Blue Hearts

I wouldn’t ask her to name one after me, even though it was all I wanted. One of two things I wanted, and the second was her lips – anywhere on my skin.

Kisses heal the hurt; isn’t that what they taught us?

“These are my favorites,” Amber said, but she didn’t have to say it. They were the only rocks swaddled in wrapping paper, and she held one out to me, the sparkling flat of it resting in the careful platform of her two palms.

Geodes, not rocks. They were geodes. The difference, Amber claimed, was the crystals crackling from the hollows of volcanic stone. They were the product of fire and water. Warring elements, she said, while I sat against the side of her dorm room bed, the wood of one leg smooth against each pebble of my spine.

Water impregnated with chemicals, rich in minerals, she continued, and I wondered why she was talking about water, but mostly I wondered if she knew I had known her name since elementary school, watched her since middle school, and to find her in college felt more miraculous that any crystal formation.

I had started taking my miracles small, scrounging for them, an addict eager for the pop of his next pill.

“You can hold it.” The rock – geode – was offered to me, but I did not want to take it. She held the flat slice of chemical blue crystal more carefully than I had ever held anything.

Watching her hold out these rocks to me, I wished that I had talked to Amber before. Before today. Before the summer. Before the speeding car and my little sister, running. I wished I had talked to Amber the first time I noticed her, back in third grade show-and-tell when she’d smiled wide at the bright crystals in her hands even though some of the kids laughed at her for collecting rocks. I wished I could have asked her how to hold something so gently, so that I’d have known how to reach out, so that I’d have known how to take my sister’s hand when I had the chance.

But I didn’t talk to Amber before today, so I didn’t know, last summer, how to take my sister’s hand. Her IV had protruded like the brightest star – Sirius, wasn’t it? – in a midnight black sky, and to touch it meant to acknowledge the solidity of the hospital room posed around us. My hands under my thighs meant I could be dreaming, a blink and the pale pink walls would crumble like ash to reveal our front yard, where my sister ran, ran, ran.

She had always liked to run. “What are you running from?” I’d asked her, that day last summer, while I’d stretched my legs across the weeds that I was meant to be pulling.

My sister had giggled like she knew I was asking the wrong question. Where are you running to? I should have asked, and then I could have run after her, faster than that speeding car.

“Does it have a name?” I asked Amber. The other rocks did. The less special ones. Clunky, misshapen lumps that only revealed the side worth anything if turned over. Not the rock in Amber’s palm, nor the three left on the wrapping paper. It was Christmas wrapping paper. Red with pearl snowflakes, even though it was the thick of August. I could feel the crisp shadow of expiring sun on my outstretched legs until a peal of laughter from outside the room reminded me that I was sitting against the dorm room bed of the girl I’d always wished would notice me, back when I could spare my wishes on such simple things.

“No, I haven’t named it yet,” Amber said. The hair she had been tucking behind her ears – black and inky like the deepest parts of the sea – fell over her face again. She could not move it, as both hands still held the unnamed rock.

I searched in Amber’s eyes for the sympathy I’d collected from everyone back home, but instead I saw only wonder at this rock she held, like it was something precious, something alive, something to be kept safe in the flimsy swaddle of Christmas wrapping paper.

Her eyes were brown. Like dirt, the kind that packed together into sedimentary rocks, which sometimes hoarded air bubbles in the empty spaces of their chests so that something beautiful could grow.

If I asked her to name this rock after me, she would. She had texted me to come over, after all, and from what I knew, we weren’t friends. To me, she was just the girl who smiled at rocks, who left me wondering how it would feel, to be smiled at like that. And to her, I was just the boy from grade school who happened to go to the same college.

I was more than that now. No longer “the boy who,” but “the boy with.” My sister defined me, and I didn’t fight. Let her take the place in my chest where only air was whirring, the hollow I ached to fill.

“Go on,” Amber said, hands moving an inch towards me. “It will help.”

Help what? It was a goddamn rock. I lifted my palms to match hers, lifelines-up like we were showing off how much time we had. The rock slipped against the sweat of my skin.

It was smooth, warm from her heat, a kiss falling along the creases of my palms.

“I know they’re just rocks,” she said, but at first I thought I had said it.

My fingers flinched, and the rock trembled against my fingerprints.

“But pretending they’re something more helps.”

