Fiction

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.

 

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.