Fiction

It is a fine day and the party will go well. Or: can it be a party, and where does the size of the guest list dwindle into a dinner? If there will be five people at the table, or four who do not own that table and clean it before they put down the food they’ve cooked, is that a party? A party can be a group so, well yes, they are a party after all. And there can be such thing as a dinner party, in fact that is what it must be; two things at once.

The flowers go into the milk jug on the table with the plates and the cutlery and the carafe with cut up pieces of cucumber and lemon peel and there is ice in the freezer to be decanted at the last moment.

The forecast says fair, which is to say it will be mild but bearable; which is to say she probably won’t have to take any coats into her bedroom, though she’s already cleaned it to hospital standard— just in case. You never know when somebody might look under your bed just to see if you remembered to throw away that collection of used tissues and takeaway containers and dirty socks. She even went into the bathroom cupboard and cleared out all the cheapest soaps, leaving herself with a collection developed mainly through hotel stays. The Molton Brown sits at the front. Templetree, whatever that actually is. From her cousin’s wedding, which was four years ago now, and she can’t believe that was the only wedding she’s ever been to. She’s almost thirty now and everyone she bumps into when she visits home brings up the apparently shared joke of having a wedding on every Saturday and a baby shower every Sunday.

Last weekend she went to the garden centre and spent eleven minutes weighing up the best fertiliser to use on her seven houseplants, all of whom she has named after people she wanted to be once, a very long time ago. Going into winter, they have all started to die, so she has moved them all into the cupboard with the boiler to keep them out of sight. Cleopatra the ficus has lost four leaves already and Nell the fern is browning over.

People always seem to be suffering over the politics of a guest list, of ‘who has invited me somewhere?’ and ‘if we invite her, we have to invite him’ and ‘he left us off the list for New Year’s, or then didn’t he bring that nice bottle of wine to your birthday, so we might as well, I think we owe him.’

But no, the guest list was the easy part because she has very few friends. Laughably few. Nothing is owed to anybody. If one decides not to come, the others will graciously bow out in sympathy. In fact this is the third scheduling of a dinner which has been set to happen for two weeks now. She has been out to buy bottles of wine three times, but at least there are five bottles in the fridge. The sixth she drank in the space of an hour after the second cancellation because there seemed to be no other way to use her mouth if it couldn’t be telling all the stories and making all the jokes she had organised in her head. It took that much wine anyway to realise none of the jokes were funny. She has workshopped them since then.

The first few drops of rain attempt the windowpane. It’s as if the clouds are spitting at her, shaking down the image she had of standing outside to await her guests. Now she will have to put wet coats on her bed. Now she will have to sleep on damp sheets.

When she dips the first piece of fish into the oil, crumbs disperse from the edges and slide aimlessly about the pan, destined now for the drain.

Carefully— she has practised this three times now— she turns the fish at just the right moment, to give it a good strong outer layer, but leave it soft and vulnerable inside. These are going to be served cold as a starter so the texture has to be perfect. Just one of the perks of having so much time to herself is that she has to come up with ways of filling it. In the last six months alone she has mastered the making of: filo pastry, this crispy fish, stonefruit liqueur, blue steak, soda bread, madeleines, lemon posset, dandelion tea.

She imagines herself at forty-eight, a woman in a larger kitchen than this who can afford slightly better bread than this with a slightly tougher crust and wine that has a cork rather than a screwtop. And the people who come will be impressed but unsurprised. She’ll let them in by a front door that leads them straight into the house, no abrasive buzzers to interrupt the Hollywood classics crooned by an expensive speaker system; and they’ll all kiss cheeks, both cheeks like the French. They will greet each other with ‘darling’ and ‘gorgeous’ and ‘love’.

As they eat, they’ll discuss shared experiences; she will not have to put the smile on her cheeks and slot gentle noises into the conversation as it winds around people she doesn’t know, names she has only ever heard in passing, because somehow she has never become caught in the currents of their life. Their circles, now, are a television show she hasn’t watched. A band she hasn’t listened to. A book she read when she was very small and can’t remember.

