Rain
& Other Stories
AP Modern Literature
Period 7
Spring 2010
Mr. Zervanos
Lauren Tusar
Rain
I always told her that while I was pregnant with her I was in the most unbearable
pain. It’s not like it was her fault, so I don’t know why I made her feel guilty. But
whether it was from her little fleshy feet nudging my stomach - a soft but firm reminder
of the pain that I would soon encounter - or from Sancho yapping at the paperboy every
morning at five o’clock, anxiety wrung its devious fingers around me, never letting go.
The humidity of the summer wafted through the paper-thin walls of my house; I was
tortured by an invisible prison of heat. Even my husband Jake couldn’t make me feel
better – the pregnancy symptoms were just too overbearing. But the one thing that
unleashed my tension, the thing that put me at ease, was the soft, gentle sound of rain.
The rhythm of rain beating on our porch, the pattern rain created in the marsh in our
backyard, the precious gift of coolness that triumphed over the clammy moisture that
filled our house, I welcomed rain with open arms. From my sudden infatuation with this
form of precipitation, I named her after Mother Nature’s gift, Rain.
I’ve lived in the Everglades all my life. When most people think of Florida, they
think of Disney World, old people that retire in Key West, or soaking up the sun on a
beautiful beach. No one ever thinks of the Everglades, the vast wetland that covers almost
4,500 miles of Floridian land - my backyard. Creaking open my screened backdoor, I step
out into a vibrant emerald kingdom. The tranquility and stillness surround me, pulling me
into a new world. The trees protrude proudly from the water’s depths, soaring up where
my eyes can’t see, a mysterious, undiscovered world hovering above us. Rain always
ventures out there to get away from the world; it’s like her own private sanctuary. At the
age of ten, it’s remarkable how keen she is to her surroundings. Peering through the
kitchen window as I’m washing dishes I can see Rain swing her legs over the damp
moldy dock, her feet skim the surface of the swamp, the chill signals her tiny arm hairs to
stand up. She thrives on this place. It’s her place to escape, and that’s what makes it so
good.
Every morning I wake to a chatter of birds, their voices invading my room. Every
morning I groggily roll out of bed and stagger to my daughter’s bathroom to splash my
face with water, clearing my eyes and rinsing my face. And every morning I
mechanically reach into her pill cabinet, clutching the plastic bottles of pills that my
daughter needs daily. A tedious routine ingrained into my daily schedule, never faltering,
never wavering. Jake is always in the shower at this point, the water pounding at the
floor. Lying in bed I scan our room, the soft light pouring through our blinds highlights a
painting of a city skyline Jake installed when we first moved here, a painting of his past.
Moving my hand across the sheets before I get out of bed I can still feel the warm imprint
his body has left on them, unearthing a distant tugging feeling on my heart. I never get to
see him before he goes to bed because he always gets home late from work, and I never
get to say good morning to him because he is always in the shower by the time I wake up.
It’s as if he doesn’t have time to fit me into his schedule anymore.
I tip-toe into Rain’s room after my daily trip to the medicine cabinet. Strands of
hair mask her face, the blanket thrown across the bed after another humid night’s sleep. I
gently nudge her boney shoulder, “Morning baby. You have to get ready for school
now.” Her eye lids flap open slowly like a butterfly’s wings, fluttering to clear her vision.
The familiar feeling of relief washes over me; I thank God everyday that I see her wake.
I feel as if I’m a sailboat drifting at sea, just swaying and bobbing through life,
floating in a familiar fantasy. I go through the motions every day, the domestic housewife that I am; I enjoy catering to my husband, content with our humble, secure life. But
lately there have been minor storms that have broken up my paradise. Rain’s seizures are
shifting the dynamics of our home. They are just one of those things that comes when
you least expect it, like getting in a car accident or breaking an arm. You would never
think that it would happen to you, but once it happens the first time, it’s as if you begin to
brace yourself constantly. My body is always tense, rigid, awaiting the next time Rain’s
eyes roll back into her head like a slot machine’s dial, the next time Rain collapses on the
floor, the next time Rain’s conscience escapes her body. Falling asleep at night is
difficult; it seems that when I finally lull myself to sleep I hear a dreaded thump, either
from Rain hitting her head against the headboard or falling off the bed in an attack. The
doctor doesn’t know exactly what is wrong with her, so he gives us pills that will
temporarily reduce her seizures. All they know is that she needs further medical testing,
and soon. Everything used to seem so perfect; now I feel like I don’t even know how to
get through one day.
“Good morning, Honey,” I say as Jake enters the kitchen.
A drab, “’morning,” is his only response.
“I thought you’d like some toast for break-”
“I can do it myself.” Jacob hurriedly shoves two slices of fresh bread into the
toaster and sloshes orange juice onto the counter rather than into a glass.
“Hey, listen, I was thinking you could call Dr. McGlynn and tell him about our
decision to go up north…I’ve got a really big meeting this morning.”
“Oh okay sure…”
“Thanks, Maddie. Remember, he needs to know today; we’ve already put it off
long enough. See you later.” Grabbing the now-burned toast, Jake rushes out, leaving a
trail of burnt crumbs behind him. The screen door slams with clang. I watch him get into
our beat up Subaru. The car crunches on the gravel driveway, tearing off into the lonely
street; tire tracks and the foreboding phone call his only things left behind.
It never used to be like this, our marriage I mean. I met Jake when he came
down to Florida during college, doing an internship with a local marine-biology center,
researching the aquatic life in the everglades. At the time I was going to a community
college, and we happened to meet each other at a bar on a random Friday night back
when I used to have a social life – back when I was young. He was from Pennsylvania,
around the Philadelphia area, and I was enthralled by his worldliness, his intelligence, his
wit. He would always talk about his home, rave of Philadelphia, New York City;
everything big, better, expensive, new. “You should come up with me sometime, I want
to show you everything,” he’d say. I’d nod and smile; sure I liked to hear about his life,
but these were all just stories to me. I’m not a story teller, I’m a listener. I listened to his
stories of the huge skyscrapers, the flashing lights on Broadway, a foreign world. What to
him was nostalgia seemed to me like an intimidating new universe. I imagined chaotic,
bustling streets; filthy, stagnant alleyways; advertisements that were a huge waste of
electricity. An ambitious, adventurous city kid meeting an innocent, naïve home-body
like me-who would’ve thought we would fall in love? At the time it didn’t really matter
where we were from, our past; all we knew was how we felt. Everything else didn’t seem
to matter.
Jake stayed down here in Florida for around a year. He’d become such a big part
of my life that I’d forgotten that he used to live all the way up in Pennsylvania, it seemed
like a world away. The crisp fall days swayed into long winter nights, and then abruptly
rolled into the sun-drenched humid days that I’ve always found irresistible, our love
growing as the seasons changed. We were inseparable, head over heels in love. I couldn’t
believe it when Jake told me that in two weeks he had to go home. But I was even more
surprised when he’d asked me to come with him. I immediately ruled out the offer and a
seed of fear was permanently planted into my brain. How could I leave my home, the
place where I grew up? The place where my old school was, the playground I used to
play on with my friends? The place where I found my first fossil (which happens to be on
bedroom bureau to this day)? The place where I sprained my ankle while exploring
through the swamp? Or how about the place where my parents were killed in a car
accident? The place where my parents are buried? How could he expect me to leave?
Every time he asked again or offered, it was as if he was watering my worry seed,
nourishing it, making it grow. I couldn’t believe that he would ever expect me to move up
there with him.
Looking out the window at the skidded tire tracks on our driveway I remember
those days. I remember the care-free year of happiness that made me forget all my
troubles in the world, finally made me feel like everything was back to normal after my
parents’ death. Eventually I convinced Jake to stay with me here in the Everglades,
finally persuaded him to settle down with me even though all his family and dreams were
in Philadelphia. I had thoroughly convinced myself, and him, that if he stayed here with
me we’d have the perfect life together. Our future seemed so bright then, but now I feel
like I’m walking alone in a murky, abandoned tunnel with no sign of light at the other
end. I go to the sink to wash the dishes that are already pilling up for the morning. I
absentmindedly chip away crusted food from a plate; I feel as if I’m chipping away time,
time until I call Dr. McGlynn to tell him that we’ve decided to move up north. Decided to
move up north so that Rain could go to a better hospital. A better hospital with better
facilities, doctors, medicine. Better jobs for Jake, more opportunities for me. As Jake
said, Doctor McGlynn needs to know today so that he can sign us up for a special clinic
to help Rain. The deadline is today, but we’ve been pushing it off. Jake is gung-ho to
accept this offer, but I keep avoiding the topic whenever it is brought up, putting the
prospect of leaving my home into the back of my mind. Jake tells me about all the great
possibilities of moving north; he force-feeds me this information like I’m an infant
resisting a bottle. I still can’t help not wanting to leave.
I finished getting Rain ready for school and whisked her away on the bus.
Another normal day for her; she doesn’t know how much her life could change in a
matter of a few days. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that soon she might have to leave
everything behind.
Sometimes on balmy summer days, if I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll rest
on the wicker chairs in our screened-in porch. In this secluded area I become a full
observer to the nature around me; I become a nonexistent being, just a witness to the
world. Even though I knew I had an important phone call to make, my body walked me
out there, as if some ulterior force was luring me here. My favorite creature to observe in
this complete stillness is the Great Blue Heron. It is so rare to see her, but today out of all
days I see her hidden behind the ferns, what insufficient camouflage. She’s shared our
home for years, always returning to catch fish in our mini-backyard wetland. Rain loves
watching her; like a ballerina on a stage, the heron gracefully glides through the water,
lifting her nubby twig legs so methodically, her pompous chest fluffy with thick, silver
and cobalt feathers, as silky as liquid silver. As silly as it sounds, I feel like I can relate to
this bird. She always returns to where she knows is safe, so proud to have this place as
her home. It’s comforting to know that the Everglades will always be here for the heron.
It is government-protected land; nothing would ever destruct such a peaceful place.
As much as I want to keep it out, the worry from Rain’s illness keeps nudging at
me. I can tell she has been becoming progressively weaker over the past few weeks; it
doesn’t even feel real to me. My mind slips into the memory of her most recent seizure, a
few days ago while we were eating dinner. I whipped my head up from where it was
buried into my food after I heard the piercing clang of her fork hitting the linoleum tiles
of the floor. Her face was in her plate, which was now tilted upwards toward the ceiling,
ketchup and grease painted on her face. I felt frozen in time, in shock from the
suddenness of the seizure. But of course Jake was quick to Rain’s side. “Dammit Maddie,
do something!” He bellowed as he got down on one knee, holding Rain in his arms like a
baby, elevating her head as she shook. He is so strong, fearless, steady; I clumsily
wobbled out of my chair and fumbled to rip some paper towel from the roll and soak it
under the sink. I put the damp towel on her forehead and minutes passed; Jake soothingly
blew cool air on her face. Rain’s haphazard breathing and Sancho’s sporadic, mournful
yelps filled the room, suffocating us. I tried to look at Jake, but his eyes bore into Rain’s
face; it seemed as if he was willing her to stop trembling. Suddenly, I heard the rhythm of
rain on our roof. Slow but steady, it was like a metronome getting everything back in
tempo, securing the rhythm of our lives. Sancho’s barking started to subside, and he
trotted over to the window to watch the rain. And with the rain, her breathing became
steady again. A blanket of tranquility warmed the room, and Jake got up to carry Rain to
her room, not looking back at me once.
I’m supposed to make that call, but I just don’t want to get up. I sit here watching
the Great Blue Heron despite the grumbles of my stomach, despite of the fact that the sun
slowly shifts behind the clouds and is eventually pierced by the branches of the trees,
despite of the ringing phone in the kitchen that proceeds to a voicemail from a doctor, his
scratchy voice confirming our decision to stay home since he hasn’t heard from us. I must
have fallen asleep, because I’m startled when Sancho starts barking; I know they must be
home. I stay put, my body unable to move. My eyes dart through the marsh; the sun and
the Heron have disappeared but have been replaced by thick gray clouds. I hope my
refuge will prove itself by protecting me from what I know is to come. “Hi, Mom!” Rain
yells as her little feet patter down the hallway to her room like rain drops in a puddle. I
can’t bring myself to answer her. I hear Jake’s footsteps like thunder of a storm walk
through the house with haste into the kitchen. He must’ve seen the blinking light on the
answering machine because that’s what he goes for first. I hear the familiar beep, and
again I hear the rough voice of the doctor, now three hours stale. A fist drops onto the
counter, then a silence that stabs my heart. Sloth-like footsteps drag across the linoleum
and a long shadow appears on the ground next to me.
We remain in a standstill for what seems like hours, but what probably is only for
around a minute. I don’t turn around to look at him, don’t offer an apology. All I hear is
an exhausted “Why?” that escapes through clenched teeth. Finally, a key to open the door
that has been locked for years, an excuse to show me the animosity that I’ve known he
has had. From years ago when I forced him to stay in the Everglades until now, his
tolerance has withered down. I know Jake will call the doctor to arrange them to move,
but all he does in this moment is turn around, plant his hands on the frame of the door,
and let his head drop in defeat. He was like a confident tree in the marsh, but now he’s a
weeping willow. My eyes give in and look back to see him in this stance, but
immediately flicker back and lock on the marsh; nothing else moves. It starts to rain, but
this time I don’t feel comforted.
Ryan Altus
Love Lost
“Hurry up we are going to be late,” John yelled to his wife.
“Five more minutes dear,” proclaimed Elizabeth.
For the past half-hour John had been sitting on the couch aimlessly flipping
through the channels waiting for his wife, Elizabeth, to finish getting ready. Elizabeth
always operated at her own pace; this, John simply had to accept. Although he had asked
her to be ready by 6:00 it was now 6:30. Annoyance tore away at John as he repeatedly
checked his watch, but he knew that telling Elizabeth to hurry would only further delay
their departure.
Normally John cared very little about being on time; however, tonight was
different. Instead of meeting up with Elizabeth’s tiresome friends for dinner at some new,
trendy restaurant in the city, John and Elizabeth were going to see John’s two best friends
from college. For the first time in while, John actually was excited to leave his apartment.
Despite John’s many attempts, he hadn’t seen his friends, Steve and James, in over a
year. Elizabeth was not very fond of either of John’s friends and always found an excuse
to avoid seeing them. Generally John allowed Elizabeth to have her way, simply to avoid
confrontation. Tonight, however, Elizabeth had given in to John’s wishes.
Finally, Elizabeth’s petite figured appeared from the bedroom door. She radiated
beauty. She wore a tight black dress accompanied by high-heels. Her long blond hair
hung over her shoulder, revealing her glossy blue eyes and perfectly white smile.
Immediately John forgave her dalliance and grabbed his leather jacket and keys from the
hook in the hall. “Ready?” he asked.
“One more minute.” She walked back to the bedroom only to return a minute later
with her purse. “Can’t forget this,” she said casually, “my whole life is in here.”
Although he was confused by this remark, John chose to say nothing. All that
Elizabeth carried in her purse was a tube of lipstick and her credit card.
*
To John’s surprise, he and Elizabeth arrived only fifteen minutes late. Steve and
James already were seated in a dark booth somewhat secluded in the back of the
restaurant.
“John! Great to see you!” screamed Steve from across the room. Cutting across
the crowded floor, John quickly moved toward his friends. Elizabeth unhurriedly
followed in his wake.
“How have you been? What have you been up to? I feel like it’s been so long,”
said James.
“It has my friend; it’s been far too long. I’ve been well, just pretty busy with work
I guess,” responded John. “What have the two of you been up to?”
Steve began to answer, “Well, I’ve been hard at work too. For the past year I’ve
been in the finance department for…”
“Ouch god damn college kids!” interrupted Elizabeth.
“…J.P. Morgan and Chase.”
“You can’t even walk across a bar anymore with out some drunken kids
stumbling into you and stepping on your toes.”
“Oh, Elizabeth…” said Steve somewhat unenthusiastically.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” added James.
“Well I’m here. Have you missed me?” said Elizabeth with a sarcastic tone.
“Oh yes, you have no idea,” responded Steve.
“Well we didn’t realize you were coming tonight Elizabeth, but we brought
another one of our friends along. I hope you don’t mind,” said James.
At that moment, a tall slender brunette emerged from the crowded bar-area and
delicately made her way to their booth. To John, she looked vaguely familiar; however,
he could not quite remember where he had seen her before.
“Hi,” she said as she arrived at the table. “Do you remember me? We used to live
on the same floor.”
Then it hit John. She had lived three apartments away from his throughout
college. They had gone to the same parties but never really had talked much.
“Oh yea, I do remember you. Your name is…”
“Emily.”
“Right.”
Steve jumped in to avoid an awkward silence by saying, “After you moved out of
the apartment to live with Elizabeth, we became much closer to Emily.”
“Steve and I wanted you to meet her for a while now,” added James, giving John
a discreet wink.
To everyone’s surprise, Elizabeth spoke next. “Well I need a drink. Is anyone else
coming with me to get one?”
After brief eye contact Steve and James simultaneously said, “I’ll come.”
Before leaving, Elizabeth walked over to John and planted a kiss on his lips. The
kiss seemed long and unnatural, but Elizabeth felt that she had succeeded in marking her
territory.
To John, it seemed that he and Emily were alone together for a rather long time.
In truth, Steve and James did everything to keep Elizabeth away. Although this meant
running up a bar tab of over a hundred dollars and having to apologize profusely to
several people, Steve and James were very pleased to set their friend up with a girl of
whom they approved.
The chemistry between John and Emily was tremendous. This, they both realized
after only several minutes of talking. Their discussion ranged in topic from college life to
the recent tax cuts and ended only when Elizabeth drunkenly stumbled back to the booth.
Steve and James followed Elizabeth to the table with semi-apologetic looks on their
faces. They had been able to restrain Elizabeth for only so long.
Dinner continued as would be predicted. Despite his wife’s drunken state, John
was content to be with his close friends. It seemed to John that Elizabeth felt threatened
by Emily, for she continually kissed his neck and tried to rub his shoulders. The more
John focused on Emily, the harder Elizabeth tried to regain his attention.
*
Later that night, after John had placed his snoring wife in bed, he began changing
out of his dinner clothes. The evening had been a blur, and John wished it wasn’t over.
He was glad that he had met Emily. She was perfect in all ways – pretty, intelligent, wellliked by his friends. If only he had met her before…
Just as he was about to put the idea of ever seeing Emily again out of his mind, a
slip of paper slid out of his pocket.
Call me we have more catching up to do - Emily
555-975-8427
*
The next day, John couldn’t focus on a thing. At work, he tried to sort through his
e-mails but gave up after rereading the same memo five times and missing the meaning
each time. Instead, he chose to fiddle with the piles of papers that needed to be sorted on
his desk. When the clock finally struck 5:00, John darted out of the building without
saying goodbye to any of his coworkers. He needed some time alone to reassess before
Elizabeth returned from work. He could not decide whether or not to call Emily.
After an hour of deep thought, John’s cell phone began to buzz. He answered on
the first ring, glad to have a momentary distraction. It was Elizabeth.
“I forgot to tell, I have a dinner meeting with a client. I will be home late tonight.”
“Ok.”
“There is some leftover chicken in the fridge, you can heat that up.”
“Alright.”
“You don’t have to wait up for me. I probably won’t be home until around
midnight.”
“Ok.”
“Something the matter John?”
“No, sorry – I’m tired.”
“Alright then, good night John.”
“Good night.”
John did not give the conversation much further though. Elizabeth always had last
minute dinner meetings. It simply was part of her job.
*
The next day John still was troubled. He felt as if his life was on autopilot. He
went through his morning routine but nothing seemed to have meaning. He knew he
quickly would become crazy if his life continued in this pattern.
After another useless morning at work, John finally decided that he needed to call
Emily. Reluctantly he dialed her number. “Please don’t answer, please don’t answer,” he
silently mouthed
“Hello?”
“Hi Emily, umm, it’s John.”
“John, hi, I didn’t think you would call.”
“We should meet up tonight and have dinner,” blurted out John before he realized
what he had said.
“Alright, what time?”
“Let’s meet at 7:00. Same place as last time?”
“Ok, I’ll see you there. Bye John.”
“Bye.”
Upon hanging up with Emily, John called Elizabeth to inform her that he had a
dinner meeting and probably would be home late. Her reaction was similar to John’s
from the night before.
*
John arrived at the bar by 6:30. He wanted to have a drink to calm his nerves
before Emily arrived. He chose the same dark booth that he had sat in two nights before.
Even if someone he knew ventured into such an obscure bar, John decided he would be
unrecognizable in the dim lighting. He sat sipping his drinking nervously.
At exactly 7:00, John watched as Emily casually walked into the bar and slid into
his booth. She was absolutely stunning. The dim light seemed to focus on her figure and
then reflect back with twice the intensity. John wondered how such a beautiful girl could
possibly be interested in him.
“Hi,” she said breaking the silence.
“Hi,” responded John. “Your note surprised me when I found it in my pocket.”
“What note?” she said with a quizzical look on her face.
“You know the note saying that you wanted to catch up.”
“John, I never left you a note.”
Then the truth washed over him. Steve or James must have slipped the note in his
pocket. Emily had been innocent the whole time. His mind had been tormented the past
two days by a false note.
“I’m sorry, this is terribly embarrassing. Steve and James left me your number in
my pocket the other night. They wrote me a fake note saying that you wanted to catch up
some more.”
“John I do. I really like you. You seem like a great guy. I just didn’t want to
interfere with your marriage. When Steve and James invited me, they failed to mention
that you were married.”
“I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I need to go back to my wife.”
“John don’t go…”
“Sorry, I can’t stay.”
“I understand.”
John stood up and practically ran out of the bar. All he wanted to do was go home
to his wife. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened. Despite how needy
Elizabeth could be, he still was in love with her.
*
By the time John had reached his apartment, he had already planned out a speech
in his head. He would start off by telling Elizabeth how much he loved her and how sorry
he was. Then, he would sit her down and tell her everything that had happened in the past
two days. He would explain why he had been acting so unusually. He knew she would
cry, but in the end, he hoped she would take him back.
John barged into the apartment with the most desperate look he could muster on
his face. He heard Elizabeth shriek from the other room, “John!?”
“Elizabeth, I love you. We need to talk.”
“John, you are supposed to be at dinner.”
“I know. That’s what we need to talk about.”
She emerged from the bedroom wearing only her robe and the sexy black lingerie
that he had bought for her a few months ago for her twenty-seventh birthday.
“Are you wearing that for me?” He began kissing her and guiding her to the
bedroom.
She pushed him away playfully but pointed to the bedroom door and firmly said,
“Don’t go in there.”
“Why not? We can talk later,” John said as he pushed the door open.
He entered the bedroom to see the silhouette of another man lying on his bed.
“John, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this,” whispered Elizabeth
through her tears.
Neil Campbell
Title?
That splendid time of year had arrived once again. I had practically lost count of
how many times it had come before. That didn’t matter though because the effect wasn’t
diminished with repetition as so many rituals come to be; rather, this ritual’s excitement
was heightened as the years passed by and I did it more and more times. I had my
windows wide open to let the warm night summer air filter into my bedroom as the radio
played song after song and I commenced packing my suitcase for two weeks of summer
camp. My head was spinning with all memories of past years of camp, all the late nights
talking with my camp friends that you only get to know in that unique way at camp.
Every second, every dead ant, moth, and spider littered on the cabin floor, every cold
pancake and shower, every sweltering moment in the hot sun has a holiness associated
with it solely because it was at camp. Nowhere else could I even merely endure such
conditions. All my camp friends would be reunited once again in the woods after a year
without seeing each other. As I debated which undershirts were grosser and thus more
worthy to be taken to camp, John Cougar Mellancamp’s “Jack and Diane,” last year’s
camp theme song, played on the radio. Hearing the first chords of the guitar erased pit
stains from my mind and brought back memories of camp. My heart swelled. I sat down
on my bed and lost myself to the fond memories of camp. This year I needed my hiatus
of camp more than ever because of the tragedy.
*
Loud cheers or celebration and joy exploded along with applause as the
Director McGillan’s talk ended, marking the official start of summer camp. I turned to
Jack, who, of course, stood next to me, and we high-fived. The pain ran up my left arm,
but soon I forgot about it as I joined the overall ruckus. As the noise started to die down
and the crowd of campers dissipated to go off to wherever, Jack and I stayed where we
were. I took a look around me, the same trees that I had come to know stood all around
us. “This is our last year here, you know,” I said.
“Like this, at least,” he replied, “we could always come back as counselors.”
“True, but there are no guarantees there and, even so, things would be different.”
“Well, we’ve got these two weeks to cherish like anything then.”
“Right on,” I replied. “So how was your year? Anything good happen?”
“I did my same old thing. Nothing really new; just another year. You?”
“Not anything new. There was an incident about four months ago though.
Otherwise nothing,” I responded, hoping not to spoil these two weeks with the thought of
Jonathan that had already tortured me for four months.
“Oh no, what happened?”
Crap. I tried to play it down. I wanted to escape from the sadness for just two
weeks at camp. Why had I brought it up? “My friend died.”
“I’m sorry. That’s unfortunate. How?”
I could feel the tears swelling up in my eyes as my mind could no longer push the
images out of my mind. “An accident. Gun loaded wrong. It’s all over now. Nothing can
be done. What’s dinner? Isn’t it usually pasta for the first night?”
“Yeah, it’s probably pasta. We should plan to arrive early so we have a shot at
getting warm pasta this year. No shoe stealing this year.”
“At least not tonight before dinner,” I chuckled in reply recalling last year when
we had stolen Mikey’s shoes and put them up in a tree so that he couldn’t get them. The
great thing about camp and its memories was that they took over my mind. Whatever was
on my mind simply disappeared at the thought of anything from camp. I needed that now
more than ever.
*
No longer having the bumble bee to watch fly around the group and almost bump
into people, I glanced around for another amusing distraction before submitting myself to
the drone of Mr. Brodear. What he was saying was actually interesting and intriguing, but
on such a beautiful summer day sitting and listening to anything had a better alternative. I
decided I would listen to what he had to say.
"What every year tingles my spine and gives me shivers, is the final act of your
ceremony. When you officially break your bond with your past years and enter into a new
realm of your life. Those of you who have been here prior years have seen this done
many times before. This year you will see it through completely different eyes. You will
not be a spectator; you will be the spectated. All of you will be celebrated, however only
one of you will do the deed. Shoot the pig, that is. One of you for all of you; just as all of
you work for each of you for these two weeks ahead of then. The individual who will
shoot the gun at the end of next week is sitting here among you all."
A gun. Oh no. I had come here to get away from guns. They brought death. Death
brought pain and sadness. I wanted happiness. This was camp, happiness, not home
where death and sadness reigned. Never before had the gun shot been more than a simple
act that the older kids did and we celebrated. Since last time I had seen a gun shot not
only end a childhood and sever one from his past, but a single shot had taken a childhood,
youth, and adulthood from my friend. His entire life. I was scared and came to dread that
moment. I didn't want anything similar to happen at camp. My home life suddenly
became intimately tied to camp life. I couldn't escape from the thoughts now. Camp
involved the same ingredients as before.
*
Free time is one of my favorite activities at camp. Just because there is nothing we
are supposed to be doing doesn’t mean nothing happens. Just the opportunity to kick back
and enjoy life at camp makes it splendid. Every day during workshops I long for free
time, never being certain as to what specifically it would bring, but always sure it would
be something fun. Such was my anticipation that day as I returned to my cabin after a
refreshingly icy-cold shower. As I passed through camp, I saw lots of groups of kids
playing games with each other, talking, and amusing themselves any which way they
pleased. My eyes rested on a group of young boys hopping scotch. I remembered playing
on that very court years before, throwing stones and jumping with Jack. All of a sudden
one boy fell flat forward while jumping. Immediately, I ran over to the group and the now
crying young camper. He had merely skinned his elbow, but his right knee looked very
scraped up and was covered in dirt. Abandoned by his friends, who had continued to play
when they saw I was there, I found myself alone with the injured boy. I helped him to his
feet, where he stood weakly, shaking, and still wailing. “Are you all right? Can you walk
to the nurse’s office with me?” I asked.
“My knee hurts…I can’t walk!” he communicated between cries of pain.
