Paddlefish 2017

Paddlefish 2017 ­— student literary and art journal —

cover art by Jennifer Vondrak

Mount Marty College 1

Editor Jim Reese Associate Editor Dana DeWitt Review Editor Jamie Sullivan Copy Editor Dana DeWitt Arts Editor David Kahle Editorial Assistant Katie Hamil Abby K. Keffeler Cover Art Jennifer Vondrak - “Grandpa Smudge Painting” Book Design & Layout Abby K. Keffeler Advisory Board S. Cynthia Binder Dana DeWitt S. Marielle Frigge Jamie Sullivan

Copyright © 2017 by Paddlefish All poems and prose are used with permission of the authors, and they retain all rights to their work published herein.

Except for brief quotations in reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system,without prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law.

The views expressed in Paddlefish are not necessarily those of Mount Marty College.

Paddlefish Snagging good literature one line at a time.

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Paddlefish 2017 ­— student literary and art journal —

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Table of Contents 6

Brandy Crisman • Beautiful Ritual [Winner of the 2017 Father Jack Garvey Award for nonfiction] • The Liar and the Thief, non-fiction

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Nick Wixon • Amputate [Winner of the 2017 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for fiction] • Late Night Sex, non-fiction

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Max Contreras • Across the Border [Winner of the 2017 Sister Eileen Neville Award for poetry]

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Katelyn Kingsbury • Green Eyes, non-fiction

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Kimberly Mosqueda • My Voice, My Power, non-fiction

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Abby K. Keffeler • Harleys, Beers, and Self-disbelief, non-fiction

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Jennifer Vondrak • Wafer Storm, non-fiction • A Swift One Hundred, non-fiction

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MMC Graphic Design Student Work

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Katie Hamil • Adventures of a Tree Hugger, non-fiction • Throw Like a Champ, non-fiction

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Megan Fink • Free Plates, non-fiction

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Joseph Brinkman • How to Become a Professional Golfer, non-fiction • Addendum to the Tom Brady Argument, non-fiction 4

Table of Contents 71

Miguel Manriquez • Where I’m From, poem

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Caitlin Davis • Illuminating Bravery..., non-fiction

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Megan Patterson • Man and Sea, poem

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Andrew Horsley • The Life of a Farmer, non-fiction

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Kaito Sukeyasu • What I Know, poem

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Bede Art Gallery: Student Art Work

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Book Reviews

Samantha Kasowski • Dorothy Must Die • God Help the Child

Megan Patterson • Fates and Furies

Jennifer Vondrak • Harry Potter and the Cursed Child • Tell me Three Things

Zach Hough • Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes

Katie Hamil • Shuffle, Repeat • It Turns Out Like This

Nick Wixon • Mr. Mercedes • Dog Years

Abby K. Keffeler • We Are All Made of Molecules

111 Contributors 5

Winner of the 2017 Father Jack Garvey Award for nonfiction

Beautiful Ritual

by Brandy Crisman

W

e peer through the slightly dusty lid, waiting for the red dot to turn black. We would have no way of knowing if it was hot other than that dot. Our sacrificial lamb is balanced on the round black utility stool purchased at a Texas flea market a few summers back. She glances around at us, looking for cues to tell her the plan. Her water blue eyes follow our hands carefully.

She wants pretty hair, and is waiting expectantly but patiently. Even at six years old she is aware that she is doted upon and these older sisters will do anything for her.

With a sign, the girl slides from the stool to stand before the full-length mirror.

She leans in, examining her little face, turning it this way and that and then leans away from the mirror, striking a pose, imitating her selfie-taking sister, with lips puckered into a duck face. She stands before the mirror, watching the reflections behind her as they gather creams, potions, serums, combs, and brushes. Knowing glances and indulgent smiles are cast in her direction as we observe her reflection.

Finally, the hot rollers are ready.

We gather like witches performing a ceremony over the youngest member of the clan. My mind wanders a bit, making connections between our girly ceremony to what might have been misconstrued in the dim past as magic. In a way, the manner in which femininity is conferred from one woman to another is magical, from mother to daughter, sister to sister. Our little family ritual takes place in my bathroom. I’m wrapped in my shabby chic style bathrobe. My oldest daughter is draped in a kimono, reminding me of a geisha with her waist length hair piled loosely atop her head. My middle daughter is channeling Stevie Nicks circa 1977 in a beaded shawl.

We begin by smoothing her hair, then gently rolling the blonde strands around the roller. Her hair has the texture of corn silk as it slips through our fingers. She doesn’t wince us we place the clip, pressing, and jabbing into her scalp. We talk about make-up palettes, mascara brands and whether Big Sexy Hair is better than Rock Your Hair. Through it all, our littlest witch waits patiently, squirming only a little on the stool as we work. Occasionally leaning over to peek into the mirror, checking her progress. Not that there is really all that much to see yet.

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Little blonde witch glances from one face to the next, observing from her silent world all the words formed and dropped by our lips. She sees one of us speak a word she knows so she hops down to retrieve an eyeshadow from the bathroom drawer. The product she has chosen is a metal tin in the shape of a chocolate bar and it even smells of chocolate. It’s one of her favorite items in the make-up drawers. She presents it to the selfie-taking sister, holding it up as if in offering to a goddess whom she worships. The goddess smiles at her and retrieves a soft, fluffy brush, and begins stroking it over little blonde witch’s eyelids.

The oldest sister, the geisha, future matriarch of the group leans in, looking with a discerning eye at the not quite there hollows of the plump baby cheeks.

A finger under the chin, tipping back the little blonde head and the rollers shift and swing precariously. She sits there, her chin pointing up looking like a flower gathering kisses from the sun. She can’t help smiling a little at the attention.

Next comes mascara and the cold, surgical looking eyelash curler. It bites the eyelashes and is reluctant to let loose. This apparatus can be a torture device if not used cautiously. However, there is not so much as a flinch from this brave little soul. No, she wants to be beautiful like her sisters, not realizing how beautiful she is to the three of us.

We test a couple of the now cooling rollers. We tug the clip and it releases with a slight ping that passes unheard by our little beauty. Gently, we unroll one curler from each side to heft the bouncy ringlet curls in our palms, deciding if they’re tight enough or should be rolled again. Some are released and allowed to cool, the rollers being placed back into the heating section of the appliance. We wait, sighing over how long it will take to heat the wax core again. We watch the dot, waiting for the color to change.

One day we will tell stories of how she imitated her sisters. How it was that she adopted, from the selfie-taking sister, the booty check in the mirror. How she adopted from the geisha bossy oldest sister ways, mentally filed away and then later wielded against her baby brother. How she uses her little girl charm to play upon her two older brothers to gain their sympathy and protection.

I try to imagine the young woman Little Miss will become. It’s only when I feel brave, confident that epilepsy won’t snatch my youngest daughter from my arms, that I allow myself to ponder her all grown up. In my imagination, some parts of her are hazy and indistinct but I already see that she’ll be very much like her sisters.

It’s inevitable yet amazing, this confluence of genetics and influence.

I continue to observe my girls, only offering my pinion occasionally by contributing a nod or a frown, sometimes I just shrug and smile. This is not a moment I want to interrupt.

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The Liar and the Thief

by Brandy Crisman

I

was taught to be a liar, but never a thief. I became a thief out of necessity.

Ours was a family full of alcoholics, each of them selfish and pathetic in the way alcoholics can be. I became a thief after a short abandonment by our mother. We’d been left with zero resources other than our wits. On our second day as orphans, we devised a plan to get something to eat. The 7-11 store on the corner had little cardboard collection boxes for a Jerry’s Kids Muscular Dystrophy campaign. They were shaped like a little house with a fold up cardboard handle and a slit cut into the top for depositing the donated money.

It was a simple plan possessing its own brand of genius. All we had to do was request this collection box from the store cashier and take it door to do and get the gullible neighbors to donate to Jerry’s Kids. They didn’t necessarily need to know that at that moment Jerry’s Kids were three dirty orphans who hadn’t eaten, bathed, or changed clothes in a couple of days, did they?

We hit the neighborhood around dinner time and I remember how jealous I was of the cooking smells wafting out of the houses. My tummy ached with hunger and my throat was dry from carrying my sister in the hot sun. I was six, and sister was only two years old and our older cousin was ten. My little sister walked slower us and whined to be carried. The sidewalks were hot but the blacktop streets were positively scorching as we crossed them. I hopped across in my bare feet pretending to be a firewalker I saw in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not paperback book.

There were a few Dudley Do-Right types who asked the expected questions but we had been trained to lie. I was a liar about big things because I had to be. I wanted to tell the truth but that meant bad things would happen to us. So, we said everything was fine. Please ignore my sweaty hair. Ignore the fact that I don’t have any shoes on. Ignore the fact that I need clean clothes. All I’m after is a hamburger from McDonalds. We’re not interested in your concern. Truth is, we don’t know what to do with genuine concern because we’re not really all that familiar with it. Can you just put some money in our box? The box that happens to look like the kind of box you get at the pet store when you buy a rat, a mouse, a hamster, or a gerbil.

We took our rat box all over that part of town where people didn’t know us.

Every so often we’d stop on the hot sidewalk and heft our rat box, tittering over the amount we might have collected in it so far. The box handle was twisted and dirty from our sweaty hands. Either me or my cousin would shift my little sister from one hip to the other as we trash talked one of the beer bellied bozos who was too tight fisted to give to our cause. Over the course of a couple of hours, we learned a few things.

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We learned that our chances were better with women. Our luck usually held out of we could score a front stoop audience with one of those maternal types. I can still see them in my mind, whipping out their wallets to hand over a dollar bill or fork over a handful of loose change from an oft handled coin purse. Most of them were similar in appearance. Middle aged and soft around the middle and now lonely after their kids were gone. We’d held out our rat box eagerly, anticipating the new addition to our treasure and we told lies.

We avoided houses with broken down cars in the yard or driveway. We avoided houses with more dirt than grass. We evaluated each male we encountered as more than one leered at us from his open doorway. One evil man even made my ten-year-old cousin a proposition that had us backing down the sidewalk as fast as we could drag my little sister. We decided that it was best not to approach the doors too closely if there was no woman visible. We knew about certain types of dangers already. Best be on guard because you couldn’t always tell, could you? He had seemed like a nice guy and even lived in a house with actual grass growing in the front yard.

Eventually, we got lucky and scored fifteen dollars from one man who was very quiet and asked no questions. He seemed happy to listen to our lies while he cast an appraising eye on us and figured a few things out, I’m sure. He held out the money and we were astounded. Absolutely amazed that we could profit so well and still be such liars. Liars who stole money from sick little kids. I was ashamed that we had to lie to eat, but it was safer to lie than ask for help. Asking for help was dangerous. Police came and took kids from their parents when things weren’t o.k. at their house. That possibility was worse than the lies we were telling. Yes, we promised this money to Jerry’s Kids, we just didn’t say who those kids were.

We walked the opposite direction of the 7-11 store to the McDonalds. It was almost dark now, the sky had gone purple as we crossed the busy street that led out of the neighborhood. I wrestled my sister into a sticky highchair with a plastic wrapped try that held in the wet nap, bib, and plastic hand puppet. My cousin stood at the counter and ordered our food, counting the money out carefully. I watched nervously. I remember that cold fountain soda as the best shame tinged soda I’ve ever had. These days, when I’m back in that city, there are ghosts on every corner that wave as I pass. Maybe there will come a day when I no longer see them.

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Winner of the 2017 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for fiction

Amputate

by Nick Wixon

“Y

ou’re late again,” mumbled Mike’s boss, Ronny, “What’s the excuse this time? A bug hit your bike and you had to touch up the paint?”

“Aw blow it out your ass Ronny, I’m here aren’t I? The bar doesn’t even open for ten more minutes.”

“You college kids and your terrible work ethic, you all think life is gonna be served to you on a silver…..” Ronny mumbled as he walked through the double doors into the kitchen. Mike hated Ronny, but more importantly he hated working at Applebee’s. The people who actually sit at the bar at an Applebee’s are parents who are trying to get a night away from the kids or couples too old to be breathing in smoke at a normal sports bar. The only reason why Mike even worked here was because he needed money to buy the ring. He finally was about to tie the knot with his girlfriend of three years, but his choice of diamond wasn’t cheap. He is currently paying it off on lay away, but has yet to give it to her. The $2,000 love investment was currently collecting dust in his dresser, but a plan was still needed concerning how Jasmine would receive the ring.

Mike imagined her blue eyes welling with tears as he said the hardest four words in the human language. “Will you marry me?” He tried not to imagine the awkward situation if she said no, having no idea how to handle a potential rejection. He wasn’t going to ask her until after graduation, and tried to push these wandering thoughts to the back of his mind as he began to prepare himself for his shift.

Mike began his routine he did every weekday at around 4:50 PM. He wrung out the musty white rag he used every day and began to wipe down the bar, the same rag that was never washed. With the same rag, he began to clean out the margarita glasses. Mike knew that this was disgusting, and half-heartedly hoped Ronny would fire him. Mike turned around to face the nearly empty restaurant.

The space was dimly lit by the faint glow of the neon lights behind the bar. The clinking of utensils from families enjoying an early dinner helped coax Mike into a daydream about his Harley Davidson. The pearlescent paint on his bike allowed him to see it in different colors just by altering his angle of view. The color could range from deep midnight blue to a smooth metallic purple. Chrome handlebars

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carried skulls on each end. He didn’t especially like this feature, but the previous owner had installed them, and he couldn’t afford to switch them out. The hour hand on the clock behind the bar struck five, waking Mike out of his daze, and marking the beginning of this unusual, unexpected evening.

“Git me nother beer!” shouted an old man that seemed far too dirty to be in a bar like this. Mike quickly grabbed a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle from the cooler behind him and slid it down the bar to the old man. The old man made no attempt to stop the bottle, instead it slid straight off the bar and crashed to the floor.

The sound of shattering glass pierced Mike’s ears.

“What the hell?” Mike questioned. “Why didn’t you grab it?” The old man raised his right arm, flashing the nub that marked where his hand used to be.

“Are you stupid er wut?” A crowd of rednecks began to hoot and holler at the cripple’s remark.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll get you another…. On me.” Mike raced to the fridge once again and grabbed another beer, and this time he made sure to place it gently on the cardboard coaster in front of the one handed man. Mike was expecting some sort of thanks, but he wasn’t given any. “…and tat’s when I gave that bitch a smack and left the house fer good.” The man with one hand explained as he wrapped up his story to his group of friends.

Their bursts of high-pitched laughter echoed off the walls of the Applebee’s.

“Ya really got er good Rusty!” Screamed a member of Rusty’s toothless gang.

The hoots and hollers continued until one of them let his excitement run free, and threw his beer against the mirrored backdrop of the bar, shattering the bottle and the mirror simultaneously.

Mike erupted in response. “Hey, what in god’s name are you doing? You’re paying for that asshole! You’re all done; I’ve had enough of your shit. Pay your tabs and leave!” The one handed man flashed a sarcastic grin, and exposed his disgusting plaque filled smile.

“You reckon we ought to leave, eh?”

“Yes, pay your tab and get the hell out.”

“Why don’t ya make us?” The man replied. Blood rushed to Mike’s face, and he could feel his fingernails digging deep into his palms. Was he really about to knock out this old man? Mike had an anger problem, and when he let it erupt, he sent people to the hospital.

“If you guys don’t get the hell out right now, I’m calling the cops. Ronny! Some jackass broke the mirror!“ The culprit lifted his hat and revealed his bald head. A dark scar appeared where hair once grew. He rubbed his forehead with the brim as if he were nervous he wouldn’t be able to pay for the damage. Ronny ran out

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from the kitchen, completely oblivious to the events that had taken place and asked “What the hell happened?”

“That asshole over there threw a bottle at the mirror!” shouted Mike. The ringing silence roared in Mike’s ears. He couldn’t tell if it was really that quiet in the room, or if he was so angry that he had blocked out all noise. The cripple broke Mike’s mental silence.

“Here’s yer money, perty boy.” The one handed man crumpled up twenty bucks in his left hand and threw it at Mike. Mike’s blood went from a simmer to a boil.

He wanted to hit this man so bad, but he knew he needed to keep his cool. Mike pictured the man without teeth in his mouth, and blood running out of his nose.

All it would take is one punch. Ronny took the information from the person that broke the mirror, and said he would get him an estimate by the end of the week.

The man nodded regretfully and turned to storm out of the bar. The rest of his friends followed, all but the one handed man. He began his walk towards the door, then stopped and turned around as if on a swivel. His eyes locked angrily on Mike’s as he then hacked a lugie on the carpet and turned around while raising his only middle finger as he left. The dead silence of the exasperated families in their booths was too much for Mike to bear. He angrily stomped out the door after Rusty, but he was too late to deliver his deadly punch. Mike could only smell the diesel fuel from Rusty’s beat up Chevy as he peeled out of the parking lot.

T

Rusty

he door slammed shut behind Rusty as he made his way up into his doublewide trailer house. He high stepped over the towers of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Copenhagen cans to his fridge where he grabbed his last PBR and cracked it open. The beer was half gone before he made it back to the beat up checkered couch. He didn’t even bother clearing the couch before he sat down. He heard the old beer cans crush beneath his weight. He placed his muddy boots on his splintery table he had made himself, and flipped on the television. Thoughts from earlier began to float through his mind. Anger swept over Rusty and soon drove him to tears.

He began to weep, nothing in his life had gone according to plan. He never was a bright individual; actually, he’s been straight up dumb since day one. “Bottom feeder of the class” was what his teachers called him. Rusty’s childhood was full of horror, abuse and neglect. When he was a young boy he always wondered why so many men would come in and out of his house. He remembered the disgusting faces of strangers as they would walk down the old beat up staircase. His single mom struggled to hold a job, so she resorted to the one thing she had left to keep a roof over Rusty’s head.

As the years passed, the number of strangers in their home decreased, and by the time Rusty was in middle school the strangers had stopped coming 12

completely. He was happy that he could finally have a night alone with his mom.

He hadn’t had that in years.

Rusty’s happiness was short lived as his mom became more desperate for money. Soon strangers began to reappear, but this time instead of going with his mom upstairs, they would sit in the TV room and exchange “hard candy” well that’s what his mother called it. They were well off again, and he could finally have decent meals when he came home from school, but the cost was his mother’s sanity. He often caught her “tasting the hard candy” but even at that age he knew his mom had become an addict. Her once fair skin now was covered with blisters.

Her vibrant, loving eyes now weary and bloodshot. Wrinkles appeared around her mouth and eyes from taking so many draws from her pipe. She lost teeth, but most of all she lost her love for Rusty.

The drugs became more important than her son, and as a result, changed her personality, and she became violent. Now she developed abusive punishment for Rusty’s misbehavior. He watched his mother break down into a heartless animal, and her behavior grew more and more violent as he got older. It went from him being forced to sleep in the bathtub, to belt lashings, to straight up ass kicking. He remembered her coming at him with an axe after he stole a can of chew from the gas station in town. She slammed his eleven-year-old arm down on the table.

“This ought to teach ya not to steal!” She screamed. Her toothless grin mocked his fear as she brought the axe down with enough force to crush the wrist bones and tear through his veins. The thud of the axe hitting the table brought Rusty back to reality. All he can remember is the feeling of warm blood rolling out the little pipes that used to pump blood to his hand. He didn’t scream, cry, or even wince, he simply blacked out. When he came to, he was lying on the kitchen floor, covered in blood, with the smell of burnt flesh piercing his nostrils. The pain was unbearable. He screamed, and cried for help but no one heard him. Rusty felt paralyzed by his pain, but eventually built up the strength to roll onto his stomach. The warmth from his own blood seeped through his shirt. He struggled to pull himself through the red sea to the kitchen phone. His right wrist felt as if someone was taking a blowtorch to the nerves. His mouth tasted of metal. The room began to spin as he finally reached the phone. It seemed as if the extreme blood loss and dehydration from his blisters were finally taking their toll. All he had to do was grab it and punch in three numbers, but it seemed impossible at that moment.

Rusty summoned the remaining strength he had into his legs to rise off damp floor. He felt the cool plastic of the phone with his fingertips and then his legs failed him. He collapsed back into the red sea, the phone in his hand. Rusty winced at the sharp, out of tune melody of the humming keys as he dialed 911.

He lay there in tears until the ambulance arrived and he was given heavy dose of morphine. The medics found his mom non-responsive in her bedroom with a belt around her arm and a needle in her hand. She had left Rusty for good.

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Rusty emerged from deep thought in a rage, and flipped his homemade table over, kicking it with increasing force until his steel-toed boots broke through the frame. He turned and punched a hole in the wall with his good hand. He pulled his fist from the sheet rock and swung his bloody swollen hand at the wall once more, but this time he hit a stud. His hand crushed beneath the blow, but he didn’t feel pain. He only felt rage. Rusty turned preparing to put his foot through the television screen when the phone rang and interrupted his trance. He looked around at the damage, and began to weep into his hand. Rusty had a short fuse, and it was nearly burnt out, just like his mother’s had been. Nightmares from his childhood constantly haunted him. His mind began to slip, he no longer had control of his anger. Rusty’s wife left him because of this uncontrollable fury. She feared for her life. Rusty acts tough in front of his friends, but really he struggles with suicidal thoughts. His childhood trauma, short temper, and deep depression have pushed him over the edge of sanity.

Rusty lifted his face up, and through his tears he observed his one remaining hand. Blood caked knuckles revealed flesh pierced with splinters, and his fingers appeared swollen. He attempted to move each one individually then made a fist. They moved, but not without pain. Rusty stood and walked across his living room to his bedroom. He pushed the beer cans off the bed and lay down. He could feel his heartbeat in his hand as he looked up at the ceiling. The room began to spin as he felt himself slip into another awful dream. Rusty was no longer himself, a switch had been turned on, and he had no one to turn it off. He was alone, and helpless.

A

Mike

narrow beam of light illuminated the road in front of Mike’s bike as he swerved around the twisting highway that lead him back to campus. The Harley roared as he began his ascent up the giant hill to the small dorm room he called home. The speedometer on the bike read 85 mph, thirty over the limit. Nearing the top of the crest two headlights blinded him. He yanked the handlebars to the right and swerved off the road just out of the way of the truck that was driving in the wrong lane. His handlebars shook as he struggled to keep the bike upright. His attempt to keep control proved futile, and soon the bike tire struck a rock and sent him flying over the handlebars, screaming as his shoulder smashed against the ground. He heard the bones crunch, and felt his joints tear on impact. Mike’s legs flipped over his head and smashed against the ground with shattering force. He rolled end over end and lacked the leverage to stop. His roll turned to a slide as his leather jacket slid against the long damp grass until a cement drain abruptly stopped him. The grass felt cold beneath Mike’s fingertips, and the cool air stung as he breathed. It was hard for him to breath, but he forced air in and out of his lungs despite how heavy his chest felt. He dared not to look down, as he didn’t want to see what was left of his legs, or his bike.

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Mike peered into the night catching glimpses of the dancing starlight. He heard a diesel truck roaring in his direction, and hoped it would be his savior.

