Illusion

We smoke for the first time together in her attic apartment, the ceiling unfinished, hidden by tapestries that meet at a point in the center. One is pale purple and patterned with flowers. Another holds colors of a sunset.

She packs the glass bowl, and hands it to me. When she says the word, “Greens,” I watch her mouth open to reveal her teeth, and it looks more genuine than the smile I saw back at the bar.

“I never—” I say, and she adjusts my hands, and lowers the flame in front of me. I take a deep breath and cough and she laughs as the small amount of smoke I’d taken in fills the space between us.

I can’t stop myself from kissing her again, this time with tongues and teeth, which clink together like our wine glasses just an hour or so before.

I met Prue at a place called Gypsy’s.

She pointed to women dressed in thick petticoats, brocade blooms patterning the fabric. She told me they called themselves sisters of the sun, homemade henna tattoos on their arms to prove it.

“You have to meet the fortune teller,” she said, pulling me to a table near the back of the bar.

I waited in line while she drank more wine, staining her lips a deep red. I wanted to kiss her an infinite amount of times, but I didn’t tell her this. Instead I kissed her once, and proceeded to the table.

“You are faithful, a loyal man, true. But you see the colors, too,” the fortune teller said, tracing the lines of my palm. I wondered how they were visible beneath my callouses; if she knew I was a painter. I said nothing, just nodded and tipped her and walked back to Prue, who gave me her hand. I traced it the same way the fortune teller did without seeing anything but her in front of me.

She said, “Follow me.” And I did.

Prue kissed me from one street corner to the next until we reached her place.

Now, when she smokes, she seems to fall back against the world, and as I take another hit, I wait to feel the same thing. But I find myself distracted by the way the bowl gleams beneath the lights on the ceiling, so purple and pure and pulsing when I squint just right.

“The lights,” I say, because I can’t say anything else. I don’t know how to explain that the lights look more alive than I feel because maybe they are alive and I’m just here; an illusion.

“I strung them myself,” she says. And I kiss her for the lights, and the moment. I can’t remember ever feeling the world in such a monumental way.

She offers me another hit, holding the bowl in front of me, letting me go slow.

“You see the fortune teller,” I say.

“Where?” Prue asks. I trace the outline of the purple flowers on the tapestry above.

We find other shapes on the tapestry, too, like we’re cloud gazing, but the ceiling is the sky, and after a while, my eyes feel heavy, and I sink into the floor, falling back against the world.

                                                                                                    ***

The first few weeks together exist in a black hole; time tentative and unreal. At my place, Prue runs her hands over the half-finished people who live within my sketchbook.

She dips her finger in a bit of blue, same as the spring sky. She paints points on blank pages. “The mountains,” she says. “They’re calling me.”

“I’ve never been,” I say, my brush in the blue, letting it puddle just so beneath her eyes.

She explains time in the mountains changes people. “But I know I’ll never go,” she says. The words are clipped, as if she's cut her hopes before they feel too real. Her eyes wander, reveal her gypsy soul within that bathetic body; an unmoving juxtaposition between want and need.

I paint Prue with perfect lips, covering the canvas with her arms and covering those in small swirls, which remind me of the sun and our first date and the beginning of everything.

“What’s your favorite season?” I ask. “For the background, you know?” I try to imagine the color scheme she’ll choose before she says it, but I can’t.

“The In-Between. That’s what I love,” she says. “One sprout through frozen ground, not quite thawed. Dandelion snow. The just-there-crisp as the first leaves fall; days disappearing,” she says.

When I finish, Prue looks at my work, stares at herself, and the faint hint of mountains beyond. I wonder if she recognizes this version, almost sad. She kisses my hands despite the paint, and I think she understands; I know her.

                                                                                                    ***

Most nights we sleep and smoke beneath my painting of Prue, her acrylic eyes protecting us from the world. I kiss my Prue and see her in shades of yellow: butter and daisies and faded henna and honey. I don’t remember when I start to see her this way, until one day, her jaundiced skin is all I see.

                                                                                                    ***

Prue sleeps and sleeps and never wakes. I’m not sure where she goes, but when I look at her, I feel trapped in the sun’s rays, eyes blinded. Sometimes it hurts too much to look at her, so instead I kiss her, and ask if she believes in the future. When she doesn’t answer, I roll a joint with thin sketch paper from the book she bought me for my birthday. While she sleeps, I smoke, and I wait for everything else to disappear.

                                                                                                    ***

One month later, Prue disappears.

They take her body and leave me with her painting. And for days after, I paint her. I surround her with pale purple flowers, eyes clouded with something I could never see.

I pack her few belongings from the attic apartment, and bring them back to my place. I take each of the tapestries, and the purple lights, which burn out.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m arrested outside her building.

The officer waits until I finish the henna lines on Prue’s arms, which I’ve painted on the side of the building.

She exists for everyone now, the brick bleeding through her skin. Her lips are dark red and everything else is pale and pure and if I squint just right, she starts to fade at the edges; only a ghost.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m released the next day, and I return to her building because I need to see her.

From the alley, I smell fresh paint.

Prue isn’t here.

Painted over.

Disappeared.


Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Tiffany Melanson

The Disappearing Heart Technique

My boyfriend’s been dead for two months. Perhaps the hardest part of it all is the fact that he left so much behind for me to deal with, yet took nothing of me with him. Love notes, clothes, the vision of him in my bed. Sharing a bath towel because we loved having each others’ smells on us. I was blindly, foolishly, and debilitatingly in love with him, and now I have no idea what the fuck to do with myself.

It hurts too much to think about the happy memories, because I know they’re never going to happen again. I try to focus on the struggles, the arguments, with the hope it will make moving on easier. Even when I force myself to consider all of his flaws, I think about how much I loved those, too, and how I wish I’d expressed that to him better while he was around.

I hate that I’m haunted by him, but he cannot be haunted by me. I find myself wondering how this happened, or rather, did it happen at all? How is it that we were together, here, kissing, laughing, talking, only two months ago, and now we’re not? Did I dream it? Was he ever really here? Have I simply woken up?

I made him a mixtape for his birthday. I had no idea what to get him. I made him a card to go along with it that said:

“Happy birthday, Peter -

I made you a mixtape.

I don’t always know what to say to you, but I know how you make me feel, which is so many things. I hope when you listen to it, you’ll feel all the things I feel, too.

Love,
Tamara”

He wasn’t a romantic person. His gestures of affection were quiet and simple, yet they were observant of my needs. When he read the card, he didn’t say anything. He had a small smile on his face, and he walked over to me and held me. I loved him so deeply in that moment. I’ve had trouble remembering what he smelled like. I think maybe it was something sweet… with that hint of saltiness that comes from all burly, heavy-lifting men.