The rain hardens and now they will have to come inside. They will have to want to come inside. They will have to want to stay inside.

At last, the tremble of excitement lifts her stomach. She is going to enjoy the evening. It’s been a while in coming and she needs to enjoy it three times over now to make up for the two failed attempts. She loves her friends. They are not bad friends. Isn’t it a miracle in the first place she has been able to invite people to see her? The last time she had a birthday party of her own she had not yet hit double digits, back when mothers invited the whole class and everybody went home with a slice of supermarket cake and a party bag.

Funny that she keeps giving things away now. As if in exchange; she is buying time, but the time of others, their presence at her kitchen table and in return she proffers books and sweaters and food and wine and once she even gave away a ring she inherited from her grandmother. Every time she thinks about it she gets the same sense of nausea as drinking coffee on an empty stomach. But she would gut her house if they asked. She would hand over her own spleen, peel the skin from her face, drain herself of her blood. And they would let her. Smile and loosen the ribbon from the package and tell her she is so thoughtful, and somehow make it a fault in her to be so thoughtful; this is too much, they will say, and somehow it will mean never enough.

It’s not sadness that she feels, nor really disappointment. More a tiredness that has been building up underneath her.

She eyes her phone like a dog in a garden watches passers-by.

Hi, I’m so sorry…

Such is the way it begins, and ends. Oh well. Oh well, there will always be other days, other bottles of wine, other excuses to bear. Oh well, she tells herself, demonstrative, in her mother’s voice. Not the end of the world. Now is the time when she should pick up that clamouring child, her own small self, and hold it in her arms: there, there, nothing to cry over, you’re not killed.

This is the love she has allowed. Staring at the perfectly crisped fish, the piles and piles of rocket she has washed and dried and fluffed up in bowls and drizzled with the last of the balsamic; at the expensive candles her aunt bought her which she has burned to the base, at the diffuser with only a film of oil left; at the playlist she has queued with a meticulous selection of light jazz interspersed with bossa nova for when the evening draws in; at the napkins she has bleached white and folded into elegant shapes; at the wine glasses she has polished to chrome; at the New York Times, paper copy, she has left open on the sideboard; at the cupboard to which she has condemned her plants.

Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. To want love like this. To beg. To need.

We’ll reschedule, don’t worry.   

You don’t mind?

It’s honestly fine! see you all soon <3

 

 

Pollyanna Jackson is an MA English Literature student based in Edinburgh, soon-to-be making the move to the Lake District to start work as an Editor. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport Prize, selected for Mark Gatiss’ writing programme with the Dartington Trust, and won the University of Edinburgh’s Lewis Edwards Memorial Prize in 2023 and 2024. She enjoys writing fiction and short essays, and is always working on a novel.

I slide my scuffed All Stars off Katherine’s dashboard. She shuffles into the driver’s seat, a huge gas station slushie in her left hand, spiked lemonade and Newport cigarettes in the right. She’s silent, seamlessly pouring one drink into the other, giving herself a light after moving one hand to the wheel. I sigh, hinting at a slight chuckle.

Even though I’m her best friend, I still can’t believe she’s thirty. I cross my arms. “You can’t drink while you’re driving,”

She shifts her janky pickup into reverse. “Big brother is out to get me for much worse.” Her shoulders fall. “That man inside did give me a weird look, Leslie. If this trucks bugged, better be safe than sorry.” She plops her drink in the cupholder.

“He looked 70-some. Didn’t he have glasses?”

“How do you know they weren’t the magnifying… no, x-ray type?”

I roll my eyes and raise my hand to my forehead. “If he’s a special forces soldier, maybe. Guess you never know.” I huff a laugh, signaling I only agree with about a fourth of her statement. About six hours lie ahead until we reach the Canadian border.

