Montage 2017

Table of Contents Grey Dawn Virgil - Scott Ellington ...................................... 4 Glass Trees - Timothy Dibden ........................................... 5 Photography - Alex Snider ................................................... 6 The Sea - Pearllan Cipriano ............................................... 7 Sea - Paul Guasco ........................................................... 8 Height Nor Depth - Kyle Garrett ......................................... 10 Free - Faith Toy ..................................................................12 Our World Is So Backwards - Becca James ................... 13 Unchained - Clark Sowell ................................................. 14 Music Reaches our Inner Demons - Alice Buswell ........ 15 Woods - Alice Buswell ..................................................... 16 Anchor - Alice Buswell ..................................................... 17 A Place of Truth - Pual Guasco ........................................ 18 She Marches Free - Pual Guasco ..................................... 19 Cross the Line - Rose Goodwin ......................................... 20 The Secret Life of Tears - Scott Ellington ............................ 21 The French Doors - Chris Hair ........................................ 22 Cluck Cluck - Jeremy Burton ............................................. 23 A Class Divided - Montage Staff......................................... 24 Happy Pill - Anonymous ................................................... 37 Detached Mine - Rachel Burge.......................................... 40 Bridal Portrait - Sherry Story ............................................ 46

Table of Contents What Have You Done? - Kora Addington............................. 47 A Lever and a Door - Timothy Dibden .................................. 51 Photography - Colton Bridges ........................................... 58 Shoot for the Trees - Rachel Burge ....................................... 59 A Discourse of Interests - Jeremy Burton ........................... 63 Photography - Blake Rackley............................................ 69 You’re Wrong - Grace Perry .............................................. 71 So Glad You Are - Timothy Dibden .......................................76

pOETRY

Grey Dawn V igil Scott Ellington Winter’s creatures ‘neath snowy carapace recline Mountain streams murmur past leafless sentinels and mist cloaked apparitions.

Snow pregnant clouds kiss the ground smothering sound and hooding sight.

Patient wind picking sheltered pockets stealing warmth and mocking winter wrappings.

Placated spring and sated summer, fall’s full basket, all half-remembered dreams, slumbering in the numinous of winter’s icy chapel.

A lonely supplicant silent vigil keeps.

A sleepless hare, nature’s optimist, attends the frosted wake, while awaiting life’s rebirth.

Night’s visions linger in the greying dawn.

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GlassTim DibdenTrees Wispy clouds lay weary across a resting lazuli sky, gentle heralds listing over the crystalline cotton below.

Long frozen fields mimic the silver-lined, sapphire sky, A tired land invited to sleep beneath a brumal bedding.

Frigid layers laze along old-autumn’s land, a soft winter mattress adorned with rigid blankets of ice.

A breeze directs a powdered dance along a low-rolling sea of sugared marble between sleeping maples of still, standing water, willows weighed low with white wool pillows.

An amber horizon rises while morning light skips along the bright, wakeless branches of the faded glass forest, and rolls a ribbon of golden illume along the horizon’s quiet friend.

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pHotography

- Alex Snider 6

pHotography

- Alex Snider 7

pOETRY

The Sea Pearllan Cipriano The sea is home Once it becomes part of you, You can never take it away Some say, although it seems alien at night, Yet so welcoming by day.

Think how, one day past a thousand moons away, The world’s first living soul arose and stood, And saw it many moving hills, Just as they move today.

We see, live and breathe it in, Mourn it when it’s gone too long.

The sea is home.

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pOETRY

Sea Pual Guasco Waves pummel against the port of a small sail boat, scarcely afloat amidst a seething sea, as pound-after-pound beat atop the boat’s breast.

Calloused hands grip tired rope, tearing…clinging onto the mast, trying to steer between the surging, like emotion; one man against the sea.

His feet sink— into plash, pouring in by the second. Thunders bellow his name, calling for his demise; her words punishing his heart, but he won’t let it be destroyed.

Ropes rip as he spills backward. Lying face up, screaming—like prayers.

Will she ever relent? Or will he divorce this Sea? Horizon beams light a path across troubled sea, without keel, without hope.

Pried apart—open by broken hull, he plunges into the open sea.

Infinite waters house him, but If not for the broken hull, his heart would not stay afloat. Wet-faced and ink dried, searching for a lighthouse, adrift divorce papers maybe he can still float home.

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pOETRY

Height KyleNor Depth Garrett God, if you hear me, I think my heart beats dead. It’s useless now. So I’ve buried it where it can’t be found.

Put it to bed.

So God don’t even try. It’s on the seafloor of the deepest trench, already encrusted with clusters of shellfish.

I don’t have to worry about it surfacing when tragedy hits, when an old song comes on, when I sin.

God don’t go looking for my forgotten heart -- that sunken pirate treasure chest.

Don’t go savior-complex on me.

Don’t come down.

Don’t start a mission to underwater weld open that decrepit thing now.

Don’t disturb. It’s settled where it lies.

Don’t uncap the fire, light up the dark, fire-slice your way inside. All you’ll find is sea debris and cirri and barnacles, slime, whatever king’s coin was ever there, ever gone.

God, there’s nothing of you inside that chest.

I’ve known that for awhile.

Nothing to salvage. Nothing to find.

So why do you keep trying the lock? There’s nothing you can do now, it’s all been undone. It was my doing, I buried myself.

I don’t need you to dig up the past.

You don’t understand; don’t touch this mess.

Don’t you dare situate me where my last last recourse is to sadly no humbly no violently plead Oh God before I change my mind shuck that master lock off me.

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pOETRY Crack open my heart.

Unbrine the inside.

Let it bleed.

Drain it all the way out. All amuck.

And fill it back with -- whatever you would, whatever it looks like -with your love.

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pOETRY

Free Faith Toy It was as if I was drowning with waves of addiction crashing over my body.

My soul longed for fresh air, but current constantly held me under.

The darkness surrounded me and clothed me in its image.

But the light was so close I could taste it.

The more I gasped for air, the more I craved its presence in my lungs, the more I yearned for the light, but I never could attain it.

That’s when a hand reached out for me and pulled me ashore.

Vivid rays of sunlight struck my eyes, while a rush of invigorating air filled my lungs.

The dark water escaped my body.

My soul was finally free and sitting in front of my Savior.

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pOETRY

Our World Is So Backw ards Rebecca James We ask others to take responsibility but are the first to point fingers.

We ask others to love but are the first to provoke.

We ask others to stand up and fight but are the first to cower.

We ask others to spread peace but are the first to protest.

We ask others to get in line but are the first to get impatient.

We ask others to give grace but are the first to withhold second chances.

We ask others to show mercy but are the first to judge.

We ask others to be more Christ-like but are the first to act like the devil.

When are we going to wake up and realize we’ve got it all wrong?

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Unchained Clarke Sowellz

I need you like I need a hole in my heart sin, you procurer of devastation; flee to your gurgling destination, damned low to your grave, no more chaining me to the questions, doubts, things which made a man once brave timid, flee, your home is below, mine is above, my solace, no, my victory brought to me as the settling of a dove sin, it’s your turn to sink, just as I once did far below in the mire.

A voice and a vision of an old steepled church where revivals once built all week like desire I’m reminded, of a knowing so sure The Father reaching to a son to procure his heart from what could be, shouldn’t be, was, sure, I was in bondage for a time but He sought me, and He bought me with His redeeming love, I am His forever, a son, a father, a love that won’t falter, forever; bought with the grandest of ransoms; life

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aRT

Music Reaches Our Inner Demons

Ali c e Buswell Scribble Box

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aRT

Woods

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Anchor

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pOETRY

A PlacePaul Guasco of Truth A bell tower and an old graveyard, lay behind my church—a place of truth, where old women with big hats and smoker laughs, gossip about who Susie is currently dating.

“Promise me, you will go,” Mother would plead.

I was never one for religion or imaginary authorities, but for Mother, I could sing-song, clap, and even shout.

She was just that kind of woman to me, lovely until the very end, and even now—her voice still roams free.

I remember long nights at the hospital—putrid vomiting; holding her hair and praying for something to happen. Anything. Anyone who would listen, but there in that room of chilled trays, and cheesy wallpaper, she laid in a white-pure hospital bed, tubes pulling on her like a marionette.

Oblivious to her own suffering. No…not oblivious, “Just at peace,” she would say, until the end.

Still smiling, about a stupid god that I didn’t believe, And yet I’m lying if said I wasn’t jealous or envious or just confused On how a dying old lady could be content.

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pOETRY

She marches Free Pual Guasco There is a young girl, cruel and ruthless.

She is free. Hymnal hair cascades down her neck, and mine.

She is sexual; an ancient lover, young and free, but she hates being alone. She says that she needs me.

White legs lay across my lap. She speaks of legislation and law—funny, I never took her for that kind of girl, but she had me curious too.

I’ve seen her on the streets, speaking fast and loud, righteous and free.

I’ve seen her in my high school classrooms, I have seen her on TV… sometimes on my Facebook, or even my Twitter feed.

Eyes igniting city streets with cardboard and flame—molotovs.

Voices billow like smoke, black as words, as she tramples on broken glass, shattered as a nation dying to be free.

That’s when silk-words rush me.

Can I not question method or message?

She glares.

Join me, my Beloved.

She hates being alone, and says that she needs me, but I’d rather be free.

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pOETRY

Cross The Line Rose Goodwin

Why are you a mile away down the road while I’m still here tying my laces? I jump start like a clown to flail, wild, after you, whose lips remain illegible for all my trying to understand your scientific tips.

This osmosis seeps info to your brain, flows like water through a funnel; comprehension I can’t even feign.

I’d ask for help from successful tutors except that the ideal one intimidates me with his impossible frantic spastic meter.

“C” will suffice — just let me stay here —; the stakes rise high beyond my reach and escalate into my deepest fear: the chance might slip away to cross the finish line — set out this close — and then to gain just that much trust.

My dream halts as your words speed along my consciousness; and I try to pass the mile marker by degrees lower than what you never even try to earn but which I wrestle with in sacrifices barely to get by.

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pOETRY

The Secret Life of T ears Scott Ellington

Bone snaps, a child howls.

Wild rush and incessant wait.

Bright lights, a stark and sterile room.

Bare-chested boy shivers.

‘The doctor will be right with you.’

Tears.

Tears amble, range, and roam down cheeks, watering arid chest, rivulets wander the wilderness, seeking rest, until by chance a pond appears, a navel estuary.

‘What’s that, a lake?’

Mother zealous to distract, ‘What lives in lakes?’

The keening falters, then stumbles and subsides.

Reluctant words surface.

‘Turtles and fish, frogs and ducks’.

The fount of tears withers and dies, the storm abates, the flood recedes, replaced by round-eyed wonder.

‘Starfish and sharks and submarines’ Giggles bud and bloom, careless laughter bursts, like flowers in the desert, new life from loss.

‘And a Sea Monster!’

Enchantment breaches, pain sinks, fear drowns in the imagined depths of a tear.

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pOETRY

The French Doors Chris Hair

A puddle of feathers on concrete, a bird sits and stares At the French door.

Head cocked this way and that, it thinks: When the sun shines I see sky and clouds.

But now I see a room, table, chairs, and food.

When I soared, I saw trees.

For a flash, I saw a bird like a streak, flying free, confident.

But then I hit some Thing not like a bird— no, no. Harder, unforgiving.

And I am certain I know less than when I hit.

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pHotography

- Jeremy Burton 23

Non-Fiction

A Class Divided Montage Staff Olivia I still feel the electric buzz, the kind you only get when you feel like you’ve really aced a test, but still hope with all your being that you actually did. Granted, it’s Calculus II, which feels as natural to me as breathing. But you can never be too careful or invested.

Laptop case in hand, I stroll up the walk to the Lion’s Den as the spring petals of the dogwood float down in a chaotic rain on the late afternoon breeze. A few try their best to disturb my high-flying thoughts by landing in my face, but I swipe them away. I sigh. Unfortunately for now I also have to swipe away the thoughts of my test as I approach the doors. I know when I open them, the group project will begin… whether my partners are there or not.

The warmth of the sun starting to set feels wonderful on my back stiff from test-taking, but if they’re already here, it’ll look weird if I just stand outside. So, bracing my molars together for a bright smile, I open the door and walk inside.

I’m both relieved and tense to see that both of my group members are here, sitting on worn couches in the far corner, deep within the innards of the Den. The SCM girl gives me a happy rapid greeting and I try my best to reply in kind. I’ve seen her hanging out with the group of freshman and sophomore SCMs that seems to be having a jam session every day somewhere new on campus. I don’t mind them as long as I’m not trying to study in the same place.

Steve the basketball player is there too. He gives me a nod as I settle onto a couch as well, the three of us now a triangle of distance and reluctance. They stare at me expectantly and I sigh. I guess it’s up to me to start this or we’ll never have a presentation ready for class.

“So, how do you guys want to do this?” I say with an air of interest. I’m trying.

Steve makes an absent noise and then says, “I think we’re supposed to pick a topic from the list and make a presentation about it.”

“What’s the prompt supposed to be again? We’re… comparing artists… or something?” The girl chimes in.

Here we go, I think. Time for me to explain like always.

“Yeah, that’s one of them, but we don’t necessarily have to pick from the list.

We could look up something that looked interesting from the class so we’re not just

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Non-Fiction re-learning stuff from the book.” I look at them both with some measure of hope that they’ll agree. I know better.

Steve doesn’t even bother to respond one way or the other as he checks his phone. The SCM girl – wow, I really need to actually learn her name, I just can’t remember, there are always so many people – starts complaining about that being more work than she wanted and now, in this moment, I dub her Minimum Effort.

I try not to seem too crestfallen, admitting that, yes, it is just a group project after all.

“So, then,” I go on after. “Comparing artists. Seems easy enough, we just have to pick a few we like.”

Steve looks up from his phone startled, like this is the first thing he’s actually heard me say.

“Da Vinci…? He seemed cool. Like, with the vir…idian man, that was cool.”

Cool, I think sarcastically. I start to wonder with what I know is a mean-spirited cynicism that I know is wrong if he has any other expression for interest.

“Yeah, we talked about him in class,” Minimum pipes up. “He’s a big deal, we could work with that part.”

Obviously, I think. But we need more than that.

“Oookay. Well, we can definitely talk about him, but who else? There’s Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello…”

Steve cracks a smile and sniggers, “Raphael…?”

I giggle at the connection but Minimal looks confused. With surprising good nature, Steve lists off the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and my brain starts to pop with potential. Minimal seems unsure but willing to do the TMNT artists.

“Yes!” I chime in, and I imagine both of my partners are probably inwardly groaning at my eagerness. “We can set up a parallel. So how should we divvy this up?” I smile, but the others stare back and I can feel my eagerness fading.

Right. That will clearly have to be my job. But at least this group project is going to be more agreeable than I expected. *** We met again the other day. I felt bad because I arrived to our meeting pretty late, but what other option did I have? My professor kept me after class to talk about my special project, I had a tutoring memo to respond to, and another study group to contact. But now it doesn’t matter, our project for Art and Music is mostly done. Now, for the final touches… if I can only get a hold of my partners. On my way to a class, I take out my phone, find their numbers, and cautiously start the conversation. SCM is the first to respond.

SCM: okie! um, well we got singers group practice @6 SCM: we r travelling next weekend :D

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Non-Fiction SCM: what abt 4:30?

Good, something that will actually work for me. I respond back.

Steve: Can we do it earlier?. I got practice at 4.

I sigh.