A few weeks after his birthday, I took the ferry to ________ _________ to see him. When I walked into his house, the birthday card I’d written him and the mix tape were sitting in the same place they were the last time I’d been there. “Did you get to listen to the mix tape yet?” He said no. That was the last time I went to his house. I rarely ever took the ferry before we started dating. In retrospect, I think the only time I ever rode it was for when I was going to see him. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to ride on one of those again without instinctively feeling like I would eventually be arriving at his house.

When I think about the last time I saw him, at my apartment, I think of all the things I would have said and done differently had I known it would have been the last time I was going to see him. We argued that night, although the reason for the argument has disappeared from my memory. I think it was just tension that had built up over time, finally combusting from something as stupid as not being able to agree on what movie to watch. It’s hard to make peace with the fact that this was our last moment together.

I’ve felt so heavy in my heart since then and have let it weigh me down. I’m tired of my eyes being swollen from crying all the time. I really thought it would be easier for me to move on from this if I convinced myself he was dead, but all it does is romanticize a remarkably unromantic relationship.

As for the “love notes”, it was just one little post-it that said “I LOVE TAMARA” because I asked him to demonstrate his handwriting, and he asked me what he should write. No clothes either, except a shirt he outgrew and had completely forgotten he’d given to me. Such small things that meant everything to me, while the birthday card I wrote him was probably tossed in the trash long ago.

I thought his gestures of affection were quiet and simple, and observant of my needs, but I never understood why he would squirm anytime I touched him. He usually humored me, but always made it a point to tell me how obligated he felt having to simply hold my hand in public. He never listened to the mix tape I made him either. It was a quiet enough gift to feel so incredibly sentimental to me at the time, but simple enough to convince myself now that it was just a piece of shit gift.

In a way it does feel like he died. It doesn’t seem like the person I was in love with exists anymore, but perhaps he never existed at all. The last time he contacted me, he told me he missed me and thought about me, but needed to think things over. Four days later, a seemingly disconnected phone line and a social media profile that has apparently vanished. There was never a goodbye or an explanation; he truly ceased being in my life. I find myself shaking my head during the day, in a way that says “Damn, how did I let this happen?” I’m fascinated by the prospect of caring for someone so little that you can actually make yourselves completely disappear from one another.

It still hurts, obviously, but less because I miss him, and more because I’m disappointed in my judge of character. I willfully opened the gates and welcomed harm. I’m beginning to learn the benefits of bitterness while suffering the repercussions: Skin thickening, heart hardening.

I never liked riding that fucking ferry anyway.

Written by: Rebecca Lee

Photograph by: Marshall Blevins

Restless

Continued from Three of Swords, Hanged Man, & Rust

Grayson shifts away from me, pulling the comforter off my legs. I can’t remember the last time she slept through the night, making notes in her phone instead of writing in her notebook.

“Would’ve been six months,” she says, beside me in bed. For a moment the words mean nothing. We talk so little about what happened, writing about it instead; burying our baby in words and metaphors about birds and nests.

We never got to bury anything real.

“I want to take the train to Fairfield,” I say.

I’m rewarded with a real smile, one I haven’t seen in weeks. Like that, Grayson is herself again, illuminated by the light from her cell phone.

Of course Gray is still herself, but we are changed. This is our reality, and sometimes it doesn’t feel real.

“Maybe I’ll write something new,” she says.

“So it’s decided?” I ask.

“Check the train times,” she says, leaving our bedroom in search of a story, or maybe a cup of coffee

The train leaves in less than an hour. When I print our tickets, the time stamp says 11:50 PM departure. I pack a bag with two notebooks and six pens and a change of clothes for each of us. I hope some time away will help Gray forget the should have of this moment. She should’ve been six months pregnant today, but instead, she’s two months empty.

Maybe the rest of our lives will be spent marking time this way.

                                                                                                     ***

“How are we out of coffee?” Gray asks on our way out the door.

The station is a short walk from the apartment. We buy a cup to share on the way to keep our hands and mouths warm. Two months ago, we would’ve held hands, or kissed instead. It’s been difficult for Gray to be close, so I take what I can from the taste of her peppermint lip balm on the rim of the paper cup.
We arrive just in time, and the conductor directs us toward our seats. The world is dark beyond the windows.

“Do you want to write?” I ask once we’re settled. Gray draws swirls in the condensation on the train window, and I wait for her answer.

I wish she’d write beside me like we used to at the beginning. Our pens used to dance across separate pages in perfect synchronicity. The movement looked like love before I really knew I loved Gray.

“I love you,” she says. She smiles her permission for me to start, and I grab a pen and my notebook from the bag.

Grayson rests her head against my shoulder, falling asleep after the train departs. I wonder if she sleeps uninterrupted, or if she dreams.

“Baby,” she says when she wakes an hour later. She pulls the pen from my hand, and asks, “What are you writing?”

“Dreams. Or maybe this is a dream, here. Not sure yet,” I say. And it’s true because I can’t remember the last time we sat so close; both of us so awake.

“Write something,” she says. She kicks off her boots and pulls her feet beneath her, nudging me with her shoulder.

“I thought I already did.”

“Write something for me,” she says. Her bottom lip wobbles when she says it, like she might cry. So I take the pen and the notebook and begin:

If she was really 

there, he’d touch her. Reflections

so close. Almost real.

“Why haven’t you tried talking to me?” Gray asks. “I’m here, Shaw. I’m real.”

“We’re on a train to Fairfield,” I say, hoping she knows I’m trying.

“You want me to feel better, but I can’t. We don’t talk about it. We never talk about it,” she says. She cries for real, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Do you blame me?”

“This happens to other couples,” I say, taking her hand.

“But is it my fault?” she asks.

“I want to kiss you, be close to you, but I’m scared. I’m not sure when it’ll be right or if you’ll be ready,” I say. “What if it’s always like this? I know when you look at me you’re really looking for her, right?”

“Sometimes I wonder if she would’ve had your eyes,” she says and then she kisses me, and it’s real, and she’s real.

“I miss it,” she says. “I miss feeling her.”

My throat feels tight, and I know I’m about to cry, and I don’t try to hold it in, because I miss her, too. I miss the people we might’ve been.

“I never could, Gray. I could never blame you.”

Grayson wipes her hand at my eyes when the conductor announces, “Fairfield.”

“Let’s go to the beach,” I say.

“But it’s snowing,” she says.

“Was that going to stop you the last time we were here?” For a moment, she doesn’t answer, but as soon as she remembers I see it; her eyes brighten, and she gives me a smile.

