By Cecil Castellucci

Photo courtesy of Antti Miettinen (flickr.com)

The village was all the world that anyone knew.  There was darkness and forest all around except for the strange lights that beamed through the trees casting its eerie glow on certain nights.  For as long as anyone could remember the mission of the town was to survive whatever lived out in the woods.  Something was out there that had shrunk the known world.  To survive it meant every year a girl must go outside of the strong wooden gates that kept the town safe to visit Grandmother.

The girls who have just turned fifteen are lined up in the center of town and the girl who is chosen dons a red cloak and walks out beyond the gates to bring supplies to Grandmother.  Sometimes there is only one girl who stands there.  If so she is automatically the chosen one.  Other times, like this year, there are a few, and so all the girls put their name into a hat and one name is picked. That is how Marie came to be the one.

“But whose Grandmother?”  Marie asks.

“Don’t ask questions,” her mother replies.

No one ever asks questions.

Once the girl is chosen, the family of the chosen girl has one week to prepare.  The women in the family busily sew as elaborate a red cloak as they can.  The richest families cover the cloak in jewels, the poorest make do with brilliant dyes.  No matter.  The cloak always dazzles in the little bit of sun that shines through as the girl leaves the confines of the town.

Except for the Huntsmen, no one else ever goes beyond the gates.  They keep to themselves.  The only difference is that the Huntsmen always come back.  The girls in red never do.  Perhaps it is because they do come back that the Huntsmen always look haunted and tired.  They never want to share what they see outside the gates. They never mix with the townsfolk.  They live apart in a barrack by the watchtower.  And although it is never spoken amongst the townsfolk, it is understood that there is something in the woods that makes the Huntsmen this way.  As though there is something to be seen that cannot be unseen.

“What happens to them, mother?  Where do the Red girls go?” Marie asks.  She is curious and excited about her adventure.  It is an honor to be the chosen girl.  To do a duty to keep the town safe.

“Hush now, and stand still.  I don’t want to stick a pin in you,” mother says.  Marie’s cloak is neither too fancy nor too plain.

But Marie wonders about the girls.  Mostly she wonders about her friend Franca, who was chosen the year before.

Supplies are readied. The family follows a strict list.  Only the things itemized on the list are allowed.  Candles are collected.  Fruits and meats are dried.  Preserves are canned. A quilt is made.  They are all packed onto a small red wagon.

It is the Red girl’s family obligation to feed the whole town for a goodbye feast.  Marie is lucky.  Her brother is one of the Huntsmen.  He makes sure to kill a big deer.  He delivers it, but although their mother asks him to stay and sit with the family, he refuses.  On his way out of the house, in the garden, he catches sight of Marie harvesting the lettuce and his hard look softens.

“Here, take this,” he says.  He presses a small hunting knife into the palm of her hand.

“Will I need this?” Marie asks.

“It’s getting harder to hunt in the woods,” he says.  “The game is moving further away.”

“Will I have to learn to hunt?” Marie says.

“I don’t know.  Perhaps,” her brother says.  “Keep it hidden.  Keep it with you.”

He turns and walks away.  Marie puts the knife in her pocket.  She does not tell her mother or anyone else about it.  It is her brother’s gift to her and it is not a thing on the list of the things that a girl in red must bring to Grandmother.  It is their secret.  Marie decides that she can do her duty and keep the knife.  She will take the knife with her beyond the gate and into the unknown.   It will remind her of her brother who she never sees anymore and sorely misses.

“It will be useful,” she says to herself.  “Grandmother will be so glad that I have brought a knife.”

Marie The Red, as she is now called, sits in the house and is visited every day before the Feast of Leaving by all the people in the village, and thanked.

“Thank you,” the mayor says.

“Thank you,” the butcher says.

“Thank you,” Marie’s best friend says.

But what they are really saying is goodbye. Never once has a Red girl come back from beyond the gate.

The girls who are chosen all have their own theory about where they are to go.  To a rumored city in the North.  To a palace on a mountain beyond the forest.  To a hut in a desert a million miles away.

Marie thinks, “To the stars.”

There is much drinking at the feast.  The town drinks to forget that Marie will be leaving them in the morning.  The only person who remains sober is Marie and one of the Huntsmen, Peter.  Marie wishes that it was her brother that stood with her but he has chosen to stay behind in the barrack.  He has not even come to say goodbye.  Marie feels the knife in her cloak pocket.  She presses her gloved thumb against the point until it she feels the prick of it.  The pain makes her not cry.

“Why did my brother not come to be the Huntsman to walk me to the gate?” Marie asks.

“He could not bear to see you go,” Peter says.

“Why did my brother not come to the Feast of Leaving?” Marie asks.

“It’s better this way.  You must do your duty and we cannot get in the way,” Peter says.  But it seems to Marie that he wants to say more.  Instead, he pulls her red cloak tighter around her shoulders.

For the rest of the evening Peter stands with her and does not say a word.   Together they look over the feast.  Sober.  Somber.

In the morning, Peter the Huntsman comes to her house to get her.  Marie’s family, still asleep, do not stir to say goodbye to her.  Peter the Huntsman walks Marie to the edge of the town where the gate that leads to the forest is.

“Do you go outside the gate often?” she asks him.

“Only to hunt,” Peter says.

“Have you ever seen the city?” she asks.

“I’ve never seen anything,” he says.

“What about Grandmother?” Marie asks.  “Surely you’ve seen her.”

“I’ve never even seen her house,” Peter says.

“Isn’t it just on the path? You could come and visit me,” Marie says.  “I could bake you a cake.”

“I like cake,” he says.

That is when they reach the gate.

Peter takes out the key and unlocks the gate.

“Never take it off,” Peter the Huntsman reminds her, touching the beads on her red cloak. “Never, until you are at Grandmother’s house.”

Marie steps through and onto the path in the woods.  Peter the Huntsman locks up behind her.  Marie hesitates and turns to talk to him through the gate.  She thinks that perhaps she should have kissed him.

“Wait!” she says.  “Wait!”

Peter comes to the gate.

“What is it?” he asks.  “You should get moving.”

“What do you think is out there?” Marie asks. “Wolves?”

“If you like,” he says.

Impulsively Marie kisses her fingers and puts them through the gate to Peter’s lips.  He blushes and then winces and steels himself.

“Go on now,” Peter says.  “Go!”

Marie pulls on the wagon overloaded with all the supplies.  It is heavy but she manages and pulls it down the path.  She wonders if she’ll know where to stop.  She only knows that she is to go to Grandmother’s house.  She only knows that it is on the path.

She walks for hours.

She feels as though there are eyes watching her from behind the trees.  She hears noises.  She thinks she hears voices on the wind.

“Where are you going, Girl?” the wind asks.

“To grandmother’s house,” Marie says out loud.  “To grandmother’s house I go!”

She pulls on the wagon harder.  Her red cloak is heavy and too warm for the spring weather.  But she knows that the one thing she must do is keep wearing it. She wonders why the red of it will keep her safe while on the path to Grandmother’s.  She wants to take it off but her need to follow the rules is stronger.  She must never deviate.  It is her duty.

On the path, there are the skeletons of animals that she does not recognize.  She wonders if these unknown beasts are what haunt the Huntsmen.  It is getting dark and there are the strange lights in the sky.  Marie begins to despair that she will never find Grandmother’s house and then she finally she sees it.  It is a small cottage with a gate and a garden that rests just a bit off the path.

“This must be it,” she thinks.

She wonders what Grandmother looks like.  She wonders if Grandmother will like her.  She wonders if she has brought the right things.  Marie knocks on the door.

“Grandmother?” Marie says.  “Grandmother?”

Slowly, the door opens and from behind it peers an old woman.  She is silver haired and wrinkled.  Her hands are gnarled.

“Oh, Marie it’s you!” the old woman says.  “Oh, why did it have to be you?”

The old woman looks at Marie as though she is looking at an old friend. It makes Marie uncomfortable.  Marie looks closely at the old woman and except for something around the eyes, she is certain that she does not know her.

It makes Marie wonder whose Grandmother this is.  But Marie knows her duty is to pretend that this Grandmother is her Grandmother.

“Hello, Grandmother,” Marie says.

The old woman sighs and opens the door all the way and lets Marie in.  There is a small fire roaring.  There is a small table with cheese and apples.  There is a large bed with a heavy quilt.  There is a wall lined with pegs upon which hang many red cloaks.   Marie knows to hang her cloak with the others.

“Do you have enough supplies?” Grandmother asks.

“Yes, I have everything on the list,” Marie says.  She does not mention the knife.

“Good,” Grandmother says.

Photo courtesy of Horia Varlan (flickr.com)

The preserves are placed in the cupboard.  The dried meat hung in the window.  The quilt is folded at the foot of the bed. The old woman sets the tea on table and they both sit.

“These are the rules,” Grandmother says.  “You must never open the shutters during the day.  You must never go outside except at night to take things from the garden.  You must never leave the yard or wander upon the path.  There, I’ve told you the rules.”

“They are simple enough to follow,” Marie says.

“Nothing is simple any more,” Grandmother says.  “One last thing. I want to be buried by the sunflowers.”

Marie takes Grandmother’s hands into hers.  “You will live a long time,” Marie says.  “I am here to take care of you.”

But Marie’s eyes wander to all of the red cloaks hanging on the peg and she wonders about the other girls who have been sent to Grandmother’s house.   Where are they? Why is Grandmother all alone?  Weren’t they supposed to take care of Grandmother? She looks back at Grandmother who is looking intensely at Marie again.  So intensely that Marie almost thinks she looks like her friend Franca, the girl in red from last year.

“Do you recognize me, Marie?” Grandmother asks.

She wants to say Franca. But Franca would only be 16.  Marie can’t help but notice that the quilt on the bed is the quilt that Franca made.  Marie helped Franca to collect the squares.

“No,” says Marie.  Marie does not know who this old woman is.

And then Grandmother begins to cry. Grandmother begins to cough and cough until finally she stumbles from the table to the bed.

Marie goes over to the bed and tries to make Grandmother comfortable.  After a bit, Grandmother finally falls asleep.  Marie is tired from her day of travel.  She looks around and notices that there is only one bed, so she settles in the chair in front of the fire and falls asleep.

In the night Marie dreams that there are bright lights enveloping her.  She hears sounds.  She feels that someone is touching her.  Marie opens her eyes and finds she cannot move.  She is trapped in the light.  In the room with her and Grandmother is a small gray man. He turns to look at her.  His eyes become enormous.  He has hair all over his body.  He looks like a man wolf.   Marie is terrified and tries to remember where she hid the knife. He comes to her and the hair that covers him pricks her with the sting of a million needles and in an instant all of the fear leaves her body.  After a while, the gray man turns from being monstrous to being beautiful.

Marie watches blissfully as the gray man goes to the bed and kisses Grandmother until it looks as though he has swallowed her.   Grandmother does not struggle.  Marie wonders what it would be like to kiss the gray man.  And then her thoughts turn to Peter.  Marie watches as the gray man lays Grandmother gently back onto the bed. Then he turns and blows Marie a kiss.  Her heart flutters.   But he does not come to her.  He is lifted into a bright light until he disappears.

In the morning, when Marie wakes up everything seems right with the world.  The sun streams gently through the window.  The birds chirp outside.  Grandmother is still sleeping in the bed.

Marie stops to admire the day and then remembers with a start that she is supposed to shutter the windows.  Sadly she does and the room plunges into darkness.

Marie puts on a kettle and makes the porridge.  She loads the breakfast onto a tray and brings it to Grandmother.

There is a body in the bed, but it is not moving.  The body is cold.  It is Grandmother and she is dead.

Photo courtesy of buddhafinger (flickr.com)

Marie cries.  She waits until nighttime and then she takes the shovel that stands next to the door and she digs a grave by the sunflowers.   She hears sounds in the night.  She hears the whistle of the Huntsmen hunting.  She goes to the path, hoping to catch sight of Peter, or her brother.  She wants to ask them to help her bring the body to the grave.  She is certain she sees a flash of a cloak and hears the crack of a gun in the forest just down the path. She is about to step out of the garden but then remembers the rules.  She stands in place for a while, hoping that if someone emerges from the woods, she will be noticed. But no one does and she is not.  After a while she goes back to the house and wraps Grandmother up in her bedding and drags her to the grave.

Exhausted, she takes the quilt and the bedding that she brought with her and puts it on the bed and crawls in and goes to sleep.  In the night, she dreams that someone is in the bed with her.

“Grandmother!” she asks.  “I dreamt that you were dead.”

But the body in the bed next to her looks so different.

It takes the girl’s hand into its own.

“Grandmother,” Marie says. “Why are your fingers so long?”

“So that I may better grasp your hand with love,” the voice says.

“Grandmother,” Marie asks.  “Why are your eyes so large and black?”

“So that I may better see your beauty,” the voice says.

“Grandmother,” Marie asks.  “Why is your mouth getting so large?”

“So that I may better take on your life force,” the voice says.

And then Grandmother, who is not Grandmother at all, but the gray man, leans towards Marie.  He is a monster until she feels the prick of his fur.  Then he is beautiful. Marie lets him place his now large mouth over Marie’s nose and mouth. Marie cannot breathe.  Everything turns black.

Marie awakens in the morning and lays on the bed feeling drained.  Soon Marie realizes that she is alone and that Grandmother is really dead and buried in the garden. The house is quiet.  Marie goes about fixing herself some supper.  There is nothing to do but make a fire and read a book.  She cannot go back home.  They will think that since Grandmother is dead that she has failed to do her duty.

A week later, Marie has the dream again.  The gray man comes back and kisses her and holds her.  It almost feels like love.  But then Marie remembers Peter and the way that his hands looked on the fence when she pressed her fingers to his lips.  She is warm when she thinks of his hands.  She is cold when she is in the gray man’s arms.

The gray man appears once a week like clockwork. After a few weeks, Marie knows that it is no nightmare.  The only thing that keeps the nights warm is the thought of Peter and his hands.

One night, on the night she knows that the gray man will come, Marie goes to wash her face.

She hears the crack of a gun from outside.  A Huntsman must be in the forest near the house.  She grabs one of the cloaks and goes outside.  She approaches the path.  She is too scared to step out.  She is too afraid to break the rules.

“Hello!” she yells.  “Hello!”

A figure emerges.  It is Peter.  He stands at the edge of the woods, gun in hand.  Deer carcass on the wagon.

“Who’s there?” Peter asks.

“It’s Marie,” she says and lets her hood down to show her face.  Her voice cracks.  She hasn’t used it in so long.

“Marie is a girl,” Peter says.

“I am a girl,” she says.

“You are a woman,” he says.

He steps closer, leaving the deer on the path.  He comes up to the garden and eyes the house but does not cross the entry.  He looks at her face.

“I did not realize I’d come so far,” he says.  “It is getting harder to find game by the village.  If something isn’t done soon we may starve. I’ve taken a terrible chance coming here.”

“Would you like some supper?” Marie asks.   “I even have cake, like I promised.”

“It is you,” he says.

“Who else would I be?”

“Grandmother,” he says.

Then in the sky there is a light and a sound.  Marie knows that sound means the gray man is coming and that she must go to bed to greet him.  But the sound makes Peter jump and run back to the road and hurry away.

“Come back,” Marie says.  “Come back tomorrow.”

Every night for weeks Marie goes outside and calls to the trees hoping that Peter will return.  Every night she is disappointed, until one night.   He is there in the center of the path.

“I have something to show you,” Peter says.

He shows her a mirror.

She notices her face in the mirror looks older.  She is no longer a girl, but a woman.  She is older than Peter.

“Where is Grandmother?” Peter asks.  “Is she inside?”

“She died the night I arrived,” Marie says.

“It’s as I suspected,” he says.

He puts his hands on the post.  She cannot help but take his hands and kiss his knuckles.  Her heart is filled with joy at touching him.  He leans over and kisses her on her lips and she knows that this is what a kiss is supposed to feel like.  Not like the frenzy of the gray man.

“Does a gray man come to you?” Peter asks.

“Yes,” she says.  She blushes ashamed of kissing the gray man.

“Do not keep me in your thoughts when you are with him,” he says.

And then he leaves.  She sees him once more.  She already knows by the way that he blanches when he sees her next that she is quite a bit older than the last time.

“I am formulating a plan,” Peter says.  “We all are.  But you are the key.”

“What are we planning for?”

“Freedom,” Peter says.  Then he shakes his fist at the sky.  “Your brother said he gave you a knife, do you still have it?”

“Yes,” Marie says.

“You must plunge it into his mouth when I tell you,” he says.

“I couldn’t,” she says.  “I’m not supposed to have it.  I keep the knife hidden.”

“Do you trust me?” Peter says.

Marie nods.

“There is something about the gray man that makes me afraid and then not,” Marie says.

“You must try to keep your mind clear,” Peter says.

“When will you come?”

“Soon,” Peter says.

This time he kisses her hands.  He does not kiss her lips and she knows that it is because she is too old for him.

“Will you show me the mirror?” Marie asks.

“You wouldn’t want to see yourself,” he says.

“I do,” she says.

Peter gives Marie the mirror.  She is much older than her mother.

“I will sleep with my knife.  I will always be ready for the signal,” she says.

She watches as Peter walks away.  She wishes she could run after him and go home.  But her path is set.

Marie now knows how this goes.  She and the other girls have been kissed by the gray man until they are no longer girls, but young women, and then no longer women but crones. There is no Grandmother.  Marie weeps that she had been excited about the adventure of being the girl in red.  She weeps at the cruelty of her fate.  She weeps as she sews herself a nightgown with thick fabric and a pocket for the knife.   She weeps at the thought of never feeling the fear and then the calm that the gray man’s fur brings. And just when she thinks she cannot weep anymore, there is a knock on the door.

It is a young girl in a red cloak.

“Run,” says Marie.  She wants to save the girl from the gray man.  She does not want anyone to do the duty anymore.  She is too tired to run herself.  She is too old.  She knows that tonight she will die.

But the girl puts her fingers to Marie’s lips and pulls back her hood.  It is Peter.  Peter goes to the chair and Marie dons her new thick long sleeved nightgown and goes to the bed with the knife hidden in a secret pocket. After a while, the lights come and the gray man descends.  The gray man holds Marie and his fur bristles, but this time it does not prick her skin through the layers of fabric.  As he leans in to kiss her, she can see him clearly for what he is:  a monster.   Her heart beats wildly and Marie thinks she might die from fright.  It is then as the gray mans lips touch hers that Peter jumps up from the chair and runs to the bed.

“Now, when he is weakest and taking his last sips of your life!” Peter shouts.  He holds the gray man’s arms down.

Photo courtesy of VanDammeMaarten.be (flickr.com)

Marie plunges the knife into the gray man’s mouth.  Her old hands tremble.  But when she strikes, light comes out of his mouth and without knowing why, she kisses the gray man on his closing eyes with all the tenderness in her heart. When she does, she feels the years coming back to her.  He slumps into her arms.  Shriveled and old, still leaking light.

