The Opposite of Fall

Cara never got used to the uneven cobblestones. This city has been around since 753 BC, you’d think they would have mastered pavement by now. Her thoughts echoed in her mind as she navigated the narrow, sloped alley way. She couldn’t afford another fall. She gripped her messenger bag with one hand, while the other cradled the black knit scarf around her neck. The early morning chill in the March air already had soured her mood.

She emerged from between two brick buildings and noticed that the light above the Pastores’ door was on. I’ll have to remember to check on Signora Pastore tonight. Since moving to Rome eleven months ago, Cara and her husband had become close with their elderly neighbors, Signor and Signora Pastore. Signora Pastore joked that Cara was like the daughter she never had. Their two sons, now grown, had gone to live in America. Cara and Gregory’s presence balanced out their universe.

At the end of their vialetto, Cara exhaled as the sunlight touched her cheeks. Glancing at her watch, she realized that she could slow her pace—a rarity. Morning wasn’t her moment to shine. Though she loved her job, she had not adjusted to the schedule of nine-to-five work and doubted she ever would. Cara’s background in both art history and translation had made her the perfect candidate for her position. Her tiny office at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica was her sanctuary: by staring at documents related to old things, she could avoid thinking about new ones—or their absence.

                                                                                               ***

Gregory savored the smell of coffee in the morning. He carried a cup to his first class nearly every day and sipped it as his students meandered in. Though Rome reminded him of Manhattan in its aggression and masculinity, the eighteen-year-olds he taught did not carry the same frenzy in their bodies that their New York counterparts did.

Clapping his hands together once, he addressed today’s group of seventeen. The class reached capacity at twenty, but one thing Gregory’s Italian students did share with others around the world was the propensity of a few select people to be absent on days when quizzes were being given. “What did you think of the ending of The Dead? Was it satisfying? Did Joyce tie up the loose ends in the ways you expected?”

“Professore, what are these lose ends, as you say?” Alberto’s English was not as strong as that of the rest of the class. The class was to be taught in English, but Gregory often had to explain colloquial American phrases to the locals in their native tongue. Gregory sometimes marveled at his own situation—born and raised in New Jersey, but now teaching Irish literature to Italian undergrads.

“It is an expression, Alberto. Did Joyce give all of the information that you, as a reader, desired? This is something for you all to keep in mind, classe, as you do today’s quiz. In two pages, explore what Gabriel and Gretta can teach us about the nature of love. Begin now.”

                                                                                               ***

Cara’s cell rang just after lunch. The corner of the empty pizza box dangled over the edge of her desk, taking up more space than warranted by the single slice it had housed. Her notes were splayed in a fan-like pattern across her desk as Raphael’s La Fornarina eyed her curiously through her laptop screen. She hesitated just long enough before grabbing the phone. Only she would notice its multiple rings.

“Hey...” Her tone softened as she redirected her attention.

“So, I was thinking, how about I make that quinoa dish you like for dinner and we can catch a movie?” Gregory’s deep, calming voice had always had a slightly hypnotic effect.

“Uh. Yeah…that would be great. I won’t get home until seven though,” Cara responded.

“That’s fine. Your feast shall await,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh by the way, can you check in on Signora Pastore? I meant to see if she needed anything.” Cara’s mind drifted to their neighbor who recently had had surgery.

“Sure, see you tonight, love you,” Gregory replied.

“You too.”

He never asked why it took her an hour to get home when they lived ten minutes away and she finished at six. She never volunteered. Cara had been the nurturer until last fall, always giving and trying to please. Fate had reversed their roles. Grief is not an equalizer, but a reorganizer.

                                                                                               ***

At five after six, Cara left work and headed in the same trajectory as she did every day. At seven after six, Gregory knocked on Signora Pastore’s door. At six fifteen, Gregory’s phone rang. It was Cara’s number, but not her voice. Instead a woman said in broken English, “Signor, your wife has been injured. She promise she is okay, but we wait for you. Come to Chiesa degli Arcangeli.” Later, Gregory could not remember hanging up his phone, whether he said goodbye to Signora Pastore or running towards the church.

                                                                                               ***

Cara hadn’t seen the two teenage boys run up behind her. Their first meeting was one of physical connection. One slammed into her left side, knocking her to the ground. Her knees throbbed as she heard one of the boys laughing. Her palms stung. She remained frozen on the ground as they made their getaway. She began to weep, not only for this fall, but the one that came before, the one that took her future, their future.

Gregory dashed up to Cara and a middle-aged woman sitting beside her on a bench, handing her tissues. Cara started sobbing again when she saw him.

“Some kids pushed me and I fell. It caught me by surprise,” she explained. Gregory examined her wounds, and confident they weren’t serious, placed his arm around his wife. She rested her head on his chest, his chin nuzzling the back of her wavy hair. They sat wordlessly for an eternity of moments.

“She would have almost been here by now.” Cara’s whisper broke the silence. Michaela had been due on the first day of spring.

“I know, I know. . .” Gregory said softly, kissing the top her head. “Let’s go home.”

As they walked up the uneven cobblestone alley into the darkness, Cara noticed that Signora Pastore’s light was still on. A tiny green bud in the flower pot by her door stood like a sentinel, a harbinger of all that was yet to come.

Written by: Lauren Jonik

Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Gone Fishing

I remember the night that myself and Blue Louis took some time out with a bottle in the abandoned petrol station before the bad times, after being freaked out of a bar by beefy rednecks, flannel shirts so stiff with sweat they were like insect shells, thin but hard and keeping all their whisky-squished innards in.

Didn’t help that Louis - Gods bless him - was all decked out like he was fresh from the jazz joint in a beat-up snazz suit and green fedora with cigarettes stuck in the band. He always had those damn cigarettes shoved in there like the press photographer in a Bogart noir. Didn’t help that I had ripped jeans and mussed blond hair and was street-skinny, like a cheap angel of the lanes bestowing miracles by the hour.

‘What brings you here, boys?’ That’s what one of the big guys says to him, and let's not forget that Louis is dark dark dark and you can see Mayan pyramids in his cheekbones, and these guys were moonshine brewers like you get out here with their terrible fucking fear of the dark.

‘Uh…I work for a paper.’ Tryin' to keep that cigar-smoke voicebox of his nice and smooth and easy.

‘Oh? There a story in these parts?’ A couple whiskeys slid over the sticky toffee bar to us. Some hulker in a shady corner mutters something as Louis pays up and the others around him chuckle like their mouths are full of gravel, and I start to hear banjo music in my head.

'He gone fishin.' One grizzled guy with a grey beard like a big smokey tongue flopping down from his lips nods at me. 'Caught a pretty one.'

And I hear the word ‘faggot’ and that's when I start praying, Oh sweet and holy Jesus let us get the fuck out of here before we get torn in two down by the river somewhere. I'll give you kind deeds and clothes for the needy and Oh holy mother of God, I'll find you some real gigantic fresh red roses, you know, the ones you like and Oh Saint Jude who watches over lost causes I'll take out that ad in the paper for you, just get us outta here or make us fireproof.

'This?' Louis looks at me like he's never seen me before. 'Stupid kid was tryin' to jump the trains. Like the old hobos.'

'Lose your life that way, son.' One of the werebears says, and the others start nodding and talking, remember when so-and-so stopped off at the railroad shack and when the train pulled up they saw something between the carriages and God above there was a leg caught up in there.

Louis shakes his head like I'm a dumb dog. 'Right? Coulda found himself landing both sides of the state,' and because these lumberdicks are rough and tumble types he looks like he's gonna cuff me round the head for a second but I see him think the better of it because let's not forget in this unbreathable place that Louis is dark dark dark.

'Huh, that's a bunch of starry-eyed crap, hopping the trains these days. You runnin' away from something?' Same guy looks me over intently, like he's trying to figure out if they need to turn me in. This place looks like it still has Wanted posters up on the walls and I'm busy winging sweet nothings up to the vaulted ceiling above this one and its golden inhabitants.

'Nossir, trying to find a job in the city, where's he's goin'.' They look up-and-down at my torn jeans and laugh.

'And you, paperboy?'

Lou shrugs like he isn't sweating blood right now. ‘Just passing through. Gotta be back in the office Monday.'

We downed our gulping whiskeys that could fireball the germs off your lips and backed out of the joint slowly, like it was full of wolves who’d leap if you moved too quick. Soon as we were out the door we whirled our bootheels away down the dust track back to the car, shrieking the banjo duel music at each other. Louis jammed it into first and pulled away from that Ol’ Boy freak circus fast as the wheels would turn. Picked up an amber bottle at some no-hope trailer and blazed out into the desolate desert road.