We stand in the Fairfield station on the edge of today, and we kiss. I write the word real on her neck. She nods against my chest.

Written by: Kayla King

Photograph by: Anthony Delanoix

Rust

Maybe we are too young and the world is trying to remind us of that.

“It’ll be okay,” I say.

When she lifted the sheet last night, it looked like spilled ink seeping beneath her. The words are on her lips even now, even if I’m only imagining them. She’s quiet and still and I’m filled with everything she’s not.

I start a haiku in my head. The words are written in blood. Too much blood. I don’t say them because I can’t. I hold Gray’s hand, and it leaves me itching to trace words in her palm. I write the haiku with my other hand on the underside of the kitchen table.

My flower baby,

free little gypsy dancer,

please don’t fly away.

“I can’t just sit here, Shaw,” Grayson says.

The way she bled our baby from her womb looked like a Rorschach test. When I think back to that moment, I try to remember the way she took my hand, running it down the small bump of her belly; a tiny half moon that will never be full.

The sun peeks through the living room window, exposing a sliver of light, trapping Gray in the shadows. She rearranges reminders for doctor’s appointments and our one ultrasound picture on the refrigerator door. She hides them beneath scraps of stories neither of us have used. Other paper bits bear pieces of poems waiting to be penned.

Grayson lets the faucet run over her hands until they are pink. The crusted blood beneath her nails turns the water pink, too. She washes my coffee mug from the night before. You could stop drinking it with me, she’d said at the beginning, but I never knew she was serious. Caffeine was the first to go when she found out she was pregnant. I never stopped drinking it. I should have given up coffee for her. I should be helping her.

When she starts scrubbing the sheets, it’s as if she is real and the sheets are real, but I am imaginary. And so I take them from her and try my best to scrape these moments back to before. I want the pen in my hand and the notebook in my lap and I want Grayson sleeping beside me.

I want us to be okay.

I’m already wishing for Gray’s lips to spread and reveal a sunrise kind of smile; teeth cresting over the horizon of her bottom lip. I know that look might be lost in blotches of blood now.

“Just leave them,” she says. The room feels different with her real voice here. Her small voice, her shy voice; the quiet way she always says she loves me.

I let her kiss me as she cries, her lips stiff and unsure. When she moves away, the space between us smells like traces of Thai takeout from the fridge. I want to pull her back, but she wraps her arms around her stomach, and I know it’s not me she wants.

We replace the bedding with two sleeping bags. Once inside, she curls away from me, but our feet still touch. I try to sleep, but her words and my words and all the words we heard between last night and this morning are in my head. I push an earbud into my right ear and the other into Gray’s and I press play.

I try to find words without paper and pen, but I can’t get them right. Before Gray, I was never a night writer. But now, the words find me while she dreams. Maybe that’s the only way stories can separate themselves between two writers.

I write a letter by the light of the alarm clock, not wanting to wake Gray. I start with To Nyxie, trying it on seven separate pages. I don’t know what to say now. I never told Gray about the name, but it’s what I’d started calling her bump while she slept. Sometimes I told it stories or wrote it words on her skin, hoping it would know.

“Already a day,” Gray says when she wakes. The early evening leaves traces of moon mist over her eyes. “I miss—”

“I know,” I say.

Because I do.

I don’t show her the pages pressed between the mattress and pillow. I set them on the bedside table instead, and wait for her to say something. She doesn’t.

Gray walks to the kitchen, and moments later I smell fresh coffee, hear a spoon clink against her mug. I know she must be stirring in honey and cinnamon the way she used to before. I wonder if the color will remind her, if she’ll write her way through the memory or if it will rust her insides until they crack.

Grayson sits at the kitchen table, steam surrounding her chin. Her eyes flash to the sheets in the sink. Spots still dot them like stars. All I see are bits of our baby. And I know she must see the same thing. I press the fabric to my chest until it doesn’t feel real and I don’t feel real and this all feels too fucking real with Grayson’s hands wrapped around my green coffee mug.

I leave the sheets on the balcony beside the bonfire pit we’ve yet to use this year. When I return to the kitchen, Gray’s coffee is gone, and part of me hopes she’s dumped it down the drain, that this is all unreal for her, too. Her hand finds mine across the table. I try to squeeze the life back into her, but it’s already gone.

Written by: Kayla King

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Connections

Sean came home to a hurried note on the fridge that read, WiFi Out.

“And?” he said aloud, knowing it was his problem now.

He wiped Kim’s scribbles from the whiteboard with his palm and studied the remnants accentuating his fingerprints. It was the closest they had come to holding hands since Kim began her nightly rotations at St. David’s Medical Center.

There was a lot to love about dating a doctor-in-training – the free medical exams, the parental approval, the promise of riches – but Sean didn’t anticipate the disparate schedules and always playing second fiddle to school work, although, he really should have. As the son of two equally preoccupied medical professionals, he had spent enough time with nannies, tutors, and tennis instructors to know that patients come first once one pledges the Hippocratic Oath.

Sean rinsed his hand off beneath the kitchen faucet, filling Kim’s marinara-splattered pasta bowl with muted-green liquid.

“Merry Christmas,” he said while drying his hands on a snowflake-patterned linen.

Sean tossed the towel on the counter, disregarding Kim’s insistence he never do that on account of the bacteria velum laminating the surface. She also gave him a very detailed explanation of how alcohol poisons your internal organs, but that didn’t stop him from retrieving his stout glass from the cabinet and filling it to the brim with a beer as dark as a reindeer’s pupils.

Sean took a big swig of the toxic elixir and closed his eyes to devote his senses to his tastebuds. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth like that spiral thing in a washing machine, detecting notes of coffee, licorice, vanilla, and dark chocolate.

“Liver be damned,” he said after swallowing the flavorful gulp.

Sean opened his eyes and saw a smeared whiteboard to his left and a sinkful of dishes to his right. He took another sip of beer and contemplated which task would have the largest impact on his immediate future. He took his phone from his pocket and spoke to the only other intelligent being in their apartment.

“Ok, Google,” he said, his phone chirping to attention. “Call Time Warner Cable.”

He watched as the search box transcribed his words and dialed his most loved and hated utility provider. Once the tone began to hum in the earpiece he hit the speaker icon and let the phone yodel from atop the bunched hand towel.

“Customer service,” he shouted when the automated messaging service asked him for his ten-digit phone number. “Customer service,” he repeated when the robot on the other line apologized for not understanding. “Customer service,” he said once more before the robot gave up and connected him directly to a customer service representative.

