Thoroughfare Fall 2014A Johns Hopkins University Publication

THE

ARTS

Content1. Violinist (COVER) ElizabethWinkelhoff2. Cartography

Casey Peta

4. Salat Al-Isha

H. Collin

4-5. Window to the Soul

Biobele Braide

5. Strange Company

Si Yeon-Lee

6. The Remains

Anna Silk

7. Glass in Black and White

AafiaSyed

7. 1.

C. Orlando

8. Ollie

Nadine Joseph

13. Little Red

ElizabethWinkelhoff

14. Aberlady Bay

Mackenzie Lane

15. To Nana: The Words I think Papa

Wanted to Say

Madeleine Marie

16. Once Upon a Timepiece

Elizabeth Mattson

17. Time Capsule

Elizabeth Mattson

23. Expectations

Biobele Braide

24. The Idea Of

AafiaSyed

25. SSG

Ruth Portes

36. Rooftop Vigil

Anna Silk

37. The Children Of Nanny Black

Kat Lewis

38. No Metro, Anna Silk

39. Sunday Best

C. Orlando

40. BuriedAmongFireflies

Kat Lewis

43. Woman

ElizabethWinkelhoff

44. My First Boyfriend

AafiaSyed

45. Twenty Questions

Diamond Pollard

46. Wanderer

Biobele Braide

47. Beastly Little Boy

EmilyDorffer

52. Isola di Burano

Hana Chop

53. Take Your Shot

Keven Perez

62. Ballerina

ElizabethWinkelhoff

Casey PetaCartography

Wait, they don’t love you like I love you…*

Amoth-eatenworldmapfromthefleamarket

rolled and unrolled, folded and unfolded time and

time again, brought

down from the shelf in my closet.

It looks like Babe Ruth hit Pangaea with a baseball bat.

It’s all crumbling, I mean look at Canada.

Like a cookie. On my map, Canada is pistachio-green,

Russia, the shape of Babe the Blue Ox, but wine-colored,

and America, with a tail like the letter “q”, the color

of straw. The periwinkle oceans get their waves

from the crumples in the page. All amidst brown rings

fromcoffeemugs.Andthatstickycornerfromthat

one night we had breakfast for dinner.

Wait, they don’t know you like I know you.

From Florence to Philly, Dublin to

London, San Francisco to NYC—bright

redlines.Myfingersflutteralongthem

likeaCabbageWhitebutterfly(dustyandpale

enough to be called a moth, really). What

does the weather map say for us today?

Wait, they can’t write you like I wrote you.

You make me want to tear a page out

from your section of the dictionary.

Doritos, dark chocolate (never a Baby Ruth,

baby), and you, Dorian; put it all in my pocket

and carry it around, maybe ride a plane or

train with it, because I feel like it. Not ‘cus

I have to.

Strewingmypreciousdriedandpressedflowers(I

tightenedthescrewsonmymagicalflower-pressing

box and then tightened them again)

all over the globe. An explosion of color

from a volcano (like my paisley seat cushion)

petalsforthebrowncoffeerings,anda

red-pennedstem,yeah.Where’dyougo?Youfelloff

the map. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

* From “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003)

Page 3

H. CollinSalat Al-Isha

Before I went to sleep, I prayed to God,A God to whom I’ve never prayed before.My feet were clean, my hands crossed in regardAndwithmyfriends,croucheddownwithheadtofloor.I did not know the words they sang aloud.Unsynchronized and poorly said was myAttempt to sing along their words, profound,“Allahu Akbar,” words I once decried.And while I prayed and asked to be made wholeI also thanked him for his universe,With piety, repented on my soulAnd I thought him successfully coerced. But when the words were done, and prayer ceased, I knew I had not found my inner peace.

Window to the SoulPage 4

His toes are scarredBlack from too many dark nightsThe blanket never quite covers his bodyHe is always in the wombThe mother in the grave reaches her legs out of the grassless ground to engulf himSoak him in her watersThere he would meet strange companyWhat did the violinist on the subwaysay to him that bright, bright night

Si Yeon LeeStrange Company

Biobele Braide Page 5

Therewassomemagicalspellthatheldthehouseinabubble,athinfilmofsuchfragilitythatitwasimpenetrable.“Iwillneveragainbeabletostandonthosestairsagain,”shemused,gazingatthewhitewashedsteps.Shesawvisionsofherfive-yearoldselfscamperinginAugustamongtheflowerbeds,trippingonthesprinkler,droppingapopsicleonthehotcementuntilitdrooledintoa pool of national pride, the colors bleeding together and evaporating into the humid air. December and the snow falling silently, blanketingthelawnwithpossibilitiesofsleds,visionsofhotchocolateandwoolyscarves,heryoungerselffiddlingwiththetoo-tight parka her mother forced her to wear. April and hide and go seek in the ferns with her best friend, her neighbor, Harrison. Flying on the swing that creaked with age and dripped with the dew of June. All this was now obsolete in reality, never to be re-trieved again except in memory, her old home taken away from her. Anna stood there and felt, despite her best intentions not to cry,tearsprickingatthecornersofhereyes,felthernosebecometightandasmallsnifflejustbegintooriginateatthebaseofherthroat. She turned away, feigning an eyelash, that age-old excuse, as her father surveyed the home, muttering that the bushes were trimmedwrongbutthenexclaimingwithjoythat“thepaintjobisstillthere!”.Thestreet,thehousesshehadgoneintoasagirltoplay with schoolmates, the cracked sidewalks where she had learned to ride her bike, swam before her eyes. So strange that such a short period in her life, four years it was, could have engrained themselves so much on Anna’s memory that even in Los Angeles, 6,000 miles away, when it was a cloudy day and rivulets of rain ran down her bedroom window, she could still smell the stench of wetsandinthecornerofherbackyard,thesquealofherbabybrotherastheybothstoodintherainandwatchedaballoonflyupintothesky,wonderingifitwouldhitaplane,orevenreachthemoon!Shepulledherparkacloseraroundherasherdadcamebackandthumpedonthecarhood.“Bettergetgoing,”.Hissaltandpepperhaircoveredapatejustbeginningtobald,ahintofwrinkles on the corners of his eyes. Where had the time gone? And she, herself, dressed up for dinner, eyeliner on, a phone in her pocket.Wherewasthatlittlegirlinjelliesandlacesocks,withshortcorduroyoverallsandasunhat?

Anna SilkThe Remains

where has the ash gone?

knockedofftheend

ofmyfirstcigarette,myfirst

breath

of intoxicating nicotine, and that

ephemeral,swirlingsmoke–likeafire

burning

through every airway and every vessel

until I’m ablaze and I’m burning too.

but where did the ash go?

because I’ve been burning for so

long, I’ve lost sight of my ignition

andwithoutreasonformyflames

am left to question whether I continue on in

light–or descend into only

darkness.

C. Orlando

Aafia SyedGlass in Black and WhitePage 7

1.

I don’t remember planting the lemon tree in our backyard. You told me that when I was four we bought a tiny packet of seeds from thestoreacrossthestreet.YoutoldmethatIcriedwhenwehadtoburythemintotheground;Isaidthattheseedswouldsuffocate.I can imagine it: Mama,don’t!Theycan’tbreathe!You explained that the seeds had to go to sleep now, that the hole was really a bed and we had to cover them with dirt to keep them warm. They would only wake up when they were warm enough. Don’t worry, Ollie,they’rejustsleeping.

I don’t remember planting those seeds. But I don’t remember a lot of things.

I don’t remember waking up this morning to nothing but the lonely cold air. I don’t remember frying the last egg in the carton for breakfast or walking myself to the bus stop. I don’t even remember riding the bus home from school.

But I remember this: the sharp scent of fresh lemons growing on our tree. The green branches, drooping under the pressure of all that fruit. Useless fruit,youcallit.Fruitthatcouldn’ttrulyfillupaperson,butonlyhoveredaroundthetasteofameal.Youwouldsay this and I would nod because you are my mother. Of course, I agreed with you. Lemons were useless.

2.

Its been three days since you’ve left and someone has been knocking on the door.

Nadine JosephOllie

Page 8

Outside the window all of the trees are colored with the bright red obscenity of fall. I can see the trees bending with the wind in an intricate dance that I don’t know the steps to. I am glad that I am inside the house where everything is warmth and simple steps to the television to lower the volume.

BzzzzzzzzBzzzzzzzKnock!

I think back to all the other times that you left and how this is not like those other times. You always left a note. Left enough eggs in the fridge. You never told me where you were going but it never mattered because you always came back.

Thedoorbellbuzzesagain.Iimaginedifferentnoises.Thefastzzzzzzzzofamosquitoinyourear.Amechanicrevvinguptheengineof a car. The sound a vacuum makes when it has swallowed something it shouldn’t have swallowed.

I get up when I cannot mask the noise of the doorbell any longer. I open the door and there is someone I have been waiting for. He isnotheretobringmeeggs,eventhoughmystomachisgrumbling.Heiswearingastarchedstiffuniformandismoppingupthesweat that has procured over his brow. He holds out his hand and I realize that he wants me to shake it but I don’t. I want to close the door and pretend that this man is not here when you are not.

But I can’t and he steps in, uninvited, and this is the beginning of the end.

3.

Five pellets.

Onthebackofthefishfoodcontaineritsaysthatfivepelletsistherecommendedamounttofeedabetafisheveryday.IlookintothelittleglassbowlthatsitsonmynewbedsidetableandIwatchthelittlefishgulpdownthefood.IwonderifitchewsbecauseallIseeisthefishopeningitsmouthandsuckingdownthepellet,likeavacuum.

Page 9

On my other bedside table is a picture of a man and a red newborn baby that is supposed to be me. Another thing that I do not re-member.Themanismuchyoungerthanhelooksnow,wearingabrightorangeteeshirtthatscreams‘SAILING!’.Thismanisthefather that I didn’t know I had.

IputthepictureinadrawersoIdon’thavetolookat‘SAILING!’anymore.

It has been exactly one month and three days since the police knocked on my door and told me that my mother had died. Five of those days were spent trying to locate any relative that I had. One of them was spent at the police department; I was questioned about my mom. Do you have any idea where she might be? Does she leave you like this often? You should have been put in a foster home-no kid should have to live with this.

