Keep on Singing

“Sorrysorrysorry,” Scott said, hustling up the hill.

“You should be,” Matt answered playfully, but Scott’s known him long enough to detect the sincerity hiding behind his words.

“Give him a break,” Dawn interjected. “We’ve got all day.”

“You know I’m just giving him a hard time,” Matt replied.

“Seriously, Matt,” Natalie chimed in. “I’m sure whatever’s going on with Scott is WAY more pressing than my pregnancy. God knows you guys had to cover for me a time or two during the nine months I was carrying a living creature around in my belly; feeding it, nurturing it, projectile vomiting because of it. ”

“Thank you, Dawn. F-you, Matt and Natalie.” Scott said, taking a swig of water.

Matt and Natalie’s high five overpowered the sound of Scott’s gurgling.

“GUYS,” Matt shouted.

“WHAT?” the others responded in unison.

“We did it!”

“Did what?” Scott asks.

“We kept this thing going for an ENTIRE YEAR!”

Matt blew his tuning whistle in celebration.

“Did you think we wouldn’t?” Dawn asked.

“Of course! Several times.”

“What the hell, Matt?” Natalie screamed, the pitch of her voice slapping Matt in the back of the head like she would’ve if she was within arm’s reach.

“Come ON. You mean to tell me you didn’t question our longevity for even the tiniest second? I don’t want to point any middle fingers or anything, but I know for a fact Scott did.”

Scott cleared his throat.

“And you did too, Natalie!”

“Those were the hormones talking.”

“I did too,” Dawn mumbled into the sleeve of her beige cardigan.

“Thou who hath not SINNED,” Matt spat, blowing the tuning whistle again to accent his point.

“But Matt’s right,” Dawn continued, “WE MADE IT A YEAR.”

Everyone “Woo-hoo’d,” at erratic pitches.

“That’s about how we sounded at our first practice,” Scott quipped once the chaotic noise subsided.

“HA. You ain’t kidding,” Matt confirmed. “My voice had the range of a bass drum back then.”

“I wouldn’t say any of us really mastered our craft at that point,” Dawn reassured him.

“Let’s not focus on our lows,” Natalie spoke up. “Let’s revel in our successes. We’ve managed to get a nice little following going.”

“You mean the close friends and family we begged to ‘Like‘ us on Facebook,” Scott clarified.

“Bah-dah-tish,” Matt added.

“Ha, ha. But seriously, we may not fill auditoriums or anything, but people show up to every one of our shows,” Natalie reminded.

“EXACTLY,” Dawn agreed. “And we’ve inspired a bunch of others to hop on stage and lend us their talents from time to time.”

“Speaking of, where’s Luther?” asked Scott.

“Yeah, where’s everyone?” Natalie joined.

“They’re actually not coming,” Matt announced.

“WHAT?” The others barked.

“NOW,” Matt clarified. “They’re not coming NOW. They should be showing up in about an hour or so.”

“Then what were you giving me shit for?” Scott yapped.

“Because I’ve been giving you shit for almost fifteen years! Your brain would implode if I didn’t.”

“Oh. You’re probably right.”

“Seriously though, Matt, what’s up?” Natalie asked.

“Well, as we’ve previously established, we’ve been together for A YEAR NOW.”

Matt paused for a celebratory shout.

“No cheer this time? Okay. Well, I know this may sound a little sappy, but...”

“Aww, are you proposing!” Scott joked.

“Kill the moment why don’t you, SCOTT. Jeez!”

“Continue, Matt,” Dawn said, always a fan of heartfelt admissions.

“As I was SAYING,” Matt continued, shooting a glare at Scott,”I just wanted to let you guys know how much I’ve enjoyed collaborating with you over the last year. I’ve made a go of it on my own a few times in the past, but it always ended up as me just singing into the wind. And although our Facebook ‘following’ would suggest we’re still kind of harmonizing into thin air, at least we’ve found a nice rhythm together. Even if you’re the only ones who actually hear my baritone self, that’s enough to keep me doing this for the foreseeable future.”

“He IS proposing,” Scott cut in.

“SCOTT,” Dawn and Natalie scolded.

“I’m KIDDING. Sorry, Matt. You know sentimental moments bring out the seven year old in me, but I agree. This group has freed me from the shackles of my white-collar 9-to-5, and I apologize for keeping you my dirty little secret for as long as I did.”

“Oh YEAH. I forgot about that.” Matt said.

“Successes, Matt,” Natalie reiterated. “Let’s focus on our successes. And I agree. I, like Matt, have been down a handful of solo roads myself, and I gotta say, I’m liking the way it feels to be a part of this clique. If I didn’t just start a family of my own, you guys would definitely be my favorite family of 2013.”

Matt, Natalie and Scott turned towards the sniffles coming from the neckline of Dawn’s cardigan.

“Dawn?” Matt asked.

Dawn poked her head out from under the front of her sweater, a piece of lint clinging to the hinge of her glasses.

“I’m sorry, that was just...”

She paused to gain composure and continued.

“That was just beautiful, you guys! I know you three have known each other for over a decade, and I’ve only been a part of your lives for a year, but it just feels like we’ve been doing this since grade school, you know?”

“Aww Dawn,” the others caroled.

With everyone too choked up to speak, the four founding members of The Notebooks huddled together on the scenic hilltop for a jubilant group hug. As they waited for the other bandmates to arrive, Matt and Scott continued giving each other shit, Natalie shared photos of her newborn daughter and Dawn made the others look like underachievers by sharing the songs she’d already penned for next year’s setlist.

“So who’s ready to make an album cover?” Matt asked as the other a-cappella singers began making their way up the hill.

“How are we doing this again?” asked Dawn.

“In the most cliché way possible,” Matt answered.


Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Losing It

Because your mother raised you Baptist, buy into your pastor's definition of fate. Believe in the existence of a soul mate and search for her. It’s never too early to find “The One.”

For guidance on this journey maintain perfect attendance at the Sex-Ed classes your church offers. The boys who share your curiosity about how and when God wants you to have intercourse will raise their hands and ask all the questions fumbling in your mind.

“So, when I get married I can do anything I want with my wife?” one will ask, as you imagine all the dirty things you’ve witnessed on late night web-browsing sprees.

“With your wife? Sure,” the pastor will guarantee despite the stunned look on his face.

When another kid asks him if he ever masturbated, he’ll end the class with a prayer begging the Holy Trinity for assistance.

                                                                                                   ***

At sixteen pursue a sweet Christian girl in your classes who’s impressed by your purity ring. She happens to be half Cuban, even though the only traits she inherits from her immigrant mother are her abilities to maintain a metabolism that sends food straight to her ass and to speak so fast that you have trouble keeping up with the words departing from her virgin lips.

