The Girl on the Street by Caroline Livingston

She lived in a small apartment, with rooms that each wore two faces. The kitchen was also the dining room, and the living room also served as her father’s sleeping quarters. 

The air was rank with the musky cologne of unwashed dishes and unfinished arguments, and so she sought refuge by the window, through which whitewashed sunlight surged like the tide. 

She would draw there, because she had never been very good at words. They tasted funny in her mouth, and they didn’t fit right in her hands. So she drew. 

She had but one sketchpad, dogeared and worn down by the rubbery touch of her stern-faced eraser, and she drew everything that she saw. She drew the red-hot anger of her parents upon those snow-white pages; she drew bursts of city lights like fireworks; she drew her thoughts that could not find words. 

But most of all, she drew the girl. 

There was a girl who walked by her window each day, a girl hovering right around her age – perhaps a bit younger. 

This girl was carelessly beautiful, in the way some girls are allowed to be; not arrogant, but effortless, floating through her day like a feather. 

She had long dark hair which flowed from her like a waterfall, and icy eyes which drank up the sunlight in small crystalline sips, and an angelic nose, the kind of nose with a delicate silhouette. 

She wore a white button-down sweater like a swathe of cotton clouds, and dove-grey jeans which fell gracefully above her ankles. 

It was so very pleasant to look down upon her. 

The girl in the apartment much preferred to look at this girl than at herself. So she looked, and she drew. 

She ignored the crooked slant of her own nose; the murky, basement quality of her own eyes; the faded silence of her own secondhand clothes. 

She simply looked at the girl on the street instead of worrying about these other things. 

Each day, she would wait for the girl, and she would capture this new, fleeting image upon a fresh page in her sketchpad. Sometimes she would experiment with a soft, absent-minded hum, to try and blunt the razor-sharp words thrown by her parents, but mostly she sat and she watched. 

She envisioned a story for the girl, a story which wore many layers: perhaps the girl was immensely wealthy, and went to an elite academy, and lived in a lovely house on a steep hill, with a nice set of parents, and a younger sibling or two, and perhaps she had a window too, a window from which she could see the sunset each night, and she surely had a perfect fairytale romance with a boy from her school. 

In fact, sometimes the girl on the street did bring a handsome boy along on her walk; she would tug him by the arm, and she would laugh, her dark hair unraveling like a roll of silk in the wind, her smile bleeding light into her face. The boy seemed to have eyes only for her. The rest of the street did not matter; there was only the girl in front of him, and she was his, and everything was just right. 

Then there came a day when she was tardy. 

The girl in the apartment waited, and waited, even as the sun stumbled in the sky and her mother burnt dinner and cast the ashes of blame upon her father. The fire alarm roared in protest. Frail-boned plates were shattered on the stained tiles. And still, she waited. 

Finally, her subject arrived. 

She was alone today, in an oversized sweatshirt that did not belong on her slender frame, and baggy blue jeans. 

She did not walk briskly by, as she so often did. 

No, she sunk to the ground, beside a dented metal trash barrel, and from deep in the folds of her sweatshirt, she extricated a lighter. She then began to smoke a cigarette. 

The smoke shrouded her heart-shaped face; it made her look very tired, and very old, draping her in silver-toned illusion. 

The girl in the apartment had picked up her pencil to draw; her fingers now hung limp, dull, and purposeless. She was not sure what to do. 

Meanwhile, the girl on the street had finished with her cigarette; she had stamped it out with beaten-down Chucks. Now she sat quietly, hands twitching slightly in her lap like bird wings. Then she withdrew from her pocket a slim, long-necked bottle; wasting no time, she uncorked it and began to take swift, deep guzzles. When she was finished, she stood slowly, swaying a bit, and let the bottle fall from her thin, perfect fingers. She watched it shatter on the pavement, and then she turned on her heel and walked away, her head buried in the hood of her sweatshirt, her back hunched, her stride crooked. And she was gone. 

The girl in the apartment saw the last dregs of liquid tumble from the mouth of the bottle, mottling the pavement. Her sketchpad was silent in her lap. 

And that was the last image she would have of the girl – a pallid face, and a broken bottle, and a skeleton walking off into the night.

Real Girls Take the Bus! by Zoe Russell

Here’s a secret from a girl who’s seen it all: if you stay up late enough, sometimes you can catch a glimpse of heat lightning on the bus ride home. When the air conditions are just right and the weather is on the fairer side of rain, and when time warped in the club so now you’re on the 205 home at four in the morning, and when the front seat on the top level of the bus is vacant so you can look out at the whole skyline during the ride – that’s the magic recipe. You have to be alone, too, or else you’ll get stuck in a conversation and forget to look up. Not that conversations on the 205 are uninteresting, or anything. Some of your best chats have occurred on the back row. The dark does something strange to the human psyche; loosens the tongue and addles the brain to such a degree that sometimes you step off and realize that you’ve spilled all your most important secrets over the span of a twenty-minute ride. 

But real girls know that magic, true magic, only happens to you when there’s no one else around to see it. Magic doesn’t like witnesses. If a tree falls in a forest with no girl around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Heat lightning doesn’t. Make a sound, that is. It’s quiet as the grave; final like it, too. Back home, people substitute the word heat for silent or summer. Back home, people love things that end. During the very last weeks of the season, the southern humidity knits itself into clouds-upon-clouds in the night sky, gray cotton balls on black construction paper, and heat lightning races across the heavens every evening as a last hurrah. So now you’re twenty years old on the 205, yeah, but you’re also drunk, so simultaneously you’re eight, sitting on the front porch with your grandmother. Together, you’re waiting for what will probably be the last summer storm of the year, as the weather works itself into a complicated dither on the horizon. The wind smells like pine needles. The rocking chair creaks beneath your weight, like an old tree in the breeze, or your grandmother’s bones when she bends down to kiss your cheek. Speaking of bones, you’re soaked to your own from jumping in the pond earlier. Actually, jump is a strong word. Your cousins had urged you in, so propel might work better. Perhaps even push. It doesn’t matter, though. You would’ve gone in anyway. You’ve never been afraid of the snapping turtles.

