Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Perhaps it’s the gallon of coffee shooting up your veins, but you swear the blank page mocks you. You wait for a newfound sense of inspiration to hit like an in-denial alcoholic waits for liver disease: sluggish yet inevitable. Your chipmunk cheeks rest upon the calluses of your hands as you wait patiently for that eureka moment to kick in. Or the two Advils you took for the tension headaches plaguing your temples. Whatever comes first. Pouting, your exhausted eyes register the only two words remaining on the document. In all your unadulterated glory, you manage to type out your full name and the date in a size twenty Comic Sans font.

Regardless if it’s the growing shadows under your eyes or the usual insanity, you know one thing for sure; Mark Twain would and could kick your ass for calling yourself, this five-foot-two failure of a Filipino, a writer.

In an attempt to lift the fog, your solution to this early mid-life crisis involves more coffee than necessary. Your taste buds can’t help but crave that familiar aftertaste of Guatemalan beans and Splenda. The aroma of roasting coffee beans give you some semblance of hope that maybe, in your twenty-four years of life, everything will turn out fine in a typical sitcom kind of way. However, this is reality, and you’re old enough to understand not everybody gets (or deserves) a Prince Charming and a happily ever after.

You pour yourself the coffee until it’s filled to the brim and ready to spill on your alabaster countertops. Whispered prayers leave your chapped lips that this will be the spark to an eternal flame, the first page to a novel long overdue. The drink kisses at your lips, shy and steady before emptying its content into your throat. Boiling coffee settles inside your empty stomach and sloshes around with a half-eaten sesame bagel from dinner. For once, you’re not satisfied by a mere sip of the drink but more barren than the Sahara.

The ends of your long sleeve rub against your mouth like sandpaper to a shoe to remove coffee stains. In God’s perspective, your issue as a failing author is but minuscule, a speck of stardust floating in the vast galaxies beyond you. At the end of the day, you chose this life with the idiotic idea that you could write; that 11^th grade English teacher of yours fooled you into picking up a pen to write angsty poetry. But, before figuring out how not to bury yourself deeper into a grave, this is all you can do now: coexist and try not to interfere for those with excellence running through their veins.

Never did you imagine yourself here, sipping coffee that’s as mediocre as yourself and debating whether to steal a car. Or run as fast as your stubby legs can move and hide in yet another metropolis under a different alias. Oh, who are you kidding; your career drowned itself in a puddle before anyone realized you lacked everything to enter the sea of novels. Because, if you’re being honest with yourself, a rarity of sorts, you’re a writer that never quite grasped the ability to write well, which is a slight hitch in becoming an aspiring author.

Fate, what a funny, funny thing.

It’s quiet—the kind that swallows you whole and spits you out with nothing more than lethargy and brittle nails. These days, you are exhausted of being exhausted. Collapsing into your single sized bed, the fake silken sheets wrap around your legs like pythons to prey. The pillowcase soaks up the oils from your skin and salt-water tears dripping down your acne-scarred chin.

A bottle of cheap Pinot Noir rests upon your nightstand, waiting to rid itself into your empty stomach. Your fingers wrap around the bottle, sudden as if your body depended on it. Cocking your head back, you press your cracking lips to the opening as the drink burns your throat dry. You didn’t want to go to bed like this: (somewhat) drunk on a half-opened bottle of Pinot Noir with waves of pity lapping around your ankles.

Why did you want to do this alone? Why did you want to drown in debt in a New York apartment? Why did you want to kill the spiders without Mom’s guiding hand? Why did you want to be twenty-four and unhappy?

The bullet-shaped raindrops bang on your window, almost asking permission inside the apartment. Maybe they can keep you company before the roses fade from your cheeks and light disappears in your eyes.

Your tongue jumbles into cherry knots tangled at the seams as your mouth opens. A soft sob escapes your throat before placing a shaking hand over it. You can’t speak as if you swallowed the ocean whole, painful like salt burning your throat dry and bleeding.

You hate to admit it, but you miss your mom; you’re twenty-four, and it’s unbearably clear that you still can’t function without her arranging the sock drawers. It’s been an eternity without her as the distance grows larger with every mere step away from your past life. But, she’s not the one that left everything behind; you did.

After everything—hair dyed platinum blond, crooked teeth whitened to blind a passerby, six-inch heels to appear more regal than before—deep down, you’re still you. You can reduce the size of your nose, buy denim blue contacts like the sky, pretend your name is Karen Rose to a new boyfriend, and still be you. Because no matter where you go, your shadow follows, and everybody knows a shadow can’t lie as well as a smile.