Peter looks at Marie and smiles.

“There you are,” he says.  “Just like the day you left.”

She takes his hand.  It is too late for the other girls, but everything is just beginning for Marie.

Cecil Castellucci‘s novels for young adults include “First Day on Earth,” “Rose Sees Red,” “Beige,” “The Queen of Cool,” and “Boy Proof” and a picture book, “Grandma’s Gloves,” which won the California Book Award gold medal. She also wrote the graphic novels “The PLAIN Janes” and “Janes in Love” for the DC Comics Minx line. She has had short stories published in “Strange Horizons,” “Teeth,” “The Eternal Kiss,” “Geektastic” (which she co-edited) and “Interfictions 2.”   Her upcoming half prose / half graphic novel is called “The Year of the Beasts” will be out in May. In addition to  writing books, she writes plays, opera librettos, does performance pieces and occasionally rocks out.  For more information go to www.misscecil.com

I stood outside the pool crouched forward, thin arms and skinny legs spread wide to cover as much wall as possible, my pubescent balls dangling like a target, waiting for the water polo game to begin.  I don’t know why we swam naked, but I suspect it was a way that Mr. Jackson, our gym teacher with the “Smokey and the Bandit” mustache, could keep forty teenagers inline and submissive. There were no co-ed gym classes and the girls didn’t have to swim nude because of “female reasons,” an excuse we boys found both unfair and unsatisfying. Instead, they received school-issued swimsuits color-coded by size: the petite girls swam in red suits, the average girls in black, and the heavy girls in an odd shade of blue that everyone called “Hippo Blue”.

Mr. Jackson, dressed in sweat pants and a golf shirt, blew his whistle and tossed a rubber ball, the same red one we used in dodge ball, into the middle of the pool to start our version of a water polo match. The two teams, one in the deep end and one in the shallow, dove in and raced towards it to gain possession. Unlike real water polo, three naked, shivering goalies stood on the deck on either end of the pool. Points were scored when the ball was thrown and hit the wall below the painted black stripe, about waist high. Sean McFarland, Ryan Connolly, and I had volunteered to guard our goal on that first water polo day. I wanted to play goalie because I was a poor swimmer and guessed that anyone with the ball would be forced underwater by a bunch of naked boys trying to wrestle it free, a thought that terrified me. Sean later said that he’d volunteered because the chlorine stung his eczema, the scaly pink patches that scarred his body and made him the object of ridicule in swim class; I think Ryan just wanted to keep his back to the wall, hiding the welts that crisscrossed his buttocks and back, the angry raised stripes left by his father’s belt.

As I stood in my crouched position, determined to be the best damn water polo goalie because I was the worst damn swimmer in the entire school, I watched my classmates fight for the ball.  It was impossible to tell which naked freshman was on my team and which was not.  All I could see was splashed water, bare limbs and asses, and smaller kids like me and Ryan getting shoved underwater by the early developers and the kids who were held back, the hair under their arms and across their chests making them easy to spot.

Photo courtesy of Paulo Avila (flickr.com)

The ball finally squirted free and Mark Jankowski grabbed it and began swimming towards me. No one tried to stop him; my teammates treaded water and let him pass. Jankowski was repeating the ninth grade for the second time and was the biggest kid in class, almost the same size as Mr. Jackson.  Cradling the ball in one arm, he side stroked his way to the shallow end of the pool until he was about five feet from me.  He stood up, cocked his arm, and yelled as he threw the ball as hard as he could. The wet rubber smacked me in the shoulder, knocking me against the wall. The ball bounced back to Jankowski, who grabbed it and fired it at me again, this time catching me in the thigh and leaving a stinging red mark. Both teams cheered as I fell to the deck holding my leg.

After that, no one tried to throw the ball below the back stripe; they followed Jankowski’s lead and aimed at the goalies instead, cheering loudest when the wet rubber ball left welts, smashed us in the genitals, or if we slipped on the slick deck and went sprawling, our tailbones and elbows striking the tiled floor, our heads banging against the wall if they were lucky.

I didn’t try stopping the shots after Jankowski’s first two throws; I tried to protect myself, punching the ball away or blocking it with my forearms, and even that was painful. Ryan and Sean didn’t fare much better. One throw tore open an eczema scab on Sean’s arm and one of Jankowski’s bullets smacked Ryan right in the gut.

“What hurts more, the ball or the belt?” Jankowski yelled to Ryan as he back stroked away.

The ball finally made its way down to the other end of the pool. I squatted and hugged my knees for warmth, my thin shoulder and thigh still stinging from Jankowski’s shots, and tried to make myself even smaller as I watched the other team’s goalies become the naked targets. I was happy it was them getting bombarded and not me, and I hoped the ball stayed in their end for the rest of the match.

Afterwards, I didn’t say anything to Ryan or Sean as we showered our battered bodies, the bruises already forming; I was too embarrassed for them and myself to even make eye contact. But the next day, Ryan did something so extraordinary that it made me want to become his friend.

Photo courtesy of JasonLangheine (flickr.com)

Swim class started normally. We had to shower before entering the pool. Mr. Tabor, the school janitor, stood in the doorway between the lockers and the shower room and Mr. Jackson stood opposite him in the doorway between the showers and the hallway leading to the pool, both of them watching us. They said they did this to keep an eye on us, to make sure there was no horseplay. Mr. Tabor grinned, as he always did, showing his dead front tooth, the faded tattoo anchors on his forearms visible, his hands buried in his pants’ pockets.

Then Ryan walked past Mr. Tabor into the showers wearing a pair of swim trunks. Conversations ended so the only sound was falling water.  I turned to Mr. Jackson and saw his face darken, his Burt Reynolds mustache twitch.

“Connolly!” he boomed, his voice bouncing off the marble walls. “What are you wearing?”

“Swim trunks, Coach,” Ryan answered, soaping his chest like this was just another day.

“Why?” Mr. Jackson boomed again.

“Going swimming, Coach,” Ryan answered, his voice calm and even, cooler than I could ever be.

“Take them off!”

Ryan rinsed off the soap.

“You know the rules, Connolly. Get rid of them!”

Ryan started shampooing his hair.

“Are you going to take them off, Connolly?”

“Can’t, Coach.  Swim class today.”

The rest of us slunk out of the showers and towards the pool, not wanting to be caught in the middle of this. Mr. Jackson didn’t even inspect us—making us turn for him, bend over, ensuring we’d rinsed all the soap from every part of our bodies before entering the pool; he just waived us to the metal bleachers. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Mr. Tabor’s hands were out of his pockets and on his hips, his face as dark as Jackson’s; Ryan was still under the shower.

I crossed my arms against my chest for warmth when I entered the pool area, the chlorine smell sharp in my nose. I sat on the cold metal bleachers, trying not to let my shoulders or legs touch the naked boy on either side of me as we waited. Everyone was quiet, even Jankowski and the other big kids who threw the water polo ball the hardest. I had my ear cocked, listening for Jackson to start screaming at Ryan but heard nothing.

“What are they going to do to him?” Sean McFarland whispered.

“Nothing,” Jankowski said. “They’ll send him to the principal. Probably give him detention.”

Jankowski’s voice was deeper than the rest of ours and carried authority. He was always in trouble and walked the halls in black Levis and concert t-shirts—Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Rush—with the sleeves cut off. The taps on his square-toed boots clicked like a warning when he went by. He wore his hair parted in the middle and down to his shoulders like we all did, except his hair was thick and blonde like a Viking’s. If anyone knew what Ryan’s punishment would be, it would be him. So it surprised me a moment later when Ryan walked into the pool area, followed by Mr. Jackson, still wearing his swim trunks.  He took a seat on the bleachers with the rest of us. Jackson called attendance, spitting our names through his teeth and checking us off on his clipboard with an angry wrist flick.

When he was done, he smoothed his mustache with his index finger and then slapped the clipboard against his leg. I jumped at the sound, remembering the time he had smacked it across my bare ass for running near the water’s edge.

“As you can see,” he said, “Mr. Connolly has decided to bring in trunks today. I told him this wasn’t necessary. I could’ve borrowed a red suit from the girls for him to wear.”

Jankowski laughed the loudest.

“Mr. Connolly declined this offer and he also declined to take off his trunks and swim naked like the rest of you men,” he said, even though Jankowski was the only one of us anywhere near manhood. “So, we’re going to sit here until Mr. Connolly takes off his suit and follows the rules.”

Everyone groaned, including me. The only way to stay warm during swim class was to get in the water. To sit naked and wet on metal bleachers for forty minutes would be torture and we all knew it.

“Asshole,” Jankowski muttered, not to Mr. Jackson but to Ryan.

In ten minutes, my skin puckered into goose bumps. In fifteen, my teeth chattered. It felt as if the metal bleachers were sucking the heat from inside me, drawing it from my marrow and out my legs and ass and scrotum as I squirmed trying to stay warm.

“Just take them off, Ryan,” somebody whispered.

“This sucks,” someone else said.

“Take them off,” Jankowski said, “or I’ll beat your ass like your old man does.”

Ryan rubbed his arms for warmth but didn’t make a move to take off his trunks.

More and more kids began whispering for him to come on, to take them off, that they were freezing, for chrissakes.  A Joe’s Boy, a new kid who had transferred from St. Joe’s after getting expelled, sat a row higher than Ryan and kicked him in the kidneys and whispered Come on whenever Mr. Jackson wasn’t looking.

I didn’t say anything. My hands and head shook, but I wanted him to keep his trunks on, thinking that somehow his stand would make Mr. Jackson give in and we could all wear bathing suits. But Mr. Jackson didn’t budge and neither did Ryan and we spent the entire forty minutes freezing on the bleachers. I can’t remember ever feeling so cold.

“That’s the class, gentleman,” Jackson said, when the bell rang. “We’ll sit here like this tomorrow if Mr. Connolly decides to break the rules again.”

Image Courtesy of cdsessums (flickr.com)

“Wear ‘em tomorrow and you’re dead,” Jankowski said to Ryan loud enough for Mr. Jackson to hear. Jackson said nothing. He just slapped the clipboard against his leg.

As each boy hurried past Ryan to get to the warm showers, they made sure to bump him with their shoulder, jab an elbow to his ribs, or whisper a threat.  I patted his back when I walked by. He hurried and dressed and got the hell out of the locker room before Jankowski and the rest of them finished showering.

News of Ryan and his swim trunks spread through school.  When I told the story, my friends’ eyes saucered in amazement until I got to the part about sitting on the bleachers, then they shook their heads, muttered what a jerk he was, and said they were glad they weren’t in that class.  Ryan’s hall locker was about seven away from mine. Kids walked by, pointed, and some shoved him.

After school, I was at my locker grabbing my jacket when I looked up and saw Ryan hurrying away. I didn’t blame him. Fast-deserting hallways were a bad place to be when you were a target. The new kid from St. Joe’s flipped the books out of Ryan’s hand as he rushed by; his notes scattered across the floor. Other kids heading for the exit stepped on them. Someone kicked his history book all the way to the drinking fountain.

“Don’t wear your bikini tomorrow, asshole,” The Joe’s Boy called over his shoulder as he walked away. Some girls, sophomores, laughed.

I helped Ryan gather his papers and tried to straighten them and brush away the dusty footprints, the treads and sneaker soles clearly visible across the pages. Ryan’s face was blank, unreadable. If he was mad or scared he didn’t show it. Only his lips, pressed together in a hard line, revealed anything.

“Wearing the trunks took some guts, man,” I said, and picked up his science notes:  delicate sketches he had made of the leaves we were studying—Petiolated, Sessile, Lobed—and rosebuds, shaded red in colored pencil.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, trying to shove the papers back through the binder rings.

“Swimming naked is fucked up.”  I handed him his notes.

Ryan looked at me, his eyes flat, gray. “Then wear yours tomorrow.”

“What?”

“If you think it’s fucked up, which it is, wear your suit. If a bunch of us wear them, what are they going to do? Send us all down to the office? Big deal. Getting yelled at or detention is still better than swimming naked or getting killed in water polo.”

Now it was my turn for my eyes to saucer. “You’re going to wear them again?”

Ryan nodded. “And so will you if you have any balls.” He turned and headed to the drinking fountain to retrieve his history book, a jumble of notes under his arm. I stood there, my body electrified with the idea of taking a stand.

For the rest of the day, my mind kept drifting back to the idea of wearing swim trunks to class. I imagined strutting past Tabor like he and his hungry eyes didn’t exist.  Different comebacks, each one cooler than the previous one, came to me when I thought of Mr. Jackson asking me what the hell I was doing.  I pictured the other kids, after seeing me and Ryan in our trunks, pulling their own swim suits from their lockers and putting them on, so only Jankowski and the other assholes were standing naked with their dicks hanging out. Their stunned expressions floated before me like plates to be smashed with a baseball bat.

The next morning I hesitated before packing my trunks in my book bag, pushing them to the bottom, covering them with notebooks and folders.

I saw Ryan before homeroom, but I didn’t tell him about the swim trunks in my book bag. His black eye and swollen lip made me turn away. As I worked my hall locker combination, my fingers trembling a bit, I wondered who’d beaten him, Jankowski or the Joe’s Boy.

Or both.

I wondered how badly they’d beat me if I wore my trunks that afternoon.

Then I stopped turning the dial and stared at my closed locker. Maybe it wasn’t anybody from school who had blackened his eye. Maybe Mr. Jackson had called Ryan’s parents and told them what a trouble maker their son was and his father had decided to use his fist instead of his belt this time.

My head snapped around when I heard the unmistakable sound of a body being slammed against metal. The hall went quiet. Jankowski had Ryan jacked up against the lockers, a fistful of shirt in his hand. He was shouting in Ryan’s face not to wear his trunks today, that he wasn’t going to freeze his ass off again. Ryan turned his head. I’m not sure how big Ryan’s dad was, but he must have been bigger than Jankowski because there was no fear in Ryan’s eyes, just resignation.

I was half the size of Jankowski, but if I came from behind, grabbed his shoulder and spun him, I knew I could get a punch off, one good shot to his nose or mouth. It wouldn’t be enough. He wouldn’t hold his hands to his bleeding lips and run away; he’d come for me, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Neither I nor Ryan was strong enough to beat a guy like Jankowski, but together I knew we could take him. Ryan, I swear, nodded at me, as if he was reading my mind, urging me to do it, to spin Jankowski’s shoulder, to throw that one good punch.  Then I saw Ryan’s black eye and the way Jankowski’s arm bulged in his cutoff Stones shirt, and I didn’t move. A long moment passed and Ryan nodded again, as if he was accustomed to no one saving him. Jankowski kneed him in the balls then let go of his collar. Ryan crumpled to the floor. The warning bell rang and I headed to homeroom, feeling smaller than I ever had.

For the rest of the morning, I avoided going to my locker between classes, afraid I’d run into Ryan, afraid he’d call me a coward, just afraid in general.  In each class, I’d pull out a binder or text book, being careful to keep the trunks covered so no one could see them, point to them, tell Jankowski about them. I regretted bringing them, and my regret added to my shame.

I made it to lunch without running into Ryan again. There was a seat open at the table where Sean McFarland sat so I slid across from him, my tray piled with pizza slices, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pudding with perfect whip cream dollops. Gorging myself was my latest attempt at gaining weight, at getting bigger.

“You going to eat all that?” Sean asked, nodding to my tray. As usual, he wore a long-sleeved turtleneck, trying to keep any eczema on his arms and neck covered, saving the ridicule for swim class.

Photo taken by Stephanie Nebeker

Before I could answer, everyone in the cafeteria rose and cheered like at a football game. A fight had broken out. A tight circle of students formed to keep the teachers and cafeteria monitors from breaking up the brawl too quickly. Sean and I jumped to our feet and pushed to the ring of students. In the center of the circle, Ryan and Jankowski fought. Each held the other’s shirt with their left hand and traded wild right hand punches to the other’s head. The crowd cheered as each blow landed. They began chanting Fight! Fight!, and I wasn’t sure if they were egging Ryan and Jankowski on or if they were calling for others to come and watch. Ryan held his own for the first couple exchanges, but Jankowski’s size and strength was overwhelming. Ryan’s left ear was already red from the battering. He sank to one knee, his own punches lifeless now and without snap. Jankowski was holding him up with one hand, the other like a piston as he punched downward, catching Ryan above his left eyebrow again, and again, and again.

I pictured myself leaving Sean’s side and crossing the distance to the fighters. I’d grab Jankowski by the right shoulder and spin him around until he faced me, like I should have done in the hall earlier that morning. My punch, crisp and clean like Sugar Ray’s in the Olympics, would smash the bridge of his nose, spreading it wide across his face. He’d stumble backward, the blood already flowing as I moved forward, driving home a left to his stomach, doubling him over in pain. Ryan would look at me from his knees. I’d meet his glance and nod before grabbing Jankowski by his Viking hair and shoving his head downward until his face met my rising knee. I saw it all so clearly, like I was watching a movie.

Standing next to Sean with everyone still chanting Fight!, my fists clenched. I took one step forward but was shoved aside as Mr. Tabor and Mr. Ring, the assistant principal, shouldered past, breaking the circle. They pulled Jankowski off of Ryan, the anchors on Tabor’s forearms moving as he grabbed him. Ryan slumped to all fours. Blood dripped from the cut above his blackened eye and landed on the cafeteria floor, the drops the color of sketched roses. He saw me staring and swallowed a few times. Kids clapped and cheered as Tabor took Jankowski away, his arm raised in triumph. Mr. Ring yanked Ryan to his feet.

“I was going to help,” I said, my voice low, hoping only Ryan could hear. “I brought trunks.”

As he was being led away to whatever punishment the school and his father had waiting for him, Ryan turned and looked at me over his shoulder.

“Wear them,” he said.

I froze, afraid someone might have heard.

“Wear them,” he said, louder, and was gone.

Kids jostled me as they headed back to their seats to finish their lunches. They laughed and said it had been a great fight, that Connolly had really gotten what he deserved, that he’d be swimming naked like the rest of us now. I don’t know how many were eating in the cafeteria that period, but I felt alone as I stood in the middle of them.

I had a science test before swimming.  The questions—naming the extended part of the leaf, defining the margin, midrib, and stem, identifying blade types—were easy and ones that I’d studied, but my thoughts kept sliding to the book bag at my feet and the trunks inside. Ryan’s words pummeled me like two tiny fists: Wear them.  I had survived in middle school and so far in high school by staying out of the way of guys like Jankowski, by playing goalie outside the pool instead of fighting for the ball inside it, by swimming naked like everyone else.  I knew what would happen if I walked into the showers wearing those trunks. Perhaps the beating wouldn’t come in the cafeteria. Maybe they’d catch me in the deserted parking lot, or after school at the bus stop, or in the second floor lav where Jankowski and his friends smoked in the stalls, the wooden doors kicked in and splintered so many times the school stopped replacing them. The beating would come and I was afraid.

