Concrete 2022

Concrete volume 40 LITERARY MAGAZINE

2022

CONCRETE L I T E R A RY M AGA Z I N E e s t.

19 8 2

Concrete Literary Magazine is an annual print journal produced in downtown Boston, amid blue-tinted high rises and blackened train tracks, at the tables of crowded cafes and at the mercy of flickering wireless internet. Established in 1982, Concrete, like Boston, or New York, or London, or Shanghai, is continuously evolving to match its urban population. Within the journal’s pages can be found a collection of prose and poetry that represents the dynamic nature of city life. All of the work found within the pages of Concrete is original work published by undergraduates of Emerson College under the Student Government Association and the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. All rights revert to the authors and artists upon publication, and permission to republish must be gained directly through the contributors.

Submissions: Concrete accepts unsolicited submissions from registered students of Emerson College, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and screenplays. Submissions should be delivered electronically via Submittable at concreteliterarymagazine.com/submit. Please also include a cover sheet that includes your name, Emerson ID, email address, phone number, and title and genre of the work submitted. Do not include your name within the document of the piece.

Emerson College 120 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02116 Copyright © 2022 Concrete All rights reserved.

FALL STAFF LIST EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PROSE READERS Isabella Rodriguez Hannah Braden MANAGING EDITOR Molly Weinrib Taylor McGowan Melanie Valencia POETRY EDITOR Iris Michelsen Theo Wolf Joseph Norris ASSISTANT POETRY POETRY READERS EDITOR Aricka Croxton Megan Grosfeld Sara Fergang PROSE EDITOR Gale Melendez Mackenzie Denofio Annalisa Hansford

ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Eva Harari Cecilia Ysabel Tan COPYEDITORS HEAD COPYEDITOR Maggie Lu Athena Singh Genevieve Cook

ASSISTANT COPYEDITOR DESIGNERS Hancine Mok Hannah Braden HEAD OF MARKETING John Coredor Jack Ferry Rifka Handelman

SPRING STAFF LIST

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PROSE READERS Taylor McGowan Hannah Braden Melanie Valencia MANAGING EDITOR Joseph Norris Cecilia Ysabel Tan Emelyn Ehrlich POETRY EDITOR Lily Labella Megan Grosfeld Ella Maoz ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Kia McKane Ethan Gold Zoe Rivera Gabriel Vazquez PROSE EDITOR Olivia Weiss Iris Michelsen POETRY READERS ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Sara Fergang Sally Beckett Annalisa Hansford Eva Harari HEAD COPYEDITOR Melina Gardiner Athena Singh Abigail Langmead ASSISTANT COPYEDITOR Ellen McCabe Hancine Mok Lynn Vecchietti HEAD OF MARKETING COPYEDITORS Marlene Mercado Maggie Lu Genevieve Cook HEAD DESIGNER DESIGNERS Hannah Braden Rifka Handelman John Corredor Charlize Triozzi

Childhood Memories Invade Melina Gardiner

Shadows

Mimi van Dyke

9

And a Happy New Year Jay Townsend

Anna Gauthier

erasure of recovery Shelbi Church

Saint Nick

Annie McGillen

10

11 12 14

Until You Weren’t

8

P

POETRY

PROSE

Y

16 24 30 44

My Own Being Maddy Monroe

Betsy the Cab Drive Lily Labella

Everything I Can

50

Maddy Monroe

Picture Day Zoe Rivera

How to Reach an Impossible Dream –after Jennine Capó Crucet Camila Arjona

Childhood Memories Invade What plays in the brain

Squeaking

without end is

from my little mouse

father’s blue

in the attic

like ice and thick hair on knuckles

when he says hi to you.

like—like—like—

Don’t touch the markers—

fear in a sister’s eye like a rolling head on the ground around—around—around— marbles in a skull— fingers clutching to the side of a pool.

Sweetly soaked strawberries, carrots in a cartoon bowl

8

Melina Gardiner

don’t you dare dare—dare—dare— draw on the floor.

Stiff jaws like blinds covering sunlight, like sunlight not there at all.

Still, you’re

after a strict order

folded into the armchair

and

sitting alone, and still

childish tantrums to be sold.

someone watches

Skating across gravel,

with father’s blue,

howling dogs

like too-loud movies and

shot— shot—shots—

a hand that crushes

pepper the night, cerements intermingled.

you.

Shadows

Mimi Van Dyke

I have now been without you longer than I had you.

Endless nights of masked charades and glass easter eggs That slipped freely through my fingertips Shattering ever so peacefully.

Yet my mind still is full— Yet my mind still is full— I am cast adrift By the remnants of you left behind in me.

The way I move Mimicking your footsteps Where I’m going; Merely following your shadow

I am cast adrift By the remnants of you left behind in me.

The way I move Mimicking your footsteps Where I’m going; Merely following your shadow The way you wrote your name, Is now how I write mine Crossing the T right to left, Slanted ever so slightly upwards.

The way you wrote your name, Is now how I write mine Crossing the T right to left, Slanted ever so slightly upwards.

We cannot be redeemed— We cannot be redeemed— I know that now.

I know that now.

Though the parts of you I still carry, Though the parts of you I still carry, Beg me to wonder and silently hope: Beg me to wonder and silently hope: Did I too, Did I too, Cast a shadow on you?

Cast a shadow on you?

I have now been without you longer than I had you.

Endless nights of masked charades and glass easter eggs That slipped freely through my fingertips Shattering ever so peacefully.

9

And a Happy New Year

Jay Townsend

And a Happy New Year It’s Christmas but there is talk of death in the air.

My great-uncle went three years ago My grandfather seems to be following And everyone else is talking about Cleaning out, cleaning up, making it Easier for the chosen executor.

I pass my grandmother, hear snatches of “She did everything right, she was younger than me and still—” And still.

I got few gifts this year: small things, from people who Barely seem to know me. I loved Christmas for the way it marks time, but sometimes the lines it draws Slope gently down into a soft earthen pit From which there is no return.

I will not stand at this grave and cry; there isn’t time.

Right now there is only enough time to smile and say, awkwardly, “Merry Christmas; I’ll see you next year.”

10

Until You Weren’t

Anna Gauthier

The last time I saw you, you were sitting in your chair, the one with the special braided seat cushion, at your dining room table. You were pulling out your deck of cards, daring everyone to challenge you because you were always the winner.

You were hugging me to your chest and, like always, you were squeezing me so tight I could feel my earrings digging into my skin. You were chewing on your toothpick and throwing up your hands when I finally won a game, but you were smiling when I said I learned from you.

You were loud, and you were gruff, with palms permanently calloused from working in the garden, but you smelled like the earth, and your blue eyes were smiling every time we walked through your front door.

You were a presence that filled every room, a constant in my life, an unshakeable ideal that you were going to be there forever.

I’ve been back to your house once. The garden is just grass now, the absence of vegetable rows mirroring the emptiness of your chair and its braided seat cushion, pushed neatly into the table. Its stillness is louder than you ever were.

I don’t know where your cards went. We played a different game at the dining room table, but my eyes kept drifting back to your chair, wondering when you’d pull it out, sit down with a sigh, and reach for the toothpicks.

Dad chewed on a toothpick after dinner and a shadow of you flashed across his features. For just a second, I could almost see you.

You were there. You were everywhere.

11

erasure of recovery Shelbi Church i.

ii.

i do not want them to notice so they don’t. i want them to notice the evidence is not visible and i still wear short the evidence. still, sleeves so nobody asks. instead they say how nobody asks. instead glad they are to see me in a swimsuit. my face hollows out like the center of a tree and what nests in my shallowness learns to eat me alive. my shallowness learns to eat me alive. this is the only thing that eats. praying to god this is the only thing that eats. praying to god begins to feel like driving to a familiar place and begins to feel like forgetting what the road looks like. i think that it’s forgetting the road. i supposed to feel like caring for myself and instead feel like caring for myself and instead it feels like avoiding damnation. i read nutrition facts like scripture and i read nutrition facts like scripture, praise hallelujah when the spirit of hunger praise hallelujah when the hunger possesses my body. i think that it means possesses my body. i think that it means i am doing something right. i think that it means i am doing something right. it means holiness is upon me in the concave of my face. holiness is in my face. on the first sunday of every month on the first i swallow my tongue instead of communion. swallow, the muscles in my stomach praise hallelujah

my stomach, praise hallelujah, when the band strikes their first chord

strikes. and the whole room swells like i do when i look in a mirror. when i look in a mirror i do not worry about the definition of divinity; i worry about divinity; i know it is zero calories so i swallow it i know zero calories like i am supposed to. there is nothing like i am supposed to. there is nothing sweeter than what they tell me is holy. sweeter than what they tell me is holy.

12

iii.

iv.

i notice the evidence. nobody

the evidence:

still,

learns to eat

alive. the only thing that eats, praying to god, begins to forget the road. i feel myself and read facts like scripture. praise the hunger. my body. i think i am something. right? on sunday, i swallow

my stomach; strikes

hallelujah!

a mirror. divinity is nothing sweeter than what they tell me is holy.

still

alive. the only thing god begins to forget. i feel like scripture. praise my body.

on sunday, i swallow

divinity,

sweeter than

holy.

v. i eat the god i forge. scripture, my body. i swallow.

13

Saint Nick

Annie McGillen

The light is sleepy, seeping through the windows from the sun reluctant to rise from her perch beneath the pines. Stairs creak beneath your feet, sockless, and you risk a glance at the shoes lined up in front of the cold fireplace. They are empty; the hollows of their mouths gape at you and you look away, swallowing the last faint glimmers of the dream you’d woken from.