Mike tried to get up to catch the driver’s attention as he could see the intensity of the headlights build. He attempted to prop himself up with his right hand but felt his arm explore ground in his shoulder region it had never experienced before, shooting an immense amount of pain from his shoulder and up his neck.

He collapsed back down to the ground, helpless. The roar of the diesel engine grew louder and soon Mike could smell burning fuel. Adrenaline took over and Mike began to drag himself out of the ditch. His fingernails clawed the earth for traction and with all of his remaining strength he pulled himself up just enough to get a hand in the view of the driver. The beam from the headlights illuminated Mike’s bloody hand. It looked as if a butcher had made a perfect cut from his palm to base of his thumb. The cut was deep and oozing blood.

The squealing of tires drew Mike’s attention from his hand to the truck. A wave of relief swept over him, as he knew he would finally be saved. The tires slowed their roll just out of reach of Mike’s hand. He tried to yell to the driver, but no audible words left his mouth. He managed a painful moan, but to his surprise the driver hadn’t left his vehicle yet. The diesel engine roared back to life, and soon Mike was covered in a cloud of black smoke. His eyes watered as he began to choke on the exhaust.

The headlights cut off and the driver’s door eased open and then slammed shut. The smack of work boots against the pavement echoed inside Mike’s skull.

Mike raised his head and in the moonlight the Chevy logo on the truck. He was gripped solidly by the collar of his leather coat and rolled over onto his back. The moonlight cast a shadow over the stranger’s face, and just as the Chevy logo, the stranger’s crooked teeth danced in the moonlight.

“Please…. Help…” Mike begged with difficulty. The stranger’s silence was broken with uneasy laughter, and soon Mike surrendered to the darkness.

T

Rusty

he rolling tires of his Mom’s brand new Ford Transit hummed in ten year old Rusty’s ears. The high sun of midday shined through the slightly tinted windows and made him uncomfortable.

“Mom, can’t we turn ta A/C on?”

“No.” Rusty’s mom replied sternly.

“But I’m so hot.”

“For Christ sake I told ya no! No means no!” Rusty’s mom unclenched one of her hands from the steering wheel and smacked him across his face. “God damn boy are ya stupid er somthin? I swear you got yer daddy’s genes, that dumb ass couldn’t even figure out how to mow the damn lawn.” Rusty watched his Mom 15

reach around and grab a two liter pop bottle from the floor of the backseat. She began to steer with her knees as she cut the top of the bottle off with a pair of scissors she kept stashed in the glove box. There at the bottom of the bottle was “Mom’s Candy.” The fumes made Rusty’s eyes and nostrils burn. His mom rolled down the window as the aroma was too strong for her as well.

She lifted the candy filled pop bottle bottom to her face and snorted what she could. Rusty watched as his mom’s pupils grew twice their normal size. The candy always made her much more violent and it scared Rusty.

“Why do ya eat candy with yer nose mom?” Rusty asked with confusion. A wave of anger swept over his mothers face. She took both hands off the wheel and wrapped them around the boy’s throat. He began to gasp for air as she squeezed with more and more force. Rusty began to feel tired and light headed; he could no longer resist his mom’s strong grasp.

“Will ya ever just shut the hell up? God damnit Rusty!” The car swerved off the road and into the ditch. The shock forced his mother’s hands from Rusty’s throat.

The vibrations shook his spine as his mom struggled to control the vehicle.

The Transit swerved from side to side on the slick grass for what seemed like ages before it finally began to roll. The shattering of the windows and windshield left Rusty covered in glass, while the metal roof warped in towards his head. He tried to scream, but the sound never left his body, partially because of the force of the roll, partially because his mom had just crushed his throat. The roll turned into a slide and then finally the vehicle was brought to a stop by a huge evergreen tree. The sudden stop pushed Rusty up against the shattered window, which dug even more glass shards into his skin.

He looked over at his mother. She was already staring at him.

“God damnit, Rusty look what ya do to me.” She pointed down at the deep gash in her leg. “This is all yer fault, and you best believe you’ll pay for it.” She reached down and unbuckled herself, which in turn made her fall against the ceiling of the van. Rusty watched as more glass cut his mothers back, but she didn’t even flinch at the pain. She rolled over on her stomach and drug herself out of the shattered window. Rusty did the same, but he wasn’t as tough as his mother. He screamed as the sharp ends of glass cut through his delicate skin. He drug himself out of the car as glass dug into the palms of his hands. He tried to stand, but he collapsed.

His leg had to be broken, as it could not support his weight.

“What the hell is ta matter with ya?” his mom screamed as she drug him to his feet.

Rusty woke from his dream drenched in sweat. His childhood memories haunted him every night and he could no longer take it. He climbed to his feet and put his boots back on. He looked at himself in the cracked mirror that hung against his smoke stained wallpaper. Rusty hated what he saw. He hated his crooked teeth, the wrinkles from smoking around his mouth, and his wiry hair

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that surrounded his receding hairline. He hated how his beard was patchy, and most of all he was disgusted with his stub. Life meant nothing to him anymore.

Rusty grabbed his pistol off his dresser and crushed beer cans with his feet as he flew out of the trailer. The door of his Chevy squealed as he swung it open and then closed. He fired up the engine and stomped on the gas peeling out of his gravel parking spot. The pistons sang as he pressed the engine closer and closer to the redline. Tears welled in Rusty’s eyes as a large hill came into sight. He cranked the wheel slightly to the left and sent his truck into the oncoming lane. He could see light peaking over the crest of the hill. Rusty clenched the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white and he closed his eyes. He was ready for the end.

Rusty heard tires squeal but no impact came. His eyelids flew open to reveal an empty road in front of him. He slammed on the brakes, initiating his truck to skid. Rusty took a deep breath as soon as his truck finally stopped. He began to shake uncontrollably as the adrenaline rushed through his bloodstream. Rusty became infuriated.

“Jesus Christ, I can’t even kill myself right!” He threw his truck back in gear and turned around, his thoughts becoming more and more exasperated.

The engine rattled back to life when he spotted skid marks and a wrecked bike up ahead. He slammed on the brakes once more and managed to stop just before he ran over an outstretched hand.

“God damn, of course I couldn’t git a car, course I got a bike that wouldn’t have even done the trick.” Rusty slammed his hands against the steering wheel. The engine roared beneath his foot one last time before he killed the engine. He swung open the door and hopped down into the brisk night. He walked around the hood of the truck to see a man lying face down. With his only hand he grabbed the back of the jacket and rolled him over. Rusty peered into the eyes of the familiar face that had kicked him out of the bar earlier that night. He began to laugh in disbelief. “Man, how did I get so lucky?”

M

Mike

ike awoke as he felt himself being dragged through the long, damp grass. He looked up at the figure that was pulling him, and all he could see was the back of the person’s Carhart. Pain shot up Mike’s broken legs as the man pulled and he screamed. The man spun around in surprise, but Mike still couldn’t see who it was; his vision was blurry from the accident.

“What…. What are you doing?” Mike asked with a grunt. The man simply laughed at his question and continued to drag him. “Please… I need to be taken.. to the hospital.” Mike repeated the request between breaths but this time his remark was answered with silence. Soon the grass turned into wet sand, and Mike looked up to see he was approaching a dock. He tried to squirm but his legs

17

wouldn’t work. It caused another flash of intense pain, followed by yet another wail. The man turned around and delivered a hard punch to Mike’s shoulder, causing another shriek in response. The shoulder was dislocated. The man began to laugh more as he drug Mike onto the dock. The spaces between boards pulled at Mike’s jacket and hair as he was pulled to the edge of the dock. Mike lifted his head up to view his surroundings. He was on a dimly lit, sheltered dock. The faint flickering light source hung from the ceiling at the very end of the structure. The orange light allowed Mike to see the boat to his right.

The smell of rotten fish settled into his nostrils as the man stomped on his right leg. He became light headed, all this pain was becoming too much. The man brought his face close to Mike’s forcing him to smell his putrid breath. A lighter sparked right by his face, causing him to flinch. He reopened his eyes to see a familiar face, the disgusting crooked teeth, wiry hair, receding hairline, and the patchy beard, but the most prominent feature was the missing hand. “’Member me?” Rusty asked with a wide grin.

“What… what are you doing?” Mike asked in horror, but Rusty gave him no response. He extinguished the lighter bringing back total darkness. Slowly his eyes readjusted to the dim light. All he could hear was the echo of boots against the dock as Rusty walked away. Relief swept over Mike and he hoped Rusty would be gone for good. He reached into his right pocket, searching for his cell phone, praying it didn’t break during the crash. He found it. The screen lit up, revealing many cracks, but it worked. He frantically attempted to call 911 but had no service. Mike hoisted himself up on his good shoulder and turned on his flashlight. He could see the exit from the dock shelter, all he had to do was drag himself approximately 20 feet and he might have a shot at better service.

He began to drag himself towards the beach. With each reach of his arm his shoulder throbbed and his legs searing pain but he persisted. He was nearly there when Rusty’s shadow appeared at the end of the dock. This time he had something in his hand. The echo of boots grew louder as Rusty came into the range of Mike’s flashlight. To Mike’s horror, Rusty had a cinderblock in hand. “No! Please! Leave me alone! I’ll give you anything! Anything!” Mike shrieked, but Rusty made no response. He walked past Mike to the edge of the dock. Mike attempted to climb to his feet, but his bones gave him no support. He heard the sharp echo of the cinderblock being dropped on the dock, followed by shuffle of Rusty’s boots. He felt a firm grasp grab on his leg once more. Mike began to helplessly fling his arms around, desperately searching for something to grab onto. He tried to grab the dock cleat but the pain was too great and he had to let go. He screamed for help, but the only answer was darkness. Mike rolled onto his stomach and tried to grasp the spaces between the boards on the dock, but the wood ripped his fingernails and left splinters in his fingers. When they finally stopped, mike shined the flashlight at Rusty. He pulled a pistol from his waistband and set it down on the dock, out of Mike’s reach. Then he rolled over and tried to grab it, quickly, but his shoulder and legs wouldn’t let him. Rusty began untying the fishing boat. Then he tied the rope 18

around the cinderblock, and then Mike’s ankle. Mike tried to kick, but once again his attempt was unsuccessful. He began to weep. Rusty slowly started scooting the cinderblock to the edge. “Please… this isn’t fair…” Mike begged.

Rusty turned around and looked him directly in the eyes. He began to laugh and kicked the cinder block over the edge. Mike watched as the rope began to unwind, following the block into the murky water. Soon the rope was tight and pulled on Mike’s body. Rusty grabbed Mike by the leg and drug him to the edge of the dock. Mike let go of his cell phone in an attempt to grab the dock once more.

He screamed and screamed, but nobody could hear him. His feet touched the ice cold water, then his waist. His groin throbbed under the numbing cold. Mike dangled from the edge of the dock, with one hand grasping for life. The cold water numbed Mike’s exposed skin as Rusty walked over and grabbed his pistol off the dock. He crouched down right next to Mike’s face. He was beginning to struggle to hold himself up with only one hand. Rusty flashed Mike a sinister grin. He pointed his pistol down at Mike’s hand and fired one round. The bullet tore through flesh and caused Mike’s grip to weaken. He felt his body slip under the cold water.

His face was pulled just far enough under so he couldn’t breath. His eyes remained above water, but his nose and mouth were submerged. He began to struggle against the tension of the rope, but his efforts were not in vain. His chest began to hurt and he became lightheaded. He needed air so he tilted his head back but there wasn’t any hope for oxygen. His body went on autopilot and took a breath anyways. His lungs burned as they filled with water. He began to feel tired, his eyes drooped, his muscles relaxed. Looking up he saw his killer’s smile between orange flickers of light. Rusty put the pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Mike watched as Rusty’s brains and blood exploded out the back of his skull. With his lungs burning like a fire, Mike gave one last effort at a breath before finally succumbing to his death.

19

Late Night Sex

by Nick Wixon

S

kimpy and supposedly “sexy” outfits brought on a sense of discomfort as well as curiosity as I stood in the lingerie aisle at Victoria’s Secret. As a Senior in High School, I drew many curious and un-approving looks. I would catch people staring at me, mostly women who seemed to be in their mid 20’s.

They would quickly look away, maybe because they were scared of the teenage pervert they assumed I was. In reality, I was lost in the store, I had no intention of being in the aisle devoted to adult couples, and actually I didn’t want to be in Victoria’s Secret at all. I wound up in the store out of desperation as it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and I hadn’t bought my mother a gift. It was really one of those “Oh, Shit” moments when you realize you hadn’t gotten the woman who endured tremendous pain to bring you into the world a single thing for Christmas. My best friend, Jacob, had done the same. So on the morning of Christmas Eve we made the trip up to the mall. Neither of us had jobs during this time of year; actually, Jacob didn’t even have a summer job. He was more of the type of kid who would just sleep until 2PM every day during the summer.

I don’t even know how he got the money to purchase his mom a gift. It was probably some money his mom had given him to pay for gas and he just never spent it, so I guess she would be paying for her own Christmas Gift. With our extreme lack of funds, our options for gifts were very limited, and who would have thought that the stores would be packed and picked over on the day before Christmas? Not us apparently, because we’re idiots.

The end of the day was near; I had to make it back in time for Christmas Eve Mass and we hadn’t been able to find anything all day, so there we were in Victoria’s Secret…. Shopping for our moms. I remember the thick smell of perfume, and I definitely remember the nearly naked models hanging in every corner of the store. Actually, I remember those the most. The workers kept staring at us just as the shoppers had been.

“Can I help you?” asked the twenty something brunette with makeup so thick one would assume she was trying to frost a cake.

“Ummm….. I don’t know…. I guess I’m just shopping for my mom.” Jacob responded. He sounded so stupid, given we were standing in an aisle full of items that no one should buy for their mother. The clown-faced worker looked us over as if she were analyzing our seriousness. When neither of us smirked she beckoned and then flipped around impressively fast for a woman wearing heels.

Her pace was quick as if she was on a mission. My nostrils burned as we neared the glass wall containing the various perfumes. The worker threw her arms wide as if she were presenting an historical exhibit. The echo from the tile floor chased her fast paced steps as she resumed her position behind the counter.

20

Jacob and I began smelling the various perfumes, but the funny thing is they all smelled the exact same. I didn’t let that hinder me though as I was determined to find the perfect scent for my mother.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I found one that didn’t smell like the others. I eagerly spun the bottle around in my palm to read its name.

“Late Night Sex” was written in metallic gold cursive on the front of the sparkly black bottle. I was shocked, I didn’t know perfume could have such a name.

Tears welled in my eyes as I began to laugh hysterically. I thought it was so funny because I was about to buy my mom a perfume that was supposed to smell like sex? Once again, I began to feel the feminine stares piercing my skin but that didn’t stop me from making a huge scene. I immediately showed it to Jacob, initially he didn’t laugh. He grabbed the bottle from my palm and took a whiff of “Late Night Sex.” A smirk crossed his face.

“Do you think it would be weird if I bought this?” Jacob asked me “Of course! Why the hell would you buy it? It’s for your mom not your girlfriend!” I shouted obnoxiously. I couldn’t believe he was going to buy his mom a twenty-dollar bottle of perfume that was named “Late Night Sex” and I also couldn’t believe I wasn’t kicked out of the store for shouting. Despite my harassment he bought his mother that bottle of perfume anyway. I purchased a lotion set, and made sure that there weren’t any sexual references on it before I brought it to the counter.

21

Winner of the 2017 Sister Eileen Neville Award for poetry

Across the Border

by Max Contreras

I am from pocket knives and small, hidden hand held guns, From low hopes and low desperate opportunities.

From Tijuana to San Diego.

I am from the thorn and bad weed.

I am from the stomp and holler.

From Contreras, and from Garcia.

From those who never accept being wrong I am from isolated and deceitful.

From, “You will never do good.”

And the, “You better do good.”

I am from La Virgen De Guadalupe, From Mexico, from menudo, and tamales.

From the murderer because of infidelity and shame, a death because of indolence.

From photos of my siblings, And in the corner, a lonely picture of me.

22

Green Eyes

by Katelyn Kingsbury

I

was a rather angsty teenager. Listening to my parents and doing well in high school weren’t necessarily top. I had moved schools a few times and I didn’t have many friends or many cares. I always looked much older than other kids my age, placing me in a more “mature” crowd from the start.

I had always been mature for my age. In fact, it was a big reason on why we changed schools in the first place. A lot of the older kids were picking on me. I didn’t mind, because I quite liked the attention of a knee going into my back or being slammed into a locker. My mother had a different sentiment.

After finding out I was in a Friday night fight club she pulled the plug entirely.

Before mom found out we would meet every Friday behind the roller rink or the ice skating arena. A group of seven to ten girls would gather. The first thing we would do is pair up fighters. Yes, we really fought, but we had rules. The most important of them being no direct hits to the face. I think if I could find my pink Envy Razor the video of me fighting my friend Jayme would still be on it. I lost that fight. It was December and there was ice covering the roller rink parking lot.

When I slipped on it I knew I was done. My mom will never know what was really going on. I personally elected myself to be in the fight club, but the bruises and scrapes were too much for her. We relocated to the country.

If you ever needed to find me three or so years ago I would be in Mrs. Washburn’s high school art room. This was the only place at my new school where I felt welcomed. After taking all of the art classes offered I made a special arrangement with the art teacher to have my own “independent study”. It was just me, an empty room, and an unrestricted amount of materials at my fingertips. This gave me a thousand different reasons to never get my homework done. Mindlessly ignoring responsibility while simultaneously smudging black charcoal on white paper. This was my favorite way to pass the time, and the only circumstance in which I felt I could truly be myself.

High school wasn’t particularly easy for me. It could have been, but I made it so it wasn’t. I had just moved from a big city to a small town. A small town where everyone knows everything and my peers had been friends since birth. It wasn’t that I didn’t get along with other kids my age, anything beyond a casual “did you get this assignment done” was the hard part. These girls were shiny and athletic 23

or wickedly smart, neither of which traits I did not have. They shared a tight bond and had a million inside stories. I didn’t like them, not because of who they were but because of their innocence and positivity. I was always jealous of that.

Things changed when I met Hayden. She was an oddly smart girl who was always getting yelled at for something. Hayden was loud and hilarious, yet very dark and damaged. She had curly auburn hair that she always twirled around her fingers, and the largest green eyes that I have ever seen. We immediately became friends. I could see myself in her. The other girls always thought she was too much or that she had no filter, which was a valid point, but I always saw her as someone who could be themself and not this nice, perfect, shell of a person I saw everyone else as.

Hayden and I got into quite a bit of trouble together but not at school, like I said I was very quiet in school. Our troubles started after the three thirty bell. This was especially true when we went to her house. Her parents were divorced and she lived with her dad. Phil didn’t have many cares in the world other than golf, drinking, and Nebraska football. He was a short man compared to Hayden, or maybe he always slouched. He had the same large green eyes as Hayden but they seemed duller behind his thick cut 80’s glasses. He had all but given up on his two daughters but it was unclear why. I have no doubt he loved them but I’ve been told that’s just what alcoholics tend to do. As it turns out two unsupervised sixteen year olds can cause quite a stir when left to their own devices.

It all stared very innocently, I would steal a pack of Marlbro lights from my mother and we would drive out to our favorite hay field and hack our way through them while climbing up hay bails. Her car would be parked below us, doors open, ipod blaring Britney Spear’s Toxic and we would scream along. I wish I could have paused here but things escalated. Soon Hayden was stealing beer from her dad and our hay field adventures morphed into us starting a fire in the backyard. Each time it seemed to get more and more wild. I kept finding myself in weirder and more dangerous situations. Hayden didn’t have a limit and I was just glad to have found someone I thought I could relate to.

I went about my usual school routine regardless of mischief going on around me. The teachers knew that Hayden and I were friends even though I never spoke more than three words about it to anyone, joys of a small town. I didn’t have too many classes with Hayden, but more and more frequently I was getting stopped in the hallway by different teachers asking me if I knew where she was and if I could go the office and deliver her homework. I’d tell them she was sick but I knew it wasn’t true. That worked for most of the teachers excluding one, Mrs. Sweeny. I think she’s the only one who really knew what was going on. She would make calls to Hayden’s house and receive slurred answers. When Hayden showed up for class Mrs. Sweeny would keep her after school. She blamed me when Hayden didn’t show up. I’d deliver her homework later those nights to find her still in bed, and she’d ask me if I was ready to partake in whatever shenanigan she’d schemed up instead of going to school that day. You could tell by her curly mane 24

and wads of blankets she hadn’t been up all day. Usually I would agree to go along with her plans.

Not long after we began misbehaving it got to be too much. I had a bad feeling about were it was all going to end. I know I was a bad kid but I wasn’t stupid and neither was my mom. She started questioning me about Hayden. A few of the other moms with high school kids told her they wouldn’t let their daughters hang out with Hayden. They had heard things around town about her dad and that Hayden wasn’t applying herself in school. My mom ignored the majority of these warnings, she knew Hayden meant a lot to me. My mom grew up with an alcoholic father and wasn’t about to unleash the same exclusion she faced as a child onto Hayden as a result of it.

The first time we got in real trouble was over another backyard bonfire. This one was down the street at the twin’s house, Dustin and Dylan. To this day I’ve never met a more rowdy duo. They had wild dogs all over their backyard and never once did I see a parent, even though I knew that is who had supplied them with the bottle of blue UV. I don’t remember seeing Hayden drink as much as she did that night. I was distracted by Dustin making a spectacle of himself by lighting his shoes on fire and throwing a closed Monster can into the pit causing a grand explosion. I turned to Hayden to see how she was doing and she is crying to Dylan about a dog she had that died several years ago, Sebastian. I walk over to investigate and find that even her eyes cannot properly align.

I told her it was time to walk home and she didn’t put up much of a fight. I slung her arm around my neck and drug her at the slowest pace possible, taking breaks whenever I couldn’t save her from falling to the ground. I didn’t do a very good job. Blood started to soak through the knees of her jeans. When she got home she threw up on her bed and all over herself. I was yelling a bit but to no avail as she was fading out of consciousness. I took off her blue vomit stained clothes and struggled to place her sticky limp body into some pajamas. I threw her clothes and blankets into the shower, the only idea I could come up with at the time. I did not want to make a bigger mess of things. Her green eyes were rolling back in her head. I didn’t sleep that night. I had seen too many episodes of Law and Order where people die as a result of drinking too much and their friends were held responsible. To this day I scream internally every time I see blue UV. After the drinking episode everything was different between Hayden and I. She laughed about her behavior the next day but I didn’t. She could not remember the events of the night before but I’d never forget them. She hadn’t seen herself as I did. She didn’t feel the fear of being out of control. I realized that day that I cared about her more than she cared about herself. I might have cared more than anyone, but I knew I had to distance myself.

Over the next few months I stopped seeing her after school. I told her it was because I was in trouble with my mom but that wasn’t the case, but she seemed

25

to believe me. My thoughts were if I didn’t contribute to her drinking she would take it easy and get her life back together. This backfired, and she started hanging out with a rougher and wilder crowd from the city, where I had once lived. She even befriended a few of my old fight club buddies who in three years had evolved into a much more dangerous crew. Hayden stopped coming to school completely.