Me: No, I’m meeting with my professor until 3:30 or 3:45, so that’s not enough time…

When do both your practices end?

SCM: :cc we late 2day SCM: til 9 Steve: Till 8… but I have night class after. Can’t miss that. Already failing.

SCM: oh no!!! :CCCCCCCCC Steve: …

I sigh, I’m almost to my class and this is becoming a terrible waste of time. But I don’t want to be an insensitive jerk either.

Me: Well, hey, we can help you with that class if you want… I’d be glad to… but in the meantime… I guess we can just make last minute edits on the powerpoint to night and anything else we’ll just have to talk out when we see each other in class. Crossing fingers and hoping for the best!

SCM: k

Her response makes me bristle. This is why I don’t like you.

Steve: I’ll try my best to be there.

This makes me bristle more. What does he mean he won’t be there? At this point I’m doing everything. All they have to do is show up to class and get the grade my work will hand them. What does he mean? I send a frantic text back.

Steve: haha yea sorry

I don’t even really get what this means but I try to respond amiably enough, hinting at seeing them in class tomorrow and getting the final bugs worked out.

SCM: see u guys then! hope ur practice & class go ok SCM: prayin for u guys

Thanks, I guess, I think. I just wish now it wasn’t all up to me. But now it is, so better to make the most of it and get to work. After the rest of my day, that is.

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Non-Fiction Laura-Lee One of them was already there waiting. Great. I was hoping to be the first to get here, at least a few minutes of peace and quiet before we got started. Serena had been up till 4am, clacking away on her keyboard, and classes lasted until three today, and then there was going to be Singers at six today.

It’s going to be a really long week.

There’s a spot on the couches that’s just a little way across from… oh what’s his name. There’s so many new faces to assign names to here, but he’s a… basketball player, I think. My couch’s cold when I sit, it soaks through my jeans – an older pair, a hand me down. It’s… Ruth’s old pair, I think. I sneak a glance towards…

Steve! Steve, that’s his name. He’s clacking away on his phone, body spread casual and open in his seat. When was the last time we spoke to Ruth? Haden had been inconsolable when she moved out. Maybe I should call her… “ This place is huge.” I start. Steven glances up from his phone, shrugs.

“I guess.”

“And empty.” Nothing like Roberson Lobby, even the fishbowl. I’ll be here again soon.

“Yeah.”

The door opens, but I’m the only one to turn to look. It’s the last of the three of us, Olivia, she’s upperclassman right? She enters with a sense of familiarity, making a bee-line straight for the couches in the back and drops herself into the leather without so much as a second glance.

“So how do you guys want to do this?” Olivia jumps right in. My mouth opens to try to contribute something. There’s nothing. Art wasn’t exactly my forte. I glance down towards Olivia’s lap, with her laptop and texts and notebooks. She is obviously prepared. Steve comes to my rescue, it’s the first time he’s looked up from his phone since I’ve come in.

“Um… I think we’re supposed to pick a topic from the list and make a presentation about it.”

I shift uncomfortably in the couch seat and I check the clock on my phone. If we can finish up this meeting before five, I can still have some time to make it to the caf before it closes, grab a plate, and do some of the reading for Ethics. It’s loud in the caf, but that’s less time than eating, going to the library, walking back to Jackson to put up my books, and then making the trip over to Swails. Especially since Serena never seems to leave the dorm. When does she even go to class?

“What’s the prompt supposed to be again? We’re… comparing artists. Or something?” It’s only Art and Music Appreciation, after all. But Olivia apparently has plans, and she rattles off some ideas about exploring new topics and material that wasn’t covered in class. Which… would be nice if it was anything but this class. Like I said, it’s Art and Music. My eyes flicker towards Steven – Steve, not Steven, Lau-

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Non-Fiction ra-Lee. Jeez. Again. No help. Still on his phone.

“Well… weeeeee…. could… try all that. If you’d like. But isn’t that more work?

It’s just a group project, right?” Voicing this opinion didn’t seem to be the best decision, I realize when Olivia’s face goes slack.

“Yeah, I mean, I would enjoy the diversion, but ultimately there are lots of important things to get to… just a group project, you’re right. So, then, comparing artists. Seems easy enough, we just have to pick a few we like…” The words are as terse as they leave her mouth. I know she wants a good grade, wants the learning experience, but still. She’s not even an art major (Do we even have those?), doesn’t she have other work to do other than this? “da Vinci…? He seemed cool. Like, with the vir…ridian man, that was cool.”

Steve speaks up for the second time during the whole affair, and I can feel my shoulder slacken. Olivia’s stink eye wasn’t exactly the kind of spotlight I was used to. Steve even suggested someone, thank God, and I’m quick to offer my enthusiasm for the idea. I glance back down at my phone. Aaaaand, it’s barely been a minute.

“Oookay. Well, we can definitely talk about him, but who else? There’s Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello…” Again I can feel Olivia trying to tug us along butSteve chuckles. “Raphael…? Heh.” Olivia brightens. Olivia laughs.

Huh? “What?”

“Yeah, like, you know, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Donatello, Michaelangelo, Raphael…” Steve is sitting up straight now, gesturing vaguely. Is this… something people actually read about?

“Ha, and Leonardo, heh, that’s funny.” Even Olivia gets it. Leonardo da Vinci as a Turtle- OH. “Oh. Oh – I wasn’t allowed to watch that growing up.” Mom and Dad didn’t like the genetic manipulation, or something. They thought men were playing God. But a subject’s a subject. “We can… If you want? Do those four?” Olivia visibly brightens, looking for the world like a woman on a mission. She opens her laptop, glancing at us over the brim “Yes! This is exciting, we can set up a parallel. So how do we want to divvy this up?” …Right. *** It’s one of my long days of the week, but Wednesday are one of the worst.

So here’s a breakdown. I’d scurried out of the room again this morning, Serena woke up at 6 a.m. with the uncontrollable urge to microwave her breakfast in the

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Non-Fiction room. Classes were stressful, no surprise there, but I was able to get some rest in between two. Serena was never in the room for that hour. Back to classes, only one more after Comp, thankfully. Lunch wasn’t too terrible, Trevor and Rachel and Pearl all took rotating turns at the table, pulled away for different classes and clubs and sports. Haden called, his voice tearing at the seams, struggling with his Algebra for the second time this week. The rest of lunch was focused on helping my baby brother with his logarithms. Fun. Then to SCM Chapel. I caved. I shot off a text to Ruth, but no response.

And now to the library. Art and Music Appreciation. Yay. Steve’s already there, smacking his gum, and he was staring at his crotch very intently or texting someone. Olivia’s nowhere in sight. My chest plummets. My backpack drops from my shoulders and I paint a smile on my lips.

“Sorry I’m late! SCM Chapel ran late!” I bend low to grab my tumbler. It’s empty. I eye the coffee machine at the other end of the room with desperation.

“One sec.” Does it count as… stealing? Hoarding? Something about this feels vaguely wrong, I realize staring at the disposable cups I’m not using, but my glass is already half full. Bounding back to the table, my smile’s way more genuine. Plopping down onto my chair, I take a large sip and relish the caffeine.

I gulp. “Has Olivia sent you anything on the project?”

Steve straightens at the question, jaw relenting in its kneading. “Yeah,” he starts. I resume my sipping.

“Hm?” “It’s the powerpoint thing. I just don’t really know like… what to actually do, so I was just waiting on her to get here.”

“Oh good.” There hadn’t exactly been a lot of time for me to get to this project between everything else today. I’d planned on glancing at Olivia’s template a little more, but I didn’t get the chance. “I was looking at her slides and she just had so much, I didn’t know where to start! Are we supposed to do an individual artist or something?” I reach for my laptop, ready to flicker through the empty slides. Why do we have to take this class? Like anyone has time for this. “It just seemed like too much.”

“It is too much.” Steve sighs along with me. His leg is drumming, it makes the table shake. I think this might be the first time today he’s actually looked me in the eye. “It’s just a dumb meaningless project. Like, nobody even cares in there? She wants to do so much.” Some small venomous part of me wants to agree and shoot off with ‘Not all of us are upperclassman with no lives’. I quietly squash the thought and frown at myself. Steve is still talking. I focus back into the conversation. “I don’t think we need to do four different guys. Just copy some sh- er… stuff from Wikipedia and call it a day.”

“You guys are the ones who wanted to do the turtles,” It’s out of my mouth before I can think. “But maybe Olivia will want to change it!” Great backtracking Laura-Lee. “She’s basically got enough for all of us.”

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Non-Fiction If Steve noticed my aggression, he doesn’t say anything about it. He looks back down to his phone and seems to fiddle with it for a moment before shrugging.

“Yeah man, I just want to be done with this. Got more important stuff to do.”

I pause. He continues to glare down at his phone. I’m suddenly reminded of Haden. “…do you need to talk about it?”

Steve fingers freeze over his phone. He squints at me. I fidget.

“Hey guys, sorry I’m late!” Olivia flops into the chair next to me, arms full of reference texts already. Ah. Steve turns his squinty eyed stare towards her. I slurp the bottom of my tumbler. *** Tuesday. I wake up to my phone buzzing. (Serena is already gone. It’s 11. My first class doesn’t start till 12. I send a prayer up to God for small miracles.)

Olivia: So hey guys, about getting together before our presentation tomorrow… when can you two meet?

I drag myself out of bed, moving on autopilot to start getting ready for the day. 7-ish hours of sleep. Nice.

Me: okie! um, well we got singers group practice @6 Me: we r travellin nxt weeknd :D Me: what abt 4:30?

Olivia: Yeah, that’ll work for me!

And that should’ve been it. It wasn’t.

My phone buzzes again when I’m spitting toothpaste into the sink. I ignore the first time. It buzzes again when I’m drying off my face. I don’t pick it up again till I’m about to start slapping the rest of my face on.

Steve: Can we do it earlier? I got practice at 4.

Olivia: No, I’m meeting with my professor until 3:30 or 3:45, so that’s not enough time… When do both your practices end?

I sigh. I don’t set down my blender sponge.

Me: :cc we late 2day Me: til 9 Steve: Till 8... but I have night class after. Can’t miss that. Already failing.

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Non-Fiction I do pause at that. What do you say to that? Do we have any classes together? Aside from Art and Music, at least. Maybe one of us can help him? What class is he failing? …somehow I don’t think that he’d like to be interrogated.

Me: oh no!!! :CCCCCCC Steve: …

So... not the right decision. Sorry Steve.

I set down my brushes and pallets, ready to respond back again. If we can’t meet at 4:30 then– Ruth: Hey, long time no see. :)

The message disappears from the top of my screen.

I close out of the group chat.

I stare.

I don’t know how to respond.

Right Laura-Lee. In, out. In, out. In and out.

Me: Yeah! We missed u sis!

Dumbdumbdumbdumb.

She’s responding anyway. My phone pings. It’s not Ruth.

Olivia: Well, hey, we can help you with that class if you want… I’d be glad to… but in the meantime… I guess we can just make last minute edits on the power point tonight and anything else we’ll just have to talk out when we see each other in class. Crossing fingers and hoping for the best!

God, she always sends a wall of text. I close out Ruth’s window for only a moment, back into the group chat, Steve looks like he’s typing. That’s fine. I’ll make it whenever they decide.

Me: k

Ping.

Ruth: Ha! Mom&Pop prolly not too much.

Ruth: I missed you too Lee.

31

Non-Fiction Ruth: Are you doing okay?

I grab my bags, eyes locked onto my screen, typing back responses, taking too long, God please help me to say the right things, let’s get the backpack, where did I put my backpack, oh that’s where I put my backpack, oh Ruth has a… girlfriend now, be supportive Laura-Lee c’mon she’s happy, oh my god she has the cutest dog now too, tell her about home, look at these pictures of everyone Ruth everyone’s grown so much, oh wait Laura you haven’t done the other eye there’s only one eye with shadow let’s go back into the pod.

It’s a flurry of texts as I continue getting ready for class. I’m probably going to be late, but it’s okay, it’s just English Comp, it’s not like it’s Bible class. As I blend the darker color along the corner of my eye, I can’t help the grin that’s probably smudging my lipstick. The group chat pings just a few times while I’m talking to Ruth, but I don’t really check it till I’m about to walk into class. I tell Ruth I’m going into class and that I’ll talk to her afterwards.

Me: see u guys then! hope ur practice & class go ok Me: prayin for u guys

It’s gonna be a busy day.

Steve I knead my thumb into the callouses in my palm, impatient to be done with this stupid project before we even start. The couches in the Lion’s Den are soft and cushy and the room is so cool that it’s easy to lay back and take a nap, which only makes me more annoyed that I have to force myself to stay alert. I sit across from the two girls I’ve been assigned to work on this thing. I barely know this Olivia girl, and I can’t even remember the other girl’s name. My thoughts are on more important things, like Friday night plans, food, and Trish. I just need to get done with this.

“So, how do you guys want to do this?” It’s Olivia. I look up, and the other girl is on her phone, and I feel the weight of mine in my pocket as I respond to her. We have to do some kind of topic from the list the professor gave out and make a presentation about it, or something. My words are dry. I clearly don’t want to be here.

SCM Girl--Lisa? Lanna? She looks up and puts on a smile. “What’s the prompt supposed to be again? We’re…comparing artists. Or something?” My phone went off as she spoke and I went straight for it.

Trish: Can we talk tonight?

Me: Sure babe, of course. what about?

32

Non-Fiction My mind was running through the possibilities, but I felt eyes on me so I looked up. The small part of me that was keeping an ear open took over. “Uh…da Vinci, maybe? He seemed cool. Like, with the…” my mind wandered through the hazy half-memories of this morning’s class, “the Vi…Vi-somethin’ man. That was cool.”

There. SCM girl took the torch back up and I looked back at my phone, staring at the screen. I heard Olivia listing familiar names from my childhood, and I lifted my head back up. “Raphael…?” I forced a small smile. She had been talking about some medieval stuff, the actual artists I think, but it just had to be said. SCM girl looked at me, baffled.

“What?”

I laughed. “Yeah, like, you know, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Donatello, Michaelangelo, Raphael…” Shoot, I had learned something from cartoons after all.

Olivia laughed too. She lit up with some sort of great epiphany and suddenly had an idea about what we could do for this project. I knew it would happen eventually. She was the type of person to think up smart stuff like that. Like a bonfire you pull back from when it gets too hot, I recoiled some as she gushed her plans at us. She’ll deal with the planning now. I’ll just do what she tells me to do, and this will be done with soon enough. *** “I just don’t think we can make it work,” I heard her say again.

I hadn’t known what to say then. I wish I had. I just couldn’t think of how to make it work either. She was a senior, graduating, with plans to go to grad school in Oregon, her home state. She was such a passionate person, a physical person who liked to be around people. We had tried to keep our relationship going long-distance over the last break but we both saw the cracks by the end of it. I felt like I could handle the strain of long distance. A lot better than she could, apparently. She didn’t want to be tied down to someone she couldn’t touch and be around. To be honest, I guess I didn’t either. Still, the last moments of our relationship together just kept repeating in my head.

And here I am, stewing in my thoughts at the library like an idiot, waiting on these two girls to show up so we can continue this stupid powerpoint thing. Olivia had said to be here by 6:30 and here I was. That was my thing. I may not be able to come up with all the really bright ideas and yeah, sure, I wasn’t that book smart, but if you just told me to do something than I’d do it. So here I was, ready to do, and they weren’t here.

Then, SCM girl turned the corner and filled the room with her presence.