Sean grabbed the gloves hanging from the faucet and slid them over his fragile hands. As his chapped fingers filled the humid hallows he recalled Kim’s lecture about the pathogens cultivating inside his rubber gauntlets. He also remembered the look on her face when he folded down the pinky, ring, pointer finger, and thumb of one of the gloves, leaving the middle digit standing tall and proud like the flag of Iwo Jima.

“Thank you for calling Time Warner Cable, this is Janet speaking. Can I have your ten-digit phone number?” Janet, the customer service rep, requested.

Sean recited his number with the pace and volume of an American tourist in a foreign land. Janet processed the information and asked, “what can I help you with?” Sean told her his Internet was out. She politely recommended a reboot and asked him to hardwire his router to a computer. Sean asked if there were any other way to do it, because he’s “kind of busy right now,” to which Janet apologized and said, “a direct connection is the only way to return the signal to full strength.”

“Fine, give me a minute” he scoffed, tossing his gloves over the faucet like sneakers on a telephone line.

Sean picked up his phone and carried it to the bedroom, where a yellow light was beckoning him from beneath his desk. He asked for another time extension to find an extra ethernet cord and Janet was obliged to comply. His clinking and clanking served as a crude waiting tune while he rifled through the drawers.

“Got it,” he announced and crawled towards the modem before Janet could give further instructions. He plugged the cord into an empty port and cursed himself for not starting with his laptop. Unwilling to turn back, he slithered the free end up the wall and wiggled it around until it latched onto an unidentified object. He returned to the surface to find the cord hooked on the ankle of the World’s Best Boyfriend trophy Kim gave him on their two-year anniversary.

He plucked the doohickey from the plastic statue and inserted it into his laptop. “Okay, fire when ready,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” she replied. “I’m going to put you on hold while we reboot your system.”

“Do what you gotta do,” Sean said, flopping onto the bed for a more comfortable wait.

Sean awoke several hours later to the sensation of skin filling the gaps between his outstretched fingers.

“AHHHH,” he yelled into the darkness.

“Shhh,” Kim said, placing her free hand on his cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you, little baby.”

“I think you literally scared the shit out of me,” he spat, grabbing her elbow and pulling her within tickle torture range.

Sean moved his fingers across her torso like a piano virtuoso, each tap eliciting involuntary leg kicks.

“MERCY,” Kim screamed.

Sean ceased his concerto and studied her face like sheet music. She was smiling with her lips, nostrils, and eyes, which were staring directly back at his.

“You seem happy,” he said. “Good day at work?”

“Not particularly,” she answered, intertwining their fingers once again. “It’s just good to be back.”

“It is,” he said, catching a glimpse of green light beneath his desk as he leaned in for a kiss.


Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Exulansis

The memories are strongest when you sit across from me, knee to knee. We close the circle and hold the moments between us like trapped spirits called in a candle-lit vigil.

“Could’ve just gone to my house. There’s whiskey there,” you say.

I drop the planchette on the wooden Ouija board and the sound echoes across the empty tennis court. There haven’t been real matches here since the seventies; the court taken over by the wilderness and other foreign things. I don’t ask if you remember last year’s discovery: that red plastic lunchbox with cartoon Beetlejuice, hiding other people’s secrets. I wonder what secret you left behind, but I don’t ask, because some things are better left in lunchboxes. I think about the memory belonging to this place and know you must remember too. And that’s enough.

“Here,” I say, handing you my flask.

You close your eyes and squeeze the bridge of your nose. I’m not sure when you picked up the habit, but it’s part of you now. You shift over the only existing corner of the boundary line, tracing the edge with your sneaker.

“Can’t believe we still do this,” you say. It’s strange to think about our first time here, before it became a tradition. That summer before high school exists in a sort of haze now, but I remember the first storm of every summer since because we spent them all here.

“Your question first,” I say, savoring the burn of the booze as I sip once and then twice.

You take the flask again and tip your head back with it pressed to your lips. The etched seven disappears in the shadow of your chin and I miss it. Because you’re twenty-one and still a muggle you said on my birthday two years ago. You forever memorialized my love for Harry Potter in just one small etching.

“Okay,” you say. “What word am I thinking of right now?”

The planchette slips across the board from the rain, but our fingertips stay on either side.

V. E. N. U. S. 

“Just because we’re on a tennis court,” you say. “Like, how do you always guess?”

“And deprive the Goddess of our connection?” I ask and you smile.

I don’t bother the board or the universe with my own question. Sounds of the storm are all around us, the rain softening beneath the ink-stained sky. We swig and pass the flask back and forth until the court crumbles and cracks and we laugh and laugh like lost echoes.

“Know the story about Echo?” I feel myself ask, feel the words on my tongue. They are full and sure and not mine even though they are.

“You’re drunk,” you say.

“Mmhmm. But the story is just so sad. Because she gets trapped with no real voice. And she can’t tell him she loves him because she really doesn’t and he doesn’t so it’s not, you know?”

“But she fell for him anyway?” you ask.

I can’t focus on your face when you ask because the words don’t match your mouth. Your lips have left so many sentences here already and the rain makes listening too difficult. So I close my eyes and I hear you nine years ago. Together, you said, pulling a book from your sweatshirt pocket. We started reading beside each other and we made a promise.

We keep promises. And you are here and I am here and we’re a different kind of we sitting in the rain at our court. It’s just us, but we’re never really an us.

“The first summer storm,” I say.

“Last one, maybe. I don’t think I’ll be back.” Your voice drifts away because I don’t want the words.

“You won’t come home?” I ask. I drain the last dregs and the whiskey no longer burns, just numbs my tongue. I’m not sure I asked the question right because you don’t answer.

“Nica—”

I don’t say your name back because I can’t. Instead I pull my letter to you from my coat pocket. I don’t think I can watch you reading my words here because they will sound so much better on the streets of Seattle with more rain than our court could ever offer.

“Don’t open this until you miss me,” I say, handing you the letter.

“So right now, then?” you ask, tracing the seal. “I always miss you. But this isn’t home anymore.”

“What’ll happen to us? Like we die and then what happens?”

“Why do you always start life talks when we’re drunk?” you ask.

“Maybe there are just some conversations you need to have drunk. And maybe the memory just sits with you for days, like a dream.”

“Babe’s so wise with whiskey,” you say and you pull me to you. I tuck my chin into your neck and you hug me and the shoulder of your shirt is damp. Maybe it’s the rain or maybe I am crying.

The world spins beyond you and stars leak dry dust somewhere out there in the universe. And maybe the ghost of Venus watches us. I don’t have to say soulmate or kindred or best because you know. I don’t have to love you to love you because that wouldn’t be the same as hiding in your neck where it’s safe.