I remember when she was expelled and sent to a flexible learning center she blamed me. I think she had always secretly blamed me for the way her life was going but had never voiced it. She told me “You made me the way I am”. To some point I believed this, I felt like the domino that started the chain reaction toward her self-destruction. I wanted to help her but I soon found out you can only help people that wish to receive it.

It would take Hayden an extra two years to get her high school diploma. We had all moved on to college but she stayed with Phil, living in their spider-infested basement. To this day she still lives there, bouncing in and out of jail and getting fired from all of her part time jobs. She has had three DUIs and a plethora of other charges. I saw Hayden not too long ago when I went back home. She told me she is on parole and doesn’t know how to pay her lawyers anymore. I watched her twirling her auburn hair and darting her green eyes and wondered how she got so lost and if I was to blame.

26

My Voice, My Power

by Kimberly Mosqueda

I

was born in Santa Ana, California to immigrant parents. My mother was seven years old and my father was seventeen when they came to America. My mother came from a family of eight and my father a family of nine. They both came to America with hope of a better life. When I was born, my father spoiled me with gifts until adolescence. My parents split when I was about seven years old for irreconcilable differences. My parents asked my siblings and me who we wanted to live with because of the break up. I chose my mother not because I loved her more but because I knew one day I would have a period and I didn’t think my father would know how to handle a girl. Silly, I made that decision assuming my father knew nothing of the subject.

I continued to live with my mother and visit my father on the weekends. He would pick me up and I would accompany him to his construction jobs. Being around both parents I grew to understand what shaped their lives, at a young age I began to examine their thinking and decisions even at such a young age. My father treated me like a princess, anything I wanted I would receive. My mother was not that way. If we wanted something she would step away like she didn’t hear us, there were more rules with her. She always seemed on edge about everything.

Why wouldn’t she be? She was a single mom, always working, supporting three children and a grandmother.

My mother had a more American perspective than my father. My mom did what she wanted when she wanted, while my father lived more for his children.

Growing up with two very different parents who did not much parenting was confusing to me. I wondered, do I become more like my mother, and adopt her personality, or should I follow a life more like my father? It tore me apart because they expected so much of me but never guided or taught me their unexpected goals. As I got older my relationship with my mother became rocky. I suspected she was entering early menopause and it became hard to tolerate her. This made me lean more toward a more positive relationship with my father. I learned more about my father and his past and began to spend more time with him. He spoke about how he never really appreciated his dad when he was younger. My grandfather died when my father was about eight years-old. So my father never quite had a father figure to guide him through life. At fourteen my father started working in construction with older men who showed him the ropes. By sixteen 27

he had mastered all that was shown to him and was granted the chance to come to America to work for a wealthy farmer. My father was to help build the farmer’s hacienda home. He left all his siblings and mother behind at the age of seventeen and would not see them for thirty-two years. He engrained in me to work hard at everything in life. He wanted the best for me and to surpass him in every way.

By the time, I was in college at California State University Chico I began to grow. I had met some powerful women and they had greatly influenced my life. I learned about feminism and the history of women and the struggle for our civil rights from Europe to America. I also learned to analyze society in a sociological and psychological perspective. My perceptions of society began to change and my voice became powerful and loud. I was taught to be silent, passive, kind and to listen. I had abandoned those ways and grew vines of my own. This scared my father. He was not used to his sweet Kimberly questioning his intentions or challenging his perspectives, it was far from the expected Mexican feminine way.

I began to question why he had attempted to raise me this way, why he didn’t view women as valuable as men. He grew angry at the why? Why? Why’s? He did not have answers to my questions so he blamed my mother for her “American like” ways. He started to question why he chose someone so untraditional from the norm. My mother had no influence over me, rather it was the education that awoke the woman in me.

My father was not as fortunate as I to receive an education. He quit school in fourth or fifth grade so he can provide for his family. He viewed me as ungrateful and not understanding or appreciating what it means to suffer. I had to disagree, I have suffered, a different kind of suffering. I had suffered limitations and boundaries my father put on me, making me believe my place was in a kitchen, was to be a homemaker, a baby grower and wife. Life was more than those things for me, and it was definitely not all that I wanted for myself. My culture had made me believe that was the only thing available for me to be and everything else was out of the question. My mother and her “American ways” showed me the strength of a woman. She provided independently for herself and her family, a thing that is uncommon in my culture. I was taught to rely more on a man to sustain me and children if I have any. My father was surprised to have raised a daughter that did not agree with his cultural expectations of a woman. I did not become the way I am to go against my father, even though he viewed me this way. I have grown into this woman, because it is who I am. I feel the need to be an example of the modern Mexican woman.

This concept did not resonate with him. The trips to his job sites I used to enjoy were no longer enjoyable. He would try to make an example of me and belittle me in front of his friends. He would say that I was “marimacha” a manly woman.

Because I was always out to prove that anything a man could do, a woman could do too. I would use power tools, paint walls and install tile. Very few of my father’s workers were supportive of this idea. Some laughed that I would dare attempt it. I did not understand that I, who had a higher education than all the men combined 28

was not respected for my intellect, but rather desired for my beauty. This angered me. I would sit in a truck with my dad and his workers on our way to buy supplies or arrive at the next job site. As we are driving the hustle and bustle streets of Orange County the workers in the truck began to whistle at the young girls on bicycles or walking down the streets. These women were not prostitutes but teenage girls. I was offended and uncomfortable that these men saw these young girls as sexual beings. It demonstrated a lack of intellect and respect. I once again challenged them. “These are young girls! Why do you think it’s appropriate to whistle at them?” The men replied. “They are cute, it’s not like we are going to rape them, you are over-reacting.” Once again, my culture had failed me. How can I be proud of a culture that made it okay to sexualize young girls? Especially for men in my culture to make excuses for their actions protected by cultural norms. Once again, I was told I’m “too American.” “Might as well have been born to white-people,” some men replied. I looked at my father to defend me instead he looked disappointed and continued driving. I was starting to believe I would never change their views. Was I wrong in believing I could? Maybe culture was so engrained in them it would not be possible.

I began chiming in on conversations using my knowledge of all the subjects I have studied. My father and his workers began to take interest in my feedback. They slowly began to ask me a few questions on politics, biological or physiological questions and even advice on women. When I had so little hope on getting through to them I was starting to surprise even myself. My father was even surprised at his reactions to me but I knew I had not yet won him over. I remember a client of my father’s asked me what career field I wanted to attain. I spoke about human trafficking and being involved with the FBI; my father was listening but had not known much about the issue. The woman I spoke to was a graduate from USC one of the best universities in California. She began telling me about some articles that she read about the subject. She asked me if I knew how it was happening. What are the police and or the criminal justice system doing about it? What happens to victims and can they get help? And what can we do as civilians to help? From my years of extensive research, conferences, and speaking with FBI agents I was able to answer her questions. Her eyes grew wide at all the information I provided her. Perhaps because she didn’t expect a young girl with a Chico State hoodie ripped jeans and vans shoes to tell her so much about a subject so taboo.

She turned to my father. “My what an intelligent daughter you have Sergio.”

My father nodded, smiled and continued at his tasks. She told me I have a bright future ahead of me. Although in that moment my father did not seem interested or he may have been too busy to ask. Later he asked me on the way to the nearest Home Depot, “what did I talk about with his client?” I explained to him for four years I was heavily involved in the Stop Trafficking of Persons Club at Chico State. I explained how we learned about human trafficking, its many forms, why it occurs, how officials are involved and what can be done to help. He had so many 29

questions and began to listen, he seemed surprised about my knowledge on the subject. Although he seemed interested to know more perhaps culture had still won over his actions, he ended the conversation and began to put on the radio and change the subject. I didn’t want to make a scene or have an outburst so I just focused on sketching and try to forget about my conversation with him. We went to many more jobsites and more clients were interested in conversing with me about politics, human trafficking, the educational system, etc. Every time my father seemed interested how I would win each person over and how every time they would repeat the same compliment. “Sergio, you raised a great girl.” “Sergio, you have an impressive daughter.” Each time my father wanted to ask me what we talked about and how I knew so much. I would reply under my breath, “Why? You don’t want to listen anyway?” He would leave it at that and change the subject.

One day my aunt Elvira started talking about how Mexican-American women are so different from their traditional Mexican counterparts. She continued to say how we have no respect for tradition and that we shame our culture. By this time, I could no longer hold my tongue. Everything I wanted to opinionate so badly started pouring out and I could not hold back. My aunt stood in silence listening to me. She had never had a younger woman challenge her or her ideas and neither had my father. In that moment, I did not care if they agreed with me or not but rather I needed to at least get off my chest that breaking from traditional expectations is not wrong. The entire conversation I had with them was in Spanish. Spanish is a more emotional and expressive language than English and any phrase, metaphor or insult holds more power than any English word.

I had said things that day that rattled their core, and I was not sorry. “A woman’s place is not in the kitchen!” I am more capable than making tortillas for a husband and children I do not yet have. If a woman decides not to have children it is okay, you should not shame them for their decision. Why are you putting so much pressure on me to get married? My own focus is not on marriage right now. I don’t want to be just a housewife I am so much more than that!” I felt sorry for my aunt because I knew that I hurt her. She was a housewife who married my uncle at a young age and had children too young. She never invested in education. Although she doesn’t feel satisfied in life I know it is partly because she has admitted at moving too fast in her life. Observing my aunt’s life over the years is partly what made me decide there is so much more to accomplish than to become a housewife. I do not think being a housewife is a terrible thing, I just find it to be unfulfilling for me.

At this point I had stood up to my father and demanded that he respect me.

I told him that I am his daughter, and whether or not I turned out the way he envisioned I am still his daughter. I wouldn’t change who I am for anybody, much less a man. I am my own person, I know my beliefs and talents and no one can take that away from me. You cannot say that I am disrespecting you by being bold and outspoken. Do you prefer that I stay quiet? I am not that type of person. I have as much right to my own voice as any man, and its time you start believing 30

it.” He stood there speechless. His eyes began to water, he turned away from me and looked back again. The words I had wanted for years to finally be said were finally spoken. “I’mmmmmm Sooooryyyy” it was as if both sides of his brain were fighting with each other to decide if he really wanted to say the words. “I never realized how much I hurt you, I did not realize that I made you feel small. I just never had a woman try to challenge me, and I did not know how to react to it.

Although I don’t tell you or show it as much as I should I am proud of you. You have gone far beyond me in every way, I am very proud. I guess I am intimidated by you, I never met such a strong woman. You don’t have the voice of a young girl, but of a powerful woman. And sometimes it scares me, because I don’t know how to react to you.” I roared back at my father. “For years of my life you have treated me with disrespect and inferiority because I am a woman. No more.” We both stood with our emotions on edge. Unspoken we decided to set aside our differences it was a conversation we needed to have but we wouldn’t let it tear apart our relationship. Today I still challenge my father’s ideas but our interaction has made a more positive influence on our relationship. The argument I had with my father was less an argument with him and more an argument against my culture. Women are slowly but surely seen as more capable and equal to men in Mexico but not entirely. Machismo is the enemy against equality. There are too many women disregarded for their intellect and skills. When we are capable of the same accomplishments as men. It is time we stood up and reclaimed our power.

31

Harleys, Beers, and Self-disbelief

by Abby K. Keffeler

T

he combined stench of sweat and stale beer made Marie’s eyes water. This happened every time she walked through the large garage door. Marie, being only thirteen years old, received looks of confusion as she walked over to the homemade, wooden bar Cassie was standing behind. Marie stood at the end of the bar in her old, tattered work clothes. Her tennis shoes donned a faded, pink Nike sign while her big toe was peaking through the black mesh. The hand-me-down jeans from her older cousin were splattered with leather sheen and paint, while her mother’s patch was holding the knee together.

The work shirt Marie wore had a buck on the front that had been distressed from days upon days of wear, and many cycles through the washer and dryer. The lettering that once spelled out, “Stagview Campground” now read as “S-agv-ew – am-gr-und”. Marie’s look was completed with a blue scrunchy that tied her brown, curly hair into her iconic ponytail, looped through the back of her favorite, babyblue baseball cap with the turtle on the front. It could hardly be viewed as blue anymore with the combination of dust and sweat stains. The warm air was seeping in through the door, but the large, industrial cooling fan was working overtime to keep the place at a more comfortable temperature.

The constant white noise from the fan seemed to provide the perfect background lull against all the chatter, clanking glass bottles, and music coming from the old, beat up jukebox in the corner. Marie stood admiring the event room with lines of old, round dining tables like you’d see in a downtown VFW. Their edges were metal plated with a golden color, but most of the varnish had worn away.

The chairs were covered in character from years of use, some rickety and some glued back together. At the front of the room, the dance floor was marked out with dirty, cream colored, peeling tape. The karaoke machine rested in the corner near the jukebox under a pile of cords and a binder filled with song lyrics. Some of the pages were falling out, ripped, folded, and discolored from spilled beer.

A bottle cap bounced off the edge of the trashcan and hit Marie’s foot, pulling her out of her trance. The man who threw it in the can was already moving across the room, so Marie bent over and picked it up.

Marie turned around and greeted Cassie, “Hi. You seem to be extra busy tonight.”

32

“Hey there, sweet girl! I’ve been swamped tonight. How are you doing?”

Marie always loved talking to Cassie because Cassie was the kind of lady that genuinely cared. Her “how are you’s?” were never the kind that were on the go, but rather she truly wanted to know how you were doing. “Oh, I’m doing okay. Dad’s up at the ticket booth with John. We’ll make our first pass soon. I was wondering if you had the keys for the cart? Dad thinks we’ll need the trailer today since a bunch more campers came in.”

A tall, bald man approached Cassie at the counter and asked her to top off his red solo cup. Cassie took his cup, tipped it slightly to the side and filled it with Bud Light right off the tap. Cassie always took extra care to prevent the beer from getting frothy. Foam made people upset, but Marie never understood why. To Marie, foam was one of the best inventions ever—they were like bubbles that you could touch. Cassie handed back the man’s cup and said with an adoring smile, “For you, that’ll only be four dollars.” He dug around in the pocket of his leather biker vest and laid a five dollar bill on the counter in front of her, “Honey, keep the change.”

Marie watched the man walk away from the bar and sit down at the table with his friends. Marie assumed they were his friends. The man he sat next to was younger and had hair longer than Marie’s. It was braided down his back, and a black bandana was tied around the top of his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The vest he wore matched the older man’s with various different patches sewn on that read things like, Jesus Loves You, Ride or Die, In Memory of when I Gave a Shit, and My other toy has tits. It’s just unbelievable that someone can wear a degrading patch right next to one that tells everyone that Jesus loves them.

“Uh, Cassie…can I have the keys? I just saw my dad poke his head in the door,” Marie inquired. Cassie quickly turned around and selected the black, square key out of the locked drawer and wished Marie good luck with their rounds.

Marie’s dad hopped on the cart and held out his hand, Marie climbed in the other side and laid the key in his palm. Marie admired the strength and experience her dad’s hands showed. They were calloused over from the physical labor his career path demanded. The sun dried his skin leaving it dark and cracked. It’s not easy for him to sit in the hay bucker every day under the high sun and fix broken fences once the sun begins to set. Marie’s dad immediately took the key and inserted it into the ignition. With one-quarter turn of the key, the engine whined to life and they were driving down the dirt path kicking up tufts of dust.

Even though it was evening, the setting sun still put off enough heat to cover their bodies with an even coat of sweat. Marie and her father were starting to glisten.

On the left side of the road was a billboard near the interstate with a naked lady “riding” an ear of corn. In large, bold letters, “Corn Queen” was scrawled out describing this lady. “Dad, I don’t understand? Why is she riding that corn?”

“Uh, ask your mother when we get home” he said hesitantly like he knew the answer, but didn’t want to explain it to Marie.

33

The Sturgis rally is a place where a person can be someone else and secrets shine bright. Naked women are riding ears of corn as innuendos, calling themselves “corn” queens. There is no other way to make a blanket statement to the world that you are willing to sleep with men for a little extra money—needless to mention on a screen.

The cart came to a halt in front of a building that had white chipping paint and used-to-be-bright-red-letters that read, “Shower House.” They were on day three of this job, and Marie had to work up the courage to get out of her seat. Reluctantly, she did and grabbed her pail of supplies and walked into the women’s side. Her father followed suit yelling, “Cleaning crew, man on duty!”

With no response, he hung a “closed for cleaning” sign and quickly got to work.

The shower house had an entry way with a hallway for the showers and sinks on the left and toilet stalls on the right. Marie walked down the long narrow, cream tiled hallway and started sweeping. As she swept out the stalls, her dad started to check the wastebaskets, emptied the full ones, and made note of the toilet paper dispenser levels. Any toilets that were in risk of over flowing were plunged, but that particular task was usually reserved for the men’s side of the shower house.

Finished, Marie walked over to the shower side while her dad replenished the empty toilet paper dispensers.

The same cream tiles lined the walls and the inside of the showers. In the first shower, the cream tiles were covered in black sharpie that read, “Stop the idea of society’s mutated self image we are all beautiful!” with an arrow and different handwriting that scrawled out, “I bet a fat girl wrote that.” Marie could not believe that (1) some women could be so cruel to one another and (2) that someone would bring a sharpie marker to the shower with them. The stalls that have sharpie marks aren’t too bad to clean. But the stalls that painted women shower in are the worst.

Marie entered the third shower stall to find a rainbow of colors were still on the floor of the shower with some on the wall. “Ah man! Dad! A painted lady showered in here again!” Marie has a theory that women like to save space on their motorcycles so they don’t pack very many sets of clothing. They put a set of pasties in their purse to use throughout the week, but find a painter that can apply even layers of body paint to cover them. Some of the painting is quite sophisticated— you can’t even tell they aren’t wearing real skinny jeans. Even though the body paint is quite artistic and show cases the painter’s talent, you will always find less attractive women who try to paint themselves. The paint is not applied even and smooth—sometimes it looks like children’s acrylic—and the perspective of the image is skewed, unless their breasts are painted as round objects.

The shower house has black rubber mats outside the curtains, similar to what you might find at a truck stop. Marie wipes down all the shower walls often stopping to read the graffiti, mops up the spilled water and empties the trash bags.

34

Above every sink is a mirror that is warped and permanently stained. It seems silly to wash them once a night, but taking off the extra hairspray and toothbrush splatter does clear up the image. Marie stops Windexing them for a moment as she notices her reflection looking back at her.

Her dark brown eyes were monochromatic with her summer skin—whether it was kissed by the sun or covered in dust, she never really knew. The color of her ball cap complimented her complexion, which was nice because she was inseparable with this clothing item. It had been that way for years. When she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see Marie rather she saw Tomboy. Weird. Not a real girl. She had never seen herself in this dim, shower house light before, but maybe Aimee was right. “Maybe I will never be a real girl,” Marie whispered under her breath.

________

It was during recess in the fourth grade, it was only about three years before Marie took the Sturgis rally job with her dad, when Aimee made the comment to Marie about being a “real girl”. Playing a game of live action war—made up with the imagination, of course, Marie tackled Jayson to the ground.

“Jay, that sniper almost got you. I totally just saved your life.” Marie told him as they both got up and started running for cover behind the large oak tree near the merry-go-round. Tucked behind the safety of the tree, Marie noticed Aimee and a few other classmates sitting on the merry-go-round. They had their legs dangling over the side, toes dragging designs in the dirt as they were talking.

“Do they even know how the merry-go-round works? They are just sitting on it, not even moving,” Jayson chortled.

“Umm, I’m not real su—” Marie stopped dead in her tracks when she heard Aimee say, “Do you think Marie will ever be a real girl?” which was followed with laughter.

“Hey, what is that supposed to mean?” Marie inquired, a little offended.

Aimee looked up from the smiley face she was drawing with her toes. “Uh, um, well, uh…you just aren’t a real girl. You are always wearing that dirty, orange visor, and your brother’s hand-me-down basketball shorts and jeans. We all wear Aeropostle. I’m getting a new American Eagle hoodie. It’s on my birthday list and we all know I always get everything on my birthday list.”

Jayson stood listening to Aimee, when he grabbed Marie’s elbow to lead her away. “You’re nothing but a meanie-head,” Jayson directed toward Aimee. “Come on, Marie. Let’s go get in line for lunch.” Marie followed as her head hung low with self-disbelief for the first time in her life. Needless to say, Marie had lost her appetite and Jayson finished off her cardboard pizza. She let him win in their daily milk chugging contest, too.

35

Boarding the school bus, she chose an empty seat near the middle back. She plugged her headphones into her silver and blue CD player and opened the book she had been reading. Marie was an intelligent girl. She had exceeded her classmate’s reading levels by several grades, and already finished her timed multiplication tests. Marie was driven to do well in school, and her teacher Miss Owens, awarded the students who came out on top. In everything they did, Marie was neck and neck with Aimee until the end when Marie pulled ahead by a couple points. Marie was grateful to have always come out on top, but that day on the playground, Aimee defeated Marie.

__________

“Hey kiddo, are you about ready?” Marie’s dad asked, interrupting Marie’s internal conversation with the girl in the mirror.

“Yeah, I just finished. I’m coming.” Marie picked up her cleaning supplies and walked out the door taking down the sign they posted. She walked over to the men’s side where they sometimes played deafening rap music.

“Hey dad, it sounds like you had control over the radio today—some good ole fashioned country. Your favor—“ when she was cut off by her dad’s out of tune, atrocious singing.

“And it went down down down, to the burning ring of fire…”

“You’re embarrassing.”

Marie’s dad beamed as he continued singing and added some “extra special” dance moves.

“Can you puh-leaze just yell in there that I’m coming in?” Marie asked exasperated.

There were still a couple men in the shower house, so Marie had to be extra cautious. Her dad walked in first and noticed all the toilet stalls were empty so they started there. The routine was identical and somewhat monotonous to the tasks that they completed in the women’s side of the shower house. Marie was thankful for a couple different tasks to break the monotony. The job was by no means enjoyable, but someone had to do it. Marie noticed some new sharpie marks scrawled in some of the toilet stalls, “Why look here? The joke is between your legs.” Marie couldn’t believe some of the comments that people decided to write on the walls. Yet again, it made a little sense because the boys in her class drew male genitalia on the desks all the time. Maybe men are just oversized boys. In the next stall, “My butt cheeks have graced this surface, as have yours, and for this, we are brothers,” was written in straight, blocky letters that were disproportionate to each other.

“Marie, what are you doin’? Chop chop, kiddo!”

“Sorry. I was reading the walls again. It’s not all 420 notes and poop 36

encouragement like it was yesterday. Listen to this one For a good time call Sheniqua. Fo Na Na – Fo Na Fi Fo. That’s even how they spelled the numbers!”

“Those urinals aren’t gonna clean themselves. You can read plenty later at home.”

While her dad plunged the toilets that were on the verge of over-flowing, she worked to clean the cigarette butts out of the urinals. This task was one of Marie’s least favorite, because the smell of pee and tobacco made her want to vomit. But, then she’d have to clean that up, too.