Photo taken by Stephanie Nebeker

Wear them.

Science class ended and I turned in my test with half the questions unanswered and headed to the boys’ locker room. My book bag felt heavy on my shoulder, as if it contained everything I wanted to be and everything I truly was.

I undressed in front of my locker, the floor cold puddled from the previous swim class, oblivious to the sounds and conversations around me. One-by-one, my classmates stripped down and drifted to the showers, some with towels wrapped around their waists, trying to stay covered as long as they could, until I was the last one in the locker room. I knew that Mr. Tabor and Mr. Jackson were already at their posts on either side of the showers—Jackson slapping the clipboard against his thigh and fingering his mustache and Tabor grinning his dead smile, his hands busy in his pockets, both looking for troublemakers, both watching for rule breakers, both of them waiting for me.

Stephen G. Eoannou earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and has taught at both Ball State University and The College of Charleston. His work has appeared in the Barely South Review,Boomtown: Explosive Writing from Ten Years of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program, Pulp Modern, and will be forthcoming from Echo Ink Review and The Cleveland Review. Eoannou lives and writes in Buffalo, New York.

(Note from YARN: “Abandon Changes” takes place several months after the events of excellent Cusick’s novel, “Girl Parts”—an awesome Christmas gift for the deserving on your list!)

To: 710-555-0170

From: 216-432-0210

Subject:

Sam. I’m breaking up with you. We’re through.

- Rei

CANCEL MESSAGE

You have changed your draft without saving. Do you want to abandon changes?

OK.

Rei tossed the burner under the lumbering street cleaner and heard it crunch. The swirling brushes raised dust and paper scraps, thrusting debris onto the sidewalk. The cleaner shifted north and Rei turned south, hands in pockets, as if blown by the swirl.

Image courtesy of bunchofpants (flickr.com)

It was early spring, too cool for blossoms. Drizzle freckled the sidewalk and turned the awnings to bongo drums. Kids biked home from class. They crossed the quad in chatty cliques and congregated outside coffee bars. School-café-home: just three stops on a short course. She pitied them. This was all they knew.

Rei skirted the square, fleet and anonymous. While normal kids learned the quadratic equation, Rei had learned to be a runner. She knew how to stay out of sight, how to keep moving. She was fast, smart, didn’t ask questions, and kept her mouth shut. Joe said she was his best ever. Even the rain didn’t seem to touch her.

She was free, and loved it.

It was time to buy a new burner. This too was a special skill. There were three cell shops in this neighborhood. She knew every shop in town and alternated between them to avoid attracting attention. The clerk was her age, trapped behind a little counter. She gave Rei a minimum-wage smile. “What can I do for you today?”

“Disposable, please. One hundred minutes and texts.” She hesitated, then added, “In pink, if possible.”

Joe insisted on cheap, untraceable burners. In the eight months since she’d quit school to work for him, she had purchased and destroyed more than four hundred. They were mostly flat, gray hunks of plastic, but lately she’d wanted a little style. Pink casings, fuzzy antennas. Normal kids had keitai: stylized, customizable super-phones. Keitai had swappable cases, personalized fingerprint stickers, gyaru-moji tags, and jangling, illuminated charms. Each was a personal statement, a reflection of the owner’s identity. Rei didn’t envy normal kids, but she envied their phones, a little.

She could buy a phone for personal use of course, but she never called anyone but Joe.

And Sam.

Well, not Sam. Not anymore.

There were no pink burners, just a flat gray Gazer Tech with a green screen. She paid with cash and left.

The rain had stopped and Rei felt refreshed. Buying a new phone was like shedding her skin, becoming new again. The last phone faded from memory, along with its run— just scraps on B Street two blocks, sixty yards, a thousand years away.

She opened the new text program.

To: 710-555-0170

From: 442-011-7442

Subject:

Sam. I thought about it and I need to break up with you. I’m sorry.

—Rei

Her thumb hovered over SEND. She would do it this time, empowered by the new-phone rush. She was without ties.

She pressed CANCEL MESSAGE.

Do you want to abandon changes?

OK.

“Damn it,” she hissed.

Stepping into an alley, Rei dialed the only other number she knew. The line clicked and she heard breathing.

“It’s Rei.”

“How are you, honey?”

Joe could call her honey and it was no big deal. He was harmless— to Rei anyway. Every month he sent her a new birthday card with her pay inside, signed Happy Birthday, Sweetheart! or Happy Birthday, Love!

“I’m thinking of dumping Sam.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. He lasted longer than the others.”

“Six weeks.” Rei closed her eyes. “Boys are . . . complicated.”

“Let’s talk about something simpler then, eh?”

“Thanks.”

She listened closely. She was not permitted to write anything down and Joe would not repeat himself.

“The recipient is an American girl, your age. A club kid. Tonight she’s at the Purple Flower Room. She calls herself Iris, and she’s got bottle-blue hair.”

So it was drugs . X or ketamine or that new one, Path, the “empathy drug.” It didn’t matter what the package was. In four hundred runs she’d never opened one or asked what was inside. “That’s what makes you a good runner,” Joe always said. “Light feet and no curiosity.”

“Where’s the pick up?”

“No package,” said Joe. “Just a message. Make sure you get it right. I need you focused, Rei.”

“I am,” she said, a little stung. She always performed assignments perfectly.

"Osaka rain" courtesy of bthomso (flickr.com)

The Purple Flower Room was part of the Sunshine Pavilion, a twenty-four-hour arcade on the other side of town. She decided to walk it. She knew the city, knew it better than the cops, even better than the cabbies. She knew the fastest routes, the most hidden. The rush of passing inches from a cop unnoticed, slipping by a doorman, moving undetected through a cam’s blind spot, was intoxicating. She floated above the world, untouchable, a ghost. Sam didn’t understand. Nobody did. Her skills made her unique.

Alone.

As she crossed D Street Sam’s voice was with her. It had been a whisper all morning, but now the reception was crystal clear, three bars.

“You’re a drug dealer?” he’d asked.

“I just run errands,” she’d said then, she mouthed now.

“But you don’t know what you’re delivering, and it’s definitely not legal, right? Why do you do it?”

“It makes me feel free . . . safe.”

“Safe from what?”

She didn’t have an answer. And then Sam, being Sam, crushed her:

“Well I don’t care what you do. I love you anyway.”

Rei paused on Osaka Bridge, interrupting foot traffic. A group of girls clucked at her.

She unlimbered the burner, and wrote a text.

Sam, I love you too but I can’t be with you.

She’d never used the word. Love. It felt like flying, hurling herself over the railing into the black churn below. It made her feel dizzy, reckless.

She pressed CANCEL MESSAGE.

Do you want to abandon changes?

OK.

She didn’t know she was being followed until Okawa Circle, just a block from the pavilion. She’d never had a shadow before; she’d never been that careless.

“Distraction is a runner’s enemy,” Joe would say.

It wasn’t a cop. Cops were obvious, like they wanted to be seen. It had to be a rival, someone against Joe who didn’t want Rei to complete her run.

That was very bad.

She switched directions and crossed the circle, cutting through traffic and putting a yellow bus between her and her tail. As the light changed Rei climbed on the running board and pressed herself against the paneling. People stared— just some kid showing off. The bus rounded the fountain and Rei jumped away, cut around the bank and approached her shadow from behind.

The side street was empty. She moved silently onto the fire escape, her tail below her now, crouched behind a dumpster, scanning for Rei by the fountain.

She cleared her throat.

Her tail whirled and said in English, “Jesus Christmas!” adding in Japanese, “You scared the holy hell out of me!”

Rei deflated, her limbs twitching with wasted adrenaline. She’d been proud of her maneuver with the bus, but her shadow was just a loud, bespectacled American woman in a rainbow T-shirt and lavender jacket. Not exactly a pro. Rei felt worse for not having noticed this one sooner.

“You’re following me,” she said. “Stop.”

The tail smiled. It was unsettling. “I’m May. Want some Pocky?” She shook a snack box at Rei. Her Japanese was textbook, her accent miserable. Rei guessed she’d been in the country less than a month. “This stuff is amazing. You can’t get it where I’m from—”

“Final warning. Piss off.” She started to climb away but the woman cleared her throat.

“Did you drop this?”

She  held something small and plastic. The pink casing was crushed, the fuzzy antenna smeared with mud, but the green light still blinked, alive. The phone Rei had tossed under the street cleaner.

“That’s . . . not mine.”

“I mean, this is your boss’s number, right? Joe?”

Panic seared Rei’s throat. She’d never texted Joe, only spoken to him. There was no way to pull conversations off a phone, was there?

“I’m good with gadgets,” May said, as if reading her thoughts. “Like, the best. In the world.” She cocked her head like a curious dog. She would have been cute if she weren’t holding Rei’s life in her hand. “Who’s Sam, by the way?”

Rei lunged for the phone, shoving her arm between the metal bars. But the girl was surprisingly quick.

“Give it back.”

“I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Give it back or I’ll break your neck.”

May pocketed the phone. “I know you’re going to meet a girl, an American like me. She won’t be what you expect.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Pup-pup! Not finished.” May wagged a finger. “I know you have a message for her, and I know you’ll deliver it no matter what I say. But I’m hiring you to give her a package. I’d do it myself but the men who hired your boss would recognize me.”

So, she was sunk. May knew everything. It didn’t make sense, but there it was. Rei was made, which meant her time with Joe was over. All because this ridiculous gaijin had spotted her, because Rei hadn’t made sure the burner was completely destroyed, because she’d been distracted.

By Sam, a voice whispered.

She shook it off.

“What’s the package?”

“Just these.”

They were tinted glasses, goggles really, though stylish enough to pass for normal eyewear. Rei took them. They were surprisingly heavy, with two switches marked A and B in Roman letters.

“Neat, huh? Don’t you want to know what they do?”

“No.” She tucked them away. “Now give me the phone.”

May tossed the burner. Rei nearly fumbled it. She clutched the device to her heart, unbelieving. “Why would I help you now? You just lost your bargaining chip.”

“Because.” May’s smile vanished. “If you don’t, they’ll kill her.”

A few nights before, in Sam’s bed, with his arm around her waist.

“Don’t you worry you’re hurting people?”

“No, Sam. I’m just delivering packages.”

“But you can’t pretend—”

“I’m not responsible for what I don’t know, Sam.”

The Flutter Café was a mom-and-pop noodle bar across from the Purple Flower Room. The commuter rush had cleared and only a few stragglers lingered in the close, damp heat. A lone flower languished in its pot, a furry moth leisurely ingesting its petals.

A boy sat with his back to the door. He had blond hair and looked American from behind. She took a seat across from him at the horseshoe counter and saw he was Japanese. He scratched his scalp— a fresh dye job— and stirred a bowl of noodles, long cooled. He might not know why he was being paid to sit in a noodle bar, but he was the decoy all right.

Rei scanned the room. Two large men, not cops but obvious the way cops were, flanked the door. They were the muscle. Where was the brain? She glanced to her right. At the end of the bar, with the only unobstructed view of the door, was an American man with feathery gray hair peaking from beneath his hat. He wore dark sunglasses. To Rei he looked like someone trying very hard to see without being seen. They were all waiting for the girl Rei was to meet. These were the men May had warned her about.

She ordered a sticky bun, ate it slowly, paid, and stepped into the rain. The Flutter Café felt less like a mom-and-pop place and more like a steel trap, waiting to spring.

She wished she hadn’t gone in to confirm May’s story. It was not like her to be curious. No, not just curious— sentimental. Who was she now? She’d changed, or was changing.

She started to text:

Sam. I’m in love with you and it’s making me into someone I can’t

CANCEL MESSAGE.

Do you want to abandon changes?

“Yes,” Rei said aloud. A woman glanced up, startled, then looked away.

Lights and lasers swept the ceiling: blue, gold, green, pulsing through the disco ball in the middle. With every phase of light the faces and clothing changed colors, the crowd a writhing rainbow. Music crashed through story-high speakers.

Iris’s hair was red, green, indigo, crimson in the changing lights. She was by far the best dancer. Her moves were marvelous, each limb moving effortlessly in a wave. She danced alone. The boys were too intimidated. A few girls tried, and she danced with them, but soon they too could only groove on the sidelines, watching her. She was mesmerizing.

Reckless, thought Rei. She attracted a lot of attention for a wanted girl.

Rei approached through the throng. Iris thought she wanted to dance and pulled Rei’s arm around her waist. She must have been on Path, or something. Rei pulled away.

“I have to talk to you.”

Iris put a hand to her ear. “I can’t hear you.” Her accent was flawless, much better than May’s.

“I have to talk to you,” Rei shouted. “Somewhere private.”

Iris shrugged.

She led Rei to the private rooms. The bouncers let them through with a nod to Iris.

The small lounge was dark, the walls mirrored, unspooling gloomy chambers in every direction. Electric candles flickered on the low glass tables. There was one other door, an emergency exit or bathroom.

Iris made herself comfortable on a heart-shaped sofa. Her smile put Rei at ease, a feeling Rei dismissed. She wondered if Iris was some kind of courtesan or special escort. They were paid to make people like them, make people comfortable. Rei remained standing.

Iris poured a drink from the tumbler. It looked like water but might have been anything. “I haven’t seen you here before. Are you a friend of Ken’s?”

“I have a message.”

She blinked false lashes. “OK.”

“The message is this.” She swallowed. It caught at first but she got it out easily enough. “I came for you. I’m across the street at the Flutter Café.”

Iris looked confused. “Is that all?”

“No.” It was the second part that would snare her. The men next door somehow knew this girl, knew exactly what she needed to hear. “The last time I saw you, I said you were a waste of time,” said Rei, borrowing borrowed words. “You never were.”

Tears have a way of shining in the dark, a silvery phosphorescence. They illuminated Iris’s cheekbones. She placed her glass on the table, slow and deliberate. When she spoke her voice quivered like the false candlelight.

“David, he…said that?”

“That’s the message.”

Her breathing quickened. “I never thought it would be David. I thought if anybody came for me—” She stopped herself. “Across the street? The Flutter Café?”

Rei nodded.

“That’s all?”

Last night she’d said to Sam, “I can’t be close to someone and do what I do. I can’t do both.”

“Then I guess you have to decide.”

“No,” she heard herself say. “A girl named May wants you to have these.”

May’s name conjured something in her eyes. Iris examined the goggles. She put them on and flipped the switch marked A.

A staccato pattern of light, like Morse code, erupted from the goggles. Their lenses flashed inward at the wearer’s eyes, but their brilliance filled the room. The dance of photons meant nothing to Rei, but when it was over and Iris removed them, all trace of her previous cheer was gone. The light had broken her heart.

“Thank you for bringing these,” she said.

In four hundred runs there’d never been anything like this. The light had spoken to Iris. “What does it mean?” Rei asked.

Iris stood. “What’s your name?”

“I call myself Rei. I’m just a messenger.”

“Rei, that’s pretty. Ghost.” She folded her arms, hugging herself. “My name isn’t Iris. It’s Rose. Some men are looking for me. They caught me once, took me from the people I cared about and kept me in a locked room. But I escaped. That was eight months ago. Now they’ve found me again.”

“The goggles told you?”

“They warned me, yes.”

“Run,” said Rei. “I would run. Running is the only way.”

“They can track me. Because I’m in love with a boy. The boy who left me,” said Rose. “The light told me that, too. It said if I forget the boy, it will sever their connection. They won’t be able to track me.”

The ceiling lights changed from green to purple, lending a violet cast to the girls in the mirrored walls. “You can’t just forget someone,” said Rei. “It’s not possible.”

Rose smiled. “I’m special. I can press this button,” she indicated the switch marked B, “and poof he’s gone. All my memories will be wiped and I’ll start over from day one. Like rebooting. I’ll be free.” Rose considered her reflection. “I’ve changed a lot since day one.”

Rei shook her head. “How is that possible? Hypnotism?”

“You could call it that.”

“Would . . . would it work on me?”

Rose shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rei. Like I said, I’m special. The only unit in my series.”

Rei didn’t understand, but she believed Rose.

“I don’t want to change,” Rei said.

Their eyes met in the mirror. “Neither did I.”

Image courtesy of kitface (flickr.com)

Rose removed the blue wig. Underneath was a roughly shaved scalp, a doll’s head a child had taken to with mommy’s scissors. Her hair was once crimson, but shorn it lost all flourish and was now pale, stiff, and reddish brown. Like dried blood, Rei thought.

“It won’t ever grow back,” Rose said, touching her scalp. “I learned that too late.”

The lights changed again, to pale white this time, and some of the dreamy atmosphere evaporated. They were just two girls in a gawdy back room, talking about boys.

“You can’t really forget,” said Rei. “I don’t believe it. You can’t just hit UNDO.”

Rose turned the goggles in her hands. “You know what? You’re right.”

She raised the goggles over her head and smashed them on the tiled floor. The bits skittered to the walls, sparking—the light in the lenses fading, and then dying altogether.

“Come on,” she said, taking Rei’s hand. “If I’m not across the street soon, they might come looking.”

She pulled Rei through the far door, into an alley. The sun was gone and the clouds had passed. The stars were barely visible in the city’s glare, but a few blue dots shined at the zenith.

“I have to run now,” said Rose. “Thank you, again. I think you saved my life.”

“You know where you’re going?” Rei asked.

“Yes.” Rose still held her hand. Her touch gave Rei gooseflesh. “You?”

“I think so,” Rei said.

Rose fixed her wig, turned, and was gone in a flash of ultramarine. Rei followed a moment later. Rose’s pursuers were gathered on the corner outside the Flutter Café. A black corporate town car idled and they climbed inside. The man with the feathery gray hair scanned the street. They would try again. They’d keep coming. But she was safe for now.

It took Rei hours to find his apartment. She’d never been there, but knew the address. It was a shabby complex on the south side, dim windows and dark stoops. She rang the bell, willing herself not to run. Finally he opened the door, and it was too late to change her mind.

“Rei! I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I have to end it.” She’d rehearsed a speech but it left her now. “I’m so sorry. I can’t do both. It’s over. ”

A bug zapper hummed a blue note, mosquitoes flirting with its grate.

“Because of him?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Joe took the toothpick from his lips and smiled. “You sure you know what you’re doing, kiddo?”

“I do.”

Joe shook his head like he didn’t think she did. Then he kissed her forehead. His white hair smelled of camphor and lemon candies. He took off his bifocals, wiped them on his shirt, and put them back on, looking for all the world like a sweet old man.

The bug zapper sparkled, and Rei felt a chill.

“I think I better go.”

Joe picked a fresh toothpick from his shirt pocket. “Disappear, little ghost.”

