And she believed in magic. For some reason, Mom’s optimism drove me up a wall, but Grandma’s made me want to run into her arms and hug her forever and soak it all up like sunlight.

She died because she fell off her rocker one too many times—and the sad but funny thing is, I mean it both literally and figuratively. She broke her hip the last time she fell off, and by the time she was transferred from the hospital to a nursing home she was straight-up loony. She thought I was her mother, Erica, who had been dead for seventy years.

The day I met Trev, I visited Grandma in the nursing home after school. She would be dead two days later, although of course I didn’t know that at the time.

“Mother dear, water Jenny,” she told me when I sat down in the chair beside her. The golden creeping jenny on the windowsill was a feisty, fast-growing plant with small, round yellow leaves that spilled over the sides of its clay pot like hair. Grandma had had one just like it in her house as long as I could remember. “She’s been telling me she’s thirsty.”

“Grandma, I’m not your mother,” I said. “I’m your granddaughter. Erica. I’m fifteen.”

“Yes, Mother. Now listen, she needs just a sprinkle. And then open the curtains so she can feel the sun.”

“Grandma, I want to tell you something, stop talking about the creeping jenny.”

“Oh. Oh no. Am I being a nuisance?”

“No, no Grandma, I just—”

“I’m being a nuisance. I knew it.” She looked like she was about to cry.

“Oh my God, Grandma, relax. I just want to tell you about what happened today!”

“Oh yes, tell me, I’m a good listener.” And all of a sudden she was smiling. “Go ahead, Mother dear.”

I almost screamed, but took a deep breath instead. My counselor had taught me that, just take a deep breath, and it’s the biggest cliché in the world but it actually works.

“Grandma,” I said. I pulled my chair closer. “This guy named Trev. He said I reminded him of this girl he was in love with in another life. Her name was Erica.”

“Your name is Erica,” said Grandma.

“Yeah, but it was so weird, he said Erica was an earthwitch or something. Am I—is there such a thing as an earthwitch?”

For a moment, Grandma’s eyes cleared. Something bright and beautiful appeared there, the Grandma I recognized.

“Grandma,” I said suddenly, not letting her answer, “do you remember when I was nine and we were baking chocolate-chip cookies together? And you were telling me about all the guys you used to date, and I was laughing so hard that I spilled the batter into the basil planter on the counter and it got all mixed with the soil but then I tried to scoop it all back into the bowl because I just didn’t know you couldn’t do that? And Mom was telling me no no no, but you just laughed and told me that you loved me because I wasn’t like any girl you’d ever met?”

‘Am I—is there such a thing as an earthwitch?’

I’d tried to say it fast, before she was gone again.

“Yes, precious Erica,” said Grandma with a faint smile, “and the basil in that pot tasted like chocolate ever after.”

My breath caught. Then Grandma turned toward the window, frowning, and that looseness in her eyes came back and she said, “Mother dear, Jenny’s still thirsty.”

*     *     *

I didn’t care what Mom had promised on that sign. Sunday night, as soon as she went to bed, I pushed the blinds of my window open a few inches and sat there in my desk chair with a microwaved mug of coffee. This time, if Trevor Wolcott was outside my bedroom window at two a.m., I was going to know about it.

The garden looked strange at night. All those loud colors turned down to mute. Every growing thing frozen, waiting for the sun to rise again. On the street, the porch light cast hulking hydrangea shadows that shifted ever so slightly in the breeze.

2:13 came and went.

I was starting to wonder if Mom had been right. If the thief could see me through the window and didn’t dare come back. Or if I was actually just sleep-deprived and/or insane and nobody would have ever shown up on our lawn tonight. That plant was gone for good.

At 4:27, I saw movement.

I pressed my face right up against the window. A figure, half-lit by the streetlamps, was moving down the street toward our house. It didn’t look nearly as tall as Trev, but it was hard to tell because it was hunched. It had this stealthy walk, each step slow and deliberate, one arm trailing behind it at a weird angle. That other hand, though—was it clutching something?

The figure crossed the street. Turned onto our yard. And stepped right into the pool of our porch light.