The yellow, one-inch stems settled in the light yellow mixture. There was no easy way to clean them out. Marie covered her hand with a purple latex glove— the kind she used to steal from the doctors office when she was a kid—and reached inside. She cupped her fingers to scoop out the butts, and ever so slightly began to part her fingers to let the liquid run through. She did this on all five of the urinals and flushed them all. Marie disposed of the gloves and started to walk over to the shower hall.

“Cleaning crew, girl on duty!” Marie yelled before she rounded the corner. There were still a couple men inside, but none of them were in the shower. It was safe for Marie to enter. It was company protocol that any cleaning crewmember of the opposite gender could enter, so long as they announced themselves, no one was in the shower, and no one objected. Seemed simple enough.

As she rounded the corner, a man was standing at the third sink from the end looking at himself in the mirror. This man was built like a rock. He was tall and the undershirt he was wearing showed off every chiseled muscle in his body. His arms had to have been the size of one of Marie’s legs. Marie tried not to stare, but something about him was intriguing. She didn’t think it was his arms covered in tattoos of skulls and flames; it was something else, something different. Before someone came in to use the showers, she quickly grabbed her things and wiped down all the showers and mopped up the spilled water on the floor. She began working on the mirrors opposite end of the man.

Through her peripheral vision, Marie saw him lather his hands with shaving cream thinking he was going to apply it to his face. Not only did he cover his cheeks and chin, but he swiped his hands all over his skull. His entire head was covered and it was the strangest thing Marie had ever seen. He then pulled a three-blade razor out of his bag and began shaving. How he never missed a spot in the back as he shaved, she had no idea. Marie couldn’t even braid her own hair, not to mention shaving her entire head.

It turns out Marie gawked a little too long because the man with the partially shaved head turned her direction, “What the hell you lookin’ at? What are you doin’ in here anyway? Can you not read?”

“I can read. I am a part of the cleaning crew. I announced I’d be coming. I can leave.”

37

“Nah, you already stared at me long enough anyway. Just finish cleanin’ them mirrors. Ya’d already be done if you just do the job instead of starin’.”

Marie grabbed her rag and focused wiping down the rest of the mirrors and the counter tops. As she did so, the reflection in the mirror taunted her. Would she ever be prom worthy? Would the boys ever see her as a real girl, whatever that meant? She checked the trash bins, reached in to pull the waste out and chucked the bag outside with too much force.

Marie left the shower house, flipped the cleaning sign and loaded all the trash and supplies into the cart trailer. She sat in the passenger side, with her feet up on the oh-shit-bar. When she was waiting for her dad to finish up what he was doing, she looked at the clothing she wore. Her jeans were not beautiful, they had been handed down probably more than once and the shoes let her toe peak through.

No wonder, she thought.

Studying herself, Marie said under her breath, “I bet Aimee has always had all new clothes. I bet she never needed to wear the silly hand-me-down’s that I do.”

Marie quickly takes her feet off the dash when she sees her dad come out of the shower house. He put his things in the trailer, got in, and started the engine.

Marie didn’t say anything, but she looked out her side of the cart at all of the bikes that have come into town. Of the 90 RV and camper spots, only about 8 of them were still open, and some of them had a tent or two as well. It is always hard to tell how many tents they have because it is built on a field so they can have pretty much unlimited tent space. Most tent-ers set up as close to their friends and family as they can anyway, so it helps save on room. If Marie had to guess how many tents there were, it would be around 100. Most tents have at least two people sleeping in them, so 200-300 people are in tents with approximately 328 people in RV’s and campers with 164 additional tent-ers in the RV spots. Doing the quick math, Marie would estimate 992-1092 people already staying in this campground. That doesn’t count the people who stay in the campground down the road or in other places all together.

As she was looking out at all the spots, Marie concluded that the rally is definitely the venue for Harley’s because Marie didn’t see many spots without at least one Harley. They pulled up to the dumpster and started to unload the trash from the trailer into the large bin. Marie could not believe how much trash they have taken out since the beginning of the week, “Dad, I bet if someone tallied up all the garbage Sturgis collected over the week it would be like thousands of pounds. People are gross.”

Her dad smiled, “Last year the news said they had about four million pounds.”

“Four million? What! Ew!” Marie replied in disbelief as her dad threw in the last trash bag from the trailer.

“Come on, Marie. Let’s go back up to the bar.”

38

They pulled up to the building, parked and took the keys back to Cassie. Marie ordered lemonade and her dad ordered himself a beer. It was a little surprising that he ordered a Land Shark this time, he usually settled with a “B” beer, Budweiser, Bud Light, you know, something like that. Marie noticed, “Dad, Land Shark? Is it because the bottle looks cool?”

“You bet the bottle looks cool…Marie, look! Blaise is here!” Blaise was a long time friend of her dads. They graduated high school together. Actually, Blaise and Cassie were siblings. It’s all kind of a small world in this town.

Blaise and Marie’s dad started to talk about Blaise’s sign business and fixing fence, and all the other things ranchers talk about. Marie began to drift off, looking at her reflection in the window of the beer cooler behind the counter.

Cassie noticed the change in Marie’s mood since they had talked earlier in the evening, “Hey sweet girl, what’s on your mind?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just tired…”

“You do remember I raised a daughter once, that isn’t a “I’m fine” look—now you tell me what’s on your mind.”

Marie sighed, “Well, there is a girl in my class, Aimee, and she asked me once if I was ever going to be a real girl. I just. I’ve been thinking about that a lot today, is all. I don’t know if I will ever be a real girl.”

Cassie looked shocked, “Now you listen here, you are perfect just the way you are. You think about it. She is probably sitting in her home right now, not earning a dime because she is too young to go waitress. Your daddy raised you right. You change the oil in the family vehicles, you can name every weed in that ditch out back, and you are practical and logical. Hell girl, you know the difference between a Honda and a Harley. You can do shit.”

“Well, yeah. I know. But sometimes I just can’t help but think about those things she said.”

“Don’t let those people get to you, honey. It’s not worth it. You will be in college doing wonderful things. Your friends will come to you for help with those practical things when they don’t know where else to turn and their daddy isn’t there. She’ll be too busy looking at her reflection in the mirror to even notice anyone else.”

Cassie went to serve some others who had come up to the bar. Marie finished her drink in silence, replaying the conversation with Cassie in her head, while her dad laughed with Blaise about something. Marie silently thought to herself, maybe Cassie is right. I will be changing people’s tires and saving money on oil changes. Aimee will be fixing people’s bad hair days and spending beaucoup bucks on eye shadow and mascara. I can do shit.

39

Wafer Storm

by Jennifer Vondrak

I

sit on the floor right below the bulletin board in the entranceway of the Wafer plant waiting for three a.m. Hanging next to the board is the time clock, which is momentarily dead from the lack of electricity coursing through its wire veins. The fading red of the exit light is the only illumination we have left aside from an occasional flash of lightning. A couple of my coworkers stand outside watching the storm and nursing their addiction to nicotine. Most of the other remaining second shifters and I breathe in the secondhand smoke that seeps in through the doors propped open with a folded floor mat. Someone also opened the door to the warehouse in an effort to get more air. It’s not a great comfort, but it could be worse. We started out in the break room when the power first went out, but it’s like a sauna. Besides, eleven and third shift came, so there isn’t much room in there anyway. I flip over my phone for about the hundredth time to check the hour, but the numbers still disappoint. At seven, I was ecstatic at the prospect of leaving at eleven, but it was clearly false hope as we had now crossed over into the wee hours of Saturday and were still here.

It’s the 9:00 hour, and I am standing at the start of line one at the oscillators on a sturdy metal stool with a yellow grated bottom. One of my hands absentmindedly grasps a thin pole that extends clear to the ceiling until the round wafers shift out of line, and I am forced to reach across and push them down while adjusting the little divider fingers between them. Otherwise a mess will probably end up in a pile on the already slick concrete floor below me.

Each product we produce has a specific formula with letters and numbers.

The letters indicate the size and shape of the wafers, and the numbers denote the recipe. Tonight, we are running RC127, which doesn’t usually run too bad on the oscillators, nor is it running bad tonight. RC127, in layman’s terms, are just round Skinny Cow wafers used for ice cream sandwiches. I assure you, squares are far shiftier and a greater pain, especially the SAs (tiny little two-inch devils).

It’s not anymore because the job became obsolete when they installed this new machine last week, but the worst part about running this Skinny Cow product used to be having to sit in the back. We’d pick off bad wafers as they came out of the oven to cool. It was a mindless, hypnotic task. The only redeeming factor was the breeze of the fan on a sweltering hot day. Of course, keeping us cool is not the main purpose of the fan. Its true job is to accelerate the cooling down of the 40

wafers before they are stacked together and continue their journey on a series of conveyer belts. Two years ago, during my first few days at this factory, after I was transferred from the company’s nearby Cone plant, I had to sit back there four hours each night. I can tell you, that’s nearly enough to drive a person to seriously contemplate suicide.

My eyes dart to the “middle,” as we call it, the position between either side of the oscillators. For this product, this spot is left open, so I have to watch it along with the oscillators. From my vantage point, I can’t see any potential disasters as the wafers prepare to be sectioned off and sent through the wrapper. With little excitement, I have to force myself constantly to stay alert and not let my mind drift off as I stand at my post. I half wish I were on line two, which has already shut down for the night.

I don’t notice Steve approaching me. He’s the wrapper operator on line one who coached one of my cousins in college years ago. He taps me on the shoulder and draws my drifting mind back to reality. Apparently, one of the warehouse forklift operators was nearly taken out when a gust of wind blew in the 20 by 20 foot overhead warehouse door.

“Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good,” I say as I try to visualize the scene. I wish I could have watched that instead of these wafers. It would have been far more entertaining. I swear anytime anything remotely exciting happens in this place, I’m always standing right here on this line.

There aren’t many windows in the plant. Just a tiny window on an overhead door.

Curious what the weather’s doing outside, my coworker peeked out the window to check out the storm. He was saved solely by his quick reflexes that compelled him to jump back just in time. There is sure to be a mess in the warehouse from the water that gushed in through the door. At least no one was harmed.

When I was on my half hour supper break earlier, a glance out the window of the employee entrance door revealed an eerie foreshadowing of the impending storm. The wind was picking up outside, but I didn’t think much of it. I just walked back through the warehouse to Packout, the part of the plant I work in where all of the wafers are packed and palletized and went back to work double stacking pallets of boxes until it was time to rotate at the top of the hour.

The day had begun, after all, like a normal day of work, for the most part at least. I had put on my uniform—khaki pants and a plain white t-shirt. Only the full-timers wear shirts with the company logo. My sister claims I look like an ice cream cone, but I’m personally reminded more of the uniforms at the federal prison a couple of my college classes visited. Considering my line of work, I suppose either one is fitting. I grabbed my lunch from the fridge, coasted out of the driveway at approximately 2:01 p.m., and arrived at the plant around twenty after two. I parked in the far north row, like always. The aroma of wafers that hit me along with the heat and humidity heat when I opened up my car door was quickly replaced by the stench of cigarettes as I walked past the usual group of smokers. While my feet dragged me through the employee entrance of the plant, 41

I was wondering what the night would bring, but I certainly did not foresee the storm. I was thinking more along the lines that 11:00 was destined to end in a war, and I thought I needed to mentally prepare myself to fight.

About half of third shift has tonight off it seemed. Although most of the empty positions that needed covered were theoretically operator positions, they wanted three of us line attendants to stay and help clean. Third shift does that every Friday night when the plant shuts down for the weekend. The assistant plant manager had made the point to email us earlier in the week imploring us to volunteer for Friday, but we were all too stubborn to comply.

I put on the hideous white hairnet that completes my uniform and slip my safety glasses over my regular glasses. When the time clock reads 2:38 p.m., I get in line behind the others to swipe my time card and walk through the warehouse, waiting for the night to play out.

We have our usual team meeting at a quarter to three p.m. We are scolded for our lack of cooperation in volunteering to stay late though I don’t care enough to let it get under my skin. Twirling my safety glasses in my hands, I let the words bounce off me as I ponder the best strategy for the night. RC127 and B101, a chocolate rectangular product notorious for causing the kuka to back up. I don’t waste time dilly-dallying to walk out on the floor when everyone leaves the team room, as I would rather not end up at an undesirable position on the line. Not bothering to grab a pair of medium sized, blue nitrile gloves, I cut directly to handpacking on line one after I wash my hands.

I am thankful that most products are packaged by the kuka, an orange arm-like machine with suction cups that packs sleeves of wafers into cases. Rectangular wafers and some of the square ones are packaged by the kuka, but rounds and the rest of the squares are handpacked. Handpacking isn’t necessarily the most desirable position, but it also isn’t the worst.

There are nine line attendants working tonight in Packout lines one and two and eight hours in the shift. The position directly before handpacking is inspections, which is something some people prefer and some people despise. I definitely fall in the latter category. Handpacking ensures that I most likely will only have to inspect for one hour on line two. That I can handle.

One hour in, we start breaks as usual, but both lines go down for whatever reason. I don’t end up having to stack at all this hour, although I should have.

After breaks are done as well as a bit of sweeping, I stand around with a few of my coworkers between the extendable contraptions that cases slide down before being stacked. We’re just talking and half waiting for someone above us in rank to yell at us and tell us to wipe down the warehouse or something. They never do. I’ll admit I listen more than I contribute to the conversation. Various things are discussed, but the main topic of discussion is the matter of who is going to get stuck staying tonight.

The answer to our question of who the unlucky few will be is answered. As nobody has stepped forward, our facilitator is not happy. I don’t need to be in that office to imagine what he’s saying to the others in there. He’s maybe twentysix or twenty-seven. Stereotypical tattoos of something cover his arms. His khaki 42

colored t-shirt has probably come untucked from his khaki pants by this time of the night. He might be in charge of this team, but that doesn’t change the way people talk around here with their f-word commas. Not long ago, I think he was just a sheeter operator or something. I never did get a tour of the plant like I was supposed to, so I don’t know much about the specifics of the sheeter room. I just know that it is between the mixer room and the oven. Anyhow, he draws three names and writes them on the whiteboard outside the facilitator/assistant plant manager’s office, which is located just inside Packout lines one and two.

I am technically on line two right now, but as that is down, I am standing with the other college girl on our shift at inspections on line one. We wait anxiously as we watch the names spelled out. Alex (one of the younger full-timers). Derek (summer help). Then our facilitator starts spelling out the name the two of us share. We know one of us is stuck. It seems to take forever for him to make it to the initial tagged onto the end, which will determine our fate. Then it’s there, scrawled clearly in black marker. Her initial, not mine. Part of me sympathizes with her, especially since these extra hours will only be regular pay for her instead of overtime as she hasn’t work forty hours this week. Still, the rest of me is relieved that I will be able to leave at the end of the shift when someone from third shift takes my spot.

The excitement I missed surrounding the blowing in of the overhead door probably should have been a warning of what was to come. Even so, when the power goes out not long afterward, it is still a bit of a shock. I navigate through the darkness of Packout by the light of the exit signs to the open area near the stacking stations at the end of the lines. The rest of my coworkers are gathered there. The power comes back on for a brief time, and I go back to the line for a little bit before it goes out again.

The second time it goes out, we are sent to the break room. As we are furthest from the exit, I walk with Todd, who was on the other side of the oscillators that hour. He is about 63 and a Vietnam vet, drafted and forced to leave college against his will where he had a scholarship for baseball or basketball or something. He is very clear in his hatred of ‘Nam and his love for his three-year-old granddaughter.

She calls him “Papa”. Prior to the power outage, when we were still on the line, he was telling me about his plans to watch her tomorrow. No matter what, there was no way he was going to stay late. I never knew what to make of this guy. He has always been relatively nice to me. A bit odd and a little too touchy for comfort perhaps, but I have never felt threatened by his presence. Apparently, however, his anger can get a little out of control when he’s off his meds.

I let a grin spread across my face as we follow the two yellow lines that create a path through the warehouse from Packout to the break room. Despite the inconvenience of this new predicament, it is an exciting change of pace in this often monotonous job. Even the sinking realization that I might not be out of here by 11:00 does not hinder my amusement. If nothing else, I have one thing to hold onto. This is a story.

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Todd makes some remark about my expression. I suppose he has a point. I don’t normally smile that much at work. The way I see it, I am there to work, and smiling takes an extra effort I am usually too tired to make unless something strikes me as especially humorous. The negativity is almost palpable in the air most days, which doesn’t do much to fuel enthusiasm. I usually wear an indifferent expression that probably makes me come off as mad, which isn’t necessarily accurate, but I don’t really care what the others think of me. I guess there are a few coworkers that are more enjoyable to socialize with than others, but I am under no delusion that I have any friends here. Maybe they talk about me behind my back, but at a place like this, you can’t let that faze you. They do that to everyone, and I can’t claim to be innocent of doing the same myself.

By the time we get to the break room, all of the chairs at the four tables are filled, so I find a spot to stand alongside the wall. I remove my safety glasses but leave on my white hairnet. There’s no telling how long the power will be out. I think about it a bit before giving in and entering the locker-room to retrieve my phone.

The door swings shut behind me with a thud, and I’m thrust into total darkness.

There’s not even an exit light to guide my path. I let my eyes adjust. I have a general idea of where my locker is. Furthermore, I have one of the few lockers with two nametags on it. Most of the women have their own lockers, but there were no empty ones when I started in May. Armed with this knowledge and my sense of touch, I am able to find my locker without much trouble. Blindly, I pull my phone out of my purse. Looking down at it, I press a button to light up the screen. A missed call and a voicemail from my friend from a quarter after eight. I’ll get back to her tomorrow. Knowing her, she’s probably already asleep. Phone in hand, I make it safely back to the break room and find my spot along the wall again.

Taking in my surroundings, I half listen to the conversations around me.

The tall lazy kid nobody likes much with the ponytail offered Xanax to the other college kids. I’ve never taken the time to get to know this kid well, but it seems just like him. I don’t mind being on the outside of that conversation.

The Hispanics are gathered at their own table. Four years of high school Spanish isn’t enough for me to make out what they are saying, however. I catch zapatos and perro or pero. Apparently they are talking about shoes, but I’ll never know if they are also talking about a dog or just saying “but.”

The rest of the conversations are polluted with the usual curse words as various topics are discussed. Those I can at least understand. My interest is struck the most with learning more about the overhead door incident.

My biggest regret of the night is not being able to see it with my own eyes, but I’ll admit it is entertaining to hear about. Jorge, the line two kuka operator, was out in the warehouse at the time, too, from what it sounds like. I don’t think he was in as much danger of being taken out as the warehouse worker was, but the other college girl takes pleasure in demonstrating how he froze dramatically with his hands up when he saw this happening. How I wish I could claim to have seen it too, so I could better describe the incident.

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You can also hear the concern buzzing in the background of this noisy room.

Marcia, for instance, an immigrant from Mexico probably in her mid-to-late twenties, maybe thirties, is on the phone calling her husband back home to see how her babies are doing.

Watching Marcia, I realize I’m a bit curious how things are at my own home. It’s too loud in here to call, so I shoot out a text to my mom instead.

The room is also filled with the dreadful ring of the break room phone. The stupid thing seems to ring continuously. Third shifters appear to be calling in left and right. I have to admit this storm probably isn’t the prettiest to drive in.

Undoubtedly, that is the reason I may find myself here until three a.m. As eleven draws near, those third shifters that hadn’t called in or had the night off began to drift in dressed in their jeans and random non-white t-shirts. (On most Fridays, third shifters are allowed to wear street clothes instead of the regular uniform).

They come in, drenched by the rain, bringing news of the conditions outside.

We get a message from our facilitator via the radio of one of the operators. We are informed that they need two extra line attendants from lines one and two and one from line three. I see the inevitable coming in that statement. I don’t volunteer, but deep down, in that moment, I know the game is lost.

We have a point system. Full-timers have eight points and temporary summer help like me have just three. Once you’re out of points, you’re out of a job. I don’t know if it is true, but when rumors start spreading about them taking double points if you leave, I decide I don’t want to take my chances.

Many of us migrate to the entranceway to discuss this new development and to peek out at the storm again. As eleven passes, we begin to lose people from our shift. There’s hesitancy in some of my coworkers, but most decide they don’t care.

I’m still undecided as I stand near the two other college kids. I kind of wish now my name had been drawn earlier like theirs had. Then, I wouldn’t have to choose to flee or suck it up and stay. As each coworker bails, I see my opening to leave close a little bit more. Even Alex, who was supposed to stay, decides to ditch.

Meanwhile, someone suggests cutting through the break room and going out some other door in a part of the plant I am only vaguely familiar with. Apparently, it’s more protected from the storm, and there’s nobody out there smoking. Why, not? I’m up for an adventure on a night like this. I follow a few of the others out.

On my way through the break room, the old Mexican guy from third shift stops me. I don’t know his name, but he sells homemade burritos, which are bought by many of my coworkers. He asks me as he often likes to ask me, “Are you staying late, muchacha?”

I hesitate and respond with unenthusiastic reluctance for the first time ever in my life, “Yeah…I guess so.” Well that’s it. I guess I am staying.

With that decided, I continue following the others to this mystery door. We walk down the metal steps. The air is clearer out here. Though the door is on the north side like the employee entrance, this door is protected by the part of the building that extends out further. It’s still raining, but it’s not coming from this direction, so we don’t feel its effects standing out here.

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We hang out for a little bit, but then head back inside. We talk about random things just to pass the time.

We find ourselves sitting on the floor in the entranceway. It is past one, and most of second shift has gone. What remains is a few second shifters and mostly inexperienced third shifters, who if the power comes back on will have no idea what to do. There are four line attendants from lines one and two. The three college kids and Brad, a middle-aged man who is big but too laid back to be menacing. I’m not sure if he’s married. I guess I’ve never thought much about that, but somehow it seems as if it would be an odd mix with his enthusiasm of video games and cow tongue tacos. He’s still here because he didn’t want to chance the roads in his car.

In addition to the four of us, there are a couple of line attendants from line three—Charmaine, a lady from Peru, who has been working here for nearly a decade and was sweet enough to miss me, and Sherry, a fifty-some-year-old grandmother. Why Charmaine is still here I will never understand. She came in early today, or rather yesterday, around 10:35 in the morning.

The power does come on eventually, and we take a back way to cut through the warehouse to Packout. Instead of taking the direct path to lines one and two, some of us go through the line three Packout room. I have only ever briefly peeked into the room when I was sitting at inspections on line one. The reason we take this path instead of the regular one, however, is to check out the overhead door, which is north and a little west of line three. Someone had secured the door temporarily with the forklift, and I remember regretfully that in the excitement of the loss of power I forgot to look at the door when I left Packout for the break room.

Second shift sometimes starts the process of cleaning, but it’s not our responsibility. “Gotta love their logic,” I mutter to the other college kids. “Make the summer help stay. We don’t have a clue what we’re doing.”

“It happens,” Derek says. I lost track of how many times he’s said that phrase tonight, but it wasn’t the first, I can tell you.

There is a portion of the line three belt that cuts through Packout and angles toward the ceiling near line two. Some chocolate chip cookies are still suspended on the line, and not knowing what else to do, I wander over to belt with the other college kids, and we snatch a few cookies from the line. We take cautious bites into our cookies. Mmm. They are still slightly warm and soft. Looking at one another, we shrug, and vocalize our observation that they’re still good.

