Fiction

Our Town

By Katherine Xiong

We realize later that the day everyone in the township lost both hands — no clean cut, just a rude awakening to two drying, painless stumps at the end of our arms — should have been declared a state, if not national, emergency. This shit doesn’t happen often! The least we could get is some recognition. Instead we got Dr. Selwyn accepting bids for an experimental treatment that’s supposed to regrow limbs like lizard tails, and those Veterans Association guys, Ray and Eddie, volunteering to lead workshops and support groups for our new lives without hands. Also a lot of screaming and anarchy and this-is-an-outrage stuff on TV in the first few days, but none of us had time for that. Panic is for morons who can afford to miss work, as Samira likes to say.

So here’s how the day goes: us girls get up individually, clear our cauterized stumps of the nastiest clots, and drag our sorry asses in with five minutes to spare. We’re forgiven, obviously, for skipping makeup and leaving our bedhead in place, though Manager David draws the line at ditching those neon-pink fifties uniforms. That alone sets us back about an hour. By the time we do manage to get the doors open, we have a line of pissed-off, balding weirdos who must be from out of town, since they’ve still got fists to shake at us. David greets them all with a yellowing say-cheese smile and leaves us four, all handless, to fend for ourselves.

It takes a few minutes in the kitchen for Haruhi, our high schooler, to ask how the hell we’re supposed to get these orders out. It’s lucky our pancakes only take one trip to the microwave and the cooler’s right there. But these plates have a long way to go. We’d leave them on the counter, but expecting customers to come up to the counter for their food? Unthinkable.

“Well, let’s test it out, Haru,” Samira says. She wiggles her stump at the steaming heap of brown on the table. “Group effort, ladies. Wrists out.” Except Haru’s tiny, and our first attempt to balance a plate on her twiggy wrists ends with the pancakes sliding off onto the floor.

So we improvise. Have her hold the plate in her teeth? No, too heavy. Hold it between her elbows? Haru’s too weak. Piper suggests having her juggle it with her knees like a soccer ball, and really, Samira’s blank stare is what she deserves.

Finally, Samira throws her stumps up and stomps off to get the whipped cream. Piper and I look at each other, then at Haru, who’s holding herself ramrod straight like she’s afraid to let herself move.

“Put it on her head!” Piper’s a genius.

It takes both of us crammed onto one step stool to get the platter to balance, but we manage it. We’re just lucky we picked Haru, whose head is surprisingly flat.

We hop off the stool as Samira returns with the whipped cream tucked into the pockets of her apron. She glares for a moment, holding the canister by her wrists, and then she yanks the cap off the cream with her teeth and pushes down the nozzle with her tongue. She didn’t shake it enough, though, so it comes out gloppy, an oozy lump that splats in a pool of liquid.

“That’s, like, three health code violations right there,” Piper says.

“What, the tongue thing?”

“No, dumbass, that whipped cream job,” I say. “Atrocious.”

Haruhi’s eyes fly to her hairline, and before we can stop her, she whips her head back to look, sending the platter facedown to the floor. I’d wipe it up, but I can’t hold a mop at the moment and one look at that rancid fluff has me convinced that it’ll give me blood poisoning. Instead I strike a movie pose — wrist flared against swooning forehead, backside against the counter. Woe is us.

The three of us start giggling, Piper and me doubled over and Haru like she can’t believe she’s allowed to breathe, but then Samira laughs. She’s laughing so hard that she can’t keep hold of the canister, and it lands with a splat in the middle of the mess. Which makes us go even more nuts.

Anyway, that’s what we’re doing when David comes back in with a tray of muffins in his translucent, veiny hands—because (and I forgot to mention) he’s also an out-of-towner and none of this is his problem. We only pause to laugh harder and cover our mouths with stumpy wrists when he shakes his crooked finger at us, saying, cut the shit.

Katherine Xiong is a freshman in college who’s doing her best. Her most recent work has appeared in One Teen Story and Body Without Organs.

Dust on the Sawed-Off Shotgun

By Zoe-Aline Howard

It was that five o’clock quiet. That near dinner, husband-isn’t-home-hush that Mary drew close to. She was working flour through her fingers, kneading gluten into a biscuit dough and hoping for an even rise that Ed might even compliment if she kept the oven steady and hot. There was a familiar taste of Mississippi pollen on her breath and a yellow day of work under her fingernails.

She held the storm door open with a dusted Mary Jane, its match cleaned by a fresh breeze. Without the lulled hum carrying from the kitchen, it would seem no one was in the steaming home. Wind brought Spring in from the porch, with the dewy smell of honeysuckle and St. Valentines Day. There were framed portraits on a table by the wall. Three of her children when they were young: Charles at twelve with a cheeky grin; Jane Ellen almost grown, with her dark curls and doe eyes; and Missy, seven, lips already sweet as sugar. Mary kept in the drawer beneath them the photo of her angel, in a coffin at three. Over doilies stained yellow, pictures of her grandchildren. In the center was a photo of a little boy with a cap-gun Ed had passed down against Mary’s wishes. A boy so young could hardly hold the truth of a bullet in his thoughts. He sat in a child’s rocking chair on top of the couch cushion, grinning at Jane Ellen through the lens. Each frame carted memories in the afternoon light.

