The Apprentice WRITER

Volume 32 $3

apprentice writer : 1 learned by working on one or more of the four magazines the Susquehanna Writers editor: Introduction Institute publishes each year. If you are Gary Fincke Labor Day at Welcome. The Apprentice Writer an- interested in learning more about the Cre- nually features the best writing and ative Writing major and progams related to associate editors the Lake House photographs from 4,000 entries we re- writing sponsored by the Writers Institute, : Elle Wallace ceive each year from secondary schools Sarah Davis, Emma McClelland, see the back page for a summary or go to Hummelstown, PA throughout the United States. Every susqu.edu/writers for details. Amanda Miceli, Jenna Rhodes Advanced Writers Workshops September we send copies printed as Mom has the potato salad out a public service by The Daily Item in Send material to be considered for next Production editor: Each summer, the Writers Institute offers the one-week on the counter in the blue bowl Sunbury, PA to nearly 3,500 schools. year’s issue to [email protected]. For Kelsey Hails Advanced Writers Workshops for High School Students. Where’s Dad? full submission guidelines, please visit Jennie wants to know Susquehanna’s Creative Writing susqu.edu/academics/10602.asp. Please be The 2015 Summer Workshops will take place in late June or major now enrolls 165 undergraduate sure to include your name and address on Special thanks to early July. Participants live on campus and concentrate on fic- On the deck at the grill, lost in a plume of white smoke students. Our program in Editing and each page. The deadline for submissions is Codie Nevil Sauers tion, poetry, and creative nonfiction. turning charred burgers Publishing gives our majors an op- March 10, 2015. The fee of $800 (early application by April 15th) covers all Dad’s not laughing but Libby is portunity to showcase what they have costs, including room and board. It sure is funny, burnt burgers, hilarious he grumbles Go to susqu.edu/writers and click on “high school students” Table of Contents for more information and an electronic application. Nana is centered in a bull’s eye of ripples in the lake PROSE 17 Next to the Windowsill ~ Mariel Reilly 19 City Kid ~ Elle Wallace like she’s hula-hooping the water 7 Her Closet ~ Cindy Choi 19 Outside, There Were Fireflies ~ Robin Shafto Her sons 12 Almost Blue ~ Samantha Pappas 21 Hornet’s Nest ~ Taylor Petty are all grown up now 12 Turning ~ Lucy Silbaugh 23 Cigarette ~ Jessica Maddox no longer knobby-kneed boys 24 Sonnet for the Captor ~ Brittany Crow 18 Traffic Lights ~ Peter Samuel Kim playing baseball in the street 20 At Seventeen ~ Cierra Ingersoll 26 Girl-Youth Gets Steamed ~ Katie Hibner and baby powder— under the lights 22 A Champion’s Guide to Climbing Whatever 30 Like Cream on Milk ~ Rebecca Greenberg how has it been but two years mountain You Want ~ Tina Weingroff 31 Window to the Left ~ Kate Busatto For You, Anita since that smell buzzing with mayflies 24 Luk Kreung ~ Robert Conner 31 The Magician ~ Parisa Thepmankorn Aidan Martinez faded from my life? but now thick-browed Italian men 32 Segmented ~ Zachary de Stefan 25 Hide and Seek ~ Jacqueline Ose owson Did it leave me when we moved who have wives 34 Dear America ~ Tiffany Spiegel T , MD 26 Gravity ~ Catherine Aviles from the house on Glendale Road, and children 27 Preserving Chestnuts ~ Rachael Allen 37 Love and Cars ~ Greta Skagerlind I found a folded scrap of paper letting the halls fill with the scent of and office jobs 31 Detox ~ Annalee Tai 39 so i want you to remember this ~ Taylor Petty inside the cover of your old copy must and disuse? 33 Walking Home ~ Katie Cooke 39 Speech like Glitter ~ Alicja Madloch of The Catcher in the Rye, Or did I hold my breath when Joyce and Kenny flip their kayaks 33 Steven’s Granary ~ Tiara Sharma 40 Rust (Belt) ~ Zachary de Stefan fragile as film and crisp you began to fade on purpose with giggles 34 Letters on the Floor ~ Madeline Smith 41 Waiting for These 90 Days ~ Adia Haven as the butterfly wings like a figure in an rupturing the water’s surface 43 Symphony for the Lost ~ Elizabeth Merrigan 36 Wording ~ Rachael Allen sitting framed on my desk. ancient photograph, like a flesh wound 44 A Love Letter From Obesity (Because You 38 Snapshot ~ Alyson Schwartz I wish you could see those wings, like your memories and awareness, Wanted to Know Why) ~ Sarah Mughal Joyce and Kenny flip their hair 40 Ken Burns on the Battlefield ~ Annika Jensen orange as tiger lilies and like my patience? 45 Elmer’s ~ Alexis Hope Lerner sending crystal drops of lake 42 The Yellow House ~ Sara Gramling laced with black, 45 My Happy Place ~ Jessica Maddox 45 The Brush, Pour Cybele ~ Rebecca Greenberg What would I give soaring 46 esus aves Elle Wallace gifted to me by the father 47 A List of Things That Ring J S ~ to breathe that scent again? as water birds 47 things under my bed ~ Sarah Horner I had said didn’t love me. more Often Now ~ Stacey Cohen To tell myself to Libby is a Szabo photograph 47 Dear Sperm Donor ~ Whitney Agyeman You told me otherwise. 49 Swirls of White Paint ~ Hannah Phillips hold onto it, 48 Brother ~ Alexis Hope Lerner You told me over the hum a pretty image of 51 Chalk Drawings ~ Emily Guerra of the blood pressure monitor that fragrance of childhood, 52 loud ecrets Allison Chu 48 Hipster Friend ~ Kate Busatto delinquency C S ~ that sucked at your slack skin of days when your comforter 54 My Eyes ~ Corinne Winters 51 Walking the Dog in a Circle Skirt in her white bikini and your thinning muscle. was too warm to leave— 55 Seeing the Wizard ~ Jessica Maddox on a Day with a Breeze ~ Robin Shafto You told me as you carefully of days when you told me with legs glistening under a hot sun 56 Untitled ~ Greta Skagerlind 54 all she ever said ~ Alexandra Kindahl penned the numbers, the dates: that fathers could love. Mom sits with pale legs 57 Impossible to Forget ~ Mollie Walker 54 Too Caught Up ~ Samara Spiler Days when you still knew crossed 58 appiness s Chasity Hale 55 The Old City ~ Anneliese Feldman 4/13/11, 2:04 P.M. H I ~ what days were. 59 The Pang ~ Alisha Cheung 56 Why I Pray on My Knees ~ Amani Garvin systolic 142, diastolic 79. beneath the umbrellas Days when you’d wake up and 62 Princesses and Singers: 58 Time Signatures ~ Amelia Carter You folded the paper, tore it her face is washed in shade nearly cry because you thought Not Basketball Players ~ Alyssa Matte 58 Dactylonomy ~ Marissa Elias neatly at the creases, and Her ring finger 63 Dear lost Limb ~ Katharine Nichols slipped it into the paperback you had woken up at home, is without a ring POETRY between Holden’s red hunting hat and Maryland was far from the Philippines. PHOTOGRAPHY and the loneliness of New York. Days when you sang She sometimes forgets 3 For You, Anita ~ Aidan Martinez slow love songs from the 30s, to slip it back on 3 Labor Day at the Lake House ~ Elle Wallace 6 Pipes ~ Elena Haskins I hold the scrap to my nose now, before you repeated your questions she only takes it off 4 Sestina ~ Madeline Padner 17 Untitled ~ Alysha Smith almost afraid to and repeated your questions. when she’s washing the dishes 25 Untitled ~ Ben Knecht Before I knew what it was like 4 Feeling for Corners take another breath, she says Inside a Sphere ~ Alexis Hope Lerner 32 Alley Way ~ Elena Haskins because if I handle it too much, to lose you, the most important person. We play here 5 A Better Answer ~ Alexandra Kindahl 37 Listen ~ Samantha Moy the scent of you Before I knew what it was like 6 Clutter ~ Zachary de Stefan 42 Untitled ~ Rheannon Lovell will shake loose to hurt you, my grandmother, at the lake house 11 Miami ~ Katharine Nichols 46 Leaf ~ Jessica Bulkley and be lost. The acrid aroma who had become on labor day 11 The Winter Moon ~ Danielle Fusaro of soap, the vanilla whiff a stranger. over photo 16 November 19th ~ Alexis Beale C : Jacob Dowdy, Hubbardsville, NY of yellowing pages, dust

2 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 3 Sestina Feeling for Corners A Better Answer Madeline Padner Inside a Sphere Alexandra Kindahl Cockeysville, MD Orangeville, PA Alexis Hope Lerner Upper Saddle River, NJ “Lie to me—convince me that I’ve been sick forever, and all of this will make sense when I get better.” -Amy Lee, “Breathe No More” Overwrought with the everyday worry My cousin Sandra called her ex-husband’s ex-number of accidently running twenty-three times yesterday, hoping that even once I’m going out to drive along one of the roads nearby, he tells me. You want to into you, I uncover a map his voicemail would come to life with a different tone of come along? I’ve finished Hate List and An Abundance of Katherines and Anthony Horowitz’s hello. showing how to get from point A to understanding Short Horror Stories, and the only thing left to read is a journal still seventh-eighths blank. I say, no thanks, and my father shuts the door of the hotel room behind him. I could why you’ll come back to me, the way a wave A man off the southwestern coast of Alaska returns to the shore, in a perfect summer photography. go out walking again, like I did in Ísafjörður—up and down the two residential streets, tried to save a beached whale by stretching his arms five commercial streets, alongside the shipping port with two or three boats and rusty chains across her left fin, spanning his fingers across her smoothed ridges, lying abandoned on the concrete. But we’ll drive back into Reykjavík tomorrow, A collection of years in worn-out photographs, telling her what a good life she had, what a wonderful whale she was, and I can wait a little longer to wear holes in my shoes. Tonight I’m still immediately I notice your lines of worry, how much he loved her. Her eyes rolled independently in their sockets with unspoiled skin, looking at my father’s Swiss Army knife easily confused with lines of understanding. on the table across from my bed. The blade You admitted to a fear to the waves, as he whispered into the thick rubbery blubber; his words couldn’t penetrate like the scientists’ needles of xylazine doesn’t laugh at me, doesn’t sing to me, and I’ll never forget that you are still running, and death. doesn’t tell me to start or trying to escape before they wash away your maps. stop. My cousin Sandra writes in her journal It only comes down six times on my A simple, black and white map until the edges of the pages are tired of her scrawl left thumb and leaves a row of the difference spaces in your brain, shown in a photograph. and give out, cracking under the weight of her heavy hand. of racing stripes. The way that you are pounded by the waves She searches in the ivory millimeters between letters for a meaning within those conjunctions of emptiness is unfair. You are stuck running I’m going out to the pool downstairs, she tells me. You want to when she does the breakfast dishes with his ghost. away from the heavy weight of worry. come along? I’m in the middle of Psych ER, between a chapter on depression Maybe one day I’ll be filled with enough understanding Peter Parker killed Gwen when he caught her from the bridge. and a chapter on mania. I say no thanks, and my mother lets the door click shut. He stared at his bloodless hands and forever avoided mirrors After seven or eight passes through the resort hallways this morning, To comprehend your lack of understanding that painted him anything more like Spider-Man, three circles of the parking lot through this West Virginia snowstorm, of a torn, heavily used road map anything less like a villain. I can’t walk any farther. I heat water for tea in the hotel room’s kettle. I used while I was running, It boils but doesn’t scream, or, at least, trying to run from my worry Joe feels for corners inside his hamster ball. doesn’t whisper, doesn’t tell me that No matter how far he runs, he only transports his green plastic universe I’m making a mistake. that was realized by the discovery of a photograph another few inches across the living room floor. I scoop him up of you, smiling at the waves. The metal only lies against my left arm for two seconds, then wrenches away. along with his sphere. I am his God. And I know that something Five seconds, and away again. Ten, away. Two minutes. Away. is controlling me and my Earth the same way. The passing of minutes is noted by the waves, I had sworn when I started five months ago to keep but few will gain understanding There is no way out. the scars only on my legs, but now I’ve of the unrealistic worry left a circle on my forearm like the seal on a letter. that comes with the snap of a photograph. Cannabis opens the ridge in my skull We’ve been circling, despite our possession of a map, so I can see the mint light slant through the inside and illuminate my mind. But it’s too narrow We’re going out in twenty minutes or so for kayaking, she tells me. You should never enough time to put a stop to the running. for me to slide my wrist through to feel it with my fingers, my breath. wear your swimsuit. Through the sliding glass door and past the hotel room’s balcony, I can see Honolulu’s palm trees framed by skyscrapers and storefronts advertising for Once, I held the tender green moss of your irises: Easter. The calendar pages flipped through nine months of secrets, and now I say, My greatest fear is to one day be running rich, texturized, teeming with life. Once, ten years ago, But I won’t want to go swimming. Can I wear something over my swimsuit? back to you, directly into the waves. I felt the green of Gwen’s eyes, and Sandra’s ex-husband’s, And she walks towards the bed, asking, You aren’t really going to keep hiding your legs and the whale’s; when I remember how the light hummed in my palm, Emotions, brought on by photographs, for the rest of your life, right? Let me see them. I still feel its lifelike vibration. Perhaps there is something more outside this cage. plot points on an imaginary map. She doesn’t gasp, doesn’t yell, One day I hope to find understanding I just don’t know what it is yet. doesn’t tell me yet how as to why we all overflow with worry. disappointed she is. Every few weeks or so, my hamster Joe finds a corner in his sphere She only makes calls to a marching line Your entire life, the maps have led to worry. and crawls right out, happy. I wish I could say the same of doctors back at home, then asks me why over and over. As we watch the waves, you long for the understanding for myself. For humanity. I have a lie ready for her and the swarm, some of why we all are still running from dusty photographs. nonsense about guilt and anxiety— a better answer than I don’t know.

4 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 5 as I realize I don’t fit. I don’t close the cir- “Where is this leading us?” Dad’s voice cle. We walk in silence through the front sounds strained. door, down the elevator, and toward our No stoplights or crosswalks interrupt Her Closet car. the endless rows of shoulder-height walls of maroon bricks, fixed together with Cindy Choi As I climb into the back of the car, I white-grey cement; yet my dad seems to Seoul, South Korea bump my knee. It throbs, but I do not feel the need to use his turn signal at ev- check to see if it left any marks. I situate ery twist of the way. It’s becoming a chal- The button closest to the neck of my myself on the familiar, grey leather cush- lenge to listen to him whine about not be- crisp white shirt is starting to get on my ion. As soon as I slam the door shut, the ing familiar with the roads, not to mention nerves. It has been only two minutes car starts moving. We’re heading to the the faithful beat of the turn signals that fit since I put it on and already I am feeling only restaurant we’ve tried as a family, somehow with the disarrayed sounds that edgy about how I’m going to survive to- Sushi Hiroshima. It is dark enough out- my dad is producing. An eerie sense of night’s dinner. This shirt would last no side that the windows reflect the opposite pride runs through my veins as I decide to longer than the other garment my mom side of the car. I can see my brother fac- tune out. With the movement of the car, I forced me to put on before it. White, knit- ing forward with his right hand on top of let my head roll slightly from side to side. ted, long-sleeved, over the knee, and loose his left, resting in his lap. He keeps his My thick, black hair forms scattered loops all around—it could practically have been head lifted slightly away from the head- around my head. The messiness keeps its for my grandma. rest to keep his combed hair tidy. When I loopy form on the headrest from the stat- I hear the clock ticking steadily behind slouch even lower in my seat, I notice my ic. Nobody notices. Tonight may not be me. The consistent beat of the machinery brother tense up, in response. as bad as the other dinners. is so unchanging, so stable. My hairline “It’s already a quarter to six,” my dad Dad is getting lost. I knew this as soon threatens to create beads of sweat. Mom says. “If I remember correctly, which I as he turned away from the main street will notice. With one hand, I lift the bot- do, because how many times have I driv- towards the flickering lights of a small tom half of the homely, uncomfortable en this car to the restaurant we’re going convenience store. I tell him that it would outfit. I catch sight of the purity ring my to right now, oh right, sixty-fourth time be best to reverse all the way back, but parents practically assigned to me before today, it takes thirty minutes to get there, either my voice is too soft or my dad the first day of high school in August. not including traffic. It’s rush hour now doesn’t think I’m right. As the car keeps The silver band is topped with a muted and there will be approximately one- winding through the streets, I feel my emerald. It does not shine, but it twinkles point-eight times more cars squishing eyelids droop. My shoulders drop as I al- when it catches the light. My wrists are their way through, around, across from low myself to relax. cuffed with another set of buttons that ours.” “What the hell is this?” keep the sleeves bound together. I manage “Husband, I know a shortcut to the res- These are very pleasing words to wake Pipes to move them enough to wriggle myself Elena Haskins taurant.” My mom speaks softly. up to. I straighten up, little by little, my into the skirt. A cumbersome silence follows and I movements limited by my dress shirt. I DeRuyter, NY Despite Seoul’s September heat, my feel the hair on my arms standing on end. look to the front. Dad’s neck is pink all mom has generously supplied me with a We never digress from the main roads. the way up to his ears, which are as red black skirt that goes down to cover my an- Dad’s forehead crinkles as his eyes nar- as uncooked meat. I can nearly see his the Fourth of July parade and kept them kles. I reach for the soft, metal handle of row. A corner of his mouth is turned nose twitch with frustration. My heart Clutter funeral-marching down in the attic the wooden door. My shirt limits me from Zachary de Stefan Beaver Avenue, of that house downward, causing him to look like a almost stomps its way out of my chest. the way winter settled on Coalridge Avenue, extending my arms too much. I swallow bloodhound pup. I suppress a snort. I am about to clear my throat but decide River Vale, NJ deep into Grandma’s tucked between wall my irritation as I walk a step closer to “Turn left on the next signal,” Mom to swallow instead. This is hard, as the Mom collected bones cracks alongside push down on the handle. Before I get and never the strays she put says. “There’ll be a street opening up inside of my mouth has gone dry, along matchbooks, a chance to walk out the door, I glance pebbles she found turned to there one summer other diagonal streets that cut through the with my sleepy eyes and their crusty sur- buried in riverbeds, spring and forgot to feed, over at the snowy white canvas, sitting main roads we’ve been traveling on.” roundings. I am more than tempted to rub but the neighbors nickels appropriated calmly on the easel stand. I feel my jaws “I trust you, wife.” Dad reaches for my eyes as they begin to itch from the from laundromat ; complained about frantic unclench. A small grin tugs at my lips. It parking lots; scratching in the night the turn signal. It ticks regularly, like the dryness. Quick things: clears my head and helps me get through clock that had resounded in my head. It “This is what happens when you do little things, fires in dry woods, and out they came, the door. is threatening to penetrate my conscious- something new. It is out of routine, un- things that could be lost water stains all the matchbooks, My dad, mom, and brother form a without so much spreading pebbles, and pennies, ness. familiar, and most of all, a waste of time. as a second thought, across bedroom ceilings, spilling out through semicircle near the door. They look indis- I regulate my breathing, leaving a slit You know what’s really important in things she would lose the floorboards putably like my family, with white at the of space between my upper and lower lip. life?” The voice that had once started out forgetting how to to land around top and black at the bottom. Despite the breathe a girl who lost The car is quiet enough for my breathing low and strained is now at a relatively on purpose hot laser beams shooting from their eyes, her voice to sound crepitated. I focus on my lungs high volume. / // that year frigidity is evidently the temperature of expanding inside me, and try filling the I check the time by lowering my gaze and never the room tonight. They fail to hide their lower parts. I see my stomach rise and without moving my head. We should Slow things: Grandma collected got it collective disappointment at my unfixed the neighbor’s hands, ghosts back fall. I breathe into the upper parts, and my have been seated by now. My body is hair. A satisfying sensation warms me up chest heaves. slammed backwards as the vehicle springs

6 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 7 itself in reverse mode. It is backing away me. The slam of the door follows. A pair shuffles his way to our table with his volting tastes and cause our throats to feel his question at me. “Have you started my shoes and file them neatly in front of from a blank wall of white bricks. On my of furrowed brows and a slightly crinkled well-polished black shoes and unreserved hot and burning. In our case, the edamame thinking about your AP classes yet?” the shoe closet before chasing after the lit- left is a lamppost with a small metal sign. nose turn to face me for a brief moment. smile. He pulls out the order sheet from is to prime our taste buds. The green salad “She should be doing the AP U.S. His- tle puppy. I know mom and dad will flip Dead end, it says, in black, painted letters The body attached to these features the front pocket of his stained apron, to with the salmon is for our taste buds to tory, son,” my dad replies. out if they see him on the loose in their that look as if they dried while dripping. strides efficiently to the automatic revolv- which he’s clipped a black pen that’s al- feel the lightly salted salmon that accom- “What do you want to be when you impeccably clean apartment. I find him I look at the post that is just standing ing doors of the restaurant. most as shiny as his shoes. panies the mild taste of the green vegeta- grow up?” I ask my brother in turn. There trying to jump up onto the black leather there. There’s something haunting about I start to follow, but my brother stops “Did I not order the Sashimi Course bles. The egg soufflé, which I expect will is no point in arguing with Dad. It would sofa. He’s making scratches on the legs of it. No words are spoken and my eyes do me. “Your hair looks a bit disheveled and A?” be served in the right order after you sort be a three-against-one situation. the furniture, and shedding black hair that not drift to anything else as the sloppi- your wrinkly skirt is not very helpful. “Yes, sir, you did.” The waiter double- this disaster out, is to cure the boring and My brother doesn’t say anything. I will have to clean later on. His shining ness of this whole situation occupies my Could you please straighten that out be- checks the piece of paper. He brings out a plain tastes and to give a little sweetness I rephrase my question. “What’s your eyes jump out from the other parts of his mind. Like the thick paint of the sign that fore our mother and father catch sight of menu from his back. “Would you like to to comfort the tongue. It also prepares dream?” face and it makes me want to just sit down had fallen slowly, we have no other choice them?” order an additional dish?” it for the big climax. If you don’t know “Wife, I talked to a worker on our floor and claw at whatever’s in front with him. than to drive the exact roads we drove to Though his tone is stern, his smile “Have the dishes in Course A changed what comes next, it’s the main sashimi. today,” Dad interrupts. “He was talking My brother hurries in to turn on the tele- get to this stop. My brother, acknowledg- seems apologetic. My brother’s unusual, in the nine days since we last visited?” Now obviously, there are all sorts of dif- about his wife needing a job and I offered vision and set the cushions in the right ing mom’s mistake and dad’s vexation, coffee-brown eyes—his only non-Korean Dad interrupts. I guess he doesn’t want ferent tastes of fish. That’s why the next her a job to work at our house as a house- places. Without saying a word, he march- offers to drive the rest of the way to the feature—seem to flicker with hope. My anything else from the menu. course is the traditional bean stew. The keeper.” es to the only creature I can relate to, and restaurant. Of course – it has always been lips part to respond but my eyes already “I believe not, sir. Is there a problem?” flavor is so strong it overtakes the unat- My stomach is full. picks it up. Brother to the Rescue. But Dad will never see his back. I stride a little more brisk- The smile is fixed on his face as if some- tractive taste that otherwise would have I don’t know if any of what my dad “Use two hands,” I mutter. He doesn’t. sit in the backseat with me, which leaves ly to catch up, and step into the revolv- one is pulling on each end of his lips. It’d stayed in our mouths,” Dad is giving his says is true. I have memorized the process “Put your left hand under his tail,” I say, a Mom to sit where my brother is sitting ing door. I know it perpetually turns at be easier if someone could do that for me usual monologue. by heart, but I wonder why I have never little louder this time. I watch my brother now. These seat changes mean that I will the same speed but it seems terrifyingly any time I converse with my parents. Not I am about to tune out but the waiter tried doing it any other way until tonight. in awe as he casually walks over to Black- have to straighten my back and devote all slower when I am inside it. I step out of converse – any time they inform me. turns to leave. My eyes widen in interest, I loved the salad and salmon before my ie’s cage, carrying the puppy by its two my efforts to being aware of where I place the triangle and breathe in as much air as “Where is the edamame? It’s always as nobody is ever allowed to walk away green peas. The peas got rid of the salmon front legs. Blackie whimpers. my hands and how I place them. Exclud- my lungs can hold. A waiter recognizes the green beans, then the salad.” when dad is saying something. I cry in taste so that it wouldn’t get mixed up with “Give me Blackie. I’ll put him back,” ing the obvious, such as wearing a seatbelt me at the entrance and brings me to my “Right. Sorry, sir. We’re missing some my heart and pray five times for the wait- the sweetness of the egg soufflé. I swal- I say in an undertone. I learned from or staying in the seats, most people would family’s table. I arrive just in time to hear of our workers today. I’ll get it to you er. I also remember to praise him for giv- low my burp. Just the thought of more my dad that a louder voice does not get not know that there is a right way to sit in my dad order the same set meal for all right away,” the waiter is mumbling real- ing me a chance to see what it’s like for food makes my stomach feel bloated. We my point across any better. I try to take a car. I feel uncomfortable, rebellious or at four of us. Every syllable that slips off his ly fast, the smile still plastered on his face. my dad to be interrupted. are on our way to the car now. The sky Blackie from him and feel only tension in risk, if I’m positioned in any other way. tongue makes me gag, it sends my back “You seem like a nice gentleman just “Sir, the other tables need to order. I droops low and I wish it were coated in my brother’s hands. My brother and I al- As the three shuffle around me, I twist the into spasms. Not the stiff kind, the aching doing his job. But do you know why the will make sure to serve the remainder of a sheet of glass so that the sky could glis- ways disagree, but never have we fought. ring around my fourth finger. Though it kind. It’s too familiar to surprise me; yet edamame is put in your hands before this course in the correct order,” the wait- ten even without the stars. The darkness I feel my throat tighten. “What the hell,” was more of an assignment than a gift, the it still initiates pain. I want to run back to anything else? Do you know why your er explains himself. He is on his second swallows everything up. As soon as I have I spit my words out without taking my ring makes me feel appreciated. And to be the parking lot and breathe the fresh air. customers that order this specific course step out and Dad’s ears are already the situated myself in my seat, I release ten- eyes off Blackie. “Don’t treat him like dad appreciated is much more satisfying to me I situate myself next to my brother and want, and deserve, the beans first?” color of the salmon on our salads. sion in my eyes and a different darkness treats you.” My brother tightens his grip. than to be wanted or needed. All I would lay the napkin on my lap. I look down “No, sir, but I am truly sorry about the “Do you know who’s paying for your swallows my vision. “Stop. You’re going to hurt him,” I feel ever need to do is be there; my presence without moving my head. I catch sight inconven–” job? Don’t you know that the customer I wake up to the gray parking lot of our my cheeks growing hotter. The cuff of the would be doing the work. To be wanted of a brown spot on the crinkled surface. “Sorry doesn’t cut it, young man. Imag- is king? I could speak to your boss if you apartment. As the four of us climb out crisp shirt restricts me from initiating any or needed means having responsibilities. I With my thumb and my middle finger ine if we had been too distracted to think think it’s necessary. Before I do, though, I and shut the door, I know what every- smooth motions of my wrists. know I am not incapable of being a good I flick at it twice, but it doesn’t move. I about what was given to us and simply do need to finish educating your ignorant body will be doing after we ride the eleva- Dad comes over and snaps Blackie out friend or daughter, but the pressure is not decide to move my whole head and take eaten the salad. What do you think that brain. I would’ve thought that something tor and reach the house. The three will sit of both of our hands. Dad glides over to the something I would ever like to deal with. a proper look at what it is – a little spot would do to us?” As my dad speaks, I feel relatively decent was going on up there. in front of the television to catch the news cage and tosses the puppy in. He doesn’t With expectations come disappointment, of soy sauce from the last time somebody the remainder of the salmon burning on Your smile’s fooling everybody. So, the on time while I use my homework as an forget to lock it. It is worse than what my and the ratios are horrible – the higher used it. Dad raises his hand, calls for the my tongue. If I weren’t so tired tonight, I raspberry sherbet. It’s there to freshen up excuse to skip out. Mom and Dad have ac- brother has previously been doing. I feel we fly, the faster we fall, and the harder waiter, and asks for a new napkin, all the would have quickly pooled my saliva and the entire process. Then the coffee to top cepted the fact that I take longer than my dinner threatening to rise into my mouth we hit the floor. The ring is a promise, while maintaining eye contact with me. swallowed the taste. But I am, so I let it it off, because who doesn’t love coffee?” brother does to complete the assignments. to stop the thoughts in my head from hence a responsibility. I guess it reminds My table napkin is replaced with a fresh linger on the salty taste buds. “I love coffee, Sir.” The elevator stops on the thirteenth floor. coming out through my tongue. I direct me that my parents have simple hopes for one that’s still warm from the dryer. “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” the wait- Of course he agrees with dad. My heart I step out first, open the front door, and my wrath to my legs. I want to stomp, or me. It’s simply success measured by the Along with the napkin come the plates er tries to laugh off the lecture. stops praying. I see the order sheet trem- hold it open, as I’m the youngest one in even jump up and down. I am breathless absence of something, not something I of salad topped with grilled salmon. My “Pardon me? I will personally educate bling. The waiter’s smile is tense now. the family. Blackie runs over to the door. just walking past the kitchen through a have to push myself to achieve. mom and my brother clear their throats. you in the way food is supposed to be tast- Maybe his jaw is locked or he needs to He got out again from his cage. We re- dark, narrow corridor but I reach my bed- The car reverses into the parking slot My dad readjusts his collars. I pick up ed, savored, and eaten. Our taste buds are stop his teeth from chattering. My heart ally need to get a new one, but I’m glad room. and the sounds of the seatbelts releasing my fork and poke a piece of salmon and incredible. They also play an incredibly slows down to a normal rate. that we haven’t. I smile and let him rub My chest heaves up and down. My ricochet throughout the vehicle. a bunch of green vegetables underneath. important role to the digestive system in The rest of the order files in. We talk his ears against my leg. arms are weighted on my knees and I can “Wow, we got here in fifty minutes?” The salad here always has too much vin- our stomachs. Do you know why? I’ll say about where my brother is going for col- “Shut the door. The more you leave it barely see through the jungle of my hair I mutter as I open the door. I hop off the egar compared to the oil, the way I like it, just in case you don’t. Our taste buds lege. None of his early applications have open, the more mosquitoes will come in to over my face. I slide down and sit with high ledge of the car. it. The sound of the lettuce crunching fills get upset when there is a sudden change been accepted yet. He says he would be suck our blood,” my dad yells. my back against the door. I look to my left “It’s actually forty-seven minutes,” a the room. My dad raises his arm again, of tastes, such as spicy to sweet, or salty to happy with Princeton. I pat Blackie’s head a few times before and see the canvas still blank. I grab the dissatisfied voice replies from ahead of along with his voice. The table waiter bitter. Our stomach acids rise up to the re- “What about you?” My brother directs he runs into the living room. I shake off paintbrush and squeeze the black paint