These cookies will not be saved of course. They are destined to end up as hog feed, as do all of the bad wafers, cookies, and cones over in the other plants. For that reason, I don’t feel so bad about eating this first cookie or taking the second one for the road when the power goes back out again before we have any time to do anything anyway. This is going to be a long and memorable night, but at least we know we won’t starve.

46

A Swift One Hundred

by Jennifer Vondrak

S

ome days it hits me when I’m out for a walk. The empty cornfield stretching out before me. The starlit sky above giving me my only guidance in the night.

Or I’m struck with it while driving on some county road in Iowa.

Or I’m in my own little world at work at the Wafer Plant in Le Mars, walking up and down a line, inspecting the wafers marching across on a belt stained with chocolate wafer dust. The work isn’t hard, but its monotony makes the nights drag on. If you’re lucky, the phone doesn’t ring. If it does, it most likely means a third shifter has called in, and somebody has to stay until three a.m. I am not fully convinced the time and a half and the stories you get out of it are worth the late night, but it’s all part of the job.

Other times I am in English class, but it’s a day we don’t get the chance to write. Whenever we are supposed to write, words love to fail me. Almost never am I sitting with something to write on when inspiration hits. At least it always seems that way.

I remember one particular day in early October of my senior year of high school. It was fourth period college comp class. After reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” a piece of satire involving the mildly disturbing concept of eating children, we were supposed to imitate his style and write our own satirical essays. “A Modern Proposal,” it was to be called. Our teacher gave us a worksheet to help us brainstorm ideas. She wanted to know what our topics were before the end of the class period.

Ugh. I wrote on the paper, but the words were as empty as my mind in that moment. It’s like my brain was wiped clean of everything. I couldn’t think of a single idea. Other kids started telling her their topics, but I was just sitting there, praying she wouldn’t ask me for mine. God was merciful to me that day. The bell rang for lunch, and I slipped out the door still undecided on a topic. Of course, it came to me then, plain as day, just as I was walking down the short flight of stairs in the senior hallway to my locker. The inspiration hit me as I recalled my present frustration with a particular situation at school.

We always used to get let out of band a few minutes before the bell, but then teachers started complaining about band students (primarily underclassmen) making a ruckus in the hallways. Because of that, our band teacher began making us play until the bell rang. I played the clarinet, which probably takes the longest to put away given that it has five major parts along with the reed and the ligature. Far from just a mouthpiece to remove before placing it in its case. We 47

were then expected to make it to our next class before the bell rang. Spanish, in my case, which was a good distance from the band room, so this was particularly annoying to me.

I went on to write an essay proposing a solution for these culprits, the unruly underclassmen band kids. I never knew writing about cannibalism could be so enjoyable. I am sure I have written better stuff since then as well as worse, but I was rather pleased with that particular essay. My teacher even praised it as a “perfect imitation of Swift� along with giving me a one hundred percent, and she’s not one to give out hundreds in excess.

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Graphic Design

MMC Graphic Design and Media Arts Students

49

Icicles

Sneaky with Chocolate

Ellen Renz

Ellen Renz

A Rose is a Rose Ellen Renz 50

Portrait

Smudge Painting

Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit

Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit

Bride and Grrroom

Eyenemone

Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit

Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit 51

Wisconsin Dreams Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit

How Do You Like Your Eyes?

Jennifer Vondrak

52

Jumping into Fantasy Jennifer Vondrak

The Internal Battle of a Graphic Artist Jennifer Vondrak

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Breast Cancer Survivor Coraina Aguirre

Calvary Baptist Church

CH

O

UR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME. THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. BIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, AS WE FORGIVE US OUR DEBTORS. AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL; FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOREVER. AMEN

Text Cloud Coraina Aguirre

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Studio Portrait [Vanessa Ryken] Abby K. Keffeler

Smudge Painting [Vanessa Ryken] Abby K. Keffeler

55

Living Within the Pages Abby K. Keffeler

Marionette or Marionettist?

Abby K. Keffeler

56

Adventures of a Tree Hugger

by Katie Hamil

“O

h no!” cries my mother from across the lawn. Oh no is right, I think to myself. What could be so terrible? All she’s doing is watering her trees. In case it’s actually serious, I hop off the trampoline and cross the yard where my mother is examining her young, thin ash sapling. The few leaves that have grown in are fluttering in the breeze.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“An animal bit some of the bark on my tree,” Mom declares, wringing her hands out with worry.

“Um…okay?” Certainly not what I was expecting to hear.

“I don’t want my tree to die.” Upon the strange look I give her she adds, “Do you know how much work I’ve put into my trees?”

I’ll give her that. She researched the kinds of trees that would do well in Iowa and could be planted in the backyard. Checking out the large stack of tree books, the librarian probably thought she was trying to restore the rainforest. I remember her flipping through the pages and pointing out that she didn’t want any with thorns or fruit. If it was up to her, those books are what she would have read to us for bedtime stories.

Once she had decided on the types of trees she wanted, the shopping started. I can’t count how many stores we went to looking for reasonably priced trees. Finding trees that were grown in at least one climate zone north of us was a daunting task, but she insisted on that being the case. She didn’t want the trees to be killed in the first frost of the season. Lowe’s, Walmart, Bomgaars, Menards, Earl May, Kmart. You name it. Wherever we went we’d have to stop and look at the trees.

After she found a variety of trees she wanted to buy, she called 811 before planting them, so she didn’t hit any underground lines when digging. The 811 line operator and mom had to be on a first name basis as much as she called.

The poor operator couldn’t get any other work done with mom calling every day to see when the workers would be out. By the end of the week mom was frustrated that they hadn’t sent any people. One lesson I learned that week: don’t tell mom to be patient.

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When the men finally came they spray painted places to avoid and marked them with bright orange flags. After this, she began to plan out where each one would go. Taking careful note of all underground obstacles, she measured out where each tree was to be planted. Not wanting the trees roots to run into each other or for one tree to block out another’s sunlight.

Enlisting the help of my father, they began to dig the holes. When the holes were finished, my mom carefully removed the trees from their temporary pots.

Gently setting the trees into the holes, she covered the roots with nutrient-rich soil. Then she added woodchips around the base and made sure the saplings were staked up with twine on each side. The thought of the trees snapping in the wind made her nervous.

The younger trees were watered at least weekly. In the fall, mom trimmed any stray branches to make sure there would be one tall leader trunk, not two or three.

It used to scare me seeing my mom on a ladder reaching for a branch just within her grasp. I was afraid she was going to impale herself with the garden sheers or a handheld saw. She was clumsy enough that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

I take a closer look at the damage initially invisible to the naked eye. Upon closer inspection I notice a small chip in the bark of the tree, about the size of a paper clip and barely scratches the surface.

“I think your tree will be fine,” I comment and she stops her incessant fluttering around the tree and looks at me.

“Fine? Fine!” My mom exclaims with volume increasing with each word. “Did you even look at it? There’s a hole in my tree! What if insects get inside? Or the animal comes back and eats more of the bark? What am I going to do?”

She yells frantically.

“Yes, Mom, all the animals have magically turned into beavers and are coming to feast on your tree.”

“That’s not funny, young lady.”

I shrug and go back to the trampoline. My mother, on the other hand, storms inside. Soon she reemerges, walking with her shoulders squared―a determined look in her eyes. In her hands she carries a box of Band-Aids. If she cut herself why didn’t she put a Band-Aid on inside? Then it hits me.

Cutting across the lawn, I arrive in time to see my mom wrapping the edge of the Band-Aid around the two-inch diameter tree. Sticking down one tip of the bandage on top of the other, she coos to the tree, “That’s better.”

“Band-Aids. Now you’re thinking.”

“The tree needs to breathe. These Band-Aids have tiny holes in them and will protect the bark.” Mom replies with a tinge of glee and pride in her voice.

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Throw like a Champ

by Katie Hamil

L

eaning against the team bus window, I see the rain run in rivulets across the pane. We’re heading to Kingsley for our fifth track meet of the season.

Mother Nature isn’t being kind. It’s pouring and is cold and windy. The perfect trifecta. I’ll be lucky if I don’t scratch all three of my throws.

I head off of the bus to where our team camp awaits. Climbing through the piles of gym bags, backpacks, and disregarded spikes, I search for the discus case.

Seeing the plastic handle peeking out from under someone’s sweatshirt, I grab the two metal rimmed competition discuses.

Discuses in hand, I get in line to start my practice throws. I am only able to get one practice throw in before the officials call us over to explain the rules. Enter and exit through the back. Three attempts. No jewelry. Standard school uniforms only. Most of the girls tune out what they’ve heard before. I take the opportunity to look around. Some girls are hopping up and down in an effort to stay warm and others are chatting about how they hate the weather. All of them are shivering.

The official with the clipboard concludes the meeting and tells us the lineup.

The order goes from lowest recorded throw to highest. My previous best was an eighty five footer; I will be in the middle of the throwing order. I do some warm up exercises while I wait. Keeping my sweats on until the last possible moment, I hear my name followed by the words “on deck.” I am forced to bare my skin to the freezing wind, so that my uniform is regulation.

The girl before me finishes her throw and runs out into the widening sector to retrieve her discus. As soon as she is out of harm’s way, I stand at the top of the ring and shake out my arms to get some feeling to return. I set one discus on the muddy grass that surrounds the ring. I try drying the other discus with an already soaked towel. It doesn’t work; it only ends up spreading the water around.

Sometimes I wonder why I ever decided to throw discus in the first place, but if I didn’t participate, I would be missing out. Success earned through hard work, sweat, and lots of practice time in the ring is the best feeling. Hearing my name called over the loudspeaker, notifying me that I have earned points for my team is gratifying. The medals we receive at the team meetings are tangible evidence of success. So are the team photos we take after winning a meet. All of us smiling and holding up our index finger as a sign that we are number one.

We weren’t always winners, though. In Junior High I was not that good, but I knew I wanted to get better. My mom threw shot-put and discus in junior high and high school. Apparently she even held the record for a couple of years for shot-put. I wanted to be like her. So I took the discus and shot-put home and practiced. Eventually our team became more serious; we wanted to win, so we did what we could to make that happen.

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Like any other meet I know my teammates are counting on me, so I take a deep breath and enter the ring. My dark brown hair whips into my face agitating me and I have to push it back over my shoulder. I stand with my left foot as far forward in the ring as it will go without actually touching the line. Stepping on the line constitutes a scratch, a throw that doesn’t count.

I twist my hips and upper torso so I face the back of the net enclosure with my arms moving like the blades on a helicopter; one arm always directly opposite of the other. The discus rests on my right palm. I wind up slowly at first, but by the third rotation I have gained enough speed to whip the discus out into the V-shaped sector. It flies a little close to one of the metal support beams holding up the safety net, but misses hitting it at the last minute. Although it doesn’t land within the sector, it looks like it would have been just shy of seventy five feet. It’s not a bad throw, especially considering the conditions.

I have two throws left. I’m not too worried. It might be a smart idea to get a throw within the sector before I start my spin throw, but today I feel like a risk might pay off. I make the executive decision to go ahead with the spin. I grab the other discus I brought with me. It sits in my hand as slippery as a banana peel on the floor. That’s not the only problem I am facing today.

From my first throw, I know the ring is slick. The thought of wiping out makes me nervous, but I take a deep breath and start my first quarter turn. I’m going slowly, so I don’t fall. Too late I realize my mistake. I’m not going fast enough for the force to keep the discus in my hand. My frozen Popsicle fingers are crinkled like raisins and are useless when I flex my fingertips to keep the discus from flying out of control. Spiraling away from me, the discus catches on the net and slides to the ground with a dull thump.

“Come on.” I mutter to myself, verbalizing my frustration.

I am down to just one throw and the nerves are kicking in like crazy. I remind myself that true champions don’t let failure stop them. I shake off the horrible throw and remind myself to stay calm. I retrieve the discus from where it lies at the foot of the net. I know I have to make this throw count.

This time I focus on my spin, don’t dawdle and my motions are purposeful and fierce. I bend my knees slightly as I pivot a quarter of a turn with my left foot and bring my right foot slightly off of the ground, kicking in until my right foot hits the center of the ring. Then I follow with my left foot bringing it in front of my right and twisting forward as I ready for the release. I keep my right arm back until the last possible moment and I use the torque from my left arm to whip the discus onto the field.

As the discus leaves my hand I pop my hip and swing my right foot around, back towards the center to keep from falling out of the ring. Before I turn completely around, I sneak a glance at the discus soaring and slicing through the rain. When I think it is going to fall to the ground, a gust of wind prolongs its flight. Finally, it descends into the grass, well within the sector.

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As I exit the ring the official yells, “Mark!” indicating the throw will count.

The marking volunteers jog to the spot where the discus touched down and stick a stake with a tape measure attached to it into the indent. Making my way around the ring, I watch as the official pulls the tape measure tight and crouches down to look at the number. He rises up and turns towards the crowd.

“Ninety feet one inch.” He calls to the crowd. That’s a personal best.

61

Free Plates

by Megan Fink

M

y dad is the kind of guy that gets irritated when the phone rings. He gets even more irritated when he looks at the caller ID and sees Toll Free or some other name that indicates someone is calling just to waste your time and get your money. One time he actually answered the phone just so he could yell at the guy, “You people need to stop calling here. I have a family to support and I’m sick of your crap!” Then he hung up and you could almost see the steam coming out of his ears for the next five minutes.

Mom on the other hand, refuses to get rid of the landline. She claims it is a necessity. So every time it rings, she answers it. One night the phone rang and Dad immediately told us not to answer it. Mom picked it up instantly and had a twenty-minute conversation with a guy trying to sell us a new vacuum cleaner.

The deal was if we let him come to our house and prove his product to us, we would get a free set of plates.

An hour later the guy was pulling into the driveway. We watched as his assistant helped him carry a bunch of crap into our house. Dad and I weren’t exactly happy with the situation so we didn’t join Mom when she answered the door. I was too annoyed to pay attention to what the guy actually looked like, but when I think about it now I imagine him as the fat guy on Enchanted that tries to help the evil step mom poison the young girl.

For a while, the man just carried on a casual conversation with my mom about anything and everything. You could tell by the anger in Dad’s eyes that he wanted to take the salesman by the back of the neck and throw him out of the house. It got even worse when my mom told us that we needed to come into the room and listen to what he had to say.

He started out by introducing his vacuum cleaner to us. Of course he told us that it was the best vacuum cleaner we would ever be able to find. He showed us every little detail about it and demonstrated how it worked. Just when we thought he was going to pack up and leave, he asked us to go get our vacuum cleaner out.

He took the thing apart and showed us how dirty the inside of it was and how all that dirt just gets spit back out onto our floors. He then asked us to take him upstairs and show us the bedrooms.

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He brought his super awesome vacuum cleaner with him and showed us how gross the places we sleep can get. He proceeded to tell us about all the different diseases dirt can cause and how we would basically die if we didn’t clean thingd properly. I was feeling pretty sassy by then so I said, “I haven’t died yet.”

Those were the only words I said all night and the guy didn’t know how to react. The room was completely silent until my dad busted out laughing. He was so proud of me. He even told the guy that he raised me to be a smartass like him.

Mom shot us both a glare and apologized for our behavior.

I think the best part about my comment was that it got the guy to realize that we were definitely not interested in his product. He finally wrapped up his presentation, after taking up four hours of our night, and made his way out of the house. I think Mom really felt bad about the way Dad and I acted because she kept making small talk with the salesman while he was packing up his stuff.

Long story short, Dad stopped letting Mom answer the phone, and Mom learned never to trust a salesman. It’s been about three years and to this day we still haven’t received the free plates we were promised.

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How to Become a Professional Golfer

by Joseph Brinkman

Y

ou were born to parents who are very athletic. Dad a three sport athlete in high school and a golfer in college. Mom also a three sport athlete in high school.

During birthdays receive every type of sport present you imagine, whether it be a football, baseball, baseball glove, soccer ball, plastic golf club, basketball or a back-stop that will only last for half the summer because you throw at it too often.

Do not let these things sit in your garage throughout your life.

Play outside as much as possible even if you are chasing the baseball onto the street in front of cars that narrowly miss you. Get yelled at for it but shrug it off like a bee on your shoulder because it doesn’t matter what is being said, you were told to have fun and don’t worry about anything else.

Move to a new town a few states away where the size is a small fraction of the last.

Try everything you can in this new town. Ride bikes with random kids you meet on the street and go to the park, one of them might turn out to be a best friend.

You’re already in tee ball and the basketball camp that the high school basketball coach puts on, why not try tackle football? But wait a year longer than you need to and let a few of your siblings be born, you were too small to be like Tom Brady anyway. When you go out for football become best friends with your running backs, it’s the only way the exchange will work.

Growing older you need to become friends with your next door neighbor who is in high school and can drive. He will be the one to get you addicted to the game of golf. Take him up on the offer every time he wants to hit a little white thing around a green field.

When you reach seventh grade play both baseball and golf because you can’t let go of either. Don’t let your friends tell you that you can play golf the rest of your life and that baseball is only temporary. Stick to the feelings of your heart.

Make sure you put a lot of thought into your decision of what sport to play.

Do not let your dad’s view of baseball blind you from the sport you really want to play. Dad is going to tell you that it doesn’t matter to him but you know better than to believe him.

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Do not be afraid to cry yourself to sleep at night, torn between two loves you are being forced to decide between. This will not be a one-time thing. This process may take you an entire summer and even into the months where snow is flying and neither sport can be played.

Freshman year comes around and you have decided that you would play golf because you are better at it, and you would like to play beyond high school. And because you get ignored by some of your closest friends you persevere and make varsity for the third time around.

Play in as many summer tournaments as you can and don’t worry about how long car rides are and the fact that you are the only kid there that is from a small town. You are the only one there that doesn’t have your own private swing trainer and a member at all the fancy courses in the cities.

Don’t be afraid that you drive a 1997 Ford Windstar mini-van, missing all of the hubcaps, rusted wheel wells, a power steering system that does not work well, a suspension system that is so bad that you are able to bottom it out with your teammates as you jump on it in the parking lot. The rich kids’ BMW’s, Mercedes’, Cadillacs and so on won’t help them on the course. So why does it matter?

Be proud of your small town lifestyle, where four wheelers and snowmobiles are driven to school; but actually do have cars in your small town.

Throughout high school you practice as much as you can at the course in town, chipping and putting because there is no range. Every year you miss the state tournament by no more than five strokes. But you use it at motivation senior year when you finally make state.

Get invited to play on the Players Tour in Minnesota which is by invite only.

The tour will get you noticed by colleges around the area, or so they promise. You will have to recruit yourself. They aren’t actually going to do it for you and getting noticed doesn’t happen. Visit the places you are being offered to figure out where you need to go so you can get yourself to the PGA. Pick the school where you can advance your education and for golf…. with the nicest practice facilities, hence the one with two different styles of golf courses and ones that have a range. Make your decision before the summer so you don’t cram trying to figure out where you need to be.

Practice all summer for where you are going to go because you know that when you head off to school where there will be two courses, and two ranges right at your fingertips after classes. Practice all the time and play just as much.

During qualifying be sure to play your own game and not copy what the upper classman are doing. Play the best you can during all the meets through college.

Don’t quit the game because of a few bad tournaments; you have one goal and that it to make it to the PGA.

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When you graduate college go back to your hometown, get a job at one of the high end courses and get some money saved up so you can pay for the Dakota Tour.

Playing well on the Dakota Tour is not going to be recognized by the Web.com tour. You need to be winning tournaments left and right, it’s the only way your name is going to get out there.

Get off to a slow start so it forces you to practice more. The first year of the Tour didn’t quite go like you planned. During the first season no victories, no top ten finishes were recorded either. Your best finish was thirteenth. Worried you may not get invited back you head home realizing that going to grad school is the safe path.

You have always pretty much walked the road less traveled. You know that there is something wrong with the safe path. For some reason going to grad school was not sitting well in your heart.

After applications are sent to grad schools your golf clubs start to collect dust in the corner of your room where spider webs surround every hole in the top of your bag but one, the spot where the putter goes. The reason that one is not blanketed in webs is because every night at home you pull it out and putt on the artificial grass putting mat in your room that is eight feet in length and two feet in width.

With the two feet in width you are able to throw one of your grad study books under the turf to create a break either left to right or right to left. Since you are right handed though, you like a putt breaking back to the left.

The reason you do this is because even though your golf career is over you still have a burning desire deep down to continue the game. When summer comes around you are waiting for the email from the Dakota Tour. To your disappointment it never comes and you have to settle for playing in your state’s amateur tournament at the end of the year.

Summer drags on because of the long hours at the golf course working and practicing for what feels like nothing to you. Finally the state Am comes and you are standing on the tee box of the final hole down by one stroke. Knowing that you need to stick to your own game you do not cut the corner while your opponent does.

You end up winning the State Amateur but you really don’t think anything of it because you know that in a couple of weeks school will be your life for another 9 months, without competitive golf.

After the tournament when you get back home after spending a few days in the cities, you find your parents sitting at the dining room table with a big white envelop in the middle of the runner. You are directed by your father to pick it up and read who it is from. To your amazement it is from the Web.com Tour (a step above the Dakota Tour). Inside is an invitation to the Web.com Tour for the following summer. Somehow they had already found out about the State Amateur.

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Realizing this is your second shot you need to purchase a new hitting net for the attic. The other one will do you no good, unless you feel like paying for new windows.

Summer came around and the first Web.com event was only a few hours from home. Coming out firing you ended up finishing in the top ten for the very first time. But it wasn’t the first time. It was during the fifth week that you won your first tournament. Over the course of twenty tournaments you won four times.

The twenty first tournament of the year is the Web.com Tour championship and whoever wins, goes on to the PGA Tour.

Walking up to the 18th green and the 72nd hole of the tournament you are tied for the lead and both you and your opponent are within range of making a birdie and sending it to a playoff. Upon missing his putt you know that you had to make it. The putt looked as it if it broke left so you aimed two feet off the right side, went through your putting sequence, and struck the ball. As it rolls toward the hole it looks as if it is going to miss but at the last second drops into the center of the cup. You are off to the PGA Tour. Of course the putt you just holed was an eight footer‌.

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Addendum to the Tom Brady Argument

by Joseph Brinkman

I

have always been a New England Patriots fan, especially when it comes to Tom Brady. The first thing I am told is, “You are just a band wagoner because they are the best team in the NFL.” This comment always seems to get me because that is not at all how my liking for the Patriots and Tom Brady came about.

I do not recall how old I was at the time but my dad believes I was around the age of seven or eight when I first started liking Tom Brady. Truth be told, I saw an AT&T cell phone commercial with Tom Brady as the to-be Flo of Progressive insurance. Dad said that I liked the commercial because there was a quarterback in it and that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up. Of course at that age I wanted to be every kind of professional athlete on the planet. Dad said that I turned to him and said, “Dad, I like him. Who does he play quarterback for?