It was a girl. She was probably around my age, maybe younger, with short, curly blonde hair framing a face the shape of a strawberry. A frilly, old-fashioned dark-green dress clung to her stout, almost rectangular body. And she was holding something—a big clay pot. But as far as I could tell, it was empty.

I let the blinds swing back into place and slipped out of my room. I was downstairs and out the front door before I could stop myself.

“Hey, you!” I said, when I’d shut the door behind me. The windchimes tinkled.

“Oh hello, Erica,” said the girl without looking at me. She was bent over, smelling our roses, one arm still stretched out strangely behind her.

I tried to calm my heart down, but couldn’t. All that coffee probably hadn’t helped. I walked down the porch steps.

“How do you know my name?”

She finally straightened up and smiled at me. It was a sweet smile, a child’s smile.

“Oh please. You don’t remember me?”

I was having a hard time focusing. I was fascinated by her eyebrows—yellow and bizarrely bushy.

“I’ve met you before?” I said.

“Of course, silly. I’m Jenny!”

Something started gnawing at my stomach.

“I was very close with your grandma,” said Jenny. “Of course, I sprouted in your great-grandmother’s house, but she died so young. I’ve lived with your grandma most of my life.”

“You… sprouted.”

“Don’t be dim, Erica.”

“You’re playing a joke on me,” I said. I felt nauseous. “You stole our plant and then came back here to freak me out.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Erica, I know you. You aren’t dumb. You don’t really think anyone would steal a potted plant, do you? The person your mother saw in the garden last night was just me, silly, climbing out of my pot!”

My knees weren’t working right. I lowered myself onto the bottom porch step. “I need proof.”

Something softened in her expression. She walked forward and set the pot down beside me. There was no plant inside, just soil, wet and fragrant.

She climbed into the pot.

Her feet vanished into the earth, then her legs, until her waist was level with the top of the pot. She twisted and shuffled her torso downwards, jamming one arm and then the other deep into the soil, wriggling until they vanished as well. Only her neck and head were still above ground. She smiled at me. Then she squeezed her eyes tight, and ducked, and she was gone.

For three or four seconds it was still. Then the breeze came back and the windchimes whispered and I realized I was holding my breath.

The soil burst open. A green stem sprang up, spraying dirt everywhere, and erupted into a cascade of round yellow leaves. When they settled, they were hanging halfway down the sides of the pot.

I let out my breath, but I was still frozen with shock.

And then it happened in reverse.

Stem sinking into the earth, leafy branches slithering back into their point of origin and vanishing one by one—then yellow curls emerging, bushy eyebrows, squeezed-shut eyes, gritted teeth. Arms, chest, legs.

Jenny stepped out of the pot in that same green dress, shook her hair out, and smiled.

“Oh, I love that feeling,” she said, with a shiver of pleasure. “Uprooting yourself.”

“Just—tell me something,” I managed. “Can all plants do that?”

She sat down beside me on the step. “To an extent. Slower-growing plants can usually only switch once in a very long time, and most don’t ever want to. We’re different. Why do you think they call creeping jenny plants ‘aggressive’ and ‘invasive’? We have the itch. The wanderlust gene.”

“But then, why didn’t you escape years ago?”

“Oh, it’s hard, Erica. When you’ve been fed and watered by someone for so many years, it’s hard to manage on your own for very long. Now that your grandmother doesn’t own me anymore and you left me outside, I couldn’t resist trying, but…” She shrugged and looked down. “I’m sorry I scared your mother. I’m back now. It’s okay. I knew this was only a vacation.”

I glanced at her.

“Jenny. Am I an earthwitch?”

She laughed. “What do you think?”

“Like my grandma? And my great-grandma?”

“Yes. But not your mother. Sometimes it skips a generation.”

“So I own you now?”

She frowned, drawing her thick eyebrows together. “Yes, Erica.”

“Then I set you free.”

Her head snapped up. “What?”