“All right. I will help you,” I said calmly. I took his less injured hand and helped
him stumble over to the nurse’s. As we walked, I kept looking at his knee, principally to
see why it hurt him so much to walk. As I looked at it more and more, I noticed her blood
staring to ooze out from behind the pebbles and dirt that was mashed up on top of his
knee cap.
We arrived at the nurse’s office to find the nurse liked her free time just like
everyone else at camp. The boy hadn’t stopped crying the entire walk. I had managed to
get his name from him. Isaac, I believe he had said. “Well, Isaac, I’m sorry, but Nurse
Clea isn’t here now. You’re gonna have to wait to get cleaned up.” Looking around, I
saw only the bustle of happy campers enjoying their hour of liberty; I, on the other hand,
could not leave Isaac and had no idea where Nurse Clea could have gone. “Don’t worry.
Everything will be fine,” I reassured him. “I’m positive.” As I took a seat next to sniffling
Isaac the realization sunk in that my hour was sacrificed to Isaac.
About ten minutes later I noticed Nurse Clea making her way back to her cabin.
“Finally,” I sighed. Isaac’s blood had started to darken on his knee.
“What happened to you?” Asked Nurse Clea in her sweet, soothing voice.
“I was playing hop scotch,” stuttered back Isaac, still clearly shaken by his
injuries.
“Come right in. You too,” said Nurse Clea turning to me. Then back at Isaac, she
said, “You’ll be cleaned up and good as new in no time at all.”
“Do I need to stick around, or can I leave?” I asked politely, hoping to be released
from the blood and bandages.
“If you wouldn’t mind staying a couple minutes I could use your assistance.”
“Just tell me what to do.”
I took a seat on the bed beside Isaac as Nurse Clea started cleaning the wound.
His knee was up first. Fumes of some chemical filled the air and shot right up my nose. A
scent I hadn’t smelled since four months ago, but as scent is the strongest sense tied to
memory, the hospital came rushing back into my mind. Those were the last moments I
had seen Jonathan living. Suddenly now the nurse’s office was the hospital. This was the
first step in the transformation of camp into my previous hell.
*
Dinner that night was another rendition of sub-par camp food. This time tacos
were the victims, although soon the victims would be our stomachs and toilets. As
always, I sat with my friends, directly across from Jack. As the meal wrapped up and
everyone was getting antsy for that night’s activity, Camp Director McGillan stood up to
do mail call, as always. But, tonight there were announcements to be made before anyone
would get their mail. After the annual talk about respect and camp tradition, he
announced a new camp tradition. One of honoring a camper of the day who had done
something outstanding. “As you know, every day at camp presents its own problems and
challenges. It is truly a team effort to get through each day successfully. Today, thanks to
one outstanding camper, a potential problem was averted.” We were all curious about
who had done what. Eyes darted around in vain attempts to get a clue as to who might be
the honoree before Mr. McGillan announced it. “Today during free time Isaac took a fall
while jumping rope. Nurse Clea was off on break. Being selfless, today’s outstanding
camper, David stayed with him and did what he could to help him until Nurse Clea came
to help.” I was amazed, excited, shocked, proud. As I realized that I was then not only
Isaac’s hero, but the entire camp’s. “Please come forward and receive your medal of
gratitude, David,” finished Mr. McGillan.
I stood and walked up to the front of the dining hall, looking out at everyone
cheering for my deed. Something about this scene struck me as familiar. After a few
more steps it hit me. Jonathan’s funeral. His father had commended me for seeking help
immediately and sticking by his side for the entire unbearable ambulance ride. He’d
asked me to stand. Everyone had clapped. He’d said Jonathan would have thanked me too
had he made it. The applause died down as I approached, and Isaac was standing there
holding my medal. I took it, high-fived him, and appreciated being able to see his smiling
face.
*
Saturday came. The testosterone levels in the camp had risen to their peak levels.
Conveniently, Saturday night combined the boys with a neighboring girl’s camp for a
midweek gender-mixer dance. Every year we guys looked forward to this night eagerly,
although actually interacting with the girls never matched the pre-dance hype. We had
decided that this year we were going to go boldly over the girls and strike up activity
between us. To ensure this, Jack had come up with a competition to see which guy could
dance longest with a girl. We all were determined win.
The girls’ camp had a nicer space for the dance, so we rode busses over there. As
we got off the busses and filed in, the youngest boys first, the boys cut directly across the
room and stayed together as a pack, like oil dropped in water. Finally, I got off the bus,
determined to be an emulsified oil droplet, even if I were the only one. My whole walk in
I was scouting the girls. Which ones were my age? Which ones were hot? Who might
likely dance with me? When suddenly Jessica came into view. She was my target; I was
going to dance with her. I made a beeline for her as soon as I got off the bus. “Hi, I’m
David.”
“Oh, hey”
“Been here long?”
“Not really, just a little.”
“We just got here.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Excited for tonight?”
“Nah, these are always so awkward. We’re all here only ‘cause we have to.”
“We’ve been looking forward to this all week,” I added.
“Really? I’ve been dreading it. It’s hot, stuffy, and always awkward.”
“Yeah, my friends and I are trying to change that this year.”
“Really? How? Your being here is awkward.”
“Then we should dance. You know, get our boogie on.”
By some divine miracle, that was probably peer pressure, she acquiesced. I looked
around. I was the only boy dancing, and people noticed me for it. After a few songs her
friends, she, and I meandered over to my friends and we all danced together. As the night
drew on the conversation became stronger and more continuous.
“May I have all your attention, please?” screeched the girl’s camp’s director over
the microphone, “I now have a special announcement to make. Every year at this dance it
is tradition to honor a young man and woman who have distinguished themselves so far
over their week at camp, and have continued that distinction tonight. This honor comes
with the honorary title of being the Chief and Chieffette of camps. Together this couple
will light the final campfire this Friday night, and will lead their respective gender peers
through the ceremonies. After careful observation of tonight and discussion with my codirectors, we have chosen this year’s Chief and Chieffette. Please congratulate David
Heisenburg and Jessica Valaso! Congratulations! Please come forward to receive your
ceremonial garb.”
*
Zing, Zwang, Zuong, thuck, thuck, thuck. The arrows stuck into their targets. I
picked up my next arrow, fitted it onto the bow and waited patiently for the command
that we could shoot again. “Take aim…Fire!” I let go and watched the arrow imbed itself
in the target; almost a bulls eye. I rested my eyes on the center of the target as I picked up
my last arrow for the round and started to fix it to the bow. So determined I was to get my
bulls eye on my last try, I focused my gaze solely on the blue color at the center of the
target. “Take aim…HOLD FIRE!” I let go and watched as white flesh covered my blue
target. Before I realized what had happened, the white flesh was spattered with red.
“What happened?! Are you all right!?” I heard a voice scream.
“Oh my God!” I shouted. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hit you!” I dropped the
bow and ran to the wounded boy, who had collapsed on the ground. It was Jack. As my
peers descended upon us I burst into tears and collapsed onto the ground. First Jonathan,
now Jack.
*
“Now as the final part of tonight’s campfire we will celebrate the passing of our
young boys and girls into young men and women.” There were eleven of us that year.
Our names were read aloud for all to hear, mine, as Chief and leader was read last. We
rose as a group and walked over to the range where the cardboard pig was set up waiting
to be blown to pieces. Mr. Brodear handed me the rifle. I took it in my hands, as I had
done hundreds of times before at the range, but this time it felt weird, different, foreign to
my fingers. By the waning light of the fire I could see the safety was off and the sparker
cocked.
I raised the gun to my shoulder. My fingers spread out and resting on the metal. I
shut my left eye and stared down the barrel, aligning my marks to the target, focusing on
hitting a bulls eye. Jonathan was to my right, leering at me after just having hit his own
bulls eye. Now I had to match him. I slid the safety off and made last minute adjustments
to ensure I hit my mark. I squeezed. The gun exploded in front of me. A large piece of
wood cracked my glasses; another lodged itself in my left arm. I heard Jonathan scream.
Ripping off my glasses, I saw his body, spattered with blood, lying on the ground next to
me. All was silent; he wasn't even crying. I dropped to my knees and grabbed his
shoulders, and shook him. "Are you all right? Are you all right? Please tell me you're
okay! Speak! Move! Talk!" Nothing. He lay limp. I ran to the building and got the
manager, sleeping, to phone for help, then ran back out and stayed with Jonathan. Blood
poured from his head and shoulder. Pulling back his hair, I discovered marks that seemed
to be branded onto his skin from some chunk of gun that hit him squarely on the
forehead. Still him body seemed limp. Finally, after an eternity the wail of the ambulance
resonated as a soundtrack to the tears gushing from my eyes.
I squeezed. The pig exploded.
Joe Cardone
Short Story
The Things that Matter
The door swung open. Jared Walters walked into the small apartment, smiling
and carrying a brown paper bag full of groceries. Jared was an eighteen-year-old white
kid who had lived Philadelphia his whole life. He was tall, strong, and handsome.
Compared to all his friends Jared was well off. He had lots going for him. That is, until
his dad was found dead and the doctor diagnosed his mother with cancer. Someone had
mugged his father , brutally beaten him, and left him to die in an alley. That was just
before Jared graduated from high school. Now his mom spent most of her time in their
apartment. She was invalid without much time left to live. Jared knew this. Jared alone
cared for his mother. He was her pride and joy.
“Mom, I’m home,” called Jared as he walked in the front door and closed it
behind him.
“Hi, sweetie,” said his mom as she raised herself off the couch where she had
fallen asleep watching the television.
“I brought home groceries,” said Jared as he leaned over to give his mom a kiss.
“You’re too good to me.”
“Don’t say that, Mom. You know I would do anything for you. Actually I got
you something after work today. Mike, my manager, says he’s putting me up for a raise
so I thought I would celebrate a little and get you this,” said Jared as he reached deep into
the brown paper bag.
“Sweetie, you really are too good to me.”
“Mom, don’t mention it. You know I do this because I love you, not for the
gratitude.”
She beamed at him. He smiled back a warm, loving smile. Jared handed his
mother a box and went off into the kitchen to put away the food before she could start
thanking him again. She opened the box and pulled out a beautiful necklace. She loudly
thanked Jared again and again for the present. “You’re welcome,” was the only response
he gave this time. But he was glad she liked it. Humming too himself, he stowed away
the last of the groceries and put dinner in the microwave for the two of them. At dinner
Jared told his mom all about his day at work. He told her how he earned a promotion to
work in the pharmacy. This meant that his pay was higher and he no longer had to stock
shelves. The whole time she smiled and listened. She was so proud he hadn’t turned out
like his father. Jared cleaned up after dinner and eventually made to leave the apartment
after giving his mom a kiss.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“To shoot some hoops.”
“You’re crazy, its dark and cold outside.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom. There are lights and I’m really not that cold.”
“All right. I know I can’t stop you. Have fun, tell Matt I say hi, and be back
soon.”
“I will, Mom. Love you” he said as he went out the door.
“Love you too,” she said and smiled happily a long time after he had left.
After leaving the apartment Jared put up his hood and zippered his sweatshirt. He
turned left toward center city instead of right toward the basketball courts. He walked
along in silence with his head bent. He walked quickly and yet in a world of his own. It
appeared as if he was in a great rush and yet was deep in thought as he sped along. At
exactly seven o’clock, he came to an abandoned alley. He turned down it and waited
with his back against a dumpster. The alley was dark and silent. It was so far removed
that not even cars could be heard. Before long, however, Jared’s cell phone broke the
silence with one high-pitched beep. He looked down at the text on the screen. Without
sending a reply, Jared shut the phone and turned around to the dumpster. He pulled out a
small gym bad and looked inside of it. Apparently satisfied, he shut the bag, slung it over
his back, placed a wad of hundred dollar bills under the edge of the dumpster, and walked
towards home. Inside the bag were exactly two full kilos of cocaine.
Before going home, Jared stopped at his old high school’s playground and
basketball courts. He saw his best friend Matt shooting some hoops by himself on the far
court. “Yo, Matt!” he yelled, and went over to him. They shook hands, pounded each
other’s fists, and exchanged a sort of hug all in quick succession. This was their
handshake. Every time they met, they greeted each other this same way. Nobody else
knew the handshake because no one else merited it. Their difference in skin color made
absolutely no difference to him. Matt was black and Jared was white, but you couldn’t
tell it from the way they acted. Jared and Matt were closer than brothers and acted as if
they were brothers. They both lived in the same apartment complex their entire lives.
Every weekday morning for twelve years, they walked to school together. And almost
every afternoon for just about as long they played basketball together on the same court
where they now stood.
“Sup?” said Matt.
“Nothin, just headin home,” Jared replied.
“You wanna play? I’ve been the only one here for an hour.”
“Nah, it’s not the same anymore, I can’t believe only last year we owned this
place.”
“Yea, kids used to look up to you.” Matt paused before continuing, “Now you just
own them all in a different way.”
“Fuck off, I do what I have to,” answered Jared angrily.
“Look, I’m sorry about your dad. I know it’s tough. I don’t really blame you. You
know that. Let’s ball to take your mind off things.”
“Nah, I’ve got to get to work.”
“Work on what? It’s almost eight. Come on you haven’t played with me all
week.”
“Stuff,” curtly replied Jared.
“Ohhh, gotcha”
They were both awkwardly silent for a while. Matt didn’t like the fact that Jared
dealt, but he didn’t blame him. He knew he had to do something to pay for his mom’s
treatment. Matt broke the silence, “How’s your mom doing? I haven’t seen her in a
while?”
Jared didn’t reply.
“That bad, huh?”
Jared remained silent.”
“She’ll be all right, Jared.”
Jared suddenly exploded, yelling, “No she fucking won’t! She’s gonna die and
you know it!” He kicked the basketball as hard as he could against the side of the school.
He went over to a bench and sat down with his head in his hands.
“Look, Jared, I would do anything for you two. You know that, right?” said Matt.
“Come on, you’ve got to get your mind off things. What’s in the bag?” No reply.
“Ooookay, never mind,” said Matt.
“Two kilos,” said Jared, sighing and looking up.
“Of coke? Holy shit!” said Matt, taken aback.
“Calm down, I’ll give you some for free if you want.”
“No thanks, man. I’ve been trying to quit,” said Matt, calming down a little.
“Come on. It’s on me.”
“You’d really give me some for free? You can’t afford that.”
“Yeah I can, I got a huge order from Raymond.”
“Raymond? The freshman?” asked Matt, shocked again.
“Yeah.”
“You’re selling coke to a thirteen-year-old!”
“Yeah, what does it matter what age they are? So do you want some or not?”
“Eh I don’t know… I could really use some.”
“Here take this, it’s good to go,” says Jared, pulling a small plastic bag out of his
sweatshirt pocket.
“I still don’t know, that shit’s dangerous and that’s a hell of a lot.”
“It ain’t dangerous, take it.”
“Fine, I’ve been dying for some anyway,” Matt conceded.
“And just let me know if you want some more. But I gotta go,” said Jared getting
up from the bench.
“What about basketball?”
“Nah you go enjoy the coke. I’ve got to get home to my mom.”
“Fine, I’ll make you play me next. See ya later, man. Tell your mom I say hi.”
“See ya.” After exchanging a handshake Jared left.
Jared was only fourteen when his dad got him hooked on cocaine. His dad was a
big time dealer. Taking care of his wife and son was about the only decent thing Jared’s
dad had done. He didn’t remain faithful to his wife and he wasn’t a very good father to
Jared. But at least he took care of them. He wasted most of his money on gambling but
he always had enough to buy food for the family. However, all the father-sonexperiences that Jared remembered involved cocaine in some way. In spite of his
addiction and his father’s influence, Jared promised himself at a young age that he would
never be like his father. Things changed the summer Jared graduated high school. His
dad was found dead and his mom was diagnosed with cancer. Jared loved his mother.
He could have gone to college but he decided to get a job and take care of his mom.
After a summer of unemployment and unpaid bills, he was desperate. His dad’s old
supplier had approached him on several occasions and offered him the same deal his
father had. Jared refused at first but as he saw his mom suffering and unable to afford her
medication, he gave in. After that the rest is history. He got in deep. He loved seeing
the smiles on his mother’s face that were so frequent during the time her husband lived.
He relished the fact that he was caring for his mother better than his father ever did. He
didn’t admit to himself that he was like his father. He had sworn to himself that he would
rather die than turn into his father.
But as time went on he became more and more like his father. His father got
Jared hooked on drugs so that they could share something together. Jared got Matt
hooked on them for the same reason. That night Jared lay in bed and stared at the ceiling
he had repainted for his mother. However, he wasn’t thinking about his mother and
everything he had done for her. He was thinking of his mother’s words from early that
evening. She had said, “I’m so glad you didn’t turn out like your father.” He thought
about his father. He thought about himself. He couldn’t ingnore that he was breaking his
promise to himself. He thought about his best friend Matt and all the time they shared
together. He reminisced about the days in high school they spent flicking paper footballs
at each other in class. He thought about all the times they had played basketball together
after school, often defeating grown men in games of two versus two. And then he
thought of the first time he convinced Matt to take cocaine with him. Eventually, he fell
asleep while trying to remember what had happened that first night they took cocaine
together. It hurt. He tried to think about something else but couldn’t. He tried to ignore
the painful feeling of guilt welling up inside of him. But it grew larger. He was
destroying lives by selling cocaine. He was slowly killing himself and his best Matt. He
was lying to his mother. In reality, his mother was happier than she had ever been.
Jared’s drug money was doing some good at least. But he didn’t think about that. He
thought about how he was deceiving his mom and hurting Matt. The only thing he didn’t
really regret was slowly killing himself through cocaine. He thought the world would be
a better place without him. He fell asleep wishing he had never been born. His dreams
were dark.
The next day was a Saturday and so Jared slept in. He didn’t have to pretend to
go to work on Saturdays. He woke up with a jolt. There was noise coming from outside
his room. He was still tired and could tell that it was earlier than he usually woke up on
Saturdays. He listened closely. Someone was sobbing in the kitchen. Curious, he slid
out of bed, grabbing the closest shirt and shorts. He cracked his door and peered out.
Nothing. Someone was definitely crying. It wasn’t his mother though. That much he
could tell. He left his room and turned the corner.
There was Matt’s mom crying her eyes out into Jared’s mom’s shoulder. Jared
froze. His mom looked up when she heard him come in. There were tears in her eyes
too, although she wasn’t making any noise. “What’s wrong?” asked Jared. Matt’s mom
kept right on sobbing. Jared’s own mom said nothing. She just looked at him, her eyes
full of grief. “What’s wrong?” Jared repeated. “Matt, he’s dead,” is all his mom could
manage.
Jared had learned at a young age how not to cry. He could get punched in the
face and not shed a tear. But now tears burst forth. He made no effort to hold them
back. He slid down the wall and sat there. His knees were pressed up to chest. He put
his face in his hands and wept. In the back of his mind he could hear his mom consoling
Matt’s mom. He heard a word, drugs. He went stiff. He listened. In between sobs
Matt’s mom managed to gasp, “Why? Why would Matt ever do cocaine? He was a good
boy."
Jared went cold. He realized how Matt had died, cocaine. He must have
overdosed. Last night Jared had given Matt enough cocaine to kill a grown man if it was
taken all at once. Matt didn’t want to take it. He had been trying to quit. But Matt
couldn’t resist the addiction. He resisted harder than most but Jared made him take it.
Jared's tears stopped like water behind a damn. He felt wrong crying or someone he had
killed
He thought about the first time he met Matt, the first day of first grade. He
thought about the time they spent together since then. He thought about the days that
they skipped school to wander the city. He thought the time last year when they played
basketball for four straight hours and remained undefeated the entire time. Matt had died
and it was all his fault. He was the one who got him hooked. Matt never wanted to take
drugs; he was a good kid. But he couldn’t refuse Jared anything for very long. Jared
wanted someone to do drugs with and so Matt got talked into it. After that, neither of
them could stop. “Why Matt?” Jared thought to himself. “Why Matt? It should have
been me. I was the one who got him started. I was the one who wouldn’t let him quit. I
was the one who did it more. I was the one who dealt. I was the one who ruined others
lives. I’m the one who’s got nothing to live for, no dignity, no father, a dying mother. It
should have been me. Then I wouldn’t have to go on living this miserable life. Then I
wouldn’t have to face tomorrow… I should die.”
He was torn, ripped to shreds. He was devastated, but he didn’t cry. Crying
wouldn’t get rid of his grief. He knew what would. He stood up and went back to his
room. His mom let him go, thinking he was just going to crawl up in bed and cry. Jared
went over to the bag next to his bed and opened it.
Hours after Matt’s mom had left, Jared’s mom knocked on his door. No answer.
She listened. Nothing. She turned the handle and looked inside. Then she thrust the door
open. Where was Matt? She saw his feet poking out from behind the other side of the
bed. She hurried towards him. She bent over him. There was Jared, motionless, his eyes
wide and bloodshot. She felt for a pulse. None. She screamed.
Jared’s mom and Matt’s parents sat together in the hospital. This time it was
Jared’s mom who was sobbing uncontrollably. “Mrs.Walters,” someone said. Jared’s
mom looked up and blinked away enough tears to see who was talking. “Are you Mrs.
Walters?” asked the doctor. She nodded. The doctor smiled, “You’re son, Jared, he
overdosed on cocaine but he’ll be okay.”
Later Jared’s mom was sitting next to him as he came to. Upon waking up, he
looked at his mom and smiled. But then, noticing where he was, he seemed shocked.
“Am I alive?” he asked his mom. “Yes sweetie, you are,” she said through her tears.
“Jared, the doctors think you might have taken…” She paused to sniff and wipe away
her tears before continuing, “They think you took too much…too much… cocaine, on
purpose.” Jared stared into space. “Jared, my baby, did you?” she implored. “I did,” he
said. She sobbed, “sweetie, were you trying to kill yourself because of Matt?” There
was a long pause while Jared thought. “I don’t know, I can’t remember. All I remember
is that I didn’t want to face the world ever again.” Jared’s mom looked at him, more
concerned than upset. Seeing her expression, he quickly said, “but don’t worry. I’ll never
do that again. I see your face now and I’m scared, but I know now that have to go out
and face the world, as much as I might want to hide my face.”
Colleen Carr
The Santa Scandal
Some people fall in love; others just get married. For my parents, it was
probably a combination of love and the fear of being alone that drove them to the altar.
*
*
*
*
*
Sunscreen used to bother me so much; I didn’t understand why I needed it I just
knew I wouldn’t be able to play until I was smothered in it. Usually I tried to squirm
away to join my older siblings whenever Mom tried to spray me but she always caught
me before I slipped away.
“I want to hear you laugh like you really mean it!” Dad chased us around the yard
through the sprinklers with a big dopey grin on his face. When he caught one of our
slippery bodies, he tickled us until we thought we were going to wet ourselves. Mom
used to watch and smile as we squealed. She had the youngest, Molly, on her hip.
Occasionally, Dad would run over towards her and hug her other side and give her a
damp kiss on the cheek. Mom always pretended to be annoyed because her outfit would
get wet but you could tell she loved it from the way her eyes lit up.
Mom had dinner on the table early on those summer evenings. We would file in
sopping wet from a mixture sweat and sprinkler water and mom would hand all of us—
me, Brian, Jack and Dad—a towel and order us to dry off before ruining her carpet. Sunkissed, we would all collapse at the table tired with joy.
*
*
*
*
*
What’s remaining of my father’s family still lives about an hour away. We used to
trek up to my aunts house for Christmas dinner every year. Religion was never a huge
part of my family; it was too much of a hassle for mom to get everyone dressed and ready
for church. My fathers’ entire family would gather at Aunt Rachel’s house for the
Christmas feast and each family would bring a dish. We always brought dessert because
we were late.
Each year, the cousins would all gather in the basement and compare the gifts that
Santa brought that morning. My eldest brother, Jack, ruined Santa for me when I was
only six. He was twelve and was annoyed that I still bought into the Santa façade. I was
giddy and eager to go downstairs that Christmas morning. The door creaked as I left my
room to wake up my brothers. Jack didn’t want to wake up yet so he told me Santa
wasn’t real. At first, I refused to believe him. He told me to check Santa’s handwriting
with Mom’s. When it matched perfectly, I cried and went back to bed; the magic was
gone. I vowed never to tell Molly that it was a lie. She would figure it out when she was
ready.
Christmas dinner was served buffet style starting at three. My siblings and me
took up half of the kid table and were always really loud, especially after having desert.
Mom never yelled at us for being too noisy because my father always drowned out our
voices. He would tell funny stories and overpower everyone else’s conversations. If the
spotlight was off of him for too long, he would start into another story. Mom was usually
very willing to help wash and clear the dishes at the end of dinner.
*
*
*
*
*
My mother is a teacher. She has been teaching second grade at the same school
for almost twenty-five years now. For a school project junior year, I interviewed my mom
about why she became a teacher. She told me that she loved kids. She loved giving them
attention and she felt like she was good at helping them. She possessed all the right
qualities: patience, empathy, brains, energy, and love. I asked her if she ever got tired of
teaching and she admitted that some of the needier kids could be hard to handle.
Sometimes she wanted to kick them out of her classroom or send them away but she
viewed them as a challenge. She told me that being a teacher gave her direction in her
life.
*
*
*
*
*
Growing up, we were lucky. My parents never really fought—at least not in front
of us. As we got older they would occasionally argue with each other about who had to
be the chauffer and drive the kids around or what age we were allowed to date but it was
never anything serious until Brian broke his arm.
Brian played football for the eighth grade team and had a bad tackle. His arm
snapped cleanly into two pieces. My field hockey team was running a perimeter of the
school so I saw my mother speed into the parking lot. She looked frazzled and had Molly
in the front seat despite her strict rules about weighing enough to sustain a blow from the
airbag. The football team was all on one knee and huddled around Brian who was rocking
back and forth holding ice to his arm and trying not to cry. The coaches were pacing as
my mother ran onto the field. I got into the minivan and started to play with Molly in the
backseat so she didn’t have to see what was going on.
The break was an easy fix and we came home from the hospital after dark. My
father was waiting impatiently on the front porch for our arrival. Before asking Brian
about his arm or whether or not he would be able to play for the rest of football season,
he started to cut in on my mom.
“Where the hell were you?” He yelled getting red in the face. “I waited for fortyfive minutes at the train station for you to pick me up.”
Mom was obviously confused, “Brian broke his arm…”
Before she could even tell him about what had happened, he began yelling again.
Molly started to cry and I ushered her inside and turned on Blues Clues. Dad yelled for
almost half an hour about the kids taking precedence over him in their marriage. Mom
was quiet for the most part, dumbfounded towards my father’s abrupt reaction. My
parents stayed on the porch sitting in a silence until I went to bed.
*
*
*
*
*
Pictures hung all over our house. School pictures and family pictures mainly. My
favorite photos were above the fireplace. One was of my mom and dad on their wedding
day. My father was throwing cake in my mom’s face at the reception. Mom looked
stunning in her white dress. She was elegant with pearls lying around her neck. My dad
was being a typical goofball just dressed up in a tux. Even though he was smashing cake
in Mom’s face, the two of them are locking eyes and smiling.
The other picture sits right next to the wedding picture and is of Jack the day he
was born. Mom is still in a hospital gown. Jack is in her arms; his face is bright red and
his hair is matted to his head. His eyes are closed and Mom is staring into his face
smiling. Dad has his arm wrapped around Mom and is looking at her in awe. They both
look happy but after studying the picture for years, I’ve realized the fear in their eyes—
the love and the fear. I have a picture of Mom holding me right after I was born but Jack
and Brian are in the picture too. The intimacy shared between Mom and Jack was unique.
*
*
*
*
*
2007 was a big year for our family. I started high school, Jack started college and
Dad got a new job. His job required him to travel some but he got more money and better
benefits. In an effort to fit in freshmen year, I joined the tennis team. Dad and I used to
play tennis when I was younger. He taught me how to hold a racket and how to serve the
ball. He was pretty good; he and mom played in a couple’s league before Jack was born.
