Parlor Tricks Issue 5 by Parlor Tricks Literary Magazine

R O S L K R C A I P R T S

A LI IL

E LL

parlor tricks Editor-in-Chiefs

Â Charlie Harrison Lisa Zhang

Managing Editors

Tiffany Chhuor Alessandra Miranda

Art Editor

Lisa Zhang

Prose Editors

Arjun Pothuri Andrew Wallace

Poetry Editors

Erin Courville Alessandra Miranda

Head Designer

Tiffany Chhuor

Web Designer

Maye McPhail

CONT ENT S

FO ELB A

6 7

UNTITLED A nni e Mi kl a s

THE MOMENT PEELS B

THE SKY PINK UNDERNE

Ca i tl i n Ub l

8 24

M IN THE G

RDEN

S a r a Hetheri ng ton

I MOSTLY PITY

BUT SOMETIMES FE

Ca i tl i n Ub l

28 29

MEDIT

YOU

TION FOR GEORGE

L i ly G o l db er g

How Not to Title an OffIce-Wide Email Br ei d y Cu eto

NING WELL Natalie Wilkinson

MOVING ON

YBE FORW

E mily Burch

the first time i

I comes home Sara Hethering ton

KIMCHI FRIED RICE

(

김치볶음밥

RECIPE

)

Ca ro lyn Kim

SECOND N

TURE

Gabrielle Giles

CHRISTM T

S BRE

WITH

KE-HOME QUESTIONS Sara Hethering ton

31 34 44 48 52 66

Cover Pho to Credit: Phillip Pyle | sunset clo uds over law rence, ks

Annie Miklas

Untitled A grid of evenly spaced dots, gracefully billowing in the wind like thin white linen. A grid of spheres. None oozing or dripping, popping, ascending, expanding, crippling. All uniform. None fuzzy or rigid. None flow. Just rise and fall with the gentle breeze.

Caitlin Ubl

The Moment Peels Back, the Sky Pink Underneath A patter of languages, of variable pitch, floats like dust falling to rest on the wind, the trapped glint of viridian, mourning the sea, a trawling net bundled in heaps on the pier. She moves neatly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, straightening the crest of the horizon line with her hands, stopping to gather the hem of her dress as she steps onto the railing. She does not yet know what it is, the mass of grey tendrils thrashing far beneath her, eel-like, writhing in the brine. She follows the arc of a single snaking body, coiling tight and coming apart, a plane and the shadow it casts cutting through the near-bursting corpulence of purpling thunder clouds, a heavy-eyed mass swelling against the surface. Her face is still as she gauges the length of the fall, but her eyes are the song of a captive bird filtered through a window she never weatherized, miserably bad at keeping out the cold.

Sara Hetherington

Adam in the Garden

hey’d been stomping along for ages when the boy had an epiphany that began like this: Once, his shoes had been all-white, and their hard-rubber lining and taut canvas had given him bright blisters. Those he’d borne. But now that his shoes were stretched and comfortable, he found them ugly. The frayed laces and worn soles filled him with a particular loathing that gained specificity the longer he walked: Old. They were old. They’d walked a mile when the cozy notwhite canvas, that specific loathing (old) and that creased rubber cage around his feet coalesced into a single concept. The boy said to the girl beside him, “My shoes.” And there were his shoes. “What about them?” said the girl. Lots of things looked brand-new to her just then, but even so, to the girl, the shoes were no different than they had been the day before. But their new conception had cracked the hazy dome of this boy’s conscious thought. There, on the sidewalk, he’d had his epiphany. “My shoes,” he said again. “I want to get rid of them.” He stepped on a crack outside somebody’s house to untie the laces: left foot, right. He separated the shoes from

his feet. The feat—his feet! His feet were free. The girl beside him said, “Well, alright.” She took them from his hands and flung one toward the yard, where it crashed through a window and triggered a sensor that set off alarms. Because of the drugs, he was a little bewildered. Then the sirens from the house picked up and he understood. And couldn’t breathe. “Why did you do that.” “What?” she asked. She smirked. It was her private joke that he was easily terrified. Whenever she moved, the stardust on her eyelids sprinkled down across her cheeks. Because of the drugs, he attached the siren sounds to the glitter, and wished she wouldn’t move so much. “Let’s go, then,” she said. And grinned. He still held the left shoe, which was arguably more loathsome than the right. “I’ve gotta get rid of the other one,” he said. “Now it’s evidence.” He was surprised by his own wisdom. She dropped the monkeyish look and brightened differently. “I know a place,” she said. “But we have to wait until later.” “How late is later?”

She shrugged. “Later.” When she’d run in from the bathroom that morning he’d looked at her like a new toy. She’d put glitter on her chest and cheeks and her lids were speckled blue and silver. Because of the drugs, her eyes shone like suns. If he stared, they started to swell. Time was strange. He thought he’d been looking at her for hours when her eyes shrank back to their sharp whites and kept going until they shriveled in her head. He watched them crawl around. “You have to look at yourself in the mirror,” she said. When she smiled, the roly-poly whites rolled out. “It’s wild.” There was a tiny compact in her purse with a mirror he could try. They could look at their faces together. But after having looked so long at her, he’d thought, Better not. She was dynamic enough for the both of them. It’d started after his square had dissolved and he’d said, “I don’t feel anything different.” What she should’ve said was, “It takes a bit.” Instead, she’d popped one under her tongue. “Hm, me neither,” she’d said, and grinned. “Some babysitter you are,” he’d said. He’d tried to laugh but felt his bile rising.

How long had he known this girl? She was new. It’d been either six days or two hundred thousand years since he’d run into her at a party. About the same time since they’d started sort-of dating. Maybe, about. He couldn’t feel the pavement under his bare feet. Once they’d walked out of the neighborhood and started to walk uphill, he would start to wonder, How long will this acid last? Six hours, maybe twelve. He wouldn’t know how long it’d already been, just that it’d been too long and he felt horrible. Later, he’d tell himself, he’d feel better. Her later was on a bridge overlooking a river. “Why not here?” she said. “For what?” he said. “The shoe,” she said and—before he could answer with something snappy—“give it here.” He bit his tongue. She took the shoe and flung it over the bridge. Into the water it went, and out went the ripples, out and out. “I used to throw sticks here with my brother,” she said. “We’d run to the other side to watch them float under the bridge.” But the shoe was just sinking. Townie, he thought. The girl had the same style shoes— creased white rubber, red canvas. She’d bought them soon after they’d met, made some joke about pretending to be straight-laced like him. The boy had for-

gotten the urgency of the house alarm, was miffed now that he hadn’t gotten to swing his shoe into the water. He wondered why she didn’t want to throw her own away. Why couldn’t she throw her own shoes instead of his? But the drugs had made his brain a conveyor belt, and the thought was replaced by a new one. Calm down, the new thought said. He tried to hold onto this thought. But he knew that probably, maybe, the old one would come back. “Good,” he said. “I had to get rid of both,” he reminded himself. “Like the Buddha,” joked the girl beside him, and because of the drugs she didn’t need to say more. The story of the enlightened man and his shoes, one lost, one discarded, came floating up to both of them. They contemplated the current. Just beneath the surface, the shoe was sinking. It drifted, swaying in the water, and flopped ashore. “Except they’re not together,” she said. He’d just gotten it—separated, his shoes were useless—when she kept going: “So you’re just littering.” Littering. Because of the drugs, the word flipped in his head like a Necker cube, and when he stared too long down at his left shoe, he saw it nursing a family of laces. Even from the bridge, he could see the aglets multiplying and suckling at the sneaker sole. That was because of the drugs: littering, litter, literally—

and he thought of the anti-litter litter they’d left around his bed that morning. Because of the drugs, the condom wrappers had crackled in his hands like crumpled stars. He crunched his hands around the railing just thinking of them. That morning, after crumbling up slices of strangely oiled cakes and fumbling with tiny squares, they’d stumbled off the bed over the condom packagings and shoes. “Oh, I’ll get those,” she said. “I’ll throw them away.” She was touching everything in sight—the floor, her face, the doorknobs. She touched him. “Don’t,” he said. It’d just started—he was dazzled by their mess. The wrappers grew in crinkly number as he watched. He picked one up and crunched it. When he uncoiled his fist, the foil swelled sharply up to meet his skin. “It feels like crushing stars,” he said. The thought scared him. He felt he’d picked up sacred things just before their great explosion. He curled and uncurled his fingers until the foil couldn’t spring back. He couldn’t feel them, and there was the terror: he’d lost them. He said it again, quietly—“stars”—but no one was there to hear. The bedroom was empty. She’d disappeared. To where? Adam wasn’t a complete nerd, but he did wear glasses. He hadn’t been ho-

meschooled, but he didn’t swear. He was the kid who picked up beer cans after parties. When parties were shut down, he was polite to campus security. Why was upstanding young Adam doing acid? A number of reasons. Young Adam was suffering from chronic anxiety and acute finals-season depression. He’d read about micro-dosing in the New York Times. Also, his more free-spirited ex-friends had done it, and his townie girlfriend had a small supply. Yes, the girl just lived nearby. She didn’t go to his college. All of this is just to say that he was a little worried about where she was right now because he was a little newer to this and he had a little bit more to lose. He wondered if she was out in the hallway, bothering his neighbors. He lived in a far-flung dorm with the type of studious twenty-year-old residents who would call the cops on you for playing your TV too loud. The security guards his friends once teased him for sucking up to might come knocking on his door. He felt nauseous without even being able to feel his stomach. Stupid of her… She wouldn’t get lost, but he wasn’t sure they should be separated. He’d read online that people on the drugs they were doing would amble into the road, following shimmering somethings unconcerned. Light was gorgeous on these drugs. She could be squashed right now

in the sun-drenched street and it was horrible but he thought would serve her right. The proper urge was to move, to get up and look for her. But from across the room, the white bedroom door was hazy and hard to watch. He kept his eyes on the small things in front of him. Her platform shoes—the plastic sheaths—his shockingly prehensile hands. There were so many more interesting things than her and it was awful of him but his fingers were white and spongy. He stretched them, stared at the white creased skin and bone. His fingernails had gone transparent. In their keratin tips there were tiny lines that seemed to spell out words. But which? y you you piece of shit Excuse me? t h a t trailer trash bitch Those cut-in words made his stomach turn. He was staring at them still when she came back. Back from the bathroom, and worried about nothing but eyeshadow and glitter. If he’d done it his way, maybe he wouldn’t’ve been so scared. He’d wanted to try it first with his friends, but those were the friends she hated. She knew more about it anyway, she’d said. She’d said she’d look after him. * * *