But you failed, and now everything is falling apart at the seams; your facade is breaking, your walls are shaking, and God, that one sitting on cotton candy clouds, knows the person you need doesn’t want you anymore. The ghost of your past self rips off these masquerade masks, nails clawing at the disguises hiding whoever the hell you’ve become. Until it’s gone—all of it. Now, lying in the bed with dirty tissues and golden satin sheets is a hurricane where a person should be.

After everything you’ve done to leave, your fingers tremble and dial the number you’ve suppressed for too long. Then, you hear it; the voice of a woman you thought was dead in your life.

“Hello, who is this?”

“Ma, it’s me-“

The line ends, static fills your ears like unwanted thoughts and Elmer’s glue, before you can breathe another word, another cry.

 

Alexa Malto is currently a sophomore at Bishop Moore Catholic High School residing in the sunshine state, Florida. She has had no prior publishing other than the Blue Marble Review. Other than writing, Alexa’s free time consists of re-reading her favorite novels, sipping coffee at midnight, and eating leftovers with her family.

 

Islamic burials aren’t like Western ones.

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

Innocence and love at first sight. Disgusting.

 

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

Do.

___

 She falls for him too quickly.

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

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

Passionate love.

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

 

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

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

Red roses are liars.

She is alone.
___

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

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

She never lets any ornament or flower touch her hair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t want to.”

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

 

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

___

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

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

Integrity, a lovely time, innocence.

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

Did she expect anything different?

“What do they mean?”

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

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

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

“…Are you hiring?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lily-

How ironic that orchids are her favorite.

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

She has made a mistake.

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

____

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

 

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

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

 

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

Amira cannot be the sister figure that Lily desires.

Amira is not the tutor Lily needs.

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

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

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

“How did you know it was a she?”

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

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

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

Amira laughs, harsh and raspy; salt against wood.

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

No one understands.
___

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

My love is true, my love is pure.

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

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

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

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

And so Amira tries.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t need your help,” I mutter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Burkley. Jonathan Burkely.”

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

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

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

“What if I never adjust?” I ask.

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

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

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

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

I decide to stay silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What if I choose the chair?” I ask.

“You’d be the first.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Air is the sweetest thing I have ever tasted.

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

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

The tip of the pencil breaks off as I finish.

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

The door closes behind me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, the fox catches the hare.

 

 

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

It only took two trips for Andres to finish dragging boxes into his new home, if one could even call it a home. It was actually a dark, dingy, and cobweb infested attic that was barely what he could afford near his expensive American school. But it was also a bed, a roof, and permission to use the nice kitchen downstairs. Who needs windows with natural light anyway? After getting rid of so much of what he owned, he was left with only the necessities, including a bow and a cello. Alas, Andres had chosen the musician’s life over the lawyer’s life, so now he needed to stick to his decision and prove his mother wrong. He made the best he could out of the situation. After all, he knew this would happen, and for that reason he had been secretly saving money and applying for scholarships, but it would not be enough to survive on for the next few years. Soon he needed to find ways to pay for himself while studying full-time. This is when Mrs. Harvey’s kitchen became crucial to his survival. By selling food, especially his popular empanadas, Andres could at least scrape by.

 

Practice was time consuming. Every day, it was the same routine: applying the rosin to his bow and fine-tuning the pegs. He would sit straight on the chair and place the cello’s endpin away from himself. He would lean the large instrument on his left side. Then Andres would begin to play. When he played his cello, the young man was intensely focused. It was this focus that kept him from meeting his shy fan for two whole months after moving into the attic, but he eventually did. After a mostly upsetting day, Andres decided to place the chair and music stand in front of a large poster of Peru’s National Symphony Orchestra on the other side of the room because he hoped to be inspired by staring at his dream while practicing. He was in the middle of practicing a challenging yet moving piece that brought out the feverish passion he had been longing for all day when something caught his eye. Set against the background of the Orchestra conductor’s face, there was a medium-sized brown spider quietly hanging on to a thread of web. Andres stopped playing to observe the small creature and debate whether he should kill it or not, but before he could decide, the spider started climbing up its thread back into the ceiling. Andres accepted that the decision had been made for him, picked up his bow, and started playing again. Then, the strangest thing happened. As he began playing the cello again, the spider climbed back down the thread to sit and listen. Andres smiled and continued practicing for he had met his first fan, but this confidence wouldn’t last very long. After another long day, he came home frustrated and doubting his ability. He questioned if the spider was actually his fan or if it just enjoyed any music. Andres tested this hypothesis by pressing the different music stations on his radio, but the spider never came down while the radio was on. Later, when Andres started practicing, he turned around and saw that the spider had climbed down again.

