Issue 30

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.

 

 

 

Forcing my eyes to stay open, I watch Mr. Conn’s face while I hold my stomach. I should have called in sick today. The artificial lights in the classroom blast the space with annoying brightness. Everything in here shines like a waxed apple, including the faces of the thirty-five students in thirty-five wobbly desks. We’re crammed close enough that I smell everyone’s deodorant after PE.

Why do I feel this way? I did nothing wrong. What happened to Jason is not my fault. Or is it? I didn’t even know him that well. We were on the same robotics team in middle school. We carpooled twice.

“Discover your self-worth,” Mr. Conn says. He’s wearing his usual blue polo shirt and gray sports pants. He’s giving his weekly lecture on mental health in “Advisory” class, which is weird since he doesn’t offer specific advice. He just monologues in strange metaphors. He’s a nice guy who’s great at teaching, but if I hear one more metaphor…

“Take care of your body,” he drones. His subway sandwich lies half-eaten on the desk.

The pickle smell of his turkey on wheat saturates my nose hairs.

Don’t think about nose hairs. Think about homework. I should be working on the three hours of homework he assigned today. God, it was much worse for Jason. What did he say to me the last time we talked? Why can’t I remember? Does depression make people forget things?

What am I wearing? I glance down. My typical black sweatpants and random free T-Shirt. This one says “2014 Mini Golf Champion.”

I peek at my friend Matthew. Unsurprisingly, he’s wearing the same red jacket he wore yesterday when we ditched to avoid three tests. He stares at the corner of the wall, his fingers fidgeting. No doubt, he’s mentally writing the Lord of the Flies essay that’s due tomorrow. He’s a procrastinator like me. It’s an underrated art form.

Behind me sits Aiden. My body blocks his entire shape from Mr. Conn. Aiden is likely dreaming about the French Revolution after the all-nighter he pulled studying for the History test. He owes me one in English class later, where I’ll bury my head in my arms and dream of fish.

“You are all young. Take this time to discover your acorns. What do you want to do in your life?”

Acorns?

One kid coughs and another sneezes.

But I wonder, what do I want to do with my life? When I was little, my older sister took me to Saratoga Creek. We hiked under the bridge at Wildwood park, and she pointed at the invasive trees and exclaimed, “Look! It’s an Ash tree!” She pointed at the butterflies: “It’s a Cabbage White!” When she spoke about the environment, she was like an auctioneer. Her words slurred together into one incomprehensible jumble. She loved the environment. One time, she picked up a guy’s empty Starbucks off the ground and speed-yelled, “Hey loser, you dropped your brain!”

But my sister has run off to study environmental science at Emory. She sends me pictures of taxidermy bugs and Chipotle burritos. Even though our parents are divorced, it doesn’t affect how we interact. If anything, we’re closer. After my mom became a travel nurse, I started spending nights in “my room” at my dad’s house surrounded by his Coca-Cola bottle collection. He always asks, “What are you gonna study in college?”

What will I study? What are my interests? My Rubik’s cube and those pressed quarters? I have one from the MET, the Smithsonian, and Pearl Harbor. My problem is that I lack motivation. My perfect day is being left alone in my room, my left cheek pressed into my memory foam pillow, my left arm underneath it, and my eyes closed. God, it’s heaven. Some days, I’m so lethargic from staying awake all night worrying about meteorites and tests.

Basically, I wish I were a cat.

The thing is, I wasn’t always like this. I used to be so curious as a kid. When I met new people, I’d tell them random facts: Owl’s don’t have eyeballs. Caterpillars dissolve into a liquid in the cocoon. Cockroaches can live up to one week without their heads. President George W. Bush vomited on Japan’s Prime Minister.

But what do I want out of life? I want a fancy pencil collection with Spoke model 6’s and IJ instrument model 9’s. I want to eat Margherita pizza every day. I want my sister to come home from college and tell me how much she missed me. I want to be an astronaut floating in space while watching the Earth spin. I want to determine the meaning of life—well as close as my sixteen-year-old brain can come to it. I want to know what went through Jason’s mind. Was it sudden or did he think about it? I want this hour to end.

“It’s like I always say: be like a cactus…” Mr. Conn continues, walking back and forth on his metaphorical stage, his forehead wrinkling with thought.

A cactus? Let’s be logical. We aren’t in the desert. Well, maybe, considering how school goes on and on forever and ever like the Sahara, or like an ultramarathon … Could I survive alone in the desert?

“You need to be able to survive in any circumstance…” Yeah, like being overworked, sleep-deprived, and bored!

“…and push through tough times, rebounding stronger than before. Be patient and bloom brightly when your time is here.”

Bloom brightly? Are we flowers now? I thought we were cacti, or was it acorns? How does he change metaphors so fast? He’s like Usain Bolt with figurative language. While he is talking about mental health, why isn’t he mentioning Jason? Doesn’t he know?

“Daniel!” Mr. Conn shouts, his fist clenching as if he had a spear in his hand and I were a fish.

 “Yes!” Oh god. What did I do?

 “Stop mumbling, face forward, and pay attention,” Mr. Conn growls. His nose hairs stick out as he crinkles his face. “Not just you! Everyone! Eyes up here and listen!”