Hit an old gas station, looming out of the darkness all squat and skeletal. Parked up and rolled a special smoke and sat watching the stars. There’s really no light out there, see, it’s like the nicotine yellow stained sky you know in the city just peels away, and there’s all this universe underneath it. It was like when you see reflections in a lake or a puddle and wonder if you could fall through it into the reflection world. I turned my head to watch Louis all strung out along the sand like a big cat.

I believe I said something nonsensical and beautiful about the universe and the microscope of God out here and the stars being our atom-selves. He shook his head and said:

‘You know, if it had come down to pig-squealing time, I just want you to know that I woulda gone first.’

‘What the fuck, Lou?’

He turned, and in that totally unselfconscious way he had of touching other beings he stroked my hair and my star-stoned face.

‘Because I love you, man, you’re my best friend.’

I thought about this a moment and said:

'But I woulda seen what was coming, I mean, thank you for your consideration and all but...No, no...That wouldn't have helped me at all.'

At some point in that long galaxy gaze we passed out. Comes to something beautiful when you wake up in an old petrol station in the arms of your best friend still wearing his green fedora. The rest of the way we played I Spy and the sand and the scrub and the sky all began with the same S.

Written by: Natty Mancini

Photograph by: Daniel Charles Ross

Nights in the Hollow

Remember the night the fire nearly escaped us? Of course you do. Britt Myerson almost turned the whole park into an ashtray, bottles of lighter fluid crumpled in both hands. “Xiuhtechuhtli! I praise you!” Pyro bastard. Did you hear he’s in real estate now? Makes a killing. Maybe the rest of us backed the wrong horse. God-wise, I mean.

I take my kids down there every now and then, to the hollow, to see how many trout or bass we can catch before someone succumbs to screen withdrawal. You will be happy, I think, to know that our summer left permanent marks on the place. Remember when that volleyball player – someone’s cousin – casually mentioned that she wanted to hear OutKast and Jason Zapp lept up, announced he had the CD in his car, and proceeded to drive his Grand Am down the tiny dirt trail until he got it wedged between two trees?

They have a “NO AUTOMOBILES” sign at the trailhead now. The Zapp Rule. One day I heard a woman say “Like anyone would ever try to take a car through here!” I let the remark pass, uncorrected.

Nowadays, ten guys would whip out their phones and, I’m sorry Ms. Jackson, the party would receive an eternal jukebox; effort-free music for as long as anyone desired. Where’s the chivalry in that? I understand that it’s dumb to get your car stuck in a tree, but when’s the last time you were so passionate about something that you’d drive through the fucking woods for it?

Impulses need time to linger, to shapeshift into longing.

After he struck out with the volleyballer, DJ Zapp took refuge in that goofy old song he loved, the one that was in the car rental commercials recently - ommaway, ommaway - and he stomped around the fire pretending to play a flute, masking the sting of public rejection. You perched on a stump, performing spasmodic karate moves that I later realized were precise replications of the real music video. Why and when had you possibly seen that video?! Everyone was dying laughing, like they always did. You had all the reference points, had always seen the movie, heard of the band, knew all the words. How I ached for your approval.

People were fighting and fucking, pissing and puking in the brush, smoking bowls in the shadows. The whole year went like that, one bonfire to another, alliances forged and forgotten, all of us together, always, like a reality show without the cameras. “Where’s the party at tonight?” Everyone asked that, and everyone got the same answer. Sports heroes and sensitive hippies from the Montessori, come on down. A party for every stoplight in a one stoplight town.

Right before the cops came, I was on my back in the tall grass past the far side of the lake, throat syrupy thick from one too many Big Gulps filled 50/50 with Mountain Dew and the cheapest vodka on the market. Wolfsbane? Wolf’s Breath? I drank so much of it that its name disappeared down the memory hole, though the snarling silver wolf on the label stayed with me.

I don’t remember how I got there--maybe Xiuhtechuhtli was looking out for me after all--but Gabi Giroux and I were side-by-side, staring up at infinite sky, probably thinking we were the first teenagers to discover the joys of alcohol and astronomy.

“Isn’t it majestic?” she said, sarcasm and sincerity blending like peanut butter and chocolate, like Wolf’s Breath and the Dew.

When the police Maglites started cutting across the trees, she said “Cops are here” as matter-of-factly as if they were just another carload of invited guests.

She inched closer and put her head on my shoulder and continued talking, now in a whisper, about PJ Harvey’s Brooklyn rooftops and Joan Didion’s Hollywood parties, about her secret sketchpad teeming with savage caricatures, about the conventional sterility of our parents’ lives, about how much we hated our hometown (which all of our friends, family, teachers and casual acquaintances knew) and how scared we were to leave (which we’d admitted to no one, including ourselves). A thistle pierced the small of my back and my Big Gulp-battered bladder cried for relief, but there was no chance I’d betray our location, or give Gabi any cause whatsoever to think I was restless. I wanted the sun to die and the cops to live forever, humdrum Highlanders searching the hollow for underage drinkers as Gabi and I grew old together in the prairie grass.

Instead, satisfied with their taming of the teenagers, and no doubt restless to return to their speed traps, the cops abandoned us. I’m not sure whether they even handed out any tickets. Someone said they snatched a loaded cooler as “evidence.” I wouldn’t be surprised. Gabi and I kept talking for a while, but I was already on alert, already feeling the ache of absence. Soon enough, the four dreaded words: we should get back.

Some survivors had already straggled back to the campsite, defiantly feeding fresh logs to the flames. Others, like Gabi, decided to quit while they were ahead, and took their trashed but ticket-free selves back to town. You don’t want to make small town cops drive out of their way twice in one night.

That’s when you had the bright idea: let’s walk home. Let’s cut through the fields, trek to town, buy sausage biscuits at the Quik-N-EZ, and salute the sunrise. Everyone else balked, but I was ready. This was my night. I could have done anything.

Things got heavy during our walk. No more karate-dancing. You talked about the “horrible banality of family trauma.” You even cried a little. You got angry. Were people just needing to unburden themselves that night, I wondered, or was there something particular about me?

I steered myself toward the latter interpretation. I never knew where I fit in, and now here was the answer. I’d be the co-conspirator hiding in weeds and tromping through pastures, the omnipresent shoulder, the last guy standing.

I was giddy and greasy-chinned as we settled onto a bench in the park, two wolves with four biscuits, snickering as a morning jogger side-eyed us. Remember that?

I don’t remember any of this. You sure it was me?

Of course it was you! Who else could it have been?

I don’t know.

I mean, I could have sworn. It’s always been you in my head.


Written by: Adam McKibbin

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Clockwise

Perry climbed over the garden wall. She never used the gate, loving the way the stone felt solid beneath her hands; always familiar. From her spot on the ledge, the tree seemed skeletal, almost bare. She found him there, surrounded by leaves the color of butter.

“They’re falling too fast,” Thatcher said when Perry waved from the wall. She’d been visiting this way since the early days of their friendship, and Thatcher’s house felt like home.

“I missed you at school today,” Perry said. She felt the handle of the half-broken teacup beneath her knee. Thatcher’s mom had added it to the other pieces plastered into the garden wall when they were little, and it remained Perry’s favorite spot.

“My mom doesn’t know I skipped,” he said, pointing to the backyard. Perry didn’t see her, but nodded. She swung her legs, careful not to disrupt the handle of the teacup beneath her.

“Ever wonder who we’ll be when we’re done with school?” Perry asked. “Like we’ll leave, we’ll love, we’ll become different people.”

Though the early September sun started to set, there was still enough light to see the way Thatcher squinted up at the tree, too much worry in the creases of his forehead. Leaves fell, seasons changed; it never bothered Thatcher.

But Perry understood. Sometime soon, there might be a full season in which everything changed.

“Would it help to pretend the future is a person? I always find talking to hypotheticals like real people much easier,” Thatcher said.

Perry jumped down from the wall to join him beneath the tree.

“Just imagine,” Thatcher said. He always seemed to be imagining other places, thinking about other people. And being friends with him meant dealing with the strange things he did or said, while everyone else just existed. “Future would say something like, Find someone you can share all your truths with. I think that might be love,” he said.

“Or maybe, Love is about being lost,” she said. “People seek happiness and think it’s love.”

Perry wondered if Thatcher would someday leave, and find something better; some place happier.

Maybe everyone tried much too hard to be happy in a world where they should be grateful. Or surprised. Or content.

Sitting here with Thatcher beneath the tree, she felt content.

“I don’t think I’ll be here,” Thatcher said, looking up at the tree like he saw something she couldn’t.