“I set you free. You can always come back whenever you feel like it, I’ll water you or give you nutrients, but you should travel. I’ll teach you how to ride the buses and stuff. We’ll go buy you some normal clothes too. And we can go on hikes together, if you want. You’d probably like seeing all the… wild trees.”

She was staring into my eyes, trying to figure out if I was joking.

“You would do that for me?” she whispered.

I shrugged.

“Your grandma would be mad at you, you know,” she said at last. “For setting me free. I’ve been in the family for generations. She could talk to me about her mother. I was the last one alive who knew her mother well.”

“Am I like her? My great-grandma?”

I hadn’t talked to someone like this since Grandma lost her marbles.

Jenny thought again, kicking her feet against the step. “You tell me. She cared for her plants like children. She even cared for the aphids that came to destroy her plants. She couldn’t harm one if she tried. She was all softness.”

“That—doesn’t sound like a good thing,” I said, frowning. But it did match what Trev had told me. “Hey, is reincarnation real?”

“What?” Jenny said. “Not that I know of. But I’m just a plant.”

I smiled. For some reason it felt good, sitting there, me and her. I hadn’t talked to someone like this since Grandma lost her marbles. A faint grey light was peeking out above the houses and a little bit of morning mist left its droplets on my nose.

“I miss her,” I whispered.

“I know,” said Jenny. “Me too.”

*     *     *

I felt weirdly awake during homeroom that morning. Must have been the coffee. Trev sauntered in before the bell. Miracle of miracles. His brown hair was sticking up in the back and his shirt was misbuttoned. I tried not to stare.

“Hey, witch,” he said under his breath as he sat down beside me, one side of his mouth turned up.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

He nodded.

We stood up and walked toward the door.

“Wait!” Mrs. Nguyen squawked. “Where do you think you’re—”

The door shut before she could finish.

“So,” Trev said as we headed down the hall. “You believe me yet?”

I pushed open a back door of the school, held it for him, then walked out and stood against the brick wall of the alcove. He leaned next to me, his long legs crossed at the ankles.  The pavement was littered with fiery maple leaves blown across from the trees lining the tennis courts.

“What type of plant are you?” I blurted out.

He froze for a second, his eyes wide. Then he grinned.

“You’re blunt. I like that.”

“Well?”

“I’m a hickory,” he said. “Once, I lived in your great-grandmother’s backyard.”

“But you didn’t want to tell me.”

“I was going to eventually. By the way, I heard about your grandma dying. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I want to show you how you can honor her,” he said. “How you can carry on her legacy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen earthwitches before,” he said, lowering his voice. “When I was a sapling, I was owned by one. None of them has the power you have. You should be out there making crops grow faster, making them grow when there’s a drought. You could replenish rainforests. You could feed starving countries.”

“You are wildly exaggerating,” I said, starting to sweat.

“Only a little. You have no idea what your powers might be. You have a gift like that, you can’t waste it.”

“What if I have no interest in plants whatsoever? What if I want to be a physicist?”

He bit his lip, looking out toward the tennis courts. “What if Agassi’s dad hadn’t made him keep practicing tennis, even when he hated it? The sport would’ve lost something precious forever. The whole world would’ve been deprived.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t you understand, Erica? Some people are chosen for a special destiny. Growing plants is who you are. You can’t run away from it. It’s been in your blood for generations. You may be the last of the earthwitches.”

He leaned in. “And that means, deep inside you, that gentleness, that sweet caring essence—it’s there. I believe in it. I believe in you.”

I looked into his eyes, brilliant green and sincere. Felt that flutter in my chest and that buzz in my fingers. But in the back of my mind, I could see Jenny, her eyes closed, pushing herself up out of that pot.

Trev leaned in even closer, tilting his head, our lips an inch apart.

And I shoved him backwards.

He let out a cry.

“I’m not that Erica,” I said, breathing heavily. “I’m not gentle or sweet.”

He stared at me, shocked.

“I’m not going to spend my life growing plants. No one gets to choose my destiny for me, okay?”

“Erica—”

“So don’t you ever try to tell me who I am.”

The bell rang. Homeroom was over.

“Do you have something to say?” I asked.

