Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

Fiction

Just Not Sad Enough

By

The rejection notice feels cold and heavy in my hands.

I sit in a chair outside Ms. Bates’ office—Ms. Bates, the counselor and school newspaper editor. You wouldn’t find a single comma out of place in those sports articles. So, in a way, I already know why I’m here. You did this to yourself, didn’t you?

Once the tick of the analog clock has faded to white noise, the wooden door swings open, and Ms. Bates beckons me inside. I wipe my palms on my jeans as I sit in the plastic chair; Ms. Bates has a swivel chair, a testament to her superiority. The door clicks shut.

Ms. Bates is a short, brown-haired woman; it is easy to imagine her with two kids in college, maybe a boy and a girl, and their university stickers are definitely slapped on the bumper of her Subaru. Not that I’ve ever seen her car. She gives me one of those smiles so often found in educators who are convinced they can change kid’s lives, but there’s a bit of quinoa still stuck behind her incisor.

“Jess, how you’ve been? Thanks for coming in today,” she says with the same stale sweetness as the lollipops in the glass bowl beside her nameplate.

“Mhmm,” I say, because my heart’s already beating fast.

Ms. Bates must have sensed my anxiety or seen the way I fiddle with the paper in my hand, because she sits down gently as if the two of us were on a teeter-totter. “Don’t worry, honey, you’re not in trouble,” she tells me. “I just happened to see something I wanted to talk to you about. You know how I’m in charge of the school newspaper, right?”

“Yeah. It’s really good,” I say lamely. It’s actually pretty bad.

I feel that prickling sting behind the lids that renders it difficult to sustain eye contact. When Ms. Bates opens up her desk drawer, my will flies faster than the weird kids who sprint to the cafeteria, and I finally break. My gaze shifts to the lollipops and their vibrant cellophane wrappers.

“Well, honey,” Ms. Bates continues, “I read all the submissions the students send to the newspaper, and that includes the little writing contest we held last quarter. I read the entry you submitted. You like to write?”

Ms. Bates is not the baseball coach, so I truly wonder why she throws me curveballs instead of getting on with it. But I smile despite the little squirrel that’s squirming around in my stomach, and my fingers fold the corner of the rejection notice. “I guess,” I say. “Just for fun.”

“It’s always good to have a hobby. An outlet.” Ms. Bates sagely nods behind the rims of the glasses she bought at Costco. “But when I was looking at your writing, I saw some things that concerned me.”

“Oh.” I glance down at the rejection slip, at the note that asked me to come see Ms. Bates Thursday during lunch. I had expected this to happen before I had even received it—I had expected this to happen as soon as I turned in that stupid story. But the part of me with pencil shavings for a spine still wants to tell her that I really am a good kid, that there is nothing strange going on, and there is no need to worry. I keep my mouth shut with an effort.

At last, Ms. Bates withdraws the papers from her open desk drawer and sets them between us gingerly, like the ink is gunpowder. “I want to talk with you about this,” she said, “not to punish you, but just to understand.” She’s going for the motherly warmth of a cozy hearth, but it feels more like the frying circuits of an overheated computer.

I stare at the papers and the sloppy staple holding them together. I had wanted to get the staple at a perfect forty-five-degree angle, but, as usual, things hadn’t worked out the way I wanted.

Ms. Bates clears her throat and speaks to fill my silence. “Let’s see here.” She looks at the typing slathered across the pages but doesn’t actually read it. “Your story was about… pirates? In… space?”

“Mhmm. They go on an adventure.”

“An adventure.” I notice a slight raise of a penciled-in eyebrow. “With all kinds of action, I noticed. A swordfight. And the ending…”

“What is it?” I lean forward, eager to get this over with, but I can feel those pencil shavings at the same time, coalescing into a hard ball of lead. I am determined not to give in.

“Well, it’s happy.” Ms. Bates puts her thumb beneath her chin and an index finger over her lips, her features furrowed. “Your characters, they win the big battle. They end up friends, and all of them are alive. Do you see how a counselor like me would be worried about this?”

I shrug and shift lowered eyes to my name printed on the incriminating evidence. “I guess so. Doesn’t mean anything, though. It was just an idea I had.”

“I don’t think so, Jess. To me, this sounds like a cry for help.” She reaches out her hand as if to pat mine but stops just short for dramatic effect. “I’ve seen many teenagers call out to me through their writing like this. And as someone who cares about you, I don’t want to ignore the warning signs.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with me, really. Just what’s so off about it in the first place?” I demand, surprised at my own boldness. “What is so horrible about stories and fantasies?”

“It’s just not… It’s just not sad enough.” Ms. Bates sighs, but I think she’s excited to have a hard case to crack. I can tell she’s secretly impressed with how artfully she extends her sympathy. “The other kids, you know, didn’t write this kind of stuff,” she says. “Sarah Williams wrote about high school heartbreak. Casey Johnson wrote about his abusive father. That’s the kind of thing teens are supposed to write about. Those are the kinds of submissions the newspaper likes to receive.”

“And you aren’t concerned about them?”

“Of course not!” An impatient grin pulls at the woman’s thin lips. “Kids are always filling up their pages with angst and darkness. That’s what makes it art, isn’t it? That’s what makes it good!”

Ms. Bates waits expectantly for my enthusiastic reply, but I just cross my arms and stare at a stain in the floor carpeting. I was already familiar with this fact; I had read the newspaper countless times and marveled at how eloquently ninth-graders had described their depression in tear-smeared letters. Some pieces were even written entirely without capitalization—a real showstopper.

But I didn’t understand—still don’t understand—why suffering makes something more meaningful. Why despair makes something better written. The stubborn child inside of me, the one who appreciates a positive emotion every now and then, refuses to nod along with Ms. Bates. I can feel our teeter-totter rocking back and forth.

Still she is determined to convince me. “You are a good writer,” Ms. Bates tells me, fishing for all the best movie lines she could remember, “but you could be a great one. There’s just something missing, and it alarmed me, that’s all. Usually I’ll see at least one mention of a coffee shop to symbolize tortured artistry and loneliness or maybe some nostalgic flashbacks in italics. But I couldn’t find any second person in your piece, and that sent up a big red flag.”

“I was just trying to be unique,” I say, nearing exasperation. “Kayla Dawson has published a sob-inducing little memoir about her eating disorder in the past five issues. I thought maybe happy could be new or interesting or powerful or—”

“But happy isn’t deep.” Ms. Bates shakes her head. She leans back in her swivel chair and laces her fingers like a therapist closing in on the eureka moment. “People always like some good oppression. The stories of all the emotionally damaged and internally conflicted children are just so important. Their voices deserve to be heard—or do you disagree?”