Thatcher’s words chilled Perry more than the wind turning the leaves inside out. She didn’t want him to talk about other places, even imaginary ones, because she couldn’t imagine Thatcher anywhere but here. Even his thoughts being elsewhere made her feel hollow.

She remembered the way Thatcher used to talk about a place he wanted to go, an address just as nonsensical as himself. And she imagined that 65 ½ now, a wrought-iron gate freckled from rust and old age, speaking in creaks.

“We should have tea,” Thatcher said.

Perry felt the future closing around her. She felt it in the way Thatcher needed to understand what might happen in a month or a year from now; seeking some distant happiness.

He walked back toward his house, but Perry didn’t follow. Instead, she stared at the pieces of glass on the garden wall, patterned with flowers and fine filigree. All of it had been whole once, broken by a past event Perry couldn’t remember. But knowing it already happened, that the pieces would remain where they were forever, made her feel better than anything else.

“Perry!” Thatcher called from the backyard minutes later. The way he said her name was nice; simple and honest and real.

“Do we have to?” Perry asked when Thatcher handed her a tea cup. He looked back at her with small eyes, pleading with her.

“Just one,” he said, and she knew it only took him one cup. He was better at reading tea leaves than skylines or wind patterns or even at reading her the past few months.

“No sugar?” Perry asked, sipping on the bitter black tea.

“It’ll ruin the reading. Now think of your question,” Thatcher said. He drank his tea and closed his eyes, savoring the liquid.

The way they talked about the future, finding their fate in tea cups, should’ve unsettled her. But such moments felt like worship: to the stars and their friendship; the profundity eclipsed by the simplicity of being here, now, with the promise of a hundred or so more moments spent just like this.

When she finished her tea, Thatcher took her cup, and swirled the remains three times clockwise, “For future events,” he said, but Perry already knew that. He tipped her cup back on the saucer without a sound, her future in practiced hands.

Perry focused on the way he stood, shifting from one foot to the other, as if the future were there waiting for him.

He dropped her cup without a whisper of what he’d seen, and then smashed his own against the tree.

“Thatcher?” she asked, too afraid to say anything else.

His voice creaked when he said her name, “Perry.”

He knelt to pick up the pieces of the cups before pulling her away from the tree, and she let him, because the ground smelled bitter like the tea. It caught in her throat and took her voice.

                                                                                                      ***

“The future scares me, too,” he said, brushing a leaf from the garden wall. He examined what was left of the cups, a bucket of mortar at his feet.

Together they pressed the pieces into an empty section of the wall. The small shards felt real in her hand. She knew they would exist one second, one moment from now. And that was enough.

Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Alone

I never want to die alone, but it seems that’s my fate.

My gramma was found next to her dried up minestrone soup, rotting for three days. Choked on a piece of bread. I guess it was sad and all, but then who’d want to grow old like that anyway and be so withered?

One spring day, Ma overdosed outside a crack house downtown, age 29. It was shortly after Dad blew town, and I went to juvie. I never could resist a shiny red car. Ma was younger, I suppose, and definitely not forgotten, at least by me. But she had her urgent need to sneak out, leaving her with only an empty needle beside her when she kicked it.

Dying alone scares me more than taking my final driving test.

Every spring night, I’m called out to scour the streets freshly lined with fast-food bags from a healthy gale off the Flatirons. Something about that night air and my restless fingers are what tug at me. I become more alert once the heat from the Colorado sun seeps out of the tar roads and the crimson tail lights brighten my night. But I don’t want to be alone.

Tonight, I "borrow" my foster parents’ SUV. Big deal, right? It’s not like they’ll miss the car much, and they definitely won’t notice I’m gone. They’re those “look how generous we are” types who take in “special needs” kids, like me. They feel so bad for the way I was raised that they always forgive me. They’ll definitely forgive me tonight.

Against a beer-soaked bar’s edge, I make two new friends, a couple. Turns out these two lovebirds are college kids. Samantha smells like the spring tulips along the Pearl Street Mall. I didn’t catch the guy’s name. Started with a ‘ch’ sound. The music in the bar is thrumming too loud to hear the rest. When they introduce themselves and their majors, I pretend like I’m someone too, someone they want to know, someone with money and a car. And then, just like nothing’s wrong, we’re friends. They’re so cute together. I want to steal their love and keep it with me always.

They ride around town with me. I put on a great act of not being the teenager I am. We stop at a friend of Chance or Chase or Chad, or whatever. A fraternity party is in full swing, mostly on the perfectly manicured lawn and partially on the roof. Samantha and the C-word guy leave to grab drinks. I hang back like I fit in. My real self reminds me who I am as soon as they leave me alone with a pretty beefy-looking dude who asks my major. I don’t belong here. I’d never belong here. I panic until my friends return with a glowing drink in a martini cup and a shot glass. Once I have that little high from the smaller cup, I sway through the party and pretend I’m someone again. I keep the high going a little by grabbing drinks from the guy dressed in just boxers and a tie who’s cruising around with a serving tray.

I suppose I shouldn’t have had that last shooter. My stomach flips after I pass some guy, who hasn't moved from the juniper bush since barfing. But I can’t let my friends see that I can’t handle the liquor. It might give me away, and I need them.

Samantha asks me for the car keys. She hasn’t drank a drop, she claims. If she has been drinking, she’s a great actress. I can’t think straight, but the hum of the busiest roads aren’t far from Delta Chi and they call to me.

“Nope,” I say, dangling the diamanté-studded key ring just inches from her nose, yanking them back.

The night air cools, and my skin craves rain drops. A spring mountain storm makes every drive a little more fun, a little more dangerous and thrilling. But there are only stars above.

The guy, whose name I now desperately wish I could remember, says I need to walk a line to prove myself. Like I’d prove to him how buzzed I was. There was only one thing I could focus on at the moment, and that was the cherry paint of the foster’s Range Rover.

"Dude, my car. Don’t you trust me?“

“Yeah, come on!” Samantha giggles and hops in back.

After giving me a once-over, he bumps my shoulder and I catch the light, musky smell he applied earlier tonight, now covered over with eau-de-beer. Then, instead of a further fight, he climbs in the back next to Samantha.

He says, "Then let's get this over with. All right?”

I nod. We definitely will be all right. What’s that saying about groups of three? They’re a charm?

The engine grinds a little as I over turn the stupid key. Samantha flirts with the C-word guy in the back. Neither notices anything might be wrong. The tail lights of the car in front of me reflect a feverish glow as I turn on the headlights. I’m so giddy.

All is perfect with the world I realize as I screech out past the neon bar lights where we’d met. We’re out among the cars on Broadway. The smell of newness breezes through the window I’ve opened a crack. These two people, here in this car, are the best friends I’ve ever had, I think. They so trust me.

I cruise faster toward the crossroads of Broadway and Baseline. The green light switches to a warning yellow. I slalom around the cars that slow down and accelerate toward the intersection, light now a glaring red. I’ve finally found two people who can stand me enough to spend more than a few minutes with me, and I definitely don’t want to die alone.

Written by: Leni Checkas

Photograph by: Skyler Smith

#InstaChristmas

This is how you Instagram Christmas.

First, you need to decide what your color scheme will be. There’s the traditional red, green, and white, but that’s kind of yawn-inducing and will figure prominently in a lot of Instagram photos.

Metallic seems like a good bet, with the warm glow and cool glint of gold, silver, pewter, and copper. It picks up a lot of glare, and the glossiness of it is somehow too shiny and artificial, even for you.

Settle for bold and interesting, a modern blend of candy pink and soft mint and rich, regal purple. Plus, you know, anything can look Christmasy. Ribbon you used for your — for Jonas’s last birthday gift, a jar of sprinkles next to snowman cookies, mulled red wine and boozy, amber cocktails.

Remind yourself not to say you are “settling.” No one is settling.

You have to find those moments. The slivers of each day that are flawless, whether they are shaped by God’s hand — or, more than likely, yours.

You have to place each ornament in the perfect spot on the tree, backlit with the right color of bulb. This may require redoing your Christmas tree multiple times because each time, you think maybe you’ll wake up from the nightmare and Jonas will be next to you, Christmas tradition in progress.

Bake a lot. If you are not sleeping or taking pictures, something should be in the oven or on a cooling rack. Make cookies and tarts and brownies and cakes. Purchase more sugar than should legally be allowed in one household. Use that weird new app Boomerang to make glorified .gifs as you whisk ingredients and make light, airy clouds of powdered sugar.

Don’t forget to artfully stack the dirty, batter-rimmed mixing bowls and spatulas because life is messy, but it can still be like, peak messy. 

Christmas presents can be wrapped (and posted!) while you’re baking. Select a matte, solid wrapping paper and go crazy with curled ribbons, elaborate bows, decorative pine cones, and recently-harvested sprigs of your neighbor’s holly bush.

Arrange gifts in towers or flat lays, with handmade gift tags and ornate calligraphy. If he’s paying attention, Jonas can make out his name at least a dozen times over. Some of the boxes are empty, but most aren’t: new cufflinks, a fancy pen, a copy of The Martian on Blu-Ray.

Will he remember it was the last movie you saw together? The last experience you shared before he cleaved your life in two, the perfect half of the Before and the desperate hollowness of the After? The residual warmth of the happy Before haunts you and teases you, and you will do anything to get it, to get him, back.

Your first Christmas together you were huddled together, a shrill ice storm whipping through the neighborhood that morning. When it died down, you walked into the yard and the world shimmered and sparkled.

Just for Jonas, and not Instagram: cut off one of the branches on your Christmas tree, throw water on it, and put it in your freezer. Make sure it’s not lying on top of anything else or you will end up with branches that get stuck to like, Otter Pops and frozen peas. You can ask your best friend’s husband to construct a stand for it and then awkwardly overhear their conversation, which includes Todd saying you’re going through a rough patch and need support and his husband David replying that you’re being coddled and need a reality check before you go totally mental.

Just shake your head because you never understood what Todd saw in David, and this was for Jonas, for the perfect Before he needs to see from you again.

Be ready to spend Christmas alone, with your iPhone and the perfectly-staged photos and messes. Be ready for each moment to be exactly what you want, the only thing you can control. 

Hear the doorbell ring, feel the adrenaline surge into your veins. You are the sun in the center of his galaxy. His path may be elliptical, he may be as far from you as his orbit allows, but he is forever circling you, forever connected to you, and he will always come back around.

You open the door, ready for an embrace, an apology, a cropped square of happiness and the mess right out of frame.

It’s not Jonas, but David.

“Todd doesn’t know I’m here,” he says, “I said I was getting Starbucks.”

“Are they even open?” You ask, because it is the only reasonable response.

“I don’t know,” David rubs his left eyebrow, a nervous twitch you never realized you noticed. “You’re his best friend, Katie. You’re miserable, and you’re alone, and you and I will never be best friends.”

“Merry Christmas, David,” you begin to close the door.

“A thousand times, you could have told Todd you don’t like me. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t see it,” you say, “but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just not for me to see.”

“He would have listened,” David says, and his brown eyes grow bleary and distant. “He loves you more.”

“Maybe. But we’ll never find out. We don’t even need to ask,” you say.

“We’ll never be best friends,” David repeats, “but you can’t be here, miserable and alone and pretending everything is still fine. Come over. We’ll get drunk on cranberry margaritas and play an Elf drinking game.”

You do not take pictures of your Christmas sock-clad feet in front of the television, Will Ferrell’s tall frame ruling the screen.

You don’t capture the second pitcher of cranberry margaritas toppling from the kitchen counter onto the floor, sticky puddles like blood from some kind of holiday horror movie.

And you definitely don’t immortalize Todd’s absolute failure at red velvet cheesecake, a soggy mess that the three of you promptly spit into napkins.

You leave your phone in your purse, and you miss Jonas’s curt, impersonal text: a Christmas tree emoji.

This is how you have the best Christmas of your adult life.


Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Bonus Time

“Meredith. Over here.”

Meredith turned towards the sound of the voice and saw Catherine waving to her from the table in the corner. She shuffled her way across the busy cafe and flopped her weary body into the booth. Hot coffee sloshed over the top of her cup, singeing her hand and staining the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Shit.” As she reached for the napkin container she upended her purse, dumping the contents onto the floor.

“Double Shit.”

The two women scrambled to pick everything up and sop up the coffee. When they were done, Catherine took a sip of her herbal tea and smiled a perky smile.

“Mondays. They’ll get you every time,” she said.

“My entire life is a fucking Monday,” replied Meredith. She surveyed her friend. Baby weight gone. Hair styled. Clothes unwrinkled and unstained. Makeup. Who in the hell has time to put on makeup? It’s like she isn’t even a parent.

“I’m sorry,” said Catherine, her voice chipper and grating.

“Catherine, you know I love you, but seriously, some days I want to stab you. What is your secret? How in God’s name do you find the time to put on makeup when I can’t even manage to brush my hair?”

“Well, you know, you’ve got to manage your time.”

“Seriously? That’s it? I spent an hour today removing M&M’s from the heating vents and your answer is ‘to manage your time’?” Meredith’s voice seethed with frustration.

Catherine glanced around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Her face got serious. She motioned for Meredith to lean in close and dropped her voice to a whisper.

“Do you really want to know? I use Bonus Time.”

                                                                                                       ***

Meredith glanced at her phone, double checking the address on the GPS against the piece of paper Catherine had given her. Everything seemed to be entered correctly, and Catherine had warned her about judging the place based on its appearance, but this still seemed like a mistake. She worked her way down the dilapidated white fence until she came to a gate. Behind the gate was a small overgrown yard and a house, rickety and paint-starved. Just as she was about to flee, a woman, young and comely and draped in a delicate gossamer dress, opened the door of the house.

“Meredith, please come in.” The woman’s voice was like a cold breeze, raising the little hairs on the back of Meredith’s neck and turning her exposed flesh into dimpled chicken skin. Meredith took a deep breath and thought of Catherine and how relaxed, how together, she always was. She wanted that. She needed that. She took another deep breath and stepped through the gate. Once inside the house the woman closed the door behind them.

“How did you know my name? Are you…” Meredith started to ask, before the woman cut her off.

“No. I am his assistant. He is in there.” She pointed towards a door. “He is expecting you.”

The man behind the desk looked to be in his early fifties. He wore a navy blazer with a crisp white shirt. His dark hair was beginning to gray on the sides. Neither ugly nor handsome, he was the type of guy you could see ten times a day and not remember.

“Not what you were expecting?” he asked, and once again Meredith’s skin turned to goosebumps. “Would it be easier if I had on a black hooded cloak, scythe in one hand, hourglass in the other? Or perhaps if I looked like Brad Pitt?” The man laughed, a throaty chuckle that almost made Meredith regret coming here. But she stood, silent and terrified yet firm in her resolve, staring Death in the face.

“I am assuming that Catherine filled you in on how this works?” he asked.

She thought back to their hushed conversation in the cafe.

“What is Bonus Time?” Meredith asked.

“This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. You get this watch. And on this watch is a button, and when you press the button, everything stops. Like Zach used to do on Saved By the Bell. But for real.

Everyone and everything is frozen in time. And you can use that time, Bonus Time, do whatever you want. But there’s a catch.”

“What catch?”

“For every twenty-four hours of Bonus Time you use, you lose one month at the end of your life.”

“An entire month? For using just one day? That’s seems like quite the markup.”

“Give up a month of sitting around a nursing home, drooling all over myself, for twenty-four glorious hours all to myself right now?” Catherine took a sip of her tea. “Doesn’t seem like such a bad deal to me. Just make sure you don’t go overboard.”

“Yes, she explained everything,” Meredith said.

“Good,” said Death. He pulled a silver pocket watch from the inner pocket of his blazer and dangled it by the fob. He pushed a contract across the desk. “Just sign here, and you’re all set.”

                                                                                                       ***

“My God, Meredith, you look fantastic,” said Catherine as she sat down at the their usual corner table.

Meredith smiled, and with a steady hand, raised her coffee in a mock toast.

“To Bonus Time,” she said.

“You haven’t been overdoing it, have you?”

“No, not at all. I only use a little at time, and I’ve been keeping track.” She pulled out her phone and looked at her notes. “I’ve used just under four days so far. And besides, I’ve got good genetics on my side. All my grandparents made it to their nineties.”

Meredith took a bite out of her scone just as she saw the two people enter the cafe. The man she wouldn’t have noticed right away, but the woman she would have known anywhere.

Meredith gasped.

“What is it?” asked Catherine.

Meredith tried to talk but fear gripped her throat. Frantic, she pointed towards the two people that were headed towards her, but Catherine didn’t seem to see them.

“It’s time to go Meredith.” The woman’s voice was frigid.

Catherine put her arms around Meredith’s mid-section and pulled up and in repeatedly, trying to dislodge the scone from Meredith’s throat.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Meredith,” said Death. “But if it’s any consolation, this is better than the car accident you were originally scheduled for.”



Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Instructions for Living the Perfect Life

Arabella found the instructions for living the perfect life on a late night/early morning Amazon binge. She was drunk and immediately clicked Purchase, woke up Gael snoring next to her, and texted her best friend, Brynlee, to tell her the exciting news.

“Bella is so funny,” Brynlee said. She was in bed, scrolling, texting, liking, commenting, and swiping with practiced fingers. I was next to her, half-asleep in frog pajamas.

“Mhmm,” I moaned. It was nearing three in the morning, and the Netflix prompt, Are you still watching? lit up the dark room. I had class at eight. Philosophy with Professor Fine. One more tardy and he swore to fail me; a fate I would surely test eventually.

“She’s drunk and ordered something called, Instructions for Living the Perfect Life. It comes in a briefcase. With, like, instructions and stuff.”

Brynlee was not a vapid valley girl, though based on her speech, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Her’s was a halting dialect full of umms and likes. But in reality we all spoke this way; all of us shock troops in an army of communicators shaped and molded by emoji-speak. We unwittingly and accidentally transcended simple slang, and eventually we’ll “speak” like binary robots, with blinks and blips in a sort of teenage auditory morse code.

“I wonder who supplies something like that? Must be a private seller or something.”

“Mhmm.”

Five to seven days later, the instructions were delivered. I came home from an exam to find Arabella, Gael, and Brynlee huddled around the briefcase like it was a board game. Brynlee was reading from a piece of paper, and Gael smoked a vaporizer, letting out invisible fumes with large, smiling, sighs.

“Hello, lucky owner,” she read. “You have in your possession detailed instructions on how to live the perfect life.”

She giggled and took the vaporizer from Gael. He leaned back in the beanbag and flipped through his phone absently. Swipe. Type. Tap. Repeat. Swipe. Type. Tap…

“Before you unlock the secrets of the enlightened life,” she continued, “please read these instructions and complete the attached checklist.”

“Instructions for the instructions,” I said.

“Don’t be so negative,” Brynlee snapped.

“Knowledge is an onion,” Gael said absently. “You’ve just got to peel back the layers.”

“Is that Descartes?” I asked him.

He looked up, confused, as if the joke had just sneaked past him in the night and all he could do was smell it.

“I dunno,” he said finally. “Sure?”

Brynlee pinched my leg before I could continue with my teasing.

“First,” said Arabella, reading from the checklist. “Surround yourself with individuals of a purely positive energy. Life is optimally experienced with an open core.”

I imagined a giant robot man, his chest lighting up, his core like a bug zapper sucking up all the positive energy of the world, zapping away the bad vibes. I would call him Mister Good Vibes.

“Second,” she continued, “find a beautiful place above sea level. Like heat, positive energy rises. High elevation areas are best.”

“We could go to Devil’s Point,” I said. “It’s the highest part of the city.”

“Ummm,” said Brynlee, “I don’t think a place called Devil’s Point would have the best energy. It’s called that because people commit suicide there and stuff.”

“That’s actually a myth,” replied Gael. “It’s called Devil’s Point because it’s the middle, and highest, of the three mountains. The conquistadors, or some shit, named it because they thought it looked like Satan’s pitchfork, ergo, Devil’s Point. It’s basically geography.”

“Who told you that?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “It’s like a thing everyone knows. It’s just true. I don’t know who straight up told me.”

I got out my phone and tapped open Chrome to catch him in his bullshit.

“Lastly,” Arabella said. “Spread the love. Secrets only hurt. Honesty is the policy of the universe. Share the instructions for the perfect life once you have them, so others can benefit and be fulfilled.”

“That it?” I asked.

Brynlee nodded.

“Well, fuck it,” I said. “Let’s do this, Leeroy Jenkins. I’ll drive.”

The four of us drove up to Devil’s Point and parked at a spot overlooking the city. It was absolutely beautiful. Some sort of cosmic paint had been spilled, creating a landscape of indiscriminate grace that emanated off the canvas of the earth, that shone through the fumes of our progress and made our world magnificent. I knew the reality. Knew that the protracted wavelengths of red blocked the other colors in our spectrum as they stretched across the atmosphere. I knew it was the science that was beautiful, not some invisible projection of mankind’s vanity, or some selfish belief that these things existed for us, blind to the notion that we were nothing more than unwitting watchers in the best of times, destroyers of worlds in the worst. I knew the truth, but I chose to keep it to myself so as not to disrupt the opening of the briefcase.

“Everyone ready?” Arabella asked. She had the briefcase in her lap.

“I’m excited,” Brynlee said.

“Me too,” chimed Gael.

And then, a strange feeling spread over me. I was also, ashamed to say, excited. All the nonsense had somehow coagulated into a sort of earnest enthusiasm; in that place, with those people, overlooking thousands of lives and actions with their personal universes spread out, merging and bouncing off one another, like someone had zoomed out on us all with Google Maps - demagnified our worlds - and from such a distance we were all lawless picnics of aggressive atoms, rubbing against one another.

What was happening to me? Was there something to be said of positive vibes? Of feng shui, and Oms and Umms? Of clapping away the bad energy, or lighting incense to wash out the negative? Was there some element of truth in all this bullshit?

“Here we go…”

She cracked open the briefcase and an intense bright light emerged from its guts and momentarily blinded us all.

“Oh my god…” said Brynlee.

“What the fuck?” muttered Gael.

“It’s beautiful,” awed Arabella.

As for me, I kept my mouth shut, hoping to contain whatever mysterious dynamism toiled inside my cranky skin and bones.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

The Commons

Darius broke right and sprinted down the alleyway, but deep down he knew even his best effort would be futile. Athletic endeavors had never been his strong suit, and the three boys chasing him were older, faster, and stronger.

“Get back here, you fat little motherfucker,” shouted their leader, a hulking monster of a teen whose real name was Terrence, but went by T-Dog. If the rumors floating around school were true, this past weekend T-Dog fulfilled his lifelong ambition, metamorphosed from wannabe gangbanger to a full-fledged member of the Baseline Crips after emerging triumphant from a cocoon of fists and stomping feet. His two acolytes, Peanut and DeRay, were no less menacing.

“You keep running, we’re gonna beat your ass even worse,” yelled T-Dog.

But Darius, faced with the first flight or fight moment of his life, kept chugging along as fast as his stout little legs and asthmatic lungs could go.

It wasn’t fast enough.

DeRay was the first to reach him. He grabbed Darius from behind and slammed him to the ground, knocking his glasses off and ripping the sleeve of his shirt. Peanut slapped him across the mouth, turning his lip raw and bloody.

“The fuck you running for?” T-Dog asked, shaking him. “Huh? Answer me motherfucker! Peanut, I thought you said this motherfucker was smart. Don’t seem so smart to me.”

“Wh-wh-what do you want from me?” Tears poured down Darius’s cheeks as he stumbled over the words.

Before T-Dog could answer, a voice, booming and gravelly, called out, “Let that boy alone.”

Darius, glasses gone and eyes clouded with tears, watched unfocused as a blur of a man hopped a dilapidated, white fence and confronted his attackers.

DeRay rushed at the stranger and was thrown headlong into the fence. T-Dog took a swing at him. The man caught his punch and pulled him close, twisting his arm awkwardly behind him. The man slid his other arm across T-Dog’s throat.

“I said, let that boy alone.” He held onto to T-Dog for another few seconds, choking him and cranking up on his arm, before pushing him down to the ground. “Now, get out of here.”

T-Dog got up slowly and brushed himself off. He and the others backed down the alleyway, bristling with teenage rage, staring at the man.

“I’m gonna get you motherfucker. This ain’t over.” T-Dog yelled, before shifting his gaze to Darius. “You either. See you around school.”

“You alright, son?” the man asked Darius, brushing him off and handing him his glasses.

Darius was pretty far from alright.

“Umm. Yes, sir. I guess, sir.”

“What’s your name?” asked the man.

“Darius.”

“Darius, I’m Theo. You live around here?”
“Yes, sir. We stay over in the Commons.”

Theo glanced up at the ten-story public housing unit that dominated the neighborhood. He put his arm around Darius.

“It’ll be ok. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

                                                                                                 ***

After he finished washing up, Darius scouted around the little house. He noticed a large picture hanging over the mantle. It was a younger version of Theo. Darius didn’t know much about sports but he knew the iconic baseball uniform.

“Did you really play for the Yankees?” he asked.

The voice that answered him was not Theo’s, but the hoarse rasp of an elderly woman.

“Yes, he did. My baby pitched three seasons with the Yanks, until he blew out his elbow.”

Darius turned and looked at the woman. She was wrinkled and weathered, but had gentle, warm eyes.

“Still lives up in New York, too. He’s just down here taking care of me.” The woman coughed. “I’ve been sick lately.”

Theo came in from the kitchen, carrying a pitcher and three glasses.