He looked at me for another moment—crestfallen, not apologetic. Then he opened the door and was gone.

*     *     *

Physics was my first class of the day, and it was the only one I wouldn’t miss for anything. But I had five minutes until it started.

I knelt on the pavement, my heart still pounding, and picked up the most perfect red-orange maple leaf. Dead.

You were right, Grandma, I thought. About magic, at least.

I traced the leaf’s veins, like a map of an endlessly forking river. I never thought I’d hear myself say the word destiny, either. I smiled hesitantly. I think you would be proud of me.

I stood up. I’m still pretty sure you’re wrong about the coral reefs, though, I thought, squinting toward the trees by the tennis courts. And as for true love—well, fine. I’m skeptical, but I’ll hold off judgment for now.

The fourth tree—that was the one this leaf came from. I had no idea how I knew that, but I did. It was a young one, its trunk still thin. Before I could stop myself, I whispered, “Thank you.”

The tree’s branches bent and creaked as though rocked by their own personal breeze. A few leaves floated downward.

“Is it hard when that happens?” I asked.

It hefted it branches up, then down. A shrug.

“I’m talking to a tree,” I said.

It nodded.

I laughed, feeling a brick come loose from some wall inside me. Every blade of grass around me—I felt it, the softest whisper, a tug against my mind. A tiny thing growing.

Jenny was wrong, I was sure of it now. Grandma wouldn’t be mad at me for setting her free.

I’m an earthwitch, I thought, the word tingling down through my body.

The second bell rang.

And I’m late for physics class.

I dashed back inside, still holding the leaf. Before the door closed behind me, a whoosh of air rushed in, blowing a whirl of leaves into school. Bringing the trees with me.

Noah Weisz received his MFA in fiction from the University of Texas at Austin’s New Writers Project. He has been a winner of the F(r)iction short story contest, a special-mention finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing, and was shortlisted for the international Bath Children’s Novel Award. His fiction for young readers has appeared or is forthcoming in YARN, Stew Magazine, DoveTales, and Highlights for Children. Noah currently teaches creative writing and children’s literature as an adjunct at St. Edward’s University and leads after-school writing workshops at two elementary schools. You can learn more at noahweisz.wordpress.com.

[fiction]

Part I

Elsie Wood, Stenographer, Age 19

Late

The sun’s long gone
when I pull on my woolen coat,
set my hat on my head,
dash outside for the trolley,
late,
and I can only hope
I haven’t missed
the car that will get me
to Washington Street on time
to get the next trolley
to get me home
to Roxbury.

My heels clack
down the block
as I struggle to fasten
my fur collar around my neck,
wishing I hadn’t worn
a coat at all today—
though it’s a lovely coat—
because the November night
is surprisingly,
unseasonably warm.

It seems
like a night
to remember.

Screech

I hear it, the screech
of the steel wheels careening
down the tracks from the east
coming from City Point,
and sweat beads up
on the back of my neck
as I race for it,
my heels pounding
over the sidewalk.

Blimey,
it’s dark
out here.

The lone headlight
cuts down the street,
lighting the way
like a miner’s headlamp
shining against walls of coal,
the beacon that’ll lead
me home—
and not my real home
back over the ocean in Scotland,
but our third-floor walkup
in Roxbury
so far away
from the soot-choked factories
lining the streets
of South Boston.

Gong Clanging

I’m going to make it,
and already I can imagine
arriving home, can taste
the leftover roast and potatoes
from Sunday dinner.

But that’s not all.
If I’m being honest with myself,
I know this trolley is my only chance
for a glimpse of that Italian boy
who always gets on at the next stop.

Gong clanging,
the trolley barrels forward,
slowing just enough to stop for me
and my raised arm,
begging the driver to let me on.

Jimmie Macaluso, Laborer, Age 18

The Big Question Mark

I wait for the trolley, my mind drifting
from the never-ending day at the factory

to my still-bubbling euphoria over the Sox
winning the 1916 World Series last night

to the big question mark
in Washington, D.C.—

Will Woodrow Wilson win the White House again,
or will Charles Hughes kick him out?