Helps what, I thought again. I wanted to say it, but my voice had lost itself in the gaping expanse of my chest, and I looked away from her dirt brown eyes to this rock in my hands.

I pretended it was a heart. Small, warmth cooling, turning blue from lack of oxygen. Did hearts do that? I didn’t know. In my head, it didn’t matter. I watched the heart harden, so tiny it could fit into a rabbit’s chest, like the ones that ran, quick, quick, across our front lawn, sometimes darting into the road without warning, without any time to stop them.

“Will,” Amber said suddenly – sudden as the flash of metal on sun-kissed skin, but not nearly as loud – and I didn’t know if she was finally naming the rock I held, or just saying my name to fill the hollow of our silence.



Written by: Danielle Dyal
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

New Year's Reservations

Scott mashes the red button on his screen and tosses his phone on the couch, careful not to hit his best friend.

“What are your resolutions?” he asks, and Dollar replies with a look that says, “I’m a dog. I have no goals beyond eating, sleeping, shitting, and–until you had my testicles removed–fucking.”

“We’re not so different, you and me,” Scott says, and occupies the open spot on the sofa.

Scott’s phone begins to buzz but he reaches for the remote instead. He knows it’s his sister, Debra, calling him back, and as far as he’s concerned, she can take her unsolicited advice, roll it up nice and tight inside one of those ivy-league diplomas she prominently displays in her study, and shove it up her even tighter twat. Bitch.

He tries to watch John Mulaney’s latest stand-up, but he can’t. Debra has made his brain uninhabitable to humor at the moment, which is really inopportune, because he managed to land a five-minute set at The Laugh Factory tonight and he needs some inspiration. He also needs her kids to stop watching Veggie Tales–or whatever the fuck they’re into these days–so he can login to her Netflix account. Little shits.

Scott’s thumb and pointer finger shoot up to his beard and a eureka moment chugs to life like the engine of his 93’ Toyota Camry. He grabs his phone, brushes off his missed call notification like a fly on a sandwich, and opens up his Jokes document.

“My sister can fuck herself,” he types, grinning at the sight of his words and the thought of how they will sound reverberating around the comedy club. “You laugh, but I’m serious. She has two kids, both born from a turkey baster and a bottle of pinot noir. And she wonders why I refuse to go to her house for Thanksgiving.”

Scott laughs until he realizes that joke will only eat up approximately thirty seconds of his set, laugh break included. He looks at Dollar and Dollar looks back at him like, “I’m a fucking dog. When’s lunch, btw?”

“Honestly,” he types, “those kids are such pieces of shit, you would think she had an anal birth. (Pause for laughter.) And they’re just like her. The first time I saw them I said, ‘Debra, they have your eyes,’ and she said, ‘You don’t know what my eyes look like,” and I said, ‘Yes huh,” and she said, ‘What do they look like?’ and I said ‘Judgmental.’”

Scott laughs again. His confidence builds with each cutdown of his younger sister. He becomes drunk on defamation of character and continues typing, uninhibited by Jiminy Cricket.

“Today, she asked me, ‘Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘What are they?’ and I said, ‘To be a better uncle,’ and she said, “And how do you intend to do that?’ and I said, ‘Stop visiting.’”

Scott laughs so loud Dollar looks at him like, “DUDE, shut the fuck up. And feed me.” Scott returns the glare like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator–the first one, when he’s the bad guy–and his thumbs continue crawling across the screen like the fleas on Dollar’s belly.

“I think the only living creature more entitled than my sister’s children is my dog, Dollar.”

At the sound of his name, Dollar springs into what he would consider action. He props himself up on his front paws and lifts his ears, listening for a one-syllable, four-letter word that starts with an “F” and ends with the first letter of his most worthless appendage.

“Why did I name him Dollar, you ask?”

THERE IT WAS AGAIN, his name. Dollar sits up even straighter and bends his hind legs like he’s preparing to either take a dump, rub his a-hole on the cushions, or jump over the armrest.

“Because that’s how much I’m selling him for. Any takers?”

Scott laughs and Dollar howls, collapsing back into his sleeping position. “That’s right, buddy, Scott says, ”there are no friends in comedy.” Dollar snarls back like, “No shit, that’s why you’re so lonely,” and Scott says, “Zing.”

He goes to his phone’s home screen, finds his stopwatch app, and recites the insults that poured out of his fingers.

“ONE MINUTE, FIFTEEN SECONDS,” Scott yells and Dollar gets up all like, “THAT’S IT, we’re done here.” Scott hears his paws scrape against the faux-wooden floors until they reach the bedroom. If Dollar had opposable thumbs he would slam the door, but he doesn’t, so he just jumps into his doggy bed and plugs his ears with the pads of his feet.

Scott looks around the living room for more family pictures–aka targets–but his lack of interior decorating skills and sentimentality comes back to bite him. Rapid-fire round; Scott goes to Debra’s Facebook page and begins picking apart her photo albums like a buzzard on a zebra carcass.

“My niece is so ugly, Jared Fogle wouldn’t touch her.”

“My nephew is so fat, I get HIS hand me downs.”

“My sister is so pretentious, even her farts have accent marks.”

“Their Christmas postcard was so bad, my mailman walked into oncoming traffic.”

“Their smiles are so fake, they look like Tom Cruise’s new family.”

“She posts so many pictures, even the NSA blocked her.”

“She is so desperate for attention, she changed her last name to Kardashian.”

“She is so pleased with herself, she has a permanent handprint on her upper back.”

A red notification bubble pops up in the top-right corner of his screen, clogging his stream of quips like a knot in a garden hose. He clicks it, and it reads, “Debra is attending your event, Laugh At Me With The Laugh Factory.” “FUCK,” Scott screams and squeezes the backspace button of his Jokes document so hard he nearly breaks his phone. “Dollar,” he yells towards the bedroom. Dollar sprints down the hallway, too dumb and hungry to realize this is probably another red herring. “It looks like you’re my muse tonight.”

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

The Architect

Tamar watches her twin sisters gaze at the horizon as the merchants row them across the harbor toward the port town of Kerr. There is a crisp, salty bite to the winter breeze that blushes their noses and cheeks. This is the first time that Tamar will lead the priestesses to commemorate the winter solstice with gifts of dried sea plants and pearls. She hides her hands from the chill in the folds of her cloak as her head tilts to the side, eyes gazing beyond the blue as the boat rocks like a cradle.

“Are you excited to see the finished fane?” one of the twins, Adah, calls back without turning.

Tamar blinks to attention, remembering that she will meet with the architect they commissioned to build the temple that would serve as their headquarters during their solstice visits.

“Yes. I hope it meets Mother Aviva’s expectations. ”

“Do you think the architect is very old and bald?” the other sister, Zillah, asks.

Tamar’s hush comes out like a hiss as the twins giggle to themselves. The merchants hop into the shallows to pull the boat ashore as the black cliffside towers overhead. Tamar recalls a dream from the night before in which she stood waist deep in the sea and looked up at this very cliff, grasping a silver key in her hand. Her seven sisters stood in the water behind her, waiting as the waves lapped against the small of their backs. Tamar notices the merchant’s hand reaching to help her out of the boat and takes it as the memory of her dream dissolves.

“More comfortable in the water than on land, eh?” asks an older man with a craggy face.

“You should know,” she says, smiling as she steps onto shore.

                                                                                                    ***

Tamar did not expect to see the stained glass windows and the oak altar encircled by benches of shaped wood and stone. Breath stolen, she approaches the center, noticing light falling from above. She tilts back her head to see the window depicting an ornate silver key surrounded by panels of blue and green glass. She remembers her dream, the feel of the key in her palm, and her desire to find it’s owner.

A priestess acolyte approaches, bowing her head before speaking.

“High priestess, this is Liam Eklund.”

Tamar turns around, meeting eyes with a man a little over half a foot taller than herself. His beard is full and betrays his youth.

“Hello, Liam. I am very pleased with your master’s design,” she offers.

The acolyte’s eyes dart toward Liam and a flush spreads across her face and neck, but he is smiling.

“Oh, Tamar. Liam is the master architect, the one Mother Aviva commissioned for the fane,” the younger priestess stammers.

The architect is laughing now.

“It’s really fine. I’m used to it. You’d only know if you noticed the ink on my hands,” he says as he raises them.

Tamar sighs and covers her face for a moment before looking up at him.

“I am sorry, master architect. I only assumed because you are young. I was expecting someone…”

“Old and bald?” Liam interrupts.

“Precisely.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t expect the high priestess to be so young either. I guess this means I don’t have to be too formal?”

“Formalities are for funerals,” she replies. “Can you tell me about the key? Is that your signature or did we request it?”

Liam rests his hands on his hips and leans back to look up at the skylight.

“Mother Aviva said the image of a key came to her in a dream. When she was searching for architects, she found me because I tend to place it on my work,” he says.

“She had a dream?” Tamar asks, brow raised.

“Yes. She dreamt that her priestesses stood in the sea and one of them held a key. Then, she heard a voice say that love would reveal the truth of our desires.”

Tamar is silent, beginning to sweat beneath her arms.

“Anyway, that’s how she found me. And now I’m here.”

She swallows, hearing the chirp of birds outside beyond the heat of her ears.

“The stars know better than we. I’m very glad to meet you, Liam.”

“Me, too, priestess.”

                                                                                                    ***

The town is quiet and the moon is high as Tamar cracks open the door of the temple and slides in, closing it with a backwards lean. Her eyes are drawn to the altar, to the moonlight that bathes it and the cold silence emanating from the stones. She takes a seat on a bench and grips bunches of her cloak in her hands, thinking of Mother Aviva.

“Love will reveal the truth of our desires,” she whispers, wondering at the meaning.

“Priestess,” Liam murmurs, stepping into the light.

Tamar looks up, startled, and sighs with a laugh.

“Hello, Liam. I guess you couldn’t sleep either?”

The architect rubs the back of his neck with his hand as he takes a seat next to her, then leans forward with elbows on his knees.

“Strange dreams,” he says.

“You and me, both.”

“What did you dream?”

Tamar takes a moment to consider her response, then takes courage as she says, “I’ve been dreaming of your key, Liam. Even before we got here. And in the dream I’m desperate to return it, knowing it is lost and precious.”

“The key represents my mother. She passed after giving birth to my sister, whom I also lost.”

“Your sister did not survive the birth?”

“She did, but she was taken by female relatives. My father did not trust himself to rear her properly. I want to see her, to know her name, but all I remember is the darker patch of skin across her foot.”

Tamar turns her head, heart pounding. Liam also turns as she slides her foot out of her boot and pulls off her stocking, the birthmark just visible in the moonlight.

“Brother, I am here.”

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Kayla King

Coven

Snap.

Their bare feet have hardened like leather from seasons of traversing the forest. Another dry twig breaks underneath a carpet of burnt citrus leaves.

“Quiet!”

The muffled crunch of their walk continues, with more attention paid to buried tree limbs. They are unavoidable, almost undetectable. Periodically a snap or crack will elicit the same harsh shushing from their leader.

When she thinks they have gone far enough, the leader signals the other three to stop.

Fingers of moonlight probe the forest floor. Their bouncing shadows stretch, mingling with those of tall, spindly trees. A breeze whispers the promise of dense fog in the morning, and they shiver. The red, chilled tips of their toes peek out from under the robes, thick and dark and warm.

They have arrived.

Each member of the coven takes her seat on her own flat stone. The four of them form a tight diamond against the wide circular fire pit. Burnt metal, almost buried by the detritus of autumn, winks in the luminescence. They clear the pit with care and consideration, piling the leaves and twigs next to them on the stone.

The leader’s hands move with a confident cadence. In the still of the evening, she coaxes a fire to life. Each woman nurtures it with an offering from the pile they gathered: bundles of twigs, or armfuls of crumbling leaves that catch fire and scatter ash and embers.

Throughout the evening, the leader will pull larger branches from behind her stone seat and feed them to the fire. None of the members of the coven will remember seeing the branches before, and will forget to ask her if it was foresight or magic.

When their faces grow warm from the fire, they begin the ritual.

“You got it, right?” The leader turns to the one with dark skin and eyes like glacial ice, blue and cold and piercing. She nods and pulls the worn canvas bag out from underneath her robe. She sets out the ingredients with painstaking precision.

“And you brought the rest?” The leader turns to the one with pale skin and a layer of freckles so thick it could be armor. Her small hand pulls the sticks out from a disproportionately large pocket. She passes them around and they each take one.

“Now?” asks the smallest one, the quiet one, with wide, muddy brown eyes and an upturned nose.

“Now,” the leader agrees. They each hold an object, once soft, that has grown rigid in the cool night air. Above them, a storm of wings erupts, and they cannot tell if they hear bats or owls, or something darker.

“Eye of newt,” the leader says. They pass around the plastic bag and skewer a white, pillowy proxy for their spell ingredient. It transforms in the flames, bubbling and charring.

“Dragon’s scale and willow root!” They chant together as they pass around Hershey bars and demolish them piece by piece. Golden graham crackers snap in half, and their imaginary spell produces something real and wonderful.

The taste is warm and sweet and decadent. It bursts with the first bite, and marshmallow sinew cuts sticky trails against their chins and robes. Mixed with the smoke and ash, they will have to scrub away residue the next morning before dutiful, prim appearances at church.

They continue the process as their supply dwindles. Laughter turns to cackles. Spells become songs. They grow frenzied and mad, consumed by their lust for sweet, dark power. Their energy spills into the night and they dance around the fire, cavorting among friends, sisters, and smoke.

Skewers are abandoned when the ingredients deplete. Offerings made have reaped their reward: euphoria on a dark weekend night, when the forest fulfills its promise as a safe haven for those with the desire to cast incantations and witness the spark of magic.

It leaves as quickly as it came. They slump against the cold stones as the fire becomes a pitiful collection of embers. In the excitement, the leader forgot to feed it more wood. It is cold, achingly so.

“Time to come back inside.”

The man comes to them when they are too exhausted to make note of it. The members of the coven protest in mumbling half-yawns, and he relents. He wraps them in plaid wool blankets and brushes the dust off their terry cloth robes. He places black pointed polyester hats on the stone surfaces. The hats wiggle from a mediocre breeze.

The man stokes the fire. He shivers and stamps his feet, his breath a warm cloud suspended over them. An owl hoots in the distance as he huddles on the stone next his daughters, the leader and the smallest member of the coven. They share pitted dimples, widow’s peaks, and the thickest blanket.

He watches them with tenderness and builds the fire back up to its glory, log by log.

                                                                                                       ***

“It’s sacrilegious,” Sarah stands on the deck, gazing to the edge of the leaf-strewn lawn where the girls still doze on the stone benches. “We shouldn’t have taught them that word. ‘Sleepover’ is one thing, but ‘coven’ entirely another.”

“It’s literally child’s play,” John says.

Sarah glances over at him, her mouth turning up in a smile. He puts his arm around her and gives her a kiss on the head. Her hair is shot with strands of gray that gleam in the soft orange of the sunrise.

“I can make them breakfast,” Sarah says into his chest, “you’ve been up all night.”

“Nonsense,” John argues, “I’ll make them oatmeal pancakes and heat up some of your apple cider. A perfect fall breakfast.”

“They’d rather have hot chocolate with chocolate chip pancakes,” Sarah says, cocking her head in the way he finds irresistible.

“Maybe you should inventory the pantry,” John chuckles, “because I think our daughters and their friends ate their weight in s'mores last night.”

“To be young,” Sarah murmurs.

“Younger,” John corrects, “and metabolically gifted.”

They clink their coffee mugs together and wait for the girls to wake.


Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Angela DeRay

Famine

Neither of them knows how to start. They have been together for ten minutes without exchanging words, and the silence between them grates against Lily’s nerves. She takes another sip of her coffee and looks away. She can’t be the one to start; it would imply —what, exactly? Fault? Desire?

It’s his fault, though. His desire.

“I didn’t mean — ” Lily begins.

“I know,” Nora whispers from across the table. Her concealer has begun to crease, and Lily notices how dark the circles are, how puffy the skin looks.

“Oh,” Lily doesn’t know what else to say. She thought this would be the bulk of the conversation, all her energy and intensity deflected to defend her honor. Lily isn’t sure why they’ve met anymore, what they have to talk about other than what happened.

“You can’t help it,” Nora says. Her voice is stronger, but emotional omission remains. She’s detached, robotic, brainwashed. Christ.

“How are you?” Lily asks, surprised by how genuine the words sound.

“Fine,” Nora says. She still hasn’t met Lily’s eyes.

Nora, who could disarm anyone with a glance, has found new power in restraint and distance. The old Nora would know this, would use it, sharpen it to a fine point. This Nora has no idea.

“Nora,” Lily says, “please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not the first time. Maybe the first time it wasn’t reciprocated, though. Maybe the first time in our house. Maybe.” Nora says.