When you hit the surface of the water, it had bubbled beneath your weight for a split second, like it was figuring out if it wanted to let you in. You wobbled, waited, worried it wouldn’t accept you. The only thing worse than falling in would be not falling in. Then the tension finally broke and you sank into the pond with a tremendous splash, flailing limbs attempting to find purchase, but water is slippery and your hands are very small, real girl. A gulp of pond went right down your throat. You choked on it, but valiantly, you stayed beneath the water to swallow it, refusing to give them the satisfaction of coughing. Belly full of pond water, you broke the surface again, victorious this time. Grinning, even. You were the first one in. They were just cowards. Just boys. Maybe the pond wouldn’t even have let them in. In your rocking chair, you smile to yourself, and think about how brave you had been. 

You’re still on the bus, real girl. Don’t forget that. But while you wait for the show, you can keep thinking about the porch.

In the dark, Grandmother passes you a glass of iced tea. She asks, “Are you cold, baby?”

She can’t see you, but she knows you’re shivering. No one else in the world would’ve picked up on that, except her. But you know real girls, magic girls, don’t get cold from insignificant things like involuntary pond plunges, so dutifully you say no, you aren’t cold. It’s been hours, but your hair’s still kind of wet, and it’s freezing you through. You run your hands over your biceps in an attempt to warm them. The goosebumps on your skinny, scraped-up arms: another secret you are allowed to keep. Sometimes you wonder if your grandmother kept secrets as a girl. You wonder if she had ever even been a girl, or if she sprung from the womb fully formed, a rolling pin in one wizened, liver-spotted hand and a plate of cookies in the other.

You dismiss the idea. She wouldn’t have known you were cold if she hadn’t done the same thing when she was a real girl – she must’ve been pushed into the pond too, and dried out in the dark, shivering just like you in the cool breeze. Maybe, just like you, she was the only girl in a family of rough and tumble boys. Maybe she also had to prove herself everywhere she went. In the sandbox, at the pond, in the bed of the truck as it flies forty miles an hour down the highway. In the woods at sunset, when all the boys abandon you so you have to find your way back home in the dark by yourself. At dinner, when they’re all piled on the couch to watch the game while you’re in the kitchen, helping out with the cooking. When you’re setting the table, glaring daggers into the living room as you fling forks around.

At night, time shrinks and stretches and thins in the middle, a worn-out slab of dough that demands reworking. You, eight-year-old-you, is speaking to Grandmother, while twenty-year-old-you is listening; Grandmother, sixty-three-year-old-Grandmother, is asking questions, and ten-year-old-Grandmother is replying. You have her eyes. Everyone says it.

Experimentally, you tell her, “I jumped in the pond today.”

She says, “I know, sweetheart. Was it fun?”

She doesn’t say: Were you careful? Did you hit your head on the bottom?

This confirms Grandmother’s former real-girl status. She knows the pond is far too deep to hit one’s head, and she also knows that careful is not in a real girl’s vocabulary. You nod, satisfied, and tell her yes, it was fun.

Grandmother grew up on this farm, too. You forget that sometimes. Back when people were born in homes instead of hospitals, she was born in the back bedroom where you now sleep every summer night. But you weren’t born anywhere near here – most of the year, you live three hours away, in a neat, tidy suburb that had been planned from the get-go, and your first screams were heard by hospital walls. You’ve got the whole farm fooled, though, real girl. By the end of every summer, you could pass for a pasture native, running wild on your calloused feet, the skin hardened and battle-worn from going barefoot for weeks in the fields. Every year, when you have to strap back into sneakers for the first day of school, you close your eyes tight to hold back the tears, because the insole feels nothing like soft grass and the leather pinches your toes. You wish it wasn’t so dark out right now, so you could sneak a peek at Grandmother’s soles, to see if she has callouses too. She probably does. On your first day back on the farm, you’d accidentally stepped in a sticker bush, and screamed when the little barbs lodged themselves in your skin. Rookie mistake. Grandmother hadn’t batted an eye, just cleaned you up and told you to watch out for mysterious electric green patches next time. That’s always where the danger lies, she said. Bright colors in nature are a warning: stay away from me, or else!

The 205 stops. You jolt forward in your seat. The movement is good for your split mind; you’d gotten too settled in your rocking chair on the porch, but now you’re definitely on the bus. Outside, mist accumulates in fine lines on the glass windows. In your thick-soled boots, your feet are soft again, unbattered. You mourn the loss, but recognize the beauty of the trade: hard heels given up for thicker skin everywhere else. You need it, in this frigid city. The porch suddenly feels a thousand miles away. Indulgently, you allow yourself to look up the exact difference. Four thousand, five hundred, and seventy-one miles, says the Internet. But your family’s farm is on the outskirts of town, so it’s probably more than that, somehow. What number is bigger than four thousand, five hundred, and seventy-one? In your inebriated state, you can’t think of a single answer.

On the bus, someone brushes past you in their search for a seat, and you pull your knees in, tuck them beneath your body to take up less space. That wasn’t very real girl of you, but you feel heavier than usual tonight. This bus seat is gobbling you up. There’s a rip in your tights, on the side of your thigh, and you push a fingertip into it, wondering where it came from. Maybe you snagged it on a wayward nail at the club or something. Under your ministrations, the little tear grows into a finger-shaped mass, bright and pale where your skin peeks out from behind dark fabric. You knew exactly what would happen when you poked at it, but you frown at the result anyway. It seems like the right thing to do. When you catch sight of your reflection in the mirror, you wonder: What would Grandmother think if she saw you like this? Eyeliner sweat-smudged down your cheeks, a crazed look in your eyes, holes in your tights. The hem of your skirt skims high on the fat of your thighs, even though you used to kick and scream every time someone tried to force you into a dress. Instead, you went everywhere in threadbare Levis, hand-me-downs from your cousins. Where did the little barefoot princess from the porch go? She had something to prove. Do you?

