WINTER 2014
THE
MARBLE COLLECTION Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts
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The Marble Collection
Winter 2014
Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts inspiration • creativity • community
TMC: ABOUT US W H AT I S T H E M A R B L E C O L L E C T I O N ? The Marble Collection, Inc. [TMC] is a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit organization that publishes the Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts — the only statewide print and digital juried publication that features teens’ artwork, writing, original music and video. TMC also offers teens a unique eMentoring Workshop in which they are paired one-to-one with college student mentors who help them refine their voices and guide their work to publication for real-world audiences. At a time of drastic budget cuts to school arts programming and an increased curriculum focus on standardized testing, TMC creates a vibrant outlet for teens to express themselves through images, words and multimedia. M I S S I O N S TAT E M E N T TMC provides Massachusetts teens with literature and arts education and one-to-one eMentoring to advance their creative development.
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TMC: STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SERVICE-LEARNING PROGRAM MANAGER LITERATURE EDITOR
ART JUROR ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATION EXECUTIVE GRANT WRITER DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE ACCOUNTING MANAGER WEBMASTER
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TMC: LEADERSHIP BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
STUDENT ADVISORY BOARD
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TMC: FUNDERS TMC is supported in part by grants from the below local cultural councils, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Abington, Agawam, Amherst, Ashburnham, Attleboro, Ayer, Blackstone, Boxford, Burlington, Chicopee, Concord, Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, Eastham, Easton, Everett, Framingham, Granby, Groton, Hanson, Harwich, Holliston, Hopkinton, Lakeville, Lynn, Maynard, North Attleboro, Peabody, Plymouth, Reading, Rochester, Salem, Sharon, Somerset, South Hadley, Sturbridge, Taunton, Tewksbury Webster, Westford, Whitman TMC is also supported in part by grants from the below corporations. Ta r g e t C o r p o r a t i o n
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TMC: MEMBERSHIP MEMBERSHIP LEVELS & BENEFITS Please join TMC in its mission to advance the creative development of Massachusetts teens by becoming a TMC Member today. Memberships are 100% tax deductible. PATRON $150: Includes one-year print subscription for you and a Massachusetts public AND school library of your choice, plus your name will be listed in the print and digital magazine. ASSOCIATE $75: Includes one-year print subscription for you and a Massachusetts public or school library of your choice. MEMBER $25: Includes one-year print subscription. To become a TMC Member please visit: www.themarblecollection.org/donate *** T M C PAT R O N M E M B E R S Friends of the Boxford Libraries MaryBeth & Joel D’Errico Anthony Grasso Meryl Loonin Patsy Rose
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TMC MEMBERS Emily Blatt Denise Nagel
TMC: ADVERTISE With a diverse print and digital circulation, TMC is a one of a kind recruitment tool that maintains a distinct presence in and outside the classroom. Reach your target audience and showcase the unique programs your educational institution has to offer in The Marble Collection: Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts! NEXT EDITION / SPRING 2014 Closing Date for Reservations: Copy Date: Pu b l i c a t i o n D a t e :
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TMC: CONTENTS 8
Strength One (Art) Isabel Tze Chen Chun / Milton Academy
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Seasons of a Butterfly (Art) Arissa Boucher / Blackstone-Millville Regional High School
10 Pills. (Fiction) Ethan Woo / Groton School
12 Antebellum (Art) Irena Manukian / Chelmsford High School
13 Transformation (Art)
23 Spotlight (Art) Renae Reints / Old Rochester Regional High School
23 Morning at Echo Lake (Art) Colby Yee / Lexington High School
24 Ultraviolet (Poetry) Alice Ren / Lexington High School
25 Top of Wachusett (Art) Shannon Barrows / Oakmont Regional High School
26 Tomatoes (Art) Kate Foster / Brimmer and May School
Yolanda Dong / Groton School
14 Jitterbug (Poetry)
27 Reflect (Art) Hallie Black / Brimmer and May School
Emily Nicol / Bishop Stang High School
28 Letter to my heart (Poetry) 15 Jubilance (Art)
Alice Ren / Lexington High School
Alexus Cruz / Brimmer and May School
29 Blood Red Veil (Art) 16 Fledgling (Art) Megan Kudzma / Peabody Veterans Memorial High School
18 The Merry Man (Fiction) Gabe Bamforth / Grub Street, Boston Cambridge Rindge and Latin School
21 Docs and Bans (Art) Joanna Garmon / Lexington High School
22 Invasion (Art) Ryan Coughlin / Brimmer and May School
22 Sign (Art) Mackenzie Ellis / Burlington High School
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Catherine Roukhadze / North Attleboro High School
30 Dichromatic Portrait (Art) Megan Kudzma / Peabody Veterans Memorial High School
30 Light Through the Leaves (Art) Ryan Girouard / Burlington High School
31 Reflection (Art) Samantha Poulin / Burlington High School
31 Independence (Art) Colby Yee / Lexington High School
32 The Infatuates (Fiction) Cecelia Bishop / Amherst Regional High School
TMC: WINTER 2014 35 Interrogation (Art) Joanna Garmon / Lexington High School
36 Christmas Spirit (Art) Janjira Sun / Lowell High School
36 Student Anthology 2013 (Video) Multimedia students / Attleboro High School
38 The Writer (Poetry)
56 Milkyway (Art) Tayler Stander / Brimmer and May School
57 Barber Shop (Art) Ruth Wooster / Brimmer and May School
58 Idols (Fiction) Cecelia Bishop / Amherst Regional High School
62 Vibrant Life (Art) Devery LeMay / Whitman-Hanson Regional High School
Shaelyn Calvey / Bishop Stang High School
63 Tea Time with the Innocents (Art) 40 Steps (Art) Michael Rafferty / Brimmer and May School
41 Shadow (Art) Keri Cucinotta / Burlington High School
42 Arm of the Lord (Fiction) Hannah Lafrati / Milton Academy
Celeste Infantino / Oakmont Regional High School
64 Pieces (Poetry) Rachel Couture / North Quincy High School
65 Lonely (Art) Serina Khalifa / Marshall Simonds Middle School
66 Deficit Omne Quod Nasciture (Art) Celeste Infantino / Oakmont Regional High School
50 My Best Friend (Art) Whitney Hatfield / Masconomet Regional High School
67 The City by the Bay (Art) Derek Xiao / Groton School
51 Summer Camp (Art) Irina Grigoryeva / Burlington High School
53 Delray (Art) Michael Rafferty / Brimmer and May School
54 The Absence Baby (Poetry) Cecelia Bishop / Amherst Regional High School
55 Fractal (Art) Hanna Kim / Brimmer and May School
68 Emotions (Poetry) Jason Mills / Ayer Shirley Regional High School
69 Environmental Conformity (Art) Ruth Wooster / Brimmer and May School
70 Androgony (Art) Emma Morrill / Whitman-Hanson Regional High School
71 Self-Portrait (Art) Hanna Kim / Brimmer and May School
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A R T Milton Academy / Grade 12
I s a b e l
T z e
C h e n
C h u n
Strength One
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Blackstone-Millville Regional High School / Grade 10
A r i s s a
B o u c h e r
Seasons of a Butterfly
d r a w i n g
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F I C T I O N Groton School / Grade 10
E t h a n
W o o
Pills.