Convince yourself you’ll end up with a Latina because the more time you spend swooning over the white girls at school, the less action you’ll get. God knows you’ll never make enough money to impress their fathers.

Develop a friendship before professing your love to her. That way you’ll know what songs to spend hours learning when you pick up the guitar. And she’ll appreciate that you sing her the one she likes to belt out of her window while driving around town on summer nights. Remain patient through the months she spends deciding if she’ll reciprocate your feelings.

During Youth Group discussions, when she defends the biblical condemnation of committing suicide, nod your head in agreement despite thinking life can be fucking depressing. Don’t mention that your father’s alcoholism looks a lot like someone ending his life “before God intends to.”

Ignore the invitations from your closest friends to party at the beach. To get drunk off light beer, get high on cheap weed, and roll around in the sand with girls who have daddy issues.

Instead, write your prudent girlfriend flattering lyrics accompanied by your guitar. Write her four-page letters explaining why you can’t breathe as easily now, because loving her has enlarged your heart so much that there’s hardly any room for your lungs. Or some corny shit like that.

Relish every opportunity to caress her round, soccer-toned ass. After your hand slips underneath her bra to grip her breast, her nipple poking the center of your palm, she’ll never allow you to do so again. Settle for dry-humping on your bed, the TV volume turned up so your mom can’t hear. One day the girl will mention that the friction between your jean-covered privates feels wrong. Because your religion has programmed you to associate pleasure with guilt.

That’ll be the extent of your sexual relationship for the three and a half years you spend admiring the virtue of her intentions.

                                                                                                   ***

In college, the two-hour drive between you will provide the space she needs to grow closer to God and for you to question whether He ever existed.

The Real Estate market will crash. She’ll know you transferred schools to help your parents so they don’t lose the house that represents an inkling of success after being uprooted from your homeland. But they’ll lose it, and she won’t call to ask how you’re doing.

When she does, she’ll say, “I don’t think we’re meant to be together.”

Realize she never loved you. Next time, listen to your mother, who foretold your heartbreak as if she were a prophet.

Go to your best friend’s house and drink your first beer, toasting the girl who wasted too much of your time. To hell with her and the morals she instilled in you.

                                                                                                   ***

Hang out with a good friend from high school who still talks to your ex. Lay a blanket at your favorite beach spot and drink a few brews to build courage. Tell her you always thought she was beautiful and kiss her when she tackles you onto the dunes.

You’ll drink too much on your twentieth birthday and almost hook up with the cute Colombian girl crushing on you. But your conscience will tell you you’re not ready. Her incessant texts after the party, outlining your future together, will prove it would’ve been a mistake.

At twenty-one ask out the cubanita who frequented the Spanish service at your church years ago. After a few dates she’ll sneak you into her house for foreplay, and you’ll wonder if she took that Sex-Ed class with the pastor’s wife.

Attend a drunkfest at your buddy’s pool. Your cubanita, who couldn’t look more like a white girl with her curly blond locks and icy blue eyes, will seduce you at the party and lead you to her car. Apologize when you leave her unsatisfied. She’ll say, “It’s okay,” and kiss you on the cheek before driving away.

Don’t think about your ex, who’s saving herself for marriage and expecting the same from her devout future husband—thereby forbidding your reconciliation. Don’t wonder if sex is the final Right of Passage to becoming a man. A man she would describe as ungodly.

Drown your regret in your father’s firewater. You’ll be unable to decipher what’s making you sick, if it’s the rum or the realization that you lost your virginity to a girl you’ll never love.

Written by: Eric Zurita
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Motives

Angie’s cat gave Jayden that I-know-what-you’re-about-to-do look as he sat on the curb and spun his cell phone back and forth in his hands.

“Shut up, cat,” Jayden said. He sounded as stupid as Angie when she pranced out onto her patio in her underwear to feed the cat the dregs of her breakfast cereal. Sweet kitty! Kit-kit-kitty! Angie lived next door, and according to Jayden’s mother, spent rather a lot of time in her underwear as a profession, not just to give the neighbors a show.

The cat folded his flabby body in half and began to groom his undercoat, as if to say, “The thing that makes cats refined is we never say anything.”

Jayden checked the time on his cell phone. The plan would work. Wouldn’t it?

The cat stretched out his legs and began licking his privates. “At least I’m the real deal,” he seemed to say. “No shame. You’re a faker. Just look at your shoes.”

His shoes were brand new Adidas that he’d run over with his mom’s car to make them look beat up and vintage.

Jayden was going to call in a bomb threat. He was waiting until 11:05, the very moment the bell would ring for fourth period, to call the school’s front office.

It was 11:00. Jayden was almost sad he’d miss the chaotic moment. The skeptical but pounding pulse in Principal O’Shannon’s neck as he smacked the phone into its holster and hissed for the secretary to summon the campus cop. The teachers scuffling to herd everyone out into the parking lot across the street from the school, the one behind the old Piggly Wiggly.

The Piggly Wiggly, where the real bomb was hiding.

11:01. Angie’s cat stopped his beautification project. He was still slumped over, his white legs poking out like those of a pale man just home from work, stripped down to his boxers and collapsing into a Lay-Z Boy.

“You want me to bring you a beer?” Jayden drawled at the cat.

He knew when they linked the bombing to him they’d question his sanity. Talking to cats was a good start.

They’d peel through his life. They’d look for all his secrets, find none, and then construct some out of thin air.

They’d have his mother on TV, asking for privacy. The news would broadcast a street view shot of his sister’s dormitory at the University of Alabama. His sister, a bright young girl studying to be a doctor, recently returned from a medical mission trip to Belize, the news anchors would say. They’d shake their heads. They’d speculate about terrorist connections in Belize. They’d compare him to all the others who had come before.

But he wasn’t like all of them, his friend from an elementary school soccer team would say on Channel 5. Jayden wasn’t angry. He wasn’t bullied. No, I don’t think he was a psychopath.

11:03. It was interesting thinking of himself in the past tense.

Angie’s cat had enough of Jayden’s gaze. He stretched his back, spiking his claws into the ground a few times, before stalking off across the parking lot.

Jayden wondered what it would be like to be reborn as another person, maybe in Texas, maybe with a new name. He knew that wasn’t how it would shake out.

11:05. He tapped the school’s number into his phone, then Principal O’Shannon’s extension. Three rings.

“Ashton High School.”

“There’s a bomb in the building.” Jayden didn’t make any effort to disguise his voice.

“’Scuse me?”

“A bomb. In the building.”

“Who is this? Is this a joke?”

Jayden hung up the phone. His heart beat normally. He felt neither hot nor cold. He watched as if, almost in slow motion, Angie’s cat sauntered through the parking lot and sat in the middle of the drive.