I realize that Ms. Bates is on the offensive now, and I have leapt right into the sugar-sticky mousetrap of that deceptively welcoming lollipop bowl. “No, I—” I shake my head vehemently, because God forbid I find those such-important stories too dramatic, too flowery, or too unoriginal. Those kids have already been through enough as it is. Could I dare disagree with stricken lamentations?

“Jess, I know the advertisement asked for short stories,” Ms. Bates continues, eyes gleaming now that the kill is near, “but that doesn’t mean fun little adventures anymore. At your age, excitement is shallow, and innocence is privilege, and standard narrative structure is just so naïve. Can’t you think back on anything that made you cry or gave you trauma? Any racial or religious persecution? Not even a broken friendship? Because that’s what impresses people—it makes you sound so very intellectual.”

The fervor in her voice and the almost-wicked shine to her eyes warps Ms. Bates to resemble a rabid animal, if only for a second. In that moment, however, I feel a cold kind of dread that presses its clammy hand around me until I shrink into myself. Her words don’t make sense to me, but a persistent thought, a hopeless desperation, prods the back of my mind. You want to get published in the newspaper, don’t you?

“It’s just that everybody’s trying to make themselves seem different in the same exact way,” I protest meekly.

Ms. Bates gives me playful, narrowed eyes; she knows she’s already won. In the end, I am no match for her and her swivel chair. She might say this only goes to show that satisfying conclusions are the least interesting.

“I’ll tell you what,” she says, tapping a finger to my sorry excuse for prose. “I can see you’re coming around, and I know you have real potential. We’ll try an exercise to fix your mindset. I want you to give a second try at this submission, and maybe this time you’ll see things in a new light.”

I think about my name on the rejection notice, and then I mentally transfer it to the contributors’ segment of the school newspaper. My words printed on pages other people will read, even if the words are slathered so thick with emotion you can’t quite see the point underneath the shiny surface. I bounce my head lightly and offer a small smile without showing my teeth. I get off the teeter-totter and out of my chair, but I leave my story behind.

A day later, I sit with my notebook in my lap and chew on my pencil eraser, but instead of drawing doodles and constructing plot outlines, I close my eyes and pretend I’m a space pirate. Except I haven’t won the grand battle; the enemy’s cannons were just too loud, and their swords were just too sharp. I imagine that all my friends have been killed, all my treasure stolen, and all my hope extinguished—maybe that I even lost an eye, so I have to wear an eyepatch now.

Then I write about how sad and lonely I am, taking care to use second person when I’m actually referring to myself, and including one-word paragraphs to showcase true flashes of genius. I throw a skull in there for a real edgy metaphor. When I’m done, I think I feel better. Like a real writer.

Still, the acceptance notice feels cold and heavy in my hands.

 

Danielle Sherman is a sophomore in high school who wants to pursue a career in writing and editing. She is currently a First Reader for Polyphony Lit and has been published in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards’ past anthologies. Aside from writing, she loves soccer, art, and her local library.

These are the Stars

By

 

The stars are made in the Cave. Every few months, on Flying Day, glowing cubes the size of refrigerators rise from the mouth of the Cave. They’re blinding white, electric blue, and tangerine orange. People from the Surface gather in picnics to watch the cubes rise until the boxes become little more than pinpoint lights in the night sky. Then they go home and forget about the stars until Flying Day comes again.

Gumby used to be one of the picnickers. Before illness swept them away, his parents took him to watch the birth of the stars every Flying Day. Now, a lady in a black-and-white suit is telling him that she will take him to the Cave. She explains that she called all of Gumby’s relatives, but nobody would take him. Gumby asks if he can gather his things. The lady says no because that’ll only make it harder from him to move on. Then, taking his hand, she leads him into a white car.

As she drives, she assures him, “Don’t worry. There’s always a place for you.”

***

The lady leads Gumby below the Surface, winding down stairs of black rock. The flashlight in the lady’s hand is the only light they have. After walking for an hour, the lady announces that they have arrived at Gumby’s room. She pushes open the metal door. Inside, there is a mattress rolled out on the floor with a blanket on top of it. A stack of new clothes sits in the corner along with a flickering oil lamp. Gumby is exhausted, but the lady has a broad smile on her face. She hands him a stack of pamphlets. A few of the titles read For a Brighter Day: Exercises for Forgetting the Past, The Wonders of the Sky, and Why the Stars are a Better Place than the Surface. Gumby promises that he will read them. The lady’s smile widens. She says that she hasn’t seen him cry yet; he’s such a strong boy. Then she walks out of Gumby’s room, heels clattering on the wet rock.

***

A different lady wakes Gumby up the next morning. She gives him his schedule and another stack of pamphlets. There are so many classes he needs to attend: astronomy classes, cosmology classes, getting-over-your-fear-of-heights classes, planetary science classes, universe appreciation classes, horrors-of-the-Surface classes, loving-father-sky classes and accepting-your-fate classes. He even has to attend a mandatory “Moving on from Tragedy” seminar, where he and the other children go through exercises to help them forget about the past. In one of the exercises, they are asked to imagine a time when they were upset and they ran to their parents. Except, instead of comforting them, their parents ignored them and continued going about their business.

A few days into his stay at the Cave, Gumby meets his counselor. She shakes his hand and asks him if he feels like he’s begun moving on. Gumby tells her that he thinks there’s something wrong with him. All the other new children he’d seen broke down in tears at least once a day, but he didn’t. Ever since the lady told him that his parents died, he felt a sort of numbness. It never occurred him that the classes he takes are supposed to be hard; some days, his parents feel like little more than a distant dream. The counselor assures him that this is normal. It can happen in cases of extreme shock. She advises him to grasp on to this detachment because that will help him move on faster. Not every child is lucky enough to have this chance.

***

Gumby begins making friends with the other children. He likes the children here better than the ones on the Surface. They are nice to him and interesting. One of the children, Lily, is nearly sixteen years old, far older than he is. She can see fairies in the Caves. They whisper in her ear, telling her all the dark secrets of the Surface. Gumby asks her how long she’s been here. She answers that she’s been here for ten years. Her parents sent her to the Cave when they found out that she could hear things that they couldn’t.

“No worries,” she says, “they never understood me, but the sky does.”

Every day, Gumby asks the other children to tell him their stories. What were their parents like? How do they like the Cave? What do they think the sky is like? Some are still too broken to speak. Others are like Lily, going on and on for hours about how they want to see the sky, how badly they want to leave the Surface. He is often asked if he didn’t like his parents because he hasn’t cried yet. When they find out that his parents loved him, they tell him that he is strong. They wish they were like him.