Kailey stands on the tips of her toes, rocking back and forth as her tiny hands grip the basement windowsill in the corner of her room. She blinks three times, her eyes sticky from sleep. Snow is falling. Kailey doesn’t remember seeing snow, but she likes how it looks, soft and white and pure. What fascinates Kailey though is the pair of black galoshes on her mother’s feet. She looks up at her, but the window is angled badly and she has to strain her neck to see her mother’s eyes, closed in numbness to the cold. Her arms are outstretched as she hugs the world. Tiny flakes of winter come to rest on her naked arms, like raw pock marks that slowly melt away. Kailey doesn’t remember the last time she saw her mother. Kailey was sick, her daddy had told her, and Mom would only make her sicker. Daddy used to tell stories to Kailey. They were stories about dragons and magic but none of his stories had happy endings. Things always started out good in his stories. Then they got bad. That’s the way it is, he had said. Now Daddy told her that stories were stupid, that she needed to grow up and shut up. The slow, staccato clopping of Daddy’s boots suddenly falls down each stair. Kailey scrambles into her bed, frantically. She pulls the covers over her head and looks at the wall, crinkling her eyes shut to feign sleep. She is not allowed to get out of bed if she wants to get better. Ever. Daddy finally reaches the bottom of the stairs, carrying a plastic tray with a bowl of microwaved soup, water in an airplane cup, and three small pills. Kailey sits up and rests her back against the wall. She always remembered getting her medicine. It would help her get better, Daddy had said. It was one pill at first, then two, and this year, three. They were small and ovular, colored a pale blue. She didn’t like the pills at first; they made her sleepy. But after a while, they made her feel warm inside. Daddy sets the tray on her bedside table. He takes a small spoon and carefully places three well-measured portions of the watery soup between her chapped lips. She swallows and looks at him. There is a care in his motions, the way he puts his hand under the spoon so nothing will fall on the comforter. But his face betrays no love, no sentimentality. He’s hardened, his demeanor cold and flinty. He makes her drink. The water is lukewarm. It tastes like pennies, as if it’s pumped through a rusty sink. She glances at the pills. They make her feel nice. There is a comfortable warmth in them that make her tingle right down to her toes. He puts the pills in the water and shakes the cup until it dissolves into an oddly colored chemical. She drinks until the plastic is dry. She tries not to look at Daddy and stares at a brown speckle on the ceiling. She takes the empty spoon from the tray and suckles on it to distract herself, rubbing the rounded side against the roof of her mouth. Daddy takes his index finger and pulls her cheek towards him so she’s staring right at his blank face. She winces. In the corner of the room, Mom stares through the window, crouching in an awkward bend. Mom is never allowed to look at her. Kailey notices and looks back, trying her best not to look at Daddy. Daddy notices. He turns around. Kailey tries to focus on the cloying soup residue as she shuts her eyes. Mom leaves. Daddy gently tugs at the spoon until she lets it go. Daddy takes the tray up and leaves Kailey, who starts to feel warm from the pills. Outside, snow falls, and Kailey shivers from the imaginary cold. 10
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A R T Chelmsford High School / Grade 11
I r e n a
M a n u k i a n
Antebellum
d r a w i n g
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A R T Groton School / Grade 9
Y o l a n d a
D o n g
Transfor mation
d r a w i n g
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P O E T R Y Bishop Stang High School / Grade 12
Jitterbug
Emily Nicol
I am high-strung: a jitterbug. I need something: an effective drug. An endless amount of stress subsists. My clarity barely even exists. Take me back to childhood, With honey dew grass, and campfire wood. I was wild, silly, and often carefree. A sparkling sequin could even please me. Little details stitch me an heirloom quilt. An overwhelming world at an orbital tilt.
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
A l e x u s
C r u z
Ju b i l a n c e
p h o t o g r a p h y TMC Winter 2014
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A R T Peabody Veterans Memorial High School / Grade 12
M e g a n
K u d z m a
Fledgling
p h o t o g r a p h y 16
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F I C T I O N Grub Street, Boston / Cambridge Rindge and Latin School
G a b e
/ Grade 11
B a m f o r t h
The Merr y Man On a brisk day towards the end of autumn, two men in suits stepped out of a grey Rolls Royce parked next to a vacant lot. They paced around, taking notes and talking to one another, then got back in the car and drove away. About a month later, a Nike store opened up in that very same block, drawing publicity from the neighborhood. The store faired prosperously, enjoying high profits and plentiful demand as citizens flocked like animals to a drinking hole. Every time a new product was released, the lines would snake around blocks — hundreds of people waiting for their turn to pay into the American Dream. From the window of a modest apartment next to the new Nike Store, a man by the name of Robin had observed the whole process. Looking at the latest line, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, running a hand through his dark hair. He walked over to the unkempt pile of mail at the foot of his mattress, and picked up the first envelope, with the words Urban Electric printed in red. Grimacing, Robin took off his glasses and skimmed the letter. It was a friendly reminder that his bill was due in 5 business days. Rubbing his eyes and cursing, Robin walked back to the window and once more gazed down at the little slice of corporate America which had appeared in his city. His city, which boasted one of the highest crime rates in the country. His city, in which packs of children would play football in the street while skipping school. His city, which had caught him with open arms when he fell from the branches of the corporate realm. Remembering the tailored suits and the pearly finish on the Rolls Royce, Robin exhaled quickly in exasperation. Those men are kings, he realized. Instead of crowns, they donned Armani suits; instead of castles, they escaped to mansions in Barbados and New Zealand. They kept their serfs occupied with materialistic fixations amidst lives of poverty, while reaping profits and enjoying self-indulgence. It’s not fair. And it was at this moment, thinking about kings and serfs and student loans, that he decided to change it all. The world was born in equilibrium, he thought, and it has been pushed out of its symmetry. It cannot exist like this much longer. Inevitably, some catastrophic event would push the earth back into uniformity, and so the task lay on his shoulders to restore fairness — to balance the scale and return power to those without. Wasn’t this what he had gone to school for? To change the world? In older ages, this might have been done with sword and shield, fire and blood. But the weapons of yesterday had become cumbersome, and new methods had materialized. No longer was gold the medium of wealth; these kings locked their 18
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F I C T I O N fortunes in circuit boards, data chips, computerized stock portfolios, and algorithmic
investment programs. Robin understood all of this; it was the life he had lived for almost 8 years. He had written some of those algorithms, and then was cast into the mud once his productivity was below standard. He started tentatively, knowing and fearing the consequences of his actions, but pressed on with a grim determination. The nature of electronic money had changed slightly in the short time since the end of his career, but as he continued he learned. He learned how to trick the algorithms, and how to spin the kings’ stocks downwards but take the money left unaccounted. He learned how to write programs that would snake into bank accounts and whittle off cents at a time, for rich men never look at the small digits. Robin’s progress soon accelerated, and as more money flowed into his network of accounts, he began to distribute it. He forged fake tax refunds and redeemable coupons, and sometimes sent out checks with the message Courtesy of the Robin written within the envelope. When paper became expensive and time-consuming, he turned to local bank accounts, sending direct deposits and money transfers from Auntie Robin and Uncle Merriman. He pumped money into the city, taking from the rich and handing it out to the poor from behind the screen of a laptop. People began to realize that their trifling fortunes were growing, gaining size and strength without apparent reason. Most kept their mouths shut. Mothers and fathers, young students, criminals, all fashions of citizens were content to accept money from, what may as well have been, the hand of God. However, some were curious. Some sought after the mysterious Robin. They talked amongst themselves, trying to find a lead on this urban legend, but nobody could trace him. It was as if he simply did not exist. One day, however, a neighbor of Robin’s, the man who lived directly across from him, noticed his reclusiveness and started to whisper about his seeming preoccupation to other people in the building. Word spread, and suspicions grew, until a group of men decided to act. Up in his apartment, the air stale and heavy from days of closed windows and canned food, Robin was enjoying a cigarette in the kitchen when a knock on the door bounced around the unit. Quickly sneaking one last drag before throwing it in the sink, he approached the door, calling out: Hello? Who’s there? From behind the cheap wood came a fuzzy voice: Are you the Robin? Alarms seemed to echo through his skull, but he tried to keep a steady voice in his response: Who are you? This time, a different voice came through the door. We want to help you. Robin paused for a long moment, removing his glasses and pressing his palms deep into his eyes. It could be a trap. He placed the glasses back over his eyes. But I haven’t been sleeping much. Assistance would be beautiful...and with a sigh of determination, he unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. Before him stood a small knot of men, most of whom wore expressions of surprise or wrinkled their noses at the odors wafting out of the apartment. Licking his lips, Robin stepped back and said: Why don’t we talk inside? Many of the men had never been to college. None had a background in TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N economics. As Robin explained his purpose and the specifics of his duties, he realized how difficult the task in front of him was. It would take training, and it would take time, and it would take a much bigger apartment, but the men believed. They believed in the cause; they believed in him. Slowly, they learned. He assigned specific tasks to each man. Every account had its own distributer, its own watchman to track the siphoned money, and its own PR man to cover up their tracks. Some men he had running errands and serving drinks and snacks to the others. The younger ones in the group painted the city in rebellious propaganda. The men took to their assigned jobs without question. They knew what was at stake. They understood the magnitude of being just a single cog in the machine that would level the earth. Their efforts were not in vain, and soon the kings began to notice a dent here and there in their wealth. They consulted economists, bankers, personal agents and private detectives, but nobody could put their finger on what had been stealing their money. It was not until a federal investigation was called that they made any headway. The finest FBI detectives and intelligence officers were put to the task, promised lucrative compensation under the table. From the day their investigation started to the day they walked up to Robin’s diminutive living space, it took them one year and three months to track him down. Robin was asleep on the couch, amidst a pile of papers and wires and graphs, when the door, that cheap, thin wooden door, was kicked in. He jumped to his feet as FBI agents whirled into the apartment, flashlights and weapons trained directly on him. His glasses were nowhere to be found. His face, a pallid, washed out mask, betrayed his fear and shock. Still half asleep, Robin found himself glancing around as his face was shoved into the ground and his hands zip-tied together behind him. He rode to the state police station between two SWAT team operatives, both unmoving, both silent. After what seemed like hours, the back door of the truck was opened and the men took him by the arms and dragged him into a barren room, with one light buzzing overhead. He took a seat on one of the metal chairs at the table. A moment later a small man with glasses and a gleaming badge walked in and sat across from him. You were hard to find, the man said. Robin only smiled. It was an easy smile: a smile of relief. He was done. His campaign was started; he had breathed life into a new age and watched it take its first few tottering steps. You won’t stop it, he said, you can’t. I’m only one man, part of something bigger than your agency or the corrupt rat-kings you work for can crush. We are one. We eat, sleep, and breathe as one. He laughed with an easy gaiety, looking the man in the eyes. We believe as one.