The heat lightning hasn’t come yet. There are only a few stops left for the magic to happen. Maybe you stayed out too late this time, real girl. The hole in your tights is bigger now, and as you widen it with another finger, you feel a sinking kind of disappointment. After all this time, you should know this: every girl can only be real for so long before she starts to disintegrate. Before the holes grow. Three A.M. would’ve been fine. Four is pushing it, so be more careful next time. You don’t want to miss the magic.

On the bus, you interlace your fingers in your lap and hope. Pray. Whatever. Same thing.

Finally, finally, a tiny heartbeat of lightning streaks across the sky. You smile, and thank the powers that be. The wish-fulfillment center of the galaxy seems to be hard at work tonight – but it also helps that real girls have a direct line to God. We pay for the calls with bruised knees and elbows instead of quarters.

The lightning turns the world gold and silver, and time twitches. When everything goes point-blank white, you’re on the porch, watching the universe with Grandmother’s hand in yours, and then when it settles into a lesser kind of light, you’re back on the 205. From the top deck, the city’s rain and grime look holy. In Grandmother’s grip, the pastures are green and never-ending. Every part of this night is old, just in divergent ways. Real girls aren’t technically old, you know that, but they are immortal, which is the same thing in a different shape.

When the lightning strikes again, you’re definitely on the bus, and you’re thinking that maybe you should make a wish on the next bolt. It seems like the thing to do. Eyelashes, dandelions, ladybugs, shooting stars… logically, the next item in that magical little list could be heat lightning. But you can’t seem to get the timing right, because the schedule of the strikes is so willy-nilly. When you were on the porch, you had a whole list of wish ideas. You wanted a house in the country, a big black horse with a white star on his forehead, and an endless supply of the buttered noodles Grandmother made you for lunch every day. You had so many wishes that you couldn’t decide which one to ask the universe for. But now you can’t think of a single one. And the girl on the porch, holding on tight to her wishes, suddenly isn’t you anymore. She’s far away, drinking her iced tea. And you’re on the bus. And no one in this city takes their tea cold.

These are all good things, probably, you decide. It’s great that you have no more wants. That little hayseed princess, sitting on the porch and wishing on lightning for her life to begin, would lose her mind if she could see you now. Your world has gotten so big that you don’t have to wear your cousins’ old jeans anymore. You buy skirts, pretty ones, and you take the bus through the city by yourself, like a real girl. You haven’t ridden a horse in years. You drink Cosmopolitans with your beautiful friends in beautiful, overpriced places, and together, you dance the whole night away. They all love you, and you love them, and when you speak to them, you always make sure to pronounce the -g sound on the ends of gerunds. Your family makes those parts round, but you know that’s not how people here talk. In this city, they take all the softness out of their speech, make it hard and clipped. So now you do, too. 

Once, you were on the phone with Grandmother, and one of your beautiful friends walked into your room. You finished the call, hung up, and then asked the beautiful friend what they needed. And they’d tilted their head, like a curious cat, and smiled at you.

“You sound so different when you speak to your family,” the beautiful friend said. “Your accent comes out. Did you know?”

The friend was not a real girl. You laughed in a way that you hoped conveyed oh that’s so funny! and not oh god I can’t believe you noticed that. You said, “Really?” Then you said, “I’ve never realized.”

In this moment, not that one, the 205 rolls up to your stop. On the horizon: one last flash of heat lightning. You close your eyes and wish, irrationally, for a pony – any size, any color, dealer’s choice – and then you stumble down the stairs to get off the bus. Elsewhere, else-time, a small girl with small hands gets up from her rocking chair on the porch, says good night to Grandmother, and goes inside to wash her empty glass in the sink. 

So she’s gone now, safe and snug back in the house. You don’t harbor any hard feelings; it was her bedtime. She needed to go. But that means that it’s just you here, real girl, standing by yourself at the bus stop in the rain. In the dark. You’re lucky that it’s a quick trek home, because you’re all alone and this city is a little scary at four in the morning. But you’ve learned how to do it. You’ve stopped smiling everywhere you walk, because that got you weird looks. Not that it matters right now. You don’t see a single person out on the streets. The bus has pulled away and it’s just you and the rain.

You turn onto your street. Wind rips through the hole in your tights and you shiver, pull your coat a little tighter around your body, walk a little faster. Belatedly wish you hadn’t made the hole bigger. Then your boots hit a puddle but your feet don’t get wet, and you realize that if you’d been barefoot, that water in that puddle would’ve frozen you all the way through, from your pinkie toes up to the crown of your head. The boots, the ones that cramp your toes, have kept you dry and warm. Do real girls wear boots, you wonder? You don’t know, but you hope we do.

Your building creeps into your sightline. At night, it looks like a massive, rotting tooth, bone-white and pocked with windows. You’ve never been able to find roof access, even though you know it’s possible. Sometimes, on warmer evenings than this, you see people up there smoking. Once, one of them flicked a butt down onto the pavement, and it had fallen five floors just to land a foot away from you. Part of you, a strange part you’d never met before, had wanted to pick it up and smoke the remaining tobacco until it was well and truly dead. The wanting of it hit you so hard that you’d rocked back on your heels, and your traitorous fingers twitched to grab it. But you’ve never had a cigarette before in your life, and lung cancer sounds like an awful way to go, so you left it there, wasted, half-smoked on the ground. Maybe someone else picked it up, someone that appreciated it more than you. 

You’re full of memories tonight, huh, real girl? Wonder why. Maybe all the Cosmos are to blame. Maybe it’s just that time of year. Just like nighttime, winter does weird things to people’s minds. The cold creeps in and all you can think about is how you used to be warm, back when you were fourteen and still slept in a twin-sized bed with all the windows cracked, to let the summer breeze in. None of the windows in this building even open. Safety hazard, apparently. They don’t know that real girls need to feel the wind when they fall asleep. But you’re making do.

On the ride up to your dorm on the fourth floor, you stare into the mirrors that line three of the four walls, and wonder who decided mirrors were a good idea to put in an elevator. From the middle of the glass box, you can view the hole in your tights from so many angles. One of the mirrors must be warped, you decide, because the hole looks cartoonishly large and not even round at all, but ovular. It grows and shrinks and grows again, right in front of your eyes. But in the other two mirrors, it’s normal-shaped, and still.