8 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 9 directly onto it. I flick the paintbrush to at my reflection. I see a transparent streak I occasionally step on some seashells but as his fingers grow slippery with sweat. in front of him. Flies continue to dart in directing the heaviness to flow or fall or the right, to the left, upwards. There isn’t of what I could never say to my family I don’t feel anything. A painless journey. The man’s face starts to reflect a darker and out of his vision. He makes some cur- drop away. enough paint for me to paint downwards. flowing through the canvas of my face. Sitting on the gravelly beach, he has a shade of pink. His glasses threaten to slide sory attempts to shoo them away before The man trails his fingers along the bor- I squeeze more paint onto the brush. My Past my nose, past my lips, curling un- puzzled look of bewilderment on his face. all the way down to the tip of his nose, giving up. A fly lands on his forehead, der of the box. His fingers reach the pieces wrists feel strained. I can see the red der my chin as the curve gives them no Each pebble that is in contact with this where the most sweat has accumulated. now covered in large beads of sweat. His of tape on top of the latch that holds the marks the clothes are leaving. I don’t stop. other choice. I snatch the dark blue sweat- man makes him stiff with vulnerability. The waves usher him to sit down again, forehead is pale, in contrast with the rest contents safe inside. The box comes easily My palms are sweaty and dented by my er I got as a team member of the middle The man is wearing a suit, and a rumpled this time on wet sand and bigger, sharper of his face, which has settled to the color off the ground and doesn’t make a sound fingernails, which are held tightly against school forensics team. My hands grip on blue shirt with a tie that ends a few inches pebbles. of a frosted cupcake under orange lights. when he shakes it. Or maybe I am still too them. the grey hoodie I wear when I’m cold be- above his navel. He has on maroon socks The sky is turning to a muted shade of The sun beats down and sweat cov- far away. The tape doesn’t peel cleanly. I hate muffling the sounds of a sob with fore going to bed. I cannot stand; my up- that match the style of his suit. The tie grey. The pebbles no longer bother him. ers his forehead. He suddenly falls to the The waves come crashing slower, calmer a pillow because I feel like I’m breathing per half is getting too heavy. My knees hit has blue-and-white stripes running in a The box is laid diagonally, slightly behind ground, letting his arms curl inwards, to- now. The wind has died. The man pulls in dust. I just swallow the gasp for air and the floor and I let my back lean against horizontal angle. He lifts the top flap of him now. He cannot afford to get it wet wards what proved to be alive. He opens the crest out from under the envelope. shove it down into my heart. My shoul- the right door. I can taste the wetness of the tie. The lines are drawn as straight yet. He thinks of slipping it inside his his mouth, but I am too far away to hear. Giving it one last kiss, he trudges towards ders move quickly up and down three my breath on the blouse I wore to dinner as the edges of photographs, or the sig- jacket to be sure, but decides otherwise, His body seems to be disconnected to his the shoreline. His shoes are wet and his times before I can bite my lip to let the ac- just half an hour ago. I stand up to finish. nal of a long-gone heartbeat. He stares at remembering how tightly his suit fits. demands. I focus on his eyes again: black eyes are moist. He pushes the crest from tual wet, salty liquid spill out of my eyes. There is a teal scarf I bought for a char- it long enough to make his eyes water. I For a moment he considers finding some but brown had mixed in, interrupted. The the cradle of his arm, out towards me. It I walk over to the closet to change. I ity event. My brother knew our parents keep walking to the steady rhythm of the other way to hold it closer to his person. It mesmerizing pair rolls back and forth, floats a little, bobbing aimlessly. He lifts unbutton my shirt. would make me throw it out if they saw waves crashing the heavy gravel against never occurs to him to place it in his lap. searching for something in the vast body the box up again, and his tears sprinkle “Have you hung your clothes yet?” it. It was too colorful to fit into my closet. the shoreline. It is eerily comforting. It remains by his side and his eyes never of water set in front of him. I realize I am the top, as if to decorate the crest. He Mom calls from the laundry room. He helped me hide it in the second drawer I see him let his hands fall. As he loses wander to it. staring. His bony, flushed cheeks and his pulls one leg after the other, moving for- No clothes are allowed to be lying of the closet, behind all the clothes. I have contact with his tie, the cheap and aged His brow wrinkles as a cool draught truncated nose moved up and down a lit- ward, until the waves are too strong for around the room. Skirts and any other to take the rolling drawer completely out black watch on his wrist is slapped onto envelops the beach. His nose twitches tle every time the wind tickles it. him to stand steadily. The crest is still in type of pants should be folded. Any top of its habitat to reach it. I use my feet to the sand. It makes a soft clank as it is as bits of dry sand blow across his face. He catches a glimpse of the box once his arms, and his feet float along with the garment should be at the top so it doesn’t pull the drawer out until it’s sitting on my cushioned with sharp stones of brown and A few grains stick to his tongue and he more. The lack of vivaciousness in the current. I wonder if he can see me now. create creases and wrinkles. Just hung in bedroom floor by itself, detached from the black colors. tastes their bitterness. A bird flies over- man’s eyes is familiar. He reaches up to my closet. closet. I try to lie down on my chest but The man has dark bushy hair, head and he wearily shades his eyes as scrunch up his already nested hair – I pat “I’ll do them now,” I reply. No reply only my thighs touch the ground. My toes which is unkempt and wavy. He is wear- he looks up at it. The bird’s wings seems down my water-soaked head. He hesitates The Winter Moon means mom barging into my room to are arched up, pressing against the ground ing black, horn-rimmed glasses, which to weigh it down but it soars higher and to open the box. He shifts his position and Danielle Fusaro make sure I am not doing anything bi- to support the weight of everything below shade the emotions in his eyes. It causes higher until the neck has to overextend to drops his head between his knees, as if Dix Hills, NY zarre like throwing my knit skirt over my my knees. I am like a downhill slope with the look of indifference on his face. It is keep watching it. He lowers his neck from chair instead of folding neatly and put- a drop at the end of the hill. Bigger than late afternoon. A dark shadow hangs over the straining position and his eyes wander There are nights when the moon is ripe ting it in the closet. I pull the white shirt expected. More serious than anybody is his left side, between himself and a box. down to see there is now a subtle orange and dangling, a fruit of sorts, over my head but the button closest to my ready for. I feel lightheaded. I inch my The box is in an old case that is wrinkled glow behind the vast darkness spread out waiting to be picked from the black and blue stain of sky. neck stops it from sliding out completely. arms forward into the blank space where and worn. The dark, tan-colored zipper on Sometimes my sister cups her hands together I cough up another burp. I know I won’t my drawer used to sit. I don’t see the teal the side is closed all the way. He brushes the same way she waits for communion, be throwing up tonight after all. I look at scarf. I twist my legs away from the clos- individual stones off the box and keeps it Miami hoping the beaming apple will fall into her palm for a moment the empty hanger. Its bareness emphasiz- et. The top of my head touches the first close to him. Katherine Nichols until it tumbles back off the edge of the earth. es the whiteness of it all. I look to the left, drawer. I lift my arms above me, my bi- The man diverts his gaze to- There is something nurturing about the moonshine, Miami Shores, FL its light savoring the bed sheets where my school uniform vest sits. I grab ceps squishing against the thick master- wards me but from the look in his eyes, I or the binding of a book vest by the collars and pull where my left piece I created. I swipe the dusty ground does not notice me the way I do. His eyes The pavement is baked I’ve been trying so desperately to finish. arm is supposed to go over my neck. My a few times before realizing that with are empty, and his eyebrows droop as if to in our colossal oven, I dread the coming of summer hands reach for the next piece of cloth- each swipe, I had brought the scarf closer block his vision. His eyes flick, catching forming intertwining cracks, only because the nights are so short ing. A soft-grey knit cardigan slips off the to the end of the blank space. I tilt my glimpses of the lifeless activity around tripping tires and dirty shoes. and unfulfilling and no one sleeps; hanger effortlessly. I grab both sleeves head and let my left cheek to rest on the him. Then he struggles to bring his focus because paper plates litter the lawns and place the left sleeve on my left shoul- grey hoodie. The new salt droplets plop back to the sea, looking past me. Occa- Cars that crawl on their backs leak oil stains on worn streets, and tone-deaf crickets compose outside the window. der, right sleeve on my right shoulder. My themselves on the bare floor. I thought sionally, he lifts his hand toward the box Because I like to be alone, arms start to ache in the high position that tears were supposed to be transparent. I and brushes off the light layer of excess their newly painted curves the winter inviting the moon in for coffee withering away. I’m holding them up at. I let them drop see them soiling the floor that the cleaner sand that has compiled from the whispers and making the house drowsy. and both sleeves meet in front of each col- swipes over twice a day. Like soiling the of the wind. The waves grow louder with There is a power in resisting sleep, All movement deadens. in gulping in the silence larbone. I fasten a knot. I find a woven, beauty of the diamond-fresh snow with every flick of his wrist. I stand still. I am Other cars stagger by, and remembering how it feels to be drunk brown leather belt hanging on the left muddy footprints. My tears glisten in the only about ten feet away now. He knows their horns overused— on being awake. side of the closet door. I first received it darkness. Like the stars of the night sky, it will make no difference in the space he disintegrating to nothing I lie numb in the dark attached to a skirt but had cut it out. I use or the glass that portrays something un- chooses to sit, but uses his legs for the first while my sister sleeps it to do the same thing I had done with real to knock hope into the eyes. There is time in hours to move forward. The wind on their stomachs with her hands cradling a lazy cheek, the cardigan. It provides a stronger grasp too much glass. swirls around me but I maintain perfect like the flipped bugs palms still outstretched and waiting around my neck. I breathe as if to create I feel a warm breeze. The smell of salty balance with my feet in the sandy water. they once were, their lives whispering a last goodbye. for the moon to show her the frosty breath on a cold winter day out- air accompanies the perfect temperature The coolness of the wind barely affects what exactly her soul looks like. side. I look to the right door and look hard of the wind. I keep walking and walking. the man. He grasps the box more tightly

10 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 11 in her dad’s car since she started college. he’s nervous. Olivia wonders whether it’s time she visited. “He just acts so sad,” her to sit on top of her desk and swing her All the other times when she’s come back about the driving or whether maybe he is mother reiterated to Olivia the day before, stockinged legs, to ask her students what Almost Blue Turning home for a holiday, her mother has taken feeling the same nerves that she is -- being as she chopped a zucchini for dinner. “I the ‘word on the street’ was. Samantha Pappas Lucy Silbaugh Olivia and Jonas to their dad’s apartment, alone together, trying to remember when started taking him to a psychiatrist a cou- “Oh my god, I remember her. Upper Saddle River, NJ Wyncote, PA dropping them off in front and then pick- they were easy together. Olivia looks at his ple months ago, so now he’s on Prozac and Does she still talk about her blind dates?” ing them up again a few hours later. But hands, holding the steering wheel -- those he has an appointment every week. But he “All the time. I think maybe You’ve hated me since the time in “Be careful,” Olivia’s father says to her, her mother is going out tonight, with a fingers, as long and straight as if they were never wants to talk about it with me. I just she’d have better luck if she ditched the or- second grade when I won the spelling leaning over the unrolled window into the violist from the orchestra, and so their dad carved out of wood. “The hands of a true don’t know what’s going on.” ange sweaters.” bee and you got runner up, but it’s not car. Olivia wonders why he says it to her picked them up from her house. When musician,” her mother used to say often, The sound of the knife clunking They both laugh, and Olivia can my fault you didn’t know how to spell instead of to Jonas; after all, he is the one they saw his car, Olivia and Jonas collected oblivious in these moments to Olivia, on the wooden cutting board was sadly feel the distance between them closing a entrepreneur. Maybe I did have an who is new to driving, and he is the one their things and went outside to greet him; whose hands were average-looking and familiar--it is a noise Olivia remembers little bit. advantage, considering my mother’s with the keys in his fist. Maybe it’s because their mother stayed behind the screen, who, her mother had at last agreed, didn’t from her childhood. She remembers play- “And cello? How’s that?” Quebecois family and my father’s he can’t say it to her quite so often, now watching to make sure they got in before have a knack for violin or piano. It was a ing with Jonas on the family room floor, “It’s good.” He looks at her oddly, Greek one, but I was just giving you that she’s two states away; maybe he miss- she closed the door. Seeing her, Olivia’s great relief at the time, knowing that she only subconsciously aware of the noises seems to pull back, like he isn’t sure why a taste of the life ahead: frustrating, es taking care of her. dad tooted the horn once and gave a small, would never again have to sit in one of the from the kitchen: conversation, laughter, she’s asking. unjust, and causing eight year olds to “Of course we’ll be careful,” she perfunctory wave before turning out onto gray-carpeted practice rooms, trying to their mother cutting things, the faucet Mom says you’re seeing a psy- run offstage in tears. says. Jonas received his learner’s permit the street. Olivia thought how odd this was force melodies out of things far too con- turned on, the fridge sucking open as their chiatrist, she wants to say. Are you okay? The other day I realized that I can only a week ago, and their father brought -- a relationship of seventeen years reduced crete and bulky while her mother looked dad reached in for a beer. How are things going? But she can’t force spell phenolphthalein entirely from them to this grocery store parking lot so to a single honk and wave. on and sighed. But she didn’t have any advice herself to say it. memory, and I think that I have you he could practice. If there were other cars It is Columbus Day weekend. But when Jonas turned four and for her mother. “I don’t know,” she said. “Drive over there, by that to blame. In third grade you won with here, Olivia knows, her dad wouldn’t have Olivia hardly ever comes home for these asked to play the cello, Olivia’s mother was “Maybe just give him some time.” That streetlamp,” she says instead. “We’ll prac- magnolia and I sulked for an hour un- agreed to walk down the block to a Star- short vacations. Flying is expensive, and ecstatic, and from then on Olivia couldn’t was what her friend Kasey had told her, tice some more of those turns.” til swearing that next year I’d come on top again, but that wasn’t necessary bucks, to let Olivia help Jonas with his ever since her parents’ divorce, going home help feeling that she’d come up short some- months ago, back when Olivia still talked He sits upright as he drives, hold- considering you got out in the second three-point-turns. “Don’t worry.” to Boston is almost more exhausting than how. It is difficult to be around them when about Aaron, back when she thought she ing the steering wheel firm in his hands round after forgetting that there are She takes him in as he stands out- it is relaxing. But Aaron has a big psych the conversation turns to music, as it often could fix things or make them better. Just and making small, tight corrections. Ol- two o’s in mongoose. You brought out side the car window: his blue fleece, the test on Wednesday. He’s almost failing, so does. It is like they both know a language give him some time. It was all she could ivia’s mother, similar to Jonas in most the competitive streak I didn’t know new silver swirling out from his temples. he needs to study. Besides, Olivia’s mother that she does not. Olivia never had a gold- think of. other ways, can’t understand this quiet- I had, until it was fifth grade and you He looks tired, worn down, and Olivia confided, she is worried about Jonas. He star talent like that. Not like Jonas’s cello- Olivia wonders if maybe Jonas ness that he has, this precision, as he cuts left for Australia. can’t tell if this is something new or if may- has always been quiet, but lately, she said, playing. Sometimes, seeing the audience is just a quiet kind of person. Even when the car across the parking lot in a perfect This year you came back and you be she’s just forgotten, not seeing him day he seems almost reclusive, practicing for ripple with applause for him, it is impos- they were kids, he never minded being by line. Usually, Olivia is the one who takes didn’t even say hello when we brushed to day. She remembers a picture that stood hours in the basement and then retreating sible not to feel a rush of envy. himself. Together at their grandparents’ after their dad, but in his quietness, Jonas shoulders in the hallway. I knew it on the mantlepiece before her parents sepa- to his room to play on his computer. Maybe, Olivia thinks, this is house in Vermont, Jonas and Olivia made is more like their father. was you from the red of your hair, rated -- her dad on their honeymoon, look- Jonas is in high school now. Near- why her favorite memories of Jonas were up a game called “police,” creeping through Olivia and Jonas will spend to- just barely long enough to tie up, and ing out over the orange horizon. Olivia’s ly three years have passed since Olivia’s often when he was sleeping; then he finally the rustling woods with sticks over their morrow with their mother. Then on Sun- the blisters you’ve always had on your mother, behind the camera, had coaxed a high school days, and already she can feel seemed like her little brother. She remem- shoulders like guns. When Olivia turned day, they will see their dad again. Jonas lips from biting them too much. I saw smile out of him, but even then, the gen- her memories softening, sneakers blurring bers the long road trips they used to take 10 and told Jonas that she had outgrown seems used to all of this switching between you in my AP Chemistry class, and eral air of the photograph was pensive and into green locker doors, the clear shards of to go visit their cousins. Jonas would go to “Police,” he didn’t whine and sulk, as she houses, to the packing and unpacking of we made eye contact, and I knew that quiet. She hasn’t seen the picture for a long memory becoming few and far between. sleep as soon as they got on the highway, secretly hoped he would. Instead, he just toiletries and clothes, but to Olivia it still you knew that I knew it was you as time. She was so different then, wearing head- leaning over onto her lap. She remembers played the game by himself, acting out feels like a foreign game. She was already you signed your name with mine for He scratches his cheek, as if may- bands and pastel cardigans, spending hours being totally transfixed by his torso rising both parts and looking like he was having out of the house when her parents sepa- lab groups. be there’s another paternal precaution he’s each night studying her notes from biolo- and falling, his lips popping quietly. just as much fun as when she played, too. rated, and it was Jonas who first told her I overshot our titration and you forgetting to say. “I’ll be back in an hour, gy, a subject that she now remembers little Maybe that’s why she gets along Jonas steps on the brake just that her dad was staying with friends from yelled at me, but I said it was your all right?” about, a subject that Jonas is taking now. so much better with her dad. The two of before they reached the imaginary curb, work. She remembers that her first emo- fault for not paying enough attention “Sounds good. See you.” He is taller than her, suddenly. He has be- them are simpler than Jonas and her moth- throwing Olivia forward in her seat a little. tion was anger -- that they told him before when it started getting blue. You said Craning over the steering wheel come thinner, too -- when Olivia hugged er, less interesting, less cultured and clev- “Sorry,” he says. they told her. that phenolphthalein turns it pink, dumbass, not blue, and I argued that with the caution of a beginner, Jonas push- him at the airport, she could feel the bones er. Maybe that’s why it was so surprising She forces a smile. “That’s okay. When she came home during the iron makes it a teal color first, and es the key into the ignition. The thrum of in his shoulders through his sweatshirt. when Aaron asked her out. It was thrill- All right, so now you want to turn the car those first months, before her dad found a when the bell rang we angrily agreed the engine fills up the darkness. Now, he obeys her instruction, steering the ing to think that a boy who plays the bass a little as you back up. Use your left hand, place of his own, Olivia saw him only for that it was both of our faults as we It’s hard to remember the last car over into one of the spaces along the guitar and almost-flunks classes would like there we go. Okay, from here it’s easy.” an hour or two on the weekends, at mu- hurried to clean up before our next time they sat like this, side by side and edge. someone as normal as Olivia. He finishes the turn. seums or restaurants. Eventually, he found classes started. alone. “Okay,” Olivia says. “For three- “Turn on your left flasher,” she “So how’s school?” she asks. a fourth-floor suite in an old brownstone You hated me and I probably hated Olivia sits forward. She likes si- point-turns, we have to pretend we’re on a says to Jonas, and he obeys. “Awesome. “Fine.” He pauses. “I have Mrs. downtown, with a sunny sitting room and you, too, but yesterday we competed lence in theory but has trouble with it in street. This is one curb, obviously, and let’s Now drive over to the other curb but stop Juniper for math.” a wrought iron balcony that looked out over who could balance the most redox practice. “Okay,” she directs, “Why don’t say the other one is, um...over there, where before you hit it. A little sharper--you want Olivia laughs, an image of Mrs. over a small dog park. It was strange to equations in ten minutes, and even you park in one of the spots by the curb? the second row of spaces starts. Okay? to end up perpendicular to the road.” Juniper flashing to mind. Rosy-cheeked, a see her dad fill the rooms with furniture of when you won by one equation I found We’ll start practicing there and then move We’re on a street.” She looks over at her brother, his little pudgy, hair always held up with col- his own--broad sofas and simple beds, big myself hiding a smile. around a little.” “Yup, on a street,” Jonas repeats, eyebrows lowered in concentration. He orful barrettes. Still functioned under the framed maps and black-and-white prints. It is the first time Olivia has been nodding quickly, the way he does when does seem more serious than he did the last misconception that she was young enough Their mother stayed in the house where

12 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 13 Olivia and Jonas grew up, with its oriental so Olivia takes a deep breath. Her heart is their cousins lived. They would drive until course, but his actions speak. When Olivia ago -- putting an iPod in an empty cup “Do you think I should call myself Olive?” rugs and hardwood floors, the magnets on beating really fast. She pictures herself and late at night, sometimes, and Jonas remem- was in high school, he came to every one of or bowl to amplify the sound. She knows she asks him. “I kind of like it. It’s got an the fridge, the room in the basement where Jonas as two trains on a track, approaching, bers that he would lean his head on Oliv- her softball games; he printed out her re- all sorts of other tricks, too. That you can edge to it that Olivia doesn’t.” she gave clarinet lessons. Little changed waiting for the inevitable crash. The only ia’s lap and she’d cradle his shoulder with port cards and hung them on the refrigera- bend a spoon back and forth until the silver “What do you mean, an edge?” there; the only large things her dad took way to end this waiting, she thinks, this her hand. It was the best way to fall asleep, tor; he laughed hard at her jokes, even the gets all soft in the middle. That bananas are “I don’t know. I just think Ol- with him were his dresser and his stereo painful suspension, is to speed up and do it listening to the murmur of their parents’ inappropriate ones. Jonas still remembers less yucky if you freeze them first. But the ivia’s kind of boring, don’t you?” and his elliptical. The lawn was cut less herself. “Mom says you’re on Prozac.” conversation from the front. Often, lying how envious it made him -- a feeling un- cup trick is the best. They used to keep a You hate olives, he wants to neatly than when her dad did it, and the His eyes brighten with surprise in his own lonely bed late at night, Jonas furling in his stomach like a vine. blue plastic bowl in her room for that exact say, even though he knows that isn’t the stack of papers on the kitchen desk became for a second before the indignation sets in. wishes that he could relive those moments. The previous Sunday, Jonas and purpose, and Jonas remembers spending point. He wants to say, you are the least even messier without him there to shuffle “What? She told you that?” He slides out from under the car, his father tried throwing a frisbee back and many nights sitting there with her, trying boring person ever. People know me be- it neat, to nag Olivia’s mother about going Olivia flusters. “Well, uh. You gravel scraping his palms. “Fuck,” he says forth in the dog park behind the apartment, to drown out the noise of their parents ar- cause I play the cello; people know you through it with him. But these were small know, I mean, it just came up --” aloud, and takes a brief moment of plea- but after twenty minutes of Jonas’s short guing downstairs. Olivia always knew just because you’re Olivia and you’re awesome details, things that an outside eye would “Really. When did she tell you?” sure in the metallic clicking of the word. throws and fumbling catches, his father the right thing to do in those situations: and confident and bold and funny. I’d give find hard to discern. The car is moving too fast, it “Fuck fuck fuck.” He pictures his parents’ had sighed and called it quits. It seems like that listening to music would help, and so anything for that, really I would. But he Aaron doesn’t understand Ol- seems, and Jonas is moving too slow. His reactions: his mother, face red, eyes flash- that’s often his dad’s attitude towards Jo- would cracking the window to hear traffic doesn’t say that. He doesn’t have Olivia’s ivia’s parents’ relationship at all. The one head turns to her like a white moon. ing, repeating herself, shaking her head. nas: resignation and quiet disappointment. outside, and so would leafing through old boldness, to break things open like that. time she opened up to him about it, af- “It doesn’t matter --” His father, running his hands through his His mother seethes, his father volumes of Calvin & Hobbes in the semi- Instead, he looks at her, at her ter a particularly strained Thanksgiving “No, I want to know. When?” hair like he can’t believe it, followed by retreats. That is the way they are. Olivia darkness. One time last year, he went in long nose and her squarish lips and her weekend last year, he hardly seemed to In her side mirror, Olivia can see that cool and disappointed silence. doesn’t understand it; she was gone by the her room to listen to some music when he tank top with tiny holes cut down the care.“That’s rough, Liv,” he said. “Did one the lamppost approaching like a big metal His mom, Jonas knows, will time they split. Sometimes it feels like she couldn’t fall asleep. But it wasn’t the same sides. He wonders when she became the of them cheat?” arm. “Watch out!” she says, but it’s too want to blame people. She’ll start with isn’t even part of the family, really -- just without her there. kind of person who needs to be named af- “No,” she said. “It was mutual.” late. The car crunches into the steel lamp- Jonas himself: “You have to be careful!” a familiar-faced cousin who comes to stay Sure enough, there is a slightly ter a Mediterranean vegetable in order to “If it makes you feel any better, post, and Olivia feels her body slam back- she will say. “I don’t know what I would every now and then. His parents change crunched plastic cup in the glove compart- feel like she has an ‘edge.’ my parents are split, too,” he said. “My ward onto the seat. do if something happened to you.” Then when she comes, the way they used to ment. Jonas takes it and stepped back out- “I like Olivia,” he says. dad ran off with some girl from the gym,” maybe she’ll soften a little, saying, “I’m a when Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Myron side. “Hmm,” she murmurs noncom- he said, leaning forward to kiss her. But it musician, too, you know. I know what it’s visited. His mom gets up earlier in the “I’m up here,” Olivia calls, and he mittally, exhaling long. Jonas likes the feel- didn’t really feel like good kissing. It felt The engine is still running, but like to be absentminded. We just have to mornings, dressed and in the kitchen mak- looks up to see her lying on her back on ing of the car beneath his back -- the cool more like he was trying to shut her up. Jonas doesn’t really notice it because his be more careful.” She does that often, pulls ing eggs when Jonas comes downstairs. the roof of the car, arms bent into trian- metal, the slight curve against his shoul- They arrive on the far edge of the heart is beating so loudly. Olivia’s hand the “we musicians” card as a way of bond- His father makes an effort, too. He buys gles behind her head. He feels that famil- ders. “The stars are awesome tonight,” she parking lot. reaches over, cranks the key until the noise ing with him. People are always saying the kind of cranberry juice Olivia likes and iar pit of admiration for her: that she is the observes. “What should I do now?” Jonas goes off. The parking lot is too quiet, like it how alike Jonas and his mom are: because tries to start conversations more. kind of person who can climb on top of a He looks up at the sky; she is asks her. is sealed in a jar. of their dark eyes, straight bangs, quiet Outside, Jonas can hear that Ol- car without thinking twice; who can ace a right. What strikes him more than the “Same thing as before. We’re just “Well, shit,” Olivia says, tugging voices -- but mostly, he knows, because ivia is still on the phone. When he hears test without studying at all; who can skip stars themselves, though, is the negative going to try it again, but see if you can re- at her lip with her teeth. She opens her they both play music. Sometimes he can’t her say, “okay, bye,” he pushes his door school to go sledding, as she did one winter indigo space between them, like ink has member the steps this time.” door, lets it hang there for a second, and help wondering. If he hadn’t stumbled into open and gets out of the car. day in her senior year, without feeling any been poured across a piece of paper, leav- He drives away from the then she gets out and walks behind the car cello, would people still say that? “Did you call Dad or Mom?” he regret. Olivia will never have to take pills ing only a few white specks clean. The streetlamp, stops before he hit the yellow to take a better look. Through the rearview One time Jonas remembers com- asks. or see a shrink. It’s like the answers to life, song ends and a new one plays. This one is line of paint. mirror, Jonas can see that the trunk is fold- ing into the basement to ask his mom a “Both,” she says. “First Dad, but to happiness, just come flashing out at her softer, more melted-sounding. “Really,” Olivia insists. “How are ed neatly around the pole. question while she was giving a clarinet then I knew Mom would freak if I didn’t in perfect neon clarity. “Did you know,” says Olivia, things going?” She touches the stud in her “Come here,” Olivia says, and lesson. The door to her studio was open an tell her. You know how she is. They’re on “Come on up,” she says. “that the lifespan of a star is determined by nose, the tiny pebble of metal, and then re- so he does. The air is cold and silky in the inch, and he could see his mom’s back. “I their way.” She pauses and tilts her head. He hoists himself up, the car its mass?” turns her hand to her lap. She got it pierced way that it only is in early October. know it’s difficult,” she was saying. “But “I think you must have hit the accelerator creaking a little as it takes his weight. He Olivia is like this: she can pull a few months ago, at Aaron’s urging. The “Can you squeeze under the car you have to make it easy. Music is the by mistake as you were backing up, be- stretches out next to her and puts her iPod random facts from the air, startle people. drummer in his favorite band has a nose and take a look at the wheels?” easiest thing in the world if you just lean cause we’re crunched in pretty well. I’m, into the cup. He starts scrolling through Did you know that all polar bears are left- ring -- she is tough, sexy, and, Olivia pri- He inches his way underneath a little. Let yourself relax.” Jonas knew ex- um, not even sure Dad’ll be able to drive towards Simon and Garfunkel, which is handed? That laughing strengthens the vately thinks, a little scary. Both of her and looks up at the car belly, a labyrinth of actly what she meant. He had returned up- this thing.” what they always used to listen to togeth- immune system? A mayfly has a lifespan parents asked her about it, and she’d been gray tubes that look like intestines. None stairs without asking his question -- it was He puts his face in his hands er, but Olivia reaches forward and tilts it of less than 24 hours, did you know that? vague. “It didn’t hurt at all,” she lied. “And of it means anything. Fuck fuck fuck, he better, he thought, that she didn’t know again. towards herself. “My friend introduced me “Small stars can live for trillions I really wanted it. I went with a friend.” thinks. He can’t believe he did this. he heard. Now often when he practices “Don’t worry,” Olivia says. “I to this band,” she says, playing a differ- of years, while some big stars might live “They’re okay.” “I’m not sure,” he says to Olivia. he finds those words floating through his don’t think it was really your fault.” She ent song instead, one he doesn’t know. It for only a million.” She laughs. “Only a She raises her eyebrows. “Real- “I really don’t know.” mind: “Let yourself relax.” He never knew looks up at the sky and he follows her gaze. sounds sharp and a little tinny, like barbed million. I guess that’s not a phrase you hear ly?” There’s a pause, and then he can the right way to say it before. The sky is clear and the stars look sharp wire. Jonas knows she didn’t mean it too often.” He puts the car into reverse, looks hear that she is talking on the phone, prob- “I’m sorry,” he hears Olivia say- somehow, like they could cut you. “Let’s meanly, but he feels a little sting of nostal- They look at the sky. “Isn’t it over his shoulder, backs up. ably to one of their parents, but he can’t ing outside the car. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m listen to some music.” She reaches into her gia anyway, that things can’t be like they amazing,” she says, “how slowly things “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t they make out any of the words. The blur of the sorry. Geez!” sweatshirt pocket and pulls out her iPod. used to. change?” be?” conversation reminds him of the road trips He is almost more worried about “Want to check and see if Dad has a cup in They lie there and listen for a He knows exactly what she “Well, you know...Mom and they used to take when he and Olivia were facing his father. It is obvious how proud the car?” while. means. How one day a tree outside your Dad,” she says obliquely. He shrugs, and younger, from Boston to Baltimore, where of Olivia his father is. He doesn’t say so, of It is a trick she taught him long Her voice cuts into the darkness. window is green and sun-splashed and in a

14 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 15 month it is yellow and in another month says. “This is a very serious matter.” “And Mom, Dad, please. This is totally all the leaves are fallen, only the change “Grave,” Jonas adds. They laugh my fault. I was talking to Jonas while he was so gradual that you didn’t even no- and slide off the car roof onto the ground, was trying to concentrate. I’m really, re- Alysha Smith tice it happening. How you start playing Olivia still holding the cup with her iPod ally sorry.” South Hackensack, NJ cello when you are five and improve so in it. For once, their mom looks slowly that it doesn’t feel like anything, “Kids?” their father’s voice rises speechless. “I...” and then how suddenly you look around over the music, loud and gruff. Jonas’s father steps forward. and realize that it is how everyone knows Olivia snorts. “Of course,” she “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve called for it to you. How your parents are happy and says. “They got here at the exact same be towed. We’ll see how much damage love each other and then start loving each time. What are the odds of that, I mean, there is. It’ll be fine.” other less and less, incrementally, until really?” Their mom seems to collect her one day they sit you down in the living “Jonas and Olivia?” their mom’s bearings a little. “Yes. We’ll talk about room and say, “We’re splitting up.” And voice joins, too, and Jonas is reminded this more in the morning, but for now how slowly people change, too. Sisters, again of those road trips long ago -- his let’s just get home.” She turns to their fa- even. parents’ voices calling his name as he sur- ther. “Can I give you a ride?” He remembers Olivia’s gradu- faced slowly from his dreams. He scratches his cheek. “Uh, ation three years ago -- sitting with his “Mom?” Olivia calls. sure. Thanks.” parents in hot folding chairs while a lawn “Dad?” Jonas says. They get into their mom’s car. mower droned far away. He remembers Olivia takes the iPod out of the Mom driving, Dad shotgun, Jonas and watching her walk across the stage, her cup and puts it in her pocket, and the mu- Olivia in the back. The streetlights white robes loose and divine somehow. sic is sucked away. He can hear with per- blur outside Jonas’s window, smudges He remembers thinking, that is my sis- fect acuity all the noises of the night: the of white and red and green. He leans ter, and when they said Olivia Adams crickets in the trees beyond the lot, the towards Olivia instinctively, and she and she leaned forward to accept her di- bugs buzzing around the light from the reaches her hand out to his shoulder, but ploma, he felt this same fist-in-the-stom- streetlamp. Olivia breathing beside him, she seems to realize at the same time he ach of feelings: admiration and jealousy his mother coming over. does that they have both grown and that and pride and nostalgia all fused into one. “Oh my god, are you guys okay?” there isn’t enough space anymore. It is a It was the feeling, he now realizes, of She leans over, grips his shoulders tight. change that has happened slowly; Jonas missing someone who was still there. His father is a dark silhouette behind her. isn’t surprised, really. So he settles for the “Sorry if I startled you earlier,” Then her voice changes and Jonas braces dip between her shoulder and her neck, she says. “I just, you know. I wanted to himself. “Jonas, I really can’t tell you and she puts her arm around him. And as make sure you were okay.” how ang--” the car rumbles down the interstate, they He swallows. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re fine,” Olivia interrupts. let themselves relax. “I’ll be okay.” She pushes her hair behind her ears. She doesn’t press. She shifts a little closer to him on the car, so that their th shoulders and elbows touch. It’s nice. November 19 “How’s college?” he asks. Alexis Beale “Well...” He looks at her, hair splayed on the dark blue metal, her sil- Germantown, MD houette white against the sky. For a sec- ond he sees something as if from back- Two years ago tomorrow was the first time I ever really drank with someone And I remember how guilty I felt stage, a quick flash of something familiar Because I was supposed to visit you in the gap between the curtains. But then And I didn’t he blinks and she returns to herself, this I have but one emotion of heavy sighs new self. “It’s good. It’s okay.” Then you died the very next day Next to the Windowsill and it lives without and turning pages. He doesn’t press either. They And I blamed myself, Mariel Reilly identification. Days like these have no reason. just look up at the stars together, and that Because maybe it was God punishing me Beverly, MA To fold my knees to my chest I am almost thoroughly is enough. For what I had done and rest my head convinced of that. A car door slams across the I have words on the denim covered legs But at the time, and I have reason, parking lot, and they can both hear their And I can’t tell you how sorry I am of someone who was reading, I don’t have reason either. mom’s shoes moving over the asphalt. but there are days, and politely ignoring me, And the words I need could be found For choosing him over you that day undoubtably, Olivia giggles. “Shitty shitty my inconsistent sleep in the book I wasn’t reading. And that summer when I can not bind the two and my fidgeting. shit,” she whispers, and Jonas laughs too. in holy matrimony, No clichéd pattering of rain “Pile of shit.” It’s almost been two years or duct tape them together, on the roof and windows, Olivia tries to straighten her And I still don’t quite feel like myself sometimes held hostage. but rather just the sound face, but she bursts out into giggles again. And I’m really not sure why that is. “We should really not be laughing,” she

16 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 17 His eyes quickly scanned the street- Shrubs of evergreen by the After a couple seconds of a vain lights ahead, who stood there remain- Traffic Lights streets seem out of place, as they are search for an answer, self-criticism fol- ing silently, just as they have been Outside, There Peter Samuel Kim innocently positioned under the winter lows. But he soon just shrugs it off, and doing for years. Was it the road? The Were Fireflies Seoul, South Korea branches of ginkgo trees. decides not to look for a reason and not fading yellow street paint and erod- Robin Shafto to think at all. ing asphalt proved him wrong. Was it Livingston, NJ Eh. Fuck it. Now with no sound to block him? The words don’t sound like his ears, he realizes the small ticking Soon, another cold shudder I listened to gossip that wasn’t meant for me: what they are supposed to. Rather than sounds from the blinking orbs. They crawls down his spine. But this time, I am alone. Wouldn’t dance with him. No… and so much lipstick… words, they are a whispery clamor. A are quite hypnotizing, as they are syn- it is different. This time, it spreads to by the chocolate fountain… wait. No it must have been… breathy emphasis on the “F”, heavy chronized with the steady pulse of the every corner of his body. This time, it The moment his family left acne and I thought it would be gone by… gasps, and barely audible syllables lights. stays. him for his grandparent’s house, the Kyle dances close. jumble out, all at the same time. Along sweet taste of freedom delighted him. with them, his body stumbles down They actually make sound... He was finally alone. He became the Candyland. That was the theme. on to the dark, dry asphalt road, right center of his world. The streetlights I wiped orange dust on my stiff dress. under the traffic lights. The moment Clarity is leaving his mind. When the rest of the world was swirled around him, putting him on It wasn’t the dress’s fault. I had no curves to hug, his sweat-soaked windbreaker touches asleep, he was awake. Again. As usual. spotlight. Shadows were cast outwards so it jumped away from my body in anticipation of the female form the elderly, yet lifeless surface, a cold My family must be asleep right As planned. A cold but pleasant winter from the soles of his feet. His parents and was cold when I shifted my weight and felt the fabric on my hip. shudder creeps down his spine, but now. breeze swiftly swept past his cheeks and were already exiled outcasts under his I was larval, white and wormy like something from under a log. quickly goes away as his body adjusts his bare calves. Before him, stretched reign. Anything that didn’t suit his My lip gloss smelled like artificial strawberries, but not enough to drown out to the newfound sensation. The seemingly perpetual oscil- only perpetual asphalt, dimly lit by taste was bound for banishment and sweat and borrowed perfume on other girls. lating orange loses its sensibility. streetlights. His timeworn gray Nike his neglect. There wasn’t a single per- The night sky is a poignant re- running shoes, now enlarged to size son or entity in the whole city who I crossed my arms over my absent chest minder of the passing of time. Its eter- Did I turn off the lights in the liv- 285 from 275, weakly treaded, showing could interfere with his decisions. He and pressed my knobby knocking knees together. nal depth evokes both introspection ing room? that it wasn’t their first time standing was finally free. Lunar New Year and Outside, there were fireflies. Warm clear air. and retrospection. Multiple emotions in front of the road’s unfriendly gaping the migration of people have granted No loud soupy music pouring from cheap speakers. contradict within the minds under it. The coldness of the asphalt mouth. him with complete independence, than Turning back to the table, I realized I was alone. starts to numb his skin. no one could hamper with. January A slow song. Am I really alone? After swaying his neck one 30th’s run was supposed to be just an- And I watched Kyle dance close. They’d be coming back tomorrow more time from side to side for a final other nightly routine for him. Again, He looks to his sides. Time afternoon. stretch, he felt uneasiness slither ahead from 11PM to 11:27PM. As usual, 3 laps smoothes the crevasses between the of him. A tranquil sense of fear of be- around his apartment area. 6.89 kilo- asphalt pebbles into obsidian. Time The chilly damp air does not ing accompanied by solitude and being meters, as planned. Nothing was to wears out the yellow centerline and taste like nor smell like anything. deafened by silence unsettlingly crept disturb the system. Is this remoteness really the inde- cracks the paint, joining the parallel downwards, from his feet to his head. pendence that I wanted? Is freedom really City Kid twin factions, who had been long sepa- What should I have for breakfast His shadow was the only shadow mov- Only after the whole run does worth this burdensome solitude? Am I ac- Elle Wallace tomorrow? ing. His breath was the only breath he realize that utter freedom is the tually even free? rated. Time embeds memory within. Hummelstown, PA The white-painted speed limit that taken. His presence was the only pres- source of his uneasiness. People are read 30, now skewed into bland gibber- Even the light’s sound soon ence present. gone. Not just out of sight. Not just But he decides not to look for he eats Wheaties on his porch steps ish from his point of view, is no longer disintegrates into white noise. out of touch. Nonexistent. The sense an answer and not to think at all. wrestles his brother to the sidewalk legible. Bizarre anxiety struck him, but of loneliness overwhelms him as the c’mon man, play fair I... Is this... not strong enough to send him back runner’s high and adrenaline intoxi- tapes Michael Jordan to his bedroom door home. Step by step, he marched for- cates his mind. The sense of complete Then, he looks up. The traffic punches at his mirror with Balboa eyes Thoughts fade out. ward, slowly gaining speed. He passed autonomy, immature eagerness and He lets go. light above him has two luminescent walks alongside newspaper tumbleweeds orbs placed side by side, encased its by a green road sign that said “Gang- absolute isolation swirl within him. shuffles with nappy-haired boys cold metallic box. One at a time, the I... nam - 1km”. The nightly silence was fi- With sweat and heat pouring down all orbs emit blinking eerie orange. They nally refilled with footsteps and pants. over his body, he lies down. He looks spinning basketballs on their fingers blink 56 times per minute, and 1.071 He lets go. He avoided sidewalks. The road was to his sides. Then, he looks up. His leans on chain-link fences times a second, from left to right, right finally reinvigorated with adrenaline. glasses quickly fog. Something in his whistling as the uptown girls pass to left, left to right, and so on. Every inch of the road was a crosswalk mind slowly swelled up, but as soon as hip sway and lip gloss for him. He was finally restored with he started to look for a way to explain home in time for dinner in the kitchen As his body’s desire for air life and security. it faded away. His glasses were not the rests his head on mom’s shoulder at the stove slowly quenches, his panting breath, There is something extremely only things fogged. The lights are no son don’t you get in trouble which was initially at a much faster liberating about this. It is something However, the moment he longer blinking; they are endlessly, eyelids shut to nighttime sirens tempo than the lights’, calms into a one wouldn’t even imagine to do so thought he had found comfort, uncer- quietly blaring. His skin burns from calling, calling similar rhythm, and then eventually without the intention of suicide. tainty dominated. He still could not senselessness. The night air is barren. to the bored city boys. goes silent. Finally, he lets out an ex- sense any tangible changes that were It smells bleak. A blanket of silence hausted, but satisfied sigh. Why? clearly around him. Was it the lights? buries everything.