Pouring yourself a cup of coffee in the unlit kitchen, you hear a whisper. Your mother stands in the doorway, crowned by the halo of her waking hair. Help me with these, she says, holding the oranges and the chocolates in an Aldi bag. You don’t know why but the Aldi bag is breaking your heart a little. You say okay. Carefully, you crouch before the waiting shoes, unwrap the bag and put two oranges in each. You think of your mother doing this year after year, before you started drinking coffee and when your bed still had the rainbow sheets. The magic in those mornings when you awoke to shoes filled with chocolate coins, the gold foil wrappings glinting in the half-light.

And even years later when the skepticism of your age told you better, there was still something luminous about the smell of the oranges and the magic of the shoes. But now here you are, crouched on your knees at 6:48 a.m. before the unlit fireplace, filling your sister’s boots, your mother behind you in her purple bathrobe watching you fondly with just the slightest trace of heartbreak in her eyes.

14

My Own Being

Maddy Monroe

“Oh my God, Laura. What are you doing?”

Jennifer shoves herself through the door, leaving us both trapped in the tiny hospital bathroom.

I crane my neck upward, toward the dirty mirror. Jennifer and I make quite the sight. Me, collapsed on my elbows, bent over the sink, mascara brush clenched in my hand, gloss sparkling on my lips, which seem so much thinner than they were a few months ago. And Jennifer, doing her best to grasp my fragile body.

It is not a situation that is unfamiliar. We have been here before.

Jennifer tugs me toward the exit.

“No.” I twist out of her hold and pull the brush back to my eyelashes.

“You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

“I’m almost done.”

She pulls the brush right out of my hand. It takes her almost no effort at all to pry it from my feeble fingers.

“Let's go back to bed,” she says in her pitying voice that I am beginning to know all too well. “I can do it for you.”

I give in and let Jennifer pull me from my position over the sink. We shuffle together into the main section of room 214.

Even in the middle of the day, there never seems to be enough light in here.

Sometimes, I have to strain to see my fingers in front of my own face.

I once told a nurse that. Instead of offering a lamp, or thinner curtains, she just reminded me that vision obstruction happens to a lot of patients at similar stages in this illness.

Once she gets me situated in the bed, Jennifer disappears into the bathroom and emerges with the makeup bag.

It was actually Jennifer who gave me the bag, almost a year ago at our studio’s gift exchange. She had tucked a little note inside.

To my favorite person to photograph. Merry Christmas.

—Jennifer

16

The note is still in my dressing room at work, assuming they haven’t cleared it out and given it to another model yet. No one at the studio is anticipating my return. Jennifer unzips the bag and reaches inside.

She knows this routine as well as I do now. The first couple of times, I had to talk her through it, but now she knows exactly the way I want it done. She puts the lightest amount of moisturizer on my flaky skin, followed by a layer of perfectly matched foundation. Well, it used to be a perfect match. My skin is much lighter now than it was when I bought the foundation. Jennifer goes on to cover the little blemishes with concealer. She dusts my cheeks with one of my many brushes. It’s soft. I’ve learned to appreciate soft things.

Jennifer doesn’t wear makeup, but she works through each of my products effortlessly. “Do you want to see?” she asks as she caps the mascara.

I nod.

Jennifer pulls out her phone and opens the camera on it so that it will reflect my appearance back to me.

On the phone screen is a girl staring back at me whom I don’t recognize, no matter how many times I look at her. Her cheeks are caving in, and there is a nasty red rash sprawled across her nose. The pockets beneath her eyes seem to be growing right in front of me. Her skin looks like ash—like if you sneezed, she would turn to dust and blow away.

Makeup can’t help me anymore.

It terrifies me.

I shove the phone back at Jennifer. Before she even has the chance to shut it off, I swing my legs off the bed.

“I want to get dressed.” I strain to get my feet to the floor. “Did you bring that dress? The one with the blue flowers? The one I asked you to pack.”

The makeup can’t help, but maybe getting out of my pajamas will. I’m not presentable in my tank top and sweatpants, but I will be in my dress.

Jennifer fights to keep me seated on the bed, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“You can’t get dressed, Laura. You’re not strong enough.”

I fight against Jennifer as a rebuttal. I push back against her, but it’s no use.

Jennifer is tiny, barely above five feet, and she still manages to force me back into the bed with hardly any effort.

17

She looks at me with a strange glance of pity and disappointment and exhaustion. “Laura, you have to stop.”

“Laura, you have to stop.”

“No, Mommy.” I wiggle my head, trying my hardest to get her fingers out of my hair.

“Laura!” She pulls my hair tighter. “Sit still.”

I listen and let her finish. There is no point in arguing with my mother, not when it comes to my hair, or the dresses she gets me, or the cream she makes me rub on my face at bedtime. She pulls my hair so tight that I can feel my heartbeat in my hairline.

“Ouchy,” I whisper. I try to be so quiet that she might not hear me. I feel her fingers slide one last pin into my hair. Finally, her hands are off of me.

I shoot up from my spot on the floor. I hop around the room, shaking out my tingling legs.

“Come on, honey.” My mother holds out an elegant hand. “It’s time to get dressed. You’re wearing the pink skirt today.”

“I don’t want to.”

She turns and stares down at me. “You have to.”

“Why?” I like the blue leggings and sparkly shirt I’m wearing now. I think Grandma would like them, too. After all, it’s her house we’re going to.

“You look pretty in the pink skirt, that’s why.” My mother motions to the long, flowy black dress she’s wearing. “I don’t like wearing this dress, it’s very uncomfortable. I wear it so that I look pretty, and that’s why you’re going to wear the skirt.”

My mother is very pretty. She’s pretty all the time, even when we’re going to the grocery store or leaving early for the airport.

Lots of people say I look like her, only littler.

“But why do we have to be pretty all the time, Mommy?”

“Because”—she kneels down so that her eyes are closer to mine—“people will not like us unless we are pretty.”

“Some people might.”

My mother reaches down and touches my cheek. “Not the right people.”

Jennifer's eyes blink back at me. They manage to break through the persistent darkness in the room. Her hands are still on my shoulders, simultaneously holding me up and holding me together.

“I have to be pretty.” My voice matches the rest of me, weak.

18

“Do you have any idea what's going on?”

I stare back at her. Of course I know what’s going on. I’m in the hospital. I’m sick. It’s lupus. I’ve been sick for almost a year now and in the hospital for almost two months. I know what’s going on. I have the facts and I understand them. I just can’t seem to prioritize them.

“Laura.” Her voice is soft and gentle; it sounds like her in every way. “You could die.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” she asks, still gripping my shoulders. “Because you’re not acting like it.”

I attempt to get her hands off of me. “How is a person who's dying at twentyfour supposed to act, Jennifer?”

“Not like this.” She sounds like she’s at a loss for words, even a bit angry. It shocks me. Even before this, when we were just normal friends, Jennifer never got mad. She’s different from my other friends and from pretty much every other person in my life. My mother was obsessed with making sure I was just as impeccable as she was. Boyfriends and girlfriends fell in love with my appearance and never bothered to fall in love with anything else. My friends only wanted to be friends because of my status, or my beauty, or my privilege.

Except Jennifer. She has never used me for what I have or what I look like.

She has only ever wanted to be my friend. Of course, I didn’t believe that right away. I still don’t know if I do, but she dropped everything when I got admitted and came here with me.

Maybe that’s enough.

It probably isn’t.

Jennifer stares back at me for a second, and then she stands up from the chair.

I watch as she throws her arms up. She’s practically taking up the whole room, even though there’s not much to take up, and she is doused in frustration.

I’ve never seen her like this before. It almost comes as a relief to know she can feel like this.

“I—Laura, I feel like I’m watching you stop caring about your life. You should be focused on fighting and healing, but instead you’re dragging yourself to the bathroom to do your makeup.”

19

“You don’t get it.” I scowl.

“What is there to get?”

Since we first met, Jennifer has always tried to understand this consuming obsession. She’s never been successful, and neither have I. Jennifer wants to understand it, but she also sees through it. Through my beauty, my obsession, my fear.

Every other photographer I’ve had has centered their work around my beauty, but not her. She just wanted to capture the world raw. She wanted to capture me raw.

I used to hate it, that she wasn’t concerned about my beauty. Sometimes, I still do. When I look back at Jennifer, I see the distress melt right off her.

“Call your mom, Laura,” she says. “Tell her you’re sick.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, I won’t.”

Jennifer finds her way back to her seat. “You need a support system, that's what the doctor said.”

“I have you.” I keep fighting. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Can’t your mom be here, too?” Jennifer reaches forward and grabs my limp hand. She does it gently; the touch is soft. It feels just like the way my mother used to grab my hand. I submit silence as my answer to her question. I know Jennifer is right, but the logical portion of my being has never had the power to guide me like the obsessive portion does. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering why I should even bother with this conversation. “She called after I won the award.”

I watch Jennifer think for a second. “The Amateur Model of the Year award?”

I nod and avoid making eye contact with her, knowing she’ll be staring back with disappointment.

“Jesus, Laura. That was nearly two years ago.”

I can still remember the entire conversation. I missed her call the first time; I was with Jennifer throwing a celebratory glass of champagne down my throat.

When I saw that she had called, my first thought was of her telling me not to drink, even past when I was old enough.

20

“It’s tawdry, Laura. When people remember you, they should recall your beauty and grace, not you stumbling into the bathroom to vomit in the toilets.”

But when I called her back, she didn’t mention the champagne. The call was friendly, a word that is hardly ever able to describe my mother's presence. She sounded happy for me. That’s what struck me about the call, that she seemed happy for me, and not just happy that I was reflecting a good image onto her. Still, I didn’t call her back like I said I would.

“You have to call her. Laura, you could die. I know you think she wasn’t a good mom, but—” “Don’t say that,” I tell her.