When the elevator opens, you swipe your fingers under your eyes in an attempt to corral the smudged eyeliner, and step into the hallway, then up to your door. The keys, the lock, you struggle with. For a while. Your hands have always been shaky – you can’t even blame the Cosmos for that, even though you wish you could. Finally, you get the door open, and collapse into your room. 

Decisively, you throw the tights in the trash. If you don’t do it right now, they’ll sit in a drawer forever. Grandmother could probably sew the hole for you, fix them up good as new, but she isn’t here. You should probably start going out in pants, anyway; the temperatures are getting lower every day, and you don’t have to pretend to be warm anymore. When you’re shivering, you go inside, or put on a jacket. You don’t wait in the rocking chair on the porch for someone to notice your goosebumps and hand you a blanket.

It’s an algorithm, a quick, practiced one. Your boots, you line up by the wall. The skirt goes on a hanger in the closet. Your top goes in your laundry basket, and you go in your bed, covers pulled up to your chin. 

The windows aren’t open, and you can’t hear the cows lowing, or the breeze humming through the trees. The bed doesn’t smell like pine needles, or Grandmother’s detergent. But you aren’t soaked with pond water, and you wished on heat lightning for a pony, and tomorrow, you’ll meet one of your beautiful friends for coffee.

You feel her again, distantly. She’s still on the farm, tucked into twenty-year-old sheets patterned with tractors. She’d fallen asleep the second her head hit the pillow, and she’s probably already dreaming of horses and green pastures. If she can do it, so can you. 

You close your eyes. Even real girls need sleep sometimes.

Loose Ends by Molly Stevens

Paulie and I were in the Millers’ kitchen when Mrs. Miller came down the stairs.

“Hello, girls,” Mrs. Miller said. 

“Hello, Mrs. Miller,” I said. I nodded and gave her a smile. 

I was leaning against the doorway with my arms crossed under my chest. Paulie was planted on the kitchen counter next to the sink, feet bare and dangling. She held a jar of peanut butter in her left hand and a spoon in her right. Mrs. Miller came closer, so I turned my body to face her, and my back sank into the wall, which was cold and rough even through my t-shirt.

“Breakfast, is it?” Mrs. Miller asked. She tilted her head towards Paulie’s snack. 

“Seems like it,” Paulie said.

Mrs. Miller raised her eyebrows and began walking across the room to the sink. Paulie hopped off the countertop, taking a few steps back. Mrs. Miller turned the faucet on, picked up the bar of soap from its soap dish, and rubbed it in her hands until they became sudsy. Paulie and I exchanged glances, and I pointed to the space on the counter where Paulie had just set the peanut-butter spoon. Paulie turned, observed the spoon, and looked back at me, eyes wide. 

She started towards it, hand outstretched, but Mrs. Miller picked it up and tossed it in the sink, where it rang out beneath the smooth sound of the running faucet. 

“That’s quite alright, Paulie. I’ll handle it.” 

“Thanks,” Paulie said. She stepped back farther until she was next to me on the wall. I nudged her with my elbow. 

The faucet ceased, finally. Mrs. Miller patted her hands dry against her skirt. 

“Late on rent again, ladies,” Mrs. Miller said. 

“We’re sorry, Mrs. Miller,” I said. “Just need a couple of days is all. Bill Carrigan still owes me a bit of money from a week or so ago. Babysitting cash. I’ll call him today and handle it.” 

“Hmm. Babysitting, is it?” she said. “I think we both know the problem is a bit more severe than that, don’t we?”

“What?”

“A bit more serious than a bit of babysitting cash, wouldn’t you say?” 

Paulie sniffled. She grabbed a tissue from the box above the fridge and began blowing her nose. 

“We’ve got some things in the works, Mrs. Miller,” Paulie said, voice muffled. She lowered her hand and smiled, nodding her head earnestly. She curled the tissue tight in her fist, and Mrs. Miller looked away. 

“Fine,” she said. “But we don’t want to make this a habit.” 

Mrs. Miller walked past us and through the door to the living room, where she would sit and read for the afternoon. Her plush armchair faced outward towards the street, and often, when Paulie and I returned home, even late in the evening, we would meet her gaze through the slats in the blinds. Her eyes would linger for a moment, wide and blue against the darkness of the night, before the blinds snapped shut and she disappeared up the stairs.

Later that night, I met Bill for dinner.

Paulie dressed me in a white blouse and a short pink skirt, which was puffy and made of tulle, like it was meant for a child. I told Paulie I wasn’t sure if it would work. 

“It’s immature, Paul,” I said. 

She smoothed the tulle down around my hips with her hands and took a step back. I stood tall and awkward inside the Millers’ guest-bedroom mirror. Paulie sat down on the bed, arms crossed. 

“Not when it’s on you,” she said with a nod. “He’ll like it.” 

I left the Millers’ house out the back door and walked around the block to the street corner where Bill agreed to meet. Leaning against a telephone pole, I watched for Bill’s red station wagon. When it pulled up, I bent down and waved through the window, but Bill’s expression was blank, his hands curled in his lap. 

“Hey,” I said, opening the car door. 

“Hey.” 

I climbed in and buckled my seatbelt. Bill started the car. The sun was setting and had fallen to the space just under the car’s small sun visor, so I shifted my body and covered my eyes with my hand. Squinting, I turned to look at Bill. He wore a plaid shirt and brown corduroy pants. The bottom half of his face was flooded with light, and I examined the lines on his upper lip, coming from the corners of his nose, which were deep and aged him severely. His hands gripped the steering wheel tight—knuckles sharp beneath his nearly translucent skin.

“What?” he said, looking over at me. 

“Nothing.” I turned my body towards the window. 

We arrived at the restaurant. It was nestled beneath a barbershop, and the steps down off the street were steep and often slippery, so I held onto the railing and concentrated on my footing. The hostess seated us at a table in the far back. It was small, meant only for two, and dimly lit by a single, hanging lightbulb, which sat too low, just above eye level. 