Tara. That was her name. “Oh I’m so sorry I’m late! Chapel ran late! Has…Olivia sent you anything on the project?” She sat down next to me, and a waft of her perfume assaulted me. I sat up, irritated that it hadn’t been Olivia coming around the corner.

At least she knew what she was doing. This girl was just like me, just wanting to get

33

Non-Fiction behind Olivia and do our tasks. Already I felt like I was having to take on more than I wanted to deal with.

“Yeah, the powerpoint thing. I just don’t really know like…what to actually do. So I was just waiting on her to get here.” I tried not to sound too annoyed in my voice, but I think I just came off as stiff and grumpy.

She started gushing about how she felt the same way and how she didn’t know what to do, so I guess I didn’t offend her. Hearing her complaints only reinforces my ugly mood, and I feel my annoyance well up in my chest and I start to rant. “It is too much. It’s just a dumb meaningless project that nobody even cares about in class. Olivia wants to do so much. I don’t think we need to do four different guys. Just copy something…some stuff from Wikipedia, read it in front of class, and call it a day.”

“Well,” she responded, “you guys are the ones who wanted to do the turtles thing. But maybe Olivia will want to change it. She’s basically got enough for all of us.”

I sigh. This feels so tired. I just want to go back to my room and sleep until it stops hurting. “Yeah man I just want to be done with this. Got more important stuff to do.” I hide all trace of what I’m feeling as I speak. All Tara needs to know is that I don’t want to be here. I’ve gotten good at hiding how I feel. I don’t want to seem like a wuss, and especially don’t want someone like Tara trying to sell Jesus to me.

Somehow, though, for all my effort, she picked up on something. I saw the look of concern on her face before I could hide everything. “Do you need to talk about it?” she asked, softly.

I was about to respond, when Olivia turned the corner, cheeks flushed and out of breath. “Hey guys,” she said breathlessly. “I’m here. Sorry I’m late.” *** Practice. Something I’m good at. Tell me what to do, coach, and I’ll do it.

It doesn’t have to do with reading books that put me to sleep, pointless work on pointless classes that have no bearing in my life, or even dealing with my own crap, if I don’t want to. On the team I get to be something bigger. I have a role to play and clear goals in front of me. I need to be able to jump high, to run fast but able to turn on a dime, able to play the game of endurance as well as physical strength. The only studying that makes sense to me is when we gather up in the second floor of the AC to prep for our next game by studying our opponents. We watch videos of their games, their strengths and tendencies and style of play, knowing they’re doing the same thing we are, learning our own so that we always have to think about how to be more unpredictable. I feel almost like a soldier when we all run out on the court on game night, knowing all our defensive drills and offensive plays we’ve gone over in preparation are meant for one thing—to win. It’s more than just playing the game well. You have to do it together with your whole team and outsmart the

34

Non-Fiction other guys. Even when I’m not playing myself, I’m out there with the others, following all their movements, seeing all the places for improvement. Basketball is real to me. Art, history…all of that is dead compared to me now, on the court.

I’m sitting at the bench drenched in sweat after a solid hour of running the same set of plays over and over, trying to perfect them for next week’s game.

Mindlessly out of habit, I check my phone and see I have a new text. I swipe with my thumb as a dumb thought runs through my mind. Maybe it’s her.

Olivia: So hey guys, about getting together before our presentation tomorrow…when can you two meet?

I sigh, and rub my eyes. Olivia has been carrying this project thing, doing all the stuff neither of us wanted to do. She did most of the research, pointing us to the pages she wanted us to read so we could take notes and make the slides we will be presenting on. I kind of feel bad, I didn’t even buy the book for class, but at the same time, she wants to do this stuff and I don’t, so why should I? Laura responds to Olivia’s text in bursts. She’s that type.

Me: okie! um, well we got singers group practice @ 6 Me: we r travelling next weekend :D Me: what abt 4:30?

Ugh, I think. That won’t work at all. I’m not going to let this stupid project interfere with what I’m good at. On the court, I’m useful. I’m in my element. I’m who I’m supposed to be, I know it. Nothing else matters, especially not this dumb project.

Me: Can we do it earlier? I got practice at 4,

Olivia responds. She’s got a meeting with her professor and can’t make it any other time. Man, I think, she has a lot on her plate. On top of our project, she’s got at least three other homework assignments, plus this meeting thing with her professor. She’s not an athlete. Instead she does all this academic work. To be honest, I’m a little impressed. But I still don’t know what time I’d be available to work on this dumb thing.

She asked when our practices ended.

Me: Till 8…but I have night class after. Can’t miss that. Already failing.

I hate that class so much. The professor is so boring, it’s impossible to stay awake. Just like Art and Music Appreciation, Bible classes feel so useless to me. I’m a business major. I’m never going to use this bible-thumping knowledge.

I don’t even read the next texts the girls send. Do they matter? Olivia gives some sort of ultimatum and I respond that yeah, sure, I’ll be there if I can be.

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Non-Fiction Olivia: What? I’m saying we’ll just take care of it when we can, we don’t have to meet up. You mean tomorrow? I hope we’re all there tomorrow lol.

Me: haha yea sorry.

Oops.

Olivia’s response makes my phone vibrate, but I won’t see it for several hours, as our break is over and coach calls us back out for more drills. All I care about right now is getting back out on the court to do what I can do. That’s all that matters.

What I can do.

Scribble Box

36

Non-Fiction

Happy P ill Anonymous I felt no emotion as my mother tried desperately not to cry about her mentally sick child, who preferred nothing more than to be in a casket. The nervousness that developed in the waiting room has completely escaped once the psychologist pointed out my flaws and declared me as a liar in some points. “If they wanted you to stay overnight, would you agree?” My mother asked. I simply nodded my head. I wasn’t sure how I felt at that moment. Just like the last couple of months. I felt nothing.

A different woman came in and greeted my mother and me. She talked about a solution and how it would affect me overall. “This pill would help her dopamine level. She should start feeling like herself in a couple of weeks. But outpatient care is the best for her.” My shoulders slumped. I was relieved. The thought of leaving home scared me the most. During out-patient care, I would come home every day but come to the hospital instead of going to school.

The ride home wasn’t silent. The radio blared with Christian music as if Jesus himself was going to come out the radio and talk sense to me.

I honestly couldn’t remember how I got here in the first place. I’ve been around darkness so long I couldn’t remember what light looked like. I would have to strain to remember the reason for this mess, why a demon suddenly made his home on my shoulders and constantly reminded me “Everyone’s life would be better without. Your only causing people you love pain. How can any love someone who is an emotional wreck? Just end it all.”

I nearly broke down the door, desperate to get back in my room. My Safe Haven. Before I could my mom pulled me into her arms and hugged me. I was annoyed by this for a long time, but this was her way to let herself know that I was still psychically here even though mentally I was already gone.

The following week started my adventure in a hospital for crazy people. I was waved with a metal detector, my pockets cleaned, and my shoelaces taken from my shoes. Just in case I wanted to end my adventure a little early. The ladies dressed in blue handed me a worksheet and one of those ‘We care so deeply for your life’ smiles.

The sheet asked ‘What mood are you? How could you make your life better?’

“Annoyed and isn’t that your job to find out?”

Other prisoners, my age, came out of a small room, some looking happy to alive, others wishing the hellish nightmare would end soon. I couldn’t blame them.

Before I could escape alone they all sat around the table and started conversing with me. Great.

37

Non-Fiction “What are you in for?”

That’s one question I wasn’t willing to answer. When I told people outside the hospital what I was dealing with they all looked shocked and taken back like I should be put in a strait jacket and thrown in a white padded room or they would give me that pitying smile and say “Everything will be okay!” I think that’s what I hated the most as if a simple little pat on the back will magically fix everything. But in this situation staying quiet and sitting in my corner wasn’t an option.

“Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidal thoughts.” (Leaving out suicide attempt and homicidal thoughts).

No one gave me a surprised look, they all nodded in agreement others saying “Me too, but I have a little more.” I’ve been alone for so long I forgot there are others the same as I. So why does this feeling of helplessness still sit inside?

They took me into a back room with another psychologist. The room was boring with concrete walls that surround my school, a wall I’ve gotten used to. But these walls made uncomfortable feelings suffer inside my chest.

“How are you?”

Tired. Hungry. “Ok.” “Eating alright?”

All I had was a sandwich that tasted like something from a gas station. “Yes.” He did his doctorly duties and wrote in pretty cursive on a piece of paper that would give me the medicine they promised me. They then gathered the out-patients and threw them in one room.

“Let’s all grow together in the faith of God. He’ll fix any problem.”

The woman preached in front of the room and went around the room telling everyone to introduce themselves. It didn’t take me long to figure that if you pretended to be happy then they will let you get out of prison early for good behavior. I got out two days early.

I just started my second year of high school when I’ve gotten used to the happy pill to make me smile again, my mood was lifted and my grades slowly improved but I wasn’t “myself” when I didn’t take it. I would be moody, grumpy, and never smile. My mom used to get angry at me. “Lazy, all you do is mope around the house. The least you could have done was clean up around the house while I went to work.” Getting up to brush my teeth was hard enough. I thought she would have understood. She proclaimed that she went through the issue, but here I was gettting yelled at for my mental state. All fingers pointed at me in the end. It wasn’t my fault, I did nothing wrong. My hands shook with anger, I felt the fire in my chest begging to come out and burn down anyone who stood in front of my path. But I stayed quiet. In the end, my feelings didn’t matter. Nothing did.

“Yes, mam.”

“Living with you is very frustrating. That’s why you scare people away. No one wants to live around this sadness every day.”

Those words were sharp and painful. It stabbed my heart and made me feel

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Non-Fiction cold all over. I was being a burden to my mother and to everyone else, something I promised I wouldn’t do to people. I went to my Safe Haven and let water flood out my eyes. It felt as it went on forever. I could have filled up a swimming pool with the rate I was going.

I looked over at my table that was filled with art supplies and artwork I didn’t approve of, but others saw it as it deseved to be in the muesum. There sat the happy pill. My name was printed largely on the tiny bottle, telling anyone who looked upon it that it belonged to me. I thought about the moments when I had it in my system. Exactly what did it do for me? It made me happy, but was it really my own doing? Without thinking twice I stormed downstairs and threw them away, hiding other garbage on top of it just in cause my mother got curious and looked for my pills to see the amount of how much was in it. She did that regularly. Eventually, I had to tell my mother about my random outrage. She would have asked to see the bottle for her regularly check up. I would be trapped in the corner forcing myself to lie to her, something I wanted to aviod doing.

“You threw them away? You should have talked to the doctors first before you made that decision” “I’m not taking them anymore.”

She looked at me and gave me a questionable stare, I stood strong even if my inside self wanted to fall on the floor and cry. “I’m proud of your decision.” I heard her say before she gave me hug.

I felt my mental state come back again. For the longest I felt completely emotionless. I remember wishing everyday that something horrible would happen to me so I could finally wake up from my never ending nightmare. But at that moment I saw light at the end of my dark tunnel giving me the feeling of determination and happiness. Something I thought I lost a long time ago.

The doctor, on the other hand, wasn’t as happy to about my decision I suddenly decide for myself.

“You are aware this is just a rebellious stage?” He said to me. “ Most people have made this decision before and had to be put back on it because they still needed it.”

I wasn’t like most. I refused to be forced to take medicine that decides what mood I was going to be. Motivation sprung in my chest, I was going to prove everyone wrong. I was going to be the hero of my story the one who won a war on her own. I declared that with a semi-colon I drew on myself, the story doesn’t end here.

My senior year in high school finally came. I decide on my career as a psychologist, so I could help others who also gone through what I’ve fought. A definition pointed out to me most while sitting in class. Placebo, a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure. That only works if the patient believes it does. A good example was a medication given to patients who suffered from depression, or as most call it, The Happy Pill.

39

Non-Fiction

Detached Mine Rachel Burge The blank walls like a prognosis were bleak and gray, a tired red exit sign flickered bright red and then dull as I advanced through the deserted floors. I passed doors three hundred and thirty-three and three hundred and thirty-one, each set of numbers glaringly red against the dull gray. I paused for a second, gathering myself, reaching forward to open the scratched door branded with the scarlet numbers two hundred and ninety-nine, but it flew open before my fingers closed around the chipped handle. A giant set of boobs waylaid me, a larger woman, robust, speaking in a fake cheerful voice.

“Oh, hello dear!” I struggled to look her in the eyes, fighting to pull my gaze away from the bosons halfway up her neck. “He is right over here sweetie,” I bit down on the inside of my lip, hard.

“I know, thank you.” Raising my eyebrows, and bobbing my head through gritted teeth. “He is my Dad, I’ve been here before.”

I nodded curtly as I stepped into the dimly lit room, wincing as several sets of eyes looked me up and down. The sympathetic glances burning into the small of my back. He was pale, even against the white sheets, like he was yellowing around the edges. A small child standing by his bedside “Look Pastor David, I dwrew dis for you.”

“No, not now,” I push the small, slightly crumpled, piece of paper down in the child’s hand “Just let him rest for a bit, K?” “It’s fine,” my Dad croaks, reaching out his hand slowly.

“Seriously?” I mutter, slightly too loudly. All eyes turned to me, my focus shifted to the window to avoid any chance of making contact with their squinting judgment. The green landscape in the distance, seemed so close, like I could hear the children screaming with pleasure, their lanky limbs swinging them between red bars. Could I not have just five minutes alone with him?

“No, not right now, I’m heading out.”

“Oh for fs sake…” I trailed off, scrunching up the newly printed paper still warm in my hand, “I just wanted you to look at this for five damn minutes, but I’m sooo sorry.”

“You want me to look at your paper instead of going to see Mrs. Hermaton?” My father answered in a calming voice as he reached for his keys.

“Yeah, well when you put it like that...” Unremorseful I continued, the sarcasm dripping from my lips like honey. “That is exactly what I want, because I couldn’t give two craps about some half-dead lady.”

“Can I grab you something from the café?” Disjoined I started, again her huge bosoms taking up most of my vision and obscuring the hospital bed.

“Uh, no. I’m fine.” My eyes following her retreating figure from the room “Thanks,” I added, as an afterthought. Unconsciously, I had taken a seat on the

40

Non-Fiction putrid green carpeted chairs, my body by habit now, avoiding the worst of the possible vomit stains. The same overused infomercial flickers behind my head. I stand up, only to sit back down again, as several church members turn in my direction. Couldn’t I just be a little girl in my father’s arms again, without half the god damn church being here?

The twittering chirp of sparrows surrounded the lush green park, a set of swings, still in motion, left unattended as seven children were now spread across the field, smiling, laughing and calling to each other to pass the ball this way and that. The sun was gleaming from above, the translucent light only lifted for a moment as an ethereal shadow descended across my face.

“Ice-cream, my darlings?” My father, brandishing cones with the white gooey cream seeping down the side of his hands proceeded to shove one into my sweaty palm. The shouts of my siblings surrounded us for a brief moment before dispersing when we had nothing more to bribe them with. He seated himself beside me, and as I slowly licked the outside of my cone the sun continued to beat down on our backs. The silence of this perfect moment was only broken by the ruffling of his shirt as he lifted his arm to throw it lazily over my shoulder.

“You know I love you right?”

I looked back at him, surprised at this almost involuntary spurt of emotions “You do?” I questioned, half joking, half serious.

“More than the world.”