But when the clang of the bell
sounds around the corner,

my heart perks up at the thought
that she might be aboard already,

that lovely blonde
in the dark blue coat

I’ve not yet worked up the courage
to approach.

The Next Trolley

Pressed close with my brother, Biggi,
I throng forward with the crowd

toward the trolley screeching
to a stop in front of us.

The two of us climb
inside the car,

but before the door claps shut
behind me,

a voice echoes through the air,
See you at home!

Our older brother, John,
three back in the crowd,

won’t make it on this car,
raises a hand to wave us on,

steps back to wait
for the next trolley.

I lift my hand in response,
watching his face

pop from the shadows
before we’re whisked away

from East First Street
in a lurching blur.

The Girl of My Dreams

We crowd inside, scrambling
for hand straps,

because of course
the benches are full as always

by the time
the trolley reaches our stop,

but I can’t help passing
my gaze over the car,

scanning the men—
because almost all the passengers are men—

for that splash of midnight blue
with a rim of fur around the collar

that tells me the girl
of my dreams is going my way.

John Macaluso, Laborer, Age 20

Lucky

Jimmie and Biggi
are lucky enough
to squeeze
onto the trolley.

Maybe tonight, Jimmie
will make his own luck
and finally
speak to that girl.

Me, I’m alone,
even when surrounded by others—
the quiet one, they say,
the listener.

I listen now to the mishmash of languages
washing over me at the trolley stop
(Italian, Polish, accented English, of course),
telling me how far we’ve all come,

reminding me
we’re a nation of immigrants,
happy to have found
our home.

A Chill

Though the breeze
is warm,
a chill runs down
my back.

I crane my neck
to the right,
but my brothers’ trolley
is long gone.

An Eternity

It feels
like an eternity
until the next trolley
arrives.

An eternity
in which
I consider
my place in this world.

Country,
home,
family—
I’m so lucky to have it all.

Lillian Frank, Stenographer, Age 20

Fish Pier

The sweaty, human stench that hits
me in the face when I squeeze
onto the trolley
reminds me of the rotten one
pouring off the open
barrels of slick silver bodies
in the thick, choking air outside my office
at Fish Pier.

The men who pile into the car after me press forward
and one gentleman already on the bench
offers me his seat,
Miss?
but I shake my head, sticking as close
to the door and the snatches of outside air
as I can get.

Somerville—home—is only a few miles
from here, but the potato and meat knishes
waiting for me there
are most decidedly a world
away from here.

Around the Car

While my attention remains focused
on each and every tiny whiff of fresh air,
my gaze wanders over the men filling up the trolley
with their might, their muscles, their weight
heavy on their shoulders,
coming to rest on the only other girl in the entire car,
a lovely thing with China-doll cheeks and golden curls,
her good looks commanding the attention
I can’t imagine anyone will ever devote to me.

Some of us share this same space
every day, traveling to work and back home,
breathing in this same stale, stifling air,
in the flickering lights that spark in the darkness,
but the only thing that binds us together
is our will to escape this drudgery
and make something better of ourselves.

Easy as Pie

I count the blocks to South Station,
easy as pie, since they go
backwards in the alphabet
from where I get on at D Street
to C, B, and toward the Summer Street bridge.

As the conductor squirms his way through
the car collecting fares,
I dig in my pocketbook for the last nickel
I stashed in my coin purse,
change from my fare this morning.

Meanwhile, the trolley clangs and barrels and lurches
forward with each start and stop,
and it seems that the motorman
is in as much of a hurry as I am
to spring out of this tin can
and walk the last stretch home,
because he’s barely slowing down
to pick up passengers.

Part II

Elsie Wood

A Glance

We’re getting closer
to Fort Point Channel,
closer to my stop,
and closer to his.

Gathering courage,
I lift my gaze,
shoot a glance
his way,
where I catch his brown eyes
shining,
his lips
smiling
as he looks right back
at me,
and I can’t stop grinning
at him.