Bill took a seat and so did I. He shifted around, pulled out his glasses from their case in his back pocket, and set them at the end of his nose. Tilting his face down, he examined the menu. 

“What are you going to get? he asked. 

“Not sure yet,” I said. The menu was the same as always and so was Bill. 

The waitress came and went. I touched his knee under the table, and he brushed my hand away. I picked at my dinner. 

“What’s going on?” I said. 

Bill sighed. “Helen knows.”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

“To be honest, I thought she did already.”

“Well, she didn’t. Or maybe she did. Doesn’t matter when she knew but she does now.”

“Hmm,” I said. I took a sip of water, looking at him over the rim of my glass. Bill avoided my eyes. 

“So what does this mean?” I said. 

Bill tapped on the table with his pointer finger. “I think you know what it means.” He shook his head and then held it in his hands. “Obviously you know what it means.” 

“I’m late on rent,” I said. 

“I’ll take care of it,” Bill said. “But this is the last time. You’d benefit from being on your own. Financially, I mean.”

“Oh.” I nodded my head slowly and laughed. 

“What?”

“I’d benefit from it?”

Bill made a face. “I think so,” he said. 

“You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better.” 

“Ha. Maybe so.” 

I sat up straighter in my chair, stretching my neck, so Bill's head was covered by the fullness of the singular lightbulb. A pair of shoulders and a lightbulb head. I wanted to giggle but didn’t and, instead, took a gulp of water, put my elbows on the table, and there rested my chin. 

“Well, that’s that,” I said. “But I thought you liked the arrangement.”

Bill laughed. “I think you got more out of it.” 

“No way.” I tapped my fingers on the edge of the table, fast, and looked up at the ceiling. “We should go somewhere,” I said. 

“Together?” 

“Yes, together. Far away. Away from the Millers’ house.” 

“Ah, the Millers. That’s what’s got you down, right? Holed up in the Millers’ house all day. Old, crazy Mrs. Miller,” he said.  

“Don’t talk about her like that. Only I get to talk about her like that.” 

“Sure.” 

I looked around the restaurant, which was dark and nearly empty. Our waitress must’ve been in the kitchen somewhere because I couldn’t find her. Bill had returned his attention to his plate and was eating furiously. 

I felt suddenly out of place and very aware of my pink skirt, which wasn’t right after all. I touched it with my fingers and let the coarse fabric tug across my skin, then looked up. 

“Anyway,” Bill said, finally. “We couldn’t go anywhere most of all because of Paulie. You’d never leave her. You, Paulie, and the Millers against the world. Ha ha.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It’s a joke.” 

“Right.” 

Bill dropped me back off at the Millers’ house later that evening. He parked his car near the end of the block and turned the headlights off. 

“Goodbye,” I said. I opened the door and looked back at him plainly, one leg already out of the car. 

“Good luck,” he said. I nodded my head and began to move when Bill grabbed my arm. “Let me give you some cash. For your rent.” 

“Sure, thanks.” 

Still holding onto my arm, Bill looked me in the eye somberly. This sudden sentimentality disturbed me, and I shook away from his grasp. He conceded the moment and finally reached across me to the glove compartment, from which he presented an unsealed envelope. I took it and stepped out onto the curb. 

The night air was prickly against my skin, for my legs were bare and I’d forgotten my jacket. As I approached the Millers’ house, I looked up to the far side of the downstairs window and felt a pang in my chest when the blinds were already shut and Mrs. Miller gone. I searched for the house-key in my purse, and upon finding it, began to struggle tirelessly with the front door. My fingers were weak and foolish against the lock, and I feared suddenly that the house wouldn’t open at all, that I would be stuck out in the dark by myself. I pressed my forehead against the door’s cool, wet glass, took a breath, and gave the lock another tug. 

It released with a shriek. I turned on the light switch, and walked to the kitchen, where I found Mrs. Miller’s small yellow grocery list and a blue pen. Rent for this month and the next, I wrote. I set it on the counter and laid the envelope beneath it.

Up the stairs I went to the Millers’ guest bedroom, where Paulie would be sleeping. I opened the door slowly and undressed. I unbuttoned my blouse and pulled my skirt beneath my hips, so it fell in a puddle around my ankles. 

When I climbed into bed, I reached for Paulie’s hand, which was warm and delicate to the touch. 

“Is that you?” Paulie asked. 

“Yes,” I said, and I closed my eyes. 

Chocolate Strawberries by Connor Perrotta

This place is going to kill me, Harper thought as she pulled into the Tops.

She parked, breathed, and took in the view of the small-town white winter hellscape. She looked at the suffocating forests and fields, the barbed wire branches, and the deathly slow cars on the poorly salted road.

Please, Harper thought, don’t make me see a hundred-and-one familiar faces in there, or so help me God, next time I’ll drive all the way out to Nueva Roma and give my dollar to Walmart. I’ll do it! I’ll waste the gas!

Her son Roger in the passenger seat tugged on her sleeve, and she sighed and led him out into the February cold. The moment they entered, they were assaulted by advertisements.

$5.28 for a six-pack of Pepsi, because Harper and Roger’s teeth weren’t bad enough already.

$3.19 for a package of heart-shaped Little Debbie brownies, because Harper and Roger’s teeth weren’t bad enough already, and because it was almost Valentine’s Day.

$0.22/pound for pomegranates, because Harper and Roger’s teeth weren’t bad enough already, and because it was almost Valentine’s Day, which meant the fruit hadn’t been edible for at least a month and a half.

Roger wanted all of it. The numbers and the seasons didn’t mean anything to him yet. At least, that was what Harper told herself so that she could love him. He pointed at and asked for everything. Harper took a shopping cart, grabbed Roger’s hand, and said, “I’m sorry, Sweety. We have a list. Let’s just try to stick to it for now.”

Roger didn’t listen, because he was too busy pointing at something else. “Mom, can we get that?”