***

Two months later, Gumby experiences his first Flying Day in the Cave. All the children are gathered under the mouth of the Cave. In front of them, there is a towering stack of white, blue, and orange cubes. The children whisper and point at the height of the stack. A lot of them will be picked today. A man and two women stand in front of them. The man is holding a piece of paper in her hands. He clears his throat and informs the children that the names on the list are the ones that have been chosen.

He begins to read off the list. With each name he says, a child steps forward. The two women help them into a cube, and the cube begins to glow. Halfway through the list, Lily is called. As she walks through the crowd, Gumby tries to catch her eye, but her gaze is locked on the blue cube in front of her. She doesn’t look back as she disappears into the box. There are a few children who burst into tears when they hear their name. They beg that they aren’t ready; they still love the Surface. The man reading the list tells them that they were all picked for a reason. It was decided that they would move on better this way. When he is done, all the cubes are glowing. The women lift each cube up towards the Cave’s mouth. When they let go, the cubes float up. The remaining children watch as each cube shrinks into dots against the black fabric of the night sky. Then they are told to go back to their rooms and prepare for next day’s classes.

***

That night, the alarm bells ring. They ring when someone tries to run. Gumby sits up in his bed. At first, he thinks that the alarms will stop soon. Nobody ever makes it far. But it keeps going. He opens the door and peers into the hallway. People are shouting, wielding blinding flashlights and clutching leashes of barking dogs. As Gumby watches, he wonders why the child is running. What do they love about the Surface so much? On the Surface, it is cold. Children in the Cave don’t have a place on the Surface. Yet there are always children that try. They must be desperate. When the flashlights and dogs disappear down the hallway, deciding that the runaway isn’t here, Gumby finds himself rooting for the child. He imagines them finding a new home on the surface, with a mother and father that love them with all the heart of the world.

When the alarm quiets and the people turn off their flashlights, Gumby feels something squeezing his chest. He returns to his room and feels something inside him boil over. Before he reaches his bed, he is crying.

***

The next morning, Gumby finds out that his counselor is gone. His planetary science teacher tells him that the girl who tried to run away was under Gumby’s counselor, giving the counselor one too many runaways. Gumby asks what happened to the girl. The teacher says that she was immediately put into a cube and sent to the sky. Nobody noticed the lone star making its way to the sky. He insists that it was for the best; it was the only way to help the girl move on.

When he sees the fallen look on Gumby’s face, he says, “Don’t linger on this. She’s in a better place now. Now, let’s learn about the wonders of Jupiter!”

Later that day, Gumby is introduced to a young woman with strawberry blonde hair. Her name is Alice. He asks if she is his new counselor, but she isn’t. She’s a volunteer from the Surface, and she will be gone once a new counselor is found. Her smile is bright, like sunshine. She isn’t weighed down by things that trouble the children of the Cave. When Gumby tells her about the girl that tried to run and about how he wished that she made it, Alice doesn’t reprimand him or tell him to forget about it. Instead, she folds him into her arms and tells him that she knows it hurts. While his tears soak her shirt, she says that while she is in the Cave, she’ll always be there for him.

***

For the next few weeks, between his classes, Gumby visits Alice. She tells him stories about the Surface. Stories about sunlight and birds and spring grass. He knows that he’s supposed to forget, but he keeps coming back. She asks about his life on the Surface and listens when he talks about the arithmetic classes at school and the oak tree in front of his house. Sometimes he falls silent during his visits because he remembers how blue the sky is in the daylight and how gold the trees are during autumn. Each time Alice takes his hand into hers, letting him know that he is not alone.

One night, Gumby can’t sleep because he’s thinking about the Surface. He wants to see the sparkling blankets of snow again and listen to the whispers of the wind. So he writes a letter to Alice. In his letter, he tells her all the things he’s been thinking about, how the Cave air is always stale, the moonlight never reaches underground, and the oil lamps in the hallways look like ghosts. When he’s done, he folds the letter into his pocket so that Alice can see it tomorrow.

***

After breakfast, Gumby takes out his letter and heads to Alice’s room. When he enters, she isn’t there. Instead, there is a man with gray-streaked brown hair. He introduces himself as Gumby’s new counselor.

“What can I do for you?” he says. Gumby shakes his head and tries to back out of the doorway, but the counselor spots the paper in his hands and asks to see it. As the counselor reads it, his face is expressionless.

When he’s done, all he says is, “Read it yourself.”

Gumby reads the letter and wants to disappear into a corner. In the letter, he is begging. He is delusional. He pleads Alice to take him with her when she returns to the Surface. He says that he can’t go another day without seeing the sun. He wants to stay with her. He asks her to take care of him. He promises that he’ll be a good boy. He’ll do his homework first thing after school and clean the dishes for her. When he grows up, he’ll think of her every day. When she’s sick, he’ll be the one to bring her water and food. Despite anything the world might say about them, they’ll love each other. He’ll cook for her when she’s too old to take care of herself. For as long as she lives, they’ll never feel alone because they have each other, and that is more than enough.

When Gumby looks up, he’s sobbing. The counselor pats his shoulder and looks pityingly at him.

The letter, of course, isn’t for Alice. It’s for his parents.

***

For next two weeks, Gumby doesn’t leave his room. When the children bring his food to his door, he only eats enough to stay alive, letting his shirts become too big. He lies in his bed all day, staring at the flickering oil lamp. When his legs begin to wobble when he tries to stand, his counselor intervenes. He tells Gumby that he’s doing himself no favors by starving himself and pushes a plate of food in front of Gumby.

“You can grieve now,” the counselor says, “But at some point, life must go on.”

During the following weeks, the alarm sounds again. Every time, Gumby secretly hopes that the child made it. When he sleeps, he still dreams of the Surface. But they are only dreams. He knows that his parents are gone. The Surface that he wants is gone. His future is with the stars, cradled in the arms of the sky.

***

On the next Flying Day, Gumby is chosen. He knows he’s not ready, but he doesn’t try to hide when he hears his name. Only when the box is closed above him, and the cube is lit a fiery orange, does he let his hands tremble. Even though the other children can’t see him, he can see them. He tries to remember their faces, watches as children he knows and doesn’t know get called. Before he’s done trying to remember, the cubes are all filled, and they begin ascending.

Two men lift up Gumby’s cube, and he is floating. When he leaves the mouth, the Surface opens up before him. His breath catches. There are the picnickers that choose not to remember why their stars glow. Children are running around, laughing and pointing at the cubes. Gumby waves at them, knowing that they can’t see him. For a brief moment, he sees himself among them from what seems like a long time ago. In the distance, there are city lights. They form an ocean, dotting the black canvas of the buildings. They are the stars of the Surface.

