July 2021

In our hometown there were places––Real places: like the Taco Bell Burger King McDonald’s trifecta, where if we went late enough we could sometimes see the employees lighting up and smoking underage under parking lot streetlights; and the beat-up other Walgreens, where a big can of Arnold Palmer and a family size bag of those pretzels bites with the peanut butter inside only cost two seventy-nine in exact change; and the church/daycare parking lot where we used to play four-square and had our own ass handed to us again and again by merciless middle school boys who found puberty early and used it to cherry bomb that motherfucker so hard we didn’t have a cold chance in hell; and that secret bike trail that wasn’t really secret and is now an apartment complex haunted by the souls of Baja Blast-drinking sixteen-year-old jackasses pulling wheelies on their ghostly 12-speeds; and the old basketball court that stood next to the high school until orcish men wielding hard-hats and jackhammers came and tore it up to build a brick building with no windows and no doors, that black asphalt and triple-rimmed hoop now long, long gone—the faded white three-point arc and games of twenty-one existing only in memory like the taste of a root beer float; and let’s not forget the football bleachers so stereotypical I don’t need to remind you they had a specified section solely for the hopeless souls of pep band kids with braces and baritones, ADHD and saxophone reeds, converse kicks and splintery drumsticks, lonely oboes and sheet music with penciled-in quotes from Seneca, etc., etc.––those bleachers underneath which the virginities of many were (supposedly) lost, along with something else we didn’t even know we had but now we miss it like those Scooby-Doo fruit snacks that turned out to be too good for reality; and of course that hill behind the Honeywell smokestack, where once on an October midnight before the end of the world we licked cheap McDonald’s ice cream cones in the backseat of a beater, and for the first time saw our lives as bildungsromans building up to this exact moment, saw the honey-colored spirit egress not just with the smoke of Marlboros or blunts or bonfires, but with each new and frosting exhalation.

And now when we find ourselves back in our hometown, it’s just a town that used to be home.

Christian Ash was born and raised in suburban Minnesota, and currently attends Gustavus Adolphus College. In 2020, his fiction and poetry received awards as part of the Lawrence Owen Prizes in Creative Writing. Additionally, his work has been published in Kaleidzine Magazine and Firethorne Literary and Graphic Magazine.

Maeve traipses home, sweat pouring down her back. March wasn’t this warm when Mommy was a girl. No,— soft, cold flakes of snow blanketed the ground. At least, that’s what Mommy said.

Past the playground, children who don’t get a future. Past the two saplings. They never last; why does the city bother anymore? People drive under solar panels, coming home from jobs that are supposed to save the environment. But everybody will die within twenty years. Those jobs came too late. At least, that’s what the scientists said.

She doesn’t have any ambitions. Nothing matters if the water is going to swallow her whole. Or maybe she’ll shrivel up like a sun-dried tomato. At least she has twenty years to find her final words. There, that’s an ambition.

Her battered house leans on a useless little hill. She swings the swollen door open, watermarks higher each year. It’s a growth chart just like the one Mommy keeps for her. The water grows faster.

Mommy drags in the groceries, wearing her Yale shirt as if a fancy degree will protect her. She wants Maeve to attend Yale, but how can she if Connecticut drowned years ago?

“Maeve, a little help.”

Into the garage, heave bags to the kitchen. 75% recycled material, one bag brags. Oh, that’s the minimum, retorts another. 84%, how’s that! Food is stocked, one more week to live in Dumpster World. Maybe Maeve can find a clean planet all for herself. Ambition number two.

The sun disappears, a breeze kicks up. Mommy frowns.

“That’s weird. Storms weren’t predicted today.”

Maeve shivers. The storms are more often these days, Maeve overheard Daddy say one night. What will we do when the house floods? Where will we go?

Now the rain patters on the windows. It’s almost pleasant, except for Daddy’s words creeping up behind Maeve, ready to pounce if she gets too comfortable.

The rain turns into a tantrum. Dying trees lash the house, people duck through doors, and the wind howls. It’s never this bad. Mommy and Daddy hold Maeve close when she crawls into their bed that night.

In the morning, there is no sun, only wind and rain. The next day, too, and the next. Maeve stays upstairs because downstairs is a swimming pool.

On day six, no power.

Day ten, nothing to eat.

Day thirteen, no Mommy. No Daddy. It wasn’t twenty years, scientists. It wasn’t twenty years. She’s alone, words half-said, lost in water before she could finish.

Lydia Hessel-Robinson is a high school freshman in the Philadelphia area. Her work has previously been published in Philadelphia Stories, Jr., and Cricket magazine. She also loves to read and competes in horseback riding.