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A R T Lexington High School / Grade 12
J o a n n a
G a r m o n
Docs and Bans
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
Invasion
R y a n
C o u g h l i n
p h o t o g r a p h y
Sign Burlington High School / Grade 10
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M a c k e n z i e
E l l i s
A R T Old Rochester Regional High School / Grade 12
Spotlight
R e n a e
R e i n t s
p h o t o g r a p h y
Morning at Echo Lake
Colby Yee
Lexington High School / Grade 11
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P O E T R Y Lexington High School / Grade 12
Alice Ren
Ultraviolet
Beach days from summers long ago, you were invincible. Draped in buttery light, admiring your sun-tanned skin, you sprawled freely across neon towels. You couldn’t know that you would later learn to define your eyelids, your cheekbones and lashes with liner and bronzer, powder from a box, promising to make you pretty. You couldn’t know to suck in your belly at the beach, apply sunscreen against the colorless danger from those ultraviolet rays. You were young and fearless, then. You did not think to dread the things you could not see.
A R T Oakmont Regional High School / Grade 10
S h a n n o n
B a r r o w s
Top of Wachusett
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 8
K a t e
F o s t e r
Tomatoes
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
H a l l i e
B l a c k
Reflect
d r a w i n g
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P O E T R Y Lexington High School / Grade 12
Alice Ren
Letter to my heart Every time a particle turns left when it could have turned right, a baby universe splits off from the old one, did you know? Shimmer-thin walls settle into the fragile realities of a new world, branching root-fine hairs, too many split ends to count. In some, I’m sure, the air is filled with the humming of aeroplanes instead of cars, Esperanto instead of English, dragonflies the size of my head — but I am a narrow soul, and the only galaxies I’m interested in are the ones with a you and a me. Sometimes, I grow up in a dusty coal mining town while you toe the gritty gleam of city sidewalks, and we never even meet. Other times, we sit across the room from each other in class every day except Thursday and never talk, and the potential energy crackling from our worlds brushing past each other makes me want to cry. In this world, I never used to write until I met you, and I never used to keep my heart where my words were, but what can I say? Every song reminds me of you, and your silence is the one I want to fall asleep to. When the house is cold and the sky empty, I wish for the warmth of your smile. If I close my eyes, I can see our universes overlapping comfortably in the shared space above our heads, and I am grateful, and I am lucky. Last night, I dreamed that they held me down, cut a rubber circle from my chest and marveled at my eyelashes, my flinch response. Under the blinding lights, love, I kept blinking. I wasn’t afraid. I still had you.
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A R T North Attleboro High School / Grade 12
C a t h e r i n e
R o u k h a d z e
Blood Red Veil
p h o t o g r a p h y
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A R T Peabody Veterans Memorial High School / Grade 12
Dichromatic Portrait
Megan Kudzma
p h o t o g r a p h y
Light Through the Leaves Burlington High School / Grade 11
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Ryan Girouard
A R T Burlington High School / Grade 10
Reflection
S a m a n t h a
P o u l i n
p h o t o g r a p h y
Independence
C o l b y
Y e e
Lexington High School / Grade 11
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F I C T I O N Amherst Regional High School / Grade 11
C e c e l i a
The Infatuates
B i s h o p
Dear Craig, So it’s the third Thursday after your funeral. Anchu called earlier and asked how I was, but I couldn’t talk about it so I hung up, lying on my bed and listening instead to the silence of my house with my feet up against the wall. I saw your mom the other day, at the grocery store. She looked small, Craig. She was pushing a cart with your same hands, and as she was moving through the produce I was wondering whether to go up to her or to turn around and leave. It hurt too much to see this skinny woman who made you, this woman who you used to say you hated, the only other person in the world who, like me, couldn’t make a decision in the grocery store because now you were dead. I wasn’t even sure that she would remember me, anyways, because I had met her only once before. But then, as I stood next to the bread and stared at her and tried to decide what to do, she looked right over at me and stopped walking. And then she nodded at me, and at that moment I could see that we were holding you the same. She adjusted her scarf quietly, pulling it up over her hair, and then she walked right past me for the exit, leaving her cart next to two shelves of packaged spinach. As she passed me I saw that she was wearing your shoes, the old sneakers that I bought you from Salvation Army for your last birthday. Even when we used to go to church with Anchu and her family and they would talk about heaven and fathers and sons and some holy ghost, I used to believe that dying would be the end point. But since you died it’s been different. Now I keep seeing the parade of our only year moving like a procession of holy ghosts through the kitchen, sometimes sitting down to have breakfast with me and sometimes just standing and staring with sallow eyes that remind me of yours, and skin that looks bad from smoking too much, like yours did. And since you died I can’t help wondering if maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is something that comes next after all. Craig, I miss you so much. I’ve been smoking a lot now, too. I go through about a pack a day. It was a Sunday, the day you died. It was my mom who told me what happened. She came into my room early on that terrible morning, early enough that it was still dark outside. And then she lay next to me on my bed and put a hand on my hair without making any noise. She started crying like she was afraid, her lips stretched back over her teeth, her face so close that her tears were falling on my neck. She started saying, “Clarice, honey,” over and over. And then I sat up and asked what was wrong, what happened, and she looked so sad and so, so sorry, and she said, “Oh God, it’s Craig, oh God. Something terrible has happened.” And I felt you then, in my stomach, and I already knew even though she hadn’t told me yet. I was wearing your t-shirt, the huge one that said Don’t Worry, Wake Up on the front, the one that was only a little bigger on me than it was on you because we were pretty much equally skinny even though you were taller. Without thinking about it I pulled it up over my head so that I was in only my underwear and tank top, and I was using your shirt to dry my mom’s face. I didn’t cry, not then. I was mostly surprised in that moment that she had remembered your name. You’d only come over twice, and my mother isn’t the kind to remember something like that. 32
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F I C T I O N The second and last time you came over to my house was last January, when you showed up in the middle of the night with a fever so high that it scared me. You’d tried to ride your bike over, but when you were halfway to my house you called me from a pay phone so that I’d know to let you in, and then I ended up coming to get you in my car because it was snowing and I was worried. I’d known something was really wrong because on the phone you started crying and you said, “Clarice, it’s really cold. I couldn’t find it — the key to my house. I looked but I couldn’t find it.” Craig, your mom was never home. After you called that night I got into my car and went out and found you. You were burning up. I put you in the back seat under this crappy quilt and then when we got back to my house I had to help you get up the stairs to my room. You were shaking, and you had a temperature of 103.1 degrees. I called the hospital to see if I should bring you in, but the woman on the phone told me to stay where we were and to keep checking on you in case your fever got any higher. After that you threw up in my trashcan and I started laughing because you asked if I could put on The Violent Femmes. I kissed you on the cheek (that was the only time I ever kissed you, Craig — the one other time, you kissed me). I said no to The Violent Femmes, and we fell asleep like that in my bed with my sock foot touching yours. The next morning, after I got up early to shower, coming back into my room tired and clean, I saw that you were gone. You had made the bed before you left. But you didn’t leave a note. My dad came home from work early the other day for the first time in my life. I was home alone in my basement sitting on the couch and smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching nothing on the TV. Then I heard the garage door opening and I heard my dad walk in, calling my name. He came down to the basement and looked at me for a while from where he was standing