I flip through the conspiracy pamphlets sitting in the glove box. They’ve become less entertaining as the drive has drawn on. “How’ll we know Henry will give us a place to stay anyway?”

“He may be my ex-husband, but he’s the only other person who knows how much danger we’re in besides me.”

I look through a side squint at her. “He’s for sure the only person as sci-fi-oversuspicious as you are.”

The year 2000’s approach is the only thing nullifying Kat’s divorcee rage. Her overdramatized tangled ramblings about the “extreme Y2K incompliant technology crash and burn” have been off the wall enough to tempt even me to actually trust the government. The biggest real threat to Kat and me is the lack of Wal-Mart stock due to our town’s panic buying dilemma. Kathrine’s concerned the future lack of power will attract aliens. I just want some toilet paper. We’d both been planning to take a road trip anyway.

Kat turns down the Jewel lyrics booming from the radio and drones on. “The water will cease when the clock strikes. There’ll be mobs at the houses of those who saved up jugs. The national guard will have to fight em off. Or, perhaps, the extraterrestrial tv broadcasts at midnight will zombify the mass out of panic.” She says.

I grit my teeth. The atmosphere of our isolated adventure has sucked her ludicrous blubbering dry of any humor. “The whole populous will be watching for New Year’s, I guess.”

I reach for another one of the pamphlets, but a popping jostle thrusts the car forward. My chest crashes into the dated, useless seatbelt. Kat’s slushie spills, and she hunkers up against the steering wheel. “They’ve made interdimensional contact. This won’t be our getaway car for much longer, Leslie. They’ve got control, Leslie!”

Jumps and bumps continue under both of our peeling leather seats. “You’re still driving, woman. Steer.”

“I should’ve installed an ejection seat here—”

I throw my arm to the dashboard to force myself still. “Drive, Kathrine. There’s another station up ahead. Pull over there.”

The truck’s bucking and backfiring refuses to quit while Kat forces the wheel into the squatty little gas shop. She double parks our bug-out-bunker-on-wheels wannabe right near the door.

I relax my hands on my knees.“Letting this thing rest might just fix whatever that was. Maybe they have a phone inside. We could call Henry,” I say.

Kathrine’s now on her last cigarette. “Alright, but you better zip it about our route to anyone inside.”

I try to walk through the gas stations doors calmy enough to contradict Kats sneaky demeanor. I gesture to the haggard woman behind the counter. “Do you have a phone, maim?”

“Phones down.”

Kat flinches. “It’s starting early, Leslie. Taking away power to charge their super solar brainwashers.”

My eyebrows fall, while hers rise. Kathrine jumps behind me, ensuring no eye contact with the slightly unapproachable backlands granny. I stomp my left foot into a pivot, and whip around to face her. “Why does everything have to be a put-up scheme with you? I have half a mind to take those keys. I’d cover more ground alone.”

Kat fists her hands onto her hips. “My best friend would never say that.”

“Well, maybe I——”

The register woman bops the counter bell. “Looks like something needs fixing.”

I cock an eyebrow. “What?”

“That truck. Made a cacophony your whole way in here. If you get back in your car, I’ll take a look for free.” She waddles toward the doors.

I exhale. “Yeah, that. Sure.” I motion my head to the entrance. “You heard the woman. Let’s go.”

Kat follows me, shivering in her own paranoia and anger, eyes darting as we buckle in again. She pops our hood for the granny. We sit in silence, but the next half hour ticks by slower than our entire impulsive venture has. I scan Kat in her scrunched-up position. A worm of guilt buries itself in me. I’m waiting for Kathrine to apologize, so why do I feel at fault?

I pick up her slushie. “You still want this?”

Her voice cracks. “Guess so, if you think big brother’s nothin’ to worry about.”

I place it back in the cupholder. “Nothing? Trust me, they’re everything to worry about.”