The sun was shining. The students wouldn’t complain as they were led out of the school and closer to the ticking Piggly Wiggly building. They’d laugh. I bet it was Colton Simpkins, since he got suspended! Yeah, I bet he’s mad about missing football. Nah, I think Dontavius called it in. He hates fourth period chem.

11:08. And now, he waited. The bomb was set to go off at 11:17, just enough time for everyone to make it to the safety area. They’d done timed tests for fire drills. The current record was ten minutes, but Jayden had planned conservatively.

A white Honda Accord roared into the apartment complex from the street. It was going way too fast, thumping some R&B disaster at top volume. When the front bumper made contact with the cat, its furry black body, now looking somehow smaller, flew through the air and landed crumpled in the gutter.

The driver got out. It was Angie. Jayden could read the string of expletives forming on her lips. She stumbled toward the cat, but then pivoted and got back in the car.

The Honda reversed, skidded, and peeled out of the complex.

Was she drunk?

Jayden knew this was not a moment for judgment. He checked his phone as he walked towards the gutter. 11:14.

The cat was stiff. He nudged it with the toe of his Adidas. The cat gave a little rumble. Purring? Its dented body inflated.

“You good, buddy?” Jayden said.

The cat cracked an eyelid. Even having just dodged death, it could make time for a stink eye.

“What life was that? Four, seven? Hope you’re not up to nine.”

Jayden knew without checking his phone: 11:17. The ground of the apartment complex, only a mile from the abandoned Piggly Wiggly, shook. The cat lifted his head up out of the gutter. Jayden scratched him behind the ears.

Then Jayden ran towards the woods away from the direction of the blast.

They’d find his name on the absence list at the school. They’d trace his number from O’Shannon’s office phone. They’d bring in Angie as a witness. I might have seen him skipping school. He always did seem a little strange. They’d ask themselves why. They’d construct and deconstruct possible motives. They’d count the bodies. They’d hold a candlelight vigil. They’d find him. If he made it through the stakeout alive, they’d ask their questions.

And then he’d fold himself in half in the interrogation room chair. He’d look at the cops as if they were idiots. He’d say nothing. Just like the cat.


Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Hail Caesar!, or The Extended Obituary of Nell Riley Foster

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn...

I can't do this.

Okay, fine - I don't want to do this. I volunteered. It's too late to back out now.

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn died early Sunday morning because some fucker got greedy and decided to rob the corner bodega with a loaded gun.

I shouldn’t say that, but you know when people your age die there's always that morbid curiosity about how it happened. I have to say something, Nell.

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn, died early Sunday morning. She was the victim of a violent crime.

Happy?

Nell was born to Patrick and Lori Foster, March 15th, 1990, in Cambridge, Mass. After her brother learned about the Ides of March, he called her 'Caesar' and staged elaborate fake assassinations on her birthday. He feels a mixture of discomfort and joy about this now.

Of course I won't include that when I send it. That is too personal. Still, if only I hadn't tempted death or God or karma thirteen times.

Nell graduated from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in 2007 and received a BA in English from Brown University in 2011. Nell studied abroad in Italy the summer before her junior year. She took an intensive language immersion course but still mistranslated dishes at Italian restaurants. She dated a guy who doesn't want to come to her memorial because it's "too hard, bro."

You'll note that out of respect, I did not call him a douchebag this time.

He is a total douchebag, though.
Nell worked for an online literary start-up. She blogged about Shakespeare's wittiest, dirtiest double entendres and why Northanger Abbey is a better Jane Austen novel than Pride & Prejudice. Her favorite response to readers' angry messages was "haters gonna hate." Her editor's favorite response was "I appreciate your comments and will keep this perspective in mind."

In her spare time, Nell wrote haiku poetry on fogged windows and steamed-up mirrors. Her goal was to finish the poem before the glass cleared. She became really good at it, dissecting syllable counts with an invisible abacus.

Nell spent a staggering amount of time contacting “those Iron Chef people.” She engaged in a one-woman campaign to have Nutella appear as the secret ingredient. Her emails bordered on propaganda.

Nell ran every day. Her brother would sometimes join her, but not enough for his own health, he thinks now that he has an opportunity to reflect and to regret.

Her legal name was "Nell," not Eleanor. She was very happy her parents skipped right to the nickname.

Nell preferred Thai curry to Indian curry, naan to pita bread, and coffee to tea. Her favorite taste was “Nutella” although she liked to use “umami” when the occasion arose. Based on her own ordering and cooking preferences, it seldom did.

This has turned into “Fun Facts about Nell.” I had to Google “how to write an obituary.” It seems like content shifts from salient biographies to trivia. Maybe I can contact your old editor and write a piece about it. It would either be hilarious or macabre. I’m betting the latter.

If our places were reversed, you would have made it a personal challenge. It would have been the former; it would have been brilliant and pitch-perfect, probably the best piece you’d ever written (but not the best piece you’d ever write). It would be a glorious memorial.

It should have been me, Nell. I should have gone with you. I could have pushed you out of the way. I could have done something. Even if it all played out the same - the stumbled-upon robbery, the gun, the shot - I would have been there with you.

What's the old saying? The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. You burned so bright you left pieces of yourself behind, and you linger like the light people see when they close their eyes. I swear I see you everywhere. Faint lines of you glow in panes of glass; your laugh smolders in my dreams (and nightmares); your smile flickers in the corner of my eyes. There is something comforting about walking into an empty room and it not feeling so empty anymore. Maybe I’m going crazy - I probably am; crazy is what happens when you intertwine your sister’s obituary with a letter to her, a letter she can’t see, a letter she’ll never see because she - you -

I need to take a break.

Nell is survived by her elder brother, Chase Foster, of Brooklyn; and her parents, Patrick and Lori Foster, of Cambridge. She is also survived by a chubby cat named Hazelnut and a betta fish named Cocoa.

Hazelnut and Cocoa seem to be adjusting to life with Mom and Dad. We try to adjust to life without you. It doesn’t always take.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Nell's name to 826 National, a national literary charity.

You mentioned trying to find a place to volunteer, and when I came to get Hazelnut and Cocoa I saw the pamphlet on your desk. It wasn't in the recycling pile, so I am almost positive it was on your shortlist and we would have talked about it.

For the record, I would have said "go for it!"

A private memorial service will be held at her family's home in Cambridge.

I will cry because you are gone. I will laugh at the good memories you gave me.

I miss you. I love you.

I know I will see you again when a room is empty. I will feel your presence fill it. Empty rooms are the dominion of the dead.

I will keep trying to adjust to life without you.

It will take. Eventually.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

The Outer Borough

It was all too familiar. After awhile, all crime scenes started to feel the same. Especially the smell. The tinny smell of blood always saturated whatever shithole apartment the victim died in. And they were all shithole apartments in this part of town.