From that point on, Andres made the space in front of the Symphony Orchestra poster his usual practicing spot, and the spider routinely began coming down to hear him practice. Besides being a motivating force, the poster was a reminder of good memories, specifically his first time seeing an orchestra. Regardless of whether the spider would care to hear Andres’ origin story or not, he decided to narrate out loud anyway in hopes that the spider was listening to what he had to say. Andres spoke of when he saw the Orchestra play at the Grand National Theater with his mother for the first time when he was five. He remembered hiding behind his mother’s long, emerald green dress as his mother mingled with Lima’s socialites. He also remembered not knowing what to expect when the stage curtains opened and then becoming overwhelmed when the music he heard made him fall in love for the first time. Afterwards, the little boy begged and begged to be given music lessons until his mother relented on the condition that it never interfere with his “real” education.

Andres sighed while reminiscing the simpler times of his childhood and longing for the support he no longer had. He wondered if the spider had family and friends to give him company in the lonely attic. Andres hoped so because he had been more attentive to the appearance of his new home whilst simultaneously avoiding cleaning out the cobwebs and spider webs in fear that the spider would be affected. As he successfully played and worked his way through school, Andres felt less stress and pressure. He found that Ms. Harvey and her family loved listening to him play which led him to start selling his services as a musician for private events. Selling empanadas and other food still remained an important aspect to his finances, though. He continued his practice in front of the spider, who would now occasionally linger for a little while after he stopped playing. There was a respectful and secret friendship between the two, since Andres knew that no one else would understand this unique relationship.

At this point, Andres had lied to Ms. Harvey and told her that there were no pests in the attic nor was there any need to paint the walls. While these conversations had technically happened downstairs, Andres suspected that the spider knew that it had been saved and was thankful for it. Unfortunately, their arrangement as the young cellist and the listening spider would have to come to an end soon. Andres had been offered an opportunity he could not refuse. He had been invited to live with other music students at the house of a well-known professor with many contacts and connections. Once Andres began making plans to leave Mrs. Harvey’s attic and had told the spider, it started coming out less and less often.

At first, the spider stopped lingering after the music stopped, but soon it stopped coming out altogether. This made Andres extremely sad because he had hoped to enjoy his last weeks with his friend, but he had to leave eventually. Right before Andres started the process of packing, he had an idea that made him very happy, but he decided to be discreet about it so it would be a surprise. Andres slowly started moving things into his second new home and cleaning out his now old home in the attic. What had started out as a bare inventory of necessities had slowly turned into a bit of a cluttered mess. This worked to his advantage because Andres hoped to stall his move for a little while as he waited for his friend to come out again so they could enjoy each other’s company one last time. Andres had moved everything but his poster into Professor Baranski’s place. He came back to the attic for the last time to retrieve his poster and pitch his idea to the spider, if it would only come out of its hiding spot. Andres walked into the room and found exactly what he had been waiting for. The spider was hanging in front of the Orchestra conductor’s face one last time. Andres then walked up to the spider and presented his long-awaited surprise: an offer that the spider could not refuse. Andres had gone to a pet store and bought a container for spiders. He told his friend that this would allow them to be together longer and that without Andres there, Mrs. Harvey would possibly directly or indirectly kill the spider. The spider continued hanging on to its thread while Andres held up the container to the spider so that it could go inside, but the spider flinched when the entrance inside the box was too close and then started climbing back up.

Andres was embarrassed that his plan hadn’t worked and frustrated that the spider was going back up once again until he realized that the spider had climbed to the last spot Andres could possibly see it and stopped. To convince it to come back down, he put the container down, which quickly worked. He and the spider stood there for a little while and silently said their goodbyes. Then, Andres carefully removed the poster from the wall without disturbing the spider. The spider was now blended into the color of the wooden walls, but he still felt the presence of the listening spider. Andres began walking towards the door and looked back one last time inside the attic before closing the door behind him.

 

Camila Rueda Torres is a Colombian-American high school senior who is currently working on a capstone project in which she is creating a collection of short literature. She enjoys spending her time reading books, appreciating art, and discussing politics.