Matthew loses his staring contest with the wall and blinks blindly at Mr. Conn. Aiden’s desk jerks behind me, and I imagine him rubbing away the fatigue from his eyes. Everyone knows Mr. Conn is going to single one of us out, and no one wants to hold the microphone.

Mr. Conn throws his hands in the air. “Why is it that nobody cares about these meetings? These are real problems people deal with.” Mr. Conn’s eyes slowly pan across the room. Is he expecting one of us to answer him?

Unfortunately, I have that terrible problem where my lips move without saying anything.

It’s a disorder. I looked it up once but forgot what it was called. Who has time for that? “Pardon? Did you want to say something, Daniel?” Mr. Conn snaps at me. “Go on, here, grab the mic.” He unclips the tiny rectangle off his collar and hands it to me.

The whole classroom stares at me like I’m suddenly a car crash on a freeway, the kind with a car upside-down, two detached wheels rolling down the highway.

I hold the tiny mic with one hand. “I was just thinking about Jason. Nobody mentioned him,” I say as my eyes roam for support. All the faces in the room look down at their desks.

“Jason?” Mr. Conn asks.

“Yeah, ever since I heard, I’ve been thinking about the culture of our school,” I continue. “And uh, sure, nobody here has an empty stomach or shoes with holes, but people are suffering. It’s like everyone is stranded on a boat in the ocean, and no one is coming to get them.” Oh god. I’m beginning to talk in metaphors too. Mr. Conn is rubbing off on me.

“Who’s Jason?” Mr. Conn inquires as he straightens his back, making himself taller. “He’s a student who passed away yesterday,” I reply.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m sure the school did what they should have done, so let’s move on,” Mr. Conn answers.

I click my tongue.

Mr. Conn folds his arms and glares at me.

“I just think it’s ironic,” I say, holding the mic closer to my mouth, “how we are supposed to be talking about mental health in this class, so why aren’t we talking about Jason?” What did I care if I made Mr. Conn angry? What could he do to me? Give me more homework? Kick me out of class? Besides, wasn’t this a time to talk about our feelings?

“What are you talking about?” Aiden whispers and jabs at my back with his finger. “You should shut up. Jason is fine.”

“What?” I say.

Whispers travel around the room: “Who’s Jason?”

 Mr. Conn storms over to me and snatches the mic out of my hand. “That’s enough.”

For the rest of class, Mr. Conn continues as if I had never spoken. He drones on about cactuses being an excellent metaphor for mental health as they are resilient and can carry on in harsh conditions. I know he’s just doing his job, and most days, he’s pretty cool, but on a day like today, it’s not enough.

After the bell rings, Aiden follows me out into the hallway, where yellow-tiles point arrows towards the school office. We pass the math mural where the faces of famous dead mathematicians look down on us. Sounds of banging instruments come from the band room. In the hallway, everyone moves together as if drifting in a river.

“What the hell, dude? Where did you hear that Jason died?” Aiden asks.

“It’s everywhere. Have you not checked Instagram? I’m serious. Ask anybody.” We pass by a group of Jason’s friends. “See,” I say, pointing. “They look depressed.”

“No, it’s gotta be a prank,” Aiden smirks. “Look, I’ll message him right now.” Aiden pulls out his phone and texts Jason a simple “wya.”

“Dude, that’s so rude. You can’t say that to someone who literally just passed away. What is he going to do? Be like ‘I’m in heaven?’”

Aiden says, “I swear I saw him yesterday in the Safeway parking lot with his mom. He was holding a box of Oreos.”

“Parents are talking about it on WeChat.”

“No way, man. Unless he died, like, today morning, he’s perfectly fine.” Aiden is always like this. He never believes until he sees it with his own eyes.

“People do these kinds of things on the internet all the time,” he says. “Don’t take it seriously.”

We turn the corner and continue walking.

Heads bounce down the hall and locks spin on lockers. Backpacks float. I want to believe Aiden is right. I want to be that kid again whose biggest worry was if my sister would take me to the park. I want to believe in a future filled with pressed quarters, Rubik’s Cubes, Social Security, jobs, and picket fences.

We squeeze through the edge of the hallway and approach Jason’s locker. He won’t be there. I just know. The world is too cruel for happy endings. But maybe Aiden’s right. It’s just a rumor that got out of control. Rumors can happen. It happened to Taylor Swift.

Is that Jason’s red North Face jacket or is it just wishful thinking? The owner gets swallowed by waves of people. Shoes squeak and kids talk about chemistry tests. Is that Jason’s voice? Maybe if I imagine enough, if I just concentrate hard enough, I can bring him back to life. We are only ten steps away.

A future with Jason flashes in my mind. I’ll invite him out with my friends to the nearby food court for spicy miso ramen. I’ll tell him that everything can only get better. I’ll remind him about the time he shot the judge in the face with the robot’s foam ball and how we couldn’t have made it to the Worlds competition without him. I’ll ask him to tell me that joke again about fish that can break dance. I’ll remind him about the future, filled with college and jobs and Social Security.

As we walk through the hall, I mindlessly nod at Aiden’s small talk. The closer I get, the more the anxious feeling builds in my throat. My phone slips out of my hand and I bend over to pick it up. I know when I rise I will have my answer.

But why am I so afraid?

 

 

Bryan is a junior in high school who recently started creative writing as a hobby. He likes doing math, hiking with friends, and watching cute cat videos.