Harper followed his finger to a plastic container of six chocolate-covered strawberries, right next to the pomegranates. “I’m sorry, Sweety–” she started.

“I need something for Valentine’s Day, though. The party, ’member? You promised!”

Shit! Harper thought. She remembered the conversation from Friday:

The two of them had been at the dinner table, and Roger had actually had an answer to Harper’s “So, what’d you do in school today?”

“I need to bring in something for a Valentine’s Day party Wednesday,” he had said.

“Couldn’t you not sign up?”

“No, I was assigned.”

“Then what were you assigned?”

Roger had shrugged.

Bullshit! Harper had thought. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! If you were assigned, it’d be something specific! And what teacher in Campton would assign Harper Lark’s boy to bring in anything? Then came the other thought, that Roger was an eight-year-old boy who didn’t know his right from his left. Plus, there was no way in hell Harper could give Roger the conditional love her parents had given her. That’s why I can’t drink before your bedtime. If you see me drink, then I love you less.

Back in the Tops, where it was Monday, Harper checked the price of the chocolate strawberries. $12.99 for half a dozen! She looked around her and thought, I know damn near everyone here, and I know damn well they’re smarter than this. What does Tops think they’re tryna pull?

Now it was her turn to point, right at those awful pomegranates. “You see those, Sweety? You see all the brown and rot?”

Roger nodded.

“How do you know that’s not under the chocolate? You see, what these companies do is they take the bad strawberries, cover them with chocolate, and then put them out so you don’t see all the bad parts. You don’t wanna bring those into class.”

Roger nodded again and looked down. “Ok, Mom.”

Harper led him off. “We’ll get something, don’t worry.”

Half an hour later, they were in the cold section.

$2.39 for the store brand frozen peas.

$7.25/gallon for the store brand orange juice, but the Simply Orange brand was $4.49/52 fl oz. and was buy-two-get-one-free, so Roger lucked out.

The milk was what hurt: $4.89/gallon for 2%. That was the price of the store brand: Harper didn’t want to look at anything else. She was fairly sure, also, that it was $0.50 cheaper at some other store, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember where. The thought of a 40 oz. crossed her mind while she put the gallon in the cart, but Roger was at that age when you start to learn things, and he sure as hell wouldn’t learn them from her.

When they exited the cold section, they met another family – the Godes – a mother and a daughter. The girl’s face lit up. There was something about her brunette hair that Harper didn’t like.

“Roger!” the girl said.

Roger smiled flatly. “Hey, Lora.”

Lora led the conversation, and Harper felt obligated to start a different one with the other mom. Mrs. Gode was much older than herself, and had big gold hoop earrings and lousy blue eye shadow, all under loose yellow curls.

“They know each other from school?” Harper asked.

“Oh, yeah. Lora talks about Roger all the time.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I’m glad Roger has a friend. And-and Lora, too, obviously.”

“Roger doesn’t talk about Lora?”

Harper smiled an apology. “Not really? Not often? I think he might have?”

Mrs. Gode waved it away. “Kids’ll be kids. You know how it is. We really need to get going, though. Beat the storm. We live in Emmonsville, so it’s a bit of a drive.” She said, “It was great to meet you!” while they left for the cold section.

“You, too,” Harper said so that they couldn’t hear. She certainly hadn’t heard of any storm. “Storm” my ass, she thought. I’ll “storm” you.

She realized what she hadn’t liked about Lora’s hair: It was the same shade as her own.

On their way to the soup aisle, Harper asked who Roger’s friend was, and why she hadn’t heard of her. 

Roger looked at the ground. “I don’t need to tell you everything. Besides, she’s not a friend. I hate her. She’s so annoying, and she’s stupid, too. She’s one o’ the dumb kids.”

Then you’re a match, Harper thought. You sound like your father, and she has my hair.

“That’s mean, Roger.”

“I don’t care. She deserves it.”

Harper shook her head, but that was all. They were at the soup aisle, so it was back to the numbers.

$1.20 for a can of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli. Harper took four.

$4.59 for a four-pack of Campbell’s tomato soup. Hell yeah, she took two.

Just down the aisle was a six-pack of ramen for $5.99, and just as she put one in the cart, Roger blew a raspberry: “Pblpblpblpbl!”

Harper turned, and found her son making a face at another boy and his mother and father. “Wally, do you know this boy?” the mom asked. The boy – Wally – took a small step back, but kept looking at Roger with big, green eyes. Wally was a hiker, and Roger a bear.

“Pblpblpblpbl,” Roger spat/roared again. “Pblpblpblpbl. Pblpblpblpbl. Pblpblpblpbl!”

Harper stepped in. “Roger, is there a problem? Is this a friend?”

Roger kept up the mean bear persona. Wally caved into his parents even more.

The other dad smiled. “We’re wondering the same thing. Nice to meet you! I’m Garret.”

“Harper.” She nodded.

The other mom didn’t reciprocate the kindness. “So this is Roger.” She put a hand over Wally’s shoulder.

Garret rolled his eyes. “We’ve been over this, they’re friends, it’s just what they do.” He kneeled down to Roger and waved. “I’m Wally’s dad. He tells us so much about you.”

“Hi,” Roger said. The word was completely tonally ambiguous.

“See?” Garret asked his wife. “He’s being friendly in his own way.”

The other mom gripped Wally’s shoulder just the slightest bit more. She had one of the smaller shopping baskets in her other hand, and she raised it just barely. “Garret.”

Garret sighed and stood. “Sorry about all that.” Then, he followed his family out of the aisle.

Harper looked at her great, bear son. “Roger, who was that?”

“Wally.”

Smartass. “Is Wally a friend?”

“Mm-mm.” He shook his head.

“How do you know him?”

“He’s in my class.”

“Then why aren’t you friends?”

“I don’t see why I have to say.”

“Because I’m your mother!”

Roger looked down the aisle the way they had come, then down the aisle the way the other family had left, like he was about to tell the secrets of the universe. There were plenty of people they knew, as there always were in Campton, but he decided they were far enough away.

Harper’s sweet, eight-year-old bear of a boy whispered, “He’s a fairy.”