High school was hectic especially with only two computers in the house—one
being Dad’s work computer. The schoolwork load was heavy and Brian and I were
constantly fighting. One night we both had an assignment due the next day and needed to
use the computer. He won the battle and started typing on the family computer. I
acquiesced and went into Dad’s makeshift office in the basement. His computer was on
rotating pictures of the family for his screen saver. When I moved the mouse, the pictures
faded away and my father’s email account was open on the screen.
His email was open, I didn’t mean to snoop. It was like he wanted
someone to read it. The email was to some woman named Sharon. I skimmed through the
email. Dad said he would meet up with her on the next business trip he took to Miami. I
kept reading—maybe I was snoopy but I was young. He had seen her before. I didn’t
think want to anything of the email; I assumed it was another co-worker. Then I read the
bottom of the email. She signed it “Love, Sharon.” Really, love?
I shouldn’t have started to go through my father’s emails. It was wrong, but my
interest was sparked. The response I read was attached to a long series of messages
between the two of them. I wanted to stop reading about my father’s affair but I couldn’t.
It was like watching a horror movie; you watch the scariest parts because you just can’t
look away even though the nightmares will last for weeks.
The facts were all there. My father denied his marriage when talking to Sharon. I
kept scrolling up. The messages dated all the way back until 2005. There was a creak
upstairs and I quickly deleted his email and went to bed.
*
*
*
*
*
Father tucked in Molly every night and gave her a kiss on the head. She was a
daddy’s girl. She had catches with him and begged him to come to her school events. The
more attached she became, the more I hated him. I didn’t know what to do; I just knew
Molly couldn’t find out. It would break her.
Tennis became my solid; I was good. During my sophomore year, I invited Father
to come to the first match of the season to be polite. He promised he would come; he was
trying to make up for freshmen year when he didn’t come to a single match. The match
was away and minutes away from his office. Even though I hated him at the time, I was
nervous for him to come watch.
Warm-ups began around three thirty. By four, Father was sitting in the stands
waiting for the match to start. I gave a little wave and felt the butterflies in my stomach.
After the line-up was announced, the match began. My serve was first. The ball faulted
on the first try. As I was coming around to hit the second serve, I heard my father’s phone
go off and the serve was out. He was smiling on the phone; it pissed me off. Then he left.
When he came back, the match was over. I lost.
Tears burned at the brim of my eyes as I got into Dad’s car. I couldn’t take it
anymore. The pressure had compounded and was overflowing. Dad finally took note.
“What’s the matter with you?” He didn’t even look concerned. “Sorry I got an
important business call.”
“Was her name Sharon?”
*
*
*
*
*
When I woke up, the pain was excruciating. Blood was all over my white tennis
outfit and my nose was totally crooked. Mom had all sorts of frozen vegetables arranged
on my face and was driving me to the hospital. Molly was in the backseat. Mom was in
shock.
The emergency room wasn’t crowded so a young nurse helped us immediately.
After taking pain medicine, I went in and out of consciousness repeatedly. My mom held
me in her arms until the surgeons were ready to operate on my face.
*
*
*
*
*
He’s lucky Mom didn’t press charges. My father stayed in his basement office for
the next couple months until he could get an apartment. Mom refused to let him sit at the
dinner table with us but Molly was still attached. He moved out in December of that year.
Mom didn’t ask me any questions until years later but she knew enough. Her kids would
always come first.
Molly wasn’t old enough to understand what happened. When Christmas rolled
around that year, Molly slept in. When she decided to come downstairs, she opened her
gifts.
“Did you get everything you wanted?” Mom asked overly enthusiastically. She
turned up the holiday music trying to make up for the void in the room.
“Dad isn’t living here…I knew Santa wasn’t real.”
*
*
*
*
*
Father still comes and tucks in Molly every night and I’ve kept my mouth shut.
She thinks I got into a fight after the tennis match. She’ll figure it out when she’s ready.
Katie Ferguson
Protecting Each Other
I pulled up outside of 34 Oak Street, edging my 1994 Acura as close to the curb as
I could and putting it in park. I glanced up at Holly’s open window and could see her
flitting frantically around her room, probably repacking her bag for the fourth time. I
thought she had heard me, but I honked once to make sure she knew I was there and
ready to go. I stifled a grin as I saw her jump and spin around to wave to me. Holly can
be so jumpy sometimes, but I love her anyway. We’ve been friends practically since we
were born, how can I not?
I stretched my arms, pushing my shoulders back into my seat. This was going to
be a lot of driving, more than I’d ever done at one time before. Not that it wasn’t be
worth is to get away for a while, and worth the excitement of a road trip, I just wasn’t
looking forward to monotonous driving. We’d have to pick exciting roads.
Holly burst out of her front door, hair flying behind her and clutching a duffel
bag, a backpack, and a windbreaker. Her mom followed close behind, holding Holly’s
wallet. I covered my mouth to hide my laugh as I popped open the trunk for Holly to
deposit her things. It was just like her to be meticulously organized, only to unpack and
repack at the last minute and almost forget something essential.
“Hey, Sam!” Holly said breathlessly, opening the passenger’s door and plopping
down into the seat. She tossed her backpack into the back seat just as her mom leaned in
the window.
“Forget something?” she asked innocently, waving the wallet in the air. Seeing
my barely contained laugh, she gave me a wink.
“Oops! Thanks, mom,” Holly said, accepting the wallet and giving her mom a
kiss.
“Now don’t forget to call and let us know where you are and what your plans
are,” she told us. “We just want to know that you girls are safe.”
“Of course, Mrs. Watson,” I assured her. “We’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Then have a good trip you two! Take lots of pictures!” She backed away from
the car, blowing us one more kiss. As I pulled away from the curb, Holly leaned out and
gave her mom a wave. As soon as we turned the corner, her arm was back in the car and
she started rummaging in her backpack.
“I made CDs!” she chirped excitedly. “We need tunes if this is going to be a real
road trip!”
“Good thinking,” I told her as she popped in the first disc. I reached to crank up
the music as Holly rolled down the window, securing her hair in a ponytail. “Now it’s a
road trip!”
Holly squealed in excitement and anticipation and, I suspect, a little trepidation.
She had never been away from home without her parents before, but I thought that this
would be good for her, especially as a practice for college. Plus, I was there, so we could
look after each other.
I accelerated as we get on the freeway, driving toward adventure and escape.
*
This trip was a release, a reprieve for me. It had been a stressful year with
college applications and my siblings’ continuing accomplishments. I had, to my pleasure,
been accepted to Penn State Main Campus and was looking forward to going there in the
fall. Unfortunately, my excitement had been short lived because that acceptance had been
quickly followed by rejections from Princeton and Cornell, the schools that my older
brother and sister attended. My parents were upset, saying that Penn State was all well
and good but that maybe with a few more activities, a little more SAT studying, I could
have gotten into an Ivy League as well, just like my older brother and sister, Josh and
Allison. “Just like your Josh and Allison.” That wasn’t anything new for me to hear. I
could have put up with just that, the usual comparisons that I was used to, but this had
proved to be a productive year for my siblings too. My sister had joined the newspaper at
Princeton and was getting an internship with the Philadelphia Inquirer this summer. If
that wasn’t enough, my brother had gotten selected to present his research at a national
conference in July. It seemed that every time I did something that I could be proud of, my
siblings immediately proved that they could top it. But they would never have gone on a
road trip with no plan and no set date to return home. That was all mine.
*
It had been two days. We’d settled into a comfortable routine by that time,
stopping when we needed gas, food, or just to stretch our by then thoroughly cramped
legs. Because it was my car, I had done most of the driving, though Holly took her turn
once or twice, but only after much urging on my part and some pathetic complaints about
my eyes getting tired. A week before we left, I took out an atlas of the country and we
closed our eyes and jabbed at it with pens. My mark was in central Georgia. Holly’s was
in Illinois. We decided that we’d visit them both, and even throw in Chicago if we felt we
had time, since neither of us had been there before. Holly had taken over at that point,
highlighting the best paths on the map after consulting both MapQuest and Google Maps.
Checking the map she had taped to the glove box in front of her and apparently pleased
that we were still heading the right way, Holly rummaged under her seat for a new CD.
“What’s next?” I asked.
“‘Road Trip mix number seven,’” Holly announced, popping in the newest disc.
By that point I was very impressed with the diligence of her CD-making. By then, it
seemed that we were nowhere near reaching the end of her supply.
“So I know it’s a little early to ask, but any idea when we’ll head back?” Holly
asked, glancing over at me. “There’s no rush yet, it’s just that we’re already more than
halfway through the CDs I made.”
I let out a short laugh. So there was an end to the supply. “After so many songs, I
don’t think I’ll recognize a repeat,” I assured Holly, “and we can play them out of order
anyway.”
“Okay,” Holly said. “At this rate we’ll be done the CDs in three days and we can
probably stand to repeat them all about four times, so overall we can handle a twelve day
trip.” I knew that organized, meticulous Holly liked the idea of finishing all of the CDs an
equal amount of times, imagining driving around our block to time our return with the
final chords of the final song.
“Twelve days isn’t very long, not even quite two weeks. I was thinking more like
three weeks,” I admitted. “I’m not in any rush to get back, it’s not like my parents are
going to be very helpful with any college preparations. Anyway, Josh and Allison are
home, so they can pretend they only have two perfect children for a while.”
“Three weeks!” Holly gasped. “But that only leaves us a week before we move
in! I can’t get ready in a week!”
“Holly, be honest, you’ve been ready for two weeks already, all you have left to
do is drive your things to school. You’ll be fine,” I assured her.
“Okay, I’m sure you’re right,” Holly demurred. I knew that Holly unfailingly
trusted me, and I was confident that I could get her back in plenty of time for any final
college preparations, even ones as frantic as Holly’s were sure to be.
*
Ten years ago, I had signed up to play soccer with the community league and,
after much persuasion, gotten Holly to sign up as well. Holly was never a sports type,
preferring to read under rather than climb up a tree, but I had always been able to get her
to things that she thought she wouldn’t like. I had loved playing soccer and quickly been
designated the goalie because I seemed to lack the usual fear mechanism that made my
teammate flinch away from the children who came barreling down the field toward the
goal. Holly had cheered me on from her main position- the bench. She played for at least
a few minutes every game, but spent most of those minutes trying to be inconspicuous
enough that no one would pass her the ball. The one time that she had been unable to
avoid receiving the ball, Holly had made it her top priority to get rid of it as quickly as
possible and had inadvertently passed it to a girl on the opposing team, who had then
managed to slip a goal past me, which, if I can toot my own horn, was no easy feat. Our
team had been mad at her, telling her that she had lost the game for us, but not after I
heard what was going on. My anger building and feeding off the frustration of losing, I
spat at them:
“If I ever hear any of you being mean to my best friend again, I’ll kick you in the
face.” This had been no mild threat, as I was wearing cleats at the time and the girls knew
I had no qualms about using them.
After they had dispersed, Holly gave me a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered in
my ear, “I’m sorry I messed up.”
“Don’t worry about it, that’s what I’m here for,” I told her. Holly grinned, and I
was glad to see that I had eased her worries and protected her from the other mean girls.
*
It had been ten days. Holly wanted to go home soon. She was getting irritated that
I hadn’t yet pointed us in the right direction. We had made it to my mark on the map,
Dudley, Georgia, in three days. It could have been done in much less time, but we
stopped for any mildly interesting sign or tourist attraction. General stores, old mine
shaft tours, Native American-run towns with gift shops that all sold the same knickknacks, we saw them all. After that, we headed for Holly’s mark, Rockford, Illinois. This
had taken longer since we passed through several large cities- Atlanta, Nashville, and
Indianapolis- with places worth visiting. On day nine, we had finally arrived in Rockford.
By day ten, we were driving towards Chicago. We had argued about this, but I prevailed
in the end. When else would we get a chance to see Chicago, especially if we were
heading to college soon? Holly had given in, as I knew she would, but she still didn’t
seem happy about it. I was ready to spend three or four days in the windy city, then
meander our way home over about two days.
“How long do we have to stay in Chicago?” Holly questioned, arms folded and
peering at her map.
“Three, maybe four days,” I responded. “There’s a lot to see, it’s a big city.”
Holly sighs. “Sam, I really want to get home soon,” she said, looking at me
pleadingly. I almost gave in.
“When are you going to come back here, Holly?” I asked her. “When are you
going to do this again? Don’t you like doing new things?” I wanted her to understand that
this was new. No one we know had done it before. It was all ours.
“Sam, I know you like being different. I know about your brother and sister and
how you want to break out. You’ve done that, great, can we head home soon?” Holly had
echoed my thoughts about my family. It was eerie how well she knew me sometimes.
“It’s not just that,” I tried to backpedal. “This is about us. You and me. Our last
big hurrah before we go to school.” I could feel her eyes on me, searching my face and
waiting for me to look at her. She could always tell when I’m covering something up. I
gave her as cheery a smile as I could muster.
“Fine,” she said, and I knew that I’d disappointed her.
*
I went to summer camp one year, one of those camps where you stay for two
weeks and every cabin has their own cheer. It was fun, mostly because Josh and Allison
had never been there, so I wasn’t compared to anyone.
On the next to last day of camp, there was a talent show. The other five girls in
my cabin and I put together an act where we sang and danced to some traditional camp
songs. I wasn’t pleased with the final product, knowing that we could have done better if
everyone had been more focused when we practiced. After the final act, it was announced
that we had won third place, which elicited cheers from my cabin mates. I was a little let
down, but was soon drawn into the cheers and hugs. Everyone was congratulating us, and
pretty soon I realized that third place was actually quite good, especially considering that
twenty acts had competed. I also realized that my parents would have to be pleased when
I told them this, because neither Josh nor Allison had ever been in a talent show.
Grinning, I had jumped into my group of friends and joined in their cheering, proud of
my own achievement for what it was.
*
It had been two weeks. Chicago was great; I never knew there was so much to see
there. Unfortunately, Holly didn’t share my enthusiasm. She wanted to be home by now.
In fact, she wanted to be home two days ago. We had just left Chicago and were driving
across Indiana eastward toward home. I wanted to continue our slow, meandering
driving. Holly was all for rushing home as quickly as possible.
“Why can’t we take our time?” I asked, yet again. “This is the last time we’re
going to spend together before college. We won’t see each other for months at a time
once we leave!”
“Frankly, Samantha, I’ve spent enough time with you over the last two weeks.
I’m ready to go home.” Ouch. I knew she meant business when she used my full name. It
took a lot to make Holly mad, but I seemed to have done it.
“Come on, Holly,” I pleaded. “Just the stops that look interesting. I promise we
won’t stop at another town where the billboards are bigger than the buildings,” I try to
joke. I’m really not looking forward to going home, home to my parents who probably
hadn’t gotten any college things ready for me because they were too busy fawning over
Josh and Allison, home to a place where I was always judged. In Chicago, and all of the
places we had visited, no one knew me or my family, so they had accepted me as what I
was- a tourist at the time, just passing through, but at least I hadn’t been told I wasn’t
doing that well enough.
“Look, a water park!” I pointed excitedly to the sign on the side of the road. “Two
miles ahead. We can stop there for an hour or two to cool down, then continue on home.”
This seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to me, especially considering that the air
conditioning had failed in my car about two days ago and the temperatures were
approaching ninety degrees without a hint of a breeze.
“Sam, no!” she yelled at me, really getting fired up. “I just want to go home! I
know it’s hot, but can’t we just get more water out of the cooler and keep driving? I’ll
even drive if you don’t want to. I just want to go home,” she finished softly. She was
definitely fed up with me by that point.
I sighed. “Fine. If we have to. I’ll pull over at the next stop.” The exit for the
water park was rapidly approaching and I could see the blue and green tubes of a water
slide climbing into the air, twisting around each other before plunging toward the ground.
If that was the next stop, then so be it. Maybe Holly would be more willing to go if we
were already there.
I put on my turn signal and got off at the exit. The water park was barely half a
mile down the road, so I continued toward its parking lot, which was surrounded by
grassy fields, normally rippling in the wind, but still at the moment in the unmoving heat.
“Sam,” Holly snapped. “Where are you going? I said I didn’t want to go to the
water park!”
“Come on, just an hour,” I begged. “It’ll feel so good and I’ll drive until we get
home after that. Promise.”
“No!” she yelled as I pulled into a parking spot at the edge of the lot. “You say
you’ll keep driving but you just keep stopping! It will get to the point where we need to
stop and we’re delayed another day!”
“But this time I’ll really—”
“NO! You won’t!” she jumped out of the car as I put it in park. “I know you don’t
want to go home to your family, but you’ll just have to put up with them.” She marched
toward the trunk and stared at it until I pulled the lever to open it.
“Holly, it’s not just my family, we’re having fun, we’re—”
“WE aren’t having fun, Sam, just you,” she snapped at me, pulling out a water
bottle and slamming the trunk closed. I winced at the noise and her comment.
“How about we—”
“Unless you’re going to say, ‘go home right now,’ don’t bother finishing that
sentence,” she threw at me. “I’m going to sit in this field until you agree to drive us home
immediately,” she said as she stomped away from the car.
“Holly, be reasonable, you’re not losing that much time.”
“Sam, I need more time to get ready! I have stuff to get together, and buy, and my
mom is getting worried because I keep telling her we’ll be back at later dates, and—”
I saw her fall as I finally climbed out of the car to follow her instead of just
yelling out of my window. At first I thought she had just tripped over a rock, or in a hole
excavated by some small animal. I waited for her to scramble up so she could keep
yelling at me, and I could finally concede. But she didn’t get up. I could see her moving,
so I started to trot toward her. Then I heard her scream.
*
It’s been seventeen days. We’re back home, finally, after spending two days in a
hospital in the middle of Indiana. Holly’s parents had arrived about eight hours after I
called them, clearly having driven straight through to get there. They thanked me out
loud, but I could see the fear in their eyes at the knowledge that their daughter had been
in danger, and that it had happened with me. I knew they loved me because Holly and I
had always been so close, but I don’t think they trusted me anymore.
It was lucky that we were right next to the water park when it happened. I didn’t
have cell phone service and wouldn’t have been able to call for help if we hadn’t been
near even a little bit of civilization.
It had been a snake. A venomous one, clearly, but what kind exactly was a
mystery. It had slithered away after being surprised by Holly’s foot near its tail and
striking out at her bare ankle. Her scream had been delayed because the pain initially
knocked her down before it even registered with her brain.
I started to sprint as soon as I heard her. I couldn’t tell what was wrong when I
first reached her until she said something about her ankle. When I glanced at it, there
were two small puncture wounds and she gasped out the word, “snake.”
I knew I had failed her then. I hadn’t protected her like we promised each other
we always would. Help came quickly when a family in a minivan in the parking lot heard
us and called 911. An ambulance came and I held her hand, but once she was out of
danger, Holly didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I knew she blamed me. I knew she was
thinking that if she hadn’t agreed to this road trip nothing would have happened.
We had barely spoken once her parents arrived. After confirming that she would
be fine with the doctors, they spirited her back home, leaving me to drive the seven hours
on my own. I didn’t play any music. I just drove.
Now I’m packing for college. I’ll leave in eight days. Holly leaves in ten days. I
haven’t heard from her since we got back, and I don’t think I will before I leave. For
now, I know I need to give her space. I know I failed her. Maybe she’ll forgive me
someday, call me up from college and just want to talk. I hope so.
My brother and sister are home and it sounds like they’re arguing, probably about
who is more awesome. I shut the door to try to muffle the noise. They never went on road
trips: that’s why I did. They also never put their best friends’ lives in jeopardy.
I can’t wait eight more days. I drag my bags out to my now-dusty car and just
drive away.
Letters from Japan
Lindsay
Gaskins
This is a story of union, of true love. Of a boy and a girl, the perfect pair,
separated by many miles, and her parents who didn’t support the couple. The girl, a
Japanese beauty, attending college in the United States, and a boy, an American lacrosse
player. Though they knew that they were supposed to marry a very different kind of
person, they couldn’t deny, that they were in love.
But one fateful day, they were ripped apart, separated by the Pacific Ocean, and
left with little communication to connect them. It seemed as if they would never see each
other again. But she had to go back, for her father was terminally ill, and her mother
needed her there to help.
It seemed that all hope was lost, but true love always seems to find a way.
*******************
This is a different story, of a girl in waiting, for something to happen to her. A
story of pain, and longing to break a mold. For an opportunity to come along, and change
her life. But until that happened, here she was, on a fine, brisk morning in March, in the
quiet town of Lexington, Kentucky. Noemi Caston lay, sprawled across her bed, reading
a book about sharks. She was in a sort of trance, just lying there, picturing herself under
the sea, diving with these beautiful creatures. A flutter of her eyelids and she realized she
was falling asleep.
“You’ve got five more minutes till you have to leave; you can just close your eyes
for a second,” she thought to herself.
But her catnap was broken by her father’s stern words upon his discovery of
Noemi asleep, “Get up and get to school, or you’re going to be late. I don’t want you to
be driving unsafely, and speeding. If you keep this up in college, you will miss so many
classes.” He probably kept ranting a bit more, but at that point Noemi had already tuned
him out.
The car made a sort of groaning whinny, like a tired horse unwilling to work so
early in the morning, fighting any attempt to move. It had been doing that since the little
accident. As her aunt once told her, “nothing good happens in reverse.” She could just
picture those words coming out of the mouth of the spunky, petite aunt, who was her idol.
She did what she loved, designing dresses, for a living. Noemi had always wanted to be
able to make a living just doing what she loved.
Well, at least Noemi had only hit her neighbor’s mailbox after misjudging the
driveway width. But her dad’s reaction was the worst. Her dad treated her like a fragile
glass rose, trying to protect her at all costs from any damage, and any harm.
*******************
Though they couldn’t see each other, they communicated via letters. Many a day
had been spent by Will, waiting anxiously for the mailman to arrive, perhaps holding a
letter from his dearly beloved, Izumi. Needless to say, his relationship with the US Postal
Service was a love-hate one, fluctuating nearly daily. But today was a good day.
“Here you are, sir,” the mailman said, courteously. Will thanked him and ripped
open his treasure, and out fell a note, along with his last letter to her, for secrecy’s sake.
His heart was soaring. He got this feeling every time this happened. Usually, she told
him how much she missed him, what had been happening, and how her family was doing.
Her father, who was battling a serious condition he was predisposed to genetically,
seemed to be doing okay, but she had to stay. This always had been the case, it seemed,
and this letter was no different. His hopes were slightly crushed, but he quickly went
back inside, to write a reply.
*******************
Noemi was brought back to reality by the bell. “Ding! Ding! Ding!” and she was
off again, to reach her next class.
As the day dragged on, she just seemed to lose interest. The whole “senioritis”
thing seemed real to her now. She did her work, but had lost that sort of “zest” for
learning that she had once had. It all seemed pointless now. She couldn’t keep
concentrated on her teacher’s droning on and on about the importance of the proper
placement of accents in the French language. “Hey, if we don’t need them in English,
why are other people wasting their time using them?” The whole language made no
sense.
The truth was, it was the end of March, and almost college decision time. It was
as if she put her name in for a drawing of thousands upon thousands of people, and was
waiting to hear the lucky winners – she was hoping, praying, for a spot at Princeton.
Since birth, her family had trained her to love those ivy-covered walls, the tiger mascot,
and the orange and black. After all, she would be a fourth generation, and the pressure
was on. But deep down, she almost felt that she had been so brainwashed by her dad’s
desire for her to attend Princeton and become a doctor, that she wasn’t sure if she herself
really wanted to go there. She was never exactly one for conformity anyway.
The end of the day bell rang. It was time for the resume-building activities to
commence. Today, there were three meetings, and a practice for the math bowl. It was
as if school had never ended. Though she had put in a lot of hard work throughout high
school, it seemed as if her previously incredible work ethic was just slowing down.
Perhaps it was worn out. Perhaps all those things were finally catching up to her. The
losses she had tried so hard to suppress. Her brother, her… But she stopped herself right
there. It was what she had been running from her whole life. Somewhere deep down,
she realized that her schoolwork was just a way for her to keep her mind off her
problems, but every once in a while, she slipped.
*******************
Izumi anxiously awaited the arrival of the mail. She had to be careful to conceal
the fact that she was dating an American boy. Her parents certainly wouldn’t have
approved, and she always got to the mail first so they wouldn’t know. She always
secretly thought her parents were suspicious that she was so eager to go to the mailbox,
but she didn’t care.
She could barely contain a squeal of joy when she opened the box. Will had sent
her a letter! A grin, only beaten perhaps by the Cheshire Cat, swept over her face. She
almost screamed. Will was coming! Will was coming! He had a two week cultural
exchange program as part of a language requirement in college so that he could learn
about the Japanese way of doing things. But she knew what he was really coming for.
*******************
A few hours later, it was finally time to go home. Noemi’s shoulders slumped
with the weight of textbooks and a laptop, her steps tired, slow, as she dawdled out to the
car, one of the few left in the desolate parking lot. Homework dominated her thoughts –
how much, what subjects, how much sleep would she get? It was all too much.
As was her daily ritual, she went out on a walk to clear her head. It didn’t last
long, but it always worked. As the day turned to dusk, Noemi sprinted home, a book
about the Great Barrier Reef clutched in her hand, feeling the breeze against her face, her
dress billowing behind her, blowing in the wind. She took a deep breath of fresh air, and
stood out there for just a second longer. She felt alive. For a second, she felt like she
was in a faraway place, underwater, studying the mysterious and magical creatures that
swim in a colorful world of coral. And she stepped back into her house. And it was back
to reality.
*******************
Will’s plane landed with a jolt on the runway, in Nagasaki, and within the next
hour, he was secretly walking around with Izumi. They hadn’t seen each other in so
long, that they could barely say goodbye when Will had a meeting, or Izumi had to get to
dinner. It was magical. And to top it off, Izumi’s dad seemed to be doing better. It
seemed for that moment, that everything would be alright.
*******************
Suddenly, as time went by, Noemi found herself on decision day. Her future, her
dad’s view of her, and her family’s legacy were all on the line. She thought this day
would never come. She was somewhere between wanting to know, and wanting to put it
off forever. She wasn’t even sure if she really wanted to even go. But here she was,
sitting at her laptop, waiting for the moment the decisions would be released. Her dad
wasn’t even there. He just seemed to already have decided on Princeton – that she would
be accepted, and that was the end of that, but in a weird way, she almost seemed to be
willing the Princeton admissions team through the computer to send her a rejection letter,
and shock her dad beyond belief. She wanted to see his face. She wanted him to see she
was not the next family doctor. But what was she thinking? This was crazy talk. Of
course she wanted to go to a great school and become a doctor. It was a good job. But
the feeling lingered.
After coming out of her haze, she saw on her computer screen that a link to an
admissions decision letter had come from Princeton. It was the moment of truth. She
clicked it in a slow way, that long, sort of drawn out click, as if you’re not sure you
should have started the clicking process in the first place. “Dear Miss Noemi Caston,
Congr” SLAM! She shoved her laptop shut. She was in.
*******************
Izumi smiled. She smiled so much she had to stop herself from smiling so her
parents wouldn’t suspect anything. Her world seemed perfect. But all things must come
to an end.
Her parents were concerned that she wasn’t interested in the boys in her town, and
were pressuring her to find someone nice. She was getting older, and soon, it would be
very hard to find someone to marry. She knew her parents wanted the best for her, but
she couldn’t keep her mind off Will.
He came over that night, his last night in Japan, and they went for a walk, the
darkness their veil of secrecy, the moon and the stars their flashlight. She told him that
she couldn’t stay there any longer, and that she was going with him to America, to do
something different. They could live somewhere together, get married, and live happily
ever after. But Will, shocked by her proposal, talked her out of it. He couldn’t break
away from the idea that he would be disrespecting her family, but inside, he wanted to
take her away with him more than she ever knew. He drove to the airport alone, a torrent
of tears rushing down his young, handsome face.
*******************
As the weeks lazily went by, things got no better. Suddenly, it was AP test time.
Her dad seemed to have a sixth sense for when she was not studying, and walked in every
time she secretly tried to take a break. It was quite defeating. So basically, when she
wasn’t sleeping, she was studying.