“You really think so?”

I look her in the eye. “Obviously. I’m sorry.” I smile, remembering why I’m here in the first place.

A knock on the window startles us both. I gasp, but it was the backlands granny again. “Trucks good now.”

We give her the midwestern nod, and back out. The truck starts up just fine. “You think she gave us a weird look?” I ask.

“Pupils looked lizard-like, unreal—”

“Don’t push it,” I chuckle again, staring out onto the open road. Pretty sure there wasn’t much wrong with the truck in the first place.

 

Kira Mata is a fifteen year old Torah-believing Mexican-American author whose writing has focused on eclectic and strangely original flash fiction since the age of 12. Initially specializing in odd short stories and controversial poetry, she has further developed her likeness of the unordinary by organizing haphazard and irregular or jarring themes into legible creative prose. Her fiction lives on a spectrum of haunting yet plausible tragedies, and semi-humorous unorthodox dramas. Aside from her identity as an author, her practiced artistry extends her labels to also include photographer, Illustrator, portraitist, watercolorist, graphic designer, and (arguably, the most fun) character designer. Her stories will surely send you on a rollercoaster, or at least, leave that funny feeling in your stomach. But, although some areas of Kira’s literature may be a little too descriptive, the romance never will be!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Is this seat taken?”

Who is talking to me? It’s a boy, a pretty one. He looms over 11A, waiting for my lips to give him a response. I don’t have one. He’s the kind of guy that could be your husband or your enemy: white teeth, strawberry blond hair, so conventionally attractive that you want to sock him in between his button nose and clean eyebrows.

He’s still standing there and I want to say yes, this seat is taken. Ms. Jane Austen and a Diet Sprite with too many napkins have reserved 11A and if they decide to give up their seat later on the flight to India, (they won’t), I will be sure to alert him. For now though, he can grow a unibrow and leave me alone.

“No, it’s free.” I say. Oh Jesus Christ he’s sitting down.

He looks eerily familiar, like I’ve seen him in a nightmare. “Sean,” he says with his tan hand outstretched. “Marina,” I reply, darting my hand out and scratching him with my purple nails instead. Goddamn it he has a good handshake.

“Why are you going to Mumbai?” He asks and I spot a green speck stuck between his molars, most likely from the Chipotle eaten outside our gate. In a way I’ll have to dissect later, it humanizes him. He’s just regular Sean going to Mumbai and he didn’t know he was interrupting my date with Mr. Darcy, and he doesn’t mean any harm and the joke is out before I can bite my stupid tongue. “I thought this plane was going to Sydney!” I exclaim too loudly. 10B turns around.

My dad used to make that joke every time we traveled for his work. He was a great actor, eyes curtaining his lies and so everyone believed for a few seconds that he really was on the wrong flight. That’s probably how he got away with what happened to  my mom. Just a theory.

I dig my nails into my palm so hard that crescent moons will linger long after the interaction. “Seriously Marina literally what the fuck is so hard about keeping your mouth shu-” A full-bellied laugh shatters my thoughts. Sean is laughing. He’s laughing so hard his torso shakes and I swear to something the plane shakes as well. He laughs with his mouth open and his head thrown back, and I want to take a picture and make it my home screen so I can remember that joy like this is still alive and maybe one day I will feel it too. His breath slows down but when he looks at me, his eyes are dancing. “Marina, I’m glad I sat next to you.”

Those dancing eyes are so familiar.

I hate myself for talking to him and I love that it’s happening. My therapist would tell me I love to hate myself, but I think I just love him. I love him so much I’m willing to hate myself.

We talk about the wrong way to eat ice cream and how useless pigeons are. He tells me his sister is so autistic that she can’t speak and he feels selfish for knowing three languages. I tell him my dad got away scot-free and I refuse to wear matching socks because I want to express my free will as much as I can. He tells me I’m beautiful and my heart crumbles and rebuilds itself in the pit of my stomach. On hour four, I delete Instagram because the alerts are distracting me from his hair.
I share my fucking Sprite with him.