“I see you’ve met my momma. I’ve been trying to get her to move out of this neighborhood and come live up north with me for quite awhile.” Theo smiled. “But she’s a stubborn old woman.”

“I love my boy, but the only way I’m leaving this house is in a body bag.”
                                                                                                 ***

“Good morning. Is there anything I can help you find?”

The man behind the counter eyed Darius suspiciously. Or perhaps it was just Darius’s guilty conscience. He had never skipped school before, and he had never ridden the bus to this part of town before, either. He felt very out of place, but baseball card shops didn’t exist in his part of town.

“Yes, sir. I was wondering if you had any Theo Jackson baseball cards?”

“Theo Jackson?” The man furrowed his brow. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He played about ten years ago, for the Yankees.” A proud smile spread across Darius’s face. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Hmm, let’s see what I can find,” said the man. He pulled out a worn copy of Beckett’s Ultimate Baseball Card Guide. “Now, not all players get cards, you know,” he said as he thumbed through the guide. “Alright, here we go. Jackson, Theo. Looks like he was a common in 2004.”

“What’s a common?” asked Darius.

“Well, with baseball cards, about eighty percent of them aren’t worth much. Maybe five cents or so. Players who most people wouldn’t recognize on the street.”

The man walked over to a cardboard file cabinet. He slid out a drawer and started rifling through it.

“It’s the superstars cards that are valuable, but to keep the value on them up, and to keep them rare, they have to fill the packs with commons.” He walked back over to Darius, card in hand. “Like your friend here.”

                                                                                                 ***

Darius couldn’t wait to show Theo and his mother the baseball card, but he forgot all about it the moment he rounded the corner. Blue and red lights swirled, lighting up the street. Three police cars were parked haphazard in front of the Jackson home. The people of the neighborhood ringed the area, watching and whispering amongst themselves. Darius’s heart dropped into his gut. Even from a distance he could see the rumpled white sheet on the lawn, covering the body.

He could see Theo’s mother sitting on the front step, crying and shaking. Two police officers were doing their best to calm her. Darius ran towards her. The baseball card slipped from his hand, mixing in with the fallen leaves on the lawn. As he got closer he could hear her wail.

“Oh Lord. I didn’t have no choice but to shoot him. I swear it. He was gonna kill my baby.” She took a deep breath. “He was gonna kill my baby.”

The front door opened. Theo walked out of the house. He knelt beside his mother and offered her some water. When she finished he set the cup on the top step and put his arms around her.

Photo and Words by: Ben Cook

The Dénouement

The rising sun, a red ball set in a hard grey sky, painted the tips of the ocean waves all the way to the water’s edge. Everything it touched looked bright and hot. Even the crystalline sand shimmered and glowed like a bed of smoldering coals.

A wind from the east blew up from the beach and carried the grit and sea-smell inland. It ruffled and filled the voile curtains at the edges of my French doors and bent inward the saw grass that grew thick at the foot of my terrace. A breeze on a beach was always welcome, but one from the east, with the red light of dawn burning on the horizon, carried a portent. 

 
I leaned against the terrace railing and watched thunderheads form at the edge of the sea just above the horizon, billowing high into the sky, majestic and foreboding. I was sipping my coffee and studying the gathering storm when I heard my front door close. I turned my head only halfway to listen. It might be the wind, I thought, but then I heard soft footsteps approaching. I’d been expecting the visit. He’d phoned and said he had news, the dénouement, he called it. He came up beside me and stood there in the full force of the wind staring out across the ocean vista and expansive sky. I didn’t turn toward him. It wasn’t necessary. The familiarity of his presence did not require it. Don and I’d been close friends for almost twenty-five years.

He was a man of rhythm and tempo like the waves on the shoreline. He’d been a music major in college, and though he’d left that life behind long ago, his intuitive sense of timing remained. He waited for his cue, counting the pulse of the waves like the measures in a symphonic prelude. I waited for his news, and when he found the rhythm for his words, it wasn’t a wind from the east that spoke, it was the storm.

“Rick loved his pickup truck.” Don began in a matter-of-fact cadence. “You know he didn’t need a pickup truck. He wasn’t in construction. He wasn’t what you’d call a very handyman or a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Those things were not his forté, and in his case, better off left to the professionals.” He chuckled. I smiled. “He was a teacher. He’d always wanted to be a teacher and in the end, that’s what he was. I learned he was a good teacher, imaginative, amusing, held in high regard by his colleagues, well liked by both parents and students. He was a good teacher, a good teacher who loved his pickup truck.”

He paused and gazed down at the swaying saw grass at the base of the terrace. I sipped my coffee and watched the light change with the shifting clouds. I stood pressed against the terrace boundary. I knew some of the story but not all. With the news to come, I wanted to be in the full force of the wind that streaked up from the ocean. Don lifted his head and continued.

“In fact, he loved his pickup truck so much that he decided there was no better place to die than on the front seat. I don’t know how he reached that conclusion. I don’t know what went through his mind. I don’t know how he put the logic together to arrive at that place, but he did. I don’t know the why either, but it took some planning. He removed the exhaust manifold and used a vacuum cleaner hose. It pumped the fumes right into the cab. I guess you could say I underestimated his handyman skills.” Don paused and shook his head, puzzled. “He must have read some books, don’t you think?” I turned and saw him smile at the thought; then Don pulled out a chair and sat down at my terrace table.

I would have preferred to take the news standing full in the wind, but after a last glance at the ocean and the endless white caps, I turned away, pulled out a chair and joined him. I wanted to get away from it, yet I needed to face the end head on.

“When they found him, he was stretched out on the seat under a blanket. Julia told me that they’d been trying for a baby. He’d brought home the blanket one day. It was a baby blanket covered in purple ballerinas. He insisted they sleep under it every night. It was their good luck charm, he told her. Looking back on it, though, it doesn’t seem so lucky, does it?” He straightened and turned to face the wind, hoping it would shutter his emotions. “In that state of mind it must be possible to live two lives in parallel, one where you continue with the life you know, your family, your profession, the familiar and frequent steps, and at the same time, unearth the thoughts and designs that write your own epitaph.” His voice rose to a shout. He spit his words at the rising wind. “How can you believe in good luck charms like a baby’s blanket and then make such detailed plans to end your life?” He was short of breath after the outburst. He slumped in his chair, and tears dropped onto the front of his shirt. His questions remained unanswered. They would always remain unanswered. The dead speak too softly or not at all.

There were no answers I could give Don. The answers he sought had died with Rick. I could only offer him solace and share the grief. It was my grief too. Together, we’d lost a friend, or perhaps he’d lost us. It wasn’t an accident or disease that took him. He’d left by choice like a friend who waves goodbye from a parting car, with no thought of tomorrow, only the journey and the road just ahead.

Written by: James Shaffer
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

One Little Push

The floorboards wheeze with each step, an asthmatic echo through the attic. Grace nudges a flimsy cardboard box with her toe, testing whether it will disintegrate on contact. It remains intact, but sighs a dusty breath. Grace sneezes and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

Blankets and old, worn clothes sit in lazy piles. Mattress pads are like discarded melon rinds after a picnic. The whole place reminds her of a garbage dump, unused things collected to decompose and die.

Grace remembers coming up here with Ava when they were younger, trading scary stories and contorting their hands like origami figures, trying to cast the best shadow in their imaginary menagerie.

Ava always won. Grace could only manage birds, but Ava could bend her fingers and twine her arms together to make rabbits and camels and once, with the clever integration of tortilla chips, a dragon. It wasn’t cheating, it was damn clever.

Next-door neighbors, best friends, practically sisters. And Grace is the good one in the equation, coming home to take care of an ailing mother: Ava’s.

Grace ignores the fact that she’s being paid as a caretaker, and that coming home was her only option after she flunked out of med school and racked up student loan debt. She’s not a selfless, dutiful pseudo-daughter. She’s broke and desperate.

Grace plops down on the floor and begins her search for an old turntable and vinyl records. It’s to satisfy the latest in a string of odd requests, regret masked as nostalgia. Ava’s mother thinks classic rock and folk music will take her back in time, back to before she was a mother and when she was untethered, unclaimed, unencumbered.

Grace can’t blame her. She wants to go back in time, too.

The first box reveals a stack of photo albums, decorated with Ava’s signature glitter-glued spirals and squiggles. Grace opens the first one, even though she is not supposed to be looking for old photos.