He always travels
with one or two others,
this boy,
and in the months we’ve been taking
this route together,
I’ve heard them call each other
their American names
and once or twice, their Italian ones,
but if he ever lets me,
I’d be happy to call him
Vincenzo instead of Jimmie,
this lovely boy
who might someday reach out
and take my hand in his.

My Gold Bracelet

Nervous at my boldness,
I lower my gaze,
fiddle with the clasp
on my gold bracelet,
a gift from my mother
for my eighteenth birthday,
engraved with my initials, EHW.

What’s the E for?

I look up
to find the warm voice
and the intense gaze
of this electrifying boy
directed
at me.

This Sweetness

The air turns sweet,
and for a moment, I wonder
if it’s this boy’s breath
filling the air with sugar,
but then I remember
we’re passing
the NECCO Factory
by the channel, and I
drink in the scent,
drink in this sweetness,
drink in his words,
before boldly telling him,
I’m Elsie.
Nice to meet you.

Jimmie Macaluso

Our First Conversation

Joy bursts through me—
pure, dazzling joy—

at the musicality of her voice,
the sunshine of her smile,

the sparkle in her eyes,
and already

I am in love
with Elsie.

So in love
I almost forget

to respond,
I’m Jimmie,

and when I do,
my cheeks flame hot,

because I realize
everyone near us in this car

is witness to
our first conversation.

But then, I’m so smitten
I don’t even care.

I Hasten

I’d love to see you home
someday, Elsie,

I say, but then, realizing
it might be too forward of me,

I hasten to add,
or around town, or anywhere, really,

and she’s smiling at me, nodding,
telling me, I’d like that,

and I can hardly contain
myself, but then something lurches,

and I’m falling forward
with the car along the track.

Suspended

Things are going so fast
it takes me a moment

to realize this is more than love
dragging me forward,

when shouts, screams,
bedlam rise up from the front of the car,

the lights go out,
and the trolley crashes through metal,

barreling forward,
tipping downward,

hanging over the edge
of the bridge, suspended.

Lillian Frank

Rolling

Crash!

The trolley bursts
through the metal fence across the rails,
its steel wheels locking, grinding
over the tracks,
white-hot smoke hissing
up from below the car,
while the motorman tries to engage
the brake, thrusting his body
forward,
backward,
forward,
grunting, huffing, yelling,
before his panic-filled voice cries out,
Jump!

I try to get my bearings
among the shadowy buildings lining the street,
but I know we’re nowhere near
the next station, and I don’t recall crossing
the bridge.

The door springs open,
someone shoves me from behind,
sending me out of the trolley,
sprawling to the pavement,
other bodies bounding
out the door after me,
and I’m
rolling,
rolling,
rolling.

Into the Drink

Sounds from the trolley continue
grinding, screeching, rumbling,
and finally, the unthinkable—
an incredible splash,
followed by an eerie gurgling.

I’ve stopped rolling over the pavement,
saved by someone’s hand
grabbing the back of my coat,
the only thing
holding me back from the edge
of the bridge,
the only thing
keeping my body
from making the last flip
and following the trolley
into the drink.

Dazed

I shake my head,
push myself to my feet,
hold a hand to a sticky gash
on my head.

I gaze around me,
but I only see a handful
of similarly dazed men beside me
on the bridge,
and we hobble to the edge together,
spotting a handful of others
in the inky-black water below—
only a handful.

That trolley was packed full.

Help! we call out
to those running to the scene, Help!
Minutes later,
our voices have already
gone hoarse.

Part III

Jimmie

Crushed

Tumbling forward
in a heap of bodies,

some of them already crushed
on the ground, trampled underfoot,

the trolley crashes through the air, flying,
until it smacks into the water with a splash.

Someone screams, Biggi calls, Jimmie!
and Elsie freezes, her eyes big as the sea.

Water covers the car in mere seconds, swallowing everyone
inside, drowning out the sounds from our voices,

amplifying the rush of bubbles escaping
our mouths and rising up to the surface.