The dough was stiff and clung to her warm hands in the humidity. Mary rolled it thick and cut circles with the lip of an empty peach jar. She washed her hands and covered the tray with a damp cloth to rise until supper. Her mind wandered down Depression tracks as they always did before evening. She counted her blessings again. The one nice brown dress with pink ribbon on the hem, the record Jane Ellen and her husband had brought on their last visit, the beef she and Ed could afford again. She hummed the melody of In the Ghetto and thought of the still fresh babies her Jane Ellen had at home. Her youngest grandson and his sweet kisses captivated her mind a moment. His hair was blonde as sand and fine as talc powder, but his mother’s had been too. By sixteen he’d have a full head of dark horse hair.

A truck crushed down the gravel drive. Three footsteps echoed up the porch stairs, disjointed. Mary busied herself with collard greens, halving and dousing them in fat on the stove in a choking simmer. The figure in the doorway turned her in panic, and hand to her chest, she exhaled relief and hugged her son. He held himself against the doorway, like his shoulders held the weight Almighty.

“Now Charles, you know better than to scare an old woman!” She rubbed his cheek with her thumb. She could smell the habitual alcohol on his breath. She spared him the loss of her temper. “You go and wash up if you’re staying for supper. It’ll be ready before your father gets home.”

Charles left the kitchen in mud-caked boots. Leaving a trail on the mopped linoleum, he ran his fingers along the wall and balanced his weight against the wallpaper. He paused at the photos and turned them down on their faces. He felt too old to cry, too broken to be home. Tile kept the bathroom cold and the water colder against his cheeks. Flushing himself with the chill, he began to sob. He closed the door.

Mary continued to cook, adding a third helping of collards to the simmering pan. She worried not, but rejoiced at Charles’s return. Her heart was near to bursting with tremors of a filled nest.

The biscuits continued to rise. Her husband would walk in any moment, hungry and distracted. There was leftover chess pie from the church group in the fridge that she’d been saving for Valentines’ Day, but she could serve it as a treat for her two men. She smiled to herself and washed a floured bowl.

“Charles, bring another set of napkins for yourself when you come.” She spoke to the sink and herself, “I would have folded them real nice if I’d known you’d be home. Such a shame I’m already behind.” She looked over at the counter. “Why, the biscuits won’t even be ready in time.”

She waited for her son to respond and took the tray of dense dough to the oven. The creaking door flooded the warm house with the evening chill. She called again – “Charles? What’re you doin’ back there? Your father will be home soon and he’ll wanna know what you’re doin’ back- Charles?”

She sighed and worked her way down the hall, kicking over the shoe and letting the door swing to a close. Two fingers all veins and knuckle closed the latch. She looked over the fallen frames. A cough cut the hall in two. Mary turned. Her son was leaning against the bedroom door frame, his eyes red and hands shaking. His eyes still held tears, years of them. They twinkled like a movie star’s – that’s what Jane Ellen had always said, that Charles was handsome as a show horse – and something was missing. Mary held composure and spoke again,

“Charles, what’s going on?” She held herself but her tone slid cussedly. “Why did you come home tonight?”

Her son’s demeanor shifted again, becoming anxious. Charles’s voice crumpled beneath his throat and a sob rippled back. “Mama I never, Mama I- Mama I didn’t want to hurt anyone.” He had lost his grip, as he’d done when he was younger. She had been sure he’d outgrown it, having watched him hold Jane Ellen’s little baby the previous Christmas Eve.

She prayed to Almighty that Ed might walk in the back door and took her son by the shoulder. It was stiff and knotted. “Charles, what have you done? Answer me- why did you come here-”

Charles swung back and forth along the door, exposing his arm and the sawed-off shotgun from the linen closet. “Mama-” He lifted the arm and lowered it, staggering in breath and stance. The house settled into its covers, and Mary began to ache, aware of every closed curtain and private space in their little home. “Mama-” he crooned, a small boy again.

Mary held her necklace and released a prayer with her tears. The house was quiet. A stormy wind cracked against the latched door and pleaded for entrance. Mary hushed it with will, praying that silence would hold until Ed’s truck pulled in. She damned herself for the smell of collards boiling over. Her movie star little boy cried to himself, ‘Mama, Mama, Mama.’ She remembered the days when he sang to her and brought her bracelets of wildflowers, the days when she couldn’t feed them more than the previous evening’s leftovers- if there was a serving left. Days when he still loved to run amuck with Missy and get into more trouble than Mary had the energy to manage. She kept in her mind the little grandson she wanted to hold. She held only herself.