I’ve only shared the bad parts about my mother with Jennifer. I didn’t see a way to explain to Jennifer how much I truly adored my mother after she saw all the damage my mother caused. My mother was a bad listener, she was obsessive, and she forced herself onto me, but she wasn’t a bad mother. She loved me. I know she did; I was her everything. And now I’m this.

“Just call her, please.”

For a second, I strain to feel the sympathy that she is feeling. I try my hardest to feel it. But I don’t.

“No,” I assert. “She can’t see me like this.”

“Like what?” That little bit of fury has found itself in Jennifer’s voice again.

“Ugly!”

Jennifer's frustration fades, and she looks back at me woefully. She never looks at me like that when I’m vomiting, or being prodded by doctors, or visibly inching closer to death. She only looks at me like that when I talk about how I look, or about my mother. Those usually come hand in hand.

I don’t like her looking at me like that.

Without warning, that other half of me pulls ahead. The part of me that wants to call my mom. The part that wants to roll out of bed, go to the coffee shop, and not care that strangers are seeing me in pajamas. The part of me that wants to ugly-cry with Jennifer because we are so scared. The part of me that doesn’t want to torture myself every time I see my reflection. It’s a part of me I know so little about.

There have been times where I’ve felt this before, and it never lasts.

21

I know I don’t have long. I know my fear of imperfection will take over soon, and I don’t want to feel that again. I can’t.

One of my symptoms is loss of sensation, but right now, I swear I feel everything.

I can feel every single chemical compound that Jennifer brushed on just moments ago eating through my skin.

“Help me get to the bathroom,” I say without even willing the words to come.

“What?” Jennifer asks, confused and concerned about my sudden shift.

“Now,” I demand.

She doesn’t question it, just lifts me up and drags me across the room.

As soon as we’re in the bathroom, I start digging through the drawers.

“Laura, what's going on?”

I don’t answer. I just keep digging.

“What are you doing?”

“I need it off.” My words escape quietly; there's not enough oxygen for them to be prioritized right now.

I throw washcloths, mirrors, perfumes, toothbrushes, everything onto the floor of the bathroom. I dig and dig and dig until I find them: the makeup wipes.

Shaking, I use one hand to hold myself up on the sink and the other to pull a wipe out and lift it to my face.

“Agh.” My knees buckle. I’m on the floor.

“Laura.” Jennifer falls onto the ground next to me; she puts a tender hand on my shoulder.

Once again, we are oddities in the bathroom. Me, crumpled on a cosmeticscovered floor. And Jennifer hunched down next to me, holding my life while I’m not strong enough to do so.

“Help me,” I plead, staring at the wipe still tangled in my fingers.

She nods briskly. “Okay.”

Jennifer grabs the wipe and raises it to my face. It is cold and smells just like the rest of the hospital. She wipes off the layers of concealer and foundation, pulls off the mascara and eyeliner, erases the lip gloss and blush.

She finishes and throws the wipe away. She then sits on the floor cross-legged and pulls out her phone. Without consulting me, she turns it on, unlocks it, and

22

hands it to me.

I’ve always felt transparent around Jennifer. She seems to know everything without ever needing any sort of proof. She’s only ever heard me complain about what my mother did, yet, she’s handing me this phone right now, knowing I need to talk to my mom.

Today is not the first time Jennifer has wanted me to call her. She tried to convince me last year when I got admitted to the hospital for the first time, and before that to see if my mother would come to London with us, and the year before that on my birthday. I refused every single time. I was always so scared that I’d disappoint her somehow, even though I knew she was proud of me. That’s the thing about all of this: I do know that my mother won’t be disappointed if I fall short of perfection. I know her love for me is stronger than the pressure she puts on me, and I know I need her here.

So I type in seven numbers. I’ve been burying them for so long, but they float into memory so easily.

I lift the cellphone to my ear.

It rings.

I can’t wait to hear her; it has been so long, and I missed her voice so much.

Even when I remember the times she pressured me with her words, I miss her voice.

It rings again.

I should hang up. Calling her is no use; she can’t stop me from dying.

It rings a third time.

I don’t want her here. I can do this on my own; I’ll be all right. I don’t want her last memories of me to be like this. Our last phone call was good, and this could ruin it. It rings again.

“Anita Walls speaking.”

At this moment, I feel closer to death than I ever have.

“Mom?”

23

Betsy & The Cab Driver

Lily Labella

On Betsy’s first weekend in New York City, she hands a taxi driver one hundred dollars and asks him where he wants to go.

The cab driver’s name is Bashar Samour, and he is just four years older than Betsy is. He speaks her language using the phonetics of his language, and he does not understand Betsy’s whimsical proposition at all. His mouth purses, his eyes stretch, his brows descend. From the backseat, Betsy smiles, straight white teeth aglow.

“Sorry, where are you going?” Mr. Samour repeats, thinking he’s misheard her. He’s spent the last few minutes fretting about the New York Jets'” recent losing streak, wondering why he invests time in watching American football just to have his team lose every game.

“Wherever you want!” Betsy insists, casually fishing her iPhone out of her pocket. She examines her own image in the Snapchat app, finger-combs her curls, puckers her lips, admires how the filter cleanses her acne-sprinkled forehead, and then takes a selfie for her story. She cannot wait to tap out a detailed Instagram post about this adventure. Maybe it’ll gain traction, get her on one of those “Travel USA” pages.

Mr. Samour suspiciously regards the one hundred dollars Betsy has handed him. It consists of five unwrinkled Andrew Jacksons, fresh from an ATM. The ride has not begun; the odometer remains at zero.

“What do you want?” Mr. Samour asks while counting the money in his mind. He stares at this curly-haired white girl in the rearview mirror and wonders if she is on drugs. She looks rather healthy; she’s wearing next to nothing, so he’s got a pretty decent understanding of how healthy.

“I want you to drive me wherever you want to go,” Betsy repeats cheerfully, her green eyes boring into Mr. Samour’s brown ones through his reflection in the rearview mirror.

24

Mr. Samour has gas to burn, money to make, and only a few hours left in his shift. He thinks of his wife’s favorite American expression, “time’s a-wasting,”

and tries to piece together Betsy’s intentions. Perhaps this woman is a few pieces short of a puzzle? Maybe she is confused and thinks the exchange of money is at the beginning of the ride, when usually this transaction occurs at the end? Mr. Samour has helped people like that before. Betsy’s unblinking stare confirms this possibility for Mr. Samour. He pastes on a patronizing smile and locates an extra ounce of patience in one of his innermost drawers.

“I don’t need this now,” he says, slowly and carefully, hoping the words come out right. “You give this at the end.”

He twists around in his seat and extends the bills back toward Betsy, whose face collapses in dramatized disappointment.

“No, no, no, keep the money!” she exclaims, “and take me where you want to go!” She puts up both hands and sits back in her seat as though she is pretending that Mr. Samour has turned a gun on her. He interprets this as mockery mixed with charity, and all at once that last ounce of patience is gone, like a peanut that has been snatched from his hand by one of those spoiled city-park squirrels.

“Take this!” He shakes his head, raises his voice, and thrusts the soft green paper with the pictures of peculiar old white men back at Betsy. The cab feels smaller and the air less plentiful.

Betsy’s eyes widen and shift around Mr. Samour’s face, assessing every inch of his annoyance. This is not the spontaneous, out-of-a-movie response Betsy was looking for. Suddenly, all the horror stories she’s heard about girls in tank tops crawling home with stab wounds surge to the forefront of her mind, but even now she refuses to really believe them. No city could be so heartless to her, not when she has thirty thousand followers on Instagram,hundreds of Snapchat friends, and an increasingly fabulous TikTok following. This is a misunderstanding. She revives her smile, cautiously.

Cars drive past, full of piss and vinegar, exhaust pipes spewing pollution and lost time. This is a white-rabbit city: everybody’s late, and Betsy might as well be Alice. She does not know the ethics of this wonderland, nor does she know how large she is in Mr. Samour’s taxi. She doesn’t know that veganmilk lattes and KIND bars are the size-changing mushrooms of Manhattan,

25

allowing some to rise above others. She doesn’t know how small and perplexed Mr. Samour feels in the driver’s seat, robbed of all the power a driver’s seat should give him.

He crumples the money in his fist and takes deep breaths. He smoked a little in his youth and remembers nothing but the methodical breathing it required. He looks in the rearview mirror at Betsy’s all-American face, her “I wore braces” smile, at her Maybelline-smeared cheeks with faint constellations of freckles poking through. Her mouth is set in a reflexive smile.

She is extraordinarily pleased with herself, with her exposed belly button and her overconfident stupidity. They sit silently, stewing in hesitation and dumbness.

Mr. Samour squeezes his eyes shut and applies the pressure of thumb and forefinger until he sees fireworks behind his eyelids. The city continues its grouchy turmoil. Other taxi drivers flip him off for loitering in front of Penn Station.

Betsy’s mother suddenly pops into her head, speaking to her in that familiar Virginian twang. New York’s a real city, Betsy. It’s got a lot of people in it. You’ve got to watch yourself. Don’t pull any stupid acts, okay? This causes Betsy’s smile to slide right off her face, for it has dawned on her that goingagainst the grain on her very first taxi ride in NYC was a supremely stupid move.. Her sternum burns with shame. She wants to dramatically pop open the door and roll out into traffic, become one with these potholed, steam-spewing streets she has waited her whole life to walk along. She is eighteen, but still her mother’s unruly little girl.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” she mumbles, reaching over for the door handle to slink back out onto the sidewalk with her head hung low.