The rest of the days have been here, in this small apartment. My father’s house.

4.

This man who is my father does not understand me. Every day I ask to go back to my house, back to my lemon tree. I want to smell its bright scent and feel the rough bark on my back. Out the window now I can see an apple tree, full to bursting with fruit. Useful fruit.

“Ollie, we can’t. Someone else lives there now-your mom was only renting it.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and stares at me for a response. He is starting to think that something is wrong with me.

I stare at him. There is nothing wrong with me. Everything in my life has all of a sudden decided to turn on me; my mom for him, my house for his apartment, these ugly trees outside for my lemon tree. Doesn’t he understand that this is what’s wrong?

He kneels down next to me. “I know you miss your mom, Ollie, but she disappeared after you were born. For no reason.I don’t know what she said about me, but you have to know that I am here for you. You have to give me a chance.”

Page 10

He hugs me and I don’t want to hug him back but what he has said has confused me.All of a sudden, I am an octopus with too many armsandnolegs.Islidetothefloorandmyarmslielimparoundme.

He sighs, “Oliver”

5.

I am walking down a street that is more familiar to me than my own two hands. It is lined with houses of all various colors: aquama-rine, sunshine, periwinkle, and ruby. Like a crazy women picked out the colors.

I stop in front of the blue house. My house. It is a squat, small building with two windows on either side of the white front door. Everythingaboutitisjustabitsmudged.Fingerprintssmudgedonthewindows.Dirtsmudgedonthefrontdoorandthewalkway.

The front door is locked like I expected it to be, but the back gate is not. I walk into the backyard.

There are no more lemons on the lemon tree. They are not even scattered around the base of the trunk. The tree also seems to have shrunkenseveralinchessinceIhavelastseenit.Eventhecolorisslightlyoff.IthinkbacktoalloftheyearsthatIhavelivedhere,in this house, with my mother and of all of the times that I sat beneath this tree waiting for her to come back when she left. The tree never changed in all of those years, but now I wouldn’t recognize it.

It looks dead.

6.

The apartment is lively, playing christmas music, when I get back. My dad is at the stove coaxing come breakfast eggs to be scram-bled. I stare at the eggs sizzling in the pan-he has added some cheese for taste-and I am struck by a feeling I can’t name.

“Oliver,wherehaveyoubeen?”Hiseyesarestern.“Youcan’tleavethehousewithouttellingmefirst,okay?”Page 11

I don’t answer him because I am so shocked that he is there making eggs for me when I was gone--no one ever has before. That the lemon tree in my backyard is dying. That my mother has left me and, this time, is not coming back.

My dad is giving me that look again, like he is becoming more and more sure that something is wrong with me, so I go up to him and do something that surprises him.

I hug him. “I’m okay.” I whisper, “I’ll give you a chance.”

7.

This time, when I go back to my house, I am not surprised that the lemon tree has died. That the leaves are dried and curled, crunchy underneath my feet. My mother has not come back for me and somehow that is okay.

Page 12

Elizabeth Winkelhoff

Little RedPage 13

It’s the good kind of sinking-in sort of feeling, that warmth that starts in the belly and rises to envelop you. Like when you’re sitting at the dinner table and everyone is too busy talking instead of eating. Or when you get out of the pool at night and the chill bites into you so you wrap a towel around your shoulders, burrowing yourself into the terrycloth. Or when you’re looking through that window at the top of the staircase for Dad to come home from work and you can smell Mom cooking something with onions in the kitchen and Dad’s big silver car pulls into the driveway and you run down the stairs because he never comes home this early.

The last time I felt that sinking-in was when we were lying on the beach at Aberlady Bay. There were these grasses nearby that swayed in the wind above your chest. The sky was dreary gray and the wind slipped across our skin and over our sweaters. You were quiet. I was quiet. I think you might have fallen asleep before me. I felt the warmth of you against me and, like a heavy winter coat, it propelled the wind away so that I could only feel a tickle brush along the cheek exposed to it. I felt it again when we stood outside your house, watching the international space station sail across the starlight on a brisk April night. In my peripheral vision, I could seetheTVscreenflickeringthroughthewindow.

You were my winter coat, my home, that feeling of sinking in and never reaching the bottom. I think of this sometimes when I see the stars somehow pierce through the smog of the city I have returned to: you, holding my hand as we watched spacecraft spin around the earth, like we were part of a movie that had no beginning or end and the sky was the camera and you I were the extras who fell back into the crowd and made up our own story.

Mackenzie LaneAberlady Bay

Page 14

Madeleine MarieTo Nana: Words I Think Papa Wanted to Say

It was a gray day. TherewasagustofwindasIcameinfromicefishing.Oneoftheheatersinthefishhousestoppedworkingwithin an hour but everything was settled;seatcushionsadjusted,polesangledright,the radio had even picked up. No one left.

I pushed through the front door and there you were.Already sitting down at the supper table, peeling and chopping.You never believed I’d come home empty handed.You were the perfect puzzle came home empty handed.You were the perfect puzzle piece to not only my lifebut to our quiet, cozy lake nebagamon world.

YoulookedjustasbeautifulasthedayImetyoubut your roasted potatoes and carrots had agedwithtasteafterfiftyyears.

I found my spot on the back porch steps.It took me longer than usual to sit down, the railing did the lowering for me.AsIcleanedthefishInoticedmystrokestofreehimof his scales were no longer smooth-theywerejerkyandfrustrating.And the cold got to my mind quicker.

Afterthesmellofmeltedbutterandbakedfishhad warmed the house, we settled in the living room.My enveloping green sofa-chair had never looked so safe.Everythinghurt.Numbfingers,stifflegs,itchyeyes.Not nearly enough beard to stay warm anymore.Facedryandcracked.Thelayerscameoff;thechairhuggedback.

Icouldtellthiswasgoingtobemylastfishingtripbut I didn’t know how to tell you.I didn’t know how to tell you I was tired, that I was sorry, that I loved you.SoIgaveaclosedmouthsmileandtoldyouthefishwasgood.

Page 15

Analog clocks or digital clocks.Big clocks or small.Clocks in general.Dart a glance at them asEvery second passes quick or slow.Fob watches are classy,Grandfather clocks more so.Hour after minute moving and turning,Inching cyclically forwardJust to tick back into place again.Keys kept old clocks wound,Lest we lose our place in timeMaybe create a temporal anoma-ly,Never to be repaired or realized,Orjustbewrongallbuttwicedaily.

Elizabeth MattsonOnce Upon a Timepiece

Pendulums andQuartz can keep themRighted as well, because sinceSundials people have knownTimeisfleeting,precious,money,essential,Verifiableandquantifiable,“When” a valuable resource.XII is a beginning and an end.Youth brings age brings youth, and never points toZero.

Page 16

Elizabeth MattsonTime Capsule

I was glad I was in the shade. It was hot enough that I couldn’t touch the head of the shovel without getting burned, and I constantly needed to rub salty sweat away from my eyes. My shirt was glued to my backpack, which at least let a little air in when it swung away from me. I checked my GPS. It was off by over a mile, but at least the clock seemed accurate.

Quarter to twelve. Sara had said that if she wasn’t there by eleven, she wouldn’t make it, so I grumbled a curse about the lack of mountaintop phone reception and set out alone.

Besides the shovel, I had in my backpack the map, some trail mix, a bottle of water, and the picture I’d drawn in the fourth grade of where our capsule was buried. I could make out a boulder twice the size of my mother nearly split in half by a cleft in the middle, some pine trees, and a tiny, scummy pond off in the distance. A hazy memory supplied a trail only three or four minutes of walking away.

Fifteen years ago we hadn’t had a particular destination in mind, only hoping for a secluded, open place we could have fun finding again years later. Mom had insisted that if we took pictures along the way or kept a perfect record of the trail half the adventure would be gone. Dad had accused her of wanting to be a pirate. She was the one who had begged for weeks that we find the capsule while we still had time, until I had decided that it was the least we could do.

I was at the entrance to the park, not the main one. It was one of the little side gates that were farther away from the campsites and the hiking trail, but closer to the rivers that you could find fish in without accidentally hooking somebody. We hadn’t been there to fish, but had all agreed that it would be better to be away from the crowds and the hikers. Back then I had hoped to see some mysterious wildlife, but we were too loud and all we found were rabbits, squirrels, and boring normal birds.

Page 17

I sighed as I entered the forest. The path was dry dirt, with sharp pebbles trodden into it by the traffic. I wondered if someone had brought a car through, since the branches on the trees started to lean in above head level. The un-derbrush was mostly dead from the drought, and I occasionally stepped on a leaf that was shriveled and dead but still green. They didn’t crunch like the leaves in the fall. I felt alone with just my footsteps and breath.

My GPS kept on searching as I moved along, until I gave up and pulled out the map.

There was a tiny x marked a little off one of the side trails through the mountain,in that purple pen that Sara had won as part of a set in a bingo game and carried as a trophy back when she was still in middle school. It was prob-ably not exactly where the capsule was, but close.

I made a right turn, hoping that I was on the path I thought I was.

When we had come here for the first time, my mother had blazed the trail, choosing turns at half-random and nearly getting us lost. The whole thing had been her idea. She wanted us to have some memories together. We each had to put in something small without telling anyone what it was, something that we wanted our future selves to see. She said she wanted all of us to go open it together and find out what we’d stored once Sara and Andy and I had kids of our own.

Andy had gotten fed up with walking and picked the spot himself by grabbing the time capsule from Mom’s bag and running off the path a bit and making us all follow through the underbrush. We’d all gotten poison ivy, but he’d found a great clearing and a great rock as landmark. I tried to remember where he’d left the path, but the forest all looked the same, and the parts that didn’t would have been different back then.

Eventually, I decided to trust in the yellow old map and trudge through pine needles halfway through the path closest to the mark.

I set off perpendicularly outward, until I hit the brook that signified I’d gone too far and turned back to try to re-turn to the path and pick a better starting point.

Page 18

After wandering a bit more I did not find the trail, but in an open area next to a pine that looked like it was dying I did find the rock. It was smaller than I’d remembered, about eight feet high and nine wide, and roughly the shape of a beanbag chair that someone had just gotten out of. The crack in it had widened, and was packed full of dead leaves and dirt. The ground in front of the boulder was untouched and mossy.