He throws Welch Fruit Snacks into my mouth and I would bet everything I have that I’ve seen him somewhere horrible.

The flight attendant winks at him so I climb out of my seat and trap her in the tiny bathroom because she is prettier than me and he is the only good thing I have right now. Unfortunately, I am in the window seat so she continues her way down the aisle with walnuts and pretzels and hands ripe to steal true love.

“How old are you?” I ask Sean. “What do you do?” I ask my boyfriend.

“Why are you going to Mumbai?” I ask my husband. “Do you mind if I take a nap?” I ask him on our deathbed, going out holding hands like in The Notebook and knowing no one is as lucky as we are. My soulmate is a twenty-six-year-old lawyer whose best friend is having a bachelor party and no, he doesn’t mind. I fall asleep wondering how glad I am that I said yes and wondering how I know him.

My nightmares are as routine as coffee runs. I’m sitting in the back row of a courtroom, watching as my father consults with his lawyer, who I remember being conventionally attractive, ‑and discusses the likelihood of his being set free. It’s high. I see him walking out of the room, handcuffs jettisoned on the ground as he makes his way to me with the same kitchen knife my mom used to make her lasagna. I see him eyeing me the way he eyed her. I see his lawyer cheering him on. I wake up and see the lawyer taking a sip of my Sprite, ruffling his strawberry blond hair. I see myself crumbling inside, organ by organ. My insides are on fire, flames licking my broken bones, and I feel my heart unraveling like a knit sweater.  I see myself kissing him, and ending him and then, ‑I see myself forgetting to take my medicine in the morning.

Lastly, I see the knife in my hand as I stand in the kitchen.. Sean has gone to the bathroom. I don’t think he’s going to come back.

 

Naomi Beinart is a fifteen year old girl who lives in Manhattan with her parents and brother. She attends school in Brooklyn

(after Ocean Vuong, Daniel Liu, and Patricia Lockwood)

,I tilt my head back against the sound. There’s a line I read in a poem that I often repeat to myself now: the most beautiful part of your body is where it is heading. I hold it like water, as if once I squeeze too hard, it will break. Back in rural Texas, behind a front porch in the middle of the Bible Belt, is a house; its rickety foundation with watered-down wood soft enough to bend, its daffodils perched by the windowsill withering in the sun’s stubborn cradle, curling into their bodies like rollie pollies; it is only early February, the month when the weather has an attitude that won’t go away, temper scaring away birdsong. I try to live largely, try to live like a wildly brilliant animal, yet so much for my efforts, because here we all are, stuck on an enormous flatland between two bodies of saltwater, trying out each day of the new year before deciding which one to die on. You are no better than me. I am no better than Claire from across the street. I entered this world with my sadness, I’ll take it with me when I leave. On our living days, we are realtors in our own homes, showing our bodies around space and time before picking some punctum to wallow in; I’ll never admit any of my flaws to my doctor, when he asks how much sleep do you average per night?, I tell him eight hours, which is excluding the time when I sit by my bedside, knees dangling from the edge, blue seeping into my joints, running lines from Ocean Vuong’s book over and over again in my mouth so my tongue can sandpaper the words into perfection and spit them out in syllables again when I need it. I’ll let you guess how long that takes. In Texas, I imagine nothing is happy. They call you fat or gawky or pretty and roll it up like a joint stuffed with insult, well, I figured I’d light it with burning eyes and smoke it, then leave at the first crack of eighteen. The future is parading itself in front of me, a red carpet, and now I am in my twenties, washing after a party I can barely remember just to feel clean. I scrubbed and scrubbed just to see how hollow I was inside, opening flesh to inspect my bones of sadness and calcium, reminding myself of my mother’s words, we are what we eat, thinking that I must have drank too much milk when I was younger. It is the first time I feel close to death, seen enough of a sliver of him to feel afraid; mother says anything can cause death if you are not careful; cover your drinks, cover your eyes, girls, live on to try out every day of the year before choosing your death date. The air here is so thin and sharp and keeps you in exquisite pain. There are flowers by the windowsill (old habits die hard) that open their red throats like tiger lilies ready to speak. Beneath the queer retreat of silken sound, the distant cacophony of doors slamming, liquor hangs in the air and my roommate has written up another list of boys she’d like to kiss, her downpour smile sharp, legs curled up against her body like an apologetica. She asked me why I was looking so blue, I told her I had written out an elegy for her. She doesn’t know what this is about (but finds it funny), and I don’t either: I can say confusion is the best quality we have, so hold on to it when you wake by the darker side of the pool shivering in the summer ode of petrichor and pondering the first time you realized you were alive, your knees giving out beneath your butterfly form when you walk because you don’t watch where you’re heading, tripping into the chlorine water before you’ve decided on a date to die, and all you hear is a murky vodka-soaked cry above from some nearby partygoer on land, you are still too young to try death on like a drug, body in the shape of a child falling off a first bike with rusting handlebars, so you pop your head above the water, the taste of hair plastered in your mouth. Remember all the kissing, all the young death flashing through your head like it’s your last day alive and the animators are frantically filling up the screentime of your life. I’ve taken you forward to where I ended up, let me take you back, back to biting off pieces of laughter like mint chewing gum, back to when we took the form of bodies that were none the wiser. I’m putting it all away: homecoming, the snuffing of a last cigarette, mourning. I think so greatly, so far ahead, beyond the starlings above, high and fevered, that nothing matters, not even the fact that I still don’t belong here—the rest is a dream.

