Fiction

Solar Seth Smith stays true to his name.

The alliteration rolls off the tongue and I hear it everywhere despite being new at this school. The S’s of his name bounce from one pair of lips to another, creating this sibilance, not unlike that of a snake. I hate snakes. I hate overachievers too and Solar Seth Smith is nothing if not an overachiever.

He’s the president of the student council and the captain of the senior debate team. He has a royal flush of other titles, ready to be picked out and brandished as weapons.

I think that I will hate Solar because people like him, they sit atop a throne built with their trophies, 4.0 GPA’s and all of their parents’ love. Meanwhile we stand at the bottom looking up at them, modern gods, apotheoses, reminding us of our inferiority.It’s true. There’s him,then there’s me, repeating grade nine again, a bewildered sheep in the flock.

It astounds me that everyone else would just sit there and accept that their lives revolve around another sun. Accept that their lives are adjectives to another narrative. Accept that their lives will never be good enough to have their own narratives.

I don’t accept it. I struggle against the chains of gravity reeling me in, and I try my best to drift from that radiance until I can’t see it anymore. That throne. That shrine. That sun.

That is, until I can’t.

• • •

At tutoring club, he smiles at me from across the table.
“I assume you are Ida?”
“I am only here because it is mandatory.” My words are thin and bruised. He pays no mind.
“Which unit are you working on?” I don’t reply, because he is already grabbing my opened notebook. His answer is proclaimed atop the page black in irate biro.
“Space Goddamn Space.”
“Did you know there is an asteroid named Ida? 243 Ida, in fact.”
“Did you know you are named after the sun? Did you know everything revolves around the sun?”
Solar laughs.  The cacophony of it is jarring in our little space where there is nothing except the sun and if you squint, an asteroid.
The people neighbouring us turn their heads. I get the impression that he doesn’t laugh.
“You are not the first to make that metaphor.”
He makes a little smile again, this time sandpaper-rough with too many teeth.
“Did you know that it is lonely to be the sun? Everything revolves around y-, around it, but they are locked into orbit, and never close enough.”
A startled snort weasels its way out in spite of myself.
“Did you know it is pretty lonely for 2-something-4 Ida too? Out there pushing against all the other little asteroids, scraped raw.”
He blinks the vulnerability in his eyes away, and this time his laugh is one befitting of the sun.
“You do know something about space.”
• • •
I come in at the end of the week and he is already there, head bowed as he listens to music. His eyes dart up as my backpack thumps against the floor.
“Trembling Blue Stars,” he declares.
“What?”
“That’s the band I’m listening to.”
“Stars are not blue. The sun isn’t blue.”
“The brightest ones burn blue. Sirius, Canopus, Vega…”
“And Solar?”
His left eye twitches. “Solar isn’t a star.”
“No. It’s a metaphor.”
The silence stretches between us until he smiles like it’s an offering. Offerings, in my experience, are never something given willingly, but given in a false belief that things will be better.

“I guess I am,” ––– a laugh that is too loud ––– “Solar Seth Smith, bright and blue.”
As I study he points out different concepts to me, and I can tell how much he loves space by the way his eyes dance and crinkle at the corners. I can tell how much he hates the sun by the way he sighs, like the hiss of a deflating balloon.
I can’t blame him.

• • •

The next time when I come in he quizzes me on vocabulary.
“Universe.”
“Everything that exists including all matter and energy.”
“Asteroid.”
“A small rocky body orbiting the sun.” Maybe I am a metaphor as well. I think of 243 Ida somewhere out there.
“Solar eclipse.”
“A phenomenon where the accomplishments of Solar Seth Smith overshadow everyone else’s.”
To my surprise, and perhaps disappointment, he’s calm. “Haha, very funny. Try again.”
“An eclipse in which the sun is obscured by the moon.”
“Good. Supernova.”
“When the bright stars die.”
“Indeed.” His next smile is a classic smile of avoidance. “This is an important concept, care to elaborate?”
“The star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity.” The metaphor hangs heavy between us, and it is a race of “Who will change the topic first?” He doesn’t. “Precisely. Stars much more massive than our sun go through nucleosynthesis, fusing hydrogen, then helium, fusing way up until iron. Then, boom.”
I don’t remind him that there is no sound in space.

• • •

“What happens to the smaller, dimmer stars then? The sun, for example?” “They turn into white dwarfs. Quite depressing, really.”

• • •

The stars that burn blue, do they ‘die’ quicker?”
“I think you know the answer.”

• • •

Within a few weeks, I notice his attachment to this particular brand of blue energy drink. He drinks two cans during our session and takes out one more as he exits. In the library’s trashcan,  more blue aluminum corpses. I ask him about it the next time.
“I thought we already covered that bright stars burn blue.” His bony fingers shake like an addict’s as he dumps the vile stuff into his throat, knuckles white with tension.
With more and more certainty I know that is true. I look at the heartbreaking blue in his eyes, the slate blue that bleeds into deep circles under them, the electric blue tainting his lips, and the protruding blue veins on his china-white wrists. He takes another swig. I stare.
“What? It keeps me awake. Alert. It’s my fuel. These days I barely sleep.”
“You should sleep.”
“I try, but I startle awake all the time. Besides, my house is too big, too empty. I’m a ghost haunting my own house.” A drop of blue catches on his collar.
“You should talk to your parents about it.”
“It’s too trivial for me to talk to them about it. Besides, they’ll be glad that I have more time to study.”
It saddens me that he is reduced to a machine. This boy, he’s so young, yet the weight of a solar system is upon his shoulders, and I don’t know how much longer he can hold it. He is the most hardworking, earnest, persevering person in the world, but I don’t think he knows that. He is the most hardworking, earnest, persevering person in the world, but I don’t think he will ever believe it.
To the sun, its light is never bright enough.

• • •

“Are you lonely?”
“There is a difference between being lonely and being alone.”
“I know.”

…

At the school talent show I watch him play the violin. He cuts an elegant figure, with his crisp white shirt, polished oxfords, and a tie ironed so straight it might as well be a sword.The Flight of the Bumblebee trills in the air, feverish. It’s like the bees have tarantism.
The last note is washed over by applause. They clap because he is the sun. I clap because I think I’m the only one to notice that God, his fingers are bleeding.
“I missed three notes.” He tells me as he wipes chapped fingertips on his shirt, smearing it with rouge.
“That was amazing, regardless.”
A tired smile blooms on his face.
His phone rings, Fur Elise slicing the space between us. He flashes a smile and hurries away. His words find their way back to me in the auditorium, airy, unnatural.
“Mum! How are you?”
“I’m sorry.” An angry silence. “Mother, how are you?”
“Of course I understand. You’re too busy.” To see your own son, I think.
“Not bad. I missed a couple of notes.”
“Yes, mother. I will do better next time.”
As he walks away, his gait is measured, deliberate, every echo of his footsteps proud and lonely

• • •

When a star supernovas, it does so without warning, in absolute silence.
When the news reaches me, it has already stunned the whole school into choked shock.
He fell asleep in a math class, and when they tried to wake him up at the end, he didn’t.
The clique of doctor wannabes is calling it “sleep apnea.”
It is a wonder he did not burn out quicker. The websites say sleep apnea sufferers have poor sleep and weak hearts.
The graveyard of blue cans was a testament to that.

• • •

At the assembly, his parents walk onstage, with the heavy tread of  the guilty. They killed him.
Look at them! They remind me of old leather couches at garage sales that no one ever buys. They are hunched over, worn with age, their skin shriveled and cracked.
I remember what Solar told me seemingly eons ago, and I snort, making a thousand pairs of eyes glare daggers at me.
“What happens to the smaller, dimmer stars then?”
They are white dwarves: once stars in their own right, but never bright enough. No one remembers them,  those burnt out bodies tucked away in black pockets of the universe, bitter and small.
So, they force-fed their dreams of stars and legacies to their son, a son who was stupid, who never disappointed them. I wonder what they saw in him, did they see a boy, or like everyone else except me, a star? Did they see a reflection of themselves?
They walk downstage, the mother minuscule against the monstrous bouquet of white roses the principal gives her.
I desperately want to scream at them, ask them if they are happy now, but I gather they haven’t been happy for a long time.
A girl makes a speech, her words graceful, sympathetic yet absolutely worthless. She talks about his perfect GPA, his perfect smile and his perfect manners.
Solar’s existence was pathetic, really. No one will remember him. They will remember the sun. He is the person everyone will lament about politely at the high school reunion. He’s the cautionary tale they will tell their friends and their children. He’s the picture they will stumble across in their faded yearbooks decades later, stare at, then cover with a turn of a page.
His parents will cry.
I will grieve.

• • •

I go online and search for Trembling Blue Stars’ concerts. If they are playing near me, I will buy two tickets, one for me and one for Solar.
They disbanded years ago.

• • •

We stand at his funeral. It is a gloomy, sunless day as if the universe mourns for him.
His parents sob, ugly in their oversized black suit and bloated dress.
They place white and pink flowers on his casket. I follow suit and gently lower a few strung together hydrangeas. They are blue, a last commemoration.
The last shovelfuls of dirt cover the dark isolated little world where he, the sun sleeps. I close my eyes. Something in me shudders, whimpers. With my exhale, the water streaming down my face dissipates into the dust and joins him.

 

Marie You is a ninth grader in a small Canadian town. She enjoys writing, drawing, eating an unseemly amount of chocolate, and listening to “It’s not a phase, Mom,” music. You can find her nesting in a library with Arthurian lore in hand, or plopped on a sofa typing up her newest ideas.

 

Sabrina liked that she was the only teen librarian and usually the only teen in the library. With very few exceptions, all high schoolers were idiots.

The boy who had just come into the library, face buried in his phone, one grimy earbud hanging over his punk rock shirt, was no exception. He was in Sabrina’s class, always wore black, never spoke, and smelled like stale cigarettes. He rarely took off his earbuds, whether he was in class or sitting at Sabrina’s otherwise-deserted lunch table. Still, he wasn’t the worst person to share a table with. At least he let her read and eat in silence.

“What’s the wifi password?” he asked. Sabrina had to resist rolling her eyes. Nobody ever visits the library to read anymore. She pointed to the sign with the wifi password, expecting him to stick in his other earbud and walk away, but he didn’t. “I forgot my PIN number to log into my digital library account, and it locked me out. Could you look it up for me?”

Maybe he used the digital library to provide his round-the-clock emo music. Sabrina gave him his PIN and watched him enter it into his phone. For a moment, she glimpsed the materials he’d checked out. He had ten audiobooks, ranging from YA dystopian to children’s classics to adult biographies. Could it be possible that he read as much as Sabrina? Did he read during lunch, too?

With a few taps, he downloaded the audiobook of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Sabrina found herself smiling. This boy might be an exception to the idiot rule. “That’s my favorite book,” she said. “I hope you like it.”

The boy smiled back. “See you at lunch.” He pushed in his other earbud and walked out the door.

 

Gabriella Clingman is seventeen and lives in Ohio with her parents and parakeets. She began writing stories when she could hold a pencil and often devours creative nonfiction, classics, and graphic novels in one sitting. Gabriella will transfer to Kent State University and double major in Spanish Literature and Translation and Professional Writing. She plans to work as a translator and teach English as a foreign language to adults abroad. Using her experience as an EFL teacher, Gabriella will start a literary magazine to provide a creative space for immigrants and people whose first language is not English to share their stories.

The feather-haired boy is about to be seven and has just learned to recite the alphabet backwards. He sits perched on his grandmother’s lap, playing with a loose thread of her sweater, twisting it around and around his finger, the tip of his pinkie turning whiter and whiter. His grandmother shakes him gently.

“Look up there. That one’s Hercules. Are you paying attention querido? What do you see?”

“Hercules.” But the air is too heavy, and the stars are too bright and he’s too awake to really see Hercules. Instead, he sees his sister’s plastic earrings shining in the night sky and the flash of pearls against his mother’s frail chest. He sees the squares of light their church’s stained-glass windows left on his hand. Soon his grandmother’s fingers grasp his arm, and they walk back into the house where he crosses another day off the calendar hanging on the refrigerator door. His father kisses his forehead as he tucks him into bed, and he dreams of Hercules.

 

He’s almost ten and has just gotten the bike he’s been asking for for years. The kids in his neighborhood don’t play with him because they say he’s too small and his father’s too quiet and his mother’s too dead and therefore he must be cursed, so he rides by himself. He likes it outside. He likes the colors of autumn and how sometimes the wind is so cold it’s hard to breathe. Somehow, he’s not careful enough and skids into a tree. The rough bark scrapes his forehead. A bird’s nest tumbles from one of the high branches and he wills himself not to hear the shatter of the eggs. He bikes back quickly, and his father curses when he sees his tears and his cut but then quickly brings a warm cloth to his forehead.

“Tell me what happened hijo. What did you see?”

“I hit a tree. I think a nest fell.” He sees flashes of red and gold, the tips of bird feathers out of the corner of his eye. He thinks about how wonderful it would feel to be able to fly. His father shushes him soothingly, and his grandmother makes him those potato tapas he loves and tells him more stories of Hercules. At night, he remembers to cross another day off the calendar hanging from the refrigerator, and his father kisses him goodnight. As he drifts off to sleep, he thinks of how those baby birds died by the side of the road and how no one ever said anything about it and no one ever did anything about it.

 

The boy is older now, and his grandmother has just baked him his very own birthday cake, with fresh strawberries and coils of white frosting. He’s too excited about the cake to notice the way her hands shake, the furrows on his father’s brow. His grandmother reminds him to think of his wish, to envision it sharply in his head. He blows out the candles, their smoke curling into the cracks of the ceiling. The cake melts into his mouth, and he giggles when his sister accidentally gets frosting stuck in her hair.

“So, what did you wish for? What did you see?” she asks him later.

“I don’t remember.” He does remember, but he can’t tell her that he wished she would stop strewing her Barbie dolls all over the floor only to shove them under her bed whenever her friends come over, because he keeps tripping over them. He can’t tell her he wished the kids at school would stop asking about his accent because he doesn’t know either. He can’t tell her he wished the cake would’ve been chocolate because chocolate is too expensive. He can’t tell her he wished their father would look more alive because he’s not supposed to wish for these kinds of things. He can’t tell her he wished he could see their mother again. So he just tells her buenas noches and crosses another day off the calendar hanging from the refrigerator. His father doesn’t kiss him goodnight until he asks.

 

He’s in high school and everything’s changing. The kids are getting taller and meaner; the adults are getting shorter and sadder. A week ago, he listened to his sister crying in the bathroom when she was supposed to be asleep. His grandmother keeps coughing. He can’t remember what his mother looks like anymore; he thinks she only appears in his dreams but he’s not sure. One day he kisses a girl on a rooftop. Her laugh is the shape of wildflowers and her lips taste like plum drops and ash. They stand close together and breathe in the dandelion wine of morning.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing.” Another lie. He sees everything.

“Have you ever thought about it?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I’ve never wanted to die.”

“Is that the truth?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

The young man walks home alone and does his chores silently because his grandmother’s asleep on the couch, and his father looks like his collar is choking him. He crosses another day off the calendar hanging from the refrigerator and doesn’t bother telling his father goodnight. He thinks about what he said to his rooftop girl and hopes to God that it’s at least part of the truth.

He’s too young yet too old now. He has enough memories, seen enough of the depths of this universe, to last him a thousand lifetimes. Sensing the end of the world, he goes into the bathroom and watches his life pass by in the smudges of the mirror.

“What do you see?” He thinks of his poor, tragic, beautiful family. He thinks of how hard he has tried and cried and laughed and loved and lived. He thinks of robin’s nests and vanilla cakes. He thinks of Hercules. He thinks about crossing another day off the calendar hanging from the refrigerator because it’s almost midnight. But he stays in the bathroom. Because he isn’t really sure he can make it to tomorrow anyway.

 

Amelia Ao lives in Wayland, Massachusetts with her parents and sister. Art and writing have been a fundamental part of her identity, and she’s excited to be sharing her work.

Women disappeared every couple of years in Cathy’s town. Spread out and swallowed by the endless rolling green hills, or so the townspeople said. They were never interested enough to find out. Cathy refused to be the next vanishing act. Unlike the others, Cathy was willful. Always kept herself busy, her husband would say. But just like the others, Cathy was confined to her house. Something about the trouble that bored housewives stirred up made the town wary of women like her. So Cathy did what she does best–kept herself on her toes. She color-coded all the pillows on her polyester couch, then rearranged them in order of what color looked the best where, vacuumed both her vintage rugs and the beige minivan, and reapplied her makeup for no one but the mirror to see.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and Cathy was spread out against the afternoon lull. Time was poured into the ravine of the day, and for the first time in her life, Cathy could not mop it up. She had checked her makeup in the corridor mirror three times, but only the third time did the woman in the mirror speak up.

Hello, my life, the woman in the mirror said. Cathy started at the sound of her name, glancing down the corridor. She peered at her reflection in the mirror, suspicious of the drooping corner of her lips and the brown eyes staring back at her.

Cathy said, What? What life? No life of yours.
Don’t be so surprised, Cathy. You knew I was coming.
I did?
It happens to everyone. You know, when the hills start to roll and the afternoons start to stretch out on your lawn…You get it.
I don’t think I do, Cathy muttered to herself. She could feel her limbs spreading out against the afternoon lull, painfully aware of time’s slow crawl around her throat. How had she become unstuck from the mirror?

But no matter how much Cathy refused to be the next disappearing woman, she was drawn toward the woman in the mirror. Her reassuring, drooping smile and familiar brown eyes captivated Cathy, and talking to the mirror was refreshing, like she had found new pillows to rearrange and take her mind off of her husband’s tired, concerned eyes.

So the women talked. They talked about her husband’s receding hairline and his little whiskers that he called a mustache. They imitated his stubby hands brushing through and through his thin hair and the way he raised his left eyebrow whenever he said something condescending. Cathy felt her body piecing itself back together, and light flashed off the mirror’s glass, and the woman in the mirror flickered, and all worries were swept aside like dust. The woman in the mirror vanished, reflecting nothing but walls and light. The woman-less house yawned, the way a cat does after devouring its owner. It was nine o’clock in the evening, and the husband finally returned home to an empty house and a still mirror.

 

April Wang is a student from Southern California, Shanghai, and Chicago. She has been influenced by the quiet rain of Irvine, the chatter of Shanghai pollution, and the rolling cornfields of Illinois. Her work has previously been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and the Word of Mouth Literary Arts Journal. She edits for HerCulture and the Beckman Chronicle.

Bella slips into my bed reeking of smoke. She lays her palm against my cheek, and the oily residue it leaves behind makes me think of gasoline.

“What time is it?” I mumble into my pillow.

I try to roll over and face her, but she nudges me back and slings an arm around my waist.

This isn’t the first time Bella has swung by after hours. Usually, her visits are accompanied by a fifth of vodka swiped from her family’s liquor cabinet and a batch of kisses, delivered silently and breathlessly so as not to alert my mother sleeping down the hall.

She nuzzles my neck. “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”

I blame my next words on my dazed, surreal state of neither dream nor waking. “Did you miss me?”

Bella’s laughter rolls like thunder and lightning through my body. “Very much.”

When I wake up again Bella has gone, the sooty outline on my white sheets the sole proof she was ever here.

The next morning, my entire class is abuzz, an aberration from the expected lethargy of early-morning homeroom. My friend Markus leans against my desk.

“Hey, Laura. Did you hear about the fire in the old warehouse down Starfall Lane?”

“What?” I sputter, suddenly parched.

Markus nods. His crooked bangs swish back and forth with the force of his enthusiasm. “The entire west wing burned to a crisp last night. We used to play Spin the Bottle there. Crazy, right?”

“Crazy…” I bring the end of my braid to my nose. My hair still carries a faint fireside whiff. I remember with a jolt that it’s Bella’s and my one-month anniversary tomorrow.

Although we have different class schedules, Bella always manages to steal a pocket of time for me. My feet propel me through the hordes of students toward her locker. Faraway flames hiss in my ears.

“Where were you last night?” I blurt the moment I reach her, forgetting to be casual.

“In your room, being your own personal dream catcher,” Bella replies.

Her warm chestnut eyes glimmer as her red-painted lips stretch into an easy smile; the picture of innocence. She leans in to kiss me, but I place a finger on her mouth to stop her approach. Her lip piercing brushes against my skin and sends a sizzling current coursing through me.

“Anyway,” I say, trying to mask my labored breathing behind faux-indignation. “Don’t you have a class to get to? I’m not tutoring you if you fail.”

Bella’s unapologetic laughter rises above the bustle of the hallway. She opens her locker to retrieve her textbooks, and I peek inside. A picture of us, taken on an amusement park date a week after she asked me out. The strawberry-colored teddy bear I won for her that same day. And pressed up against the bear, books of matches stacked in haphazard rows and a set of ash-stained clothes. I look away.

This is all so new, so fragile. I don’t want Bella’s secret to complicate things between us.

I don’t wait for her after school. Instead, I trek past the gentrified part of town, to the old dirt roads running along the waterfront. I pause when I reach the abandoned warehouse, a pigeon-gray smear against the blue of the sky. Tilting my head back, I take in the entire dilapidated glory of it.

The first thing I notice when I squeeze through the gap in the chain-locked gate is the blanket of ash underfoot. It must have rained down from the cracks in the ceiling. It sticks in a thin film on my white sneakers and stains each fingerprint when I try to wipe it away. The big stairway leading to the upper floors is intact, and so are most of the rooms.

Markus might have been exaggerating, but it still looks bad. The west wing is torched, every wall kissed by the flames. The fire’s memory lingers in the blackened charcoal spots and the scorched detritus accumulated on the floor. A smell of burnt hair permeates the air like a faulty hairdryer.

I imagine Bella standing in the doorway just as I am, the flames casting shadow and light across her face, her silver lip-ring glittering like a fire-forged gem. Goosebumps bloom across my skin, and I don’t know if it’s due to unease or awe.

—

“So,” Bella says, “how should we celebrate? I’m told one month is a milestone. Most high school relationships don’t last past it. I don’t know what the statistics for same-sex romance are, but you get the gist.”

Her voice is nonchalant, but her eyes dart around the hallway without landing on anything and the toe of her shoe scuffs against the scarred linoleum floor.

All week, I had giddily filled page after page of my planner, trying to come up with the perfect anniversary date. Something classic, like dinner and an indie movie, or maybe something daring, like a romantic picnic where the entire town could see us. Instead, I find myself saying, “I’ve got too much homework. Plus, Mr. Ramirez hinted at a pop quiz tomorrow.”

I tell myself that I’m putting the date off because of smoke and suspicions. But a little panicking part of me has wanted to pull the fire alarm on our relationship even before I visited the warehouse on Starfall Lane.

“Oh.” Bella frowns for a moment before she paints a bright expression back across her face. “I could help you study. I know you’re a nervous wreck right before a quiz.”

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I really need to ace this test.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bella says, her smile reassuring. “I’ll find some other way to entertain myself.”

I let her walk me to my next class with a searing certainty that I will be following her tonight.

—

Groggy, jittery, exhausted, I look for Bella first thing in the morning.

“I know what you did last night. I followed you.” I want it to sound like an accusation, but my words are tired, losing steam.

Bella shoots me a smile, gone before I can decode it. “You think I didn’t know? You’re not as sneaky as you think.”

I think of last night, the dumpster fires Bella left like trail of breadcrumbs across town.

“Why are you doing this? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? Not to mention illegal.”

“I love watching the flames. They’re beautiful, and they make my heart quiet.”

I stare at her, unable to process her words. I expected her to deny it, or at least weave some lie. Not this crippling honesty. Her smile contains the duality of a child making mischief and of a girl being humbled by a force of nature. It makes my throat tight with anger. With longing.

“I only burn things people don’t need, and I’m always careful not to lose control of the fire. There are no witnesses. It’s only me and…”

“Your messed-up hobby?” I snap. I can feel the cracks forming between us, a hairline fissure growing bigger, and I’m not sure if it’s her doing or mine.

Bella’s smile turns small and hurt before fading altogether. “Laura, come on. Talk to me. What is this really about?”

I take a step back when she reaches out to link our fingers together. For the first time since I met her, I evade her touch.

My breath rasps in and out of my throat; my tongue tastes like ash and charred meat. I don’t even know why I’m so angry. It’s because of the fires and the secrecy, sure. But as I stand there staring at her open expression, I realize something else. Maybe I’m looking for a reason to fight because I don’t know if our relationship can withstand it.

The truth is, I’ve been having doubts about us. They creep up when Bella is away and I start wondering why she would ever go out with me when she could have any boy or girl she wanted. They spike when boys I’ve known all my life ask if they can get a ticket to the ‘lesbian show.’ They cut deep when I watch the news, read the statistics, or when I hear the whispers in the hallways. And now, all of those worries are threatening to engulf us and the anniversary date I keep postponing.

“I… I have to go,” I say, moving farther down the hallway, away from Bella and all the confusion caused by her presence.

She doesn’t try to stop me but instead calls after me, “I’ll be at the shipyard tonight. Please come.”

Her dark eyes follow my retreat. I can feel their concern, their tenderness. The sensation of her gaze lingers even after I’ve burst out into the parking lot.

The truth is, I’m scared of the connection between us, those tight wires that quiver and pulse with electricity. I’ve never felt anything close to this before, and I don’t know if I should embrace it or run away.

I’m afraid of getting burned, and it has nothing to do with matches or tinder.