18 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 19 last year when I was blissfully unaware that a few nights earlier when I saw my mom playing songs I’d only dreamed of hearing she became a mother, into a happier person Hands in pockets and headphones on, I didn’t have much time before he moved make the exact same movement as we sat live. I felt like the whole night was a page with more purpose, and that’s the only ver- I walked off in that huddled way that de- At Seventeen two states away. From northern Washing- in two plastic chairs under a dim light bulb ripped out of an imaginary book that de- sion I knew of her. Until recently. fined my mood and actions those first few Cierra Ingersoll ton to southern California is a distance that that hangs from the awning of our house. It scribed my dream life. So many factors collided at just that months of my junior year. I was blown can be driven in a few days, but too far to be was late, and she was slurring her words as I traveled back three years fur- wrong time and velocity, and after the dust with the wind at my back across the bridge Los Angeles, CA settled, she was left clinging to alcohol. It any comfort to me. she tried to explain to me things I couldn’t ther, to when my mom and first step dad and onto the boardwalk that lined a small divorced, and her, my older sister Celeste, was the last thing I would have ever imag- I walked across the overpass into understand. She apologized over and over section of the river. It was so small, such I used to think I was a normal kid. The and I lived alone. It was morning, and mom ined to happen to her, and it didn’t make differences between most kids I knew and downtown Mount Vernon where the spicy for being drunk, and repeated things she’d a tiny structure of twigs that for some rea- warm smells of the natural foods co-op already said and forgotten as she always was driving us to school, and we were all sense to me. But nothing made sense any- me were few, but major. I’ve always had smiling and laughing despite the fact that it more. This was my mom who taught Sun- son pulled my heart out and left it flopping an especially strong bond with my family, confronted my nose. There was a crowd does when she’s that gone. Between little at my feet. I could remember every Fourth spilling out from their packed deli, hip- sobs and sentences that made no sense she was a Monday. When it was just the three day school at our Nazarene church, smil- which to me, is my mother Stacie and my of us, we were always happy, it didn’t mat- ing in front of the kids, wearing a bright of July for years, sitting on that boardwalk pie looking people with dreadlocks who mumbled a few words that told me of the sister Celeste. My mom’s two husbands ter that life was suddenly different and we red skirt and looking like the picture of and watching the fireworks shoot and flare gripped steaming cups of coffee and chatted fight she and my step dad had earlier. were constantly straining to win affection had no money. Every night we ate dinner happiness. I didn’t know how things had in the sky, lighting up the faces of my mom cheerfully. The music played on in my ears, “He wants me to be perfect. I just can’t from Celeste and me, but to us they re- together, and I would tell her about things crumbled so far. I didn’t know what, if any, and Celeste and illuminating the crowd mained neutral people. Like pieces of furni- muting the voices around me, the steps of do it. I can’t be perfect,” she said. we were doing at school, or new songs we role I played in her ordeal or how I could people on the pavement, and the cars that “Nobody’s perfect, Mom,” I said. around us. ture that were always present, a vague addi- were learning in band. She listened and help. I just knew I was sad and cold. And it This mood lingered just as the rain drove by in the puddled filled street. Beyond the small circle of light that seemed like it had been this way for so long. tion to memories but not meaningful ones. had always had something sweet to say. did, and I felt the net of drops form on my I continued on, hands stuffed shined out of our one lonely light bulb, the She never responded with a patronizing, This bone chilling winter made me long Except when they abandoned their role of hat like tiny bits of cloud. I stopped in at snuggly deep into my pockets, up the small night suddenly seemed darker. “Mmhmm, that’s nice sweetie.” for summer just as the pressing heat of July background fixtures and became swirling the co-op and tried fleetingly to do my alge- tornadoes of rage, threatening to destroy hill past the art store to the bridge that This was the way it had been going most Most nights we would talk about ri- makes me wish for December. But when separated east from west Mount Vernon. nights for the last many months. It didn’t bra homework, though I soon lost patience, my mother’s fragile self-esteem. But the diculous things, like how Celeste’s history the chill in my life was from something be- I walked slowly across the structure. I always end with us talking about what and packed up and left. My next class was happy times outweighed the bad. Things teacher resembled a walrus or other stupid sides the weather, all I could remember and stopped and leaned over the edge to admire happened, but it always ended up with her bits of life that were so funny for no reason. French, which I slumped through, absorb- weren’t perfect, but I recognized that the wish for were the times before when there the steel gray of the cold river beneath me, drunk, hammered in the kitchen, banging I remember one time Celeste was making ing the beautiful words but none of the world could be both ugly and beautiful. I was a warmth in my soul that I had taken the ghostly way water appeared in win- and dropping things, pretending to be so- fun of something I had said, so I flicked an general happiness of the people around me. found peace and things to be happy about, for granted. Now, being in both a literal ter, so harsh and uninviting. The current ber enough to put the dishes away. I don’t olive in her direction. It landed on her hand After I would return home and work on as- never worried for long about problems that and internal winter, I shivered. It started flowed south as I walked west, crossing know if the act was for her or me, but it and she squealed and threw one back. Soon signments for the online course I was tak- were small and easily fixable. While in on my skin but I felt it go inside my soul over to the other side and turning immedi- didn’t make either of us feel better. A few we were all chucking the remnant olives ing at the local community college. those childhood and early teen years which until my whole body was trembling like the ately left into the park. hours later she would be in bed if she made from that night’s tacos at each other. One At 11:02 I took the short walk from the I have so recently left, I never imagined whizzed through the air and landed in my leaves clinging to branches above me. The water and the air were cold, it, or blacked out on the bathroom floor. building to the back parking lot. I glanced that I would become a brooding teenager, hair, another hit the window and stuck. Fi- When I checked the time it was the daughter of an alcoholic mother. but I had grown warm under all my lay- Her husband Scott would try to bring her at the cemetery adjacent to the high school, nally, hysterical, we realized that all the ol- nine a.m. I calculated how long it would So many things have changed since then. ers and unzipped my coat as I walked down to bed, but he wasn’t strong enough to pick tombstones barely fifty yards away. past the playground and field to a secluded up and carry anyone. So he would have to ives had been thrown and we collapsed into take to walk back to school, and realized I My house, school, the state I lived in. My laughter. That was how my mom used to “No wonder this places always feels so clearing that opened into the river once I wait until she was at least conscious, then had to leave. So I exhaled one last drag and hair color. be; free, fun, my best friend. grim,” I thought as I pulled away in my walked past the trees. The water was too drag her drooping frame over his shoulder flicked the butt where it fell, hissing, into I had just turned seventeen. That morn- A gust of wind shook the flashback little blue Kia, heater roaring. high to get too far, so I perched on the edge. to the bed. the eternal river. ing I crunched down the hill by the dis- from my mind. I remembered that despite trict office, on icy sidewalks and grass that Toes close to the icy water, I watched its I squeezed my eyes shut to erase every good thing that had ever happened, acccompanied the glassy fog of my breath. perpetual flow and marveled at this one that vision from my mind. There were oth- no matter how many Sundays of my child- My boots were dark, with socks pulled over permanent thing in the world, one force er things in life to be happy about. I told hood were spent with my mom at church, dark pants. I was wearing a thick coat over that goes on no matter the constant change myself to go back, to find the best memory no matter how many years I remember her of fleeting things around it. It was solid and I could think of. The cold river and gray sky Hornet’s Nest a sweater, knitted gloves, and a hat. So as a loving mother, there were some things Taylor Petty many layers protecting me from November consistent. faded away and for a moment I stood on a she couldn’t handle. I knew it wasn’t all in western Washington, but still the chill I thought of five years earlier, when street on a Seattle night, city lights reflect- Scott’s fault. Mom’s parents divorced when Woodbridge, VA of the early morning clung to my body. I everything in my life was so different. A ing in the unnaturally large pupils of the she was twelve, and after that she never re- thought briefly of the large brick building different step father, a different, home, a people around me. I went back to that sum- ceived much familial support. I don’t think with scratching suffocating drowning honey, she’d ever been fully at peace. Her dad was clover honey sunken through your fingertips, words heavy. on the Mount Vernon High School campus mother who I’d never seen drunk, no con- mer night when Joey and I stood outside i kiss the sweetness from your pointed teeth, and acid will burn everything through. distant and her relationship with her mom that I should’ve been inside, and the Alge- cept of romantic relationships or that feel- the WAMU Theater, hearts pumping and acid clawing its way was shaky. At nineteen after giving birth bra II that I should’ve been learning, but as ing that chokes me when someone I love is minds alight with the effects of the magi- from my lips to yours, scabs forming we did this to each other: far away. And five years earlier, this river cal potion we’d drank earlier that magnified to Celeste she left our drug addict father in the corners of your mouth. my orange blossom to your killer bee, I cut class I remember thinking that over- and moved in with her dad and his wife all, this was a much better use of my time. had been flowing the same way, at the same every good sound or sensation and made it each “i love you” dragged out rate and down the same route as it did now. the best thing in the world. The cigarette and started over. She tried to put her past sunday, harvest, like skinning an animal, extracting a splinter Headphones on, listening to insecurities behind her and focused on be- Death Cab for Cutie croon his poems set to Ice had been melting in the mountains and we passed back and forth filled my head peeling back layers of skin that fractures bone. moving downhill to the Skagit River and with a buzz that was as fantastically beau- ing a mother, and for a long time it worked. to pull honeycombs from music, his starkly beautiful sentences sank Then we grew up, her second marriage fell into my heart and into my mood. He sang, then out to the Puget Sound for more cen- tiful as the night around us. The music of brittle skeletons. autumn soon, and hibernation. turies than I could imagine. Kaskade boomed. The theatre was packed apart and then she married Scott. But that crystallization. “The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flat- didn’t develop into the fairytale she expect- I unzipped a pocket of the bag hanging at with a massive crowd cheering and dancing there are craters sinking into your lips that quiet shaking humming lands to your door have been silenced, for- ed and all the sadness that she thought she my side and brought out a box holding two and pulsing together under the spectacle of that bee stings won’t swell. before the strike. evermore… And the distance is quite sim- had buried somehow rose up again. I don’t my throat is clogging up ply much too far for me to row…” cigarettes and a dark blue lighter. I stuck a lights that flashed around us. And in the know the whole story. I don’t know every I related the lyrics I heard to Joey, my cigarette between my lips and shielded it front, commanding this huge audience, was past demon that haunted her because she first love and boyfriend of two years, and to from the breeze to light it. I flashed back to one of my favorite musicians, DJ Kaskade, kept things from me. She changed when

20 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 21 ered suicide, and contemplated suicide. but her attempts were fruitless, I was the be clear, it’s gonna look like mud. color, and other times she got blonde high- days). I think I love him, but I’m not en- A Champion’s Guide I’m not going to lie, I did too. But who only one left. But I will help you swim, lights. I wasn’t sure if she washed her hair. tirely sure. I’m only 18 years old, I’ve got hasn’t? When I died, would I be look- Yes I will help you swim. She helped me more than the meds. plenty of time to figure this shit out. to Climbing Whatever ing down on the people I adored? Where Emma is better. When we hang out, she Mountain You Want would I be looking from, a tree or the sky? I told her that my brother had asked When Emma came out of the hospital, actually laughs. She makes plans, and we Tina Weingroff Would I come back and not remember the The idiot didn’t write down my num- where she had been. My too-cool-newly- we went to church an hour early. We sat go on hikes and to the movies. We hang life I had worked so hard to obtain? What ber. What an idiot! Only my idiot of a pubescent 16 year old brother that hid in in the back row and put our feet up on the out with Ingrid, one of the first to go who Upper Saddle River, NJ if it was worse than right now. Could I best friend would forget to write down my his room whenever any of my friends pews, wearing bulky boots and skinny has almost fully turned back to her normal give up pizza? number so she could call me from the hos- came to the house. That made her cry. jeans. We ate pretzels and talked about self. Emma and I go to church every Sun- Occasionally I think that spiders are filling pital. Thank god her sister had it, other- When we would hang up, around 9:30 ev- nothing in particular, while we waited day, to the mass and then Youth Group my mouth, even when I’m awake, this essay is BREAKFAST PIZZA wise I would be screwed. When she called ery night, I would sit in silence and con- for everyone else to get there. We locked where we both have a very strong support about that. Emma loves pizza. from the 000-000-0000 number I picked up sider smoking the 3/4ths empty pack of pinkies and prayed for her mom who had system and lots of friends. Things seem to She would eat it for breakfast. immediately, I was familiar with this se- Marlboro Reds sitting at the bottom of my passed away from breast cancer in March. be looking up for the best these days. This is dedicated to Brian Sella and Mat I believe she has. cret correspondence. It could have been a sock drawer. I only smoked them when Well I did, in my head. But I don’t know Uychich of The Front Bottoms. call from the president, but I would have I was really distressed. I didn’t even like what she prayed for. I assume she did, but I still don’t know what happened. I Emma and I were the only ones left. We rathered it been from her. When she called smoking, I just liked watching the smoke I can’t read minds. don’t think I will ever know what hap- It is not unusual for me to feel abso- were closer than ever, I felt like we were she filled me in on all the lies our other gather above my head and slowly dissipate pened. I don’t think I ever want to know lutely nothing. Sometimes the medicine holding onto a life saver in a tumbling sea friends had told. There was no micro- into nothing, something I wish I could do. She was different. Her hands shook what happened. numbs out the sadness, but it doesn’t of our friends misery. We spent all of our wave room to hook up in, we were idiots I’m jealous of cigarettes and the power more than normal, and she dyed her pink plaster a smile on my face. So I settle for time together, going shopping, watching for believing that there was a room filled they have over people. No one would ever hair to black. Her eye make-up had gone numb, because it is better than feeling sui- movies, sending funny pictures back and with microwaves. She told me the truths be addicted to me, constantly needing me from pretty gold to black and blue, she cidal. When I do feel something I have forth, you know, friend stuff. We went to as well, the food was only subpar and every 45 minutes or so. I would never give didn’t bother to cover the purple-ness a range of emotions; happy, sad, angry, different schools but it didn’t stop us from they did give you your meds from paper someone cancer. I had never been trea- under her eyes. Her lips were always sleepy, tearful, joyful, grumpy, etc., but it hanging out together several times a week. cups just like in Girl Interrupted. I didn’t sured and held carefully like a lit cigarette. chapped. Her fingernails were bitten down is rare for me to be scared. I was scared for I would read her my poetry and she would ask how she had tried to kill herself and the nub and the scars on her arm that had a long time. Somehow I implanted myself make me cookies or cut my hair, we were she didn’t mention of it. I didn’t want to I wish I had a dog. My dog had been been healing very well were tauntingly into a group of mentally unstable teenage artists in different respects. I didn’t think know, it would only make my nightmares named Theo, and he was the greatest dog pink. The melody in her voice was gone, girls, not the “OMG LOOK AT THOSE anything could ever break us apart. more vivid. in the universe. He only had one eye, and bare and raw. Even when she smiled her SHOES” mentally unstable kind of girls, Cigarette was losing vision in it fast. He wasn’t eyes didn’t. I felt lost without her, I tried the mentally unstable kind of girls that lis- It was at lunch. I was sitting with Nick In my nightmares Emma and I would the cuddliest, he was very prudent about to be supportive, like I was when her Mom Jessica Maddox tened to punk music and did drugs. The and Zack when I checked my phone for be sitting on a pier. The ocean would be a coming to you first, but if he was curled died, but there was nothing left for me to kind of girls that had mental problems of Towson, MD the 1st time that day. There was the text, vibrant light blue color, like her hair was up on the couch you could lay your head do. She wouldn’t eat the food I brought all sorts. Somehow I survived the begin- surrounded by twitter notifications. “im in September and the sunset was a beauti- on him and sleep for hours. He was old, over, she barely ate anything. She didn’t ning years of our friendship. I survived Appreciate me being sent away.”. A small message from ful pink-orange color. Our pinkies would but he played like a puppy. He never bit do anything but lay in her bed and listen the million late night phone calls, the tear- before the ash Emma made me scared. I hadn’t been be locked as we looked at the strange wa- or growled or jumped, but he would come to the same sad albums over and over. She burns your throat, ful voices that were cracked and aged from scared in so long. ter. The nightmare started when I looked when you called him and lick the make- would only go out if there were boys to the wrinkles appear, smoking. I held hands with everyone, and the taxes go up: at her face. I would turn my head in slow up off your face. I went to camp for eight kiss or some kind of substance to take her barely slept, and somehow managed to be you have five minutes. Emma: im being sent away motion and see the bones clearly under her weeks one summer, and when I came back mind off of the numbness she felt. That’s the only one out of the six of us to not get Tina: haha no way r u joking? skin. She had always been pale, but in this he was close to the end. We put him down what she told me, that she couldn’t feel Draw me sent to a mental hospital. from my cardboard cave Emma: this one is real. dream her skin was translucent. I could in September. I started going to therapy anything. She knew that I loved her, but and brandish me Tina: oh my god. what happened? are see her skull clearly, and as I examined three times a week instead of two. my hugs just felt like pressure, she didn’t like a sword Until recently, Emma and I were the you okay? her face she would start to cry. I would feel the emotion. When I asked what I as I lie between your lips, victors. We were secretly filled with pride, unlit, hanging, Emma: sunday night was rough. ill call try to wipe the tears away but as I pulled By the time Emma went away I was could do to help her, she said I could give ready for the spark. we rode incognito chariots of healthy you from the hospital. my hand away her skin would come with only seeing my therapist once every other her a gun. Graciously, minds and we were proud. The environ- I will accept Tina: i love you so much it hurts, youre it, like the film on a boiling pot of pasta if week. Bernice Killington, she was not a ment we were in was filled with toxic your ring of lipstick, my best friend you let it sit for too long. That’s when the doctor but I called her Dr. K. She was in This is bullshit. I don’t even know what ruby red staining waste, they would gossip about the coun- Emma: i love you too, ill call you when screaming would start and I would wake her late 50’s, with saggy bronze skin and triggered her. I started to lean on my oth- my bleached skin cilors at the hospital, how they had secretly like an unforgotten kiss. i can. up. too much eyeliner on her lower waterline. er friends. I couldn’t be surrounded with Strike the box, hooked up with boys in the laundry room. Tina: i love you Her lipstick never stayed on, and she didn’t negativity. I checked up on her as much lay me over the flame They talked about everything except the and inhale, When she called she would hum Twin really give good advice, but she was cheap as I could, but I was tired of the exhausted treatment. Emma and I talked about the feeling the bittersweet smoke I cried. It had been months since I cried. Sized Mattress by our favorite band The and would quietly sip on her XXL cup of zombie like responses. This has happened kiss the crevices outside world. We talked about the shoot- But it happened, the tears slipped out of Front Bottoms to fill the silence. I wouldn’t Dunkin Donuts ice tea (which I’m pretty before, with all of them, it would pass. of your lungs ings at Newtown, the party at Nick’s as I unravel for you. my eyes like melting ice cream. They tell her about how I couldn’t sleep, I would sure was 1/8th vodka) while I spilled my house, and we whispered how much we Watch me bloom didn’t taste like ice cream, and neither did tell her that Ingrid and I attempted to guts. She took notes when she felt like it Christopher is older than me. He is 22 like a small wildflower, missed our friends. They talked about the the mascara that came with it. I bolted make cookies and they burnt to a crisp, or on a yellow legal pad in the basement of and is a senior at Rutgers. He’s 6”4 and full, dripping grey medication they took as if it was a prize. petals of ash from the lunch table and locked myself in how Christopher (my boyfriend) showed an office building in Westwood. She asked I’m 5”4. He’s my boyfriend, and I don’t onto your skirt They compared milligram numbers and the bathroom, never wanting to come out me a really cool new band and as soon as me about my medication sometimes, just think I would make it without him. We before I’m brushed away. looked down their noses at people with In a moment again. After the tears had run out I went to she got home we would drive aimlessly to see if it ever fluctuated (often) and she had only been dating for a month when less. They said horrible things about each I will lie in a cemetery the TVP room late and didn’t say a word. and listen to the whole album. would write it down in tiny neat hand- Emma went away, and I leaned on him of soggy remains, other, about their boyfriends and even the I quietly played soccer in gym class, and writing. I never asked about her children, more than I should have, but he under- but I will laugh bands they loved. I was still not scared. as you strut away, went home like a zombie. I told my mom This is for the lions living in the wiry broke even though there were pictures of them stood. He lives 43 minutes away from me, carrying my thick perfume what had happened, she tried to support down frames of my friends bodies. all over the room, and I still haven’t. but he comes over whenever I ask or when in your chest. They all thought about suicide, consid- me as best as she could through the phone, When the flood waters comes, it ain’t gonna Sometimes she dyed her hair a dark red he can tell I’m upset (which is often these

22 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 23 off in places like temples and hope that the right will.” Luk Kreung they will be someone else’s problem…It’s a I turn my head to Grandma and it is as Robert Conner shame…” if the bones and muscles fueling her spirit Hide and Seek I hold Grandma’s warm hands and we have withered like dead leaves during a Exeter, NH stride through the compound, towards the dreaded Thai drought. I shake myself out Jacqueline Ose A collection of golden brown gazebos soaring stairways of the central pagoda. Al- of the shock and start speaking Thai to the Vernon, CT dotted around a vast central pagoda makes though her back hunches as if she is diving monk. Enunciating each syllable, I state, up the newest Buddhist temple in Korat, towards the floor, her head tilts toward me, “Holy father. I trust you may have made a grandmother’s hometown. A knee-length “Hey this is a good one; what allowing the few evidences of teeth she has mistake. I am just here to visit my Grand- do you call a cow with no fence of white bars encircles the compound, left to glint at the touch of the sun’s rays. mother during this sacred holiday. We extending towards many corners of the legs?” Aidan shouted ahead. She talks in a hoarse whisper, but at times, wish to donate to this temple, as it is new “Shhhhh! Oliver’s going to Thai countryside, and reaching the lush, her voice switches from a low growl to a and not all the gazebos are complete.” The lime-green foothills of the rainforest-clad hear us. You can tell your little sharp, high-pitched cheer, as though she is monk silences. A blank expression wash- jokes later.” Maddy whispered, mountain range. As I enter the compound, singing. “What a blessing it is that Vesak es over his face and he stares at me with my shoes submerge into the soil with each pulling him behind the wood- falls on one of your long weekends this squinting eyes. pile. A smooth spring breeze step I take along the temple paths. A glossy year.” “Son, I apologize. I should not have banner suspends across the part of the fence rustled the tarp above them. “Yeah!” Chuckling, I respond, “It’s nice made false guesses nor should I have spo- They sat in the prickly grass, facing the main road and declares in bold to take a break from the whole family and ken those words I did. Your family must listening to the faint rhythm of Thai letters: “Vesak Holiday May 2007 – all that city pollution to spend it here in Ko- be proud that you can speak Thai so well! Oliver’s counting. Worship the lord Buddha on the full moon rat for once.” Most luk kreungs who come here cannot “Do you think he’ll find us?” of the sixth lunar month.” A rich, garlicky “What a precious grandson you are. speak Thai very well, and so we have a the little boy whispered. and creamy aroma of green curry from the Now, we are at this new temple as they still very hard time communicating with them. “I don’t know. Maybe if you nearby market filters though the mango need donations for some of their gazebos.” Many of them also come from very diffi- shush, we’ll actually win this trees and fences, swarming the vacant spac- Grandma slips a white envelope into my cult situations…” time.” Maddy murmured as es between each gazebo. Grandma giggles, pocket and I take it as a hint that it is my I nod my head and say, “Yes holy father, she peeked around the massive “Bobby, I think you know what we will be duty as a boy to hand over a donation to the I completely understand.” I place the enve- pile. They sat in silence for a having for lunch today!” older monks, as they cannot interact with lope on a tray in front of him as the other while, listening to the squeals I nod and smile. “Yes Grandma. Korat females. Flawless soapstone steps make up monks closest to us shift their weights to and shouts of their friends run- green curry.” The aroma floats amidst the the stairways. As we climb up the countless focus their attention onto me. ning around the yard. Aidan humid air and overpowers the faint scents levels, I press my hands into the railings One of them asks, “Son, if you were shuffled through the weeds. He of orchids on wild vines that interlace the to savor the grainy mosaic that invokes a to enter a monastery as a student-monk, turned to Maddy and watched edges of gazebos and fences. A muffled light, prickling sensation on my palms. At would you shave off all your hair?” her intently as she searched the chiming of water against rocks from the the top of the stairs, a chain of towering col- “Yes holy father, I promise I would lawn. adjacent river mingles through the linger- umns gleams under a thick coating of var- shave off my hair and both my eyebrows.” “What are you looking for?” ing silence of the new morning. nish and the columns align both sides of an The head monk places his hands together he asked tentatively. The mango trees, gazebos, and pagoda archway, leading into the main hall with all and recites a prayer. The monks around “Someplace new to hide. We cast sheltering shadows for the temple’s the senior monks. Multiple tiers of slanted him join the deep and throaty chants while have to win the game, remem- young student-monks to sit and meditate. A roofs rest on the columns. The roofs create I look back at Grandma’s smiling face. ber?” Maddy whispered back. dozen or so boys meditate in complete still- visual rhythms as sparkly Garuda orna- “Why don’t you tell me anoth- ness, like statues sinking into the ground. ments resembling the beaks of a bird perch er cow joke while we’re wait- Their loose, saffron robes flow over their at each end. Sonnet for the Captor ing?” She watched as Aidan’s bodies, covering up all breathing move- Inside the main hallway, the monks sit Brittany Crow blue eyes lit up for the first ments. In keeping with traditional Bud- on long rows on a raised platform. Respect- time in months. dhist customs, the young student-monks ing basic temple etiquette, I take off my Woodbridge, VA “Oh! Okay what do you get have shaved their heads and eyebrows. The shoes and go down on my knees. I shuf- from a pampered cow?” Aidan boys meditating are Thai. Full Thai. Their fle over to one of the monks. I hold onto They say I write to satisfy the lips, beamed. Maddy tapped her fin- complexions are the common shade of dark Grandma’s envelope as she sits in one cor- That my fingers lost their virginity ger against her nose, pretend- and sandy beige with a tawny undertone. ner. As I move closer to him, his eyes focus As a paper symphony stroked their tips Ben Knecht ing to be stumped. However, not all the student-monks are onto something, somewhere else, and I do And the loose leaf love letter bridled me. “Hmm, I don’t remember this Hubbardsville, NY meditating. A few of the boys run around not exist. I glance down the platform and one…” as if the temple is their playground. Mud the other monks are whispering amongst They say I bleed ink from a liar’s whip, “Spoiled milk! Haha I got tints the tips of their saffron robes. One or That my veins spill in foolish submission you!” he teased. each other. The monk I edge closer towards “You’re such a silly goose. two of them are bald, whereas the other few mutters a string of fragmented English As the King of Hearts (yes mine) deals a trip have visible hints of unshaven hair. All of Which ever sends me falling into him. Okay Aidan, it’s our turn for words in a thick and husky tone: “Not. the game. Last one over the these boys have eyebrows. These boys have No. Sorry. Not. Cannot. Now. Sorry.” I complexions that are a blend of the Thai fence is spoiled milk!” Their stay still and silent. He then shouts right And they say I’ll be nothing in the end, mud-caked feet raced across dark beige and a Caucasian paleness. The through me, his words, in Thai, directed That I will be ground into words and ink mixture creates a hue in between honey the lawn and scrambled over towards Grandma. “Ma’am, we are deeply As I become something they cannot mend: the barbed wire fence. Their and ivory. These boys, like myself, are luk sorry for your circumstances, but we sim- A broken poem that does naught but think. kreungs, the Thai word for “half child.” striped uniforms flapped in ply cannot accept any more luk kreungs into the breeze to the cacophony Sighing, Grandma says, “I’m glad you our monastery. There are many alterna- And think and think and think will I, then be of German soldiers’ shouts didn’t turn out like those luk kreungs. What- tives to orphanages. The monkhood is a sa- The lyric work of art he wrenched from me. and gunfire. ever families they have tend to drop them cred experience for those youngsters with