He’d been crunching the iron handrail for a minute, maybe, or an hour, when she moved. “Come on,” she said. Her voice was slo-mo soft and sly. Later, Adam would come upon a cop, and his voice would be just as drawnout and arch. That man’s words—“What were you doing up there?”—had it been a different day, might’ve made the boy’s stomach sink like stone. But all he could feel today were his eyes. They were slick and solid as un-pitted olives, had un-pitted olives been stuck in his skull. They powered some racing thoughts. On some other day, he thought, he might’ve felt this girl’s hand on his. Today, he saw her hand but couldn’t feel it. “Come on,” she said, he heard, again. He thought of saying no, of letting her go on or of himself turning and going home. But she was glitter-cheeked, chewing gum and grinning green-blue bubbles at him. The sparkle in her lipgloss shot out in igneous explosions, and then it wasn’t hard for her to pull him away. Sheepishly, he said, “Sure. Yes.” They loosed their grips on the bridge and left. He didn’t know how long it’d been, but it’d been long enough for him to decide—several times over—that he didn’t like being on acid. On acid, he took these loose-jointed, long, wobbling steps that didn’t register with his head. He had to look down to be sure of where his feet

were going. When he looked up, they’d stopped at the foot of a hill, outside a graveyard. “Are we going in here?” he asked. The path was open for visiting. The girl was eyeing him. “Your lips are blue,” she said. But how would he know that? He touched them, and his face was numb. “I can’t feel them,” he said. “Yeah,” she said. “And you’re kind of shiny.” He must have been cold, but he couldn’t tell. It was windy but he only knew because the trees were moving. They melted into each other, a cedar blur that swirled like the spittle on the corner of her lips. Even though his high was wearing off, he felt a sudden moment of clarity, in which this moment felt like many moments he’d had with the girl before. He didn’t feel like telling her to wipe the spit away. It reminded him, presently, of when she spent the night in his dorm, and they washed their faces together before they went to sleep. When their eyes caught in the bathroom mirror, over the suds of his ph-balancing, pore-tightening, scar-reducing skincare products and whatever drugstore brand she was using, he’d always had the strange, unarticulated sense that they were, even so, getting clean together. It was a weird kind of fondness. He never knew what to do with it. If he ever looked at her long enough, maybe he could’ve figured it out.

He was almost offended when she broke eye contact with him to look down at his feet, the way the grass and black dirt swelled up between his toes. “Hey,” she said, “that looks nice.” She struggled to pull her shoes off, too. “Can you hold these?” She threw the shoes at him before he could answer. Sulking, he tied the shoes’ laces together and slung them over his shoulder. When they’d walked far enough up the path, she did cartwheels on the graveyard green. After spinning around the grounds for a while, she wore herself out. They walked silently together. Everywhere they went, the graveyard was empty. Up and up the twisty path. Distant headstones rose like snaggled teeth into the gray sky. The higher up the hill, the taller the tombstones. Adam had taken a philosophy class his freshman year, and he scrounged around in his addled head trying to figure out why the cemetery seemed so relevant to it. Then he had it: Phallic. That was the word. There were the headstones, the crypts, and the hill—all of it seemed phallic. There was a great huge tree with twisty limbs at the top of the hill, and that seemed the most phallic of all. He contemplated the carved names and reflected on the masculine ego, the significance those last names had in

relation to Foucault’s concept of state biopower. He could’ve written an essay on it. Or a dissertation. It’d be the perfect thing for his short story class next semester. This is just to say that the entire scene spoke to him. But all he could get out of his mouth was, “It’s like Freud. Or Foucault. Or… someone.” “Who’re they?” the girl asked. He sighed, already forgetting what he’d meant. “Freud was a psychoanalyst,” he said. “And Fouc—” “What’s that mean?” He fell silent. He sat on a monument. Couched between the husband and wife were another few wives and one infant. They all bore the same last name. “Just, like. Look at all these graves,” he started again. “It’s arrogant.” “Hm?” She had flopped on the ground. She was playing with her hair. “All of them determined to take up space even after they’re dead,” he said. “It’s depressing.” “It’s a graveyard,” she said, and laughed. He didn’t know why she was always so goddamned happy. “No, like, what’s the point?” he said. He spread his arms wide. “What’s the point of all this? They should be ashes.” “You’re doing that thing again, Adam,” she said. Yawned. He ignored her. “And why are they arranged like this?” he said. “The father’s parents and children. Where’s the mother’s family?

“Surely you get it,” he said. “All those women who don’t get to keep their names, who just get squashed in with their husband’s family. Who maybe didn’t want to marry them.” He looked moodily down the hill. She piped up from the lawn: “I think it’d be kind of nice.” She smiled in a way that infuriated him. “Nice?” “They always have someone.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “Someone was always there to take care of them.” “But what kind of someone?” He was maybe raving. “What if you don’t get to pick which someone?” He wanted to pull out his hair and wasn’t sure why. But if this was going to be the argument that did it for him, it wasn’t doing it for her. She mulled over his words, or pretended to, then said, “I guess I see your point.” “Do you?” he said, more sarcastically than he meant. She looked him full in the face. “No,” she said seriously. And then burst into fresh laughter. She rolled in the grass. “Oh, c’mon,” she said to his scowl. “You’re either mad because I tell you you’re over-explaining, or mad that I have an opinion. Does it matter if we disagree?” He remembered how, once, after a particularly embarrassing night at a basement party, where she and

his friends had small-talked at cross purposes for an agonizing length of time—“What’s that patch mean?”— “Patch? Oh, it’s just… the brand.”—“Ah, I thought it was, like, Boy Scouts or something.”—“Oh, I was in the Boy Scouts!”—“Wow.”—“How ‘bout you? Girl Scouts? I was an Eagle Scout.”— “Your mom must be so proud.”—she’d followed him as he stormed upstairs. They’d roved through the house, together only in the sense that they were going the same way and talking loudly in each other’s directions. “Do you hate everyone here for being wealthy?” he’d said. “Do you hate me for not being?” “I hate that you don’t even try to talk to my friends.” “I try. I don’t get anything they say!” They’d found the living room empty and he’d plopped down, too frustrated to plan where this argument would take place. She’d followed suit, but draped her legs across his lap as she continued with her point that it felt like he pushed her into situations where he knew she’d be unhappy, and didn’t give her credit for how she tried to adjust, considering. “You’re a lot to put up with,” he’d said, interrupting her. His head was tilted over the back of the couch as if he wished his neck would snap. “What do you mean?” “Like with this,” he’d said, waving his arms over her legs. “If you’re so angry with me, why are you doing this.”

And she’d looked at him like he was the weird one. “You’re a lot sometimes too, and you get mad at me, too, but I try to work with you,” she said. “You’re more than just that one thing I’m mad at.” She’d kept going, about how he needed to loosen up and find more nuance in other people. Maybe it was just another example of her being naïve, or some form of emotional manipulation, but at the time he’d wondered at the way she argued: intimately. Though there might be times he felt, and earnestly so, that she was just some townie girl, one who was often annoying about it, at that moment he’d thought maybe she could be much more than that. It was the first time he’d thought there might be things she could do that he couldn’t. “Are we good?” she said to him now. She was lying with her belly on the grass, had propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. “We’re good,” he said, though he still wasn’t sure. “I want to climb that tree,” she said. She struggled to her feet. “Let’s go!” She held out a hand for him. He didn’t have the energy she did. He was starting to feel the cold. But, “sure,” he said. “Let’s climb the tree.” * * * This is her sense of humor, Adam told himself as they climbed. But still, he didn’t get it. He was no longer surprised when

she did things he wouldn’t. When she wore bright blue lipstick just to smack him—and her friends—and his friends—on the cheek with it. When she showed up at college parties when she wasn’t even going to school—not their school, not any school. When, at that party, someone said odds she’d swallow the host’s goldfish, and she said screw odds, and just did it. It’d been a year. He’d watched her sass his best friends and show up to his orchestra performances in short-shorts and outrageously low-cut tops. He’d watched her hit on his cello instructor. He was used to her antics. Still, this day was one he couldn’t believe. On the debate team, he had to be able to see another point of view. But here he couldn’t. The girl had gone back on her word. He said he wouldn’t feel safe unless she stayed sober and played babysitter, but she’d done acid anyway. That made her reckless. She’d done the acid and had then immediately wandered away. She’d dragged him outside when he thought they’d stay in. She’d thrown his shoe into a house. And his other one into the river. He didn’t do things like this. The drugs were making him fixate. Come up with something else, he thought. Up in the tree, she swung her legs. “Hey, your eyes are red,” she said, peer-

ing down at him. She’d managed to get up higher than him. He was spent and getting snappish again. The view from the tree was all graves. “How would I know?” he said. “I can’t see them.” “Oh, look,” she said, bemused. She stretched out her hands. “It’s raining.” And it was. Like the whipped son-of-a-bitch he was, he put her shoes under his shirt to keep them dry. They dug into his ribs. Then, because of the drugs and because of the rain, because he was up so goddamned high and sitting so awkwardly in this stupid tree, his mouth began to water. Without warning, he threw up. And then everything really went south. “Oh, Adam—” she started, but she had a weak stomach. He was still hanging over the tree, but even as he trembled he resented her sympathy vomit. She shouldn’t’ve been the sick one. When it passed, he said, “This is too much,” over and over, scrubbing the corners of his mouth with the sides of his hands. Even after he was clean, he kept scrubbing obsessively. “This is too much.” Her eyes were big and round. She was bent over the tree, in her stupid spot way above him. “Whatcha mean?” “I don’t know why the fuck we did this.”