“You think the rain’ll sound different there?” I ask. “That’s the reason you’re leaving.”

You don’t answer. The wind and the rain chink the fence and I don’t see us as caged birds, but the kids we were years ago. The early summer smells thick with worm bodies and rehydrated leaves and whiskey breath. And there is the bitter arugula taste of an ending left in my mouth.

“I’m sure it sings lullabies because—what else?”

Our foreheads meet and they are skin against skin, skull to skull and memories against each other, seeping and sharing this life we’ve had for so long.

“You never asked your question,” you say. We cross our legs, resting the old Ouija board on our laps. I remember finding it in your grandmother’s basement and the way you cried when she died. No one said anything when you curled into me at the funeral. Everyone thought they knew us because they just knew us.

You hold your hands above the board and there are charcoal smudges, the long ago painted letters finally imprinted on your skin. I move the planchette and you follow my lead as we spell words we need. We’ll never be anything more than this because we’re already too much.

T.O.O. M.U.C.H.

T.O.O. U.S. 

T.O.N.I.G.H.T. 

G.O.O.D.N.I.G.H.T.

When I wake, you’re gone. The ground is mapped with cracks like state lines we’ll have to cross to see each other again. Your folded sweatshirt is nestled between my head and the white painted corner of the court. The morning air is cool, and I slip your sweatshirt over my windbreaker. The pocket crinkles.

When you’re missing me. The words are scratched on the back of a Food King takeout menu.

I read on until there are no words left. I’m already missing you, too.

Written by: Kayla King

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Do I?

Hello! May I have everyone’s attention?

I’ll let you get back to guessing each other’s baby pictures and bobbing for nipples in a moment, but first, there’s something I’d like to say to the lady of the hour.

My dearest Amber Beasley. As Jerry Maguire said, “You complete me.”

For those of you who don’t know, that’s our favorite movie. We watched it on our first date, once she told me she hadn’t seen it and I insisted we go back to my place and watch it. I won’t tell you what else happened that night, but let’s just say it led us to where we are today; sorry Mom.

Amber, you are my Dorothy Boyd, and not just because you’re as beautiful as a young, pre-plastic-surgery Renee Zellweger. You embody what Jerry would say is the most important quality in a mate: “loyalty.” No matter what I say or do, you are always right behind me with your special kind of silent support.

Most girls would’ve dived right back into the dating pool the minute I told them my plans to quit my job and create the next Facebook, but you just nodded your head and said, “Go for it.” And just a month into our relationship, when I asked if I could move in with you to save a little money, you welcomed me with open arms and half your closet. Even though Brenda was NOT having it--no hard feelings, Brenda.

Things started off better than I could’ve imagined. You’d go to work, I’d spend the day taking online coding classes, and we’d meet back in bed, where we’d eat dinner and watch Hulu until we fell asleep. Then you started gaining a little weight.

Hold your gasps, folks. It wasn’t her waistline that tested our loyalty. It was the little surprise floating inside that ever-expanding belly.

I found out the Monday after season three of House of Cards hit Netflix. I know this, because I was trying to catch up on all the sleep I lost while binge watching every episode over the weekend--spoiler alert, Frank is a terrible President. The key word there is “trying.” My slumber was disrupted by the guttural grunting of Amber trying to squeeze into her skinny jeans. Understandably, I was a little angry, and I may have said something about her mooing like a cow--those details are a little blurry.

Whatever I said, it did NOT go over well. She turned on me like Siegfried and Roy’s tiger, forcing me to hide under the covers until the pummeling turned to sobbing and it was safe to fold back the comforter and put my arm around her. That’s when she told me I was going to be a father, and that’s when I knew our story was far from over.

It took Amber a little more convincing--to keep me and the baby--but having that argument made me realize my true life’s calling. That same day, I deactivated my Lynda.com account, kissed my SocialGoGo dreams goodbye, and started studying for the LSAT.

Amber, once again, your loyalty was put to the test, and once again, you aced it. You--and your parents, thank you Mr. and Mrs. B--helped me pay for all my books, all my prep classes, all my law school applications--which should be coming back before this little bun pops out of the oven--and I am more than ready to spend the rest of my life paying you back financially, emotionally and romantically--not you, Mr. and Mrs. B, at least not that last one.

Amber, you may not see it now, but I’ve had a glimpse at our future, and it is beautiful. I’m a partner at some reputable law firm, we have a gaggle of healthy children, and you’re sliding back into the same skinny jeans you wore on our first date with the greatest of ease.

With all the loyalty you’ve shown me in our less-than-year of dating, I have no doubt you’re going to be the greatest mom on the face of the planet. I can already picture you: joining the PTA, carpooling our little darlings and their friends to school and soccer practice--or dance, or whatever extracurricular activities they partake in, keeping them on a healthy diet, reading to them before they go to bed, and leaning on me whenever you’re in need of love and support.

In return, I vow to take on as many cases as I need in order to make sure you never have to step foot into an office again. I’ll enforce any rules or punishments you dole out. And, most importantly, I’ll make sure to be a strong, male role model our children can look up to.

WOOOO. Boy. Is anyone else having an allergy attack?

All tears aside, Amber, when I first discovered Tinder, I thought I would NEVER want to get married--I mean seriously, it’s the dating equivalent of stealing candy from a baby--but in the last seven-months, you’ve made a man out of me. A better man. A stronger man. A driven man. And after all we’ve been through: all the surprises, the fights, the financial hurdles, the hospital visits, etc; I am ready to step up to the plate and take charge, like a real man.

This union of ours may have started off on the wrong course, but I’m going to take the wheel and redirect this ship towards a lifetime of love and loyalty.

Amber, to repeat my favorite quote from my favorite--no--OUR favorite movie, “You complete me.” Will you let me complete you by: caring for your every whim and need, protecting you from any physical or emotional harm that may fall upon your beautiful face, “Showing you the money”--eventually, spending whatever time I have left outside of the courthouse with you and our kids, and last but not least, giving you my name?

This is the part where you say, “You had me at ‘Hello.’”

Wait. Amber! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?


Written by: Mark Killian

Photograph by: Matt Crump

Silent Treatment

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Outside Dena’s window, the desert flew past in a never-ending loop. Sandy ground. Scruffy shrub. Discarded tire. Sandy ground. Scruffy shrub. Discarded beer can. Sandy ground...

It was like watching one of the GIFs Chris loved so much. The cat swats the wine glass off the table, and then looks at the videographer and seems to grin. The video loops, re-sets, and the wine is back. The cat prepares its paw to swat.

“Would you be happier if I’d stayed in Austin?” Dena asked.