On the street the air was warming. Spring was here and soon the cherry trees would blossom. Sirens wailed to the east at Hal’s Fish Market. She and Sam had shopped there once. Steam rose from the Yasuki Refinery, by the snack truck where she and Sam had met. She knew every corner of this town, and every inch reminded her of Sam. He kept her tied to the world, and made her feel a part of it.

It was a beautiful night, the city gleaming and music somewhere and Rei ambling, remembering. A street cleaner rumbled by—the same one? Like it was following her. She turned north, hands in pockets, fingers wrapped around the burner. A man in a long coat watched from a doorway. As she passed, a van started its engine and moved into the shadows. She walked in the street for all to see, beneath the bank of streetlights, casting many shadows.

She strolled toward the river and Sam’s apartment. Not a ghost but a girl. A real girl.

Copyright © 2012 by John M. Cusick

Published by arrangement with Scott Treimel NY

This story will be available on January 17 as a free ebook, published by Candlewick Press.

John M. Cusick is the author of “Girl Parts” (Candlewick Press, 2010), and the forthcoming “Cherry Money Baby.” He is also a literary agent with S©ott Treimel NY, and a managing editor and co-founder of Armchair/Shotgun, a Brooklyn-based literary magazine. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 2007 where he wrote his first novel on a SmithCorona Electric (now kaput). He lives in Brooklyn.
www.JohnMCusick.com.

The sun reared its blinding head early this year, making the students squint and seek shade under the faded umbrellas of the plastic lunch tables. Chemistry worksheets, pencils and pens, erasers and rulers lay scattered while they swear and graph lab results.

A band kid screams, disturbing the peace as his kind are apt to do, as he jostles and elbows his way onto a seat of the packed table. “They’ve installed a new fire alarm!”

Immediately, “Let’s test it!”

Everyone laughs, and the idea is stowed away for later, a summer night or a late-night study session.

Someone’s phone buzzes, dancing on the green plastic.

“Hello?”

Everyone continues to talk at the same volume.

“HELLO?”

“PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON,” a friend bellows. The unrestrained, guffawing laughter of teenage boys echoes across the quad, empty two hours after the last bell.

The owner of the phone ignores his friend. “Guys! Rob wants to know what kind of soda we want.”

Image Courtesy of Mark Brennan (flickr.com)

“Sprite!”

“No, fuck Sprite,” a junior snaps. “Let’s get Coke.”

“Root beer!” a foolish freshman howls.

“Your mom tastes better than root beer!” The freshman’s ears burn red and he looks down sheepishly.

“Canada Dry,” says the lone senior authoritatively.

“What the fu—“

“It’s fucking delicious,” he cuts the naysayer off, enjoying the power of his seniority. The junior opens his mouth to argue again for Coke, but the phone’s owner speaks up.

“GUYS,” he yells again, “There’s a deal at Safeway. Ten dollars for ten bottles.”

“One for each of us!” someone exclaims gleefully.

“Hold the fuck up,” protests Rob, on speaker phone. “I’m not paying for all this.”

“We need soda,” someone pleads while another one states, rationally, “We’ll pay you back.”

The senior gets his say, and Rob promises to bring back ginger ale. They spend ten minutes swearing and laughing and sharing sex jokes about things they’ve never experienced and probably won’t for years, before the phone jumps again. Five of them rush off to carry back the glorious prize of fizzy sugar water. Ten bottles, as promised, one for each of them.

Image courtesy of Quite Adept (flickr.com)

Someone produces a stack of plastic cups. “These are fucking classy,” he says, flourishing the cups. They’re clear plastic with slightly angled triangular planes, so that each cup glitters in the sunlight. A recyclable trying to pass off as a glass goblet.

The anthem of middle school birthday parties–the soft hiss of air escaping its plastic chamber–rises into the air as worksheets and calculators are pushed aside. They jostle and push each other to pour themselves a cup first. Predictably, some is spilled and there is more swearing.

The ginger ale is light yellow with flecks of gold and white. It’s a party now, and the foam and the trapped air bubbles glistening inside an equally scintillating cup fill them with a buoyant glee that giggles up and escapes with every sip of soda.

They’re all alcohol virgins—bookish kids that have never been invited to parties with illicit beer or wine. But they imagine that this is what getting drunk must feel like—liberating and lifting. They guzzle ginger ale, feeling sophisticated and worldly. Drinking soda on a Tuesday, for no reason, and before they even finish their homework. The sweet fire of rebellion swirls in their bellies with the soda bubbles.

A sophomore tosses his head back as he chugs, and the sun shoots through the ginger ale, turning the cup into a golden inferno. Specks of gold and white light settle on his tanned, dry face and skip across his eyelids. It was like he had plunged his plastic fancy cup into the fountain of youth, and was swallowing the very essence of these few years.

Later, when the blinding sun sets and the boys are at home, the bubbles of ginger ale are released as contented burps, fizzing into the dark atmosphere. Excitement dies as they take out their soda-stained worksheets, but immortality lingers in their blood, the last bubbles of that afternoon drink.

Maggy Liu has lived in California for all sixteen years of all her life, yet she does not know how to surf. For the majority of her life, she believed that she expressed herself better through paints and pencils, so it is only recently that she has started writing stories. She has been published in “Seamless Magazine” and “The Writer’s Slate,” and she has won first place for narrative in the High School Division in the Writing Conference’s annual competition. Her favorite activities include buying old books at garage sales, drawing fish in Calculus, and doodling historical comics for the amusement of her friends.

Some people swore that the house was haunted. I didn’t believe them. Some people would swear on the Bible and still lie. What do unbelievers use when they take oath in court? Steven Hawking’s The Grand Design? Some people said that any unbeliever would turn into a Bible-thumping preacher after visiting this house on the corner of Park and Prospect.

There used to be a regular family living in it: a father, a mother, and two kids. Then the father lost his job, and they stopped paying the mortgage. Then they just abandoned the house and moved someplace else.

My friends called me Nosy Ethan. My dad said that if someone else wouldn’t cut off my nose because I poke it in other people’s business, he would.

“You’d thank me, boy,” he said. “I’d do it gently.”

My dad was big and ugly. An IED blew up in Iraq and shrapnel poked his face.

Yes, I was nosy. But you don’t need to butt in to hear what other people say about the ghosts in that house.

The house stood empty, unoccupied. Until the ghosts moved in. That’s what some people said. They also said the weeds in the front yard grew like crazy. The weeds don’t grow like crazy. They just grow. Only people grow crazy. I was crazy. If I were a normal 14-year old, I wouldn’t break into a haunted house.

Image courtesy of Christop Brooks-Booth (flickr.com)

I carried an LED flash light and Ka-Bar knife I stole from my dad. The backyard window was broken a while back, so I had no problem getting in. It smelled musty inside. We’d had a lot of rain lately. The carpet was wet and covered with broken glass. They left all their furniture behind, even an old TV.

And that TV was on.

There was nothing on the screen, of course. Just the faint blue light. The cable had been disconnected for sure. I was surprised the house still had electricity. Weird. I came closer and saw that a caption ran across the screen.

It said, “Ethan has a long nose.”

That was bull. Totally. My nose was normal European American. I went around the TV. It was unplugged. Somebody was pulling my leg.

“Who on earth is there?” I said. “Get out and face me like a man. Loser.”

Then I saw that the Ka-Bar knife somehow got itself free from its sheath and now was floating in the air in front of my face.  It was a great knife, a Johnson Adventure Potbelly. My dad brought it home from Iraq.

“Time to cut your nose,” the new caption said. I knew it was a trick. A neighbor’s kid was hiding in the house. A loser and a half.

“Are you a ghost?” I asked. “Are you inside the TV?”

Then the knife pricked my nose. That hurt. But the ghosts, or the kid who did that trick, had no idea that I was my dad’s son. I swatted the knife with my LED light, and knocked it to the ground. It lay there, thrashing like a fish on the sand.

Then I lifted the TV and threw it down. Ka-boom! The blue light was gone and the knife stopped thrashing on the floor. That was when my dad walked in.

“What is going on?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Just wanted to see the ghosts. Should’ve waited until Halloween.”

“Let’s go,” my dad said, wiping blood from my nose with his handkerchief.

“How did you find me, Dad?”

He folded his handkerchief but did not put it back in his pocket. “You’re a lousy thief. You make too much noise and are easy to trace. So you better keep your nose clean.”

Through the broken windows, the moon bathed our faces with ghostly light. But my dad and I knew that there were no such thing as ghosts. Even if some people swore that the house was haunted.

Mark Budman was born in the former Soviet Union and is fluent in Russian. His fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in such magazines as Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine (UK),  McSweeney’s, American Book Review, The Bloosmbury Review, Sonora Review, Another Chicago, Sou’wester, Turnrow, Southeast Review, Mid-American Review, The Literary Review, the W.W. Norton anthology “Flash Fiction Forward,” “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure,” Short Fiction, The Warwick Review (UK), Flash (UK), Neo (Portugal) and elsewhere. He is the publisher of a flash fiction magazine Vestal Review. His novel “My Life at First Try” was published by Counterpoint Press to wide critical acclaim. He co-edited the anthology “You Have Time for This” from Ooligan Press; a new anthology is forthcoming in December of 2011 from Persea Books. He is at work at another anthology and two new novels. He judged several flash fiction contests.

The summer before he went away to college, Adam spent his days ringing groceries at the Shop Rite on the highway, long hair pulled back into a frizzy pony tail. His nights were spent doing who-knows-what. If you asked Elsie, she’d tell you he spent them with Louis and Evan, coasting up and down the highway in Evan’s Lincoln Continental.

But it would be a lie.

Adam made rare, rushed appearances at the dinner table—eating quickly, pressing his lips to his mother’s cheek, disappearing again.

“He’d better not be on drugs,” her stepfather Ted groused. At that, Elsie kept her expression even, kept her eyes on the thick print of her paperback. She was scared that if she looked up, it would show: how she heard the water running each night after Adam came in, how she was always pulling tufts of fur out of their shared shower drain. How she was always keeping Adam’s secret.

Image courtesy of Berto Garcia (flickr.com)

And who was there to keep her secrets? Nobody. Like how strong she felt when she was underwater. Submerged in the blue-white depths of the county pool, she streamed along the bottom and pretended she was some sleeker, better creature. But the girls who sprawled out across the concrete in their bikinis wouldn’t let her forget the truth.

“A virgin,” she heard them whisper. “Look at her. She doesn’t even shave her legs.”

When she spun around, they fluttered their eyelashes—heavy from too much mascara—and buried their noses in their magazines. It was only when she dove back into the blue water that their snickers rose up again on the humid air.

Soon August faded. Elsie tried to ignore the movement in the next room as Adam packed his belongings into Tupperware bins and tore his posters down from his walls. Before he climbed into the passenger’s seat of Mom’s overloaded station wagon, he gave Elsie’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Good luck in high school,” he said.

Without thinking, Elsie replied: “Yeah, you too.” And then she blushed deeply, burying her face in her palms. But Adam only laughed as he pulled the car door shut behind him.

On the first day, Elsie shuffled between classes, letting her unkempt hair veil her eyes. In the four minutes between bells, boys slammed their lockers shut; girls shouted greetings to one another across the crowd; no one directed a single sound or word or glance to Elsie.

Which was just the way she liked it.

Her problems started during lunch. First, the lunch lady didn’t hear her over the clash of dishes when Elsie mumbled her order. She had to repeat herself three times, jabbing her hand at the glass. “The quiche! The quiche!” A gaggle of boys behind her all elbowed one another, snorting at her. Their plates were piled high with sallow French fries resplendent with grease. Elsie blushed and stared down at the hash-marked surface of her own lunch tray.

“Hey! Lesovik!”

Elsie paused at the cafeteria door. She looked back behind her, bracing herself, clutching her tray tight.

“Hey! You’re Adam’s sister, right?”

It was a boy. Evan. He’d changed since the last time she saw him at Adam’s twelfth birthday party, the last one before Ted moved in and put an end to parties at home (too much to clean, Ted said, too many kids with dirty sneakers scuffing up the wood floors).  But once she’d known him well, almost as well as family. Adam’s best friend, the one he always brought on his camping trips with Dad. The one she might have thought she’d marry once, when she was little, before they found Dad’s body on the side of the road that winter night and she gave up on girlish dreams.

Evan’s pale hair now hung in long, scraggly tresses down his shoulders. His face was pitted with acne. He’d circled his clear, sapphire blue eyes with smudgy kohl. Lanky and lean, Evan wore an old army jacket that dwarfed his thin shoulders. And he took Elsie’s long silence for affirmation.

“Elizabeth, right?” He grinned at her through braces. Finally, she nodded, keeping her eyes down.

“Elsie,” she said.

“Well, Elsie,” Evan said, slumping back in his chair, making an easy gesture with his hands. “Don’t let the proles get you down. You’re Adam’s sister. We’re looking out for you. Right, Louis?”

Louis. Elsie had hardly noticed the other boy who sat silently beside Evan. She knew him, too, but not as well. He’d only appeared at Adam’s side last spring, after he started working at the supermarket. He was chubby, dark, his black hair twined into a sloppy tail down his back. And he had a mustache, a real one, not one of those wispy things the ninth-grade boys sported. He’d just taken a bite of his pizza and he chuckled up at Elsie through a full mouth, his black eyes glittering sharply. He didn’t speak.

“You know,” Evan began, “you could sit with us.” He caressed the smooth table top before him, his palm sliding across its surface. “We wouldn’t mind. Right, Louis?”

“Naw.” Louis grinned through bites.

“Um.” Elsie could feel her pulse racing in her throat. She looked out at the empty tables at the room’s edge. “No. Thanks. Um.” She felt the heat of a blush sweep over her ears. Evan, still smiling, raised a cool hand.

“No worries. Some other time, then?”

Elsie didn’t respond. Instead, she just stumbled over to an empty table and set down her tray. She pulled out her book, the one with the dragon on the cover, and did her best to read. But it wasn’t easy.

Elsie often thought people were looking at her. She felt their eyes on her everywhere she went, examining her, probing, trying to get below the surface. But this time she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. Every time she looked up, there was Evan, his eyes like two flinted pieces of sapphire, their sharp edges scraping her skin away.

After that, Elsie watched for the boys. Between bells, in open classrooms when she managed to speak up and beg her teachers for a bathroom pass, she watched, and waited. There were boys who looked enough like Evan and Louis to turn her head—boys with long hair or makeup, boys with stubble or acne or with bike chains as jewelry looped around their necks—but they weren’t the same. The other boys had dull eyes ringed with red from the pot they smoked behind the gym. They looked right through Elsie. They never looked at her.

But when she managed to spot the boys, her boys, it was different. Passing them in the hall, her books clutched to her chest, Evan’s grin seared through her. He’d nod his head and she’d blush and blush as she shuffled by. Beside him, Louis beamed.

And they spoke to her, too—or at least Evan did—every single day when she passed them at lunch. “Sit with us today, Lesovik?” He’d suggest, arching an eyebrow, as, every day, her face blossomed with color.

In middle school, she’d spent the day staring down at the tiled floor, her textbooks clutched to her chest as if they could shield her true self from the world. Now she wore the skittish expression of a frightened animal. It got so that the hairs on her arm would stand on end at even the passing scent of boys who smelled like them—the scent of their unwashed clothing just barely masking their animal perfume.

She wondered if this had happened to Adam. Had he walked through these halls, growing lusty at the sharp, clean odor of girls? What had it stirred inside him? She felt wild, unbridled—dangerous. At school her heart was always sounding in her throat like a jar full of trapped lightning bugs, striking the glass with their frantic black wings, struggling to get out.

Image courtesy of Ryan O'Hara

At home things were better. She got there before Mom or Ted did, sat at the kitchen counter with a bag of potato chips and her geometry homework, and took a half-hearted stab at the odd-numbered problems before copying down all the answers from the back of the book. She began to breathe more easily. By the time one a.m. rolled around, her heartbeat felt nearly normal. Up too late, reading her dog-eared books until the stars began to gasp out in a graying sky, she was no longer on guard.

She told herself that’s why she missed it at first—a tiny smudge of light between the dark trees, flickering and flaming in the distance. It could be seen from her bed, between the gnarled branches of the sap-sticky peach tree that leaned against her open window screen.  If only she’d looked.

But Elsie didn’t look up. She wouldn’t let herself. She only turned the pages, telling herself there was no fire, no boys out there in the woods.

Elsie kicked at the stones and sticks that clutched the edge of the highway. In skips and shuffles, the days were getting shorter. Overhead the tree branches shivered, now only half-clad in brown, brittle leaves. Elsie shivered too, every time a car drove by, too close, she thought, making her leave the firm surface of the road for the brambly ditch beside it. When a branch full of tiny thorns whipped at her bare arms, she stopped and winced, yanking them away from her soft flesh. They left little holes in her, beaded with blood.

Her instinct was to bring her forearm to her mouth, to taste it. Even her own blood raised bright colors in her mind. The fuzzy yellow of the potato chips she’d scarfed down at lunch. The iron-brown of the stew Mom had made last night. Her own wild, verdant flavor. Her arm was still pressed to her lips when the old Lincoln Continental rattled up beside her.

It was a big blue boat of a car, its sidewalls and hubcaps all eaten by rust. Billows of white smoke coughed out of the exhaust. The window rolled stutteringly down. It was Evan who cast one arm out of the window, his brace-fenced smile gleaming.

“Hungry, Lesovik?”

Elsie dropped her arm, rubbing the spit off on her T-shirt. She peered into the car’s dark cabin. Louis gazed back at her from the passenger’s seat. He wasn’t smiling, not this time—in fact, he looked away.

But Evan was as confident as ever. “Hop in,” he said, gesturing to the backseat with his thumb. “We’ll drive you home.”

Elsie gazed into the dusky distance. She had almost a mile left to go, and the feeble sun was already sinking into the horizon. It was dangerous for her to be out after the sun went down. There was no telling what would happen. So she reached for the door handle, and slid herself, and her backpack, across the leatherette seats.

“Buckle up.” Evan’s blue eyes smiled at her in the rear view mirror. She fumbled for the lap belt; the metal parts clicked into place.

“Okay,” Evan said. She could see his hand grip the gearshift as he eased the car forward, but his eyes remained on the rear view mirror, remained on her. She shrank down in her seat, gazing out the window.

“That’s my house!” she said, as they rolled right on past it. In the mirror, Evan’s eyes narrowed.

“I know, Elsie. I just want to talk to you first.”

“Evan . . .” Louis looked at him, his thick lips slack, his mouth open. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Elsie could hear her pulse in her ears.

“Relax, Louis. We’re just going to talk.”

But they didn’t talk, not for a long time. Elsie stared desperately up at the ceiling where the fabric had begun to collapse from the foam. Meanwhile, the Lincoln made its way around the neighborhood.