“Give me the rundown, Peterson,” Detective Thorne said as he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, squatting to get a better look at the body.

“The victim’s name is Esther Walker. Sixty-three years old. Cause of death appears to be multiple stab wounds to her chest. Lives here in this apartment with her husband, Charles Walker.”

“Do we know where he is?” Thorne asked.

There were gelatinous mounds of blood surrounding Esther’s body, which told Thorne that the stab wounds he saw had penetrated her lungs. The blood had coagulated inside her body before seeping out onto the dated beige carpet.

“He’s supposed to be at work. South Bronx Auto Body over off of White Street. Our boys already checked it out, he’s not there. We got an APB out on him. Get this though, Charles is six months out of the pen. He was released last year after serving thirty years on a life sentence for the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl back in '79. The medical examiner’s report indicates that the girl was sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death.” Officer Peterson eyed Esther’s body and the similar wounds on her body. He was giddy, “You think he did this?”

Thorne glared at him. Peterson’s smirk quickly faded.

“Any eyes on a potential murder weapon?” Thorne asked as he scanned the one-bedroom apartment, hoping to gather enough clues to reconstruct the events leading up to Esther’s death.

“No, nothing yet.”

There was religious imagery everywhere. Esther was a woman of faith, after all. She had held on to hope all those years that her husband was innocent. For three long decades, she had filed petition after petition to have her husband freed, paying attorneys inordinate amounts of money, and begging non-profits to take on her husband’s case.

“My Charlie is innocent,” she had told reporters. “Charlie always told me that we would save up and move out to the country together. He wanted to get away from the big city. Charlie never did like it here. He said it corrupted people. After this experience, I believe it. The prosecutors, they didn’t have any leads, so they pinned it on him. Well, I have faith that Charlie and I will be reunited again one day and that we’ll make his dream of leaving this place a reality.”

Esther’s resolve ultimately paid off. She had finally brought her husband home and they would start saving up to move upstate, out of the city.

                                                                                                    ***

Charles had been nursing a glass of Jameson for a few hours now. The Blarney Stone was a few blocks away from his apartment, but Esther would never know to look for him there. He had lost his taste for alcohol in prison, but didn’t know where else to go.

“Charlie,” Gary started from behind the bar.

“Don’t call me that, only Esther calls me that,” Charles replied, still looking into his glass of brown liquor.

“Charles,” Gary continued, “what’s going on? You’ve been coming here every morning for the past week, ordering a glass of whiskey that you don’t touch, not saying a word to anyone.” Gary had known Charles from before the conviction, he hesitated before adding, “Look, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but you gotta start living again. Get back into a normal routine – go to work and at the end of the day, go home to your loving wife.”

“I killed her Gary,” Charles said suddenly.

“What?” Gary was taken aback.

“I’ve never told anyone, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I was drunk, that’s not an excuse, just a fact, and I killed her. I killed that girl.”

“Alright Charles, I think you should stop talking about all that now.” Gary wasn’t sure what to do with the information he was now privy to, wasn’t sure if he was supposed to do anything with it.

“I wanted to confess to the police, I really did, to get it off my chest. But Esther…I couldn’t break her heart. She was fighting so hard for me, you know? I never actually thought she’d be able to get me out. But she did it and they let me go...they let me go on a fucking technicality.”

“Charles, look buddy…” Gary was desperately trying to plug the leak he had inadvertently caused.

“I accepted it Gary,” Charles was looking straight at him now. “I was guilty and I accepted that I was supposed to be in there. I thought it was all over. How are you supposed to go on living after you’ve already accepted death?”

                                                                                                    ***

Nothing in the apartment appeared to have been disturbed, Thorne realized, at least not in any obvious way.

“What happened here?” Thorne wondered to himself.

The only thing that caught Thorne’s eyes was two framed paintings that were hanging at an angle. One was a reproduction of the Last Supper and the other was of a farmhouse. Thorne couldn’t be sure if the paintings had been jarred by a struggle or if they’d been crooked all along.

                                                                                                    ***

“Prison was supposed to be my punishment,” Charles continued, “It was supposed to be how I suffered. But now I’m a free man, living on good fortune that I didn’t earn. Human experiences are always paid back in turn,” Charles said as he threw back his glass of Jameson.

“You’ve been given a second chance Charles,” Gary mustered, not really knowing what to say at all.

“I’m an old man Gary. Even if I had all the time in the world, you can’t make up for taking away someone else’s.”

“You can at least try to lead a good life with what you have left.”

“Maybe, Gary, maybe. At least I have Esther.”

Written by: Sam Chow
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

A Tremor in Your Name

(continued from "Beloved" and "Bury Their Own")

Anna stands by the window, resting her head on her forearm propped up against the wall. Searching the backyard, she spots the noose that almost ended her client’s life and the little red stool that kept death at bay. The yellow police tape wrapped around the perimeter of the house quivers as rain begins to fall. Anna closes her eyes as the pattering resonates through the ceiling, recalling the boil of her blood when Lucas appeared by her side, a ghost that had possessed an innocent man and compelled him to attempt murder. Suri, her client, hired Anna to extract Lucas from her life. For fourteen years he has haunted her and taken control of men’s bodies in order to do her harm. While Suri recovers, Anna remains in this abandoned house with nothing more than a name to go by, but in her line of work, a name is all the power she needs.

She sits down on the floor in the center of the room and rubs the cross dangling from a chain around her neck. In the blink of an eye, a ten year old girl sits in front of her wearing an easter dress and a blue bow in her blonde hair. Lydia Marie is the ghost haunting her necklace, and her phantom sidekick. She tilts her head to the left and studies Anna’s face, furrowing her brow.

“What’s wrong, Anna?”

Anna smiles with just the right corner of her lips and shakes her head, “I’m trying to track someone down.”

“A ghost?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you can only see him if he lets you see him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lydia Marie wrinkles her nose and offers an impish grin. “But I can see him even if he doesn’t want me to.”

Anna looks up and mirrors the spectre’s expression. “Precisely. Lucas knows the rules; if I say his name, he has to come. You can be my lookout for when he decides to show up.”

“But how are you going to extract him? It doesn’t sound like he’ll be too interested in taking orders,” Lydia Marie says with some concern.

“He’s obviously got some unfinished business and it’s centered around Suri. A game of twenty questions is in order. If he gives me a motive, then I just need to provide him with a suitable substitution.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Anna doesn’t answer. Instead, she claps her hands and rubs her palms together, fighting the chill down her spine. “You ready?”

Lydia Marie nods, unsure at first, but gaining confidence with the prospect of helping Anna catch the bad guy. Anna imagines her lungs expanding in every direction as she inhales, then whispers.

