Fiction

Cashback, the magic word. Like wishing for more wishes.

In Paradise Pharmacy, you buy yourself a toffee, thirty-three cents, and then you ask for twenty back; those bloody bloody Andrew Jacksons. You swipe Mama’s card, that blue plastic genie, and the cashier simply gives you the cash. No questions asked.

It’s like stealing cajeta from a baby.

Every Sunday, you come back for more; Mentos gum and jelly nails and those fake eyelashes that fwip-fwip-fwip like butterfly wings. You keep wishing for more wishes till your pockets are stuffed and you’ve got lollipops sticking out your mouth, and you walk out of the store, happy as a clam till Mama comes up with her nostrils flaring…

“No más tarjeta para ti,” she snaps, swiping the blue genie right out of your fingers. “Not even food stamps.”

Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

***

Next time, you go to Dollar General and try to look eighteen. You ask for a pack of Newports and the cashier simply raises his eyebrow, and then rings you up.

En serio. It’s really that easy.

Outside, you hold up the little yellow sticks and you wonder what to do with them. Too late, you realize, you should’ve bought a lighter, too, but now your courage is gone and you can’t screw it back to the sticking place.

Aw, screw it. You just stick the unlit cigarette between your teeth and walk down the street, thumbing your belt loops and trying to play it cool. Como los jets y los tiburones. Like a rumblefish, playing pool. All the while, you know you look stupid, but you don’t really care.

What were you thinking! Mama says, when you walk in the door. It is an exclamation, not a question. She snatches the cigarette from your lips and stamps it out on the floor, even though it wasn’t lit. You trying to kill me, huh? she says. Trying to break my poor heart?

All you can do is shake your head. The shame will catch up with you later.

***

The final time, you don’t even bother with the card. You just snatch the painkillers right off the shelf.

Mama is gone now; long gone, and she took her blue plastic genie with her. Her poor heart broke, just like she always predicted – though it was the cholesterol that killed her.

It wasn’t your fault. You know it wasn’t.

All that she left behind was the apartment with its peeling paint and the hole that you kicked in the wall. The apartment, and the car with the busted muffler, and the debts that she’d collected over the years, like stamps.

They are her debts, that’s what you like to think. Inherited. But sometimes you wonder if maybe they are your debts, too, from all those jelly nails you bought, all those Mentos. Maybe they are your debts, shaped by your grubby fingers, by your ravenous mouth.

You were all mouth as a kid; just a monster with braces and teeth. Like Charybdis, always gnashing and hungry. Sometimes you would open the fridge and find only milk inside. Sometimes you would find Mama crying outside the drugstore, gripping the Marlboros that she quit years ago. You would find her eating candy in the bathroom – at least it looked like candy – those pale-colored Mentos from the bottles on the sink.

Don’t you ever grow up, mija, she would say. Prometeme.

Once upon a time, you used to believe in genies, but now you just believe in bottles.

***

On the way out of Paradise Pharmacy, you walk past the liquor store and the security guard waves to you. You don’t wave back. On the way out, you pass Solo Shoes and the Taco Bell and the Shell station with its sickly yellow light. You take those painkillers down to the tunnel under the 8, rattling the pill bottles like maracas, as you go. Vamos a bailar, mijita. Tiempo de bailar.

You sit down, in the drifting tornado of litter, in the piles of pigeon shit, and you pop the pills one by one, but you stop at the recommended dosage – you always stop, because you don’t want to end up like Mama. Nah, you don’t want to roll off the deep end, ¿si? You just want to daydream for a little while. Maybe you will fly to an oasis in the Mojave Desert. Un oasis en el paraíso. Maybe you will sleep in the shade of the palm leaves. Maybe you will wake up to find a genie standing over you: Your wish is my command.

It is dark in the tunnel, and the cars scream overhead like a migraine.

When you hold out your hand, the pigeons flutter down to peck the pills from your palm. They cock their heads and shuffle sideways and they stare at you with goo-goo eyes as if to say, Carajo, this ain’t bread.