“You know,” Evan said at last, “we used to hang out with your brother.”

Elsie didn’t answer. Part of her wanted to reach up, to tear the beige fabric away like paper. Part of her wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

“Out in the woods,” Evan added, like it was important. “Your dad showed me how, you know. And Adam and I showed Louis.”

They know, she thought, feeling offended by the idea of it. They’re not even family! Elsie’s breath was shallow, wrong.

“We still go there at night. Every night, really. So,” Evan said, “if you ever want to join us—”

“Evan!” Louis’s eyes were like the pieces of coal that Elsie used to find out in the woods—uneven, craggy, and sharp. “Adam said not to.”

“I think,” Evan said evenly, “that Elsie can decide that for herself.”

For a moment Louis stared at Evan. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, turning forward again. All Elsie could see was the back of his head over the top of the bench seat. The crown was spotted white with dandruff.

“So, Elsie,” Evan said again. There was something eager, hungry about his tone, like he’d been warming up to this. “If you ever want to join us out there, we’ll be waiting.”

Image courtesy of Taylor McConnell

There was a throbbing fist in her throat. She wouldn’t have been able to answer if she’d wanted to; it choked out all her words. But they’d circled back around to her house by then. Evan parked the Continental at the curb. He reached one of his long hands back over the seat and opened the door for her. He remained frozen there for a moment, unbuckled, sitting up, and staring. Without looking at either of them, keeping her eyes down at the floor of the car, at the hamburger wrappers and soda cups, she slid out of the backseat. Then, before she slammed the door shut, she scrambled back in to get her backpack. Blushing. Holding it against her like it was some precious part of herself.

“See you,” Evan’s smile was steady as he pulled away. But it wasn’t a sweet smile. It was sharp, all metal and teeth.

Elsie stood there for a long time. She watched the Lincoln’s exhaust dissipate into the chilly air until she couldn’t really be sure if it had ever been there at all.

That’s when the dreams started. She’d be in her room, or it wasn’t her room, or it was sort of her room but the back wall, the one where the window was in real life, opened to a jungle of paper-cut trees and felted tigers. It was hot, always too hot, and the boys were there dressed in their coats and nothing else, and their skin was cold against hers, cooling. Usually it was Louis who touched her, who slid his pudgy hands down the curve of her back while Evan watched, laughing, saliva streaming from his jewel-encrusted mouth. But sometimes they didn’t touch her. Sometimes they did something else. And she’d bring her hands up to her eyes to see that the skin had torn away, exposing sinews and blue arteries and blood vessels curling like vines.

On Thanksgiving, dessert was a narrow slice of store-bought pumpkin pie, paired with the first cup of coffee Elsie had ever been offered. She poured so much sugar in that the bottom of the cup was coated with beige by the time she drank it down. After, Elsie made her way to her room. Dinner had been too much for her, but now Ted and Adam were on the dishes and Mom was fretting over Gram and the second story of their house felt dark, empty, and wonderful.

Elsie didn’t even bother turning on a light. Instead, she went to the window and threw it open. The air was ash-scented. She could see something flickering in the distance—a neighbor, she told herself, though she knew it was a lie, must have been burning leaves. Inhaling deeply, Elsie pulled up her desk chair and sat in front of the open window for a long time, until the hairs on her forearms were all raised, until the world outside, save for the firelight, was almost black.

Elsie didn’t remember falling asleep, but when Adam rapped his hand against the door, she woke with a start. “Come in,” she said, rubbing her palms over her face.

“Man, it’s dark in here.” Adam flicked on the light. Elsie looked at him, blinking rapidly.

“What are you doing?” her brother asked, his gaze drifting to the open window. Then he added: “Can I come in?”

“I already said you could.”

Elsie got up and moved stiffly to her unmade bed. When she reached it, she let herself fall into the wrinkled sheets, pressing her face against her flower-speckled pillow case. Then she peered out of one barely-open eyelid. “What do you want?”

Adam pulled the desk chair over, sat in it. His long limbs formed jutting angles. Her father had sat the same way, his hands or elbows on his knees as if he were too big for whatever chair he sat in. It felt strange to see him in Adam. Elsie never had before.

“Just to talk. How are you?”

“Fine.”

For a moment neither spoke. The wind rattled through the window screen, stirring Elsie’s curtains.

“If you’re thinking about hanging out with Evan and Louis,” Adam finally said. Elsie could tell that he was picking his words carefully, turning them over his tongue. “I don’t think you should.”

“Who said I was thinking about it?” Elsie reached under her pillow for her book, held it over her head, flipped through the yellow pages.

“I just thought you might be. And I don’t think you should. What those guys are into . . . it’s not for you.”

“Says who?” Elsie demanded. She let her eyes meet Adam’s for a minute, only the briefest minute. He almost cracked. She could see it in the way his groomed eyebrows ticked up.

“There’s a reason Dad never took you camping, you know.”

She winced. She’d been only seven when Dad died, too young for anything but their walks together in the woods out back. She’d only watched as Mom had photographed Adam and Dad and Evan beside Dad’s pick-up truck. The trio had geared up in the camouflage Mom had bought for them at K-Mart, even though Dad told her not to waste the money. Too little, Elsie had told herself, hanging back. I’m too little for hats and guns and sleeping bags. For the hunt. But was it true? Her heart felt suddenly bound up by a tangle of vines and thorns.

She turned to him, searching his shaved face. What he was saying about Dad had to be a lie. Elsie knew it. And Adam must have, too. But if she said so—if she bared her teeth at him and growled the truth—then she’d be giving him power. Letting him win. Her brother’s eyes were open wide beneath his carefully combed hair. He’d cut it short; now it fell around his eyes in a tousled mop-top. He looked different. Freshly scrubbed. Clean.

Finally, Elsie spoke. “When did you become such a prep?”

Adam raised his hand to his mouth. He rubbed it over the short stubble that, even now, was pushing through his white skin. Then, not speaking, he rose, still rubbing his lips and jaw, and left, closing the door behind him.

Elsie sat up on her knees and turned out the light.

But later that night, even though Adam had warned her to stay away, Elsie heard the weight of his feet on the stairs, and then, after a pause, heard the screen door slam in the kitchen below. She rose to her window just in time to see the figure of her brother rapidly retreat from the motion-sensing porch light and head toward the fire, still shifting, in the distance.

Mom took Adam to the train station late Sunday morning. On Sunday night, Elsie woke sticky with sweat, her chest moving hard with the force of her breath. Evan. Evan had been feeding her something, something lumpy and barbed with spines. She turned her head away, kept her lips clamped shut, but somehow he reached through the skin of her cheek, craning his hand inside and burying it deep within her.

Her eyes scanned the darkness. Out the window, her eyes found light.

Elsie moved across her room as if propelled by some other force, like she was a wind-up toy that someone had let down to a tabletop. She stood by the window, hugging herself. Then she opened the rattling screen. She reached her hands out and touched the bark of the peach tree, her old friend. When was the last time she climbed it? Years ago. But her body knew what way to shift her weight, which branches would cradle her bare feet as she shimmied down.

It was early December. Each blade of grass across the lawn glittered with frost. The air was cold, harsh, and clear, and though Elsie wore just a pair of flannel shorts and one of Adam’s T-shirts, she hardly noticed.  Instead she marched ahead, fumbling for only a moment with the latch of the gate until swiftly she lifted herself over it. In one movement, just like that. Even though she refused to even try to climb the ropes in gym.

Elsie’s bare feet broke twigs, sunk into cold mud. She passed all the old markers: the creek bottom, dry and hard; the toppled picnic table where some other boys, years before, had scrawled spewing cocks and pot leaves and women with breasts like balloons. Soon, the light in the distance was huge and dancing. Elsie crouched behind the rotted-out stump of an old tree. And she watched.

Image courtesy of Jops (flickr.com)

At first there were only silhouettes. Then there was Louis, his round form gamboling before the fire with surprising grace.  And Evan, swinging his lithe body from an overhanging branch. They danced and played under flags and streamers. Elsie could see the curves of their muscles, their bellies. They’re not wearing any clothes, she told herself, and forced herself to feel something like shock, but then her eyes adjusted to the red, blazing light and she could no longer deny the truth about what she was seeing.

The streamers that laced from one branch to the next weren’t streamers at all. They were long ropes of wet flesh, entrails, and they were dripping blood on the leaves below. The pair of flags that skipped on the late November wind above was made of skin. One was a sallow pink; the other brown, and Elsie could see the firelight shine through the holes where the eyes and mouths and small, neat nostrils should have been. Each trailed hair from a headless scalp like seaweed stirred by the current.

And Evan and Louis weren’t just naked. No, not only that. They’d pulled off their skin, exposed what lies beneath. Their bodies were covered with damp pelts of scraggly hair that seemed to darken even the soles of their long-clawed feet and the palms of their hands and every inch of their flat faces, except for where their mouths opened wide, too wide, showing an armory of teeth

But their eyes—their eyes were the same. Sharp familiar stones in furred faces. Those eyes that had watched her in the lunch room and in the hallways and down the road. She knew those eyes.

Elsie felt something move against the inside of her bare ankle. Ants, she thought first, shaking her foot. But she looked down and saw a dark line tracing her inner thigh. Her period. She’d forgotten completely.

“Shit!” she breathed, and, standing, pressed a hand between her legs. In that moment, that split second, she’d forgotten about the eyes. But they hadn’t forgotten her. When she looked up, they were on her.

It was Louis’ voice that she heard, close to her ear though she hadn’t moved. We smell you. Elsie froze. Evan and Louis froze, too. Only the fire moved.

And then Elsie ran. She ran so hard that her bare feet snapped branches beneath her. She ran so fast that she surprised even herself. She ran and ran until she left the woods and slammed shut the gate, then the screen door, behind her. She locked the door and fastened the chain. The warmth of her house felt like a slap. Her arms and legs tingled like she was on fire.

She went to the bathroom and turned on the lights and the vent and locked the door behind her and ran the water as hot as it would go and climbed in to the bright porcelain of the tub. She squirted out a handful of apricot scrub into the palm of her hand and scrubbed her breasts and stomach until everything ached and burned.

There was a knock on the door.

“Elsie?” It was Ted. Ted’s voice. “What are you doing up?”

Elsie’s fingers were tangled through her long hair, the hot water streaming down her face.

“I had a bad dream,” she called back. Ted mumbled an answer. She heard him move away from the door. He was satisfied by that. Just like he should have been, because it was true, wasn’t it?

Like always, Elsie hid behind her book the next day during lunch, holding it like a shield between herself and those searching eyes. What did she have beside her books? Nobody, nothing. Not Mom, not Ted, not Adam. Not Dad.

Only Evan. Evan and Louis.

The bell rang. As her classmates rushed around her, jostling her chair as they passed, Elsie stared down at the cracked spine, the dog-eared pages. And she drew in a breath, holding it, avoiding the final look Evan gave her before he left the cafeteria. She knew what she had to do.

Tuesday afternoon, Elsie didn’t wait to be invited. She walked right up to Evan and Louis. Their eyes were the same—one pair of turquoise-blue marbles, the other dark as onyx—but different. Soft. It was Louis who reached over, Louis who pulled out a chair for her. Elsie sat down, dropping her backpack on the floor beside her.

“So, Lesovik,” Evan said. But his tone was no longer coy. It was nervous, edgy. “You’ve decided to join us.”

Elsie looked at him for a moment, for a long moment.

And then she rolled her eyes.

She didn’t bother going to sleep that night. Instead, she was still, her hands folded over her chest like she was dead. She felt herself breathing, coalescing, gathering her courage.

Adam would be home in twelve days for winter break. By then it would be too late.

Image courtesy of Marlon Malabanan (flickr.com)

At midnight she rose and went to the window. The moon was a perfect round disk in the sky. She thought that if she reached up, she’d be able to palm it, to hold its bright heat in her hand. Instead, she opened the window and climbed down into the yard. Her breath fogged the air. She went to the gate, opened it. She couldn’t even hear her own heart.

In the woods, Evan and Louis were waiting. Their skins hung heavy in the windless air like the shadows of statues, unmoving. The boys—her boys—had captured a doe for her. They wrenched their elegant claws through the downy flesh of its throat. Blood sprang out like a fountain of garnets. Both boys went to work, lapping it up with their strange mouths as though they were leaving tender kisses across the creature’s chin. For a moment, the doe’s legs still kicked. And then she was still.

They hadn’t seen Elsie, not yet. She was crouched behind the old tree stump, the one where, when she was young, her father had shown her secrets that she’d almost forgotten. How to take off your soft outer flesh. How to make mischief. Adam had always been better at it, felling the animals in one swift movement. But when her Daddy had asked her to sweep her claws over the old wolf’s throat, she’d just stood there and cried Elsie knew now that it  wasn’t because there was something wrong with her. She’d just been too little, that’s all.

But she wasn’t now.

Elsie rose, tugged off the old, tired t-shirt that had once been her brother’s and left it lying limp as a pelt on the muddy ground. She stepped forward, her small breasts bared to the December air. They hadn’t seen Elsie, not yet. But soon they would.

She fixed her fingers to the thin flesh that covered her clavicles. She dug her nails, her chipped, painted nails, in as far as they would go. And then, wincing—of course it hurt; it always hurt—she tore her human skin away.

Phoebe North is a 20-something writer originally from the fantastic–and possibly mythical–land of Central New Jersey. She currently lives in New York State with her husband and her cat (who just might be the most intelligent being in the household). You can follow her on the web at www.phoebenorth.com or via twitter at www.twitter.com/phoebenorth.

Originally published on February 13, 2010 “The Weather” is one of the first publications on YARN. Writer Giulia Caterini effortlessly captures the moment when bad news is unavoidable – be it the climatic or familial kind. More than anything, though, this is a gripping character study. The fact that there are no names for these characters, and the setting is ambiguous, makes this more apparent and more intense. Most importantly, Giulia being only 16-years-old at the time gives this story greater credence and weight. 

BTW: Giulia tells us that she was accepted to Duke University for the fall.  Congrats, Giulia!!!

By Giulia Caterini

It’s debatable whether or not he is aware that he’s doing it, but it’s so glaringly obvious. He makes you want to scream laughter into his face so hard that it would make the white, soft skin flap behind his head. You’d turn him into a Looney Toon, but with all the pain of real life.

“Sit, sit,” he says, going to great lengths to emphasize the fact that what he is about tell you must be broken to you carefully.

“What is it Dad?” you ask, as if you don’t already know, exactly. He pauses for drama, over-exaggerates it, and then solemnly declares that it started raining pretty hard.

Photo courtesy of AlmazUK (flickr.com).

“Yes. Yes it has,” you respond.

You should be patient. Why should you blame this relatively innocent man for the nature of mankind? Because this is what humans do: they talk about the weather. We are fascinated by the cotton candy clouds with shades of white, grey, orange, and red drifting in the blue backdrop of the sky. It’s simple, really: we see the pretty colors and we get distracted, and then we forget what we really wanted to say.

“Oh man, why, would you look at that rain?” he says.

He must think you’re stupid. Maybe it’s because of your age, but since when has “young” been a synonym for “clueless”? It’s the other way around, I’d say: people tend to retreat into a little cage of idiocy and denial the older they get, while when they’re young they are able to see the rawest, most blistering truths around them.

“Yeah, it’s raining pretty hard,” you concede.

“The Weather Channel was wrong, they said it would rain on Wednesday,” he continues, “but would you look at that? It’s pouring!”

“Sometimes they get it wrong, you know.”

Maybe he knows that you know. How could he not after all? Sound has a way of meandering into rooms unapologetically; it never knocks first. It never asks you, “Hey, your mother and father are arguing again, wanna hear? Wanna hear them sling insults at each other, their shrill voices vying for attention in narrow hallways? What about that time when your mom broke the lamp? That was a great sound. Do you wanna hear it? Or, I know, how about her footsteps, only one set, as she slowly retreats to her bedroom while your father stays on the couch? Huh? Wanna?”

Manners, that’s it. Sound should really get some manners.

“Oh I know that, but today it was just ridiculous,” he drones on, “last night they said it was going to be sunny! Sunny!”

“Sunny would have been nicer, I guess.”

That’s what makes him so mad; that they got it wrong. Weathermen are the only human beings who have the gift of predicting the future. It doesn’t matter that it’s something as trivial as the weather; the simple fact that they can take a peek suddenly allows them to make claims of omnipotence. Today, the weatherman, with all his mystical powers, took a tumble and fell. If he doesn’t know what’s going to happen, then no one does. We are doomed.

“And to think that I was planning to take a stroll later today, maybe take the dog with me,” he continues.

Come on, why doesn’t he say it already.

“Guess you’re gonna have to cancel that plan,” you respond.

“Yeah I mean, there’s just no way now, hopefully tomorrow won’t be the same.”

“Maybe it’ll stop in a couple of hours, you should just wait a little.”

Spit it out. Spit it out.

“You think?”

God damn it, he has too much to say to talk about the weather.

“Well I don’t know, but I hope, I guess.”

“You know what, I think you’re right, when it rains this hard it usually stops pretty soon.” Say it, come on, come on, say it, say it. “I’m giving it another half hour.” For the love of Christ just say it, the pleasantries have been exchanged, the weather has been discussed, on to what he really wants to tell you now. “Another half hour, and then it’s gonna start drizzling. Then it will stop.”

You nod. There’s a pause.

Finally, finally. You’d think that you’d want him to delay this as much as possible; it’s truly amazing how impatient you are to go through one of the worst moments of your life.

“Son,” he states and takes a deep breath. He’s going to say it. He’s actually going to say it.

“There’s no easy way to tell you this, so I’m just gonna come right out with it.”

He pauses again, breathes in. Come on. Come on.

“Your mother and I are getting a divorce.”

You’d think that hearing it like this, the truth consolidated into a statement ready to punch you in the face would shake you, despite that fact that you knew it already. You were expecting some sort of life-changing reaction, maybe hatred towards your father, maybe the opposite, or some moving outburst of tears, or something or other of the sort. You must be sorry to disappoint yourself.

You see a worried, expectant look on his face. You nod several times, then look at him blankly. He probably wants you to say something now.

So you respond, “Hey uhm, I think the weather people said it might rain tomorrow also, but I guess they’re wrong since it rained today; maybe they were just a day early.”

About Giulia: She is sixteen years old, born in Rome, Italy. Her family moved to Curitiba, Brazil, when she was around six years old. Since then, she’s lived in Austria, Greece, and in Italy again.  She then lived in New York City for one year, and subsequently began her high school career in CT at Greenwich Academy, where she is currently a Junior. She loves writing; she has attended the UVA Young Writers Workshop, has been recognized at the regional level by the Scholastic Awards (Gold Key), has been a finalist at the IMPACs, and has been published in “Connecticut Student Writers.”