Mr. Samour’s mind has been turning over her previous statements. This child has asked him where he wants to go. Like most human beings, he just wants to go home. Home hasn’t been easy for him: home is hidden behind layers of green card paperwork, cheap apartments, and where are you from questions. He is from dry dirt mixed with the debris of explosions. He is from a land of olive trees, leaves unfurling tirelessly while people breathe like smokers and try to believe in peace. He is from the very pain of the word

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“homeland,” a place of unintentionally plein air kitchens like the one at his uncle’s house, where a missile had hit the backyard and the roof had fallen in on his cousins. They said it was God’s will.

Mr. Samour wants to go home to the beautiful woman he recently married, home to where they watch the Jets lose on TV while the neighbors fight on the other side of the walls. Those walls never disintegrate into plumes of plaster dust, but sometimes he dreams they will. Mr. Samour wants to go home, of course he does, but Betsy’s concept of home doesn’t translate to his.

Home is not something Betsy has ever feared for. Mr. Samour knows this because she is at the age where people in this country leave the homes of their parents to get wasted and take taxisback to their dorm buildings. He can practically smell the college on her. She asked him where he wants to go, but there’s really nowhere else for him to be at this moment. He will get off at 5:00 p.m,and drive home to eat dinner with his wife, and maybe his in-laws, too, if they come over unannounced again. Until then, this cab is where he’s going to be, and although Betsy cannot imagine him enjoying it, this cab is where he wants to be. From this leather seat equipped with the comfy butt cushion his mother-in-law insisted he use, Bashar Samour might as well own Manhattan. He trained incredibly hard to perfect this daunting process of transporting people. And while what he earns isn’t a flawless sum, it’s still something he earns. The money that comes to him from the backseat is never simply given; it’s bestowed on him for a job well done.

That pure satisfaction of doing and earning defines him, raises him above the aggravation of customers like Betsy.

So, if the girl won’t take the money back, he’ll just give her a ride. He puts the car in drive, checks his mirrors, pulls carefully and confidently away from the curb, and maneuvers into the middle lane.He feels like a true New Yorker. In the backseat, Betsy’s face lights up.

“Where are we going?” She asks.

“Nowhere. You say nothing, but you give me money, so we make a big circle.”

“Oh,” Betsy says. “All right.”

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She swallows the urge to insist he fulfill her daydream . Wouldn’t he like to drive to the aquarium or the Bronx Zoo? Wouldn’t he be interested in seeing the Empire State Building or even just stopping at his favorite pizzeria?

Maybe, she wonders, he would like to go home early, and maybe he would introduce her to his family. That was her fantasy: to give a stranger a good day, to feel like a hero. At first, she feels ripped off by this idea to circle the block. Once again, her life has failed to unfold like a movie; how can she post about this now? She watches Mr. Samour’s hands on the wheel of the taxi, watches the hard set of his mouth and the twitch of his beard, and something shifts behind her eyes. The stoplights appear brighter, pulsing with her humiliation. She wonders how she ever got the notion that she could post about something like this. This man owes her absolutely nothing. She is, after all, a guest in this vehicle, and they are still strangers. She does not even know his name.

Mr. Samour battles busy intersections and avoids slaughtering jaywalkers. They end up right back in front of Penn Station, and Betsy stretches her lips apart into a painful smile to avoid seeming ungrateful.

While driving, Mr. Samour thinks of how much he would rather be driving a little kid. He loves having them in his backseat, staring at their iPads, snoozing slumped against their caregivers, whining with their endearing crankiness, and smudging his windows with their curious fingers. All of that is adorable. He chuckles about their antics with his wife over dinner. It’s the obtuse teenagers, like this one, that he can’t stand. He often doesn’t bother telling his wife about their behavior, for she’s quick to curse them, and Mr. Samour doesn’t usually think their antics are worth the effort of her blasphemy. This time though, something ought to be said. This girl can’t go on thinking she’s adorable. He fixes her a hard stare through the rearview mirror.

“You cannot do this, you know,” he says, with careful enunciation. “Waste of my time. Waste of your money. Here.”

He hands her back four of the twenties and selects a five dollar bill from the change compartment next to the gearshift, keeping fifteen for himself. He figures he deserves that much for putting up with this twit, even if all he did was drive her around the block.

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“You take this. And you be good.” He performs something that’s in between a smile and a frown, some tight-lipped midland of politeness. It’s the same expression he uses when his wife tells him to put out extra place settings because his in-laws will be joining them for dinner again.

“Yes. I will. I’m sorry. Thank you, sir,” she manages to say. She closes her fingers around the money and scrambles out of the backseat, quaking with embarrassment.

If she had stuck around to hear what else Mr. Samour had to say, she’d probably romanticize the words as some sort of prayer, because she can’t conceive of a stranger cursing her. As she walks away, he mutters that Betsy should go and take with her sixty demons. He’s lost the desire to reserve any more patience for people like her.

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Everything I Can

Maddy Monroe

October 4, 2027 There are hundreds of photos sprawled out on my dining room table, and all I can focus on is one. A lanky blond boy is looking at me through the lens of the camera. He’s got a frail girl with wild black curls and paint-splattered skin wrapped in his sturdy arms. He’s looking right at the camera, but she doesn’t even notice. The girl was mad at him after the picture was taken, but she got it developed anyway. I know because that girl was me, eight years ago.

It’s hard to recognize myself now. Our image is faded and blurry around the edges. It’s obvious the photo was taken on a cheap disposable camera, one of the dozens I carried with me all through high school and college.

I don’t know how long I stare at the image before I’m pulled out of my thoughts.

Jake shuffles into the dining room with Tori asleep in his arms. I watch him carefully move to the couch, where he sets her little sleeping body down and covers her with a blanket. He’s so much better at the parenting thing than I am. I never would have been able to get her out of the car seat without waking her and pushing us both into a fit of tears.

Even with my eyes on him, I’m still thinking of the photo.

Jake is so different from the boy in the picture, and I feel so differently about both of them. There are dark days when a piece of me is tempted to find the boy, to pack a bag and leave all I’ve built here for him. But there are other days when I remember how Jake and I ended up here. We met at work, fell in love, got married, had Tori. We did everything the way you’re supposed to. It was simple and right, where everything with the boy in the picture wasn’t.

Jake walks over to the table, leaning down to kiss my cheek before falling into a chair next to me. “Looking through old pictures?”

I nod, trying to keep my attention from going back to the photo. Apparently I don’t succeed because the image is now back in my line of sight, and I know Jake notices.

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“Who’s that?” he asks in a hushed voice, trying not to wake Tori. “Old college boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I say, completely forgetting to mute my voice for my sleeping child. “Something like that.” I flip the picture over and slide it down the table, out of reach, and do everything I can to keep from picking it back up.

December 19, 2020 Of all the times to come start a conversation, Andrew is choosing to do it while I’m shoveling horse shit. He catches my eye as I’m digging the metal scoop into the big ol’ pile of poop, and he starts walking over. His sneakers crunch in the dirt, steps getting louder as he approaches.

He’s tried this before, a couple times, actually. I’ve always been able to get away: sneak into the kitchen, duck into the pool house, run to the barn.

But there’s nowhere to go now, no escape. Andrew’s cute and nice. He’s a total catch, but I’m not interested. I’ve made that mistake already.

“Hi,” he says, landing at a spot in front of me and my half-full bucket of feces.

I dig the tip of my shovel into the ground and lean on it. I look up at him and blow a piece of hair off my face.

“Hi.” I try my best to stay expressionless.

“Nice to finally catch you,” he says with a smile. “It seems like I just keep missing you.”

“Huh, weird.”

I pick up my bucket and turn toward the barn, eager to escape him. My sweaty ankles pull my feet along, dragging through the thin layer of dirt on the path. I should be wearing boots, but my boots are back at my pueblo.

“Can I walk with you?” Andrew appears at my side, as if by magic.

I stop, and he does, too. Turning toward him, I hold out the bucket in the space between us.

“So I can walk with you if I carry the bucket of shit?”

I nod, and he takes the bucket. I’m the first to step back in the direction of the barn. Andrew follows. It’s like being accompanied by a golden retriever.

He’s got a mop of scraggly blond hair that grows in three different directions and brown eyes that constantly look like they’re begging for something.

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“I didn’t stalk you, Jacks. I swear, me being here is a total coincidence.”

“Jackie,” I correct him. “People only called me Jacks at school.”

I lead us around the bend, away from the village and out to the stables.

It’s a decently long walk. The sun beats on our backs, and the persistent dust layers over our bodies. I don’t particularly like it here. It’s hot and dusty, somehow I can never manage to feel clean, the guests are entitled, and the coworkers are silently judgmental. Still, it’s better that I’m here and not there.

Knowing Andrew, he probably hates it here just as much as I do.

“Are you avoiding me?” He suddenly disrupts the silence.

“Only a little.”

He places the bucket on the ground and takes a seat on a bench that lies on the side of the path. The path to the barn is framed by cactuses and shrubs that add a splash of color against the beige that seems to cover everything here. The vegetation is what I miss most about school. Back in Brunswick, there were trees everywhere; they coated my entire world in green. Here at the ranch, every plant looks like it’s on the verge of drying out. Like it’s all seconds from death.

It’s like a visual representation of the feeling that drove me to leave school.

“There’ll be people in the barn,” Andrew says. “And I was hoping we could talk in private.”

I walk over to him, but I don’t sit down. I reach over and grab the bucket he has since neglected.

“We’re never doing anything in private again,” I tell him before turning and marching off down the trail. My cheeks flush from the memory of my nights with Andrew, but even if my words sounded partially flirtatious, I mean them.

I really hope Andrew chooses to stay on the bench, or heads back to the pueblos. But he doesn’t.