Her pupils found their footing. “I thought we’d have fun.” He wiped the sick off on the tree branch and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “This is stupid,” he said. “I thought this would be lights and colors and shit. We’re both barfing on a tree in the middle of a graveyard.” He planted his hands and swung onto the ground. His bare feet squished in the grass. “I’m out.” “Adam,” she said. “Oh, shut up!” he exploded. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and he thought, of course. Really, it was time to go home. He’d sit in bed and wait for the damn stuff to wear off. His feet squelched as he walked. Black mud ran over his toes. Behind him, she was whining: “Come baaack. Adam, c’mon.” He didn’t answer. She called out to him more, something he couldn’t catch. Her voice was as high-pitched as those house sirens. “How am I supposed to get down?” That was maybe what she’d said. But it was hard to hear when it was starting to storm. Stupid. Inconsiderate. This was his first time. That’s what he thought as he rolled down the hill, oblivious to the gravel biting his feet. Some help she’d been! Some babysitter!

Some girlfriend! That’s what he was fuming about when the gravel turned to sidewalk and he ran into a policeman. The policeman was at the very bottom of the hill, just getting out of his car. Because of the drugs, the boy wasn’t exactly dismayed. But. The cop was older and graying. He could’ve been the boy’s father. The boy admired the Dodge Charger the cop had parked by the cemetery entrance. The cop regarded the boy’s drenched clothes and ripped-up feet with something less than admiration. “Whåtsüp?” said the boy. Not because he was nervous or totally because of the drugs, but maybe partly because of them and why the fuck not. “Someone broke into a home down the street,” said the cop. “Smashed the window with a shoe.” The cop looked again at the boy’s bare feet. “Would you happen to know anything about that?” And then all the boy could feel were his eyes in their sockets. He who might’ve become a lawyer imagined himself going to jail. He saw his name blacked off next year’s graduation program. He saw it in the school paper, in the Switchboard Blues column next to the kids who were caught skateboarding in the parking garage and putting traffic cones on lampposts. He pulled up his shirt and showed off the girl’s sneakers. “Well,here’remine,” he said.

“Hm,” said the cop. “Why do you have ‘em there?” asked the cop. By some divine intervention, Adam modulated his voice. “Didn’t want them getting wrecked in the rain.” “I see,” said the cop. And they stood there for what felt like all night. “And what were you doing up there?” The boy shrugged. “Just on a walk.” He fiddled with the shoelaces. “You go to school over that way?” “Yep,” said the boy. “Just walking home.” “Well,” said the cop. “Keep an eye out.” And the boy breathed a sigh of relief as the cop passed him and started up the hill. He shoved the sneakers back under his shirt. His eyes were still drumming in his skull when they dit-dahed in another thought. He turned. Going backwards, he called out, “Hey!” and when the cop turned round: “There was a weird girl sitting in a tree up there.” He didn’t hear what the cop said, was looking away from him and towards the graveyard. A bolt of lightning suddenly illuminated the hill and the headstones and that horrible tree. And there was the girl, his girl no longer, clinging to the top of its trunk. At some point on his walk home, he lost her shoes. For all he could fathom,

his baggy T-shirt had swallowed them up. And as he walked in his bare feet, he remembered why he’d thrown his own shoes away: he’d gotten too used to them. And he’d never liked doing things the easy way. In some ways, he thought, the hard way was actually the easiest. Also at some point on that walk home, he saw the policeman again. The cop whizzed by, tipped his hand at Adam and honked once, twice. There was a new figure in the back seat. It was a long walk before home was within sight. On the way up the stairs he bumped into some friend. “Hey-hey-hey!” the friend went, and Adam stopped. “’Sup with you, Zander,” he said. “Liquor run, man.” This cheerful dolt was one of the friends his girl had hated and who had hated his girl but at least had tried to hide it. He was one of the first people Adam’d met at college; in fact, Adam had given the once-dorky Alexander his nickname. Now everyone called him Zander. The kid had beefed up since then, but his still-spiked hair reminded Adam of when they’d first met. “You should swing by,” Zander said. “Even if it’s just to say hey. It’ll get good later, when the boys show up.” He slapped Adam on the back. “I haven’t seen you in forever, man.” The boy wasn’t sure how loose his friend’s conception of later was, but just

then, he didn’t care. It would get good soon enough. He thought, I will swing by. I can. Later was when the first and other drugs had faded and he didn’t even wonder where she was. The clock said four and he was in bed. No sense in thinking, or in thinking of getting up. He burrowed to the bottom of his pillows. There was extra room there where the girl was not. Hours ago, because of the drug, he might’ve felt the coolness of caverns and scritching of bugs in the seams of these creased linens. But the best and the worst were long worn off. The sheeted cave was blank. Oh, how young and dumb he was, he thought, but he couldn’t make out why. He was dumb, and tired, and naked under the slowly warming sheets. Racing thoughts had traded hands with restored feeling to his flesh. He felt, and he felt tired, so he closed his heavy, pitted eyes and pulled the covers round his head just to see how that would feel. And it was good. In that black hole of his own making, he slept well.

Lester Lee | self portrait

Bret Hairston | Blk Grl | Model: Germanie Louis

Phillip Pyle | hoodoos in bryce canyon national park, ut

Caitlin Ubl

I Mostly Pity, But Sometimes Fear, You steelstrong wire razor thin wanting breathing its breakage into flesh you longing to be changed by what you enter scent on your collar cloying a plea of crushed lilacs extended for praise

* your turn

toward possession

time glitters in cupped hands

clean and cold no space between your fingertips for breath

a minute more of night today a minute less of morning

Phillip Pyle | tame impala at pitchfork music festival in chicago, il

Lily Goldberg

A Meditation for George When I was ten or eleven, I used to go after school to the pet store on 97th and Broadway. There, a tortoise named George patrolled the bottom floor, where luminous fish gurgled in a procession of tanks. I thought George would make the ideal pet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d watch him crawl, slow across the hardwood floors. Now, I realize I just wanted to live forever. Or simply long enough to understand the mechanics of carrying the world on your back. My mother did it every day, you see, chopping cilantro on the cutting board and knifing it into a large stone bowl.

Breidy Cueto

How Not to Title an OffIce-Wide Email Swivel chair in a dizzy daze, ditzy days swept—no more of the dirge: “You married your wife in a suit, you married your work in a suit. They hailed the Holy Mother at your wake and you wore a suit.” :the sound of someone telling you to wait before wasting your life away. Even androids dream of your body electric. . . Somewhere between the bar and the Bar, you forgot your dreamings as if awoken. This is called awake paralysis. Of course the first living thing they cloned was a sheep, but you will have no Second Coming. Fathers conspired against you from a mountaintop; your fiction but synopsizes natural disaster. You don’t need to tend to any given garden, you don’t have to eat any unripe fruit.

Melani Ortega | A Murder

Natalie Wilkinson

Meaning Well You spilled your meaning again at dinner / it dripped onto your pant legs / you mopped it with a napkin but only rubbed it in more / your thighs were sticky with significance / you kept saying you meant nothing / but there it was / everything you meant / congealing on the table There was a phase where you tried to store all your meaning / mostly in the fridge / fumbled with what you hadn’t accounted for, cursed your inaccurate measurements / most of it had to be thrown out / sometimes for the mold, sometimes for the room / it stank up the house You always meant pretty awfully / left a residue wherever you went / and me following with a sponge and an empty bucket / and you with all those containers / managing to mean something in spite of yourself / it’s a shame you wasted so much / on some shit that couldn’t mean back

Phillip Pyle | muir woods national monument in marin county, ca

Phillip Pyle | view from angelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landing in zion national park, ut

Emily Burch

Moving On, Maybe Forward

he’d asked Mark why he’d applied for the job without asking her. I thought it’d be good for you to get out of here, he’d said. Live a little, experience the world. Because moving 200 miles to a city she’d never particularly liked was really experiencing all Earth had to offer. You’ve only spent a few days here and there in D.C., he’d said. Give it a chance, Nel. What about her work? I already looked into it. There’s a biotech company that’s hiring right near the firm. Another thing he should have asked her about. She said she’d think about it. And she had. She thought about it all the next morning while tromping around the marsh, counting the slimy clutches of frog eggs for Fish and Wildlife’s annual bullfrog fitness survey. Well, maybe for an hour or so. Or just a few minutes right at the beginning, before the red-winged blackbirds darting after the blue dragonflies through the cattails distracted her. She had thought about it at lunch, too. Jeremy asked why she’d seemed like such a space cadet all morning, so she told him. They’d grown up together, were in the same class K through 12. She could remember pushing him off a bridge when he was too chicken to jump

into the river below, helping him ask his first girlfriend to homecoming, and hacking up a lung instead of getting high with him on summer breaks back from college. What are you gonna do? She said she thought she might go. Biotech wasn’t great but hey, Mark wanted her to be a part of the decision, wanted her to come with him. That was a huge step commitment wise. Yeah, you’re practically married, Jeremy had joked. But when she’d gotten home, wanting nothing more than to sink into her claw-footed tub to soak out the putrid stench of decay Mark always complained the marsh left deep in her skin, there was a bottle of champagne sitting in a bowl of ice on the counter. Mark’s music and several male voices drifted in from the backyard. His friends were there to celebrate. They’d been waiting for her to open the chilled bubbly. I thought you wanted me to think about it. Well, I thought about it, too. I took it. She’d managed to smile through one glass before excusing herself to go shower because she smelled like rotten fish. She called him a selfish bastard after his friends left. He cooked her pasta alla norma, the only recipe he remembered from his one trip to Sicily, and added way too much ricotta. She went to bed

early to lie awake and listen to Mark rustling through case files in the living room below. The starlight coming through the window whispered that maybe she was the one being selfish. Jeremy brought cupcakes in to the office the next morning. His fiancé, Katie, had made them. With pink frosting coating the roof of her mouth, she’d told Jeremy that he’d taken the job. That’s great! He didn’t ask me. Oh. What would you do if it was Katie? A slow, stupidly tender smile had pulled his cheeks towards his ears. Her stomach had knotted. I’d go with her in a heartbeat. She’d nodded. Hadn’t said a word. Just nodded. They had grabbed waders from the shower and piled into the truck, motoring towards a different section of the swamp. That whole day, her future felt like it was right next to her, sprinting the opposite direction. She’d applied for a research position at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Biotech was fine and all, but she had awful memories of hours spent using micropipettes in biology lab at college. Fieldwork was more her thing, being outside in the woods and ponds and mud. Mark said it all sounded the same. The museum’s team was looking into the effect of pollution on crawfish in the Potomac. She hadn’t expected to get the job – it was the Smithsonian. But she did. She texted Jeremy about it and he brought over a cherry pie Katie had

made to congratulate or console her. It was, to her disappointment, delicious. She wondered if she’d ever be the type of woman who made baked goods to say thank you, or feel better, or good for you. It didn’t feel right. Leaning on her counter, Jeremy had asked if she was going to take it. She realized she hadn’t asked Mark that question. I think I might. Really? I never thought you’d leave home. Its not like there’s anything here for me. Sure there is. Your friends and family and work. You sound like you want me to stay. Of course I want you to stay. You’re my best friend. She’d decided to take the job. Scared you’ll end up alone forever if you don’t go with him? Yeah, it’s not like there are a ton of acceptable guys our age in this town. You’re right. I think Mark was the last one. Semi-acceptable. Jeremy had laughed. She woke up with a pounding headache. There was a glass of water and two little orange pills on the bedside table. Jeremy must’ve put them there when he drove her home from the farewell party last night. She swallowed the pills gratefully and drained the water, images from the previous night swimming through her head. She hadn’t been sure that this was what she needed until she watched Katie kiss Jeremy. He’d looked so happy. She winced remembering it. Her phone buzzed; a text from Jeremy. Thought you might like this. It

seemed appropriate, with a link attached. It took her to Global Change Biology’s website. “Urbanization drives contemporary evolution in stream fish.” She read the title but wasn’t particularly interested – too many other things to do, and Mark wouldn’t help with any of it, of course. She slowly stood and stripped the sheets from the duvet and mattress, packing them on top of the towels in the final box. A few hours later, she reminded herself that this was a good thing while packing the final load into the U-Haul. The fancy new city with the fancy new job. The new, probably shitty apartment Mark had found. The same old boyfriend. “Nel, you coming?” Mark called out the window from the driver’s seat. “Yeah, gimme a sec. One last run through.” “You didn’t forget anything.” “Its just for me,” she said. “Don’t get all sentimental on me now. We both agreed on this.” She looked at him for a breath, then turned and walked up the sagging front steps, through the open living-kitchen-dining room, and to the full-length windows overlooking the backyard. The absence of the white linen curtains she’d normally twist around an arm while watching the squirrels chase birds off the feeder left a flutter in her stomach, like they were strung up inside her chest cavity, blowing on an internal wind.

The rental’s horn made her jump. Tearing her eyes away from the tall cottonwoods that lined the very same river she’d pushed Jeremy into, she forced herself to move through the empty house mechanically. He’d been right, she hadn’t forgotten a thing. He honked again. She ran her hand all the way around the walls of her bedroom, stopped to yell “COMING!” down to Mark through the still open window, then fingered the old latch as she closed and locked it. The sun-warmed metal seemed to hold her like a magnet. Her hand was reluctant on the wall down the stairway, over the doorframe, on the handle pulling the oak slab shut behind her. Mark motioned for her to hurry up already, so she walked slower than necessary to the truck and climbed into the passenger seat. “Done being a diva?” “Probably not.” “Alright.” He turned the key, cranked up the radio, and started down the gravel driveway. She pressed her forehead to the window and watched her old two-story colonial grow distant, then her driveway, and then, as they merged onto route 9, her street. When she couldn’t imagine that she could see it anymore, she straightened and turned down the chords crashing through the truck’s blown speakers. “And the princess returns!”

“Shut up, Mark.” “Whoa now, I’m just trying to help.” He didn’t sound hurt – too excited to consider her feelings, she figured. “Well, you’re not helping.” Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Jeremy again. Drive safe! Stay in touch! The link he’d sent earlier was now enticing considering the long ride ahead, so she opened it and scanned the article. “Hey, listen to this,” she said. “‘Urbanization alters stream hydrology by increasing peak water velocities, which should in turn alter selection on the body morphology of aquatic species. Urbanization can drive rapid, adaptive evolutionary responses to disturbance.’ Pretty cool, huh?” Mark’s head bobbed to the broken tune of The Killers. “See? Urbanization’s a good thing. It’s gonna evolve you, baby.” “That wasn’t my point.” “Maybe it’ll mutate you into the tight skirt, blouse, heal wearin’ professional I can bring to office parties.” She didn’t respond, so he continued, looking over at her, “Oh come on, it was funny. That little sundress was adorable.” “And your lack of understanding is sexy.” “No need to get testy, I’m just saying. Researcher for the Smithsonian? No sundress wearing there.” “You do realize that I’ll probably wear the exact same waders in the Potomac that I did every day back home, right?”

“Are you going to keep coming home smelling bad?” “Probably worse. A trash smell instead of a nature smell.” “Yummmmmmy,” he said, in a way that made it seem like he didn’t mind at all. “Thanks for coming with me, Nel. Means the world to me that we’re starting a new life like this.” It was so unexpected, so sincere, she almost started crying. She turned and looked at him, hit by the sudden impression that maybe she really had made the right choice, maybe she’d decided to go in the same direction as her future. “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks for wanting me to come.” Mark looked over at her and smiled. She smiled back, and slipped her phone back into her pocket.

Phillip Pyle | friends cuddling during a film screening in the living room

Phillip Pyle | campo at 70 hoxsey in williamstown, ma

Phillip Pyle | ravyn lenae at pitchfork music festival in chicago, il

Phillip Pyle | tame impala at pitchfork music festival in chicago, il

Phillip Pyle| blood orange at pitchfork music festival in chicago, il

Phillip Pyle | sza at uptown theater in kansas city, mo

Sara Hetherington

the first time i/I comes home it’s a sunday afternoon and even though I just got home, i’ve been told to get gas—to go do something useful—which is fine since i just want to go. i’m water working my lip and feet into flip-flops that don’t fit when our neighbor who’s named bob (this isn’t a joke) comes ambling over to say hello! to tell me how Proud he is of me, getting into That School in Wherever-It-Is, (M’ass). College Means A Lot, it means, to him, that I’m not like that matthew, his step-son, who’s a year older but a grade below me, who crashed the first and second cars he was given,

who hits on my sister, who’s just turned thirteen. matthew wants, but won’t make it into the army, and’ll be living with bob, until, bob says, the boy’s thirty. that boy can’t think, and, Quod Neighbor Bob, that’s not how you’re gonna be. The you here is me, and i’m standing barefoot, kind of bare-assed in booty shorts in the dry grass of our lawn just trying to get to the car. i have the car key with the battery that doesn’t work and i want to believe, even for a second, the things bob’s telling me, but my parents scream for a living, and i suck at my fancy new school. We live next to bob and the boy he hates and those garden gnomes that stand like wizened children over his front yard, and I am no better than he is.

Carolyn Kim | Haring Met Dali on Photoshop

Carolyn Kim

Kimchi Fried Rice (김치볶음밥) Recipe Ingredients ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

2 cups cooked white rice 1 cup kimchi, chopped 4 ounces pork belly, diced 2 tablespoons gochujang, a sweet and spicy Korean chili paste 3 teaspoons sesame oil ½ medium white onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 green onion, chopped 1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds 1 package of roasted and salted seaweed sheets, crushed into fine pieces

Directions ◊◊ Heat a pan on medium-high and add pork belly with no oil. Once the pork turns from pink to brown, turn the heat down to medium-low. Cook down until the pork caramelizes to a deeper, warmer brown and the fat is rendered out. The pork pieces should have shrunk substantially. ◊◊ In the rendered pork fat, add your onions and sauté until translucent. Add the kimchi and cook until the kimchi is tender. Add the garlic and stir for about 1-2 minutes. ◊◊ Add the rice, gochujang, sesame oil, and sesame seeds to the kimchi, pork, onion, and garlic mixture. Stir to combine. The rice should have a bright red color. ◊◊ Stir the rice around for a few minutes. Then, using your spoon, smooth the surface of the rice on top, pressing it down so that the fried rice is compact in the pan. Let it sit on the heat for about 3-4 minutes. The rice is going to develop a hard, shell-like crust on the bottom. Eating this is the best part! ◊◊ Take off the heat and garnish with the green onion and crushed seaweed. Serve family style and enjoy!

Bret Hairston | Blk Grl | Model: Germanie Louis

Phillip Pyle | accra, ghana

Gabrielle Giles

Second Nature

n the corner of 6th and West 40th outside Bryant Park, we see each other from a distance and she shrieks, and I smile wide like it’s something I can’t control. We teeter towards each other on the tips of our high-heeled boots and catch ourselves in each other’s arms. We don’t realize we’re stuck together until I pull away and she emits another shriek, and I give her a giggle. We make noises of delight and exchange disbelief over how long it’s been. “I have SO much to tell you,” she says, as we trot our way into the park. It’s December 22nd . We haven’t seen each other since the middle of the summer. I smile, looking straight ahead as we walk side by side. “I’d expect nothing less.” We pass the tents, which are actually little glass buildings, of Winter Village, where natives and foreigners alike peruse high-end goods and holiday gifts. The lights of the carousel have already begun to spin, glowing against the silver late-afternoon sky: fairy lights. “I’ve been dying to be back the city,” she says, and I detect the beginning of a vintage Abby monologue: “Chicago has its perks but it’s nothing close to this. I

mean, the nightlife. I feel like every club and bar I go to is some shithole I’ve been with my sorority at least twice. And it’s the Midwest! I live in the Midwest, Sophie! I mean, what the fuck?” I laugh again. “I know. It’s kind of funny—“ “Have I even told you about the pizza?” “Yeah.” “It’s disgusting. Whoever invented deep dish is a sociopathic cunt.” Pizza—specifically, the thin-crust kind with toppings like truffle oil and prosciutto and arugula—has been our signature dinner since we were fifteen. “I haven’t had pizza in a while anyway,” I say. We dodge the entrance to the skating rink, which is currently undergoing a mass-exodus of parents trying to herd children off the ice to make way for the Zamboni. We glide around the chaos up a short staircase and settle into one of the sectional couches in a corner of Celcius, the outdoor café alongside the rink, underneath heat lamps that keep the blood flowing even in the most frigid hours. From where I’m sitting, I can see out across the ice. Little kids are still swarming like bugs around the edge of the now empty surface.

I look around at the people lounging on nearby sectionals while Abby reapplies her lipstick in her phone camera. I scan the cocktail menu. She flips her hair and presses her lips into a smile. “Yes. This is so what I need right now. Sophie, I am definitely an alcoholic; like, it’s a problem. I went to bottomless brunch yesterday, at this French place you would have loved, and then this birthday party for my friend from the Met. Jesus Christ. I’m talking too much, I’m sorry. But it never ends. I’ve been sober for like, six hours.” She laughs hysterically and I say, “Let’s fix that!” I’ve picked out a hot drink with bourbon and maple syrup and lemon, because even with the heat lamps I’m still freezing, and because I love the taste of slightly sweetened bourbon. Another thing I love: the smoky smell of bourbon on a man’s breath. She’s quick to fill me in on the state of her love life, although we both know I won’t remember half the details anyway; by the next time I see her, she’ll have a whole new saga to share. She tells me about the guy still bombarding her with Facebook messages five weeks after she dumped him, yet another Spanish guy. She has a thing for Europeans and accents. People who, when they speak, she can’t entirely understand, and who definitely can’t understand her. She tells me about another guy at work who has been hitting on her but is just so dorky and also kind of an asshole, so she flirts

with him for her own entertainment. I nod and watch the movement of the waiters behind her, tracking them from table to table. “Soph,” she snaps. “Am I already boring you?” I laugh lightly, turning her comment into a joke, and shift my gaze to her face. “So,” she says. “What about you? Anyone new? And how’s my favorite little sociopath?” I lick my lips, which feel numb from the cold, and pretend not to know what she’s talking about. “Our old friend Jacob? Do you guys still talk?” “He actually moved back to Montreal,” I tell her. I play with the zipper of my boot. The waiter comes. He’s decently attractive, with dark hair and blue eyes that betray his apathy towards us. He looks miserable. Abby orders her elaborate drink with the same conviction as when she was 16, insisting she was 21 and native to Columbia, South Carolina. I order as well. While the waiter scribbles on his pad, she scans his face for some sign of interest. She’s probably proud to have used the word “sociopath” twice in twenty minutes. She must see something in my expression, because she gives me this what the fuck? look as the waiter walks away. My phone alarm buzzes. I glance at it. “What?” she says defensively. “He was cute.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, and excuse myself. * * * It was easy to move my stuff out of his apartment because we never really lived together. I’d spent most of my time there because it was significantly bigger than my studio in Williamsburg, but other than a few sleep-shirts and makeup remover and a toothbrush we’d ventured out to buy me at 1 a.m. one night, we had kept our material lives separate. Jacob and I had always fought a lot, mostly about nothing. It was part of our rapport. It had been years, and we’d always managed to bounce back. But this time was different. We went three days without speaking—not even close to our record—and then over the course of a month, our communication pretty much ceased to exist. We finally managed to converse enough to make a plan, which resulted in a stiffly quiet dinner out. “I’ve got a job offer in Montreal,” he told me, once we were seated. At first I didn’t respond, but the stillness quickly became more agitating than the effort of conversation. “What does that mean.” He shifted in that way that meant he was telling a half-truth. “It means the firm is trying to expand their Canada branch, and there’s an opening for a paralegal position in Montreal.” I stared, and he continued. “They think I should go because

I already know my way around, from school.” “Isn’t that just another entry-level job?” He bit into a piece of bread. “I’m probably going to take it.” I leaned back and looked at him while he concentrated on his plate. I didn’t tell him to stay, or ask if it had anything to do with our fight. I sipped my wine and thought about the time I’d christened his dorm bed in Montreal during his second week of school, the first girl to spend the night there. The room had been depressingly institutional but the view of the city breathtaking. He found an apartment in Canada pretty quickly, but left the city even quicker. Apparently he had a lot of friends up there with couches. He had moved around a lot as a kid, so he was good at that kind of living. At that dinner, he’d motioned for the check after sitting in silence for a full minute and a half. I’d timed it in my head. As he reached for his wallet, I said, “It’s pretty fucking cold up there. Bring a sweater.” * * * For whatever reason, I don’t like the idea of taking my birth control in front of Abby, in public. I take a towel from the counter and stare in the mirror, attempting to fix my hair. It’s begun to stick to my face, an effect of the straightening iron. If I left it wavy like Abby’s I’d

save myself the time and effort. I’ve had this thought at least forty times before. In high school she took an acrylic painting class to complement her A.P. chemistry and biology, proof of her artistic side. The project she was most pleased with was “A Figure from Greek Mythology,” and she’d pulled me into the studio to admire it one Friday morning. She’d held the canvas up for me: her rendering of Aphrodite in an attempt at seduction. She stood waiting for my reaction, and I took a step closer, suddenly realizing why Aphrodite’s face looked so familiar. I’d almost burst out laughing, but instead glanced around the empty studio to ensure that we were alone, and said, “It’s really good, Abby.” I told her the detail was amazing, that it looked like the real thing. She sulked behind me until the bell rang. I told her I had to get to class. When I return to our sectional she’s on her phone, still texting. I ask if she’s hungry. I’m not. She shakes her head, puts down her phone and picks up the conversation, telling me about her lab work in Chicago. She’s a paid intern getting some experience before med school, or, as she puts it, before she decides if that’s what’s right for her. Either she’s forgotten about Jacob or picked up on my aversion to the subject, or the topic doesn’t interest her anymore. “And by the way,” she says, “Flights

are cheap right now. I have, like, a gazillion miles on Southwest. This could be the year you finally come visit.” I laugh. “And hang out with you in the lab all day?” “It’s not all terrible. You’d love the Art Institute. What are you doing for New Year’s?” The waiter comes with our drinks, and we order a flatbread with goat cheese and figs just because. There’s a brief silence as we wait for him to unload the tray, and watch him walk away. She asks about my job. “It’s alright,” I tell her. “I like being downtown. The gallery’s in the West Village, so it’s pretty much a prime spot. Lots of good bars and stuff and around there. You know.” She sips her drink carefully, leaving a trace amount of lipstick on the rim of the glass. “How’s business?” “Slow as fuck. Nobody’s buying right now. At least not photographs. At least not from me.” Nobody is buying anything from me. I’m only the receptionist, a job I was offered by a friend of a friend a month before graduation. It wasn’t really what I wanted but it had seemed like a good starting place. Seduced by the promise of immediate independence, I’d accepted. “Whatever,” she says, interrupting my train of thought. “What?” “Nothing. At least you’re not the

sucker who owns it. That’s all someone else’s problem.” “At least,” I say. She narrows her eyes at me, unsmiling, but nevertheless lifts her glass in a toast. “Cheers!” We clink, and I smile for her. “To other people’s misery.” * * * Jacob and I almost always slept in the same bed, but he had this thing where he couldn’t be touching someone while he slept. I would wonder if the other women he slept with (we weren’t exclusive, but to my knowledge we were the only ongoing thing in each other’s lives) made the mistake of imposing that kind of intimacy. I’d realized they probably didn’t even have the chance, since I was there almost every night. He was lying all the way on his side of the bed when I finally told him. At first he didn’t respond and I thought maybe he was asleep, but then he said “What?” The wait had been long enough that I knew he’d heard me. I think we fucked up. Another silence. “Shit.” A long sigh, exhaling. Just go to sleep, I told him. We can talk about it in the morning. The next morning came and the guy who was never without a conversation starter had nothing to say to me. I ate my yogurt slowly at his counter, looking

up with each bite in time to see him turn away, preoccupied with the newspaper and gathering his things for work. He mumbled see you tonight before shutting the door behind him. As if a promise of the future. But it turned out that I was wrong, which I discovered a few hours later after taking a second test in the gallery bathroom. I didn’t text him. I figured I would wait for him to bring it up. It took him seven days. He called me at work. “Soph.” I could hear the strain in his voice. “Are you pregnant?” My first instinct had been to laugh, so I did. It came out in short, sharp breaths. “No, I’m not pregnant.” His tone slid from tension to confusion. “Then what…” “It was a mistake,” I said. He was silent for a few moments. “A mistake.” And then: “You let me go a whole week thinking…” He trailed off, so I picked up for him. “You didn’t ask.” “Sophie.” He over-annunciated each syllable, as if otherwise I wouldn’t understand. “I didn’t sleep. For a week. Do you know what that’s like? Have you even noticed?” “Uh huh, I noticed.” “My coworkers have been asking if someone died.” I wanted to laugh again, because I was fairly sure he’d never experienced

death first-hand. Instead I made a clucking sound into the receiver. “Poor baby.” “Fuck you.” “Fuck me?” “This is so typical. I don’t know why I’d expect anything different. You never initiate anything.” I rolled my eyes. “I was always going to take care of it. Jesus.” “Take care of it?” “It had nothing to do with you. I don’t know why you’re so upset.” “You’re unbelievable.” He hung up on me, but I had nothing more to say anyway. He was right about one thing; I didn’t initiate. I made a point of never inviting myself over to his house, never suggesting that we go out to dinner, or anything like that. If I went a few days without hearing from him, I still wouldn’t text, opting to wait, instead, because I knew he eventually would. It drove him crazy, and I loved that. When I put down the phone it felt as if a weight had been lifted. It was our quietest fight. No yelling, nothing physical, but also no satisfactory climax or resolution, the angry sparks that always seemed to morph into an epic reconciliations of sorts, like especially good sex. Something in our balance had been irreparably broken. For the last few weeks before his departure, we were still technically together, but moved like ghosts. We slid past

one another without eye contact, pulled apart from kisses. To him, that must have been one of the telltale signs; we were fairly certain that we kissed like nobody else could, but that was no longer enough to make the effort worthwhile. He’d say, “What’s wrong?” as if it wasn’t both of us resisting each other. “Nothing,” I would say. Some nights he worked late and I would take myself to a bar, sometimes meeting up with an old friend, but more often than not by myself. Those were always moments of blissful clarity: sitting on a barstool, ice clinking in my drink, mesmerized by the colored glass bottles and backlit glow of the bar shelves. A few moments of stillness before chatting with a stranger, before finding one of the millions of bourbon drinkers to take me home to his mediocre apartment. * * * Whenever I drink enough vodka, I start to see little lighting bugs in the corners of my vision, swimming towards the center but disappearing before I can catch a solid view. The first time I thought I was dying, but I soon became entranced. I’m on my third drink and Abby’s finishing hers and contemplating another, insisting we order the spiked hot chocolate for dessert because it’s what this place is famous for. I’m trying to remember if I have enough to pay in cash, and come to the conclusion that

I probably don’t. We’re talking faster now, with vivacity and laughter about the past, about high school, about all the horrible and ridiculous people we used to know and can’t imagine being adults. It feels like the old days, and there’s always something warming in nostalgia. As much as I was relieved when she announced she was going to stay in Chicago after graduation, part of me that I prefer not to recognize still can’t decide if I do in fact want her to move back home. She talks like she’s still sixteen, bitching about her friends and her life in way that makes me hope to God the people around us aren’t listening. But she also knows the right people, and sticking with her means gaining access to all the underground lounges, VIP sections and secret rooms. She’s always been like that. Her circles ripple outward like pebbles in a pool. The waiter comes to clear our empty glasses and half-eaten flatbread, and asks if we want anything more. She picks up the menu for another round, but I laugh and say “NO, Ab!” and snatch it from her grasp and ask for the check. I make eye contact with the waiter and try to look apologetic for her. Uncharmed, he rolls his eyes, and as he walks away she sighs and says, “You’re no fun.” I try to think of an answer while I fumble for my wallet, but clearly she’s moved past the moment, because she interrupts my train of thought. “OMG!” she squeals. “Let’s go ice skating!” * * *

A year ago Jacob went on an “observational business trip” to London for the week, which was code for partying with his brother and his British friends. He talked about them all the time with uncharacteristic sentimentality, and had been promising to introduce us for ages. Before he left I hinted that I had some extra vacation days. I told him I’d never flown business class before. He’d said something along the lines of hm and a few weeks later he boarded the plane solo. Abby was temporarily back in the city at that point, and when I made the mistake of mentioning he would be away for the week, she’d immediately pounced. She had been seeing this German guy she’d met abroad for about a month, and set up a double date with one of his American colleagues. They both worked on Wall Street, she told me. I’d rolled my eyes. “Whatever,” she’d said. “Rich dudes like to show off. You’ll have a good time.” I changed my dress about five times that evening as I was getting ready, wanting to get the message right. This is very nice and I could charm you if I wanted to, but I’m not interested. It was funny. When Jacob and I were both in the city I didn’t worry so much about seeing other people. But in his absence, I’d had this unfamiliar feeling of commitment. We met them outside the restaurant. Abby’s German lover was tall and blonde, his companion similar. Abby planted an air-kiss on the cheek of her

man while I flashed a smile at his friend, who was clearly expecting something more emphatic. He responded with a “How’s it going?” Inside, I stayed quiet while they made small talk about Oktoberfest in Munich that year. Abby groaned and told them how she’d missed it when she was abroad and how she was dying to go. German Lover absentmindedly played with her hair, and she caught me staring. “You know,” she told the table, “Sophie’s family actually comes from Germany.” My date gave me a sideways glance with what I took as feigned interest. I offered a half smile and said, “They were refugees. And Sophie can also speak for herself, you know.” My date’s eyes widened and he grinned. “Damn. You pick the feisty ones, Ab.” Abby laughed but her eyes turned to slits and she shot me an irritated look. I didn’t care; I wanted to leave. I made it through another two drinks and announced I was going to the bathroom. Abby said she’d join me. I wove my way through the tables and she caught up at the door to the women’s room. She called me a bitch and accused me of not trying. I told her I wasn’t really that available. She snorted. “Are you kidding? When have you ever been? Jacob’s not your boyfriend. He’s just your convenient excuse.” I reminded myself in the bathroom mirror that she couldn’t stand Jacob.

Part of the reason I’d agreed to the date was to make up for one a few weeks prior with Jacob and a friend of his, a surprisingly nice guy whom Abby had been fixated on for a while. When she’d confessed she was actually starting to feel something for him, I’d begged Jacob to set up a date, with the excuse that Abby would never shut up about it otherwise. Miraculously, he’d obliged. But during dinner, he’d continuously pushed her buttons for his own entertainment until she’d thrown a tantrum and stormed out of the restaurant. He told me his friend deleted her number the next morning, and she never heard from him again. Not that she expected him to; in a moment of unforeseen self-awareness, she clearly knew it was over for them. I waited for my punishment or scolding, a second wave of tantrums, but all I’d received was a text: I don’t get it with Jacob. He’s toxic. “And doesn’t seem to like people all that much,” she’d added when I finally took her out for apology drinks. Back at the table the group was already engrossed in carefree conversation, and my date turned to me with concern as I yanked the chair out noisily. He said in a low voice: “You okay?” I nodded and prayed for the bill. As we were pulling our coats on I announced that I was too tired to continue on to the new club Abby’s promoter friend was working at that night, an integral piece of the original plan. She looked at me like she couldn’t believe anyone could be so selfish, and then

sighed, turning to smile at German Lover, and said, “Your loss.” “Goodnight,” I said. I was walking away briskly to hail a cab when my date materialized next to me. “Hey,” he said. I stared. “I get it, you’re not that into all this. It’s fine. I just wanted to know if you’d get a drink with me before you call it a night. We can go somewhere low key, wherever you want. No commitments.” I looked at him. “Or even a coffee some time. Seriously, I’m just looking to get to know this place better.” He smiled, a little nervously. I could see a cab approaching out of the corner of my eye, yellow and inviting with its gloriously reassuring taxi light lit. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You should go with them. You’ll have fun.” I slid into the cab, inhaling the scent of leather and cherishing the atmosphere: vacant, like the empty studio that waited for me just sixteen dollars away. Not even London could have been more tempting. I glanced out the window, catching one last glimpse of my date still motionless on the corner, still staring in earnest at the spot I’d just been standing in as we sped away. I watched the flicker of the skyline across the river with satisfaction. And two days later I’d picked Jacob up at the airport with a bottle of bourbon. I jumped a little and kissed him

when he hugged me, and I could feel us both recoil from the unusually public display of affection. We took turns sipping from the bottle in the cab ride home, and I’d leaned into his coat, saying, “You were gone way too long. Don’t do that again. Abby was a crazy person all weekend.” I expected him to laugh in response. Instead he said, “Why are you still friends with her? Hasn’t it gotten a little old by now?” I blinked at him and straightened up, rubbing the leather of my gloves between my fingers. “She’s fun.” “You don’t even like clubbing. Why do you need to get into those places?” “They’re better than the other places I’d be getting into.” “Yeah, but why bother in the first place, if you hate it? What’s the point?” I stared out the window. “Why don’t you call your dad more than twice a year?” He shut up for the next few minutes. I asked about his brother. He said he seemed happy in the U.K. He didn’t ask what happened with Abby, and I didn’t ask about the rest of his trip. The minute we crossed his apartment threshold and shut the door I didn’t care about any of them. * * * The day after our last dinner I began to collect my things from his apartment, and by the end of the week I

had removed all traces of myself. There was something satisfying about storing the makeup remover in my own bathroom cabinet, throwing out the frayed toothbrush. I’d felt my life remarkably unaltered. I felt focused. I had no trouble saying no to Abby, or anyone else’s pestering for a night out. I slept beautifully, uninterrupted. A guy I’d met a few weeks back at a gallery event had texted me for drinks, and I’d finally agreed to meet up with him for an evening. I was stepping out of the shower when my phone buzzed with a call from Jacob. I let it ring while I towel-dried my hair. The buzzing stopped, and then immediately started up again. I picked up. “What?” “I need my book back.” “What?” “My book. The Hemingway stories. I’m leaving this weekend.” “What are you talking about?” “You have it. You borrowed it. I need it back. I’m coming over.” “What—“ He’d hung up. I texted the gallery guy: Can we push it back a few hours? Something just came up. Twenty minutes later I was buzzing Jacob in. My hair was still wet. When I opened the apartment door he walked past me for the bookshelf. He tapped on the spines, as if searching for something. Then he turned and looked at me. “What the fuck, Jacob?” He didn’t answer.

“What are you looking for?” “It’s not here.” He took a step closer to me. I looked at him. The space between us disappeared, and he pulled me onto the bed. I lost track of my shirt, my bra, the earrings I had just put on. I could feel the pillowcase dampening under my hair. And then I started losing energy, at first slowly, then all of a sudden. The will to embrace him for one second longer had disappeared. Lying on my back, I realized that I had stopped moving entirely. A few seconds later he realized it too. “What’s wrong?” he said in a low voice. I blinked. He worked a little harder, trying to revive me. “Soph,” he said. It was as if the proximity to any kind of genuine emotion was exhausting him. “What happened?” I just looked at him. He held my face in his hands for a moment. Then he let go. “We just… we always had that thing. We got each other. From the beginning. Right?” I kept looking at him, my mind blank. Then I said, “We were pretty young back then. There wasn’t really anything to get.” * * * Abby and I hold on to each other for dear life as we make our way down the short staircase with significantly

more difficulty than we had getting up, and having much more fun doing it. I squint into the light reflecting off the rink. Only about an hour has gone by since we arrived. I wait on a bench while she goes to rent the skates. A man next to me is attempting to pull a tiny white skate off the foot of a girl in a puffy jacket and purple hat. Her cheeks are flushed pink and her hand is clutching the edge of the bench. I get up. I hear her exclaim in a whine, “Da-ddyyy!” I stand still so I don’t fall over. People are moving in slow motion and people are moving in fast motion. How are they doing it at the same time? Magic. The fairy lights sparkle and swim in my view, a vignette effect, like you’d find on an old photograph. I feel an arm and Abby says, laughing, “What are you doing, dipshit? Sit. Put your skates on.” I laugh, too, and we fumble with the ties on the skates, the white leather dull from years of borrowed use. I laugh a lot when I am with Abby. I often forget this. “Let’s go, Abba-Cadabra,” I say, because I’ve somehow decided I’m fourteen. We stand and hold onto each other again, performing a second and even more extraordinary balancing act on our blades. With some minimal help from the stiff black rubber beneath, we make our way to the edge of ice, swing open the little door, and stumble into the few

who have lingered in the face of the cold. It takes a minute or so, but like second nature, I find my footing and ease into a glide, forgetting Abby behind me. Our fellow skaters disappear from view as they blend into the background, forming a single blur of color as I speed up. I can see the carousel. I look down to watch my own unbelievable footwork. I take a sharp breath, ecstatically full of cold and life and the lives around me. Because the Zamboni has just cleared it, the surface is smooth, and watery, and for a moment I think I can almost see my own reflection.

Melani Ortega | Chrysalis

Bret Hairston | Blk Grl | Model: Germanie Louis

Sara Hetherington

Christmas Break, With Take-Home Questions

t’s almost merry Christmastime and the mother who made you is making red jello while you sit at the counter and try not to cry. You woke up to the sound of carols. Your mother’s old stereo, which only comes out of its cabinet for occasions such as these, spins a compact disc that’s older than you are. Whenever it gets to “God Rest Ye—,” it skips. You’ve been balanced on a barstool for the past little bit, leaning on your arms and ignoring your morning orange juice. Your mother thumbs through a box of recipes and hums along with the music. When she’s found the most yellowed index card, she turns to the pantry, pulls out boxes of gelatin. Brightly, she asks over her shoulder, “Do you want to help?” A line of black ants strides across a hairline crack where the kitchen counter meets the sink. From the crook of your crossed arms, you watch them march towards a plastic trap. Merry almost Christmas. It will be your fourteenth one. The year before, you asked your mother why you celebrate it. It’s only the two of you, and neither of you believe in Christ. (That realization about her, made many years

back, had given you comfort. When you’d tried to talk to God and gotten only static, you’d thought you were the only one.) But her answer left you discontent. Tradition, she’d said. Like the green and red jellos. Like “Jingle Bells.” Christmas could come more slowly for other reasons besides. You are only fourteen, but lately, before bed, when the lights are out and the space in your skull narrows to a single point, you see time slipping fast behind you. You learned about life expectancy some weeks ago in school, and after class you started the ominous computations that have cursed you ever since. They start here: As a female born in your country and year, you can expect to live to seventy-five. You have maybe sixty more years ahead. If you round up your fourteen years, you think, that makes just four more lifetimes left. Onefifth, one right-hand finger raised. Just four more up and then goodbye. 1 You don’t mention this math to your mother. It might upset her. If your mother is ever unhappy, she’s never shown it. On school days, she wakes you in the morning, makes you fried eggs like eyes over bacon smiles, and, when it’s time, 1 | Using the Internet, look up the average life expectancy for a person of your sex born in your country and year.

waves to you from your front door. It’s a well-worn play: she does all the things her mother did ’til she died. Their script has no room for pause. You never met her, your grandmother. She is for you an ancient figure, something like a myth or riddle. It’s strange to think of a person who was and now isn’t. The mother who made the mother who made you. When you try to imagine her, from old pictures and puzzling family traditions, you draw a blank. It was your grandmother who made these jellos for Christmas. Christmas Jello-Salad Rings, the recipe card calls them. Crenulated layers of red and green and sugary white cream cheese made them prettier than fruitcakes and popular in the sixties. You’ve come to expect them every December, were once surprised that your classmates had never heard of them. “Why jello?” you asked your mother once. She’d shrugged and smiled. Tradition. Your science classes have taught you more about the matter than your mother will or can. In chemistry you learned what jello even is: granules of chemically treated collagen, from the bones and hides of once-live things. Cows and horses, sheep and pigs. You now know also how it works. Dousing gelatin with boiled water pulls apart its protein bonds; stirring in ice re-binds the chains with water trapped inside. The life-cycle of gelatin: solid, liquid, semi-solid.2 But from your biology book’s 2 | A package of sugar free jello requires

section on digestion, you discovered, too, how this cycle has to end. Swallowing jello subjects it to stomach acids that break apart the protein chains and make them loose liquid goop again. Like there’d never been a jello at all. With your cheek against your arm, you peer into the darkness of the ant trap. The back of the box was explicit. Inside the trap there is a poisoned bait that the ants will carry back to their colony, killing the queen and all her children, or your money back, guaranteed. The ants march thoughtlessly toward it. “How many layers should we do?” asks your mother. She contemplates the bowls and boxes spread out before her. You hear the echo of the question, and realize that it matters for planning which colors to set when. You can’t think of what to say. “Just red-white-green, or more of each?” she asks again. Looks up.3 Stage direction: drag up the edges of your mouth and answer. * * * 1 cup (8 oz) boiling water and 1 cup cold. Describe the changes the water molecules undergo in the creation of jello: 3 | You have 3 packages of red gelatin, 5 packages of green gelatin, and 1 package of cream cheese. The recipe for one Jello-Salad Ring requires half a package of cream cheese, 2 packages of red gelatin, and 2 packages of green gelatin. Answer the following questions: a.) How many Jello-Salad Rings can you make with the ingredients you have on hand? b.) What is the limiting factor?

“So how are Ally and Samantha?” she asks.4 The lump in your throat gets fatter. You know Christmas is important to your mother, so it’s important you don’t cry. But her questions aren’t helping. If she knew how hard you’re just trying to hold it together, you think, she wouldn’t bother you so much. “They’re fine.” The first time you frightened yourself, you were seven. (Half your lifetime now ago, when you still had ten lifetimes left.) It was summertime. You were on your stomach, spread-eagled across the cool white of your patio, chin balanced on your stacked wrists—not so different from how you sit now, at almost Christmas, at kitchen counter—contemplating the crisp lawn in front of you. Little black ants walked the border between yard and deck. For a time, you watched them, their small legs lifting, antennae straying in the air. You wondered at their invisible path. Then you became bored. Decided to test their planning. You blew on the parade. Some flew off the pavement and got caught in blades of grass. Others hesitated, confused by the break in their line. But one, disturbed by the disruption, ran recklessly towards you. Too heavy to move, too surprised to stay still, you 4 | What are some of the signs of anxiety

or depression in children and adolescents? What are some non-obvious techniques you can use to determine whether your child may fit some of these criteria?

squished it with your thumb. Your guts went cold even before you took your hand away. It was worse when you did. In the tiny black smudge that remained of the ant, there yawned something vast and chilling. That plunging feeling was hard to shake. For months afterwards, while other children agonized over sidewalk cracks and creaky swings, you exercised caution around ants and garden lizards. “Just fine?” Ally and Samantha are two bubble-headed bimbos who haven’t talked to you as much since they made it onto the volleyball team. Now they hang around with the sporty girls who, in elementary school, laughed when your father left you and your mother. In those early days, he’d still come for career day, parent day, the science fair. The nutty professor, the other kids called him. It was weird how much he tried to teach, as if your class of third graders were a lecture hall of college students. Weird how bouncy he was, and how he steamrolled over any kid who had a question or a confused face. Weird that he showed up for these things when he didn’t even live with you. You’d shrugged off those comments then. Your father was the smartest person you knew. It would be more than a little sentimental to think that your friends’ betrayal alone has caused your present condition. Even at fourteen, you are aware that it’s more comorbid than causal. Even if you had a normal father,

the newest Nike sneakers, and were the star of the volleyball team, you and your classmates wouldn’t escape mortality. Because you know this, yes, you are morose in class, but not like an outcast. More like a sage. Even so, in that small part in your head where a previous-you has crawled, you know this has an end. It has happened before, without, you think, anyone else really noticing. Your obsessions with death have tended to disappear when confronted with heavy enough distractions. Meeting Ally and Samantha for the first time in homeroom a few years ago, for example. Until the next one, then, you’ll watch a lot of TV, smile little, talk less, and wait. Something has to give eventually. Still, the sage-you knows better: distractions and happiness exist only in the space where you suspend disbelief. This year you’re in a class on World Religions. On the first day, the teacher popped a documentary into the TV and bade you take in the strangers on the screen. Strangers in mosques and temples, with crosses and turbans, incense and statues. There were monks in India who wore cotton masks over their mouths and swept the ground in front of them so they didn’t swallow or step on bugs. Before the screen switched, you thought how those monks would have shuddered at how your mother tipped a pan of scalding water into the anthill in your yard. (You still remember its collapse. The soggy sand and twists of steam.)

The monks believe in reincarnation. A funny thought. To have nothing new and everything reused. You wonder, sometimes, if you were once something else. A sugar ant or a sheep. Your grandmother, maybe. But just as you can’t believe in Christ or Christmas, you can’t believe you were or will be reborn. In the past ten years, the world population has ballooned by a billion. The birth and growth rates are at odds. You regard the mother who made you. One day, will you make someone, too? God, that seems cruel. She pours boiling water into a bowl with care. The crystals of gelatin darken. Your mother stirs as she hums, adds ice and whisks the waters more. Her wooden spoon is hypnotic. “Hey,” she says. In her right hand she holds a bundt pan. It’s meant for cakes, but makes a pretty shape for jello, too. In the left, she holds the gelatin bowl aloft. “Come give me a hand,” she says. 5 She smiles, ever sunny. Showtime. Time to do your part. You scrape back your stool and come around the counter. “Here,” she says passing you the 5 | In the previous chapter on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, we examined something called Behavioral Activation. After reading the chapter, do you think you should you force your child to engage in activities they’ve expressed little desire to participate in?

bowl. That glassy globe is suddenly yours. It’s slick with water and more solid than you’d expected. And heavy. Your mother holds the bundt pan steady underneath your grip and waits. Through the jello and the glass, you can see your hands tinged red. Dyed light wavers over your thumbprints and palm lines. The bowl suddenly seems a clear wet womb. 6

Your mother doesn’t entertain many conversations about your father, especially not about his work. She’s a school nurse. The older you got, the less you thought she could keep up. Your dad certainly implied as much. “I don’t think she was very interested in my work,” he’d say sadly, then bounce a tennis ball for the dog and ask how you were liking your science classes.

A few years after walking out on your family, your father was finally selected for a tenure track position at the state school where he’d started as an adjunct. He moved into a nice house near the university. His calls became rare, his visits rarer still. Despite or because of this, you listened raptly when he talked about his work, which concerned the effects of government policy on our steadily degrading planet, took him away to talks in Beijing, and generated an indeterminate income of which only a small portion was put towards the cost of rearing you. This was made clear in various ways. When you visited your father’s three-bed/two-bath, two-story clapboard house, played with his Golden Lab and roamed about the rooms free of bodies and full of books before, coated in pet dander, returning to you and your mom’s apartment, you couldn’t help but notice the differences. But your mother’s never mentioned it. She’s not a griper.

Can’t. Don’t. is your only response to your very powerful urge to cry. If you start crying, you will be defenseless when your mother asks you why. Both the instance of your tears and your convoluted explanations will ruin Christmas, you are sure. The first time you saw her cry was when you were in middle school. Your obsession at that point had been with pollution statistics. At breakfast, you’d swung your legs at the table and said, “Hey, mom, did you know that over five hundred petabecquerels of iodine and caesium nuclides were released in the Fukishima disaster? And that China has the highest CFCs emissions of any country in the world?” “Oh, yeah?” your mother had answered. It had been the weekend. She’d been making you breakfast. “CFCs. What are those?” And you’d launched into a monologue about chlorofluorocarbons—their use in industry, their emissions rates by country, how they break down in the atmosphere, how they contribute to the decline of the ozone layer. “How’d you learn all this?” she said,

6 | What is the jello in this analogy? a.) placenta b.) embryo c.) amniotic fluid

sliding your plate of eggs in front of you. “We learned about it in school. Didn’t you?” “I don’t think I remember that,” you mother said. 7She untied her apron. “It’s pretty neat,” you’d said with feigned indifference. “I know it’s not interesting to everyone, though.” “When did you become my little science whiz?” she’d said, and tried to smile. Then you’d wondered why she was gone so long in the bathroom and heard her sniffing through the door, and you’d had a feeling like an egg had been cracked over your head and dribbled down your neck. It had been like the first time you’d realized you would die. You swore you wouldn’t be such a smartass again. Tradition at least gives you the bare minimum means of making your mother happy. It’s easy. All you have to do is pour this goop into its mold. The fall is slow. As the bowl drops, the space in your skull narrows to a single dark point. The jello sloshes, then cascades over the dish’s lip. And then the bowlful shatters. Glass spears skitter under cabinets. The more sizable shards spin in situ, like compact 7 | With the depletion of the ozone layer, an increased amount of solar radiation will reach Earth, likely inhibiting plant growth and causing an increase in incidents of human skin cancer and cataracts. How could someone not remember the steps of such a terrifying process?

discs or cosmic bodies in space. 8That black space that always crouches on the border of your thoughts now threatens to engulf you. You choke. You’re crying in the kitchen and the mother who made you cannot comfort you at all. She clears glass with a dishtowel, your mother, and asks if you’ve been hurt. She is all motion and motherly concern. You can’t answer. You think to blame her. Still-warm jello spreads across the tile floor. It seeps into the grout, stains white mortar red and runs like artery through bone. Liquid collagen laps your toes. Your chest and head, and the kitchen, heaves. Honey, says your mother. C’mere, what’s wrong? 9 She crunches over glass to grab hold of you, hug you. C’mere, she says. Why are you crying? Not her fault for killing ants, for making Jello Rings. For forgoing cotton masks and forgetting basic chemistry. But you’re still shaking. You can’t tell her anything. She’ll never know, and maybe doesn’t want to. It is, after all, almost Christmas. 8 | In 5 billion years, our Sun will begin to expand. a.) How will this affect the Solar System? b.) How does that make you feel? 9 | We’ve identified some phrases that are unhelpful when dealing with a child who may have anxiety or depression. Now, try to think of some more understanding alternatives. Practice them.

SPRING 2019

CONTRIBUTORS EMILY BURCH

is fueled by chocolate, caffeine, and sunshine.

Active 2 minutes ago

BREIDY CUETO

LESTER LEE

is wondering why the rum is gone.

likes lines.

BRIELLE GILES

writes a lot about New York City. Shockingly, she also happens to be from New York City. She hopes to spend at least part of next year writing about New York City while living in New York City.

ROLYN KIM

NNIE MIKL

Avid supporter of Burger King's unsweetened iced tea

MEL

NI ORTEG

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

LILY GOLDBERG is trying her best.

BRET H

IRSTON

W i l l B r e t e v e r u n d e r s t a n d w he r e t h e w i n d comes from? Will they ever find jeans that fit both their butt and their waist? Will she stop watching Pride and Prejudice while sobbing into Kraft Mac & Cheese? All these questions answered and more, next time on Dragon Ball Z!

HETHERINGTON'S

work is inspired by bad weather, sad animals, and personal complaints.

PHILLIP PYLE is from Kansas. He often uses websites titled 'best settings for concerts' because he is still bad at adjusting iso, shutter speed, and aperture.

ITLIN UBL

likes languages and running. Her favorite book is All The King's Men.

LIE WILKINSON

eats oranges whole.