at the bottom of the stairs. I expected him to say something about the cigarette, about how I should put it out or something, but he didn’t. Instead he came over and sat on the couch next to me, and then he said, really softly, “I miss your friend.” I started crying, for the first time since you’d died. And I was nodding, because yes, I did too, Craig, so much. My father reached for the remote, and we watched football on our crappy basement TV set until my mom came home and made me put Clorox on the rug where there were ashes and small ghosts. Sometimes the quiet ways in which parents have settled into a less-than exceptional life can be comforting, which is ironic because so much of the time we are trying to escape from them and from that surrender. No one wants to be like their parents, do they, Craig? And sometimes we forget how much we need them. The first time you came over to my house you stood in my living room and talked to my dad about the college plans that I knew you didn’t actually have. And you smiled when my father asked and said that yes, you got letters from your own dad and that you might be going to stay with him in Florida for a few months in the summer. Only I knew how made up it all was, Craig, but I didn’t mind that you were lying to my father right in front of me, because you were so good and sweet about it, unassuming, as if you, more than anyone, wished that what you were saying was true. And later on that night, even though you hated, hated sports, you sat down next to my father in the living room when he asked and watched the whole of some game that I can’t remember now. And while you were watching it, I was watching you, Craig, eighteen and so beautiful, so alive then. As I watched you that night I realized that maybe I could be in love with you. And when you left later on you touched my wrist in the doorway, but that was all. So last night I had this dream about you. We were in the biology lab of the high school, and you were an angel. I laughed and said, “Craig, where are your wings?” Then, like you did only once in real life, you kissed me quietly against the windowsill, my head pressing into the screen. Your teeth, which were long, so sharp and so strange, scraped against mine. TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N But I wasn’t afraid. You said, “Just remember, okay? You just have to remember.” But I didn’t know how to answer. And then my skin started to flake off under the pressure of the big lights overhead. Finally, I told you, “Just don’t go anywhere.” And you said okay, that you wouldn’t, and you apologized, and then you left out the door that led to the science hall instead of out the window, as I thought you would. I watched your hair, blond, against the percentile dark of the outside. The best part was that you were still wearing your old sneakers that I’d given you, the ones with the soles falling off and the ratty laces, the ones your mom wore in the grocery store. Craig, this morning I woke up so relieved. So I guess this is a eulogy, because I never went to your funeral. Anchu went. I guess they didn’t talk about how you died at all, or how they found you. Anchu said your mom didn’t cry, just looked forward with huge empty eyes that were older versions of yours. She said the principal talked a little, mostly about how you were such a good student (you were an okay student). But he forgot some things. He forgot about us going to church every Sunday because that’s what Anchu wanted. He forgot to mention that you took LSD that one time (the only time, the only time ever), and that you had a panic attack because the walls started creeping backward. He forgot about how, last March, the janitor found you sitting in the bleachers of our school football field; how you had no shirt on even though it was really cold that day. And how you had carved “Screw the World” into your skin with school scissors, which apparently were child-proof, but not child-proof enough for you — just a lonely kid with something to say and his own white, white skin to write it on. And he didn’t talk about what a good kisser you were. He didn’t talk about how wrong your dying was; he couldn’t make it make sense. I mean, how does a kid with as much hope as we all thought you had end up in a bathtub with his clothes on and his wrists slit open like yours were? Sort of like you used to be, but at the same time not the same you at all. How does that happen? I don’t know, Craig. I don’t know the answer. You didn’t leave a note. A month before you died, the day that you kissed me, was also the first time that you showed me the cuts on your arms, on your stomach. And you were beautiful, Craig, even then, standing shirtless in front of me with those white scars on your skin. We were at your house. “I’m so sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. And what I wanted most of all right then was to reach out and touch you. You didn’t have the right words to explain it to me, so you kissed me instead, careful and sad, maybe making up for all the things that you couldn’t talk about. Finally, I went downstairs to pour myself a glass of juice. And after leaning against your sink for a minute, I got out another glass and poured you one too, even though you hadn’t asked. You followed me down the stairs, smiling big and goofy like you were a little boy and you had just taken a bite out of the world. You know what you said? “Wow!” Craig, I wish you hadn’t died. And I’m so angry with you, because you didn’t have to die but you did, and you chose that. Mostly I just wanted to say goodbye, because I didn’t get to before. And if there is something after this, some place you go to, then I hope you’re okay there. And if there is a God, I hope you find him. Mostly I just wanted to tell you that I love you, because I never told you when you were alive. The truth is that it hurts so much I don’t know how to bear it. Love. Clarice
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A R T Lexington High School / Grade 12
J o a n n a
G a r m o n
Inter r ogation
p a i n t i n g TMC Winter 2014
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A R T Lowell High School / Grade 10
Christmas Spirit
J a n j i r a
S u n
p h o t o g r a p h y
To watch please visit: www.themarblecollection.org/video
Student Anthology 2013 Attleboro High School / Grades 9-12
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P O E T R Y Bishop Stang High School / Grade 12
Shaelyn Calvey
T h e Wr i t e r
There are boxes of toothpicks on the bedside table. A nervous habit. A large bed fitting perfectly into the corner of the room. I feel safest here, My back pressed against the joining of two walls. There’s only a few things on the walls: A favorite poem, and a picture of me I never liked. Big, black boots on the floor Twenty eye and so big Both of my small feet could fit in them. A bed made for sleeping. Blinds to keep the light out. No alarm clock. Insomnia. This is where I feel safest. Nestled between all these things that make up a person. This person, Fairly large, smelling of peppermint and tasting of chewed toothpicks. A writer lives here. A writer breathes here, And every time I breathe in this room, I take the life of him into my lungs and feel His quick pen strokes there. A lover lives here. He touches me with Moleskin hands and speaks to me in Murakami. He inhales exotic teas and exhales black ink that flows onto pages like rivers to the sea. They can cut like rivers too. You can’t hear it in how he speaks, But the words that jut from his fingers like picks and shovels could have carved out the Grand Canyon in an hour. Gifted. Unassuming he walks, With tar black shoes and electric skin that bristles upon hushed tones of rebellion. Eyes so icy blue they could have sunk the Titanic. Fear not. 38
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P O E T R Y The warmth in him is unbearable. What’s not to like? But he is more than that. He is a sea of rocks to navigate on a dark night without a lighthouse in sight. Look deeper. Please, please look deeper. Into this person more heart than man. You can tell a lot about a man by his hands, And his are hard. Not the kind of hard that has ever known a hammer or saw, But hands that saw more than they should have. Hands that had to make what they needed because they would never open to beg. Hands that show a troubled mind Around bloodied cuticles and jagged nails. A writer lives here. And I wish that he would stay. I wish that I could dive into his pens and be the ink that translates his brain. I wish that I could be the messenger, From mind to fingers. Lightning only strikes once, But I swear every time he looks at me I go up in a blue ball. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and suddenly Falling isn’t so bad. No one is afraid of falling. Just scared of what may lie at the bottom. He kisses me with hungry lips and I ask God, If like the lamp He gave to the widow, My store of food for him will never go dry. Insatiable. I hope I never find the bottom of him. And God? Please let me smash upon his jagged rocks, Let me shatter on his concrete floors, Let me break over his coral reef. I want to know where the writer lives.
