ScribendiUSU Creative Writing Contest 2015 Utah State University 2015 Scribendi Creative Writing Contest This magazine has been printed by Publication Design and Production on the Utah State University campus and is published under a Creative Commons license in association with the Department of English. THANK YOU We want to thank everyone involved: first, our USU students for writing and submitting; second, our dedicated judges for their expertise; and lastly, the English Department, CHaSS, and USUSA for funding. We’d also like to thank the English Department office staff: Annie Neilson, Kuniko Poole, Lori Hyde, and Carol Hatch. And as contest director, I want to thank our two wonderful— interns, Ben Gunsberg Shay Larsen and Emily Holmes, for their hard work and enthusiasm while promoting, editing, and designing the magazine. The online version of the magazine is available on the USU English DeptartmentSponsors: website, www.scribendi.usu.edu. USU English Department the Writing Center CHaSS Helicon West USUSA Judges: Steve Shively Paige Smitten Jared Colton Michael Sowder Brock Dethier Shanan Ballam Evelyn Funda Self Creation Christine Cooper-Rompato byCover Grace Image: Ryser Kacy Lunstrom Undergraduateform Art, onFirst page Place 39 Janimarie Lester DeRose Image appears in its unaltered Fiction Honeymoon Remnants ValuedGraduate Employee NonfictionRiverGraduate Touchstones The Empty House, Anastasia Lugo Mendez Nocturnal, NavigationChloe Hanson , Kendall Pack , Lori Lee , Matt Halaczkiewicz , Paden Carlson Case Study The Cost of Love TheUndergraduate Tool Shed ConversationsUndergraduate with My Past Constellations, Lorelle of a Pescador’s Frank Wife Like Magic , Tracy Jones , Alyssa Utley , Sarah Timmerman , Mitch Hawk , Preston Grover Poetry America Through a P.O. Box Graduate(Our father has never been sorry.) ArtTheGraduate Places You’ll Go Anya HawkeAnd now you’ve burned your cookies. Invisible , Katharina Marchant The Mind’s Illness , Katharina Marchant , Katharina Marchant Heavenly Throne Self Creation Kendall AtPack a Disciplinary Hearing AttachmentUndergraduate Bloodhounds Hooded Siblings, Grace Ryser , Norian Cruz Graffitti , Grace Ryser Aiya SakrDampened Prayers Whiteout Mint, Milk, Tea Splinter,Honorable Storms, Mentions Full, Bloom, Red, leave her ,- Grace wild., liberation,Ryser Scuba Diving, Ascension, Maria Williams Macy Marin Keith Spark, Captive, McKenzie Lowry UndergraduatePhineas Gage J. Conrad Lucas Brady Hunsaker human. Between Spaces Contents My Brother Runs Away Alyssa UtleyWardrobe Neuroses American Sniper Rhapsody For A Child Of The Sagebrush Loren Smith 5 | Scribendi 2015 Fiction mouth and do something sloppy: kiss only the corner of her mouth, Graduate or her nose, or her chin. I didn’t want to slobber on her chin. But the kissing was fine. - 1st Two years later I took her sister Emma Clemens out on the boat ple leaves on the water. We watched as some sunk and others spun Honeymoon on the same kind of night, and she dropped a handful of curling ma Anastasia Lugo Mendez she unbuckled my pants. We didn’t have sex. The boat rocked too muchslowly and out sheaway shrieked from the that boat. we Iwere took goingoff her to shirt drown. that She night, stood and up I spent every summer of my childhood out at the lake behind my grandparents’ old home. My grandfather and I would spend each boatso quickly slowed that its shetottering. almost fell out and drowned anyway. I pulled her day in oversized hats, fishing rods resting over the edge of his small,- back down before she did and we sat there, half undressed, as the wooden boat, waiting for something to bite. The boat on the placid surface was almost like the bowl of a wooden serving spoon. A serv I lost my virginity the weekend after that, on a Sunday morning ing spoon nestled into a big bowl of liquid jello. That’s what I told when our families were both at church and Emma and I had been him, and that’s what he told my grandmother in turn. a bowl of jello with a wooden spoon in it. Everyone ate around the left behind, taken for granted as the sleeping slovenly teenagers A week later, when I turned nine, instead of a birthday cake I got that we both were. I had wanted it to be on the boat but in the end- it was quick and sweet and blinding, like I had walked into a field of spoon until there was so little jello that the spoon was about to flop new snow on a cloudless day the second I moved inside her. I for over sideways in the bowl. So I pulled it out. For a moment the jello got about the boat, and I forgot about the threadbare paisley sheets stood upright, the imprint of the spoon like the imprint someone laterwrapped and shearound was us. back I could in Poughkeepsie. only think of The how Clemens’ her hair smelledstopped likecom - might leave behind on a sofa cushion. Then the jello tipped over, and inghoney. to the When lake I aftertold her that. that, she almost seemed upset. Another week it got spooned up and served out to anyone who wanted it. I kept the cherrylast bite red until taunt. I was There sure andeveryone then gone was done.again. I had the first bite, and the last. I spent that evening sticking my tongue out at the mirror. A quicklyTwo and years quietly after followed.that my grandparents died. First my grandfather, quickly and quietly in the night. Two days later, my grandmother snuck out one night and met Maddy Clemens and paddled it out I had my first kiss on the boat, the summer I was fourteen. I When I got up the nerve to propose to Megan we were on the to the middle of the lake on a moonlit night. She told me I looked boat. She brought along a picnic in a wicker basket, checkered red dreamy, and in the shadows I was nervous I was going to miss her 7 | Scribendi 2015 we boarded in Florida. Megan was sick for - the city and she wanted the picnic to be tablecloth and all, because she grew up in intoof it. troubleWhen we and docked, always we managing traveled to the board is - the first day or so but then she got used againlands beforeand beaches it became for other too serious. corners, getting exactly right. I put the ring on her finger and hugeto being and on we the kept ship, it stocked and we withwere choco so busy- she cried, and for a second I had that feel that I forgot about it at all. Our cabin was late covered strawberries and champagne though when we got back to Florida it ing I used to get with when I was with my and spent a good part of every day walking seemedTwo thatweeks we seemed had only to just last left.a lifetime, Megan grandfather at the end of a long, hot day on the boat when I walked home with our catch the king-sized bed and watching bubbles itsin atelltale bucket, creak swinging and the weight lightly, around in silk robes or ofnothing, sky through lounging the on felt sick again on the ground, and I said it waiting to fling open the screen door with shout for my grand- portholes. When we grandparentswould pass and had that left I feltme kindtheir ofhome fuzzy and too. The doctor calls it Mal de bothered leaving we MeganWe flew had back agreed north that to my we dream should house. live in My got dinner!” Debarquement Syndrome. spent a day at the that cove of green and quiet. She had found mother, saying, “We spa and at the casi- that moment with MDDS. It sounds like it found a position as an accountant for a small I wanted to have enough money to companya job teaching in town. at the Wedding elementary gifts waitedschool andfor I should be one of the out- no, where we won and we held each pay for another trip otherMegan. as I thekissed boat her lets on a television. to the spa. The on- board entertainment us, stacked inside the front door. was tacky but they and when we went I carried Megan across the threshold, played the songs we used to listen to in rocked, so slightly, - which she said made her dizzy, so I put her high school and we danced like we were ten - foredown long and Megan kissed said her sheforehead was tired to say and I was that back to the house, now empty and forgot sorry. We tried to unwrap presents, but be ten except for my summer visits, I took her what greeted me and our newly purchased to the bed I always stayed in, the bed that inyears every younger. hallway. We We spent narrowly time poolside, avoided beingand though it had been nearly ten years since marriageshe’d be going bed was to bed. only I sleep.followed her up but I slept in with Emma Clemens, and even askedshe bet to me leave that at we the could next kissport on when every we deck, - were found in a maintenance elevator. They howthat dayfelt justand likeI’d been being with with several Emma. other Blinding. caught us too soon for our clothes to come women, lying in that bed with Megan some were up to. We were sent back to our cabin I had the weekend to adjust before going But Megan smelled like perfume, not really withoff, though only the of mostcourse tired the andcrew feeble knew gesture what we calledback to for work, her throughoutand by the time the house I woke but up she and floral or sweet or musky, I could never say of disgust on the part of the crewman who went downstairs Megan had left the bed.