Closing your eyes, you try to imagine stoned pigeons flying over San Diego; they would wobble and bobble like drunken drones. Stumbling into skyscrapers. Careening into streetlamps. The thought, in itself, is enough to make you laugh.

“So this is it,” you say to the pigeons. “This is what paradise looks like.”

But the pigeons are gone now – too far gone to answer, and even if they weren’t, you’d be too far gone to listen. There’s nothing else left to do, so you give the pill bottle a little kick with your toes and you watch as it rolls away down the tunnel, a runaway maraca. Escucha el ritmo, mija. Que ritmo bonito…

It is almost funny – the frenetic way that it rolls – as if it can’t get away from you fast enough.

 

Julian Riccobon (he/him) is a writer, editor, and artist of Italian/Panamanian descent, and the Managing Director of Polyphony Lit, an international literary magazine for teen writers and editors. His work has been published in The Acentos Review, Rumble Fish Quarterly, and F(r)iction Lit, among other places, and his favorite genres to write are contemporary fiction, magical realism, and historical fiction. He is currently drafting a magical realism novel about a bunch of loco neighbors who live together in a row house in San Diego.

This is how you smile: Cracked lips pulled back, cheeks flushed, the corner of your eyes crinkled. You were always told you had a beautiful smile, but it is your biggest insecurity. You may have perfect, cupid-bow lips, but your teeth are crooked and disjointed, and your grin always seems too big for your face. In your bathroom mirror, you practice smiling modestly, stretching your lips minimally, squeezing them shut. You cry with frustration as your features refuse to configure into that of a stranger’s.

This is how you cry: Heaving breaths, wailing. You’ve always found it difficult to express your emotions with words and maturity. Your hands move as you weep, pulling at your hair, scratching at your arms, before wrapping themselves around your chest and shoulders, holding you tight. When you grow older, you learn how to cry softly, holding your breath before exhaling a sob into the crook of your elbow.

This is how you grow: Quickly. Sprouting up, taller than your mother now, but without any of the eloquence that she carries herself with. You aren’t sure what to do with your gangly limbs. You groan in disgust as you run your fingers over the pustules that litter your face. You spend an afternoon squeezing them between your thumb and index fingers until they pop. You go to bed with the remaining scabs littering your face. You spend your days poring over photo albums with pictures of little you, face smooth and soft, running your hands over the pages with reverence. You are no longer a child. No one treats you like one anymore.

This is how you hug: Tightly, and with fervor. You are terrible at articulating your emotions, good or bad, and so you scream, you cry, and you hug. You pull people close, wrapping your arms above their waist, inhaling into their shoulder, and squeezing tight. You hold them close, feeding off their warmth like you need it to survive.

This is how you kiss: With the slight air of someone who doesn’t know exactly what to do. No matter how many times you’ve done this dance, you can never quite get it right. Your lips are too eager and your limbs are too long, and no one ever asks you to stay out past curfew, so you sit in your room instead, avoiding the mirror as you scrub your makeup off.

This is how you leave: With a ring on your finger, in the arms of your lover. You ignore the urge to run back into your mother’s arms as you walk down the front steps of your childhood home. This will be good. You are an adult now.

This is how you love: Properly. You’ve always found it difficult to express your strong emotions, but you’re always able to keep your calm with your husband. You don’t feel strongly about him anymore, you know, but you stay anyway, for now you have children who need you to love them too. Your motherhood has taught you the art of patience and an ability to put your children first. You love your children, as they rush through the door each afternoon with stories of their elementary classrooms. And you love your children, hands clenched at your side, as they scream in the grocery store aisles, anger in not getting a toy painting their faces redder and redder. You learn to love as a sweet woman should. You learn to love everyone.

