Fiction

The graveyard is empty. Well, there are the dead bodies underneath Abigail’s feet, of course, but they don’t creep into her mind. If anything, knowing Nana is beneath her feet wipes her mind squeaky clean, just like how Nana used to wipe down the store windows until they sparkled in the sunlight. But the important part to Abigail is that no other person sits across from her. No one is yelling at her to get off the headstones; no one shaking their head at her basket full of pastries, all with enough butter to put even Madame LaCombe’s cakes to shame. Abigail can let her feet dangle, lean into the fresh summer winds. A crisp breeze in summer is the only thing that keeps her going, if she’s being honest.

She runs her fingertips across the scars beneath her fishnet tights. They are her chainmail.

Abigail wonders, not for the first time, why her parents moved from the biggest city in the state just to run a general store in a town of fifty people. She can hear her mother, Caroline, jabbering on and on about the “atmosphere” and the “peace”, but she can also hear Doctor Harvey’s panicked phone calls when the power went out and Nana’s wheezing got triggered by a thunderstorm rolling in. The pitter-patter of the rain echoed through town as Nana waited four hours for an ambulance. She passed within three.

Abigail was fourteen years old. She stopped going to school after that,— not like this town had a high school. It was more that Caroline couldn’t teach her anymore and didn’t want to teach her anymore. Twenty-year-old Abigail, who sits on top of her grandmother’s gravestone, lights a cigarette. She rolls it in her fingers. The little ball of orange at the end reminds her of a hamster she used to have as a kid. It died the same year Nana did. She looks down at her ratty 80’s band shirt, her ripped dark-wash jean shorts, black boots that go up to her knees, and wonders if there was any chance she was going to turn up normal. Everyone said being depressed and emo was typical for a fourteen year old, but here Abigail is now: nineteen years old with no idea what the hell she’s going to do with her life except maybe teaching herself the bass chords to every Sleeping with Sirens song. She should go to college, find a job, not sulk in her room, she knows. She likes to ignore the advice, wallowing in ever deepening depression that her parents don’t notice.

She takes in a big gulp of smoke. She coughs.

“Nana, what do you think?” Abigail asks, putting out her cigarette. She doesn’t plan to live long enough to get lung cancer, but it burns too much right now. “Am I a worthless failure?”

Silence.

Abigail gets off of the headstone. She is opening the graveyard fence when she feels a hard chill pass through her body. She snaps her head back to see her Nana, frizzy hair, floral dress, and the smell of homegrown Chinese chives exuding from her.

“Nana?”

The old woman smiles. She walks up to Abigail, and Abigail thinks she might burst out into sobs if she weren’t in shock.

This Nana takes a lock of Abigail’s purple hair, frayed and rough from the bleach, and tucks it behind Abigail’s ear. Her fingers are soft, like Nana’s old silk scarf that is stuffed in some cardboard box in the attic. Her face is paler than the moonlight, wrinkles running like river channels down the sides. Her crows feet make Abigail want to smile like she is six, canoeing in the lake up by Ms. Robin’s house with her best friends. All those best friends went away to college or moved before then. Abigail is the youngest person in town by at least fifteen years.

This Nana, like her real one, always seems to know when Abigail is sad. She presses a kiss onto Abigail’s forehead and whispers, “Bu yao shang xin. Don’t be sad.”

Her lips are crisp, like the summer breeze.

She disappears like it too.

And it is just Abigail Li, alone in the graveyard. Sometimes she wants to kill herself.

Tonight, she doesn’t.

 

Ashley Bao is a high school sophomore and a Chinese-Canadian-American writer. She has a poem forthcoming in Liminality.

In the shady bloom of evening, when work is nearly done and the growling automobile which brought back the Primavesis has long since crawled back to its cave, I slip out to meet Mäda in the garden. I like to imagine that she lives there—that she guards and governs it, that it is for her that the frogs croak and the creek murmurs and the flowers stretch up towards the sun. From the edge of the orchard, I watch her run to meet me, her new white silk dress streaming out behind her, cloth flowers rustling at her waist and in her hair.