 

 

Michelle Li has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, The Waltham Forest Poetry Contest, published or forthcoming in Blue Marble, Masque and Spectacle, and Lumina Journal among others. She is an alumnus of the 92Y Young Writer’s Workshop and will be attending the Kenyon Review Workshop; you can find her on the board of the Incandescent Review, Pen and Quill magazine, and the Malu Zine. She’ll read practically anything, the more absurd and emotional the work, the better, and plays both violin and piano. She has an unhealthy obsession with Rachmaninoff, morally grey characters, and Sylvia Plath.

 

 

 

It is in my nature to absorb identities. Since I was thirteen, I have played many different roles; hoarding and collecting them like my brother’s stamp collection. It started with my mother. Stately and elegant wherever she went, I felt like a caterpillar trudging behind a Rajah Brooke’s birdwing. I adopted her walk, first, then her mannerisms. As I grew older, I looked to my sister, who was some ten years older, and copied her, until I stole my next identity.

The first ipseity I outwardly stole was in the eighth grade. On the first day of class, I was seated next to Kimberly. There were two other Kimberly’s at my school, but neither were as renowned as the du jour Kimberly, and so they faded into a listless obscurity for the rest of their middle-and-high-school careers. My Kimberly possessed the three traits guaranteed for high school success in America:

1. She was athletic,
2. She had perfect grades, and—
3. She was white

Kimberly was a trifecta, a beautiful statue erected in the image of suburbia, and I wanted to be just like her. I wanted her body, toned from track and cheer; I wanted her straight A’s, her ability to speak up in class and say what she meant without ums and ahs; I wanted her fair skin, her blonde hair, her white teeth, her blue eyes. I even wanted to be white, though I never told Mother or my sister this.

During introductions that first day, she asked me what my name was.

I did not share with her my home name, Ehuang, which means ‘beautiful.’ “Evelyn,” I said.

“Are you Evelyn Smith? You might be in my homeroom!”

“Oh,” I deflated, realizing I was not who she wanted. “No. I’m Evelyn Guo.”

“Oh,” she echoed. We said nothing more, and I felt the silence between us in my bones.