“Wait a second,” he says. “Is that why you left Bowdoin? Because of—” “No,” I snap at him. Believe me, after what happened with me and Andrew, I was tempted to pack up my bags and run away, but I didn’t. I stuck around and dealt with it. I left Bowdoin for an entirely different reason. A reason that is none of Andrew’s business.

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“Then why are you acting like this? You say that you left, and it had nothing to do with me, so then why are you avoiding me?”

“Andrew, even if you weren’t the reason I left, I came here to get away from Bowdoin. I came here so I could forget. And then you show up, and you’re around every corner reminding me of what I’m trying to escape.”

“It’s not like I followed you hear, Jacks, I—” “Jackie.”

“Jackie,” he corrects himself. “I didn’t mean to show up here and scare you or whatever. It’s just some crazy coincidence.”

Andrew’s family has been spending their Christmases here for years now.

I know because I looked at the records the second I saw his name on the reservation list. He’s right—if there’s anyone who’s not meant to be here, it’s me.

“I know.” I keep my eyes focused on the trail in front of me. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you going back to Bowdoin when the new semester starts?”

“Why do you care, Andrew?” I sigh. “You won’t be there.”

Andrew graduated last May, top of his class. If he’s stuck to his plan, he should be in law school at UCLA now, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. Maybe his plans changed. He used to go on and on about how excited he was to experience California. He had grown up in Brunswick and was desperate to escape. I was, too.

“I’m just trying to have a conversation with you,” he says, already sounding exhausted. “Once upon a time, we were actually pretty good at talking to each other. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Once upon a time.”

Andrew opens his mouth to say something, but he freezes before any words form. There’s a sound coming from behind us. It’s trotting. It doesn’t take long for the noise to take visual form, and from around the bend, a massive brown horse appears. On its back is Luke Barron.

Once he sees us, Luke slows the horse down to a walk, and then to a stop when he reaches us. He swings one leg off, and both of his black boots plop onto the ground, arousing a small dust cloud around them.

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“Jackie.” He pushes a wide grin around his face and holds his arms out as a signal that I’m supposed to hug him.

“Hi, Luke,” I say through gritted teeth. I lean in and let him wrap his bulky arms around me, ignoring the churning in my gut. I feel his palms brush my hips, where my t-shirt ends just above my shorts. Even in the Tucson heat, seeing Luke always makes me feel like I want to put on a hoodie and sweatpants.

When I break free from his grasp, he reaches down and tugs the bucket from my hand. “I can take this,” he offers.

I swallow. “Thanks.”

Luke reaches out and touches one of my black curls. “I know how you hate the barn.” I can feel Andrew’s eyes burning into my back as he watches Luke interact with me. I fight my urge to turn around and look at him because I know the expression on his face will break me. Besides, I can’t allow myself to find a sense of comfort in Andrew, not anymore.

Luke grabs the horse’s reins in one hand and the bucket in the other.

“I’ve gotta get going,” he says. Then he leans over to whisper, “But if you wanna come over for drinks again tonight, you’re more than welcome.”

I nod and paint a smile on my face. “All right.”

Luke smirks as he walks the horse toward the barn. I watch him grow smaller and smaller until he rounds the bend. I can still feel Andrew’s eyes on my back, but I don’t turn around.

“So you ran all the way across the country just to find the same problem here that you had at Bowdoin?”

When his words stick to my brain, I nearly throw up.

“You asshole.” I whip around and look at him. “You’ve known all along.

That whole conversation, just now, where you asked why I left Brunswick— that was bullshit, wasn’t it?”

I watch as Andrew’s expression changes from anger to desperation. We’re several feet apart, but I can see the tears glazing over his eyes. I can tell there’s a million things he wants to say to me right now, but I don’t want to hear them.

“Who else knows?” I ask harshly.

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“I’m the only one who knows the truth,” he says. “Everyone else only knows Damian’s side of the story, but I knew he was lying. I figured it out months ago, Jacks. You were different after that night, and before I had the chance to ask what was wrong, you had already left.”

All I can do right now is look at Andrew. He’s a completely different person than when I last saw him. He’s traded in his denim jacket for a ratty t-shirt and his Timberlands for a pair of cowboy boots. We’ve both changed so much. And still, we’re both here.

“I’m traveling for the next semester,” Andrew says. “Come with me.”

I stare at him, unable to even fathom what he just said.

“We’ll be away from the assholes at Bowdoin and the douchey guys that are here. And we can go see all those places we talked about and we can—” “Andrew, stop,” I interrupt, unable to let myself consider his fantasy.

“There is no we.” Looking at his expression, I know my words have already scarred him. I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t regret my words. It’s a choice between preserving Andrew’s feelings and keeping myself alive, and I have to choose the latter.

Because last time, I didn’t.

“We’re just not the type of people who are going to know each other forever. That lifelong friendship bullshit is just not in the books for us.”

“Jacks.” He slips up again. “You’re still doing it.”

“Still doing what?” For the first time my voice is soft; it sounds almost broken.

He shakes his head. “You’re still pretending like the only thing between us is friendship.”

I let Andrew’s words settle in my brain. I know they’re true, and they’ve been true since that night he first said them. But, now more than ever, I can’t accept them.

I walk over and grab Andrew’s face in my frail, sweaty palms. I pull his face toward mine and press my lips to his. I let myself have what I always wanted, and I don’t have to worry about Elise, or Damian, or anyone. I kiss him like I have dozens of times before, and I let myself enjoy it because I know it won’t happen again.

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When I pull away, I let our foreheads stay touching. As I catch my breath, my hands fall from his jaw and land on the base of his neck. His hands remain on my hips, tugging me closer.

“I’m sorry,” I say so softly it’s practically a whisper.

I don’t have to explain that I’ll leave the ranch tonight and go hide somewhere else, that I’ll look up where he is every couple of months and make sure I won’t stumble into him again, that I’ll pull his picture out when I miss him, or that I’ll dial his number and never hit call.

I let my hands fall to my sides, and then I step out of his grasp, and do everything I can to keep from turning back.

May 23,2019 “Are you seriously leaving?”

Elise stands in the doorway of the dorm, framed by my chaos. Her side of the room is neat, as always, and mine is in shambles. There’s a stuffed duffel bag and a half-packed suitcase on my bed. The dresser has been emptied, and clothes cover the floor.

“Do you really care, Elise?”

“I’m pissed at you,” she says. “But I thought this was going to be something we fought about and then got over. Not something you ran away because of.”

“The semester’s over, anyway,” I say as I shove my rain boots into my suitcase.

“We have the summer program,” she states. “The program we spent months creating portfolios for, with Jean Marricot—who’s your fucking idol, in case that somehow slipped your mind.”

I stop folding my clothes and just start stuffing them in the suitcase, doing everything I can to get out of here as quickly as possible. I’ve already filled out the gap-year paperwork from the admissions office, and I’ve already got a plane ticket. Once these bags are packed, I’m done.

“Come on, Jacks. Andrew’s gonna be gone in a week, and he and I are done. Besides, now you’ve got Damian, and he’s really into—” “Shut up!” I snap.

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I tried to get her to stop before she said his name, but it’s too late. He’s in my head now, with his red hair and stubbly beard and calloused hands. He’s in my ear again, whispering.

As Elise stands in silence, I throw the rest of my clothes in my bags and zip them up. I throw the duffel over my shoulder and yank the other suitcase off the bed. I rush my feet, in their cushioned sneakers, toward the door. When I reach Elise, I expect her to move aside and let me through. Instead, she plants her feet into the ground, stabilizing herself between me and my exit.

“Shouldn’t it be me storming out?” she asks. “If anyone gets to be mad here it should be me, right?”

I don’t say anything. I just stare back at her.

“Jacks, you’re the one who slept with my boyfriend. So why are you the one who’s leaving in a fit of rage?”

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to make it bleed. I push past Elise and make it into the hallway before turning back and grabbing the handle of the door.

I slam the door, take off down the hallway, and do everything I can to keep from looking back.

May 22, 2019 I lie in bed all day. When Elise comes into the room, I do everything I can to keep from erupting into tears.

May 21, 2019 I have to force my feet to take every step. If I focus on that, on moving forward, I can keep my mind from going back to that house, to that room. I think about every muscle it’s taking to pull my ID out of my wallet and hold it up to the scanner, about how the handle of the door feels as I push it, about how the carpet of the building muffles my boots as they hit the floor.

I’m so focused on my feet, dragging my shoes across the floor, that I walk right into Andrew. He shouldn’t be here; his apartment is miles away, off campus. He must have been here with Elise, but that still doesn’t make sense because he and Elise usually only hang out at his place, for privacy. Behind him is a white door. We’re standing right outside my room.

Andrew’s arms land softly on my hips, stabilizing me. My eyes shoot up

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from my feet to him. He looks just like he did when I saw him a couple hours ago: black jeans, army-green t-shirt, yellow Timberlands, silver necklace, worn denim jacket, shaggy blonde hair, teary eyes. His lips are moving. He’s saying something.

“What?”

The sound of my own voice wakes up every other sound: Andrew’s breathing, a stopwatch beeping, a door locking, the AC clicking off, muffled sobs behind my door.

“I told her.”

“What?” I say again.

“I told Elise about us. She knows everything that has happened since October.”

That’s who’s crying behind the door. Elise. I’ve known her for two years now and I’ve never heard her cry, let alone sob. She’s broken.

It’s my fault.

“Why?” I ask another question.

“I couldn’t pretend anymore. I thought I could do what we agreed, and I— I thought that I could pretend nothing ever happened with us, but I can’t.

Jacks, I can’t. I really thought I could be happy with Elise. And then at the party tonight, I was with her and you were with him. And I was really okay with Elise’s idea that you guys should start dating until I saw you actually go upstairs with Damian . . .”