Mäda’s real name is Eugenia. That is the name her beady-eyed governess calls from the terrace when she sees us talking. When I first met her two years ago on my way to water the flowers, she told me never to call her by her mother’s name.

Breathless, Mäda reaches the gate and pulls it, creaking, open. Then she hugs me tightly. I smile as she talks, and when she finishes, I ask about Vienna.

She shrugs, nudging me along our favorite path, the one that leads down to the edge of the stream. “I missed it here. More space, less grown-up talking. But the streets were beautiful at night—too bad we weren’t allowed to go out by ourselves. You know, my father had an artist paint my portrait in Vienna. I have his name in my autograph book now.”

Last spring, I drew a picture of Mäda, but my mother wouldn’t let me give it to her for her birthday. Her parents get embarrassed when they see us playing. My parents just tell me to stay out of her way.

At the end of the path, we crouch down on hands and knees. We stick our faces in the lavender until we can’t smell anything. She fills her dress with flowers like a great white sail, then opens it and spins until they rain from her, all folded, their scents mixed with hers. Mäda says the painter dreams about her every night and that it takes a long time to live forever. Ravenously, we uproot the hyacinths, hands sunken deep in the soil. The stream licks the dirt from our fingers. With a splash, Mäda plunges a hyacinth down, then pulls it up, glistening. I splash her. She splashes back and threatens to baptize me. Barefoot, I run.

Where the stream empties into a tranquil pond, I throw a leg around the worn limb of a tree and hoist myself among its budding branches. Mäda stands bare-ankled in the lavender. She squints against the setting sun, and her white dress ripples. Mäda likes to read myths and tell lies. She says last night she dreamed she was trapped in the painting. Her lips sealed shut, she burned at the eyelids as the painter drew his feathered brush across her surface like a sorcerer.

“Do you think that’s where you’ll go when you die?” I ask. She is always talking about immortality. Once she told me that eating rose petals could help you live forever, and I haven’t yet proven her wrong.

She considers gravely, then shakes her head. “No. That’s where the painter will go.”

She calls a truce, and I climb down from the tree. Now we walk holding hands, giving the flowers ugly names and laughing.

“This one’s called mudface,” says Mäda, clutching a zinnia.

I tear a rosebud from a thorn bush and hold it up for her. “This one’s called Mäda.”

Mäda snatches the rose, throws it down, and stomps on it. Pausing, she kneels down and looks at it, crushed. She scoops up a handful of soil.

“This is called Anna.”

She turns to me, squinting. I can’t tell if she is sorry. She unfurls her wet, pink tongue and licks the dirt from her palm. She swallows, wincing fiercely, and wipes her dirty hand on her new dress. Maybe I should have told her not to.

“Is this the latest way to live forever?” I ask. She doesn’t answer. “When they ask what’s on your dress, will you say Anna?”

We both laugh. We name the worm after her governess and the flies after her brothers. We spot a garter snake and call it Echidna. The sun drains from the garden like the mud in our hands as we gather it from the leaf-strewn bottom of the pond. Mäda’s pointed toes draw circles in the dust. I ask if I will ever see the painting.

“They’re bringing it to the house out here. My father says they’ll put it in a golden frame and hang it in the hall, and no one will be allowed to touch it. Even I will not be allowed.”

“One day it won’t look like you anymore.”

Mäda smirks, poking eyes in her circles. “It doesn’t look like me.”

The caresses of blue shadows give her hundreds of faces. She pulls the cloth flowers out of her hair and does a tap dance in the dust. I lift her discarded hyacinth, dripping, from Anna.

Maybe nothing ever looks like anyone.

 

 

Inspired by the painting Mäda Primavesi (1912-1913) by Gustav Klimt, currently on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Lauren Rooney is seventeen years old. She lives in New York City and attends school at Convent of the Sacred Heart, where she is a co-editor of the school literary magazine. Lauren’s work aims to engage with ideas of myth and symbol, often inspired by the parks and museums which have nurtured her imagination since childhood, and is  informed by her interests in philosophy and theology. The Met is one of her favorite places in the world.

Remember all the girls…

…Forget to call Casey, the cheerleader you’re going out with now; wonder where last month’s Lisa moved; don’t think about the brunette you could’ve loved; throw away the pictures of you and Amanda, the ones that her cousin took on the Fourth of July when she told you that she loved you; ignore the memory of Amanda’s face when you told her you were breaking up with her; hate yourself for the fact that it was the cousin who took the polaroids that you woke up next to a week later; try not to feel like a jerk, even though all of the girls probably think that your name is the definition of that word; wonder why the new ones don’t seem to think that; for the love of all things decent, forget the girl you think you loved; rub the scar that Kelly’s boyfriend etched on your jaw when he caught you kissing her in the hallway; call Casey and ask her if she wants to go out; let yourself smile when she responds yes with a squeal; frown when it seems that she’s too eager, too excited and clingy; plan to break up with her this weekend–it’s her birthday tomorrow, you’re not that heartless; remind yourself to buy something for that birthday, flowers maybe; shower away the sweat of today’s workout and the scent of Casey’s perfume; brush your teeth and spit out the taste of her cherry Chapstick; try to throw away the thought that the girl you might’ve loved never let you kiss her; try not to wonder what kissing her would’ve been like; pull on a shirt that Lillian said would match your grey eyes; muss your hair; spray on cologne; grab your wallet, full of money from working overtime at the auto center–taking girls out is an expensive business; pick up Casey, whose clothes are so tight and skimpy that you wonder why she didn’t just wear a bathing suit; kiss her when she leans over the console; drive to the ‘50s themed diner, the place you took the girl you possibly loved on your first date, the first of many in six months; sit at the same booth where that girl blushed when you told her that her ocean eyes were beautiful, blushed and then sipped her pink milkshake; bite your lip when Casey pulls out her phone and takes another selfie; let your hamburger and fries captivate you when she starts yammering about cheerleading and how good you were at last week’s game; wince when she shoves the arm that a tumble with a wide receiver nearly dislocated; accidentally squirt ketchup on her white denim shorts; apologize profusely when she squeals and hurries to the bathroom to assess and contain the damage; stare across the room at the jukebox the girl you likely loved slipped quarters into to listen to Frank Sinatra croon songs you wish you could’ve crooned to her; force a smile when Casey gets back; don’t run away when Sinatra starts crooning and you have to pay the bill; kiss Casey in the parking lot, and again in the movie, and again when you drop her off at home; look forward to the weekend when you can kiss her goodbye; lie awake until midnight staring at the ceiling thinking about the girl you almost certainly loved; lie awake until four thinking about her ocean eyes and brown waves of hair; lie awake until five thinking about how you should’ve treated her better and why you shouldn’t have broken up with her; lie awake until six thinking about all the girls you didn’t love, the girls that fill your camera roll and follower list and memories, the girls that drain your heart and your bank account and your sanity; at seven, text three words that make you shake and sweat and nearly get sick; worry about those words until eight; drift off around nine thinking about the girl you most definitely loved…

Sent from DYLAN at 7:03 A.M.

I love you.

Sent from SKY at 8:30 A.M.

It’s too late.

….Wake up and wonder why on God’s green earth you let the girl with ocean eyes, the only girl you’ve ever loved, the only girl you think you can ever love, the girl you should’ve never let go, the girl you shouldn’t have abandoned when she needed you most, the girl you should’ve fought for and protected…

be the one girl that got away….

 

Micaiah Saldaña is an avid reader and writer of stories of all kinds. When she isn’t lost in the stories she writes, you can find her reading books that make her cry, daydreaming about typewriters, going on one of her many adventures, or drinking salted caramel hot chocolate. Find her rambling about stories, adventures, and her faith on Instagram @micaiahsaldana or on her blog at www.notebooksandnovels.com

The Pearly Gates looked less…well…pearly than I had imagined. Sure, Saint Peter stood before them, there was a distant echo of angels singing, and a faint scent of flowers floated on a warm, gentle breeze. But sitting atop the brilliant gold of the Gates twisted a menacing spiral of barbed wire.