As the days went on, I found myself wanting to be reeled into her circle. While we followed our teacher’s demonstration of quiet country scenes on 4 by 4 canvasses, I would ask her questions, prodding her to speak to me, as if we were friends, not merely two people forced to sit next to one another in a class we would forget in ten year’s time.

“Math is so hard,” I would say, dabbing my brush into our shared paint tray, “what math class are you in?”

“Advanced,” she’d answer, with a roll of her eyes. “I hate it. I’m so bad at it!” I paid attention to the way she held her brush and mimicked it.

“I bet you aren’t. You’re super smart.”
She smiled, and I returned it.

As days turned into months, I fell into deep study—the subject being Kimberly. I learned to speak valley girl and nearly fried my hair every morning straightening it. I begged Mother for new clothes. She said no, said I had perfectly fine clothes already.

Said my sister never asked for new clothes—so why am I unhappy?

When Kimberly told me she shoplifted a tube of mascara, I shoved t-shirts from the mall down my sweaters. When Kimberly told me she’d started a new diet, I asked her what she ate, and at dinner subbed out bowls of rice for lettuce.

On the last day of eighth grade, I walked into art class a near identical copy of Kimberly, a hand-painted reproduction of the real thing. Kimberly complemented my outfit, and as we parted ways, she gave me her home phone number.

She never returned my call—and yet, for the rest of summer, I remained a Kimberly clone.

The next identity I stole was in junior year. I was watching T.V when a singer appeared on screen. Her name was Hannah Montana.

My traditional mother did not appreciate the gaudily dressed, white American singers on television; she called them whores, but in her own way. I watched Hannah in secret, focusing on her footwork, the way she held the mic.

At that time, we were the same age, and I saw in Hannah what I wanted to be next. She was a pop star, a global entity which loomed in the hearts and minds of everyone under the age of twenty.

She wore what she wanted: wide studded leather belts over glittery tops, thick heeled black boots. Sometimes, a frilly tiered skirt, or a long sleeveless tank. Mother did not allow me to bare any skin below the collar bone, so I cut off the arms of my favorite shirts in secret, wearing them underneath hoodies so she wouldn’t know.

I began waking up earlier to get ready for school, hiding what I would wear under baggy jeans and the thick sweaters bought from Macy’s, which I despised. I’d ask to be dropped off at the side entrance, and from there would run to the nearest bathroom to transform.

I took sharpie to my eyes for liner, and used a jar of Vaseline from Mother’s medicine cabinet and beetroot powder from the pantry to make lip-gloss. In the bathroom stall, I slipped out of my jeans and pulled my hoodie over my head, stuffing them both into my bag. I couldn’t change the color of my inky black hair, but I could style it, and often pinned it back with bobby pins.

For a time, this plan worked wonders; in choir, I would sing out, overpowering the other sopranos in the room, and during lunch I would tell fabricated stories of my fascinating home life. I no longer went by Evelyn; my new name was Eva. It was a nice name; short, more modern sounding than Evelyn, easier to pronounce than Ehuang, and most importantly, white.

I told everyone my uncle was an important businessman in China; to my white classmates, this was exotic, but still distant enough from myself that they could treat me as an equal. I then told them that both my parents and myself were born in Quebec and therefore Canadian; that I had been to China and performed there; that I had a boyfriend in Canada, who was also a musician.

“What’s his name, Eva?” Someone once asked. It might have been one of the other Kimberly’s, but I can’t recall anymore.

“Jason,” I said, thinking that sounded believable. “His last name is French, though.”

“Really? What is it?”

I panicked. “Blanc,” I said, accenting the c. “He’s from Quebec, too.”

“Jason Blanc,” remarked the girl-who-might’ve-been-Kimberly, “that’s such a cute name. Do you have a picture?”

I told her I didn’t.

“It’s long distance,” I’d said, “I met him on vacation, when my family went back a few years ago.”