TMC Winter 2014
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
M i c h a e l
R a f f e r t y
Steps
p h o t o g r a p h y
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A R T Burlington High School / Grade 11
K e r i
C u c i n o t t a
Shadow
p h o t o g r a p h y
TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N Milton Academy
/ Grade 11
H a n n a h
L a f r a t i
Arm of the Lord Five minutes before the match. Any other day I’d be at the ring by now. But my trainer, Mick, told me to wait. Said I could be sick or something. He doesn’t want me fighting sick. I get that. Never lost before. Never been sick before either. Probably why he was surprised to see me at the toilet barfing my stomach out. He’s never seen me on my knees. Not for anything. The food Mary made me eat last night. That’s what did it. Damn woman. She put me in a suit. She took me to a restaurant. “Be adventurous, babe,” she said. “Try this, babe,” she said. Pushed slugs and mushrooms down my throat. Culture my ass. That’s monkey food. “How you doing, Jack?” Mick says. He’s got a big cut up his face. Knife fight. Mugging gone wrong. Car explosion. Vietnam. A different answer every day. “Better,” I lie. I feel like falling on the dirty locker room floor. But I feel like fighting too. “You still got a fever?” he asks. “I’m going get that first aid kit and check if you’ve still got a fever.” I lie on the ground and start doing crunches. Show him I’m fine. I’m ready to go. I’ve never needed a jerk with a doctor degree telling me what to do. Who needs a doctor. I’ve got God. I’m fighting a big one tonight. Jonah Corley. Tough guy. Blond hair. Giant. Too big to be fast though. I’ve never fought him before. Big man thought he was too good for a kid like me. But now I’m a big man too. Mick sits next to me with a temperature stick. Shoves it in my mouth. It stabs into the bottom of my tongue like a knife. I gag. He glances at his watch. “Only a few more seconds,” he promises. I try to make my breath colder. Think about icicles. Mountains. Popped tires in December. Sleeping in a snowstorm. He yanks it out. “A hundred,” Mick tells me, “a little high.” I let out my breath. A little’s not enough for him to keep me out. He knows it too. Mick puts his hand on my shoulder. Looks at me hard. “You sure you’re feeling okay, Jack?” he asks. I nod. “Then get out there and win.” I was twenty-two when I got my first interview. Everyone else seemed surprised. “What would a reporter want with a boxer kid like you?” they asked. I wasn’t surprised. I was a good boxer. Great, even. It was a matter of time someone noticed. “Then why not this interview?” they asked. “What do you have to lose?” I couldn’t think of an answer. Mary dressed me up. But I wanted her to. Needed her to. Needed to look the part, needed to calm down. I can take a hundred hits to the head, easy, but give 42
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F I C T I O N me a jerk with a tape recorder, it all falls to shit. Mary held my hand though. Told me I was going to be great. Told me I was handsome and strong and I could take down this interview. Not like I needed that pep talk crap. Twenty-two-year-olds don’t need girlfriends holding their hand. I didn’t mind hearing it, though. Kissed her on the forehead. We walked to the interview together. The jerk with a tape recorder introduced himself when we got into his office. Small. Size of a bathroom. Scent of one, too. He told us to take a seat. Can’t remember his name. Was from some local nobody radio station. Can’t remember the name of that either. But his shirt was buttoned to the top and tucked in at the bottom. Big greasy part in his hair. The type you just want to punch. Didn’t matter, I wasn’t here to do that. For once, I was just there to talk. He started with easy questions. What’s your name? What’s your age? How long have you been fighting? Then he switched it up, got trickier. What’s the culture around amateur boxing? How do you respond to the increasing rate of marital abuse in the boxing community? Um. Ah. Can you ask that again? “What do you say to the multiple charges of assault on your record?” he asked. He smelled like the tiny, windowless room. He smelled like crap. “Well…I…” I didn’t know what to do. Punch him? No. Couldn’t do that. Had to just sit there. Take the blows. Take them or give up. “Do you think your aggression stems from the fighting, or do you fight because you’re psychologically more aggressive?” His tape recorder whirred. Like it was cheering him on. “What?” I asked. I looked over at Mary. Her little hands were curled into fists. “Mr. Clark, do you think your slow mind is a product of years of brain damage?” I knew I should say something. Do something. I just couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. “Shut up!” It was Mary. She’d gotten up from her seat. Both fists pressed against the jerk’s steel desk. “You think because you’ve got a degree from some expensive college you can talk to another human being like that? Jack is a good man, and you’re just a… a snake!” I ran one hand through my hair. Trying to act like a woman didn’t fight my fight. I grabbed her hand, dying to drag her out of there. But her fingers dug into the desk and her heels dug into the floor. He looked taken aback for a moment. “Would you like to be interviewed too?” he asked. “Screw you!” She slammed her hand against the metal. “And screw your interview!” I dragged her to the door. I thought about those words when we were in bed that night. They were pretty good. She was pretty good. Even if I didn’t need her to help me. Even if I wished she would just shut up sometimes. I gave her a big kiss. What more can you ask for than that. TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N First round of the fight is the easiest. In that corner Jonah “Goliath” Corley. In this corner me. We’ve knocked gloves. Now we can be enemies. I run up and hit him with a jab. Clean. Full contact. A good hit. I don’t waste time. He throws a cross. Nails me in the jaw before I can move. He tries again. This time I put my hands up and block it. I feel his punch on the bone, the sharp pain of a bruise to come. Still, no points for him. I move quick. Three uppercuts to his stomach. Bam, bam, bam. The match seems to only get worse. In round three I stumble. Four hits to the head. Damn fever. Round seven I’m on the ground. Everyone thinks it’s a knockout. But I get up and the bell rings. Like a church bell. The hour’s over, mushy brain. Get ready for the next one. Round nine I’m in the corner. Two uppercuts to my face. Jab. Jab. Can’t even get a punch in. Jab to my side. To my head. I’m leaning against the side. Punch after punch. Mick won’t stop screaming. I want to lie on the floor and do crunches and puke. But I hear a voice telling me not to stop. I see that big white light. And I throw a right hook at his jaw. Then a left. He tries to hit me and I duck. Punch, punch. Dodge, dodge. I lunge out of the corner. Now the crowd won’t stop screaming. My head collides with his stomach and he falls into the ropes. I hear him cuss. His mouth guard gives him a lisp. I run up. Three upper cuts to the head. Jab to the chest. Bang, bang. He slides down to the floor. I step back. One. Two. He looks hurt. Real hurt. Three. Four. He’s trying to climb up the side. He better not. Five. Six. I’m not feeling too good either. Puking not good. I don’t think I can fight another round. Seven. Eight. We’re both sweaty, miserable. Pretty soon I’ll be on the ground too. Just not with a ref counting down the seconds. Not with a trainer screaming for me to stand up. Nine. Ten. The crowd goes crazy. “Jack! Jack!” It’s like I’m Jesus on Sunday. I bet Mary’s out there. She’ll be glad. I’m glad too. But right now I just need to fall to my knees again. “I want to go dancing.” My butt’s asleep on the couch. Nine at night. Bud in my hand. Saints versus Raiders blasting in one ear. Mary in the other. “Jack Clark, are you even listening to me?” she says. She’s got a tight red dress on tonight, with her butt popping out the bottom, breasts popping out the top. Surprise attack to the eyes. Head lock me into looking. Sometimes I lecture her about modesty. About chastity. But it’s a fight I easily throw. I’m sure God can let that battle slip. “I’m listening,” I tell her. I am. Until Chris Chamberlain, number fifty-six, runs through the goal line. Touchdown, Saints. Mary doesn’t like my shouting. Tells me to listen. Tells me she wants to go dancing. 44
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F I C T I O N “I have a concussion,” I say. The neighbors boom to some foreigner TV. Our