Dark

Shapes shift around me, struggling
in the chilling water, dark as coal,
while I press my lips together,
trying to figure out how to get

all of us out of this watery wreck,
but there’s no time, so I blindly grab

at the floating, flailing limbs to my right,
wondering if one belongs to Biggi,

until in front of me, I identify
Elsie’s slim wrist,

her bracelet smooth
under my fingertips.

I swim, pulling her toward the side of the car,
where one of the windows must be,

struggle to lift my legs, kick
the window with all my might.

Burning for Air

The glass shatters,
but there’s no time to think,

my lungs growing smaller,
my ears filling with pressure.

I give Elsie’s hand a quick squeeze,
before propelling her first

through the window, but her bracelet catches
on the glass, her fingers frantic.

The bracelet slips downward
past my hand, but I have to get it,

and I reach for it once, twice, again,
my head growing heavier,

my lungs burning for air,
until finally

my mouth opens against my will,
filling with salty water from the sea.

Elsie

His Strong Hand

My heart
hammers
amidst the panic,
in the darkness,
in this freezing
rush
of water,
but I can tell
the hand
on my wrist
is his
strong hand,
and he means
to save
us both.

A Gentle Push

A jerk
of our bodies
among all the struggles
around me,
and he’s guiding me
toward the window,
which he’s managed
to pop free,
but my bracelet catches,
falling
back into the car,
away.

I grasp for it in the water,
but Jimmie
gives me a gentle push,
sending me out of the trolley
into the channel,
and I know he’ll join me
in a moment,
but I can’t tell which way is up,
and I can’t find him
in the rush of bubbles,
and I panic
and gasp
for breath.

Nothing but Darkness

No Jimmie,
no air,
nothing but
darkness,
water,
cold,
slicing
through me
like glass.

Lillian

Retracted

Trembling, the lot of us stand
at the edge of the bridge,
which we now realize is retracted
to let a boat pass
instead of set in place
for the trolley,
creating a huge gap over the water,
but knowing how this happened
doesn’t help understand why,
and the pale faces around me register
nothing more than the same shock I feel,
as the rowboats and tugboats below
pick up only a handful
of additional survivors.

Footsteps

Another trolley clangs up behind us,
coming to a stop behind
gesticulating officials
and a swell of new crowds from Southie,
streaming out to help, gawk, cover
their mouths in horror.

Footsteps pound behind me
from the trolley,
and a young man leans over the edge,
scanning the water,
scanning the amassing crowd,
calling,
Jimmie! Biggi!
sobbing,
My brothers.

His Rough Hand

Were you on board? he asks,
his gaze scanning mine in desperation.

I nod, swallow,
unable to speak to this boy
who’s lost everything,
and instead, I reach
for his rough hand
and squeeze it in mine.

John

No One Below

We wait,
this girl and I,
even though she tells me
she has no one below.

We share our names,
our sorrow, our guilt
at having escaped
this watery grave.

As she waits
with me, I can see
her heart has also sunk
below the channel.

Car 393

Huddled under a blanket,
Lillian says everything
by saying nothing when divers
begin bringing up bodies.

Not until three o’clock in the morning,
when it’s finally empty,
do they hoist
up the trolley.

I break then, sobbing
under the weight of Car 393:
the trolley that crushed
my heart.

Gone

Lillian squeezes my hand,
and it’s finally clear
that the slick waters of the channel
have swallowed my brothers whole,

clear that tonight
I’ll have to go home
to tell Mamma
two of her sons are gone,

clear that I’ll have to let go
of Lillian’s hand—
once I can remember
how to breathe.

Author’s note: Based on true events from the night of November 7, 1916, this story relies on details provided in the Boston Globe article, “The Tragedy that Boston Forgot,” by Eric Moscowitz, October 29, 2016.

Kip Wilson is a YA writer with a PhD in German literature. Her work has been published in the Timeless and Spain from a Backpack anthologies, as well as Black Fox Literary Magazine, Cobblestone, and Faces magazines. Her writing has won several awards, including the 2017 PEN/New England Discovery Award. She’s the poetry editor at YARN. Wilson can also be found on twitter (twitter.com/kiperoo), and on her website, kipwilsonwrites.com.