This is how you die: In a hospital bed, heart monitor near your left ear, beeping away in a steady rhythm. Your eyes are closed, and you see purple stars against your eyelids. You breathe, inhaling shakily and exhaling with a croak. Your children sit on either side of your skinny little hospital bed, each holding one of your skinny little hands. They say words that you don’t quite catch, that you don’t quite care to. You feel peace. It’s a new feeling, one you’re sure you haven’t experienced before, but you like it very much. Inhale with a stutter. Exhale.

 

 

Eva Rami is fourteen years old, and is currently a freshman at Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she studies creative writing. She has been published in the Silly Gal Magazine and Cathartic Literary Magazine, among others. Her work has been recognized in the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards. When not writing, Eva enjoys making herself laugh, attending poetry performances, and trying to get inspired.

Beads of condensation crawled down the side of Anya’s half-empty plastic cup, pooling in the bottom of the cup holder. She picked up the drink with a delicate hand, the liquid transferring to the pads of her fingers as she sipped on the peach-flavoured tea. She did not like the sensation and quickly wiped them on the hem of her shirt. Sitting in the passenger seat, her best friend, Talia, smiled at the passing cars, sometimes even earning one in return when traffic came to a hold.

“He stomps his foot against the break, face creasing with impatience,” Talia narrated, procuring a small smile from Anya. “A velvet ring box weighs down his jean pocket, the feeling causing a string of nerves to tangle themselves around his limbs. Please say yes, he thinks, as the light turns green.”

Following along with Talia’s commentary, Anya pressed her foot against the gas pedal, pulling ahead of the well-dressed man tapping his pale fingers against his leather steering wheel. She wondered what it was about his expression that made Talia plot out a proposal for his story. When she had looked at him, all she had managed to notice was a faint tracing of stumble grazing his jaw and a scar beneath his right eyebrow.

“I think you may have been wrong about that one,” Anya stated. “I doubt he’s on his way to become engaged.”

Talia sighed, dreamily, the back of her head meeting the seat’s headrest. The passenger-side window was slightly ajar and a frigid breeze blew into the car. The wind whipped around Talia’s head, sending strings of blonde hair into a whirl. They fluttered and looped around the crown of her head, occasionally tangling on her earring backings. She looked like an angel. “Your imagination cannot be wrong, merely too prolific for the confines of reality.”

Anya wondered where her seventeen-year-old best friend got these ideas from. She considered voicing the thought, but they had encountered another red light and Talia’s eyes were already roaming around the scene beyond the window. Her gaze stopped on a silver minivan, filled with three rambunctious children–all younger than the age of eight–who appeared to be fighting over a takeout bag. The lady driving the car pressed a palm to her temple.

“The rarest treasure money can buy–a strawberry-glazed donut larger than the size of a kitten–is in reach, but who will be the one to outsmart the rest and claim the prize?” Talia deepened her voice as if she was recording the introduction of a drama. “The three competitors each try to pry the paper bag from the other’s grasp, settling on the same strategy: force. But little do they know that their own mother is plotting the betrayal of the century, and, in time, will take the delectable treat all for herself.”

Anya watched with intrigue, wondering if, this time, Talia’s tale would come true.

It did not.

Her green eyes burned through the window of the van, only to see the woman sigh before speaking a set of exasperated words. She must have asked the children to share the contents of the bag because they each reached into the crumpled bundle one by one and obtained a greasy paper container of fries.

“I liked your version better,” Anya said.

“It was more exciting, wasn’t it?” Her best friend beamed, folding her knees up to her chest. They were nearly at their destination: a small cottage-style home on the outskirts of the city.

The GPS navigated Anya to take a left, then a right, until the cars previously crammed into traffic had dispersed. Anya wondered if Talia could feel the emptiness settling throughout the car, even if nobody had left, yet. It was a sort of ominous feeling, one that made Anya want to suddenly stop thinking about the future.

They pulled into the newly-painted driveway of the house–the lawn flourishing with brightly coloured roses–but both girls remained rigid in their seats. I will miss you hung in the air, but neither Anya nor Talia made a move to grab it, fearing the finality of the four words.