In a few minutes this view of the Surface will be snatched away from him, and all he will be able to see is the stars and the sky. They are not the home he would’ve chosen for himself, but as his counselor tells him, it’s the only home he will have, and he will always have a place in this world.

 

 

Jieyan Wang is a high school junior in Moscow, Idaho. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Canvas Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, Lilun Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also a First Reader for Polyphony Lit.

The Language of Flowers

By

Islamic burials aren’t like Western ones.

This is a fact Amira learns at the age of ten.

But before that, life was sunny and saccharine sweet, served with a side of hard caramel and candy floss on Saturdays, at the place Baba used to take her to before they’d visit Mama’s shop, to breathe the air of oxtails and tulips, see the rows of flowers sprouting different colors in variations Mama called arrangements. Floriographic language, she called it, leaning above Amira with her hijab that smelled like rosewater and an apron with little dogs on it. Flowers mean different things for different occasions, but most customers these days prefer looks over substance. Snip the thorns off roses, clean the leaves of gladiolus, wrap marigold and daphne flowers in plastic and tuck them in between vases.

 

Ambrosia— reciprocated love, bittersweet— truth, ivy sprigs— affection, poppies for consolation and snapdragons for deception.

 

Amira loved the pretty pink roses Mama would always sneak her in school, at home, and in the shop.

I’m happy you’re the joy in my life, I love you.

 

 Afterwards there were relatives and friends speaking in hushed whispers; both in Indonesian and Urdu, hugs and kisses, somber speeches and cries, prayers and du’a, white – too much white. Her neighbor sends them a bouquet of thornless white roses.

Innocence and love at first sight. Disgusting.

 

Islamic burials are not like Western ones; at least they take care to not shower her with thoughtless, empty flowers like Western ones would.

Do.

___

 She falls for him too quickly.

He’s all dark hair and shy eyes, clad in denim and always in a corner with a book, but has the most amazing smile, and when he looks at her, she doesn’t feel so alone: maybe I’m truly not. And then he grins again, and she tugs her mother’s headscarf further around her head.

 On Valentine’s Day, Amira’s fourteen when she receives her first red rose from him.

Passionate love.

 He’s willing to wait until they can properly date – a fact that makes Amira fall for him harder, and they go slow until they can truly show their affection to each other, under Baba’s watch – throwing popcorn at each other during movie dates, studying together in the library, walks under low light when the sky is brushed dark blue and wine purple. He cheats after two months.

 

He cheats on her with Amira’s closest friend, who doesn’t bat an eyelash at the whole ordeal.

That night, Amira burns his rose, the one she’d petrified in artificial water, and watches the fireplace lick charcoal black out of the petals and chemicals. Baba is concerned.

Red roses are liars.

She is alone.
___

She grows out her hair, lets it be messy and unruly beneath the scarf she douses with rosewater every day. When she’s home, she lets the hijab fall to the floor and reveal a cascade like a lion’s mane: you cannot contain me.

 Her cousins decorate theirs with flowers, especially the younger ones. Amira lets the little girls wear pink carnations in their pigtails: youth, vibrancy, energy.

She never lets any ornament or flower touch her hair.

It’s almost time for her brother to graduate, and it’s almost time for her to enter freshman year. Streamers are bought, the food is cooked, and countless throes of people stream into the Tjoe household on the eve of his graduation, after the ceremony is done and goodbyes are said to anything-but-life-long friends, and they receive him well, and congratulate Amira for taking on her mother’s old shop at such a young age.

“My mother’s shop?” she asks. “I wasn’t aware that I was.”

“Well, it’s being shut down unless a new manager steps forward, and your brother is leaving, and your father’s taking care of the business parts of it all, so I assumed-”

Without apology, Amira storms towards her father in the kitchen. He has a spoon of sambal in his hand.

“I don’t want to work in the shop,” she states plainly and clearly.

Baba sighs. “You have an eye for flowers, Amira. If you would just-”

“I don’t want to.”

Her father sighs. “Your mother would’ve wanted this.”

 

The next morning, Amira tucks a hydrangea into the pocket of her shirt and runs off to the shop.
“We’re opening early,” she says to a woman waiting outside, tying an apron around her waist. “Birthday?”

___

She turns seventeen, and on one sunny day in March, a girl from her school walks in and asks for a small bouquet to give to her sister for a ballet competition.

Amira comes out with a plastic cone containing fresh, peach-colored roses, sweet peas, and from the sides, flaring orange blossoms.

Integrity, a lovely time, innocence.

 “It’s beautiful,” the girl says, and she smiles. “Orchids are my favorite.”

Did she expect anything different?

“What do they mean?”

Amira frowns, but tells her. She stares down in fascination at the flowers, watching the way their petals catch the light, the stems, the leaves. The girl reminds Amira of a fern; closed up, sensitive, shy.
At least she’s anything but a flower.

“I’ve been looking for a job for a while now,” she says, and coughs into her palm. “Is this place hiring?”

“I’m the head florist,” Amira says, and her tone is cold. She feels a twinge of regret at the way the girl flinches.

“…Are you hiring?”

She should take pity on this newcomer, the girl who is a fern, who tucks herself away like Amira used to, who reminds Amira too much of herself.

 “We already have enough staff. There’s a coffee shop next door if you’re interested.”
____

Two months pass before the same girl comes in the flower shop.

White poppies for consolation, scarlet zinnias for consistency, to heal a broken heart. Amira gives them to her free of charge along with a packet of tissues to wipe her tears away.

“We’re hiring again,” she says gruffly, then repeats herself in an attempt to be gentler. “What’s your name?”

“Lily,” says the girl, whose sadness has subsided to only a sniffle of her red nose.

Lily-

How ironic that orchids are her favorite.

Amira goes home that night, sets the rosewater scarf to the side, and sits on her bed and stares at nothing.

She has made a mistake.

If she teaches this girl the language of flowers, she, too, will be left with more empty promises and an broken heart for all of eternity.

____

Lily is fifteen and three years younger than her. Lily wears purple glasses that hide her long lashes and smiles nervously whenever she feels like she’s made a mistake. Lily has sea glass bracelets around her wrists – gifts from her parents since she was seven – and owns three dogs at home. She feels like no one really gets her at school.

 

Amira will not tell her that she is an outcast herself, and now the universe has pulled together some strings in irony, because that’s a can of worms she doesn’t want to open.

Instead, they spend their days working together. No matter how many times Lily begs, Amira refuses to teach her apprentice about the language of flowers, and instead shows her how to make aesthetically pleasing bouquets, flower crowns, baskets, the like.