“It never went that f— ” Lily says.

“Because I walked in, Lily. It never went that far because I ended it for him. ‘Wasn’t reciprocated’ is a coward’s way of saying my husband tried to rape you. I know what I saw.”

Daniel had cornered Lily in the master bedroom, one hand planted firmly on her left breast and the other approaching her thighs. Lily’s eyes had been wide and scared when she looked up and saw Nora, champagne glass in hand.

Daniel played it off like he’d tripped when he was trying to help Lily find the bathroom.

Nora and Daniel had lived in the house for eight years. Lily knew where the damn bathroom was.

“I won’t tell anyone, Nora. I won’t say a word. Not to the press, or our friends, or —” Lily can’t say the rest.

“I know you won’t,” Nora says. “I’ve thought about this for a long time. Longer than I should have. Long enough to where it makes sense, to where it’s the only thing that makes sense. I need to ask for a favor.”

Lily knows this world. There are things Nora can’t do, mostly innocuous, because they are political statements. Make any choice and it’s a political statement now. It’s the careful world Nora navigates daily, and Lily doesn’t envy her for it.

Lily nods. As Nora speaks, she feels like their own personal Pandora’s box has been opened and laid before them.

Nora’s asking Lily to devote herself to something base and distasteful. And for what? Nora throws around “commitment to her constituents” and “obligation to the legislative docket.”

Nora isn’t charismatic or special enough to guarantee anything. Constituents would love another bureaucrat. No one needs Nora’s vote, and their district is a solid, unwavering blue on CNN’s election coverage.

Nora asks because she’s proud and loves power more than family values, and Lily agrees because for Nora, she will do anything.

“Tomorrow, then,” Lily says, and Nora nods her assent.

Both women’s eyes fill with tears. When they say goodbye, they embrace.

Each woman tries to give the other strength.

Each woman comes up wanting.

Daniel’s studio is in the middle of the orchard, an oblong stretch of brush that once produced wild berries and tiny sweet apples. It is where Daniel comes when he wants to think and create, sketching the impossible worlds that have made him moderately famous. His book covers guarantee sales.

Lily didn’t sleep. She’s thought about what she will say to him since she left Starbucks. A tongue-lashing about how she’s only doing this for Nora. A diatribe about consent. A sad plea that his liaisons would destroy his wife’s political career.

Daniel’s hair has begun to gray, and for a moment Lily feels pity for the aging Adonis.

It comes to her then, how she will play this. Lily always wanted to be an actress, but she never quite got over the stimuli: blinding house lights, cameras that begged for eye contact. The affair will be her stage, her set.

If it’s obvious she’s doing this for Nora, he’ll feel the forgery, and his desire will wane. He’ll get smarter about hiding it from Nora, and dumber about hiding it from anyone else.

Lily is safe for all of them, but Daniel has to want it. He has to desire her, each day’s lust eclipsing the last. She has to coax that from him.

And instead of her tirades and begging, she walks into the studio and unbuttons her blouse. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, worried the truth will find its way out: My sister asked me to sleep with you.

Lily doesn’t desire him. She disassociates, lets her body find a rhythm. Her back arches. Her hips move with his. They are one, and she would feel sick to her stomach were it not for her fervent belief that this repays her big sister: Nora, who took the punches meant for Lily and their mother. Nora, who testified against their own dad.

Nora, champion of abused women.

When it is over, she rolls up from the floor. Years of yoga make the motion languid and smooth.

Outside the studio, two deer wander into the orchard. Lily watches them take nimble, timid steps. Fur stretches over ribcages. They starve together, even as they nibble patches of grass and the dried husks of fruit once ripe.

Daniel touches her calf, desire reignited. He wears a smarmy grin. Gravity does him no favors, excess skin drooping.

Lily does not want to frighten the deer.

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Chris Boyles

Figments

"Aren't you excited?" Steph's voice carries from the hallway. I do my best to ignore the bile churning in my stomach. My face is a mask of pain and anxiety, and a few shades paler than it should be. I nod at my reflection in the mirror, trying to convince myself of a lie before I tell it.

"Yeah," my voice wavers in response. Not convincing. "Totally."

Definitely not convincing.

"Alex," she draws out my name, each letter a syllable. The sharp points of her stiletto heels click in the hallway, drawing closer. She opens my door, not bothering to knock.