Harper had had her share of humiliation, but this was peak. It wasn’t actually, but it felt like it. “Who taught you that word?”

“Franklyn,” Roger said.

“Is Franklyn a friend of yours?”

“Oh, yeah! Franklyn’s the best! He just knows everything!”

Harper looked again at where Wally had been. My sweet child, she thought, no he fucking doesn’t. “Are you mean to Wally?”

Roger did not answer.

“Roger, are you and your friend mean to Wally?’

Again, Roger did not answer.

“Roger, I am your mother. I need you to answer me. Are you or anyone else in your class mean to Wally?”

He blew up. “So what if we are? We’re not, because you can’t be mean to a fairy, not really – Franklyn says so, and Franklyn knows everything, more ’n the teacher, even! There’s no such thing as being mean to Wally, ’cause he deserves it!”

Her head pounded.

She needed that 40 oz.

What was one box of cosmic brownies? Just one?

The rot on those strawberries was just a lie, right? She hadn’t accidentally learned something?

Harper bent her knees, took her face level to Roger’s as Garret had done, and said, “Roger. You don’t bully. Ever. You are a good person. You are better than the people who hurt other people, and you are going to grow into a kind, strong man. You are a good person.”

Roger blinked with thick, beautiful lashes over hazel eyes. “I know.”

Harper felt like she had tried to swallow a big chunk of meat. “We’re gonna talk about this later.”

Just then, another family came by for ramen – a father and a daughter, Harper assumed. Harper and Roger smiled at the father the way one does at a stranger, and he smiled back. He was normal enough. The girl, though, made Harper do a double take. She had Wally’s big, green eyes, but the ugly brunette hair of Lora and of Harper herself. She also had big loopy earrings like Mrs. Gode, which looked funny on a child.

The incongruous girl did not make sense to Harper.

Nonetheless, Harper smiled.

The girl smiled back, then smiled and waved at Roger. “Hey, Roger.” She said it softly, as if giving Roger the excuse not to hear.

Roger took that excuse. He did not hear nor see her, even though he was staring at the ramen right behind her, so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge Harper.

Harper tried to remember how to parent, and stood. I’ll lead by example, she thought. “Let’s get that thing for your class.”

Roger lit up.

“It’s not a reward, though.” Harper tried to correct herself, but the damage had been done. No, she thought. No damage. It is unconditional love.

They went back to the junk toward the front of the store, and Roger returned to his good friend Little Debbie. He picked out those heart-shaped brownies the store had advertised earlier. Harper didn’t need to look at the price again, because Roger was happy.

On their way to the checkout, they ran into Mayor Lowenge, who smiled and waved. It was Roger who started the conversation this time, with, “Hey, Mayor! How are ya?”

Lowenge smiled more brightly. “Roger! It’s great to see you!”

Harper’s head swam. So he’s not friends with Lora, and he’s not friends with Wally, but he is friends with the Mayor?

“I spoke at the elementary school,” Lowenge clarified. “Your boy here had some great questions! I was very impressed!”

Fucking mall Santa Claus-ass condesention. “What questions?”

“Well, a conversation about the school turned into a conversation about taxes – light details, you understand, I promise it was relevant to the kids – and that turned into a conversation about money in general – The topic was somewhat out of my control, I don’t know why they had me talk about this, but oh well, what can you do? – and then this boy – this smart boy – this boy asks a great question: He asks, ‘What happens when the people whose job it is to count the money count wrong?’”

Harper looked at her cart. It looked fuller than she had hoped it would be. A dollar here, a cent there, and all of a sudden she had Little Debbie when she had intended to buy carrots. She had forgotten the carrots! “I suppose that is a good question,” Harper admitted.

Roger beamed, and the carrots left Harper’s mind.

“You should be very proud of him.”

“I–” Harper began. I am. I am. I am. The words came back to her: Unconditional love.

“I am,” Harper finished. “I’m very proud of you, Roger.”

Roger looked happier than ever, and Harper felt sick.

There was a broken light behind her, so more light came from the Mayor toward Roger than vice-versa. It put Roger in the hunched, monstrous, gray shape of the Mayor’s shadow. The bear-boy took one of the checkout knick-knacks – a foam stress toy globe – and he squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed until a crack opened from the West Coast, through the Atlantic, past Europe, and to somewhere in Russia.

“Could you put that back?” Harper asked, and Roger obeyed.

Mayor Lowenge laughed, and then straightened up. “Well, it was very nice to see you. I’ve got to get back to, um…”

“Right, thanks,” Harper said. “Have a nice day.”

“See you!” Roger said.

Lowenge smiled one more time before turning to the checkout cooler with the sodas.

Roger pointed at it, even as they walked away. “Mom, can I get a drink?”

Harper hesitated, which was a good sign for Roger. “Yeah, when we check out.”

Roger pointed at the nearest checkout aisle, but Harper shook her head. “I need a drink, too.”

She led her sweet, impressionable cub to the liquor aisle and grabbed the first forty she saw, brands and prices be damned.

The shortest line with someone at the register had one old woman in a mobility scooter. Roger picked out a Coke-a-Cola, just as the old woman grabbed a package of peanut M&M’s. It triggered Roger’s impulses, and he pointed and asked, “Mom, can we get that?”

Harper shook her head. They had enough in the cart already.

Roger pouted, and Harper felt that maybe she had done something good after all.

The wait took longer than it should have, because the old woman and the cashier – a young woman with dyed red hair – shared some pleasantries. Harper was happy to see generations getting along, but nothing made her more anxious than waiting for a receipt. The old woman was slow, too. Even after she paid, it took her a moment to maneuver the scooter and make way for Harper.

The cashier slid every barcode under the sensor.

Beep! $4.89.

Beep! $5.99.

Beep! $3.19.

“Can I get an ID for the forty?” she asked.