24 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 25 the circular metal base down with a gob of the rise in the road each morning on the ten to open doors for her and producers cial. Mama and I were sitting on the couch, wax and holding the string upright with a way to school, I look in the rearview mir- Preserving Chestnuts pluck her off the street to be on television. cloth crumpled between us, the result of Gravity popsicle stick. ror and see the sunrise over the water, the I only noticed when her face relaxed and Mama’s attempt to hem a stout man’s suit Catherine Aviles pastel colors different depending on the Rachael Allen she looked unfamiliar, a beautiful guest in from South Boston. Mama sometimes Cianan and Cecilia were too young to time of year. I see the water, sometimes her own home. Auntie would have made a tailored clothes or mended curtains from East Sandwich, MA Canton, MA good actress, without even trying. I guess eat popsicles, too young to hold a knife, dotted with a sail or two, and I don’t think home to bring in more money, dropping she did. off the repaired pieces at the drapery fac- too young to use a stove, too young to of them. It’s very wrong of me, because I Wax isn’t like clay. You can’t cut it with When I was fifteen, my aunt was in the “How much are they paying you tory off of the highway. I went with her a wire and have the lovely, smooth-sided, color with crayons. Once I start thinking probably wouldn’t live here if it weren’t for army. At least, that’s what I imagined down there?” Auntie narrowed her eyes. once to deliver curtains she’d made and when we watched her commercial on tele- moldable chunks slide off. You have to use about all the things they never got to do, them. So maybe we wouldn’t have grown She was tracing patterns in the sticky pick up her check, and felt glad she worked I can’t stop. I see a tree and I think, they up together anyway, and my brother and vision. Huddled in our living room, we wooden table as she looked at me. at home, glad she wasn’t bent into a seat in a spike or a knife to stab the block, careful saw her figure lean out of a top floor apart- not to stab yourself or the cutting board, never got to climb a tree. I eat an apple I would be Eagles fans and I wouldn’t be “$1.60 an hour.” the factory, barely touching the fabric as and I wonder, would they have tossed it afraid of cities. Maybe it’s all moot. ment in Boston’s North End and beckon “$1.60? For dealing with the loons it bit through a sewing machine that beat chipping off bits and pieces with pressure- her television son home for dinner as if up like a baseball before the first bite, too? in this town?” Auntie called everyone a ceaselessly against itself, one in a hundred whitened crackly edges. The chipping she were waving American planes onto I’ll never know. I see that the wax has melted to an even loon who wasn’t Italian. “Here, I’ll dou- machines studding the warehouse. inevitably produces a lot of useless white the tarmac. Anthony, Anthony! Her voice ble that if you clean my basement.” She Dad looked at Nickie, then dust that looks like the coconut shavings Every picture I have of them is land- hue, so I uncork the tiny vial of “Ocean” rang deep, gritty. The announcer called scaped, a sideways smiling face with a tuft fragrance and squeeze a few clear drops got up for her purse. glanced at Auntie on television. The my grandmother uses for snow on her gin- for Prince Spaghetti, the slogan brimming “You already promised that to of light brown hair and a thin yellow rub- into the blue. Lifting the pot by the han- screen switched from her to Anthony run- gerbread houses at Christmastime. with what felt like Auntie’s call for John, Nickie.” I paused. “Not that he’ll do it.” ning through the streets of the North End. ber tube running under the nose, because dle with my left hand, I steady the jelly her real son, a corporal in the 604th Air Nickie milked his position as eldest son in The voice-over filled the silence. I sweep my collection of wax chunks they couldn’t lift their heads. glass on the counter with my right. The Commando Squadron, to come sit at the the family now that John was away—he “With Rich, Steve and Chris?” I head of the table. into the pot on the stove, brushing the dust My diving coach once told me a human blue wax creeps viscously to the edge as I got everything and did nothing. could tell Nickie was trying to look taller head weighs ten pounds, and he threw a tip the pot carefully, and then it falls and Auntie sat back down, money by the way he pushed his shoulders back. in as well just in case it will add anything, Dad liked to say that after Aun- and go back to work on the stippled wax ten pound weight to the bottom of the pool fills the jelly glass, clouding behind the in hand. “Take it anyways.” She took a He held his arms against his sides, as if he and made me fetch it back to prove that walls. When it reaches the lip, I stop. The tie took her husband’s name over twenty couple Jordan almonds from the bowl in were preparing to salute a lieutenant. block with my knife. years ago, her name didn’t sound very Ital- ten pounds is a lot for a little girl to carry surface of the wax quavers as I adjust the the center of the table and placed them on Dad shook his head. ian. Mary O’Brien. My name, though, fit- through the water. I learned to tuck my popsicle stick to keep the wick from being top of the bills. “What am I supposed to Nickie’s shoulders deflated and I stood at this same green granite coun- ting my olive skin and curly brown hair, do with the money from the commercial Mama sat up straighter. ter about this time last year, rolling pin in head in correctly after that, but my head sucked down and drowned, and I sigh be- sounded like a cartoon character. Francesca never feels that heavy. I wonder if their cause when the wax hardens, it will cave, anyways? Spend it on pasta?” “Angelo…” Mama nodded to- hand, my brother and sister on my right Fellini, Frankie Fellini. Nickie used to joke it “Thanks, Auntie.” I gnawed on heads felt heavy, or if they could even and my new candle will have a depression wards Nickie, who had sat back down and left and my aunt and uncle across from sounded so goofy that I would look good at one of the almonds. I could never get just and was sullenly digging his fist into the understand what heavy felt like. If their in the center. I love the flatness of the wax me, the countertop in between littered the drive-in next to Donald Duck. Maybe the sweet topcoat. couch. with cutting boards, sugar dough, flour, muscles didn’t work, did they still try? before it dries, and I hate to see it sink. I’d make the title shot with Sophia Loren “You shouldn’t be working. Re- “Regina,” he said with the same if people believed I was related to Federico bowls of icing and food coloring, and jars Maybe once I chip the rock-hard mind your father. Marry you to a doctor, inflection. He started speaking in Ital- Fellini. Auntie would have hated it if I on jars of sprinkles. It was pretty cramped, The Robin’s Egg Blue wax from the block, melting and changing, the wax lawyer—” ian. His words slurred together around crayon bits spreads like a cold-blooded starts to feel a heaviness and cannot lift became an actress. “—Engineer. I know. Auntie, Mama’s responses, the rhythms fading to but it could have been more cramped, and “Do something with those brains happier, even though it was Christmas- blush into the liquefying ice, and I turn up its head. I can look at the miniature sink- I’m only fifteen.” background noise. Their accents didn’t of yours, Frankie!” she liked to say while “I was only two years older when sound so strong within our house, not the time and there was coconut snow on the the heat to even it out. I rip open the pack- hole and see the dimples at the corners of I was at her apartment eating something, I married your Uncle Sean,” Auntie said. way their words seemed to clip like broken gingerbread houses. I wished, as I had ev- age of scent I bought this morning and my cousin’s mouths, because in my mind usually fiadoni cookies or a piece of ricotta take out the vial labeled “Ocean.” they are infants, and their spine muscles She stood and moved two steps to the English at the store or at school. Nickie ery year before and would every year after, pie. She’d pinch my cheek, bloated with stove to start dinner, a lemon patterned and I didn’t know Italian, other than the that I could not move my elbows to reach didn’t work, but their smile muscles never pastry dough, and screw her eyebrows up, We moved here – to the ocean – be- dishcloth thrown over her shoulder. basics and random words like “handker- for the yellow frosting for my bell-shaped skipped a beat. the way she did when her Italian soccer cause they were dying. When I drive over I ate another almond to keep from chief” or “fig.” Dad always thought we cookie. I wished that I would bump into team was losing. She’d sigh, “Que faccia saying that she didn’t marry a doctor, law- should learn, but Mama wanted us to be the arm of a girl about my height and she bella!” yer or engineer, but an army drum major. American, dunked straight into the pot. I had been waiting to tell Auntie would tell me to watch it because my el- Girl-Youth Gets Steamed Auntie was plunging pasta into about my first job until we were alone. bows are sharp. I wished that her brother – Auntie was on television almost the boiling water on television. The steam Katie Hibner “At Russell’s Mart, the one off every night. I sometimes waited for it, sit- bubbled up at her. like mine – would laugh and say yeah, stay Atlantic Avenue, Auntie.” We were sit- away from those things. Always caught Mason, OH ting cross-legged in front of the television, Dad looked up when they were ting at her kitchen table, my head bent holding my breath or counting the dents ready for us to understand. between being the oldest at the children’s under the low-hanging light. Auntie’s Shards of soprano trills hail girls as they in the ceiling or something else mindless “Nick, you can go, if—” Dad held table and the youngest at the adults’, my apartment was the human-size version of until her voice sounded from the screen. It out his hand for Nickie to shake, “—if, peel from the kiddie pool, a mouse hole. Everything knit together: brother and I had wondered what it would crossing into the convenient corn-syrup slushee was as if she were standing in our kitchen, you apologize to Auntie for missing din- be like to grow up with them, our cous- couches skinned with sheets to block sun- calling Anthony! the way she used to call ner with her and you walk Frankie home tundra where their fellow volcanoes shudder light, the television wedged in a corner, ins, and they with us. Would her hair have beneath their high school-malted glazes and rumble John when he and Nickie would take too from the market next week, so she doesn’t turned dark and curly? Would he have tuned to the news, its antennas kinked like long to come in for dinner. Auntie hated have to walk alone in the dark.” to hook holes. Then their tanned-orange legs rickety Auntie’s hair at the end of the day, and loved rugby shirts and pumpkin seeds? to bound them up to their own personal waiting. “Food doesn’t taste good cold,” “We have dinner with Auntie al- four kitchen chairs glued to the linoleum she’d say, then seat herself at the head of most every night,” Nickie said. “It’s just head-ballooning; they’re an Amstel aurora, only floor. I toss six bits of broken Robin’s Egg Blue to be reclaimed, saran-wrapped the table before one of the boys had the one time.” Auntie was forty-one, Dad’s chance. “Don’t be disrespectful.” crayon into the pot of melting wax and set into a man’s half-numb appendage: younger sister by four years. Widow to to work setting the eight-inch wick in the an elephant ear draped over “Dad, can I go out for dinner to- I kept my eyes focused on the Uncle Sean, Auntie was still pretty. She morrow night?” Nickie asked Dad one screen, watching for a hint, a plate placed bottom of the empty jelly glass, sticking his fireplace. was the type of pretty that made men has- Thursday night during Auntie’s commer- down too casually or a smile too wide

26 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 27 when the boy walked in, some motion on Uncle Sean lost his job at the shipyard her front teeth, the “Fellini Gap.” We all down by the chickens, holding his breath, Steve, loitered behind him. Seventeen quickly as the water hissed. Dad put his screen to expose the Auntie of us from and decided to enlist in the army. There had it, except for Mama. Mine had finally feeling his heart strike his chest and feath- and almost out of high school, they tucked hand out behind her back. the Auntie of them, the clean cut Italian was a misfire incident at Fort Chaffee. started to close with my braces. ers tickle his nose as he tried not to sneeze, themselves into oxford shirts and high- We turned at Nickie’s intake of breath. family who wore their immigrant status He died quick. The army base was not at I liked hearing them talk about Italy, the strobes of American planes patrolling waisted pants, Nickie wearing a leather He was fiddling with the porcelain figu- on their sleeves. I sometimes wore long fault. They were sorry for her loss. His though. It felt as if we were special, sealed above flickering through the slates in the jacket. He nodded towards my nametag, rines that dotted the windowsill, the sleeves in the summer to keep my skin name came with the honor of dying for safely into our four by four kitchen. Aun- cart like the fireworks above us. which the manager had printed “Frank” smallest of which had almost fallen. from tanning too much. the country. I remembered playing check- tie started telling us the most stories once Dad told us to go to bed after that story. and I had added “ie.” “You haven’t quit “Nickie, be careful with those. John “Sorry.” Nickie shook Dad’s hand. ers on the floor with Nickie and John the John left, narratives of Nonno John com- The heat from the radiator bit at us, tin- yet?” sent them back from Saigon last summer.” Auntie’s commercial ended. week after and hearing Auntie and Dad in ing to America when Auntie was two and gling, as we went inside. I heard Nickie I rolled my eyes. “What’s up, Nickie?” Auntie said Saigon with a certain twinge “And walk Frankie home next week.” the kitchen. Dad six. He worked as a cobbler and sent switch on the radio in his room. I closed He wouldn’t be spotted buying something in her voice. I stiffened at the mention Dad winked at me as Nickie frowned. “Private O’Brien, they said, Angelo!” money home each month, until Dad final- my eyes, turning into my pillow. I could from me unless he had to tell me some- of John. Auntie didn’t usually talk about I smirked at Nickie. I knew Dad was Auntie was talking fast. “Mannaggia, not ly came over at sixteen, having never met feel my shoulder start to numb under my thing. And he had long since abandoned him. Nickie’s cheeks visibly burned. He proud of my job. His smile had twisted even Sean O’Brien! Some stupido alle- his father. weight and I imagined Auntie calling An- his promise to Dad to walk me home. placed the figurine back gently as if the approvingly when I told him, an expres- giance to a country.” I could hardly picture Dad in any way thony home for dinner, which morphed “Ma’s working tonight. Dinner’s at glass was already shattered. Auntie quick- sion Mama in particular usually reserved I let John win that round. Auntie spoke but the now, my father with the slight into John in Vietnam, uniformed in air- Auntie’s.” Nickie started to turn towards ly turned back to the stove. for Nickie. I found him at work, the place only Italian for the next two weeks and build and hunched shoulders that some- plane cockpits, flying over Dad like crows. the door. “Oh, and Rich here will have a I stared at the raised paint pattern on the where Dad was tucked into the in be- John started swearing in Italian. how made him appear stronger. I tried pack of cigarettes.” Rich and Steve, who ceiling. The heat dried my eyes. It stung tween, the neutrality of the airport and its I wondered what John was like now. It to envision the story of a younger Dad Russell’s Mart was the kind of store were flicking pennies into the tip jar, like the time Nickie and I tried one of unknown crowds. For ten years, he had had been a year since Auntie’s only son, winning an orange for packing the most where nobody bought more than vegeta- cracked up. Auntie’s cigarettes. I was nine and Nickie worked at the lost baggage claim, the for- freckled and pale like his Irish father, had tomatoes into a glass bottle to store for bles for dinner or where the passerby chose I glared at Nickie. “This is the slushie eleven, the two of us sitting cross-legged eign man with the wide toothed grin be- tucked himself into the American Air winter. Auntie had to wait inside and to ask if he could use the restroom. The counter. Go over to the cashiers.” on Auntie’s living room floor, the box in hind the desk, amidst the conveyor belt of Force. John was probably the one who wedge chestnuts in jars of sand to preserve store’s stout frame was wedged between Nickie copied my face. “Fine.” He front of us as unimposing as the cigarette people entering Boston and losing parts of told the most jokes and stayed the longest them, the bark of eleven chestnut chunks two much taller office buildings. Its brick glanced over his shoulder and saw the box we had at home, jammed with screws themselves. after drills, and I bet he had no idea his plopped into earthy grain callusing Aun- exterior blobbed with graffiti was painted manager was looking. He jumped up to and nails. I started crying once Nickie lit “A job that will never be outdated,” he mother was now on television. That’s tie’s fingertips. She kept busy while Dad over white but for a small window. reach me over the counter and pinched my the rolls, afraid the smoke would fog up liked to say. “People will always be losing what Nickie would be like anyways. got to play outside by the water fountains. I had been walking home from school cheek. “Que faccia bella!” he said loudly, Auntie’s four windows until we couldn’t luggage, Frankie.” Dad was different though. Dad, un- “Naples wasn’t so dirty then,” Auntie with Eveline Rogers to pick up her moth- laying on an accent. see. He had clapped his hand on my shoul- like Uncle Sean, served for four years said that New Year’s Eve, blowing smoke er’s curtains Mama had patched. We went I swatted his hand away, knocking over “Frankie,” Nickie called ten minutes der when I first told him. in World War II. I only heard him talk between her lips. We were all crammed inside the market to buy wax bottle can- a basket of straws instead. The man- later that night. “Can you get the cheese? “Good for you,” he said, ears rising with about it twice. The first came the night out onto the fire escape, waiting to see dies. The wax tasted like dried glue and I ager still stood by the canned foods aisle, You’re closest.” He smiled so I could see his grin. His accent was fainter in the air- after John was drafted. At dinner, Nickie fireworks over Boston Harbor. Dad was ate only the blue ones, spitting the rubbery watching. “Go away, Nickie!” I said. the chewed pasta in his mouth. port, or maybe I just wasn’t as aware of said he wished he were a year older. Dad inside, his head bowed out the window. I tops onto the sidewalk as we stopped to He laughed and ducked outside, friends “No. Gross.” I sat down and reached it. Waiting for his shift to finish, I wan- put down his fork and stiffened, turning leaned against Mama’s legs, the backs of watch the television perched in the small behind him. I jabbed the straws back into for the bread. dered around the airport that night, feeling towards him. my thighs laced with the metal pattern be- corner window. Eveline had somehow the plastic container one by one. Auntie looked at me and I knew what proud, as if the airport and its terminals “Don’t wish to fight for something you neath me. The air tasted stale from Aun- reached the topic of Dad’s job. was coming. were mine, as if I could condense them don’t know.” tie’s cigarette. “They don’t get confused and think he’s It was the fourth night we’d had “Fine! I’ll get the cheese. Because and pack them inside me. I sat in the do- The second time happened during Auntie rested against the railing, hand a tourist?” she said. dinner with Auntie that week and she was Nickie’s my brother.” I tugged open the mestic flight waiting area for an hour and a car ride to get my braces checked. At curving over bumpy metal. Her voice fit I squinted a bit and swallowed. particularly focused on chopping peppers. refrigerator door, almost knocking down a watched the flight list rotate, sporadically stoplights, Dad turned and looked at me, into the night, whoops and hum of cars “Oh, did you get a sour one?” She She’d been having dinner with us almost cutting board from the top. I put the bowl clacking to another place in America. then let slip some detail about his tour falling into place behind her. She told pointed to the candies. every night since the New Year. That of cheese in front of Nickie, letting it clat- in Europe. At one light, he told me that us how she and Dad would run up and I shook my head. New Year marked a new decade, and, for ter. Auntie flinched. Her hands moved Auntie once decided we should go the sergeant would take him outside the down the stairs from the town center to I turned to the television for somewhere Auntie, a three-month silence from John quickly to pat her hair. on a cruise. She planned the whole thing classroom during training and give him the wharf, the smell of humid fish stick- to look. News about the war, then an in- since her last letter. “Regina’s working tonight?” Auntie out: we would go the last week in Septem- tests orally, since he was the only one ing to them. When Dad was twelve, he surance commercial, and then Auntie. Auntie lived two streets down from said. She spooned cheese onto her pasta. ber because that was Dad’s slowest time who couldn’t read English. At another snuck onto the back of a poultry cart set Auntie said marry a doctor, lawyer or en- us, in an apartment on Prince Street. It Dad nodded. “Rush order on curtains.” at work; we’d get a room for Nickie and light, he said he was assigned to Germany, for Casadrino. I watched Dad. He was gineer, but there she was, wide face, gap bulged out of the alley where she and her Auntie had moved the spoon too hastily. John, a room for Dad and Mama, and then and then to Rome to flag down American looking away, watching the lights crack in grin, heavy voice hemorrhaging into the neighbors sat at night to smoke and talk. Grains of cheese spilt onto the tablecloth a room for her and me. planes onto the tarmac. the sky, but Auntie was still talking, un- screen. I didn’t say anything to Eveline, In late summer, when the feasts came and she exhaled sharply. She got up for “We’ll get the one closest to the pool,” “They liked us there,” he said, refer- fazed. A trail of smoke from her cigarette wanting to hoard Auntie’s presence my- around, we’d drape a ribbon of dollar bills the sponge and began scraping the cheese she told me, and my nine-year old self ring to himself and the eight Americans marked her hand gestures as she spoke. self, as if I could fill up that much space out the window to the statue of Madonna. into her palm cupped below the table. I smiled, feeling special. She began sav- stationed there, “the uniforms. Just four Dad blinked roughly as it blew his way. too. I asked the store manager for a job Auntie would blow a kiss out the window watched crumbs escape onto the floor. ing too, picking pennies and quarters up years older than you. Nineteen.” He I didn’t know what to say when Dad be- at the market the next day, thinking that to the people trailing below, in the way Auntie walked to the sink and threw the off the ground during her walks as if her said it again, before realizing the light had came serious. Auntie’s commercial was telling me go do she blew us kisses out the door when we sponge in, clapping her hands loudly over old jam jar could be filled up with enough turned green. “He went to find our uncle because we something, Frankie. would leave. Auntie liked to think she the drain to brush off the cheese. metal to furnish our trip. Dad’s accent was even thicker when he were out of money. We’d already spent Most days I stacked shelves, but knew everyone down the North End. “I’m thinking of selling books,” she said “I just want to move around,” she told talked about Italy, Auntie’s and Mama’s Nonno John’s money that month on a Wednesdays I worked the slushie ma- I lay on my back that night by the radia- suddenly. She turned to face us, reddened Dad one day during dinner, tugging her too. I usually didn’t like them to talk to doctor when I had the mumps.” Auntie chine. The blue sludge was mostly bought tor, feeling the heat on my scalp. I could hands grasping the countertop behind her. wedding ring on and off. my friends from outside the five blocks glanced at Dad, waiting for him to jump by the middle school girls who made their see Dad cutting up vegetables for the salad Dad looked up. “We’ve moved enough,” Dad replied. of our neighborhood because then they in, but he just looked at her. cups sticky with Bonne Bell crescents and next to Auntie. Their shoulders bent in “There’s this bookstore, down by Fleet The planning ended when the wait might think I sounded different, too. I had heard the story so many times, filled the tip can considerably, not wanting the same way from this angle. The boiling Street that sells books in Italian, and I was ended, three weeks long, short compared Auntie’s accent wasn’t as noticeable in the I knew how it went, how the cart had to to carry change. water foamed as Auntie tossed in a pinch thinking of working there.” She flipped to John’s yearlong absence now. Auntie commercial, but she had the strongest ac- pass Nazi officers, how they checked the “Frank!” Nickie walked in the door of salt. I knew she had done that motion a strand of hair back into her bun, then got the call she’d been expecting ever since cent, the most pronounced gap between back for stowaways, how Dad had to lie on a Wednesday. His friends, Rich and hundreds of times, but she stepped back seemed to remember her hands were still

28 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 29 sticky. She pulled it back out. tie’s commercial on television while wait- change. She heard the reply, a blatant “Do you…need to, Mary?” Dad was ing for Nickie to finish taking a shower. “no.” Their hands clasped and she gave a clearly uncomfortable speaking about Auntie had told us she pretended she was Like Cream on Milk Detox truthful expression that spoke more than The Magician money at the table. Nickie stared at the Mary Tyler Moore all throughout filming, Annalee Tai words. Her eyebrows lifted in melancholy Parisa Thepmankorn bend and her eyes dilated, softened. Her ceiling. even when they brought in new boxes of Denville, NJ Rebecca Greenberg New York, NY lips parted then closed again with dissolu- “I need to do something. John isn’t tomatoes and pasta for each of the takes, tion, as if to respond in acceptance of her you pull creaky cream doves here.” uneaten food she took home for dinner Providence, RI She shaved her head. It was not the uncertainty; she had trouble pinning it from your sleeves, Dad seemed to recognize something that night. The producers loved that. work of her mother’s hair stylists who down but for some reason the tangibility release them, but they always return like the helpless flowers more in that sentence because his shoul- “‘Authenticity, right there,’ they said Forget, for a moment, spoke in sharp, piquant english and of absence was incredibly soothing. ders softened with his voice. He put down when I packed up the food,” Auntie said they are. a street performer the thirsty sidewalk, clicked their tongues. Her cut was from his fork. “Mary, you can’t blame him for later. “But really, they think I look young a cramped studio apartment bathroom, Her fingers laced around her ears and wedged between happy and the salt, the plows— wealthy, lighting matches into flames going.” enough to be a twelve-year old’s mother?” with aromas of bleach and sour stenches tickled the temples of her glass forehead. for a career. my hairdresser’s kids Auntie turned back to the sink, letting And she didn’t look young enough to just take in the spruce-tops, urging her to work hastily and mess- In her head spun the buzz of others, lined up, all three crow-skin dreamers, the water splat against the metal. I could be a twelve-year old’s mother. She was the corniced roofs that surround you. ily. She had found an old electric razor whispering that she only did it for the slack-jawed and awed into see her starting to detach, the way she did pressed flat into the screen, her voice What would the world become between her father’s bottles of pungent attention. But the vibrations only made silence like the rest. her laugh and her index traced zigzags when someone would mention John or the bending to the wrong son. It was all were its concavity to fill— cologne and after-shave. At night, she me. would play with the idea, switching the around her bare cranium. Her shoulders war or, at one point, Uncle Sean. Nickie wrong. The little boy with the curly hair if the earth refused to absorb, razor on and off again, snipping at the collapsed over fetal-tucked knees and i wondered how many times and I were too young to remember, but was wrong and the pasta plunged into the if the sun refused to melt winter’s caprice? ends of her brick-red mane, bristle and her intertwined hands encompassed the you can repeat a trick Dad told us that after Uncle Sean left for pot the wrong way and Auntie kept smil- around us would settle thick linen, falling wiry. The abrasive buzz terrified her, whole of her head. She had always said until their licorice eyes finally the army Auntie wouldn’t talk about him. ing even though I knew she was just filling delicately but packing hard with the coldness of making the experience all the more entic- presence was a mere hair away from glaze over or your deft fingers stutter A week after his departure, she started her time with waiting for the wrong son. ing. On a loud night, she screamed at the burden-- a smile grew from this moment like groggy first words, taking walks around the harbor at five in I dropped one chestnut in the jar now. razor as it penetrated her knotted head of redemption that was feasible and sat- but it is a secret and you are a magician Permanence. and you say its answer you can’t reveal. the morning. One night on his way home I think it cracked when it hit the bottom. of burnt straw. The electric razor gave isfying. Youthful nakedness was simply that night your tin can slept from work, Dad found her sitting on “Your father working today?” Auntie her a fuzzy military cut, with which she refreshing, and old minds never seemed with a hollow stomach. for now, someone’s boat. Auntie told him she was asked. Around us would be the beginnings of a solid Deluge, was fervently unsatisfied. So she grabbed to understand such simplicity, always their sorrow and suffering searching for some implicit reasoning waiting for the fish to emerge from the “Yeah. Mama, too.” and one so lovely the open blade-razor sitting beside her is dispelled. no one would think of an Ark. sink and viscerally shaped her scalp like or concealed emotion. It was a shame water, watching the wrinkles they made Auntie placed a filled jar to the side and a deranged sculptor working with wet because it gave everything an oppressive day after day i stay solemnly still - from beneath, the flicks of their tails. On started a new one. She seemed comforted Slowly our asphalt-and-steel world clay. She didn’t bother to use a mirror weight--little did they realize that it was i never realized how hard it is the way home she had told Dad we should by the motion. would be and nicked the skin around her ears and from these loaded perceptions that she to stand among mars-eyed children go on the cruise. I thought of a question and bit my erased around the nape of her neck. was withdrawing, detoxing with absence. and really see them, “I know. I can’t blame him for missing lip. “Auntie,” I said. She glanced up and not just their skin, imprinted with a sun-scar, smiled and looked like Dad. “What did into coal black and irregular Christmas.” white as the world would turn She claimed the experience was purely like malformed stick-and-pokes Auntie had raised her voice over the you want to be when you were my age?” physical, “Have you ever felt your scalp? She paused for a moment. “An artist. I a new page, from the night you got too running water, twisting the word “him” as I have” she told the monsters under her drunk and wavered the needle liked to paint the ocean.” She went back to Slowly, bed. She explained in lengthy detail the if she didn’t know John. I realized Aun- filling the jar. “I also wanted to be a pilot, Window to the Left like a steering wheel. tie didn’t believe John was coming home. Flake sensation of stroking your hairless head, Kate Busatto we are not too different, they and i: though.” Auntie laughed quietly. by entirely vulnerable and softened. The my mouth like theirs, filled She seemed already preparing herself, not I smiled. I liked thinking of Auntie as a Sewickley, PA flake the hungry ground, shadows nodded and smiled but she heard with inquisitive flies; identical stupors strong with the independence I admired pilot, flying across oceans. their conniving whispers and sheepish from your cards and flames but distant as she had become with Uncle She looked up at me then, fixedly, and a satiated lover, condemnations. She then assured herself and rabbits and cheeky smiles. Sean, the commercial, the dinners, the el- she seemed like Auntie again, the one who would rise to meet the skies it was a political statement-- a feminist I hear transcendentalists whisper dest male respect for Nickie. Maybe it was filled up the streets of the North End with --a new Babel of white sent from heaven— gesture to empower unconventional louder than the snow falls knowledge settles inside of me, a outside my window. so unconscious at first that she missed the her voice. “You need someone for secu- God’s last parting joke to man. beauty. “Its a sort of exploration, an in- sunken boat of facts, murky rity, though,” she said. “More than just trospective reflection of fragility” But she Perhaps I should be sitting blue and twisted brown with wretched truth: awful irony of calling another son home in there isn’t much to do a commercial only to return to her vacant money.” saw she was only confusing her friends at the shoulder of the valley- I started to nod automatically, then Believe me, so she stopped-- she didn’t understand waiting for persevering snowflakes for these kids, some with the root top floor apartment. I didn’t talk the rest stopped. I could see myself years from it would be the most beautiful mass extinction only just removed, cancer of dinner, trying to find the moment when half of those big words herself, anyway. to fall through the fingers of trees already interwoven into cells, now, hair twisted up, Dr. F. Fellini, comb- She even pleaded to her mother that it instead of in my home Auntie had changed and I had missed it. of all time: and others prepped for surgery, ing through medical charts of patients was purely for practicality. Her hair had with a heated mattress and cable TV. for a man with a forget-me-not who would come to me, in some hospital, The world would become all feather, gotten so tangled and knotted that it was Perhaps, in August’s pyre, blue gown and bright knives ready I went over to Auntie’s the next day af- somewhere. impossible to tame. Maintenance was to cut away a childhood froth and wisp, I should not have been standing ter work. She was stuffing chestnuts into Auntie sunk back in her seat to placing never her priority and this way she had on a metal bridge made by engineers friend turned nefarious. an empty jar. I thought of the way she had chestnuts in the jar. I watched. its only denizens absolved herself of all the trouble. She I wanted to break the wait. I wanted with ink spots on their breast pockets but you, you carry their happiness saved coins for our cruise. Leaving a red the light things, thrashed and shrieked that she felt better but in God’s heart lipstick mark, she gave me a kiss on the John to come home in a uniform or as a than she had in a long time. in your sleeve and their white phone call. I wanted Auntie just to know, the aerial angels of squirrel, in the thick of British Columbia. teeth stretching from eye cheek, then motioned for me to sit down finch and dragonfly, to stop plopping chestnuts into jars like As her auburn hair started to slowly grow But then again, to eye ending in jolts and help. she had in Italy as a girl, waiting for her rising to the rim I’ve seen things as beautiful of wondrous electricity, “I bought them from the supermar- back, sprouting from her pale head, she crackling like splitting wood. turn to come over to America after Dad. like cream on milk, faced an old friend, whose eyes were large like the two in the alley, running for nothing ket this morning,” Auntie said, moving if clicks of metal keep you here, treating I wanted to topple over the stacked jars of their wraithlike bodies and wandering. They sat on the window- or the snoring boy at the symphony. their bandana-wrapped heads like the plastic bag of chestnuts closer to me. chestnuts that balanced on the table before pane by the green vines that ran through Perhaps all transcendence isn’t in nature “Don’t you think they’d make good pres- us, for the glass to break and the pent up holding up the sky, no other medicine can - then, tonight, barely pocking the surface her brick house, speaking small. She but in the human nature to capture it hear the sound of copper ents?” She pointed to one of the ribboned chestnuts to tumble out, gutted open stared at the trampled mud outside and and the transcendent moment studs clanging against the roof jars she had finished, crammed with chest- to wrinkled caramel flesh, sand spit- of our sepulcher. asked “do you know why I cut my hair” when we finally do of the washing machine and return with nuts stuck together with sand. ting out on top of them like a gash tempted by the fact that this was the only without even trying. your kings and queens and knaves, I nodded. Last night, I watched Aun- without a tourniquet. person who had not addressed the drastic Magician.

30 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 31 when I finally began liking this trek up to my house. I live on a hill, and, especially Walking Home when the wind is blowing against you Steven’s Granary Katie Cooke and the nights are starting to get darker Tiara Sharma Old Tappan, NJ and darker with each passing day, walk- Quincy, MA ing home seems like a terrible chore to say When I was in middle school, I remem- the least. But with music on, it wasn’t half It starts like it always does. She picks out ber seeing the same girl walking home bad: playing some Benny Goodman made her old floral dress and pulls it down over her head, pokes her arms through the from school whenever my mom drove me streetlights turn into bright city lights, Al- holes, and adjusts it over her hips. Her home. She was always sulking, trudging, ternative Rock made kicking a pebble on arms tremble as she reaches behind her or just dragging herself; I was never re- the street an entertaining rhythmic game, neck, fastening one side of the necklace to ally able to give one single word to how but most of all Tchaikovsky made even the other. She chooses a red wine shade of she walked. I couldn’t even define her ex- the darkest nights and the most grueling lipstick. He always said it made her eyes look bluer. pression; it wasn’t sad, but it wasn’t angry walks times of personal and introspective Down in the kitchen, she drags over either, just stoic. She walked in an eerily musing. the stool and slowly steps on, opens the uniform fashion, like a soldier marching Classical music became my “walking cupboard that groans, and pulls out the alongside an army of ghosts. One step af- music” of choice, and my walk home soon mug with the chipped handle. Her arms ter another, as if making progress in this became the most anticipated part of my sway under the weight of the rusty day. If I was frustrated, I thought about pot, letting the water spill over onto the path of life meant nothing to her. Seeing linoleum where it will stay to dry on its her always made me sad, so I never re- what exactly made me frustrated; same goes for if I was feeling anxious, paranoid, own. She turns on the stove. Just waits. ally liked looking in her direction. Sooner The water begins to bubble and then it or just angry. Walking home was a thera- splatters and she counts the drops that or later, even though we always took the py session with myself; I soon discovered same route home, I felt that we had parted escape and sizzle on the stovetop. She that I knew myself best, and it changed steeps her chamomile: up and down and ways. how I looked at the world. Walking home up and then shuffles to her armchair, the Her name was Jessica. I knew who Jes- was one of the best things that had ever one with patches and springs that pop out sica was at school: always a really aloof, happened to me. sometimes. She sets the mug on the side quiet, and sort of mysterious girl who But it soon came to a halt. Not a screech- table with the lamp, and sits on the edge preferred to be alone. She was always ing halt, but a halt nonetheless. Instead of of the armchair. hunched over, and she never had a smile helping myself out, I became a brewing Three, two… Her wall clock chimes out pot of negativity. If I got off the bus feel- of tune, waking the sleeping cottage. She on her face. All of her facial features rises and walks out into the dusk in her were smeared down her face, giving her a ing frustrated, my walk home only culti- vated and bred it; I wasn’t helping me, I lavender kitten heels. She remembers droopy, old-beagle look. I was really active was helping my anger. I helped my anxi- how they would never feel the need to in everything in middle school (probably talk on their evening walks, but how she Alley Way eties, paranoia, and frustrations and I let would always steal a glimpse of his face Elena Haskins since I had the time to be), including the them consume me whole. I still enjoyed Set Design Crew for our musical. Jessica when he was not looking. She’s sure she DeRuyter, NY my walks, but only because it isolated me walks by a Giant Redwood tree. She was in that too, and no matter how whim- from everything that I hated. was taught to recognize the cone shape sical or happy her Seussical sets were, the II. lips at the corner store; of the trunk, the short, spiky needles that way she painted them just seemed so mis- gather in clusters on each branch. Beside Segmented As a child, something entirely different erable. Her paintbrush fell hard onto the the Redwood lies a simple gravestone Zachary de Stefan the only fruits from the embarrassment she felt I failed to mention this before, but I entangled by forest weed. She lingers and she would eat choking on her first canvas and the colorful paint just dripped then takes a path that leads her out of the River Vale, NJ were ones with pits and last cigarette, down like tears. I didn’t enjoy being in her have a bad habit when I walk in that I al- because she liked something like what she saw ways look at the ground. I’d much rather forest into a familiar place: the granary. how it felt to hold hearts in the pomegranate eyes prescence, but high school brought about a She remembers how lush the surround- like to see where I’m going rather than I. that could not be broken of a dead snake change of heart. ing meadow used to be, how she would between her teeth. hanging over Grandma’s who I’m going to meet and when. So Her fingers get lost in the sea of small, white flow- shoulder - I decided not to go to my local high whenever I walked home, I always looked pierce the flesh III. school, but instead a high school that was ers, trying to count just how many there so effortlessly, Hunger, like snake skins at the ground. In the fall I stared down were. Sometimes she would just follow it is easy to forget A girl of eight runs barefoot left out on the porch thirty minutes away from my house. So at the leaves, winter the snow, spring the him here and watch him work from the that you are watching through a peach orchard, to dry in the late afternoon I’d have to wake up early in the morning death hair mussed, her hands and feet sun. pollen. One day I looked up. I looked up window. She pushes open what is left of on the formica countertop. caked with dirt, to catch my bus, and come home really and saw something. Someone. Jessica. the wooden doors and welcomes the sweet IV. She still sulked, and even though I rustic scent. When they were dating, Nothing is wasted, late since I was one of the last stops on the couldn’t see her face from where I walked, he once gave her a tour of the building, nothing save the fibrous muscle: while up ahead, Grandma brings You wonder why she tends bus route. My bus dropped me off at the but all she focused on were his moving the blood you sip her hatchet down upon the rattler to forgo a knife in favor local gas station and that was the first time I assumed it was the same glum expres- lips and the way he twiddled his thumbs as an accompaniment that took a bite out of the neighbor’s of her bare hands, but then sion, as if her features were forever en- to your breakfast of eggs and toast, tabby cat, you remember that strength that I started walking home. when he was shy. She plops down on a the body you find wrapped is sometimes as simple At first I didn’t really like it: my ears graved in facial stone. There she was giant mound of grain. The faint moon- and she, witness to both murder as sneaking a pregnant walking, and I soon realized that I fol- in tin foil, tucked inside your lunch bag, were too cold and it was just so lonely. light leaks through the holes in the roof, and the skin she grates up and stashes and execution, understands peach from the bushel lowed slowly behind. that hunger is something when Grandma isn’t looking The next day I brought a hat and mittens giving every shape in the granary an away for a chiffon pie that will be much more than wheat fields and planting its pit If someone were driving past us, they iridescent glow. She takes in her hands a offered up at the church potluck with me, but that didn’t make much of a supper next week. lush like sunburned boys deep, would have thought that they were seeing blade of wheat and runs her fingers over and penny candy from deep down difference either. Then I started listen- the Greek with bubblegum in your pocket. double. its grooves, surrounded by Steven. ing to music during my walks and that’s

32 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 33 “Care to remind the class how we around and continues to babble and one was in first grade. I was such an seem to control my tear ducts, it was spelling of the word ‘houses’ I would use factoring to find the discriminant whack his pointer on the chalkboard. innocent little kid, I had absolutely no like there was a levy in there that col- have a hole in my head. Letters on the Floor of a quadratic?” Wow, public embarrassment, how idea what kind of hell that year would lapsed and tears just kept on gushing Madeline Smith I try my best to give him a stare that original. You know, they always are bring. I was young, six years old, but out. My whole class was staring at me Woodbridge, VA lets him know how unamused I am telling you in school to report bully- I remember this event vividly and I bawling my eyes out like I was some The bell rings. All the other with his sarcasm. “No actually Mr. ing, but what they don’t know is that think back on it every day of my life. sort of emotional buffoon and Mrs. kids pack up their things in their back- The numbers are separating them- Hunter I would not care to explain that adults are just as guilty of bullying as My class was learning how Langley eventually called my mother packs, creating quite a cacophony of selves from the chalkboard, intertwin- process to the class.” teenagers. Which, of course I don’t let to read. My teacher, Mrs. Langley, a to take me home. paper shifting and zippers zipping. I ing with each other in mid air. Some “And why is that Mr. Watson?” affect me in the least. No one will ever short, elderly woman who wore a fa- My mom bought me ice cream, didn’t take anything out of my back- even decide to hide under the desks “Just don’t really feel like explaining understand what kind of things go in cial expression that was terrifying for which seemed to have lightened the pack because I knew there would be of the kids in the front of the class. I a concept to the class when I know you in my my, there is absolutely no use in a child of my age, used a damn pointer, flow of my tears significantly. She no need for a paper and pen unless to think if I was a number that I would only want me to do so for your own en- letting their ignorant remarks contami- just like Mr. Hunter. Except instead asked me why I got so upset. I took a doodle a picture of a magical land filled be the type of number to hide under tertainment.” nate it. I’ll let everyone have their own of numbers crawling off of the chalk- lick of my double scoop mint chocolate with unicorns and butterflies where a desk. I’m not sure what number I “Your statement is duly noted, but ignorant opinions about me, I am the board, it was letters, but to me there chip and replied “cuz’ Mrs. Langley is some sicko never came up with the de- would be though. Definitely a single given your clear lack of understanding only one who knows the person that I really isn’t a difference, they’re both a liar.” mented idea of math. And honestly, digit though because I know more than on the subject I will let your scantron really am. symbols that run away from me. She “And what is it that Mrs. Lang- today I’m feeling rather creatively and anyone else that the numbers with scold you when the time comes that we My mind rushes back to all of would point at different letters and the ley lied about?” she asked. emotionally drained. I don’t know if more than one digit intertwine WAY take our test on this material” he says the times teachers have passed judg- whole class, with the exception of me, “She told me that the letters it’s the tedious, unimaginative routine worse than digits that stand alone. I with a straight face. And then he turns ment on me. The first and most major would scream out the names of the let- weren’t on the floor, she lied, the letters of it all or if I’m just having a bad day, would probably be an even number too ters and then scream what the letters WERE on the floor, they were playing but since first period my sole motive because those tend to be easier to spot spelled. I could tell that Mrs. Langley tag and hiding underneath desks.” for getting through the day has been when the hide under desks and things, didn’t appreciate my lack of participa- I will never forget the color the leftover sausage and olive pizza sit- I wouldn’t want a kid to do bad on a Dear America tion with the exercise, but I frankly running from my mother’s face when ting in my refrigerator. test because of me. Tiffany Spiegel could care less about what Mrs. Lang- I told her that. That was when I knew Luke is waiting for me outside of Mr. Mr. Hunter is using a pointer Upper Saddle River, NJ ley did and did not appreciate. Every that it wasn’t a normal thing to see the Hunter’s classroom. “Dude! You will day she would point at a blank chalk- to explain some sort of equation or Why do you serve super-sized McDonald’s letters playing tag on the floor of the NEVER guess what just happened to something, but I don’t see any numbers everything with a couple of carrots and granny smith apples board and I would follow the letters classroom. As soon as I came to that me in Algebra!” Luke seventeen, same that are still on the board. Just a point- tossed here and there in happy meals? Austrian restaurants with my eyes as they hid under desks realization I regretted telling my mom age as me, but he isn’t exactly moti- er violently inflicting itself on a blank will keep you satisfied but leave you with a little room for and played tag with each other while that I saw the letters running around vated in school. Major pothead. Not chalkboard via Mr. Hunter. I can’t dessert and coffee, not feeling like you just ate your all of the other kids in my class shouted on the floor instead of sitting still on saying that I am motivated, I could blame the numbers though because I grandmother’s stuffed turkeys at Thanksgiving. Why don’t we out the names of the letters that I saw the chalkboard. honestly care less but for some reason know that if I had the misfortune of be- have fast speed underground subways? Instead we rely on our running around on the floor. The next day, the special whenever the time rolls around for our ing a number, I wouldn’t want to spend American bulldozer cars leaking oil every blink of an eye. One day I guess Mrs. Langley education teacher pulled me out of end of the year tests, I pass. I don’t my life on some stupid chalkboard ei- Why are we called the United States if we are more separated had reached her breaking point with Mrs. Langley’s class and took me to a know how, it’s not like I pay atten- ther. I would want to experience the then ever? News reports flooded with information about the me because right in the middle of a strange room. I immediately noticed tion, I just see numbers on the backs world, slip under the crack of the door latest state that wants to secede. The thing is, nobody really knows, word, she suddenly stopped hitting multiple different stations with things of my eyelids sitting perfectly still and and leave this place forever. That’s and if they do know, the information is left a secret. that damn pointer on the board, slowly like games and puzzles set up at them. I write them on the test. So I’m sit- why I never get mad at the numbers Why do we think we “need” when actually we “want?” turned around, stared me straight in There were a few other kids there sit- ting pretty in Algebra 2 while my ge- for vanishing. It’s selfish to prioritize We need to purchase coffee every morning, the eye, and said in a low, but stern ting at the stations. The woman who nius friend Luke giving Algebra 1 his me understanding a concept that I hon- we need to buy expensive Halloween costumes voice “Trevor, why are you staring took me out of class, Ms. Green, in- third go alongside his freshmen peers estly care less about over the youth of thinking they will be impressive but never wearing them again is not. at the floor? The letters aren’t on troduced herself and said that this is a who are fascinated with him because some poor, innocent little number. It seems as if communication is no longer popular, the floor, they’re on the board. Now class for kids who have a harder time of his age, but in reality share roughly I look around at my class- it’s extinct from modern culture, exterminated from society please, if you want to stop failing all with learning how to read and that it’s the same maturity level as him or lack mates and I see the faces of robots. A and banished from our world. of your spelling quizzes, pay attention okay to take my time because everyone there of. dead stare straight at the chalkboard, Blinking and buzzing screens flashing letters don’t count. to what is happening on the board and learns at a different pace. “What?” worshiping the mathematics that Mr. And what is so important about the name IPhone? stop living inside your own mind.” I spent my days in that class- “I found my soulmate.” Hunter is preaching. I suppose for an Everyone is so used to them we don’t even realize That was the first time a teacher had room playing word games and popcorn “Really?” outsider I look considerably similar to that we rely on them for almost everything. ever called me out in front of the class reading. It was actually pretty fun, I “Dude, don’t try and pull that whole all of the other students in the class. What happened to using cents? Change? Coins? before. I didn’t know what to do. She made friends and I noticed some im- ‘you are too young for love’ bullshit But I’m not actually IN class, not men- I once watched a girl receive change from a cashier was wrong, the letters WERE on the provements on my spelling quizzes. like my mom and my sister do. I’m tally. The fact that my physical body proceeding by her throwing her dimes and nickels into the trash. floor. They were running around on But I still feel as if I never really learned telling you, I took one look into her is in the premises of these four walls Isn’t that illegal? What happened to morality? the floor having a hell of a lot more anything from all the time spent in soft, meaty body and I knew right then is a mere technicality. My mind has Just the other day, I was walking on a sidewalk of a neighboring street fun than I was sitting here being chas- that classroom with the reading games. and there…” traveled so far beyond this place in the and found $50 dollars soaked in a puddle. tised by Mrs. Langley for “living in- I think I was just really good at making “What Luke? What did you know past half hour that I’ve found myself I put it under a hair dryer when I got home and it was good as new. side my own mind”. I reacted the only the letters sit still for me long enough right then and there?” confused on multiple occasions because I thought about who’s it might have been, way I could being a sensitive six year for me to memorize the order of them “I knew that I wanted her IN MY I’d forgotten where I was. maybe a business man walking his usual route to work old whom had never been yelled at by in the word so that I could pass the BELLY!” He shouts as he pulls out a “Mr. Watson!” Mr. Hunter shouts and forgot to shove his cab fare back into his wallet a teacher before, I cried. I cried and quiz and then promptly dump all of roast beef hoagie from his backpack. with an annoyed look on his face. or maybe it was someone trying to save up for a special gift cried and Mrs. Langley apologized for that information in the nearest waste “Nice!” I congratulate him on his I give my head a slight shake to re- and luck wasn’t on their side that day. being so hostile. But I still didn’t stop bin. To this day, if someone held a gun sandwich with a high-five. I mean gain consciousness. “Whats up?” I might not know why or how but I do know this is important. crying, I tried, but somehow I couldn’t up to my head and asked me the correct this in the nicest way possible but I

34 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 35 love how simple Luke’s mind works. okay sorry, heads… we use the bong.” He ALWAYS is smiling. And over “Thank you.” he says and then he to fit books or winter coats. the things that most people take for flips a dime in the air. We wait in an- Maybe they’re pieces for a crib. Love and Cars I was twelve granted every day of their lives. Like ticipation for approximately one sec- You know she’s having a baby Greta Skagerlind when my mother slammed our blue station wagon door his hoagie for example. I think if there ond while the coin rotates, free as a because you saw her framed in on my hand when I wasn’t looking and I felt Maplewood, NJ were more people like Luke in this bird. Luke catches it in his hand and the front door waving to her a crunching in my carpal bones world of malice, existing on it would builds even more suspense by looking husband a few weeks ago, her belly rounded. She looked like when she screamed be a hell of a lot easier. at me for a few seconds before reveal- I was nine louder than I did. “Come on man, let’s skip last period ing the fate of the means of travel in she could be Sophie fifteen years when my heavy-metal teenage neighbor and go get high at my house” he says from now—small, easy shoulders, which smoke will enter our lungs. backed his family minivan I was seventeen with his mouth full. Another thing I He peeks at the coin and I await my expressive body. Then again, into their old-and-rotting side door when I fumbled with the too-smooth steering wheel and like about Luke, he’s great at coming fate with baited breath. “...heads.” you could say any brown-haired but he wasn’t drunk almost crashed my car up with ideas. Moments later the all too familiar American looks like Sophie. The deliveryman ambles just in love into a white vinyl garage door in “Great idea dude, let’s go!” sound of water bubbling water fills down the steps, leaving the with his girlfriend and the school parking lot my ears and the sweet smoke of qual- boxes on the porch. You’d like the way she’d been kissing his neck ity marijuana fills my lungs. I exhale. because in the rearview mirror to place all you can’t express in at the time. I was watching you walk away. Luke lives right across the street The smoke expands, filling every cor- these boxes, everything you can’t from the school, which is pretty awe- ner of the room weightlessly. And for say to your very foreign fam- some considering the fact that neither however brief the moment, the letters ily who too often don’t feel like of us have a car. We have to take the playing tag on the floor of Mrs. Lang- your family at all. It’s awful back door through the library to get ley’s classroom seem irrelevant. to say that, isn’t it? That even out because there is almost always a after years here, you, unmarried cop patrolling the front door, plus the and thinning and clumsy, are school librarian is pretty chill, I can still waiting to be shipped off to tell that she likes me because I am reli- another place. gious about attending her weekly book You’ve tried to pray club every Thursday before school. I aloud to sort this out, but it’s as like having the other kids read me the if your feelings have squirmed words on the pages. I pretend to be Wording out your ear, unheard, not want- following along in the book, but I’m ing to be clipped into words. really just drawing pictures behind my Rachael Allen Maybe God instead communi- eyelids of the events that I hear. Canton, MA cates in thoughts. You lean back in your chair, the toe of your Cathy Evans got mailed. No, that’s wrong. We reach Luke’s house with one- shoe scuffing the floor. It makes She mailed? She’s got mail? The words sense God understands fragment- fourth of a hoagie left. He sets it on feel funny on your tongue as you ed thoughts instead of thousands kitchen counter, probably without con- speak aloud. Why do the basic of languages. Why should an sciously realizing it. Luke lives in a words trick you? You pray to angels, Italian bother learning English? little house that always seems to reek You should bother learning of incense with his mother and his old- Zio, not angles, your niece Sophie said at church last week, trying English so you can talk to So- er sister Jen. We drop our backpacks not to giggle as you mumbled the phie, so you come to see yourself by the front door and run upstairs to wrong words. You hadn’t wanted less as an Italian and more as Luke’s room. to embarrass your very young, very just you. You think this, but Luke opens the first drawer of his American family by speaking your you know actually you won’t be dresser and pulls out his stash, the language. They don’t remember able to do this, and you feel more stench of it immediately fills my nos- that it’s theirs too. lonely as you peer out again at trils. I can tell that this is going to be The UPS truck is outside Cathy Evans’ house. By now some good shit. Cathy Evans’ house, rattling below the deliveryman has moved on to “What are you in the mood for Trev- your window. The engine swallows another home, leaving the boxes or? Bong or blunt wrap?” as the deliveryman turns it off. waiting. You wonder where all “Your call dude, it’s your shit.” Balancing the boxes, he manages up the cardboard will go once Cathy “Trevor! Why do you do this to me! Cathy Evans’ front steps. Maybe Evans opens her boxes. It’ll be You know I get stressed out when I’m you should order something. It’d discarded, surely, swept into the forced to make decisions!” be nice for something to show up at ocean to wash up at a foreign “Dude, calm down. Why don’t you your doorstep, your name printed shore. Maybe it’ll be buried just flip a coin?” on it to verify that you are part of beneath a mound of plastic and “I like the way you think my friend” this country, that you do share a paper, ground heaving below. he says searching his pockets loose last name with your family. The Most likely, it’ll be recycled, deliveryman places the boxes at God breathing folds and corners change. “Okay what should heads be?” back into the boxes, a life after Listen “Your call man.” Cathy Evans’ front door, below a wreath hung above the doorknocker. life, yet the word for that, too, Samantha Moy “Trevor! You’re doing it again!” has slipped from you. I laugh at his frustration, “okay, There are three boxes, large enough Berkeley Heights, NJ

36 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 37 sunlight was left, and there was sudden- fling of snow beside her, and a voice, a tried to pinpoint how their Angie ever there anything I need to do for said pho- ly only her and the chilly shade and the real voice. came to be one of them. She couldn’t to-shoot?” so i want you to Snapshot flakes of snow brushing off tree branch- “Lindy?” help but wonder if things would be the Lindy grinned. “No, you’re perfect remember this Alyson Schwartz es like ash off paper. The water in the From both surprise and frosted fin- same had Angie not fallen out of touch in where you are. I’ll just take a couple stream was lower than she remembered, gers, Lindy dropped the camera and it the transition to high school; if she was shots over the water and maybe a few of Taylor Petty Upper Saddle River, NJ and the walk across the moss-covered caught on the safety strap, swinging on perhaps the glue that held them togeth- where you’re sitting.” Woodbridge, VA tree trunk no longer seemed like a dar- her arm like a pendulum. The first thing er for so long. There was stale sadness Bea nodded slightly and turned back to- how we knelt by “Nostalgia” was both the key word ing, Indiana Jones-style mission. she saw when turning toward the voice in Lindy’s heart, as well as some guilt; ward the water, her smile fading; her light the riverbank, at tree stumps, and the nuisance of the assignment. In Once on the other side of the stream, was pale yellow hair and cherry lips: there was always that feeling of hav- eyes lost in the landscape as the rising sun looking for an altar her six years as a photographer, Lindy Lindy turned back and watched the Bea. Not the little Bea-ghost of her past ing somehow failed Angie as a friend. cast yellow beams across her nose. Lindy on which to place our affections never struggled to find picture-worthy ghosts of three pale, twelve year-old with crooked teeth and frizzy hair, but It was no secret that her home life was for each other, too scared lifted her camera once more and kneeled of touching the other’s chest. moments, yet this single Photography girls shrieking and laughing and tiptoe- the new Bea she’d come to know in the the harshest of the three girls, yet nei- to angle the shot out toward the cascade seeing our bones stark in the assignment for school had her stumped. ing across the same log, holding mit- present. This was the Bea with styled ther Lindy nor Bea ever saw it leading to with Bea’s silhouette to the side. She knew cold and skin barely stretching over, hardly keeping ourselves “Capture nostalgia in an image,” her tened hands and swearing promises to hair and rosy cheeks and hands tucked fewer weekend hangouts, skipped days in the split second before hearing the shut- teacher told her class while staring into “never, ever, ever” let go. of school with new friends, and dark ru- inside, warmth and guts threatening into a blood red designer coat she would ter of the camera that this picture would to spill out the distance and dramatically waving The projections of her memory evap- never have been caught dead wearing mors of parties and alcohol. be the one; solemn, telling, beautiful… her arms like a windmill. The neon or- orated, and Lindy continued to follow four years ago. The Bea she hadn’t spo- “Right, right,” Bea said, frowning. which is why we kept our mouths shut, nostalgic. She lowered the Polaroid and anges and pinks of her abstract dress, the roaring sound in the distance. In ken so much as a word to in the longest “Hopefully she’s, uh, doing well.” because we would say something followed Bea’s gaze across the clearing, dangerous, about love or the way combined with her thunderous voice, the clearing up ahead, the leaning trees time. Lindy was still lost in her thoughts. and there Lindy could perfectly see those our mouths felt open against were enough to eliminate any student’s opened up to reveal a large pond and an “Bea,” Lindy breathed, her mouth Bea’s appearance, their conversation each other’s necks, the only same ghosts skipping and jumping, pass- hope of dozing off. “Make me feel emotion overhang of boulders with a shower of gaping open. “Uh, hi, how have you about Angie, and the ghostly memories kind of heat we found ing a thermos of hot chocolate and spilling for one of your memories. I want to feel your water spewing over its edge, little drop- been?” She lamely raised her arm to ges- that felt so real... she felt dizzy. They secrets from their mouths like water from kneeling by the ashes and fallen branches, looking for nostalgia!” lets flying every which way and making ture a wave. How have you been? Really? were all completely different people any holy place on which to call each other the cascade. In her peripheral view, Lindy To Lindy, “feeling” someone’s nos- the newly fallen snow glitter. Bea half-smiled and picked at her now, but did the memories mean noth- worshiped, eyes wavering on our noticed Bea flinch before frowning at the white bone poking through the skin, talgia sounded more like a rare sinus in- “LAB Falls,” Lindy breathed, but in open-fingered glove. “Pretty good,” she ing at all? They couldn’t possibly have fection than a photography project. Still, her mind it was her twelve year-old self same spot where the ghosts stood. In the goosebumps raising up and something said, looking out over the pool of water. meant nothing; LAB Falls certainly longing in the warmth seeping through our breath. that Saturday morning she took care to who spoke. “What are you doing here?” dead silence of the moment, she knew Bea meant something, or neither of them reload her Polaroid with a new memory “It’s perfect, see? Lindy, Angie, and Bea. “I was taking pictures for my class could see them, too. would have been standing there now. card and polish the cool, marble-smooth L – A – B.” Lindy’s little freckled ghost and it started snowing and I decided “Well, I’ll get going now so you have lens. Outside the double-paned window stepped up beside her with eyes wide it might be cool to come here, I guess above her daybed, snowflakes like po- and round like orbs, her breath catching because it’s been a while, ya know?” the place for your project; I wouldn’t tato shavings swirled and fluttered to- at the view ahead. Lindy’s words came out rushed, and she want to interrupt.” Bea began to step ward the ground from a pale, blank sky. “Wow, it’s so beautiful,” little Angie lifted her Polaroid as testimony to what backwards. Speech like Glitter It even looked like they were beginning said in a voice that drew out the end of she was saying. “No, no, stay,” Lindy said, suddenly Alicja Madloch to stick. Like the wind, sudden memo- every word. If Bea noticed her awkward stance snapping out of her stupor. “It’s cool Short Hills, NJ ries swept her mind in a rush of sensa- Little Bea nodded in agreement. “LAB and ridiculous rambling, she didn’t let having someone here. Besides, I may tions; cocoa powder, wet denim dried Falls it is. For now on, this place is ours.” on. need a model, and it’s better you than When words fall from the curve of your lips they don’t die, by a fireplace, and brown water rushing Lindy shivered and unzipped her coat “Yeah, well, I come here pretty often, me.” She raised her arms and dramati- she said. over a sparkling stone ledge. to retrieve her camera. She had expected actually, but only when it snows. It falls cally indicated her puffy jacket that Because death is for the mortal and the weak, And then there was that feeling in her visit to be quick and simple, a couple in like a snow globe, see?” made her look like a brown marshmal- the loveless and analytical. her side, like someone had clenched her easy nature shots and that’s it. Instead, They both looked up toward the circu- low in comparison to Bea, who looked She plays her cigarette stomach with an iron fist and deflated her throat felt swollen and her stomach lar sky beyond the encasing trees where fresh out of a winter edition of Vogue. like a harmonica and glitters in the sun because no rain can put her out. her lungs with the poke of a needle: the queasy as the ghosts refused to disap- snowflakes fell downward like shooting Bea laughed and looked her straight in sudden longing to return, to seize that pear, and instead splashed freezing wa- stars. Lindy had the urge to point out Words can slosh around. the eyes. “All right. I’ll stay for a bit.” She chews with her mouth open to speech, moment and relive it... and that was it; ter at one another and threw snowballs that Bea said the same thing about the There was a moment of uneasy si- words can build worlds and you can paint an atlas with your finally, she had an idea. Hastily, she and took photos using crappy, outdated snow globe when they were little kids, lence between them, an understanding own creations. tucked the short, choppy pieces of her picture phones. Their eerie giggles sent but she decided to hold her tongue. The hanging in the air that they weren’t go- And her letters get caught on your sweater hair under a blue knit hat, zipped her chills down Lindy’s spine. Together, the sudden echo of giggles rang through her ing to sit down and reveal their deepest and they stay, dangling like wind chimes, like silver bells in Polaroid beneath her heavy coat, scrib- little girls smiled, forgetting for the mo- ears and she flinched, but seemed to re- secrets and rekindle their friendship like winter. bled a post-it note for her mom, and ran ment what prowled outside the woods. alize nothing. in the movies, and that come Monday I want to be a doctor because I want to explore the out the back door. Here there were no family arguments or “So, have you spoken with Angie morning at school they’d both go their words inside you. Although it’d been almost four years cheap middle school insults or awkward lately?” Bea asked. Her feet bent inwards with her words, separate ways as usual and probably not since her last visit, the way to the falls appearances; only the three of them in Lindy’s heart stopped for a moment at every heart beats to a story. speak again for who knows how long. still came to Lindy as naturally as ty- their own fantasy world. the name. “No, I think she’s just hang- ing shoes: two blocks down and a turn Polaroid in hand, Lindy ad- ing out with the same friend group as But for the moment, Lindy was okay And she beat her boots on the pavement and each scuffmark to the right, a couple feet downhill justed her footing and raised the lens, usually. Chris, Olivia, those kinds of with this. is a map to her destination because into the woods, and over the fallen tree trying to shake their uneasy presence. people.” She nodded as if reporting the Bea stepped near the water and she isn’t from earth, she merely survives here, and the book trunk that doubled as a bridge across the Click. She turned toward the waterfall news. plopped down into a pile of snow, tuck- in her chipped black manicure is just another portal, and she ing her arms into her coat and looking laughs with her hips and smiles with her soul because she knows stream. The envelope of trees at the en- and was focusing in on the downward The faces of those teens rolled through it’s only life, not something to be scared of at all. trance to the woods smothered whatever cascade when there was a sudden shuf- Lindy’s head like a slot machine as she up at Lindy with a goofy smile. “So is

38 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 39 chewing on ice or holding water bottles only tap the surface of the history that up, smiling. rassed, no matter what.” around; people videotaping on their to their heads, resting before their next lay beneath them. I walked past a man “Afternoon, miss,” he greeted me I released a sigh that had been sit- phones, a few clapping. Someone shout- Ken Burns on reenactment. A woman was wiping sweat cleaning his gun, who gave me a polite in a voice much less daunting than his ting in my chest, played with the ends of ed, “Was that Ken Burns?” the Battlefield from a behemoth draft horse, rubbing its smile and his hat in common Southern disposition. my hair momentarily, trying to find any- The heat rushing to my cheeks told Annika Jensen belly with a cool cloth. I bent down to courtesy. I wondered if he could tell me “Hey,” I replied, a little flustered. where but his eyes to look to. I gave in. me that I was probably redder than the Columbia, MD massage my ankles, sore from hours of just what it was that prompted Pickett Speaking in public, even just to one per- “Okay,” I surrendered. “Did you Chili Peppers. I quickly handed the in- The first thing to come to my head walking and standing in the heat, and to lead his charge, what the camarade- son, had never enthused me. “Sorry to ever watch the PBS Civil War series?” strument back, keeping my eyes locked was Comic Con. Women were dressed stretched, ignoring the dull pain that rie of war entailed. How it felt to lose a interrupt. I was just listening.” Then, in The man laughed suddenly; sharp, on the dirt below me. in bright hoop skirts; teenage boys in pulsed in the back of my head.. A family brother. an uncharacteristic act, I added, “I’m a but not demeaning. “You know Asho- “Thanks,” I said to the behemoth gray and blue wool uniforms sipped Ga- walked past with funnel cakes and iced I walked, wondered, and out of the violinist, too.” kan Farewell, don’t you?” His smile fell violinist, trying to ignoring the beaming torade. Older men were doing cosplays tea, huddling under the relief of a black endless blue there sounded a sharp ring The bearded face brightened. “Were somewhere between genuine and excited. smile that managed to outshine the sun. of Lee, Chamberlain, Armistead, their umbrella. that broke through my curious trance. I you trained classically?” He asked, slip- I allowed the corners of my lips to “I’m gonna go. There are a lot of people horses dressed in old-fashioned cavalry I didn’t really consider myself a Civil would have recognized the violin any- ping momentarily out of character. The curl up, if only slightly. “Yeah.” looking at me.” I managed a tiny laugh. tack with heart-shaped breastplates. War “buff,” even after The Killer Angels. where. Raising my eyes from the dirt violin lay cradled beneath his mammoth It was a song that had stuck with “Ma’am,” he called after me. I turned, Booths stretched out across acres of dry, The novel by Michael Shaara was bril- and dead grass, and I looked around for arms, protected like a delicate child. me since I first heard it. Something in its a rare flutter of wind pushing my hair in flattened dirt, boasting authentic photo- liant, but I figured that the only other the source, following the somber melody I said yes, since the age of three. This melancholy harmonies had reached the front of my face. He walked toward me, graphs and shotguns. Weaving through people who loved it as much as I did were across the battlefield. The song rang out delighted him. inner workings of my brain that normal- the crowd dispersing, and removed his hat. the jungle of tarp and tents, I slowed to old, bearded men. As far as I was con- with bittersweet vibrato, a tune that told “Me, too,” he told me. “I’ve been do- ly didn’t show, where I stored my most “That was almost as beautiful as you are.” read a man’s t-shirt: “If at first you don’t cerned, I was neither old nor a man, and I of hope and loss without any words. ing a lot of folk music lately, though. Ob- dangerous and beautiful thoughts. It re- secede, try, try again.” certainly did not have a beard. Yet when What I found was a young man, viously.” He chuckled, gesturing to his minded me of what I could have been, Waiting for These By noon, it had surpassed 95 degrees, my mother asked me to go to the Get- huge, in his late twenties. Towering well uniform. “I didn’t really consider this re- had I not been born with a terrible dis- and the long expanses of battlefield and tysburg reenactment with her, 150 years over six feet tall, he stood before me with enacting thing until they told me I could ease of the mind, and of what I would 90 Days clear sky offered hardly a tree or cloud after the battle, I found myself agreeing, closed eyes, his massive hands endanger- bring my instrument.” never be. It was what I had played when Adia Haven for shade. I had deemed resistance to the despite the weather forecasts straight ing the delicate wooden frame of the vio- In his eyes there shone not only an I heard of the suicide of a friend, imagin- from hell. lin beneath his chin. Blue wool stretched azure haze, but a genuine love of music, ing what might have been if I had taken Towson, MD heat futile, and settled instead to throw Your sparkling spells spin lazily towards me. my hair up and wander about in a tank I figured at least I didn’t have it as across him, standing out against the and I felt suddenly a rare, pure curios- his place. A letter from a soldier to his bad as the soldiers did. black beard that tickled his face. Beside ity growing, the kind that accompanied wife; from a teenage girl to her family, Through the night they send warm tendrils top, despite my discomfort with the of liquid flowing light, radiant tight, body-hugging cloth. The Gettys- The odor of sweat was omnipresent him, a boy, no older than eighteen, lay delight. apologizing for what she had done. as the sun’s final burst of yolk burg sun sank deep into my skin, singing and the heat was baking me alive, yet my across the ground, not exactly an active “I might even do it if I could just “Good song,” I said. when it seeps through my cheeks and weaving a rather unflat- fascinations grew. There was something listener, but hearing the music nonethe- play violin and ride horses all day,” I Before me, the man was holding his twilight’s velvet folds. tering pattern across my shoulders. morbidly enchanting about walking the less. shrugged, trying to play it off as a joke instrument out, offering it to me. My soul recognizes and welcomes these gifts. grounds that claimed 46,000 lives in just The frayed strings ceased to sing. but being alarmingly serious. “I’m not “Play it?” He asked, placing the bow Stars tonight hang heavy like All around me, men in costume pinholes winking bright, sprawled out below half-pitched tents, three days. My Converse shoes could The man lowered his eyes and looked entirely competent with folk songs, in my right hand, and the neck of the though.” violin in my left. the plasma pulsing in an electric hum. beneath the purpled skin you know He waved his hand incredulously, I hesitated, looking around at the The moon shines more bloated and the mane of hair that still than ever at its fullest phase, Rust (Belt) all but scoffing. hundreds of people milling about, feeling and the twinkles of heavenly bodies illuminate carried the faint scent How’s Tiger doing? “If you’ve had strings under your the sun on their backs just as I did. Zachary de Stefan of lemons that Mom mistook I hope you’ve stopped careless smoke spirals from fingers since you were three, I’m sure I wasn’t even brave enough to order my precariously hung cigarettes River Vale, NJ for hope feeding him twice a day, you know what Dr. Jacobi you can manage something.” a pizza over the phone. resting on the moist tier Walks down those halls / said “I do know one, actually,” I start- Yet the glow in the man’s eyes and of my lonely bottom lip. were lessons in lung capacity; ed, immediately shrinking back when his expectancy revealed untold stories On our frosted stoop, anything to keep from breathing She said once that her Papa Good, good, good the words came from my mouth. “No, that did not have a soundtrack to them. my hands are numb with cold. in the air, stale and dry like old had toiled away on train tracks There’s no room for them bones -- nevermind, I don’t. It’s dumb.” A small The birds calling from above, the heavy for twenty years in that city // laugh was all I could manage before I hid breathing of the cavalry horses across in my overstuffed pockets; I’ve packed them with presents for you. of gristle and steel; my brightening face in shame. the hill, the booming voice of a general if you were lucky, the pounding he’s been buried up I want you to know I am waiting here for in your head would drown out on the north side of Dutch Hill that I look for you often, The man’s smug grin greeted me took me back 150 years, where a dying our cream and honey combination the screaming woman for half a century now, whenever we take a ride when I could look up again. “Yes, you soldier lay at my feet, begging for one to dazzle this world again who’d claw at the walls in search and still those veins snake down I-80, and I think do,” he said with a brightening smile. last melody. The heat was slowly infect- so that civilians will have to shield of nothing and everything across the ancient streets I see you now more than ever, “Tell me.” He didn’t demand, but there ing his sense of time and space, the sweat their eyes upon seeing us. at once, like they’d been laid in those gutted barns that line was a certain willingness present. pouring from his body mingling with the You will twirl your fingers slowly just yesterday the highway, in the rolling hills through nappy golden strands, and there she sat, “Seriously, it’s really dorky,” I blood that escaped his chest. His hands burned out like candlewick, pleaded, overwhelmed with self-con- clutched my heart, yearning, and with and I can picture the beauty eyes averted, facing the city and I’m scared, like moonshine’s milk unleashed. smeared outside the rain-slick People never go away, Grandma, sciousness. “I’m embarrassed.” only one purpose in his last moments, I When you come home, glass, and we’d bend down she told me, not really; because Mom “Dude.” The violinist took a step put the bow to the string and played him in silent observation my golden tendrils will wrap and then - can’t bend down forward and bent down toward me, his a song. nazareths of loving longing of the woman we hardly still grinding your teeth? anymore stare persistent. “I’m twenty-five years One hundred and fifty years later, recognized, tucked deep around your legs You got that from me, old and I’m playing dress-up. I don’t care I looked up, drawing out one last mel- so you will never leave again. what you tell me, I will be more embar- ancholy note. A crowd had gathered