walls squeak. The apartment can never be quiet. But it’s our home. Our dinky little one bedroom home. It’s where I want to stay. “You always have a concussion,” she whines. She rolls back and forth on her feet. Heel to toe. Heel to toe. “That way I never have to dance.” “Excuse me for trying to add some excitement to our lives.” Mary has stopped rocking. Her shoe crashes loud on the floor. Her blonde hair falls into her face. I roll my eyes. Tell her I love her. Tell her to sit down. “Why can’t we do something for once? You said you’d treat me better this time, you said you’d act like I was a queen. Queens don’t grab beers and watch the Saints lose every Sunday!” I pause the game. Takes a lot to make me pause a game. Takes the goddamn End of Days to make me pause the game. “Why can’t you do something fun for once?” she shouts. “Real men do things with the woman they love!” “Shut up, Mary!” I crush the bottle in my fist. Glass on the carpet. Glass under the TV. Glass lodged in my hand. “Shut up or I’ll show you what I do!” She swears and starts crying. “You said you’d be better this time, Jack. You said you’d treat me right this time.” Blood drips down my hand. All over my hand. Drip. Drip. Drip. Glass going through my palm. She’s made me bleed for real this time. “I went to dinner with you. It made me sick but I went anyways. Now watch the Saints or get out of my face.” She kicks off her shoes. Slams the bedroom door. Cries. I know I should go in with her. I don’t though. Jabari Greer, thirty-three, just got slammed into the field. Out of nowhere. Tackled by some Oakland kid. Jabari’s struggling to get up. It’s a good fight. Can’t miss the end. Today’s match is easy. Boom. Boom. Down goes Ben “Unbendable” Freiberg. Jews aren’t made for fighting. Simple fact. Only takes three upper cuts to the head to mess him up. Only takes four rounds before a KO. I don’t know how he made it so far. Maybe his God really is looking out for him. Means even Jew-God likes me best. Mick tells me nice job. Gives me a water bottle. Tells me about his first fight. He was twelve and the guy was built like a bull. Took the other guy down in one swing. Don’t know if it’s true. One hell of a story though. A slick guy comes into the locker room. Looking like a jerk. But a new kind of jerk. Hair gelled back type. Suits on Saturday type. The type that skips church to go to work. Red tie. Big smile. He introduces himself as Kent Iscar. Hands me his card. Sports manager. Fancy pants sports manager with a fancy pants business card. But Mick seems to like him. So I keep my mouth shut. He says things like, “investing in the future.” Like, “assets,” and “decline of worth.” Mick eats it right up. I don’t listen to a word of that junk. Takes more than that to get me to listen. TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N “Listen, Jacky, can I call you Jacky?” He asks in that quick talking lawyer way that leaves your brain itchy. I nod. Takes more than that. “Jacky, some idiots would say you’ve got skills. Some idiots who don’t see what you and I see. What you have aren’t skills, they’re gifts, they’re blessings. Tell me, Jacky, do you pray a lot?” I nod. Takes more. “Well keep at it, because it’s clearly working out for you.” I’ve thought about that a lot, over the years. Not out loud. That would be pride. Sin. But he’s right. I do have gifts. I can punch guys till they can’t remember their birthdays. Hit them with jabs so hard their teeth abandon ship. A genetic wonder, straight from God. “Stop me if I’m crazy, but I’d go as far as to say God chose you to fight these battles in his name. And I’m a man who believes that God picks the winners and only the winners, don’t you agree?” I nod. More. “So will you let me help you on God’s quest? Jack Clark, you are a modern day messiah. Together, we will spread the good name of the Lord through each one of your victories. Is there anything more you could want?” I shake my head. “You’re a good man Jack Clark, you’re a good Christian. I’ll just go back to my office and write up some legal documents for you to sign, and then this partnership will be official. We’ll be great crusaders, you and I.” I shake his hand. He gives me one of those winning lawyer smiles. “It reminds me of a quote from church school, ‘for we are laborers together with God,’” I tell him. From Corinthians I think. Not sure though, it was always the names that got me. He turns his head towards the door and absentmindedly says, “Hmm? Oh, of course. I think I’ll be on my way. Nice meeting you, Jacky.” And he was gone. First time I ever saw Mary was at a “Noah’s Pub.” She was a dime. Total ten. Blonde hair all the way down her back. Nipples making a surprise appearance through her tank top. Of course I said hi. Of course I sat down. Of course I bought her a drink. Of course she had a boyfriend. Of course I didn’t care. I was an eighteenyear-old twerp. Been boxing since I could pick up my arms. Boyfriends didn’t worry me. Such a little shit. Back then, I was the biggest little shit there was. We were dancing when the boyfriend who didn’t worry me came out of the men’s. Face like a bull dog. Hair like the devil. Arms the size of my little shit torso. Eyes looking at my little shit jeans pressed against his girlfriend’s hot stuff ass. There was no room for Jesus on that dance floor. No room for boyfriends. I would have dragged her off of that little shit too. I would have taken her to the corner of the room too. I would have squeezed her arm and whispered promises of the terrible things about to come her way too. In his shoes. I’d do all the same. If he hadn’t dragged her off of me. I saw him pull his girl outside the bar into the alley. I was such a little shit. I followed them out there. Hid behind some trash cans. Such 46
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F I C T I O N a little shit. Couldn’t let a man do his own business. Couldn’t let him be. He called her a slut. Pushed her against the wall. Called her a bitch. Slapped her across the face. Amateur performance. He left his face completely unprotected. His technique was sloppy. A harsh breeze could have taken him. But Mary just stood there, taking all the hits and returning none. Amateur. Amateur on all sides. I stepped in. More to show them how it was done than anything. Couldn’t take any more bitch slaps and crying. They saw me. He told me to get lost. Right hook to his face. He staggered. Three jabs to his gut. Jab. Jab. Jab. Tried to hit me with the lamest uppercut I’ve ever seen. All power. No direction. Dodged it easy. Another hook. And down goes the giant. God blessed my name since. Like a prophecy. Jack and the giants. The giants and Jack. I take them down, every time, every one. And for it, I steal their treasure. Their title. Their dime. Kent and I chat it up in his office for a long time. Big place with big windows over the big city. He tells me I’m a big deal and he has big plans for how to make me bigger. Big money. Big sponsors. Big match coming up. Against a big guy. The biggest guy. Zach “Zamboni” Philips. Zamboni because he sweeps away everything in his path. Flattens anything in his way. And I’m in his way. And he’s in mine. “Beat this guy, and you’re the top of league. You listening Jacky? If you beat this no good piece of garbage, you’ll be headed for the WPBF.” That’s the heaven we’re trying to reach from our makeshift tower. World Professional Boxing Federation. Big deal. Big names. Big checks. Big. Big. Big. “I can see it now, Jack Clark, top of the top. People will pay thousands to see you punch their favorite fighters. They’ll fill up shopping center waiting for your autograph. You’ll be famous Jacky, I swear.” I nod and take it in. Soak up the words like gauze soaks up blood. “Just one more fight, Jacky, and then we’re in. You’re in.” He smiles his huge smile. His fake smile. But it works just fine. Good as a real one. “Win one more fight. Think you can do that, buddy?” “I always win,” I tell him. And it’s true. So that makes it okay to say. When you’re worth something, it’s okay to know it. It’s okay to say it. I’m sure that’s in the Bible somewhere. It’s what God does, anyway. And what he does, I do. That’s how it works. I strayed from Mary when I was twenty-one. Three years after I met her. I wasn’t a little shit anymore. I was the shit. Got tattoos by then. Got real muscle by then. Real build. A man build. And when you’re the shit and you’ve got tattoos and muscles and an undefeated fighting record, everyone around you knows you’re the shit. Mary knew I was the shit. But so did Stacy. And Trish. And Candice. So I strayed. Sue me. It was a bad day when she found out though. Terrible day. She came home. Wish I could say she was early. Wish I could say I put even a bit of effort into hiding it. Wish I could say that I cared when she opened the bedroom door to find Gwen sweating on top of me. That I cared when she dropped her groceries and threw a little plastic stick across the room, when she left the house crying. It wasn’t until long after she was gone and a short while after Gwen was gone that I cared about anything. That goddamn little plastic stick. That little plastic stick that smelled like TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N piss and those two faded blue lines. Two lines means pregnant. That’s what the box at the drug store told me. Two lines. Two people in one. Two people eating the same thing. Sharing the same body. Two people about to get very big. Big. Big. Big. Didn’t come back for six months. Just packed my bags and left without another word. I trained mostly. Drove up to a mountain and stayed there till I could come back down. Louisiana gets so hot sometimes. It’s nice to cool down. Nice to be left on ice for a while. When I did come back, I expected things to have changed. They didn’t change. Mary was still there, still skinny, still a ten. Still willing to take me back. Barely took any promises, any dates, any fake faces and jerk suits. I barely had to change. No baby though. Only one line, one person, one Mary. I asked her about it one night in bed. She blushed. Looked away. Miscarriage. She said. It was a miscarriage. A car accident. A mistake. This was a fine answer. Even if it wasn’t true. Even if the second line on that plastic thing wasn’t lost. Even if it was scrubbed away till there was nothing left. I’m a good Christian. And that’s one hell of a story. I am focused. Ready. Ten eggs for breakfast ready. Woke up at dawn ready. Ready for Zamboni. Ready for this fight. Ready for the WPBF. Ready. Ready. Ready. “You ready?” Mick asks, ducking into my locker room. I nod. “Well, someone’s here to wish you luck before your big match,” he says. Steps aside. Mary walks in. Wearing a suit and pants. Disappointing. But I don’t let it break me. I’m ready. I’m focused. I wait till the door swings closed to say anything. I don’t want Mick hearing me talk to her. Even our words are private. And that’s how I want it to stay. Keep our business private. Keep the body ready. Stay ready. Ready. Ready. Ready. “You’re not here to wish me luck,” I tell her. I’m ready. “I’m not here to wish you luck,” she agrees. “You’ve never wished me luck. You aren’t picking today to start,” I tell her. I’m focused. “I’m not here to start,” she agrees. “So what do you want Mary?” I look hard at her face. It tells me nothing. “Money? A quickie?” I’m ready. “I want to tell you I’m leaving.” “Figures.” I walk to the other side of the locker room. “You never stay for big things.” I pace up and down the floor. “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with you.” “No Jack,” she says with more force. More urgency. “I’m not just leaving the stadium.” I stop pacing. “I wanted to come here and tell you before I get my stuff out of the house.” “Don’t be stupid,” is all I can say. “Goodbye Jack,” she says. She comes over. Quick kiss on the cheek. “Good luck.” The door swings shut before I can say another word. The match begins. I’m ready. I’m focused. Uppercut. Left hook. End of 48
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F I C T I O N round one. I’m focused. I don’t even care that she’s gone. Jab. Jab. Cross. End of round two. I’m ready. It’s not the first time we split up anyways. Right hook. Left hook. Dodge. End of round three. But this time it feels different. Cool. Calculated. Jab. Jab. Jab. End of round four. Like a surgeon with a scalpel. Sterilized. Big punch in the jaw. Punch. Punch. End of round five. Enough. I’m ready. Zamboni smashed my face. Nose bleeding. Teeth bleeding. End of round six. Zamboni jabs me in the stomach till I can’t breathe. End of round seven. Zamboni has me on the ropes. End of round eight. Zamboni has me on the ground. The world is black. Enough. Enough. “You bitch,” I say, walking through the door. Boxes on the table. Boxes on the bed. Boxes on the floor. Boxes everywhere. Mary looks up. “How’d the match go?” “You bitch.” She can see on my face how the match went. She can see it in my busted lip. In my bleeding gums. In my broken nose. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Uppercut to her face. She doesn’t see it coming. Stumbles. Two jabs to the stomach. She curls over. Cussing. Tells me to calm down through her heavy breathing. I go for cross but she rolls out of the way. She’s gotten better since her last fight. Launches her fist at my broken nose. Full contact. I cry out. She’s gotten much better. I smile. Right hook. Left hook. Right hook. Left hook. She’s against the wall. Right hook. Left hook. Cross. Cross. Cross. Cross. She slides down the wall, crying, taking it. Cross. Cross. Cross. Cross. She tries to swipe back, terrible technique. I grab her arm and pin her. Pin her to our wall. Pin her to our home. Pin her till she stops struggling and I just hold her there. One. Two. The moment seems to burn forever. To have no end. No possible finale worth waiting for. Worth living to see. Three. Four. Like the moment the priest says God will never forgive your sins. The moment you know the fight is over. The moment you see one line instead of two. Five. Six. Mary will forgive me. Mick and Kent will lie for me. I was in the locker room. I couldn’t have gotten home to see her. Is she all right officer? Will she ever dance again? We always loved to dance. Seven. Eight. I’m a good Christian. God picked me. Up until tonight God had picked me and was raising me to the top. He can let this battle slip. I wasn’t even here. I was talking to Mick. I was talking to God. Nine. Ten. At least it’s one hell of a story.
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A R T Masconomet Regional High School / Grade 12
W h i t n e y
H a t f i e l d
My Best Friend
d r a w i n g 50
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A R T Burlington High School / Grade 12
I r i n a
G r i g o r y e v a
Summer Camp
d r a w i n g
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
M i c h a e l
R a f f e r t y
Delray
p h o t o g r a p h y
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P O E T R Y Amherst Regional High School / Grade 11
C e c e l i a
B i s h o p
The Absence Baby The absence baby Now sits in my stomach, cretin-eyed, Its palms open, Strange and wanting in the dark of my clean chamber. Oh, and its cry, Unmistakable, Ringing off of the floor where you and I used to lay, Tracing each other’s bodies in circles. Sometimes it’s mutant feet Shake me awake from the inside out At two o’clock in the morning, And I, Gasping, Turn and curve into the empty half of the mattress. Meanwhile, the absence baby Is scraping its newly formed teeth Along the inner concaves of my ribcage. Its small and ugly fists are rooted in my throat. I expect that someday The absence baby will leap from my narrowed face, Suddenly deer-limbed and pale like chemo, Threatening to pull back the stars from A black-shocked sky. Until then, I am clenching my vitals, checking its lungs, Making sure that it’s still breathing. It shrieks. Only by seeing the outline of its slight and furious heart, Do I know that you are not coming back.
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
H a n n a
K i m
Fr a c t a l
m i x e d
m e d i a
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
T a y l e r
S t a n d e r
M i l ky w a y
p h o t o g r a p h y
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
R u t h
W o o s t e r
Barber Shop
p h o t o g r a p h y
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F I C T I O N Amherst Regional High School / Grade 11
C e c e l i a
B i s h o p
Idols
One night that August we crept onto the football field, some of us totally naked and only half-ashamed, others in our underwear, faces painted and young, all carrying the flinty rage of the unbottled teenager. Maybe it was boredom that gave us the idea to burn the scoreboard; maybe it was our shared adolescent frustration. It didn’t matter. Andrea’s hair was red, a flame against the height of the sky, brighter than the streetlamp or the tilted stars. Watching her across the field, suddenly I was intensely aware of our matching skin, marked, girlish. I wanted to touch her. She looked back at me for a minute. Then—we needed a lighter, where was the lighter? The boys struck fire to the scoreboard, electric lightbulbs popping in the heat like insects. As Andrea and the others cheered and screamed, suddenly free, I stood apart, still watching her as I felt the heat from the fire on my face. Each of us was reborn that night, skin sticky and ripe against the humidity that was that town, so small, so deaf. A little drunk, a little high maybe, all of us. In the end we burned the entirety of the field, each of us only pretending to have no fear. We trembled in the glory of it. Then, before the police came, we escaped back into the dark, jumping the fence that held back the slanting woods from the school. “Katrin!” Andrea grabbed my hand as we ran so that we ran together, kind of naked, kind of scared. She gave me one of her long smiles, and I saw that at seventeen she still had the saddest eyes in the world. Andrea’s younger brother by a year, Timmy, had wanted to come with us, but Andrea had said no. I had been in love with Andrea since the fifth grade. None of us knew exactly what was wrong with her brother, and she didn’t talk about it. But we knew, deep down, that he was different. Once, at her twelfth birthday party in early December, hours after everyone had gotten tired of playing hide-and-seek in the snow and everyone had gone inside for cake, someone remembered. “Where’s Timmy?” We found him outside a half-hour later, freezing and wet, weeping and up a tree, still waiting to be found. He’d pissed himself. “Andrea,” he kept saying. “Andrea.” His hands were shaking. “You piece of shit,” Andrea said, and we turned to look at her (we hadn’t yet learned her language). “You idiot, why didn’t you come in?” She turned and went back inside. Later, I found her in the bathroom, crying. “He just messes up. He just messes up all the time. He needs so much help.” She looked at me with an intensity and a rage that I could not yet understand. Even then, I wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt. “He didn’t know to come in,” I offered quietly, and she looked away. “Yeah. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know. That’s the thing.” 58