It took Harper a moment to snap out of the numbers. Looking at them and misremembering them took all her concentration. Plus, she never liked this part. She winced as she gave away her driver’s license. The young woman looked at the license, then at Harper, then at Roger. Again, she looked from the license, to Harper, to Roger. This all happened while another worker bagged the groceries, because Harper had left her own bags in the car for the twentieth fucking time. You’re correct, Harper thought. I’m the woman with the birthdate in 1999, and an eight-year-old kid in 2024. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

“You’re good,” the cashier said, and she handed the license back. A few beeps later, and she said, “Your total’s $139.07.”

The world ended. But I had a list… Harper thought. I only went off it for the forty… and the brownies, but those were for school… and Roger’s soda… and that orange juice, but I couldn’t not get that, there was a deal… and the milk was pricier than it should’ve been, but that was only $0.50…

Harper swiped her card and signed her soul away on the screen. Then it was toward the door, past that old woman who was still in the store struggling with her scooter.

When the groceries were in the trunk, the cart was in the corral, and Roger was next to Harper in the passenger seat, Harper heard something crinkle in Roger’s shirt.

She looked at him, another hiker to the bear. “What was that?”

Roger shrugged. He hummed, “Mm-mm-mm,” to the tone of, “I don’t know.”

“Roger, what do you have?”

“I don’t know, Mom! Mind your beeswax!”

“Roger, did you steal something from the store?”

He smirked. “No.”

“Are you lying?”

He took out the crinkling lump – a yellow package of peanut M&M’s. “I didn’t get it from the store. I got it from that fat old woman who held us up. She deserves it.”

“Roger! I don’t care what you learned from Franklyn! We do not think like that, and we do not steal!”

He opened the package. “She’s gonna die soon, anyway.” Then, he ate one.

She took a moment to watch the cars go by, and noticed that most of them were going right, toward the heart of the town. They crawled, because they had to with the snow this bad. There was one beat-up green Ford, though, on its way out, to the left.

It was going too fast. Harper had a funny image in her head of a panicked driver saying, “I gotta get outta here. I gotta get outta here.”

The green Ford lost control. Its tail end spun into the other lane and just barely clipped a Dodge, which curved out into a snowbank as carefully as it could have. The Dodge was brown, almost, or maybe a dark yellow. Harper might have called it hazel. The next car was a Volkswagen, which was also brown, but more of a brunette. It tried to avoid a collision, but overcorrected. The green Ford and the brunette VW were both totaled.

“Hah!” Roger laughed. “Hee-hee, heh-heh, hah!” Chocolate spittle rained on the dashboard.

Harper almost got out to see if they were all right, to check if she knew them, which she could only assume she did, but the Dodge distracted her.

It crept out of the snow bank. It was scratched, but it was fine. It must have been the luckiest car in the world, and it continued its slow path toward the center of Campton.

Harper wondered how many more times it could do that, before all the scratches and dents caught up to it. She thought, Roger, this place is going to kill you.

Cat Palm by Ulla-Britt Libre

Chamaedorea cataractarum, the cat palm, cascade palm, or cataract palm, is a small palm tree. It is native to Southern Mexico and Central America. 

A boy I used to love owned a cat-palm. It wasn’t very big or very beautiful, but it was very his. He would water it twice a week, dutifully reading directions on wiki-how to keep the plant alive. For an arborist, he knew surprisingly little about the care and keeping of this low-maintenance semi-tree. The plant’s leaves would weep and sag, easily unsatisfied. So it moved in migrant patterns around his childhood home, growing roots in every corner until it finally settled into the mossy carpet of the master bedroom. I would wake up to the feeling of dancing hands on my hips and palm leaves on my nose. 

We bought the plant together, at Home Depot, on our third date. He walked barefoot through the greenhouse aisles, pressing his toes into the pavement, searching for the right roots. I knew I loved him from the way he took his steps, careful and considerate and confident. His thin frame leaned over each plant as he read their plaque card descriptions. He knew he loved the cat palm from the way it reached its soiled hands to hold his. This is the one. He placed a large pot for $4.99 in the space between my arms and body, trusting me with the weight. The plant looked up at us expectantly, knowing it was coming home. 

We carefully strapped the cat palm into the left back car seat. It wailed as we blew through the Central Oregon traffic, distraught by motion and the little bits of soil that would fall out of the pot when I made a left turn. 

“Almost there,” I said, squeezing the little palm’s leaves, “hold on for one more minute.” We settled into a routine. Wake up with the sunrise, feel the warmth of the day photosynthesizing through us. He worked and I wandered, taking the palm through town with me. The little plant and I found new ways of feeling alive – sipping coffees by the river, reading our books on mountain tops. Hank would come home and we would dance in the refrigerator light to Ween or Fiona Apple. The palm would sway in motion alongside us. Once, we accidentally kicked over the plant’s pot. The fronds splayed over the carpet, encircled by spilled soil. 

“Quick, grab the loam,” Hank said. 

I nodded and grabbed the bag of soil from his kitchen closet. Together, we pat new soil into the pot and interwove the roots again, standing the little plant upright again. I traced a frond with my index finger. 

Shhhhh, I whispered. 

Then Hank held my cheekbones with his ten fingers until we collapsed with laughter and made love until we could do it all over again. 

He knew how to do things that other people didn’t, like kayaking off of sixty foot waterfalls or climbing until he could tip toe around God. He taught me the bits and pieces. How to roll myself over in his kayak, how to tie safe climbing knots. How to pivot my hips towards a rockwall in order to reach for a hold. We drove to Squamish, in British Columbia, where he taught me to walk without my shoes. 

We knew it wouldn’t last – I was 19 and he 24, cat palms from Home Depot aren’t meant to live forever. I had school across the country to return to in September. He would never graduate college, never be anything more than an arborist, never leave Bend. What would my mother think? There was only so much of him I could hold. The two months we had slipped beneath me, like eroded soil from a monsoon rain storm. Our days were numbered, and soon they were over.

The last time I saw him or the palm it was an unseasonably cold day in late August. Hank, barefoot as always, held me until my soil spilled over my pot, and it was time for me and my Subaru to make the twelve hour drive home to Salt Lake City. I waved goodbye through my window, leaving my love growing companions behind.