I paced around, trying to remember which side we’d buried the capsule on. Mom had drawn a big X in the ground with a stick once we’d finished, but that was long gone. The crack would point to it, but it extended down both sides. How far away was it, anyway?

I picked the side away from the tree by mental coin-flip and pressed the sharp edge of the shovel into the dirt about four feet away. The dirt was hard-packed dried mud, which was tricky to break through but turned into dust as soon as it was removed. I tossed the dirt I got out to the side without paying much attention to where it went.

Soon my hands were sore, and I wished I’d brought some gloves. I hit against something that I thought was metal for one breathless moment, but it was only a gray-black stone bigger than a bowling ball that took me ten minutes to dig out. I could barely lift it to clear it away from the dig site and had to kick it away.

Back when I was a kid, we’d all helped—Dad and Mom had done most of the digging, with Sara and Andy pitching in whenever one of them tired. I had been wearing thin cloth shoes back then without much in the way of sole, so my father had refused to let me handle the big shovel. He’d seemed to take pride in being the one who got the most progress done, despite having only agreed to come after hours of Mom’s cajoling. He hated the feeling of not being at work, and jumped when a leisurely outing gave him a job.

I’d gotten back at him by filling up the hole when we were done, not letting anyone else help. The soil had been softer, browner, and wetter back then, and we’d all been covered in mud.

Now Mom was in the hospital and always would be, and Dad was with her, and Sara was busy with a baby, and Andy was busy overseas, and only I was here.

I took shovelful after shovelful from roughly the same spot. Though it was getting to be around three feet deep I didn’t see a hint of steel. I decided to make the hole wider, since I wasn’t sure exactly how far from the rock it had been and I didn’t want to have to start again on the other side.

Page 19

I chipped away at the edges until the hole was wide enough for me to stand in and work at from the inside. It start-ed to take on a bit of an ovular shape extending along the line from the fissure, but I still found nothing.

Now my hands were on fire and my mouth felt sandy. I climbed out, tossing the shovel. I only had half a water-bot-tle left and didn’t want to get heatstroke in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to take a break and head towards the barely audible babble of the river.

The brook was a tiny thing and I had to crouch among the rocks to stick my hands in. The water felt perfectly cool against my bruised and burning hands. I was going to have terrible blisters.

I considered giving up for today and waiting for Andy, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find the spot again, or even if Mom would have enough time for that. If we had had the time, we could have waited for all of us to get our own families, with kids old enough to run around and beg to dig and listen to all their grandparents’ stories, but that would take too long. Only Sara had Benjy, and he couldn’t walk or talk yet. At the very least he could be in the pho-tos when we opened the capsule in front of Mom.

I splashed water over my face and neck, and then turned back toward the woods.

The heat had abated just a bit from noonday levels. I proceeded to the treeward side of the rock.

There were only around six feet between the boulder and the tree, less room to search. I picked a spot roughly halfway in the middle.

Digging a second time was much the same, except with sorer hands. I was more careful about the dirt this time, laying it to the side instead of tossing it. I was worried that I’d run into big roots, but aside from a few fist-sized rocks I didn’t have trouble.

That changed when I finally got about three feet deep, and heard the tink of metalon metal. I scraped as much dirt off as I could. The shape and size were all right. I shoved the shovel tip under it, making it pop up, and I had found our time capsule.

Page 20

It was heavier than it looked, a stainless steel cylinder a foot long and a few inches in diameter. It looked like the seal had held, but I couldn’t be sure until I unsealed it in Mom’s hospital room with the rest of the family. I hoped they could make it.

I felt the strangest twinge of excitement when I examined it and wondered what was inside. Shaking it next to my ear just made a shifting, tinny sound. I couldn’t remember what I had put in there. I hadn’t even thought about it until Mom’s diagnosis.

I left the holes—it would be nice to have a little record of what had once been there.

Mom and I decided that a Saturday afternoon would be best, since I didn’t need to leave for the night shift until five and Sara usually visited then. Andy was supposed to make it, but one of the tigers he was studying had gotten sick and he simply couldn’t be spared.

At that point Dad had grabbed the phone to mutter quickly, quietly, and angrily, but Andy had sounded upset enough that Mom asked him to just drop it, dear, he can be here in spirit. Dad begrudgingly gave her back the phone, and since her hands were shaking so much I had to help her press the speakerphone button.

It was still strange to see her like that. She seemed as strong as ever when she was speaking, but if you glanced at her when she didn’t know it she seemed absorbed in the white hospital sheets like a shrunken part of the background. Her tan was gone, and the hair that she had been meticulously dying for at least ten years had a centimeter of gray at the roots.

Sara, who was sitting by the door and rocking Benjy on one knee, asked if we could get started.

Page 21

I unscrewed the top of the capsule and laid it in Mom’s lap, so she could get first look. We’d all wrapped our ob-jects in newspaper so the others couldn’t see, so the first thing that Mom drew out looked like a long, thin column of old yellow parchment, like some ancient scroll. Inside was a spoon.

“A spoon?” Dad asked.

“Sorry. I had no idea what to put so I just grabbed something,” came the voice from the phone. “I didn’t think we’d ever go get it.”

“So you wasted a perfectly good spoon?” Dad retorted, but stopped when Mom put her hand on his shoulder.

The next parcel was thinner. It unraveled to reveal a turquoise pen with flowers printed on the side. “Oh yeah, I think I won that for something,” Sara said when I showed her.

I tried it on the brittle newspaper, but the ink had dried up.

Next was Dad’s, a plastic soldier with a hook on the back. I felt a vague sense of familiarity, but Dad’s face lit up. He began to recount the way we’d tied parachutes to the back and thrown it out the window, and we’d always cry if he didn’t to fetch it from the yard. I passed the toy to Benjy, who gripped and shook it.

Mom’s hands were shaking so badly that I took over fishing for the next treasure, and pulled out a tiny one. Mom grinned tiredly when she caught a glance of it.

“Now you’ll see why I asked you to get this.”

It was a ring, a gold band with an unreadable engraving. Sara gasped. “You put something like that in the ground?”

Mom chuckled. “I wanted to bury a treasure. It belonged to my Aunt Hannah, and she asked me to give it to one of you kids when you were old enough. I thought it would be a fun find.”

After a second’s hesitation, I passed it to Sara, who had risen from her chair at the sight of it. She slid it on her ring finger, where it was noticeably too big. Mom began to list places she knew that would adjust it while I pulled the last bit of wrapped paper out of the capsule.

Page 22

It was a watch, silver-headed with a pink cloth Hello Kitty band. It had stopped at 8:23. I vaguely recalled try-ing to set the timer to figure out how long it’d be in the ground. The loop was small enough that I could barely fit my fingers through. I showed it to Mom, who gave a smile of approval and patted me on the hand. “You should get a daughter to give that to.”

I smiled and protest-ed and pretended it wasn’t going to be five soon.

Biobele BraideExpectations

Page 23

Aafia SyedThe Idea Of

Pompeii’s ruins

in the tourist-ridden summer is

like a model’s ribs

under a spotlight, her painted smile

litbythecameraflash

of a stranger,

like the Tower of Pisa,

leaningpoint-oh-fiveinches

more every single year,

and still we pose

with our palms raised upward

like captured criminals,

pretending to hold it up,

andsay,“Cheese!”

Blades of grass pushing up

through the cobblestone, and vines

using the walls as highways

against gravity are like

pullingonyouroldestjeans

fresh out of the drier and

jigglingyourwayintothem

until they hug back perfectly,

like an envelope torn open

leaving the letter frayed inside,

but no word is left unread,

like the circles my cup stamps

on the living room table.

Page 24

Ithadstartedoutasajoke.Theywereyoung,juniorsincol-lege, whining about their lives with hopeful and pessimistic thoughts for the future, etcetera, etcetera. But now it was a four-year-longjokethathadgottencompletelyoutofhand.For some reason she still went out of her way to come when she received an email from Maia inviting her to the next meeting.

She stopped at the green door with the number 445 on the front and knocked after straightening her shirt that had got-tenatwistedunderherleatherjacket.Shewasgoingtobeina good mood today despite the morning’s events.

“Alex!Hi!You’reearly!”Alexforcedherlipsintoasmileforher tiny, bouncy friend. The woman was one of those people whohadneverreachedfivefeetandlookedlikeshecouldbreak if you poked her with a hairbrush but she did things likebungee-jumpoffcliffs.Shewaswearinganewpurpleshirt with the letters SSG written on the front. Alex almost giggled.

Ruth PortesSSG

“Maia, what the hell is that?” Alex asked as she walked into theapartmentandtookherjacketoff.

“Isn’t it great?” She straightened the shirt.

“No, it’s not great. Why does it exist?”

“OhAlex,it’sfunny!Nooneknowswhatitmeansanyway,justus.”Maiawinked,slappingAlex’sarm.“We’vemissedyou. Thanks for coming,” she said before turning away and opening the door again to welcome another friend.

Alex walked into the kitchen where three women were chat-tering over chips and guacamole.

“Hey guys,” she said, leaning her elbows on the counter.

“You look glum,” Eun told her.

“I’m alright,” Alex said. “Just stopped by Dad this morning.” She could feel Eun’s eyes trying to sift through her soul.

Page 25

Eun was the third of their original college trio, tall, athletic, with long black hair hanging in a curtain down to her waist. They had lived down the hall from each other in freshman year and had become friends during a very intense game of capturetheflagonthequad.

Alexhadbeen terrifiedof thegirlwith longdarkponytailand the most aggressive eyes she had ever seen. They had been put on the same team, and Alex had been doing her usualshuffleinsteadofintroducingherself.

“Hey,Alex!We’reonthesameteam!Thisisgreat!”aneigh-teen-year-old Maia with her bouncing copper curls said. She had been sent from the US to a British boarding school when she was thirteen and found the Free New World a fascinat-ing place. “I want you to meet one of my friends. You’ll like her a lot.” She dragged Alex over to the tall Korean girl.

“Eun, this is Alex. She’s the one I was telling you about.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Eun-Ae. But you can call me Eun,” she said with a faint lilt to her strange accent and shaking Alex’s hand. “Where are you from?”