Andrew keeps talking, but I don’t hear anything he’s saying. Just that one name, over and over. Damian.

Damian.

DamianDamianDamianDamianDamianDamianDamianDamianDamia nDamianDamianDamianDam ianDamianDamianDamianDamianDamian DamianDamian.

“Are you okay?”

The name stops repeating. I turn my head up to Andrew and see him look at me as if I’m an enigma. His gaze persists. I can see him trying to solve my puzzle within his own mind.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. I’m not sure I’d recognize okay if it was standing

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as close to me as Andrew is. I go back to settling my focus, this time on my breathing. In, out, inhale, exhale.

“I did it for us, so that we can be together.”

The focus on my lungs slips away.

“No, we can’t, Andrew,” I say. This time I don’t have to think about my words. I don’t have to force them out. They just come, and they stick.

“Well, yeah, we should keep things quiet for a while. Elise doesn’t deserve for us to shove it in her face right away, but we can be together now, Jacks, because Elise and I are done. We can finally—” “No, we can’t.”

Andrew swallows and takes a breath. He told me once that he always plays a conversation out in his head beforehand. He likes to be prepared, so he takes the time to imagine every possibility. I don’t think he imagined this one.

“Is this about Damian?” he asks. “I mean, if you’re worried about hurting him, I get it. He’s my friend, and I don’t want to hurt him, either. But I think he’ll understand. You guys aren’t serious or anything.”

“It’s not about Damian.” I whisper my lie, nearly choking on his name.

I keep my eyes focused on my boots. They’re cherry-red Doc Martens that I bought in high school. I adore them. “I want to be with you, Jacks . . . I love you.”

I take a step back, forcing Andrew’s hands to slide off my hips. I force my eyes off my feet and up to Andrew’s eyes. The tears that were holding on before are now sliding down his cheeks, and I notice that drops are sliding out of my eyes, too. For a minute, it brings me comfort knowing that Andrew and I are experiencing the same sensation.

“I love you, too,” I say. I’m not lying. When it came to those particular words, I never was. “But Andrew, the way we started was all wrong, and there’s no way to fix it now.”

I know that if Andrew were to reach out right now, if he were to take me in his arms, I’d take it all back. I’d forget everything I just said. I’d forget Elise, and Damian, and everything that’s ever happened around the two of us.

But I can’t do that.

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So I walk past him, grasp the handle of my door, and do everything I can to keep from turning back.

November 21, 2018 “Oh, shit,” Elise says. “You’re not allergic to cats, right? I totally forgot to tell you about our cat.”

I chuckle. “No, Els, I’m not allergic.”

“Good, good.” She merges into a new lane while diving her hand into the bag of Chex Mix and tossing some in her mouth.

I stare at the red Kia in front of us, unreasonably nervous. Elise became my best friend so quickly, and I really want her family to like me, especially since she’s so close to them. The fact that Andrew’s coming by for Thanksgiving dinner, too isn’t helping.

Fuck, I should have told Elise she was moving too quickly when she asked if she should invite Andrew to her house for Thanksgiving. But that was weeks ago, and I was convinced that I was gonna cut off things with him that very next night. I convinced myself of that every night, though. Even now, after all those times hiding in the stairwell and telling Elise I was in the library when I was really going over to his apartment. My stomach churns thinking about it, about how I’m hurting her.

I want to be the person who loves her friendship more than her affair. I try to be. Elise has been nothing but a perfect friend for the past year and a half, and even when I was closed off and snappy, she was always just what I needed. It’d be easier if I just didn’t like her that much, if she was annoying or snobby or mean. She’s just not, though. She’s my best friend.

I don’t know why that’s not enough for me to leave Andrew, but I want it to be.

“Don’t let my family freak you out,” Elise says. “They’re really excited to meet you and they’re totally overbearing, so if you need a break, just give me a look and I’ll make some excuse for us to run away.”

“You’re a godsend,” I tell her.

“Hey,” she says. “Did anything happen with Damian the other night?”

“Not really? Why?”

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She shrugs, “He told Andrew he was kinda into you, and it looked like you guys were hanging around each other a lot.”

My stomach churns for a whole number of reasons. Damian is fine, I guess, plenty attractive and nice enough. He says something a little strange occasionally—nothing super weird, though. But why would Andrew want to instigate something between us?

Maybe it’d be good. Maybe I could fall in love with Damian and forget about things with Andrew and not have to lose Elise in all of it.

“Els, you know I would have told you as soon as I got to the room if something happened with Damian.”

She laughs lightly, “You’re right. You’re not really one to keep secrets.”

I nod in agreement and do everything I can to keep from telling her everything.

October 4, 2018 “As requested, a beer straight from the keg.”

Andrew hands me the red cup and sits down next to me. We’re sitting on the steps of the porch while the house party rages on inside. It’s just barely warm enough to be sitting outside, and Andrew and I are both bundled up in a million layers.

“Um, I’m pretty sure I asked for a seltzer.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find one.” Andrew reaches behind him and pulls out a colorful quilt. “But I did find this.”

He spreads the blanket over our legs and scooches closer in the process. For a minute, I visualize us as a painting: two figures with cups in hands and legs pressed together, miniscule against the house behind them. When I decided to come to Bowdoin, I thought I’d be going to small parties in apartments, where kids with colored hair smoked weed. Turns out there are just as many juvenile house parties at liberal arts colleges as there were in high school. It’s still fun, just not what I expected.

“So Elise has food poisoning?” I ask.

“I think so,” Andrew responds. “She started feeling sick after we went to lunch today.”

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“Yikes, sounds like I might have to avoid going back to our room. Maybe I’ll go inside and find some hottie to take me to his place tonight instead.”

As my words escape my mouth, a look of discomfort crawls onto Andrew’s face, and he takes a sip of his beer instead of responding. I’m no comedian, but I expected at least a chuckle in response to my joke. Andrew just looks like he wants to throw up. I don’t know why he’d even care if I got with someone tonight. Elise and he have their thing going on, and he should be focused on that, right?

“So.” I try to break the awkwardness. “Things with you and Elise are getting serious, yeah?”

He nods and replies softly, “I think so.”

“She really likes you,” I tell him. I’ve known Elise for over a year now, and she’s never been this into a guy. It should make me happy. Andrew’s a great guy: he’s kind and vulnerable, not douchey or entitled like most of the guys here.

Elise loves him, and Elise is my best friend. I should be happy for both of them, so I don’t know why the thought of them together sets fire to my insides.

“I really like her, too,” he says, swirling his cup. “Things are great. She’s beautiful, smart, and an incredible artist. And she . . .”

His words fizzle out. For a second he looks up from his cup and catches my eye, but he quickly pulls his gaze back down.

“Why does it sound like you’re trying to convince me of something?”

The words are out of my mouth before I have a second to think about it.

As soon as I hear them settling in the space between us, I’m certain that the words were much better off in my head than spoken out loud, but it’s too late to take them back now. They’ve already crawled into Andrew’s ears.

He looks embarrassed and shameful. He looks like he’s been caught.

“Maybe I am.” Andrew’s eyes catch mine. We hold that stare for a while, and I’m terrified that someone will come outside and see us like this. There’s no visible crime, but right now, there is no doubt that we are guilty.

I stay silent because I’m scared that I’ll say something I can’t take back.

Andrew breaks eye contact and looks out across the street, and my gaze turns with him. Little houses with navy shutters line the road, illuminated only by street lamps. The sound of traffic trickles into my ears, and the salty air floods my nostrils.

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“When Elise and I first met, I was so sure that everything was just right,” he says. “It felt like everything was coming together.”

He leaves his words hanging in the air, pinned next to a dozen questions unanswered. “And then what happened?”

Andrew takes a deep breath, letting the ocean air infiltrate his lungs. I can see the gears turning in his head, and I have to fight the urge to run back into the house. I know that if he says what he wants to, there will be no way to fix it.

“And then she introduced me to you.”

My eyes flutter from the houses across the street to Andrew, who’s already staring back. I know I should leave. I should go home and check on Elise, who’s probably miserable right now.

I should, but I know I won’t.

I put my beer down on the step next to me and grab the collar of Andrew’s corduroy jacket, pulling him toward me.

I kiss him. I kiss him because of all the words he just said and the ones he didn’t need to. I kiss him because I’m a hopeless romantic, because I have to know, because I can’t let him slip away from me. I kiss him because I think I love him, and I think he loves me, too, and I know it’s crazy because we really don’t know each other.

When we break apart, the first thing I see is his eyes, green and calm. And then his smile, small but certain.

I do everything I can not to fall.

But everything I can isn’t enough.

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Picture Day

Zoe Rivera

The first time I had my curly hair straightened was for my fourthgrade picture day. My mother wanted me to look nice; things like this have always been of particular importance to her. Norma’s salon was my mother’s favorite and would quickly become mine. It was a room filled with women with the uncanny ability to work what I considered magic.

After forty dollars and thirty minutes I would leave with shiny, straight hair and the glowing accomplishment of sequestering its unruliness. I spent hours from that point on enduring the searing blow-dryers, flat irons, relaxers, and hot combs—pain I believed to be a necessary burden.

My inherited rite of passage. My mother was the first to show me this.

For us, beauty is pain.

The salon was always particularly busy around picture day, the room crowded with other little black girls and mothers making conversation.

It was always vibrant, a room endlessly full of women’s voices, fluid movements and colors, and I liked being there, despite the discomfort of the rest of the experience. I could walk in chaotic, wayward, and disobedient and leave perfectly flattened out. My mother would pick me up with a smile, and everything would be all right for a while.