Emily Deibel slams her reader in the driver’s seat by her engaging use of the second person. This rare narrative style makes the viewpoint of the main character compelling, heartbreaking, and uncomfortably real. This story gripped YARN’s editors and YARN’s readers as it became one of our most commented-upon stories to date.

Time flies and it’s hard to believe that we published this gem over a year ago. I’m so pleased to put “In the Spotlight” back…well….in the spotlight where it belongs. Enjoy!

By Emily S. Deibel

Any minute Ms. Morris will call the girls up on stage.  The cattle call.  You certainly feel like a large heifer standing under the hot lights with Ms. Morris telling everyone to turn right, then left.  This time you suck in your stomach and hold your breath because all the boys in the drama class are staring right at you.  They see your double chin and how tight your jeans are compared to Anna Daly’s, who stands to your right.  Sweat prickles on your brow as the boys whisper and from somewhere in the dark auditorium someone moos.  You suck in your gut even further and tilt your chin to hide the second one.

When Ms. Morris posts the cast list for the school play you are not surprised to see Anna will be Eliza Doolittle in this year’s production of “My Fair Lady” Once again you get cast into the part of the old mother, this time as Mrs. Higgins, who doesn’t even sing a duet, let alone a solo.

Your voice is better than Anna’s, your friend Julia tells you after class.  You shrug and laugh and say you could never do a cockney accent, especially in front of a whole audience.  You tell her you get too nervous on stage to be the star and enjoy doing these small parts that no one really cares about.  You say you like to make the audience laugh, but inside you know that they’re laughing at you, not at Mrs. Higgins.

The morning news reports statistics about how good exercise is for the body.  In the grocery store they line the magazines so that every picture flashes you a smile, and there are muscled arms and firm stomachs and people together enjoying life because they are normal and they love to be active.  The normal people get the lead.  That’s why most of the magazine covers have an actress smiling back at you.

You think that if you get up at five-thirty every morning to speed walk when it is dark and cold and it seems like dawn will never come, that you will have time to lose the love handles before they take measurements for Mrs. Higgins’ costumes.  Anna works out two hours every day without fail and she can run the mile in six minutes.  Her jeans don’t rub together at the thighs when she walks down the hall and there is always a boy standing with her at her locker before and after school and even in between classes when she gets her books.

You need one more gym credit before they’ll let you advance to senior status next year and the education counselor puts you in a weight training class.  You’ll love it, she says.  You stare at her yellow teeth glowing between pink painted lips and mumble, Why not?  If you’re lifting weights then you’re probably not running.  There’s nothing you hate more than running.

The first day convinces you the gym teachers are conspiring to get you to drop the class.  There are eighty people enrolled and because there are only seven girls, your spotter was Matt Karson, from the wrestling team, who could probably bench press you, thunder thighs and all.  You can’t even lift the bars alone and after one week you moan every time you have to climb stairs or put your arms above your head to wash your hair.  The gym teachers only shake their heads and stare as you huff and wheeze to lift the bar, to revive the muscles you must have somewhere.  In the locker room before class you swap exercising tips with the girls in your stall because they are all trying to get in shape and lose ten pounds even though you look at their ribs poking through their skin and wonder where those ten hideous pounds are. You position the locker door to shield as much of you as possible and hope no one notices the twenty pounds you’ve been trying to shed for the past three years.  You figure you’ve lost and gained more than all of the girls in the class put together.

But still you push yourself during the “surprise” mile run at the beginning of class that the teachers have suddenly decided to make a permanent fixture in the training schedule.  You even feel like all of the other normal people when you run the entire four laps and the football and basketball jocks walk the last one.  You pass the coaches standing at the sidelines, with clipboards in hand to record your time, and smile because you finished and you were not last.  Your chest is burning and your side feels like it’s going to split wide open, but you did it and you are normal.

Wasn’t that a great run? someone asks and you try to slow your breathing and say that exercise always makes you feel a hundred times better even though you want to kneel on the ground and lose your lunch.

They say variety is the spice of life and you wonder if that’s really true when you quit speed walking to try aerobics and switch to an elliptical machine two months later because you think that a change in routine will make you want to get out of bed in the morning.  You tell yourself the real reason you haven’t skipped a workout is because it was getting easier and you felt better and not because Ben Waldrom, a boy in your drama class, asked Julia if you were changing somehow.

On opening night he stands in the wings after your last scene with a hand outstretched.  You are high on the adrenaline rush that comes with first night jitters and the applause.  You wonder if he is on the same high or if he is purposefully waiting to congratulate you and not just anybody that comes off the stage.  Everyone is best friends on opening night so it’s hard to tell.  You give him a high-five only to find he grabs your hand and squeezes it.  The audience loves you, he says.  You thank him like a robot and can’t think of anything else to say.  Are you going to the cast party at Nancy’s? he asks and you nod and say of course like you go to parties all the time, when really no one had told you about the party.  Good, he says.

After the show you skip the congratulations from family and friends in the lobby and hurry home to wash your hair and find some outfit that doesn’t make you look like you swallowed an entire watermelon.

Nancy doesn’t seem surprised to see you on her doorstep and takes you and Julia inside.  Some of the cast offer congratulations on your big scene as you pass.  After months of work on and off stage, you are closer to your goal weight, closer to these people smiling and enjoying a successful night.

Music blares from a stereo system and a table nearly groans under a cache of chips, pizza and cookies.  You give Julia a worried look and she punches you in the arm and says relax.  She knows that you’ve been eating carrots and lettuce like a rabbit for two weeks and that you skipped your workout that morning because you were nervous about the play, yet she steers you to the table and shoves a plate full of tortilla chips dripping with cheese and a mountain of Oreos into your hands.  You ask for a glass of water and Nancy looks at you as if you were asking for the moon and directs you to the pop at the end of the table.

You say thank you because everyone is eating and laughing as if they ate like this every day.  You know that they don’t have to measure their cereal every morning and count the grapes they eat with lunch.  You know that normal people don’t care if they eat an Oreo because they can stop after one and just one night of junk food won’t show up on their thighs the next morning.

You stand with Julia next to the wall and laugh at all her stupid jokes when really you are watching the door.  You want to see what Ben will do when he walks in and he sees you there with everyone else in the cast.  When he finally comes Anna ambushes him in a corner and they talk in hushed tones like they’re sharing special secrets.  You see him look your way and hold your breath wondering if you had just imagined if he had held your hand and asked you to be here tonight.

Finally he walks toward you and nodding at Julia, asks if you prefer blonds or brunettes.

Brunettes, you say without thinking because the butterflies in your stomach have morphed into a distracting swarm of hornets buzzing in your brain.  And then you realize his hair is blond.  His smile freezes on his face and there is disappointment in his eyes. Your tongue feels numb from a thousand stingers.

He says good, but like he wasn’t expecting that answer.  He says he knows Scott Lewis was interested in asking you out and since you like brunettes he could set you up.

Scott Lewis, the fattest boy in drama class, coupled with the fattest girl.

How perfect, you think as you walk to the table and spoon another large helping of nacho cheese over your already soggy chips.  On the first bite you suck the cheese right off the chip so hard you can even taste the grease from the tortilla.  Dinner, consisting of one slice of whole wheat toast with ¼ C of tuna, hold the mayo, was so long ago.  All the sudden you have a headache and that hornet swarm you get when you’re nervous is now in your arms and legs and you are shaking all over as you chew the next chip and then the next.  You stop tasting cheese and you don’t even know that three cookies have disappeared as well.  They don’t taste like anything anymore. You almost don’t even chew anymore, just swallow, swallow, swallow.  The body is a machine, they say, that needs fuel to keep running.  You know they are wrong.  Sometimes the body is a black hole that needs to be filled.  Only does it ever really get full?

Mom tells you she wants to get in shape and asks if you will go walking with her at night.  You both know that you haven’t exercised since the party.  She is only trying to help, but that doesn’t make you feel any better when you have two siblings who were born twigs and grew up to be beanpoles and you resemble a short stump.  You shrug your shoulders in agreement.  If you don’t walk, you won’t fit in your costumes for the final three nights of the play this weekend.

You walk together on the road that circles the town cemetery because that’s where the entire neighborhood goes to run and walk.  Sam Halson and his friends roller blade there every Wednesday night and you hope he has sprained his ankle or something this week and doesn’t come because you are there with your mom and everyone at school will probably know because Sam has a big mouth.

You count One, Two, Three, Four after every lap and it doesn’t make the time go by any faster and it never seems shorter and your body never feels different.  You are told that after twenty-one days of doing the same thing you can form a habit, but experience has proven this is a lie.  You wonder when you will consciously stop thinking about forcing one foot in front of the other and smile while you exercise like Denise Austin in all her DVDs.  Even the fat people on the “Weight Watcher’s Walk at Home” DVD smile and laugh like they are having the time of their lives and exercising is their favorite thing to do.  Someday, you keep telling yourself. Someday you will be like everyone else and you will be happy if you just keep getting up, going out, and torturing your body like all the news reports, doctors, and gym teachers tell you to.

Mom thinks you should both run your last lap around the cemetery before going home.  You don’t say anything, but leap into motion because it’s Wednesday and you hear roller blades surfing asphalt somewhere behind you.  And you are younger than your mom and if you were really normal you could outrun her.  Come on, Mom, you say as you dash out in front of her.  Run faster.  Run faster, it’s good for you.

Friday morning Ben sits with Anna during cast notes like he has all week.  You pretend to ignore them every time Anna flips her hair over her shoulder when she’s really looking back to see how many girls are watching, how many girls are wishing they could be with Ben.

Surprise pep rally today, Ms. Morris tells the class.  The student body president has asked the drama department to perform a song from the play.  We’ll be doing the Ascot number, she says as the bell rings.

You wait until almost everyone is gone before shuffling to Ms. Morris at the piano.  You tell her you’re not in the Ascot number.  While everyone else in the cast is on stage pretending to watch horses racing across the audience, you are ditching a parasol while a crew member unhooks mic one before you jog behind the backdrop in time for crew member number two to jam mic two on the back of your skirt for the following tea scene.

Ms. Morris drops sheet music and purses her lips.  She’d forgotten about you.  Join the cast anyway, she says.  Stand in the back.  Deep down you know you want to, but there is also anger there.  Anger that she made you Mrs. Higgins who doesn’t sing.  You tell her it’s okay.  You’ll sit and watch.

Before you turn to leave, she cuts deeper.  Loosen up on your last monologue, she says.  You’ve been too stilted the last couple performances.

You sit on the second story of the field house during the pep rally and watch the drama class below.  They form a single line, smoothing black and white dresses, tapping tall hats in place, flexing satin gloves.  You’ve never seen them from this perspective. They all look poised, elegant, the same.  And you are sitting up here in a 1X sweatshirt, filling two seats.  You wonder why you sacrifice the time for this stupid class.  Screw next year.  You should take more AP classes for college anyway.

You arrive late on closing night.  Ten points off your term grade, Ms. Morris reminds you as she sprays your hair gray.  You pretend you don’t care, collect an armful of makeup from her cubby and head to the girl’s dressing room.

Ben is about to go in the boy’s dressing room as you pass.  You pretend to take stock of your makeup pile to avoid looking him in the eyes.

Hey, he says and his voice stops you as effectively as a brick wall.  Where were you yesterday?

You play stupid.

At the pep rally, he says.  Our show isn’t a show without Mrs. Higgins.

Ben had missed you.

A beginning of a smile tickles your lips when Julia bursts through the girl’s dressing room door and shouts loud in your ear, Mrs. Higgins returns!  She drags you into the bowels of the girls’ domain and you only have time to give Ben a weak wave.  He is still staring at you as the door shuts on his face.

We missed you at the pep rally yesterday, Julia says, chorused by the six other girls sharing your mirror.

You mumble something about not being in the scene and Julia tells you not to be such an idiot.  We almost didn’t go on at the rally without you, she says.  Then Ms. Morris told us you didn’t want to participate.

A senior helps apply the gray and white wrinkle lines to your brow, transforming you into Mrs. Higgins, and admits it’s hard to read you sometimes.  You do such an amazing job on stage, she says, and then a curtain comes down and you disappear in some dark corner in the wings.  You know she’s speaking metaphorically and shrug, wishing you had a literal curtain to hide behind.

Of course a senior wanted your part, she continues, but you are the best Mrs. Higgins we could have got.  Friends? she asks.

Your smile comes back full force.  Friends.

Wait until senior year, she continues.  With that smile and that voice of yours, you won’t be third string any more.  You’ll be in the spotlight.  Yeah, chime the others, patting you on the back.

There are similar groups around the other mirrors.  After two long weekends of coming early and staying late, this last show brings back all the excitement and belonging you caught a glimmer of at the cast party.  Girls are curling each other’s hair, helping with zippers, reapplying mascara after crying through the first application.  Everyone hugs the seniors who will walk out on stage for the last time, hug you for being the perfect Mrs. Higgins.

You are glowing.  It’s not just the hot lights raining on you, casting a slender silhouette across the stage, a figure you’d kill to have in real life.  It’s being here on this stage.  The audience shifts in the dark, unseen, waiting upon your every word.  But it’s not your words.  It’s Mrs. Higgins’.  Under the lights you are not the dumpy brainiac.  You are anything you want be.  With gusto you haven’t felt since tryouts, you lay into your final scene and tell Professor Higgins to basically get over himself.  It usually garners a few laughs, but tonight, the crowd claps and cheers so loud it’s deafening.  You go girl, shouts someone in the audience.

There are friends waiting in the wings, and they pull you in.  You are the middle of a bear hug, with one of Ben’s hands squeezing your shoulder.  Maybe he’d been sincere when he said the audience loved you.

Senior year.  Yes, everything will be different senior year.  Summer’s a perfect time to get in shape.  When you come back, no one will even recognize you.

There’s pizza in the green room after the show.  Ms. Morris lets everyone have a short party before striking the set.  You see Ben dithering over pepperoni or sausage and mushroom.  You fill your cup with Coke to the brim, wondering if he’s taking so long because you are.  He smiles.  You smile.

Senior year, you tell yourself as you take your plate over to Julia.  When you are normal and pretty like everyone else next year, then you’ll take that vacant seat next to Ben’s before Anna claims it.

Cheers, you tell Julia as you raise your third slice of pizza and tap it against hers.  She laughs and says something about the diet going out the window tonight.

Tomorrow, you tell her, watching Ben get up from his chair and leave.  You fill the frown on your face with another bite of greasy cheese and crust.

There’s always tomorrow.

Emily Deibel lives and writes in Michigan, where she manages to cram in writing time when her four kids are asleep or outside playing.  She graduated with a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University and is currently a member of SCBWI.  Her work has been published in “Lighthouse” magazine and in 2008 she placed third in the SCBWI-MI novel mentorship program.

By Michele Tallarita

photo © 2008 Ollie Crafoord | more info (via: Wylio)
“I want to be abducted by aliens,” Attison said as he shoveled a spoonful of tuna into his mouth.  He liked to eat it right from the can, and then slurp down the saltwater afterward.  He leaned over the wooden picnic table so that his face was inches from mine.  “Green-skinned, saucer-flying aliens.”

“Why, Attison?”  I put a chip in my mouth and kept talking as I crunched it.  “My question is why.”

“An excellent question.”  He smiled, showing off the scrap of tuna wedged between his two front teeth.  “And I’ll answer it.”

“That’d be great.”

“The possibility!” he shouted.  “I want to be dissected!  Probed!”

“Probed.  Hmm.”

“I want the syringe in the neck!  The tubes in the arm!”  He thrust his spoon into the air.  “I want to be taken apart!”

I kept eating my chips, saying nothing.  Seeing that I had nothing to say, Attison dropped the hyperactivity and went back to spooning himself tuna, looking dejected.  He thought we were dating; anytime I didn’t respond to his insanity he thought we were having a fight.

Attison and I were lifeguards at the local pool, which got a lot of traffic but also had a high poop-evacuation rate, courtesy of the local toddlers.  That was why on a hot and sunny day like today two lifeguards could be found sitting at a picnic table instead of at their chairs by the water.

I was not a good lifeguard.  To tell you the truth, I was barely a proficient doggie paddler, but Mr. Hacker needed one more lifeguard and I needed a summer job and resumes are really just works of fiction.  No one had drowned yet.

Speak of the devil.

“Yo!”  Mr. Hacker waddled out of the pool house, his face clenched in an expression of constipated fury.  “Rob!  Get your rear end over here!”

I’m Rob, by the way.  I’m also a girl.  Rob is short for Robin, the ridiculous name my mother chose to bestow upon me the day I was born—or hatched as my name would seem to suggest.  I just couldn’t understand how a mother could peer down at her rosy-faced newborn and name it after the thing that crapped on your windshield.  So I went by Rob, to spite her and to spite myself, because I was already a tomboy and with a name like Rob people start thinking you’re the type that wears a tux to prom.  I wasn’t that type, by the way.

I hauled my rear end off the bench and walked up to Mr. Hacker, who was standing with his hands on his hips.  His stomach looked particularly bountiful today.

“What’s up, Hacker?” I said.

“Green slime.  Locker room.  Get to it.”  He was a man of few words.

I shrugged and entered the pool house, a place where all of the world’s nastiness got together and partied.  My bare feet sloshed on the wet concrete floor, picking up pieces of toilet paper as I went.  Attison trailed behind me.  Some people would wonder about green slime in a locker room, but I once saw a cockroach die and rise again in there—and since then I’d thought of it as a place of netherworld miracles.

Photo courtesy of Shaun Dunmall.

My stomach did a flip as I entered the locker room.  There was green slime everywhere, steamy and smelly and draped over everything like a blanket from hell.  I stared, open-mouthed, brokenhearted at the buckets of elbow grease it would take to scrub this place clean.

“You clean it up, Attison.”

He pulled up beside me, his mouth dropping open.  Green slime on the wooden benches, leaking out of the slits in the locker doors, oozing from the cracks in the tile floor.  It reeked of sewage juice.

“I’m not touching that puke fest.”

“I don’t think it’s puke.”

He shook his head.  “It’s puke alright.  Possibly alien puke.”

“Alien puke.  Great.”

I went to the towel closet, and shoved a fresh one into Attison’s hands, and grabbed one for myself.  Without stopping to dwell on the slime’s many potential identities, I walked to a bench and started scrubbing.  I’d learned from past slime explosions that the stuff gets smellier the longer you let it sit, sort of like milk.  Clean it up quick or submit yourself to exponential smelliness.

Attison and I spent the next three hours becoming well-acquainted with the slime—its tangy sewer scent, its mucusy texture, its love of sticking to your fingers.  I scoured it, I splashed it with water, I touched it, I smelled it—heck, I even tasted it.  Cleaning up a slimed locker room is not for the faint of heart.

It was five by the time everything was totally de-slimed.  In the corner sat a pile of green-tinged towels, all of which seemed perfectly capable of lurching to life at any moment.  Best not to hang around.