My large hazel eyes met their twin in his, the sun seemly cold next to the warmth emanating from those pools of honey. Impulsively, he picked me up, the cone falling forgotten beneath the warm sanded wood of the bench. I gasped as I flew into the air, and inhaled again sharply as his strong hands closed around my waist. I snorted, half hiccupping with perfect delight, my hands enclosing his. My feet left the ground like I weighed nothing as he started to turn, slowly at first, then picking up speed. He started singing, softly at first, then stronger as his deep baritone reverbed through my brain.

“This is our story, this is our song.”

I was in heaven, visions of rapture bursting in sight, just me and him revolving around and around, enclosed in a world of our own. My braids spiraled around my head like thick ropes, lost in his love and assurance, surrounded by spheres of blurs and lines.

He was my savior all the day long. My heart jolted, lurching in the direction of my base as my body moved away from his, my fingers slipping from the trusted grasp.

“Dad!” I screamed as he let go. The tree sinking into my face, shattering the celestial world of a child…

Abruptly breaking me from my reverie, was my brother’s face, an inch away from my own.

“Amen,” I said automatically “Are you awake?” My brother’s soft hands clutching both sides of my cheeks, patting my face to wake me. I had dozed off in church yet again.

The strains of Blessed Assurance where echoing around the nearly empty chapel. I traced

41

Non-Fiction my features with my hands. Although my nose was smashed into my face, it was unfortunately the way I had been born. I half shook my head, trying to focus into the now late Sunday afternoon surrounded by my siblings littering the pews, lying prostrate and bored.

“Thank you, Father.”

“Anytime son, you and your family are welcome here,” A brisk handshake and nod were exchanged, as the last people finally departed the almost empty building. My Dad turned as I looked up hopefully. I had fallen asleep with a question still on my mind.

“Is there room for me to come with you tonight?”

“We will see, if the Chandler’s need a ride. Then…” he turned away nudging his head towards the door.

“Let’s go kids.”

I jumped up, unprepared for the race, sleep still clinging to my eyes in dried chunks. I swung my sister, chubby, blonde haired and grumpy, who wasn’t more than one, onto my hip. I was barreled aside by my older brother as he smashed through the double doors, down the steps, and into the fray. All of us seek to grab the sliding door handle, in search of the trophy, the unspoken rule that allowed the victor to be the first to pile into the back of the white minivan. The war was fought and won. As a defeated party, I strapped my sister in with one hand, breaking apart the sticky mess that was two brothers fighting for a seat at the window. Agreeing that yes, chickens were stupid animals, I proceeded in aggressively shoving my way closer to the one window that could still be unfastened, for that precious breath of fresh air that would be so essential in the sweltering white van.

The whiteness of the hospital floor distracts me, something so clean surrounded by so much mess. Not even the polished floor could hide the death that surrounds a hospital. My dreams, like the floor, insist on reminding me of the truth.

I try and remember a time where I was at the park, where I was spun around in a reverie, but the church protrudes violently each time, smashing into my wistful dreams, like the rigid bark colliding with my face. The hospital room has emptied, the tearful bystanders leaving, clutching soggy tissues. I am alone, finally. I listen to his labored breathing while calmly wiping away the blood again, and again. The blood continues to build up in his esophagus, but not the blood that was killing him. I look away as the dry heaving begins once more, trying to bring up bile, or something, from a body that has long given up the last trace of anything healthy.

His hollowed face swallowed by pillows, dark rings outlining his cheekbones, his arms that could once hold someone so tight, now limp and helpless.

A nurse pushes past me, inserting a fresh IV and checking the morphine drip. Her portly frame shakes the bedside table knocking over a card. The bright yellow daffodil surrounded by the ugly white letters “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” falls to the plain white floor. I stare at it, my body too exhausted to bend over, the yellow is repulsive to me, that particular shade of lemon yellow is something I

42

Non-Fiction can no longer stand.

Delightful in yellow, the blue flowers dull against the brightness of the dress itself. The top part of my hair pulling my forehead tight, my braid coiling against the rear of my head. The yellow dress never failed to get compliments. My siblings are equally prepared, standing smartly in blue. The weight of two set of arms around my shoulder, felt good, pushing me towards the ground, the heaviness grounding me in safety. I felt rested, just staring up at my father watching him intently, waiting for him to tell me when to smile. “You look beautiful” He whispers, his arm around me. I am assured. I am pretty. This is perfect submission, perfect delight. His face like an Angel, descending, bringing gifts from above. He echoes mercy, I whisper love. The bright flash of the camera captures this perfect moment, this story in time.

At least that’s the way it could have been, but reality struck a chord of remembrance bringing me back to a flash of the truth.

The lobby was cold and smelt like mildew. I slipped down from the white plastic chair, and standing on tiptoes I peeked through the glass at the family inside. Two daughters on either side of their father, one like a buttercup adorned in yellow, the mother holding a toddler on her hip, a dollhouse family. I can see the father mouth something to his daughter as she looks up at him. They smile as the camera engulfs them in white light. They left towards the back of the church as my brothers clustered through the door, my father following in behind us, his black suit striking against the plain white backdrop. I patted my hair down, smoothed my dress, I knew my Dad was leaving soon, to serve. Our family would be traveling with him, in his pocket. I had finally made the cards. The cards of unfamiliar faces, families, missionaries. These people are on cards because God loves them, we would be on those cards soon. I try to stand in the middle, reaching out for my father’s hand. The lady pushes me to the right; her cold eyes daring me to argue.

“Stand over there please.” There are too many people for such a small backdrop.

I stand crushed, as my father’s arm wraps around my brothers; I’m smiling on the side, forgotten and yellow against the blue.

Kneeling down to pick up the fallen card, I know I have precious few seconds left to say goodbye. Yet I can hardly focus, insignificant memories coupled with old emotions resurge.

“I don’t blame you,” I whisper. “I don’t blame you for struggling.” I’m fighting back the resentment and the anger caused by our best memories only being dreams. I didn’t blame him for getting involved in a cult, but I blamed him for joining the church like nothing had happened. Like God really did just forgive him.

“You never even tried to make up for what you did.” The words slipped out, jolted and out of place beside a death bed, but I needed to offer him an explanation, to explain the absence of tears upon my cheeks. Even the sickening change from Chemo, could not hide the old side of him, the side that had laid dormant for years.

Fresh pain on top of the old bruises. The searing pain of leather ripping apart skin, the wet thwack of the blood oozing between the holes of the belt. I hear myself scream-

43

Non-Fiction ing. As long as I can scream, I can still fight back, I will never surrender to the pain. Mazes of psychedelic red and yellow danced vividly in front of the pitch black darkness that otherwise imposed itself throughout my tightly clenched eyes. My lips now only forming the cries that he was trying to beat out of me. I tried to focus in on the beads of blood dripping down my legs, the drips becoming lines, those lines swinging in time with forgotten music, shifting and eventually morphing into bars. My brain needing to leave my body. It was easy to imagine a swing, a child playing and a man on a bench looking over the small jungle gym.

The coughing begins again, at least it isn’t dry retching. He moans slightly, turning his face towards me. I’m still clutching the card as I hold the bucket closer to the bed, his nose is bleeding profusely and he stains the white facecloth pink.

This time I can’t turn away.

I was skilled at ignoring the sounds of dry retching by now, so it wasn’t that, that woke me. I turned over on my side, careful not to wake up my younger brother sleeping on the bunk bed beneath me, or my sister in her smaller cot. A shrill cry cuts a rift in my imagination, my sister speaking in the only way she knew how. I sighed, rolling out of bed only to catch myself on the side at the last minute, swinging down to the floor like a welltrained Ninja. My audience was unappreciative; my skills were nothing compared to a nipple. Reaching out my hands to scoop my sister into my arms, I was struck with blinding pain. The pain was jarring, waves of it, pulsating, emanating from beneath my foot, my vision shifting, and the world instead of dimming becoming a more vibrant shade of white.

The agony was threatening to overwhelm my senses, seeping up my leg like wildfire. I had only ever felt pain like this twice before, my foot throbbing, I reached down, past my ankle, gritting my teeth and trying to fight nausea. “Oh sweet Jesus, no.” Balancing on one foot, I slowly peeled away the small block of Lego embedded in my foot. I stick the dummy in my sister’s mouth like a plug, my hand rubbing her back as I slowly limp around the small room. As she settles, I return to my bed. A hoarse voice from the next room calls out.

I briefly considering getting up again, the guilt fighting against the need to protect myself.

The anger, tiredness and regret still buried deep. I couldn’t, I didn’t want to face the drugs that created a third side of a person I barely knew. As the night becomes darker, purple spots dance and shift before my eyes. I block out his pitiful sounds, turning my face away from the bedroom wall.

I look down at the card in my hands. I snorted, placing it back on the bedside table. I was repulsed, angry at myself for not being effected differently. Angry for having the ability to be so detached from this situation. It was a sick sort of relief that came from never being able to spend time with the figure in front of me, never being able to recover from the phantom bruises still covering my body. His labored breathing continued, a hacking cough so familiar, yet tonight edging on something different. For the first time I notice the high-pitched noise in the background, buzzing, bright lights beaming up and down the dim corridors, illuminating his face despite the heavy curtains. The glass window frames the empty parking lot, the grass a sinister purple. The park sits submerged in darkness, forgotten. Fragments

44

Non-Fiction of sentences, like the fragments of memories rushing through my mind.

“I think you should come round tonight,” softly whispered from my mother in the background the phone attached to her ear. Footsteps echo down the corridor.

I need to leave. I walk out of the room as several people clutching bibles file in to take my place. Someone tries to lay a hand on my shoulder, whispering something about Gods plan. Roughly I move my shoulder away from the touch that burned, like holy water, sizzling from the contact of something repulsive. I took one last look at the bed, the figure in it was unrecognizable, but it didn’t matter. He had left my life years ago and I would forever regret letting him do so.

Scribble Box

45

pHotography

- Sherry Story 46

Non-Fiction

What Have You Done?

Kora Addington Alex Trebec’s voice cheered nonchalantly in the living room. Someone had won the Daily Double as Jeopardy played on the TV. No one was watching, though.

The illustration of the scowling figure with the pompous white wig stared back at me out of my history picture book as it lay open on the table. I read the simple paragraph about the trial of the Separatists over and over again. I still had trouble saying that word – Separatists - out loud, but had you asked me to spell it, I could write it a hundred times. I just didn’t want to look up, even if I had to stare at the mean old judge’s face all night.

“Honey, you have to eat something,” my mom’s voice pleaded at the head of the table. My dish of microwave stroganoff had been empty for an hour and a half now. Abi’s was still full, picked at, shoved away, even nearly toppled over once.

“Please.”

“It’s cold now!” my sister protested, near to tears. “I don’t want to!”

“I’ve reheated it twice, and you still haven’t eaten.”

“But I don’t like it, it’s gross and slimy!”

Now the tears started to spring to Mom’s eyes.

“This is all we have for tonight, we don’t have anything else. Now, eat, Abigail.”

My little sister’s only response was to stare back, her eyes angry and red, but her lip quivering.

“I can’t, I won’t, I can’t!” was the phrase that had been repeated for the last two hours, in shrill elongated tones that grated on the ears but simultaneously tugged at the heart.

“I… I can’t have you drinking chocolate milk and eating cheese for every meal. You have to eat something good for you.”

Abi simply let out a long mewling cry. I tried to focus on the wrinkles of the judge’s face. But since A Beka curriculum wasn’t well known for the quality of its drawings, I had to imagine them for myself. I wondered what it would have felt like to be before him, on trial, judged and condemned. Maybe it would feel like sitting at the table amidst this shouting match.

I forced myself to look up at them from my book. Abi’s forehead had settled onto the table in a puddle of tears. My mom’s round face was red, her eyes watery, her hands holding her temples. I knew there wasn’t going to be any movement to this stalemate any time soon.

I folded up my book, slipped out of my chair, and turned away. Normally I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the table before anyone else. But I don’t think Mom

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Non-Fiction noticed now. I could hear their sighs as I headed into the darkness of the front hallway and rounded the corner toward the stairs. Bent over as I climbed up, I allowed myself to hide behind the railing as I ascended to the second floor.

The master bedroom gaped open immediately to my right as I stepped up on the landing. I didn’t like looking in there. I guess Mom didn’t anymore either.

Whenever I would come down the stairs in the mornings, she would be asleep on the couch in the living room, the tv still humming, barely audible, on some news channel.

I turned left toward our rooms – the little bathroom, our play area, and our room, at the very end of the hall. I didn’t look into any of the doors as I passed. At night, the house seemed to take on a sinister air. Phantom shadows crept about in my imagination outside the second story windows, different sized eyes watching frightfully, while always some goblin or menace followed me whenever I walked around the house alone. I stepped into Abi’s and my room at the end of the hall and felt the checkered pink and blue wooden floor under my bare feet, cold and somehow sticky from the protective glaze that had long hardened on it. The room hadn’t been this way for very long, with custom shelves for our books and tv and treasures and a bunk bed for the two of us. It all had this gilded craftedness about it.

I climbed up into the top bunk, my bunk, and as I did, it felt like I was being lifted into it for the first time. The same big calloused hands that made all of the parts of our newly minted room (I’d just turned seven then, and they’d decided I was finally old enough for a bunk bed!) had lifted me up gently into my new nest the first night we were allowed to sleep in it, half a year ago. It had been scary, being all the way up there.

I opened up my history book over my knees, but with Mom’s and Abi’s voices, now fainter, but with all the same force and strain, still coming up from downstairs, I knew I wouldn’t really enjoy it. I stared blankly at it for a while until they quieted down. Then, I tried to sleep. *** Smoke from the grill wafting past the windows. Ketchup and mustard and tomatoes laid out on the table, a brightly colored Americana tablecloth laid out beneath. The biting taste of onion on my tongue.

I remember the tastes vividly. This memory nags at me any time I think about the four of us ever together. This was one of the only times I could recall we ever were.

Abi rocked back and forth in her high chair next to Mom, finicky and only willing to taste certain bits of the food before us. She certainly wouldn’t eat the onions, like I would. Mom smiled brightly, the sunshine from outside lighting up her features and hazel eyes. Dad, his silvery round glasses sitting on the bridge of his

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Non-Fiction nose, his blonde-turning-white hair pulled back into a ponytail, his funny side smile jumping up onto his face, walked into the dining room through the back door, his arms full of freshly grilled hamburger patties. He set them down onto the table with pride. He sat down next to me and started setting my plate; he made sure I had everything I needed. I feel like he probably had a catch-phrase of some sort for how good his burgers were that made me giggle.

I guess he never said it enough for me to remember. *** Everything was dark. I woke up. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it was beyond any time that I would have been allowed to stay up. I heard Mom’s voice from downstairs again.

They’re still fighting? I thought. But then I realized that I could hear Abi’s soft breathing from the bunk underneath me. I craned my neck over the edge of my bed to see down into hers, and sure enough, there she was curled up under the pink covers. So… who could Mom still be talking to?

Curiosity took over my normally overly cautious personality. I didn’t want to creep across the house all by myself, but I wanted to hear what she was saying, or who might be talking to her.

Abi didn’t stir as I clambered down the ladder to the floor and left the room.

I hoped the second floor didn’t creak under me too much as I made my way across the house and down the carpeted stairs. My mother’s strained voice started to become clearer. There was a muddle of words and then she said “Mark.”

My heart jumped up into my throat excitedly.

Could... could Dad be home?