When I was in fifth grade, I had a unibrow. I harbored hatred for my eyebrows through my entire childhood. Thick, dark, and unyielding, they threatened me. They looked worse next to my mother’s, which were thin, arched, plucked, and as perfect as the rest of her. Femininity, to her, has always been characterized by making as little of yourself as you can. My eyebrows looked like my father’s. I recall hearing for most of my younger life that my mother was beautiful and that I looked like my father. She suggested I get my eyebrows waxed like hers for that year’s picture day—I was old enough now, and my brows were unruly enough to need it. I remember being nervous. My mother stood by my side, holding my hand, looming. Hot wax was smeared over my eyebrows— I cried out once because I couldn’t help it, but I bit my tongue afterwards.

I refused to give my mother the satisfaction of my screaming. She was impressed with my high pain tolerance. I hate pain.

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The photos from that picture day did not come out as expected.

My experience with waxing was a disaster. The wax took off the hair and a layer of skin with it, creating a light ring around both of my eyebrows and leaving my face discolored and uneven. The pictures were embarrassing evidence of my own failure; my body had visibly rejected my attempts to seek attractiveness. I threw a lot of them away one night, alone in the kitchen after I had snuck out of bed to eat freezer-burned ice cream. My mother only allowed us dessert once a week, on Fridays.

It was a Tuesday.

In seventh grade, I especially resented whatever horrible person had invented picture day. I dreaded it for weeks. My hair was straight and dead, and I had taken to shaving my unibrow with a razor, taking off an extra inch of eyebrow more often than not. I had also developed a particular interest in eating all the time—this was the picture day when it became crystal-clear that I was not going to follow in my classmates’ footsteps by shedding baby fat. This was not acceptable to my mother; I could not be fat. Unfortunately, I could not stop eating.

I wouldn’t learn about Binge Eating Disorder until I was much older and already all too familiar with it to need a diagnosis. My mother’s efforts to put me on every fad diet in the book escalated over the course of my seventh grade year, and they began to backfire on both of us. The less she wanted me to eat, the emptier I felt, so I ate more. Who can tell the difference between hunger and emptiness? In the darkness of the kitchen at night, at school, after school, anywhere but in front of my mother, I ate and I ate until it hurt.

I went to nutritionists who stifled laughs when I told them I hadn’t eaten much that week. I sat in early-morning weekend Weight Watchers meetings full of people who, week after week, lamented about the great sin of being fat and begged for absolution from food. I hid candy under my pillow and satiated my mother by pretending to work out at the gym.

My mother and I reluctantly went shopping the day before picture day to get clothes that would hide the parts of myself we didn’t like. I settled on an extra-large sweater and large floral jeans. The jeans were uncomfortable, too small because I didn’t want to get both garments in

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an extra-large in front of my mother—I couldn’t bear it. The button left a red, smarting imprint on my stomach every time I wore the pants.

My mother told me it was good to wear clothes that were too small: goal clothes. Reminders of who you weren’t that dug into your stomach.

Relentless suffering until you got better. I didn’t understand her painful goals then, but I would one day.

In ninth grade, I wanted to wear a collared shirt for picture day. I wanted to look different from the other girls; I had rationalized that if I didn’t dress like the other girls, it would be less likely for my overweight body to be compared to theirs. Life was a game of minimizing myself, of harm reduction, but my mother didn’t understand. She asked if I wanted people to think I was gay: a sentiment framed like a joke that cracked with spite. Maybe I do. I had known I was gay for two years already. During one of our conversations that broached the subject, she had drunkenly revealed to me that she didn’t think bisexuality was real. Such a thing confused her, and anything that confused her was written off as nonexistent. My mother has always lived in a world she built herself. I have come to realize she can’t bear it any other way. She let me wear the collared shirt in the end, but I had already known I was going to wear it anyway. I suppose I’d just wanted her to approve of all of me, feminine and masculine, wielding dual energies at all times like queer people can do. My mother has never approved of collared shirts or short fingernails on girls, both of which I now don regularly. Such a waste of a pretty face, she said. Such a waste. Years later, she accepts me as completely as she can, which I have come to appreciate. I only wish, from time to time, that she would remember our conversation about the collared shirt.

In eleventh grade, we had to take senior portraits. The portraits were seen as an important rite of passage because only the seniors got yearbooks after graduation, but the idea of them tormented me the way everything else in high school did. I dreaded having my sixteen-yearold body immortalized. I was five feet tall and would weigh 235 pounds by the end of junior year. I envisioned showing my future daughter my picture and shuddered.

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The senior portrait experience was worsened by the fact that girls had to change into a bizarre half-dress garment to take the photo. I began to panic. I couldn’t wear the fake dress. I would tell them that I couldn’t put it on; I would lie. I would lie and say I had a rash, or that I hated my neck, or my boobs, or anything but the truth. I mulled over senior portrait day for a week before it came. I took a shot of Svedka before I went to school to calm my nerves, a new and horrible habit I had acquired. I did my makeup slowly, trying to contour away my face.

When it was my turn to be photographed, I grabbed the extra-large garment that had lain untouched by my classmates and went to the bathroom to change.

I inhaled this-is-fine and exhaled I-am-going-to-cry. I changed, struggling with the zipper and staring at myself in the mirror. I looked stupid. My eyes trailed down to my arms, paler than the rest of my body and on display for the first time in a year. They were alien to me, covered in smooth scar tissue from years of compulsive self-harming. I had been digging into myself since I was eleven, trying to find the answers to all of my questions in my veins. I was mortified. My arms have always been my confessional; they continue to be the only part of me that can’t hide the truth. My arms have always scared people. They scare me too— they disrupt me and everything I want to seem to be.

I walked out of the bathroom with an unfamiliar feeling of vulnerability. The photographer glanced at me, then briefly at my arms, then back up at me; she smiled. I smiled back. My senior photos came out fine in the end. When I opened the yearbook after graduation, I noticed that they had cropped out our arms in the final photos. At first I was relieved. I had always longed to look as stable as everyone else, less deteriorated. But I didn’t recognize myself without my scars, no matter how badly I wanted to.

Before my freshman year of college, we had to submit photos for our ID cards. This year was different. There was no picture day, and I had changed. After an ego-crushing college admissions experience, I had lost any semblance of confidence I’d previously had in my intelligence.

A familiar feeling had washed over me—I was unruly, too much, and

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I needed to be less. Much less. So I stopped eating. And it worked. So there I was, with my beautiful and drunk mother on a summery Tuesday morning, about to have her take my photo.

I was dizzy as usual and high on starvation. I had claimed the emptiness as mine and harnessed it to bend to my will. I was safe within my emptiness, safe from myself. I sought no salvation from it. My mother and I both smiled as we took the photo. That summer, my mother loved me more than ever before. We shopped in the petite section of the store with linked arms, pushed food around plates, and exercised together, each of us trying to run faster than the other. She always could outrun me, but for the first time, I caught up to her.

After that summer, I started my freshman year hungry for everything— for love, for friends, for sex, for attention, but still, more than anything, for my mother. I was full of want all the time, running through the dorms with glittering friends and shrinking inside of different lovers. I ate nothing but ice cream for dinner and threw up in my coat pockets. I lost hours inside of the mirror. I was scared of everything, but for once, I wasn’t scared of pictures. Looking at them now, I don’t recognize myself, a version of me so hollow, so mindless. I wasn’t scared of how I looked in pictures then, but I should have been scared of what I’d done to myself in the mad pursuit of a body that was never meant to be mine.

Years later, I’ve gained some weight back. I haven’t had a picture day in years. I have boarded the “Instagram is ruining our lives” train and deleted the app, seeking to lessen my obsession with my own reflection and perception. My mother and I don’t shop together anymore, but I don’t mind. My mother has become more tender, more gentle, more aware of the way her eating disorder has snaked down from our family tree and whispered not to bite the apple. I have come to understand her more than I ever thought possible. I love her more than anything. I only wish she would stop shrinking herself.

I would love to say that I’m completely all right with my weight gain, that I have allowed myself to experience and taste and feel again, that I have reckoned with food and conquered my body. I am still working on it every single day. I am learning to nurture and be nurtured.

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I am coming to love my body and finding a way to see it as just that: my body, nothing more and nothing less. I want to love myself, all of my identities, the way I move and take up space, and I am trying to.

This, I am coming to understand, is the most important thing: trying to nurture myself. I’m not sure my mother will ever find this out, but I hope she does. Farther away from her now, I wonder how much we are allowed to need from the people who made us. I wonder how much they are allowed to need from you. I wonder how much of our lives we are supposed to spend being hungry for love.

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How to Reach an Impossible Dream –after Jennine Capó Crucet

Camila Arjona

You can’t do it without help. You have to think about your father, perfecting his English at age ten despite living in Mexico City, where the only place English was required was at the newly opened IHOP that became the biggest local destination for authentic American cuisine. You have to think about your mother, who listened to tour guides at the local plaza telling stories to tourists who were focusing on the smells around them rather than on the tales of the monuments their ancestors colonized. You have to think about how they made you move from your perfectly comfortable life in Mexico City to upstate New Jersey, where you were greeted by your thirdgrade teacher over-enunciating every syllable as she directed you to your seat. You have to think about Robbie, the first kid who came up to you in class, only to ask you why you weren’t wearing a sombrero.

“You are Mexican, after all,” he said.

But none of this matters, since being the oldest daughter of two overachieving Mexican immigrants means personal struggles are irrelevant until you get your college degree: the first American college degree of the family. You are expected to set an example for your younger brother. To give your parents lifetime bragging rights so they can go back to Mexico and have something meaningful to contribute after church chisme. Very quickly, the idea of doing this for your parents becomes a dream for you as well.