“New York,” Alex answered, “and you?” the girl spoke, thankfully.

“Berlin,” Eun answered.

“What made you decide to come to the States?” Alex asked, genuinely interested.

“Wanderlust,” Eun said, the way the word was supposed to be pronounced.

“Isn’t that great, Alex?” Maia gushed.

Something had clicked. The other girls were extreme, she discovered as she let herself be pulled along and become an extreme herself.

“How am I going to sit through another one?” Alex asked, hangingherheadandflappingherhandforachip.

“Oh hush, you keep coming back,” Eun whispered.

“It’s an anthropological study,” Alex whispered back.

“You hate anthropology,” Jenny, one of Maia’s friends from home, said.

“Well—” She was interrupted by Maia’s call to the kitchen.

“Girls! Welcome to the fourth anniversary of the SinglesSupportGroup!We’velostsome,we’vegainedsome,somedon’ttakeusseriously”shewinkedatAlex“butIloveus!”Page 26

IthadbeenMarchinjunioryearandEunandAlexhadbeenslaving through their homework when Maia had burst in and yelled louder than a person her size should have been able to.

“He has a fucking girlfriend,” she said, throwing her phone on Alex’s red bedspread and falling cross-legged onto the floor.“Whotakesagirlonthreedatesandthentellsherthathe has a girlfriend?” she asked, looking at them with her big brown eyes that seemed to take up most of her face.

“Guys are assholes,” Eun said in a rather heavy German ac-cent, as she tended to do the later in the day it got.

Alex nodded. “I could go turn everyone he loves against him andruinhislifeforeverifyouwant,”sheoffered.

“Alcohol,” Eun said, untangling her long legs and hopping upfromthefloor.

“But it’s a Monday night,” Maia said, her voice small again.

“Well I’m already fed up with the week, so I’ll use you as an excuse,” Eun said, handing them each a beer.

“I’m going to die alone,” Maia moaned as she cracked open her can.

“Don’tsaythat,it’sjustonejerk,”Alexsaid.

“Alex, I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never dated any-one. Even my younger sister has a boyfriend.” Maia slurped her beer.

“Well, it’s not that strange,” Eun said. “We haven’t either.”

“And your sister is in year nine. It doesn’t count,” Alex add-ed.

“This is what happens when you go to an all-girls school your entire life. What is England trying to do? Make sure only lesbians can date each other?”

“How is it we always end up talking about boys?” Eun sighed.

“Because we’re sad. We’re the Singles’ Support Group.” Alex giggled. “The SSG.”

Maia cracked a grin. “I like it,” she said.

Little had Alex known that she would be sitting in a living room at twenty-five years old, still single, facing a friendwearing an SSG shirt who was hell-bent on catching a man. Which was a switch she hadn’t seen coming even when Maia had come over to Alex’s place after another failed date three years ago.

Page 27

“He told me I wasn’t what he was looking for,” Maia told her, swilling the wine Alex had poured for her. “I’m starting to think something’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Maia,” Alex told her.

“Mum’s always said there was. Maybe she’s right,” Maia an-swered before switching topics.

“So,how’s everyonebeen?”Eunasked, sippingher coffeeand making a face.

“Ifinallydraggedmyselftothegym,”Lindsey,afriendAlexhad found two years ago, said.

“Any ridiculously handsome men checking you out yet?” Anna, a woman Alex didn’t know very well, said.

“If you mean the 60 year old man who was blatantly staring atmyass,mostdefinitely.”

The women laughed, but Alex had already begun to zone out, to the point that she didn’t notice Maia’s glances.

“Hey,” Maia whispered. “Come to the roof with me for a sec.

Alex nodded and smiled at Eun before following Maia up twoflightsofstairsandontotheroofofthebuilding.Herfriend’s building had an exhilarating view of the city, twen-ty-eightfloorsupovertheHudsonRiver’spollutedcurrent,wherethey’dwatchedthefourthofJulyfireworksthatsum-mer.

“How’s your dad?” Maia asked.

“Lonely,” Alex said, leaning her elbows on the roof wall. “Told me to make sure you weren’t doing crazy things again.”

Maia laughed. She knew Alex’s father well, considering the number of times the girls had stayed over in Alex’s Manhat-tan apartment.

“You can tell him I’m on a man-hunt,” Maia told her. “With negative results. What’s bugging you, Lexus?”

Alex grinned at the nickname. “I don’t know. I don’t like him worrying about me—he doesn’t like that I’m so alone. And he’sstartedtravelinglessandIcan’tfigureoutwhy.”

“Maybehejustwantstobenearyoumore?”

Alex shook her head. “That’s not it,” she said, staring at a bargeasitshuffledby.

Page 28

“Well, can’t have you looking like a brooding vampire,” Maia saidafterasilence.“Yourdadwillbefine,andyouguyswilltalk, like you always do. Besides, we should get to the Im-provement part of the meeting.”

“Maia, aren’t you taking this a bit too seriously?” Alex said for what seemed like the thousandth time.

“I think it’s really helpful and constructive, Alex. It’s weird thatwe’vebeensingleforthislong.Thisismywayoffixingit,” Maia said.

“Maia, it’s not—”

“It gives my mum and I something to talk about.”

That one ended quickly. Alex sighed in defeat and followed the woman back down the stairs and into Maia’s bright, modern living room where the eight women were sitting. Everything about the apartment was cheerful and sleek, courtesy of Maia’s British interior-designing mother.

“...I mean, I really think I’m the perfect amount of indepen-dent and vulnerable,” someone said as they walked in.

“Oh? What did we miss?” Maia asked, bouncing over to her chair.

“Emma’s been promoted,” Eun explained in the midst of her silent conversation with Alex that consisted of: ‘everything okay?’ ‘Yes, same old with the papa,’ ‘you’re telling me later,’ ‘of course.’

“Congratulations!Whatdidyoumeanaboutthevulnerablebit?” Maia asked.

“Oh, justthat it’s intimidatingwhenawomanis inahighposition, so I’ve been lucky enough to be promoted without scaring anyone. We can’t all be Hilary Clinton.”

Maianoddedandgrinned.“You’llfindsomeoneinnotime,”she assured Emma.

Alex was silent. She’d tried speaking against this more than once, but gave up when she was berated after the meeting. Eun had talked her into supporting Maia’s little humanitar-ianproject.Theyweretheonlysanepeopleinherlife,Euntold her. And Alex could get some great writing material from all this. So she stayed.

“Maia, what about you?” Eun asked.

“I’ve decided it’s time to settle. Mum’s set up a blind date for next week so we’ll see how it goes.”

Page 29

“But Maia, your mom isn’t—”

“Lexus, I’ve been bonding a lot more with her. We’re so alike,” Maia gushed.

Alex glanced at Eun again, but the woman had her poker face glued on. They’d met Maia’s mother, once, at gradua-tion. She was tall and thin and seemed to look at Maia like a room that needed redecoration. She’d been shocked to hear thatnoneofthemhadasignificantother.“I’dalreadygot-tenMaia’sfathertiedaroundmyfingerbythetimeIgradu-ated,” she’d said while Maia looked at her lap.

“She had a few suggestions that I wanted to share with you guys, anyway. Little tricks, as she put it,” Maia said.

This was like a Jane Austen book club gone wrong. Before college she had never been the type to be surrounded with female friends, choosing instead to hang out with boys and pick up her eating habits from them. Others supposed it stemmed from being raised by a single father. But he wasn’t messy or scatterbrained or a drunk any of the stereotypical things that a stereotypical widower with a daughter would be.

He was the opposite, having only been raised by women; he loved buying Alex shoes and clothes and hair clips and did his very best to make sure she didn’t need another parent. His girlfriends were always perfect and earthy and real. But he had never remarried.

“I’m a two-woman guy,” he told her one night when she was worrying about leaving him alone when she went to college.

“Dad!You’retwo-timingsomeone?Andwhatmovieisthatline from?” she asked.

He laughed. “My life was your mother.” He pointed to her framedphotographonthewall.“Andyou.”Heruffledherhair. “I don’t need anything more.”

He started traveling much more when Alex left for college, alwayscomingbackwithnewclothesorjewelryorpresentsand calling her from God knows where in Australia to tell her about the snake that almost bit him or sending pictures fromMt.FujiinJapan.Themanwasalegendamongherfriends. But now he looked at her like he’d made a mistake somewhere, and he blamed himself for it.

“You seem so lonely, Alex,” he told her that morning. Some-thing had been in the way of their conversation since she’d arrived.Page 30

Alex laughed. “Dad, you of all people know that one isn’t lonelyevenwithoutasignificantother.”

He looked at her, his green eyes mirroring her own. “I of all people know otherwise.”

Alex couldn’t reply.

“Maybe that knife wasn’t the best idea after all,” he said. “You still carry it with you, don’t you?”

Alex nodded, hand moving protectively to her bag. “Dad, I’m late to Maia’s. I need to go,” she told him, escaping to the subway as quickly as possible.

“How about you, Lexus?” Maia asked.

Alexlookedupfromtheloosethreadonherjeans.“I,uh,found an intern for the summer. He looks promising—a junioratPrinceton,andwhenISkype-interviewedhimhedidn’t seem pretentious at all, which was nice.”

“I’m sure you get interesting people trying to work at Ran-dom House,” Emma said.

Alex smiled. “I have some great stories.”

“Isn’titdifficultbeinginsuchahighpositionforsomeone

at such a young age?” Lindsay asked. “I mean, you must not have time to get out and meet people much.”

“I meet people.”

“Like Ross?” Eun snuck in.

Alex blushed. “There was no meaning behind that. And he didn’t like Dickens.”

Actually, he’d stopped texting her after the third time he spentatherplaceandshecrossedhimoffherlistofpoten-tial partners.

“Iwonderifyoufrightenedhim,”Maiamused.Shejerkedup. “I mean—”

“No, you’re probably right,” Alex agreed.

“You probably wouldn’t frighten a woman,” Danae, a friend they’d met alone at a bar before she’d admitted she was les-bian, said.

“Danae, you’re beautiful, but you lack an essential element to my happiness.”

The woman grinned. “Worth a try.”