 

Baba feels pleased Amira’s taken on an apprentice to take on the shop after she leaves high school for college – while, funnily enough for her, it is the opposite.

Amira cannot be the sister figure that Lily desires.

Amira is not the tutor Lily needs.

“Why do you keep asking me?” she finally says one day, after Lily’s tenth attempt to get her to teach the floriographic language. “I won’t teach you it because it’s useless.”

“Then who taught you, even though she’d know it was useless?!”

Amira drops the vase; it shatters into a million broken pieces.

“How did you know it was a she?”

Lily doesn’t respond, and closes in on herself again. Amira is senseless with rage. She wants to pry open the fern, shout louder than a lion’s ever roared-

“How did you know it was a she, Lily.”

“Your father told me,” she confesses. “I want to arrange with meaning. Like you do.”

Amira laughs, harsh and raspy; salt against wood.

“There’s no point in doing so. I do it to honor my mother. What are you doing it for? No one understands,” Amira says, ignoring Lily’s protests as she closes the door behind her.

No one understands.
___

The first thing Amira sees after a week when she opens the door is Lily holding out a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, forget-me-nots, and pale pink roses.

My love is true, my love is pure.

“Did-” Amira’s voice is close to cracking. “Did you-”

“I learned from your father. I don’t remember much, but I’m trying,” Lily admits, and meets Amira’s eyes head-on for what seems to be the first time; fierce, unyielding. “You’re my best friend, Amira. You’re more than just my mentor and I’m not going to let you hide away all the beauty you have to give to the world because it was cruel to you once.”

“You understand,” she breathes, and it’s only after a bittersweet smile crosses Lily’s face is when Amira realizes she’s crying. “Someone understands.”

“They can, too, if you’ll let them,” she says, and holds out her arms, letting Amira fall into them and wet Lily’s right shoulder. “They can try like me.”

And so Amira tries.

She posts signs on the walls of her mother’s beloved building; for what they signify, their meaning. Lets customers pick and choose – and beside her is Lily, helping her every step of the way. Drawing people to the right colors of roses, of carnations, talking to them about the aesthetics of floriography and its vast, vast significance.

Yes, they cannot help everyone, but they can try.

And for the first time in what feels like years, Amira does not feel alone.

 

Aliyah Fong is an Indonesian-Chinese high school writer and author originally hailing from Chicago, Illinois, but now residing in Washington state. Her work aims to, above all, evoke emotions in her readers, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and The New York Times Academy. She is also a First Reader for the Polyphony HS Literary Magazine. When not writing or fruitlessly staring at a blank Google Docs document for two hours, she can be found learning another language, watching science documentaries, or occasionally playing her violin.

Dull

By

The chair in the principal’s office is so soft that if you sit there for long enough, you can sink into it and never resurface again. That’s what happened to John Burkley. He went into the office, sat down in that plush chair, and they strapped him there and yelled at him until he disappeared forever. Rumor has it that the principal sends him food once a week to keep him alive, with no one to talk to but the dust bunnies.

This is the third time that I’ve been asked to sit in the chair and speak to the principal. Each time before, I’ve managed to avoid that terrible fate, but it has only gotten harder to escape. I fiddle with my thumbs. No one has ever talked to the principal three times in one year and remained unchanged by the experience.

I sit in the waiting room until a student exits the office, seemingly unscathed. He paces towards his next class with his head down. He looks like a new transfer. A sad smile forms across my face. He’ll learn.

“Next,” the principal calls through the crack of the closing door. I push it open with the palm of my hand and enter the room.

The chair is older than I remember. The bright yellow fabric has faded to a brownish mustard color, and the stuffing is beginning to come out of it. I peer through one of its holes to look for John, but before I can find him, the principal motions for me to hurry, so I sit down and face her desk.

“Welcome, Jason,” the principal says. “I suppose you know why you’re here.”
I glare at her. I’m not going to give in that easily. The chair supports my weight.

The principal clears her throat. I still don’t answer.

“You, young man, are failing your classes. I’ve called you in to discuss your options. You seem to need a little extra…” she pauses. “Help.”

“I don’t need your help,” I mutter.

“Your teachers have told me otherwise. I’ve been informed that you haven’t completed a single assignment in several weeks. Is there a reason you’ve neglected your studying?”

“It must have slipped my mind,” I answer.

She gives me a skeptical look, which I don’t find entirely fair. I did forget about the assignments, at least, after I shoved them down the paper shredder.

She lets her suspicions go, though, and continues. “Jefferson Preparatory has a 100% pass rate. We have a wide variety of resources to help failing students—”

I interrupt her. “John was failing. Did you help John?”

“We have no records of any ‘John’ at this school.”

That’s a lie so glaringly obvious that she knows she has to correct herself.

“I suppose you are talking about Jonathan,” she says.

“Burkley. Jonathan Burkely.”

“Jonathan Burkely was removed from our program for tarnishing our reputation and refusing to obey guidelines. A path you may be headed towards if you are not careful, Jason.”

The chair has begun to sink beneath me. I can almost feel John banging his fists against the inside of the chair in frustration.

“Luckily,” she continues, “the staff here at Jefferson is willing to provide you with several options to assist with the learning process until you have fully adjusted to our rigorous climate.”

“What if I never adjust?” I ask.

She stares right at me. No, she stares through me. Her gaze pierces through my chest and locks on to the chair behind me. She remains silent for a while, attaching my torso to the chair backing with two long metal skewers, and I wonder if she’s going to leave me hanging here forever.

“Don’t worry,” she says finally. “You’ll adjust, one way or another.”

She blinks once, and the skewers disappear from my chest. My full weight rests upon the seat once again, but this time, my rear sinks completely beneath the fabric. I try to push myself back up with my hands, but it’s impossible. I’m stuck.

“Now, do you have any more questions, or may we proceed?”

I decide to stay silent.

“Good,” she says. “Let’s discuss your options.”

She opens a drawer and pulls an old leather book onto her desk. She blows on the book to clean it, and the specks of dust float towards me and dance around my vision. She’s like a witch, casting spells on me, trying to transform me into a frog or a snake, or some other type of slimy creature that she could take home as a pet.

She opens the book and reads from it silently. While she’s distracted, I try to escape the grip of the chair again, but the more I try to loosen its grasp, the further I sink in. My body folds into a slight V shape. I sigh. I figure I’ll have to wait until the principal decides to let me go.

The principal looks up to find that I’ve fallen further below the surface of the chair, and I swear I can see her lips form a tiny smirk.