Your uncle drops you off at your college campus. Don’t ask yourself why the entire family wasn’t able to come, like in true Mexican family fashion. Stop thinking about your mother stuck in an immigration center in Guadalajara after U.S. immigration denied her H1 work visa for the second time. Don’t think about how you miss her. Resent her a little bit for not being an American citizen. For missing her own daughter’s college drop-off.

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“Estoy contigo en espíritu,” she tells you on the phone.

Try not to be angry at your father, who had to stay in the New Jersey apartment with your younger brother because your family would never let him miss his first day of school. Education is important, whether it is getting yourself to college or making sure your five-year-old brother makes it through his first day of kindergarten. After all, you have always been independent and are perfectly fine embarking on this major life step with just your uncle whom you haven’t seen in years but who chose to fly in from Mexico City because es familia.

Move in a day earlier than your roommate. The first night feels like a horror movie. You toss and turn on the bare mattress because the word mattress pad is not yet in your vocabulary. The next day, you are startled by a key jiggling in the lock and quickly realize that your roommate’s family decided to arrive promptly at 8:00 a.m. You stand awkwardly in the corner, mesmerized by the heaps of boxes, clothing, and plastic containers full of items your roommate thought would fit in your twelve- by fifteen-foot dorm room. You learn words such as bed risers, shower caddy, and command strips, thinking back to when you chuckled during your fifty-dollar Target trip, not thinking all these items were college essentials. Maybe it’s better to leave the room until her family leaves, you think.

Four hours later, you come back to a fully stocked room—a mini-fridge full of frozen homemade casseroles, a Brita water-filtering machine, and a series of pink girl-power posters. Try to keep yourself busy. Call your parents at the same time every Sunday and pretend that your heart doesn’t sting everytime you hear the word mija. Fooling yourself into thinking you are not lonely becomes easier as you get over your fear of the subway and apply for a card at the nearest public library. You learn more new words, like intersectionality, gender norms, and white fragility. You start referring to yourself as a person of color and get a rush of energy from this new vocabulary that seems to so eloquently explain why you feel out of place. Spend as little time in your dorm as you possibly can; you really only enjoy the academics and haven’t made any friends, anyway. Choose to visit your parents for Thanksgiving. Take your finals online.

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Studying abroad always seemed appealing. Neither of your parents have been overseas. Your idea of vacation was flying from Newark back to Mexico City to visit your grandma. She would cook your favorite foods in exchange for you going to church with her on Sundays. Aside from that, vacation for you simply meant a break from what had become life as an immigrant in the U.S. The emails you keep getting from your school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office finally become relevant when you get a low-income student scholarship to sponsor a semester abroad. Where else would you choose to go but Madrid, the capital of Spain. The home of your ancestors who so defiantly conquered your homeland. It doesn’t matter, anyway, since your parents chose to leave Mexico and now you’re forced to strive for the “American Dream,” which includes the authentic college experience:one that inevitably includes studying abroad.

Try not to freak out as you realize your father is terrified of you leaving.

For the first time, you will be in a place he knows nothing about. Fool yourself into thinking that is part of the excitement. No tengas miedo.

You arrive, yearning to meet real, lisping Spaniards. Tall white guys who drink cafe con leche, wear long brown coats in the winter instead of Canada Goose jackets, and can converse with you in authentic Spanish. You are genuinely excited to speak in Spanish again. Your mother tongue. You miss how easily sentences flow and are surprised at how naturally it comes back to you, even after years of only speaking it with your parents. Mistake life in Spain for the true Hispanic community you have been craving ever since you left Mexico.

Eat paella, rice, and tapas, but stop ordering them out of anger when you realize many of the dishes you used to associate with your own Mexican cooking seem to originate from Spanish colonizer cuisine. For the first time in your life, be a little reckless with your money. Pay fifty euros to visit la Sagrada Familia and instantly regret your decision as you think about how that amount of money used to cover all of your monthly expenses. Let yourself go to clubs and parties. Drink white wine, cocktails, and sangria because, after all, alcohol is cheaper in Europe.

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Cry yourself to sleep the day you go to a terraza only to hear Spanish men sing the N-word at the top of their lungs when a Nicki Minaj song plays.

You quickly start to notice that you are the only non-white person in your classes. That game you used to play, the one where you would count the number of non-white people every time you walked into a room, is no longer fun, as the answer always seems to be one. Listen to your professor calling people “the blacks” and students defending hate speech under the concept of freedom of speech in your Cultural Diversity and Development class. Bite your tongue as your professor agrees with these students. For once in your life, you miss the all-white classrooms of your New England liberal arts school, where 80 percent of the student population was white, but at least they wore Black Lives Matter pins and asked for your pronouns.

Call your parents often. Try to explain your frustration using phrases such as losing my identity, needing a safe space, and feeling alone in the face of white supremacy. The other end of the line remains silent as you realize your mother feels your frustration but will never understand your vocabulary.

“Te amo, mija” is all she says.

You live in an alternate reality for a moment.

Move back to the East Coast for college. This time you know better than to try to live in the dorms and choose to live in an off-campus apartment with four other girls. The ad for the place calling it “affordable housing” and the arepas restaurant down the street give you hope that you will feel less out of place there.

Your hopes are crushed when your roommates ask you to pitch in fifty dollars to buy a TV you will never actually use.

Look through your syllabi and see words like feminism without borders, racial privilege, and the psychology of white shame. Be excited to finally talk about all the race-related experiences you bottled up during your time abroad. You are soon disappointed, though, as you stay silent throughout your first class and realize that you still don’t have the cultural vocabulary to speak at the same level as your peers. Find yourself too scared to speak in class.

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Stop calling your parents unless they call you first. Be as vague as possible.

Tell them you are fine, that college has gotten better since that first semester when you would call them crying every week. For them, forgetting to call them means you are busy and happy with your life. Extrañas hablar español.

Get a minor in Latinx Studies. Enjoy your time learning about the Cuban Revolution, the successful imperialist efforts of the United States throughout Latin America, and the fight against Puerto Rican statehood.

Ignore the fact that your professor for Introduction to Latinx Studies is a white woman from Wisconsin.

You answer a phone call from your parents after a month of not talking to them. They tell you they are no longer looking to rent a new apartment in upstate New Jersey. Instead, your parents bought a house in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. Fight the urge to tell them the state just elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as their governor. Wonder instead how they managed to buy a house and how much debt they must be in. Realize this is your parents’ way of reaching the “American Dream.” A house in the suburbs.

Be a little jealous that your six-year-old brother is going to have the life you always dreamed of. He will be a true American, born in the U.S. and spending his developmental years in suburbia. He will be able to bring friends home for sleepovers and not be ashamed of having to sleep in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. He will have a backyard, a bike, and chores such as raking leaves during the fall and shoveling snow during the winter. Be a little happy he won’t have to go through what you did. You will teach him about being a POC and will buy him college essentials when the time comes. Cry at the thought of your little brother having a childhood bedroom instead of a string of stories about moving to different apartments and changing schools every couple of years. When someone asks him where he is from, he will be able to confidently answer—Richmond, Virginia.

And no one will question his response.

You are at the library when your father calls you. You can’t cry here.

Go back to work using your thousand-dollar laptop your parents worked so hard to pay for all those years ago. Hold back tears as you realize you are still their dream. Start crying over the fear that you will never reach it.

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POETRY ABOUT OUR AUTHORS MELINA GARDINER Childhood Memories Invade

Melina Gardiner is a freshman Creative Writing major at Emerson College, minoring in Publishing. She hopes to have more work published in more literary magazines because her Google Docs is clogged. She also hopes you enjoy your private reading of her poetry (or public, if you want to share it with friends and family).

MIMI VAN DYKE SHADOWS Mimi van Dyke is a freshman creative writing major at Emerson.

She loves working on poetry, flash fiction, and screenwriting.

JAY TOWNSEND And a Happy New Year Jay Townsend is a writer, illustrator, and animator graduating from Emerson this semester. They are co-editor of horror magazine READER BEWARE and writer of the audio drama mini-series Atlas of Angelon.

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ANNA GAUTHIER Until You Weren’t Anna Gauthier is finishing her first year of her Masters in Publishing and Writing and this will be her first time being published in Concrete Literary Magazine. She is so excited for this opportunity and hopes you enjoy her work!

SHELBI CHURCH erasure of recovery Shelbi Church is a queer poet from Haslet, TX. She currently lives in Boston, MA. Her work has been featured in Hobart, 86 Logic, and the lickety~split.

ANNIE MCGILLEN Saint Nick

Annie McGillen is a WLP major set to graduate in December '22.

They have been writing since they were an elementary schooler in their hometown just outside Chicago. They think Attack of the Clones is Shakespearean and the Midwest is pretty neat.

PROSE P ABOUT OUR AUTHORS MADDY MONROE Everything I Can; My Own Being

Maddy Monroe is a first year student from South Lake Tahoe, CA. This is her first time having her pieces published, and she sincerely hopes reading them makes you feel the same love she felt writing them.

LILY LABELLA Betsy the Cab Driver

Lily Labella is a writer of fiction and poetry from Port Washington, NY. She is currently a first year student studying Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. While living in Boston she has developed great affinity for drinking boba tea and petting dogs in the Common.

E PROSE ZOE RIVERA Picture Day

Zoe Rivera is a senior WLP student at Emerson. She is an Aquarius, her favorite television show is Bojack Horseman, and she loves writing poetry and nonfiction.

CAMILA ARJONA

How to Reach an Impossible Dream–after Jennine Capó Crucet

Camila Arjona is a first generation Political Communications major at Emerson College. She loves exploring themes of family, home, identity, and the intersectionality in her writing.

In the future, she hopes to continue creative writing even as she commences a career in electoral politics.

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