“Later,” I said to Attison.

He grabbed my shoulder.  His messy brown hair was sprinkled with tiny slime orbs, his pale face splotched with slime patches.  “Swamp monsters.”

“Huh?”

“You and me.  Loch Ness.  Just wait, Rob.”  He nodded his head wildly and sprinted out of the locker room.  “Just wait and see!”

The whole drive home the smell of green slime wafted out of my bathing suit and filled up the car.  I rolled my eyes.  It figured that green slime had exploded in the locker room.  It figured that the smell of it had stuck to me like zombie perfume.  It figured, it figured, it figured.  That was just my life.

The house was quiet when I came in.  I went to my room, shed the slime-doused bathing suit on my way to the shower, and afterwards pulled on something that didn’t smell like toxic waste.  It wasn’t until I went back downstairs that I noticed my mom sitting in the living room—the TV off, the lights off, her eyes open.

I flicked on the lights.  “Hey,” I said.

Mom kept staring for a few seconds before she noticed me.  She looked like me if I was forty-six years old and frequently depressed.  More wrinkled.  Sort of yellow.  Skinny.

“Robin,” she said, using the name I hated.  “They’re coming for me.”

I cocked my head and thought of Attison.  “Who?”

“Shadows.”

That was her way of saying her recent happy period—and by happy I mean she frowned only about half the time and ate Lucky Charms—was over.

“Shadows,”  I sighed.  “Great.”

As I lay in my bed that night, I thought about the slime dripping from the lockers and squiggling through cracks in the floor.  I could still smell it, somehow, as if it had seeped into my hair follicles.  Lovely.  That was sure to attract the male species.

Not that I was looking for a boyfriend.  It wouldn’t seem right to drag someone else into a life that involved things like green slime, Attison, and a mother whose sleeping habits mirrored a vampire’s.

Mom hadn’t always been like this.  I could remember a time when she really was happy, when she would teach a yoga class and then take me to the park.  Being the highly intellectual four year old that I was, I would make her pies out of sticks and mud.  “Ooh, yum,” she would say, and a smile would spread across her whole face.

I couldn’t say exactly when Mom’s smile disappeared, but it seemed like the more shelves I could reach, the further she sank into darkness.  That was what scared me the most about her depression—its mystery.  It seemed to have come out of nowhere, like a fairy curse.  Like a random explosion of slime, except in her heart.  I often wondered if it was my fault, since it was no secret that my arrival into this world hadn’t been on the agenda.  Mom never even talked about the guy who was my dad.

The next day was largely normal, except for the fact that I sprouted fins.

Attison and I were back on duty, perched on our lifeguard chairs and watching the local kids splash around in the pool.  Don’t worry—I may have been leaden in the water, but Attison was a regular dolphin.  He’d save any potential drowners.

The kids burst into a splashing contest, and I growled inwardly as a wall of water crashed over my head.

“Hey!” I yelled.  “Nix on the splashing!”

Since I’m a highly intimidating girl who can’t swim, the kids settled down instantly while I shook water off myself in dog-like fashion.  It was a cloudy day, cool and sort of breezy.  I rubbed my arms to warm them up, my palms grating against my…scabs?

photo © 2009 Patrick Hoesly | more info (via: Wylio)
I glanced down in alarm.  Green, fish-like scales coated the outer edges of my forearms.  Panic rushed through me; my heart kicked into high gear.  I touched the scales with a shaking hand—they were hard, like plastic, except attached to my flesh.  In the crevices between each scale oozed droplets of slime.

“Attison!”

I swung down from my chair and galumphed to where he sat.  Raising my arms like a boxer ready to fight, I showed him the scales.  “Something’s happening to me!”

Attison examined my scales in a curious way and then lifted his own arms—he had scales, too.

“It’s just like I thought,” he said, sounding very fascinated and distant, as if he personally wasn’t growing fish parts.  “We’re going to become swamp monsters.”

“What?”

“I saw it on the SciFi Channel once.  This happens.”

I started crying, but just then Mr. Hacker came out of the pool house and yelled at me to quit making conversation and sit my rear end down.  Not wanting to be fired, I whimpered my way back to position and spent the next hour wetting my fins with my tears.  How could this happen?  Why me?

Attison approached me at the end of our shift, as I packed up my stuff in the locker room.  There was a ball of crying mucus in my throat that I was barely keeping down, and my eyes were swollen and drippy.

“Why are you so upset?” Attison said, leaning against the locker next to mine.

“Gee, let me think.  I’m turning into a swamp monster!”

“What’s so bad about that?”

I slammed my locker shut.  “I don’t know, fins?  Scales?”

“And probably flippers.”

I coughed.  “I can’t handle this, Attison.  I don’t want to be weird.”

He laid his hand on my cheek.  I noticed that he was standing freakishly close to me, his tuna-scented breath punching me in the nose.  “Weird,” he said, “is beautiful.”

I smacked him in the head and stormed out of the locker room, my tears falling freely as I climbed into my car.  Weird is beautiful?  I jammed the keys into the ignition and jerked the engine to life.  Clearly Attison was demented.  Clearly he had never lived in a house where the only thing that weirdness brought was sadness.  I didn’t want to be weird; I wanted to be normal.

When I got home, I sat in my car for several minutes, gripping the steering wheel and taking deep breaths.  I had to pull myself together.  I had to tell Mom about the scales, and to act like I was okay with it—maybe then she wouldn’t freak out.  I wiped my face with the back of my hand and smoothed my hair.  Be cool.

I approached her as she sat the dinner table, slumped over microwaveable lasagna.

“Mom,” I said, gulping down tears.  “I thought you should know I’m growing scales.”

She looked up at me, dark circles under her eyes.  “Since when?”

“I don’t know.  It happened today.  Attison says I’ll likely turn into a full-blown swamp monster.”

Her forehead crinkled as she digested this.  I rocked back and forth on my heels, watching her thoughts brood behind her dark eyes.  “I don’t approve of this at all.  I forbid you to grow scales.”

I shook my head.  “It’s not exactly something I can control.”

“I am way too depressed for you start growing scales!”

I turned and ran up to my room, slamming the door behind me and panting wildly.  This was typical Mom.  So wrapped up in herself that God forbid someone else had a problem.  God forbid I turn into a swamp monster and steal her thunder.

I walked to the window and pressed my forehead against the glass, my breath fogging the window.  I knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it; she’d never been able to deal with anything but her own depression, which by itself sucked up every ounce of her attention.  That was why I couldn’t talk to her, why our relationship was a failure.  How do you talk to someone who’s too delicate to handle anything?  Not boys, not classes, not swamp monsterdom, not anything.

And now she forbade me to grow scales?  I knew that she was just looking out for me, that she didn’t want me to make what she perceived to be a stupid life decision—but how hypocritical was that?  Being grumpy and sad all the time didn’t seem like a very good life decision.  I fell into my bed, my head swimming with frustration.

The next day was Saturday, which meant I was off from lifeguarding.  I went about my usual Saturday activities—laundry, dusting, and downloading music—while my mom went about her usual Saturday activity—lying on the couch.  We had exactly one conversation, which went something like this:

“I forbid you to grow scales!”

“It’s going to happen no matter what you say!”

“You can’t actually want to grow scales!”

“Maybe I do!”

When I returned to the pool a few days later, I found Attison catching some swim-time before the crowds rolled in.  I stopped at the edge of the water and watched him.

My mouth fell open.  He was shooting underwater like a bullet, moving so fast he was practically a blur.  He went back and forth ten times before he popped up for air, a grin on his face.

I struggled for words.  “How—

He turned his head from side to side—he had gills, great slits running down his neck and pulsing rapidly.

My head spun as Attison hopped out of the pool and dripped toward me.  To my horror, I saw that the green scales now covered all of his arms, and his feet were more like flippers.  His face was noticeably greenish, as if he’d overdosed on broccoli.

“Let me tell you,” he said, still grinning.  “Being a swamp monster is such a rush.”

I shook my head.  “Holy crap, Attison.  What am I going to do if that happens to me?”

“Swim.”

“I can’t swim.”

He motioned toward the water.  “Bet you can now.”

My eyes went wide.  “No way.”

“Try it.”

“Attison, back off.”

“It’s really fun!”

“Attison.  No!”

He wrapped his wet, scaly arms around me and flung me into the pool.  First I dropped like cement, as I generally do in water, and flailed around until my butt tapped the floor.  Then, something cold flowed into my lungs.  I breathed.  Well, I gilled.

Sitting at the bottom of the pool, I opened my eyes.  My arms were entirely green and scaly, my feet flippers.  I inhaled again.  Breathing with gills felt just like regular breathing, just colder and a lot thicker.

I flapped my arms and rose, then kicked forward with ridiculous force.  Though I’m sure I didn’t look nearly as graceful as Attison, I soared through the chemically treated water like a high-speed jet across a clear, blue sky.

I whizzed from wall to wall at least fifteen times, bursting with exhilaration, before my scaly arms and flippered legs grew tired.  I rose out of the water with a grin on my face, my gills beating up and down on my neck.

Only to discover that I had an audience.  A crowd of people wearing bathing suits and carrying towels were either gaping at me or gaping at Attison, who stood outside the pool in all his swamp monster glory.

“They’re freaks!” somebody yelled.

“Monsters!”

“Disgusting!”

“Swim some more!  We want to watch you!”

Attison took three running bounds and jumped into the pool, landing in a dive that shot him all the way to the other side.  He leaped ten feet in the air like Shamu and landed back in the water.  Everyone cheered, clapped, and shouted derogatory names.

photo © 2004 Jason | more info (via: Wylio)
This went on for some time—Attison doing tricks and the crowd cheering—before Mr. Hacker stormed out of the pool house with a look on his face that could petrify wood.

“What in Pete’s name is going on out here?”

“We love your freaks!”

“We want to watch your freaks!”

Mr. Hacker spun to where they pointed, at Attison and me with our gills flapping in the wind.

“What the—”  He took a step forward, his stomach jiggling.

“How much does the swamp monster show cost?”

Mr. Hacker scrunched his forehead, then smiled.  “Ten dollars per adult, seven per child.”

And the green came out.

That turned out to be the first day of Swamp Monster Bonanza, which consisted of Attison and me swimming around and doing tricks while Mr. Hacker charged people money.  Somebody must have been spreading the word about us, because on that first day we had an endless stream of clappers and hecklers—Mr. Hacker kept having to throw people out to make room for more.

By that afternoon, Attison’s green skin was glowing as he flipped, twirled, and splashed for the crowd.  He shrieked with delight as they roared their applause.  I, on the other hand, found myself clinging to the edge of the pool and turning red as all of the people gawked at my gills and fins.  Attison took a break from doing tricks and waded up to me.

“You can swim now, remember?  You’ve got gills.  That makes it pretty much foolproof,” he said.  Mr. Hacker was holding back the crowds.

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you think it’s fun?”

“I guess.”  I sighed.  “But now all of these people think I’m a freak.  It’s going to be all over town.  Rob the freak.”

Attison grinned.  “Rob the freak!  Rob the freak!”

I lurched forward and flippered him in the gill.  “What are you doing?”

“The sooner everyone knows you’re a freak,” he said, rubbing his gill, “the sooner you’ll let go.”

He squatted in the water and then shot up, spinning so fast he didn’t even look like my friend, just a whirlwind of green.  The crowds jumped up and down, screaming his name.

As Swamp Monster Bonanza continued each day, it attracted more and more people.  A neon sign showing Attison in a muscle-man pose was placed on the front of the poolhouse, and there were even ads in the local paper:  “Come see Swamp Monster Bonanza:  A real live freak show!”  It ran for eight hours a day, five days a week, and at the end of each day Mr. Hacker took home sixty percent of the profits while Attison and I split the rest.  Getting paid for being a freak didn’t exactly thrill me, but my reservations oddly evaporated the first time Mr. Hacker thrust a fistful of money in my face.  After only a few weeks, I was swimming in cash.

“Careful driving,” Mr. Hacker said one day as he handed me my cut of the money.  “Wouldn’t want to damage those freaky fins.”

“They go away when I get out of the pool.”  I held up my arms to display their clear, pasty normality.  I may or may not have just spent the last twenty minutes blasting my scales away beneath the bathroom hand dryers.

He counted his money.  “Great.  Just great.”

Outside in the parking lot Attison was signing autographs.  He’d taken to spiking his hair straight up in a shark-like way and occasionally making “the swamp monster call”—a high-pitched, bubbly sound, somewhere between Chewbacca and a turkey.

“There’s going to be a movie about me,” he was saying as I walked past.  “It’s going to be bigger than Flipper.”

I waved at him sheepishly and hurried to my car.  Even as Swamp Monster Bonanza oozed with popularity, my discomfort with being a swamp monster remained.  Sometimes I did a few tricks for the crowd, but mostly I just stood off to the side and watched Attison dazzle everyone with his aquatic genius.  All of the pointing and shouting made my stomach turn.

When I got home I hopped into the shower, working a bar of soap over my slimy scales and being careful to keep shampoo out of my gills.  Yuck.  Afterwards I went downstairs, still a swamp monster because of the shower water, and saw my face peeking out of a newspaper Bonanza ad that sat on the table.  I walked over and started ripping it up with my fins.

“You’re not my daughter,” Mom said as she emerged from the living room, “when you look like that.”  She pointed to the scales and gills that remained from my shower.  At that moment, they receded into my skin.  I was normal again.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” I said, collecting the newspaper scraps and crumbling them in my fist.  “It’s kind of who I am now.”

“Stop doing the show.”

“Why?”

She pushed her hair out of her sunken face.  Since she’d said that the shadows were coming to get her, it had proven true—she’d been increasingly distant and tired lately, hanging around like a phantom when she wasn’t at work.  “I don’t think you need to flaunt the fact that you’re a swamp monster.”

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“Because it’s weird, Robin.  Do you want to be known as weird?”  She reached out and grabbed one of the newspaper scraps from my hand.  It was a picture of Attison clenching his scaly biceps, smiling from gill to gill.  I imagined him laughing as he twirled across the water, happier to be a swamp monster than he was to be a human.  Mom glared at his picture with disgust.

“Maybe I do.”

I grabbed the picture and rode a surge of frustration out the front door, stopping on the porch to huff, puff, and kick things.  My blood sizzled as I thought of Mom frowning at my fins, glowering at my gills.  Who was she to judge me?  Who was she to say that I couldn’t be a swamp monster?

I grumbled my way to my car and sped off toward the pool, not really sure why I was going—Swamp Monster Bonanza was done for the day.  When I arrived, the lights were off and the water was still.  I dropped my shorts, pulled off my T-shirt, and leaped into the pool in my bra and panties.

My body crashed into the water with a thunderous splash.  I felt my scales pop to the surface of my skin and my gills flutter to life on my neck.  I kicked with fury, pumping across the water at lightning speed.  When I reached the far end of the pool, I sprung into the air and flipped in the other direction, taking off toward the opposite wall.

I swam until my limbs burned, until my gills were sore with effort.  Then I rolled onto my back and drifted in the darkness.

“That was amazing.”

“Attison!” I croaked, flipping and crouching so that the water came to my neck.

He stood up from our picnic table and walked to the edge of the pool, fully human but still wearing his swim trunks.

Under the water, I crossed my arms over my chest.  “Get out of here!  I’m–” I struggled to describe what I’d been doing.  “I’m swimming!”

“You’re doing it.  You’re embracing the swamp monster.”

“I am not!”

“Didn’t it feel good?”

I blew air out my gills.  “No!”  I shrank deeper into the water, burying my chin.  “Yes.”

“I love you, Rob.”  He gazed at me from where he stood, his shark hair glowing in the moonlight, his pale face goofed into a smile.

“I love you too, Attison.  Now get the heck out of here.”

After that night, being a swamp monster proved less of a problem for me.  Attison and I began collaborating to come up with new, two-person tricks for the Bonanza—my favorite being a sort of swamp monster rumba.  Together, we made the crowds explode with adoration and disgust.  But even as they screamed, “Rob the freak!” or, “Take me to your leader!”—I found that I didn’t really care.  I was having too much fun.

One day during Bonanza, I was flying through the air after being catapulted by Attison, my arms spread wide and the wind in my hair, when I spotted a familiar face in the crowd—my mom’s.  When I fell back into the water, I strongly considered not coming back up.  Thankfully that was the end of our routine.  The thought of going on was mortifying.

Slowly, I bobbed to the surface and dared to peek at Mom.  She stood amidst the screamers and clappers with her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed.  I bowed my head.

“What’s the matter?” Attison said, splashing up to me.

I nodded toward Mom.

Attison glanced at her and then looked back at me.  “I’m sure she’ll be impressed.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hey.”  He put his fin on my shoulder.  “Want to do the rumba?”

I shook my head.  My green skin blushed as Mom continued to frown at me, a stern sentinel in the midst of the merriment.

“Let’s really impress her,” Attison said.  “Let’s do something amazing!”

He grabbed my hands and began to spin us round and round.  The water churned like a whirlpool.  Attison yanked harder on my arms, his cheeks flapping in the wind, and we spun even faster.  A funnel of blue water rose all around us, the sun glowing through the eye of the vortex.  Inside it, my arms felt like they’d snap as the centrifugal force wrenched me away from Attison.  I could no longer make out his face in the darkness of the vortex, though his laughter echoed in my ears.  The joints in my fingers screamed as our hands clamped us together.

Pop!  We flew apart.

I crashed into the wall of the vortex and got sucked under as it spun to a standstill.  When I paddled to the surface, I wiped my eyes to find the entire audience dripping wet and squawking indignantly.  Mom was nowhere in sight.

Attison popped up from the water, laughing maniacally and making the swamp monster call.

“Shut up!” somebody yelled.

“Go home, freak!”

“Actually, we’ll go home!”

Wet and angry, the crowd filtered into the pool house, no longer entertained by our freakiness now that they were drenched in it.  I hoped they hadn’t consumed any slime.  Sending an army of new swamp monsters into the world didn’t seem like the best idea.

“Robin!”

I whirled to see Mom walking toward me, her hair dripping and her eyes burning into me.  I exhaled.

“Robin!  Get out of that pool!”

I threw my leg over the side of the pool and heaved myself onto land.  Water ran off my scales onto the concrete.

“Robin–

“Rob.”

“Rob is a boy’s name.”

“Robin is a bird’s name.”

She threw her hands onto her hips.  “Well maybe you would have preferred Swordfish.  Would that have been better?”

photo © 2008 The National Archives UK | more info (via: Wylio)
“You know, Mom,” I said, shaking my head, “at least I’m making the best of what I’ve got.”

“By selling yourself to whomever comes along?”  Her voice rose.  “It’s a circus, Robin!”

“It’s fun, Mom!  You know, fun?  That thing you never have?”

“What I won’t have is a swamp monster for a daughter!”