Junior year. There they are, two mismatched twins joined at the hip. Grace’s long, tanned arm thrown over Ava’s shoulder. Short blonde hair, pulled back in a half-braid at her crown. Eyes the color of a foggy morning, deep and inquisitive. Ava’s long, dark hair tumbles down to her slim waist, her hazel eyes looking through the camera, looking into the future and meeting Grace’s eyes. Grace runs her thumb along the curled edge of the photo and blinks back tears. Her father’s sharp words ring out in the attic.

That girl’s trouble, Grace. You won’t get anywhere hanging around with her. She’s a bad influence. I don’t want my daughter turning out like that. You’re on the edge. She’ll push you off if it means you’ll go down with her.

And where’s Ava now? In Reykjavik, where her latest script is being lovingly shaped into a film. She doesn’t have to be there of course; the cruel twist of it is that she can be.

And Grace, good Grace who didn’t run around with boys or smoke pot or sneak sips of Bacardi her senior year, who buckled down and focused and told her best friend she was too busy studying or going to prayer group? She’s in that same attic from her childhood, and those scary stories are her life: sleeping in the same bedroom back home, single and not loving it, caretaker to her best friend’s mom, listening to her own father lament why she isn’t more successful.

Be good, but not too good. Have fun, but not too much. Grace was never good at chemistry or fractions or anything that required her to mix parts of a whole. She couldn’t find that balance.

She’s full-on crying now: loud, angry sobs that make her body shake.

What happened to that girl? The one that stood in the center of every photo and commanded attention? Grace didn’t know if she could ever be the girl she once was, but she hoped so.

“I wish,” she chokes out, and something by the window moves.

Grace looks over and watches something roll itself up from the floor. What she thought was a heap of old clothes was actually a figure sitting on the floor. A figure now in front of her, with dirty, scaly skin and copper eyes peering from under a navy hoodie.

Ava used to tell her the attic was haunted. A cute prank, one that neither believed. Grace would play along, pretend to be scared and nervous.

The figure feels too corporeal, too present to be a ghost. It stands, not floats; shifts, not wavers. And Grace is neither scared nor nervous. Something supernatural is before her, and all she feels is a beautiful lightness like endless possibility, like a balloon being filled with air and sailing up into forever.

“What do you wish?” Its voice sounds like the creaking floorboards she previously ignored.

“How long have you been here?” Grace asks, hoping the figure does not ignore her question.

“I don’t know,” the figure admits. “Maybe forever. Maybe no time at all. It does not matter.”

Maybe Ava wasn’t joking.

“What do you wish?” The figure asks again.

“To go back,” Grace says. “To do it all over again, from junior year until now.”

The figure lingers, considering the request. An appendage reaches out for her and Grace does not hesitate. Nothing claims her here. There is no post to which she can hitch herself. She is grounded entirely in the past.

Grace wraps her hand around what feels like soggy leather, a spongy knob protruding that could have once been the bone in a wrist. Grace nods, the unspoken question hanging in the air between them.

The figure siphons itself into her, a shadow in reverse. Grace feels the tight embrace of something curling itself around her, and the sick, sweet pain of release as she tilts forward and falls into infinity.

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Skyler Smith

Freshmen

We recap the year with pitchers of overpriced margaritas at Chili's, procured less by our fake IDs and more by fortuitous seating in a section manned by a frazzled waitress. Her name tag reads Jessica, but we all swore she said her name was Beth. Either way, she's tilting at windmills trying to get a good tip from that six-top of frat boys.

It's the three of us: Naomi, queen of problem sets and keg stands; Yara, wannabe director, actual drug dealer; and me, future M.D. unless the system breaks me. A third of our freshman class entered in some kind of pre-med track; after four days a week with 7 AM chem or bio from the dullest profs the college could hire, survival of the fittest has whittled it to a fifth of our class.

I'm still hanging in there, but Yara sometimes mentions adding two more to our crew to keep the pre-med proportions right and when she does, there's a good chance Naomi will say something about three-fifths and give me this look.

If we've been drinking it's hilarious like Chappelle's Show, but if we're not it's just sad and awkward, like explaining Key & Peele's magical negro sketch.

I'm about to lose faith in Jessabeth the waitress, but a timely refill of margaritas and bottomless chips and salsa keep her in Naomi's good graces, and Naomi's picking up the tab (with her mom's AmEx).

And oh God, when I think there can't be a more bittersweet moment, when we're laughing till we're crying and refusing to consider how this summer we'll be bound only by FaceTime and Instagram, Naomi slips and mentions Levi.

It's how I imagine a stained glass window would melt in an inferno: searing heat, crackling glass, the vibrant colors pooling together and hardening, a warped lump once beautiful.

Yara's face scrunches up. She's trying not to cry for real this time, and Naomi looks down and we're conspicuously quiet. Jessabeth checks in, but probably because her waitress senses are tingling and she's worried we realized we don't have enough cash to cover three rounds of margaritas and counting.

One of us should say something, break up the mood before we all descend into memories of the great night that turned into a bad morning.

I know I should say something, but I can't.

I remember sickly-sweet vodka, flavors manufactured to market to teen girls. Cake and cotton candy; didn’t even need a chaser.

Bailey was there and I tried to play it cool, tried to make my way over to him gradually. He was all suburban prep: J. Crew closet, lacrosse scholarship, poli sci and econ double major. Such a vanilla choice, but he captivated me with that orthodontia-perfect smile and New England charm.

He offered to make a s'mores shot in my mouth, and when we finally kissed the cigarette smoke on his lips made me taste campfires and cool nights.

We all left and stumbled through the freshman quad, everything in soft focus and blurred to perfection.

Yara and Levi slipped away. I watched them go, her hip pressing into his thigh and his arm around her shoulders, their silhouette illuminated.

Naomi and I made it to the frat house, the bass thumping, a beacon for the wasted. I don't remember much other than Bailey's hands against my hips, furtive kisses tasting less like smoke, more like sweat. I woke up in his bed the next morning, and we didn’t kiss or cuddle.

I don’t even remember my first time.

Maybe I should be more upset about what happened and why we haven't spoken since, but I don't want to think about it, and if you don't think about things they can't make you upset.

I went back to our room, walk of shame mercifully short. Yara was single and heartbroken. Naomi had spilled coffee all over my floor trying to juggle my hot pot and french press.

At least she wasn’t injured, she pointed out. At least I was here, the subtext. And the evidence: Yara’s blotchy cheeks streaked with tears. She shook with sobs and choked it out: how Levi’d confessed he loved her, but thought he was in love with a girl from her film class.

And I couldn’t say why or what happened, because what would I say? Why would I take the comfort Yara needed more than I did?

"I don't want to talk about him," Yara says, dragging a chip around the perimeter of the salsa bowl, and I know how she feels although I can't tell her why.

"I'm sorry,” Naomi replies. “Guys are assholes. Especially that one."

"Where are you working again this summer?" I turn to Yara. She's told me half a dozen times in the last week but her gray eyes light up, eager to think or talk about anything other than Levi, her first real boyfriend. Her first real ex.

"The community theater at my hometown. They're letting me do some of the programming for the youth performance camp," Yara sips on her margarita. "Oh, and my job from last year. It's so much easier to sell pills there, you have no idea."

                                                                                                   ***

A month into summer and the three of us have talked less than I thought we would. A text here or there, maybe a Snapchat. No phone calls, no FaceTime, no sound other than the static of friendships on hold. We communicate through pixels.

I try to convince myself that I don't feel abandoned, just neglected when Yara texts me from work. Golden arches leer at me in her photo.

Making bank. 1st brunch on me as thx. xoxoxo.

One day I'll tell her things I remember about that night. How I saw a couple wrapped up in each other, backlit by hazy possibility and walking into the future together. How I wanted that moment, to be so caught in it I didn’t know it was happening, dizzy in love and invincible in ignorance, unaware that anyone could hurt you.

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Matt Crump

Fifteen to Life

Most days I eat my lunch outside. There’s a break room with a vending machine and microwave and everything, but I bring my own chips because the machine don’t carry the ones I like and I don’t need to nuke my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anyway. And the break room always smells like bleach. Whole place actually smells like bleach most of the time, but other than that, it’s not bad as far as jobs go.

There’s a nice bench that I sit on when I eat. It’s made out of wrought iron and looks uncomfortable as hell, but it don’t hurt my back or butt at all. Plus it’s right next to this table where two of the fellas that live in the nursing home play dominos all of the time, and they don’t mind if I watch. They don’t play the same way that we used to on the inside, though. They’re real quiet and don’t slam the dominos down or keep score or anything.

It’s funny, watching them play, almost makes me miss being in. Crazy, huh? Spend ten years of your life locked up, dreaming of freedom, and once you get it, you sit around missing the times you had. I guess good memories are good memories though, no matter where you make them.