Because I like them.” My liking for the team that is now being discussed as a dynasty all started because I was watching television late at night with dad, when I was supposed to be dreaming of hitting walk off homeruns in the bottom of the ninth of a World Series.

“You are just a band wagoner” is always the start to the argument about the Patriots being my favorite team and Tom Brady being the best quarterback in the NFL and possibly in the history of the league. Most people tend to disagree with me for a number of different reasons. Some of the reasons are because he was picked 199th in the NFL draft, which I believe has nothing to do with being possibly the best quarterback in NFL history. “Bill Belichick is one of the best coaches ever, it’s because of him that Tom Brady is so good.” I definitely agree that Belichick is one of the best because of Tom Brady, no doubt about that. I always answer back with, “Where did Bill coach before New England and did anyone really know who he was before Brady and the Patriots?” I tend to get a lot of people stumped on that one because the truth is, he really isn’t known for coaching the Cleveland Browns in early 90’s. He received the head coaching job in New England in 2000 and has not left. He and Brady together have won a whopping 160 games which is 44 more games than Don Shula and Dan Marino (2nd). Dan Marino is also one of the greatest QB’s to play the game.

Of course the comment, “Oh, he cheated! They deflated the footballs!” is always brought up against him and the Patriots. That I cannot explain or prove, and neither can the NFL. No one knows whether Brady or Belichick deflated those footballs but they were in fact deflated and that is not right. I understand that completely. Whether the footballs were deflated or not, does not define Tom Brady’s career. He has 160 wins as a quarterback which is third in NFL history behind Brett Favre and Peyton Manning. Surprisingly Joe Montana isn’t even in the top five in this category. And oh yeah, he’s in the Hall of Fame and according to most IS the greatest quarterback of all time.

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I could go on and on about stats that prove Tom Brady should be in the conversation for the greatest quarterback of all time. In addition, there are so many things that he does that don’t show up on the stat sheets. He was drafted 199th overall, which would be the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft. He was told in college that he couldn’t make it at the NFL level because he sometimes played with too much emotion. Playing with emotion is never a bad thing in my book.

Tom Brady worked to be what he is today, it wasn’t just handed to him. He is one of those athletes who plays in the moment and doesn’t let a big lead or something like that bother him or mess with the way that he plays the game. He has fun playing the game that he loves and there is no reason to punish someone for that.

“He plays for the New England Patriots, they are always good and they get a lot of good picks in the drafts.” This statement is one that I hear over and over. I don’t understand why people keep saying it because it is only half correct. The first part about them always being good is true because Tom Brady and Bill Belichick is the best coach-quarterback combo that the league has ever seen. The second part however is completely different. The Patriots hardly ever get the so called “lottery” picks in the draft. When you do well throughout the season the league basically says that you don’t need to get a great player out of college because of how the last season went. And since New England is always in contention for the Lombardi trophy they have around the 30th pick every year. Because of this success Tom Brady has the most conference championship game appearences in NFL history with ten, Joe Montana is second with only seven. The 2015-2016 AFL Championship game also gave him the NFL record of 55 career passing touchdowns in the post-season, only distancing himself more from Montana’s 45.

“Tom Brady always has great receivers and tight-ends to throw to. That’s why he has so many yards, other players make him look good.” Whoops, sorry, wrong again! He hardly ever has an elite player/ Hall of Famer to throw to. The only potential Hall of Famer that Tom Brady has ever had on his team that he threw to was Randy Moss and only for one season. That season was in 2007 when Brady threw for 50 touchdowns and the team was undefeated until the Super bowl. His 50 touchdown passes in a single season are second in NFL history only to Peyton Manning, another all-time great. Just imagine what the Brady-Moss combo could’ve been if it had lasted longer. This 2015-2016 season he threw to Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski for the most part. Julian Edelman did worse in the draft than Brady, a whole round worse. Now because of Tom Brady, he will be one of the top receivers in free-agency when his contract is over. Three players the league had never even heard of before Tom Brady got ahold of them, at least in my understanding. If you look back in history at some of the greatest quarterbacks of all time you will see a different story. Take Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers for example. Who did he have as a wide receiver threat? Yep, that’s correct, Jerry Rice #80, the greatest receiver in NFL history. His name is on the top or near the top of every receiving stat there is to

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keep track of. Peyton Manning, another great, had Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, two guys that are potential Hall of Famers.

Does Tom Brady deserve the conversation of being the greatest quarterback of all time? Absolutely. He worked his way to the top from being a sixth round draft choice, he’s won four Super bowl championships, he plays the game the right way, he knows how to lead a team, and he has never had a stellar receiving core like some of the greatest quarterbacks of all time did. He has never had “that guy” at the wide out position but yet he still is at the top or near the top of leaderboards from an all-time standpoint. Tom Brady makes everyone around him better.

Period. He deserves the conversation with a high recommendation.

I do not need to persuade you anymore. I will let Tom Brady speak for himself, exposing you to the most recent addition to his greatest of all time resume. On Februrary 5, 2017 Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, his underrated receiving corps and the Patriots somehow pulled off the greatest comeback in the Super Bowl Era. Super Bowl LI (51) looked out of reach for the New England Patriots. The Atlanta Falcons lead 28-3 until the Patriots managed to score late in the third quarter, but missing the extra point, dismissed any momentum they thought they had. The fourth quarter started with a 28-9 score and people were starting to leave. One of my friends looked at me and said, “So Joe, how do you feel about this game right now, you’ve been a little quiet.” I answered with, “If anyone can pull this off it is Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, I’m not worried.” Sure enough, it happened. Down 19 points at the start of the fourth quarter this task looked nearly impossible.

Forget about every single statistic that has the Patriots losing the game, it isn’t over until it is over. The fourth quarter was owned by the Patriots, tying the game at the end of regulation at 28, only after they converted on two, two-point conversions.

In overtime, New England won the coin toss, chose to give the ball to Tom Brady, and marched down the field, winning Super Bowl LI, pulling off the greatest comeback in Super Bowl game history. Still not enough proof? Tom Brady’s stats are as follows. 43 completed passes on 62 attempts, 466 yards, 2 touchdowns, 1 interception (which was tipped in the air). His fourth quarter quarterback rating was 120.3, on a 0-158 scale. The league average is 83. He is now the only quarterback to win 5 Super Bowls. Who’s better?

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Where I’m From

by Miguel Manriquez

I am from a borderline dividing two nations, from the famous Whataburger restaurant and the deadbeat house on the corner selling cheap homemade tacos I am from the lower valley in the sun city I am from the green cactus you see on every corner, the weeping willow tree in our backyard I am from celebrating something every weekend, thick black hair, from my uncle Juan, my favorite cousin David, and my grandpa Carlos I am from bribing Mexican authorities with a $20 to not get a citation and trying alcohol at a very young age From I’ll see you next weekend grandson to take care of your sisters at school I am from a catholic religion but only going to Sunday mass because it was required for confirmation class I’m from El Paso, Texas, beans and rice From the time our grandma went to school with famous singer Juan Gabriel, the time my uncle got shot for just staring at two people making a drug deal, and the time my sister Marisol lost her first tooth as we crossed the border I am from recognizing family members in every shopping mall we go too, eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts at two in the morning with our neighbors every other Friday, from hearing gunshots in the distance, laying low until the gunshots are over then continue with our lives as if nothing had happened, from the city there is on the southern border, El Paso, TX.

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Illuminating Bravery on the Colorado Trail A brief memoir by Caitlin Davis

A

fter reading the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed, I decided that I was going to go on my own backpacking adventure someday. After the discovery of blood clots in my arm in March of 2016 that required surgery to remove my first rib, my perspective on the frailty of life was enhanced. I wanted someday to become less abstract and more concrete. The Colorado Trail was calling my name and I wrote backpacking adventure underneath August 2nd on my 2016 calendar. While I have always loved the outdoors, I was not a girl scout by any means. I had never even been camping by myself, let alone a multi-day backpacking trip alone on a foreign trail. However, I had the stubborn determination I inherited from my daddy, a feisty spirit, and a passion for learning. For several months, I meticulously planned my journey in a 99-cent composite notebook that I labelled adventures with a black sharpie. I would spend summer nights in the corner of Barnes and Noble reading my Colorado Trail Databook and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Backpacking during my breaks from studying for the Law School Admissions Test. I made a list of all the supplies I needed and slowly researched and purchased them one by one. I bought a neon orange one-person tent that I named Tina- absolutely everything is better when it has a name. The backpack that I chose was sky blue and said the word ‘adventure’ on it.

Throughout the summer, I tested out my supplies on several weekend camping trips to different sites around the Sioux Falls area like Union Grove State Park and Newton Hills State Park. While I knew I was prepared, my human desire to succumb to the confines of fear crept up on me when I was the most vulnerable.

I’d sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to this sinking dread in the pit of my stomach and the vision of being completely terrified in the wilderness. I knew this fear was irrational, and I was determined to not let it stop me from the experience my courageous heart longed for. During my three days on the Colorado Trail, I kept a journal that I wrote in every night before falling asleep. I will share these raw journal entries with you: 72

August 2nd 2016 Currently writing within the safety of my tent, Tina, 8.7 miles into the wilderness on the Colorado Trail. It’s crazy how subjective the word home can be. It can be the childhood home that I grew up in- concrete walls and structure. It can be the way that my hand feels intertwined with the hand of someone I love; or a big family supper where everyone has a seat. Or, it can be a tiny tent named Tina in the Rocky Mountains. I certainly felt the word home surging through my veins as I crawled into my tent at the end of this long day. I’ve had this backpacking trip planned all summer, but it all became too real on my drive out to the Waterton Canyon Trailhead with my backpack all loaded in my backseat. Nervous excitement consumed my entire being. I silently reminded myself that this adventure is all about finding myself even more than I already have this year – especially the person that God wants me to be. My devotion for today told me to seek quiet time with God and if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. I sumo-squatted my backpack on and waddled my way towards the Colorado Trail. My pack is ridiculously heavy, but it’s a learning experience this time around. People are unbelievably friendly. A man named Justin stopped me, asked me a bunch of questions about my journey, and gave me some good advice. Another man stopped me and wished me luck. Every interaction further fueled my motivation and my enthusiasm. Around mile three, I had my first encounter with mountain goats. They spooked me out. Mountain goats may sound harmless enough, but they stood there staring blankly at me with their beady little eyes and pointy horns. Whenever I tried to walk around them, they slowly started moving towards me like zombie goat creatures. I could not get around them, so for like five minutes, I seriously considered giving up and going back to my car. But, I thought about what an embarrassing story that would be so I slowly tip-toed past them and let out a little squeal while happy dancing on the other side. Around mile five, I noticed another girl coming up behind me with a big backpack on.

Her name is Kat (Sherlock) and she’s doing the entire trail ‘alone’. She’s from D.C. and has hiked the Appalachian Trail previously. We hiked together the rest of the way to Bear Creek where we are both camping tonight. I cannot explain how nice it is to have someone else with me, especially this first day out here. We instantaneously had 73

this connection, and opened up to one another about our lives like old friends reuniting after a hiatus. Something about the mountain trail brings out the most genuine aspects of a person. It is hard work with the elevation, steep inclines, aching muscles, and heavy backpack, but it’s unbelievably beautiful out here.

There is this absolute tranquility that comes along with being absorbed in God’s natural beauty and having a disconnect from society. My phone hasn’t had any service, and it’s pleasant having that silence from my phone. I’m exhausted and it’s only 8:17 PM. Tomorrow is going to be an even longer day. Hey God- truly open my eyes and my heart to you throughout this adventure. Please look after me as I explore your divine beauty.

August 3rd 2016 Have I lived enough? Have I loved enough? Have I considered right action enough, have I come to any conclusion? Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace? I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it. Actually, I probably think too much. Then, I step out into the garden, where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, is tending his children, the roses.

That’s The Gardener by Mary Oliver. Her poetry is even more soul satisfying on top of a mountain on the Colorado Trail, 12.2 miles away from civilization. I hiked alone most of the morning. I thought about how we complicate the act of living – as a society. There’s so much sadness, hatred, stress, and worry. All too often, we forget how to simply be alive. Out here it is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other and appreciating God’s beauty. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. Everyone is so happy and friendly out here. We met Kevin and Nicole who were doing the entire trail, as well. Kevin has done lots of big trails like this, but it was Nicole’s first time. I hope that my future husband is ok with long-distance hiking trails with me. Today I freaked myself out for twenty-five minutes. I heard loud noises so I proceeded to hide behind a tree with my bear spray in hand until I eventually crouched out and realized it was just trail maintainers cutting down a tree. I need to work on not being so paranoid about bears and mountain lions – worrying isn’t a productive state of mind. At the top of the mountain, I got service! The first thing I did was call my mom and let her know that I was alive. I felt so giddy on the way down – singing Jack Johnson to the trail and stopping to appreciate the beauty every ten minutes.

When Kat and I met up at the bottom, we jumped into the river and drank so much water that our bellies hurt. The South Platte River became shower and it felt like a dream to soak my tired feet in the cold water. We met another hiker, 74

Josh, who is doing the whole trail 20 miles/day. He goes to college at Washington State and is studying mechanics. I found myself wanting to know every detail that lead up to him meeting me at that exact moment on the Colorado Trail. People are so cool. Tomorrow is my last full day of hiking, and I have mixed emotions about it.

August 4th, 2016 – We woke up at five am to get an early start on Segment 2. We heard that it’s the worst because of high elevation gain, no shade coverage in burn areas, and no water sources for the first ten miles. It was nice and cool in the morning – especially beautiful as the sun rose over the mountains. Getting up that early is much easier with such beauty. It was a tough hike most of the day, but I felt invincible and strong. Kat is seriously the sweetest thing. She gave me my trail name of ‘Mace’ since I carry around that bear spray. Also, yesterday during my fit of paranoia, I lost the safety tab. When we were sitting on the top of the mountain eating lunch, I accidentally set it off into the dirt with my foot. For a moment, I thought I stepped on a land mine like in the movies. I’m odd. Honestly, I think Kat was a God-send. I was about to give up before she came along. It was quite the coincidence that she showed up. I fully believe that God speaks to us through coincidences (god winks). She was exactly what I needed to get me through this first backpacking adventure. I hiked ahead of her most of the day. For a while, I listened to music. How He Loves by the David Crowder Band came on at the top of a mountain, and it brought tears to my eyes. What did we do to deserve all this beauty? I sang at the top of my lungs to Mumford & Sons and attempted dance moves with my pack on – which ended up just being awkward hand gestures and hip wiggles since it was so heavy. Most of the time I turned off my music, and I just let my stream of consciousness go crazy. I saw two deer and tried to team up with them against the lions and bears of the mountains; they just stared at me. I thought a lot about everything. This morning, I woke up with this familiar aching in my gut that can only be described as homesickness; I hadn’t felt that feeling so intensely for a long while. I miss my family, and I realized I won’t be around them for much longer. I don’t know where I’ll be this time next year, but I know it’ll be somewhere else at least for a while – preferably somewhere with mountains. That makes me both sad and happy at the same time.

I met a group of interesting people on the trail. I wish I could remember their names. They met on the Appalachian Trail where they spontaneously hiked together. They met back up the next summer to hike the Colorado Trail together. I ran into one of the guys on the trail. We talked for a while and he told me that [I am brave] for 75

backpacking alone for the first time. That became my new mantra on the trailespecially when I heard frightening noises. I repeated the phrase until it became natural for the formation of the words to roll out of my mouth without effort. I imagined the phrase as being a flashlight that illuminated the dark unknown of the wilderness. It seemed silly to be afraid with this truth bringing light to the trail. The hiking community is lovely. I’m going to come back next summer to do the whole thing with much more confidence and knowledge. I am proud of myself though. I came out here to backpack the Colorado Trail alone and I did it. Although, I felt very far from alone with the kindness I received from everyone I met and the connectedness I felt through nature. I hope I never forget how it felt to be standing on the top of the world today overlooking all the mountains, trees, and open land. I was in the middle of nowhere with nobody.

But, I’ve never felt so full and empowered. God is good.

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Man and Sea

by Megan Patterson It is hot sometimes, going Into it from the cold tile Floor, as if stepping out From the shade and Into the sun letting your Feet lie flat, blister on The concrete, this dipping Your feet into bathwater.

The steam rises from the Water, an inviting Warm whisper. Let Your feet sit in for a spell, Wave your toes to make Tiny ripples, tossing coins Into the well below.

Rest your body.

Water will rise and Part for you; Hold you tight, Make you sit While it floats, Mother-like, and waves.

The mirror is no longer Transparent; instead, a Glossy film reflects the Shade of your skin and Cleanses you of daily sins.

It is your baptismal fount.

The tub settles, a still pool Of blues, greens, white opals.

With precious treasures Concealed below, light casts Back a moving ocean above.

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Life of Farmer: With and Without a Tractor

by Andrew Horsley

F

arming has changed drastically over the last century. Before the era of motorized tractors, many farmers used their livestock to plant and harvest their crops. The methods of farming from 50 years ago to present day are very different from one another, yet they produce the same final outcome: harvesting the crop that was planted only a few short months prior.. Tractors have their advantages, but they also have disadvantages. Farming with livestock took many hours to complete a single task, while farming with a tractor can accomplish the same feat within minutes. Farming with tractors saves time, but it is also much more expensive. The price of tractors and equipment used today can add up very quickly to the equivalent of a brand new house. Farming with livestock was cheaper to regulate and maintain. Even in today’s world of farming, there are still a few farmers that use their livestock instead of tractors. The choice comes down to how you were raised and if you want to learn the new methods of farming.

In Kloefkorn’s book, he talks about how his grandfather farmed in Kansas. Just like his grandfather, there is an old man from my hometown that farms with his livestock. It is very uncommon to farm with your livestock where I am from, but it is all this elderly man has ever done. He owns an 80 acre parcel one mile south of town. He grew up on this farm, and after his parents passed away he inherited the farm and has lived there ever since. His name is Darwin Brink. I have visited his house, and farm, multiple times over the years because his grandchildren and I grew up together. We would occasionally go out to his place and have paintball wars because it had the best terrain around. On his farm, there is pasture ground, soybean and corn ground and alfalfa ground. He uses his livestock to cultivate, plant, and harvest his crops. The best place to hide during the paintball wars was underneath the old cottonwood tree in the pasture. It was probably 100 years old and had a trunk the size of three telephone poles.

Darwin is one of the nicest men I have ever met. He always said we were welcome to come over whenever we wanted to, but we had to help with chores.

On his farm, he also raised Percheron horses. These horses are exceptionally large and built to work. He takes pride in his horses, and one of the rules on his farm is, you have to help take care of the horses when you are there because they are his means of getting work done. Every year since I can remember, he has rode his horse and buggy during the Fourth of July parade. The thing that sets his horses apart from all of the others in the parade is their size and their duties. The 78

other horses that are in the parade are either for showing at the county fair, riding for leisure, or riding during the rodeo, while Darwin’s horses perform farm work nearly everyday.

Each spring, you can find Darwin out in the field prepping for the upcoming planting season. He sits, with his yellow leather gloves and straw hat, on his old wooden chair mounted on top of the field cultivator being pulled by his Percheron’s. They are perfect for working long, hard hours in the midday sun.

After many hours of prepping his fields, he goes right back out there and plants the crops for the upcoming season. He has and old two row planter that he uses, as compared to the sixteen or thirty-two row planters that most of the other area farmers use. It takes him multiple days to accomplish what others can do in a few hours. After he gets his fields planted, he prays for rain and good weather, just like the other farmers do until it is time for harvest. Once harvest season arrives, Darwin and his horses will be out in the field with his two row corn picker, picking corn. It is truly amazing to watch Darwin and his horses perform their duties. It takes a great deal of work and time to farm with livestock, which is why no one else in the area does so.

There are quite a few advantages of farming with livestock, according to Darwin. He says that even though it takes more time, you do not have to worry about fuel costs, repair costs, or overall maintenance. The hardest part of farming with livestock is in taking care of your animals, which really is not too hard to do. If you treat them with care and respect, such as cleaning and washing them, feeding and watering them properly, and giving them rest when they need it, they will work hard for you time and time again. Farming with tractors and other modern equipment is fun, but I believe farming with Darwin would also be pleasurable. When asked why he still farms the way he does, Darwin said that he enjoys being out in his fields admiring the harvest of the crops he produced.

In the age of modern farming there are still some of farmers that use livestock to complete their work, but they are few and far between.

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What I Know

by Kaito Sukeyasu What I know is what everyone else thinks about me that I am some sort of ‘super genius’ who understands the curriculum instantly, that I know all the answers to the homework, that it comes naturally to me, that I don’t need to ask questions.

What I know is what everyone else’s expectations are of me, That I should be a doctor or lawyer or any sort of “respectable career”, That I should not be wasting my time at “Some South Dakota school playing baseball,” That I should do what “they” say and that “they” know what’s best.

What I know is that I control my own fate.

That it is my life and I will make my own decisions.

That I will live and die by the consequences of my actions.

What I don’t know is what I really want to do.

I am uncertain which direction my life will take me, that there are cruel realities out there, waiting for me, that the world is unfair.

What I know is that I am ready, ready, ready.

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Bede Art Gallery MMC Student Art Work

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Mountains & Waves (Yin Yang) Colin Linde

3 Circles Caiti Ziegenbein

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Color Wheel Devin Fink

Gone Fishin’ Kelsey Mitera

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Born to Wander Breanne Kuehler

Reflections Krista Radke

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Man’s Best Friend Kristen Dunn

Zen Megan Fink

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Swans: A Love Story Jennifer Vondrak

Child’s Play Abby K. Keffeler

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Field of Happiness Kourtney Christensen

Elephants Bobbi Soukup

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Book Reviews

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Book Review: Dorthy Must Die

by Samantha Kasowski

D

ear Reader,

Everyone always thinks they know the story of Dorothy, the sweet Kansas girl from the infamous book The Wizard of Oz. What if I were to tell you that she goes bad? In Danielle Paige’s book, Dorothy Must Die, we take an exciting romp through the lands of Oz where none other than Dorothy, the resident evil leader, is stealing the magic. Once a sweet and innocent hero, Dorothy has become corrupted by magic and power and will stop at nothing to keep herself in power.

Enter Amy Gumm, an unassuming girl from Dusty Acres Mobile Community in Flat Hill, Kansas. Amy has been told her whole life that she was trash, a nobody.

Her father walked out on her at a young age and her mother, turned to drugs and alcohol in order to hide her grief, leaving Amy to fend for herself. She got in fights at school, though she did not start them, leaving her suspended at the end of one of them. Amy comes home to a bleak home life, her mother often passed out on the couch or gone entirely for days.

Then the tornado hits. Amy is left alone, defenseless in her trailer, when the tornado takes her up, up, up, into the sky. As in The Wizard of Oz, she is somehow transported to the land of Oz, where she meets peculiar new friends and gets herself into trouble almost immediately. She witnesses Dorothy’s vicious reign, one that cuts the wings off of monkeys and serves the death sentence to those trying to help the innocent.

Oz is now almost turned inside out. Those who were once deemed “good” are now the resident evil leaders and those who were deemed “wicked” are now the revolutionary force behind undermining Dorothy. The Scarecrow has turned into an evil scientist, who cuts up and experiments on the creatures of Oz to his heart’s content’, the Tin Woodman, Dorothy’s loyal and brutal servant, will stop at nothing to be the center of her attention and the Lion, has warped into a monster who feeds on others’ fear.

Amy meets the members of the Order of the Wicked, a group of the once “Wicked Witches” that now operate to take down Dorothy. They convince Amy to join them, to go undercover and destroy Dorothy from the inside.

Training Amy proves more difficult than expected because they run into many different problems. Amy cannot understand or control the powerful magic that she obviously possesses.

Another issue they run into is the attraction between Amy and Nox, the dark, mysterious magician who operates with the Order of the Wicked. Nox, known for his playboy ways, is the wrong boy to fall for. Amy tries hard to resist, but cannot help herself.

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Then, tragedy strikes. Right before their plan to place Amy undercover, the Lion begins to attack some of the villages near their secret hideout. Setting out to help save the towns and to keep the Lion from seeing through their magical defenses, the Order of the Wicked comes across some difficulties. To successfully keep the Lion from rampaging the village, they have to come face to face with him. During the battle, the Lion kills one of the Wicked.

This event is what pushes Amy over the edge. They successfully infiltrate Dorothy’s castle, where Amy learns just how terrible life is under Dorothy’s rule.

They are forced to wear PermaSmile, a substance that pastes a smile on your face, ensuring that the smile stays in place for the entire day.

Many horrible things happen. One of Amy’s friends on the inside is killed, and she finds out the real horrors behind the Scarecrow’s doors. The whole story comes to a head when the Wicked finally put their plan in motion. The plot thickens as time runs out and Dorothy is finally cornered.

Danielle Paige does a fantastic job of incorporating the classic themes and scenes of The Wizard of Oz. She takes the classic themes of the Wizard of Oz and twists them into what can only be a great retelling of a classic story. Paige interweaves themes of oppression and how power can corrupt the best people with the best intentions. Everyone knows Dorothy as the hero who saved Oz from the Wicked Witch, but no one knows that she was lonely and felt worthless in her dusty little town when she returned from Oz. Paige also showcases a more behind the scenes look into Oz. She explains how the flying monkeys, the minions of the Wicked Witch in the original story, were more like slaves than minions, and that the only way to free themselves from that slavery was by brutally mutilating themselves. Paige also offers a differing view on the author of the original story, L. Frank Baum.

Dorothy Must Die is a fantastic book. It uses the classic themes of The Wizard of Oz and also provides an interesting twist to the classic story. Themes of oppression, slavery, and corruption of power among others are showcased in this wonderful retelling. In Dorothy Must Die, heroes become villains, villains become heroes, and each page is a new adventure.

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Book Review: God Help the Child

by Samantha Kasowski

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y father, who is a very traditional man, has many great sayings. The other day, he goes, “Sammy, what do buildings and children have in common?” I, knowing that something profound was going to come out of his mouth, said something completely sarcastic back. In response, he says, “Foundation, Sammy, foundation. Without a good foundation, a building will shift and break, whether it is from the wind that beats against it or the ground moving. Children are the same thing. Without a good foundation, they won’t be able to take the challenges that life throws at them. They will break in the face of adversity.”

Every time that I see my nieces and nephews, I think of how much what I do to them and what their parents do to them, affects them. What you do to children matters and will ultimately affect their life. Toni Morrison really gets at this in her book, God Help the Child. Many see child abuse as hitting or slapping a child silly, but it can also come from physically and emotionally neglecting your child.

The main character of the story, Bride, a beautiful woman with blue black skin, or as her mother would call it, “Sudanese black”, is battling her past as she tries to move forward with her life. She finds herself almost dead when she is assaulted by a figure from her past. This leads her on a trip down memory lane, and makes her see that she is in need of her disappeared lover.

Bride, formally known as Lula Ann, her “countrified name”, was abused as a child. She was not hit or slapped in any way, but was denied the love of her mother and was abandoned by her father. A line from the book reads, “I used to pray she would slap my face or spank me just to feel her touch. I made little mistakes deliberately, but she had ways to punish me without touching the skin she hated — bed without supper, lock me in my room.” Bride would do absolutely anything to gain her mother’s affection; Even if it meant putting an innocent woman into the Decagon Women’s Correctional Center to gain it.

God Help the Child also takes on an almost magical feel. Bride finds herself returning to her younger state. Her breasts become smaller and she loses hair, ultimately becoming, “a little black girl” again. Although none of the other characters notice her transformation, it seems to be an integral part of her overcoming the trials and tribulations of her past.

Bride goes on a series of journeys that help her to find out what she is looking for. Along the way, we meet characters like Rain, a white girl with shocking green eyes who eventually becomes Bride’s friend and confidant. In each of these characters, we see how childhood trauma brought on by the abuse of adult power has shaped them into the people that we see within the book.

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Toni Morrison also switches between the views of the characters. This is a great way to see the story from the viewpoint of another character, and give insight into what that character is thinking at the moment. Otherwise, we would never see how affected the other characters, like Booker, were by the transgressions of the adults in their pasts.

I wish that she would go more in depth with these characters, to give us an ending to resolve all of our unanswered questions. However, I believe that she writes in this way because in real life, we may never know the real story, of what really happened to those closest to us and how that affected them.

Overall, Morrison writes in a way that is loving, then cold. She leaves the reader begging for more warmth, to go back to the way that things were. Morrison writes like everything is okay, and all right, only to have the scene end in horror.

She shows how life really is, and that not everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. I think she writes this way to give the readers the sense of what Bride felt. She always wanted the warm sun, but was getting the cold moon. Morrison draws you in only to leave you begging for more.

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Book Review: Fates and Furies

by Megan Patterson

F

ates and Furies, written by New York Time’s bestselling author Lauren Groff, was published in 2015 by Riverhead Books, and contains vivid description of the love story between Lotto and Mathilde. The fictional story surrounds the two young lovers in the beginnings of their marriage; Groff offers up the two different perspectives of characters on what it is like to truly be in deep, passionate love through vibrant, original prose. As described by Vanity Fair, “Lauren Groff rips at the seams of an outwardly perfect marriage in her enchanting novel Fates and Furies.”

The novel is separated into two parts, “FATES,” and, of course, “FURIES.” The first part is concentrated on Lotto, who from birth was believed to be destined for greatness, especially by his mother, father, and aunt: “It was taken for granted by a trio of adults that Lotta was special. Golden.” His early life is setback by tragedies both inside and outside his family (such as his father passing away suddenly before his younger sister is born, or his first love, Gwennie, tragically dying while he is away at boarding school). In his college years, his life becomes absorbed in theatre arts and women; ultimately, it is Mathilde who catches his eye. His uncanny life draws him to want her every second he breathes.

In the second part, the narrator switches to telling the story of Mathilde. As with Lotto’s life, her life is also deeply rooted in pain and tragedy: She had been left at age four by her parents to be raised by her uncle after an accident occurred where her younger, toddler-aged brother fell down the stairs and passed away after she opened the door to the room where he was napping in. Unlike Lotto, who is an open book, Mathilde instead shut others out, and inflicted pain on other peers: After she pinched the cheek of a schoolboy mocking her, “she watch[ed] as, over the course of the hour, twin purple grapes developed on his cheek. She wanted to suck them.” Yet as soon as she is capable of loving others by her college years, she heavily devotes herself to her husband.

Lotto and Mathilde are married by the end of college, and Mathilde backs Lotto up to be a playwright after his acting career fails, even after his mother, Antoinette, offers her money to leave Lotto. For them, their marriage on the inside is how other people see it on the outside: madly in love, destined for exhilarating greatness, carrying dynamic pleasure. Later in their marriage, secrets are revealed, and the story ultimately becomes one of revenge and redemption. Groff knows how to completely catch a reader by surprise in the plot that twists and turns so much towards the end, that the reader is begging for more by the time it really does. Her ambitious novel is filled with intricate secrets and details that only add to the plot, not lessen it. Her untraditional, fragmented, descriptive sentences can remind one of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. Overall, Groff ’s Fates and Furies perfectly executes a balance between comedy and tragedy, fate and destiny.

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Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

by Jennifer Vondrak

I

t took me forever to jump on the bandwagon and read the Harry Potter series, but when I finally did in junior high, I never regretted immersing myself in the magical world created by J. K. Rowling. I fell in love with the characters, the plot, and everything involved with the series. I enjoyed the movies—I admit I saw a couple of those before opening the first book—but you can only put so much in a movie. The books are able to hold far more of the details I found myself craving, so I have always liked them more. However, in either format, there is something captivating about the story that inspired my imagination to soar, and I felt a sincere sense of belonging to this fictional world.

I consider myself to be a fan of the series, but I realize I might be a terrible fan, as I do not usually keep up to date with the latest Harry Potter news. For instance, I did not pay much attention to the news that a new book, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, was being released until I was asked about it one day by another Harry Potter fan, who wanted to know if I had read or was planning on reading the new book. I probably did see something about the book online somewhere, but until that moment I had not thought much about it. This brief conversation lead me to decide to read the book if the opportunity presented itself despite the reviews of some other readers I had skimmed. I did not want to judge the book without even opening it myself.

It is advisable to proceed with caution when it comes to spinoffs or afterthought additions to a completed series. Sometimes they can be good and successful at satisfying the reader’s natural nostalgic desire to relive the original work.

Other times, however, such books (or movies, television series, etc.) only lead to disappointment and heartbreak. I completely understand anyone who has avoided this book for fear of the book not living up to his or her expectations. There are some potentially disappointing features of the book. If you are set on setting your expectations too high, you are probably destined to be disappointed. I believe the Harry Potter series is about as close to perfection as a series can get, but I am not sure even J. K. Rowling can top the first seven books. Perhaps acknowledging the disdain of other readers helped me to lower my expectations and more easily embrace this new addition to my favorite iconic series. I cannot claim that I fully embraced it, but part of me did. I think I will always have conflicting opinions of this book, so I must accept my simultaneous love and dislike, for I doubt I will ever hate a Harry Potter book.

The first thing about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that was a bit disappointing was that it was collaboratively written by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne, rather than by just J.K. Rowling as the other books were. I was further disappointed to discover that it was written as a play script.

The description was limited in comparison to the other books. Because of this, 94

I suspect it would be better to watch an actual production of the play instead of reading the book. I know I am not alone in my wish it had been adapted into a novel. However, it was not, so I forced myself to accept this and read the book.

Once I got over the format it was written in, I was soon once again enthralled with the world that has been close to my heart since my first acquaintance. I found it interesting to revisit old characters and learn more about the children who were briefly introduced in the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The story revolves mostly around Albus Potter, the second son of Harry and Ginny, and his best friend Scorpius Malfoy, Draco’s only son. These two children experience the struggles of unpopularity in spite of who their fathers are or perhaps because of whom their fathers are.

I had been satisfied by the conclusion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but with the release of this script, I was excited to discover what happened afterward according to Rowling. I think it is natural to find that everything is not perfect and sunshiny in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts in which Voldemort was defeated, but I am not sure I was prepared for what I found in this book.

Rowling uses time travel in this story, which is both intriguing and unsettling.

The concept of time travel is complex even in the midst of a magical world.

She played with time travel in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner or Azkaban, which I both liked and hated, but that was child’s play in comparison.

Unlike the time-turner Hermione and Harry used in that book, Albus and Scorpius are able to go back decades and revisit various scenes that anyone who has read the series has already witnessed. I do not mind flashbacks in stories. I am fond of using them in my own writing, but I am not sure if I am comfortable with characters being physically present in past events, especially ones that occurred before their birth.

At the same time I find it an intriguing part of the plot. This creates the complications of the storyline along with focus on the less than perfect relationships between some of the characters. It allows us opportunities to see the “What ifs” of the plot. What if everything had not gone the way it had?

Overall, as I will always have a soft spot for the Harry Potter world, I have to at least like this book. I absolutely do not regret taking the time to read it from cover to cover. Is it the best book in the series? No. In fact, though I have heard this book referred to as the eighth installment in the Harry Potter series, I am personally more comfortable keeping this book separate in my mind. I have always believed the seven original books were near perfection. Besides, Harry is definitely present in this book, but he is not the main character. This book did not exceed expectations, but I would at least give it a passing O.W.L. of acceptable. I think I will always be in a constant internal battle on my feelings about this book.

In comparison to the rest of the series, it is not in my top, but it is not a bad read.

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Book Review: Tell Me Three Things

by Jennifer Vondrak

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t begins with an anonymous email from a complete stranger, who calls himself Somebody Nobody (SN for short) and claims to be a fellow student at the new expensive private school in LA your new stepmother insists on paying your tuition to attend. As if it is not enough to lose your mother, your father drags you across the country from Chicago to Los Angeles after he elopes with a widow he met online through a bereavement support group. You are now expected to learn to navigate in a world you never thought you would belong to or really desired to belong to, suffer through bullying by a spoiled, jealous rich girl, and forge new friendships while you try to figure out who SN is.

Such is the premise of Tell Me Three Things, a 2016 young adult novel by Julie Buxbaum. After her mother’s death and father’s sudden remarriage, Jessie Holmes is uprooted from her comfortable life spent hanging out in her Chicago home with her best friend Scarlett and making smoothies at the Smoothie King. It is not easy for her to fit into the lifestyle of her new family, which includes Rachel, her father’s new wife, and a stepbrother named Theo, who is a junior like Jessie, and Gloria the “house manager.”

Early in the semester, she receives an email from SN. She is initially skeptical about who SN is and what his or her intentions are, but they continue to converse, first through emails and eventually through instant messaging once they both get tired of coming up with clever subject titles.

Soon enough the reasoning behind the title of the book is unveiled. Jessie and SN develop a little game in which they tell each other three things about themselves to the other. As they text back and forth, sometimes late into the night, SN earns Jessie’s trust and she even begins to have feelings for this boy she has only communicated through written words on a screen, at least to her knowledge.

Is it possible that this relationship is real?

As the book unfolds, we see Jessie struggle with the loss of her mother, her adaptation to her new environment, her crumbling relationship with her father, and some major high school drama. These things all add to the plot, but the real mystery that leaves the reader hanging is the question of who SN is. Buxbaum drops us little hints, some of which are red herrings, but ultimately leaves us trying to figure out who he is along with Jessie.

Is it Caleb, the boy who always seems to be on his phone and comes into the little bookstore Jessie works at the exact same day she tells SN where she works?

Is it her coworker and the boyfriend of Gem, the girl who likes to target her with bullying, Liam? Could it possibly be her Batman t-shirt wearing English partner Ethan, who never seems to sleep and Jessie is slightly ashamed to be crushing on because it seems too cliché? Or is it all actually just a hoax?

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The reader is left guessing until the very last chapter. Theories will be made and probably disproved. I think it is this little bit of a suspense that helps keep the reader’s attention as they read.

Still, the whole idea of the story is rather creepy. Putting myself in Jessie’s shoes, I am pretty sure I would never have responded to these anonymous emails, nor would have I advised a friend in this situation to do so. It is just too risky to put yourself out there to a complete stranger. The Internet can be an extremely dangerous world. While I do find writing easier than talking most of the time, it does not seem like a good idea to immerse yourself so emotionally in a relationship solely founded on words on a screen. This story is not about a girl getting caught up in a fake relationship online that ends in tragedy, but it could have been. SN could be anybody.

Although this story turns out all right, I cannot help but think that Jessie is really stupid to take this blind leap of faith and believe in SN. Sometimes in life it is good to take a leap of faith, but this is not one of those times to do so. In a situation like this, it is far better error on the side of caution. I think this book gives unrealistic expectations of online relationships. I am not entirely against people meeting online, but there are certain cautionary measures one should take if they do so. Jessie really did not know for sure that this person she was communicating with was a student from her high school. In real life, doing what she did is not a good idea. The risk is not worth the potential reward.

That said, if you can get past the unrealistic features of the novel and do not ponder the “what ifs” of the situation, it really is not that bad of a book. It is a cute story about how words can pull people together. Sometimes you might struggle to find the right things to say but writing them out comes more naturally because it allows you more time to think responses through.

Furthermore, if I take the time to consider it, characters in other books as well as movies sometimes also meet their love in ways that are realistically creepy.

If readers do not look at this plotline as strange, I believe they might come to enjoy the cuteness of the story, which I believe was the author’s intention. I doubt Buxbaum wanted us to fear for Jessie’s safety.

Three things: (1) Part of me finds the concept of SN creepy. (2) Part of me enjoyed the story. (3) If you look at this as a story mostly about finding high school love and dismiss your concerns, it is possible to be at least partially satisfied.

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Book Review: Five Nights At Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes

by Zach Hough

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n December 17 of 2015, Scott Cawthon’s and Kira Breed-Wrisley’s book by the name of Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes was released in paperback. This book, and the ones likely to follow it, is a “re-imagining” of how the events of the lore within the infamous games of Five Nights at Freddy’s played out. If anyone reading this is not familiar with the lore of Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF for short), I encourage you to go find out about it, as it is crucial to understand at least the basics of the lore before you read this book. Despite what Scott Cawthon has posted on his website, it is better to know the lore before reading. Certain aspects of this can only be explained through the lore of the games he has created.

Now lore aside, this book is a murder mystery/supernatural story set in the early 2000s. No year is given but it’s thought to about 2004 or 2005 due to a hand held video game reference, cell phones, and the overall age of the characters as the story puts them coming back for a memorial to a dead childhood friend that died in a mysterious murder alongside four other children that died in separate but connected incidents.

That brings us to the characters. To say the least, while Scott Cawthon is good at visual storytelling, making character personalities is not his strong suit, or Kira’s apparently, as I’m sure she had a hand in the characters as well being a co-author.

Every single character is based off a stereotype or even a combo of two or three.

Carlton is the wisecrack/trickster of the group, Marla is the carefree spirit that can’t take stress worth anything, John is the regular romantic pursuit with “complicated feelings,” Lamar is the nerd that grew up nice, Jessica is the girly girl you want to strangle sometimes, and Jason (who is Marla’s little brother) is the pet/damsel of the group. Charlie, who is the main character of the story, is honestly one of the weirdest characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. One second she’s smart and piecing things together, even defusing a killer animatronic suit single handedly, but in the next chapter you can’t help but wonder how she made those connections. I like to think of her as the Fred of the group, if you get the reference.

The book’s side characters weren’t the best either. The main villain was seen coming from half a mile away, especially for someone that knew the lore, and was treated as a side character for most of the book. Carlton’s father was one of the biggest idiots I have ever seen. Officer Dunn was a practical realist police officer, it’s just too bad that he’s in a horror story and thinking realistically isn’t a good idea. I suppose Carlton’s mother was the best out of all the side characters. She actually knew her son well enough to know when he was in danger, something 98

his father never even picked up on, even with all the murders that had happened within the building Carlton was kidnapped at.

Then there was the scenery, which was amazing. Got to give Scott and Kira some credit here. These two can create one creepy, dark, and mysterious tone with just the scenery. Scott himself could give Poe and Stephen King some pointers on how to create dark and creepy scenes. The scenery and the vibe it gives off is honestly the best thing about this book. It chills you to the bone in some instances. They make four in the afternoon on a summer day into the darkest night you can imagine. Bravo to the two authors, bravo, they continue to impress their audiences and fans with their prowess in creating dark, creepy, and mysterious imagery.

So, what about the story? Is the story itself any good? Well, I give the storytelling a good three out of ten. There was many a time the book felt so dry and dull when it shouldn’t have. Other times though it was lively, vibrant even. One of the biggest problems in this book though is the lack of using some form of separation between the changing of characters. This made the book extremely choppy and a bit hard to follow at times. Then there are the flashbacks that Charlie is constantly having of her childhood. Dear God, she needs to get checked for PTSD, because the number of flashbacks was astounding. There were too many, far, far, too many. What was worse was when there was no way of knowing when she was going to have one; it just switched in the middle of a scene to a flashback, no warning, no line break, nothing. What was worse was all the flashbacks did was spill exposition. Maybe I need to go get checked for something similar to PTSD because I too had a flashback, to a memory that involved the M. Night Shyamalan movie (biological weapon) called The Last Airbender where it was nothing but exposition and bad acting.

Another bad thing about the story telling that goes hand in hand with the bad exposing of exposition was the loose ends. Scott is known for leaving enough loose ends to keep his audience and fans guessing. It’s literally his biggest business success. He knows how to keep a loose end going and going. Unfortunately, that kills a book, especially one with this kind of fan base. The fans are getting a little sick of the mystery to say the least, even if this book offers a line of thinking that was never fully explored. So hats off there.

Finally, the supernatural element within this little ghost story is worth mentioning. I’ll give Scott and Kira some more credit here; they knows how to be subtle and loud at the same time. It was impressive just how subtle some of the supernatural elements were in this book till the end, where naturally, the action finally starts and pieces fall together very quickly. This was the second most amazing thing about this book. Especially with the animatronics. The animatronics stole the show when they go crazy; I just couldn’t stop reading the parts where they were involved and almost kicking the main character around like a freaking rag doll. Charlie takes one heck of a beating from these things. As do all her friends, a few old tables, and solid metal doors. There was a small, sadistic 99

part of me that wanted the animatronics to get them and kill them within the suits to join their supernatural lives.

In conclusion, I would rate this book as a five out of ten. Why am I giving it such a mediocre rating? The main reason is while the settings and themes were done correctly and brilliantly, they could not cover up the storytelling or the characters. A book is only as good as its characters, storytelling, theme, and setting. Unfortunately or fortunately, two of those sucked while two of those were straight up awesome. So, it kind of balanced out for me. It’s worth a read, but don’t get too invested in most of the characters or the storytelling.

You’ll be disappointed.

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Book Review: Shuffle, Repeat

by Katie Hamil

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huffle, Repeat by Jen Klein is a mediocre read. The story is about two high school seniors, Oliver and June. June is a somewhat bitter character who is ready for the real world to start, while Oliver is basking in the glory days of high school. They probably never would have interacted except that June needs a ride to school and Oliver is the one to provide that ride. What starts out as a promising story soon turns into an over romanticized and unrealistic novel about high school love. The positives that are visible in the novel are far out shadowed by the negatives. In my opinion, this book does not even deserve three stars.

Despite my harsh rating, there are definitely some good parts to this book. My favorite part of the book is the chapter when Oliver and June get into a fight. Even though the reason for the fight is ridiculous (June believes that they can’t be together because senior year is almost over) the fight itself is a powerful one. Whether it’s the tension that the author built up, the beautiful use of similes and metaphors, or the bit of injected humor that makes the scene work well I am not sure.

I am glad there are a few funny scenes in Shuffle, Repeat. They help balance out some of the more serious issues at play. When Oliver’s mother finds out her husband is cheating on her, she comes over to June’s house to have a girls’ night with June’s mother. They are close friends and were roommates in college. They end up drinking the majority of three bottles of wine by themselves. As one can imagine this scene is quite entertaining. Another entertaining scene involves Oliver punching June’s ex-boyfriend because of a miscommunication. Oliver thinks Itch is still dating June, so when he sees Itch kissing another girl he slugs him. The repercussions of this action are humorous.

Lastly, there are a few good shocking moments in this book. Lending elements of surprise helped to keep me engaged when my attention started to stray. For example, when Oliver’s dad is cheating on Oliver’s mom with another woman, I did not expect that at all. Another point in the book that is surprising is when June realizes that her dad didn’t get her the bouquet of flowers like he claims he did; it is really her mom covering for her dad. The way these moments are revealed, had my mind reeling.

Now onto the negatives. This first con is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of the story, but it still served as a pet peeve to me. The description of what the characters look like is very minimal and is all crammed into the very beginning of the book. There are not very many reminders of what the characters look like after the first few pages. Only the two main characters get any physical description at all. Personally I like to be able to have enough description so that I can fully see the characters in my mind. The little description that is in the book just doesn’t cut it.

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Another problem I have with this book is that it is way too cheesy and unrealistic. There are places throughout the book that seem like they would never happen in real life, particularly the ending. This novel could be adopted for a Disney channel film. That is the feeling I had when I was reading the ending.

First, June decides not to go to the prom. After she finds out that it really wasn’t her dad that sent her the flowers she has a change of heart. This in itself doesn’t make sense. Why would her dad not sending her flowers make her want to go to the prom? After I got past the terrible reasoning, I read on to find that June and Oliver’s moms got June all dolled up for the prom in record time. At this point I knew the ending would be predictable, but I still kept reading. June races into the prom and talks to her ex-boyfriend Itch to make sure they are on good terms. This also doesn’t make sense because if she was there to see Oliver why is she talking to her ex? So, of course, Oliver sees her and Itch together and mistakenly thinks that she is getting back together with Itch. He then storms outside, gets into his car, and is about to leave when June miraculously catches up to Oliver. Standing in front of Oliver’s vehicle, she waves her hands. Oliver gets out of the car to talk and June starts gushing this long, romanticized speech at Oliver. It of course ends with June telling Oliver she loves him and he agrees.

Then, they kiss in the parking lot of the prom. Please. If this has ever actually happened to anyone I’d love to know about it.

It also bothers me that there are a lot of potentially powerful issues in the story that go practically untouched. June’s relationship with her father is not a good one, we know that much, but the storyline is not developed far enough. It left a lot of unanswered questions and never got past surface level. June’s dad never even has a face to face conversation with her. I wanted more. I also wanted more of Oliver’s parents’ relationship. Why did his dad cheat on his mom and how did that affect Oliver? Another character that could have been developed further is Theo. Theo is Oliver’s best friend, but he is a jerk and is always making inappropriate comments.

A snippet of this is revealed, but not enough to satisfy my curiosity. Overall, I believe this book needed to go beyond the surface more than it did.

My biggest pet peeve about this book is that June does not seem remotely like the same girl in the beginning of the novel as in the end. While I am all for character development, Jen Klein didn’t make the character development believable enough for me. June does a complete one-eighty. She goes from hating high school and all that it represents to loving it and claiming that “it matters.” There wasn’t enough evidence in the middle of the novel to make how differently June acts believable.

It makes it seem like she changes for Oliver, which is extremely annoying. Who would compromise every single belief they have for a boy?

All in all, while there are a few good aspects of this novel, Shuffle, Repeat falls quite shy from being a novel I would want to read again. The cheesy scenes and underdeveloped characters and issues make this novel hard to stomach. If you’re in need of a light idealistic YA romance novel this book might be good, but if you’re looking for a book with substance and wit I’d search elsewhere.

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Book Review: It Turns Out Like This

by Katie Hamil

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t Turns Out Like This by Stephen Coyne is a novel of short stories published in 2016 by New Rivers Press. After reading a couple of his short stories as standalones, I decided I liked his style of writing. This led me to read his entire novel. As with anything, there are aspects about his novel that I like and aspects that I dislike. Some of the pros of the novel are that his stories are always engaging, they contain a lot of real feelings, and there is a common thread between many of the stories. One part of the story that I am still not sure how I feel about is the sense of time and the order in which the novel is laid out. A few of the cons of the novel include the incomplete character development, a few ill-fitting stories that would have been better in a different collection and being almost entirely comprised of sad stories.

Stephen Coyne does a great job of setting a nice pace and having something happen, either in the dialogue or the plot. The book is never boring. There are some intense conversations as well as intense action scenes. The conversation between Stu and his daughter before she gets an abortion is powerful. The scene in which Stu grabs Hooks off of the burning hot floor is an example of the action found in the novel. I read half of his book without taking a break. I just kept turning the pages. The relatively short chapters are also less intimidating and are easy to read if time is an issue.

Another positive to It Turns Out Like This is how real to life the characters’ feelings and certain situations are in the novel. When Stu’s wife leaves him, he has an affair with Nancy. When reading the novel I could see how lost, alone, and helpless Stu feels. He just wants to be loved. The scene in which Gloria will not talk, Stu is angry. Not so much angry at Gloria as he is angry at himself because he feels like a failure. He cannot seem to please his wife, he cannot get the El Camino running, and he cannot make his daughter talk. There are many different scenes I could have chosen that demonstrate Coyne’s ability to capture human emotion, but these are two that stood out to me.

The common thread aspect of this novel is interesting. The stories are set in the same general location, but span a period of time. There are a variety of different people and situations going on in each story. Despite all of this, many of the stories have a connecting factor. A piece of information that was in one story will pop up again in another. For example the healing abilities of Stu as a child pop up again later in the book. As does Gloria’s abortion. Certain minor characters have reoccurring roles. Brody, Karen, and Pressy all make more than one appearance.

These people and situations loosely link the stories together.

The one aspect of the book that I feel fairly neutral about is the sense of time.

The book is non-linear in nature and skips around from when Stu is very young to when he is relatively old. I don’t think the order in which Coyne chooses to 103

place events hurts the novel, but the stories probably could have been arranged in chronological order and worked just as well. I also have mixed feelings about the gaps in time between stories. While it is not necessary to detail every moment in every character’s life, I think this novel has too many large gaps of time. What happens during these moments? I do not know, and it bothers me.

This could be a contributing factor that leads to one of the problems of the novel: lack of character development.

The most serious problem I have with It Turns Out Like This is that the character development for many characters is not there. Stu, the main character seems to be the only one who has any growth at all. This growth does not visibly occur until the very last chapter. I think that a novelist should always aim to have at least three or four characters who grow throughout the novel. It does not help that many characters who have the most potential for growth are only in one or two chapters. JoAnna, Karen, Coy, and Gloria all could have been very interesting characters, but because they don’t show up all that often it makes it hard to see if they grew at all. If they did grow, in what ways and how much?

It seems that many of the issues I have with this novel interrelate. There are some stories that do not fit as well as the others. I believe this has something to do with the lack of time spent on some of the characters. “Ice Boy,” “Daddies Don’t Care,” “Edna and Coy,” and “The Mercy of the World” are all examples of good stories that could have been left out with little impact to the novel. The stories about Karen, Nancy, Edna, and Coy are too much. Instead of having more characters that are less developed, I would like fewer characters that are more developed.

Lastly, I am not a fan of super sad stories. This is purely personal opinion, but It Turns Out Like This is too sad for my taste. Abortion, failure, broken marriages, injury, death, are all explored in this novel. It is great that Coyne is willing to openly discuss such heavy issues, but at times this weighed me down. There needs to be a better balance between humor and happiness, with sorrow and depression.

Overall, the short story/novel It Turns Out Like This by Stephen Coyne is good.

Not fantastic, but good

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Book Review: Mr. Mercedes

by Nick Wixon

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r. Mercedes is a thriller novel written by the famous horror/thriller writer Stephen King. I have always been a huge fan of Stephen King’s works, and I would go as far as saying that he is my favorite writer.

The thing that I feel makes Stephen King such an incredible writer is his ability to make characters come to life. Simple detail that I would normally view as insignificant, he uses to make characters seem more real, and the story more believable as a whole. He uses this ability effectively by making the main character in this novel, K. William Hodges, much more unique than most other detective thriller novels.

K. William Hodges is a retired detective who struggles with depression, but he doesn’t drink. Typically in these types of novels, the lead detective is a middle aged alcoholic, while Hodges is relatively sober. This aspect of Hodges made his character more real to me. I loved the descriptions on how Hodges true addiction is mid-day television. It’s relatable to most retired people I would assume, as mid-day television is usually awful, but retired professionals end up watching it anyway.

I enjoy how Stephen King depicts Hodges as suicidal. He struggles finding a meaning to his life because he no longer has the thrill of his old job anymore, and that brings another element to the reader’s image of Hodges. It makes Hodges seem more human.

The thriller elements of this story captured my attention immediately and had me hooked all the way through. The way King described the various murder scenes allowed me to see the story unfold, as I could hear bones cracking, and smell blood. King created the perfect antagonist to the story with the Mercedes Killer. He added many elements to Mr. Mercedes including his at home life, and he describes the Killer’s perfection when it comes to hiding in plain sight. He also makes the killer seem human as well though. As bright as the Mr. Mercedes is when it comes to scheming his murders, he still makes mistakes. He poisons the wrong victim, and even kills the wrong person in a car bombing.

Mr. Mercedes tries his hardest to torment Hodges, but his first torment effort fell short. He finally tried to just kill Hodges, but the car bomb killed someone else instead. Mr. Mercedes is suicidal, and this makes him seem even more real.

In his final ploy he attempts a suicide bombing, in the same location of his first massacre. King leads up to the climax of the story beautifully by also adding in vital outside characters such as Hodge’s seventeen year old neighbor and tech genius Jerome, as well as the sister of the owner of the Mercedes used in the original murders, Janey. Janey causes Hodges to fall in love, but ultimately serves as a member of his personal crew of investigators.

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King wrote a chaotic plot, where it appears that nothing goes right for the investigators or the killer throughout the story. It keeps the reader wondering who really is on top, or a step ahead of the other.

The book is an easy read due to the constant chaos and the vivid descriptions.

King does a great job of throwing in the unexpected in the climax of the story. The race against time kept me flipping through the final pages in a rapid succession.

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Book Review: Dog Years

by Nick Wixon

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have recently been reading the book of short stories; Dog Years, by Melissa Yancy. One of the stories I read was titled “Consider this Case,” about a homosexual gynecologist who struggles with his love life while balancing his time demanding job. Julian doesn’t fit the homosexual stereotype though as he doesn’t care about fashion or even how his home appears. I personally like this feature of Julian as I often find writers stereotyping their characters. By making Julian his own person, I find the character more believable and easier to picture.

Yancy builds up a very original story and does a great job of hinting that Julian is homosexual without actually saying he is until halfway through the story.

Julian’s father has stage four lung cancer and is sure to die while staying with Julian. It’s very interesting, as his dad is flamboyant and fits the gay stereotype but is actually a heterosexual. I love the humor that Yancy incorporates when Wesley, the middle aged man who Julian has just began to see, mistakes Julian’s father for a homosexual. The flamboyance of Julian’s father and his occupation as a interior designer makes the reader wonder if that’s why Julian is so detached from the fashion and design world. When he was growing up his strait father figure was flamboyant, so since he was a homosexual he figured he had to be the opposite.

The part I like most about this short story is the vivid descriptions it gives of Julian’s medical career. The terminology, and the analytical point of view of a doctor are deeply intertwined into Julian’s personal life. It all seemed very knowledgeable and detailed from the medical procedures all the way back to Julian’s medical school experiences.

What bothered me was the ending of this short story as it didn’t really provide any closure. I found it to be a very soothing final image, but I wanted the end of this story to provide some excitement. I wanted to know what the final moments and words would’ve been between Julian and his dad. I wanted to know how the relationship between Wesley and Julian would play out, and I wanted more stories from Julian’s surgery room.

Overall I really liked this story, especially as someone who is hoping to enter the medical field as a doctor in the future. The way Yancy connected Julian’s personal life with his job was incredible, especially when he attended a pro-abortion political party. Of course he’d be pro-abortion; it’s half of his job.

The next short story I read was titled “Teeth Apart” which is an interesting title, but the meaning behind this title is discovered near the end of the story. Laura, a yoga instructor and a scholar finds herself sitting at a bar in Davos, a town that she seems to have a history in. We never fully understand what history she has in Davos, and why she recognizes everyone, including her mentor when she was getting her doctorate. Laura is in Davos because her husband, Peter, is at a 107

business meeting regarding the decline of the economy. He is late meeting her for supper so she spends a few hours sitting at the bar. I find it very interesting how Yancy has built up the bar scene, as she doesn’t use vivid descriptions but I still have a clear image of the bar in my head.

Laura is a complex and well-developed character with her scholar knowledge, her yoga expertise, and her relationship wisdom. Laura has an ex husband who she finds has rubbed off on her a lot. She doesn’t miss him, or think about him, but she thinks like him and I find that this is a very relatable experience for most people after a relationship. The two married individuals could’ve hated each other, but post divorce, they would both think like the other.

Laura’s brief stint in Davos has completely changed her during the moments she spent in the bar. Her husband has never seen her drunk before, but when an older man at the bar buys her a drink, she doesn’t hesitate to let the scotch warm the back of her throat. When Peter arrives, she continues to act out of her norm. She had never declared herself vegetarian but she hadn’t had meat in years. Despite her avoidance of meat, she orders a steak. Her old mentor, Nestor, recognizes her, and stumbles his way over to her booth to pour his drunken knowledge. The situation goes from friendly to intense very quickly as there must’ve been a sexual relationship between Laura and Nestor. He speaks to Laura in front of Peter in Spanish continually throughout their time spent in the booth. Yancy makes us think that his Spanish rants are insignificant because he is intoxicated, but soon she drops the bombshell of what he’s really saying. Laura is fluent in Spanish and has continued this sexually heated conversation with Nestor in front of her suspicious husband. Peter doesn’t understand this and he soon becomes irritated.

The way Yancy develops her characters into complex individuals in this story is incredible. With only twenty pages she has developed a complex background with Laura and Nestor, while displaying the innocence of Peter. Even further knowledge is gained with Laura’s complex past, but it’s very brief and it brings a sense of mystery behind who this woman actually is. Neither the reader nor Peter know who she really is, and that’s what I feel makes this story so great.

I have only read two stories from Dog Years, but both of these stories were very well written, so well that the words seem poetic. I would definitely recommend this book to readers even though I haven’t read it fully yet. I look forward to reading more of these short stories.

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Book Review: We Are All Made of Molecules

by Abby K. Keffeler

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e Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen is a young adult fictional novel that explores some tough topics teenagers face. While we journey with two main characters, Ashley and Stewart, we hear from each of their perspectives, which add depth to the story that might otherwise be lacking.

Throughout the story, there is a strong character development.

When I chose to read this book, the cover was eye catching with colors and an interesting typeface. But, more than that a statement claimed it would be hilarious. As I read the novel I found that the humor was lacking, and unsophisticated. Ashley often called Stewart, Spewart, which I think was meant to be humorous. I personally did not find it funny. Despite the lack of humor, this novel was still a quick read with insight into some tough subjects.

While Ashley (14) learns to live with divorced parents—a father who turned out to be homosexual—she battles the want to be popular and win approval with her friends. None of her friends know that her dad is homosexual, the reason for the divorce, and it is her goal to keep it a secret. I thought it was interesting that this character showed an internal struggle with accepting her father’s new lifestyle, as I think many others would. Not only does Ashley learn to accept her father and his new partner, she learns to live with Stewart (13) and his father.

Stewart is an intellectually gifted individual who struggles socially. When his father decided to move in with his girlfriend, Ashley’s mom, Stewart had to transfer from a private to a public school. In order to challenge him intellectually, he was bumped up a grade level—putting him in the same classes as Ashley. We are walked through Stewart’s transition with finding new friends and clubs, while dealing with bullies. This is a strong message for those that might also struggle with the same circumstances.

Not only do we see Stewart struggle with making new friends, finding a new clubs to belong to, but we also see him trying to keep the memories of his deceased mother alive. Throughout Stewart’s journey we spend quite a bit of time working though this struggle and learn how we, too, can move through similar struggles. I think it is brilliant that Stewart is the reason for the namesake of the novel. Using his logic and science background, Stewart believes he can keep his mother alive by breathing in her molecules that are still left on this earth. He spends time under a blanket his mom made, just breathing her in. This is sensitive because he is the only one who knows he does it until Ashley finds him one day. His father doesn’t even know how he still copes with the pain of his mother’s death.

In a couple instances this novel fell short. The voice of the characters felt too young to be young teenagers. I did not have much appreciation for Ashley 109

because she got almost everything she wanted but was still a stubborn, stuck up, brat. She disrespected her family and told lies to keep her friends. This is real, but I think it was played up too much. Stewart also seemed to be far too young to be thirteen years old. It would make sense considering he is socially challenged and a bit awkward, his voice can be explained as innocence. I still struggle with the gap though because it feels like he could be as young as seven or eight years old at certain points in the story.

Through the narration, we see two young teenagers dealing with societal challenges. These are revisited several times, but I am disappointed that in a Young Adult fiction novel, the topic of rape is brought up more than once but it isn’t dealt with in any depth. The surface is glazed over, and feels brushed off like it is no big deal. The last time I checked, this is a serious issue that any tween or teen should be exposed to—giving them the resources to handle such heavy topics if they were to encounter it in real life. Books are the easiest way to expose youth to topics such as rape.

All in all, this novel has immense potential. The characters develop at a steady rate, but could have been more effective if they were at a solid beginning point.

They felt younger than they should have, which did not allow them to expand upon themselves as much. The heavy topics: death, LGBT, bullying, transferring schools, and fitting in are through out the entire novel and allow for young people to relate to it. I am highly disappointed in the amount of discussion and emotional reflection on the more serious topics in the novel, such as rape, which was little to none. This was an easy read, but I would not choose to read it a second time. Nor would I recommend this book to a friend. There are thousands of books that have been published that I would rather read, or re-read that deal with these topics in a more effective manner.

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Contributors As They Appear

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Brandy Crisman is a freshman at Mount Marty and this edition of Paddlefish contains her first published works.

She has not yet decided on a major but is certain she will accompany it with a minor English.

Nicholas Jay Wixon is a Sophomore Pre-Med major with an English Minor and a track/cross country athlete at Mount Marty College. Paddlefish published Nick’s work in 2016 with his story My Dysfunctional American Family. He hopes to never get caught in the Lingerie aisle of Victoria’s Secret ever again.

Originally from Tijuana, Mexico, Max Contreras made his transition to San Diego, California in 2010. He is a freshman pursuing a degree in Exercise Wellness with hopes of owning his own Massage Therapy business someday. Max is involved in campus activities such as Student Government as well as Soccer, and Track & Field.

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Originally from Sioux City, Iowa, Katelyn Kingsbury is a non-traditional transfer student from USD to Mount Marty College pursuing a Secondary English Education degree.

Katelyn is 22 years old and enjoys playing The Elder Scrolls, painting, hunting and hanging out with her two chinchillas.

Katelyn travels back home to Iowa often to spend time with her 20 year-old twin brothers, Kenten and Karson.

Kimberly Mosqueda is student here at Mount Marty College, she was born and raised in Orange County, California. She attended California State University Chico were she studied Art Studio and Social Work. For a various number of years she was involved in multiple student clubs but was most involved in the Stop Trafficking of Persons Club at the Chico State Campus. “Being involved in this club has ignited my desire to be involved in the fight for human rights and help stop modern-day slavery.”

Abby K. Keffeler is a junior Mount Marty College student from Piedmont, South Dakota, pursing a degree in Graphic Design and Media Arts with minors in art and English writing. When she is not focused on her academics and responsibilities in various clubs and organizations on campus, she enjoys spending time outside. Abby is a photography fanatic who loves the adventures life throws at her, and all the while; her greatest aspiration is to change the world—by changing someone’s world one person at a time. She has previously been published in Paddlefish and 4 P.M. Count.

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Jennifer Vondrak is a junior at Mount Marty College majoring in Graphic Design + Media Arts and minoring in Art and English with a writing emphasis. Although she occasionally ventures into realms of fiction and poetry, she more often finds herself writing nonfiction pieces, usually about writing, art, Iowa farm life, or her experiences working in a factory packaging wafers and ice cream cones. This is the second year she has had work published in Paddlefish.

Katie Hamil is a sophomore at Mount Marty College and is currently pursuing a degree in English with a history minor.

She has always dreamed of becoming well-known author.

Besides writing, Katie likes to read, create art, participate in community service events, hang out with friends, and cook meals for her family. She has been previously published in Paddlefish.

Megan Fink is currently a freshman English writing major at Mount Marty College. In the Fall, she plans on transferring to Northeast Community College to pursue a vet tech career.

Megan and her older sister were born and raised in the small town of Randolph, Nebraska. This is her first publication.

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Joseph Brinkman is a sophomore at Mount Marty College, majoring in Psychology with a minor in English writing, and he is also playing golf and basketball for the school.

He is blessed with being the oldest of eight children from small town Jackson, MN and enjoys being outdoors as much as possible. Faith, family, friends, academics and athletics are the five main aspects of his life. He plans to deepen his faith, continue his education and improve both his golf and basketball ability while attending Mount Marty College.

Miguel Manriquez was born December 23, 1997. Son of Magdalena Manriquez & Juan Santacruz. He has two sisters which makes them triplets, Miguel was born in El Paso, TX then moved to Minot, ND where he currently resides. He is a freshman in college pursuing a Criminal Justice major along with a Spanish minor to maybe one day become a police officer or border patrol agent. He enjoys playing soccer and loves Mexican food.

Originally from Elk Point, South Dakota, Caitlin Davis is currently pursuing a double major in Criminal Justice and Human Services with a minor in English. Caitlin will be graduating from Mount Marty in May 2017 and will be starting law school in the fall at Colorado Law in Boulder, CO.

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Megan Patterson is a freshman Secondary Education and English major with a minor in Theatre. She hails from the great Jackson, Mississippi, and enjoys the rich, Southern culture she was brought up with. Megan has a great like for poetry, but wishes to improve in writing both poems and short fiction. The one place you will most likely find Megan is either Marian auditorium, or walking around town enjoying the scenery.

Andrew Horsley is currently a freshman at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota. He is an accounting major and a member of the school’s tennis team. The nonfiction piece, Life of a Farmer, will be his first publication. He is from Lawton, Iowa, and enjoys spending time with his family and friends in the great outdoors.

Kaito Sukeyasu is from Durango High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Business and English double-major freshman and is continuing his baseball career with the Mount Marty Lancers. He says that baseball helps him keep a connection with both his American origins and Japanese roots, both of which heavily help influence his writing along with his experiences growing up a first-generation American in his family.

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Samantha Kasowski is from Colton, SD and is the daughter of Marcia and David Kasowski. Samantha is a sophomore History Education major at Mount Marty. She attended Tri-Valley High School before continuing her education at Mount Marty College.

Zachary Hough is the oldest of four kids, all of which came from two amazing and hardy parents. His hobbies are reading, writing, editing, swimming, and playing soccer with the Mount Marty Lancer Soccer team. He is looking into the field of editing books and has always dreamed about helping a writer publish a book so that someone else could find the art of reading as enjoyable as he has.

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Paddlefish Snagging good literature one line at a time.

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