But time kept marching by, at the pace of a leisurely walk. The AP tests passed,
then finals, and graduation. Summer had at last arrived, to her great relief, or so she
thought. Suddenly, there was a push for her to get a summer internship. Her dad just
wouldn’t seem to relent. He had always told her that he just wanted to do what was in
her best interests, but he also seemed to have problems with getting anyone to change his
mind. There was no talking him out of any ideas, no matter how crazy. She had never
quite understood why.
*******************
The letters continued, and after what seemed like an eternity, Izumi’s father
finally recovered, but had come very close to death several times. She could finally
attend school again, though she had to take several years off. Her parents had discovered
her relationship with Will, but with her husband’s failing health, Izumi’s mom had
decided to just let Izumi go and be happy. Finally, true love had come through, and just
perhaps, they could live out that fairytale.
Izumi arrived in the JFK airport, and Will could barely wait till she got off the
plane. He took her bags back to their apartment, and they celebrated. At that point, he
could wait no longer, so he dropped down on one knee, and at that moment, not even the
Cheshire Cat could have competed with her grin.
*******************
Time slowly rolled along, and it was time to pack up. She carefully packed up all
her essentials. She slowly disassembled her room, piece by piece. She pulled the sheets
off her bed, and gave them a fold or two. Next, her dresser, pulling out piles of shirts,
socks, shorts, and tanks. Next, her bulletin board. Everything seemed to have a
memory. Her ticket stub to the aquarium in New York City, a picture of her family back
when it was whole, and her drawings from when she was younger, of lopsided fish. As
her room slowly became more and more bare, she almost seemed to slow down, savoring
each carefully piece in the room. But this part of her life was over. She knew she had to
move on.
*******************
Will and Izumi were married soon after, and had twins, a beautiful baby girl and
baby boy. They felt as if they couldn’t be more blessed. But once again, they couldn’t
seem to hold on to happiness they so desperately wanted to keep. Izumi had the same
condition that her father had, and the doctors told Will that she wasn’t responding well to
the treatments. She simply didn’t have a strong enough immune system to fly back to
Japan, where the treatment for this condition was best. Will was absolutely devastated.
He couldn’t understand why this would’ve happened to her. He could barely take care of
his family, and emotionally, he was a disaster, but somehow, he slowly began to pull
himself back together. Time seemed to be the only remedy.
*******************
Then, there came the day when Noemi had to leave. She hitched a ride to the
airport with a friend who was on her way to school, and her dad walked her out to the end
of the driveway with her bags. She gave him a long hug and told him goodbye, and
hopped in the car, watching her dad out the back window, receding into nothingness as he
stood there watching her, leaning on the mailbox.
She landed a few hours later, and took a cab. Suitcase in her hand, she stepped
out on the street, and has greeted by the noise of seals, playfully splashing around. She
looked up at the perfect blue sky, through the trees of Central Park. The bustling of
millions of people filled the air with noise, sweet noise. She had found her haven.
Dear Dad,
Thanks for supporting me in everything, and letting me listen to my heart. I
really appreciate it, and the volunteer work at the zoo is going to be great. Princeton can
wait for a year, and then, I’ll be ready to hit the books, and serve my duty as a 4th
generation Caston! Go Tigers!
Love,
Noemi
*******************
Will finally decided to get the mail, and pulled out a letter. It was fairly worn,
and it looked like it had been through a lot trying to reach him. A smile crept across his
face as he saw the return address in the corner. He knew she was safe and sound, and this
was what was best for her, though he missed her dearly. Tears fell down his sullen,
wrinkled face, and he wished that he had made the same choice as his daughter.
Mike Grau
When the Music Fade
As she approached the bench she felt herself entering the reclusive world that she
had created for herself. She lay her fingers on the keys, let them rest there for a moment
and soon they would melt into a blur of intricate pale movement, gliding from one side of
the keys down to the other. She closed her eyes and let the music take her to the other
dimension with which she was so familiar. The black smudges on the white keys were
evidence of the weathering they had experienced getting to know her soft yet aggressive
touch. The hypnotizing movements of the pedal were second nature as she played,
pushing down at just the right moment to make the harmonious sounds. Scraps of paper
littered the top of the piano with her chicken-scratch handwriting covering every inch
with musical notes and revisions.
“Hal? Come to dinner,” yelled her father, interrupting the peaceful solitude.
She responded merely by banging down on all the keys at once, an outlet of her
range and frustration.
“I was right in the middle of it, Dad!”
“Sorry kiddo, even famous pianists have to eat,” he retorted sarcastically.
She thought for a moment about how he could never understand. The intimacy
with which she gave her heart and soul to the music was hard for anyone to understand,
even her father. Nonetheless, she ran upstairs for dinner, as per request, but she
proceeded to replay the melodic sounds in her head as she ate her ordinary dinner… foot
pushing down the imaginary pedal under the table all the while.
The creaking of the door caused all heads at the dinner table to turn as Halle’s
mother, Elisa, entered the room with a recent shiner commanding attention under her left
eye. It wasn’t uncommon for her to come home with bruises. She frequently brushed it
off and attributed it to a “mental patient we couldn’t get to go to sleep.” So, eventually, it
didn’t surprise the family at all to see the matron sporting a brand new color on her face.
“So sorry I’m late,” she said. “I got caught up at the hospital, you know how it
is.”
Halle’s father Kenneth stood up and greeted his wife with a welcoming hug and a
tender squeeze of the hand that said a thousand words without him even opening his
mouth.
“That’s all right, we just started” he said naively.
“What did I miss?” Elisa asked eagerly of her two children.
“Nothing unusual, Halle is trying to become a musical genius…AGAIN” Jason,
Halle’s brother, teased.
“I resent that, I’m just practicing.”
Halle pushed her dirty blonde hair out of her face as she continued to cut her
chicken. Her bony fingers moved towards her silverware. She sat at the dinner table with
perfect posture, a very mature fourteen-year-old. While her hands delicately cut her meat
and led the fork up to her pink lips, it was easy to notice the power and control present in
those hands. The years of piano had toned them into fine-tuned machines running on pure
talent and desire. Halle looked at her mother. She noticed the increased fatigue and worry
present in those brilliant-blue eyes that she had so luckily inherited from her. Her mother
was pushing fifty, but never acted a day over thirty. It worried Halle that she was
showing such signs of old age.
“Mom maybe you should go to bed early tonight, you look really tired” Halle
urged.
“Perhaps I will it’s been a long day” her mother gasped out during a widemouthed yawn.
As dinner wrapped up, Halle and Jason went to go watch the usual after-dinner
movie and their parents went to their respective bedrooms. Mr. Jones sleeps down the
hall because he sounds like a trash compactor when he snores. As the final credits of the
movie floated up the screen, Halle saw that Jason had passed out on the couch so she
decided to say goodnight to her mother before retiring herself. As stood at the oversized
doorway, she heard her mom in the bathroom talking on the phone.
“I’m done. I’M DONE. I cannot do this anymore; I will NOT put my family at
risk.”
Halle heard muffled tones coming from the other end of the phone, but she
couldn’t make out what they were saying. She heard the telephone click off and she
thought she heard her mother turn something on. Was it the sink? It was an unfamiliar
noise. She turned the rusted brass doorknob so she could say goodnight to her mother,
but no words came out. Halle stood in the doorway and couldn’t even scream as she
witnessed her own mother slide down the far wall leaving a scarlet red streak behind her.
* * *
The autopsy concluded that the death was an obvious suicide. She had taken one
of Kenneth’s power drills to her left temple. It would be impossible to conclude that as an
accident. Halle recalled what had happened to her father and brother, grasping at any
inklings of a clue… anything that would explain why their perfect mother had committed
such an obscenity. Through desperate sobs Halle tried to rehash the intensity and rage in
her mother’s voice during that telephone conversation.
“If I had known, Dad, I swear if I had known” she uttered through gritted teeth.
Of course Kenneth reassured her and told her that it wasn’t her fault, but how
could he be sure. “Realistically she should have gotten me” he thought to himself. “No.
It’s impossible that Halle could have done anything to prevent it” he told himself
continuously. Naturally the police investigate the phone call that Halle had accidentally
intruded on. The evidence that the affair was a well-kept secret was written all over
Kenneth’s face. As his mind obviously struggled to wrap itself around this new piece of
information he could only sit, still as a statue, mouth agape. The policemen decided it
would be best to leave him in peace to digest the news. He was jolted awake by the sound
of music creeping up the staircase. He managed to rise and descend down the staircase to
find Halle sitting at the piano with Justin at her side. With his head nestled in the crook of
her neck, she played. She played through the tears falling onto the ivory keys; she played
through the hand tremors hitting ill notes; she played through her mournful sobs. The
collar of her V-neck polo was damp as Justin’s tears were absorbed in an attempt to hide
his pain. Kenneth sat down on the floor next to the bench and wept silently as Halle
continued to play.
* * *
The soothing and comforting sounds of the piano grew distant to Kenneth as the
days went on. He distanced himself from the kids and he distanced himself from life. His
two children, however, were closer than ever. They depended on each other now for
every emotion that was void in their lives. Jason, being two years Halle’s senior, acted as
her sole role model and she graciously let him up on that pedestal. It had been over a year
since their mother’s death, but everyday Halle struggled with the memories. The piano
acted as her safe-haven as she struggled through the painful days. Even though she had
stopped taking lessons, her playing had obviously improved; she was playing from her
raw emotions, letting the music flow free from her and pulse through every vein.
“You know, if you play that much you’re going to get sick of it” Jason would
scoff.
But she knew better. She knew that she could never get sick of it. She had lived
through the worst of the worst and the piano was still her protection, the one thing that
she could trust in the cruel world. She knew that as long as she had her music and Jason,
she would be safe. Jason would frequently listen to her play. He would gaze, enthralled,
as she scratched out note after note until she found the exact one that fit perfectly in her
selection. He would smile as she closed her eyes to play…memorizing the pitch and tone
used to create the magic from her fingertips. When the smallest crease appeared on the
right side of her mouth then he knew that she approved of her piece. When she let the
smallest sign of joy shine through, he could tell that she was home. Halle enjoyed having
her brother watch her play the piano because she could tell how much he appreciated her
talent.
* * *
The fluorescent lights of the local hospital burned bright tin Halle’s eyes as she
sat in the uncomfortable hospital chair…watching…waiting.
“You OK Hal?” Kenneth asked almost sympathetically.
No response came from the pensive fourteen-year-old. How was she supposed to
be OK? Jason is in the hospital and she’s supposed to be OK?! The doctors said that they
were trying their very hardest to keep him alive, but Halle knew what was going to
happen. It’s the same thing that happens to everything she lets herself get close to. She
sat in the cold uncomfortable waiting room and stared at the boisterous nurse across the
hall with no regard for anything going on around her. Halle wanted to slap her. She
wanted her to play for her exuberance.
The doctors gave their condolences with no remorse in their eyes. Halle wondered
how it was possible to deliver such bad news to all these families and not even feel bad
about it. Her father held her as they watched the gunman be escorted down the hallway
by the policeman. He ignorantly stared at Halle as he passed…not even caring about
what he had done. Halle burst forth from her father’s loose grip and threw herself upon
the convict. She screamed and flailed as the policeman struggled to separate the two.
“YOU DID THIS! YOU DID!” She screamed to the inattentive ears.
“Halle! Halle let him go!” Kenneth struggled to restrain his surprisingly powerful
daughter.
“No. Fuck him. FUCK him.” Halle turned and ran from the hospital. How could
it be possible that Jason could be such a victim of circumstance? Why did it have to be
her brother; the person she cared about the most. Why did he have to go get milk right
then? If he had gone a minute r two later the gunman would have already been gone and
she would be sitting at home on that familiar piano bench playing for his ears only.
* * *
It was two months later and Halle hadn’t touched the piano. She rarely saw her
father, let alone spoke to him and she was OK with that. She had become a faceless blur
in society. No cares for life or for anyone else in it. She couldn’t care, after all, the more
she cared and the more she invested in something the easier it was for her to lose it…and
even more painful. Jason’s death was nothing like her mother’s death. She was numb and
she couldn’t sleep. She lay motionless night after night, but this time her foot was still.
The imaginary pedal was no more because the music in her heart had faded.
“Hal?” A somber voice called down from the top of the steps. This came as a
shock to Halle because she had had no interaction with her father for months now.
“Dad?”
“I was wondering if you had given any thought to Jason’s funeral.”
Funeral. She hadn’t even thought of the funeral. The thought and the word stung
deep in her heart.
“What about it, Dad?”She called up.
“I was thinking maybe you could play at the church. I really think that Jason
would have loved that and wanted it that way.”
“Dad you know I can’t play” she shouted up almost angrily. She didn’t hear a
reply from the top of the steps so she knew that the conversation had ended. She gazed at
the egg-white sheet that she had draped over the giant wooden monster that loomed in the
corner of the room. She hadn’t even looked at it since Jason’s death and she really didn’t
know how she could. She couldn’t play the piano without Jason. The special bond that
the two of them had shared was formed and reinforced over the ivory keys and therefore
it would never be the same.
The sun shone brilliantly on the day of Jason’s funeral as Kenneth prepared to
leave. Halle stayed in her room with the door shut even when her father knocked to
inform her that it was time to leave. The lack of response forced him to leave alone in
hopes that she would be meeting him there. The service was beautiful with delicate
arrangements of flowers littering the altar and surrounding the vacant piano that Kenneth
had requested…just in case. As the pastor opened his thick black book and began to read,
the grand wooden double doors at the back of the church creaked open. Halle stood in the
gaping doorway, teary eyed, holding her folder of music in trembling hands. Nobody
spoke as she made her way up to the piano. Her eyes met her father’s but he turned away
immediately for fear of appearing weak to his only remaining child.
The delicate yet muscular fingers took their place on the keys and she took a
moment to herself, to get reacquainted with her long lost friend. As she played the
congregation wept in unison with the player. Her tears fell and bounced on the keys,
slipping gently between the thin cracks of the piano. She played as best she could…given
the circumstance, and it was beautiful. When she finished she didn’t stand up from the
bench until the service was over. She stared at the large wooden casket at the front of the
church and she couldn’t move. Her body was paralyzed, but she didn’t even care
because, for the first time, she felt. She felt the pain and she felt remorse.
* * *
That night, Halle lay awake in her bed…staring at the paint chipping off of the
ceiling above her and wondering what would happen next. She had given up tossing and
turning because it was to no avail. Nothing helped her sleep because the one thing that
could help her sleep was no longer around. She placed her dainty feet on the cold, hard
floor and proceeded to creep out of her bedroom, careful not to wake her father. She
walked into Jason’s room and stared at the big, empty bed in the far corner of the room.
Without looking back she crawled into that big, empty bed and laid her dirty blonde hair
on the pillow. She wept until the cold pillowcase couldn’t absorb her tears anymore; she
wept until she couldn’t weep anymore; and she wept until she crawled out of Jason’s bed,
went to the piano, and began to play.
Kristen Hartman
Food Poisoning
"Hello, thank you for calling Charlie Brown's Steakhouse in Springfield. We are
now accepting Mother's Day reservations. On mother's day we are offering a special
menu only. My name is Mary. How may I help you?" I said as I answered the phone. I
was instructed to say, as you can see, quite a paragraph to every person who called the
restaurant. The special events, that we’d accept reservations for, changed but it all
became very mundane, and I subconsciously rushed through it. People only listened to
the first sentence usually anyway because they were really only concerned with their
reason for calling in the first place, and if they dialed the right number of course. The
absolute best was when someone would reply, "Um yes, hello. My name is M as in
Monday, Mildred. (old woman voice) I'd like to make a ... are you accepting Mother's
Day reservations?" Yes, Mildred, we are, you stupid... anyway, it didn't matter if the
person on the other end of the phone heard my speech this time however because after I
sold my spiel the dial tone insultingly buzzed back. I scowled as I hung up the phone and,
minutely annoyed, thought that the person could have at least said sorry for dialing the
wrong number rather than making me say my speech for nothing. "Was that for me?"
John came panting up to the host stand with a rack of lamb in his left hand. "Somebody
was supposed to call for me. I told them I'd pick up." So that's why he was creepily
lurking around the host stand I thought to
Hartman 2
myself but replied, "Oh. I don't know. They hung up. Maybe they'll call back."
John was a new waiter, newer than me, and I had only been hosting for about two
months. He was very charismatic, but not particularly attractive. Rather than saying
immature, I’d say he was a…young twenty-eight years old. Sometimes I enjoyed talking
to him because we were both new, and he carried a good sense of humor, but every once
in a while he'd insist we hang out which I found a bit inappropriate considering I was
only eighteen at the time. I'll admit he was a little odd. Rumors circled around, because
gossip thrives in a restaurant like the ants that mob over fallen take-out near our front
door, about his odd habits. I was curious to see them myself. Overall, he played no
particular role in my life though. He'd talk to me, I'd talk to him, but I'd talk to anyone.
As far as I knew, John didn’t receive any more phone calls that day, and work
traveled its usual course because Barb did receive a number of personal phone calls and
Tina sarcastically greeted the guests that came into the restaurant when she wasn‘t
tending to her tables. Nina complained about every person she waited on, Cassandra
begged me to not give her any more people, while Jorge and Rolando asked me if I would
seat them more often. It was dramatic but not unusually so. Everything ran smoothly
despite the atmosphere’s colorful personalities.
Hosts are mediators in a restaurant. People don’t realize the control they hold over
the waiters. A host doesn’t completely run the show, but ultimately determines the tables
a waiter receives. I don’t do this, but if I wanted to be cruel, I could avoid seating people
with tables. Essentially, a waiter makes his money from tips so a host
Hartman 3
can make or break a waiter’s salary. When I host, I strive to make everyone satisfied.
Learning people’s pace and habits allows me to allocate tables efficiently. I took special
notice to John. His peculiar habits began to show. Often he went to the bathroom or walk
out of the restaurant with a look of distress.
There’s a cliché saying that ignorance is bliss, but there’s another “fortune
cookie” quote that claims knowledge is power. What do we want? Power or happiness? I
don’t know if I was ever looking for power, but perhaps ignorance would have brought
me bliss if I had only minded my own business. Curiosity killed the cat. There’s another,
and because I was curious about John, I pried. We talked more often because I wanted to
learn the facts of his life. A part of me wanted to help him because I could sense
something was wrong. It’s unexplainable why, but it’s comparable to when someone
knows that someone else is staring at them. It doesn’t make sense why one knows, one
just knows.
For a long time John disclosed his secret. He enjoyed talking to me because he
would often start the conversation, but I would begin to ask questions, and with each new
question, his answers became shorter and shorter until he stopped replying.
Eventually, there was a quiet night. John and I was one of the last to leave. “I
know what you want to hear,” John bluntly stated. I looked at him with guilty wide eyes
since I’d been caught. He could read my face and continued, “I have a problem…an
addiction, and I need money. I have a plan…”
His plan was to steal $10,000 from the restaurant. Sunday was Mother’s day. John
knew the place would be swamped, and he could get away with acts being unnoticed. The
managers would be busy tending to customers so the office would be unattended. He
threatened me to promise to disclose everything I had heard. “We’re friends. I trust you.”
He confided to me. Yeah, wish I could say the same. I pasted on a smile for him, that
reflected into a deep frown when I turned away to talk to my car.
When Mother’s day arrived, I was more alert than usual.
My manager Mark brought me into his office and closed the door on my face. He
said he needed to talk to me about something, but that he would be with me in a minute.
A knock on the door came and a police officer walked back into the office. He
handcuffed me and dragged me through the restaurant. All I could do when I was being
taken away was scream with desperation, “You have the wrong person!”
Dillon Hobson
No Second Chances
It is very rarely that someone gets to enjoy pure silence in their lifetime. Pure
silence is different than the kind of silence when you’re home alone and in bed at night.
Pure silence is different than the kind of silence during a moment of silence in church, or
the silence in a classroom full of kids who just got screamed at by their teacher. Pure
silence is stillness in the room around you. Pure silence is not being a sound; no
electronics in the room, no ticking clock, no hum of a heater or air conditioner. It is a
silence that is so quiet that your mind itself is silent. Your thoughts are racing, but going
nowhere, and you cannot comprehend what is happening. You’re thinking of everything,
but not knowing what to think. It is a silence that itself is a punishment, because it only
enhances the isolation of your room, and reminds you of your isolation from the world.
There was pure silence in the jail cell that morning. It was a beautiful day outside.
You could see the bright blue sky through the thick, foggy, scratched Plexiglas sliver of a
window. Outside of his door, he could see the offices bustling with activity, with people
passing his cell periodically, people answering phones, and people dropping things off.
He could see all of this but in the jail cell, he remained sitting there in pure silence. There
was nothing on the cold white cement walls, and all that was in the room was a wooden
bench that served as a bed, and a small stainless steel toilet with a sink.
Kyle sat in this cell, not knowing what to think. Kyle could not convince himself
that he was actually here, and that last night had actually happened. He saw his parents
out in the office area talking to a slender woman in a navy suit. His mother was crying
and his father was rubbing her back with a look of utter disbelief and disappointment on
his face. Kyle looked at them, and did not feel sorry for anything when he saw them. He
forgot about why he was there, and what he had done, and the only thought running
through his mind was how quickly his parents were able to get home for this, when they
were unable to make a single one of his soccer games. Kyle walked back over to the bed
and lay there for hours, staring blankly at his ceiling until finally it was time for his
lunch.
Kyle had big parties at his house very often. Lots of kids showed up, with lots of
booze and pot, and there was never a problem with cops or parents or anything because
everyone would just sleep at his house. He had a big, luxurious house, located pretty far
away from any of its neighbors, and this quickly became his school’s party Mecca. He
told all of the kids that his parents didn’t mind the parties, they just stayed up in their
room during them, and let them do whatever he wanted to do. No one ever saw them, so
no one ever questioned this.
At prom, Kyle picked up his date early, looked great, and went over to his friend’s
house for pictures. He met up with his date’s parents at the friend’s house. They had been
taking pictures for a while, and Kyle walked away with his phone held up to his ear,
trying to explain directions to the house to whoever was one the line. He told everyone
his parents had gotten lost and couldn’t make it to pictures. There was no one on the other
line.
And at his senior night soccer game, his final game of his high school soccer
career, Kyle, the team captain, and all-state first team selection as a junior, had to be
escorted across the track by his coach. Kyle told his teammates that his grandparents
were in the hospital and that his parents couldn’t make it. Kyle’s grandparents had passed
away before he was even born.
Kyle was not a bad kid. He was not underprivileged, and had been granted many
luxuries growing up that few kids ever receive. Most kids that you will find in juvenile
hall or in jail are bad kids, but not Kyle. Kyle was a good student, a two-sport athlete, and
for the most part stayed out of trouble in school. He was well-liked, dressed well, and
was a happy, privileged teenager; on the surface.
What no one saw was the dinners in front of the TV every night alone. No one
saw him doing the grocery shopping for his house, or buying his own clothes, or going to
the dentist and doctor by himself. No one could see this part of Kyle, but this part of Kyle
dominated his life. Kyle’s parents were never home. It wasn’t that they worked late or
were too busy with things for him. There was no family crisis or divorce going on
between them. His parents were away on vacation. They were on vacation in their house
in St. John’s, and they had been on vacation for the past 6 months.
Kyle would try talking to them, but it would usually end in his father telling him
that he was a grown boy, with essentially unlimited funds at his fingertips. Kyle’s dad
argued that Kyle had everything, and should stop complaining. But Kyle felt like he had
nothing.
People call Kyle an idiot for getting involved with a gang. People say that anyone
involved in that is foolish and pathetic. People assume that gangs are for bad people, but
for Kyle, this gang was the closest thing he had to a family. Kyle never had people who
were there for him. Kyle was not used to always being around a group of people who
would protect and provide for him. The people who called him an idiot did not see the
neglect. They did not see the emptiness inside of him or inside that house. They saw a kid
in a gang who killed someone, and labeled him as a “bad” kid.
No kid wakes up one day and decides he wants to be in a gang and sell drugs and
carry a gun. No kid grows up hoping to be a criminal when he’s older. For Kyle, it was
not the drug scene or crime scene that pulled him into the gang life, it was the unity. It
was the people willing to pay any price for their “brothers.” To him, the drugs and crime
were a way to gain access into this family.
He started off slow, selling pot to some of his friends, or getting some friends
liquor. He sometimes would break into cars and take ipods, phones, wallets, or other
things. He was obviously not doing this out of financial desperation, as that was
obviously not a motive for him to take these things. He was doing it to fit in. He never
thought these were major crimes, because for the most part they weren’t. But these
crimes became a gateway for Kyle into the greater crimes; and the more drugs he sold or
the more things he stole, the higher up in the gang he became, and the tighter his ties
grew. Kyle became trapped inside the gang, he could not let down his new brothers, and
could not say no to them. They had never said no to him. He would do anything for them,
and that is what got him to where he is.
It was just another party at Kyle’s house. He had had plenty before, and this one
was no different. There was a big bonfire going in the backyard, and kids were all around
it drinking, smoking, and having a good time. It was starting to get later into the night,
but there party was nowhere near over. Kyle’s friend from soccer ran over to Kyle, who
was sitting on the porch, and in a drunken slur, said, “Yo Kyle man, great party and all
but I think we’re out of pot.”
“No problem man, I’ll get some more” Kyle replied in a nonchalant tone.
“Aight, sick” blurted out Kyle as he turned and stumbled away.
Kyle got out his phone and called his friend, Jeff, whom he knew from his gang,
and had Jeff swing by to drop off some more weed. Jeff agreed and about 20 minutes
later he showed up with 4 of his friends.
“Yo Jeff, thanks for swingin by man.”
“No problem dude, you know I got you. But is it cool if me and my boys chill
here for awhile?”
“Yeah man absolutely, the kegs are down by the bonfire if you feel like drinking.”
“Alright nice, thanks man.” Jeff replied as he headed down the steps of the back
porch down to the fire.
Shortly after Jeff had gotten down there Kyle heard people start to yell and looked
down to see the crowd forming a circle. He sprinted down the stairs and shoved his way
through the crowd, until he arrived at the middle of the circle to see Jeff and his friends
on the ground being beaten by kids who Kyle didn’t recognize. Kyle tried to get in the
fight to break it up, but just as he grabbed one kid to get him off of Jeff, another kid
punched him across the side of the face, knocking him onto the ground.
The rest is a blur to Kyle, he pulled himself up off of the ground and turned to the
kids again, in a bit of a daze from the punch and saw one of the kids pull a knife out of
his belt. Kyle had a gun in his belt, which he more carried as a sort of status symbol in his
gang, he never thought he would actually need it. Before Kyle knew what was going on,
he had fired a full clip into the fight, and people were running and screaming. He never
got to see the faces of the kids who he had shot, he didn’t know if he even shot the kid
with the knife. The only faces he saw were the grieved and enraged faces of parents who
had just lost a child.
Days went by and Kyle sat in that cell, staring out the lone window. But instead of
seeing the endless fences and the blue sky that surrounded the prison, all he could see
were the faces of those parents. All he could see were the three bodies of the kids, face
down next to the fire. Kyle sat there, his body and mind enveloped by the utter silence in
his cell that mocked his own solitude.
“Kyle, let’s go. You have to get up now, we have court.”
Kyle was awoken by the stern voice of a younger woman, who had come to fetch
him for his hearing today. He opened his eyes, and rolled over on his cheap foam
mattress that felt more like a couch than a bed. He did not have to worry about dressing
or showering or anything, since he no longer could do these things at will. So he walked
over to the sink, brushed his teeth, was handcuffed and walked out of the room and down
the long hall. There was no exchange between Kyle and his secretary besides what was
necessary.
“Do you remember what we talked about?” she asked him as he trudged alongside
her in the hallway.
“Yes,” Kyle replied
“Are you ready to do this?” she asked him, looking at him with her piercing
inquisitive eyes, and receiving no acknowledgement in return.
“Yes,” Kyle nodded continuing to look straight ahead as he continued this
procession, which felt more and more like a walk of shame with every step.
He entered the courtroom with his head still straight down. He could not stand to
look around, he could not stand to see the people he had hurt. He could not stand to look
around at where he was, feared that if he did, reality might set in.