Page 31

“Mums— Imean,maybe if yougaveoff less of a seriousvibe, men wouldn’t run away so fast,” Maia said, her voice small.

Maia always felt the need to protect her friend, tiptoeing around her unlike she did with anyone else. She worried—her dad probably wanted to see Alex happy and settled and help the man who was so nice.

Now Alex’s dark green eyes were intently focused on her friend. Maia had always accepted her quietness, loved her dark wavy hair and clothing that always seemed to hold some menace to it. She even accepted that the woman car-ried a switchblade in her purse that she knew how to use. But sometimes the woman could scare every thought out of her head except the word ‘run’.

“Why don’t you try going by Alexandra or Alexa at work or something?”

“I like the name Alex.”

“Maia,” Eun interrupted. “I think that’s enough for now.”

Maia sighed and nodded. Eun was queen at reading Alex’s thoughts.

“AndwhileIhavethefloor,”Eunsmiled,heralmondeyescrinkling. “I’ve met someone taller than me and who’s going to take me out tomorrow night.”

Alex frowned. Any man who wasn’t intimated by Eun was either a douche or a really great person. She hoped it was the latter. The last man who’d hit on her grabbed her waist too hard and ended up home with a black eye.

“That’swonderful!”

“Eun, that’s great. Does he play sports?” Alex asked.

“He plays horse-polo actually. His family owns several hors-es and he wants to show me them sometime.”

Douche. When had she ever given a man like that the time of day?

“Alex, he’s not a douche,” Eun laughed, reading her friend’s mind. “I was surprised too,” She made to get up and get a drink from the kitchen. “He said that he’d love to see my long legs on a horse.”

“Eun, when did he tell you that?” Alex asked, turning around toward the kitchen.

“Oh, maybe the second time we had a real conversation?” Eun called from the kitchen, coming back with a beer. Page 32

“Isn’t he funny?”

“Eun, I love him already,” Jenny said, “What else has he said?”

“Oh, he said that I should be a model instead of working in anoffice.Ithoughtitwasadorable.”

“I’veneverbeentoldthat!”Maiasaid,smiling.

“That’s because you’re fun-sized,” Lindsay answered. “You needtofindamanwhosetypeisfun-sized.”

“You’re so perfect. You can make men feel strong and mas-culine without doing anything,” Jenny gushed. That wasn’t new.

“Eun,” Alex said. What had happened during the meetings she’d missed?

“She’s right,Maia,youknowhowhard it’sbeenfindingamanwhodoesn’tfindmeintimidating?”Eunsaid.

“Eun.” Now that she thought about it, Eun never wore her hair so perfectly combed and shined. Or heels that high, for that matter.

“Yes, Alex?”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“Yes, is something wrong?”

“Yes!Yesthereis!”Alexsaid,hervoicecatching.

“Alex,” Eun pleaded, “He’s a really nice guy. And I like him.”

“This man is wrong for you,” Alex said.

“Maybe he’s not,” Eun muttered.

“Deep down every woman wants to be protected, Alex,” Da-naeinterjected.

“Eun, you used to play soccer, and lacrosse, and curse out anyone who hit on you—”

“Yes,” Eun answered. “And I recently realized maybe I should try something else. And look, now I’ve met someone.”

“Come, Alex, don’t look so upset,” Jenny said.

“Lexus,Ithinkyourfatherinfluencedyoutoomuch,”Maiasaid, leaning over in her chair and taking Alex’s hand.

“What?”

“I mean he’s the one who started calling you Alex. He let you be too independent. And as much as he tried, he couldn’t show you how to be feminine. And look how worried he is now.”

Page 33

“Don’t bring my father into this,” Alex said, her voice dan-gerous.

“I mean he gave you that switchblade to carry. Who carries a weapon anymore?”

“I protect myself.”

“But you don’t need a knife for it.”

“Alex, you are a beautiful woman. You could be so gentle. But when men start getting to know you, you scare them away,andIthinkthatmaybetheknifejustmakesyouredg-es that much sharper.” Maia said.

“You could soften up a bit, that’s all. Everyone needs some-one to take care of them, and I read an article that women need it more than men,” Eun said.

“Whydon’tyoujustgiveitatry?”Maiacajoled.

“Something small, like wearing flowers or something,”someone said.

Eun walked over and kneeled to look Alex in the eyes. “Why don’t you give me your switchblade to hang onto?”

Alex’s father had given her the knife on her fourteenth birth-daybeforeshestartedhighschool,whenhefinallystartedletting her stay out after dark.

“Alex,” he said when she looked at him, confused. “Your mother wasn’t from the safest neighborhood, and she al-ways carried this around because it’s not so safe out there for women.”

“Won’t I get in trouble?” she asked him.

“Keep it hidden and folded. It doesn’t look like anything dangerous if youdo.But that’s just the trick, littleninja,”he said, kneeling to her height, grey hairs sneaking past his otherwise black hair.

“I want you to be able to take care of yourself out there,” he said, holding her gaze with eyes that matched hers. “Your mom would have done the same thing,” he laughed. “And sinceyouremindmeofher,Ithinkit’sjustperfect.”

“ButhowdoIuseit?”sheasked,flickingitout,andbackinagain.

“I’ll teach you,” he winked. “Your mom taught me how.”

Page 34

But now he regretted it, apparently.

Alex looked at Eun’s outstretched hand that had pulled her up in soccer club so many times before, and then into her eyes. “It was my mother’s.”

“Iknow.I’llkeepitsafe,justfornow.YouknowI’veneverlost anything,” Eun replied.

Alex looked at the other women. Eun had taught her how to turn her hair into an art piece, Maia had shown her how to catch someone’s gaze and hold it. They’d been mothering herforsevenyearsnow;sheguessedthiswasn’tanydiffer-ent.

She took out the little blade, with its engraving of a fox on the handle and put it into Eun’s palm.

“Your mother would be proud,” Eun said.

Alex smiled with closed lips, nodding as she let go of the handle.

“That’s our girl,” Maia said, hugging Alex’s shoulders.

Page 35

Anna Silk

Rooftop VigilPage 36

Kat LewisThe Children of Nanny Black

Nanny Black hobbled out of the room, her ebony dress as black as the moonless night she arrived. To this day, I can still hear the wheels of her pram creaking over the floorboards. I can still feel the way she cooled the room, birthing goose bumps and frosting every living breath. The first time I saw her, it was only a glimpse. I shot from my bed, a cold sweat clinging curls to my face. Barefoot, I padded down the hall to nursery. Through the cracked door, I saw her long dress bil-lowing in the open window’s breeze. She stood over my daughter’s crib, hands choking the railing. I squinted my eyes at veil of charcoal hair obscuring her face. The floors whined underneath my feet. She looked up from baby Mary and slowly began to turn her head towards me. Startled, I pressed my back against the wall just out of her sight. As I my heart beat in my ears, I sucked in a brave breath before peering around the corner. The room was empty, nothing to see or hear but the chiffon curtain flapping by the window and the soft patter of baby Mary’s breaths.

I can only remember half of my eldest daughter’s face. When the Spanish flu invaded, my family joined the army of white masks. Everyday I looped a mask around Helen’s ears despite her protests. It was no use though. My husband brought the disease home with him. It hailed from his lips, laced in every sigh, laugh and cough. It soon nestled its way into Helen’s lungs and painted her skin with an ashen blue. I’ll never forget the way blood spurted from her chapped lips and snaked out of her nose like a red teardrop.

Baby Mary and I were next. When I awoke from one of my sleeping spells, I saw Nanny Black gaping out my window into the night. Her pram rested beside her hood drawn as she rocked it back and forth. I could hear Mary cooing from inside. As I sat up in bed, she moved away from the window, taking Mary with her. I begged for her to stay and she stopped walking. She looked at me; face skinned to the bone and bleached white with despair. Her skull’s sunken eyes stared at me, piercing with their emptiness. Her jawbones groaned as she creaked mouth open. “Soon. . .” the word fell out between her teeth in a long, tired rasp. She continued towards the door, walking over my grave with measured steps like a bride’s pace down the aisle. With every bit of strength I could scrape together, I stumbled into the dark hallway. She emerged from Helen’s room, bone fingers wrapped around her blue hand. I called for my daughter and she glanced at me, blood still splotched on her nose and nightgown. Nanny Black hugged her headto her bosom and guided her away. As I watched the pram and their figures dissipate into the shadows of the hall, I collapsed. There on the floor, I waited and waited, hacking up blood and pain. I stared at the hall’s black pitch with hope but Nanny Black never came back for me.

Page 37

Anna Silk

No MetroPage 38

the girls haven’t put on their bobby socksor lace gloves and tailored skirts with crinolines cut below the knee–because knock knees and bruised kneesand scraped knees and bony kneesdon’t make for Sunday best–no hats have been donned, roses pinned above the brim,or sunscreen lathered early in the morning–early enough to protect the Sunday best from grease,lateenoughtokeepskinjustmilkyavoid looking like a bowl of olives too early

C. OrlandoSunday Best

in the season–girls haven’t processed inand sat neatly in pews with ankles and legscrossedneatly,fingerslacedandmotherswatching, carefully, fathers in pews and preaching alike. no girls have congre-gatedhands laced atop the holy book,discussed scripture and what it is to be pure.the girls don’t believe anymore,and have rid themselves of bobby socks and lace glovesand tailored skirts and crinolines cut below the kneeand hats and sunscreen and the only communionthey receive each Sunday is that whichfires

dopaminergic receptors in the church parking lotand the only peace shared is the smoke theypass along and they’re all bowls of olivesand scraped knees bruised kneesknobby knees skinny knees bony kneesknock knees have all become Sunday bestand nothing is neatly crossed or neatly lacedbecause they’ve lost that blind hope that mother and father will lead them rightand watch carefully and do them welland that Sunday best is best and they’veredefinedtheir holy books and burned their pinned roses.

Page 39

Kat LewisBuriedAmongFireflies

ThenightIkilledmybrother,firefliescircledaroundhisbody.Theyhaloedhimwiththeirwarmflashesofyellow.Askids,weusedto chase them around in those very same woods. Pine needles crunched under our Crocs and Converse as we lunged for them. Our hands would clap together at the same time but my sweaty palms would always open, holding nothing but hot summer air. Every timeIglancedbacktoBradwithdisappointmentsaggingmyface,I’dseeaglowofyellowleakingthroughthecracksofhisfingersandthesatisfiedsmirkplasteredonhisface.“Betterlucknexttime,”he’dalwayssaywithapitilessshrug.