I stepped up to the pedestal as Saint Peter called out my name.

He seemed to sense my confusion. “This is the back entrance. It’s for people who…might not make it in.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I felt like I had been pretty virtuous in my life and earned a spot in eternal paradise. Or maybe I just really didn’t want to take a spot in eternal damnation. “So basically, I’m still on the line?”

“Oh, no – your place is secured. I merely need to ask you a question, and we don’t like causing traffic through the main entrance.” Saint Peter reached into his robes and withdrew a golden scroll. He unraveled it and began to read. “On the 24^th of August, in the Year of our Lord 2019, Joseph Stephens departed his mortal life by means of an elevator malfunction.”

I was a little annoyed at being reminded of the circumstances of my death, which were both less glorious and earlier than I had wished in life, but I kept my mouth shut.

Saint Peter continued, “It has come to our Lord’s attention that this was the result of a mishap on the part of Joseph Stephens’ Guardian Angel, who was meant, but failed, to protect his charge from the accident.” Saint Peter looked up from his scroll into my somewhat baffled eyes. “Before you enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must decide your Guardian Angel’s fate.”

I stared at Saint Peter. “You’re joking.”

He looked surprised. “I assure you, I am not.”

I thought it unlikely that a saint in charge of admission to Heaven would lie, so I didn’t question him further.

“What are my options?” I asked.

“Whatever you wish. You can banish him to a mortal life, take away his status as a Guardian Angel, or force him into eternal poopy-scooping service in Hell.” Saint Peter paused, thinking. “You may also forgive him and grant him total exoneration of his sins. It has happened occasionally, that someone has chosen that path. Please, take your time.”

He dismissed me with a wave of his (I suppose) holy hand. An old woman stood behind me, so I stepped out of her way to let Saint Peter deal with her admittance.

I sat down on a puff of cloud to consider my choices. I had very little experience in making decisions, but what little I did have told me to make a pros and cons list.

On the one hand, the angel had hurt my family greatly in not saving me. I could only shudder, thinking of the grief they must be suffering even now; I imagined my dad’s wretched tears, my mom’s shattered smile that would crumble at the news of my death, my wife’s life as she would try, and perhaps succeed, perhaps fail, to adjust to a life without me.

And because of this angel, I would never know the joys of fatherhood, the quiet happiness of growing old with the woman I loved, or the simple moments in between that count for just as much. I would miss every Christmas morning of pancakes and carols played too enthusiastically, but still adorably, by my child on the piano. I would miss every Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, miss Easter picnics, miss…

But on the other hand, I did not know for what reason he had missed the moment of my death; perhaps he had been saving another, destined to be more important than me, or perhaps preventing some cataclysmic war that would have killed millions. Who was I to judge? The greatest responsibility with which I had ever been entrusted was my dad’s twenty-five-year-old station wagon when I was, myself, twenty-five. I could not imagine holding the fate of a human—thousands of humans for all I knew—in my hands.

I glanced at Saint Peter, but he was busy shuffling papers and sorting out the business of admission to heaven for the old woman.

I rose from my puff of cloud and approached him. It seemed the woman had gained entry, for she thanked Saint Peter heartily and practically skipped through the gates in a manner that seemed to defy the frailness of her frame.

Saint Peter looked up from his papers as I approached. “What did you decide?”

“Can I talk to him?”

Saint Peter sighed. “It would require much paperwork, and it is rather busy today, so you’ll forgive me if I say no.”

I glanced around. Now that the old woman had passed through the gates, there was no one to be seen.

“Really?” I asked, trying hard to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

“He is unavailable.” I raised my eyebrows. Saint Peter sighed and continued in a more genuine tone, “It isn’t allowed; I’m sorry. You have to make this decision entirely on your own.”

A memory crept suddenly into my mind, of my grandfather telling me to forgive a second-grade bully. I remembered him wiping my tears and saying, “You can only judge a man after you’ve seen him lose to the turtle and beat the hare. If that went for guardian angels as well, I had no business passing judgment on mine if I knew so little about him.

I put my hands in my pockets and tried to look as casual as possible. “I think I’m going to forgive him. You know, no punishment, just a warning…a ‘don’t let it happen again,’ that sort of thing?”

Saint Peter shook his head absentmindedly as he continued to sort through his papers. “Off to Hell, I’m afraid.”

My stomach dropped. Too many words of outrage tried to force themselves from my mouth at once that I stood mutely, staring in utter shock at the saint. Off to Hell?

A half-growl, half-choke finally escaped my throat and Saint Peter looked up. His brow furrowed. “Wait. You decided on forgiveness?”

I nodded.

“Then you must forgive me, as well; it has been a long few centuries—I’m far overdue for a vacation. I must have misheard you. If you have chosen forgiveness, then it is with great pleasure that I can open the gates and welcome you into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

My heart leapt as the barbed wire dissipated into mist and the gates swung open. The scent of flowers floated more pungently on the breeze and the angel choir sounded a little clearer.

I turned, bemused, back to Saint Peter. “And if I hadn’t chosen forgiveness?”

He winced. “You would have gone the other direction, at least for now…but you would have gotten whatever revenge on your guardian angel you desired. From my view, you made the right choice, though; he’s really a lovely chap, your angel.”

I bowed awkwardly (I was never taught the proper etiquette to use when speaking to a deceased saint) and walked through the gates. My granddad stood just inside, his arms outstretched. As I ran towards him, he winked, and I knew suddenly who had been my guardian angel all along.

 

Megan Meyerson is a senior in high school and has been published in Surge (“A Flower’s Dream”), NEATE’s The Leaflet (“The PB&J Showdown”), and Daedalus (“A Look Beyond”, “The Devil’s Appointment”, and “Vader Takes a Taxi”). She was also a finalist for Bluefire’s $1,000 for 1,000 Words Contest, has been awarded an honorable mention from the Connecticut Student Writers Contest, and has won 1 National and 20 Regional awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is most inspired by J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brönte, and Gail Carson Levine. She enjoys writing, playing squash, baking, and roughhousing with her two dogs.

 

Fire streaked through the dusky horizons, swirling reds and golds amid wisps of spectral smoke. The sky was a collision— a clash of vibrancy and terror and ruin. It spoke of longing, the sort which holds no object, yet does not loosen its grip for want of one. It was a brutal, unforgiving sky, and yet, gazing at it from the aegis of a window, its viewers found it muted— docile, even. Two of the youngest found their eyes drooping as they sat huddled closely together in the backseat.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” murmured the woman behind the driver’s wheel.

The girl sitting next to her nodded, tapping her fingers against the glass. Outside, she could see her own reflection in the rearview mirror. She saw the way her hair drooped, clinging to her head at all the wrong angles. She saw the way her skin bickered quietly with the outside world, rising and stinging as though its bitter quarrel was with its own form. She saw herself, her own, expressionless eyes peering back at her. And she could not look away.

The woman glanced over. “It really is a stunning one,” she tried again. Her tone was enthused, although, admittedly, her actual impressions of the heavenly display were substantially more subdued.

“Yeah,” the girl said, her tone more of dismissal than agreement.

Fingers drummed against the steering wheel. From the backseat, a muffled grumble emerged from the younger of the two children when the older shifted in her seat. The engine made all the sounds that are eventually forgotten on a long trip, intricate hums and heartbeats which eventually fade into obscurity.

“Allison,” the woman in the front seat said softly. The girl, Allison, who had begun to reach for the radio, left her hand suspended in the air as she shifted her eyes towards her mother. There was something about her voice— something gentle, painfully intimate, which pulled her back into reality. Or, at least, whatever sort of reality could exist there, in this dreamscape of a moment, with fiery skies and dozing siblings and a world that sped past their windows like a memory sooner forgotten than it was conjured.

Allison glanced back at her sleeping sisters. “Sorry,” she muttered, withdrawing her hand. “I forgot.”

Her mother shook her head. She had not meant to extract an apology. What she wanted was her daughter’s voice. She wanted to know how her day had been. She wanted to know what she was thinking when she sat there and stared out the window like that. She wanted Allison to know that she loved her, and that she had her father’s eyes. Eyes that she had once thought she would never see again.

She knew the look of sadness in those eyes. And it terrified her.

“Allison,” her mother said again.

“Yeah?”

Mother looked to daughter. Then back to the road. “Sit up straight, okay?”

Allison nodded. And slowly, slowly, her eyes drifted back towards the window. Back towards the deep brown of her eyes which her mother so cherished. Against the canvas of towering gray buildings and skyscraping lights, she watched the ghost of her reflection fade, and fade, and fade into obscurity.

From another set of eyes, the same vision, of cityscapes and lights and phantasmic reflections, sat planted decidedly ahead of the dark and winding road. Another car, of similar size and similar speed, raced in the opposite direction. The backseat was empty— that is, empty of life, rather than of empty of substance. Old toys, broken car seats, and more fast food packaging that could have been from just one, or even a week’s worth of meals, littered every inch of the vehicle. The man in the front seat seemed to care very little, however. If the smell of old food and unwashed cloth bothered him, there would be no telling from his expression.

As something vibrated next to him, he reached over to turn down the radio. Without taking his eyes off the road, he traced the tiny tremors back to their source with one fumbling hand, then brought it to his ears.

“Laura,” he said, not missing a beat. His voice was more prayer than greeting.

He let his eyes rest gently on the horizon as he listened, caressing the city’s outline with his eyes as distant words fell like petals upon his ears. When he spoke again, his smile was just as much a note in his voice as a fixture on his face. “I’m on my way home now. Tell the boys I’m almost home.”

The phone fell gently back to the seat. And then, once again, it was just he and the road. The radio still hummed with a muffled chatter, a song so quiet that its words were nearly impossible to discern. The man did not reach over to restore the volume. In his head, he could only hear the echo of his own voice. I’m almost home.

Outside, the passionate hues of the sky had gradually darkened, granting a stage upon which the first eager stars began to burn. A certain serenity glazed over the chaos of the fading day, and yet, the sun still peaked over the bustling earth. The day was not over quite yet.

A man, rather young, but rather more worn in appearance, did not seem to share this view, however. At least, his heavy eyelids most certainly did not. Against his will, he found them slowly shutting, more than once, before he forced them open with a jolt. He had already burned through three cups of coffee. He shouldn’t be tired. He couldn’t be tired. It was still an hour longer before he was home. Although he was far too close to warrant stopping, the distance seemed almost unbearable as he shifted in his seat. The car, which had been freezing only minutes ago, was now unbearable hot. Agitated, the man tried to find a more comfortable position, but to no avail.

The world around him was vast, or so the setting sun seemed to suggest. And yet, from a seat that was just a couple centimeters too narrow, a car that was just a few inches too small, and a road that was entirely too full of nameless and faceless people with so many places to be, everything just felt small. Too, too small.

When the cars in front of him stopped, the man slammed on the wheel. Once. Then again, then again. A tear escaped, then another. Everything began to spiral. He would be home later, and his mother would be angry, again, and he would have to listen to a month’s worth of scolding, again, and he wouldn’t have time to start any of the many tasks that he knew needed to be done by the end of the week. Time was running out, and time was taking away every hope he had of a night, just one night, of respite. And he had no choice but to sit, to sit and watch it flee.

He hated his job. And he hated his home. And he hated that he had to go to either.

He did not make the turn to drive back to his old neighborhood that night. He missed the turn, and he kept going. He kept going and going into the night, until his eyelids closed and he couldn’t find the strength to open them.

The sound of horn filled the darkening night, then the sound of a startled engine and a startled voice. Finally, a deafening crash. As the sun ended its journey across the sky, so too did the young man and his companion in the wreckage. Fire flooded the night sky.

Perhaps, the next day, a woman and her daughter would reconcile on a crowded road. Perhaps, a man would kiss his wife in the passenger seat as his kids protested from the back. Perhaps, a tired young man would return home to sleep. Perhaps everyone would go back to their jobs, to their families, and to their lives, unaffected by a distant collision.

No matter what, rest assured, the road would hold something new tomorrow.

 

 

Phoebe Houser was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and is currently a senior in high school. She has loved writing since she was in second grade, and doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Note: Independent study, Last interview, hardest interview. Interviewees anonymous. Study: How discrimination affects minority twins.

Interviewer: I put you and your sister in separate rooms for a reason. I want to interview you both individually so I can hear your own authentic answers. What I’m going to do now is ask you a series of questions. Take them seriously and be as honest as possible. First question: what do you think of the phrase ‘let there be light?’

Sister 1: Honestly, it was a mistake that He left us alone. Light is always supposed to be pure. So, why create light when it would be tainted? I don’t understand. I mean if our creator formed another world would he create another human race or hope that we learn? With this world’s seemingly new and more demented version of morality, I’m starting to believe that darkness is becoming synonymous with light. Children in cages, refusing to prevent another school shooting, considering miscarriages a crime . . . how could I not believe otherwise? There was already Noah’s Ark, who says there won’t be another.

Sister 2: I think it’s beautiful. He trusts us to achieve the eternal. Not like we need to, though, because already light is eternal. Cruelty has repeatedly found ways to thicken out and swallow a majority of humanity. But specks of morality are always found. Look at history, reflect on your life, go through religious scriptures, and observe the progress we’ve made. I sound naïve, but really I’m speaking the language of common sense because if that isn’t true then why hasn’t the world shriveled yet?

Interviewer: There’s a stranger next to you. How would you interact with them?

Sister 1: Why do I have to interact? I’m not an idiot. In the classroom we’re taught to put ourselves first and yet society scorns us if we do. Women are no exception to this rule. Selflessness is important, but so is selfishness. What if I have a sore throat that’s so bad that if I speak I lose my voice forever? What if I’m in the middle of sending an extremely important text message? What if I’m having a really bad day? Perform anything but selflessness and you’re scorned for it. If that’s the case, then scorn me.

Sister 2: Did you ask this question to my sister? I bet she overreacted. We’re pretty different did you notice? Selflessness can get overrated sometimes. No, that’s not the right word for it . . . overpraised? I’d forget that, though, if I acknowledged said stranger. How different would we be in comparison to each other? Would we have a lot in common? They have a story; at least in that aspect we’re similar. They could be a potential friend or lover. You never really know with strangers. So, I guess I’d talk to them.

Interviewer: The news is on.

Sister 1: I listen with my eyes and with my ears because that’s all I can do—reflect on the twisted evil consuming this world. Bickering over policy making. Grown men controlling bodies through bills. I’m confused but I get it. I scream, — but more at myself. I’m a kid, incapable of understanding. So I can’t do anything, right? Change the world? They say we can’t; yet they rely on us. I say bullshit. Stop relying on us. Stop pushing the problems you’ve created onto us. Sometimes silence can be change. Let them, those past generations, suffer with what they started.

Sister 2: I turn it off. Every flicker of the screen depicts corruption, which dims the hope that I know is still lingering in this world. I don’t bother questioning. Questioning creates frustration and frustration leads to anger. But sometimes I do break. I scream at the news not me. I throw the remote once the screen blinks into blackness. It’s just not worth watching. It’s never worth watching.

Interviewer: Why do you view the world the way you do?

Sister 1: My teachers never liked me in pre-school because my skin was darker than a Hershey’s chocolate bar. At least, that’s what one of my classmates told me. You remember that? The funny thing is, I still question how to react to that. Sometimes I imagine flipping him off. But other times I imagine thanking him. If not for his harsh comment then I never would’ve woken up. I walk into an ice cream parlor with Mom and people would stare at us as if they’d never seen a fucking human being before. Back then I thought it was because we had stains on our shirts or something. But since that classmate of mine told me what he thought, I understood that the only stain that we had was not looking like them.

Eventually, I started asking why because I was stupid enough to hope that the explanations would debunk what he’d told me. To some I look like a monkey. Our president says we belong in our shithole countries. But it’s not like I can go back to my country because European exploitation drove it into fucking war. Like I fucking want to stay here. I wear my natural hair to work and I risk being fired. I was even unfortunate enough to get a brother. I yell at him when he puts his hood up, snap at him when he plays with a toy gun. Some say I sound harsh but I only do it because I love him. Sorry, I sound like an angry black woman don’t I? Look . . . I’ve tried to view the world otherwise. I’ve tried to view the world like my sister, beautiful, happy and whatnot. I still wake up trying. But then I step outside my door and the world gives me reasons why I should stop.

Sister 2: My friend once told me that I could push the night sky into retirement. I assume it’s because of how dark I am. I was . . . what in elementary school? Because I loved nighttime I took my friend’s comment lightly. But my sister didn’t. Instead she just stormed off. I thought she was overreacting. She always does. I remember I’d always ask her to play dolls with me but she never did because she thought it was too childish. Yeah, I know. And we were kids. Of course, you already know that. But I look back now and I understand. I wasn’t like her. Whenever my teacher told my class that we could pick partners, I was always alone. I became so desperate at one point that I started asking the guys to be my partner. How do you think that went . . .?

I’m no different than anybody else. As kids, most of us are naïve and innocent before seeing the world for what it is. It’s just a matter of how we react to it. I’m shopping with my friends and I notice that a security guard is watching not us but me. Strangers would pull at my curls. I look at mothers holding their children with this affection in their eyes. Sometimes I see myself through them. I’m a mother holding my own kid. But I’m not just looking at them with affection. I’m scared. They’d be a newborn but already I’d be imagining what I should say if they started wishing that they were white or how I should react if I got a call telling me that they were arrested or killed. I mean . . . I try not to fuss over that, though. The world sucks but it’s not going to change if I keep hating the people in it. It just . . . won’t.

Interviewer: How do you view your sister?

Sister 1: I pity her. I like to think that it’s people like her that are too good for this world. But I’ve noticed how she chooses to stay in the ignorance marinating her. Her head isn’t even above water. This world will eventually swallow her and it won’t spit out her bones. Her mouth will turn on her, her emotions will betray her. She can care but on judgment day her costs and losses will be extortionate. She’s seventeen now. This is no longer childhood innocence. It’s not cute anymore. She’s not cute anymore. God, I just don’t understand her. She needs to stop forcing her eyes closed.

Sister 2: Honestly . . . she confuses me. She’s always pushing herself to see things she doesn’t have to see. Anger literally fleshes out her heart and boils her blood. It’s like a cloud that surrounds her. I mean, the water that clumps in her eyes isn’t even prompted by sadness anymore. It’s all anger. I’m scared for her. She wants change but . . .
with her quick maturity came an inevitable cynicism. She needs to take a break for once or else she’ll suffocate herself before the world does.

Interviewer: Do you have any hope for the world?

Sister 1: Solutions you mean or punishment? Hope is too infuriatingly overused. It can be good but sometimes it makes people unbearably naïve. What is hope gonna do for us? Is it going to stop global warming? Of course not. Fuck hope.

Sister 2: My sister or the world? It’s on and off. But I’d like to say yes. Without it comes a loss of motivation and inspiration and world changers. People would become apathetic and with that “fuck everything” mentality nothing would get solved anymore.

Interviewer: Is there any additional information you’d like to mention?

Sister 1: Yes actually. I want you to remember something, especially after this interview. Don’t ever compare me to her.

Sister 2: Even before this interview I’m sure you already knew this but . . . I’m not and I won’t ever be like my sister and I’d appreciate it if you remembered that, Fiona.

Interviewer: Thank you for your time.

Interviewer Signature: Fiona Ngu Interviewer Status: Older Sister

 

 

Lum Chi is a high school senior who’s been awarded a Gold Key and American Voices Nomination for her fiction pieces in the Scholastic writing awards. Her work has also been published by the Minnesota Writing Project and by the K’in literary journal. Currently, she is busy traditionally publishing a three-part young adult novel. When she’s not busy writing, she’s either locked in her bedroom curled up with a good book or binge-watching anime.