Instead, Talia whispered, “I’m going to tell you a story.”

Anya forced a half-hearted smile. “Is it fictional?”

Talia shook her head, eyes glimmering. “It will be the truest tale to fall from my lips.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“Okay,” Talia breathed. “A girl sits beside her best friend in a beat-up Toyota Camry. Change looms ahead of them in the form of a red brick house with a bold SOLD sign sticking out from the lawn. She stares at her best friend with fondness, and remembers all of the thrilling memories they have together. With certainty, she swallows down words of farewell because she knows this moment is nowhere close to the end of their friendship. And she hopes her friend–whom she loves so dearly–agrees.”

Tears pooled in Anya’s eyes. “She does.”

 

 

 

Ksenia Martynova is a self-proclaimed bibliophile from Canada. She’s currently a student at Emma Willard School and enjoys spending her evenings writing stories of her own or enjoying the works of others, alongside a glass of iced tea or coffee.

Filho de Peixe, Peixinho é¹

‘Bem-vindo à aldeia do Rio dos Juncos²’ read the dark red letters on the driftwood sign at the entrance to Reed River Village, a small settlement consisting of forty brown river mud homes. Named for the mountain tributary that ran through its center, the village’s inhabitants were sustained by the cool water and its fish. A bed of round glistening stones resembling ancient eggs bordered the wide river of pristine water, which grew and shrank with the seasons.

The typical 20 Celsius temperature of Reed River valley sharply contrasted the biting cold of wintry Antarctica which lay all around the valley, and its surrounding, slightly colder prairie lands. From the river marched a neat military-line of creamy-capped mushrooms, starting from their nestling place between the rocks and leading from the summery valley to the colder prairie, a vast expanse of frozen earth and frost-tipped grass. The sun reflected off the mirror-like plain, almost blinding the rare visitor.

Isaque’s grandmother lived in a small hut, right where chilly plains yielded to frigid mountains. Its walls were tightly woven from long, thin straw and sun-dried reeds from the river, the cold was kept at bay by its insulation. The salty, smoky aroma of freshly cooked bacalhau, cod caught by the rare ice fisher that ventured past the valley and sold as a delicacy, wafted through the air and Isaque swore he could smell it half a mile before he arrived at her home. The tangy smell was of the sea (or so Isaque had heard – he’d never visited the sea which lay many miles north of the valley), mixed with the citrus tang of sumac and the earthy undertones of mushrooms.

Tall stalks of wildflowers, as colorful as the sunset, dotted the outside of the hut, gently swaying in the breeze, seemingly waving hello as Isaque rubbed dirt off his shoes against his grandmother’s seal-skin welcome mat. He opened the door which made a slight scratching noise as the cold straw moved for the first time in days.

“Isaque? Is that you?”

His grandmother was a determined, tenacious woman. Before reaching her 80s, she was a renowned hunter, and well respected by the Reed River denizens. The walls were lined with spears and hunting weapons of all kinds. Of them all, his grandmother was most proud to own a harpoon, tipped with a black rock and carved with stories of fishermen.

Now slowed down by age, Vó Cida maintained a respected position in the village, but was less able to move about outside the hut. Short, and with a matted thatch of thick black and gray hair that Isaque shared (minus the gray), her face was scarred with a lifetime of stories.

“Sim vó. It’s me.” Isaque responded, taking off his fur-lined shoes before walking over to where his grandmother cooked the cod in her cracked stone oven, removing the sizzling bacalhau from between the heated rocks with practiced hands. The sweltering kitchen warmed Isaque’s frozen skin, and he removed his coat to drop it onto a stool.

When his grandmother turned, she gave him a wide smile, a scar stretching her top lip. Vó Cida had gotten it from a fishing incident decades ago, a story well-known and frequently embellished as time passed.

Isaque knew the story behind every one of her scars; in fact, he knew them twenty times over. He knew she had a bite mark on her leg from a shark, a damaged ear from falling into the rocks bordering Reed River. Most of all, he knew she had a deep scar on her leg, never to heal and never to discuss, from a sailing accident sixty years ago.

“Do you think you’ll leave soon?” His grandmother asked.

Isaque prevented himself from blubbering his response. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her alone, though his heart yearned to see the sea.

“I don’t think so, vó.” He replied, taking a seat on one of the driftwood stools his grandmother had set up around the table. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I see,” murmured his grandmother, pausing long seconds before she asked: “Do you want to hear a story?”

If they had been discussing anything but the possibility of Isaque leaving, he would have practically yelled his eagerness to listen. Now, he simply nodded, hoping her tale would give him clarity in his decision.

“Centuries ago, our ancestors were unlike today’s insular and incurious folk of Reed River. They were sailors, explorers from a far-off land. Their captain had hoped to traverse through a stormy strait so that her crew could be the first to discover and categorize new lands. But the spirits were against our noble forebears, and they found the seas treacherous. The changeable winds blew their entire fleet into the Antarctic rocks; they survived only by happening upon the warmth of Reed River Valley–a total anomaly. But years passed, people got comfortable and fear grew of leaving the protection of Reed River. Our once-respected forefathers were forgotten, or worse, thought of as fools for having the urge to traverse the globe. Rediscovering a world outside of Reed River was deemed impossible. Some, the more adventurous, tried. Including me.

“When I was young like you, I was determined to show everyone that there was a world outside our valley. One day, after months of working on my father’s fishing boat with my best friend, we felt we were ready and sailed down the Reed River. Soon the river became an angry mess of waves and winds and we were scared. We forgot who we were and panicked. We came to a raging sea–we had chosen our timing wrong in the middle of winter’s nasty storms. Our bright curiosity of exploring new lands soon faded as before we were two days into the voyage, my friend fell ill. We turned back; I had foolishly hoped we would make it back in time to save her.”

At this point, Vó Cida fell silent, the memories of decades past behind her wet eyes. With a tremble in her lip, she continued haltingly. “I couldn’t sail the ship alone. My friend was sinking into fever. The ship crashed into the coastal rocks, just like our ancestors had done before, and splintered into a thousand pieces. My friend disappeared under the crashing waves. When I came back to, I had lost everything but my will to survive. Bleeding and battered, I limped my way home, days passed and I don’t even know how I made it. My foolish childhood dream had transformed into a nightmare.”

The room fell into absolute silence except for the crackling of the fire.

“Are you telling me not to go?” Isaque asked.

“No,” his grandmother said. “I’m telling you to go prepared. Leave knowing what you’ll face, and be ready for it. I wish I had tried again–my friend would have wanted me to. But my courage and leg are too damaged. But you, I want you to go if you feel it in your heart, which I think you do.”

“I do feel a pull that I find hard to ignore,” said Isaque, almost in a whisper.

“Do you believe in that phrase of our ancestors? ‘Filho de peixe, peixinho é’. The son of a fish is a little fish. This may seem obvious, meu neto querido, but know that it also means that the grandson of an adventurer is also an adventurer. Follow your heart and return with stories.”

 

¹ A Portuguese saying: ‘Son of a fish, little fish he is’; essentially, like father like son

²‘Welcome to the village of Reed River’ in Portuguese

 

 

 

Nicolas Barbieri  grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, until he was seven years old. His dad is Brazilian and his mom is American. He has always felt a part of the two cultures, but somehow his writing always includes a piece of his Brazilian core. No one can tell a story like a Brazilian and he is working on always making his better. When he’s  not writing stories, he is the Opinions Editor of the school newspaper, running or playing soccer for Weston school sports or reading books, usually fantasy or fiction. He is a sixteen- year-old sophomore at Weston High School.

While we sang hymns, a fat black spider spun her web over the holy dove’s wings. It was painted at the crest of the church’s vaulted ceiling, haloed in buttery light where it hung above the congregation. In those delicious moments when the reverend’s voice would rise, shine, for thy light is come, my neck would tilt back in feverish rapture. I would gaze into the dove’s open wings and feel that I was protected under its gentle wingspan.