He found his seat, and sat there slouched over, maintaining his dead stare straight
down at the table. He knew everyone in the courtroom was looking at him. He heard the
whispers, people saying how he had lost his life to drugs, and how he was a bad kid. He
felt the stares beating down on his back, every stare judging him and profiling him as
some thug. He heard the jury whispering. He knew that none of them were there to listen
to his side of the story. They saw a teenage kid, involved with gangs and drugs that had
just murdered someone. To them, that was all that needed to be said. They were ready to
throw him in jail right then and there, and go about their lives feeling like they just put a
criminal behind bars. They just had to go through the motions of listening to him, and
considering his circumstances before they could put him away.
The funny thing about teenagers is that whenever they’re in trouble, there is an
excuse as to why it isn’t their fault. It wasn’t their fault that they crashed the car, or that
they’re failing class. Teenagers have a way of lifting the blame from themselves and
distributing it around to everyone else. Kyle could have easily sat there and argued that
he was defending his friends when he shot those kids, and that he didn’t intend to kill
them. He could have easily blamed his drug problems and gang affiliation on peer
pressure or the absence of his parents. Kyle could have easily sat there and said that it
was not his fault that those three kids would not live another day, but he didn’t.
Kyle never mentioned his parents, he never mentioned how he was defending his
friends, and never said it was an accident. While all of these things may have been true,
Kyle never said any of them. He sat there in silence, speaking only when spoken to and
saying only what he had to say. As he faced testimony from distraught parents and tearyeyed friends, Kyle sat there in silence, showing no signs of emotion or acknowledgement.
People say it was because he felt no remorse for his actions. People say that he sat there
in silence because he was angry at everyone else, and because he did not care about his
life. But maybe, he sat there in silence knowing that no amount of resistance or excuses
would change his fate. He knew that nothing he said to justify or apologize for his actions
could ever change the minds of those parents or bring those kids back. No amount of
begging or pleading for mercy would make people believe him. Kyle had fucked up, and
nothing could change that.
So during the entire trial, Kyle sat still, not making eye contact with anyone in the
room. When his parents stood in front of him, trying to apologize and fight for him, he
did not look at them. He did not acknowledge that they were there. They had never
acknowledged that he was there, so why should he do any differently. Kyle sat with the
same unchanged emotion on his face even when his fate was announced, and when he
was removed from the courtroom. His mother tried to fight through security, swinging
her arms and crying out for her son as he was escorted out. She hollered desperate cries
of, “I love you,” but these were too late. Kyle walked out of that room, not looking back
on the people that he was leaving. He walked into that jail cell without once looking back
on the life he left. It was this jail cell that he would spend the next 20-30 years of his life.
He sat silently, just as he had in the courtroom, and stared straight at the wall as if he
planned to sit in that position during his entire stay in prison.
His freedom was gone, and his shot at a second chance were gone with it. It did
not matter that Kyle felt sorry. It did not matter that he wanted to change. He refused
visitations from anyone, and threw out any mail that he got. He was in a place where he
would never change. There was no one there to support him, and no one to help him. He
had nobody to go to with his problems, and nobody to talk to about getting better. He sat
in that jail cell, where his only interaction was thanking the guard for his meals. He ate
alone in his cell, and did everything by himself; but to Kyle, this was not all that much
different from home.
Christa Horrocks
Matt Walsh
Natalie lifted her head from her pillow and glanced at the clock, had she really
been asleep for 14 hours? She looked around the room and it looked no different from
when she went to bed the night before. It seemed all she ever did was sleep these days.
She moved her bangs out of her green eyes to let some light into her dark world. She
decided today was a good day to get out of bed.
Natalie Walsh moved silently by her husband who slept in a separate bed and
moved into the kitchen, she did this every day. Her husband was a man in his late forties.
He had dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was a man forsaken by the days of his youth
and had been the hero in high school, today still trying to live out his glory days. Natalie
on the other hand strived in high school to be the best she could possibly be and
succeeded in the top of her class. However she fell in love with the man she knew from
her high school days which she no longer knew, this man in his forties starring back at
her. “Good morning” she said. “Good morning” he replied. “Going to work today rather
early?” he questioned. Natalie just turned and walked out the door. She did not bother to
discuss anything further with him, there was no use in starting another fight.
This is what Natalie did on a daily basis. She avoided her husband, who only tried
to be nice to her, and ran to work. She would bury her head in her work to avoid any and
all confrontation that came from her husband. Natalie cried frequently due to her
struggling and failing marriage. The troubles all started for Natalie and Luke (her
husband) the night their son was taken from them. Before the death of their son they had
been a happy and devoted, loving couple. Matt was a baby when he died and they knew
no other life than the one he was in. Natalie and Luke were married because of Matt. He
was by no means planed but was welcomed into the world with loving open arms. Natalie
spends her time thinking of Matt and the time they sat on the swing set until the sun went
down, or the days they spent at the park with Matt’s yellow blanket unfolded over his lap.
“Natalie, Natalie what are you doing? Are you ready for the presentation?”
Natalie shook her head and began to speak in front of her peers. She held a strong
exterior but inside her heart was broken. On the car ride home she went to many stores
that she and Matt frequently visited, all the while attempting to avoid what was at home.
Luke Walsh sat with a puzzled look on his face, perplexed and disillusioned about
the situation at hand. He knew he should get a job but what should he do? He felt he was
no help at all and the woman he was once best friends with was now a stranger to him.
Just then Natalie walked through the door. “How was your day honey?” She looked at
him with sad and lonely eyes and replied “it was just another day, how was yours?” She
added a slight smile, which Luke had not seen in months. At this he began to get excited
and his voice even picked up a hint of excitement. “Hey do you want to go out to dinner
tonight? I was thinking of this really cool new place I think you might like.” Natalie
glanced around the room clearly looking for something. “I don’t know if tonight is a good
night I have a lot of work.” This was her usual response to everything.
Natalie felt as though she could not live life if her son was not here to live it with
her. She took full responsibility for the accident that led to his death. She was told over
and over again it was not her fault but she couldn’t help but look back on that night that
changed her life.
It was a warm summer evening and Luke was leaving to go to pick up dinner.
Natalie was playing with Matt who refused to eat his vegetables. “So you and Matt are
headed to Samantha’s tonight for the play date?” Luke questioned. “Yes we are, I think it
would be good for Matt to have a play date.” Natalie responded as she put the dishes into
the sink. Luke couldn’t help but smile as his wife gave him a gentle loving kiss on the
check. Natalie returned to the table to play with Matt. “We are off, Luke I will see you
later. I love you.” Luke gave his wife a kiss and then bent down to kiss Matt. Matt looked
at him with large crystal blue eyes. He looked as though he was in deep thought. “I will
see you later Matt, have fun with mommy.” Matt gave a big smile and raised his arms up
to be lifted by his father. Luke raised Matt out of his chair and began to hold him. “Ok
babe we will see you later” Natalie said as she took Matt from Luke. Luke looked as his
beautiful wife and brilliant son walked down the driveway and into their minivan.
When Natalie entered the minivan she was full of excitement and anticipation.
This was Matt’s first play date and she wanted to make sure everything went smoothly.
She dressed him in his little overalls which he preferred to play in. Natalie and Matt spent
the time singing their favorite songs and reciting nursery rhymes. Natalie looked out the
window and began to think how lucky she was. She had a husband who loved her, a son
who she adored and a job people would kill for. It was rather late for a play date,
however, Natalie was best friends with Samantha and had been to her house many times
to help with her son. Natalie stopped at the red light and paused to look at the setting sun.
Reflections of red and orange fell through the window onto her sons buzz light-year
shoes. She looked at her angel who was asleep in the back seat. His head wresting on the
side of his car seat, his cheeks looking extra chubby due to the position of his head, she
could do nothing other than thank God for the gift he had given her in the form of Matt.
The light turned green and Natalie pulled out into the intersection. The incident happened
in a second but the moments that followed felt like months. A car ran a red light and hit
Natalie and Matt. Their minivan spun into the road. Natalie did not even have enough
time to register what happened. When the car finally stopped spinning she felt a warm
liquid on her and she realized she was bleeding profusely. She screamed and looked back
to see Matt helpless and lifeless. She heard sirens coming from all directions. She took
Matt in her arms and rocked him. She passed out shortly after due to the loss of blood.
She awoke violently shaking in the hospital bed. She was cold and needed Matt. “Where
is he? Where is my son, Matt?” she looked from nurse to nurse. They gave her a blank
stare.
Natalie often times woke from her sleep to hear the screeching car, the crash of
the metal or the officers telling her that her son was killed by a drunk driver. “How? He
was sitting in the back seat, I saw him!” she cried hysterically. She would sit up in bed
and cry. Luke did his best to comfort her but at times it was impossible to help her
overcome this pain.
Natalie always remembered the times that they played with chalk on the sidewalk.
Matt would get chalk on his hands and rub it on the ground. He always called his mother
Nat. Natalie did not understand why he didn’t call her mom but she didn’t care. He
always would write Nat on the sidewalk over and over again. It became their joke and
they continued to call Natalie that up until the day Matt died. Luke would call Natalie,
Nat as well and the name stuck to her. After Matt’s death she decided she never wanted
to be referred to as Nat ever again.
Luke and Natalie now very rarely talked and the up coming dinner that that they
both needed to attend was a worry for the couple. Natalie spending long hours at work
while Luke struggled to look for a job, the two never seemed to be in the same place at
the same time. The house turned into a place they both avoided at all costs. Something
had to change in the dynamic of the relationship, but what? Natalie sat for hours
wondering if she should even care about her failing marriage. She thought of all of the
good time she and Luke had together, however that was always when Matt was in the
equation. She had never really faced Luke without her baby. She spent her time looking
blankly at her computer screen when her boss approached her. “Natalie why don’t you
take a break for today.” She looked blankly up at her boss who gave her an abnotious
almost menacing smile. “c’mon Natalie you need to live a little”. She shook her head and
all she could think to herself was “he will never understand.”
The following days were more frustrating than the previous ones. She did nothing
but sleep and refused to eat. The depression began to creep in on her life more than she
could have ever imagined. Luke attempted to remain upbeat however it was a futile
attempt and Natalie always remained wanting. Luke returned home from buying
groceries in the grocery story. There was an uneasy stillness in the house that made his
blood run cold. He looked around; Natalie was nowhere to be found. Luke called her
friend Sam and only got the reply
“Sorry I have not seen her, maybe she is still at work?”
Luke shook his head and hung up the receiver. Luke noticed that Natalie’s car
was no longer in the driveway so he decided to go out for a ride to look for her. He
noticed the night was unusually still and calm. The evening was settling in and the sun
was starting its slumber for the night. The dark sky began to fall and cover the ground.
Luke attempted to reach Natalie through cell phone, but he failed miserably. Luke was
possessed and enamored by the fields that stretched for miles and miles, unable to stay
focused, he desperately attempted to think where Natalie would be. He searched back in
his mind to all of the places she and Matt had ever gone together. He was aware that they
loved to play with chalk on the sidewalk. He remembered how they all went to the picnic
for lunch, the way Natalie looked at him then gave him an undeniable feeling of love that
would never be replaced, and was deeply missed now as he searched the open road
looking for something he would never truly find again.
As he approached the stop sign it dawned on him. There is only one place that
Natalie would be, only one place that would help her remember the times Matt was alive.
Luke looked to the sky as tears fell from his eyes.
Natalie began to get cold and was unaware the night had fallen. She was unable to
open her eyes and confront the demons that lay in front of her. Depressed and unable to
function she let the night fall over her and take her. She no longer wanted to live this life
without her son.
Luke’s car pulled onto the side of the road and he ran to Natalie who lay curled up
next to her sons grave. Luke picked Natalie up and embraced her in his arms. She sobbed
unbearably and screamed out her child’s name. She was unable to restrain the pain and
guilt she felt.
Luke and Natalie sat holding each other into the night, sitting by their dead sons
grave. They looked at each other. Questions filled their minds while tears filled their
eyes. Luke helped to lift Natalie up, who had recently gained composure, and carried her
to the car. They sat in the car for a few moments without words, and listened animals of
the night that had just come out to play. They embraced and held each other for a few
moments. Upon releasing there was a different feeling in the air. Natalie looked over to
Luke with a small slight glimmer in her eye. Was it a glimmer of hope or a glimmer of
ultimate desperation that lie ahead in the future? Luke could only wait and wonder.
Brett Hudson
Something Special
His name was Jeff. Throughout most of his life, he was known as “just that kid”,
never really having too many friends. He had always been a little chubby for his size, but
made sure that he never let that affect him (or at least let others know it did). Jeff was a
smart kid, but often times didn’t give effort, and never once worked to his potential. His
favorite class was Language Arts, but despite this, he never raised his hand in class, or
turned in his homework. One could perhaps argue that Jeff was immature. Jeff, himself,
was content with this lifestyle. Often times, Jeff would let his mind wander through class,
thinking about fantasies, and imagining voyages. His favorite time of the week was the
weekend. This was Jeff time; nothing was stopping him from living his life. Jeff
continued to live this lifestyle until his freshman year in high school. It was a cold and
damp fall day, October 2nd. It was a Saturday, Jeff’s favorite day. Around 6:30p.m, as
usual, just as the reddish sunset would retreat behind the dark blue clouds, the
temperature slowly decreased, and the wind picked up slightly, Jeff rode his bike around
his neighborhood. He would often ride at this hour, because only a few of his neighbors
had kids, and most were never outside this late. Jeff called these bike rides his “Evening
Sabbaticals”, a name he derived from the thought of taking a hiatus from his life to
ponder the world around him. They were Jeff’s way to escape from his friends, his
schoolwork, and most importantly, his problems. On this certain Saturday in early
October, things were different. Jeff had a terrible fight with his mother, who had recently
received his report card in the mail. “Mom, I still have another week before the end of the
marking period, I can raise it”, Jeff told her.
*
*
*
Her name was Diane, and she was Jeff’s mother. Three months after Jeff was
born, she and Jeff’s father underwent a divorce. “The divorce never affected me, I was
too young to remember my father”, Jeff would tell anyone who asked about the divorce.
Jeff was unique, he had the ability to be sad, yet never show it to the world around him.
“A trait”, his mom would say, “that your father had.” Jeff never liked hearing about his
father. It angered him that a man could be committed enough to marry a woman, yet not
mature enough to stick around and take care of the baby they had together. “Whatever,
I’m sure he’s happy… Wherever he may be,” Jeff would often times tell himself.
“You told me things were going to be different this year, Jeff. You promised that you
would try.” Diane said.
“Mom, it’s only the first marking period, don’t worry, I’ll…” replied Jeff.
“You’ll what, ‘Promise to try” again!” Diana screamed.
“Yes, trust me” Jeff’s tone shifted to that of the early morning infomercial guy, who
could practically sell you anything.
“Ok, but no friends until you raise that C! For heaven’s sake, I thought you liked
Language Arts.” Jeff didn’t need friends, he had his imagination. “Friends are” Jeff
would say, “another way to escape your reality, just like a video game, or bike ride.”
As Diane finished her sentence, she retreated to her office, where she would spend most
of her time, working frivolously. When she wasn’t working, she was out with her friends,
and would usually return early in the morning, empty the contents of her stomach, and
pass out in bed until Jeff said goodbye to her before he left for school in the morning.
Yes, October 2nd, a day neither Jeff, nor Diane would forget. After his argument
with his mother, Jeff decided he would take an extra long sabbatical. He believed that
giving his mom extra time to cool down would only make her happy in the long run. As
usual, Jeff would speed past the stop sign positioned strategically on the corner of the
road so as to avoid the large willow tree next to it. After the stop sign, he would turn right
onto Oak View Lane, a stereotypical suburban street with a dogwood on every house
corner, and no streetlights. After completing the two or so miles of Oak View, he would
make the right onto Canterbury Road, the street where he lived. This “Sabbatical
Circuit”, as he sometimes called it, would take about fifteen minutes, twelve if he decided
like giving effort, and the standing record was nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
“How fast can you do your little ‘circuit’ in, Jeff?” Jeff’s neighbor, Eddie asked.
“I could probably do it in ten minutes”, Jeff replied.
“Ha ha, ok, I’ll time it for you”, Eddie confidently said.
Jeff was off, pedaling faster than he ever had before. This wasn’t just a race against the
clock, it was a race against himself, a race against Eddie. As soon as Eddie came into
view, Jeff could hear him shouting, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. As he
neared the finish line, he squeezed his front brakes, and did a one hundred eighty-degree
turn, right through the finish line.
“Impressive” Eddie said.
“Thanks, how did I do?” asked Jeff.
“Nine minutes my friend,” replied Eddie, “and twenty-seven seconds. A new record
for… um… “Sabbatical Circuit Speedway.”
“Ha ha, nice name, let’s go inside.” The two vanished into the horizon as they walked
back to Jeff’s house.
He finished in fourteen minutes that Saturday. Ever since he first completed the
“Speedway”, he had the tendency to time every revolution, even if he wasn’t going for
the record. He decided to give it another run, but this time, he was going for gold. “Do
you think I can do nine minutes, flat?” Jeff asked himself, “Of course I can!” Right as he
finished, he sped off, flying past the stop sign at breakneck speed. He was on a roll, only
one more turn to go, onto Canterbury. As he went around the corner, he didn’t see the
large white SUV speeding down his street. Determined to break the record, Jeff squeezed
the front brakes, and attempted to drift around the corner. Right as he did so, he pulled
right in front of the path of the SUV. Unable to get out of the way in time, Jeff was hit by
the SUV.
The rest is a blur. Jeff only remembers certain parts, and nothing worth telling. He
had broken his arm, and leg, injuries experienced by most of his classmates. Unique to
this accident, was the fact that Jeff had also broken three vertebras in his neck. The
doctors told Diane that things didn’t look good. “He was brought in unconscious, so his
condition cannot be properly assessed”, a doctor said. “He could be in a coma, or
completely paralyzed”, another one said. Jeff awoke with the ability to walk, talk, and
most importantly, think. The accident had transformed Jeff, from the chubby, unauthentic
kid for sixteen years, into handsome, and charming seventeen-year old Jeff. Upon his
return to school, Jeff had new priorities. The accident had given him a month off from
school. He used this month to his advantage, being able to ponder whatever he wanted,
during that time. When he got back, he had a new view on the world. He had finally
matured; he had become a new Jeff.
*
*
*
Her name was Beth. She was usually a shy person, but when she talked, Jeff
would listen. He had known of her from five years of Latin classes, but they had never
really conversed. “Hey Beth,” he would say, “how was your day today?” She would give
him the standard reply, “It was pretty good, what about yours?” Aside from this type of
conversation, the two never spoke very often, and Jeff was fine with this. He had noticed
her, blond hair, green eyes, white smile, but he never thought deeply about it. To him, she
was just another classmate, another person who didn’t affect his life.
When Jeff returned to his academic year, he was different. This time when he went to talk
to Beth, he began to notice traits he hadn’t before, like when she was stuck on a question,
she would chew the end of her pencil. He had three classes with her, and would
indiscreetly watch her, to see how she acted. He enjoyed taking tests in classes, because
he had a nice view of her, while he was looking down at his test. He would often times
just stare, and think. Think about how she adjusted her hair right before the essay portion
of the test, or how she never used mechanical pencils, and would often times sharpen her
pencil part way through the test. Jeff was confused; he had never expressed such feelings
before.
November 21st marked the deadline for turning in the school’s Latin trip’s deposit.
Every other year, the school’s Latin class would go on a small, weeklong trip into the
city, to visit various Latin exhibits in museums. Because very few students took Latin, no
one was denied the right to go on the trip, “But you need to turn in your permission slip
in on time,” the Latin teacher, Mr. Jennings would say. Turning assignments in on time
wasn’t Jeff’s strongest trait, but something told him to turn this assignment in on time. He
approached her sheepishly, her locker was right near the gym, across from the water
fountain. He hesitantly asked, “Beth, are you going on the Latin trip?” Naturally, she
responded in the same manner as usual, “Yeah, I am. What about you?” He replied, “Yes,
I’m going as well.” She simply nodded her head, and walked off, saying, “It should be
fun.”
Jeff was satisfied, he had conversed with her. Though the nature of the
conversation was very short, Jeff couldn’t help but get that feeling in his stomach, similar
to when you eat too many butter cookies during the holiday season. When Jeff returned
home, he would think, this time not about his friends, or problems, but about Beth. He
had become enamored.
The very next day, Jeff had turned in his permission slip, a task only fulfilled by three
other students. Jeff was quite eager to go on the trip. Throughout school that day, he
noticed Beth, but when he noticed her, she didn’t have green eyes anymore, she had
beautiful lily pads, floating in a crystal spring. He noticed her hair wasn’t hair, but vast
strands of golden yarn, awaiting the chance to be woven into a fine blanket. He noticed
her smile, shinning white against her symmetrical face. His favorite task was to secretly
listen in to her conversations, not to overhear what she was saying, but to hear her speak.
Her voice was soft and delicate, “A voice,” Jeff told himself, “that I could recognize
anywhere.” Her voice was very aesthetically pleasing, and he enjoyed listening to the
melodies that occurred when she spoke. Jeff was highly anticipating the Latin trip
November came and passed, and Jeff repeated his daily routine, which he now
had down to a science. He made sure he talked to her every other day of the week,
Tuesday, and Thursday. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he would spy on her. Jeff
was alone “No, no, I’m not spying on her, I’m admiring her, I just call it spying”, he
would tell his friend, Eddie. “Sure, whatever man, it all sounds weird to me,” Eddie
retorted. Eddie was Jeff’s oldest friend, and he figured he would tell him about his
situation. He was the first person Jeff had told, “And the last. My friends always think
I’m weird, and never support me”, Jeff would say to himself. He was a lost soul, never
experiencing these feelings before, and never having the ability to tell anyone about
them.
Two months went by, and it was now February, two months until the Latin trip. Jeff had
continued his daily routine, and had learned about her along the way. He learned that her
favorite class was chemistry, and she would always go to sleep around 11 p.m., studying
extra hard. He learned that she didn’t watch T.V. too often, but when she did, she
watched the stereotypical teenaged girl television. He learned that she held a job, as a
cashier at a bookstore. He learned of her favorite style of music, and began listening as
well. “It seems as though I already know everything about her,” Jeff told himself, “when
I actually start talking to her, there’s going to be nothing to talk about.”
*
*
*
April 2nd marked the start of the Latin trip. When the students loaded onto the bus,
Jeff was careful to make sure he sat near Beth. He ended up sitting in the seat directly
behind her. The bus ride was three and a half hours, and Jeff was listening the entire time.
When they finally arrived, Mr. Jennings handed out room assignments, and told the
students the rules. As soon as he finished, he let the students on “free time”, but
demanded that they be on their rooms at 11 p.m. for the room check.
Jeff noticed Beth sitting on a couch in the hotel’s study. He sheepishly approached her,
carefully avoiding a direct path. As he approached her, she looked up, and their eyes met.
Jeff’s stomach had turned upside-down, and he began to sweat. “Hey…Beth, how do you
like the hotel we’re staying in?” Jeff quietly muttered. “I think it’s fabulous, what about
you?” Beth replied with her stock answer. Jeff took the open seat next to her, and the two
began conversing. They talked about everything, from school, to television, and even
politics. “She’s a democrat, like me, and I didn’t even have to change my views to be
similar”, Jeff thought. When they finished talking, Jeff wished her a good night, and the
two went on separate elevators up to their rooms. Instead of sleeping that night, Jeff
thought. He had feelings similar to those of a tiny child in a toy store. “I’m almost certain
that she likes me”, Jeff told himself “Why else would she talk to me so much?” Jeff
finally managed to go to sleep, and eagerly planned to ask her out the following day.
The next day, Jeff sat next to her on the bus. She gave him a surprised look, but allowed
him to sit, nonetheless. Instead of talking, he blurted out, “Beth, will you be my
girlfriend?” loud enough for the entire bus to hear. Her eyes lit up, and she seemed
shocked. “Uh…well… I thought we were just friends?” Beth replied. Jeff’s confidence
was drained. Defeated, he said, “Yeah Beth, silly me, we’re just friends.” As he finished,
he left her seat, and went to the back of the bus, where he sat in a melancholy fashion.
During the tour of the exhibits, Jeff didn’t listen. He couldn’t stop thinking about what
happened. When he finally returned to his hotel room, after thinking all day, he made a
decision. He decided he was going to take a break from love. He concluded that a
girlfriend is just another way to escape reality, similar to friends, and his evening bike
rides. “I was rejected”, Jeff said, “but I’m happy. She saved me from a heartbreak later”,
Jeff assured himself. There were still two more days left on the Latin trip, “Would they
be awkward?” Jeff asked himself. “Well Jeff, they’re only going to be as awkward as you
make them.”
*
*
*
Despite what happened over the course of the trip, Jeff was indeed satisfied with
the turnout. When he returned home, his mother immediately interrogated him on his
experiences. In the same Jeff-like fashion, he gave her one-word answers, and minimal
detail. “Did you see anything cool or exciting, hun?” Jeff’s mother would ask.
Unenthusiastically, Jeff would give a monotone reply of “Yes, I did.” and not dwell on
the subject. Jeff had now decided to try a new look on life, and he retired to bed feeling
satisfied. During the night, he awoke to the sound of his mother releasing the contents of
her stomach. Jeff seemed to think nothing of it, and returned to sleep.
Jeff awoke with a smile. He was well rested and ready to begin his new life.
Before leaving for school, he went to say goodbye to his mother. “You look pleased, Jeff.
Good night?” Diane asked. Jeff simply nodded his head and kissed her on the cheek. “See
you after school mom”, yelled Jeff as he ran out of her room.
When Jeff arrived at school, he decided to walk around the halls freely. Suddenly,
he walked past Beth. Unlike before, he raised his and, and waved at her. She
immediately returned his wave, and mouthed the word “hey.” Despite Jeff’s new outlook,
he still had a small amount of feelings for her, and was very satisfied with their
interaction. With his brushed ego, Jeff confidently walked to Language Arts class. As
soon as Jeff walked in the class, his teacher told him to report to the main office. When
Jeff arrived, the assistant principal told him to have a seat. “I have important news for
you Jeff. Your mother was rushed to the hospital this morning. She has a liver
complication.” The principal said sternly. Jeff was shocked; he got up and walked out of
the room without saying anything. A representative from the hospital had arrived to take
him to his mother. The car ride was quite, from both parties. Jeff hadn’t introduced
himself, and the representative didn’t give his name. It almost seemed like standard
policy not to talk to those who were grieving. When he arrived at the hospital, the doctors
told him he couldn’t enter. Jeff lacked the will to argue with them, and followed the head
nurse to the special waiting room. He waited for three hours. Finally, one of the surgeons
returned and explained what had happened. He said that their medical team wasn't sure if
she would make it through the night, and that there was a bed prepared for Jeff, because
he would need to spend the night. Jeff asked if he could visit his mother, and the surgeon
advised him not to because she had just fallen asleep. That night, Jeff lay awake and
thought. This truly was a new day for Jeff. From the fifth floor, Jeff opened his window
and looked out at the dark, tranquil street. In an Instant, Jeff's thoughts spiraled and he
thought about everything he had experienced. When he was five and went to his first
theme park, when his mother through him a special party when he turned ten, when he
first laid eyes on Beth. He had become one with himself, and felt a clear mind. He had
only ever felt this relaxed in his sleep. In one swift movement Jeff was flying down, at
peace with the world. In another swift movement, the pavement had taken it all away.
Diane passed away at 3:14 A.M that morning from liver failure.
Paul Hwang
Temper, temper
As the pale Chicago sun falls out of sight behind the worn apartment complexes
and office buildings of the city, the last rays of pale light filter through the dingy
windows of the Windy City Boxing Gym. The artificial light of the fluorescent bulbs
flickers out and even the most dedicated spectators, fighters and coaches wander out into
the biting cold to find their ways home. Even the janitor, satisfied with the gym’s
mediocre condition, puts on his coat to leave but still one person remains in the gym.
A deep thud echoes through the emptiness of the concrete chamber. The chains,
swinging back and forth, moan under the tension of the heavy bags. Thud. Another
strike impacts the bag and a rhythm develops. His eyes are alive as he methodically
pounds away at the bag but his eyes are not locked on his target. His movements are
fluid but his thoughts seem to be elsewhere, as if he is stuck in a trance.