“Maybe you never wanted a daughter period!  Maybe that’s why you’re so depressed!”  I panted angrily.  “Did you wake up one morning and realize you screwed up your life?  That you never wanted me?  Well, guess what?  Sometimes the slime hits the fan and you’ve got to learn to deal with it—

My stomach lurched.  I clenched my fists as something hot came rushing up my throat.  A humongous belch roared from my lips, and green slime sprayed out in front of me and splattered all over Mom.

We stood there, silent, dripping, shocked.

I sighed.  “I’ll get you a towel.  You’ll probably end up a swamp monster now, too.”

“Robin—

I walked off toward the pool house, my limbs burning with frustration.  What had I done?  Mom would never be able to handle being depressed and being a swamp monster.  And why had I said all those things?  If Mom had never wanted me, well, wasn’t that the kind of thing that was better left unsaid?

When I came out of the pool house with a fresh towel, Attison was talking to her.  He was fully human again, stroking his chin in an intellectual way.  I walked toward them.

“What does it feel like to be depressed?  Rob told me about it, but I don’t really understand,” Attison was saying.  I felt my eyes go wide.

Mom shifted uneasily in her sliminess.  “I don’t think I feel comfortable answering that, Attison.”

I shoved the towel into Mom’s hands and grabbed Attison’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

He shrugged.  “I want to know more about depression.”

“Attison,” I groaned.

“What?  I think it’s interesting.  I want to soak it up!”

“You’re so weird!”

“So are you!”

Mom laid her hand on my shoulder.  “Get in the car.  We need to talk.”

“We did talk.  I’m done talking to you,” I said.  Her face sunk deeper into sadness.  “Plus, I drove my own car, Mom.”

We all walked out into the parking lot.  Mom got into her car and drove away.  Attison walked me to my car, always the gentleman.

“I think I’m going to jump in the pool again before I go home,” he said.  “I’ve kind of been wanting to try driving while being a swamp monster.  I think it’d be cool.”

“You really wanted to know more about her depression?”

“Is that hard to believe?”

Sunlight bounced off his shark hair.  “I guess not.  But depression is such a dark thing.  You don’t know her like I do, Attison.”

“I shouldn’t want to look closer because it’s a dark thing?”

“In the darkness, what’s there to see?”

He leaned against the trunk of my car.  “I don’t know.  But I think it’s worth finding out.”

As I drove home, I wondered why I hadn’t ever asked Mom about her depression.  I guess it seemed like the kind of thing you didn’t talk about, that you dealt with alone.  In a way, I think I’d been trying to do her a favor—if we didn’t talk about her depression, it existed a little less.

I went straight up to my room when I got home; I wanted to be alone.  My bed called my name and I fell into it, stretching out my limbs.  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Mom was screaming my name from downstairs.  I stumbled out of bed and walked down.

“What’s up?” I said as I entered the kitchen.

She held the phone in her hand.  “Attison’s been in an accident.  Get in the car.”

My hands shook as I sat in the van’s passenger seat.  Mom was whizzing us down the highway, flying into the left lane to avoid slow cars and blinking the four-ways.

She glanced at me nervously.  “He’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

It was dark outside.  The lights from some distant buildings reminded me of alien spacecrafts, which reminded me of Attison.  I clasped my hands together and actually prayed that he would be alright.  Apparently the accident had been serious.  I couldn’t handle this.  He was my closest friend.

When we arrived at the hospital, Attison lay unconscious in a room stuffed with beeping machines.  There were cuts and bruises on his face, and his arm was in a sling.  I noticed, with an inappropriate chuckle, that his shark hair had survived the accident.  The doctors said they wouldn’t know the scope of the damage until he woke up.

I knelt down by Attison’s side and touched his hand.  A hurricane stormed in my stomach; my heart tossed and swirled.

“Does anyone have any tuna fish?” I said as tears gutted my throat.  “The smell might wake up him up.”

Mom walked over and touched my shoulder.  I shrugged her off.  I couldn’t think about anyone but Attison right now.  My hand wobbled as I stroked his.  The tears poured over and didn’t stop until Mom finally pulled me away and took me home.

The next few days were horrible.  I was so worried about Attison that I couldn’t bring myself to go to work.  Swamp Monster Bonanza, without its two stars, was forced to take a hiatus.  I huddled around the house and distracted myself with music and television.

Why had this happened?  Attison was probably the best person I knew; he didn’t deserve to get into a car accident.  It didn’t seem right that things like this could happen to people without any kind of warning, just popping up one day and changing everything.

Yet I knew that if Attison were awake right now, he’d be bragging about the accident, hamming it up as he told everyone about his near-death experience.  And people might love him for it, or hate him for it, but either way he was who he was.  He was proud of who he was, gills, flippers, scars, scales, and all.  Light and dark, without hiding.

One morning, Mom bumped into me as I came down the steps.  She grabbed my arm.  “We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“You didn’t screw up my life,” she said.  “I needed to tell you that.”

The shadows under her eyes sunk into her face, and there were deep lines in her forehead.  We stood in silence for a long moment.

“Then why are you so sad?” I said.

She held onto the banister and shifted her feet.  “I don’t know, Robin.  It’s something inside me that I can’t control.  Can you understand that?”

I crossed my arms, remembering that I sometimes had scales.  “I think I can.”  I hesitated, still thinking of Attison.  “What does it feel like, Mom?  To be depressed.”

She laughed.  “It’s hard to describe.  I probably don’t feel that much different from you, most of the time.  Just darker.  Sadder.”

“You can talk to me about it, you know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

We went our separate ways up and down the steps, but I sensed that we’d been tied together.  In a way we’d never been before.

I continued to worry about Attison, who’d been in the hospital for several days now and still had not woken up.  I rode my bike through town and passed the pool, where I saw that the kids of the neighborhood had returned—they were splashing around and jumping off the diving board.  Aside from the Attison’s muscle-man sign on the front of the pool house, Swamp Monster Bonanza might never have existed.  Yet I knew that the swamp monster inside me was real.

That night, I was sitting on the stoop when Mom popped out of the front door and sat beside me.  I hugged my knees and watched the sunset, which looked like a giant had puked red, orange, and yellow all over the horizon.  It was pretty.

“I just got a phone call,” Mom said.  My heart stopped.  “Attison woke up.  He’s going to be fine.”

I exhaled and was flooded with relief.

“But,” she said, and I held my breath again, “some people are interested in his swamp monster problem.  It looks like he’s being flown somewhere for testing.”

“Like they’re going to probe him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God.  He’ll love that.”

We both laughed.  The sun dropped closer to the edge of the sky, but even in the dark the air stayed warm and sticky.  August was always like that, but soon there would be fall and things would get colder.

Mom slung her arm over my shoulder.  “I’m glad your friend will be okay.”

I turned to her and nodded, and a big smile spread across her entire face.  I inhaled sharply, more shocked than if she’d suddenly sprouted wings.  Then, for no reason I can fathom, I started crying.

“What’s wrong, Robbie?”

I shook my head.  If I only knew myself.  Mom tightened her hug around my shoulder, and before I knew it she was crying, too.  Typical Mom.  No one was allowed to cry without inviting her.  I pressed my face into her shoulder.

Our tears mingled together, my arms wet with them.  Scales popped from my skin, and gills rose out of my neck.  I looked at Mom.  She was a green, scaly swamp monster, too.  We looked so similar this way—we were equally capable of freaking the heck out of the neighbors—but inside us were differences that I’d never understand.  We must have both realized that at once, because we hugged each other harder.

Michele Tallarita is a student of English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in “Go!” magazine and will appear in an upcoming anthology of science fiction.She is the 2011 winner of the Jean Corrie Poetry Prize, an award for Lafayette undergraduates sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Her favorite flavor of tea is honey vanilla chamomile. She also loves Star Wars, dogs, and Billy Joel. Though she has written heaps of short stories, most of them do not involve swamp monsters.

Why?

Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a response piece to the furor arising from her diatribe against violent and mature themes in YA literature, “Darkness Too Visible.” Gurdon’s response primarily backs up her original article, while taking it one step further. She argues that these dark books are, in a way, condoning this dark and violent behavior for young people. Gurdon concludes her defense with the words of Sharon Slanley, an Idaho high school teacher who notes that, “”You are naive if you think young people can read a dark and violent book that sits on the library shelves and not believe that that behavior must be condoned by the adults in their school life.”

Well, that’s a slippery slope pockmarked with rotting banana peels. I didn’t know that as a high school teacher I’m silently condoning witchcraft by having Harry Potter on my classroom bookshelves! Dang! Did I just support defying your parents, secret marriage, underage sex, murder and suicide by teaching “Romeo and Juliet”? OMG! I just approved sleeping around, copious drug use, and orgies by teaching “Brave New World”! Whoopsies!

Authors are artists. They write to make an impact…the good ones write well enough to inspire feelings of shock followed by healthy discussion.  It’s with this idea in mind (and a rather snarky desire to stir the pot a bit) that I kick off YARN’s re-release summer with the stories of boundary-pusher Jon Papernick.

I wonder what Ms. Gurdon would make of these…

By Jonathan Papernick

Skin for Skin

Photo Courtesy of ShutterBugChef (flickr.com).

Her parents were four hours up the Interstate celebrating her baby cousin’s bris in Albany, and the new boy from English class, who quoted Nietzsche to the impertinent Miss Meade, sat shirtless on the orange rec room couch. Breath laced with cooking sherry and Marlboros, he was irresistible. His pale, concave chest scored with angry red pimples spoke of punk rock and wild abandon; his lithe body, a knife ready to spring. They made out in the darkness, side one of Astral Weeks spinning on the turntable. He pressed closer and touched her cheek tenderly, the throbbing vein in her neck, the gently curved clavicle she broke in a fall from her first bicycle. He wasn’t a spastic mauler like the rest of the mediocrities at her high school, not a clueless virgin impersonating the porn stars the other boys watched on their parents’ VCRs.

She whispered his name, halting his progression.

His voice was entirely changed. “You want to do it?” He took his time flipping the hair from his eyes in a gesture meant to seem casual, and removed his wallet from his jeans’ pocket, lightly fingering the raised circular impression to assure her that he had come prepared.

She felt the cool bite of his necklace against her skin, the pendant swinging around back as her fingers blindly explored his body, and she imagined a tiny motorcycle or pistol, something fearless strung at the end of the chain. And now, as he reset the pendant to its proper position dangling at his solar plexus, she realized that the constriction in her throat was entirely in-voluntary, and that the delirious moments before its appearance marked the end of a lifelong dream. Even in the basement’s gloom she could see it clearly, iridescent, glowing dangerously between them, like something aflame.

“Take it off,” she said, reaching for the gold crucifix at his neck. It was heavy; the miniature corpse reproduced in minute detail weighed something like two thousand years in her trembling hands.

“Why? Are you Jewish?”

“My parents are.”

“That’s cool.” He laughed and dipped in for an-other kiss, but she wasn’t having it.

She told him to take it off or forget the whole thing. He hesitated, not sure she was serious, then fumbled with the crucifix before lifting it over his head with great difficulty, as if he were bearing the True Cross on his narrow shoulders, then tossed it across the floor.

“Now what are you going to take off?”

“I’m done,” she said.

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “What’s your problem?”

He told her he had come all this way by bus and she owed him something. She knew what happened to girls who went back on the unspoken contract that was made when they invited boys over with their parents out of town. She had always thought a cocktease was worse than a whore, and now she faced the sickening prospect that everyone in her school would know what she was.

She had been with non-Jewish boys before, one or two had even worn simple crosses, but nobody so bold as to parade a gory crucifix before her eyes.

She had naturally turned away from being part of an unlucky, persecuted tribe. The way she saw it, there was no gain in membership, only grief. “I’m not Jewish,” she had told her parents hundreds of times. “I’m a secular humanist and I believe in self-determination.” She thought ritual circumcision was barbaric. But now, as he slid his hand around her waist, she wished that she were with her parents and aunts and uncles celebrating her eight-day-old cousin’s covenant with God and the Jewish people. That was where she belonged, not here in a darkened basement with a nasty, crude boy determined to have his way.

He stood naked before her, wearing only a pair of white gym socks that smelled like they hadn’t been washed in a very long time. “Your turn,” he said.

Now in the dim light she saw it clearly against his livid thigh and it shocked her more than the appearance of the crucifix, like the emergence of a sea monster from a bathtub.

“No. I can’t.” She had never seen anything like it before, but had heard somewhere that uncircumcised men were likely to give their partners greater pleasure. She could not believe that.

He didn’t seem fazed by her reaction at all, as if no were simply a prelude.

“Come on. It’s getting late.” And then, “I can ruin you.”

She thought of all the combinations of what might happen if he shot his mouth off around school, and she determined that she would be better off doing it with him to avoid a public shaming.

There was just one small thing.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, climbing off the couch and heading for the stairs.

She returned a few minutes later with a sharp Japanese paring knife that her mother used for salads in the summer, a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of witch hazel. “Okay, I’ll do it,” she said. “But first you have to let me fix something.”

The Engines of Sodom

Photo courtesy of Fabian Reichert (flickr.com).

Hershlag’s mother hit him over the head with a loaf of rye bread when he told her he was going to catch a show at Ildiko’s instead of joining her at synagogue to mark his grandfather’s yahrzeit. “What’s the matter with you? Poppa’s been gone a year today and you’re running downtown to fill your ears with that trash.”

Hershlag raised a delicate middle finger, jumped on his skateboard and wobbled down the driveway.

Connor and McManus were crouched on their boards in front of the club sharing a sodden pizza sub when Hershlag rolled up. They had large black X’s drawn in marker on the backs of their hands and Hersh-lag was glad that he had had the foresight to mark himself before his mother went crazy.

In Hebrew school, he had been called Hershlag the Fag by the spoiled Forest Hill JAPs because he had acne and wore Lee, instead of Levi’s; the next year, he was a skinhead boozing with Eamon Sturtze and Little John at the Bulldog. Now he didn’t drink or smoke and hadn’t been to the Bulldog since it had been shuttered following a bloody after-hours brawl.

He wore his high-top sneakers, an oversized Walk Together, Rock Together T-shirt and sanctimonious black X’s scrawled onto his skin. “Gonna be a great show tonight, guys. I read in Maximumrocknroll that this band shreds.”

“You haven’t heard them?” McManus sneered.

“Sure I have. Their old stuff.”

McManus rolled his eyes at Connor. “What’s up with your arms, Hershlag?”

He hadn’t had time to throw on long sleeves before his mother chased him out, and now his slim, scarred arms were visible for his new friends to see. It looked like a melon baller had scooped out the tender flesh of his forearms, leaving the wounds to heal into cruel putty-like scars.

“Got rid of some old tattoos,” Hershlag said. “Drag-ons and skulls. Kids’ stuff. I’m thinking of getting some new ones, though. You know, a little bit straight and a little bit edgy.” He laughed, but his companions did not.

“Hey kids, don’t forget your fake IDs,” he quipped, trailing after them.

When old man Ildiko introduced the opening band the club was already smoke-filled and packed. Hershlag popped in his earplugs and yelled something to McManus, who was talking up a dreadlocked Asian girl who lived in Kensington Market.

McManus spun around and poked Hershlag in the chest with a stiff finger. “Go away, Hershlag.”

Connor scolded McManus and told him not to be so hard on the kid, then disappeared into the rolling wave of bodies.

Amid the clash of distorted buzzsaw guitars, Hershlag thought of his grandfather. Not long before he died, Poppa had approached Hershlag’s bedroom. The music was blasting.

“Oy!” Poppa Hershlag had shouted. “Like the very engines of Sodom. Turn that racket off, Adam. It will put me in the ground.”

Hershlag had laughed at how weak his grandfather’s plaintive “Oy” sounded compared to the militant, testosterone-fuelled Oi, oi, oi’s chanted on his record.

Then Poppa Hershlag had seen the tattoos and shaken his numbered arm at his only grandson. “Do you think this is a joke? Does this mean nothing to you? You are a lucky boy, Adam, to be born in the time you were born. Don’t ever forget that.”

Hershlag’s scars itched and he scratched absently at them as the band cleared the stage.

Despite the swelling crowd pressing around him, Hershlag felt a deep loneliness and shame. He missed his grandfather and had done nothing to honor his memory. Poppa Hershlag deserved more than a candle and a muttered prayer.

Connor stumbled up from the mosh pit, sweating through his T-shirt. “I’m going backstage to hang with the band. Wanna come?”

Hershlag nodded and followed Connor through the crowd, but he was stopped by a voice calling, “Look who’s back from the dead.”

“And with the straight edge crew,” a second voice added.

Eamon and Little John stood before Hershlag and Connor in identical oxblood Doc Marten boots, blue jeans and red suspenders snapped tight over their Fred Perry polo shirts. They were a couple years older than Hershlag and towered over him like fully grown men.

Eamon flicked Hershlag in the nose with a battered finger. Eamon’s head was newly shaved and a droplet of red blood had dried on the side of his scalp. “I didn’t think I’d see your sorry ass again. What happened to your tats? I thought we were brothers.” Then he gestured to the swastika tattoo on his forearm, the Death’s Head, the SS lightning bolts.

The next band was doing its sound check and Connor had to shout. “You’re a Nazi?”

“No, I’m not.”

“He’s a Jew. How can you miss a nose like that?” Eamon taunted.

Connor shook his blond head and burst through the crowd, shouting in disgust, “A Nazi.”

“Oops,” Eamon laughed and grabbed Hershlag’s skateboard. “I guess you’re out of friends, mate.”

Hershlag stood a moment, trying to find the right words, but he was afraid that he would cry in front of Eamon and Little John, and nothing – nothing in the world, he was sure – could be worse than that. In an instant, he was running down Bloor Street, in search of the tattoo parlor, giant snot bubbles bursting from his nose. He had his grandfather’s blurred blue numbers committed to memory and he was determined to become a living monument to Poppa Hershlag so that Hershlag himself would never forget.

Photo courtesy of Gary Alpert.

Jonathan Papernick is the author of “Who by Fire, Who by Blood” and “The Ascent of Eli Israel” and his just-published collection of short stories, “There is No Other.” Author Dara Horn wrote about “There is No Other,” “Every single story here delivers a knock-out punch that will leave you reeling long after you’ve put it down — and revising your thinking on what life and love really mean.” He has been selling his books via pushcart at farmers markets in New England as Papernick the Book Peddler. Papernick teaches fiction writing at Emerson College and the BIMA program at Brandeis University. To learn more, please visit www.jonpapernick.com or become a fan of Jonathan Papernick on Facebook, or visit his onlineshop.

Both stories published here also appear in Papernick’s latest collection of short stories, “There is No Other,” and “The Engines of Sodom” will also appear in a forthcoming anthology of very short literary fiction for teens, published by Persea Books and edited by writers Tom Hazuka and Mark Budman.