Chris’s gaze locked on the road, as focused as if he were navigating switchback mountain passes instead of keeping a straight line for hundreds of miles. Dena noticed his jaw clench.

“I just think if you’re never going to talk to me again--” she started.

“Jesus, Dena. Can you just give me some time? If I say what I’m thinking right now, I’m going to regret it.”

The first words in a six-hour silent treatment.

“Maybe I deserve it, though,” Dena said.

“Oh, you definitely do.”

Chris rummaged between his seat and the center console for his aviators.

Okay, so cry. And hide it, Dena thought. She tried to envision what she’d do if their roles were reversed--if she’d walked into a clearing expecting to find a party, and instead found her boyfriend half naked with some guy.

The problem was, she knew exactly what she’d do. She’d laugh.

Dena had felt so numb for so long. Her father’s death had shut off her normal reactions. When she’d climbed into the RV with Chris ten days ago, she’d felt almost inhuman. But in the field with Jennifer--she’d caught her breath, just for a second.

She fiddled with the radio.

--a Connecticut pastor drops dead in front of his congregation after confessing to an extramarital affair. More on this story when we come--

Dena punched the radio back off.

So she had cheated. So what. It wasn’t like they were engaged. And it wasn’t like she’d expected to stay in Austin to be with Jennifer. To don a jumpsuit and fix cars and play second mommy to Jennifer’s kid? Shit. Jennifer’s kid. That had thrown Dena for a loop. There was so much she hadn’t known. Everyone, herself included, was a stranger.

If only Chris hadn’t shown up. She could have gotten tipsy at the bonfire, kissed Jennifer one more time, and then gone with her boyfriend in the morning. She could have left town as Chris’s partner in crime and Jennifer’s mysterious what-might-have-been. Now, Dena could be neither.

“Explain this to me, though,” Chris said. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

Now it was Dena’s turn to be silent. She tugged at the frayed hem of her shorts, twisting a thread until it broke off in her hand.

“I guess I wanted to feel something,” she said under her breath.

“What was that? You wanted to feel something?”

Chris took his eyes off the road and turned his face towards Dena. She could see her reflection in his sunglasses.

He jerked the wheel of the RV to the right, and they veered onto the road shoulder, before he jerked it left again. A red truck in the eastbound lane honked as they missed colliding by a few feet.

“What the fuck?” Dena said.

“Did you feel something? Did you? Did you get what you wanted?”

“Chris, don’t be a psychopath!”

“No, you don’t be a psychopath, Dena. You don’t. Because do you know what psychopaths even are? People who can’t feel anything. People who will hurt other people because to them, it feels like nothing.”

“Chris, that is not what I meant.”

“Do you even feel guilty at all?” he asked, his voice whining higher as he fought back tears.

“Yes, okay? I feel bad!”

“You feel bad you got caught,” Chris said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“I shouldn’t have done it. Is that what you want me to say?” Dena said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m going crazy or something. I don’t even like girls.”

“Yes you do, and that’s not what this is about.This isn’t some true awakening bullshit, and you know it. This is about choices, Dena.”

“Okay! Okay. It’s about choices! And right now, I am choosing to be with you. Even though you hate me more than anyone in America!”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You just tried to fucking run us off the road.”

“You tried to run us off the road. Like, metaphorically speaking.”

“You’re an idiot,” Dena said, cracking a smile.

Chris pushed his aviators up on his forehead and massaged the bridge of his nose where the glasses had pressed red, bean-shaped indentations.

“I’m starving,” Chris said. “I’m going to stop up here, and then can you maybe give me some space until we get to Santa Fe?”

“Okay.”

Chris drove onto the exit ramp and followed the signs towards McDonald’s. He parked on the far side of the lot and opened his door.

“Five piece or ten-piece?” he asked, not meeting Dena’s eye.

“Ten piece.”

Dena watched Chris cross the parking lot. His hands were jammed in his pockets. She rolled down her window and leaned out. The air was hot, but dry, and smelled of sage and oily french fries. She thought about calling out after him, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

When Chris returned, Dena took her chicken nuggets and climbed up into the bed above the RV’s cab. She took tiny bites, counting how many times she could chew before swallowing, turning the meat into mush.

Chris turned the radio up full blast and drove them away from the restaurant. Dena sprawled on the bed like a starfish. She felt like a stowaway. Below her, Chris sang along with broken-hearted Taylor Swift, periodically smacking the steering wheel to accentuate the beat of universal pain.

The RV coasted down the access ramp and back onto the interstate. Dena closed her eyes and let the rumble of the desert road lull her to sleep.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Three of Swords

The window fogs beneath my breath; a blank slate. Here I write your name. Always your name. The upholstery is not unlike that of any other train: rough and stained and seeping with other people’s secrets. This gives me a nonsensical dose of hope, leaving the taste of lemons and honey behind.

Somewhere out there you might be sitting on a train, looking out the window, thinking about me too. Maybe you smile without opening your mouth, your lips the seal of an envelope. I loved to kiss words from you this way. But maybe there is another pair of lips performing this same kind of ventriloquist act and you let her, even though it was our thing.

Maybe you tell her about that movie and you both laugh and nod and she slips her legs around you and the train moves slow and rocks you back and forth. You are in love with her, and you kiss more words into her.

“Can I sit here?”

The voice comes from a twenty­-something who slides into the seat next to me. His eyebrows are thick and his lips are full, as if every part of him is filled up with youth. He looks younger than you ever did.

“Jess?” he asks. And I look, like maybe I’m responding to my own name.

“Grace,” I say. I’m not sure why the lie slips so easily from me, except that your name is still printed on the window.

“Where you headed?”

His question makes me remember why I hated having you as a travel companion. I just want to absorb the feeling of leaving, the abundance of possibilities out there in the world; quiet.

“The beach.”

“Bit cold for that,” he says, pointing to the snow beyond the train window. “Me, I just like to ride and write. No place in mind, no place to go. Just the ride,” he says. He pulls a leather notebook from his bag and scratches a few lines onto the page.

“What’re you writing?” I ask. I don’t tell him I’m a writer, that a similar journal hides in my purse. Because when I used to talk about writing, you never said anything. You just poured cream into your coffee and smiled while stirring everything up, like maybe you were looking at the entire galaxy instead of just a cup of coffee. Instead of looking at me.

“Notes, ideas, sentences. Whatever.”

I nod and retrace the letters of your name on the window. I hear the scratching again and know he’s taken himself back to the page. I close my eyes and pretend it is the sound of waves. I imagine you with your windows open, the way they always were back home. Maybe they wrap around your new house like the symbol for infinity, window after window; forever. Or maybe they are like an ampersand now, a broken reminder that nothing lasts, that there is always an and when it all ends.