Every time he blinked, images of the people and things that had angered his
throughout his day seemed to creep into him mind’s eye; the school bus driver that had
cut him off earlier today and made him late to work, the inept boss who micromanages so
much you’d think he’d be a better pencil pusher than a manager, the smug look on
peoples’ faces that showed how much better a person they thought they were solely
because they drove a Prius instead of an SUV. Much of the frustration came from idiotic
drivers but peculiar, small things like vaguely written instructions, flies that buzz around
your head endlessly, crying of small children and liberals seemed to shoot his blood
pressure sky high. But no matter how many things bothered him through the day, he
found that if he repressed it until he hit the gym, not only would the pent up aggression
fuel his workout, but would also keep him out of trouble and further frustration. This was
a habit he picked up in his days in the military, where even the smallest outbursts were
met with severe behavioral correction, or so they called it. And so, to an extent, he
became passive aggressive through his training.
Terrance pounds ferociously, angrily at the ill-fated bag that seemed to be on the
brink of bursting at the seams under his violent barrage and moments later, his session
with the heavy bags comes to an abrupt close as he collapses onto a bench, exhausted.
He slips off his gloves and unties his shoes, which have been shuffling across the cold
cement floor for hours. Steam, rising from the sweat stained tape wrapped around his
hands, seems to whip at the air like flames as it dissipates into the dark room. For
tonight, it seems he has found peace from his irrational anger through sheer fatigue and
so steps out into the tranquil night.
Sunday morning, the one day of the week that the gym is closed. It is on these
infuriating days that Terrence, and consequently those around him, suffer most.
Sunday’s were also the days when he and his wife went out to dinner, an event that took
the place of his near daily “therapy sessions”.
“Jenny! Are you ready to go yet or what?” Terrance yelled impatiently.
“I’m coming! Why do you always have to be so snippy?” his wife retorted. “Can’t
we just enjoy a night out without you freaking at every little thing that goes wrong? You
bitch so much, I swear you’re worse than my sister.”
Terrance was silent, and the faintest vein pulsed on his temple but continued to
read the magazine article he had started while waiting for his wife to finish her endless
primping and preening.
“Weren’t you the one rushing me a minute ago? Can we get a move on?” Jenny
said as she walked towards the door.
“Its our first night out since we had the kid and we’ve got reservations at Le Bec
Fin tonight. If I get up early tomorrow, I can get a few rounds tomorrow morning before
work,” Terrance says under his breath to himself in an attempt to quell his stinging anger.
And with this, the couple leaves for the city.
Shortly after they leave, they hit what seems to be a wall of traffic.
“What is this?” Jenny asks, annoyed. “Oh that’s right, there’s an Eagles game
tonight isn’t there. Why didn’t you get us going a little earlier? Aren’t you men
supposed to keep up with things like this?”
This time a vein in his neck bulges just enough to become visible but Terrance
decides to ignore his wife, and turn up the radio.
Some time later, they park and walk up the Walnut street restaurant scene only to
find that they had forfeited their reservation by being late. Being the man he is, Terrance
handled the situation.
“What do you mean you gave our spot away?” Terrance raises his voice, visibly
angry.
“Exactly that sir, we were forced to give your reservation away when you did not
arrive on time. I’m sorry for any inconven…” the maître d’ started before Terrance
interrupted. “What exactly does reservation mean to you?”
“We will do out best to find you a table but we cannot guarantee anything,” the
maître d’ said in response.
“Well I cannot guarantee that I will continue to keep my temper,” Terrance
imitated the maître d’.
“Sir, calm down. I hope you know if that you are threatening me, I have the
authority to call security,” the maître d’ responded, his voice quivering, and rightfully so.
With this, Terrance threw a hard left cross, shattering the maître d’s face.
“How’s that for a threat?” Terrance remarked as he left.
“Holy crap Terry! You’re going to get arrested for this! What am I supposed to
do? How are we going to take care of Ben? What were you thinking?” Jenny shot out
questions without enough time in between to hear an answer.
“Jen, I can’t go through life repressing my anger anymore. This is the last straw,
end how it may, I will confront my problems from now on. I was reading earlier in one
of your magazines that its bad to repress emotions, you can develop malignant and even
fatal brain tumors. If you think about it, I’m actually preserving myself so that I can
spend more time with you and Benny later. Plus I’m sure your sister and brother-in-law
have enough money to post bail,” Terrance said as he walked outside to confront the
security guards who had just arrived on scene.
In this instant, he was tackled by a trio of hulking men and the foursome tumbled
through the entrance doors and out onto the street. A violent fight ensues and Terrance’s
expertise in hand to hand combat is evident. The altercation becomes more and more
rambunctious and Terrance, outnumbered and outmuscled, loses his balance and falls into
the street, colliding with a Toyota Prius. The car was destroyed in the crash but as can be
expected Terrance was not killed. There in the street, he blacked out and was rushed to
the hospital.
As he woke up, he found himself cuffed to his hospital bed and dressed in a
backless paper gown. Terrance was completely bewildered but was comforted by the fact
that his wife was by his side. Judging from the jungle of overgrowth that his beard had
become, Terrance concluded that he must have been in a coma for at least the better part
of a day. As he make eye contact with his wife, she says, “The doctor said he’d be in
soon to tell us the results of your accident and don’t think I feel sorry for you just because
you might be hurt.”
The doctor walked in to tell the couple, waiting with bated breath, and said, “I’ve
got bad new Mr. and Mrs. Newman. You, Mr. Newman, have damaged a part of your
brain that is essential to retaining short-term memory. You have lost your ability to
remember any new information for more than a few hours. I’m very sorry but there is no
way to fix your condition.” And with this, the doctor left.
Needless to say, things were hard for Terrance after his accident. He forgot about
his court date, forgot he was in jail every day for about a year, forgot that his wife’s
brother-in-law had refused to post bail, even though he had the funds to and forgot to
attend his son’s graduation years later. Interestingly enough though, it seems that
Terrance’s forgetfulness was key to curing him of his anger problems. Although, through
the years he forgot nearly everything and had to resort to carrying around a notepad to
record the day’s events, his curse of forgetfulness, it turns out, was a blessing in disguise.
Terrance continued his pattern of repressing his anger to unleash at a later time but
because of his condition, forgot all about any altercations he had throughout the day. It
was as if he was always walking on clouds, except for those fleeting moments when
someone’s actions infuriated him but it was ok because he would soon forget all about it.
Unfortunately, the condition did not do much to alter his sharp temperament but as the
years went on, Terrance grew out of his anger habits and into senility. And since noone
can be angry at an old man for having a short fuse, he was accepted in society.
Fin
Nan Localio
Unfixable
Ben was halfway out the door when the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Ben? It’s Jim. Listen, before you come into the office, I was wondering if you
could do me a favor. This month we want to make a wall featuring the early days of all
the employees. Before you leave, grab an old high school picture, nothing too
embarrassing. Thanks.”
This frustrated Ben. His overbearing boss had been trying to “spice up” the office
(Ben did have a rather boring job) by doing a different “fun” project every month. Ben
hung up the phone, then, realizing the receiver was slightly crooked, corrected its position
so that it was angled perfectly perpendicular to the table on which it sat. He was already
running late, and therefore went up the stairs rather hastily to the room where his only
high school pictures were contained – his childhood bedroom. His parents were kind
enough to pass their own house on to him after they moved into a retirement home,
partially because they knew how sentimental Ben was, and partially because he could not
afford anything else at the time. The reason he had never converted his old bedroom into
a guestroom or the like he was reminded of on the rare occasions when he dared to enter.
His wife was fully aware of the reason, and resented it.
Earlier that morning, Ben’s wife had sauntered down the spiral staircase at half
past seven and sat across from her husband where her usual cup of coffee waited for her,
placed directly in front of her chair. She leaned across the table as best she could, yet
rather clumsily bumped the coffee mug out of line in the process, which greatly perturbed
Ben. Her weight, accumulated over the years, restricted her, unlike the flexibility a
young woman might have. She managed a raspy “Morning, hon,” and a dry kiss on the
cheek before proceeding to return to her seat and bury herself in a copy of “SELF”
magazine.
This had been their daily routine for the past thirteen years. Long ago, after the
couple had given up on the idea of having children (which had in his younger years been
one of Ben’s main aspirations in life) they had slipped into this ritual – silent coffee
together in the morning, then off to their respective jobs (Ben was an accountant, Jessica
worked at a hair salon), followed by another silent meal, sometimes together, sometimes
separately, in front of a television screen. It wasn’t that Ben was not content with his life.
Rather, it was more that something was out of place; some cosmic force had not lined up
as it was supposed to.
Luckily Ben’s wife had already left, yoga mat in tow, to attend her weekly class,
which left the coast clear. He braced himself, peeked into his old room, and slowly
entered. There it was, sitting on his childhood bureau, the lopsided frame of him and
Analise from the Winter Ball at Central High School, so many years ago. The
irregularity of the crooked frame would not bother any other person in the way it pained
Ben. He desired more than anything to fix it, yet couldn’t. The two faces, smiling so
brightly and intensely with unwavering joy made him stagger. He felt a rushing feeling;
the memories began to overwhelm him. The story of his high school experience was
nothing short of tragic. He did his best to push it out of his mind most of the time, to
avoid going in his old room, to treat it as a sad and melodramatic film he had watched as
a boy, but these people staring back at him were as real as ever and forced him to think,
to remember, to hurt. His was a story of love, lost.
Central High School in the 1980’s was the most archetypical high school to be
found. There were the quintessential groupings such as “jocks”, “cheerleaders”, “band
geeks”, “nerds”, “trouble-makers”, etc. that no one publicly acknowledged, yet
nonetheless, remained obvious. A rare few, however, were able to blur the lines. Ben
and Analise fit this category.
Ben could have been associated with the jocks, as he was sitting on a full baseball
scholarship the following year (pending on an improvement of his grades) and therefore
had many friends with similar interests. Ben, however, was more complex than your
average meathead. Sure he was an average student at best, but he had an uncanny wit
combined with a passion for life that naturally attracted others. He also had obsessivecompulsive disorder. On occasion, his obsessive habits cramped the laid-back style he
tried to convey, however luckily, his O.C.D. only struck in peculiar ways. He was not a
neat freak, nor did he brush his teeth seven times every morning. Rather, he was keenly
observant, and if a particular item in his surroundings struck him as out of place, he felt
the need to correct it, lest the entire universe remain out of line. On the surface he
portrayed himself as a class clown, as he was constantly cracking wise-ass jokes to
receive attention. They were silly, futile attempts to alleviate his extreme selfconsciousness. He, however, had an emotional fervency that was tender and could be
broken at any given moment.
Ben had been channeling this passion for the last seventeen years toward one sole
being: Analise Delorenzo. Analise was another complicated personality, which was what
drew him in so. She was a natural beauty, both inside and out, yet ironically, did not care
what she looked like in the least bit. Her free spirit emanated from her, and her lack of
mindfulness of how other people perceived her shaped her loveliness. She was funny yet
awkward, outgoing yet clumsy. She was also brilliant. She had always had her sights set
on attending Emory University, as both her parents had attended and were avid fans.
Ben, however, knew how smart she was, how much potential she had, and therefore had
always pushed for her to attend Harvard when she was old enough. She and Ben had
been inseparable since they had attended Hilltop Preschool, when their parents used to set
up their play dates.
As they grew older, they learned to love the faults in one another and more
importantly, appreciate what made them both wonderful and talented people. As they
matured they became more and more attracted to one another, but because of their close
upbringing, each was too embarrassed to let the other know of his true feelings, for fear
of ruining the tight-knit friendship they had sustained for so long. Each also feared the
chance that the other may not feel the same way, though this hypothesis was made only
out of embarrassment and immaturity.
Ben's jock friends, whose maturity levels were years behind the development of
their bodies, never really approved of Ben's friendship with Analise, mainly because they
did not understand. They were stupid high school boys following a mob mentality: when
one disapproved, they all disapproved. At lunch, they would look over at her reading a
book or sitting quietly and remark to Ben, "What a nerd! I can’t believe you’re friends
with her," or if they were feeling extra nasty, even, "Look at her hair! It’s like a rat’s nest.
Give her some money to invest in a comb." Though Ben was by no means superficial, he
was self-conscious, and these deep cuts would eventually begin to leave a mark. Though
he was blind to Analise's faults, these comments all the same convinced him to delay
further from sharing his true feelings with Analise, for fear of being ridiculed by his
friends.
One Friday night, in dreary January of Ben's senior year, he was hanging out in
his friend's basement. His friends had been planning to throw a party.
"This party's for you, man," Ben's friend Andy said to him. "You never get any.
We need to do something about this. I hope you don't mind, but we invited some of the
girls’ tennis team over. They're lookin' good this year."
"What the hell, Andy!" Ben retorted angrily, “There are dogs smarter than those
girls!”
"Don't worry dude, we didn't mention how desperate you were. We just said you
were in search of a good-lookin' chick. Chill out, man, have a beer."
Ben never drank, but on this night in particular, with so much emotional intensity
and confusion surrounding him, he decided to accept the offer, desperately hoping to find
some clarity.
A few hours later, after Ben had consumed many more beers than someone of his
stature and tolerance ever should have, the girls arrived. Ben was lying on Andy’s couch,
only half conscious. Andy came over to him, a girl on each arm.
“Look who I found, Ben.”
A tall, overly tan brunette smiled back at him, dressed in a tight white dress. Had
Ben had his wit about him, he would have been quick to judge her as entirely out of his
league. Ben, however, was confused and fairly disoriented as he gazed up at her dizzily,
the room spinning. She wasn’t anything compared to Analise, he could tell that, but she
did look pretty cute, especially through beer goggles. Ben’s responsiveness was snaillike, and Andy took advantage of the situation by yanking Ben by the wrist onto his feet
and hurrying the two into the guest bedroom behind the laundry room.
“You two have fun,” Andy said wryly.
After that, Ben remembered almost nothing.
The next morning, Ben woke with a splitting headache, the light through the
window blinding him, even through his eyelids. He looked down, saw that he was naked,
and panicked as the events of the previous evening began rapidly returning to his
memory. At a glance around the room, he noticed so many items out of place and felt an
obsessive need to correct them. After getting dressed he stood up and began frantically
replacing books in the book shelf, fixing lopsided picture frames, and picking up toys
strewn about the room by Andy’s little brother. Maybe by doing this he could fix his
own life, restore some sort of order. He felt so wrong about what had occurred the night
before, and was afraid that after this moment, his life would never be the same again.
Andy walked outside, hoping to get a breath of fresh air to clear his senses, and saw
Jessica on the way to her car. She stopped and turned, and with that same gleaming smile
he remembered from the night before, she asked him to meet her for lunch later. Ben was
speechless, but knew that because of the events from last night, he was obliged to at least
attend. And she really was pretty.
Ben and Jessica began dating. It was convenient, as they shared a similar group
of friends, and all of his buddies were constantly boosting his ego by telling him how hot
she was. Ben did harbor a certain amount of guilt and regret from that spontaneous
evening from which this fairly superficial relationship blossomed. However he did
legitimately enjoy attending her tennis matches, where she would win most of her games.
His baseball games weren’t the same without Analise cheering him on, but having Jessica
there with her cute handbag and matching heels really wasn’t half bad. Sure, they didn’t
have much in common besides their athleticism, but he wasn’t looking for his future wife
in high school anyway.
Analise cut through the snow-covered Harvard Yard on the way back to her dorm.
The wind began the pick up, and shaking from the chill, she pulled her scarf tighter,
covering her frail neck. Her puffy down jacket felt enormously big, as she had
unexplainably lost fifteen pounds in the last few months. She was thinking of Ben,
missing his great sense of humor, his warm laugh. It had been nearly eight months since
they last spoke, after Analise had coldly shunned him from her life. Though she had
never admitted her true feelings to Ben, she had never seen a need to. She had always
felt the reciprocation. That Monday at school when Analise had walked into the
bathroom, only to find Jessica and her friends in front of a mirror, swooning over her and
Ben’s newly founded relationship she turned and ran, clumsily, filled to the brim with
anger, tears streaming down her face.
When friends notified Ben of the scene Analise had created in the hallway, he was
somehow shocked. Sure, he was constantly aware of Analise, thinking of her even when
he was with Jessica, but he never thought she would react in such a way. He thought they
could remain friends; maybe she could even give him sweet girly advice like she
normally did, except this time it would be regarding his girlfriend. He had never wanted
to rush his relationship with Analise, and assumed she shared this view, for prolonging
the wait could surely only deepen their feelings for one another. Clearly, he was
mistaken.
Analise refused to date. Though she had come down with a fever multiple times
this fall and was constantly feeling tired, her reclusive ways were her personal choice.
Her beauty had attracted many suitors, despite the ugly bruises that now covered her
body. She, however, would always distance herself, never allowing herself to become
close to another as she had before. She barely socialized for that matter, for she didn’t
trust anyone. The one person she relied on the most had betrayed her in the worst of
ways. Instead, she focused on her studies, and pursuing every topic of interest she came
across. International Justice, Oceanic Studies, Multivariable Calculus, and EighteenthCentury Literature consumed her life. She also had another constant worry that she had
been trying to push to the back of her mind for the past few months, but feared she could
not for much longer.
Ben was having a much different college experience. He was offered a full
athletic scholarship to James Madison University, following in his older brother’s
footsteps. He chose to live in a single dorm, aware that his O.C.D. would most likely
creep out a stranger. Not so coincidentally, Jessica decided to accept a modest tennis
scholarship to JMU as well, after her parents did a bit of finagling with the admissions
office. Ben, under the influence of his girlfriend, had found his way into the party scene.
As he began drinking more heavily and even experimenting with drugs, his speed and
agility began to wane, to the point where he lost his starting position as shortstop. This
was not how he had pictured his college experience to be. Even with the help of his
tutors, he would have difficulty passing his second-semester courses.
Each day, as reality set in, he began to realize what a mistake he had made.
Jessica was not real, she had only been a time-filler, a mistake he would temporarily have
to live with. He thought of Analise more and more, and of how disappointed she would
be if she only knew where his life was headed. The urgency to reunite with her became
apparent to Ben one rainy April morning when he was given notice that he was being cut
from the baseball team. Before leaving for Virginia last summer, Ben had heard Analise
would be attending Harvard, which gave him a pang of delight, knowing his girl had
listened to his advice after all, and taken full advantage of her intellect.
He drove ten hours speeding down the highway to Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and arrived that evening. He hadn’t come with a plan, but knew Analise would never
pick up if he called her. Desperate to see the one person who could save him, he found a
payphone and called Analise’s parents, whose number he still had memorized from the
late night phone conversations he and Analise used to have.
“Hello?” Mrs. Delorenzo answered sounding very tired, much different than her
normally chipper voice.
“Hi, Mrs. Delorenzo. It’s Ben.”
“Ben.” Her voice became soft, sweet. “We’ve really missed you dear.”
“I’ve missed you all too. That’s actually why I called. I really miss Analise, and
was hoping to talk to her, you know, in person. I drove up to Cambridge to see her.”
“Oh, hon, that’s so nice of you. But haven’t you heard?” Her tone was strained
as if she was in pain, and Ben immediately knew something was wrong.
Ben slept in his car that night, haunted by nightmares, only to wake and discover
his reality was worse. The next morning, on little sleep, he made the nine-hour journey
South to Baltimore. He parked illegally in front of the building, and rushed into Johns
Hopkins Hospital, where Analise had been a cancer patient for the last four months. He
ran inside, desperately seeking the first person he saw with a nametag. Somehow, though
the hospital was packed, the nurse who Ben questioned seemed to sense the urgency in
his voice, the pleading in his eyes, for she abruptly disappeared, reassuring Ben she
would return. Ben’s nerves clenched his entire body. He looked around the hospital,
noticing the imperfections of the objects that surrounded him in a desperate attempt to
distract himself rather than allowing himself to think of Analise, bald, weak, laying in a
hospital gurney. The nurse returned ten minutes later, her eyes sparkling, glistening with
tears. He knew before the nurse told him.
Ben sat crumpled on the floor, staring through blurry, tear-filled eyes at the
crooked picture of him and Analise. His obsessive-compulsive disorder compelled him
so desperately to restore the frame back to normality, but he never could bring himself to
like he would to any other object. That part of his life could never be fixed, could never
be made right. He heard the door slam downstairs, and knew he would have to pull
himself together, and quickly. Jessica was home.
Andrew Maser
Distractions
Friday night in Orange County consisted of dinner by your chef with your
“perfect” family. Our family was no different. Mom, Dad, Carry, and I had sat down
thirty minutes prior to the start of Game 5 of the Los Angeles Lakers championship
game. Of course I wanted the home team to win, Lebron may be The King but we have
experience. Steve, our native Haitian chef, came over to cook his famous French Lamb
dish. It consisted of the meat, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and a dessert of chocolate lava
cake. NO one could cook a better meal than Steve, for one he was part French and two he
owned his own restaurant famous for this specific meal. The dinner started off as normal
as it always did. Dad complained about the skyrocketing gas prices, even though he
clearly wasn’t to concerned driving around in an Escalade that I wouldn’t say got the best
gas mileage. Clearly he wasn’t concerned about gas when he bought the thing, ten miles
to the gallon isn’t exactly a cheap car to fill up. Carry divulged us in her daily concerns.
Everyday seemed to have a new and more elaborate conflict that threatened to kill her
life. I looked up at dad and he seemed to be really interested in the conversation, until I
realized that he wasn’t looking at her, but was looking at his BlackBerry. Two things he
loved most in his life, work and thinking about work. It wasn’t odd to glance over at him
and know he was attached to some sort of business deal in the going or just trying to drag
him out of our immature concerns. Carry was cut-off by the start of dinner, and we sat
and watched the Lakers battle out for their title.
Halfway through the first quarter, Mom had to open her mouth. She stood up,
turned off the TV, and pulled out a little plastic bag the size of a candy wrapper. Inside
held my weed. “What the fuck is this Paul”, she yelled. Fuck, this was the second time in
less than a week that I had been caught with weed. The first time, I played it off like a
was holding it for a friend that would literally get shot if he brought it home. I got yelled
at and my rents threatened to drug test me, which I’m not sure what would be the next
step after that but it didn’t seem to bad. This time it was different. She took the three
pound remote stationed in her right her and launched it across the room. It hit me square
across the head, putting a golf ball size bump above my right eye-brow.
The first wave was over, but she came in with a right slap that landed right in the
side of my face. Blood started to rush to my white cheeks. I was speechless and out of no
where started to shriek. I was fucking pissed now; I couldn’t understand what I did to
deserve this outburst of anger for a something far-short of an atrocity. I grabbed her hand
out the air threw her down. “You’ll be lucky if you ever see me again you bitch”, I belted
out as I slammed the garage door. I spit my blood all over the back of her license plate
that read, “LRolls”, Laura Rollins. All I could think was who the fuck puts there initials
on their car, other than someone famous.
Enraged I ripped open the door, hopped in my car, slammed the heavy metal door
shut, and sped off. Looking out of my rear-view mirror I could see the red sun set over
the top of my room and my red face in the corner. I had angrily left before but this time I
thought I was seriously never going to come back. Speeding onto the highway all I saw
were streets was filled with cars heading into the city to start their night life. Everyone
seemed to be escaping a piece of their life that they were unhappy with. There was a
party going at my friends house that my good friend just Tom texted me about. I needed
something to dilute the anger that was just flowing through my veins. Swerving along the
highway, the car turned off at exit 46, just a few miles down the road from the open
house. I pulled outside of the lowly lit house, just on the corner across from the bank. The
sun-had finally gone down and the music rushed out of the door as it quickly opened and
shut. I grabbed a golf-towel out of the back and wiped my face off. Who cares what I
look like, I just need somewhere to go. This thought ran through my head, still cluttered
with anger and confusion.
The first drink went down pretty smoothly. I usually don’t drink liquor but it was
the only thing I could find. Coke and Wild Turkey’s finest whiskey, although I’m pretty
sure all the coke did was turn the color of the drink from a brownish-yellow to a brown.
The burning sensation was a relief to the cold-atmosphere of my house. Bottles filled the
counter-tops along with the bodies of kids from my high school. The sounds of the people
and music slurred together into one beat of harmony. The three stories, shorefront house
belonged to my friend Jeff. He was a year younger but we all were on the lax team
together. These types of parties were a weekly occurrence for us. Some kid’s parents
would travel to the east coast or fly to their house in the Bahamas and we would get lit.
Not for the love of the taste of alcohol, because we weren’t drug addicts or addicted to
anything but relieving the daily stress created in the stressed out atmosphere of wealth.
You could tell this was his first time throwing a party, paper towels were being tossed
around every time a drop of anything hit the floor. But as the night wore on, everyone
became more and more relaxed. We all sat around playing drinking games; that involved
anything from cards, to ping pong balls, and just what we had in our hands. This was a
relief to the tension-filled atmosphere of my house.
The Bay-music stretched from the smoke drenched basement to the cluttered
rooms upstairs. Everything was going right. Elena came up to me and instantly knew
something wasn’t right. We had been dating for two years when we decided to take split
after getting into different colleges. I was going to UCLA and she was going to
University of Miami; it would have never worked out. She knew that I never got this
drunk regularly and something must have been going wrong. “What’s the matter”, she,
what looked like mouthed. I couldn’t tell I was too drunk. “Mom”, I mumbled. One thing
Elena was best at was persuading me to do the right thing. She coaxed me to go back
tomorrow morning right away and unknowingly I agreed. I thought everything was going
to be all right, and why not get fucked up while I still had the chance with my friends.
Distractions were something that I used all the time in my life. When I would get stressed
out, I usually which get lit. That’s what the weed was for. It’s not that I was an aspiring
drug dealer, just an aspiring student looking for a branch off the daily stresses. Each mixdrink made me realize more and more that my mom wasn’t there to get on my case; she
really cared what I did. I know she took it over the line but I guess in her case I would
too. The combination of the alcohol and my spiraling emotions really questioned me
leaving.
“Yoo I frink I’m going to leave”, I drunkenly blurted out to Tom. “I hope your
kidding man”, he questioned. But he looked at me and knew I was dead serious. He made
me promise I wasn’t going to drive and I unknowingly agreed so I just left. Reaching into
my pocket to call for a cab I stumbled on my keys. The screen on my phone seemed to
not function correctly, and I opened the switch-blade like keys to my truck. I thought I
could get home quicker to apologize for leaving and having weed. The thought of settling
things with my parents, especially with my mom was intriguing, and even a little more
intriguing with a half of bottle of whiskey in my blood. It was only ten o’clock and I was
wasted.
The door seemed heavy and stiff, but I seemed to get in fine. The sky, blackened
by night, reflected some of the nightlife off of the few clouds that scattered the sky. I
turned on the car and cranked up the music, feeling like a king. I took the same route
back to my house that I came to the party, meticulously thinking what to say and how I
was going to bring ourselves back to normal. The streets were not empty but not filled
with the usual array of cars that seemed to never stop coming back from the bright lights.
I’m not sure how I made it through the four lane high-way, but I ended up coming to a
stop sign. I could see the lights shining from my house; too drunk to put the image
together I drove towards the spiraling driveway.
Everything after that was a blur. The house came towards me and I turned into the
approaching mass. The house that I was pulling into happened to be to a black Range
Rover. Supposively I hit the car-head on going forty miles an hour on a twenty-five-mile
per hour limit road. The car was coming in the opposite direction on the two-lane road
and never had a chance to react as it came up the winding curve of the newly made road.
My red, Heavy Duty Ford F150 slammed into the driver’s side door almost splitting the
car in half. Witness said they heard a scream coming from the Range Rover right before
impact that turned steel into scrap metal. I hit the car and we both spun out of control
flipping several times. Each roll loosely stowed away in my mind. Everything then went
still, completely black. After what were supposively a few minutes I opened my eyes and
looked out the window. The last thing I remember seeing was the back of a black car the
shown light on the license plate labeled “LRo…”.
I’ve had dreams where I have been killed or have done the most terrible things
imaginable. Then I would shakily wake up and feel the cool air streaming down from the
non-stop ceiling fan. Waking up seemed like another dream, it went from dark to light
and the noise of the always loud fan seemed to cloud my mind. Staring down I began to
see a tube stretching from my mouth to my cast wrapped feet. I froze. Blood instantly
rushed to my head and I began to panic. The doctors rushed in to stop me from running
out of the hospital. Looking up I saw Carry and dad, tears streaming down from their
faces…. I still remember the look on their eyes when we first saw each other, something
that will never leave me. As I sit in my ten by ten box, I pray everyday to take that one
night back.
Matt Maser
Six by Six
“Twenty minutes past three”, I thought to myself. It was the closing hours of his
workday, one no different than any other: nine to five and shit pay. The printer made a
growling sound and looking down, I could see the mangled sheet attempting to push
through, but the high quality printers the firm ordered were infamous for jamming.
For the past three years I’ve worked for the center city accounting firm,
dismissing chances for higher paying jobs to instead, secure my stability and position at a
fairly prominent Big Three firm. It was, to say the least, a pathetic way to earn a living
considering my background, but a way to meet ends nonetheless. I was supposed to be
the family doctor, lawyer, or hedge fund manager. From family dinners to parties, I knew
the disappointment I’d brought to my parents, but I felt that it was not unwarranted. At
age six, my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, believed that a private school education would
be necessary for their son to attend, considering their highly respected status throughout
the community. To myself, it was path I didn’t want, but was forced upon to take. I
preferred hanging with the kids on the outskirts of town, playing soccer with the
Hispanics and basketball with the Blacks. On Fridays, I would purposely leave my sports
coat on the bus so I could make an excuse for not wanting to wear one on the following
Monday. A child shouldn’t be forced to wear a tie.
As a boy, my parents would send me away to summer camps to allow themselves
to enjoy their summer getaway homes, and the occasional round at the country club. They
were those types of people. At age ten, I won the youth golf and squash championships
for the youth-ten league for kids from surrounding counties. At eleven years of age, I was
touted as the next Congressman to come out of the Prep since Rick Santelli. I never
received bad grades; or that was until the fifth grade. After earning my first B, I vowed
never to fuck up in school again; naïve to say the least. Mr. Brooks wanted the perfect
son; one with smarts and looks to become the man that he tried so hard to be. I felt the
pressure and began to find other means of handling it. At age fourteen, in the back of my
friend’s brother’s pickup, I took his first hit of weed, thanks to my most covenant friend,
Seth. Sometime around the freshmen year of high school, my mom told her only son that
he should never hang out with “those” types of people that didn’t pay the ridiculousoverpriced tuition in full for a less than perfect school; “those” type of people happened
to be my friends. They were the kids on “scholarship” and, for the first hint of prejudice
towards others by my parents, Black. Drugs were my method to distance myself from my
parents. They could never understand, they were too good for me, and for that, I hated
them.
A tapping sound came from the glass pane on the room’s door, and peering over
my shoulder, I acknowledged Ms. Winslow as she let herself in. The tall, slender figure
maneuvered her way behind the printer and in a seducing manner, bent over to fix the
jam, while all the time, keeping two eyes fixed on me.
“I appreciate the hand Karen, but Mike was on his way from the maintenance
room to help out. He should be here any minute.” There was a tremble in my voice, one
that reminded me of talking to a teacher.
“Well it’s my pleasure, plus I noticed you’ve been bending your back lately.” She
ran her pointy, fragile fingers along my spine, going ever more slowly as she worked her
way down my back. I didn’t have the balls to speak. I was too afraid to straighten up; her
hand forced me to take an awkward position up against the machine.
Mike wiggled his keys in the keyhole, and abruptly, Karen turned her body away
from my own, dismissing any form of chemistry that was present prior to the man’s
arrival.
I made my way to my desk, grabbing my coat off the back of my chair and headed
to the lobby doors. Across the street was the building that used to be my father’s realestate investment firm. He’d sold the business some two years ago, just at the crest of the
housing bubble. Lucky bastard. The rest of America is in rubbles while he travels the
world to find his “true identity”. It’s all bullshit if you ask me. I can see his old desk, ten
stories above street level. I remember the days when my mom used to drop me off during
lunchtime so I could spend time with my father. We used to harass his co-workers, and
when it came time to eat, he left me with his secretary, who oddly enough, would talk
about her dinner plans with my father through emails. I was quite the detective back then.
I could of never told my mother and I didn’t; for that, I hated myself.
A warm breeze blew the through alley of which was adjacent to my parked car.
Summer was near. I made swinging motion with my left arm, mimicking my near to
perfect Tiger imitation that I used to be so good at. My briefcase prevented me from
finishing my form. I could hear the beeps and whistles, quite annoying to the average
commuter but comforting to myself. I was not alone. Opening the door of my silver,
tarnished sedan, I laid in the front for some ten minutes, not wanting to move a muscle.
I decided to take the scenic root adjacent to Boat House Row; I’d have been
insane to take the Blue Route. My Manyunk condo was a piece of shit: rusting shutters,
cracking stucco, the whole works. I didn’t live alone. I split the rent with my best friend,
Will. We used to watch T.V. together, tailgate at Penn State for the weekend, and even
hit the front nine for the after two O’clock special; that was, until Seth died.
*
*
*
It was early in morning after a night of Irish Car bombs and Jaggermiester when
Will woke up to find Seth on his bedroom floor. We had played pranks before, but this
time, Will wanted Seth out; the stench of old urine arose from the hardwood floors.
Picking up the limp body, Will heard Seth moan, and with a thrusting motion, threw his
friend back onto his bed, in the room next door. Three O’clock that day, Seth was
pronounced dead. Seth had fallen off Will’s dresser, fractured his vertebrae, unbeknownst
to Will. The moan he heard was for Will to stop; he was dead before he hit the bed.
I never blamed him, I knew he blamed himself, but I could never. Seth’s parents
refused for Will to attend the funeral. Total devastation.
*
*
*
Will had risen from the streets, without a mother and only a drunk of father to
provide support. We were roommates during our freshmen year of college. It just so
happened that his street smarts carried more weight than he or I presumed. He’d won a
full-scholarship, room and board, for placing first in a national Future Business Leaders
of America competition. We used to poke fun at him and say the company offering the
scholarship misinterpreted FBLA for the “Future Black Leaders of America”. He didn’t
like that very much.
I approached the stoop to our two-bedroom dump, wiggled the keys into the lock,
first opening the top then the bottom. A piece of paper wedged in between the screen
door fell to the hardwood floor. The place was spotless. A strong scent of PineSol burned
my nostrils. The pillows, folded immaculately, crowded the one side of our wrap-around
couch. Two candles burned on both sides of the mirror that hung directly over the foyer’s
table. Will was nowhere to be found. I’d noticed his blue Audi A-4 parked in the back lot.
The keys lay gently on the windowsill. I took a walk. The stairs creaked under my heavy
feet. I called for Will but no one answered. Peering around the edge of the wall, I saw his
six-foot frame curled up on his futon with his left arm and leg slumped over the mattress.
He had snoring problem that pissed me off. I hadn’t slept well for past two weeks. He
made no noise. I went to check on his phone as it vibrated angrily against the wood
floors. He hadn’t noticed my presence. It was his friend Trey at Cohen Lisk Waters,
Will’s boss was looking for a document that Will was preparing for the past week.
Lifting up the left arm, I caught a glance of a bottle of Xanax lying crushed
beneath his chest; pills were scattered throughout the sheets. I fell. From the way he felt, I
presumed he been dead for over an hour. How the fuck would I know? I’m no doctor, a
future could-have-been at best. The EMTs arrived shortly after I called them. I couldn’t
remember the exact time. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be by his side as he was
carried out, almost a farewell of some sorts, something that only I could experience.
By nine o’clock the parents were notified. I took a walk down to the river. The
city shimmered on the water’s surface. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this shitty.
I revealed the paper I’d dismissed in the doorway and read it under the street light. He
poured his life into that paper. I cried. I couldn’t continue the life I’ve been living. I’ll
end my life in a six-foot long and six-foot deep hole; I sure as hell don’t want to work in
a six by six area for the next forty years of my life. I’ll quit work tomorrow, start fresh.
The city was never for me. I grew up in the suburbs, loved the people; I think I’ll move
back.
Melissa O’Brien
The Denial Twist
Samantha had never played dominoes before she moved here. It was an
interesting game to her, the square pieces lined up in rigid rows. She loved running her
fingers over the indentations in the wood, the intentional imperfections in their smooth
surface distracted her as she waited for the other players to make their moves. The old
man was taking especially long. The smoke from his cigar floated around the room,
making it foggy. She breathed in the scent as one would a perfume, noting with
satisfaction the musky scent. Finally, the man made his decision, placing a one end to a
one end. Snake eyes. The game was halfway done, one hour in. She didn’t know she’d
have to give two hours of her Saturday every weekend when she’d signed the contract for
the lease. She hadn’t read the fine print that stipulated that tenants would have to play the
ritual domino game. Yet there it was afterward, when her landlord, the elderly lady,
knocked on her door at 10 o’clock. She was crazy, the girl thought fondly, but the trouble
was well worth it for the cheap price she paid.
“It’s your turn dear,” the old lady said with a smile. She was short and small,
nondescript really. She had a husband once, but he had died years ago from some sort of
illness. She had never really talked about him, but Sam one could tell she missed him.
She imagined that he had been the sort to play dominoes with the woman, long, long ago.
But now the old lady replaced his company with the company of her three tenants.
“Hmmm,” Sam hummed, fidgeting with the pieces she had in front of her.
Expertly casting her over the board she made her move just as her phone vibrated with a
new text message. Bring. Short, abrupt, to the point the alarm sounded. Sam ignored it.
She saw her game-mates looked curiously at her, but they didn’t comment.
As the game went on her phone sounded again. Trilll, the alarm cooed, sweet and
shrill. Sam quickly grasped for her phone and read the message that popped up on the
screen. “<3 u, miss u.” the short text read, smiling to herself, although all could see. She
quickly tapped a response and put her phone away, making the final move on a game
well won.
Strolling up to her room on the second floor, Sam paused by the phone in the
hallway, the only one in the house. On the yellow, lined note pad next to it, there was
written the messages of the callers through the day. The old woman insisted on having
only one phone, as the wiring needed to reach all the other rooms would destroy the
vintage paneling in the walls. And so the woman answered the phone herself.
Meticulously writing down the purposes of each bewildered caller. Sam shook her head
to herself, sighing over the absurd nosiness of the old lady. She continued her dancing
walk down the hallway and up the stairs.
She danced into their rooms, jumping onto the bed and shifting herself to stare, as
she had done thousands of times before, at the framed art work that crowded the small
walls, marveling at the expanse of color that let not one speck of the pale white walls
shine through. The pieces were incredible at their worst: wonderful collages, landscapes,
and portraits There were sculptures of found objects and clay on the bookshelf next to the
dusty college books that were hers. And as she sat there on the bed, she daydreamed,
letting the colors tint her waking dreams. A text message interrupted her rapture. Bring, it
sounded. And with a sigh, she finally read the urgent message with annoyance. “Where
are you?” it said. She thought for a moment, and then replied, “Don’t worry, on my way.”
She silenced the phone and then gathered her things, walked out the door.
On the metro she formulated her plan. A night out with friends, crashing on their
couch, a late start and an early lunch was the lie she came up with. Well, she thought with
a smile, it’s sorta true. As the train lurched to a stop, she made her way out to the wealthy
street above, the apartments glistening in the afternoon sun, such a contrast to the house
back on T Street. Dodging the gaggles of tourists, she made her way to the lobby of the
largest, shiniest building in view, and made her way to the elevator, pushing the button
for the top floor.
Opening the door to apartment, she was instantly embraced in a hug. Breathing in
his scent, she thought with a bit of surprise how much she had missed his cologne.
Returning his hug, she heard him murmur, “I missed you.” She stayed silent, but
squeezed him a little tighter.
“So,” he said, breaking off to look at her face. As she nonchalantly told her story
and apologized for being late, he smiled in relief and then began to tell her all about the
apartment he had found in New York city, how pretty Soho was, and how his new boss, a
family friend, had already hinted at promotion within the next year. She smiled and
nodded, saying the right things and laughing at the right parts, but inside she felt a little
sick that she was in this situation, but at the same time so excited.
After he finished all he could say, he took her face, searched it for a moment and
then kissed her. She almost broke it off, but then let go as the moment increased. He
picked he up and then brought her away, leaving behind her guilt for at least a moment.
Late that night, she lay beside him, the brilliant, orange light from the city skyline
awash over his features. She couldn’t help but reminisces as she stared at his sleeping
face. A face she had known for over a year.
She was like most upper middle class people. She grew up in a shiny
neighborhood, surrounded by shiny cars and shiny people. She did know of the dark side
of life, but only through the feverent parties in finished basements, the occasional drugs,
and frequently missing parents. When she went to college, none of these things had
changed. As a freshman, majoring in undecided, she went in not knowing what she
wanted to do. She had the freedom to choose whatever she liked, although she would
probably be a doctor or lawyer, like her mother and father before her. They knew she
would probably end up as one, and had a bet going over which. Their daughter was a
Levine, and she would do what she was meant to do.
College was a blur, the first semester a whirlwind. The memories of those times
were only flashes of color. The shades of memory were mellow blue when she was in
class or asleep, and a hot, fervent red when she took advantage of the nightlife the city
had to offer: a red that intensified when she met him about a year and half ago. He was an
upperclassman, attractive, and filthy rich. Very nice to everyone he met, but ultimately
superior in everyway. When her parents met him, her mother brought her aside and
congratulated her on snagging him.
“Now,” her mother had said, “You don’t have to worry.” You mean you don’t
have to worry, Sam had thought. After that night, her mom and dad canceled the bet,
neither winning, as they knew she would never have to work again if she played her cards
right. Sam knew of the bet. She knew of what they and everyone else thought of her. She
had always been expected to become a professional, but those were degrees that were
going to be achieved with money, not with hard work or intelligence. Her mom and dad
secretly knew of her desire to run away from it all, but they knew she never would. She
was a leech, always dependent on others. She was no better than the homeless that
loitered around her street, living on the handouts of others. She pretended this hadn’t
bothered her, and pushed it to the back of her mind. But it rested at the bottom of her
heart. But each time something reminded her of her weakness her heart pounded with
self-loathing. She was ensnared in a cycle of dependency, and she was too damn scared
to break out.
She had grown angry and tired. Tired and angry of what her boyfriend and what
her college life really represented. She still loved him, but she couldn’t take it any more.
She didn’t know what to do, so she just starting walking one night, walking away from
him and her parents. As far from the college as far as she could go. Her feet, tired, unused
to walking in anything but heels for extended periods, had gone numb and cold. They
slowly brought her to the nearest light. It was a small restaurant, a cave of incense and
color. The music sounded foreign to her ears, and the walls were lined with beautiful
pieces of explosive art. And at the center of it all was him. The boy behind the counter.
The artist who would be the one to share the other apartment with her. Freedom. That
was what he loved to paint. In every brush stroke and every pinch pot, a breathe of cold,
independent air washed over her, and she grew to love its feeling. He knew she had
boyfriend. Knew she couldn’t break it off, not yet. But he was confident that she was the
one for him. This extreme confidence he had in himself bugged her sometimes, but she
hoped that he was right. Maybe she would get sick of her college boy and leave to join
him. Maybe. Maybe even one day soon.
As the morning sun hit her face from the wide glass window walls, she looked
over at the man next to her. He was looking at her face, a smile on his lips as he snuggled
closer, his arms reaching around her bare back. Pushing him away and off, she promised
to return with coffee and escaped to the kitchen, so he wouldn’t see the guilt that festered
in her heart.
After coffee, and some cereal to wash it down. It was time for him to go, he had
come down only for the night. Just to see her, before he had to start his job and trips
down to DC would become infrequent. He had to go.
He said, "I know you have things left to do down here, but when you’re ready, I
have a train ticket for you." He handed her a one-way, anytime ticket. Her eyes closed as
she pocketed the small slip of paper.
He kissed her forehead, his cheek rough against her skin. She resisted the urge to
rub away the kiss, but held it back. Picking up his keys, he shuffled out the door, glancing
at her, and whispering, “I love you.” under his breath. She pretended not to hear him,
keeping her back to the door. With every footstep that led away from the door, her sense
of guilt heightened until she, rushing out to the door, threw it open and yelled, "I love
you!" Silence followed, she became certain he didn’t hear her. Until the response, "I love
you too!" came blaring back. Smiling, she closed the door, and then horror crept in as she
realized what she had done. Had she sealed he future with that? Paling, she loitered
around the apartment before she grabbed her things and ran out the door.
Sam threw herself on the bed back at her apartment, and threw the jacket with that
horrid ticket onto the floor; its presence had begun to overwhelm her. Tears started to fill
her eyes, but her sob session was interrupted as a knock sounded on the door.
“Are you okay dear?” The white head poked around the door. Nosy old woman,
Samantha thought, irritated, but good manners overcame and she pulled herself together.
When she went to wipe her tears, the woman asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Sam murmured.
“Is this about flunking out of college?”
Sam flinched. College had been terrible for her. She had flunked out of one class.
And then another. She decided to take a break for a year, with her parents and first
boyfriend’s blessing. They knew what she would ultimately do. She would eventually go
back and get that degree, then marry him and end up as his wife. To her, this yearlong
break was a personal failure. It marked the height of her independence on others. To them
it really didn’t matter. She was set for life.
“The school called,” the old woman said, pity in her eyes and sympathy in her
words. “They wanted to know if you wanted to come back next semester? The advisor
said to call so I wrote the number down by the hall phone. It seemed terribly important,
so I came to tell you.”
Sam didn’t know if she wanted to go back. School had been a difficulty; she was
not cut out for the academic life. While others studied, she had daydreamed. And when
she had met her lover she had daydreamed even more. Inspired by him, she had picked up
a paintbrush, and tried painting on her own. It’d started to consume her free time. The
paintbrush had felt good in her hands.
“Well,” the woman said as Sam remained silent, and left. Sam was alone at last,
alone to be with her thoughts. It was a scary thought. To be alone. Without anyone there
to help her, someone to fall back on.
“Alone,” she whispered out-loud, tasting the words on her lips. Alone.
But her momentary solitude wasn’t to last, as the old lady returned with a giant book.
“Here, Sam, this is my photo-album. You see this man here?” she said pointing to
a man sitting next to a lovely, young woman. “He was my husband. I loved him, loved
him dearly.” Sam looked at the pictures, tracing the faces of the black and white photos.
They look so happy, she thought, so happy to be together.
“I loved him enough to let go the one thing I wanted to do in my life, singing.”
she said, “I was good too. But singing wasn’t for the family life.” She gave up the one
thing she had for herself, Samantha mused, but at least she was happy.
“But years passed,” the woman said, “and when it was clear children weren’t to
come, I resented him for it.” Oh, Sam thought, stunned and full of pity, her own plight
forgotten for the moment.
“And I took a lover,” sighed the woman, “but my husband died young of cancer,
and then I resented myself for what I had done.” She paused, and looked away. Standing
up she went over and stared at the only painting on the wall that was Samantha’s own. “I
guess what I’m trying to say, is to do what you have to do.” She looked back in her
direction. “I know the situation you’re in, and you’ve caused a lot of harm. To them, and
to yourself.” She picked up the book and walked out of the room, leaving Sam to her
thoughts.
Sam couldn’t believe what the woman had said to her. In the months she had lived
here, the woman had hardly spoken a word about her past. And the things she knew about
Sam! And the things she said…
The old woman was right of course, Sam thought. The woman had just said what
Sam had known all along. It didn’t mater if she loves them or not, she was using them.
She was dependent on them; she can’t function without them as she is now. She leaned
on one for his money, the other for the sense of freedom she didn’t have. The woman had
just had to say it aloud to make it real…
Fuck, she thought. Fuck! What am I doing? She looked at the paintings that hung
on the walls, holding back the urge to smash them. Smash the illusion of freedom she had
in her life. Fuck. She got up and left, left her purse, left her annoying cell phone. She
walked, and walked. And where they led her was no surprise, they had brought her there
before; that restaurant were she had first met her artist. Entering, she sat down and picked
up a menu. She tried to concentrate on it, but her thoughts and emotions made the words
waiver.
“Hey, look at that painting,” commented the girl sitting at a table near her,
interrupting Sam’s thoughts.
“Yeah, its pretty awesome,” responded the girls date.
“It’s beautiful.” She asserted.
Sam couldn’t help but look up and focus on the painting they were talking about,
expecting to see a piece of her lover’s art. Maybe one of his collages, or a portrait. But
her jaw dropped when she realized what it was. It was a painting she had done, one of her
own original works of art. A piece she painted… an abstract landscape of the city. It was
his favorite; he must have put it up. A thunderbolt hit her heart, and she stood up,
abruptly. Hurrying out the restaurant, she ran home, ignoring the odd looks she got. She
couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to realize what she had to do. The choice she
was going to make ran around and round her head, and she grew dizzy from the
anticipation of the moment. How the hell had I walked this far, she thought. Speeding up
her pace. As she ran without any inhibitions, the buildings and cars and people started to
blend into a mix of colors and shapes. They became the painting on the wall back at the
restaurant. An unrestrained blossom of minute choices in every stroke. Random seeming,
but completely deliberate. The blues and reds flashed before her eyes until she realized
she had reached the apartment.
Heading to the phone in the hallway, she picked it up and dialed the number on
the note that the old woman had left.
“Hi, this is Samantha Levine. Yes, I do want to come go back next semester, but I
would like to change my major. No. An art major. Yes, I can come in tomorrow to verify.
Thank you.” As she set the phone down she closed her eyes, her heart still with the
finality of what she had said.
“Bling,” her cell phone interrupted. “Trilllll,” it sounded. She looked down at her
phone and turned it off. She could ignore them just a little longer.
Leah Paulson
Meg & Me
“NO WAY! My dad won’t let me get a Facebook either!”
Meg and I had encountered yet another trivial similarity about our lives. In
exchange for denying my request to make a Facebook like every other teenager in the
world, my dad bought me a Blackberry with unlimited texting, calling, and he even had
my e-mail forwarded to my phone. Not like any of that was free in Europe; I’d been using
my phone sparingly as not to cost my parents another arm and a leg in addition to the
ones they’d paid for my trip. Besides the Facebook thing, both Meg’s and my mother are
doctors (mine a pediatrician, hers an obstetrician), our fathers traveling businessmen.
Neither of us have ever had a serious boyfriend and we obviously both love (and are good
at) soccer because we were in Europe playing together. If this random roommate
selection was any sign of how my college roommate selection was going to go, I was
golden.
Our six weeks in Holland were the quickest of my life and after sobbing and
exchanging e-mails, Meg and I went our separate ways-I to Maine and she to Alabamapromising that we’d talk every day.
After a dreadful, lonely nine-hour plane ride, I was expecting to be greeted by
both my parents, but when I ran through security, backpack heavy on my shoulders,
hauling my baggage behind me, my mom was running toward me, alone. I tried to mask
my disappointment when she told me Dad was away on business (I should’ve known)
and gave me the roses he’d sent in his place, but she saw through my façade.
My phone started vibrating off the hook; all of my friends had been anticipating
my arrival and I could finally talk for free again in the States. Three missed calls, six text
messages, and thirty-three new e-mails. I hadn’t had access to a computer the last week
of camp because we’d been so busy. UNC…College of New Jersey…spam….MEG!
“What?!” My sudden change of expression confused my mother.
“Remember my friend I told you about…Meg? She already e-mailed me!”
My layover in South Carolina must’ve given her a few hours lead to my
homecoming. I read her e-mail in the tiny letters on the Blackberry’s screen and if my
mom hadn’t felt so badly about my father’s absence, she may have accused me of being
rude.
Meg and I e-mailed back and forth daily about anything and everything; I
couldn’t wait to see the “Inbox” tab on my homepage blinking with new messages.
Crushes, family, soccer, friends; we hid nothing from each other. It felt kind of cool
having an unbiased third party to tell all my stories to and give me advice. My finger was
just about to click my newest e-mail when I heard a deep voice from downstairs permeate
my bedroom walls.
“DAD!”
I ran downstairs to where my dad dropped his bags and squeezed me so tightly
that my feet left the ground. I didn’t even let him take his loafers off before I was
grabbing the photo album I’d made of my trip off the bookcase in the living room and
plopping myself on his lap.
First were the pictures from the flight, the airport, scenery; I basically had no
pictures of people from the first few days of the trip. I loved when he asked questions
because each one led to a new story or something crazy I’d forgotten about. Mom
watched smiling from the doorway-she’d already seen all the pictures and heard the
stories a billion times. When I finally reached the first picture of Meg and me, looking a
little awkward having just met, my Dad didn’t even ask me who she was. Wasn’t he
curious? Whatever, I continued on, at least a third of the remaining pictures had Meg in
them; still oddly uninterested, my dad seemed tense. He didn’t even flinch when I got to a
picture of me with a cute European guy; maybe his overprotective nature had gone away
when his little baby went to Europe on her own. I looked at his face and there was
something strange, disapproving about it.
“Is something wrong, Dad? You haven’t even asked about Meg or any of my new
friends yet.”
He snapped out of his trance and feigned interest-pretty weakly, “Oh. Right. Who
is this lovely young lady-a friend of yours?”
He continued unconvincingly to pretend that he was actually interested while I
rambled on about Meg and how we became so close, but I cut myself short when I
realized he didn’t quite seem to share my excitement.
A few days later I had just finished telling Meg about the new kid, Jacobo (Jake
for short), in my Spanish class whose beautiful Puerto Rican tan and flawless natural
accent was my newest distraction. I was on my way downstairs when hushed voices drew
me toward the kitchen.
“I don’t know if all of this e-mailing is safe, Beth.”
“But it keeps her happy, hun. That’s all we can ask for with teenagers these days;
we really are fortunate.” Mom, so sweet.
“I think we should set some ground rules; she’s glued to that screen for at least an
hour every day; that can’t be healthy.”
“Tom, you don’t know teenage girls. Please, trust me on this one. There’s no
harm in her e-mails. She’s a smart girl; she can take care of herself.”
With a reluctant but submissive sigh, my dad apparently gave in. The wall
between us being not quite transparent, I didn’t realize how close he was to the doorway
and he nearly ran into me rounding the corner up the stairs.
“Hey babe, what do you want for dinner?”
An e-mail from Meg came at the perfect time. Dad was away on a business trip
and Mom has just gotten back from her yoga class and her endorphins were about to
benefit the both of us.
“Hey Mom? We don’t have any plans for spring break, do we?”
And there I went. I told her the well-thought-out plan Meg and I had formed; fly
into Baltimore, stay at the Holiday Inn for three nights, and pay for myself with the
money I’d saved up from pet-sitting the past few months.
Instantly amenable to the idea, my mom only insisted on a phone conversation
with Meg’s mom before the plans were set. Ecstatic and overly-prepared, I offered her
cell, work, and home phone numbers to my mom and we were ready to roll.
Spring break couldn’t come fast enough; even though it was just for a long
weekend, I’d had my bags packed a week in advance and Meg and I had been feverishly
e-mailing day in and day out sharing our excitement for the mini-vacation. Finally,
though, the day had come and my mom was dropping me off at the airport.
“Have fun, baby, I’ll miss you! Call me when you land.”
After a lonely few hours, I’d landed in Baltimore and began looking for Terminal
G where Meg would be waiting for me with her bags; she’d been on the ground for over
an hour before I’d arrived. I made my way through the crowd, scanning it for Meg’s
brown and pink carry-on I knew so well until I finally spotted it.
“Meg!”
It was as if we’d never been apart; immediately she was talking a mile a minute
about how her flight had almost been delayed and how they’d lost her bag, but it didn’t
matter now because I was there. I gave her a huge hug and clumsily knocked her purse
off her shoulder, scattering all its belongings all over the dirty airport floor.
“Typical.” She laughed it off.
As I was helping her regather everything I’d strewn across the floor, I picked up
her open wallet only to see a picture of a woman with a man who looked creepily
familiar.
DAD?
It couldn’t be. But it was.
I swallowed the knot in my throat and handed Meg her wallet. I felt like my brain
was scattered into a million puzzle pieces, and I was struggling to put even just two of
them together.