Inhighschool,wetradedcatchingfirefliesforskirtchasing.He’daskpryingquestions,settingthemuplikemousetraps,tofindoutwhom I was interested in. Once he found out, I’d see him strutting down a hall of lockers with a gamely arm draped over her shoul-der. On the rare occasion he couldn’t reel my crush in like a singing siren to ships, he plagued her mind with lies about halitosis or bed-wetting. When I’d try to talk to her, she’d give me a rushed, “I’m gonna be late for class”, before hurrying down the hall. I never hadtofacerejectionalonethough.Bradwasalwayslurkingaroundthecorner,readytopatmeonthebackandsay,“Betterlucknext time.”

Ayearaftercollege,Ibroughtmyfiancé,Emily,homeforThanksgiving.OurparentsintroducedthemselveswithfriendlyhugsandBrad shook her hand, eyeing me with a devious gleam in his gaze. I warned Emily about what his intentions likely were. Even though she stroked my cheek, whispering about how “silly” and “paranoid” I was, she heeded my warning.

ThesmellofbarbequecharcoalandchlorinegreeteduswhenwereturnedfortheFourthofJuly.WhileMomwenttobuyfireworks,DadandIpackedlunchforahike.“Areyousureyoudon’twanttocome?”IaskedEmilyasIfilledupaNalgeneatthefridge.

“Positive,” she said. “I’ll only slow you guys down.” Setting the water bottle aside, I gave her a peck on the forehead.

Page 40

Outside, I listened to Dad rant about a car he was restoring. His water bottle’s slosh accompanied his words, swishing in time with hissteps.Withaquickglanceintomybackpack,Irealizedleftmywaterinthekitchen.“Youcanjusthavesomeofmine,”Dadof-fered and I looked back to the house that was only a few hundred yards away.

“That’sokay,I’llbebackinaminute,”Irepliedandjoggedoff.Inthefoyer,Iheardwhatsoundedlikesomeoneknockingonthewall:

Rat-tat-tat.

I followed the thumping up the stairs.

Rat-tat-tat.

It led me to Brad’s closed bedroom door. The sounds of giggles and his headboard rapping against his poster-papered wall emanated through the white wood door. A playful but haunting, “You stop it,” crept out from underneath the door, crawled up my feet and legs and shoulders before slithering into my ears. As much as I wanted to burst in there, I forced myself down the stairs, listening to the headboard’s drum as I went.

Rat-tat-tat.

Afterdinner,IinvitedBradintothewoodstocatchfirefliesfor“oldtimes’sake.”Weleftthehouse,earsberatedbythedroneofci-cadas.Inacloudoflightningbugsthatflickingfromdimoblack,westoodwithoureyeschasingtheirlazymovements.“Thetrick,”Bradsaidwithacadenceofpseudowisdomandhisgazeontheflashingfogofbugs.“Istowait.Letthemhoveraroundyou,settleinto a pattern then–” He clapped his hands together and a frantic light beamed from his hands. “Strike,” he explained, releasing the bug from his grip.

Rockinhand,Itookhisadvice.Iwatchedhimsteparoundinaslowcircleasheeyedthefireflies.Thethirdtimeheturnedhisbackto me, I swung my arm, knocking the rock against the side of his head.

Page 41

He dropped to the ground and I followed him, taking great pleasure in the sound, a cracking squish, of skull against rock. A spritz of blood freckled my face, refreshing like stray sprinkler droplets on a muggy afternoon. When it was done, I buried him there among thefireflies.AsIwalkedaway,Itookonelastglanceattheupturneddirtofhisshallowgrave.Ahumidbreezeruffledtheoverheadbranches.Foramoment,inthewind,IsworeIheardthewhisperofBrad’svoice.“Betterlucknexttime.”ButIwroteitoffasnoth-ing but the guilt creeping into my veins.

I cleaned up with the hose out back before going inside. “Where’s your brother?” Mom asked at the sink, scrubbing dishes while Em-ily dried them. Emily looked at me, expectant, with this painful curiosity in her eyes.

“One of his high school friends invited him to a party.” The lie eased out simple like breath or blinking. But the quiver absent from my voice quaked through my hands but I hid the fault lines in my pockets.

“Jason?” Mom asked and only made my lie all the more real as I nodded.

“He’ll probably be back in the morning.”

As the sun woke up me up from a sleepless rest, the doorbell chimed. Groggy, I made my way downstairs to answer it but Mom got therefirst.Whensheopenedthedoor,fearburnedmystomachasIwatchedBradstepinfromtheporch.Hestoodinthefoyer,faceunmarred and bloodless. “Did you have fun last night?” Mom asked as she hugged him. “Yep,” he said before turning a dark gaze to me, “So much fun.” I stood at the foot of the staircase gaping and frozen. Brad strolled over and yanked me into a hug. He wrapped hisarmaroundmyneck,squeezingittightenoughformyfacetoflushwithterrorandshame.Chappedlipsatmyears,hishotbreathrippled over the side of my face as he whispered, “There won’t be a next time.”

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Elizabeth WinkelhoffWoman Page 43

Aafia SyedMy First Boyfriend

It’s summer vacation, and we are both home, so we met in between our houses at the halfway point - the school bus stop – the same place we met every morning of every weekday for eleven years before parting waysinto the “real world.”

I hugged him and his shoulders were still bony, although he towered over me. We walked alongside the road. The conversation was a creature evolving: born a formality, itgrewintonostalgia,andfinallyreachedtoday. There wasn’t enough time for the future.

The road kept our attention; it laid out strange tokens for us to examine. A metal boomerang covered in rust, a cigarettelighter painted hot pink, and a fruit stickercovered in glitter, stuck to miscellaneous,frayed pieces of paper. These things caughtour eyes, and pulled us away from words.

We became explorers once again, justlikeweusedtobe–adventurers!I watched him pick up each token; hebentoverjustlikehedidasachildtrying to dig up a note we had buried exactly one year before, hoping it had fossilized. I don’t think

we ever found the note on that third gradeafternoon, but he wanted to be an archaeologist one day, or maybea paleontologist, and I wanted to write about imaginary worlds in which trees could speak and I was Queen of the Trees, so it didn’t matter that we had to pretend the note was stolen by a vicious sewer monster. It was good practice. Pretending always is.

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Diamond Pollard“Twenty Questions”

“How old are you now baby girl?”It’sthefirsttimehe’saskedmetoday. I nod and smile“I’m twenty, Pa.”

Hejumpsbackinsurprise,a gummy grin spreading his face.As he discourages me from telling anyonemy age for it might give his away.

We walk side-by-side for a bituntil he looks at me with curious eyes:“How old are you now, baby girl?”I frown slightly, “I’m twenty, Pa.”

It’sonlybeenfiveminutesand I forget his constantquestioningisnotajokeor a game to him. He wants to know.

“How old are you now, Baby girl?”I clench my teeth, sighing. WonderingifIshouldindulgebecauseitisn’tjusthisquestioningthat is getting old.

“I’m twenty, Pa.” I answer with a knowing smilebecause I know these questionswill only last a little whilelonger.How old are you baby girl?

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Biobele Braide

WandererPage 46

Emily Dorffer Beastly Little Boy

Alice groaned in exasperation at the sight of the trail of muddy paw prints that stretched from the backyard through the kitchen into the dining room. Yet another mess she would have to clean up. Between all of that filth and the disaster area that was her son’s bedroom, Alice would have an awful lot of cleaning to do tonight. But that would have to wait; she had to cook dinner before her six year old son got too cranky. Alice selected a fillet of salmon from the fridge, coated it with fresh parsley and dill from the plants she kept in the tiny pots on the window sill, and dropped it into the waiting frying pan. She hummed a little tune to herself as she worked, trying to experience the joy cooking used to bring her when her husband was still alive. Before an extremely protective mother bear had ended the park ranger’s life two years ago when he had accidentally wandered too close to where her cubs had been playing, Ulysses had been a huge help around the house; he had been especially talented when it came to helping his wife turn ordinary meals into extraordinary masterpieces and keeping their energetic son reasonably well behaved.

Alice had just added a splash of lemon juice to the salmon when she was torn from her memories by the appear-ance of her son, Bernard. The boy was much larger than the average six year old. In fact, he was almost twice the size of most boys his age both in height and weight. Bernard was far from an ordinary boy; however, he was quite average for a young bear aside from his ability to speak. Even that was bound to fade eventually though. Alice had already watched as her wall defacing, toy destroying, sanity damaging child morphed from a disobedient little boy who was nothing but a mischief maker even at the worst of times into a dangerous, ill tempered beast following his father’s death. The changes had been small at first, an increase in Bernard’s appetite and frequent cravings for fish, but more alarming changes such as an enormous growth spurt and the appearance of abnormally long inci-sors made the metamorphosis quite alarming for Alice. Bernard had always been a bit wild, but Alice had never expected him to sprout brown fur the color of fresh mud after a long storm all over his body or to begin snarling at her if she tried to make him behave.

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It had been especially horrible to be around Bernard when he grew claws; as small and blunt as they were at the time, they had still left Alice with a handful of scars along her arms after she had accidentally ignited her son’s temper by trying to convince him to learn to hunt for himself like other bears. However, Alice had long since re-signed herself to her role as a glorified zookeeper by the time Bernard’s physical transformation was complete, forced to work from home in order to care for her charge.

Hiring someone to watch the bear for her was out of the question. As miserable as Alice was, juggling her re-sponsibilities as a mother and as a freelance writer of articles for a nature magazine, Camper’s Digest, she sim-ply could not afford to hire anyone. They would probably quit within a week anyway. Finding a babysitter for an unruly child was one thing, but finding anyone who could possibly handle a particularly disobedient and often downright aggressive bear was quite another. Besides, how could Alice ever bring herself to ask anyone to endan-ger themselves on a daily basis just because she was stressed out and exhausted all the time? Bernard was quite a large burden to bear, but Alice was his mother; it was her responsibility to take care of him at least until she could find a more suitable living situation for the boy. All boys had to move out eventually and Bernard was no excep-tion. The hulking mass of brown fur addressed his mother in his oddly deep, rumbling voice. “When’s dinner?” He lifted his nose into the air and inhaled the tantalizing scent of fresh salmon only to notice one crucial detail was wrong. He snorted in agitation. “You’re ruining it again! Haven’t I told you that cooking the meat destroys its flavor?”

Alice slid the cooked salmon onto a plate and added a generous handful of blueberries. “I’m just not comfortable with you eating raw fish. It could make you sick.” Not likely. Eating raw flesh was usually only hazardous for hu-man boys. Alice nudged the plate towards Bernard, taking care to make sure it was close enough to the edge of the marble counter for easy access while still avoiding the risk of the plate crashing to the floor as soon as Bernard started eating. Satisfied that the young grizzly had been catered to and certain that he would be sufficiently dis-tracted, she devoured the ham sandwich that she had hidden in the fridge earlier that day. Bears were prone to stealing food left out in the open, and Bernard was no exception. Leaving her food out in the open simply was not an option anymore. Alice practically had to inhale her meal to prevent her son from snatching it out of her bare hands as it was. Alice jumped slightly when Bernard’s plate fell to the ground and shattered with an ear piercing crash. Bernard had attempted to roll the last of the blueberries towards him.

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Alice knew she should have used strawberries instead: they were much easier for bulky, somewhat clumsy paws to move without causing a mess. Ignoring the sharp shards of plate surrounding his paws, Bernard wiped his purple stained muzzle against the kitchen wall, leaving behind a long purple streak as he trudged back into the yard and the chilly early Autumn air.

Alice gathered her cleaning supplies and began vigorously scrubbing the mud off the floor after she disposed of the fragments of the plate. She couldn’t keep living like this. Not only was it extremely stressful, but it was also ridiculously dangerous. Her son became increasingly irritable and his appetite became more insatiable as he pre-pared to hibernate through Winter; Bernard always seemed to be growling these days whether the dreaded sound came from his stomach or deep within his throat. Something seemed to get broken every day now. Today it was a plate; tomorrow it could be Alice’s neck. Hopefully the sedative Alice had slipped into her son’s salmon after she brought it home from the market yesterday would prevent that!

Once the kitchen was spotless once again, Alice hurried over to the window. She pressed her face against the glass like a child waiting for her parents to come home as she waited for her son to succumb to the sedatives. Hopefully he would drop before he ventured out of her line of sight. Living in Alaska meant that the wilderness was Alice’s backyard. Bernard could easily evade his mother there if he so desired. Tonight, the grizzly elected to stay close to home instead of wandering deeper into the woods for his nightly foraging trip. He scratched the hump of his back against a pine tree before nosing around by the roots of the tree and under a nearby rotting log, searching for any mushrooms that could serve as his dessert. Bernard flopped down with a dissatisfied huff, shutting his eyes. Alice scurried over to the phone and grabbed it before pausing for a moment to contemplate what she was about to do. She could still stop her plan if she wanted too; Bernard would probably just thing his sleepiness had been caused by the time of the year. Alice’s fingers hovered over the phone’s buttons. What was she doing? This creature may be hard to deal with, but he was still her son. Could she really live with her decision knowing that she would never see her little boy again?

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Alice’s eyes wandered over to the picture of Ulysses she kept in the kitchen and wondered what he would think of what she was doing. As Alice stared into her now dead husband’s emerald green eyes, she found her answer. Ulysses would be ashamed to know that she had ever considered this plan. He would have told her to buckle down and teach Bernard how to behave instead of running like a weak and helpless rabbit from her problems. Just as she was about to put the phone back on the receiver, Alice remembered the last time she had seen the love of her life, hours after the fatal attack. His neck had been crooked, bent at an unnatural angle. His mouth had been fro-zen in a silent scream of agony, almost as if it was still reacting to the enormous bloody gashes on the ranger’s broad chest. He hadn’t even tried to run, his coworkers had told Alice when they delivered the life-ruining news. He had stood in place with his arms spread wide to give the illusion of being much bigger than he was, looked the furious mother bear in the eye, and tried to keep the grizzly’s attention and intimidate her long enough for his co-workers to escape. His plan had worked, but it had cost him his life. Alice did not want to die the same way, stand-ing foolishly against Mother Nature in an impossible fight she knew she had absolutely no chance of winning. Alice whispered an apology to her husband’s picture. She knew she was being a coward, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want die because of the aggression of a beast; she wanted to live. If the mangled fawn carcass Alice had found days earlier had been any indication, it wouldn’t be long before Bernard finally snapped. Before she could begin to regret her heartbreaking decision, Alice called one of her husband’s former co-workers with trembling fingers and an even shakier voice. Hopefully her son wouldn’t be able to talk again or wake up until they success-fully relocated him to a more suitable habitat. She couldn’t stand to see how he would react to her betrayal or, even worse, possibly hurt himself or the rangers as he attempted to escape. “Hello, I would like to report a bear sighting near my house.”

The rangers told Alice to try to keep as calm as possible and stay as far away from the bear as she could; they were on their way. Alice put the phone down after she assured the rangers that she would be careful. It was only then that the reality of the situation sunk in: her son would be relocated. The rangers would move him to an area with plenty of food, water, and a cozy den where he could hibernate through the winter without any interruptions. Al-ice couldn’t resist peeking out the window again. Her son would probably be much happier without his mother constantly failing to treat him with the proper amount of unconditional love a child deserved and the proper amount of respect a bear demanded, but Alice would still miss the troublemaker.

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She still remembered that special sweetness he would show when he would apologize to her for his various acts of mischief before this mess had started. Alice desperately wanted her little boy back; she hoped her gargantuan bear would at least remember her. Alice could still see the mound of fur curled up outside, but something was wrong. The bear was moving.

Alice watched in horror as the grizzly drowsily rose to his feet. He opened his powerful jaws in a massive yawn, exposing his monstrous teeth. Both Alice and Bernard swung there heads in the direction of a small group of men that had silently made there way through through the underbrush. Alice knew the rangers meant no harm, but Bernard didn’t seem to reach that conclusion. He reared up on his back paws, towering over the noticeably in-timidated but still fiercely determined men. When Bernard let loose a throaty roar at the men, everyone involved looked absolutely horrified. Alice could hardly believe her ears. The same bear that had criticized her cooking earlier that same day could no longer talk, let alone yell.

Bernard himself seemed more terrified than Alice had ever seen him. He had dropped back down onto all fours and was letting out a series of miserable noises that sounded more like a panic attack than anything else. One of the rangers took advantage of the bear’s confusion and shot a tranquilizer into Bernard. Bernard bellowed what Alice assumed was a scream before charging at the men with the dart protruding from him like the world’s largest thorn. The men scattered into the underbrush to wait for the creature to drop. Bernard swung his head around to try and dislodge the dart, but he couldn’t quite reach it. Finally, he gave up after his motions became increasingly labored and sluggish. The last thing Bernard did before falling unconscious and being relocated so deep in the forest that Alice could never find him again no matter how much she searched for him, was to look through the kitchen window at his guilt ridden mother with furious, terrified, sorrowful eyes. Alice would never forget those dark colored eyes for as long as she lived.

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Danielle Jacobson Hana ChopHuman Nature Isola di BuranoPage 52

SheriffWalkerslidoffhishorse,duckingbehindanearbyboulder.Threedeputiesfollowedandcrawledtotheirownpositions.Eachofthemhadarifleoverhisshoulderandworeadarkdustercoat.SheriffWalkerpeekedovertheboulder.Theywereinfrontofanoldmine,abandonedlongbeforemostofthemhadbeenborn.OnlySheriffWalkerrememberedhowexcitedtheminershadbeenattheprospectofgoldandsilver,onlytofindveinsofpyrite.Oneofthedeputieshadreportedtohaveseenasmallgroupofmentakingshelterintheminelastnight.TheywerepresumedtobethelocalgangofbanditsthatSheriffWalkerhadrunoutoftownjustlastweek,ledbytheinfamous“SammySnake-Tongue.”

SheriffWalkergavethesignal.Thedeputiesrantotheentranceofthemine,riflesdrawn.Theonewhohadfiledthereport,AdamRedding,steppedinfirst.Themine’slanternshadlonggoneout,andhewasquicklyengulfedinthetunnel’sdarkness.Afterabouta minute, he returned to the others.

“Coast is clear.”

SheriffWalkerledthepackofhorsestothesideofthemountain,outofsight,beforehecaughtupwithhisdeputies.Hepulledouta short stick from his backpack. Tightly coiled rope covered the thicker end of it. He motioned toward the newest deputy, Ernest Wells.

“Yeah,Sheriff?”

Ernest’s words were met with hushes from the rest of the men and a set of knuckles knocking against his ear. He nearly let out a cry inpainbeforethesheriffslappedhishandagainstErnest’slips.

“The hell d’ya think I’m askin’ ya for, Ernie? Gimme a damn match and shut yer mouth.”

Keven Perez Take Your Shot

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Ernestfumbledwithapackofmatchesinhiscoatpocketandhandedittothesheriff.SheriffWalkerletgoofhismouthandtookone of the matches. He brushed the roped end of the stick along the inside of a broken lantern, collecting any remnants of oil. He then lit the match and pressed it against the rope, fashioning a torch. He handed it to Adam.

“Takelead.Ernie,coverourasses.AndWally,Idon’twantyerfingeranywherebutthattrigger.Y’seeanyone,putleadinbetweentheir eyes.”

Adam began to move further into the tunnel, torch held in front of him. Wallace Henson, the tallest of the bunch at six feet and four inches,kepthisrifleinlinewithhisshoulder.Ernestpointedhisrifleatthefloor,inhalingasharpbreathasthelightoftheentrancesoon disappeared from sight.

“Sheriff.Whatifitain’tSammySnake-Tongue?”

“Son, I swear to God, if you don’t shut yer damned hole.”