“Infinity sign or ampersand?” I ask.

“Ampersand, always. Just look at it,” he says, sketching it out on the page. It looks beautiful, like a line embracing itself. “Self-­love,” he says.

“Oh.”

“No, not like that. Like it’s just you and, whoever, whatever you want, you know?”

“Yeah, I like that.”

“So where are you really going?” he asks, his pen holding place in the notebook. I stare at the cover, trying to find the words hidden within.

“Away.” This is the first true thing I tell him, even though I don’t know his name.

“Away happens to be my favorite.”

You never said anything that perfect. Maybe you are better with words now that I am gone. And maybe the phrases you give her blossom into beautiful sentiments because they have filled you with something new.

“I’ll just call you Away, then,” I say.

“It’s Shaw.”

I smile at the way he says his name, like it is the most precious thing he owns. “Mine’s Grayson,” I say, letting another truth pass over my lips.

“So, you hate your name?”

“Ah, no, actually. But—”

“No, wait, let me guess,” he says, turning in his seat so he faces me. From this angle his vintage-­style tee looks shabbier beneath his jacket; well­-loved. An image of a baby cherub peeks at me with eyes like his, round and grey. “You hate your dad? Or mom? Or your ex hated the name? Or you like to lie to strangers? Must be getting close,” he says.

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

He pulls out an iPod and hands me an earbud. We sit like that for too many miles, the landscape zipping by in a collage of greens: dill and meadow and sea mist and cabbage. They remind me of your eyes until I look back at Shaw. He mouths the words to the acoustic song that blares through the headphones.

“Indigo dawn,” he says out loud, no longer lip syncing.

Soon the song ends and he finds another and closes his eyes. I write Shaw’s name in stiff, sword-­like letters on the window before adding my own. I pull my journal from my bag and write indigo dawn and same sun, a partial lyric from the current song. I make them into a story and when I look up, Shaw is watching me write. And then he kisses me, and he tastes like cigarettes and gin.

When the train stops, Shaw grabs my hand, and leads me out into the station. He pulls a joint from his pocket and we smoke and kiss beneath the sign to Fairfield where no one can see us. He traces the back of my neck and I feel the word writer.

If you looked through that train window now, all you would see is a pair of empty seats and the remnants of names criss­-crossing the glass like constellations. And maybe that is the way it should be.

Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Samuel Zeller

Flying and Falling

I never understood why people kept birds. It felt wrong, seeing those creatures in cages. How can a bird live closed in? I used to dream of freeing all the birds. I explained this to my father at the zoo, as only righteous eight-year-olds can.

“I’ll release all of them and become a hero to the whole animal kingdom!” I exclaimed. To his credit, he didn’t laugh. He just pointed to a group of parrots.

“Where do you think those parrots are from, Leah?” he asked me.

“The forest,” I said, certain. I’d read books, after all.

“Not any forest around here. They’re used to warm climates. What would they do in the winter?” He rested a hand on my back as I turned away.

“I don’t know.” My eyes tightened in frustration. But I did know, and I hated it.

“They won’t make it. Is it okay to let them go, knowing they can’t survive outside?” He gave my shoulder a squeeze, but it didn’t help.

I nodded, hiccupping back tears. Even though I didn’t have the answer, I still hated seeing them kept from the sky.

                                                                                                 ***

Twenty years later, I made two decisions I regretted. One was agreeing to five tequila shots at my best friend’s bachelorette party. The other was wearing a tacky t-shirt claiming I was on Team Bride.

But I didn’t regret him. He was broad with buzzed hair and a strong jaw. With his sleeves rolled up, the edge of a tattoo peeked out. I was content to watch him joking with the bartender, his hazel eyes surrounded by laugh lines. Multiple shots of tequila made my staring obvious.

“Go up and talk to him,” the bride said.

“Oh no no no--” I shook my head. “Tonight’s about you!”

“Do it!!” she yelled. “It’ll be….my wedding present!!!”

I tried to be casual walking up to the bar. But I couldn’t ignore the hoots behind me. So, I sidled up to him and ordered water. Could I get away with a thirty-second conversation?

“Are you going to start a fight?” he said, turning to me.

“What?” I couldn’t believe it would be this easy.

“Well you have a bunch of women staring at you. So either you’re about to start a fight, or they dared you to come talk to me.”

I snorted water out of my nose. “Don’t know. Depends on how I feel when I finish this.”

“How long will that take?”

“How much time you have?”

I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and his number in my phone.

                                                                                                 ***

In ninth grade biology I read a factoid about Peregrine falcons. They can fly up to 240 miles per hour, killing other birds in mid-air.

I wondered: was that death by falling, or by flying?

                                                                                                 ***

On our second date, we played pool.

“So,” I said, standing up from the table. “When did you decide to become a pilot?”

He laughed.

“Leah, you’ve set a new record.”

“For doing what?”

He turned from the table to look at me. “For taking the longest to ask that question.”

“So what do I get?” I said, grinning.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” His eyes made the promise clear as they roamed my body.

“David, I hate surprises.”

“I think mine can change your mind.”

I enjoyed the surprise, but he didn’t answer my question.

                                                                                                 ***

People always talk about about birds mating for life. Some species do form long-term monogamous bonds. But this choice comes with benefits. They often enjoy expanded territory. Long-term bonds also help them take care of their young.

Peel apart our words, our clothes. Survival is all that’s left.

                                                                                                 ***

It took four more dates and an hour in bed for him to open up.

“So, when did you decide to become a pilot?” I asked, tracing nonsense on his chest. He looked away from me.

“I didn’t tell you?”

“Nope, you distracted me with your pool skills.”

“Just my pool skills?” he asked.

“Stop changing the subject.”

“When I was ten,” he began, “my family flew back to Mexico City. My grandma was sick, and this was the last time we would probably get to see her. My parents gave me the window seat. You know, to distract me. The minute we took off, I loved it. The sound, the speed, the whole world felt brand new. I wanted to stay up there forever. But the flight ended. I came back down into the smog, the noise, the mess of it all. I knew then and there I would do whatever it took to get up in the air.”

“Do you still hate coming down to earth?” I couldn’t help asking, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay still. I’d known this combo before: it was too late to run. I was already caught.

He kissed me and began working his way down my body. “Depends on where I’m landing.”

                                                                                                 ***

The bird with the shortest bond is the ruby-throated hummingbird. Once the birds have mated, the male leaves.He doesn’t help build the nest. He doesn’t help keep the eggs warm. He definitely doesn’t help raise the chicks.

There must be an evolutionary benefit to leaving.

                                                                                                 ***

Three weeks later, he had to leave; his assignment was changing. He was going to be out west, close to San Diego. As apologetic as he was, I could see the excitement in his eyes. There were new places to see, new skies to explore.

It was a relief, really. I’d started throwing up every morning as accurate as an atomic clock. I took a test, but I already knew what the result was going to be.

So I didn’t groan about tender breasts. I didn’t admit that motherhood terrified me. Saturday morning I kissed him goodbye and went to the clinic, alone.

You can’t fly weighed down with secrets.

Written by: Katie Simpson
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

This is It

                                                                            continued from “West”

The RV made it to Austin before it died, without fanfare, in the night. Dena and Chris didn't hear it breathe its last mechanical breath. It just refused to start when they woke in the morning, foiling their intention to check out of the Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park.

"I didn't even know she was going," Chris said, struggling to open the hood of the giant camper.

"So she's a she, now?" Dena asked with an eye roll.

"It's probably the transmission," Chris said.

He doesn't know a damn thing about transmissions. He doesn't even know the difference between regular gasoline and diesel.

"Okay," Dena said.

"I'll fix it," Chris said. "Go find us muffins?"

The Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park was five miles from downtown. Dena shuffled out to the main road. She shifted her weight on one leg, thrust her hip out, and extended a thumbs-up to the passing traffic.

Is this how you hitchhike? Shit. I'm as much of a poser as everyone else.

After ten minutes of cars zooming past without stopping, Dena started walking. She Google-mapped the nearest bus stop. This is how it goes, now. Forget everything you've seen in the movies.

When the bus arrived, she boarded and made her way to the back. She slumped onto the last row of seats, avoiding an old woman with a bloom of grocery bags and a hipster with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby looked at Dena with big, sparkling eyes, but didn't wail.

At the next stop, a girl got on. She looked maybe nineteen, twenty at the most, and wore a work jumpsuit with LeeAnn stitched over the breast pocket. Her boots were enormous and caked with dirt and grease. Her hair had been dyed black, then grown out, and then the roots re-dyed camellia pink.

After her short-lived hitchhiking experiment, Dena was now sure that nothing happened unless you made first contact.

"Hey," she said to the girl, presumably LeeAnn, "Are you a mechanic?"

"Learning to be," the girl said. "Please don't tell me how badass that is. I already know." She rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette.

The hipster's baby began to scream.

“Shh, shh, Reagan,” the hipster crooned.

"Hey! No smoking on my bus!" the driver yelled.

"Whatever," LeeAnn muttered. She extinguished the cigarette on the dingy vinyl of the bus seat. It burned a glowing circle, which then blackened.

"Do you know anything about RV's?" Dena asked. She extended her hand. "I'm Dena."

"Jennifer."

Dena's eyes drifted to the girl's name tag.

"Hand-me-down uniform."

"Huh."

"So you've got an RV? What are you, eighty-five?"

"Something like that," Dena said.

She felt a jolt of realization that the RV, as much as she hated it, was the sum total of all she had in the world. She and Chris had sold everything to buy it, and now it was dead. The RV was her family inheritance, her car, her favorite vintage clothes she'd consigned at a loss. The RV was the re-fashioned, welded-together, Frankenstein’s-monster version of her life.

"It's at the RV Park a couple of miles back,” Dena said. “Won’t start. Any chance you could look at it today? Or know somebody who could?"

"I'm going to class now. I'm done at noon if you want to wait around downtown until then. You can pay, right?"

Dena promised she could.

They got off downtown, where Jennifer left her at a Starbucks. They exchanged numbers.

"I'll text you when I'm leaving class," Jennifer said.

Dena stood outside the Starbucks, watching Jennifer go. She walked with such purpose. Her bag of tools bounced against her leg as she moved. Her steel-toed boots clomped through the morning shadows of tree branches on the sidewalk. She was a rough goddess of Austin.

Dena's phone buzzed. It was a text from Chris: Muffinz? and a cat emoji.

This is my life, Dena thought.

No muffins. Mechanics, she texted. Back this afternoon.

Sad cat emoji.

Whatever. Dena pushed open the door to the Starbucks, where the burnt stench of bad coffee assaulted her. It was still early, and the line of people wound through the store, circling cutesy displays of seasonal beans and Keep Austin Weird coffee mugs.

She ordered a grande chai tea and barely flinched when her cup arrived with her name spelled "Dean."

It made her want to find some boots like Jennifer's. Who wears the pants, now?

"Is that the Oprah Chai?" a guy in a beanie asked her as she plopped down in a faux-leather chair.

Hipsters. Who wears a knit hat in Texas summer?

"What?"

"The Oprah Chai. There's Tazo and Oprah. I want to try Oprah, but I kind of don't, you know?"

"Oh. I don't know. I don't think it's Oprah."

"Gotcha. Where you from? I’ve never seen you around here before."

"Georgia."

If this guy’s going to hit on me, he could have at least bought my tea.

"Do you go to UT?"

“I graduated from college already.”

“Cool, cool. So what brings you to Austin?”

“Well, my dad died and now I’m an orphan, so I sold all my shit and bought an RV, and now the RV’s broken down, and I’m stuck here until the stranger I met on the bus gets out of mechanic-class.”

“Whoa.”

“You asked.”

“Well, good luck with all that. I gotta—“

“See ya.”

She watched his beanie-clad head pass out of the doorframe as Jennifer’s hot pink roots entered it.

“My whole class is like, in love with you now,” she said. “You got us a field trip.”

                                                                                                 ***

Chris stood on the sidelines, useless, as the head mechanic and his gaggle of protégés peered under the hood of the Chinook. Dena was there in the thick of them, handing Jennifer tools when she asked.

Jennifer’s whole class was women, all dressed in their matching jumpsuits.

“I know the whole point of fixing this is so you can go, but you should stay and come to the shop sometime,” a blonde named Shelly (nametag: Bridget) said.

“We’re going out West,” Chris said, knitting his eyebrows.

Dena watched the smudged, engaged faces of the women as they tightened valves and checked fluids.

She couldn’t remember the last time her life felt real.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Jennifer’s instructor said, slamming the hood. “The bad news is, it’s the fuel pump. The good news is, a part replacement on this baby is so outrageous that it would be cruel to charge you for the diagnosis.”

Dena looked at the grimaces on the faces of the mechanics, whom she was beginning to think of as friends. She looked at the hulking RV, her worthless everything. She looked at Chris, playing Candy Crush on his phone. This was it.

“Shit,” she said. “Should I order pizza?”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal