Thoroughfare Fall 2014

T H E Thoroughfare

A R T S Fall 2014

A Johns Hopkins University Publication

Content 1. Violinist (COVER)

14. Aberlady Bay

39. Sunday Best

Mackenzie Lane

C. Orlando

2. Cartography

15. To Nana: The Words I think Papa

40. Buried Among Fireflies

Casey Peta

Wanted to Say

Kat Lewis

4. Salat Al-Isha

Madeleine Marie

43. Woman

H. Collin

16. Once Upon a Timepiece

4-5. Window to the Soul

Elizabeth Mattson

44. My First Boyfriend

Biobele Braide

17. Time Capsule

5. Strange Company

Elizabeth Mattson

45. Twenty Questions

Si Yeon-Lee

23. Expectations

Diamond Pollard

6. The Remains

Biobele Braide

46. Wanderer

Anna Silk

24. The Idea Of

Biobele Braide

7. Glass in Black and White

47. Beastly Little Boy

25. SSG

7. 1.

Ruth Portes

52. Isola di Burano

C. Orlando

36. Rooftop Vigil

Hana Chop

8. Ollie

Anna Silk

53. Take Your Shot

Nadine Joseph

37. The Children Of Nanny Black

Keven Perez

13. Little Red

Kat Lewis

62. Ballerina

38. No Metro, Anna Silk

Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Aafia Syed

Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Aafia Syed

Elizabeth Winkelhoff Aafia Syed

Emily Dorffer

Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Cartography

Casey Peta

Wait, they don’t love you like I love you…* A moth-eaten world map from the flea market rolled and unrolled, folded and unfolded time and time again, brought down from the shelf in my closet.

It looks like Babe Ruth hit Pangaea with a baseball bat.

It’s all crumbling, I mean look at Canada.

Like a cookie. On my map, Canada is pistachio-green, Russia, the shape of Babe the Blue Ox, but wine-colored, and America, with a tail like the letter “q”, the color of straw. The periwinkle oceans get their waves from the crumples in the page. All amidst brown rings from coffee mugs. And that sticky corner from that one night we had breakfast for dinner.

Wait, they don’t know you like I know you.

From Florence to Philly, Dublin to

Wait, they can’t write you like I wrote you.

You make me want to tear a page out from your section of the dictionary.

Doritos, dark chocolate (never a Baby Ruth, baby), and you, Dorian; put it all in my pocket and carry it around, maybe ride a plane or train with it, because I feel like it. Not ‘cus I have to.

Strewing my precious dried and pressed flowers (I tightened the screws on my magical flower-pressing box and then tightened them again) all over the globe. An explosion of color from a volcano (like my paisley seat cushion) petals for the brown coffee rings, and a red-penned stem, yeah. Where’d you go? You fell off the map. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

London, San Francisco to NYC—bright red lines. My fingers flutter along them like a Cabbage White butterfly (dusty and pale enough to be called a moth, really). What does the weather map say for us today?

* From “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003) Page 3

Salat Al-Isha

H. Collin

Before I went to sleep, I prayed to God, A God to whom I’ve never prayed before.

My feet were clean, my hands crossed in regard And with my friends, crouched down with head to floor.

I did not know the words they sang aloud.

Unsynchronized and poorly said was my Attempt to sing along their words, profound, “Allahu Akbar,” words I once decried.

And while I prayed and asked to be made whole I also thanked him for his universe, With piety, repented on my soul And I thought him successfully coerced.

But when the words were done, and prayer ceased, I knew I had not found my inner peace.

Page 4

Window to the Soul

Strange Company

Si Yeon Lee

His toes are scarred Black from too many dark nights The blanket never quite covers his body He is always in the womb The mother in the grave reaches her legs out of the grassless ground to engulf him Soak him in her waters There he would meet strange company What did the violinist on the subway say to him that bright, bright night

Biobele Braide

Page 5

The Remains

Anna Silk

There was some magical spell that held the house in a bubble, a thin film of such fragility that it was impenetrable. “I will never again be able to stand on those stairs again,” she mused, gazing at the whitewashed steps. She saw visions of her five-year old self scampering in August among the flowerbeds, tripping on the sprinkler, dropping a popsicle on the hot cement until it drooled into a pool of national pride, the colors bleeding together and evaporating into the humid air. December and the snow falling silently, blanketing the lawn with possibilities of sleds, visions of hot chocolate and wooly scarves, her younger self fiddling with the tootight parka her mother forced her to wear. April and hide and go seek in the ferns with her best friend, her neighbor, Harrison.

Flying on the swing that creaked with age and dripped with the dew of June. All this was now obsolete in reality, never to be retrieved again except in memory, her old home taken away from her. Anna stood there and felt, despite her best intentions not to cry, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, felt her nose become tight and a small sniffle just begin to originate at the base of her throat. She turned away, feigning an eyelash, that age-old excuse, as her father surveyed the home, muttering that the bushes were trimmed wrong but then exclaiming with joy that “the paint job is still there!”. The street, the houses she had gone into as a girl to play with schoolmates, the cracked sidewalks where she had learned to ride her bike, swam before her eyes. So strange that such a short period in her life, four years it was, could have engrained themselves so much on Anna’s memory that even in Los Angeles, 6,000 miles away, when it was a cloudy day and rivulets of rain ran down her bedroom window, she could still smell the stench of wet sand in the corner of her backyard, the squeal of her baby brother as they both stood in the rain and watched a balloon fly up into the sky, wondering if it would hit a plane, or even reach the moon! She pulled her parka closer around her as her dad came back and thumped on the car hood. “Better get going,”. His salt and pepper hair covered a pate just beginning to bald, a hint of wrinkles on the corners of his eyes. Where had the time gone? And she, herself, dressed up for dinner, eyeliner on, a phone in her pocket. Where was that little girl in jellies and lace socks, with short corduroy overalls and a sunhat?

C. Orlando where has the ash gone? knocked off the end of my first cigarette, my first breath of intoxicating nicotine, and that ephemeral, swirling smoke–like a fire burning through every airway and every vessel until I’m ablaze and I’m burning too. but where did the ash go? because I’ve been burning for so long, I’ve lost sight of my ignition and without reason for my flames am left to question whether I continue on in light–or descend into only darkness.

Glass in Black and White

Aafia Syed

Page 7

Ollie

Nadine Joseph 1.

I don’t remember planting the lemon tree in our backyard. You told me that when I was four we bought a tiny packet of seeds from the store across the street. You told me that I cried when we had to bury them into the ground; I said that the seeds would suffocate.

I can imagine it: Mama, don’t! They can’t breathe! You explained that the seeds had to go to sleep now, that the hole was really a bed and we had to cover them with dirt to keep them warm. They would only wake up when they were warm enough. Don’t worry,

Ollie, they’re just sleeping.

I don’t remember planting those seeds. But I don’t remember a lot of things.

I don’t remember waking up this morning to nothing but the lonely cold air. I don’t remember frying the last egg in the carton for breakfast or walking myself to the bus stop. I don’t even remember riding the bus home from school.

But I remember this: the sharp scent of fresh lemons growing on our tree. The green branches, drooping under the pressure of all that fruit. Useless fruit, you call it. Fruit that couldn’t truly fill up a person, but only hovered around the taste of a meal. You would say this and I would nod because you are my mother. Of course, I agreed with you. Lemons were useless.

2.

Its been three days since you’ve left and someone has been knocking on the door.

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Outside the window all of the trees are colored with the bright red obscenity of fall. I can see the trees bending with the wind in an intricate dance that I don’t know the steps to. I am glad that I am inside the house where everything is warmth and simple steps to the television to lower the volume.

Bzzzzzzzz Bzzzzzzz Knock!

I think back to all the other times that you left and how this is not like those other times. You always left a note. Left enough eggs in the fridge. You never told me where you were going but it never mattered because you always came back.

The doorbell buzzes again. I imagine different noises. The fast zzzzzzzz of a mosquitoin your ear. A mechanic revving up the engine of a car. The sound a vacuum makes when it has swallowed something it shouldn’t have swallowed.

I get up when I cannot mask the noise of the doorbell any longer. I open the door and there is someone I have been waiting for. He is not here to bring me eggs, even though my stomach is grumbling. He is wearing a starched stiff uniform and is mopping up the sweat that has procured over his brow. He holds out his hand and I realize that he wants me to shake it but I don’t. I want to close the door and pretend that this man is not here when you are not.

But I can’t and he steps in, uninvited, and this is the beginning of the end.

3.

Five pellets.

On the back of the fish food container it says that five pellets is the recommendedamount to feed a beta fish every day. I look into the little glass bowl that sits on my new bedside table and I watch the little fish gulp down the food. I wonder if it chews because all I see is the fish opening its mouth and sucking down the pellet, like a vacuum.

Page 9

On my other bedside table is a picture of a man and a red newborn baby that is supposed to be me. Another thing that I do not remember. The man is much younger than he looks now, wearing a bright orange tee shirt that screams ‘SAILING!’. This man is the father that I didn’t know I had.

I put the picture in a drawer so I don’t have to look at ‘SAILING!’ anymore.

It has been exactly one month and three days since the police knocked on my door and told me that my mother had died. Five of those days were spent trying to locate any relative that I had. One of them was spent at the police department; I was questioned about my mom. Do you have any idea where she might be? Does she leave you like this often? You should have been put in a foster home-no kid should have to live with this.

The rest of the days have been here, in this small apartment. My father’s house.

4.

This man who is my father does not understand me. Every day I ask to go back to my house, back to my lemon tree. I want to smell its bright scent and feel the rough bark on my back. Out the window now I can see an apple tree, full to bursting with fruit. Useful fruit.

“Ollie, we can’t. Someone else lives there now-your mom was only renting it.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and stares at me for a response. He is starting to think that something is wrong with me.

I stare at him. There is nothing wrong with me. Everything in my life has all of a sudden decided to turn on me; my mom for him, my house for his apartment, these ugly trees outside for my lemon tree. Doesn’t he understand that this is what’s wrong?

He kneels down next to me. “I know you miss your mom, Ollie, but she disappeared after you were born. For no reason.I don’t know what she said about me, but you have to know that I am here for you. You have to give me a chance.”

Page 10

He hugs me and I don’t want to hug him back but what he has said has confused me.All of a sudden, I am an octopus with too many arms and no legs. I slide to the floor and my arms lie limp around me.

He sighs, “Oliver” 5.

I am walking down a street that is more familiar to me than my own two hands. It is lined with houses of all various colors: aquamarine, sunshine, periwinkle, and ruby. Like a crazy women picked out the colors.

I stop in front of the blue house. My house. It is a squat, small building with two windows on either side of the white front door.

Everything about it is just a bit smudged. Fingerprints smudged on the windows. Dirt smudged on the front door and the walkway.

The front door is locked like I expected it to be, but the back gate is not. I walk into the backyard.

There are no more lemons on the lemon tree. They are not even scattered around the base of the trunk. The tree also seems to have shrunken several inches since I have last seen it. Even the color is slightly off. I think back to all of the years that I have lived here, in this house, with my mother and of all of the times that I sat beneath this tree waiting for her to come back when she left. The tree never changed in all of those years, but now I wouldn’t recognize it.

It looks dead.

6.

The apartment is lively, playing christmas music, when I get back. My dad is at the stove coaxing come breakfast eggs to be scrambled. I stare at the eggs sizzling in the pan-he has added some cheese for taste-and I am struck by a feeling I can’t name.

“Oliver, where have you been?” His eyes are stern. “You can’t leave the house without telling me first, okay?”

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I don’t answer him because I am so shocked that he is there making eggs for me when I was gone--no one ever has before. That the lemon tree in my backyard is dying. That my mother has left me and, this time, is not coming back.

My dad is giving me that look again, like he is becoming more and more sure that something is wrong with me, so I go up to him and do something that surprises him.

I hug him. “I’m okay.” I whisper, “I’ll give you a chance.”

7.

This time, when I go back to my house, I am not surprised that the lemon tree has died. That the leaves are dried and curled, crunchy underneath my feet. My mother has not come back for me and somehow that is okay.

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Little Red Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Page 13

Aberlady Bay

Mackenzie Lane It’s the good kind of sinking-in sort of feeling, that warmth that starts in the belly and rises to envelop you. Like when you’re sitting at the dinner table and everyone is too busy talking instead of eating. Or when you get out of the pool at night and the chill bites into you so you wrap a towel around your shoulders, burrowing yourself into the terrycloth. Or when you’re looking through that window at the top of the staircase for Dad to come home from work and you can smell Mom cooking something with onions in the kitchen and Dad’s big silver car pulls into the driveway and you run down the stairs because he never comes home this early.

The last time I felt that sinking-in was when we were lying on the beach at Aberlady Bay. There were these grasses nearby that swayed in the wind above your chest. The sky was dreary gray and the wind slipped across our skin and over our sweaters. You were quiet. I was quiet. I think you might have fallen asleep before me. I felt the warmth of you against me and, like a heavy winter coat, it propelled the wind away so that I could only feel a tickle brush along the cheek exposed to it. I felt it again when we stood outside your house, watching the international space station sail across the starlight on a brisk April night. In my peripheral vision, I could see the TV screen flickering through the window.

You were my winter coat, my home, that feeling of sinking in and never reaching the bottom. I think of this sometimes when I see the stars somehow pierce through the smog of the city I have returned to: you, holding my hand as we watched spacecraft spin around the earth, like we were part of a movie that had no beginning or end and the sky was the camera and you I were the extras who fell back into the crowd and made up our own story.

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To Nana: Words I Think Papa Wanted to Say Madeleine Marie It was a gray day.

There was a gust of wind as I came in from ice fishing.

One of the heaters in the fish house stopped working within an hour but everything was settled; seat cushions adjusted, poles angled right, the radio had even picked up. No one left.

I pushed through the front door and there you were.

Already sitting down at the supper table, peeling and chopping.

You never believed I’d come home empty handed.

You were the perfect puzzle came home empty handed.

You were the perfect puzzle piece to not only my life but to our quiet, cozy lake nebagamon world.

You looked just as beautiful as the day I met you but your roasted potatoes and carrots had aged with taste after fifty years.

I found my spot on the back porch steps.

It took me longer than usual to sit down, the railing did the lowering for me.

As I cleaned the fish I noticed my strokes to free him of his scales were no longer smooththey were jerky and frustrating.

And the cold got to my mind quicker.

After the smell of melted butter and baked fish had warmed the house, we settled in the living room.

My enveloping green sofa-chair had never looked so safe.

Everything hurt. Numb fingers, stiff legs, itchy eyes.

Not nearly enough beard to stay warm anymore.

Face dry and cracked. The layers came off; the chair hugged back.

I could tell this was going to be my last fishing trip but I didn’t know how to tell you.

I didn’t know how to tell you I was tired, that I was sorry, that I loved you.

So I gave a closed mouth smile and told you the fish was good.

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Once Upon a Timepiece Elizabeth Mattson Analog clocks or digital clocks.

Big clocks or small.

Clocks in general.

Dart a glance at them as Every second passes quick or slow.

Quartz can keep them Righted as well, because since

Fob watches are classy,

Sundials people have known

Grandfather clocks more so.

Time is fleeting, precious, money, essential,

Hour after minute moving and turning,

Verifiable and quantifiable,

Inching cyclically forward

“When� a valuable resource.

Just to tick back into place again.

XII is a beginning and an end.

Keys kept old clocks wound,

Youth brings age brings youth, and never points to

Lest we lose our place in time Maybe create a temporal anomaly, Never to be repaired or realized, Page 16

Pendulums and

Or just be wrong all but twice daily.

Zero.

Time Capsule

Elizabeth Mattson I was glad I was in the shade. It was hot enough that I couldn’t touch the head of the shovel without getting burned, and I constantly needed to rub salty sweat away from my eyes. My shirt was glued to my backpack, which at least let a little air in when it swung away from me. I checked my GPS. It was off by over a mile, but at least the clock seemed accurate.

Quarter to twelve. Sara had said that if she wasn’t there by eleven, she wouldn’t make it, so I grumbled a curse about the lack of mountaintop phone reception and set out alone.

Besides the shovel, I had in my backpack the map, some trail mix, a bottle of water, and the picture I’d drawn in the fourth grade of where our capsule was buried. I could make out a boulder twice the size of my mother nearly split in half by a cleft in the middle, some pine trees, and a tiny, scummy pond off in the distance. A hazy memory supplied a trail only three or four minutes of walking away.

Fifteen years ago we hadn’t had a particular destination in mind, only hoping for a secluded, open place we could have fun finding again years later. Mom had insisted that if we took pictures along the way or kept a perfect record of the trail half the adventure would be gone. Dad had accused her of wanting to be a pirate. She was the one who had begged for weeks that we find the capsule while we still had time, until I had decided that it was the least we could do.

I was at the entrance to the park, not the main one. It was one of the little side gates that were farther away from the campsites and the hiking trail, but closer to the rivers that you could find fish in without accidentally hooking somebody. We hadn’t been there to fish, but had all agreed that it would be better to be away from the crowds and the hikers. Back then I had hoped to see some mysterious wildlife, but we were too loud and all we found were rabbits, squirrels, and boring normal birds.

Page 17

I sighed as I entered the forest. The path was dry dirt, with sharp pebbles trodden into it by the traffic. I wondered if someone had brought a car through, since the branches on the trees started to lean in above head level. The underbrush was mostly dead from the drought, and I occasionally stepped on a leaf that was shriveled and dead but still green. They didn’t crunch like the leaves in the fall. I felt alone with just my footsteps and breath.

My GPS kept on searching as I moved along, until I gave up and pulled out the map.

There was a tiny x marked a little off one of the side trails through the mountain,in that purple pen that Sara had won as part of a set in a bingo game and carried as a trophy back when she was still in middle school. It was probably not exactly where the capsule was, but close.

I made a right turn, hoping that I was on the path I thought I was.

When we had come here for the first time, my mother had blazed the trail, choosing turns at half-random and nearly getting us lost. The whole thing had been her idea. She wanted us to have some memories together. We each had to put in something small without telling anyone what it was, something that we wanted our future selves to see. She said she wanted all of us to go open it together and find out what we’d stored once Sara and Andy and I had kids of our own.

Andy had gotten fed up with walking and picked the spot himself by grabbing the time capsule from Mom’s bag and running off the path a bit and making us all follow through the underbrush. We’d all gotten poison ivy, but he’d found a great clearing and a great rock as landmark. I tried to remember where he’d left the path, but the forest all looked the same, and the parts that didn’t would have been different back then.

Eventually, I decided to trust in the yellow old map and trudge through pine needles halfway through the path closest to the mark.

I set off perpendicularly outward, until I hit the brook that signified I’d gone too far and turned back to try to return to the path and pick a better starting point.

Page 18

After wandering a bit more I did not find the trail, but in an open area next to a pine that looked like it was dying I did find the rock. It was smaller than I’d remembered, about eight feet high and nine wide, and roughly the shape of a beanbag chair that someone had just gotten out of. The crack in it had widened, and was packed full of dead leaves and dirt. The ground in front of the boulder was untouched and mossy.