"You promised," Steph says.

"I just don't feel very well," I respond.

"Bullshit, you just don't want to go."

She isn't wrong. I don't want to go, even though I did promise Steph that 2014 would be the year I got out more. 'You can't just hang out at the house every night,' she'd told me.

"I don't want to go," I admit. I stare at the wall, willing it to somehow turn into a time machine. I imagine it shifting, the paint and boards peeling away to reveal a panel of buttons and bright colored lights.

Oh, or better yet, the boards slide open and illuminate a secret passageway that takes me to a Delorean. Run for it, Alex!

"It's just dinner," Steph says beside me. "It's like, the most low-key double-date ever because Garrett barely knows this guy so there's no pressure to like, ever hang out with him again. And I bet he's way better than those weird guys you met online last year."

I look at Steph but continue to think about my imaginary time machine. Where would I go to stop this double-date from happening?

I could go back to the train ride, when Steph first proposed it. Living in an old house away from the action of the city has its perks; I get tons of reading done on our morning commute. Steph plays Candy Crush, and apparently matchmaker.

The New Year's Eve promise is a strong contender, since I regret it more and more each day. It was a night that began with glitter, shots of tequila, and flirtatious boys; night yielded to residual liquid courage, adrenaline from going out and not hating it, and an impossible resolution I no longer want to pretend I'll keep.

"It'll be fun," Steph sing-songs as she twirls a perfect curl of blonde hair around a manicured finger.

There was the OKCupid debacle. I like vintage things, I'd written in my profile. My high standards were met by two different men, and to reward them I invited them back to my place. I caught Tim batting the old lanterns downstairs because he thought they were 'like touch lamps or something.'

Mike was a little better - he knew what the lamps were and admired them from a respectful distance. He was problematic in a different way. I didn't see it coming, but I should have – he got distracted by Steph whenever he saw her. Maybe distracted isn't the right word. He was obsessed with her. His eyes would linger on her, and it took too many instances of me staring at him staring at her to realize it could never work out.

I settle on a time, envision Doc Brown adjusting the date in the Delorean: May 22nd, 2013, the day Mom convinced me that Steph and I should once again live under the same roof.

'She's your baby sister,' Mom said. 'She wants to move to the city, but your father and I just don't think it's a good idea for her to use Craigslist to find roommates. You've already got a job, and that second bedroom was nowhere close to an office or a study or an exercise room when I visited a couple months ago.'

I agreed to this, but if I'd known the consequences -- men more interested in my little sister, coerced drunken promises, mandatory double-dates -- I would have put my foot down and refused my mother.

"You can't do this," Steph's eyes get serious. "I didn't believe Mom, but she’s right. You never do anything exciting."

Because what's happening in my head is almost always more exciting than what's happening in real life.

"You don't have any friends, Alex," Steph sounds sad and distant.

Imaginary ones. I have imaginary ones.

I look down at my feet and a trap door opens. It’s the same one I always imagine: my social escape hatch, a way to ignore everything around me and live comfortably inside my head.

I'm not sure who to expect this time. There have been hobbits and elves, superheroes and supervillains, boy wizards and talking paintings.

Her back is to me, but she has a trim, petite figure and long pale hair.

“Khaleesi?” I ask, confused. I'm not a huge fan, but it was a popular enough Halloween costume. The woman turns, and it's not the Mother of Dragons.

It's Steph.

I want to ask how she ended up in my imaginary panic room. I want to ask why Mom told her I never did anything, if our living together was as much about me as it was about my little sister. Questions pile up in my mind, but before I can articulate any of them she is gone and I am alone in the dark made-up space inside my own head.

I get off my bed and walk downstairs. My sister follows at my heels, radiating pain like a new blister.

“Alex?” Steph asks. I grab my purse from its hook and stop in front of the mirror. I don’t want answers to new questions - why I’d rather dream experiences than live them, why I wore my favorite outfit, why I envisioned my sister as part of my imaginary friend panoply. I say that I’m ready and smile when Steph yelps with glee. She darts back to her room, her stilettos tapping a percussive beat.

I see a shape move in the shadows, another flash of my overactive imagination. Maybe it’s just what I need to stay sane tonight, to blur reality enough to make it tolerable.

You can come, too, but keep it down, okay?

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Emily Blincoe