40 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 41 of five and grandmother to seven, only ever admit it. Seeing them together puts then, I have left my own. Over the last managed to keep a small potted begonia a smile on my face. seventeen years, my dents and mistakes alive. My grandmother’s delicate have been added into the mix. With lessons Rheannon Lovell The only new thing in the house needlework covers up the cracks on hidden in small closets and warmth found was the living room carpet, a Christmas the walls. Even though they are often in the loud atmosphere, I’m forever grate- Chepachet, RI ful to have my yellow house. The most present from my uncle last year. The in- blue-ribbon recipients at the fair, all the awards are in a beat-up shoebox upstairs, maltreated-looking dwelling on the block is stallation was a family affair, involving where only dust knows what it contains. the one that seven people at some point had my Aunt Gail and her husband, my Un- My grandfather’s books of war heroes, called home, and now with me, eight. cle John and his wife, my grandmother, pirates, sailors, and saints are strewn grandfather, my Aunt Steph with her around everywhere—usually where no sense of humor, and myself. In order to one would ever expect them. remove the old carpet that had protected Dents in the walls and scratches the knees of the kids who had played on the furniture still call to memory my on it (and created a mosaic of stains), aunts and uncles in their childhood. Since we had to move all of the furniture and place it haphazardly in other areas of our cramped home. I found great amuse- ment in sitting on my grandfather’s Lay- Symphony for the Lost Z-Boy in the kitchen up until it was time to put it all back again. Elizabeth Merrigan The basement, for seventeen Morristown, NJ years, had belonged to two people, my mother and myself. Even though it is a A boy in an orange beanie big room, our big personalities filled it whips his feet onto the curbside so he can wall to wall. The tiles slide under your tightrope home. But along the way feet, and there’s a pile of the ones that the cracks in the avenue have released fully in the corner under conspire, convening into a gaping maw the carpet. The carpet itself I’m sure at that consumes the names on the signs some point was a bright red, fluffy and and regurgitates them in a different language. lively, but it too has been matted down He finds a stooped back meditating atop a lime green stool over the years. In the winter, the lack beneath full grown stars and dying ones. of heating in the basement makes for a The crossroads of a man’s face are buried specialized lifestyle. The tiles are so cold in a windbreaker’s crisp folds. He sleeps. it’s as if frost himself called them home, A wide-eyed paper dragon hangs above him from the awning, boasting foreign gashes on its beckoning belly. and yet I only just got myself a pair of It sheds its faded, flaking scales, slippers this winter. curling, bemused, as they fall. As you would climb the old wooden steps that creak almost in an- Ten steps down, the boy is stopped. A huddled figure smiles a naked yellow smile guish from so many generations of to please the moths, stomping, running, and other abuses, her greying hair secured in a pinned halo around you reach the kitchen. Here, the tile an onion-shaped head. and a semi-finished basement make up sound and the elements. You could stand is warmer, though just as patched and She has her own constellations. ragged. The small kitchen serves din- She presents six rows of neon polyester The Yellow House the yellow house that the family of seven in the dining room and talk just above an shipped from somewhere far away, has called home. average decibel level and everyone in the ners made by my grandmother, and its hope sewn in their zigzag seams. Sara Gramling back porch holds the grill that my grand- Their own straps confine them to the wall, The last two of the five kids house could hear you. There’s a leak in father uses for the occasional steak if it’s Towson, MD my grandparents had were born here in the light fixture above the sink when it twenty-dollar Andromedas chained to the same cliffside. affordable. Like petrified butterflies The yellow house was some- the yellow house. And as my youngest rains. The dining room itself allows they bare their pockets and zippers to where between “Well, it’s got character” aunt turns fifty this year, this house eas- Its modestly sized windows for banter and laughter, with table and uneven temperatures, and “It could use some work.” ily turns seventy. If walls could talk, I’d overlook our lawn, a botanical garden chairs belonging to my great-grandfa- indifferent glances, the tight lips of strangers. wonder if the house appreciated all the of every type of unwanted weed imag- Below them, On the cusp of a town we could ther. A china cabinet lines the wall, young and asphyxiated in their bubble wrap never afford, it was buried between peo- stomping children running around, and inable. Everything people in our street though after surviving two generations lie the empty shells of plastic ple holding onto their last years and kids if it got somber when they moved on to chased from their yards to ensure pre- of curious children, it holds just about suitcases. exploring with their playground eyes. pursue their futures and future homes. sentable street appeal seemed to find ref- everything but china. In the morning, The boy tugs the hat away, The house itself is now a permanent yel- The structure has settled over uge in ours. In the spring time, we get an old married couple sits at the aged seventy years. Still it supports the fam- a brief moment of beauty; three azalea saluting his abandonment. He knows he must go. low. According to stories, back when my wooden table, well beyond their golden But gone is the smoky makeup of business hours. grandfather was younger and able, it was ily inside. The damaged hardwood floors bushes—peach, purple and red—line the years, but still their faces lie about their Night applies the rouge and iridescent warpaint painted wood. Now it is simply a muted, creak when you walk, but that’s not as front porch. The red and the purple seem age. The sight of them eating breakfast of aureate street lights, of blazing LED pale yellow aluminum siding. It’s got a loud as the creaking of the house on a to hug the pink in between. As I would side by side contradicts how they bicker and their psychedelic mirrors on the pavement. windy day. The sound of the house’s cut across the grass on my way home The boy listens closely with his blushing ears new set of porch steps built in one after- with each other in every other situation. to the rainwater tap-dancing behind bars beneath him, noon by my uncle, but other than that, frame settling against itself was the from school, those azaleas always put a Anyone could tell they were still as close swells of laughter ringing distant but so nightly lullaby I had as a child. The smile on my face. Besides the bushes, my nothing has changed. Two bedrooms, to each other as when they were married so quick. one and a half bathrooms, a finished attic house had little insulation from both grandmother, an accomplished mother almost sixty years ago, but neither would

42 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 43 The dying hope. seconds-in, six-seconds-out, but my breath, stubborn and excited, is running A Love Letter From Obesity Despair. (Because You Wanted to Know Why) Elmer’s My Happy Place at a rate of one-second-in, one-second- (Will it ever end?) Alexis Hope Lerner Jessica Maddox out. After seven sets of six-in, six-out, I Sarah Mughal Upper Saddle River, NJ Upper Saddle River, NJ coerce my breathing to slow to its usual The wanting. The helpless wanting of dreams, the blacking out of Vestal, NY brisk jog, taking timed laps around my boulders, the hopeless stargazing of the weighed down. The unde- look at the milk circulatory system. The physical? The spots popped between the legs, the lines serving. The losing of everything (but you let it go). Watching the “Take a deep breath with your stomach, dreams above flicker, don’t even care you’re drowning in waves look at the milk not your chest, Jessica. Find your happy The truth of the matter is, I don’t think carved on the arms, the hair growths dusting I can share my “happy place” with her. the wide frontier of belly (and just about everywhere, they of your own body. Your own body killing you, in every way and and the sandwiches place, imagine the feeling of the ground don’t checking off every possible detail- your own and the gum packs under your feet, the smell of the wind, My “happy place” isn’t a memory bur- personal, mental dictatorship. Not caring. Because there’s no chewing on the counter tell you this in health class), the strain of just crossing legs, and describe it.” I’ve considered this ied in the veil of the fog called time. It’s the pimples dotting the point. Your aspirations never happened. and the cigarettes not the cover of a private island’s bro- face and the nape and the breasts, the gasping breaths at night, Never will. burning in the cabinet request before. Therapist Number Six’s protected by a year’s distance exercise was as standard as the Ikea chure, luxurious sheets of white sand the companionable with two sets of footprints trailing into discomfort, stumping around the world in Because sometimes it feels as if I’m pushed to kneel in a flicker- between curiosity and proper age. furniture in the waiting room. cropped thick bones, the world spinning when standing, the ing gold dungeon, knees digging into sandpaper stone, writing Rolling the idea around like a marble an endless desert of turquoise water. the names of sins over and over into my wrists (obese, obese, lazy, look at the milk health you’ve never known forgotten into far away memory in a maze, I smirk at her “University But I can write. I can ravage ten pages (where there was some fairy like confidence bestowing wishes and sinful, depressed, anxious, failure, dead) and the blood spills and soils dusting away of my cracked and colored composition dreams and Hope), the ever wavering forecast of disease, the the gown and crawls into the cement mazes in the ground as if to of Something Prestigious” diplomas, get away from the reality and the head’s thrown back and there’s the Arnold Palmer the prepsters drink all shellacked onto the center of cheap book with thin cursive, highlighting thudding heart dashing in the halls, the thin silk of a spider web’s geometric the looks of people, the talk of people, the cutting screaming and screaming so loud even the lowliest of angels hears the Red Bull the jockies down. oak slabs with inorganically cheery pity of people? the agony (God might yet), but keep scrawling and ripping and not one wallet has yawned and lolled dollars finishes. Matching her erect form, I pull pattern with my pen. I can compose an bleeding because somewhere between the pain and the loss there for a drink at Elmer’s I look into the mirror, ignore the boulders tumbling from my shoulders down from my neck and arrangement of stars into a symphony above- is a moment of the most unimaginable nothing. of words where most people see only it is so easy to forgo now but the milk has never seen imagine releasing my words like smoke And they only watch, the overtakers, torn jacket lining or the lint inside for her innocent lungs to inhale. “Well, a “dipper” or “belt.” When I allow in anticipation of when. myself to scratch at the itch of words [God has given me eyes to see and a brain to think but hands unre- expressions concealed by a flat mask of disgust. a deep, deep pocket. no one touches the milk I went to a river once… I remember strainable and a mouth uncontrollable.]) though it’s fresh from yesterday. balancing on the balls of my feet, trying tickling under my skin, I can feel the You think- this is your punishment. You, you make promises you to track the path a single leaf down the soothing aloe of clarity. Huddling The emotion? A never-ending fear, is that what you want will not keep, you pant under the weight of dreams you’ve only look at the milk inside the silly loops and sensual curves to hear? thought on and the condoms on the shelf rushing freeway of water. It smelled in passing, not even working, not even next to the Advil and floss and other necessities. like rotting leaves and I stood watching of letters, my friend’s wrists, jagged This hopeless hope, this monumental struggle that seems with crusted marks, no longer beg for too lonely to surmount, and exploding anxiety and defeat- trying, or else there would be some sign, would there not? You chocolate labs barking after a gnawed defeateateateat, the juggling and the fumbling, not picking cannot decide, you waver look at the milk on tennis ball. Other kids my age me to answer why she glares at her face between great folly and great sin poured into the omelet the Hispanic Achilles’ torch up again, wanting to know why and knowing splashed each other under a waterfall so in the mirror. As I cut my pen into a it, hearing it, ignoring it, the turmoiled mobs cry death to not even striking near mediocrity nor greatness, little fool. You makes for me, wiping his greasy hands slice of paper, I dice the world with my peace and the crucifixion of calm, the gave nothing, on stained apron, offering a dirty smile high it must’ve been five stories tall, but and now you will receive none. and the best breakfast i’ve ever had. I was happy to just be still and watch.” ideas, and carve out my “happy place,” hate, pity self prescribed and overdosed, the screaming, the syllable by slanted syllable.. hope torn and fed to fire, the tears that should burn pounds look at the milk Of course, I’ve never visited that river, away, the weight of the world (ha), the constant (Giving up is the sweetest poison.) if it even does exist, and sitting still is While I stare at Rita’s diplomas, words anger, fear, disappointment, despair, confusion, tears, the sitting in a glass bottle outside the rusted door and sentences crowd my tongue, plead- Someone will fish you out. Drag you out of the dead seas, lay you as we swivel in stools, not my forte. fearthefearthefear(mydrug, myonly Therapist Number Six, otherwise ing to explain my reasons for stealing solace). I can’t feel a thing. (why why why why WHY WHY out on the beach, and slap you. Slap you leaning on countertop and stories another six-in, six-out breath. I don’t WHY AM I A FAILURE?) and beat you and chase you into a corner to kick you and make from back when we were friends. known as Rita, is a thin woman so you cry and make you break and make you bleed sapphires prim that wrinkles would never dare to think she could handle the cacophony The consequences. (So many. So, so many.) The tears of grand- and cry red rubies look at the milk jug disrupt the smooth fabric of her face. of syllables. Instead of describing an- mothers, the soft voices and yells and sparring of mothers, the the cook burns his cig into other scene of some picturesque beach because it is a revelation. And it cannot be painless. It cannot be like an ashtray, crushing Adjusting her salmon pink accessories pretending and condescending of peers, the quiet angry (which of course match her salmon for her, I simply say, “I’ll write about it discarding of fathers, the self hate, hating everyone, the slip- seen coming, fury blazing and grief pouring rivers of black blood glowing orange tip into cloudy white for you.” ping of subjects, the dropping of steam and the rise of mad, to overcome you and cleanse you. And it cannot be undone- only pink shoes and salmon pink scarf), she cackling electricity into a downward spiral of broken mettle, ignored. And then you’ve drowned. and look at that milky smile watches me fidget. Uneasily curling THE HEADACHES, the anxiety, the self doubt, the sudden the cashier gives with ribbon tied ‘round her teeth my toes in my black boots laced loose, If you’re waiting for that to happen when she opens her cobwebbed register for us. The Brush, Pour Cybele ambush of new fears, the new occupation, the guns blazing I wonder if she notices that I can’t stay and mowing down traces of sun, the anger, the resentment, then maybe think of this- Rebecca Greenberg no one can help you but yourself look at all the milk still. everyone’s frustration, everyone’s pain, everyone’s weight, Providence, RI everyone’s business- growing up is being slapped and told you anymore. and the cigs behind the counter Therapists always know when you’re cannot and the sandwiches and condoms and brats in the corner lying—their radar puts the NSA to cry anymore- the letting go. (That last part’s not about fatness, love- it’s about failure.) with Snapple hidden in their purses shame. To Rita’s credit, I have yet to When she was here, survive a session under her judgmental the brush would slip through her hair, The sinking ship. look at the lottery ticket splitting the dark waters of a silent stream next to the milk the cashier drinks gaze with a single lie still intact. Feeling True fear, when you remember you are the one and only sitting shiny shiny buy one win some like a traitor, my breathing picks itself captain, a up and runs in my chest at a rate so Now it lies belly-up on her dressing table, lone we should get one alarming some doctors would prescribe gold hairs glinting on the hull like wet seaweed— silhouette or a pirate’s foolish dream. but i’ve already won. mild sedatives. Rita insists I set a pace on deck. to my breathing to the rhythm of six-

44 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 45 3. The doorbell, announcing the de- A List of Things That livery of more food, adding onto the never-end- ing supply already sent by friends and family. Ring More Often Now For as long as I could remember, my mother Dear Sperm Donor Stacey Cohen and I went to the grocery store together every Whitney Agyeman Livingston, NJ Friday night, but when high school came, Fri- Vernon, CT 1. The telephone that lies beside my day nights were reserved for other purposes— mother’s bed. It used to ring occasionally, friends, books, or homework. I did not think I’ve been ignoring following mirrors, its shrill sound piercing whatever sounds of of my mother carrying my 10-year-old brother, Outlined with your face. life wafted through the house—music (that or her purse filled with coupons, more than I’ve been chasing cars, my father constantly played despite my half of which probably expired months before. To find the one, mother’s chastising), the canned laughter I did not think of her pacing the aisles, lean- My lover hid into. of a sitcom audience long gone, or the oven ing on the cheap plastic cover of the rattling I was told I was just like you. timer ticking away as my mother prepared shopping cart as she looked through the neon By a woman who hardly knew me or the real you. a dinner we should have thanked her for. colored cereal boxes under stingy fluorescent I had your hard shaped head, The phone ringing has blended into back- lighting, urging her to save, save, save! Plump lips, ground noise now, as my mother picks up Now she spends her Friday nights in Unseen freckles, the phone and repeats the same story back bed, and the flow of food has not stopped since A nose an ape once had, into the cold receiver. It seems people who her surgery. The deliverymen (so far no wom- Because just like the ape, have lost touch suddenly remember our en) have smiled politely and accepted their It speaks right through my ears, phone number. tips, dropping off their packages and moving A language forbidden, Yes, she’s doing fine, no she’s on to the next delivery. I wonder if they know, Repeatedly ignored. not in much pain, thank you very much if there is some tint to her skin or slight smell I refuse to believe I was beget, for your gift, we really appreciate it. She that gives her condition away. Out of a loving marriage, hangs up. News of appointments with her By a woman- myriad doctors, her search for a wig, her But she smiles and tells me her can- Frozen in smiles, plans for chemotherapy. Yet, she repeats cer is not something to be ashamed of, that it And a father- the stories, listens to friends and family tell is just a part of her that desperately wants to Hated by his second creation. her about their normal lives, and manages survive—just as much as the rest of her. to laugh right along with them. I ask her if she ever tires of having to put on a face for everyone, and she smiles and asks me, what things under my bed face? Sarah Horner Pleasant Gap, PA 2. The alarm on my phone each morning before school. Before the surgery, last night after I turned off my light and my mother would wake up at a quarter to whispered your name into my pillow I burrowed down into my sheets and my blanket Leaf five each morning to prepare her breakfast, slid off into the crack next to the wall. Jessica Bulkley shower, walk the dog, and organize every- It’s a funny thing that I was so tired before because after I turned my light back on, un-burrowed myself Friendsville, PA thing to make sure my brother and I were found the energy to reach for it ready for school before she left for work. my fingers touched something else and I wasn’t so tired anymore. Sometimes, after reading an article in the stands on tiptoes covered in a thin sheet of dust and memories to catch sight of greener newspaper she thought I would find inter- I found a small white tealight (one of the battery ones. Jesus Saves grass esting, she would leave a crinkled cutout by it doesn’t work anymore). Elle Wallace neighborshavesprinklers weneedthemtoo my seat in the dining room. After all this, a water bottle, half empty, drops clinging to the top, reaching for sun from the window above. ummelstown she would open the door to my bedroom H , PA sorry son winter time treats all grass the same and winters are bad around here and peer into the darkness, with my dog A square of fabric that feels like grey god help the man who and the warmth of sleeping, falls racing into my room like she had not seen my head on your shoulder. know the man who me in years. She would remind me to get getbackupboy there’s nothing foryou closes his eyes there was a yellow post-it note down needs a rest up, urging me gently, unlike the harsh jabs with your lyrics on it there of sunlight pushing their way through my hot air balloon by owl city. the congregation goes tiredfromworkdon’t botherme window shade. hush-hush I took my hand away after using and when he rises he finds that Now the sounds of a mechanical my blanket to cover them because when he walks in I can’t bear for these things to come to light >all eyes on< the lost soul he has grown old robot greet me at six every morning from even though some of them don’t matter hearts ripped from chest misshapen my cell phone, while my mother catches up but neither do I. and thrown to the hands raised veins like blue rivers on the sleep that eluded her for years. She of temptation your name is still on my wall pulsing needs her rest, the doctors say. But every next to the calendar turned to July of last year – lust pulsing morning about twenty minutes into my fit I don’t know when they’ll ever come down. of oversleeping, I hear her soft footsteps desire (those men can’t control themselves) no god has not forsaken he has simply maybe the paint behind them is a different color forgotten shuffling outside my door, reminding me untouched by the sun control yourself boy! unbleached by you. (god help) the man who to get up and face the day. to help

46 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 47 “that’s for tea (--no--) okay, it’s Johnny’s”, his rib cage – and carves into them every of her fork, flipping it over on a journey “I love you” etch of numbed over trepidation, of chest- across her dish, but for once, he knows Brother because although those aren’t true Swirls of White Paint rocking salvation, of that fierce, teary she’s not stringing together atoms to make Hannah Phillips kind of need to be something more, that carrot molecules in her head. Instead, Alexis Hope Lerner I know they definitely once were half-men have ever felt tremble inside of she’s thinking about what it would be like Clifford Township, PA Upper Saddle River, NJ back when you were shorter them, looking into the eyes of girls they to just be a simple morsel on her plate (when we wore plaid & corduroys undoubtedly loved. right now, entirely dependent on the oth- With each blink, I am inside Even when she locks him out of the and the underbellies of our shirts looked exactly the same.) It’s the first time he realizes that, per- ers to get this meal over and done with. the nostalgic eye of the Sun 660: house, he can’t leave. Every day I defended you against the fourth grade girls, haps, that feeling he has in his chest – the “They have me taking care of this new we are standing beside the school bus together, Every vein inside of him is crackling, the ones who occupied the last row on the bus one that pushes out from inside like armor kid,” Helen states, as if it’s not the first hands clasped in solidarity, matching in plaid & corduroy, and screeched and picked at your gawky hesitance threatening to shrivel and fold up, and he unable to stay put in place – can feel warm and only announcement of the night, as my pigtailed braids plus your pocketful of buttons, like crows on a carcass-- can’t fathom the idea of her perched inside instead of heavy. He thinks that just may- if Mia has just said something about her two gapped grins shining for mom’s old camera. the things that Sun 660 couldn’t capture. somewhere, lips pursed delicately and eyes be, when he finally does implode someday, Chemistry project or Kyle about his job at A Polaroid emerges like a mechanical tongue alight with nothing wilder than concern. a few good things will come leaking out the hardware store downtown. “Clinical- and winds up crunched up in my hand Now those twenty-four-year-old “natural redheads” There are parts of her that fascinate over all the bad. ly depressed, post-traumatic stress from are the ones you take upstairs to experience Parker and ones that devastate him, but when he witnessed some accident as a kid, your lips and adjectives--not chivalry and grace the only one that maintains an equilibri- ten years later. There is white light bleeding onto the they’re saying, but you know what, I think (just as they corrupted you, you corrupt um between the two is her ability to leave film from my too-tense fingertips. the church girl with braces and braids that’s bullshit. There’s a difference be- things unsettled – as if these words don’t They shake; still I find your bedroom eyes like mine.) It occurs to him in a moment that holds tween being crazy – being downright sick clink around in her mind after midnight, soaked into the storybooked princes on my shelf, semblance to a jolt: there is nothing for in the head – and just wanting an excuse don’t scrape against each other like dead dignified men of chivalry and grace. (Too bad mom can’t praise But just remember that holding them him to do but wait – for Mia to change her to give in.” bolts, pretending to hold things together. you with those words (like medals) anymore.) doesn’t feel nearly as wholesome mind, for a concerned neighbor to peek out Suddenly, he feels his own silence add Words like that can’t just dissipate out as when you held my hand in that beautiful Polaroid of a window with a phone to his or her ear, to the scraping. into the universe, he wants to tell her. Our sibling honeymoon lasted for my first fourteen years: or for Helen to come home from the hos- They have to stay close to you, have to during the latter seven, we stood beside the school bus together or when you held up Grandma’s quilt pital. bury themselves somewhere. He worries hands clasped, a plaid & corduroy pair; for us to hide under long past our bedtimes The thought of Helen, Mia’s mother, reading not about proper princes, but instead Peter Pan sometimes that they pool into her blood, September after September, year after year-- stalking toward him, eyes sharp and black Helen’s Subaru never does peel into the and forming shadow puppets in that sacred dark. thickening it like lead, so that one day, one a constant element like perennials. like the two of them are standing on a driveway. She never wrenches open the Brother, don’t forget the dog-earred pages, unsettling remark, it will cripple her right Now we are less than a fresh pair of flowers crime site, rather than a yellowed, frozen door and threatens to call the police should cracked spine and faded illustrations. Don’t forget on the spot. She’ll just freeze over like a --less than an old married couple over front yard, rattles around at the bot- she ever find him “harassing” her daugh- --less than the frayed remnants of a divorce: the snickers we stifled and Snickers we stuffed cold statue with dry pain flaking off of her. tom of his stomach, clinking against the ter again. Instead, Kyle’s old truck wob- under our pajamas to chew on at midnight. For now, he paces over the patchwork hollowed-out caverns there. Since the bles up over the curb, staggering on until we are complete strangers. And don’t forget the flashlight we used-- floorboards of her family’s front porch. first time she met Parker, that woman it heaves to a stop – horrendously parked, that glowing beacon of the days He retraces his path until the boards has always looked at him like an animal blocking off both garage door entrances. This bleeding Polaroid--I saved it from the photo album that were once all seem to give slight way from under him, mine. awaiting termination, as if he was already But one look at that crumbling piece of rotting on the top shelf of your armoire seem to find a rhythm that agrees to stick caught in a snare without even know- machinery and a double-take of the crum- along with a few expired acceptance letters around as long as he does. Like the house ing it. Now, he knows she’s right. His bling boy sliding out of it, and it’s clear (last year’s edition), mom’s now-decrepit camera, pulses with life beneath my feet, he thinks, own terrors swarm around him, wrench that not much will be said about it. your old flashlight Like it writhes and chokes, like it knows him down like netting; she never makes Kyle is a lanky sort of kid. His limbs the terrible sensations of being truly and Hipster Friend a striking move, because she knows he’ll often look like, at one point, they were just and my pride. I hide my eavesdropping eyes utterly alive. Kate Busatto drag himself under, far from her daughter, haphazardly thrown together and miracu- as I sit around the staircase corner so you can’t see Or maybe it’s just a house, he thinks. just the same. lously, unexplainably, they’ve stayed put your nervous sister fiddle with her sweatshirt-sleeves-- Sewickley, PA Maybe, this is why she can sleep while over the years. But up close, it’s easier to I watch my too-young older brother suffer he watches ceiling patterns shift. We’ve got the vegan kid, see that his face is warm. It’s something from his own reckless apathy. When the rhythm proves disquieting, listening to smooth jazz on weekdays, that starts in his eyes and pools out into Parker takes to loitering around the front Brother, I see in the living room the left corner of your lips and his weekend friend: He’s only been dating Mia Staudinger the rest of his features, ruffling through yard. It doesn’t feel like that, though – curl around that church girl’s innocence, her open face a full moon the wonders of the television set. for a little over a month, but from what he his hair and hopping from freckle to freck- shouldn’t feel like loitering when the girl as you drape your arm around her shoulders Why won’t he turn on MTV? takes of it, it’s seldom that her mother eats le – the kind of face that, under no circum- he plans on marrying one day is inside likes a shawl; her older brother (and our own Aunt Margaret) Please reach a tattooed hand to the remote dinner with her kids – or rather, her daugh- stances, could startle somebody around watching him, picking apart his symp- had warned against vampires and hook me up with some True Life. ter and someone else’s son. Mia’s older the turn of a corner. toms like she probes at specimen. Mia has like you. Nope, music on that channel’s a part of the mainstream. stepbrother, Kyle, didn’t have enough time “Hey, Parker,” he mumbles. Kyle never always treated his disorder as some sort of He turns on the Educational Program to find a place in this family when his fa- says much anything more, but he also nev- equation, as if it can be dissected on nu- Brother, I feel through the floorboards the force of rusty bedsprings but thinks about drugs, sex ther was alive and certainly doesn’t pose er forgets to say something. merous occasions, each time to reveal the when your mattress holds one body and other mind-pollutants. much of an interest in continuing to try Parker’s throat feels too dry to answer, same misplaced emotions. Only he knows that weighs two--the way the walls pound How bout a smoke, kid, how bout a smoke? now that he’s gone. all cracked up inside. He just smiles as that if she tried to take him apart, there with the sound of loud noise from the radio Okay, and sticks it in his teeth as he finishes So, perhaps, the fact that Kyle is star- best he can. would be chaos – strings of eroded inse- and loud lives against the headboard shaving half his head for Kleptomaniac Awareness: ing down at the home-cooked food on “You need to get in . . . ?” He chuckles. curities some days, chasms of dizzying while I try to forget that on your pillowcase are the same printed animals be aware that the klepts are stealing his look. porcelain like it’s a poached alien isn’t en- With the realization of just how strange misery others, and the occasional swell of from when you were six (the red bunny What is this, Camel? He only smokes tirely an indication that moments like this, he must look to Kyle – off-balanced and was our favorite)-- fleeting inspiration. Virginia Slims to demolish the sexism of the corporations. packed neat and homely, are rare between sauntering around on their front yard – He’s got a Starbucks cup of hot philosophy, --and I know what you conceal the three of them. Even so, there’s some- something dives down, sharp and quick, in the shoebox in your closet (I’m not stupid; and nihilism means something to him. thing about the way the silence among in Parker’s stomach. He has to remind When he dies he’ll turn off them scrapes against itself, as if three quiet himself that Kyle, for every time he’s wit- they’re clearly not for tea (or party balloons)) To look at her hurts. It hollows out like his beloved iPhone forces – each capable of carrying through nessed a near slip in composure, has never all the spare places inside of him, ones he because he’s trying to spread his message: this place alone, in its own way – have been one to wrap his mind around things --and I don’t mind the lies you tell our parents didn’t even know existed until now – cra- Hell is just another corporation. been forced to cross each other. he doesn’t have to. when you’re “going to class”, “see you tonight”, ters beneath his shoulders and dips along Mia prods at a carrot with the prongs