Risking detection, I rushed faster down the stairs and around the corner. I could see Mom huddled, alone, over the kitchen table where I had left her hours before. She wouldn’t have been able to see me from here, facing away from me as I peeked around the corner of the island in the kitchen. She was looking down at some papers, the landline phone held up in her shaking right hand. The thickness of her voice told me she wasn’t ok.

“But, Mark… why?” she said, sobbing. “What about them? What about me?”

I could hear Dad’s voice, garbled over the telephone. It sounded placating, but removed, like the last tendrils of his attachment were loosening.

“Oh, yeah, and what am I supposed to do now, now that you’ve run off doing… doing that?” Mom said in an accusatory tone. “Where are we going to live? What’s going to happen to the girls?” She shuddered, her shoulders heaving. “How could you do this? How could you do this!”

A pang of something ran straight through me, to hear her sob so, to hear what they were saying, but not to understand.

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Non-Fiction *** Dad’s new BMW smelled like Alyona’s overpowering herbal teas and Katya’s toys that gave off the scent of baby powder. I always found the combination noxious. By the way Abi sat perched awkwardly on the back seat next to me, it seemed like she felt the same way. I don’t think she liked the way the leather felt. It was quite a stark difference compared to the seats in our beat up, dilapidated Dodge Intrepid, the fabric seats felted together by the heat and humidity of the many summers it had existed before we had managed to buy it from a shady used car lot.

“You sure you guys want to go ahead on home?” Dad asked from the front seat. I saw the speedometer spike up to 65 as we passed a 45 mph speed limit sign. Abi inched slightly closer to me and nodded her head.

“Yeah, we’re sure,” I piped up. “Abi wants to eat dinner with Mom.” Her big blue eyes thanked me, but she stayed completely silent. Dad murmured something under his breath about whatever he would give us not being good enough for her, but he nodded to us in the rear view mirror and turned up his music.

Whenever we would come to see him, which had by now become increasingly rare, he would have a new different band to listen to. This weekend it was Within Temptation, a symphonic rock group. Before Abi had gotten uncomfortable enough to want to go back home, he and I had been talking about the band. Now we all sat silently.

He turned on their next song and cranked it up to max volume. The rolling drumbeats and whistling winds and electric strings that started it off came through with resounding roars through the stereo system. Abi scrunched up her sleeves over her hands and held them over her ears. I could tell it was too loud for her. I reached out to touch her shoulder comfortingly. She almost let me hug her for a moment, but then pulled away. Even loving input was too much for her to handle at the moment. I turned toward the window and listened to the lyrics of the song as it reached the chorus: “What have you done now? I, I’ve been waiting for someone like you But now you are slipping away. . . oh.

Why, why does fate make us suffer?

There’s a curse between us, between me and you.

What have you done? What have you done?”

I didn’t know then why the song resonated so strongly with me then, but it did. I drank up the words as I watched the darkling sky. I know now that I felt the emotions the song was talking about. I just didn’t know their names yet.

50

Non-Fiction

A LeverTimothyAnd A Door Dibden If I could take a guess, based on what little I know so far, I’d say you have to know where you’re going to know the significance of where you’ve been. Perhaps if you’ve been going long enough, and you’ve paid attention along the way, you can look back at where you’ve been and take a guess at where you’re going. But what if the path doesn’t seem to go anywhere, as if it almost ends at your nose? What if that light unto your path is only shining about a foot in front of your toes? What if all the things around— the trees, and plants, and vines, the things you would look to as visual marks of where you’re going or where you’ve been— what if they only seem to appear when you’re close enough to touch them? That certainly doesn’t help.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a Wellons Science classroom, fighting valiantly to stay awake against the lulling voice of Pastor Chris Maxwell. The class was Spiritual Formation and he was talking about coming to terms with the callings God has given us. Somewhere in the middle of one of my few brief moments of lucidity, I caught him sharing a quote which has managed to follow me around ever since.

He said “God is calling you to the place where your deep hunger and the world’s deep need collide.” I think of that now because it’s all I have to work with. Those words, especially the idea of a “deep hunger,” have rung in my head for the past few weeks. They have made me feel, for the first time, like I finally have something to go on. So I can talk about that. I can’t tell you where it’ll lead me, but I think I can tell you where it began. *** Let me first say that I sucked in school. I was just awful at most things I did.

My English teacher was obsessed with preparing us for college, so she gave us a book report almost every other week. This might seem great with my love for reading, but I read about as fast peanut butter runs down the side of a hill. I’d like to say I only used Sparknotes for the long books, but that simply isn’t true.

This was the general idea for most of my classes. The biology class used a textbook with questions you could google. You could skate by in Spanish because they forgot to disable the “show answers” button on the Rosetta Stone program.

You could manage the details of Fine Arts projects by printing out a picture, placing a lamp underneath a clear-skinned floor tom drum, and tracing along the lines. To be fair, the last one was an act of pure laziness, but the rest felt like honest-to-God means of survival.

From the very beginning, I felt like I was behind the pack. Early on, It be-

51

Non-Fiction came fairly apparent to everyone that numbers and I didn’t get along too well so I was given my very own special desk on the far side of the room, separate from all other desks and all other students. Each one of them was two years below me, and all were intently focused on learning concepts of math that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I remember sitting there, struggling at the problems in the years-reused Saxon remedial math book. My only comrades were my ragged, lone-ranger desk bearing the artworks of every unique and special student before me, some shelves filled with trinkets and books that were entirely decorative, and the pencil sharpener that I prayed to God would one day be moved so that people would stop walking by and remembering that I was there. In fact the teacher, who was both leading that class and overseeing mine, often did just that. She was a lovely woman, but she would also go entire weeks without taking notice of me, collecting my work only every now and then. I soon got into the habit of standing up and walking right out of the class room to sit with my friends in the library down the hall. I’d come back some time before the end when she normally collected my work, sauntering in and plopping down in my chair at the end of the room, completely within her view. Not once did she notice.

This was how I operated for the first several years into middle school and high school. I couldn’t crunch numbers in my head like this guy, I couldn’t remember everything the first time I read it like that guy, I had to either look for a shortcut or work like an Ox to make it through with less-than impressive results. I would usually come home and just fall back on a good book or some cathartic video game after a rough day, but it was around the time I started sophomore year that I found something oddly fulfilling.

I was in my brother’s room trying to beat his high score in Call of Duty: Nazi Zombies which wasn’t easy because he held the world record at the time. Sometime after dying for not-the-first-time that night, I glanced over my brother’s shoulder and saw something I’d never seen before. He was watching a demo of some kind of game, something involving blocky textures and poorly animated cube-people. The camera showed them walking down an extremely narrow green ridge that looked only as wide as they were and was the only thing keeping them from falling into what appeared to be some undefined nothingness. I exited my game and walked over to him.

“What in the world is that?”

“Dude, check this out!” He said, pausing the video and whipping around to face me with startling excitement. “It’s a game that uses these block to let you make whatever you want! Look at this.” He clicks back on the video a few minutes to show the block people no longer on the bridge-of-certain-death, but on the inside of some large room. After a moment, the camera panned up and the room was shown to be a sphere, or rather, a globe. They were standing inside a giant model of the Earth. My brother unplugged his headphones just in time for me to hear the narrator say that they had made this entirely by hand, no programs used, over

52

Non-Fiction about five weeks. I sat down with my brother, entirely transfixed, absorbing this new concept. It was so simple: you pick up a block and put it somewhere else. Different blocks have different colors, properties, and uses.

I came to learn that the game was called Minecraft but I won’t oversell how in love I was quite yet. The reason being that the game offered something that the video didn’t show, something which would honestly effect the manner in which I think and process even today. I downloaded the game and gave it a shot. I built some houses, I mined some mines, I had a blast with it. I constructed massive castles planted on the faces of seas or carved into the sides of mountains. I recorded the tales of the cultures they inhabited and the conflicts they endured over the ages, adjusting the castles as the ages wore on. The thought of finding an untouched world and making it your own had intoxicated me— whittling away to give it form, watching it come to life as every detail you tenderly carved falls into place in a completeness only you understand. But I soon discovered something hidden deep in the caves, near the world’s very bedrock, that would quite literally start me on a new path in life.

Near the bottom of the world, as deep down as you can go, a player would encounter a faint glowing light emanating from the rocks being picked at. It was called Redstone and had properties like no other mineral in the game. At first I was confused, I had never seen this before. I mined the rest in the vein and headed back to one of my many lavish kingdoms to store it safely in my favorite chest in my favorite room in my favorite castle.

I tabbed over to google and searched for a Wikipedia page on it. At first it made no sense to me. It was some sort of conducting material. If you place it on the ground, it forms a line that acts as a wire and will carry a signal put off by a switch.

“What the heck’s a switch?” I thought to myself. I clicked the link and discovered that there are a few types of switches such as levers, buttons, and pressure plates for pulling, pressing, and stepping on respectively. Ok, I got it, but it still seemed pointless.

I played with it for a bit and found that it works on moving things. If you put the Redstone “dust,” as it’s called, on the ground in a line and connect one end to a door and the other to a lever, the lever would make the dust glow and the door would open.

“Ok, cool…” I thought to myself “But why click the lever to open the door when you can just click the door itself?” The pointlessness of it all bothered me so I continued to read the articles. I read on the stuff for a long while, climbing further and further down article after article and slowly it dawned on me. I began to realize that I was dealing with something much, much bigger than a lever and a door. I learned that you can use Redstone to create systems. I learned that you also have Redstone torches which, when placed in certain patterns with blocks and bits of dust, create complex conditions for those systems. I learned that you have Redstone Repeaters, which can delay a given signal for 0.1-0.4 seconds. I learned that if you want

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Non-Fiction to build anything useful, you had to read up on concepts of digital circuitry such as “logic gates,” “latch circuits,” and “monostables.” I wasn’t in bloody Kansas anymore.

I was consumed. I had fallen into a hole that I knew I wouldn’t climb out of for a long time and I was perfectly ok with it. For nearly two years, every facet of my thought was arrested by images of NAND and XNOR gates, rising and falling flipflop sequences, and the wonderful systems they would come together to make.

Spanish soon became my favorite class as I would spend my free time perusing one Wikipedia article after another, trying to commit these patterns to memory so that I would be more efficient in my constructions. Every day I couldn’t wait to get home so that I could test out some new concept or build some new mechanism to add to the quickly growing collection that was starting to look like the backyard of a well-educated madman.

Looking back, it’s clear why I was so obsessed. It was the first time in all my life that I felt smart. I felt like there was finally something I could do that no one else really could, like I was truly capable of something special. It really wasn’t just a game. I could stand for hours and watch the dancing lights of my machines, continuous signals sent around a carefully-tuned line of repeaters, feeding an iterative pulse of light into a behemoth of thumping pistons and blinking torches, a colossus of my making. Each miniscule piece served a delicate purpose as it was placed to do, feeding, conditioning, and directing the signals throughout the system, the whole of which I alone understood. I knew even then how silly it seemed, but after so many years, I felt as if there was actually something that made me special.

At least it didn’t have to end there, I figured. Senior year was just starting and we all had to start thinking about life. There were some real skills involved in this and I figured I could follow them. Perhaps I could become an auto mechanic, with all that system thinking, I would really enjoy that. Or maybe I could even find my way into circuitry and computers. I went several weeks daydreaming about all the things I would do as I expand my abilities with and fascination for systems, their functions, and all the ways they could serve the world. And then, out of nowhere, I got called to the ministry.

I had felt for years that there was something tugging at my spirit, something about going to the people and being a voice for God in their lives. The truth is that I’ve always liked people, they just haven’t always liked me. Despite being such a loner growing up, I was always interested in people and wanted them to be well.

But even knowing all of this, it felt so sudden, almost unfair. I was afraid I wasn’t cut out for it, that I would never learn how to relate to people or open up to them. I hasn’t so much as had a good friend growing up, how could I expect to touch people’s lives? Why couldn’t I just stick with my systems? I struggled with it for a time, praying and complaining to God. But with one vision and dream after another, I had to give in.

Sometime near the beginning of senior year, I called my dad into my room

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Non-Fiction and told him about this calling. I remember how he pulled me in for a hug and how he tried to keep from crying. That was the start of a very quick time of life-refocusing. For the following year, he tried to prepare me for what was to come. He had me preach in front of the church, but I never really took to it. I applied to study in the School of Christian Ministries at Emmanuel College and was accepted. I enjoyed the Bible study classes, the evangelism classes didn’t click with me, but the theology classes blew my mind.

As much as college is intended to expand the minds of its students, it also has the unexpected effect of shrinking them. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. As time went on, my classes became harder, my grades came back lower, and I was being challenged as a person like never before. The further I went, the future didn’t become more certain, it became less. I stopped being confident in my calling in life, and my drive and passion started to waned. I didn’t know where I was going and a part of me wanted to slow down and stop. Somewhere throughout all of this, in the bombardment of doctrines, theology, and the works of great Christian thinkers, I started to feel like I’d left something behind, as if something was incomplete.

It wasn’t until my senior year that I finally began to fill those gaps. I had declared a writing minor the semester before which helped tremendously, but it wasn’t the final piece of my passions. I knew where I had to go in life and I always believed that I had to choose one thing over another, that anything else would distract from what God created me to be and do. I’d spent the last few years trying to reorient myself, tuning my mind and heart to one facet of my life in the hopes that I may forget, or diminish, the things which distracted. But in the end, that didn’t work out, and Pastor Chris would see to it.

At first, I was a bit hesitant. The journals Pastors Chris was asking us to write were of a very personal nature. He asked us to write prayers, he asked us to write what Jesus would say if He saw us, He asked us to write things that get to the heart and each one picked at me more than the last. Somewhere a few weeks in, Pastor Chris would say something that he’d end up repeated several times throughout the semester. He told me that I should not hold back and that the things I love were given to me to love. “You’re calling is unique, your ministry is special. Embrace it.” I don’t know if I expressed how deeply that got to me. I probably just smiled and said “thank you,” but this wasn’t the last time I hear that. He’d go on to say it again and again until the encouragement stuck and I finally accepted that I am not a coincidence. *** I had never felt so alive. It was probably about two in the morning and I was trying not to wake Josh as I scribbled my late-night epiphany on my tablet. I don’t

55

Non-Fiction know as Pastor Chris ever realized what he was encouraging me in, but it worked.

I decided to learn to code. The day before this, I was trying to put together a small function for a simple program I was building as a means to test what I’d learned. I wanted the function to activate whenever the user of the program typed something incorrect, and I wanted it to remember both the false entry and every previous false entry. It would be called the false entry trap (FET) and it had been kicking my butt for two days. I had a couple ideas, but each one was large and cumbersome, requiring I prepare an empty variable for each false entry. A variable is a device which is given information and keeps it until it’s told to do something with it. In this case, it would be asked to remember a false entry and would later be asked to tell me what the false entry was. But I didn’t want to write thousands of variables for every single false entry. I wouldn’t be satisfied until the FET was small, flexible and could store entries infinitely. Finally, while sharing a bed with my best friend who had leant his own bed to his girlfriend, it hit me like a punch in the gut.

I’d hoped that I didn’t jump to much or make any sound when it finally came to me, but I knew I couldn’t wait till morning. I slowly crawled out of the bed, scribbled something barely legible on my tablet, and slowly slid back onto the awkward place on the very edge, making certain not to bump my comrade. I didn’t fall asleep for another hour, I was too busy grinning at the ceiling like an idiot. And I also couldn’t want to explain it to anyone willing to hear it.