It had taken me a while to notice the spider, since the church’s ceilings were so high. They arched over the pews like a massive stone ribcage, shielding the soft, warm bodies of the congregation. Each Sunday, I remembered my own smallness. The spider didn’t seem to care that the holy dove was five times its size. It scuttled over the sacred olive branch clutched in its beak.

The freshman soprano standing next to me missed her note, and the chord hung sour in the heated air before our director cut us off. The congregation gave polite applause. I couldn’t stop watching that spider. It was a scalding summer day and I was drenched with sweat. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was sweating as much as I was, not with our choir robes hanging like stiff black shields over our bodies. In the yearly youth choir pictures, we always looked like a group of floating heads. Busts displayed on a pedestal of black fabric, all variables of body erased.

We started singing the next song. All Creatures Of our God and King. The spider’s spindly legs formed dark cracks over the dove’s white body. I imagined the cracks spreading out until the whole ceiling was webbed, ready to crumble under its own weight and squish us all flat. My skin prickled, phantom spiders skittering up and down my spine. The holy dove, once a constant source of beauty and comfort, suddenly seemed hideous to me. Those hulking wings, those cold, beady eyes pinning me down. I had never experienced such a betrayal of my own senses; to have the beauty of a beloved thing vanish seemed much worse than immediately judging something disgusting. The heated air sliced down to my lungs with each breath, drying my tongue until I couldn’t sing, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

We still had two hymns left, but at the end of All Creatures, I stepped off the stage and headed to the back door. I could imagine the director, chorus, and congregation staring after me, blank-faced with surprise. In a few seconds, each face would begin to settle into individual expressions of pity, judgment, or suspicion. I didn’t turn back to see it.

Outside, the heady thrum of crickets and distant cars. My own breaths, wheezy with panic. My fingers scrambled for the clasp at the back of my neck. I unclipped my robes, and they fell to the ground in a dark pool, revealing my damp clothes. I took gulps of rotten air. I was standing next to a dumpster, pressed snug to the back of the church. Next to it was a pile of trash: a battered AM radio, an empty sleeve of crackers, a flip flop, and a puzzle box warped with water and time. This collection of objects, unrelated and dream-like in their proximity, nearly brought me to tears. What kind of incomprehensible logic had brought these things together, rotting in a pile behind a Presbyterian church? I felt nauseous, off balance, like something solid at the center of my being had been ripped away. Inside, the choir started back up again, perfectly functional without my voice.

I thought of calling my mom for a ride home. Then, I heard a noise coming from the thicket behind the church. My body tensed. The trees were close knit, and I couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

“Who is that?” I called into the woods. No response. I wiped my face with shaky hands. I wasn’t scared by the woods, or the strange noise, but I was terrified by the way my voice vanished into the trees. “Anyone there?” I called louder, hoping for an echo.

A blur of gray came hurtling through the branches and I leapt back. It settled on the dumpster’s brim – a common pigeon. It hopped down, poking at the sleeve of crackers. The bird was mottled brown, like a white bird that’d been mud-splattered by a passing car.

“Hello,” I said. The pigeon tilted its head at me, crumbs stuck to its grimy beak. Then, it continued hunting in the plastic sheath. The pigeon kept pecking at the wrapper. I watched its dogged persistence of this simple task, the importance of finding each crumb. My breaths evened out. Faintly, I could hear the choir singing the last hymn we’d rehearsed. Eventually, the churchgoers would file out and leave the hall to the spider, who would patiently weave in the dark. The church would be strewn, wearing time like fine silk.

 

 

Nina Collavo is a senior at Binghamton University. She is an English Literature major with an affinity for weird nature, especially deep-sea creatures and carnivorous plants. She has edited with Harpur Palate and is the founder and editor-in-chief of Maenad, an online literary magazine.