48 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 49 Other side of the house, window farthest to Kyle turns to see Parker clutch- groan. Out of the corner of his eye, he catch- “Yeah,” Parker huffs, and with the left, above the gas tank ing the bottle just where he’d caught it, es Kyle watching them again, lips curved up that, something tumbles off of him – per- next. She doesn’t know that sooner The night is so heavy around her house, eyes wide and half-smiling in a mixture of in a half-way grin. He watches them as if haps, just for the moment, but that’s longer than she can blink she’ll find herself like something radiates from it and pushes amusement and shock. “Whoops,” Kyle he’s the visitor, and Parker is the one to be- than it’s ever stayed away before. in her room for hours on end doing against his chest. She’s probably upstairs chuckles, “I forgot Mia likes to create as long here. “You know, I don’t know a whole homework with her headphones in to in her room, practicing speaking with a He hadn’t been sure whether or not to al- many unnecessary hazards in this place as lot about the mind or any of that stuff, but block out the nightly yelling coming German accent or trying to understand low Kyle to let him inside. Sure, he needed possible.” I’ll tell you what, if I could feel all the good Things have never been this way and all the bad that make up this world – if I from downstairs, not chalking up why the quadratic formula works the to talk to Mia – needed to let her know that the driveway or selling lemonade to way it does – whatever current whim her until something in her eyes said she was before. It only now occurs to Parker that in “You’re not like her at all, are could feel it all at once – I’m pretty sure there curiosity has taken the form of – and in still there, still his, and still fascinating the time he spent memorizing this place and you?” wouldn’t be enough room inside of me. And strangers in cars. She’ll be listening to this moment, she probably doesn’t even and devastating all at once, his body would its ceiling patterns, Kyle may have been do- Parker watches the college athletes you seem like you’re a hell of a lot closer loud angry music sung by loud angry remember that she called him overbear- play pinball with its fears – but something ing the same thing. on the screen when he answers, wishing he than the rest of us to knowing what that’s men. She doesn’t understand the genu- ing today. The memory, filed somewhere about taking advantage of Kyle’s soft kind was just as hard in the eyes as them – wish- like.” ine troubles of being an only child in a ing he could channel all the things that don’t Kyle stops then, just as things are in that mind of hers, is probably just as of ignorance makes thoughts of Mia sink broken home. On the same driveway, weighted and real as the fact that German make sense in the world into a game that starting to fall off of Parker like layers of ar- down inside of him, allowing for guilt and “Remind me again why I’m here, doing does. “No, I’m not.” mor, and he turns to look over his shoulder. in what seems to be no time at all, sounds replace w’s with v’s. Things, he’s fears of his own morbidity to pool up over this in this very moment, because I sure Kyle nods, and he’s quiet for a mo- “Nice of you to show up.” she will inhale smoke into her lungs coming to see, clink and shuffle around in them. can’t answer that question myself.” ment, taking a slow sip of the cola. Parker Mia stands at the foot of the stairs, and she will be angry. But right now Mia’s head, but they never bleed together The air pulses around him. Mia doesn’t Mia’s small frame contorts with thinks he might not say anything more, hair tied back and eyes glistening at their she is sitting on the driveway, and or threaten to ooze out. show herself. Suddenly, all those spare hefty laughter as she lets four grocery bags might let the comfortable distance that’s corners. Her throat folds in and then out He circles the house three times, places inside of him – the craters under his everything was beautifully distilled, tumble out of her arms onto the kitchen always floated between them and these as she swallows hard. Parker starts to stand but she is angry because the rain is but of the few upstairs rooms that are lit- shoulders and the dips along his rib cage counter. “Because, you know, I woke up this questions reshape itself. But then, he starts – to embrace her, to flee from her, to drop up, he can only catch glimpses of ceiling – feel washed through by ice. Standing morning and realized I haven’t the slightest again, “It’s like you get something that she to her feet – but her gaze skips passed him, overwhelming her. patterns. And they’re all identical to the at the foot of the Staudingers’ staircase, idea how to make sushi. I don’t know how just doesn’t, as weird as that seems. I mean, landing on the athletes. Her mom came outside when she one he’s always reserved for Mia’s room. glazed over by sunlight that has also stolen to make arguably my favorite food on this I don’t think I get it either, but that’s noth- Her eyes dull down then, as if saw the rain start to come down. She Parker has come to associate those swirls its passage inside, he feels the burning in planet, and that really put a damper on my ing new. Mia gets everything.” willed by her to do so. She pads across the called for her to come inside, but the of white paint with nights spent holding the corners of his eyes, the tingling in his day.” She’s laughing, playing at sarcasm, “That makes me sound really cool, room, almost lazily, perching beside him on little girl didn’t move from her spot on her close to him – nights where things in- hands, the swells of fear beneath his chest, but he knows what she just said is truly the like I’m in on some secret everybody wants the arm of the sofa. “What’s the score?” the ground. side of him quieted down, overwhelming deflated now and yet so prevalent just mo- only reasoning she has. He’s here for just to know.” Parker means to chuckle, but the “Please come inside, you can draw him with neither the good nor the bad, but ments ago that they bubbled up over all this, of course – to see the corners of her words drip tiredly out of his lips in a sigh. just the real. Realizing now that Helen rationality. Shame sears through him, hot eyes crinkle up, the colors of them flash with “Maybe, you are,” Kyle murmurs. again tomorrow when the sun is out.” might look up at those same swirls every against the ice. It snaps his crinkling veins light and passion. “Nah, people like you guys are just “NO. This is not fair. I loved my night, he feels like a kid who’s just real- back into place. Kyle sits a few feet away at the smart enough to know” – Chalk Drawings drawings and now they are gone. ized his favorite word is pronounced with “I don’t think she’s here,” he dining table, an American History textbook He stops, too abruptly, he realizes, Emily Guerra Everything is ruined!” a harder tongue. It makes his insides wal- opened in front of him. He smiles a little, but the truth is, he has no idea how to finish, manages to croak out to Kyle, who, doused Upper Saddle River, NJ “You can make even prettier chalk lop around a bit. in the sunlight, just kicks at a familiar rug uncomfortably though, as if he’s not sure no idea what separates him from the boy be- drawings tomorrow. You’re getting He throws a pebble at one lit-up in a familiar house, unaware that he’s in he’s allowed, as if he’s afraid that everything side him, other than that one of them doesn’t The drizzles splattered down about Parker and Mia together is some sort feel anything weighing down on him when drenched honey, come inside now, it’s room, being quick to slink into the shad- the presence of two intruders. “Tell her on the driveway. Her vibrant chalk time for dinner.” ows behind the garage. It isn’t Mia, he I’ll see her whenever. Tell her I’m sorry.” of inside joke that will prove to be offensive, he sleeps. should he try to play along. “When to stop thinking?” drawings disappeared before she had She stayed there, sitting on the sees from his peering point, who comes He turns back for the door, but time to blink; before she had time to to open the window, but mercifully, it Kyle reaches a friendly arm out to block Mia, noticing him watching, saun- pavement for a while longer, sop- ters across the room to look over his shoul- realize that her tiny back was wet ping and sobbing. Her mom walked isn’t Helen either. Instead, Kyle, shirt- his exit. “Stay a little while,” he offers, Walking the Dog in a with raindrops. When she realized less and with sleepy eyes and disheveled “She’ll show up any second now. You der. “History, huh?” over and sat down in the rain next to hair, slides his elbows out onto the screen- He nods, but it’s more like a stutter both of these things, her eyes began her daughter. She let out a long sigh know Mia, she probably stopped at the li- of the neck. Circle Skirt on a Day less pane. He looks out and then direct- brary, because she developed some burn- to get wet too. She slowly started and said, “There is no use in crying “My favorite guy has always been with a Breeze whimpering as she watched all of her ly down, but when he finds nothing, he ing interest in Dr. Seuss’ life story or Bismarck. God, was he a manipulative bas- Robin Shafto now, nothing is permanent.” Then merely slumps his head into his arms, cra- something.” tard. But he got two entire countries to act creations wash away with the rain. she stood up and went back to setting dling it for a minute and watching the sky. Despite the heaviness pushing at like sensitive, insecure little humans.” Livingston, NJ It was the summer before she went the kitchen table, leaving her toddler Eventually, he straightens himself out and his chest, Parker snorts. Still, he mutters, Kyle smiles to appease her, and into first grade and every day seemed with those words. The crying stopped disappears from Parker’s view, cut off by “I don’t know, man. To be honest, I don’t Parker doesn’t point out that the Franco- My dog pooped on your lawn. better than the next. She drew but- the ceiling pattern. He leaves the window even think that she wants to talk to me.” although there was still some sniffling. Prussian War isn’t part of American histo- You compliment my eyes. terflies with the blue and green chalk, She’ll remember this conversation open, though – open for every little crunch Kyle’s mouth slides crookedly to ry. Instead, he just jibes, “Well, believe it or hearts with the red and pink, and of leaves, every cough of crisp autumn air, I respond “Excuse me.” with her mom forever. the left, eyebrows hinting up in concern. not, dearest, that’s what most countries are rainbows stretching all around the to come to his notice. Parker decides it’s “Something need to be fixed between the made up of – humans.” My voice cracks. She didn’t know that the rain was time to accept a sleepless night. two of you?” Mia arches an eyebrow and danc- pavement. She drew grass and bees coming. No one told her she should I mean to step to your right. and trees and all the things she saw But just as he’s about to slouch Something needs to be fixed in me, es over to him, wrapping her arms around No. Your left. No. stop loving the drawings before the into his hood and make a silent run for Parker thinks, but he only shrugs back at his neck. “Oh, but you’d be surprised how around her. These were all the things rain came and washed them away, so his car, parked two blocks up the street, a Kyle. Before he can make the cognitive much smarter most people can get when Your right? she knew. She didn’t know how long it wouldn’t hurt so much. She can’t flash of white flutters out of Kyle’s win- decision to do so, he’s following him into the they’ve got an entire nation depending on I am in your way. she had been drawing, but the sun had see any beauty in clean, dark, wet dow, down the side of the house. Then, kitchen, placing his elbows on the counter it.” gone from the middle of the clear sky My dog sniffs too far up your leg. pavement. She doesn’t like the smell the lit-up room inside of it goes dark, and and watching as Kyle rummages through a He smirks. “Mm, and how much to being hidden behind the trees. the window is pushed shut by a quick set refrigerator. dumber they can get when they’ve got one Your fly is undone. I say nothing. of fresh rain yet. She doesn’t see the of arms. pretty girl counting on it.” She doesn’t know any other place beauty in being cleansed, because she Without warning, Kyle turns and Your underwear is striped. but here. Here was home. Here has When Parker’s finally spun up tosses a bottle of cola – the old-fashioned, “You bet,” she breathes, her face So is mine. has never seen anything dirty. and broken down enough courage, curi- glass kind that Mia picks up – at Parker, just inches from his. “Now, start unpacking always been home, and right now Everything is beautiful for now and osity, and numbness to investigate it, he who, just by some stream of traveling luck the seaweed, dearest.” She delivers a light You do not know this. she thinks here will always be home. she is angry. finds a crinkled up piece of notebook paper using this house, this kitchen, as a bypass, sock to his stomach, and he doubles over the I hope. And every day will be better than the that reads: manages to snag the neck of it. counter with a cross between a snort and a

50 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 51 ashamed that anyone should see me fall the next. Hundreds of footsteps march in Nights are also filled with the in- When it gets dark outside, windows be- apart. But she was there. And she had only time to a thousand different tempos. Metal tangible, more so than the day. Dreams fill come rectangles of reflections. The light Cloud Secrets The clouds move in a different direction talked for a minute before turning the dis- locker doors spit out books and inhale bind- the air while nightmares paint it black. Lit- from my room illuminates the rectangle of Allison Chu today. The white puffy floating masses fly cussion to me. Already, I was crying. ers, papers flying everywhere. Backpacks tle stories are produced inside our heads… black, and the outside world is hidden in towards me, towards my window- that’s Quietly, she walked around her play bumper cars as messenger bags are And there are the thoughts, flying from shadow. Holmdel, NJ different. Yesterday, the clouds floated desk and sat down in the chair beside me. hoisted onto shoulders, the stray lunchbox one end of our minds to the ever expand- At night, my room is rarely The door shuts loudly when I walk in. from left to right across the rectangle patch She wore grey dress pants that day… I re- grabbed after a moment of forgetfulness. ing other. completely dark. I dislike the cold, ex- Heads turn, watching me as I slink to my of sky my window proudly displays. member that because I couldn’t raise my The last few footsteps are hurried, racing pansive, empty feeling of black windows. seat in the back corner. Pencils return to I never knew the sky was so varie- head to look her in the eye. She dragged against time. The drone sounds again, and Instead, my windows become extensions scratching, little whispers resume. The gated. Colors change within two minutes. the yellow tissue box across the desk and the halls grow quiet once more. That note… There was a note scribbled of my room: another bed, complete with teacher glares at me briefly before return- In a half hour span, there are yellows and offered it to me. I took one, wiped my eyes, I’m lost again, turned around in on a piece of loose-leaf paper. In pen, I its messy purple covers, another faded ing to her lesson at the board. I’m late, oranges and purples and periwinkles and and balled it up into my temporary secu- the hectic bustle. Seeing unfamiliar sur- think. A note left on the bedside table. wall map, another pink paper flower sus- again. indigos… Colors that define clouds as more rity blanket, a makeshift stress ball. roundings, I turn and walk in the opposite Why did he leave a note? pended from the ceiling. My desk has been than just puffy white or dense gray. “It’s okay, you know,” she had direction, through the halls that once again There was medicine, little white extended another yard in width, and my In the mornings on my way to the bus In the thirty-three minutes I said. And she had let me cry. hold their breath. pills lined up on the white kitchen table. bookshelf now has another side… Another Some were grouped into irregular white stop, the October sky above me is weary laid on my back on the floor of my room, reality. circular shapes. The white kitchen table and shy, cautious about the day. As I pick watching the sky, I saw more colors and But when I sit at my desk and had a white kitchen chair next to it. He sat my way around the wet puddles, the sky shapes than I have in the past two days. It’s My pencil briefly touches the paper in The band stops when Mr. K waves his look into my extended room, I see that on the white chair, feet planted squarely mimics me, passing tiny patches of faded a wonder how much we all miss because feather light strokes. I never doodle in hand, the last of our notes reverberating someone has already moved in. She has on the white linoleum floor. There was blue through thin covers of silver-gray we look down rather than up. Once in a class, much less draw with pencil. But in the outdoor setting. The cool air rustles the same hair as me, and she always wears too much white in that room. And on the cloud. while, it’s nice to lie on the floor and watch under my hesitant strokes a tree grows, between our music stands, teasing the cor- the clothes that I wear. Her movements the sky. branches reaching for the make-believe ners of our sheets. Some parents sit on the white table were the little white pills… mirror mine, and she also always writes in In the afternoons, the foggy dregs There was a lot of sofa-sitting that of sleep are long gone; my mind is clear. I sky. A trunk appears, stretching to the base ledge by the walkway, listening. purple ink, just like me. Everything about Mr. K says something. The band night. Hands clutched at the fabric, feet swing my lunchbox as I whistle a familiar of my paper, its roots sprawling in messy, her is the same as me… limbers up again, preparing to play. Sheets resting on the beige rug. Tense expressions melody, feet striding confidently against Feet tap urgently on the carpeted floor as impossible tangles. Leaves float across the Except for her eyes. Her eyes are are rearranged and fastened. Spit valves clenched faces. Whispers floated between the sunlit pavement. The October sky is a fingers fly across brass keys. A wall of noise page, quivering in the windy paper air… dark, with only a hint of white around the are emptied; the horns retune. I scan the my brother and my mouth. Low conversa- brilliant blue, a picturesque sky complete organizes itself into a chord, then a melody. The teacher walks by, her shadow iris. There are always shadows under her Lazily swinging from horn to horn, it skips creating a dark pool on my desk. I slam various parents, hoping for a familiar face. tions came from the kitchen. eyes, and they always look sad. Even when with big fluffy white clouds that seem to There were frantic phone calls. around the room, flirting with each instru- my planner shut, hiding any trace of the None. I smile at her, she returns the smile, but it suspend in mid-leap. Carefree children The kitchen phone still had a spiral cord- ment. Players only move slightly, torsos tree. She gives me a strange look, a calcu- Another half-hour of music pass- never reaches her eyes. I make conversa- play in the streets and on the driveways of - white, to match the kitchen. The cord minutely swaying to the music. A flash lating stare, before moving on to the next es. At the end of our last chart, there’s a tion with her, too, but she never responds. my neighborhood, shouting and shrieking was stretched; it didn’t reach any further. of gold distracts the melody as the whole student, glancing over his shoulder at his smattering of applause. I smile; the audi- Her eyes never seem happy. in the warmth of the day. Panicked conversations gripped my dad’s chord breaks down and crumbles. A voice work. ence enjoyed it. The last stragglers hurry Every night, I look for her in the In the evenings, my window hunched shoulders. The phone cord didn’t cuts through the last of the sound waves. I look down at my paper. It’s up the pathway, slowly ending the steady alternate room, and every night, we sit blinds are always open, especially since stream of parents. I stay in my seat, hop- reach to where the sofa sat. Why haven’t it is October. From my little chair in the Fingers twirl valves, feet shift, and papers blank. I open my planner again to the tree they switched their phone? down to write in our notebooks in purple shuffle. A sharp finger snap calls the gold drawn on the pervious week. Branches in- ing. Around me, the other band members ink. And I always smile at her. She smiles corner, knees drawn up as to make myself begin to pack up, and I grudgingly follow There were sirens that night, ear-pierc- horns to attention. Sounds are built on top tertwine with the dates and lines meant for back at me, and I always watch her eyes. invisible to the passerby, I watch the Octo- suit. Disappointment floods my mind. ing sirens that force cars to pull over to of each other until the melody reappears, assignments. It’s smudged already. I knew They’ve been sad for a while now, but ber sky paint itself in beautiful, flamboy- They didn’t come. the side of the road. The doorbell joined ant oranges and pinks. The expansive blue jumping for joy. there was a reason I hated using pencil. in with the sirens, clashing in a painful maybe if I keep smiling at her, one day her stretches and camouflages itself among the harmony. A mess of noise, ear-piercing eyes will sparkle and she’ll say hello. purples, colors colliding and transforming Steam slowly creeps up the mirror, noise… Unnecessary noise. I’m not sure which sense reminded me At dusk, the sky turns into a royal blue, in secret formations. Then, all too soon, transforming the clear reflective surface There were men in clunky boots the most about the memories I’ve tried to an ocean stretching across the horizon. I saw a cloud today, floating in the sky. the sky darkens into the deep blueness for into an opaque expanse. Water rains on and navy jackets. They clomped up the repress for so long. Was it the same color Wisps of clouds scatter across, making It was lonely, solitary in the expansive the night. And like me, no matter how my shoulders, running in rivets down my stairway and into the kitchen, leaving dirt swirly lines reminiscent of waves crashing sea of sky. It was sunset, 6 o’clock in the hard it tries, the October sky can never be- walls? Or maybe the desk and its place- arms. I hold out my hand and watch as the on the floor. It was all right at the time; the on the sandy shore. Flying creatures flit- evening, and I sat at my desk to watch the come invisible. ment in relation to the room? It’s orga- water falls off in drops, each drop carrying floor hadn’t been cleaned anyway. They ter through the air as the ocean turns from show. nized the same way as her office, the desk a little piece of my sorrow away. They fall spoke loudly, adding to the confusion and Glittering light reflected off the blue to black. Hello, Night. jutting out in the middle, her computer to the floor of the bathtub with little pat- the tension. We don’t wear shoes in the bottom of the slivery cloud, illuminating I bounce back and forth on the balls of next to the wall… tering plops and stream towards the drain. house. But they wore heavy boots that only a thin strip. The rest of the cloud re- my feet, dancing in place to the beat of the If I close my eyes, I can envision One by one, they descend through the little clomped up the stairs. mained in the shadow, periwinkle purple pounding bass drums behind me. Eyes dart myself back in the same chair, similar of- The lonely halls are mazes when silent… holes, disappearing from sight and erasing There were red and white lights- in the shadow, hiding from the people on the ground. What was there to hide, cloud? across little plastic coated sheets of music fice, but with a different woman behind simply empty passages to wander down my thoughts from my head. flashing, blurring lights that faded down the desk. I sat there in that day… crying and get lost. It’s easy to calm your thoughts the streets. They stubbornly streamed in Maybe the cloud has secrets, tales while fingers skim across glistening brass too dark to tell. Maybe the cloud has had keys. Flying sticks and blue dancing bod- silently in shock… because somebody no- by walking through the empty halls. Like a through the shut blinds… No blinds could labyrinth, I think. Through each little door- a stormy day, and it can’t bear to spill any ies catch my attention from the corner of ticed, and it felt like my whole world was Nights are never filled with silence. have stopped them. In an instant, they more tears. Maybe the cloud needs a place my eyes. Mr. B announces something on crashing down. I remember those anxious, way is an entrance to another world, trans- There’s always the crickets and cicadas were gone. The red and white lights left to hide, another cloud to lean upon and the loudspeaker, and the crowd erupts with silent minutes, time passing so quietly you ported into the microscopic particulars of singing the summer opera; there’s the along with the men in clunky boots who disappear into. Maybe the cloud needs a cheers. The drums pound in my ears; my could hear the second hand counting each biology or the dreary lifestyle of the Indus- gentle snoring from the room next door; took the only thing left on the kitchen ta- break. Or maybe the cloud finds it easier feet sway in time to the rhythm… I can feel eternity… trial Revolution era. there’s the little whirling of the fan. And ble- the scribbled note. to simply hide behind its cheery orange A tear fell. Then another. I re- A loud monotonous drone sounds, cover, to pretend its whole entity is bright, the vibrations down to my very core. This there’s the sound of my pen gliding along to save its story for another day. is music… and I’m home. member angrily dashing them away, and the halls exhale life. Doors open as stu- the worn page of my notebook. dents leave one isolated world in search of Like me.

52 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 53 I believe that you can always find me with a smile tucked under a geode on her side of the When I’m sitting under that oak tree table. Is it too late to get a refund? Too Caught Up On 40 Krouner Road. My Eyes Seeing the Wizard Before I can snatch my money The Old City Samara Spiler I don’t believe in God, or goodbyes, Corinne Winters Jessica Maddox back and walk out, she grabs my hands. Anneliese Feldman Livingston, NJ Or luck. Halloween is just an excuse Cream Ridge, NJ Towson, MD I let them lie over her own like dead fish. Baltimore, MD To be half naked and not be judged. After Meg Kearny “I could not unpeach the peaches.” “The human aura is defined as an energy field After only three seconds of looking at my I believe that judgmental people - Annie Dillard which surrounds the physical body, in all hands, she’s ready to tell my entire life Israel, 2011 Are looking from the wrong perspective, I believe that curly hair is the worst hair directions, and will have a three-dimensional story. And that perspective is often most important. A scorpion. A dragon. A flying And that there’s no anti-frizz product look and feel…..An aura’s color usually re- “You will live a long life with Outside the Dung Gate, I believe that lying in bed all day horse. Or random white dots. Sitting in Or flat iron that can make this poodle flects the subtle energies which surround the many riches!” bullet holes Watching Grey’s Anatomy can make you forget the sky lab in fifth grade, listening to the That sits on my head look good, teacher fire off constellations, I nodded individual.” –Psychic.com ...Seriously? Does she have a script? Are from World War II About stupid things. Stupid people who create That looking good is just a phrase mindlessly when she asked if everyone there fortune cookies at the door? remain in the walls Stupid drama should also lie in bed all day could see the shapes. That was a lie, And that we get too caught up Between chic boutiques and cozy coffee “You have had your heart broken next to the arrow slits And watch Grey’s Anatomy. because no matter how long I stared Obsessing over this little fragment of a sentence. and blinked and squinted, Aquarius shops, a thin building squeezes its grey three times, once by love, once by fail- carved into the sandstone. I believe that warm weather is much better I don’t believe in love at first sight, still looked like a potato. My classmates sides to fit into the eclectic Hampden ure.” I walk the path of the cross Than the cold, and that one day I’ll be honey mooning But I do believe you can find your soul mate might have had trouble following as scene. The wide window holds no defini- and listen to the sobs of women In Bora Bora with that dimpled guy I spilled my fries all over. well, but I refused to be the one to raise She doesn’t tell me the third one. At a baseball game where you spill your tive name, just a sputtering LED sign as they rub pieces of fabric I’d like to believe that I’ll go to a good college, my hand and voice a question. At that “Who is the man who hurt you, dear?” Fries all over that guy with dimples age, it would have been social suicide to reading “PSYCHIC OPEN.” Its dim onto the site where he lay And that it takes a lot of hard work to get there. I think of the man who hurt me, and I In the Yankee shirt. say something so foolish. On my own, bulbs scream low budget. I run across the dead. Candlelight dances I also believe that hard work is somewhat of a struggle, I stared up at the sky in an attempt to wonder for a moment if she really does I believe in phone calls, smelly stickers, street in my old combat boots, weaving on the antique walls Considering that season nine of Grey’s Anatomy make sense of the shapes but all I got know. Concentrating on the memory Long showers, water balloon fights. between cars, cigarette butts, and icy inside the church Is waiting for me, just a few clicks away. was a cramp in my neck. I pulled out makes my eyes water, and I look up at her binoculars, spun in circles, sketched patches. where people surround Netflix glows with so much promise, saying, smudged grey mass. star charts on blank sheets of paper, I heave my weight against the the final monument of Jesus. “Watch me! History can wait,” but still found nothing. What was I “He broke your heart, didn’t he? When he brown, chipping door, and the old hinges Sunlight bends itself all she ever said Hypnotizing me. missing? Why could I not see what left you?” squeal profanities at me. “Nicer than I through colored glass windows I believe that thinking too much is dangerous others had been seeing for thousands of I choke back a dark laugh, pretending it’s Alexandra Kindahl years? Finally, I gave up and went to expected,” I mutter as I inspect the mild- and hits the ground And if we just let loose and stop thinking so much a sob. She has no idea what she’s talking Cockeysville, MD the teacher to reveal that, no, I could not mannered waiting room. Four chairs face like a crash of thunder. That we could maybe be a little happy. see the shapes. Ursa Major was a mouse about—leaving was the best thing he had a set of closet doors, which hide a small As old Jewish men speed by you spent a year telling her you loved her I believe that teenage girls always think they’re no matter which way I looked at it. And ever done. without hesitation, my teacher agreed. table and mismatched chairs. Beyond the on their way to devotion, in the din of coffee shops, Unhappy, when all they are is dramatic. The figures in that sky lab closet, a game show murmurs through a “You are not happy. You have money, I a beautiful cry in scrawls of misspelled french, And that includes me. came from an astronomical consensus, muted brown curtain. With expectations cleanse your aura. Your chakras are very from somewhere in poems you wrote and rewrote I believe that the weekend cannot come soon enough, not the Rule Book of Life. Not even all of head wraps and gypsy skirts, I day- messy.” outside the walls until they turned to dust. And that the weekend is nothing but wasted time. the ancients saw the same forms; what astronomers have officially labeled as dream of hidden meanings and riches to Pausing, I imagine my aura. rings in our ears. all she ever said I believe that a king size dark chocolate Hershey’s Ursa Major, the ancient Sumerians come, maybe even a ghost or two. Echoes of emerald green, lemon yellow, The Muslim Call to Prayer was that she didn’t believe you. Bar can get rid of tears, as much as it can add saw as a wagon, the Greeks as a bear, With a flourish, a woman muddled orange, and stained rose ema- comes right on time. A few calories to my thunder thighs. and the Chinese as a chariot. For me, parts the curtain, revealing a man in his nate from the corners of my vision, signi- Car horns and you held her when she let you, I believe that 14 is a boring age, it looks like a mouse, and it is not from lack of trying or lack of caring that all I pajamas watching Jeopardy reruns. As fying healing, controlling nature, anxious sirens blend together kissed her when she let you, And that I’d like to move on already, even though I believe will ever see is a mouse. After printing she shuffles towards me, I glance from thinking, and survival-oriented instincts. in the background ran your fingers through her hair, That rushing your life will do you no good. star charts and holding them up to the the dingy carpet to her attire, and I’m “You come back with a hundred of the worship telling her how long you’d wanted just I believe in springy picnics, sky, I was able to connect the dots, but I convinced she’s a fake. She’s all grey dollars, yes? ATM down the street.” She surrounding me. to touch her—as though she were really With the checkered blanket and everything still could not see the shapes astronomers the fresco you’d once described her as, had labelled. I knew what Ursa Major clothes, long sleeves and sweatpants with I can hear the murmurs Out in the grass with the bugs and the sun. insists on my return—my aura is tainted unearthed only to be kept far out of reach. was supposed to look like, but my brain grey hair to match. Grey teeth(what few of the Jewish I believe that contrary to popular belief, twisted the image into a mouse. The with streaks of muddy blue: insecurities. she asked you are left), nestle in rotted gums. I had done men and women, Spiders are really not all that scary. only mistake I ever made was think- She must cleanse it. if you were sick of her yet. my research—in the psychic world, grey separated by a divider They’re just creepy crawling their way ing that seeing things differently was a Lady, I think, not in a million problem. means guarded. Grey means poor health. as they bow and pray Through life, trying to survive, years will I give you a hundred dollars. you took her hand Trying to see what others see Grey means disconnection. She is far at the sacred Western Wall. Just as we are. is the wrong way of going about life; it In fact, dear grey lady, let me read your to tether her to the earth, from a gypsy cloaked in colors. People scribble their hopes and dreams I believe that crying makes you weak, is seeing through someone else’s eyes. I colors: grey, dark grey, pale grey, yel- met her eyes again and again and again Without introduction, the wom- on scraps of paper But only if it’s about boys. see my shapes, and I will always see my low grey. I predict that you haven’t lived to draw her back from the horizon. shapes. Annie Dillard cannot “unpeach an recites her prices: twenty for palm and shove them into every niche I sometimes believe that rocks should be thrown at boys, a long life with riches. The only luck you wrote out every memory you had of her the peaches” the same way I cannot reading, forty for tarot, sixty for aura between the ancient stones. But don’t go overboard. “unpotato” Aquarius or “unmouse” you’ve had is grabbing a nice location searching for novels on library shelves, reading, eighty for aura cleansings. I had Islam, Christianity, and Judaism improvising on out-of-tune pianos, I believe that next to a really good brownie, Ursa Major. There is no such thing as in an artsy town. I predict you will not “supposed to look like” or “should look nineteen dollars, and I wasn’t even will- are all fighting to claim walking beside you along sidewalks Family is the most important things in our lives. be meeting Benjamin Franklin any time like.” Even when the stars are connect- ing to give her that, but there’s a cover this one little spot on Earth. soaked with rain and mud. They will always be our warm and fuzzy security ed, Cepheus the King still looks like a fee for seeing the wizard. Four dimes, ten soon. Lost in the commotion you spent a year telling her you loved her, Blanket. And even though sometimes this blanket five-year-old’s attempt at a stick figure pennies, one quarter, and a load of nickels I walk out, twenty dollars poorer and a in the Old City, and all she ever said Makes us a little too warm, I have decided house. And that is perfectly fine. It does not make me wrong. It does not make later, I’m sitting next to her in the closet. hundred times grumpier, imagining my I find myself. was that you were wrong. That it’s better to be a little warm than freezing. me blind. It makes my eyes my own. I spot a Beginners Guide to Palm Reading colorful aura stained with grey.

54 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 55 pressure around my mouth. I reach for rushes to my bed. The steady stream of another week, and she never was present ting it all in. After a few minutes I slowed my lips but instead my fingers are met doctors becomes a pulsating, malignant on that day for as long as I can remember. down and glanced at the time and looked Untitled with plastic. I grope around a little and sea, and I am filled to the brim with Impossible to Forget I sat at my kitchen table a few around for the now not so little girl who’d realize I’m wearing a mask of some anxiety. Daphne is nowhere to be found, months short of a year later, with the sat across from me in kindergarten, and Greta Skagerlind kind. There’s a small crack in the divider the nurse has called two others over, and Mollie Walker little blonde girl who sat across from me, who now happens to have a locker right Maplewood, NJ between my bed and what appears to be a one comes careening into the room with a Upper Saddle River, NJ coloring Ariel’s hair a shade of blue. My next to mine. She should be here right hallway and through this crack I observe metal cart of tools that jump up and down mommy paced back and forth watching us now, but isn’t. Getting to homeroom on I awake a tangled heap on the kitchen a steady stream of nurses and doctors. with every revolution its wheels make. There’s a sort of dry humor in the story color, smiling and giggling at our creative time was a struggle but that day I man- radiator with a violent headache. My I imagine them coming and going and The buzzing fluorescent lights overhead my mother always tells people about 9/11. color choices. aged to be in the door and sitting in my floodgates are thrown open and a clicking bringing people food and saving people’s catch a gleam on the side of a blade on the How I sat in my white plastic high chair “How’s your mommy? Does your desk at 7:39. Heavy sacs of black hung noise fills the room. I’m short of breath, lives. I rip the mask off my face, skeptical nurse’s cart, and I begin thrashing in the just three days after it happened and calmly mommy work?” my mommy asked her. underneath everyone’s eyes. A deep voice trying to remember some dream I’d just about what it’s pumping into my body. cot. Before long, IV fluid is pooling on announced to my family that I “was “No.” spoke through the loud speaker and told us had about…waves? Whipping my head I slip into sleep as I diligently scan the the linoleum floor and my long legs are tired of watching the plane show.” Their “Oh, well, what does she do all to stand for the pledge of allegiance. Then around, I notice the cracking sound is ground for muddy pawprints. being tied to the sides of the bed. drowned out faces with sullen smirks day?” to remain standing. He sounded rehearsed just a broken burner on the stove. I blink. When I awake, my headache has re- The nurses hold my forearms down, force looked back at me. They all knew I could “Stays home.” and rushed to get through this supposedly Above me is a host of flyers and expired turned. My head is a bass drum, and I them into the cool metal armrests of the not possibly understand, and that was “That’s nice, how about your inspirational speech; concluding with of pizza coupons tacked precariously to a croak weakly in pain. Suddenly, two cot, and I can already feel the bruises that exactly how they wanted it to stay. daddy?” course, “never forget.” thinning, warped bulletin board. The familiar figures rush to my bedside and will inevitably form in these newfound Every morning before school I’d The little blonde girl looked up at I haven’t forgotten. Why do I always have burner doesn’t stop. By now, the phone it takes me a blink or two to realize I’m depressions. One of them lifts a gloved sit at the head of the kitchen table eating my mommy with her set of big blue eyes to be reminded? I walked down what the has also begun to ring, and usually by this looking at my parents. They dote and hand and forces another mouthpiece over my chocolate cocoa puffs out of my red in curiosity. My mom let the question hang upperclassmen call “Sunshine hallway,” point my mother would have picked it up. stroke my hair, Thank god you’re okay. my face. How long has she been with- bowl and watching the T.V. My grand- there for another moment or two, until the which left side was ceiling to floor tile I sit up slowly with one hand touching We were so worried—when we got home, out oxygen? One demands. My mom is mother would stand directly in front of it awkward silence needed to be broken. narrow windows, side by side by side. my forehead; my back is burning from you were passed out in the backyard! now flustered beyond repair. She stam- and yell at me every time I’d try to change “Does your daddy work?” But today I could not see the turf field the hot metal cover on the radiator. I try Their brows are deeply furrowed, and mers. I, I don’t know! She was sleeping the channel. She stood with her hands on “I thought everybody knew about or the track or the tie dyed forest across to stop the throbbing in my temples and my mom takes my hand as she calls out without a mask for an hour? Two? We her hips, fingernails matching her shirt, my daddy.” from the school that magnified vibrant realize no one else is in the house. into the hallway. A nurse shuffles toward didn’t know! Alarmed, I try to cry out slowly shaking her head back and forth, My mom glanced back at my reds and oranges in the fall. Instead it was The phone’s stopped going now, and so the divider to see what the commotion is for help but my lungs feel like empty not the head shake disapproval but the grandmother and back at the little blonde patched up with slips of paper typed with I swing my legs around the side of the about and when we meet eyes, hers open toothpaste tubes. I don’t understand… one of disbelief. Her feet were glued to the girl. My grandmother puffed smoke out of two words in fine black ink. Names. From radiator and walk towards the stove. wide. oxygen? I blink hard to try and keep from cream tiles below her feet and I thought her her plum colored lips and coughed until the ceiling to tile, just names. My eyes moved Silence. I move to turn it off, and a small My throat feels like autumn leaves and fading to black, but stop resisting once I neck would get tired after a half hour or so. smoke evacuated from her lungs. up and my eyelashes tickled my eyelids, wave of concentrated heat blasts me in I try to call out, fearing she might try see Daphne saunter up beside me, a back She wiped her eyes, grabbed my backpack “No Sweetie, I’m sorry, I don’t then I looked down. Up and down, up and the face. I can smell the unmistakable to put the mask on me again. But leaves arched and a tufty, half-burnt tail raised and sent me to the car. She couldn’t even know about your daddy.” down for the entire length of the hallway. scent of gasoline, and stumble awkwardly can’t speak, only crack underfoot. The indignantly in the air. turn the T.V off. “I thought everybody knew.” I stopped next to a name that made my backwards. The odor takes my hand and nurse throws open the cloth divider and By kindergarten I didn’t need my “Is your daddy famous?” throat tense and my eyes blink repeatedly. leads me back eight years to a moment highchair anymore and I went to school “No.” I stood in front of it unable to move, just when my cat burned her tail on this same for a full three hours. I’d sit on a foam My mommy chuckled and looked reading it from left right without hesita- stove. My mother was making stew for a mat with pop out letters and numbers that back at my grandmother again. The little tion. I looked back down the hallway and dinner party. What a shame, we all had Why I Pray on My Knees engulfed the entire room. I played with blonde girl looked back down at her picture back at the one name, bit my bottom lip said once the vet bills had to be paid. I Amani Garvin anyone who wanted to play and considered and grabbed a teal crayon from the box and and walked to class. made small strokes back and forth. I sat in front of my locker on am blinking hard, and reach out for my West Orange, NJ everyone in my class my best friend. Mrs. cat, Daphne, but a bubble of dizziness Eckert’s voice crackled through the loud “Then what don’t I know, the same day two years later waiting for pops over my head and I can’t extend my speaker beside the clock and greeted us Sweetie?” the homeroom bell to ring. I pulled up my arm more than a couple of inches. Still I’m sitting here laughing in the silent spaces The little blonde girl stopped socks and put my books in my bag. The during conversations with some boy, with a smile that I could hear. Robotically, groggy, I stumble toward the back door. we all stood for the pledge of allegiance and stroking back and forth, slowly looked up tile stung my knees and I quickly shoved The January night’s utter and undis- who texted me early this morning to call me beautiful. at my mom and pursed her lips together. my pencil into my front pocket. Abruptly, It’s winter in New Jersey and my tongue is between directed ourselves towards the flag hang- turbed absence of light sucks me further ing above the coat rack at the corner of “My daddy died in the building.” I felt a rattling of the locker next to me in and now I am standing flush against first date Miyazaki-movie kisses and the room. I put my left hand on my heart My mom’s chest filled up with an and I slowly looked up. The little blonde the cold windowpanes in the door, my the sour taste of lead-guilt. and quickly switched to my right before obscene amount of air, and a look of dis- girl had a neutral expression woven onto sweaty hand fumbling at the knob. The anyone noticed. Slowly murmuring the traught crept up onto her face as if someone her fair skinned face as she twisted her door squeaks as it opens and now I am in Children are being beheaded and mutilated in the Central African Republic pledge I scanned the room and quickly was scratching at her rib cage. She started lock back and forth. I glared up and slowly the yard, digging, digging, clawing at the because the people there can’t decide whether to call noticed that the blonde girl who sat across to breathe heavily as she turned back to my hauled myself to my feet to match her frozen ground for my dead cat. the man-in-the-sky God or Allah. They’re missing the point from me wasn’t here. Mrs. Eckert went grandmother whose mouth was to the floor face to face. I gently swung my backpack and whose cigarette was almost burned out. onto my shoulders being careful not to I awake again, this time on a hospital because either way they’re dying in this world- on to talk about how today was a differ- bed. No one’s by my side…if something The little blonde girl looked back down at make too much movement, though I don’t of deserted homes and half built fences around hospitals for refugees. ent kind of day and how we should act bad had happened, surely they would and feel different than we usually do. She her book and resumed her small strokes know why. She turned to me and caught have called my parents by now. My jaw called for a moment of silence. It felt like back and forth, back and forth. my stare but returned it with an amiable hangs dumbly open and I wait for the And yet; the world is already dead- By freshman year I ate in front of smile. She looked down at her lock and children are being beheaded, the longest minute of my life. I knew today burner to act broken again, but I hear was important but a moment of silence my T.V and was at my school until at least quickly back up at me. I managed to pull only soft beeps. I can feel my heartbeat I’ve been writing love poems. was something that had never been asked eight o’ clock every night. My backpack up a smile. I watched her walk away, and steady in my forehead. It thumps dully, The world is on its knees of me before. Mrs. Eckert thanked us and was bigger than me and every boy and girl I turned the other way; with a smile that as if wrapped in a dishtowel. The dirt begging for forgiveness, told us to never forget. The blonde girl that that walked past me. I opened my creaky made my cheeks hurts, but in a good way. stuck under my fingernails reminds me… “will we be saved?” sat across from me wasn’t in school for locker and shoved my books inside and where’s Daphne? Suddenly, I feel a light threw the rest in my backpack, barely fit-

56 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 57 missing. she was not alone. Other kids, who were white. The pearls. The pearls! What if Sadness is the feeling after hap- also alone in their own way, trudged in she forgot about them? The doctor’s hair Happiness Is piness. It is being able to compare the Dactylonomy The Pang front of her, chimneys of puffing steamy was tied back harshly; her eyes watched rest of your life to one moment and still Marissa Elias breaths. Emma with mild interest. Chasity Hale never having anything be good enough. Alisha Cheung It happened. Then a figure behind the doctor, Trafford, PA One boy’s boot hit the ice. The a motion catching her eye. Dressed in Miami Beach, FL I watched my reflection drown Mineola, NY rest of his body followed suit in a hor- blue. Emma breathed out a sigh of relief. in the change in position of the light that One, the number of years I watched you from across rible mechanism. Less than a breath, he “Simon.” I learned how to fly once in this excerpt day. Emma was an average girl. Ev- fell and a thump vibrated straight into He nodded. “You passed out. I from a book called The Encyclopedia of Then I realized I could skip the coffee shop, your smile erybody said it, so it must have been true. Emma’s insides. brought you here.” Immaturity. across the lily pads, dance in the shad- cracked and slowly healing. Never mind the scars on her wrists or the Stop. Please, no. “He carried you, so I heard,” the It went something like: ows, imagine every kind word ever bor- redness in her eyes—a shade that only The pang. doctor said with an eyebrow raised. “Car- comes from crying. 1 Hold knees tightly together. rowed brought back to me on the same Two, the number of months ried you the entire mile from the school “The scars are from my pet The pearls helped. They helped to the hospital.” 2 Stick hands between them. winds from the coach’s party yet still we trudged through the park together, fingers tangled, gerbil,” she smiled with first-lady grace. somewhat. Okay, they did not really help Emma nearly choked. The pang 3 Strain and strain. Try to sepa- I’d be sad. They’d never feel the same. The delicate pearl beads of her bracelets They’d never evoke the same emotions. basking in the summer sun. at all. But they rounded out the sharpness. was here again. But it felt… inside out. rate your knees, but keep them locked contrasted sharply with the darkened They rounded out the pang. Like a shirt inside out. The sleeves were for 60 seconds. I am not a lily, but I wish I was. redness of her skin and the pinkness sur- Emma grabbed for them with wrong, the stitching was shown. It felt 4 After 60 seconds release. Close I’m just a girl with coffee-colored skin Three, the number of people rounding her eyes, but she looked like an animalistic need. They slipped under the new and… and spacious. And comfortable who observes sunsets rather than being eyes, smile, and float away. at our wedding. The minister, angel otherwise. pressure, and one by one they fell out of again. them. the jogger that passed us every day The angelic beauty, perhaps, was the string—bouncing off the ice, white She expected her arms to feel I had stood, stupidly trium- in the park, the barista that made the one thing that made her more than against gray. “The pearls,” she breathed. heavy. But she felt nothing but the Flying this way is a nice alternative to phant, atop the hill over looking the average. The paleness of her beige skin— “Do you need help?” A voice inside-out pang. The good pang. growing wings or jumping off rooftops. us our coffee on all those wordless there was something underneath her that river. The sun finished rising like life mornings. came up from behind her. A male voice. “Thank you,” she managed. Her It’s does. Instinctively breathing the second glowed. She was not a beauty queen, but “No. No, no, no. I’m fine.” Her voice was weak, but her heart felt strong. probably much safer too. Flying can- something small and fragile and sparkling voice cracked at ‘fine’ and she doubled “I don’t know why I didn’t just it exits the womb. Gasping for breath Four, the number of days that you wanted to protect. not be measured making it so that the the moment it emerges from water. over. The pang. The pang. call a cab or something,” Simon shrugged. we stayed curled in bed Something that was, indeed, The boy’s forehead on ice. Cold. “But I felt… I felt like you wouldn’t be lengths of joy it brings are seemingly Struggling to inhale when it’s crying, quite easy to break apart. infinite. It makes me wonder how many learning the geography of our bodies Cold, cold, cold. No, no, no. She felt it; safe unless…” and it’s quiet and late and it no longer together. the bruising was beginning, just on her “Unless?” The doctor asked after different ways there are to fly . . . and wishes to go on. “Where is Gene, Mr. Pates?” knee. a pause. Emma felt like she had stolen a how I’ll only ever know a few flights in “Gene?” He peered down Five, the number of times A warm hand. Warmth? Where? word that Emma was supposed to say. my lifetime. through his glasses at Emma. Where could there possibly be “Never mind. It’s not important. Happiness is the same way. It’s you said I love you during “Yes, Mr. Pates.” warmth in such a cold, cold place? Just a weird feeling. But back to Emma. brief. There are millions of roads to it, Time Signatures the sixty second descent “Gene Marino has been absent Her hand was enveloped with She’s okay, now right?” for quite some time, hasn’t he?” yet in 2010, 33,687 people died from mo- Amelia Carter in the elevator punctuating another’s. Through the fabric of the mit- More words that Emma was “Yes, Mr. Pates,” she repeated. ten, her thirsty blood drank up the heat. supposed to say. Simon wasn’t supposed tor vehicle crashes. every word with a kiss Rochester, NY because we were young “I don’t know, Emma. They “You’re not fine. Not at all,” the to be asking; he wasn’t supposed to care. In the same year 38,364 died don’t tell the teachers why students are She was spun from a sonata, and breathless and hopelessly boy said—but wait, this was a different Strangers do not care for each other in from suicide. There are fourteen dead absent.” He cleared his throat, and said in boy. His eyes were a dark brown. For this way. Emma knew that. people for every one person. Happiness born tap dancing across ledger lines falling for each other. a louder voice, “Does anyone keep touch a second, she thought that he could be “Your record says you have is brief. and spitting key signatures like with Gene?” Gene—but then it stopped. a disease,” the doctor looked at Emma I had it once. The fireworks cherry pits. Treble and bass; Six, the number of times The reply was pure silence, The world stopped turning. inquiringly. “But I’ve never heard of a erupted by a slight cough and shuffle of at the coach’s party lit up the sky and one hand spidering up, up, up, I traced the outline of your “Who are you?” she asked. disease by that name.” along the ivory of the hospital crib, lips today, trying to remember papers. “My name is Simon.” “There’s Google,” Simon said. turned the winds red. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon, She stared at him in one delirious She turned to him. Emma Another time, I was walking on the other only a pitter patter the first time you kissed me, Emma. Now, focus on your work. The along her mother’s palm. trying to remember where we stole instant. The sky was gray. His eyes were guessed that the doctor had glared. “Yes, a hill across a plain of evergreen grass. midterms are coming up!” brown. But she looked down—her wrists I know that. But neither Google, the The river stretched out across the land our magic from. She closed her notebook and were no longer red. hospital database, nor several books of like a thread unraveling from a sweater. Her father pays for lessons stared at the pearls furiously, but nobody diseases include it.” noticed. Water lilies settled on the in brush strokes, coating Seven, the number of times Emma heard beeping. Cold “I know.” Emma grabbed the surface and mimicked the best kinds of the teacher’s house with red. I caught you on the phone beeping. The memory of the boy falling blankets surrounding her nervously. “I His brush moves in time at three am, huddled in the corner, It was a dreary day. Emma surfaced like a glacier on water. Her knee know. They say it’s rare. They say that I sunsets. The pink ones, fresh and puce, liked dreary days the most. She absorbed throbbed as if the pang was still there. am one of the few.” cold and jaded, ready to fade away. with his daughter’s Breval— wrapped up in the same blanket the grayness of the sky like a napkin; I was cocooned in on our first But the pang was not there. In “Who are ‘they’?” the doctor The petals of the lily shot up dripping half notes down the siding, it flowed through her veins and fell its place was a strange sensation. How to asked. skyward as if reaching toward the heav- splashing angry eighths morning after. like snow all over her heart. The nasty describe it? Spacious. Comfortable, even. Emma couldn’t speak. Her voice ens. Each of the mantis green lily pads along each window sill. puddles in the ground soaked her beat-up Her eyes opened. The shock of failed her. All she could do was stare at shoes, and her feet ached. floated in place. The lilies are unaware Eight, the number of years white jolted her heartbeat. White. Like the doctor, who wasn’t exactly pleased It was the good kind of ache. Not the pearls that she lost. with her lack of answer. that a part of them was and will be for- The pigment, red like the poppies it took to finally admit that love cannot be forged the bad kind. “I need to get the pearls,” she “Dr. Marcello,” Simon inter- ever submerged in water. They’re better growing outside her window, Emma hated the bad kind. When stains his calluses for weeks, on secrets and a foamy latte. said. rupted the silence. “Will there be a fee for off this way. they told her, she felt it—the pang. The “Interesting thing to say when this visit?” As a small child I had dreamt of matching the dress she wears on Sundays. I hope the next girl that wants pang like no other. She once tried to ask you’ve just woken up from fainting, Ms. “The insurance should have it a beautiful life in which I was something He picks her up, swings her like a rag doll, to fix the cracks in your smile a doctor about it. He replied with a long Angara.” covered,” she said quietly. “Ms. Angara. undeniably pretty as a flower. I am not singing and proclaiming knows how to keep her heart name. A disease. This unfamiliar voice was not Which doctor here wrote this on your She didn’t bother to remember a water lily. I am not the best kind of her to be better than Mozart, from breaking in your palms. comfortable. It was spacious, though, and record? Who was the last doctor that you finer than Shirley Temple. the name. She didn’t want to. Emma sat up. saw?” sunset, and I know that a part of me is Emma was walking alone, but A doctor in white. So much “He—he didn’t tell me his

58 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 59 name.” of hopelessness, maybe? Dead ends and “Always?” through pain after all. Maybe he was on a would mean that he was home-schooled. head. “He told—he told you? And you’re “What did he look like, at least? dead possibilities. Death of dignity. She stepped closer until her long vacation. Only troubled people were home- the, you’re going to my school now?” It was this hospital, wasn’t it?” Then her own voice surprised head was on his shoulder. He held her It was all lies, she knew. Lies to schooled, weren’t they? “Yes and yes.” “He was…” Her mind emptied. her, “Okay.” awkwardly in an embrace. “I’ve always ease her emotions, just in case the pang She only saw Simon after school “Why?” Anger surged in her. Where she thought were shelves of books He smiled. “Really, though, I believed that because I felt the pain of really did come. and on the weekend, after she had en- “Why did he tell you and not me?” ended up being glass display cases. Was would like to meet your father. It’s the others, that I was a good person. But no, dured eight hours without him. Endured. “Why did you want to know so it even a male? She couldn’t remember. “I proper way of courting girls, isn’t it?” I was… I was far from it. I’m just as cruel He sat alone in the library, a don’t—I don’t…” Emma chuckled. “Courting? as those who inflict pain. I do nothing to huddled mass of gray. Emma approached She sounded desperate and dependent; badly? I heard that you were shouting “Dr. Marcello, I don’t think it’s a In your dreams. And what kind of date end it.” him, her footsteps as quiet as pages turn- she hated it, yet she knew it was true. and stormed out of the library.” good idea to interrogate someone who has would going to a soup kitchen be?” “Hey, don’t be so hard on your- ing. “Gene.” Emma walked home. She didn’t “Because, because,” she struggled just fainted. Plus, I don’t think doctors It ended up being much more— self.” He paused. “Understanding others’ “Who is it?” Gene looked at her. care that it was the middle of the school for words. “Because that’s what I do. are allowed to pressure their patients like yet much less—than what Emma had ex- pain is admirable. I’ve never been one “Emma? You look… different.” day. She wanted to go home and forget That’s my… role. I sense when people that.” pected. The faces, under fluorescence, that to. Maybe that’s why I go here so often. “Do I?” She hadn’t noticed after about Gene. She wanted to forget about have suffered. And I don’t know why—I The doctor’s mouth opened, then smiled at her so gratefully. The words Because I want to understand their pain.” everything that had been going on. the absence of the pang. probably sound crazy right now—I have closed. It opened again—”I see.”—then, exchanged and the hands shaken. The “Did you ever?” “Your eyes are no longer red… The pang had to be good, because this need. This need to feel their pain.” magically, the door opened, then closed smell of beef cooking and the warmth of Silence. “No.” and her wrists aren’t covered in scars.” she had felt it all her life. Simon was the “Empathy,” he said. and the doctor was out of the room. people. She stopped crying, wiping her It was ironic. A sad irony, one who got rid of it. And she didn’t want Emma stared at him in awe. Simon neared the edge of the The pang had not come—not tears on her sleeve. The lack of pearls because Gene and Emma had switched bed. “You don’t have to tell me what even when the people shared their stories. freed her hands, she thought to herself places. Gene’s own eyes were sunken and to need Simon. “You knew?” disease you have if you don’t want to.” “My father was in enormous absentmindedly. “I don’t think you want red. Emma couldn’t see his arms under Simon, who had said that her “That’s the disease you have.” “I don’t want to.” debt when he had passed,” said one. Her to. It hurts.” the sweatshirt, but if she could guess… feeling of others’ pain was admirable. She nodded. Em-pa-thy. She still “Okay.” wrinkles were premature, as were her “What does it feel like?” “You look different too.” Simon, who made her care for others. couldn’t say it. Her mouth just wouldn’t Emma sighed. “I feel fine. Go hardships. She was not much older than “Like… like…” She thought for a “Yeah.” Simon, who revealed her true character. reveal what caused her heart such ache. back to your life. I don’t know why you Emma in reality; yet they were years and moment. “Sometimes it’s just a twinge of “Why were you gone this past And her true role in life. “If you must know, Gene’s are treating me so nicely. I don’t fully years of suffering apart. “I had to pay for hurt, like you’ve been offended. Some- month?” But did she want this role? Did parents were undergoing divorce. Gene trust your intentions.” The words came it. I was helping my friend’s business for times it’s heartbreak and it lasts forever. “No reason. How much did I she want the change? Did she want to be started cutting himself.” out easily, but landed like sharp points several years. It fell apart, and we were Sometimes it’s doom and fear and not miss in Chemistry?” free of the pang? “Oh.” into the ground. placed in even more debt. They took my knowing what comes after.” Emma asked in a louder voice, Her heart and her mind fought. Simon knelt down next to her. Simon’s eyes were full of apartment and everything in it; for sev- “Do you ever feel the opposite of “Why were you gone?” something. Full of contemplating. Emma eral nights I was in the streets.” pain?” Gene shrugged. “It was nothing. She had never felt so broken before. He brushed snowflakes out of her hair expected him to be hurt, but instead he Her language was pristine; she “The opposite of pain?” I had to visit my grandmother.” with a gentle, gloved hand. “Do you feel laughed. was a princess in her words. Emma closed “Like happiness, but not just “Is she sick?” Snow started to fall. It fell like the pain when they tell you themselves? Laughed like a child. her eyes. She saw darkness and trash pil- happiness.” “No.” chunks, landing like powdered sugar over When you see them in pain?” Laughed like a prisoner broken ing in the streets. She counted. 1, 2 trash Emma found it. The answer. “Dying?” her world. Naked trees stood starkly and “Both. Even when another per- free. bags. Now 3, 4. A dog passing by, coating Why she had been feeling that delicious- “No!” Gene glared. “Why are cars were soon enveloped in white. Emma son describes someone else’s pain. But,” “I guess that I must have come her with its urine. The dog owner laugh- ly warm feeling. The feeling that brought you asking me that?” should have gone inside, but at the sight she looked at him. “I haven’t felt any on a bit too strong,” he smiled. “Carrying ing and giving her one measly penny. The on slight guilt and the question--why “Because I want to know! I want of her house, she turned and went west, pain this past week. Besides today, but it you and all. But it really was a feeling. A penny landing in the pool of urine, and no pang? “I have. I didn’t use to. It feels to know why you look like you’ve been towards the park. wasn’t the pang. It was, it came from… It feeling that you, well, that you would get tears falling down her face as she thrust comfortable. It feels… spacious.” hurt somehow in the cab.” her hand in to pick it up. She looked up at him and smiled. crying! I want to know why you’re avoid- The cold numbed her frustration. came from me.” She stared at him. Then she Yet while she saw all this, her ing my question, and I want to know if She sat down in the middle of the tennis “It was your own pain.” laughed too. The feeling spread, from her heart did not throb in agony. She handed Emma sat down at her desk. you felt the pain that I thought you did! court, where snow collected on her hair, “Yes.” heart to the space behind her ears and the woman her bowl of soup and said Something was different. Her senses I want to know, so I can understand!” clothes, and eyelashes. He exhaled. “What do you be- her fingertips. She felt warm. Warm and somberly, “I am sorry to hear that.” tingled. Gene was back. Her voice had risen without her noticing; She wasn’t sure how long she lieve in?” alive. “Don’t be. I learned a lot. And His hood was over his head; it was only the stare of everyone else in was there. After a while, time felt like the “What do you mean, like God the community center has helped me Emma would not have recognized him if the library that made her say in a lower snow around her. Immense, uncountable, and religion?” Gene came back on Tuesday. tremendously. It’s nice to know that this it wasn’t for the fact that she had memo- volume, “What happened?” useless to fight against. “Yes.” The last five days had been the best days world has kind people. People who care rized where his seat was while he was “It’s none of your business. “You want to freeze yourself to She thought for a moment. “I of Emma’s life. for those in need, not just those who will absent. I barely know you, Emma. We were death out here?” believe in karma. I believe in spirits, and Once, Simon had knocked on her benefit them.” The chair sunk under his weight door. She’d thought it strange and even She paused, then looked at like it hadn’t expected him to come. friends for a while last year, but you Who was that? Her conscience, angels. I believe that we are put here for a alarming. Her mother was out on a busi- Emma in the eye. “People like you.” Emma hadn’t expected him to come, stopped talking to me. I don’t even tell maybe? reason.” ness trip; just another of many expedi- Emma felt a feeling that she either. my friends. Why would I tell you?” Emma’s eyes opened. She hadn’t “What reason would that be?” tions to the third-world. Every string of could not name. The comfortable, spa- “How have you been, buddy?” He said it all quietly. As quietly and as realized that they were closed. She turned “I’m here to understand pain, logic told her to not open the door. But cious, warm, tingly feeling that made her Mr. Pates patted him on the back, obvi- sharply as a needle while sewing. around and saw a startling black figure and you… you’re here to relieve pain.” every nerve in her body told her other- face break out in a smile. “Good luck.” ously not expecting an answer. Gene Emma stared at him furiously. against white. Simon. Simon nodded. He stood up and wise, and she found her hand turning the “Thank you.” grunted in response. He turned away, and Emma noticed that His dark coat neared closer. offered her his hand. Emma let him pull knob. Emma turned to Simon with It was a crucial question and he was wiping his head on his sleeve. Emma supposed that she looked ridicu- her up. “Simon.” tears in her eyes. But they were not the Emma wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear Emma had made him cry. lous at that moment, a real-life snowman. Then Simon said, “I think I can “Emma.” same tears during the penny experience. the answer. But her recent experiences She turned on her heel like a “I talked to Gene.” finally understand now. Sympathy and “You better go before my father They were tears of happiness. They made had showed her that the pang was gone comes to beat you up,” she lied. As if her everything shine and swirl with color. for the most part; since she had met wounded soldier. She wasn’t surprised to Emma could hardly believe it. empathy, together at last. Who would’ve father was home. Simon looked at her with concern. Simon, it had been replaced with that find that her own tears were falling down “You did?” imagined.” “I’d like to meet the man, actu- “What’s wrong? I’m so sorry if happiness. The happiness that was not her cheeks. Simon kicked some snow with Emma laughed. Then she ally. Or at least ask him if he’d let me this is too much for you, Emma. Do you solely happiness. his shoe. “Yeah. He told me why he was reached her hand out to him. He took it take you to a soup kitchen.” want to go back home?” I will ask him, Emma told her- Where was Simon? Who was gone. I guess it was easy to tell the new with a smile and they walked home in the “A soup kitchen?” Emma had “No,” she sobbed. “I’m just… I self. I will, and he’ll tell me why, and I Simon, anyway? If he didn’t go to this kid, someone who didn’t know him be- snow, two warm figures in a sea of cold. never been to one. She wondered of all can’t believe that I had never done this won’t feel the pang. Maybe I’ll even feel school, how old was he? Emma had as- fore he left.” the pangs she’d experience there; feelings before. I’ve always…” that warmth. And maybe he didn’t go sumed him to be Emma’s age, but that A million questions swam in her

60 : susquehanna university apprentice writer : 61 ite thing, they didn’t feel a need to be the this is a team of middle school girls, I also a bounce pass. Practices where the girls something that the girls will remember But they did pick females that are super best at it. I asked many of the girls what figured they would have some opinion played dribble knockout, their favorite later on, during a game. She actually dem- powerful, women or girls that could stand Princesses and Singers: their favorite sport was, and none of them about their jerseys. I wasn’t there when game as I now know. Practices where the onstrated while she explained, as opposed on their own. That is one of the things Not Basketball Players said basketball. Most of the girls said vol- the jerseys were handed out, but I was at girls, like Eva, a small blonde who I think to doing just one or the other, (which that I think being on a team with Jazzy Alyssa Matte ley ball, soccer, or field hockey; sports you the practice for their team picture, where might have actually tried to e oblivious lead to some interesting replications of as a coach does for you. It shows you that can’t play at school in the winter. they had to wear their jerseys. The jerseys to everything, took wild guesses about the team trying to mimic what she was you can be yourself and still succeed. You Stratford, CT I asked Bryn, a seventh grader, didn’t fit anybody well. They were either actual basketball stuff like saying, “zone demonstrating). She actually participated don’t need to be good at everything, you Blue team basketball players how many wins she thought they’d get too tight, too loose, or too long. I could defense is so you can get to the basket in some of the drills that she had the girls just need to find something that you like, always have their shoes untied. At least this season. Bryn was one of the girls imagine how self-conscious that made the easier.” I don’t know that much about do, which I think showed the team that and do it regardless of what people think that was the first thing I noticed when I on the team who looked like she actu- girls feel. When I was on the Blue team, basketball, but I’m pretty sure defense she was more than just their coach. about you doing it. watched one of their practices for the first ally wanted to get stuff out of practice. I was not a stick figure like half of these involves guarding people, not scoring. Jazzy could also get the same level as the The last day I was visiting their practice, time, because their coach kept yelling, She was spunky and never got down on girls. My jersey was ordered two sizes too According to the other girls, Eva was one girls if needed, which I think is some- Jazzy had to leave early. The girls looked “tie your shoes!” which rang out across herself, or at least she didn’t show it. Her big so it would “fit me” and not be too of the worst on the team, but she provid- thing unique to her style of coaching. at me and said, “You’re going to coach us, the gym and echoed off the cold stone hair matched her personality perfectly; tight, but, because I was short, the jersey ed comic relief. She would take the time to explain to the right?” I just looked at them and laughed. walls and shiny polished wood floor. The it bounced with every move she made. nearly covered my shorts it was so long. I think part of the reason the girls individually what they were doing Like they will probably do, I stopped second thing I noticed was that they’re Bryn, unlike some of the other girls, One of the girls, Alex, didn’t have the girls seemed to enjoy practice was that wrong. Even if it’s in the middle of a playing basketball after middle school. very short for basketball players. Well, would actually put effort into the drills right color shorts on, (bright pink to be they liked their coach. Jazzy graduated drill, especially the lay-up drill that they While the girls may never play basketball three girls were sort of tall, (Kirwan, and she would listen to what the coach exact) and was handed a blue pair by the college not that long ago, so she’s a lot did nearly every practice, she would pull again, they can take some things from Bella, and Christina), but everyone else said. I was told by a few people on the photographer, who happened to be a male younger than the other coaches or teach- girls aside and explain what they needed their practices, like being able to laugh at was very short. The girls also all had their team that Bryn was one of the best play- from the athletic staff, just to wear just ers that the girls have had before. Her to do to improve. She could sense if one mistakes, learning that coaching styles hair up in the same way, in sloppy pony- ers. When I asked Bryn how many games for the picture. The entire three minutes coaching style was unreal. The way she of her players was having a bad day or like Jazzy’s are effective, or that being the tails nearly slipping out of hair elastics, she thought they’d win, she told me, she had them on, she was fiddling with explained things to the girls was so differ- just needed somebody to talk to and she best at something is not necessary to en- probably so it wouldn’t get in their face or “hopefully four…but probably two.” Bryn them and trying to make them look some- ent from the way I’ve seen other coaches would tell everyone else to get water, and joy it. The girls might forget everything distract them. The girls fiddled with their was one of the few people who told me what flattering. I don’t know if she suc- explain the same things, because she then pulled that person aside so she could about basketball. But I hope they don’t hair throughout practice none the less. she wasn’t friends with everyone on the ceeded or not, but they took the picture really tried to make it so they understood talk to them. Her attention to each of her forget what’s really important, and finally The Blue team consists of eleven seventh team. Most people told me that they were anyway. If any of the girls thought about what she’s trying to explain. players, whether they like basketball or learn to keep their shoes tied. graders and one eighth grader. All the friends with everyone, but when I asked it, they would have realized how awful I think the best thing about having Jazzy not, was unmatchable. other eighth graders dropped out after Bryn, she said, “I know everyone, but I’m the lighting in the Coyle Gym makes as their coach was that despite the fact I asked Kirwan, a seventh grader, if she finding out that they were on the Blue definitely not friends with everyone.” people look. Fluorescent lighting does that she’s intimidating (their words, not liked Jazzy. She told me, “Yeah. Jazzy’s team, the worst of the two middle school I know it’s hard not having friends play nobody justice, even super popular middle mine), she’s somehow approachable. The great!” That pretty much sums up what girls basketball teams. the same sports that you play in middle school girls. intimidation factor probably came from the rest of the team thought of Jazzy, One of the days I was at practice school. When I was on the Blue team Sometimes I could tell that the the fact that she’s built from training to too, because every person that I talked I was talking to Simmy, the eighth grader I had no friends with me either. The girls didn’t take practice seriously. They be a firefighter. She’s not tall in the bas- to on the team told me that they liked on the Blue team. Similarly to the other epitome of a middle school girl is to be didn’t pay attention at all when the coach ketball realm, just average there, but she Jazzy. I have never heard of a team where girls on the blue team, Simmy didn’t look well liked and popular, often causing was explaining directions, and one time was incredibly strong. She looked like she everyone unanimously liked their coach like she played basketball. She always those who aren’t to stand out in a team I noticed that the girls who weren’t part could use some of the smaller players as so much. wore long baggy shorts and an oversized sport like basketball. Simply put, if you of the drill that they were doing, sat the basketball, and during demonstrations Not to be pessimistic or anything, but shirt to practice. Because she was Siek, an aren’t friends with the person who has down and had their own conversations she had to be careful not to go to hard or I don’t think these girls have futures in Indian religion where you do not cut your the ball, then she might not pass it to you instead of paying attention to the direc- she might knock someone over. I was at basketball. By the age of fourteen girls Dear Lost Limb hair, she wore her hair in a long braid that just because she doesn’t like you. tions when it came time for their turns. I one practice where she was demonstrat- drop out of sports twice as much as boys Katherine Nichols went all the way down her back, not a po- Besides the conversation I had know that when I was on the Blue team ing how to do a lay-up and nearly flipped because of the social stigma that comes Miami Shores, FL nytail like the other girls. I asked Simmy with Bryn, I noticed a few times some of in middle school I wasn’t allowed to sit a girl over, entirely by accident. It was af- with being a female athlete. Thirty five if she minded being the only eighth the stereotypical, “middle school drama.” down when I wasn’t doing anything…but ter that that I noticed how she took things percent of girls say that they plan to stop I crawled forward in bed, grader and she told me, “I knew I wasn’t bipolar twinges I didn’t get to talk to all of the girls, and that probably has to do with the fact that down a level and go a little bit easier on sports within the next year or plan to stop up my arm, reaching going to be on the Red team, so I never one of the girls I didn’t get to talk to but I had an entirely different coach when her team…but not that much easier. Her sometime soon. Most of these girls prob- even thought about it. I’d rather be decent would have like to talk to, was Nicky. I was on the blue team. If we sat down years as a varsity athlete in high-school ably won’t even go on to play basketball but grasping nothing, on the Blue team then really bad on the She dressed like she was modeling the in practice, we had to run sprints later. and college showed through when she in high school, given that none of them a delicate hand red team.” Simmy shared the mentality latest sporting attire, not getting ready to Instead the girls told their coach that they demonstrated for her team. You could see told me that basketball was their favorite with painted fingers of the other girls on the team. They don’t play basketball. She was seventh grader “forgot” what she said, when they really her genuine passion for the sport. sport. no longer there. seem to care that they are on the Blue and was noticeably popular, so I figured weren’t paying attention. They laughed a At one of the practices I watched, Jazzy I asked some of the girls if they could be team. I thought that they would; that she was friends with everyone. Well, that lot when they messed up. They’re not al- was explaining to the girls how to do any character or other person, who would I felt pains changing colors being on a better team would have some like a chameleon’s skin, wasn’t the case because during the second lowed to sing in practice, and when they chest passes, which according to her was, they be? Most of them told me pop sing- and a calming night-blue sort of social status to it in middle school, practice I watched, the girls were asked to do, I was told they had to run the rest of “like salsa dancing; you go forward and ers (like Taylor Swift), characters from but that apparently not. When I was on pair off and she had to go with someone practice. Some of them flinched when back.” I have never seen salsa dancing, teen fiction books (one girls said any girl like a crooked crab, a Blue team in middle school, you were she didn’t like. She rolled her eyes, had so they catch the ball or in general, when it aside from Dancing with The Stars, but from any Sara Dessen book), or Katniss strong aches a reminder seen as worse at all sports because you much attitude (to the point where I was came within three feet of them. I can imagine it would be like a bounce from the Hunger Games (that was a of your disappearance. weren’t playing at the top level. I know waiting for her to put her hand up, a ges- Ok, so maybe they aren’t going pass for basketball, at least how you move pretty common one). I think the fact that Your inability to grow back. people thought I wasn’t good at sports ture almost like a high five, to the other to be the next Miami Heat, but they your body. Apparently you lead with none of them picked athletes as people because I was on the Blue team for two I say goodbye to you girl, but instead meaning, “I don’t want did have some of the most entertaining your arms and then the rest of your body who they would want to be fits with the but I am left different sports. Maybe their mentality to talk about it”) and nearly ignored the practices I’ve ever seen. Practices where follows…or something like that. fact that hardly any of them have futures with your shadow. was that if the sport was not their favor- other girl she was paired with. Because the girls said, “For Narnia!” before doing Jazzy liked to make the explanations fun, in sports, and that they know that too.

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Susquehanna University’s Writers Institute the country, a nonfiction magazine, and sachusetts, Pittsburgh, Houston, Boston provides students with the opportunity to a magazine of fiction and poetry from University, Ohio State, UNC-Greens- receive nationally-recognized undergradu- Susquehanna student writers. boro, George Mason, Rutgers, and The ate training in all forms of creative writ- New School. ing through its Creative Writing Major. Endowed Writing Prizes and Scholarships: Students work closely in fiction, poetry, Writing scholarships of $20,000 per year If you would like to know more about any creative nonfiction, and the technology of are available to incoming Creative Writ- of the programs for high school students editing and publishing with faculty who ing majors based on the quality of their or receive information about the Creative are the widely-published authors of more writing portfolios. Prizes of as much as Writing Major at Susquehanna, than forty books. Small workshops and $1000 are awarded to students chosen each see our web site at www.susqu.edu/writers one-on-one instruction are enriched by the year on the basis of work published in our or contact Dr. Gary Fincke, Director, by following programs: student magazines and in senior portfo- e-mail at [email protected] or by tele- lios. phone at 570-372-4164. The Visiting Writers Series: Seven writers visit campus each year (One of Internships: Susquehanna’s Creative them for a week-long residency). Recent Writing Majors have had recent intern- visitors have been Tobias Wolff, Andre ships with national magazines, advertising Dubus III, Li-Young Lee, Billy Collins, agencies, professional writing organiza- Advanced Writers Workshops Sharon Olds, Robert Boswell, Jayne Anne tions, nonprofit foundations, newspapers, For more information about our Phillips, Louise Gluck, Eavan Boland, public relations firms, radio stations, summer Advanced Writers Workshops, Richard Bausch, Dagoberto Gilb, Ted churches, businesses, and schools. see our ad located on page 3, or visit: Conover, Tom Perrotta, Carolyn Forche, and Richard Rodriguez. Graduate Programs: Within the past five www.susqu.edu/about/writersworkshop.asp The Susquehanna Review, Essay, and years, Creative Writing Majors have RiverCraft: Three distinct magazines received fellowships or assistantships to are edited and produced by students— such outstanding graduate writing pro- a national magazine featuring work grams as Iowa, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, from undergraduate writers from across Indiana, Washington, Arizona, Mas-

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