“It’s amazing you two are still together.” “Yes,” I’d replied distantly, “it is.”

Since then, I have taken up many personas; once I was an artist, after I watched my friend Brian sketching out a still life; then I was a bookish girl with blue light glasses, discussing novels I’d never read to impress those around me in college. At one point, I was advertising myself as a DJ, going clubbing despite hating the sound of the bass thumping under my heels.

I have become everyone and anyone, modeling myself after acquaintances, friends, colleagues, people I see on television, voices heard on the radio. But I have never been able to escape my mother, my elegant, stately mother, who wears our culture with pride, or my sister, the model immigrants’ daughter.

When I look in the mirror, I see many faces, fractured, none whole. I see many lives lived, but none of them my own. Who am I looking at on any given day? Who is the woman standing before me, who wears these clothes, this haircut, this makeup?

I will never escape myself. If I could, I have tried. I do not want to be Evelyn, no, never Evelyn.

I do not want to be Eva—she died long ago.

Once, long ago, there was Ehuang, little girl, beautiful, who wore her culture with pride, too. I crushed her long ago, in favor of who Evelyn could become.

But if I could be anyone in this given moment, I would choose to be her.

 

 

Claudia Parker Joel is a young writer from Ohio. She has received honors from the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and is currently working on her debut novel.

It was July, warm, a few days too late for a Virginia Woolf novel, but we could still feel its residue on us like stardust. Red, white, and blue flags, red faces of uncles in tight blue polo shirts that strained to hide their barreled bellies, white wine poured too fast into elegant glasses while we should have been somewhere else, blasting music and emptying red Solo cups. Root beer floats on the shadowy grass, feeling like a kid at a party even though we both know deep down in our stomachs, unspoken yet going without saying, that our childhood is just out of reach, the feeling of what once was still lingering on our fingertips like the opposite of phantom pain. White fireworks lighting up the dark lake, white beneath our eyelids when we blinked. Sweatshirts invisible shapes somewhere by our side, relishing the first chill of the night as it cuts through one of the hottest days of the year. Small shiver, laughing at our goosebumps, saying I’m not cold but meaning I don’t want anything to change. Intertwined hands flashing red/white/blue//gone under the noise of fireworks displays. Counting breaths, counting seconds until our idle conversation lapses into muggy silence. One/two/three//gone. One of us saying, this might be the last time we’re at a lake without mosquitos. Music and half-drunk chatter drifting down the hill from the white gabled house, absent of origin by the time it reaches our ears, like a conversation entering our dream from a distant, waking room. Grass tickling our bare feet and arms, thumb over thumb, lightest of squeezes silently returned. Breezeless hair limp on the grass, still damp from afternoon sweat. Morning/noon/night//gone. The final crescendo of fireworks, whizzing noise and color, your face in and out of shadow. Belly warm with root beer and contentment, no shame in waistband unbuttoned. Everything vanished now in darkness, anchored only in sound and touch. Crickets. Quiet breaths. Our own voices and blurry, distant ones. In fifteen or twenty minutes, a call from the house that we will ignore, until the last warmth of the day melts away like a dropped popsicle on asphalt. Crumpled napkins sticky with fudge and melted ice-cream, empty cups spilled out on the lawn, shoes in hand and jackets draped over arms, following you up the hill with a stomach full and a heart bursting. But not yet; linger one more moment on the grass, laughter out of sync with our conversation, everything we feel but need not say stretched between us thick as taffy. The first star of the evening has long vanished into a vast plain of constellations, yet still we wish for the night not to chill, the lights not to shut off in the nearby house, room by room, the fireworks to always be only an instant in the past, their afterimage still brightening the night from black to dark blue. Seventeen/eighteen/nineteen//gone. Not vanished, only a moment too far behind.

 

 

Jessy Wallach is a rising senior at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, California. In addition to writing, she enjoys drawing, reading, and spending time outdoors.