As it turns out, Josh and Mikayla were not willing to hear it, but they were stuck in a car with me so they heard it anyway. On the first of the four-hour drive from Virginia to Emmanuel, I finally let out my excitement: “It’s ridiculous how simple it is!” I exclaimed. “It’s based off of three basic variables: var a = y; var b = c + a; var c = b;” “And what exactly does that mean?” Josh asked, his inflection expressing anything but interest.

“You’d have to add some bells and whistles to make it fit your situation, but here’s the basic idea: After variable ‘a’ takes note of the false entry (in this case, ‘y’), which might be, say, the wrong answer to a question, variable ‘b’ places that entry next to whatever variable ‘c’ is already equal too. Variable ‘b’ thus makes itself equal to the result of ‘a’ + ‘c.’ Variable ‘c’ then makes itself equal to ‘b’ and records the change so that it does not go away the next time around. In the end, variable ‘c’ becomes a list of false entries that expands and continues on for as long as it needs to.” I ended my soliloquy by first taking a much-needed breath, and second by letting out a small “WOOH” and throwing my arms in the air. It was the only celebration I knew I’d get. It seems that Josh had tuned the whole thing out while Mikayla spent the whole speech recording me on her snapchat and making faces at my rambling. I was fine; I didn’t need an applause. My code worked, I was ec-

56

Non-Fiction static, and I just needed someone to hear.

When we got back to Emmanuel I fiddled with the code, adding whatever tweaks and pieces I need to make the FET fit into the whole scheme of things.

As I did so, I was again reminded of what Pastor Chris said about our deep passions and the world’s deep hunger. I can no longer ignore the exhilaration I get from thinking in systems and I couldn’t be happier that God put me on a path that teaches me to find Him wherever I go. I know where my deep passion is, but I’m still looking for the world’s deep hunger, and where the two meet.

I’ve heard it said many times that the best life is one the Jesus leads. Pastor Chris also shared a story about letting Jesus drive the car and take you places you’d never think to go, though Ms. Underwood may have beaten him to that one.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet learned how to give up control. Maybe that’s why my path is so dim, maybe that’s why I have to trust Him to guide my foot at each and every wobbly step. I know what kind of person I am, I prefer to take the pieces and place them as I choose, and I would rather direct things on my own. But perhaps the happiest people are the ones who learned to give up control. I understand this, but I may be working with a disadvantage. Perhaps after letting go of the wheel I should also close my eyes.

Scribble Box

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- Sherry Story 58

Non-Fiction

Shoot For The Trees Rachel Burge The white airbag came out of nowhere, smashing into my face. A sharp blinding pain ripped up my side. I started to panic, trapped between the steering wheel and the seat, the bright light of my phone dimmed, leaving me in darkness.

The shattered remains of the driver’s window surrounded me. I struggled to open the door, but it was bent in by force and was unmovable. Shards of glass were ripping into my skin; blood seeped from the jagged cuts. As I sat there in the dark, I wondered if I would see my life flash before my eyes. I hoped so; I wanted to see the sum of my existence, played before my eyes like my funeral montage. I waited, nothing happened. Crap.

I yelled out, waiting for a response. Surely this road wasn’t that deserted? I could still taste the alcohol on my breath, my stomach clenched, an iron band tightening as I realized that taking the last drink probably wasn’t my brightest idea. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, I looked around for inspiration. I wasn’t sure what the protocol for being trapped in your car was. The passenger side of the car was littered with odds and ends, to be honest it actually looked tidier than it did before the accident. Last weeks “to go” wrappers were almost in a neater pile, thrown against the back of the seat. Amidst the booze and sweat stained 12 hour shift shirts, thrown carelessly towards the side of the car, was a medal, a bow carved into the shining gold reflected in the dim moonlight. I laughed almost deliriously, my head still spinning from the alcohol and shock. What if I died, I would never be able to pick up a bow again. At least my deaths highlight reel would feature my first major achievement in life. *** I remember picking up the wooden bow, it felt weird, light. Not what I had expected at all. Joking and laughing with the other students, trying to hide my confusion. I wasn’t even sure which way up the bow went, and why the string wasn’t even taunt. I gave a sideways glance, only to see equally confused looks on my fellow want to be archer’s faces. A thick French accent coated the room.

“You must first string the bow,” he yanked it from my hands, tutted at me as he turned it the right way up and proceeded to perform a complex set of tasks, which would soon become second nature to me. Annoyed at being the only one called out, I scowled at him, my eyes burning into his back. I was already looking like the noob, I needed to be good at this.

“Follow me,” he said, and as I walked outside into the sheep infested field

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Non-Fiction clutching my cheap wooden bow tightly in my fist, I vowed I would show him and these other kids. The moment that first arrow left my hand showed them up I did. *** Beginners shooting they called it, sometimes you just have a flare for archery, and before you really start having expectations, it’s easy. Ignorance is bliss they told me as I pounded out 10s. I was ignorant until I realized that I was good.

Until I started noticing that the better you shoot, the more people look at you, and the more you want that ten, the lower those arrows drop.

The summer’s day was bright, with the almost wool-less sheep lazily chewing grass; one sheep had decided to station itself right to the side of me. Not really in the way of my shooting, but close enough to have to constantly keep a wary eye on any sheep suicide attempts. My form was feeling fine, great in fact. I had just sent my third ten smashing into the gold, but I could see my coach coming over, already looking intently at my front arm. My shoulders inevitably started to tighten, my stomach clenching. My hand jerked forward as I tried to release, the arrow veering off to the side, just barely hitting the target. Don’t miss again, you fool. Flustered I quickly drew another arrow, hoping to send this one into the gold. This time, it was my front arm that failed me, its tension giving way at the last second for a low right 6. His heavy hand slapped my shoulder.

“Kid, you should think about a tournament, there is one this weekend, I’ll coach you.”

“Yeah, nah,” I told him, looking over at my poor grouping, I hated it when he watched me shoot. I would make so many changes for him, only to have a week’s work ruined because of a single glance. I could only picture me going to pieces in front of strangers, and it terrified me.

“I have to work” I blurted out.

“Seriously?” he was scowling at me, like I was personally attacking him, “you are working for minimum wage at that screwed up bar, instead of going to the NI FITA?” “Well, all the incredible amount of nothing there is to win for prize money won’t exactly pay the rent will it?” I laughed, passing off my rudeness as a joke.

“So you have to work 75 hour weeks? To pay for what, your friends booze?”

“Very funny, I’ll see you next week.” I didn’t look back as I stomped down the range to grab my arrows. Ignoring my coach’s scowls and his pointed muttering about talent wasted. *** The music was loud, no louder than normal, but for some reason, my head could not adjust. Taking another large jug of Tiger beer outside was a relief, the

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Non-Fiction air was cool, and I stood there for several seconds, subtly lifting up my arms to air out my armpits. Hoping that my pit stains weren’t too obvious I walking over to the group of twenty guys in suits, half of them already more than intoxicated. This group had been my baby since 4pm this afternoon. I had fed them and boozed them refilling drink after drink. Grooming them for a tip that would make the constant running back and forth, and rude remarks worth it. Here I was in my element. I knew this group would make this long shift worth it.

“Keep them coming girl,” the huge bearded man, surrounded by his employees, who had finally ceased to suck up to him as they had become more and more intoxicated, winked at me as I placed the jug of beer down. Picking up the three empty pitchers, I quickly made a judgment call, I could probably serve the group two more, and hopefully increase my tip a little in the next fifteen minutes, and they would be fine. After filling up another jug from behind the bar and grabbing yet another plate of their greasy food, I headed outside for the fiftieth time that night.

As I leaned in to clean out the chunks of vomit from the hand basin one hour later, I had plenty of time to analyze my poor decision making skills. Screw that last jug of beer. I had watched them as they had drunkenly staggered out, relieved that they were finally gone and I no longer had to be wary of fingers drunkenly pinching my ass. I ripped off my gloves, throwing them in the rubbish bin with disgust. Tying my apron back on I headed behind the bar, swiftly typing my code into the POS system, I gave a glance over the bill. My heart sank as my eyes reached the bottom.

Those bastards. No tip. *** It had taken several of my club members a lot of convincing, to drag me away from work for the weekend, and to fork out the overpriced entry fee. I knew people would be watching me shoot, even spectators would make the iron band tighten, my shoulders rising and fingers tensing, making a smooth shot an impossibility. Wellington was such a long way to go to fail.

I had shot well the first day, and to several people’s surprise, mostly my own I had placed in the top 5 only 3 points away from second place. The elimination matches had started early with number one being knocked out by a nobody from Taupo. “Anything could happen in matchplay.” The few spectators had told me. And anything did. The large warehouse was empty at one end save the two separated target butts, the little targets looked ten times tinier than normal, dull against the dark black stands. The spectators stood and sat around, most of them intently watching the Recurve Woman’s Gold medal match for the Indoor Nationals. The commentator was pretending to be much more excited about archery than was realistically possible.

“Ten from Cheree, and Rachel is drawing back to answer with… a 9. Cheree follows with another 9. 28 to 19, Rachel has to shoot a 9 to tie, or a 10 to win. She is

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Non-Fiction coming up..” The crowd was hushed. A loud crack wrecked the air, as a portly man leaned back too far in the white plastic chair. I lost focus for a millisecond, my sight shaking around the gold. My shoulder was high, the tension lost in my back, this wasn’t going to be good. “ohhh she lets down with 8 seconds on the clock, risky move. She’s coming up again, 3 seconds, and damn she shoots a 10! Right in the middle. The girl from Auckland takes it out.” Coming off the line shaking, I embraced my coach, barely hearing the commentator continuing to spout rubbish. The adrenaline was pumping, who knew such a calm sport could give such a hit? *** Similar adrenaline continued to keep the inevitable pain away, somehow I wasn’t worried about getting out of the car. I was strangely calm, I didn’t believe in God, but I believed in second chances. The red seeping blood tricked like raindrops down a glass pane into a sea of red. I tried to wipe some of the blood off what was left of the window, as I drew my arm away the redness was thicker.

Deserted on that lonely road, an inch at a time; I crawled through the window. The knowledge that I shouldn’t be alive sending shock waves of adrenaline. Looking back I can’t remember making it from the window to the grassy bank, I just know that the wreck was before me, wrapped in the tree, metal and wood becoming a single pile of junk. It was ok; I was ok. It was only money; I could get a new car. The air felt so good, the smell of burnt rubber only made the soft caress of the cool wind seem more invigorating. It was like I was high, high on life for the first time.

I could feel the tears on my cheeks, the last few minutes had gone by so slowly each second turning into an hour. My eyes were transfixed by the car, but instead of terror I felt angry. The anger continued to build. How could I let a shitty job take over my life like this? I was letting the bar take my life away from me. I didn’t want to hide behind the bar, like a coward. I wanted to change, right that second. I would quit my job. I’m going to do it. I’m going to be good at something for once. Not just good, but amazing. I’m going to shoot. The idea of being scared because someone else was watching seemed ludicrous at that moment. I sat down on the bank, the wet grass soaking into my pants as the rain fell, just past the corner that I hadn’t even begun to slow down for. My body was shaking, emotions coursing through me. It was such an odd time to think about my sport, but despite the pain, I was oddly removed, smiling at my first near death experience. I pushed the hair out of my eyes, only to have it stay exactly where it was. I tried again, pausing to look down at my shooting arm, the absence of pain in my fingertips finally sinking in. My head the clearest it had been that night. Shit. I can’t move my fingers.

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Non-Fiction

A Discourse of Interests Jeremy Burton

I was heading toward the office of the first professor I’d meet from Emmanuel College, my soon-to-be residence and place of education. I had been ushered through the process of application, acceptance, financial aid and housing with relative ease—much to my surprise, as I expected getting into college as a lone homeschool graduate with no portfolio and a questionably verifiable transcript would be more difficult, and I was set to begin classes in the Spring of 2013 once I spoke with the temporary advisor I was assigned to, and gotten scheduled. I was nervous and excited, bound for an actual college with actual classes and professors and fellow students. Everything was new and exciting.

My advisor shook my hand and smiled friendly enough. I suddenly had the feeling I was fifteen minutes of a long day. We sat down.

“So,” he asked, “Jeremy, what degree are you interested in?”

I stop writing. Is it contrived? Too dull? I like to write fiction, so of course it sounds that way to me. I wanted to write a reflection of my time in college, but if I continue this way, I’ll end up with another 2400 words of a pretty average college life narrative, and that’s not what I want. Sure I could do it, but what a bore—right?

I want to write something different, something that entices readers and makes my professors go, “Yeah, this one has it.”

Unfortunately for me though, I end up struggling for days to squeeze out sentences, (a struggle that boiled down to these very words), as I remain always in a vague sense of unease, knowing that while I plod along in my other assignments, I still have this draft hanging over my head, robbing me of carefree naptime or guiltless matches of Smash Bros with my friends. I sniff out for inspiration in my reading, and pick up inklings of what I want in Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt. Something explorative, unanswered, bothered.

“Um,” I said. “I don’t know yet.” I truly didn’t. I was a fresh fish, naïve, but golly gosh ready to learn. Before I left his office, I had been advised to give a shot in the biology degree, which I did. I can’t fully place what exactly made me choose that path, or what he had said to convince me—or even if he had, for that matter. I think it was a conglomeration of a brief comment or two about enjoying the biology course I’d taken with some friends in my high school years (my only co-op class), which gave my advisor something to work with. I’m…pretty sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he was from the department of Natural Sciences and I was entirely a blank slate, ready to be guided to the world of Biology.

A fine start I suppose, but this cannot be the best I can come up with. I feel

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Non-Fiction like I’m missing some element of depth. The question of my path choices in college—my biology major, my passion for writing, there’s got to be something I’m missing, because I really have no idea where I’m going after college, and that’s what I want to capture in a memoir about my college life. I want these moments of contemplation to make up the content, because at the core of my college life experience, I am a very indecisive person.

The Consolation of Philosophy is lost somewhere in my bed, where I’ve left it since finishing the midterm for my European Literature class and I let it be swallowed up by my mob of bedsheets. In it, the philosopher Boethius uses the figure of Lady Philosophy to explore and conquer his fears of impending demise, and the nature of evil. Everything she was came from within him. She was a metaphorical entity materialized from his own understanding that he personified to help him. I’m no philosopher, nor am I as smart as someone like one, but I wonder if it’s worth a shot. Hopefully it’ll be better than the drivel sloshing around in my brain right now, at least.

Lady Science floats over my left shoulder, wielding a test tube as a staff. Lady Writing floats over my right, armed with a pencil. They are draped in Classical, Grecian-style robes, with faces that don’t matter, but probably complement their heavenly locks and righteous virtuous demeanors. They are the manifestations of my main Interests, and each vouches for their pathway of life I can take in college and beyond.

They do not get along.

Lady Science prods me in the temple with the butt of her test tube. “As a man of scientific thought, of seeking out Wisdom—Yes, Wisdom, that which you prayed for when you were young, and with your lifelong curiosity of nature, you will find true happiness and fulfilment in the STEM fields. Become a doctor. Discover something new.”

This, of course, makes Lady Writing chime up. “Ah, you could further a field in the sciences by pursuing such a path, yes, but at the cost of what? Your passion lies with creativity. You must write. It’s what you think about, daydream about, while in your science classes even! It’s where your heart is, it’s what heals you. Plus, you don’t like people all that much, so would you really enjoy being a doctor?”

Lady Science isn’t having it. “But what of the dangers of unemployment? Everyone wants to be a writer these days, and the competition is overwhelming. Worse than that, what if you became trapped in writing for publications you did not care about? Having to use that passion of yours just to put food on the table, while your story withers and dies— and so close, too! The moment you must use your creativity to survive, your passion will die as well. But passion for learning and discovering the objective truth of nature has no such danger, as it is a fire of a different sort. A curious sort, that is fueled by the observable world around you, rather than that within you. It cannot hurt you the way a career in writing can.”

I remember when my brother had told me it was stupid to consider anything that even smells like English as a major. I needed something that paid money. But

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Non-Fiction my thoughts slip further into memory, to my first English course at college.

I sit attentive in class, my brain turning in new and different ways. We’ve been over things I didn’t know mattered. We’ve analyzed the manipulations in advertising, we’ve thought on the importance and modern-day relevance of liberal arts brick and mortar colleges—something I didn’t even know was in debate. We’ve talked about William Wallace’s commencement speech, now my favorite speech of a public figure. Contrary to my brother’s warning, everything has felt important, dripping with Wisdom and higher thought.

Each reading sits with me long after I finish. I’m learning. This is what I wanted from college.

I’m genuinely interested.

“Why did you take on a Biology major,” I hear Lady Writing pipe up as she strolls into the memory, full size now, her regal arms crossed as he leans over my shoulder. “Because you didn’t know better. You were told to. You’re so hungry for any sort of guidance that you jumped on what was recommended to you.”

Lady Science wafts into the scene, floating ethereally through an open 3rd story classroom window. “That may be so, but you drank readily from that realm of knowledge.

You cracked open the tomes of Science and drank deeply, wanting more. Your excitement here was found in your Biology class as well—and truthfully, in all your classes. Who cares if you were born with the desire to learn or acquired it through a desire for guidance. What is more fascinating than studying the origin of life itself?”

“The meaning of it,” snips Lady Writing. “What gives your life meaning? What goal have you set in your heart besides the passion of sharing your story, writing what nobody else can? Only vague things—financial security, a stable job. Why betray a goal based on concrete desire for one based on vague fears?”

I pull back. This isn’t new territory. I know all these arguments. These are the things I wrestle with on a daily basis. I want to be more vertical. I need it to go somewhere new. Come on, Ladies.

Going back in, I let the scene change to another memory. I know where it needs to go next.

I’m on the floor, cross-legged in front of my new dry-erase board, staring at the white space, with a marker in my hand and my Organic Chemistry textbook laid open on the floor in front of me. This is my most recent effort to bring my grade in O-chem up from a dreary 82. Maybe if I work through the problems one at a time on the board, if I sketch out reaction pathways and the Suzuki equation and functional group lists, it’ll help me retain things better. Deep in my brain I can feel the parts starting to come together, maybe, a little…but still, my chest is tight with stress. I’ve never made a B. This is so much harder than Biology 1. Outside my door, I hear my friends out in the hallway and living room, laughing together as they play Smash Bros, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Zombies, or just talking and cutting up together. Later tonight they would all go out together, and I would still be in my room, cross-legged on the floor, working hard to get my grade up.

I would go on to make an 87 in the class. My first B. “It’s not betrayal,” Lady Science says solemnly, cutting through the lonesome silence of my room to correct a mistake I’d made on the board. “It’s preservation. Why haven’t

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Non-Fiction you written your story already? Because you aren’t satisfied with it. What if you wrote it out, fought to publish, and it bombed? On the other hand, you are strong at studying, and a hard worker. You would make a great PhD. Plus, you would have the opportunity to enhance your writing through experiences outside of it. Nobody likes a writer that knows only writing.”

Lady Writing was contemplative, doodling on one corner of the board. “You can’t base your life off of fearing failure—that much we agree on, surely.”

“But you may have to, if failure means hurting you and your family’s well-being.”

Her marker squeaks, pressed in agitation. “His family doesn’t need a poor writer.”

“The Lord provides.”

Does he? I pause on that. I hadn’t expected Lady Writing to say anything so pious. Of the two, I’d say she was actually the edgier one, since it’s my writing that’s explorative and questioning and heretic at times, I’m sure. I’d reflect on that now, but I’ll have to get to that later.

“The way I see it,” Lady Writing says, her doodles wandering into the carboxylic acid functional group of my 1-3-4 Trimethylpentacarboxylic acid figure, “You desire a field in the sciences—a PhD or similar, not because you’ve always wanted one, but because it’s the most prestigious thing to get and others around you heard you mention it, and they all believe in you and want you to do it. Now you’re doing it for them. For their expectations.

You’re going down a path that you’re alien to because you’re too afraid of not knowing where you can take yourself.”

I feel alien to everything. Having one foot in one world and the other in another makes me feel like I don’t fully belong in either. I’m not analytical and mathbased enough for one, not linguistically fluent or well-read in the other. On top of that, I have one foot in trying to get the best grades I can…and the other with my friends, though that’s more of a toe or two tops, unfortunately. In yet another way, I have one foot at college life, and the other in my home-life, doing my best to support my family through tough times.

I’m well aware that analogy stopped working halfway through the paragraph, and decide that’s enough for now. *** Deadlines tic closer. I feel unable to toc. It’s been a few days since I last conjured up the Interests. I felt like I had reached the bedrock of my vertical pathway at the point when I could only think of circular arguments and tired excuses, with nothing more to dig into, even if I hadn’t found my answers. Something changed about that when I was signing up for classes this current semester, however, and I was advised it might be best to drop the consideration of my minor, as it would be unnecessary in the pursuit of my biology degree, and maybe even detrimental, when it came to scheduling. I’d never fully declared the minor, so doing so would have converted many of my electives into minor classes, and I’d have to take

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Non-Fiction more to make up the difference. It’s difficult from a financial perspective for that to be feasible to me. But more than that, it did make me think again.

Lady Writing floats at one shoulder, and Lady Science at the other, both diminutive in size again and contemplative.

“Perhaps,” Lady Writing began, “Perhaps this is best. You’re still taking the important writing courses. But now…”

“You’re doing exactly what I suggested,” puts in Lady Science. “Writing isn’t meant to be your career. It isn’t the path that will put feed your family.”

Lady Writing crosses her arms, thinking aloud. “The change in your schedule means you should have a lot more free-time in your last year. Perhaps you could use that time to further your writing craft, without the pressure of deadlines and as many other pressing concerns.”

Lady Science thinks about this as well, but her probably beautiful face scrunches up. She taps her test-tube on one shoulder in thought. “Then again, you can’t become complacent, or your gift will atrophy. You still must set your goals high, even in writing.

You don’t get good grades in your classes because they don’t ask much of you. You get good grades because you let the pressure motivate you.”

“Writing should not be motivated by pressure. Especially not this.”

“Why not? Shouldn’t it be? Perhaps it’s in his blood to respond to pressure with productivity.”

I don’t like that thought. I hate the feeling of weightiness in my gut. Dread.

Worry. The thought of my changing schedule forecast for the remainder of my time at Emmanuel College to be simpler without having to cram in a minor does make me feel oddly relieved, but I’m afraid that relief is rooted in laziness. I know I’m all twisted up in what I want to do with my life, and motivated by that fear of “missing my shot”, but the alternative feels like complacence to me.

Then again, maybe the extra time could help me figure that out too. Maybe my Interests could work together on that. I suggest it.

Lady Writing cracks a smile and nods.

“I agree,” muses Lady Science. “With his degree path straightened out, why should his Interests not work together? We no longer have to compete.”

“I’m reminded of something,” says Lady Writing, still wearing a smile. She’s been waiting for this. “A passage from Goethe’s Faust. I think it might be appropriate, here.”

Faust is another title that had a stint of residence somewhere in the enigma of my bedsheets. My favorite so far from European Literature class. It doesn’t surprise me that Lady Writing takes a liking to it. The part she quotes from comes from a part in the story where Faust, always restless, tries to sooth himself and reaffirm his faith by translating the Gospel of John into his native German. But again, never satisfied, he can’t seem to get past the first line.

Lady Writing inhales deeply before beginning her recital. At the last line of the poetic segment, she puts emphasis on two words. She begins;

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Non-Fiction It says: “in the beginning was the Word.”

Already I am stopped. It seems absurd.

The Word does not deserve the highest prize, I must translate it otherwise If I am well inspired and not blind.

It says: In the beginning was the Mind.

Ponder that first line, wait and see, Lest you should write too hastily.

Is mind the all-creating source?

It ought to say: In the beginning there was Force.

Yet something warns me as I grasp the pen, That my translation must be changed again.

The spirit help me. Now it is exact.

I write: In the beginning was the Act. This whole thing, when pulled from its context in the story, does seem to have some parallels with the Interests, and works well for my purpose of understanding. I don’t feel like my writing is enough to carry my life forward on its own— not without crushing my love for it at least. But my desire to write has constituent parts, including a yearning for deeper, introspective thought and discovery. That element, once converted from thought to force, gives me the desire to do something meaningful, something new. But, ultimately, the two can do nothing without the other. For me, to write on its own does not sustain, but to do without planning and discovering is formless. I may not know what I’m doing yet, but if I’m going to be successful, my Interests will have to work together.

The two sigh in relief. Now, on to that question of faith.

Scribble Box

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- Blake Rackley Scribble Box

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- Blake Rackley Scribble Box

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Non-Fiction

You’re Wrong Grace Perry Three things can happen when you say I’m wrong.

1. I accept it graciously and hope to learn from this mistake in the future, a smile and a thank you for bringing this blight to my attention (there may or may not be embarrassment involved).

2. I appear to accept it graciously and hope to learn from this mistake in the future, a smile and a thank you for bringing this blight to my attention. there may or may not be embarrassment involved). In reality, I’m flipping you off in the safety of my mind.

3. I flip you off in reality, other expletives probably soon following.

It is not difficult to understand which of these are easier.

Only the first two are appropriate inside a church. I have found myself performing two rather than one. My favorite spiritual experiences start with the third, progress into the second, and ground themselves in the first. This is not one of those stories. *** It’s late. The cold has found a home in my jeans and wet hair, I’m as warm as a drowned cat. The Taylor building stands only to hold me up it seems, as I crouch at her steps, the riptide in my stomach tipping me over.

You’re Wrong.

I remember sitting next to him as he rubbed my back, trying to ease normalcy back into my posture. We spoke in quiet whispers about Hebrew definitions, God’s idea for my life, and hell. We held hands and tried to find some place of peace. I do not know if I have.

Why would God punish someone for loving someone else?

He recounted me with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, relating my confusion about my identity with a bible story he’d wrestled with as a kid. I remember thinking ‘what bullshit’ and instantly regretting it.

Roberson was dark when we returned, we did not let go of each other, but I couldn’t banish the black hole in my chest. He gave me a quick kiss and promised he’d be keeping me in his prayers. I didn’t want to be in his prayers. I wanted to be right.

The chasm in my chest did not disappear, I stood outside and glared up at the sky. When I was little, I used to stare out the car window and try to imagine God

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Non-Fiction sitting up just above the night sky, somewhere between the Earth’s atmosphere and the stars. I still liked the idea of God in space, surrounded by cloudy nebulas and colors we couldn’t even see. To me, God is in the stars.

I saw nothing in the sky tonight.

I tried to imagine Heaven in the traditional sense, like the kind of traditional with the little baby angels that never seemed to wear tunics, so you only ever say their backside and their fluffy wings, the kind where God sat on a golden throne settled on on the fluffy clouds beneath him. They were too wispy to hold up such a lavish throne.

My phone buzzed, I flicked the lock screen open. My friends were wondering where I was, the bonfire’d started about an hour ago. I shot off a quick response, promising I was okay, just having a talk with the boy toy. Complete with a smiley face emoji. A concerned text was still sent my way, but they promised to give me some space. It was a small comfort, to know other people cared. My chest warmed a little. *** The next day, I went back to holding his hand. He offered me a tentative smile, and I forced one right back. It was daytime, no time for Feelings or Breakdowns. We all had homework to do and friends to support. So we did homework and talked to friends. We went to lunch.

The table didn’t have enough space for everyone, so we dragged a few of the high chairs together, some of us with our plates on our laps. There were smiles all around, and it felt like somewhere to belong.

“We have, like, Two and Half Whole Gays at the table!” Kyle laughed, with all the homosexual gusto and pride I expected from him. My gut jumped instinctively, I opened my mouth to correct Kyle, that I and the other two bisexuals at the table were each One Whole Gay thank you very much, and then I remembered. The hand under the table holding mine, Sodom and Gomorrah. Both our palms were sweaty.

The black hole in my chest grew tighter. The boyfriend shot me a quick glance.

You’re Wrong.

I shut my mouth. *** “Can I have a pet snake? Or an owl?” I’d asked. Mommy’d been scrubbing bean sprouts in the big metal pot. I was going through the kitchen pantry, trying to find the spray cheese, I liked to spray the stuff right into my mouth, and had hoped Mommy was too focused on her food making to notice me.

We’re in the house that I grew up in, the one where I learned to read and Becky taught me to play the Big Girl Games on the computer: Tomb Raider. This is the

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Non-Fiction house where Michelle tried to teach baby Sarah to read, but Sarah’d got frustrated and threw her Clifford books over the side of the catwalk with the loudest shriek I could imagine at the time. This is the house where Michelle and Chrissy used me as messenger between their two rooms when they were fighting. This is the house where Becky’d helped our cat Tiger birth three separate litters of kittens in the basement and let us hold them once they were clean. This is the house where Mommy and Daddy would squabble over the Totally Not Secret Sharing With Grace Yoohoos! that Dad would always get caught buying.

It’s the Bent Mountain house. The Perry’s belonged there.

“Gracie. Don’t you want something pretty?” Mommy’d started. She didn’t turn around from her big metal pot, but she’d heard me starting to rustle through the cabinet anyway. “If you’re going to eat something, you need to have room for dinner.”

“I will!” I’d promised. I’d found the Cheezy Whiz. Next Step: oyster crackers.

“And Snakes are pretty! I can feed them worms.” I’d meant the owls. Maybe.

“Honey. What about Eden.” The way Mommy’d said it, it didn’t sound like a question. “Wasn’t the devil a snake in Eden?”

“Well the devil isn’t a snake now.”

“But don’t you think it’s wrong to want the animal that Satan’d wanted?”

Mommy’d didn’t look up from her pot once, and had started to strain the kongnamool. I’d squirmed at the question, too agitated to reach the oyster crackers. I thought snakes and owls were pretty. Maybe I was wrong.

“Well, mayb-” “Then you don’t need one.” Mommy’d finished. “Besides, we have four dogs already, Gracie.”

“What about hermit crabs?”

“No Gracie.” *** June 12, 2016. It’s a year after we’ve broken up and I woke up to a flurry of pings on my phone. RIP Pulse. Stand with Orlando. My throat swells up in my bed, and I rip off my blanket, pulling up the news on one tab and tumblr on the other tab. People were hospitalized. They were ID’ing bodies. Some of the kids were only outed to their family in death.

It’d been a hostage situation. Some of the people in the club hadn’t even known there was a shoot out at first, they’d assumed there was fireworks or something going on outside. Two of them were around my age.

I closed out my tabs and retreat to my closet, not taking the time to laugh at the irony, and didn’t cry. I stared up at the ceiling, waiting to cry, and it never happened. God, Grace. How fucked up are you?

Eddie Jomoldroy had texted his mom while he was trapped in the bathroom. “Mommy I love you. In club they shooting. He has us. He’s in the bathroom with us. He’s a

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Non-Fiction terror.” He’s pronounced dead on Monday. I try to imagine being able to text my own mother in a situation like that. (I do not have trouble imagining being in a situation where I could be shot. Dad had started telling us to not wear hoodies since Michael Brown in 2014.) No matter how hard I try I can seem to put those hypothetical texts on that hypothetical phone. Something is Wrong with me.

The closet in my bedroom has glow in the dark stars on the ceiling and as I laid out flat amongst the dirty clothes I’d thrown in here months ago, I made up constellations between them. There’s Scorpion nearby the dresser. By the left wall, there’s the Tulip. Harry Potter’s lightning bolt is above the door. That chasm in my chest clawed at my ribs.

God I hope you’re with these families.

Above my head, the stars continued to shine, nothing had changed. God was still somewhere over my head, orchestrating the literal symphony of the universe.

I went downstairs to start the day. No one mentions Orlando. *** We’re cleaning up the foyer for Christmas, Mariah Carey is playing for the bagillionth time on Michelle’s iphone. There’s boxes of Chrissy’s stuff I need to move. She’d just moved to Boston and some of her stuff from her Atlanta apartment was still at home. I flip open the box, sometimes Chris has some golden nuggets of nick knacks squirreled away. And hey, I am the younger sister after all.

This box is full of books, these are the best boxes, and I’m already digging in.

I pull aside a biography on Barack Obama, a book on the education of girls around the world (or lack thereof), and on the very bottom: Does Jesus Really Love Me? – A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.

My breath catches. I look around. Becky’s untangling the Christmas lights. Michelle’s sweeping. No one is watching. I grab the book and shove it under my shirt, zipping the Spider-Man themed jacket closed.

“Going to the bathroom!” I call over the blast of Christmas music. I’d considered slipping the book away somewhere discreet and picking it up later, but I didn’t want to risk someone picking it up and trashing it on sight. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I keep the book close to my stomach, back hunched to keep the outline of the book hidden. Walking casually does more to keep things hidden in this house, but hopefully my speed walking is passable enough with my bathroom announcement. Mom and Dad are sitting in the kitchen, within open view of the stairs that lead up to my room, towards the bathroom. I hunch further.

I shut the door to the bathroom, back sliding against the painted wood. My fingers run over the cover again. I’m not alone. There are others out there. There’s other Gay Christians out there. Not the handful of people who I’ve absorbed into my friend group, all three of which had already left the college. Chrissy bought this, had kept it with her other very well loved tomes. My body curls around the book and the

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Non-Fiction book slip allows my tears to roll down plastic and leave the actual book unharmed.

There’s already doubts. So what if you’ve read a few articles on Hebrew translation? Those could be Wrong. Accepting a single viewpoint as truth is dangerous. We’re all still Fallen. The author, Jeff Chu, he could still be Wrong. You could both still be Wrong.

But he exists. He’s out there writing on his experience serving God. He is serving God. You could be Right.

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Non-Fiction

So Glad You Are Timothy Dibden It was a good time, but I wouldn’t repeat the experience. I never did well in crowds and hated interacting with people I didn’t know. The noise, the jostling, the lasers and strobe lights, it was not a scene the attracted me. But Michael Tate was doing his first tour with the Newsboys after replacing Peter Furler and I wanted to see how he was. I liked him, but no one can really replace Furler.

As soon as it was over, my brother and I headed straight for the door. He may have lingered longer than I did but the only thing I came for was the music and I was ready to go. We were just about to his car when we heard our names.

“Tim! Mike, hey guys!” I turn around and first notice a long mat of unkempt bright red hair. Torn, raggedy shoes were slapping on the concrete as they carried a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. We greeted him with smiles and fist bumps, acting like we didn’t notice how much he had changed. I don’t remember much of what was said but I remember thinking how different things are now. I wanted to be happy to see him but I had to wonder where his brother was. His mom left our church a few years before and has dated a number of different guys since then. His two older brothers, Ched and Perry, two of my best friends, are probably off strung out on drugs somewhere. His younger brother, Aiden, was probably back at home, still innocent and waiting for the day that he finally asks what happened to his home. I can’t say for either of his sisters though. I hadn’t seen them for years by this point and I don’t think anyone had.

We stayed and talked for a while as the cars slowly made their way out of the lot. He tells us that his ride is a long ways off and he would be waiting pretty late into the night. There is a moment of awkward silence in the air as we didn’t quite know what to do. We hadn’t seen him in years, but he was still a good friend.

We decided to invite him to stay the night with us. Levi, with his laid back, toothy smile, thanked us, shuffled into the back of my brother’s car and rode with us all the way home. *** Some of my fondest memories are of staying up late at night with my friends.

When I look back, I don’t remember the trips to Six Flags or the road trip to Washington, I remember the whispers of friends lounging on beds made of sofa cushions and piled-up sleeping bags. I remember straining to make out familiar faces in the moon light shining through the skylight window, and the quieted colors of disorganized blankets and pillows. I remember hushed voices sharing the myster-

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Non-Fiction ies of life as we knew it, secret things shared only in that little secret place.

I don’t remember much from that concert, but I remember a lot from the night that followed. On the drive back, a part of me was eager to recapture those moments. Staying up late and talking about anything and everything that might pop into heads. Levi stayed in my room since I knew him a bit better. At the time, I was staying in a very small room directly off of the kitchen that was likely more of a large colonial-style pantry. It fit little more than my bed and by dresser and I loved it. Levi slept in a hammock that I felt compelled to install a few weeks before. When you hung it on the hooks it barely fit, slung from one corner of the room to the other and hanging right over half of my bed.

For a while, things go like they used to. The light is off but my lamp is on, facing toward my lightly-colored wall to create a mellow atmosphere. But I quickly realize how much my friend has really changed. He talks mostly of himself and the issue he’s had. He tells me that he has trouble focusing in school, that he’s constantly seeing things shuffle around the sides of his vision. He also passes out sometimes and other times he gets scared. He doesn’t like sleeping in his room because he never feels alone and sometimes hears things shaking. I remember that his house used to creak a lot so I try to ask him what he means. Right as I open my mouth he jumps, as if startled by something behind me and for a slip second he stares at me with a shocked and haunting face before suddenly passing out. He drops hanging half-way off of the hammock and nearly falls to the ground. He’s only out for a moment when I reach out to grab him and call his name.

“Levi, you ok?”

“OH F-SHIT!” He suddenly comes to and jumps up, breathing in frantic hollow breaths and staring at me with scared, shaking eyes. “DON’T TOUCH ME! WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES?” He nearly falls out of the hammock as he tries to back away from me.

“Levi, what are you ta-” “YOUR FUCKING EYES, WHAT COLOR ARE THEY?” “Hazel green!”

“AND YOUR HAIR, WHAT COLOR IS IT? WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” “My hair is brown and my name is Timothy Dibden! What is going on with you?” He puts his hands on his forehead and takes a moment to collect himself.

For several minutes, the only sound is the whirring of the fan and his own shallow breathing.

“I’m sorry.” He tells me. “I had to make sure you were you and not something else pretending to be you.” I didn’t know what to say to that, I was just trying to remain as calm as possible. I took a few stifled breaths and asked the first reasonable thing that I could think of.

“Does this happen often?”

“Yeah, more than it used too. I see and hear a lot of bad things,” His voice trails off while his eyes focus on what looks like nothing at all “…monsters trying to

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Non-Fiction hurt people and take their place. Sometimes I try and fight them to protect people.”

“I hope you’re getting help, man.” I say probably more bluntly than I should have. I really just wanted to go to sleep and let the night end. He doesn’t resist, just smiles and nods.

“I know, I am.” I said a prayer for him and turn to shut the lights off. At his request, we left the lamp on that night along with a little water-vortex lamp that casts a dancing blue light on the ceiling. He told me that it was the best night’s sleep he’d ever had, though I’m not sure I can say the same. I never learned what was wrong with Levi, and I decided long ago that this was for the best. I wasn’t going to let what he’d become bother me. I wasn’t going to let anything bother me. *** When they told me that Maine was probably one of the most dangerous spiritual battlefields in the country, it was not news. I’d known for a while that many missionaries use Maine as training grounds. “If you can survive in the hotspots of Maine, you can survive anywhere,” people will say. Growing up, I saw many pastors fall to every kind of pressure, I saw loved ones slip down paths too dangerous to follow on, I saw marriages end for every reason from molestation to violent psychopathy, and I saw demoniacs like the kinds in the gospels, some of whom were my personal friends.

All things considered, it’s not too surprising that no one trusts each other up there. The north is a cold and unfriendly place where no one expects you to hold the door, no one wants you closer than a few feet, and no one is going to ask you how you’re doing. One of the best ways to handle this is to just make yourself colder than the world around you, encase yourself in an iron crust and move along indifferent to the bellowing winds. The world can’t hurt you if you show it nothing to hurt. *** I was sitting in the lobby of third floor Drum during an evening in February.

I was amazed to find there as a lull in my homework schedule and it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. It’s early on in the spring semester so the air still carries that winter tinge. It’s not much but it’s all the excuse I need to bundle up in one of my hoodies, my natural second layer that Georgia prevents me from wearing nine months out of the year, as I’ve grown accustomed to. I’m entirely alone in this lobby, accompanied only by the AC running on constant fan and the uncharacteristic country chicken sign advertising “Fresh Laid Eggs.” I always enjoy these times of solitude, often more than times with friends. Having the lobby all to myself on such an evening was a golden moment in time and I was determined to milk it for all it was worth.

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Non-Fiction I was sitting at my laptop exploring my new-found fascination with writing. I had only started writing that January but already had a small handful of short stories that I was proud of. Zoe was about a sad little man who could only express his musical genius through a life-size doll he had fallen in love with. The Rabbit and the Spring Bringer was about a bunny rabbit who hated the changes that winter brought and so decided to chase and catch the spring to make it stay as long as possible. I was quickly realizing my fascination with fiction as a venue to express my thoughts, mostly of people, and the way they live, think, and interact with one another.

Somewhere around 9:00pm that night, as I was still typing away at my computer, I received a sudden phone call.

“Hey mom, what’s up?”

“Hi dear, how are things?” I didn’t like what I heard. Her voice sounded a little fallen, like she’s trying to be natural to keep me from panicking but has called for a very specific reason.

“Pretty good, nothing unusual. Is everything ok?”

“Well, no.” My mom was never really one to beat around the bush. “Your aunt Jane has been in an accident.” I set aside my computer to give her my full attention.

“Wh- Is she OK?” “It doesn’t look like it. She pulled out of a stop and was T-boned on the left side. She’s in the hospital now.” I didn’t really have anything to say, I just sat and waited for her to continue. “I wanted to let you know so you could keep all the kids in prayer.”

“I will mom, thank you.”

“I’ll talk to you later, dear. Bye” I found out later that my aunt was driving home from dropping her eldest, Lisa, off at the airport. Lisa was on her way to continue another semester at college and was in the air when the crash happened. My aunt was dead before Lisa’s plane landed. I remember that I took time to call my cousin Arthur, I listened to him cry and barely manage to brokenly ask “Why?” over and over. Somewhere in the middle of this, a thought struck me and I was hit with one of the most shocking epiphanies of my life. I didn’t care.

I looked back on when my grandmother died a few years before, and I remembered wondering why I wasn’t sad. She lived the last fifteen years of her life with completely debilitating Parkinson’s that caused her to grip her hands and squeeze her fingers together day and night until her knuckles wore down to bloody bone. When she finally passed away, I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t shocked, I felt nothing. At the time I thought “Perhaps I’ll feel more when someone closer to me passes away.” Despite living in the same house, I didn’t connect much with my grandmother so I chalked it up to unfamiliarity.

I had just gotten off the phone with my cousin. I stayed on to hear him cry, listened to his rambling and prayed for him. When I got off the phone my mind wasn’t with him or any of his siblings. I tried to turn back to my stories, my quant little

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Non-Fiction observations about people and their lives. But I found that I focused on one singular thought that racked in my head and begged to be acknowledge. “I have some serious issues.” I finally said.

And that is what I told the man sitting across from me. I forget how many times I had walked past this building over the last few weeks. Several unsent emails and incomplete phone calls were made that week, cut short or skirted by thoughts like “You’ll just waste his time,” or “There’s nothing wrong with you, you’ll only embarrass yourself.” But now I sit in that cozy office, board games and photographs lining the wall on the floor, white noise machines making up for the paper-thin walls. I look at the man I’ve only known through stories of my peers, not responding to my initial, nondescript opening statement.

“With my emotions, that is,” I continue.

“In what way?”

“In that I don’t have any,” I say half-jokingly. For the next hour, Dr. Rackley walked me through a couple basic questions to figure out whether there was an issue and where it was hiding.

“Can you remember when you last cried?” I thought for a moment, being overly aware that he was taking note every time I looked away to think. I could vaguely remember.

“Over ten years ago” I was almost embarrassed to admit. “That’s the last time I really cried, though I can’t even say what it was about. That is honestly just my best guess.”

“What do you mean ‘really cried’?” He asked without any sign of change in his body or face.

“Well, I hadn’t considered it crying, but last year I went to see Inside Out which turned out to be a bit of a milestone movie for me. It’s the only movie, show, or anything that has gotten to me enough to make me tear up. Granted, it was a single tear, but still.”

“Do you remember what scene it was?”

“Yeah” I responded, again looking away to see the moment in my head. “It was right after Riley had come home, when she was hugging her parents. Sadness and joy pressed the button and she gave that quivering sigh.” What followed was the last thing I had expected. Dr. Rackley began asking hypothetical questions, asking how I would feel if such a moment were to happen with my own father. He began saying things as if in my father’s voice, things about acceptance and approval.

“Timothy, I want you to know that I am amazed at the man you’ve grown to be and love you for everything that you are. I am proud to call you my son.” Right in that cushy little office, I broke down like I hadn’t in years. I tried to fight it, it felt so unnatural, but I was encouraged to let it go, to finally let the walls crack.

We had three meetings, the most we could fit before the end of the semester. Over the course of those three weeks I apologized to those I learned I had hurt

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Non-Fiction and let myself grew closer to the people I thought I already knew. When I left for my last session, I made my way straight for my dorm. The winter had moved on and the heat had arrived so I had no intentions of being outside any longer than I needed. I swung open the upper parking lot door and made my way up the stairs to the third floor. I didn’t go straight to my room but peaked my head into the lobby. I was surprised to find that there was no one in there. There is almost always a group of people hanging out in here at this time. I looked around wondering where they might be when suddenly it hit me. I was disappointed. My friends were nowhere to be seen and for the first time ever, I was disappointed about it.

I decided to drop my bag on the floor and sit in the lobby in case some of them showed up. I pulled out my tablet and for a moment debate between working on a story or loading up Google books to continue inching my way through Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. I went to my “incomplete” folder and saw Mr. Castell, a story about a kindly old man who knew what people desired and would change their lives by painting a picture of what they longed for the most. I knew I should finish it, but I ultimately gave in to the pull of Vonnegut. But rather than continue from where I left off, I took a moment to go back and read my favorite excerpt, the part where he describes these small, tranquil creatures called “harmoniums.” They were basic creatures who lived to be together and to share simple relationships, and I admired them for that. There in that empty lobby, as I waited for my friends to return, I read those words for the hundredth time: They have weak powers of telepathy. The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second and the second is an automatic response to the first.

The first is, “Here I am, here I am, here I am.”

The second is, “So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.”

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