“Lucas.”
                                                                                                  ***

Lydia Marie hides in the closet, peeking through the shutter-style slats with her hands over her mouth. The hair on the back of Anna’s neck stands on end and her skin prickles with the presence of another otherworldly being. She does not see Lucas pacing in front of her with his hands behind his back, grinning from ear to ear. She waits for Lydia Marie to signal her, but instead the young ghost passes suddenly through the closet doors with horror written in her eyes.

“What are you doing here? Where’s my father?”

Lydia Marie is all but shrieking, her spectral hands balling up into fists and tears welling up in her eyes. Lucas turns toward her, still invisible to Anna who is startled and jumps to her feet. He narrows his eyes as he searches his memory for who she is and recognition passes over his face.

“Ah, Lydia. I left your father long ago…”

Lydia Marie’s entire body trembles, her bottom lip quivering. “It was you! It wasn’t Daddy! It was you!”

Lucas pulls the corners of his mouth up into a smile and shrugs. “If that makes it easier for you to cope, my dear, but I didn’t make him do anything other than what he’d already considered himself.”

Anna, unable to hear Lucas, asks desperately, “Lydia Marie, what’s he saying? Ask him what he wants. Ask him why he’s doing this!”

“You’re a monster! I’m all alone because of you!”

Lucas chuckles, his hiss like poison. “You and your father, ripped apart. All alone. Just like me.”

Before Anna has a chance to confront him, the chill leaves her skin and she knows that Lucas has disappeared. Lydia Marie wraps her arms around herself and looks up at Anna, shaking her head from left to right.

“Before Daddy drowned me, there was always a man at the house. He would sit with my dad while he drank and watch him when he hit me. I never knew who he was. I thought he was Daddy’s friend, but I understand now. It wasn’t Daddy who hurt me. It was Lucas.”

Flesh and spirit, the two stand in silence. A dog barks in the distance as thunder rips through the rain.

“Anna, Lucas said Daddy and me are all alone just like him.”

Kneeling down in front of Lydia Marie, Anna meets her gaze and whispers, “Let’s go find your father.”

The ghost looks down at her feet and asks, “What if he doesn’t want to see me?”

Anna shakes her head and says, “Baby girl, I think he’s been dying to see you since 1962.”

Lydia Marie looks up and says, “I want Daddy to know I forgive him, that I know it’s not his fault.”

Anna realizes that this is the reason why her friend hasn’t been able to crossover. All this time Lydia Marie was wandering between worlds because she believed a lie, that her father never loved her. Reconciliation could be the very thing she needs to move on, a bittersweet notion once Anna considers that she would lose her. But this is why Anna entered this obscure line of work, to secure peace for both the living and the dead.

“Come on. Maybe we can track him down before dinner time.”

Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

A Strong Foundation

“That’s one heckuva fall,” Dale said, looking up towards the sky.

“Sure is,” answered Ernie, emptying the contents of his shovel into the refuse bin. “You know that building ain’t even legal?”

“What’chu talkin about?”

“It’s bigger than any building in this area’s s’posed to be.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know? Sumpin’ about the foundation bein’ too weak.”

“Then how’d they get to build it?”

“I don’t know the reason, but I betchu anything there’s a dollar sign attached to it.”

“Well, looks sturdy enough to me.”

“They always do, until they don’t.”

Dale turned on the hose and washed the remaining cloth fibers and DNA down the storm drain.

                                                                                                  ***

Shelly woke to a text from her sponsor.

I covered for you, AGAIN. You HAVE to be at the next meeting or you’re going back to rehab. They sounded serious this time.

Shelly scoffed and tossed her phone across the room.

“What the FUCK?”

She propped herself up on her elbows to find a man she didn’t recognize writhing in pain on the antique area rug she bought at a Sotheby’s auction. She just laughed and fell back into her Egyptian cotton sheets.

Shelly pulled her comforter over her head to drown out the album that had playing been on repeat since the party moved to her place. It was her album, and it was the reason nameless faces were sleeping off various substances in every square foot of her penthouse apartment.

Despite her inability to play a musical instrument or carry a tune, Shelly had successfully released a 12-track party oeuvre that conquered iTunes in less than 24 hours. Some would say it was a dream come true, but Shelly could never tell the difference between reality and her dreams.

Since the day she was surgically removed from her mother’s womb, Shelly was given everything but adversity. She was born in the hospital wing of her parents’ Southampton home and wrapped in the finest hypoallergenic blanket an offshore bank account could afford.

Shelly recreated the scene as she bundled herself in a silk throw blanket and headed to the bathroom. Years of private ballet lessons served her well as she tiptoed through the minefield of half-naked bodies, empty bottles and drug paraphernalia.

She bounded into the bathroom, closed the soundproof door and cherished the escape from her own auto-tuned voice. As she turned toward the sink the delicate fabric slid off her left shoulder, exposing half of her body.

Shelly paused and studied her reflection in the mirror. She let the rest of the blanket fall to the white-marble floor and scanned her skin for imperfections. There was no sign of the lower-back tattoo her father had lasered off the same day she got it. There were no scars from the breast augmentation or nose readjustment she received on her 18th birthday. The only blemish on her velvety skin was the beauty mark above the left side of her lip.

“God DAMN,” interrupted a man who had been admiring Shelly from the bathtub.

“Rude,” she responded, calmly reaching for the blanket.

“Like I haven’t seen it before.”

“I was too fucked up to even remember that night.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Shelly flipped him off and left before he could say another word, soon realizing she traded one obnoxious voice for another. She covered her ears and shook her head back and forth until the sloshing fluids in her skull drowned out the monotonous beat of track 8, “I’m Not Sorry I Party.”

Through her blurred vision she spotted a joint nestled behind the ear of a passed out partygoer by her feet. Hands on her ears, she gracefully retrieved the rolled paper with the toes of her right foot. She remained balanced on one leg like a stork as she bent over and brought the joint to her mouth without ever letting the music slip through her fingers.

Shelly maintained her grace as she searched each room for a lighter, eventually spotting a golden Zippo standing on a shelf next to the porch door. She jeté’d between the unoccupied patches of carpet until she came within arms length of the lighter.

After she snatched the gold case during a pause between songs, the lighter’s absence brought the other items into focus. Specifically, the photo album chronicling her greatest childhood achievements. She grabbed it and fled to the porch, where she sat on a lounge chair, lit the joint and proceeded down memory lane.

She opened the book to find her eight-year-old self staring up from the back of her purebred-horse, Sebastian. That year she and Sebastian won first place at the Youth Dressage Festival, although, most of the credit belonged to Sebastian and his team of world-class trainers.

She took another drag and flipped to another random page, this one containing a picture of her and her prom date in front of a private helicopter. Shortly after their departure, Shelly was caught straddling said date on the headmaster’s desk. The hormonal teens got a lecture and the teacher who turned them in lost his job.