I paced around, trying to remember which side we’d buried the capsule on. Mom had drawn a big X in the ground with a stick once we’d finished, but that was long gone. The crack would point to it, but it extended down both sides. How far away was it, anyway?

I picked the side away from the tree by mental coin-flip and pressed the sharp edge of the shovel into the dirt about four feet away. The dirt was hard-packed dried mud, which was tricky to break through but turned into dust as soon as it was removed. I tossed the dirt I got out to the side without paying much attention to where it went.

Soon my hands were sore, and I wished I’d brought some gloves. I hit against something that I thought was metal for one breathless moment, but it was only a gray-black stone bigger than a bowling ball that took me ten minutes to dig out. I could barely lift it to clear it away from the dig site and had to kick it away.

Back when I was a kid, we’d all helped—Dad and Mom had done most of the digging, with Sara and Andy pitching in whenever one of them tired. I had been wearing thin cloth shoes back then without much in the way of sole, so my father had refused to let me handle the big shovel. He’d seemed to take pride in being the one who got the most progress done, despite having only agreed to come after hours of Mom’s cajoling. He hated the feeling of not being at work, and jumped when a leisurely outing gave him a job.

I’d gotten back at him by filling up the hole when we were done, not letting anyone else help. The soil had been softer, browner, and wetter back then, and we’d all been covered in mud.

Now Mom was in the hospital and always would be, and Dad was with her, and Sara was busy with a baby, and Andy was busy overseas, and only I was here.

I took shovelful after shovelful from roughly the same spot. Though it was getting to be around three feet deep I didn’t see a hint of steel. I decided to make the hole wider, since I wasn’t sure exactly how far from the rock it had been and I didn’t want to have to start again on the other side.

Page 19

I chipped away at the edges until the hole was wide enough for me to stand in and work at from the inside. It started to take on a bit of an ovular shape extending along the line from the fissure, but I still found nothing.

Now my hands were on fire and my mouth felt sandy. I climbed out, tossing the shovel. I only had half a water-bottle left and didn’t want to get heatstroke in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to take a break and head towards the barely audible babble of the river.

The brook was a tiny thing and I had to crouch among the rocks to stick my hands in. The water felt perfectly cool against my bruised and burning hands. I was going to have terrible blisters.

I considered giving up for today and waiting for Andy, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find the spot again, or even if Mom would have enough time for that. If we had had the time, we could have waited for all of us to get our own families, with kids old enough to run around and beg to dig and listen to all their grandparents’ stories, but that would take too long. Only Sara had Benjy, and he couldn’t walk or talk yet. At the very least he could be in the photos when we opened the capsule in front of Mom. I splashed water over my face and neck, and then turned back toward the woods.

The heat had abated just a bit from noonday levels. I proceeded to the treeward side of the rock.

There were only around six feet between the boulder and the tree, less room to search. I picked a spot roughly halfway in the middle.

Digging a second time was much the same, except with sorer hands. I was more careful about the dirt this time, laying it to the side instead of tossing it. I was worried that I’d run into big roots, but aside from a few fist-sized rocks I didn’t have trouble.

That changed when I finally got about three feet deep, and heard the tink of metalon metal. I scraped as much dirt off as I could. The shape and size were all right. I shoved the shovel tip under it, making it pop up, and I had found our time capsule.

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It was heavier than it looked, a stainless steel cylinder a foot long and a few inches in diameter. It looked like the seal had held, but I couldn’t be sure until I unsealed it in Mom’s hospital room with the rest of the family. I hoped they could make it.

I felt the strangest twinge of excitement when I examined it and wondered what was inside. Shaking it next to my ear just made a shifting, tinny sound. I couldn’t remember what I had put in there. I hadn’t even thought about it until Mom’s diagnosis.

I left the holes—it would be nice to have a little record of what had once been there.

Mom and I decided that a Saturday afternoon would be best, since I didn’t need to leave for the night shift until five and Sara usually visited then. Andy was supposed to make it, but one of the tigers he was studying had gotten sick and he simply couldn’t be spared.

At that point Dad had grabbed the phone to mutter quickly, quietly, and angrily, but Andy had sounded upset enough that Mom asked him to just drop it, dear, he can be here in spirit. Dad begrudgingly gave her back the phone, and since her hands were shaking so much I had to help her press the speakerphone button.

It was still strange to see her like that. She seemed as strong as ever when she was speaking, but if you glanced at her when she didn’t know it she seemed absorbed in the white hospital sheets like a shrunken part of the background. Her tan was gone, and the hair that she had been meticulously dying for at least ten years had a centimeter of gray at the roots.

Sara, who was sitting by the door and rocking Benjy on one knee, asked if we could get started.

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I unscrewed the top of the capsule and laid it in Mom’s lap, so she could get first look. We’d all wrapped our objects in newspaper so the others couldn’t see, so the first thing that Mom drew out looked like a long, thin column of old yellow parchment, like some ancient scroll. Inside was a spoon.

“A spoon?” Dad asked.

“Sorry. I had no idea what to put so I just grabbed something,” came the voice from the phone. “I didn’t think we’d ever go get it.”

“So you wasted a perfectly good spoon?” Dad retorted, but stopped when Mom put her hand on his shoulder.

The next parcel was thinner. It unraveled to reveal a turquoise pen with flowers printed on the side. “Oh yeah, I think I won that for something,” Sara said when I showed her.

I tried it on the brittle newspaper, but the ink had dried up.

Next was Dad’s, a plastic soldier with a hook on the back. I felt a vague sense of familiarity, but Dad’s face lit up.

He began to recount the way we’d tied parachutes to the back and thrown it out the window, and we’d always cry if he didn’t to fetch it from the yard. I passed the toy to Benjy, who gripped and shook it.

Mom’s hands were shaking so badly that I took over fishing for the next treasure, and pulled out a tiny one. Mom grinned tiredly when she caught a glance of it.

“Now you’ll see why I asked you to get this.”

It was a ring, a gold band with an unreadable engraving. Sara gasped. “You put something like that in the ground?”

Mom chuckled. “I wanted to bury a treasure. It belonged to my Aunt Hannah, and she asked me to give it to one of you kids when you were old enough. I thought it would be a fun find.”

After a second’s hesitation, I passed it to Sara, who had risen from her chair at the sight of it. She slid it on her ring finger, where it was noticeably too big. Mom began to list places she knew that would adjust it while I pulled the last bit of wrapped paper out of the capsule.

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It was a watch, silverheaded with a pink cloth Hello Kitty band.

It had stopped at 8:23.

I vaguely recalled trying to set the timer to figure out how long it’d be in the ground. The loop was small enough that I could barely fit my fingers through.

I showed it to Mom, who gave a smile of approval and patted me on the hand. “You should get a daughter to give that to.”

I smiled and protested and pretended it wasn’t going to be five soon.

Expectations Biobele Braide

Page 23

Pompeii’s ruins

Blades of grass pushing up

in the tourist-ridden summer is

through the cobblestone, and vines

like a model’s ribs under a spotlight, her painted smile lit by the camera flash of a stranger, like the Tower of Pisa, leaning point-oh-five inches more every single year, and still we pose with our palms raised upward like captured criminals, pretending to hold it up, and say, “Cheese!”

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using the walls as highways against gravity are like pulling on your oldest jeans

The Idea Of Aafia Syed

fresh out of the drier and jiggling your way into them until they hug back perfectly, like an envelope torn open leaving the letter frayed inside, but no word is left unread, like the circles my cup stamps on the living room table.

SSG

Ruth Portes It had started out as a joke. They were young, juniors in col-

“Maia, what the hell is that?” Alex asked as she walked into

lege, whining about their lives with hopeful and pessimistic

the apartment and took her jacket off.

thoughts for the future, etcetera, etcetera. But now it was a four-year-long joke that had gotten completely out of hand.

“Isn’t it great?” She straightened the shirt.

For some reason she still went out of her way to come when

“No, it’s not great. Why does it exist?”

she received an email from Maia inviting her to the next

“Oh Alex, it’s funny! No one knows what it means anyway,

meeting.

She stopped at the green door with the number 445 on the

just us.” Maia winked, slapping Alex’s arm. “We’ve missed you. Thanks for coming,” she said before turning away and

front and knocked after straightening her shirt that had got-

opening the door again to welcome another friend.

ten a twisted under her leather jacket. She was going to be in

Alex walked into the kitchen where three women were chat-

a good mood today despite the morning’s events.

“Alex! Hi! You’re early!” Alex forced her lips into a smile for her tiny, bouncy friend. The woman was one of those people who had never reached five feet and looked like she could

tering over chips and guacamole.

“Hey guys,” she said, leaning her elbows on the counter.

“You look glum,” Eun told her.

break if you poked her with a hairbrush but she did things

“I’m alright,” Alex said. “Just stopped by Dad this morning.”

like bungee-jump off cliffs. She was wearing a new purple

She could feel Eun’s eyes trying to sift through her soul.

shirt with the letters SSG written on the front. Alex almost giggled.

Page 25

Eun was the third of their original college trio, tall, athletic, with long black hair hanging in a curtain down to her waist.

They had lived down the hall from each other in freshman year and had become friends during a very intense game of capture the flag on the quad.

Alex had been terrified of the girl with long dark ponytail

“Berlin,” Eun answered.

“What made you decide to come to the States?” Alex asked, genuinely interested.

“Wanderlust,” Eun said, the way the word was supposed to be pronounced.

and the most aggressive eyes she had ever seen. They had

“Isn’t that great, Alex?” Maia gushed.

been put on the same team, and Alex had been doing her

Something had clicked. The other girls were extreme, she

usual shuffle instead of introducing herself.

“Hey, Alex! We’re on the same team! This is great!” an eigh-

discovered as she let herself be pulled along and become an extreme herself.

teen-year-old Maia with her bouncing copper curls said. She had been sent from the US to a British boarding school when she was thirteen and found the Free New World a fascinating place. “I want you to meet one of my friends. You’ll like

“How am I going to sit through another one?” Alex asked, hanging her head and flapping her hand for a chip.

her a lot.” She dragged Alex over to the tall Korean girl.

“Oh hush, you keep coming back,” Eun whispered.

“Eun, this is Alex. She’s the one I was telling you about.”

“It’s an anthropological study,” Alex whispered back.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Eun-Ae. But you can call me Eun,”

“You hate anthropology,” Jenny, one of Maia’s friends from

she said with a faint lilt to her strange accent and shaking

home, said.

Alex’s hand. “Where are you from?”

“New York,” Alex answered, “and you?” the girl spoke, thankfully.

Page 26

“Well—” She was interrupted by Maia’s call to the kitchen.

“Girls! Welcome to the fourth anniversary of the Singles Support Group! We’ve lost some, we’ve gained some, some don’t take us seriously” she winked at Alex “but I love us!”

It had been March in junior year and Eun and Alex had been slaving through their homework when Maia had burst in and yelled louder than a person her size should have been able to.

“He has a fucking girlfriend,” she said, throwing her phone

“Alex, I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never dated anyone. Even my younger sister has a boyfriend.” Maia slurped her beer.

on Alex’s red bedspread and falling cross-legged onto the

“Well, it’s not that strange,” Eun said. “We haven’t either.”

floor. “Who takes a girl on three dates and then tells her that

“And your sister is in year nine. It doesn’t count,” Alex add-

he has a girlfriend?” she asked, looking at them with her big

ed.

brown eyes that seemed to take up most of her face.

“This is what happens when you go to an all-girls school

“Guys are assholes,” Eun said in a rather heavy German ac-

your entire life. What is England trying to do? Make sure

cent, as she tended to do the later in the day it got.

only lesbians can date each other?”

Alex nodded. “I could go turn everyone he loves against him

“How is it we always end up talking about boys?” Eun sighed.

and ruin his life forever if you want,” she offered.

“Alcohol,” Eun said, untangling her long legs and hopping up from the floor.

“But it’s a Monday night,” Maia said, her voice small again.

“Because we’re sad. We’re the Singles’ Support Group.” Alex giggled. “The SSG.” Maia cracked a grin. “I like it,” she said.

Little had Alex known that she would be sitting in a living

“Well I’m already fed up with the week, so I’ll use you as an

room at twenty-five years old, still single, facing a friend

excuse,” Eun said, handing them each a beer.

wearing an SSG shirt who was hell-bent on catching a man.

“I’m going to die alone,” Maia moaned as she cracked open

Which was a switch she hadn’t seen coming even when Maia

her can.

“Don’t say that, it’s just one jerk,” Alex said.

had come over to Alex’s place after another failed date three years ago.

Page 27

“He told me I wasn’t what he was looking for,” Maia told

Alex nodded and smiled at Eun before following Maia up

her, swilling the wine Alex had poured for her. “I’m starting

two flights of stairs and onto the roof of the building. Her

to think something’s wrong with me.”

friend’s building had an exhilarating view of the city, twen-

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Maia,” Alex told her.

“Mum’s always said there was. Maybe she’s right,” Maia answered before switching topics.

“So, how’s everyone been?” Eun asked, sipping her coffee and making a face.

“I finally dragged myself to the gym,” Lindsey, a friend Alex had found two years ago, said.

“Any ridiculously handsome men checking you out yet?”

Anna, a woman Alex didn’t know very well, said.

“If you mean the 60 year old man who was blatantly staring at my ass, most definitely.”

ty-eight floors up over the Hudson River’s polluted current, where they’d watched the fourth of July fire works that summer.

“How’s your dad?” Maia asked.

“Lonely,” Alex said, leaning her elbows on the roof wall.

“Told me to make sure you weren’t doing crazy things again.”

Maia laughed. She knew Alex’s father well, considering the number of times the girls had stayed over in Alex’s Manhattan apartment.

“You can tell him I’m on a man-hunt,” Maia told her. “With negative results. What’s bugging you, Lexus?”

Alex grinned at the nickname. “I don’t know. I don’t like him worrying about me—he doesn’t like that I’m so alone. And

The women laughed, but Alex had already begun to zone

he’s started traveling less and I can’t figure out why.”

out, to the point that she didn’t notice Maia’s glances.

“Maybe he just wants to be near you more?”

“Hey,” Maia whispered. “Come to the roof with me for a sec.

Alex shook her head. “That’s not it,” she said, staring at a barge as it shuffled by.

Page 28

“Well, can’t have you looking like a brooding vampire,” Maia

“Emma’s been promoted,” Eun explained in the midst of her

said after a silence. “Your dad will be fine, and you guys will

silent conversation with Alex that consisted of: ‘everything

talk, like you always do. Besides, we should get to the Im-

okay?’ ‘Yes, same old with the papa,’ ‘you’re telling me later,’

provement part of the meeting.”

‘of course.’

“Maia, aren’t you taking this a bit too seriously?” Alex said

“Congratulations! What did you mean about the vulnerable

for what seemed like the thousandth time.

bit?” Maia asked.

“I think it’s really helpful and constructive, Alex. It’s weird

“Oh, just that it’s intimidating when a woman is in a high

that we’ve been single for this long. This is my way of fixing

position, so I’ve been lucky enough to be promoted without

it,” Maia said.

scaring anyone. We can’t all be Hilary Clinton.”

“Maia, it’s not—”

Maia nodded and grinned. “You’ll find someone in no time,”

“It gives my mum and I something to talk about.”

That one ended quickly. Alex sighed in defeat and followed the woman back down the stairs and into Maia’s bright, modern living room where the eight women were sitting.

Everything about the apartment was cheerful and sleek, courtesy of Maia’s British interior-designing mother. “...I mean, I really think I’m the perfect amount of independent and vulnerable,” someone said as they walked in.

“Oh? What did we miss?” Maia asked, bouncing over to her chair.

she assured Emma.

Alex was silent. She’d tried speaking against this more than once, but gave up when she was berated after the meeting.

Eun had talked her into supporting Maia’s little humanitarian project. They were the only sane people in her life, Eun told her. And Alex could get some great writing material from all this. So she stayed.

“Maia, what about you?” Eun asked.

“I’ve decided it’s time to settle. Mum’s set up a blind date for next week so we’ll see how it goes.”

Page 29

“But Maia, your mom isn’t—” “Lexus, I’ve been bonding a lot more with her. We’re so alike,” Maia gushed.

Alex glanced at Eun again, but the woman had her poker face glued on. They’d met Maia’s mother, once, at graduation. She was tall and thin and seemed to look at Maia like a room that needed redecoration. She’d been shocked to hear

He was the opposite, having only been raised by women; he loved buying Alex shoes and clothes and hair clips and did his very best to make sure she didn’t need another parent.

His girlfriends were always perfect and earthy and real. But he had never remarried.

“I’m a two-woman guy,” he told her one night when she was worrying about leaving him alone when she went to college.

that none of them had a significant other. “I’d already got-

“Dad! You’re two-timing someone? And what movie is that

ten Maia’s father tied around my finger by the time I gradu-

line from?” she asked.

ated,” she’d said while Maia looked at her lap.

He laughed. “My life was your mother.” He pointed to her

“She had a few suggestions that I wanted to share with you

framed photograph on the wall. “And you.” He ruffled her

guys, anyway. Little tricks, as she put it,” Maia said.

hair. “I don’t need anything more.”

This was like a Jane Austen book club gone wrong. Before

He started traveling much more when Alex left for college,

college she had never been the type to be surrounded with

always coming back with new clothes or jewelry or presents

female friends, choosing instead to hang out with boys and

and calling her from God knows where in Australia to tell

pick up her eating habits from them. Others supposed it

her about the snake that almost bit him or sending pictures

stemmed from being raised by a single father. But he wasn’t

from Mt. Fuji in Japan. The man was a legend among her

messy or scatterbrained or a drunk any of the stereotypical

friends. But now he looked at her like he’d made a mistake

things that a stereotypical widower with a daughter would

somewhere, and he blamed himself for it.

be.

“You seem so lonely, Alex,” he told her that morning. Something had been in the way of their conversation since she’d

Page 30

arrived.

Alex laughed. “Dad, you of all people know that one isn’t

at such a young age?” Lindsay asked. “I mean, you must not

lonely even without a significant other.”

have time to get out and meet people much.”

He looked at her, his green eyes mirroring her own. “I of all

“I meet people.”

people know otherwise.”

Alex couldn’t reply.

“Maybe that knife wasn’t the best idea after all,” he said.

“You still carry it with you, don’t you?”

“Like Ross?” Eun snuck in.

Alex blushed. “There was no meaning behind that. And he didn’t like Dickens.”

Actually, he’d stopped texting her after the third time he

Alex nodded, hand moving protectively to her bag. “Dad,

spent at her place and she crossed him off her list of poten-

I’m late to Maia’s. I need to go,” she told him, escaping to

tial partners.

the subway as quickly as possible.

“I wonder if you frightened him,” Maia mused. She jerked up. “I mean—”

“How about you, Lexus?” Maia asked.

“No, you’re probably right,” Alex agreed.

Alex looked up from the loose thread on her jeans. “I, uh,

“You probably wouldn’t frighten a woman,” Danae, a friend

found an intern for the summer. He looks promising—a

they’d met alone at a bar before she’d admitted she was les-

junior at Princeton, and when I Skype-interviewed him he

bian, said.

didn’t seem pretentious at all, which was nice.”

“I’m sure you get interesting people trying to work at Random House,” Emma said.

“Danae, you’re beautiful, but you lack an essential element to my happiness.”

The woman grinned. “Worth a try.”

Alex smiled. “I have some great stories.”

“Isn’t it difficult being in such a high position for someone

Page 31

“Mum s— I mean, maybe if you gave off less of a serious

“And while I have the floor,” Eun smiled, her almond eyes

vibe, men wouldn’t run away so fast,” Maia said, her voice

crinkling. “I’ve met someone taller than me and who’s going

small.

to take me out tomorrow night.”

Maia always felt the need to protect her friend, tiptoeing

Alex frowned. Any man who wasn’t intimated by Eun was

around her unlike she did with anyone else. She worried—

either a douche or a really great person. She hoped it was

her dad probably wanted to see Alex happy and settled and

the latter. The last man who’d hit on her grabbed her waist

help the man who was so nice.

too hard and ended up home with a black eye.

Now Alex’s dark green eyes were intently focused on her

“That’s wonderful!”

friend. Maia had always accepted her quietness, loved her dark wavy hair and clothing that always seemed to hold some menace to it. She even accepted that the woman car-

“Eun, that’s great. Does he play sports?” Alex asked.

“He plays horse-polo actually. His family owns several hors-

ried a switchblade in her purse that she knew how to use.

es and he wants to show me them sometime.”

But sometimes the woman could scare every thought out of

Douche. When had she ever given a man like that the time

her head except the word ‘run’.

“Why don’t you try going by Alexandra or Alexa at work or something?”

“I like the name Alex.”

“Maia,” Eun interrupted. “I think that’s enough for now.”

Maia sighed and nodded. Eun was queen at reading Alex’s thoughts.

Page 32

of day?

“Alex, he’s not a douche,” Eun laughed, reading her friend’s mind. “I was surprised too,” She made to get up and get a drink from the kitchen. “He said that he’d love to see my long legs on a horse.”

“Eun, when did he tell you that?” Alex asked, turning around toward the kitchen.

“Oh, maybe the second time we had a real conversation?”

Eun called from the kitchen, coming back with a beer.

“Isn’t he funny?”

“Yes, is something wrong?”

“Eun, I love him already,” Jenny said, “What else has he

“Yes! Yes there is!” Alex said, her voice catching.

said?”

“Oh, he said that I should be a model instead of working in an office. I thought it was adorable.”

“I’ve never been told that!” Maia said, smiling.

“That’s because you’re fun-sized,” Lindsay answered. “You need to find a man whose type is fun-sized.”

“You’re so perfect. You can make men feel strong and masculine without doing anything,” Jenny gushed. That wasn’t new.

“Eun,” Alex said. What had happened during the meetings

“Alex,” Eun pleaded, “He’s a really nice guy. And I like him.”

“This man is wrong for you,” Alex said.

“Maybe he’s not,” Eun muttered.

“Deep down every woman wants to be protected, Alex,” Danae interjected.

“Eun, you used to play soccer, and lacrosse, and curse out anyone who hit on you—” “Yes,” Eun answered. “And I recently realized maybe I should try something else. And look, now I’ve met someone.”

she’d missed?

“Come, Alex, don’t look so upset,” Jenny said.

“She’s right, Maia, you know how hard it’s been finding a

“Lexus, I think your father influenced you too much,” Maia

man who doesn’t find me intimidating?” Eun said.

said, leaning over in her chair and taking Alex’s hand.

“Eun.” Now that she thought about it, Eun never wore her

“What?”

hair so perfectly combed and shined. Or heels that high, for

“I mean he’s the one who started calling you Alex. He let you

that matter.

“Yes, Alex?”

“Do you hear yourself?”

be too independent. And as much as he tried, he couldn’t show you how to be feminine. And look how worried he is now.”

Page 33

“Don’t bring my father into this,” Alex said, her voice dan-

Alex’s father had given her the knife on her fourteenth birth-

gerous.

day before she started high school, when he finally started

“I mean he gave you that switchblade to carry. Who carries

letting her stay out after dark.

a weapon anymore?”

“I protect myself.”

“But you don’t need a knife for it.”

“Alex, you are a beautiful woman. You could be so gentle.

But when men start getting to know you, you scare them away, and I think that maybe the knife just makes your edges that much sharper.” Maia said.

“You could soften up a bit, that’s all. Everyone needs someone to take care of them, and I read an article that women need it more than men,” Eun said.

“Why don’t you just give it a try?” Maia cajoled.

“Something small, like wearing flowers or something,” someone said.

Eun walked over and kneeled to look Alex in the eyes. “Why don’t you give me your switchblade to hang onto?”

“Alex,” he said when she looked at him, confused. “Your mother wasn’t from the safest neighborhood, and she always carried this around because it’s not so safe out there for women.”

“Won’t I get in trouble?” she asked him.

“Keep it hidden and folded. It doesn’t look like anything dangerous if you do. But that’s just the trick, little ninja,” he said, kneeling to her height, grey hairs sneaking past his otherwise black hair.

“I want you to be able to take care of yourself out there,” he said, holding her gaze with eyes that matched hers. “Your mom would have done the same thing,” he laughed. “And since you remind me of her, I think it’s just perfect.”

“But how do I use it?” she asked, flicking it out, and back in again.

“I’ll teach you,” he winked. “Your mom taught me how.”

Page 34

But now he regretted it, apparently.

Alex looked at Eun’s outstretched hand that had pulled her up in soccer club so many times before, and then into her eyes. “It was my mother’s.”

“I know. I’ll keep it safe, just for now. You know I’ve never lost anything,” Eun replied.

Alex looked at the other women. Eun had taught her how to turn her hair into an art piece, Maia had shown her how to catch someone’s gaze and hold it. They’d been mothering her for seven years now; she guessed this wasn’t any different.

She took out the little blade, with its engraving of a fox on the handle and put it into Eun’s palm.

“Your mother would be proud,” Eun said.

Alex smiled with closed lips, nodding as she let go of the handle.

“That’s our girl,” Maia said, hugging Alex’s shoulders.

Page 35

Page 36

Rooftop Vigil Anna Silk

The Children of Nanny Black

Kat Lewis

Nanny Black hobbled out of the room, her ebony dress as black as the moonless night she arrived. To this day, I can still hear the wheels of her pram creaking over the floorboards. I can still feel the way she cooled the room, birthing goose bumps and frosting every living breath. The first time I saw her, it was only a glimpse. I shot from my bed, a cold sweat clinging curls to my face. Barefoot, I padded down the hall to nursery. Through the cracked door, I saw her long dress billowing in the open window’s breeze. She stood over my daughter’s crib, hands choking the railing. I squinted my eyes at veil of charcoal hair obscuring her face. The floors whined underneath my feet. She looked up from baby Mary and slowly began to turn her head towards me. Startled, I pressed my back against the wall just out of her sight. As I my heart beat in my ears, I sucked in a brave breath before peering around the corner. The room was empty, nothing to see or hear but the chiffon curtain flapping by the window and the soft patter of baby Mary’s breaths.

I can only remember half of my eldest daughter’s face. When the Spanish flu invaded, my family joined the army of white masks. Everyday I looped a mask around Helen’s ears despite her protests. It was no use though. My husband brought the disease home with him. It hailed from his lips, laced in every sigh, laugh and cough. It soon nestled its way into Helen’s lungs and painted her skin with an ashen blue. I’ll never forget the way blood spurted from her chapped lips and snaked out of her nose like a red teardrop.

Baby Mary and I were next. When I awoke from one of my sleeping spells, I saw Nanny Black gaping out my window into the night. Her pram rested beside her hood drawn as she rocked it back and forth. I could hear Mary cooing from inside. As I sat up in bed, she moved away from the window, taking Mary with her. I begged for her to stay and she stopped walking.

She looked at me; face skinned to the bone and bleached white with despair. Her skull’s sunken eyes stared at me, piercing with their emptiness. Her jawbones groaned as she creaked mouth open. “Soon. . .” the word fell out between her teeth in a long, tired rasp. She continued towards the door, walking over my grave with measured steps like a bride’s pace down the aisle. With every bit of strength I could scrape together, I stumbled into the dark hallway. She emerged from Helen’s room, bone fingers wrapped around her blue hand. I called for my daughter and she glanced at me, blood still splotched on her nose and nightgown. Nanny Black hugged her headto her bosom and guided her away. As I watched the pram and their figures dissipate into the shadows of the hall, I collapsed. There on the floor, I waited and waited, hacking up blood and pain. I stared at the hall’s black pitch with hope but Nanny Black never came back for me.

Page 37

Page 38

No Metro Anna Silk

Sunday Best C. Orlando the girls haven’t put on their bobby socks or lace gloves and tailored skirts with crinolines cut below the knee–

in the season–girls haven’t processed in

dopaminergic receptors in the church parking lot

and sat neatly in pews with ankles and legs

and the only peace shared is the smoke they

crossed neatly, fingers laced and mothers

pass along and they’re all bowls of olives

watching, carefully, fathers in pews and

and scraped knees bruised knees

preaching alike. no girls have congregated

knobby knees skinny knees bony knees

hands laced atop the holy book,

knock knees have all become Sunday best

and scraped knees and bony knees

discussed scripture and what it is to be pure.

and nothing is neatly crossed or neatly laced

don’t make for Sunday best–

the girls don’t believe anymore,

no hats have been donned,

and have rid themselves of bobby socks and lace gloves

because they’ve lost that blind hope that

because knock knees and bruised knees

roses pinned above the brim, or sunscreen lathered early in the morning– early enough to protect the Sunday best from grease, late enough to keep skin just milky

and tailored skirts and crinolines cut below the knee

mother and father will lead them right and watch carefully and do them well

and hats and sunscreen and the only communion

and that Sunday best is best and they’ve redefined

they receive each Sunday is that which fires

their holy books and burned their pinned roses.

avoid looking like a bowl of olives too early Page 39

Buried Among Fireflies

Kat Lewis

The night I killed my brother, fireflies circled around his body. They haloed him with their warm flashes of yellow. As kids, we used to chase them around in those very same woods. Pine needles crunched under our Crocs and Converse as we lunged for them. Our hands would clap together at the same time but my sweaty palms would always open, holding nothing but hot summer air. Every time I glanced back to Brad with disappointment sagging my face, I’d see a glow of yellow leaking through the cracks of his fingers and the satisfied smirk plastered on his face. “Better luck next time,” he’d always say with a pitiless shrug.

In high school, we traded catching fireflies for skirt chasing. He’d ask prying questions, setting them up like mousetraps, to find out whom I was interested in. Once he found out, I’d see him strutting down a hall of lockers with a gamely arm draped over her shoulder. On the rare occasion he couldn’t reel my crush in like a singing siren to ships, he plagued her mind with lies about halitosis or bed-wetting. When I’d try to talk to her, she’d give me a rushed, “I’m gonna be late for class”, before hurrying down the hall. I never had to face rejection alone though. Brad was always lurking around the corner, ready to pat me on the back and say, “Better luck next time.”

A year after college, I brought my fiancé, Emily, home for Thanksgiving. Our parents introduced themselves with friendly hugs and Brad shook her hand, eyeing me with a devious gleam in his gaze. I warned Emily about what his intentions likely were. Even though she stroked my cheek, whispering about how “silly” and “paranoid” I was, she heeded my warning.

The smell of barbeque charcoal and chlorine greeted us when we returned for the Fourth of July. While Mom went to buy fireworks, Dad and I packed lunch for a hike. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I asked Emily as I filled up a Nalgene at the fridge.

“Positive,” she said. “I’ll only slow you guys down.” Setting the water bottle aside, I gave her a peck on the forehead.

Page 40

Outside, I listened to Dad rant about a car he was restoring. His water bottle’s slosh accompanied his words, swishing in time with his steps. With a quick glance into my backpack, I realized left my water in the kitchen. “You can just have some of mine,” Dad offered and I looked back to the house that was only a few hundred yards away.

“That’s okay, I’ll be back in a minute,” I replied and jogged off. In the foyer, I heard what sounded like someone knocking on the wall: Rat-tat-tat.

I followed the thumping up the stairs.

Rat-tat-tat.

It led me to Brad’s closed bedroom door. The sounds of giggles and his headboard rapping against his poster-papered wall emanated through the white wood door. A playful but haunting, “You stop it,” crept out from underneath the door, crawled up my feet and legs and shoulders before slithering into my ears. As much as I wanted to burst in there, I forced myself down the stairs, listening to the headboard’s drum as I went.

Rat-tat-tat.

After dinner, I invited Brad into the woods to catch fireflies for “old times’ sake.” We left the house, ears berated by the drone of cicadas. In a cloud of lightning bugs that flicking from dim o black, we stood with our eyes chasing their lazy movements. “The trick,” Brad said with a cadence of pseudo wisdom and his gaze on the flashing fog of bugs. “Is to wait. Let them hover around you, settle into a pattern then–” He clapped his hands together and a frantic light beamed from his hands. “Strike,” he explained, releasing the bug from his grip.

Rock in hand, I took his advice. I watched him step around in a slow circle as he eyed the fireflies. The third time he turned his back to me, I swung my arm, knocking the rock against the side of his head.

Page 41

He dropped to the ground and I followed him, taking great pleasure in the sound, a cracking squish, of skull against rock. A spritz of blood freckled my face, refreshing like stray sprinkler droplets on a muggy afternoon. When it was done, I buried him there among the fireflies. As I walked away, I took one last glance at the upturned dirt of his shallow grave. A humid breeze ruffled the overhead branches. For a moment, in the wind, I swore I heard the whisper of Brad’s voice. “Better luck next time.” But I wrote it off as nothing but the guilt creeping into my veins.

I cleaned up with the hose out back before going inside. “Where’s your brother?” Mom asked at the sink, scrubbing dishes while Emily dried them. Emily looked at me, expectant, with this painful curiosity in her eyes.

“One of his high school friends invited him to a party.” The lie eased out simple like breath or blinking. But the quiver absent from my voice quaked through my hands but I hid the fault lines in my pockets.

“Jason?” Mom asked and only made my lie all the more real as I nodded.

“He’ll probably be back in the morning.”

As the sun woke up me up from a sleepless rest, the doorbell chimed. Groggy, I made my way downstairs to answer it but Mom got there first. When she opened the door, fear burned my stomach as I watched Brad step in from the porch. He stood in the foyer, face unmarred and bloodless. “Did you have fun last night?” Mom asked as she hugged him. “Yep,” he said before turning a dark gaze to me, “So much fun.” I stood at the foot of the staircase gaping and frozen. Brad strolled over and yanked me into a hug. He wrapped his arm around my neck, squeezing it tight enough for my face to flush with terror and shame. Chapped lips at my ears, his hot breath rippled over the side of my face as he whispered, “There won’t be a next time.”

Page 42

Woman Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Page 43

My First Boyfriend

Aafia Syed

It’s summer vacation, and we are both home, so we met in between our houses at the halfway point - the school bus stop – the same place we met every morning of every weekday for eleven years before parting ways into the “real world.”

I hugged him and his shoulders were still bony, although he towered over me.

We walked alongside the road. The conversation was a creature evolving: born a formality, it grew into nostalgia, and finally reached today. There wasn’t enough time for the future.

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The road kept our attention; it laid out strange tokens for us to examine. A metal boomerang covered in rust, a cigarette lighter painted hot pink, and a fruit sticker covered in glitter, stuck to miscellaneous, frayed pieces of paper. These things caught our eyes, and pulled us away from words.

We became explorers once again, just like we used to be – adventurers!

I watched him pick up each token; he bent over just like he did as a child trying to dig up a note we had buried exactly one year before, hoping it had fossilized. I don’t think we ever found the note on that third grade afternoon, but he wanted to be an archaeologist one day, or maybe a paleontologist, and I wanted to write about imaginary worlds in which trees could speak and I was Queen of the Trees, so it didn’t matter that we had to pretend the note was stolen by a vicious sewer monster. It was good practice. Pretending always is.

“Twenty Questions”

Diamond Pollard “How old are you now baby girl?”

It’s the first time he’s asked me today. I nod and smile “I’m twenty, Pa.” He jumps back in surprise, a gummy grin spreading his face.

As he discourages me from telling anyone my age for it might give his away.

We walk side-by-side for a bit until he looks at me with curious eyes: “How old are you now, baby girl?”

I frown slightly, “I’m twenty, Pa.”

It’s only been five minutes and I forget his constant questioning is not a joke or a game to him. He wants to know.

“How old are you now, Baby girl?”

I clench my teeth, sighing. Wondering if I should indulge because it isn’t just his questioning that is getting old.

“I’m twenty, Pa.” I answer with a knowing smile because I know these questions will only last a little while longer.

How old are you baby girl?

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Wanderer Page 46

Biobele Braide

Beastly Little Boy

Emily Dorffer

Alice groaned in exasperation at the sight of the trail of muddy paw prints that stretched from the backyard through the kitchen into the dining room. Yet another mess she would have to clean up. Between all of that filth and the disaster area that was her son’s bedroom, Alice would have an awful lot of cleaning to do tonight. But that would have to wait; she had to cook dinner before her six year old son got too cranky. Alice selected a fillet of salmon from the fridge, coated it with fresh parsley and dill from the plants she kept in the tiny pots on the window sill, and dropped it into the waiting frying pan. She hummed a little tune to herself as she worked, trying to experience the joy cooking used to bring her when her husband was still alive. Before an extremely protective mother bear had ended the park ranger’s life two years ago when he had accidentally wandered too close to where her cubs had been playing, Ulysses had been a huge help around the house; he had been especially talented when it came to helping his wife turn ordinary meals into extraordinary masterpieces and keeping their energetic son reasonably well behaved.

Alice had just added a splash of lemon juice to the salmon when she was torn from her memories by the appearance of her son, Bernard. The boy was much larger than the average six year old. In fact, he was almost twice the size of most boys his age both in height and weight. Bernard was far from an ordinary boy; however, he was quite average for a young bear aside from his ability to speak. Even that was bound to fade eventually though. Alice had already watched as her wall defacing, toy destroying, sanity damaging child morphed from a disobedient little boy who was nothing but a mischief maker even at the worst of times into a dangerous, ill tempered beast following his father’s death. The changes had been small at first, an increase in Bernard’s appetite and frequent cravings for fish, but more alarming changes such as an enormous growth spurt and the appearance of abnormally long incisors made the metamorphosis quite alarming for Alice. Bernard had always been a bit wild, but Alice had never expected him to sprout brown fur the color of fresh mud after a long storm all over his body or to begin snarling at her if she tried to make him behave.

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It had been especially horrible to be around Bernard when he grew claws; as small and blunt as they were at the time, they had still left Alice with a handful of scars along her arms after she had accidentally ignited her son’s temper by trying to convince him to learn to hunt for himself like other bears. However, Alice had long since resigned herself to her role as a glorified zookeeper by the time Bernard’s physical transformation was complete, forced to work from home in order to care for her charge.

Hiring someone to watch the bear for her was out of the question. As miserable as Alice was, juggling her responsibilities as a mother and as a freelance writer of articles for a nature magazine, Camper’s Digest, she simply could not afford to hire anyone. They would probably quit within a week anyway. Finding a babysitter for an unruly child was one thing, but finding anyone who could possibly handle a particularly disobedient and often downright aggressive bear was quite another. Besides, how could Alice ever bring herself to ask anyone to endanger themselves on a daily basis just because she was stressed out and exhausted all the time? Bernard was quite a large burden to bear, but Alice was his mother; it was her responsibility to take care of him at least until she could find a more suitable living situation for the boy. All boys had to move out eventually and Bernard was no exception. The hulking mass of brown fur addressed his mother in his oddly deep, rumbling voice. “When’s dinner?”

He lifted his nose into the air and inhaled the tantalizing scent of fresh salmon only to notice one crucial detail was wrong. He snorted in agitation. “You’re ruining it again! Haven’t I told you that cooking the meat destroys its flavor?”

Alice slid the cooked salmon onto a plate and added a generous handful of blueberries. “I’m just not comfortable with you eating raw fish. It could make you sick.” Not likely. Eating raw flesh was usually only hazardous for human boys. Alice nudged the plate towards Bernard, taking care to make sure it was close enough to the edge of the marble counter for easy access while still avoiding the risk of the plate crashing to the floor as soon as Bernard started eating. Satisfied that the young grizzly had been catered to and certain that he would be sufficiently distracted, she devoured the ham sandwich that she had hidden in the fridge earlier that day. Bears were prone to stealing food left out in the open, and Bernard was no exception. Leaving her food out in the open simply was not an option anymore. Alice practically had to inhale her meal to prevent her son from snatching it out of her bare hands as it was. Alice jumped slightly when Bernard’s plate fell to the ground and shattered with an ear piercing crash. Bernard had attempted to roll the last of the blueberries towards him.

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Alice knew she should have used strawberries instead: they were much easier for bulky, somewhat clumsy paws to move without causing a mess. Ignoring the sharp shards of plate surrounding his paws, Bernard wiped his purple stained muzzle against the kitchen wall, leaving behind a long purple streak as he trudged back into the yard and the chilly early Autumn air.

Alice gathered her cleaning supplies and began vigorously scrubbing the mud off the floor after she disposed of the fragments of the plate. She couldn’t keep living like this. Not only was it extremely stressful, but it was also ridiculously dangerous. Her son became increasingly irritable and his appetite became more insatiable as he prepared to hibernate through Winter; Bernard always seemed to be growling these days whether the dreaded sound came from his stomach or deep within his throat. Something seemed to get broken every day now. Today it was a plate; tomorrow it could be Alice’s neck. Hopefully the sedative Alice had slipped into her son’s salmon after she brought it home from the market yesterday would prevent that!

Once the kitchen was spotless once again, Alice hurried over to the window. She pressed her face against the glass like a child waiting for her parents to come home as she waited for her son to succumb to the sedatives. Hopefully he would drop before he ventured out of her line of sight. Living in Alaska meant that the wilderness was Alice’s backyard. Bernard could easily evade his mother there if he so desired. Tonight, the grizzly elected to stay close to home instead of wandering deeper into the woods for his nightly foraging trip. He scratched the hump of his back against a pine tree before nosing around by the roots of the tree and under a nearby rotting log, searching for any mushrooms that could serve as his dessert. Bernard flopped down with a dissatisfied huff, shutting his eyes. Alice scurried over to the phone and grabbed it before pausing for a moment to contemplate what she was about to do.

She could still stop her plan if she wanted too; Bernard would probably just thing his sleepiness had been caused by the time of the year. Alice’s fingers hovered over the phone’s buttons. What was she doing? This creature may be hard to deal with, but he was still her son. Could she really live with her decision knowing that she would never see her little boy again?

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Alice’s eyes wandered over to the picture of Ulysses she kept in the kitchen and wondered what he would think of what she was doing. As Alice stared into her now dead husband’s emerald green eyes, she found her answer.

Ulysses would be ashamed to know that she had ever considered this plan. He would have told her to buckle down and teach Bernard how to behave instead of running like a weak and helpless rabbit from her problems. Just as she was about to put the phone back on the receiver, Alice remembered the last time she had seen the love of her life, hours after the fatal attack. His neck had been crooked, bent at an unnatural angle. His mouth had been frozen in a silent scream of agony, almost as if it was still reacting to the enormous bloody gashes on the ranger’s broad chest. He hadn’t even tried to run, his coworkers had told Alice when they delivered the life-ruining news.

He had stood in place with his arms spread wide to give the illusion of being much bigger than he was, looked the furious mother bear in the eye, and tried to keep the grizzly’s attention and intimidate her long enough for his coworkers to escape. His plan had worked, but it had cost him his life. Alice did not want to die the same way, standing foolishly against Mother Nature in an impossible fight she knew she had absolutely no chance of winning.

Alice whispered an apology to her husband’s picture. She knew she was being a coward, but she couldn’t help it.

She didn’t want die because of the aggression of a beast; she wanted to live. If the mangled fawn carcass Alice had found days earlier had been any indication, it wouldn’t be long before Bernard finally snapped. Before she could begin to regret her heartbreaking decision, Alice called one of her husband’s former co-workers with trembling fingers and an even shakier voice. Hopefully her son wouldn’t be able to talk again or wake up until they successfully relocated him to a more suitable habitat. She couldn’t stand to see how he would react to her betrayal or, even worse, possibly hurt himself or the rangers as he attempted to escape. “Hello, I would like to report a bear sighting near my house.”

The rangers told Alice to try to keep as calm as possible and stay as far away from the bear as she could; they were on their way. Alice put the phone down after she assured the rangers that she would be careful. It was only then that the reality of the situation sunk in: her son would be relocated. The rangers would move him to an area with plenty of food, water, and a cozy den where he could hibernate through the winter without any interruptions. Alice couldn’t resist peeking out the window again. Her son would probably be much happier without his mother constantly failing to treat him with the proper amount of unconditional love a child deserved and the proper amount of respect a bear demanded, but Alice would still miss the troublemaker.

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She still remembered that special sweetness he would show when he would apologize to her for his various acts of mischief before this mess had started. Alice desperately wanted her little boy back; she hoped her gargantuan bear would at least remember her. Alice could still see the mound of fur curled up outside, but something was wrong. The bear was moving.

Alice watched in horror as the grizzly drowsily rose to his feet. He opened his powerful jaws in a massive yawn, exposing his monstrous teeth. Both Alice and Bernard swung there heads in the direction of a small group of men that had silently made there way through through the underbrush. Alice knew the rangers meant no harm, but Bernard didn’t seem to reach that conclusion. He reared up on his back paws, towering over the noticeably intimidated but still fiercely determined men. When Bernard let loose a throaty roar at the men, everyone involved looked absolutely horrified. Alice could hardly believe her ears. The same bear that had criticized her cooking earlier that same day could no longer talk, let alone yell.

Bernard himself seemed more terrified than Alice had ever seen him. He had dropped back down onto all fours and was letting out a series of miserable noises that sounded more like a panic attack than anything else. One of the rangers took advantage of the bear’s confusion and shot a tranquilizer into Bernard. Bernard bellowed what Alice assumed was a scream before charging at the men with the dart protruding from him like the world’s largest thorn. The men scattered into the underbrush to wait for the creature to drop. Bernard swung his head around to try and dislodge the dart, but he couldn’t quite reach it. Finally, he gave up after his motions became increasingly labored and sluggish. The last thing Bernard did before falling unconscious and being relocated so deep in the forest that Alice could never find him again no matter how much she searched for him, was to look through the kitchen window at his guilt ridden mother with furious, terrified, sorrowful eyes. Alice would never forget those dark colored eyes for as long as she lived.

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Human Nature Isola di Burano Danielle Jacobson Hana Chop

Take Your Shot

Keven Perez

Sheriff Walker slid off his horse, ducking behind a nearby boulder. Three deputies followed and crawled to their own positions.

Each of them had a rifle over his shoulder and wore a dark duster coat. Sheriff Walker peeked over the boulder. They were in front of an old mine, abandoned long before most of them had been born. Only Sheriff Walker remembered how excited the miners had been at the prospect of gold and silver, only to find veins of pyrite. One of the deputies had reported to have seen a small group of men taking shelter in the mine last night. They were presumed to be the local gang of bandits that Sheriff Walker had run out of town just last week, led by the infamous “Sammy Snake-Tongue.”

Sheriff Walker gave the signal. The deputies ran to the entrance of the mine, rifles drawn. The one who had filed the report, Adam Redding, stepped in first. The mine’s lanterns had long gone out, and he was quickly engulfed in the tunnel’s darkness. After about a minute, he returned to the others.

“Coast is clear.”

Sheriff Walker led the pack of horses to the side of the mountain, out of sight, before he caught up with his deputies. He pulled out a short stick from his backpack. Tightly coiled rope covered the thicker end of it. He motioned toward the newest deputy, Ernest Wells.

“Yeah, Sheriff?”

Ernest’s words were met with hushes from the rest of the men and a set of knuckles knocking against his ear. He nearly let out a cry in pain before the sheriff slapped his hand against Ernest’s lips.

“The hell d’ya think I’m askin’ ya for, Ernie? Gimme a damn match and shut yer mouth.”

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Ernest fumbled with a pack of matches in his coat pocket and handed it to the sheriff. Sheriff Walker let go of his mouth and took one of the matches. He brushed the roped end of the stick along the inside of a broken lantern, collecting any remnants of oil. He then lit the match and pressed it against the rope, fashioning a torch. He handed it to Adam.

“Take lead. Ernie, cover our asses. And Wally, I don’t want yer finger anywhere but that trigger. Y’see anyone, put lead in between their eyes.”

Adam began to move further into the tunnel, torch held in front of him. Wallace Henson, the tallest of the bunch at six feet and four inches, kept his rifle in line with his shoulder. Ernest pointed his rifle at the floor, inhaling a sharp breath as the light of the entrance soon disappeared from sight.

“Sheriff. What if it ain’t Sammy Snake-Tongue?”

“Son, I swear to God, if you don’t shut yer damned hole.”

The group crouched into a tunnel with a low roof. The scaffolding along the sides of the tunnel seemed to have withered away along with the miners’ dreams of gold. A strong shove was all that was needed to snap one of the wooden posts. Wallace’s back was at a near forty-five degree angle as he tried to avoid smacking his head against the roof. The tunnel eventually gave way to a larger clearing, the main hub of the mine. Rusted tracks were laid in three different directions, leading further into the dark depths of the cave.

“Well, shit. Looks like we’re splitting up, folks.”

“We only got one torch,” reminded Adam.

“If some good-for-nothing pack of bandits can find their way in the dark, so can we. Wally and Adam, you got left. I’ll go straight.

Ernie—“ Page 54

“Right, coming with you.”

“Like I want your sorry tail holding onto me. You got left.”

“But, Sheriff, you know I ain’t never done something like this before. I can’t even shoot straight. It always goes left.”

“Then aim to the right.”

Sheriff Walker disappeared into the middle tunnel before Ernie could get another word in. Adam and Wallace had gone to. With no torch and a rifle he couldn’t aim, he stepped slowly into the rightmost tunnel.

Each step he took onto the uneven iron tracks was followed by a low creaking noise. He could’ve sworn he heard the noise at least twice while standing still. When this happened, he held his rifle in front of him, a trembling finger brushing against the trigger. After a minute or two, he would continue onward, his pace a bit quicker.

Before long, he found himself in another large room and at the end of the unfinished tracks. A mining cart lay on its side, a few handpicks and other tools spilling out from it. Ernest sat on top of the cart and sighed. Another tunnel led out of the area at the far side of the room, but the roof was much lower and didn’t look to be as carefully carved out. Ernest decided it probably led to a dead end, likely to have had held veins of the unwanted pyrite. He couldn’t help but wonder if whoever they were chasing was in a sense fool’s gold, an unwanted group of individuals instead of the WANTED: Sammy Snake-Tongue and his gang.

The sound of lead colliding with stone rustled Ernest from his thoughts. He instinctively ducked behind the cart, holding his rifle against his form. More gunfire followed. A voice resembling Adam’s sounded nearby amongst the pops of rifles and pistols. Ernest mumbled a prayer before he ran toward the low tunnel. For the first time, he thanked the fact that he wasn’t as tall as Wallace, for he likely would have had to crawl through the low space. Jagged rocks tore into the soles of his boots as he rushed along, the increasing volume of gunfire fueling him onward.

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To his surprise, a speck of light appeared in the distance, growing wider with each step he took. The tunnel eventually widened, and Ernest pressed himself against the wall, carefully sliding his way to the lit exit. He found himself on a high ledge in a wide room. A wooden ladder was the only thing connecting him to the ground floor. Several lit torches lined the walls, and crates, barrels, and bags of all sizes were littered on the lower floor. The hideout of a gang of bandits.

The gunfight was below him. He hit the ground, crawling up to the edge of the ledge. He could see two men hiding behind a wall of barrels, occasionally holding out their pistols above them and shooting blindly across the room. Ernest followed the whizzing bullets to see Wallace pressed up against a wooden post. Adam and the sheriff weren’t in sight.

Wallace peeked out from behind the post and shot a few rounds into the barrels shielding the bandits, using it as an opportunity to roll behind a crate just in front of him. A click sounded. One of the bandits had run out of ammo. He tossed his pistol to the side and ducked out from the line of barrels, running to what Ernest guessed was a nearby stockpile of weapons. Two bullets tore through his chest before he could find new cover.

“Yeah, you shoot those assholes, Wally!”

The remaining bandit turned to the sound of Ernest’s outburst and fired. Ernest shuffled backward, the bullet whizzing past his head. He looked back over the edge. The bandit wasn’t there anymore. The ladder beside him began to wobble slightly. He stumbled backward, pointing his rifle out in front of him. The bandit’s hand reached the top of the ladder. He fired. The bullet flew to the left of the hand. The bandit was about to pull himself onto the ledge before the squishing noise of lead tearing through flesh was heard. The bandit coughed up a drop of blood before both he and the ladder fell backward. Ernest glanced over the edge once more.

Wallace stood in the center of the room, pointing his rifle in Ernest’s direction.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! It’s me.”

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“I know who you are, shithead. Doesn’t want to make me shoot you any less. Get your ass down here.”

Wallace kicked the corpse of the bandit out from on top of the ladder and lifted it upright. Ernest descended quickly and held out his hand.

“You saved my skin, Wally.”

“Just thank Christ that scumbag was stupid enough to think I wouldn’t see him climbing a freakin’ ladder.”

“Say, where’s Adam and the sheriff?”

Wallace grimaced and pointed to the wooden post he had been hiding behind. Adam lay slumped against the other side of it, head lowered and back turned. Ernest dropped his rifle and moved to run toward him, but Wallace gripped his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Isn’t anything that can be done for him, Ernie. Clean through the head. Let’s go.”

“No, no, c’mon, Wally. We can’t just leave him here.”

“Listen. We’re not done. Snake-Tongue is still somewhere in here, and I bet either the sheriff’s already found him, or he’s already found the sheriff.”

“We can’t just leave him here. He’s got two little girls. It ain’t right.”

“Deputies die, Ernie. It’s our job. He took the oath, same as us.”

Gunfire sounded nearby. Wallace picked up Ernest’s rifle and shoved it against his chest.

“Move your ass, Ernie. Stay close.”

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Ernest stared at Adam’s limp form before being pushed in front of Wallace. The two deputies followed the gunfire back to the main hub with the three split tunnels and took the path that Sheriff Walker had taken. The tunnel abruptly took a steep incline and the two slowed down in an attempt to climb it. By the time they had reached the top, the gunfire had ceased. The flickering shadows of a torch could be seen up ahead.

Wallace motioned for Ernest to stop a few feet from a corner. He moved to turn into the corner, but as soon as his foot inched past the wall, a bullet found itself lodged into it. Wallace stumbled backward, yelping in pain.

Sheriff Walker turned the corner, his hands raised above his head. A man followed closely after him, a black bandana tied around his face. Both Wallace and Ernest recognized him as Sammy Snake-Tongue. He held a pistol to the side of the sheriff’s head. Wallace and Ernest raised their rifles, prompting Snake-Tongue to pull Sheriff Walker against him as a human shield.

“Evenin’, boys. Fancy seein’ you ‘round these parts, huh?”

“Shoot! Wally, shoot!” cried Sheriff Walker.

Wallace tensed his finger on the trigger, squinting as he tried to take aim. Sammy Snake-Tongue shifted his head behind the sheriff and laughed.

“Go ahead, Mr. Wally. I dare ya.”

“I don’t have a shot, sir.”

“You got ten seconds, Mr. Wally.”

“Til what?” asked Ernest.

“Six.” Page 58

“Take your shot, deputy!”

“Three.”

“Sheriff, I can’t--.”

“One.” A gun fired. Wallace dropped his rifle and fell to the side. Sammy Snake-Tongue clicked his tongue against his cheek and repositioned his pistol against the side of the sheriff’s head.

“I gave him time, I did.”

“Ernie, you need to send this asshole to the dirt.”

Ernest struggled to raise his rifle, glancing between the prone body of Wallace and Sammy Snake-Tongue.

“Don’t let anyone say I wasn’t fair. Mr. Ernie, was it? I’ma give you the same time. Ten seconds. Ain’t I fair, sheriff?”

“Ernie, he’s gonna kill us both anyway.”

Ernest shut one eye and aimed his rifle forward. Sammy Snake-Tongue’s head was in his sights.

“Hey, who knows? Killin’ a sheriff gives you one helluva reputation. Shoot him, maybe you join my little gang.”

He brushes his finger along the trigger, ready to squeeze. He glances down at Wallace one last time and mumbles a prayer.

“Goddammit, take your shot!”

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Ernest shifts his rifle to the right of Sammy Snake-Tongue, aiming now at Sheriff Walker’s head and fires. The bullet whizzes to the left and buries itself into Snake-Tongue’s skull. He falls back onto the ground with a resounding thud.

“Sheriff, are you all right?”

The sheriff glances over his shoulder and spits on Sammy Snake-Tongue’s corpse. He dusts off his coat and stares down Ernest.

“Did you just try to shoot me?”

“You said to the aim to the right, sir.”

“Not when the right is my damned head. Get your shit together, son.”

Sheriff Walker slid to a seat against the wall, pulling out a cigar from within his coat. He motions to Ernest, who pulls out the pack of matches without a word.

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Staff President: Ruth Portes Vice President: Annie Cho Secretary: Evelyn Ho

Editors and Staff Layout Chair: Hannah Ingersoll

Poetry Visual Art Chairs: Caitlin Dwyer, Gulnar Tuli Anna Silk Candice Gard Madeleine Wheeler Yuqing Zhu

Chairs: Annie Cho, Katherine Quinn Alizay Jalisi Debbie Ou Laura Ewen Katy Li Rikki Jarvis Si Yeon Lee Sonal Sharda Sophie Johnson

Prose Chair: Lydia Youngman Allison Schingel Anna Silk Anne Hollmuller Kat Lewis Kathleen Kusworo Madeleine Wheeler Sooean Chin Keven Perez

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Elizabeth Winkelhoff

See the Magazine Online: http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/ thoroughfare/