“You okay, girl?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”
Why did I have to see it right when we landed? I walked beside Meg, listening but
not hearing, to the baggage claim-from baggage claim to the taxi-from the taxi to the
hotel. Our dads both travelled, didn’t want us to have Facebooks-because we’d see
pictures of each other with the same man. I tried my best to feign enthusiasm while Meg
spoke to me a mile a minute, but I don’t think she was buying it.
“What’s going on? You’ve been acting really weird.”
My dad’s cheating on my mom; so’s yours. My dad goes on business trips for
weeks sometimes months at a time when in reality he’s with his other family; oh, yours
does too. Did you know we have the same dad? How do you tell someone you care about
something so crushing, devastating. I couldn’t.
“Jake hasn’t texted me back all day, that’s all. He probably thinks I’m annoying;
I’m just being stupid.”
All weekend I was going through the motions, hoping Meg didn’t think she was
doing something wrong. I faked a smile and a laugh, even tried to crack a joke or two, but
my weekend was sufficiently ruined. I looked at Meg, the spitting image of her mom, and
couldn’t help but think of the picture. She had my father’s eyes which made it unbearable
to look her in the eyes. As much as I hated to say it, I wanted to go home. Who do you
tell your secrets to when no matter who you choose, someone’s going to get hurt?
After three painful days, we said our goodbyes, promising to keep in touchalthough I’m sure Meg knew something was up. Who knew if she even still liked me
after this weekend?
I couldn’t face Meg anymore. I didn’t know if I could even face my mom. She
picked me up at the airport; I couldn’t tell her.
“How was it, honey? I missed you!”
“Missed you too, Mom.”
She was going on and on about how the dog had ripped up the sofa, she’d gotten
me a new comforter, and there was a surprise for me at home. Her incessant rambling
made it easy for me to zone out, to act normal. I’ll never be able to tell her; I can’t.
We finally pulled into the driveway where I saw his red BMW. Surprise-Daddy’s
home.
Ian Pritchard
Stay What You Are
Usually, I like the springtime. The temperature is perfect in Pennsylvania, so I
am comfortable in the same clothes both in- and outside. I like the way the flowers look
when they are just blooming, though the pollen they produced makes it hard for me to
breathe. Rain is not too frequent, but when it happens it is a soothing, warm rain.
Usually. This year it rained all April.
But April showers brought May flowers, flowers which I couldn’t enjoy. I broke
up with my girlfriend of nine months on April 27th. It was raining that day. I felt as
though our relationship had become routine, and I’ve always been afraid of falling into
routine. Once things begin to be the same, I feel the need to shake something, anything,
up. I thought this change would be easy.
We were sitting in my car, a 1995 Ford whose cigarette lighter, among other
things, didn’t work. I was driving her home, but after I pulled into her driveway, I
stopped the engine; she carefully twirled her hair around her finger and asked me why
and I said I didn’t know. I stared straight ahead but I felt her eyes glaring at me in that
judgmental kind of way. She put her hand on the door and started to move as if she were
getting out of the car, but she moved very slowly; she knew something was wrong. I
didn’t say anything, but I could tell she wasn’t leaving until I said something.
“Listen,” I said. I turned to face her. She was still glaring. “I’ve been thinking,
and I think I need some time to…,” I paused, searching for the right word, even though I
had rehearsed this bullshit, “explore who I am.” She was still glaring, though now the
inside corners of her eyebrows shifted up.
“Are you…”
“Yes,” I interjected. “I’m sorry.” I shifted my focus from her to my steering
wheel in order to keep it together. The rain pounded on my windshield. Without
looking, I grabbed a cigarette, Parliament Ultra-Light, and a lighter, a green Bic, from the
compartment between the driver and passenger seats. I lit the cigarette and turned to her,
hoping this would get her to leave. I didn’t smoke often, but I knew she didn’t like when I
did. I didn’t feel like talking.
“Goodbye, I guess,” she stated as she climbed out of the car. She was pissed.
“Yeah…” I looked down, partly in shame, “bye.” She slammed the door and I
inhaled deeply. It was like the smoke in my lungs could take my stress away, but it
couldn’t stop the rain, which poured on Jessica’s head as she walked to her front door.
*
I carefully placed the needle on the black vinyl disc as it repeatedly spun in
circles. I crossed the room to my bed, which only took a few steps, as a faint crackling
came out from my stereo's speakers. As I began to lie down across my mattress, the
crackling was replaced, or at least drowned out by, a high-pitched male voice smoothly
singing, "This song will become the anthem of your underground." This was my favorite
record, and I listened to it every rainy day that summer. It was the saddest pop record I
had ever heard, and I think that’s what drew me to it.
Lying in my bed, I would let Chris Conley's words penetrate my ears, and
sometimes I would pretend he was singing to me. He sang to me about being alone,
something I could connect with; I watched my phone as it sat next to me on my bed. I
hoped one of my friends would call, but none ever did. I only went out if I forced myself
into their pre-existing plans; I was a burden. They had stopped talking to me shortly after
I had left Jess, for reasons I did not understand, and, eventually, I stopped trying to force
our friendships. My records became my friends, and this one, was my best friend
because it understood me so well.
The record began to slow down at the sixth track, "Freakish," and it was at this
point that my mind would always begin to wander. As soon as the track finished, I would
quickly turn the record to Side B then return to my bed and my thoughts. It was hard not
to reminisce while in that room; it was filled with such emotion. More often than not, the
image of Jess and me sitting at the foot of my bed came to mind. She was sitting on my
lap, her legs straddling mine, with her arms curled around me, softly touching my back. I
had just put on a record and taken off her shirt, and music filled the room as we kissed.
We would do this often, so I had carefully memorized the last track on every side of
every record I owned; as soon as a side ended, I would bring the sexual encounter to a
halt as I rushed to the record player to stop the needle from dulling itself on the inside of
the record and bouncing back to scratch the precious vinyl.
But this became routine; it got old. At least, I thought it did, but I couldn't figure
out why I missed it so much. I couldn't help but wonder how I could get myself into this
mess. I didn't know how I felt, let alone understand it. This question danced in my head
until, for some reason, my focus moved itself back to the sounds in the room around me.
The rain was pounding on my window, and Chris' voice sang one particular line which
stood out: "to me you are the light from a light bulb that breaks sometimes." This line
had never touched me this way before. I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it touched
me.
I pondered its meaning until my concentration was again broken, this time by a
loud screech. The needle had forced its way backwards across the record in a sad attempt
to replace itself on its resting position. The record continued spinning, and the needle
had not properly returned itself because of a broken arm, so the screech continued, which
was not good for the record at all. Normally I would jump up to stop this, but for some
reason I didn’t. I let it happen. I let my favorite record, which was now out of print and I
had only found by nothing short of a miracle at a independent record story in New Jersey,
spin while the needle bounced off it and ran against it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about
that line. And her.
*
I decided I was wrong. It’s not easy to be wrong. By ending a routine, I created
another routine which I would only fall deeper into. Life is cyclical like that, and who
am I to fight it? All I knew was that I needed to fix this.
My phone sat next to me in my bed, carelessly emitting unnoticeable amounts of
radiation. That phone would be the death of me. I stared at it; that was all I could do. I
found it hard to get the motivation to pick it up. I was too scared. But it had to be done. I
didn’t even know what I had to do.
I hate talking on the phone; I always have. There’s something extremely unpersonal about it, which could probably be attributed to the fact that I can’t see the face of
whomever I’m talking to. I always said that was my reason, but I never looked people in
the eye when I was having a serious conversation anyway. I usually look away and
glance at them every-so-often. This was because I’m afraid to see their face, their
reactions. I’m afraid to see her face.
I grabbed my phone and unplugged it from the wall. I charge it every night when
I sleep, but I hadn’t yet gotten out of bed that day, so it was still plugged it. I heard the
rain gently tapping on my window, and I hoped that it would not interrupt the signal my
phone received. I would die if the call cut off in the middle of our conversation. How
could I know if she hung up or if it was due to my cell phone’s horrible reception? I
didn’t want to think about it.
I held the phone in my hand and stared at it. The bright touch-screen stared back,
with a list of contacts starting with “J”s. I ran my finger across the screen until
“Jessssssss” was highlighted. She had added an unnecessary amount of letters in an
attempt to be cute; I pretended I didn’t like it, but it was still there.
I slowly pressed my finger against the screen, and the phone began to dial. I
wasn’t quite sure what I was doing or what I wanted. I just needed to talk to her. With
each ring, my heart beat faster. My gut churned, and for a moment it was like I could
hear Chris Conley singing to me; “I don’t think that I’ve got the stomach to stomach
calling you.” Man, you’re right, I thought. I pulled the phone away from my face and
moved my finger towards the red button which would end the call, and that was when I
heard her voice faintly echo from the small phone speaker.
“Hello?” She did not sound happy. It was more of a mix between surprised and
pissed off. I could feel her glaring at me on the other end of the phone, but I was also
sure she was twirling her hair like she always did when she was nervous.
My words were on the tip of my tongue. I couldn’t force them out, though, and I
don’t even know what I was going to say. I was just stuck; I hate being stuck. There was
a grenade in my mouth and my tongue was wrapped around the pin.
“…Max?” My silence obviously was not pleasing her. She sighed.
“Uh… sorry,” I blurted out. “Wrong number.” I pushed the red button and ended
the call. I stared at my phones screen for a minute. It stared back at me, almost mocking
me. It was the only thing in the world other than me that knew for sure that I had not
dialed a wrong number.
I placed down my phone, hoping to just forget what happened. I pushed the
curtains off my window, only to notice that it was still raining. Oh well, I thought as I
walked over to my record player. I carefully placed the needle on the black vinyl record,
and the faint crackling came out from my stereo's speakers yet again. As I began to lie
down across my mattress, the crackling was replaced, or at least drowned out by, Chris’
high-pitched voice smoothly singing, "This song will become the anthem of your
underground."
Love Sick
By Christopher Sell
Jake had found the love of his young life. He first met her when he was just an
innocent little middle school student. They immediately clicked and within hours after
meeting her he decided to give her his first kiss. However, due to timing and
transportation issues the act was performed in the most romantic setting available, behind
a dumpster at the mall. This was the first omen but Jake’s hormone fueled brain was too
driven by sexual desires to see it. Fortunately there were many more omens to come, but
he would yet again be blinded by his raging teenage hormones until it was too late, and
the damage had already been done.
Once the kissing was over Julie went back to her home 789.67 miles away, they
calculated the distance with the help of MapQuest, but unbeknownst to Jake she had
taken his heart with her. He wouldn’t get it back until four years later at which time it
would be shattered into so many pieces that the only viable repair option was to consume
enough drugs on a daily basis to forget what had happened and hope that with time it
would repair itself. This was eventually successful. But only because the physical and
mental pain that Jake went thru to overcome the multiple addictions, which came with
this repair process, replaced the pain of his broken heart. But for now he felt happiness
and for the first time in his life he was experiencing what could only be described as love.
Julie had grown up in the same town that Jake currently lived in. She had moved
away with her mom about the same time that he moved into the neighborhood. When
Jake moved into neighborhood he became very good friends with the same group of kids
that Julie was good friends with before she moved away. Then after a year or two had
passed she came back to visit for spring break and naturally wanted to visit her old
friends which is how Jake and Julie met.
Despite being separated by 789.67 miles Jake and Julie kept in touch. Eventually
this turned into deep conversations that would last hours every night. She made him feel
like someone valued and cared about him for the first time in his life. Jake had never felt
this close to anyone before but he really liked having someone there for him at all times.
However, after a month or so of being separated from the first girl he ever loved, Jake
began to realize that perhaps things just weren’t going to work out. They were young and
he saw that it would be many years before they would be capable of destroying the
physical boundary that kept them apart. As more time passed this feeling of hopelessness
began to weaken the desire he had to be with her.
Then Jake met another, prettier, smarter, girl who for some reason liked him. He
immediately pounced on the opportunity and began to date her. As he spent more and
more time with this new girl he began to feel like he was cheating on her because he was
still having those long conversations with Julie. This was the final push that he needed to
tell Julie that he wasn’t going to be taking her calls any more, he was only in middle
school and wasn’t anywhere near experienced enough to juggle long, late night
conversations with both Julie and the new girl. Julie kept calling but Jake stuck by what
he said and didn’t answer once. She gave up after a week and a half but not before she
had left a number of sobbing voicemails on Jake’s phone that made him feel like the
biggest dick in the world.
Jake was now guilt free and could have a healthy relationship with his new girl.
Unfortunately, his new relationship lasted all of two weeks; he didn’t even get the chance
to kiss her.
*
After three years had passed and Jake was entering his junior year of high school
he still hadn’t had a relationship where he felt as close to the girl as he felt with Julie, and
it embarrassed him to say it, but he was still a virgin. Then he got word that Julie was
moving back and would be attending a neighboring school. At that point in time Jake
viewed this as bad news. His opinion of Julie had changed drastically. He was now
convinced that she was a “crazy psychopath” who was obsessed with him. Over the
course of the first year that Jake stopped talking to Julie, he got about ten more
voicemails from her. About half were seemingly harmless drunken voicemails in which
Julie talked about how much she missed him and so on but the other half were the ones
that scared him. These sober voicemails ranged from twenty to an hour in length. In them
Julie was essentially having a conversation with Jake’s voicemail and was telling it
everything that was new in her life. It was because of this that Jake decided to try his best
to stay as far away as possible from Julie.
*
As the school year went on Jake had a number of accidental encounters with Julie,
and from what he gathered at these encounters Julie had changed, for the better, and was
no longer a “crazy psychopath”. Then around April, driven by loneliness, desperation,
and the hope that Julie had really changed, Jake decided to start talking to her again.
Fairly soon after they started talking, Jake saw a flaw in his plan; Julie had a
boyfriend that she had been with a full year. Luckily, for Jake they were on the verge of
breaking up. So Jake began filling Julie’s soon to be ex-boyfriend’s role by texting her
and talking to her all throughout the day; they were picking up right where they had left
off four years ago and as the days passed by Jake’s old feelings for her began to return
stronger than ever.
Then after two weeks of talking Jake got the call he had been waiting for; Julie
had broken up with her boyfriend. Now he finally had a chance to truly be with the first
girl that he had ever loved. He immediately made plans go out on a date with her on the
upcoming weekend. It was going to be the first time that they had hung out since the
night behind the dumpster; Julie didn’t want to hang out with Jake while she was still
with her boyfriend because if her boyfriend found out that she was hanging out alone
with some other guy he might suspect Julie of cheating on him.
Jake had an amazing time on their first real date. He had never really felt
comfortable when he was alone with a girl but with Julie it was different. He felt no
pressure and since they had spent many long nights talking on the phone he had no
problem keeping the conversation going. At the end of the night Jake drove her home,
walked her to her door, and gave her a kiss goodnight but not before making out with her
in her driveway.
They decided to keep their relationship quiet for the first three months for the
same reason that they didn’t hang out while Julie and her boyfriend were together. After
those first three months Jake decided it was safe to stop keeping it a secret and he began
to tell his friends that him and Julie were together and in love. Jake was having the
greatest time of his life. As word began to spread that they were together a few of Jake’s
friends that he wasn’t very close with began to approach him with some pretty outrageous
claims. They all approached him separately and none of them were working together but
they all said the same thing, “Jake, Julie is cheating on you.” He had a lot of difficulty
believing these claims. Jake decided to confront Julie about these claims because he still
loved her and didn’t want to end their relationship without hearing her side of the story.
He wanted to talk to her the next time they were together because it would be easier to
tell if she was lying if he questioned her in person.
As Jake drove to pick her up from her house he started to get an empty and
uneasy feeling in his gut, this wasn’t going to be easy. Once they were alone in his car
Jake asked her point blank if she was cheating on him. Julie suddenly got extremely upset
and was on the verge of tears. She said that she didn’t cheat on him and promised that she
didn’t do it again and again. She began begging for a way to prove that she was telling
the truth; to Jake this at the very least proved that she really did love him just as much as
he loved her. This knowledge is the main reason that Jake was oblivious to the truth.
Julie asked who told him that she was cheating on him and after telling her all the people
she calmed down and simply said, “Oh…” and let out a sigh of relief. Julie explained to
Jake that the girl who told most of Jake’s friends that she was cheating on him hated Julie
so she just made it all up. Jake believed her. He decided to do a little bit more
investigating but for the time being he was going to just trust her.
The next day in school Jake told his friends what Julie said and they agreed that
they got most of their information from the girl that hated Julie. However, there was one
piece of proof that they heard from the girl that hated Julie and also a number of other
people, some had even witnessed it themselves. They explained that they were told that
every day around five o’clock some guy picked Julie up from her school. Now it all made
sense to Jake, he was that guy, the guy that everyone thought Julie was cheating on him
with was himself. His car was in the shop so he had been driving his step-dad’s truck
which is why no one recognized him. This was a great relief to Jake, he felt like a weight
had been lifted off his back and the strange feeling in his gut finally went away. He called
Julie right away to tell her that he had gotten to the bottom of things and that it was just a
silly misunderstanding.
The future looked bright for Jake and Julie and he was finally going to be with the
girl he had fallen in love with so many years ago. Jake felt like them being able to stay
together and sort out all the cheating accusations had made them stronger. So that next
day when Jake was home alone with Julie he gave her another one of his firsts and they
made love.
A week had pasted since Jake first made love with Julie. The act is now a
common occurrence but, although he doesn’t mind it, Jake is still getting used to the idea
of having sex on a regular basis. Everyday Jake picks up Julie after track practice and
now that he has his car back he hopes there won’t be any more misunderstandings.
Then one day as Jake is sitting at home waiting for five o’clock to come so he can
pick up Julie he receives a picture message from a number that he doesn’t recognize. It’s
a picture of Julie and some guy kissing and it’s time stamped two minutes ago. Jake’s
phone then began to ring; it was the same number that had sent him the picture. His head
was spinning as he answered the call. He tried to talk but nothing would come out. The
voice on the other line started to talk. The voice claimed he was Julie’s boyfriend but
Jake’s brain recognized the voice as Julie’s ex-boyfriend. The voice started threatening to
hurt him if he didn’t stay away from Julie. Jake couldn’t feel his body; all he felt was his
head exploding. The voice was gone. All he could hear was his brain screaming,
“Something must be wrong! This must be a mistake!” The voice began to come back so
he hung up the phone. His brain told him that Julie would be able to explain what was
going on. He dialed her number and as the phone started to ring he began to relax. After a
few rings there was an answer but it wasn’t Julie. It was the voice.
Gwyneth Shumar
June
I was at a party in the balmy August heat right before the start of our senior year.
This night was rather rowdy, the music up a little too loud and most people far too drunk,
including my friends Gabe and Colin. Pete, who I’d known since we were five, and I had
been more responsible. After twenty minutes of hearing Gabe and Colin debate the pros
and cons of doing a keg-stand, I told Pete I’d be back in a minute and I headed out the
front door to get some air.
The night was perfect as far as summer nights go. The blazing heat had subsided
with the sun and now the cicadas were loudly chirping and the gigantic maple tree rustled
its leaves in the light breeze. I took in a deep breath and leaned against the cool bricks of
the house and just stood there for a moment. My skin crawled with a kind of indefinable
restlessness.
After a few minutes I heard the front door open and close again, and a girl strolled
out into the middle of the lawn, blonde hair, lit up with moonlight, bouncing behind her,
red solo cup in one hand, pack of cigarettes in the other. Not noticing me, she lit up a
cigarette and took a drag, tilting her head towards the sky and blowing out a stream of
smoke. I watched her then take in another lungful and spit out several immaculate smoke
rings. Bringing her head back down to earth-level, she looked around her, as if feeling my
eyes on her. Upon seeing me she held up the pack, offering me one. “Thanks,” I said,
putting up a polite hand, “but I’m fine.”
She chuckled. “A good boy, huh?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “No, I just can’t go home smelling like smoke.”
“I see,” she said, walking towards me swiftly and tilting her head to one side as if
puzzled. The porch light hit her face and for a moment I was surprised to find myself
staring straight at June Oliver. June Oliver was the eccentric, indie girl that no one ever
really got. She showed up at public events with tall, mysterious guys in leather jackets
and sunglasses, no matter the time of day, in the back of their beat-up Volvos, sharing
cigarettes and talking quietly about things we normal beings were clearly too mainstream
to understand. In class she rarely did anything but doodle on her hands and notebooks and
piss her teachers off with the fact that she always knew every answer, even when
awoken, bleary-eyed, from a mid-third period nap. I honestly never gave her a second
glance. And I honestly could not tell you why tonight was different.
“I, uh, I would, normally, but I don’t have a change of clothes in my car,” I
scrambled nervously.
June raised one delicate eyebrow. “You have a car here?”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said, dropping her cigarette butt and squashing out the lit end with the
toe of her shoe, “shall we?”
“What?” I uttered stupidly.
“Leave,” she said, smiling cutely. “I’m bored.”
“Oh,” I said, uncomfortable, caught off-guard by this request. “I…I have friends
inside. I gave them a ride, so…”
“No worries,” she said without pause, then turned to leave, but stopped, halfturning back and said, “I’m June, by the way.”
“Joey.”
She looked at me intently for a minute. “A good boy,” she said to herself, and
laughed softly. I watched her walk down to the sidewalk of the friendly neighborhood
street and disappear into the darkness, head held high and arms swinging self-assuredly. I
stared at the black spot where she disappeared for a long time before I headed back inside
to my friends and the noisy party.
“All I’m saying,” said Gabe, resolutely swinging his French fry from side to side,
“is that Jack was a hell of a quarterback, and I don’t think training Louis will do any
good. He’ll never replace him.”
“True,” replied Colin. “But we still need a decent quarterback by August.”
I stared down at my half-eaten turkey sandwich, all taste and appeal of this daily
reprieve lost. Colin and Gabe continued to chatter about the new lineup, while Pete
followed along quietly, eating his lunch.
Across the cafeteria there were several empty tables, the room far too big for the
number of kids eating in it at any one time. At one table, entirely by herself, sat June. Her
feet were propped up on the table, clad in Chuck Taylors, her flowery dress draped lazily
across her lanky frame. Hiding her face was a giant book, her nimble fingers turning a
page every few minutes. My gut hurt looking at her.
I turned my focus back to the table, where Colin and Gabe were still heatedly in
debate, and found Pete regarding me curiously.
“You miss her,” he said, looking me square in the eye.
I paused for a second to keep my voice steady. “Yeah.”
He nodded, then stabbed another bite of pasta salad, and we finished our lunches
in silence, the noise of Colin and Gabe’s conversation overwhelming me.
June and I were walking along the sidewalk of the main street of our little town. A
couple of times I would press my eyes as far to my left as they would go, putting my head
in screaming pain, but able to look discreetly at the way she walked, moved, breathed.
We stopped at the ice cream parlor, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the way she made
every motion. The sincere smile and thanks as she handed the money to the elderly
proprietor, the graceful way she bent to pick up fallen change and slip it into her purse,
the way she tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear.
“Joey,” she said, looking at me with those big brown eyes.
“Junie,” I said, mocking her a little. She smiled and I took her hand, swinging it
back and forth as we walked.
“Tell me something you wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“I work for the FBI,” I deadpanned.
June tipped her head back and laughed, her hair falling down her back, and she
shook our intertwined hands. “Shut up.”
“Okay,” I said, heaving a sigh. I watched my feet walking along the cracked
sidewalk and was reminded of the rhyme we used to say in elementary school: you step
on the crack and you break your mother’s back.
“My parents divorced six months ago,” I said flatly, “and I couldn’t hate them
more.”
She looked at me, listening intently. “Why do you hate them?”
“I dunno. My mom doesn’t do what she used to do anymore, you know? She’s
just sad.”
There was a pause for a moment, where June kept looking at me but I would have
preferred she didn’t, so I said, “Well, how about you? Fair’s fair.”
She made no indication that this question made her uncomfortable. “My mom left
when I was ten. She broke my dad.”
I was heartily unsure of what to say in this situation, but Junie knew. Junie always
knew.
“I’m sorry about your parents, Joey.”
I looked at her, surprised.
“I’m sorry about your parents too, Junie.”
She smiled at me radiantly. “No worries.”
I tapped my pencil slowly, over and over again, on the cover of the book in front
of me. Ms. Quimbish droned on about the symbolism in Of Mice and Men at the front of
the class, a steady stream of words being written on the chalkboard, their yellow letters
slowly melding together in my line of sight. Directly in front of me was the back of
June’s head. I stared at her golden hair for a while, watched as she tucked her hair behind
her ear and ran her fingers through her hair, all the while seeming to listen intently.
After a few minutes of staring, I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around
without missing a beat, and looked at me, eyes blank. I stuttered, forgetting what I was
going to say. Her face remained devoid of any emotion.
“Do you have a pencil? Um, that I could borrow?”
She raised an eyebrow. Without a word, she reached into her bag, pulled out a
pencil, and handed it to me over her shoulder.
I looked at the slender piece of wood in my hand, wishing I could have inspired
any reaction but that.
At that moment I honestly wished I had a George to soothingly whisper a dream
of a better life while he pressed a shotgun to the back of my head.
We were driving down a shaded back road, our arms out the windows of my car,
the radio humming happy summer ditties. It was the first time I’d ever seen June get
nervous.
“You really don’t have to come in,” she said as I pulled into her gravel driveway,
which led up to a small white house with a wraparound porch. On the porch sat an old
man with a large, protruding belly clad in a painter’s work attire, smoking a cigarette and
drinking beer out of a can. He rocked on his rocking chair, back and forth, back and forth.
He simply watched us pull up to the house.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said, unnerved by the way she was unnerved. We got out of
the car and she walked ahead of me, leaving me yards behind by the time she got to the
porch.
“Where ya been, Junie?” he slurred as she ran past, slamming the screen door
behind her. Before I could introduce myself, he had lumbered inside, calling after her.
When I finally made it through the door, their dialogue had clearly escalated.
“You live in my house, I wanna know where you been and what you been doin’, it
don’ matter to me if you like it or not,” he growled at her. From the doorway I could see
through the dining room to the kitchen, where June was standing, her arm caught up in
his meaty grip.
June did not say a word.
“Look at me!”
June’s eyes stayed on the floor as if she were hypnotized by the tiles.
I watched, frozen, and saw his face fill with cherry rage, his jowls shake, and in
one swift movement, he made contact with the side of June’s face. June was so slight in
comparison to his huge presence, I was surprised she didn’t fall to the floor. Instead, she
just looked at him, eyes completely blank. It was worse than if she had started sobbing.
He stumbled back, his eyes filling with tears. “Junebug,” he said softly.
Junie slowly turned around, picked up the heavy black backpack, the whole
reason we had come, and we walked back out to the car. His sobs got louder and more
hysterical with every step we took, but June did not say a word. So neither did I.
That night we did homework together in silence, and at 11, when my mother came
around and turned out all the lights, the time when I normally drove June home, I stayed
sitting at my place at the dining room table. June looked at me, but I did not look up.
After a moment, she got up and took her books, then quietly left out the back door,
shutting the door with a soft click behind her.
For some reason, that night, June had developed into a foreign creature, one that I
was afraid to look at; for fear of what, I still don’t know.
Pete cocked his arm at a perfect ninety-degree angle, and with an inhuman grace,
slung the basketball into the basket. I watched it swish through the net, never even
making contact with the rim. I stood next to him, dribbling my ball, then lining up my
shot.
“So you haven’t even called her.”
I missed. “She hasn’t called me.”
Pete clapped the ball between his two hands. “So you figured you just shouldn’t
even try.”
I said nothing.
“Man,” he muttered, and shook his head.
“Well, what do you think I should have done?” I asked defensively, not looking at
him, instead lining up another shot.
“I dunno, Joe. Maybe called and said that didn’t change how you thought of her?
Maybe said something like, gee, June, I sure as hell don’t want you to run away from me
just because I saw how fucked up your life can get? Something like that, maybe.”
I looked over at Pete, the basketball still clenched between his two hands, and he
just shook his head at me. I knew he was right, I should have said all of that. But that
would have been a lie.
Disgusted with myself, I took my shot. I missed.
My head spun with the sound of Pete’s ball slamming against the blacktop and the
memory of that golden hair, and I wondered when I had become incapable of pulling my
head out of the sand.