I hope you got some good memories. I’m sure you do. Probably none of me, though. That’s ok. I wish it was different but I understand. You were only five when I got locked up. I don’t remember much from before I was five, so maybe you don’t either. I kind of hope you don’t, because it will give us a fresh start. I wasn’t a good person back then. I hope I am now.

Your mom says you’re doing great in school and have lots of friends. I think that’s one of the hardest things about being out so far. Inside, I had all sorts of friends. Like Preacher and Demetrius, the guys I used to play dominos with. Preacher wasn’t his real name. We just called him that because he was real loud and was always saying “Jumping Jesus Christ”. Except when he said it with his thick southern accent it was long and drawn out. Like when he’d slam the domino on the table and shout out “Jump-in Ju-eee-sus Ca-rist boys, thats a-nudder fi-deen for me.” I would crack up every time. That’s why they called me Giggles. Everybody gets a nickname on the inside. Except Demetrius. He was just Demetrius. He was in for killing a couple of folks. It’s funny, he was a bad man but a good friend.

My friends from school--because being locked up at twenty, that’s all I’ve ever really had, school friends and prison friends--were always guys I had something in common with. Girls. Cars. Fights. Drugs. Whatever. Inside it wasn’t like that. Preacher and Demetrius and me, we were all complete opposites. Preacher was white and loud and his hair was long and scraggly. He was about sixty and so short and wiry that it looked like you could fit two of him in his jumpsuit. He was doing eight years for burglary. Demetrius was black and bald and thick. It was like his muscles had muscles. He didn’t talk much, and when he did, his voice was real soft and low. Like thunder off in the distance. I don’t know how old he was. Probably in his late forties, I guess. We were like the weirdest Three Musketeers ever, an old white thief, a big black killer, and a young vato drug dealer. But it was all good. And now who knows, I’ll probably never even talk to those guys again.

I don’t even really know how to make friends anymore. Most of the people who work at the home don’t really talk to me. I think they get a bunch of ex-cons through here, and most of them don’t last long before they screw it all up and get thrown back in. And I’ve been trying to stay out of the bars and stuff. I don’t need any of that temptation.

I went to church last Sunday. The sermon was all about how only God can judge somebody, but when I was talking to the preacher afterwards and told him I just got out, I could see the worry in his eyes. Made me miss my friend Preacher even more. I think he could show them all a thing or two about judging folks. It is what it is, though. Guess I better get used to it. But I don’t want you to feel bad for me. I’ll be okay. I promise.

I can’t believe you’re going to be fifteen next week. It’s funny, when I was in, time seemed to drag on forever. Probably because I wanted it to go fast. Like when you’re waiting for Christmas. But now I realize how fast life really goes, and if you spend your time looking forward to the future you miss what's going on right now. I don’t want to miss anything that's going on now anymore.

Fifteen can be a pretty tough age. Remember to be a kid, okay? You don’t need to be a rush to grow up. You’re going to get there someday, and when you do, you’ll probably wish you had a chance to go back and be a kid again. I know I do. And remember to be safe out there. Make good decisions. I know I don’t have the right to tell you how to live your life, seeing as how bad I messed up mine, but try to learn from your mom’s and my mistakes. Not that you were a mistake. Far from it. Matter of fact, you’re pretty much the only thing ever in my life that I’m proud of. Hopefully someday you’ll be proud of me too.

Anyway, I hope your quinceanera is amazing. Your mom says you look beautiful in your dress, and I believe it. I wish I could come but I understand why you don’t want me there. I would love some pictures of it though. Maybe we can have dinner next weekend? For now, I’ve got to get back to work.

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Touch of Grey

I glance at the stack of messages my secretary just handed me. The name on the top one hits me like knuckles to the solar plexus.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I stare at the name, scrawled in her barely legible scribble. Walt Bowman.

“Mr. Willett?” Her voice wavers. “Did I do something wrong?”

I shift my gaze to her. She’s a temp, but besides her poor handwriting, she has been doing a fantastic job. Sadly, this makes her one of the few bright spots of my life at the moment. I do my best to regain my composure.

“No, Darlene, you didn’t do anything wrong.” I try to smile at her to put her at ease.

“Whew, you had me scared there for a minute.” She lets out a nervous laugh. I know she needs this job as much as I need some sort of stability in my life right now. She puts her hand on my arm, a warm grandmotherly touch. “I know I shouldn’t pry, but is it something to do with the divorce? I know how hard it can be.”

I shake my head and hold up the message.

“No, this is just a name I haven’t seen in a long, long time. It’s probably just a coincidence anyway, I’m sure it’s not even the same guy I used to know.”

I close the door to my office and think about the first time I saw Walt Bowman. In his torn jeans and ragged Grateful Dead t-shirt, all eyes were on him as he came sauntering through the door of Ms. Faber’s freshman English class. As he searched for a seat, he scoured the class, taking in all the Beverly Hills 90210 clones in their Z Cavaricci jeans and Oxford shirts. And then he spied me, sitting in the corner, about as non-descript as you could get.

“What’s up, I’m Walt,” he said, sliding into the desk next to me.

“Eric,” I replied.

“You like to get high Eric?” he asked, eyebrows raised, a pimply grin spreading across his face.

“Uhh…” I glanced around the room, full of kids that I had known most of my life, but who seemed to have forgotten my name through the years. I thought of my mother and the look of quiet sadness she would get whenever she asked why I never invite any friends over after school. I turned to Walt, and tried to sound as cool as possible. “Yeah, I love to get high, who doesn’t?”

“Good,” he said.

My God, Walt fucking Bowman.

I notice my fingers tremble a little as I punch the numbers into the phone. My heart beats faster with each ring.

“Hello?” My stomach drops, the voice doesn’t sound familiar at all.

“Is this Walt Bowman? My name is Eric Willett.”

“Eric! How are you doing? You remember me, right? Hayward High, freshman year?”

“Of course I remember you. I just never expected to talk to you again. What happened to you? You just disappeared.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He chuckles. “My dad was pretty mad when the cops brought me home. He moved us to Albany to live with my grandparents.” He chuckles again. “Man, what were we thinking?”

Thinking? I remember us thinking Spring Break warranted something more exciting than sneaking a half of a joint in the alleyway behind my house, like we had done most days during our three month friendship.

I looked above me at the two street signs above me, in awe of the fact that I was standing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

“What did that guy say to do?” I asked.

“We put it under our tongues and let it dissolve.” Walt looked at me. “Ready?”

I took a deep breath and popped it into my mouth. After a minute I spit out the soggy remnants of the paper.

“Feeling anything?” Walt asked.

“I don’t think so,” I responded. “You?”

“Nope. Damn it, that fucking hippie ripped us off, man. Come on, I want to go check out City Lights Bookstore.”

By the time we had walked the three miles, my world had turned into liquid dream. I stared at the historic building in front of me as it melted and swirled in a kaleidoscope of color. It was too much.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I mumbled to myself. I grabbed Walt and threw my arms around him. “I can’t handle this shit. Help me. Please, help me.”

My paranoia sent Walt into a fit of maniacal laughter.

I fell to my knees. Walt tried to pick me up.

“Cool it man, or you’re going to get us busted.”

I scanned around me. I saw the horse, but not the policeman on top of it.

“Are you okay, son?”

I screamed. “The fucking horse is talking, Walt. It’s talking.” I collapsed to the ground.

By the time I got out of rehab, Walt had vanished, never to be heard from again. Until now.

“So how have you been?” Walt asks.

I look at the pictures on my desk. I want to tell him, to unburden my soul on this stranger who once, a long time ago and for a very short period, was my friend. Well, let’s see Walt. Ever since my soon to be ex- wife found out I was fucking my now ex- secretary, my life has turned to absolute shit. I’m living at the Motel 6, my kids won’t talk to me, and just this morning I found out my former secretary/lover is suing me for sexual harassment so I’m probably going to lose my business. My life is just grand.

“I’m okay, I guess. How about you?” I say.

I try to picture him as a forty year old version of the fifteen year old kid I knew. I imagine him sporting a graying Mohawk, chain-smoking Camels and quoting Nietzsche. More than anything I want him to say “So do you like to get high?” But he doesn’t.

“I’m good,” he says. “Actually better than good, I’m great. Wife. Kids, the whole bit. I’m in the insurance game these days. Speaking of which, how are you doing with life insurance these days? I was wondering if we could sit down and discuss your portfolio sometime. You can never be too careful these days.”

I put the phone receiver down and lay my head in my hands. The tears fall from my eyes and form little pools on my desk. I faintly hear Walt’s voice.

“Hello? Hello? Eric, are you still there? Hello?”

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Steve Harlow