The fat from the collards rushed in rivers over the edge of the pot, the greens simmering down to a green syrup. A smoke flooded out from the oven, stones of flour calling out for safety. The house was hot and loud, festering wounds of the evening. “Mama, Mama, Mama-”

It was just one shot. Then the world kept its quiet.

Zoe-Aline Howard is a Kernersville, NC local and Early College graduate entering her college years with an Associate of Arts and high, high hopes. Beyond studying forms of poetry and reading fiction, she enjoys creating digital zines. In the fall, she will declare herself a Pre-Creative Writing major at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and begin her literary journey in full force.

The Art Show

By Emma Wang

Nola says nothing even though she dislikes the way the letters run over each other like a herd of sheep on the name tag they had given her the first day at the art museum. Eleanor (Yuxin) Xia. She dislikes the way the brackets confine her middle name, her Chinese name, creating an unnecessary pause. A crowd of tourists parts, revealing behind them a miniature sculpture of a contorted woman with little black holes for eyes. Nola overhears a middle-aged woman say to her friend about how the sculpture brings about the fragility of womanhood and a bored amusement fills her, the kind that tickles the back of her throat. She would’ve liked to stop the woman, to ask her politely to attend the presentation that’s about to start in ten minutes, but resists. It is not her job to pick and choose.

Ever since Nola graduated from college two months ago, she has been working as an intern at Alte Nationalgalerie, tucked away in a cubicle sorting through strange-looking porcelain pillows until a week ago when her manager arranged for her to guide tourist and, at the end of the week, to interpret a particular piece of art for an audience. Not feeling an immediate urge to tell her parents about this accomplishment, Nola stared at her phone for a few minutes, and then thinking her hesitation pointless had called home.

Nola leans against the white wall as tourists amble by, watching them with a mix of amusement and pity. Just an hour ago, she had spent more than twenty minutes explaining the cultural implications of The Abbey in the Oakwood to an elderly couple while watching their rippling foreheads smooth themselves and their heads bob up and down. Nola thought it rather comical that all the tourists, all of her fellow art history grads, and all the other interns, took themselves and their fine art so damn seriously. Fine art, Nola thought, fine art indeed. They sought meaning in their art and in others, believing paintings to be bigger than life. That is their motto. Bigger than life.

At the end of her sophomore year, when Nola called her father to tell him that she had chosen her major to be art history, the mathematician nearly cried with what Nola could only hope was pity. She didn’t tell him that she too hated art, but joyed in his dismay. It wasn’t what he had dreamed of when he held her in his arms for the first time, Nola was sure, but in her mind, the mathematician told himself that nothing ever turns out the way one expects.

A few minutes before her presentation Nola slips into the tiny white room. She doesn’t have the PowerPoint she had promised, doesn’t have a speech prepared, doesn’t want to give the audience the satisfaction of getting something they would’ve expected. Nola seats herself in the front row and waits for the room to fill up. Indistinguishable chatter surrounds her like a flock of migrating geese. The subject of her presentation, Monk by the Sea, feeds off the viewer’s desire to understand it, and Nola has been chosen to guide them. As the lights dim and the curator walks to the podium, Nola glances back at the woman behind her and sees it is the same one who earlier commented on the sculpture of the woman. They exchange smiles.

The curator gives a brief introduction to the painting (created in the early nineteenth century by Caspar David Friedrich) and to Nola (a brilliant intern and recent college grad) and the crowd applauds. Nola smiles at the curator as she walks behind the podium. The crowd watches her and breathes as one. As her eyes wander to the back of the crowd she sees a shadowy face ripple in the darkness, and then recognizes that it belongs to her father. She glimpses a small nod and a smile, perhaps out of pity, perhaps pride. When Nola starts she doesn’t talk about Theophile Gautier as she has planned. She doesn’t say that the idea that morals can be extracted from art is ridiculous, doesn’t talk about nothingness and how artists create meaning because of a deprecating sense of self-pity. Instead she gives them the classical interpretation of Monk by the Sea, one that art history professors would give in a normal college course. She explains how the vastness of the sky and the smallness of the monk encourage a sense of terrifying beauty. She talks about the historical background of the work and how it all ties together into one beautiful mess of meaning. Nola talks until her tongue twists into cursive letters and the crowd bends under her words. When she finishes, the lights turn back on and the crowd stands up and applauds, taking pride in their ability to understand what Nola has told them. Nola smiles. Looking over to where her father was mere minutes ago, she sees that he has gone, presumably to the bathroom.

Emma Wang is a seventeen-year-old writer born in Xi’an, China and currently attending Indian Springs School in Alabama. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, The Harpoon Review, The Mire, K’in Literary Journal, and more. She founded and co-runs the Goya Writer’s Workshop, an international online workshop for young writers. On days when she remembers it, she likes to blog at www.lifes-lemons.com. She is usually tired.

Perihelion

By Marie You

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.

Idiots

By Gabriella Clingman

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.

Hercules

By Amelia Ao

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.