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F I C T I O N 3:00 a.m. the early morning before the burning, and I lay next to Andrea on her living room floor as she breathed in a t-shirt that was too big for her. The TV was on because it was always on at Andrea’s house—she said it helped her fall asleep—and in the dark of her night I lay awake listening as I watched her. As her small lungs worked automatically, the valves of my heart opened and closed, blood pouring into my darkest chambers, expanding. Andrea turned on her quilt on the floor, reached out to find me next to her in the dark, touched my elbow. “Hi. You’re beautiful.” “Go back to sleep. You’re dreaming.” “No, really. You’re beautiful in the morning,” she whispered. “You should know.” “So are you.” I didn’t breathe as she reached up and traced my collarbone with one finger. “Katrin?” “Yes?” “Can I kiss you?” “Yes.” “How are you so perfect?” Timmy asked me when I was in seventh grade, leaning against the door in the front hall as I waited for Andrea to come downstairs so we could walk to school together. Quickly, and so quietly I didn’t know he was doing it until he was, he reached out and touched my hair. “Nobody’s perfect.” I said, and I moved away from his hand. “Yeah, but what about you?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you, then?” I didn’t know how to answer him. So I didn’t say anything. “Andrea thinks you’re perfect,” Timmy said, rocking slightly against the door. “Andrea, perfect Andrea, perfect Andrea.” I blushed. As Andrea and I touched each other quietly on that stiff Saturday morning, I was unlatching like a sail. Opening, opening, unhooked eye facing the sun. And in my mind—Perfect Andrea, perfect Andrea, perfect Andrea. The world burst into flame, and I knew for sure that lips could be wings. Later, after I got up to pee, my feet led me back to Andrea on the floor. She was almost hard to look at, so beautiful and angular on her flannel quilt, all knees and mouth and bruised skinny-girl hips and hair like fire. It almost hurt, that hair, so bright. I pulled the quilt up over us, trembling against her sweaty warmth. I had to think to breathe. In her half-sleep she found my hand and sighed. “You okay?” she asked. “Yeah.” I was shaking. “I’m okay.” And by the time Andrea’s parents had gotten up the next morning and the usual ceremonies had taken place—breakfast, newspaper, shower—both of us sat side by side on stools in the kitchen, red hair against blonde, chafed heels swinging, sometimes touching under the table. I think Andrea’s mother saw but pretended she hadn’t, and her father slipped out quietly without saying anything. I was syrupy in love. TMC Winter 2014
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F I C T I O N “Andrea,” Timmy said later that day. “Want to come with you. Tonight.” He stood outside her bedroom door as we painted our faces with some crusty Halloween makeup from five years ago. I was watching Andrea change her shirt in the mirror. She was watching me watch her. “Piss off, Timmy.” “Andrea.” Timmy pleaded, and his hands were shaking as he looked at his older sister, his face half-broken, half-full of admiration. “Timmy, I said piss off!” She turned to stare at him. Timmy’s face suddenly changed, and he put both hands over his ears. Suddenly, he was crying. “Piss off Timmy! Piss off Timmy, Timmy, piss off! No, Andrea piss off! Andrea.” And he was gone. “Why were you so angry with him?” I asked later as we were walking to the football field in the dark, both in our underwear and war paint. “You could have let him come.” She stopped walking. Suddenly her eyes were mirrors, her jaw was a lock with a key, and I could not access that bitter mouth that I loved. For the first time, as I looked into her face I felt a huge divide stretch between us like a minefield. I stepped off, afraid of being swallowed or blown away. After the burning, we reconvened in an all-night diner on Main Street, and we didn’t speak of it. All of us had changed back into the clothes we had worn earlier that day, and the girls had washed the oily paint from our hair in the scarred diner bathroom. Once again we looked, if tired and a little ragged, human. Although none of us said this, we were all frightened by our ability to make such a smooth transformation from monster to child. “That was good,” Thomas said, and got up to have a cigarette outside. “That was really good.” Susanne blushed. Michael was silent, Chris distracted and anxiously high. Andrea touched my foot under the table. No one had the money for the cheap waffles anyway, so we left. Back at Andrea’s house that night, her mother met us at the door. “Where’s Timmy?” Her eyes were opened so wide that they could have grabbed each of us and shaken us like panicky hands. “Did you bring Timmy with you?” And suddenly we were drawing back. Suddenly someone had punched me in the stomach. Andrea’s mouth was filled with lead. “He’s not with us. He didn’t come with us.” “Where’s Timmy?” Andrea’s dad went out looking with a flashlight while we sat on the couch. Andrea was somewhere I couldn’t reach, her mouth opening and closing slowly, her eyes seeing something I could not. I had never seen a person look so empty or so scared. I wanted to touch her, but I couldn’t. 60
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F I C T I O N “Andrea—” “I think you should go home,” she interrupted. She didn’t look at me when she said it. “I think you should go home.” “Okay. Andrea, I—” “Just go. You should go.” “Okay.” I shut the front door quietly. The tears came easily on the walk to my house. They found him the next day, of course, under the bleachers. I imagine that his skin, burnt, fell off his body in ashy flakes as they lifted him out, and I picture his melted rubber soles melded to the metal of the stands. His hair, which used to be red like Andrea’s, had been eaten by a greater flame. He had no face left. Crouching on the floor of my kitchen that morning, pressed up against the wall and biting the palms of my hands, unable to speak, I could only wonder how long he had waited for us to find him that night. Then I threw up. None of the rest of the kids who started the fire went to the funeral, but it didn’t matter. Andrea was there. At the end, she knelt beside the coffin and rocked on the balls of her feet. “Timmy, come in. It’s too cold out here. Please, come inside, Timmy, come back inside. I’m sorry. Timmy, come inside, please come inside. It’s too cold.” At the very end, her cousin had to take her by the arm and bring her back to the car. As she was guided past, she looked right into me, but saw nothing. I saw that we were universes apart. I don’t sleep anymore. Not really, anyways, not like I used to before. Now I’m nervous even in my depthless dreams, those blank anxious spaces which sometimes turn into nightmares on black wheels, taking me back to the places I don’t want to go. “Timmy, come inside. Timmy, it’s too cold.” Then I get confused. “Piss off, Timmy, Andrea, come back, piss off, Andrea, Andrea perfect, perfect Andrea.” Some nights I just dream of the fire and that stupid football scoreboard, burning bright as Andrea’s hair, burning brighter than the stars. Sometimes I dream of Andrea asleep on her living room floor. She’s kicked off her blankets, but she still has her wool socks on even though it’s August and it’s hot, so hot. This time I know that if I touch her she will come apart into ash, that her skin will burn mine. In my dreams she never wakes up. And in the shameless eye of truth I am too scared to touch her.
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A R T Whitman-Hanson Regional High School / Grade 12
D e v e r y
L e M a y
Vibrant Life
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Oakmont Regional High School / Grade 11
C e l e s t e
I n f a n t i n o
Tea Time with the Innocents
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P O E T R Y North Quincy High School / Grade 12
Pieces
Rachel Couture
The things I do remember are as vivid as they can get— either bright, colorful and beautiful, like a flower about to bloom, or dark, dragged on and ominous, like a storm cloud waiting to burst. Sitting in my dad’s pickup truck feeding the dirty, yet entertaining, seagulls on Castle Island. Listening to my father sing “My Girl,” as if he is on stage, and my sister and I are the only ones in the crowd. Every day, trips to the corner store were ordered by my parents. “Here’s a dollar, go somewhere,” became a phrase I could repeat backwards. When my parents split, I made the connection. “Get Lost.” “Go, so we can fight and hide everything from you.” That’s what they should have said. To lessen the surprise To dumb down the hurt To weaken the blow that flew right into my stomach, when my father decided to tell us. In his pickup truck Singing “My Girl” Putting the pieces together.
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A R T Marshall Simonds Middle School / Grade 8
S e r i n a
K h a l i f a
Lonely
p h o t o g r a p h y TMC Winter 2014
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A R T Oakmont Regional High School / Grade 11
C e l e s t e
I n f a n t i n o
Deficit Omne Quod Nasciture
p a i n t i n g
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A R T Groton School / Grade 12
D e r e k
X i a o
The City by the Bay
d r a w i n g
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P O E T R Y Ayer Shirley Regional High School / Grade 12
Emotions
Jason Mills
Emotions are like the ocean, In constant fluctuation, With steady rises and crashes Due to the relentless pulls Of outside forces. Emotions are like the ocean, So vast and deep, Always disguising the truth Of what lies beneath. Emotions are like the ocean, Full of rushes and waves of excitement That seem everlasting, But in one moment are crushed By the pull of the undertow. Emotions are like the ocean, Constantly searching for a life boat That will make everything better, Constantly searching for a way out. Emotions are like the ocean: A vast array of feelings, So wild. So calm. So rough. So gentle. Consuming anything And everything.
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
R u t h
W o o s t e r
Envir onmental Confor mity
d r a w i n g
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A R T Whitman-Hanson Regional High School / Grade 12
E m m a
M o r r i l l
Andr ogony
d r a w i n g
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A R T Brimmer and May School / Grade 12
H a n n a
K i m
Self-Portrait
d r a w i n g
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TMC Winter 2014
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No. 10
OUTBREAK
Irina Grigoryeva
mixed m e d ia
Burlington High School / Grade 12
ISSN 2156-7298
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