—

Deep into the night, I lie in bed, thinking. I bury my nose in my pillow, but I only catch the scent of lavender detergent and my everyday shampoo. There’s no trace of smoke. No proof that Bella was ever here. I get up and pace around the small space. My room is catalogue-perfect, everything in order—just as I like it. The only thing out of place is inside my drawer, tucked beneath my diaries and old school notebooks. I take out the box of matches I swiped from Bella’s locker and twirl it between my fingers for a few minutes. A package so small. So harmless. So full of chaos and possibility.

I take the matches with me back to bed. At times I feel like my whole life is scripted, but this is new and unfamiliar. I want it to fill me with excitement, but my brain knows all too well how to be scared. So I bring Bella’s face to mind. I imagine the way my pulse gets out of sync whenever she’s near, another diversion from its steady, boring routine. Holding the matchbox makes me feel closer to her, somehow, and I don’t shy away from the feeling.

Somewhere from within, I draw the courage to light the first match. I watch the tiny dancing flame, transfixed by the way it consumes the match’s stick body. I don’t notice when the flame reaches my thumb and forefinger. My fingers get singed, and I drop the dead match on my bed sheets. I imagine Bella beside me, taking my hand in hers ever so gently, teasing me a bit before she kisses it all better.

Lurching to my feet, I put on my coat in one swift motion. I don’t feel scared walking the empty streets alone at night. I know Bella will be waiting for me, and that certainty is enough to light up the world.

The old shipyard has been out of use for decades. These days, it’s an ancient, corroded husk whole generations of kids have been utilizing to ride their bikes and smoke their weed in secret. I’ve never done either of those things, but the thought of breaking the rules makes me feel like liquid fire is flowing through my bloodstream. Even before I’ve woven my way through the labyrinth of metal and decay, I catch the telltale gleam of flames.

Bella stands before a small open fire. Her hair is draped over one shoulder, a red scarf coiled twice around her neck.

“You came.”

She doesn’t disguise the relief in her voice. She keeps surprising me, this girl. We’ve been friends for almost a year and girlfriends for longer than a month, but I still don’t know her all that well.

I want to know her, pyromania and all.

“This wasn’t exactly the anniversary date I had in mind,” I say.

I join her at the fire. For a few moments, we stand side by side, watching the flames flicker and tremble in their pit.

“Help me find more kindling?” Bella asks.

The fire illuminates her profile. Her eyelashes cast elongated shadows against the honey-tint of the flames against her skin. It’s beautiful. The fire. Her smile. Everything.

My breath catches in my throat.

I say, “Will you show me how to make the fire stronger?”

Her smile turns brilliant. I follow her around the shipyard. Together we gather dry branches and bunched-up newspapers to bring back to the cinderblock pit.

Bit by bit, I feed the fire, making it bigger, stronger. I watch the flames climb up to the night sky, blazing orange against pure black. I close my eyes, and the flames paint the back of my lids strawberry-red. The crackling sounds combine with the smoky smell to touch a place inside me, somewhere close to my heart. I don’t know what it is that makes Bella’s heart so loud and unruly that only starting fires can soothe it, but her presence has always quieted the maddening whir of my brain.

I reach out blindly and grasp Bella’s hand in mine. Our fingers interlace, and I feel more right than I’ve felt in a long time.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so afraid,” I say, trusting that Bella will know I’m not referring to the fires.

“It’s not your fault,” she says gently. “I know you came out of the closet because of me. Maybe you weren’t ready. But you should know I’m here for you, even if you don’t want us to be together anymore.”

My eyes fly open. “No. I want you.”

I didn’t come out to the world because of Bella; I did it for her. For us. I wanted to be the kind of girlfriend she deserved, not someone trapped, ashamed, and afraid of her own shadow. And maybe I failed at that last part, but not anymore.

Bella smiles, fire and stars and determination in her brown eyes. “And I want you, too.”

I’m the one who initiates the kiss. It’s sweet like a sugared fruit at first. Slow, maybe a bit tentative. I pour all the love and frustration of this last month into it, all the uncharted hope I discovered within myself tonight. Then her piercing rubs against the inside of my lips and sends sizzling sparks of electricity from my tingling mouth all the way to my toes.

When our mouths part, Bella laughs and pulls me into a hug. Entwined, we stand before the fire. I close my eyes again and allow the warmth to envelop me.

 

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary, The Colored Lens, Argot Magazine, The Arcanist, and other venues.

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.