“Jason,” she says, “if you follow these steps, we will be able to get you out of this situation without problems.”

Get on with it, I think. I don’t dare to say it out loud.

“With your signature, I can write a recommendation for our two step preparation program. The first step is the questioning.”

“Questioning? What kind of questioning?” I don’t like where this conversation is headed.

“When first joining our school,” she explains, “many students partake in activities that are detrimental to our learning environment. Usually, students end all involvement in these activities within their first month here at Jefferson. Occasionally, a few students slip through the cracks. When students interfere with the learning environment, it is necessary to find the root cause so that it can be fixed. The questioning method has proven to be very effective.”

It’s true. No one at Jefferson Preparatory throws parties, does drugs, or cuts class. I’ve never seen anyone do even so much as blink during instruction time; everyone writes their notes in neat little columns without ever taking their eyes off of their teacher. They raise their hands to give insightful comments or, every so often, to throw a softball question to a teacher so that he feels good about answering it and being helpful. Then, they go home, and all they do is sit at their desks with their homework for hours. There are no sports teams, no art club, no amateur rappers who think that they’re famous because they got three hundred views on YouTube. There are only students, their worn down pencils, and a desk lamp that never gets turned on because everyone’s asleep by sundown. Working here is every teacher’s dream.

“So you’ll question me, and then what? What’s the second step?” I ask. The chair gradually pulls me in further.

“You’ve heard of our training programs, haven’t you?”

I ball my fists. “Training program” is a horrific euphemism.

You see, every once in a while, you’ll get a kid who’s slow to give everything up. Maybe he’s a street basketball prodigy, and his parents sent him here because the colleges won’t offer him a spot on their team until he gets his grades up. He thinks he can juggle two things at once, so he spends his days playing ball with his friends, and he stays up too late at night trying to get his work done on time. He only has to nod off once during class for the teacher to send him to the principal’s office. They’ll have a discussion, and she’ll write out a recommendation for a “training program” in New York. He won’t be in class for a week or two. No one will notice.

When he comes back, he’s just like the rest of them: staring at the whiteboard with soulless eyes. His school calls his parents to inform them of their child’s success, and they are elated that their son can finally chase his dream. Except then he tells them that he doesn’t want to play basketball anymore. He thinks it’s a waste of time.

Eventually, the other streetball players show up at his house asking where he’s been. They walk up the stairs, open the door to his room, and see a student hunched over a desk, filling out assignments with mechanical precision, and several dull pencils that have rolled onto the floor. He doesn’t even look up. Without saying a word, they leave him there. That isn’t the kid they’re looking for.

No one knows what happens during the training programs. Maybe they’re full of unlicensed surgeons who sever brains into pieces with their scalpels, or maybe they hire psychologists to strap students down to chairs and hypnotize them into robots. Only one thing is certain: the training programs change people. The principal ships you off to another state like she’s returning a defective product back to a factory, and in a couple of weeks, they’ll fix it for her and send it back free of charge. I don’t want to be fixed. All I want to do is tell the principal that she can shove her training programs right up her—

But I don’t say that. The chair would hear me. Instead, I tell her, “I’m not signing anything. I’m not doing the training program.”

“Jason, we have training programs all across the country. We can find the right fit for you. All you have to do is sign some papers. Just say the word, and I’ll bring them to you.”

“I’m not doing it.”
“Jason.” She looks at me pointedly.

“You said I have options. I want to hear my other options.”

“Jason!” She slams her fists against her desk. My lower body swings beneath my torso and I start to fall until the fabric reaches up to my armpits.

“Don’t you understand? You have no other options, Jason. It’s the training program, or the chair.”

I start to wonder if it even matters anymore, because whether I drown inside of the chair or the principal sucks my soul out of my body, “Jason” will never be seen at this school again.

“What if I choose the chair?” I ask.

“You’d be the first.”

“You’re wrong,” I say. “John did it, too.”

She sneers. “John doesn’t exist. We made him up to scare kids like you into submission. It’s easy to make an example out of someone that isn’t real.”

“Liar!” I say. “You’re a liar!” With every word, the chair pulls me further into its fabric. My shoulders are completely smothered, and my neck sprouts above the seat like a pathetic little weed.

“No one at Jefferson would ever sacrifice themselves for some noble cause,” she says. “Look around you. Does this look like a school of martyrs?”

I think of all the dull, monotonous faces I’ve passed by in the hallways, the perfectly aligned rows of desks in every classroom, the pristine school bathrooms, the deafening silence in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and the resigned, shuffling footsteps of the new students after their first meeting with the principal. I come to a realization: it doesn’t matter whether John exists or not because this school will never change.

The principal reads that thought right off my face. “That’s right. Your idol can’t help you now. It’s time for you to sign the contract.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I said no.” The principal can reprogram a thousand students to do her bidding, but I refuse to let her control me.

Her cheeks flush with anger. “Do you think anyone will care about your sacrifice? No one will even remember you.”

“I’m not doing this so that they will remember me,” I say. My neck is submerged. I tilt my head back so that I can say my final words. “I’m doing this so that you will.”
And with that, I take one last look at her faltering expression, then sink below the surface.

It’s dark. I can’t breathe. It’s mind numbingly dark. It’s dark like the soot on the floor of an abandoned coal mine. It’s dark like the infinite depths of outer space. It’s dark like twenty thousand feet below the ocean. It’s dark like the gaping mouth of a man eating giant. The dark is suffocating me. I can’t breathe. My lungs writhe inside of my body. Thorns of fire pierce my chest. I can’t breathe. Fear seeps into my blood like acid. Pure agony.

I would do anything, anything, for a single molecule of air.

I’m on top of the chair again. I’m gasping. Coughing. Heaving. The principal looks at her watch.

“Thirty seven minutes,” she says. “Impressive. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t want to come up after all.”

Air is the sweetest thing I have ever tasted.

She pushes a piece of paper and a pencil towards me. “Are you ready to sign this paper? Or do you want to spend more time with my chair? Maybe a week long vacation?”

I snatch the pencil from the desk and sign her contract. I can’t go back there. I’m sorry.

The tip of the pencil breaks off as I finish.

Her smile chills the air. “I knew you’d come around eventually. Now, follow me. Let’s begin the questioning.”
I get up from that wretched, ugly chair and do as she says. As I leave the room, I can almost hear John screaming and begging me to be the one to make his pain worthwhile.

The door closes behind me.

Jayla Stokesberry is an eighteen-year-old writer who attends Aragon High School in California. She developed a passion for writing when she began to use it as a way to express her inner feelings and her perspective on the world around her. Along with writing, she enjoys playing soccer and spending time with her dog.

The Hunted

By

I sit in silence. All it takes is the slightest spasm of an aching limb – an untimely itch that simply must be scratched. I breathe deeply, trying to make as little noise as possible.

He’s still there, watching me. I can’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. He’s always there, waiting for that one, fatal mistake that I know one day will be my undoing. He doesn’t know where I am and I don’t know where he is; that’s the game, because it is a game. It’s an endless game of dice rolling. Except if I lose, I don’t just lose my dignity. The price is my life, and the reward is his.

I can feel that itch now. It’s in my right leg. I want to look down at it, to check there’s not some parasite hooked onto my skin, but I can’t. Even when I’m being eaten alive, I can’t move – not until I hear that telltale rustle of leaves that tell me he’s leaving. Then, I will run, and, as the dice are flung into the air, I will race for my life.

The itch is getting worse. I need to scratch it, but I know there’s not long left; soon, he will be gone, and I will get to keep my life. I try to calm myself. I can’t let my own fear be the ruin of me, not when there are so many depending on me. I let out a long breath, thinking of home.

It happens in an instant. Just as a sharp, jarring pain cuts across my leg; I hear a sudden rustling that tells me my hunter is giving up. Too late. I gasp from the pain, and then it is too late and I am running.

I dart out from my hiding place, a clump of densely growing leaves, and flee into the open meadows beyond. He’s right behind me, rampaging through the undergrowth. He is close. Too close; there isn’t enough time. I speed up, putting all my remaining energy into my legs.

The right one is still stinging, and a suspiciously warm liquid is beginning to trickle down it. I don’t have time for it, not for an injury. The smell of blood will only drive my hunter on.

I duck back under the cover of trees: a detour. It’s risky, and it might cost me, but it’s the only option I have left. I dart around tree trunks and leap over uneven ground. Then, as I skip over a protruding tree root, I feel my leg give way underneath me. The ground vibrates and hot breath skims over my neck, but before he can reach me, I duck, and then I’m on my feet again. The chase continues, but my hunter is now upon me, scraping at my back as he matches my pace. There is barely a claw’s width between us.

This is it, a voice whispers in the back of my head. You’re going to die today. You’re going to lose the game. I can almost sense his sharp teeth as they lurch towards me. You’re too late, the voice whispers.

I stop running. I stand resolute, and, as I do, time seems to slow down. I don’t think of the hunter, moments from plunging his fangs through my midriff. I think of home; I think of my tiny, little burrow, hidden barely two metres away from where I now stand. I could make it. Of course I could, but I can’t. Under those trees, my babies lie curled up together, their eyes bright and their mouths hungry.

They will have to go hungry tonight. They will have to go hungry until they learn to feed themselves – if they ever do. It’s better to risk that, whispers the voice. It’s better to risk it than lead this monster to them. You can’t do that. You can’t kill them.

So, I listen to the voice. I don’t move, because I can’t move. I’m not angry: sometimes, we lose the game.

Sometimes, the fox catches the hare.

 

 

Emily is a student of English at the University of Exeter. She has previously had two poems published in Young Writers anthologies and spends most of her time reading and writing.

Poisonous

By

Mrs. Mary Blakely is a small nervous woman with a sharp chin, beady brown eyes, and a finely trimmed crop of oily chocolate colored hair quickly turning grey. Her closet bears a dark value spectrum of royal blue, olive green, and burgundy. Mirroring this dreary palate are the wardrobes of her three sons, who usually don some variation of black jeans and shadowy sweaters. If you were to view the top shelf of her laundry cupboard, you would find it sparingly stocked with Arm and Hammer Baking Soda, and sour smelling bar soaps. A combination lock secures the doorknobs of this cabinet together, and Mrs. Blakely must turn the dial to 15-9-06 to remove her one bottle of bleach with two shaking hands stuffed in oversized yellow HAZMAT gloves. She will not stand for household brand detergents and stain removers, and therefore must douse the family’s undergarments and bedlinens with the safest substitute. The dreary dyes of her favored fabrics obstruct smears of ice cream or remnants of cranberry juice.

On the refrigerator door is a red skull and cross bones magnet securing a leaflet from the Poison Control Center, a phone number stamped bright and bold on the cardstock. Open this chilly chamber and you’ll find it barren of meats. Peer into her vegetable bin and everything down to the last little green bean has an organic sticker on it- nobody in this house runs the risk of ingesting pesticides. Canned goods are few and far between in the birch wood drawers of her pantry, the expiration dates flagged with post it-notes and brick red Crayola crayon. If you happen to stop by when Mary is hosting Christmas Eve there’ll be no shrimp hors d’oeuvres, though everything else is prepared with manic precaution.

Crack open the mirrored bathroom cabinet and note a distinct lack of womanly clutter. No frosted glass dishes of anti-aging cream line the clear racks; the marble counterspace bears no trace of spilled lotions. There is not a makeup bag to be seen, for this housewife goes without. You won’t find a can of shaving cream in there either– mighty strange for a house containing three growing boys and one cleanshaven real-estate agent. A variety of soaps, two nail clippers, a tweezer and an eyelash curler reside on the bottom most shelves, accompanied by four fine toothed combs and a scratchy hairbrush on the levels above. The hairdryer resides in a bin perched atop the toilet’s water tank, its rubbery black cord coiled about the metallic purple handle. Mary keeps nary a vial of Advil or Motrin, there’s not a drop of modern medicine to be seen in this house. Stored in their stead are clear bottles of herbal remedies that emit drowsy perfumes, tucked away beneath the sink under literal lock and key. There are no numbers to spin here, but Mr. Morton Blakley fights a copper padlock to reach his shaving cream and razer in the morning. In the evenings he might battle the Missus, who urges him to switch to an electric clipper.

At night the boys find the most child friendly shampoo set out in paper cups on the tiled shelf of the shower stall for them; protection from excess. Their toothbrushes are carefully arranged on the lip of the sink with pea sized dollops of paste allotted to each brush. Each morning they awake to find their clothes laid out atop their dressers, folded into painstakingly laundered stacks. Outside the home they know to follow the rules- no hamburgers or candy, don’t stay for dinner at anyone’s house. On the rare occasions when the family goes out to eat, their meals must be cooked to match the coloration of a laminated paper depicting the specific pink of a harmless steak. She takes no chances with the public-school system and sends them off with matching pairs of piss colored rubber HAZMAT gloves and a signed notice; to be worn in the event of an experiment containing potentially poisonous chemicals.

Unlike some other mothers in the area, Mrs. Blakely never packs hand wipes with her children’s lunches, and won’t hear of clipping scented Purel to the straps of their book bags. She is known to loudly express her opposition upon the sight of such hygienic equipment. “God forbid they squirt that stuff into their eyes!” She rants, “What if a Wet One were to end up in his mouth?”

Mrs. Mary Blakely runs a tight ship, orchestrated around her one golden rule: Do not risk exposure to poisonous things. Not once have her babies suckled on the poisonous casing of a Tide pod, or accidently swallowed a rouge pill. Forever under strict supervision, they still aren’t allowed to use art supplies alone. When Halloween rolls around she scours their pillow case sacks for candy of dubious origin, and as they grow she orders their backpacks to be emptied on the kitchen table, her fingers feeling every zippered fold of canvas for that hidden parcel of drugs she fears to find. The boys roll their eyes with her every panicked practice, and stuff their hands in their pockets. They long for the day they’ll escape this house of fear and spray Febreze in their dorm rooms. Mr. Blakely rushes to work, where he can slide slick blue pens across page after page, without the ink setting of a tirade of nervousness.

Poisonous thoughts are difficult to protect against, but Mrs. Blakely’s faith takes care of things quite nicely. The Catholic Church is a coordinated effort to keep her sons pure, and if not for Mr. Blakely she would douse all their ailments with Holy Water. Her third son is Simon, after Heaven’s doorman. He and his brothers attend religious instruction dutifully, and without comment. For our misguided Mary there are no poisons in the chapel and church of St. Anne. She begs Him to grant her children defense against injected toxins when they must be given booster shots or seasonal inoculations. Anxiety pins her to her knees.

Mrs. Mary Blakely is lucky that Hideaway Drive is so small, that the rural town is not so large. She is under no scrutiny; no one mocks her openly when she prays aloud to ward off poisons. They pity her for sure, with her undyed hair turning frostier by the minute, her worried hands and pursed mouth setting a wedge between herself and her loved ones. They cannot fathom what has driven her to such extent. Indeed, the deep frigid tendrils of this fear are embedded in the very essence of her Catholic soul.

 

Every poisoned mind bears the tale of its baptism, and Mary’s happened long before she was a Blakley. The day was damp, the sky a swirling with soapy clouds. The air felt sweaty, but there wasn’t any heat. It was one of those autumn days in which the season is being decided. Through the kitchen window came the frenzied clacking of a blender’s chop cycle, the percussion of mid-day cooking. Young Mary was reclining on the patio, reading aloud from Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? Her little brother Matthew kicked a soccer ball back and forth across the soft-earthed yard, although she told him multiple times to sit still and listen.

“Come back here and follow the words, Matty!” She insisted, ever the encouraging sister.

“But it’s boring, an’ we’ve already read that one.” The five-year-old protested.

“Good readers reread.” She quipped, a quote from her much adored first grade teacher.

Matthew didn’t want to read and continued to muddy his sneakers by dribbling the grubby black and white ball, kicking with the fraying grey laces of his sneakers the way he was taught. Seeing he wasn’t in the mood Mary set the book down and leaned back on the pillows that smelled like wet grass clippings, squinting into the sky’s colorless dome.

“Mary!” Called the soccer player, “The ball got stuck in the bushes!”

“Again?!” She hollered back, hustling over to where Matthew was crouched near the foliage on the edge of the property.

“I kicked too hard. It’s all the way back there.” He extended a small dimpled index finger to indicate where his toy had landed.

Mary tiptoed around the thorny plants to the one that held his beloved ball hostage.

“Found it!” She exclaimed, and Matthew performed a dance of victory, stomping vigorously on the summer worn grass.

Mary grabbed the sphere with both hands only to find it was sopping wet. She shrieked in surprise and lobbed the ball back into play. Her hands were grimy with dirt, and she wiped the filth on her capris before maneuvering back into the yard.

Her brother didn’t remember to thank her; he was busy inspecting one of the prickly shrubs, fingering a sticky red-orange berry. It resembled the dewberries Mary had learned about at day camp that summer, a tiny wild fruit that was fun to mush between one’s fingers. A few adventurous campers had gone so far as to eat them, harmless as they were. The Bellham hedging had never been unsafe, so Mary plucked a berry off for herself and popped it in her mouth. It tasted like the sweet-sour candies their father brought home from the drugstore, with sharp little seeds in place of sugar granules. The substance went down easily, the aftertaste like a starburst of tart orange razzberry.

“Try one, Matty! These are the ones we had at camp.”

Her little brother dutifully chewed and swallowed his own berry, exclaiming at how good they were. It did not take long for them to consume a short handful, after which the initial effects wore off.

The pain began in Mary’s stomach, a slow churning of acid reacting to the foreign food. Just a few sharp firecracker spells, like breaking wind on the inside, nothing to complain about. Then the inferno ignited, and her whole midsection was ablaze, the thick sloppy taste of play dough in her mouth, forcing the floodgates open as the berries reunited with the soil. She smelled it coming up, like burned pomegranate, slicing a scorching path up her esophagus. This physical pain was nothing compared to Matthew’s tortured shrieks, sonar missiles shot from his tear streaked face. The sight of his hunched form and tortured expression was a blur.

The kitchen’s blender stopped, and a panicked chef let the screen door slam shut, dashing to the aide of her children, murmuring a symphony of concern.

“Jesus-God, what did you eat! Mary tell me, what is it? Where does it hurt?” Warm hands flanked her back, and here is where Mary’s memory stutters.

She felt her body burning and the bile rising up again. The ground moved beneath her, her senses like foggy spectacles. Matthew’s sobs slipped away, and he was laid on the couch with glazed eyes and red skin, a crust of vile green about his mouth, his dirty shoes marking the upholstery. The beeping of a landline phone, a tumble of words, her hands around a cold metal bowl, her insides convulsing and surging forward, spilling into the reflective depths, the clammy red splotches on her palms. This day became one of infamy, another story of what poison can do.

 

A little girl marked by a misidentified berry metamorphosized into this woman governed by fear and precision. Next to the crucifix on her bedroom wall is a framed Matthew, who is not dead, but suffered like Him; a victim of deceit and poisoned thorns. In their names she rises before the sun each day to micromanage four separate lives around the belief that harm will come to them.

Whatever will become of her? Will Mrs. Mary Blakely ever see the end of her poisonous panic? Or shall she be laid to rest a victim of childhood mistakes and unconquered dread, the woman who never waxed her floors or dyed her hair?

 

Lily Labella is a sophomore in high school, and hopes to one day pursue a career in either writing or teaching. She loves little dogs and floppy hats, and the authors that inspired her to write are Laura Ingalls Wilder and Jeanne Birdsall.