Thegroupcrouchedintoatunnelwithalowroof.Thescaffoldingalongthesidesofthetunnelseemedtohavewitheredawayalongwith the miners’ dreams of gold. A strong shove was all that was needed to snap one of the wooden posts. Wallace’s back was at a nearforty-fivedegreeangleashetriedtoavoidsmackinghisheadagainsttheroof.Thetunneleventuallygavewaytoalargerclear-ing,themainhubofthemine.Rustedtrackswerelaidinthreedifferentdirections,leadingfurtherintothedarkdepthsofthecave.

“Well, shit. Looks like we’re splitting up, folks.”

“We only got one torch,” reminded Adam.

“Ifsomegood-for-nothingpackofbanditscanfindtheirwayinthedark,socanwe.WallyandAdam,yougotleft.I’llgostraight.Ernie—“

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“Right, coming with you.”

“Like I want your sorry tail holding onto me. You got left.”

“But,Sheriff,youknowIain’tneverdonesomethinglikethisbefore.Ican’tevenshootstraight.Italwaysgoesleft.”

“Then aim to the right.”

SheriffWalkerdisappearedintothemiddletunnelbeforeErniecouldgetanotherwordin.AdamandWallacehadgoneto.Withnotorchandariflehecouldn’taim,hesteppedslowlyintotherightmosttunnel.

Each step he took onto the uneven iron tracks was followed by a low creaking noise. He could’ve sworn he heard the noise at least twicewhilestandingstill.Whenthishappened,heheldhisrifleinfrontofhim,atremblingfingerbrushingagainstthetrigger.Aftera minute or two, he would continue onward, his pace a bit quicker.

Beforelong,hefoundhimselfinanotherlargeroomandattheendoftheunfinishedtracks.Aminingcartlayonitsside,afewhand-picks and other tools spilling out from it. Ernest sat on top of the cart and sighed. Another tunnel led out of the area at the far side of the room, but the roof was much lower and didn’t look to be as carefully carved out. Ernest decided it probably led to a dead end, likely to have had held veins of the unwanted pyrite. He couldn’t help but wonder if whoever they were chasing was in a sense fool’s gold, an unwanted group of individuals instead of the WANTED: Sammy Snake-Tongue and his gang.

ThesoundofleadcollidingwithstonerustledErnestfromhisthoughts.Heinstinctivelyduckedbehindthecart,holdinghisrifleagainsthisform.Moregunfirefollowed.AvoiceresemblingAdam’ssoundednearbyamongstthepopsofriflesandpistols.Ernestmumbledaprayerbeforeherantowardthelowtunnel.Forthefirsttime,hethankedthefactthathewasn’tastallasWallace,forhelikely would have had to crawl through the low space. Jagged rocks tore into the soles of his boots as he rushed along, the increasing volumeofgunfirefuelinghimonward.

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To his surprise, a speck of light appeared in the distance, growing wider with each step he took. The tunnel eventually widened, and Ernest pressed himself against the wall, carefully sliding his way to the lit exit. He found himself on a high ledge in a wide room. A woodenladderwastheonlythingconnectinghimtothegroundfloor.Severallittorcheslinedthewalls,andcrates,barrels,andbagsofallsizeswerelitteredonthelowerfloor.Thehideoutofagangofbandits.

Thegunfightwasbelowhim.Hehittheground,crawlinguptotheedgeoftheledge.Hecouldseetwomenhidingbehindawallofbarrels, occasionally holding out their pistols above them and shooting blindly across the room. Ernest followed the whizzing bullets toseeWallacepressedupagainstawoodenpost.Adamandthesheriffweren’tinsight.

Wallace peeked out from behind the post and shot a few rounds into the barrels shielding the bandits, using it as an opportunity to rollbehindacratejustinfrontofhim.Aclicksounded.Oneofthebanditshadrunoutofammo.Hetossedhispistoltothesideand ducked out from the line of barrels, running to what Ernest guessed was a nearby stockpile of weapons. Two bullets tore through hischestbeforehecouldfindnewcover.

“Yeah,youshootthoseassholes,Wally!”

TheremainingbanditturnedtothesoundofErnest’soutburstandfired.Ernestshuffledbackward,thebulletwhizzingpasthishead. He looked back over the edge. The bandit wasn’t there anymore. The ladder beside him began to wobble slightly. He stum-bledbackward,pointinghisrifleoutinfrontofhim.Thebandit’shandreachedthetopoftheladder.Hefired.Thebulletflewtotheleftofthehand.Thebanditwasabouttopullhimselfontotheledgebeforethesquishingnoiseofleadtearingthroughfleshwasheard. The bandit coughed up a drop of blood before both he and the ladder fell backward. Ernest glanced over the edge once more. Wallacestoodinthecenteroftheroom,pointinghisrifleinErnest’sdirection.

“Don’tshoot,don’tshoot!It’sme.”

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“I know who you are, shithead. Doesn’t want to make me shoot you any less. Get your ass down here.”

Wallace kicked the corpse of the bandit out from on top of the ladder and lifted it upright. Ernest descended quickly and held out his hand.

“You saved my skin, Wally.”

“Just thank Christ that scumbag was stupid enough to think I wouldn’t see him climbing a freakin’ ladder.”

“Say,where’sAdamandthesheriff?”

Wallace grimaced and pointed to the wooden post he had been hiding behind. Adam lay slumped against the other side of it, head loweredandbackturned.Ernestdroppedhisrifleandmovedtoruntowardhim,butWallacegrippedhisshoulderandpulledhimback.

“Isn’t anything that can be done for him, Ernie. Clean through the head. Let’s go.”

“No,no,c’mon,Wally.Wecan’tjustleavehimhere.”

“Listen.We’renotdone.Snake-Tongueisstillsomewhereinhere,andIbeteitherthesheriff’salreadyfoundhim,orhe’salreadyfoundthesheriff.”

“Wecan’tjustleavehimhere.He’sgottwolittlegirls.Itain’tright.”

“Deputiesdie,Ernie.It’sourjob.Hetooktheoath,sameasus.”

Gunfiresoundednearby.WallacepickedupErnest’srifleandshoveditagainsthischest.

“Move your ass, Ernie. Stay close.”Page 57

ErneststaredatAdam’slimpformbeforebeingpushedinfrontofWallace.ThetwodeputiesfollowedthegunfirebacktothemainhubwiththethreesplittunnelsandtookthepaththatSheriffWalkerhadtaken.Thetunnelabruptlytookasteepinclineandthetwosloweddowninanattempttoclimbit.Bythetimetheyhadreachedthetop,thegunfirehadceased.Theflickeringshadowsofa torch could be seen up ahead.

Wallace motioned for Ernest to stop a few feet from a corner. He moved to turn into the corner, but as soon as his foot inched past the wall, a bullet found itself lodged into it. Wallace stumbled backward, yelping in pain.

SheriffWalkerturnedthecorner,hishandsraisedabovehishead.Amanfollowedcloselyafterhim,ablackbandanatiedaroundhisface.BothWallaceandErnestrecognizedhimasSammySnake-Tongue.Heheldapistoltothesideofthesheriff’shead.WallaceandErnestraisedtheirrifles,promptingSnake-TonguetopullSheriffWalkeragainsthimasahumanshield.

“Evenin’, boys. Fancy seein’ you ‘round these parts, huh?”

“Shoot!Wally,shoot!”criedSheriffWalker.

Wallacetensedhisfingeronthetrigger,squintingashetriedtotakeaim.SammySnake-Tongueshiftedhisheadbehindthesheriffand laughed.

“Go ahead, Mr. Wally. I dare ya.”

“I don’t have a shot, sir.”

“You got ten seconds, Mr. Wally.”

“Til what?” asked Ernest.

“Six.”Page 58

“Takeyourshot,deputy!”

“Three.”

“Sheriff,Ican’t--.”

“One.”

Agunfired.Wallacedroppedhisrifleandfelltotheside.SammySnake-Tongueclickedhistongueagainsthischeekandreposi-tionedhispistolagainstthesideofthesheriff’shead.

“I gave him time, I did.”

“Ernie, you need to send this asshole to the dirt.”

Erneststruggledtoraisehisrifle,glancingbetweenthepronebodyofWallaceandSammySnake-Tongue.

“Don’tletanyonesayIwasn’tfair.Mr.Ernie,wasit?I’magiveyouthesametime.Tenseconds.Ain’tIfair,sheriff?”

“Ernie, he’s gonna kill us both anyway.”

Ernestshutoneeyeandaimedhisrifleforward.SammySnake-Tongue’sheadwasinhissights.

“Hey,whoknows?Killin’asheriffgivesyouonehelluvareputation.Shoothim,maybeyoujoinmylittlegang.”

Hebrusheshisfingeralongthetrigger,readytosqueeze.HeglancesdownatWallaceonelasttimeandmumblesaprayer.

“Goddammit,takeyourshot!”

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ErnestshiftshisrifletotherightofSammySnake-Tongue,aimingnowatSheriffWalker’sheadandfires.Thebulletwhizzestotheleft and buries itself into Snake-Tongue’s skull. He falls back onto the ground with a resounding thud.

“Sheriff,areyouallright?”

ThesheriffglancesoverhisshoulderandspitsonSammySnake-Tongue’scorpse.HedustsoffhiscoatandstaresdownErnest.

“Didyoujusttrytoshootme?”

“You said to the aim to the right, sir.”

“Not when the right is my damned head. Get your shit together, son.”

SheriffWalkerslidtoaseatagainstthewall,pullingoutacigarfromwithinhiscoat.HemotionstoErnest,whopullsoutthepackof matches without a word.

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EditorsandStaffStaff

President: Ruth Portes

Vice President: Annie Cho

Secretary: Evelyn Ho

LayoutChair: Hannah Ingersoll

PoetryChairs: Annie Cho, Katherine

QuinnAlizay JalisiDebbie Ou

Laura EwenKaty Li

Rikki JarvisSi Yeon Lee

Sonal ShardaSophie Johnson

ProseChair: Lydia Young-

manAllison Schingel

Anna SilkAnne Hollmuller

Kat LewisKathleen KusworoMadeleine Wheeler

Sooean Chin

Visual ArtChairs: Caitlin Dw-

yer, Gulnar Tuli Anna Silk

Candice GardMadeleine Wheeler

Yuqing Zhu

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See the Magazine Online:

http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/thoroughfare/

Elizabeth Winkelhoff