Shelly continued alternating between tokes and page turns, each image reminding her of her immunity to hardship. Once she ran out of pictures, she noticed a billboard promoting her latest fragrance, Dangers––which she had yet to smell. She stood and walked towards the banister on the balls of her feet, staring at her massive portrait until she felt the subtle chill of polished metal permeating through the silk.

She lifted her right foot and rested it on the bottom rail. She repeated the motion with her left; then again with her right; then her left; then right; then left, until her entire weight was balancing on her arches.

She took a deep breath, leaned forward and began her descent. She looked for the net or fireman or superhero that would save her from harm, but all she saw was pavement.

She was confused. She was afraid. And for a split second, she was alive.

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Hide and Seek

The tub smelled like Lysol when Jeremy climbed in. Dana must have been up before sunrise cleaning. He thought of his own tub, back in his studio apartment, the rainbow of mold he was accumulating. First the black kind and now an orange-pink kind around the drain. But he could eat out of Dana’s tub if he wanted. He thunked his skull against the tile wall a few times.

You’re an adult. You’re an adult, too.

He could hear the twins counting in the hall.

“Twenty-seventy, twenty-eight, thirty! Ready-a-not, here we come, Uncle Jeremy!”

“Let’s get him!”

Their bare feet pitter-pattered up and down the hardwood floors of the hallway.

Dana’s twins had never heard of hide and seek. Their eyes stretched wide as he explained the premise, the rush of the hunt already winding them into a frenzy. Dana’s twins hadn’t heard of a lot of things. They had only wooden toys. No plastic. Dana was afraid of hormones and over-stimulation, and said that certain toys just didn’t fit “the aesthetic she was going for.” The twins weren’t allowed to watch television because of something about pixels and ADHD.

All of this, of course, was documented on a list Dana handed off to Jeremy before she left for the weekend.

“No sugar, no caffeine. And no chicken nuggets,” Dana had said.

Jeremy nodded.

“Once kids eat nuggets, they won’t eat anything else,” Dana laughed.

“Sure,” Jeremy said.

Kitty wasn’t eating gluten, and Huron should have soy instead of regular milk before bed.

“Got it,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy had spent most of the last decade resenting Dana for making him look bad. He’d heard somewhere that parents’ satisfaction with their grown children depended on a set of factors including the child living in close proximity, being married, achieving a successful career, and producing grandchildren. Jeremy was a sea of negatives. He moved to New York after college, just like everyone else, where he worked intermittently as an underpaid hotel concierge. His girlfriends were also intermittent, mostly manic types who turned out to be more interested in being interesting than spending time with him.

Dana had the career, the husband in finance, the twins.

But while Dana and her husband were in LA for some coworker’s black tie, no-kids-allowed wedding, Jeremy had the twins, trying to curry favor. He needed some brownie points before he dropped the bomb on everyone about his whole legal situation. It had just been a little bit of coke. He’d had enough money to post bail, but his sentencing date was coming up, and he was pretty sure without help from Dana, he wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of lawyer who would get him out of doing 180 days in county jail. It was the baggies and the scale that would do him in—the cop had accused him of dealing because of paraphernalia alone.

The bathroom doorknob rattled.

“Uncle Jeremy! You in here?”

It was Huron. He was caught.

“I found you, I found you!” he said, bursting into the bathroom.

“You got me, Huey.”

“Now we gotta find Kitty!”

“But you and Kitty were both seeking. Where did she go?”

“She’s hiding too. She’s a better hider than you.”

Shit.

Jeremy darted through the labyrinth that was Dana’s pristine house, checking under beds, in the linen closet.

“Kitty!” Huron called. “Kitty come out!”

“Kitty! Game’s over!” Jeremy rounded a corner into the living room. The sliding glass door was open about six inches. “Huron, come on.”

He yanked his nephew by the wrist and went outside onto the deck. Huron continued to call for Kitty, more chant-like now, repeating her name over and over in between deep gulps of air.

“Stop it, Huey.”

Jeremy slid his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pinched the baggie inside.

Get through this. Later. When Kitty’s found and they’re both asleep. You are an adult.

Dragging Huron, he headed for the street. He considered ringing the neighbor’s bell, but then figured that might get back to Dana. Better not to have any witnesses to his failure at the one responsibility of babysitting—keep track of the kids.

Two responsibilities: keep the kids alive.

“I don’t like hide and seek,” Huron whined.

“Me either, buddy.”

They checked the ditches, the bushes, the park down the street. The guy in the ice cream truck said he hadn’t seen her.

“Ice cream is full of processed sugar,” Huron said.

“Helpful,” Jeremy grunted.

It had been thirty minutes. Sweat crept up Jeremy’s back. An hour. They went back to the house and searched again. Nothing. Huron fell asleep on the couch, and Jeremy moved him to his bed. Jeremy went back to the bathtub and climbed in. He took the baggie of coke from his pocket, licked his finger, and stuck it in the baggie. He swiped the powder on his gums, then knocked his head against the tile a few more times.

Shit. You are a grown-ass man sitting in a bathtub. You are a grown-ass man outsmarted by a four-year-old. Get it together.

“Anybody home? Police!”

Double shit.

Jeremy tripped out of the bathtub and toward the front door.

The cop had Kitty by the hand. She was fine. She was perfectly fine.

“Good thing she knew her address, right? Are you her dad?”

Jeremy’s lips felt a little numb.

“Uh…”

“Jeremy’s my uncle!” Kitty said.

Jeremy pulled Kitty to his side, positioning her in front of the pocket where his drugs were stashed.

“Mind if I come in?” the cop asked.

“Okay!” Kitty chirped. “You want a snack?”

The cop laughed. Jeremy managed a grimace.

“Your neighbor over on Iverson found this little lady picking flowers in her yard—didn’t know who she was.”

“Well, thanks, officer. I was…just getting ready to call 911, actually.”

The officer squinted at him. Jeremy knew this drill. Checking for red eyes, for balance, for any disoriented behavior. Any sign he couldn’t be trusted. He pulled Kitty closer.

The officer’s eyes then redirected to Dana’s foyer—the Manet print of the naked woman picnicking, staring straight out, the parquet flooring, the ridiculous chandelier, the rug from India.

“Well, you all have a good one, then,” the cop said. He tipped his hat and left.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Zuhause

She believes that life is good while he believes that life is not any particular thing. How long has she felt this way? It’s been a good fifteen years since the church thing. Fifteen years since she started waking he and his younger brothers on Sunday mornings and ten years since she stopped trying and let them make their own decisions about it. Before that there’s no telling. He assumes she’s felt this way all along and religion simply extracted it, like a nurse taking blood. But people turn to church for a reason. Hell, let’s be honest. People turn to church because something has happened or something is missing or because that’s just how it’s always been. In the end, is it going to matter? Religion or no religion, she is happy when her children are happy. It sounds conspicuous, but the degree to which she has fused her children’s lives into her own cannot be overstated. She has a most important thing, and the fact that her son knows this and believes it so unconditionally attests to her skills as a mother.

She says that she counts the days since he has been gone, and he has been gone a long time. He knows that she’s kidding but there’s something in her smile that hurts him. Pain births humor and he knows pain props up her smile. He will take bits of this pain back with him along with her smile, and maybe a hundred dollar bill. Don’t tell your father, she whispers as she slips the cash mischievously into his palm. It’s nothing less than beautiful when his father repeats the action five minutes later. Don’t tell your mother.

She says that she knows and has accepted that he’s not coming back, but he doesn’t believe her. He doesn’t believe her because he knows what that lie sounds like - he uses it all the time. She believes that he will come home. For a myriad of reasons, most having to do with family, she believes he will come home. Most of the time he knows he’s never going back. Nothing personal, it’s just not who he is. But then he remembers the night he called her and told her he was thinking about coming home. He asked her to talk to Dad about the job. She refused, acting in direct opposition to her desires. Is there a more honest representation of love? He gets older and tries not to make such declarative statements as he’s starting to suspect most of them will eventually turn on him.

And after all of it, he is selfish. Selfish as he has always been and perhaps always will be. So selfish that it became a running family gag. In typical fashion, he rushes to fix his flaws, but knows deep down that this is impossible. He believes in nothing over the power of the conscious mind and so he wants to believe that he can take control of his own personality, but goddamn, there are certain things in life that simply cannot be grasped or handled or morphed. His brain is neither Play-Dough nor Plato. Once he was too young to care, and hopefully one day he will be too old to care, but for now, he has nothing to do but care. He works to become the man he wants to be, but he’s worried he won’t recognize the final product. It’s in this context that she shines brightest. It’s in the hour-long phone calls and it’s in her honesty with him, something that he would never have expected but would never, ever trade. It’s right there on the surface, his definition of home.

They used to go to movies. He loves movies, thinks they mean more than they do, and she does not. And yet she went with him to the apocalypse movie that said the F-word over fifty times. She really does not prefer the F-word. She went with him to see the movie with the child soldiers and the drugs and the violence. She really does not prefer child soldiers or drugs or violence. The list goes on. They never saw a Meg Ryan movie or a Sandra Bullock movie or an underdog movie or a feel-good movie. And still she tells him constantly, every time, that she misses going to movies with him. But she hated those movies. He asks her if she goes to see films with her girlfriends, or her sister, or her husband. She replies that it’s not the same. What’s not the same? You don’t even talk in a movie. He thinks about her going to a movie alone, sitting there in the darkness, and he has to stop because it will make him cry and he is not in the habit of crying for no reason. He vows that eventually they will go see a movie that she wants to see. It’s the least he can do.

He wants her to know that it’s not all about his father, regardless of how it appears in his writings or songs or conversations. With his father there is ego, respect, gratefulness, stubbornness, and a whole host of other issues that he has yet to unpack. And he wants her to know that its not that those things do not apply to her, only that with her they come under a fresher and more hopeful light. Because of their soft edges, they are easier to swallow. And above all else, he wants her to know that he thinks of her often, though his actions sometimes do not align with this theory. His actions are often flippant and cruel, but never, ever malicious.

He wants her to know that when he sees a wheat field, or a picture of a wheat field, or a drawing of a wheat field, he thinks of home and he thinks of her. He wants her to know that she is home. They are one in the same. They are inseparable. And in the end, words do not do them justice.

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Small Things

“Where to?”

Emir’s passenger was dressed in a handsome light grey suit. It fit him well. Emir owned a suit too, but his jacket sat too broad on his shoulders and fell too far down his thighs. He only wore it on special occasions.

“Chase Manhattan Plaza,” the well-dressed man replied. “So, where are you from?”

Emir glanced at his rear-view mirror, smiled and replied, “Istanbul. Turkey.”

He enjoyed chatting with passengers, but never initiated conversations himself.

“I’ve never been to Turkey. Went to Israel a few years back, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been. You miss it?”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“I respect men like you. My grandfather came here from Italy without so much as a penny to his name, but managed to put my father through college and business school. Whenever I visited him as a kid, all he could ever talk about was how everything was better in Italy.” The man in the grey suit paused before continuing, “I can’t imagine having to leave New York City, let alone the States.”

He was looking out the window as he talked, watching Bleecker Street slowly pass by.

“What would you miss about it?” Emir asked.

“The City? Everything. The people, the sounds. But I think, most of all, I would miss having amazing pizza on every corner. I’m not even kidding. New Yorkers don’t realize how good they have it here. And believe me, I know. I’ve been all over the country and the world for business. No other city compares.”

“I think your Italian grandfather would disagree,” Emir joked.

The man laughed, “You’re right. He would’ve. What about you? What do you miss most about Turkey?”

Not a day passed that Emir didn’t think about his home country. He thought about Turkey because he was terrified of forgetting. It was only five years ago that he left Istanbul for New York City, but the haze of time was already setting in.

When is mother’s birthday? His little sister, Azra, was usually the one to remind him. What was the name of that sweets shop near his old school? He wasn’t even sure he ever knew the name of that shop, even though he had frequented it nearly every day.

Sometimes Emir closed his eyes and imagined his younger brother, Derin, working the family’s chestnut stand on the darkened, cobblestone streets of Istanbul. He imagined his father sitting by Derin’s side, reading his newspaper, making small talk with the patrons, and making sure Derin didn’t overstuff the small paper pouches that held the chestnuts.

Emir could hear their conversation.

“Go home father, I can handle the chestnut stand on my own,” Derin would plead.

His father would reply, “Home? And what will I do there? Listen to your mother scold me for leaving you here by yourself? At least here I can read my paper in peace.”

Emir would imagine this, and the sweet, nutty scent of the roasted chestnuts would fill the stale air of his apartment as if he were right there, cobblestones beneath his feet.

“Emir,” his father would say, looking up as he approached, “you know what I mean, tell your brother I would rather die than stop working.”

Derin would roll his eyes and ask, “This is working?” He’d point to his father seated next to him, newspaper open in hand. And Emir would laugh.

That’s how Emir reminded himself, “This is what life was like.”

Turkey was a part of his history now, and he often took the sadness of that fact out on his adopted city. He felt jaded by the people whom he thought too rude and the streets that he thought too crowded.

He shared a small studio apartment in Sunnyside with two others, cousins of cousins of cousins or something. They slept on mattresses strewn lazily about the studio floor and erected makeshift room dividers from salvaged garment racks and old curtains. They bonded over their shared longing for Turkey and lamented over the irony that, in a city so large, they could feel so lonely.

Emir already knew the answer to the man in the grey suit’s question, but he thought a moment before replying. “The smell of roasted chestnuts,” he responded. “My father owned a chestnut stand. I worked there with him until I was a teenager, but I never forgot the smell. My father came home smelling of it every night.”

The man chuckled, “Nostalgia’s devious isn’t it? We always long for the sweet honey of it, but we always forget about the sting of the bees. You’re here in the States for a reason right? I can’t imagine making a living off of chestnuts was easy.”

That evening, before returning home, Emir stopped at his favorite Turkish restaurant in Sunnyside.

“Emir!” Toprak, the owner, shouted as he walked in. “Where have you been my friend? Is it just you tonight? Where are your cousins?”

“I’ve already eaten, I just want to order some roasted chestnuts, to go.”

It was in Turkey that he had his last roasted chestnut. After eating them for years from his father’s stand, it felt unnatural to pay for them.

He didn’t go home right away and, instead, found an empty bench underneath the 7 train overpass just a few blocks from his apartment. As he peeled back the warm, woody shells of the chestnuts, the 7 train rumbling overhead, he took in the neighborhood. It was late, but the storefronts and food carts still illuminated the streets. The early autumn evening was still alive with activity, a chorus of traffic, conversation, and laughter hanging festively in the air. To Emir’s left, down the block, was Jeremy’s bodega where he bought coffee every morning. Just beyond that was a hookah bar where he often passed the time chatting with his two cousins, his friends, about nothing at all.

For the first time in five years, as Emir ate his roasted chestnuts, New York City was transformed. He was home.

Written by: Sam Chow
Photograph by: Becky Lee

Wheels

Robbie leaned in the passenger door, wrinkling his long nose. Trace had one tanned arm slung over the faded top of the car.

“It looks like someone died in here, Trace,” Robbie said.

Trace took in the wretched interior with a critical eye. The stuffing spewed out of the cloth seats and there was the faint reek of decay in the air. “I’ve been looking for this car for years, Rob.”

“You’ve been looking for a car somebody’s grandpa doesn’t even want?” Robbie shut the car door with a creak and folded his arms on the weathered, rusted top. “You’re going to spend the money you saved—that you worked your ass off for—on this?”

“Maybe I am.” Trace struggled to close the driver’s side door.

Robbie laughed.

                                                                                       ***

Poking around an engine with his older brother, Jack, in the driveway was one thing; overhauling an entire car was another. If it wasn’t rusted or corroded, it was rotten. The headlights seemed to be the only thing that worked. All summer, the most anyone saw of Trace were sneakered feet sticking out from under the Chrysler New Yorker. His friends laughed at his single-minded mission to resurrect the old car. Robbie kept him company for the first week, making suggestions and asking him if he’d been back to the future yet. Trace threw a wrench in his general direction, swearing as grease dripped into his eye for the thousandth time.

Trace sat on the driveway, feeling the heat of the concrete beneath his legs and the warmth of the metal door against his shoulders as he leaned against the old Chrysler. Shuffling steps caught his attention and he scrambled to his feet, wiping sweat and grease on his jeans.

“Ma, go back inside, it’s too hot out.” He gestured back to the house.

His mother cocked her head to one side and held something out to him, her hand shaking. Trace took the beer from her and swallowed past the lump in his throat. He and Jack always had a beer after a long day working on Jack’s car.

“Thanks, Ma.” He twisted the cap off, taking a long pull.

The cold liquid trickled down his throat and he felt the weight of it settle in the pit of his stomach. His mother’s mouth twitched in a parody of her old smile, her pre-breakdown smile. Jack’s smile. She fluttered a skeletal hand at him before scooting back up the driveway in her worn slippers. Trace rubbed his hand across the peeling paint on the rusted hood of the car; the condensation on his hand left a smear that quickly evaporated in the late afternoon heat. It was impossible to tell which shade of paint came first. He squinted up at the sun and drained the rest of his beer. There were still hours of light left. He crawled back under the car.

                                                                                       ***

“You have got to relax,” Robbie said, handing Trace a beer. “It’s supposed to be a goddamn party.”

Trace tried to conjure a smile, switching the beer from hand to hand without cracking the tab. He resisted the urge to check his watch.

“Well if it isn’t the grease monkey,” Carl said. “Sure is a lot better view than the undersides of a heap of junk.”

Trace followed Carl’s gaze to the girls lounging near the pool. A few of them looked up and smiled. Trace waved—he vaguely recognized one or two. He opened his beer and took a gulp to keep from answering.

“What’s with him?” Carl asked Robbie.

“What’s been up with him all summer? First time he’s been away from that damned corpse of a car.”

Trace looked down at his watch. He’d been there fifteen minutes. He took another swallow of beer; the taste of aluminum overpowered the cheap brew.

Carl turned back to Trace. “What brought you out, anyway? Get tired of looking up the same skirt?” He grinned.

“She’s getting body work done and a paint job—stuff that needs a professional,” Trace said, feeling the thin beer can flex beneath his fingers as he tightened his grip.

“Not the only one that needs a professional,” Robbie said.

“What’s that?” Trace set his beer can carefully down on the table.

“What’s with you, man?” Robbie asked. “You search junk yards like you’re on a mission from God and then you buy a rusty Chrysler for chrissakes. If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’d gone crazy like…” Robbie stopped, his freckled cheeks flushing.

“Crazy like who, Rob?” Trace felt the muscles in his jaw contract. “Crazy like my mom?”

“Robbie didn’t mean anything.” Carl sidled between them. “We just missed seeing you around is all.”

“Sure,” Trace said.

He let himself out of the back gate and walked the five miles home.

                                                                                       ***

Two weeks later, he could hardly believe his eyes. There she sat, shiny coat of red paint looking like melted candy poured over her, the upholstery inside as smooth and flawless as a Playboy centerfold. Trace slid into the seat and flipped down the visor. He looked at the picture of him and Jack, arms flung around each other’s shoulders. Growing up, Jack had pictures of cars taped all over his walls—but one predominated. The Chrysler. Trace never understood it; there’s the Mustang, the Impala, the goddamn Ferrari, he’d always say. Jack simply shrugged, and said, “She’s my favorite.”

The engine thrummed as Trace turned the key. His gaze returned to the faded photo taped to the visor. Its corners were curled from the time spent in his wallet. Ten years time. He smiled and, for a moment, he was the boy in the photo again. He felt a desire to glance over at the passenger seat so strongly that his hands froze on the steering wheel. With the windows down and Jack’s favorite cassette in the refurbished player, Trace inhaled deeply before shifting the car into drive.

“She’s all yours,” Trace said.


Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe