Category: Theme Issues

Author Bio: Joshua Yurche is a husband, a father of four, and he has degrees in Graphic Design and Computer Science. As a toddler, Joshua’s parents let him draw on left-over rolls of wallpaper, and his dad taught him how to draw Mickey Mouse; art and creativity have been a part of his life ever since. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Joshua used his creativity to design custom helmets for pilots and aircrew, painting here and there during his time off. Two years ago, Joshua started painting again, and he has really enjoyed getting back into it and trying out new mediums. More of his artwork can be seen on his Instagram @the_ycreative.

Author Bio: Tina Williams, a resident of Waynesboro, PA for 17 years, has done some portrait commissions, as well as other commission work, but mainly utilizes art as therapy for depression and anxiety.  She is self taught with no formal art education.  Tina has 3 wonderful grandsons, as well as 2 cats that love to supervise her art work. Education wise, Tina has her bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice/Forensic Psychology. She also has 2 associate’s degrees from Southwest VA Community College.

Author Bio: Joshua Yurche is a husband, a father of four, and he has degrees in Graphic Design and Computer Science. As a toddler, Joshua’s parents let him draw on left-over rolls of wallpaper, and his dad taught him how to draw Mickey Mouse; art and creativity have been a part of his life ever since. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Joshua used his creativity to design custom helmets for pilots and aircrew, painting here and there during his time off. Two years ago, Joshua started painting again, and he has really enjoyed getting back into it and trying out new mediums. More of his artwork can be seen on his Instagram @the_ycreative.

Author Bio: Coal Williams is a junior at Greencastle-Antrim High School. He is currently taking Greencastle-Antrim’s Art Portfolio course, and he is sixteen years old. Coal’s main medium is digital art, and his art typically ventures into the realm of surrealism.

Author Bio: Jack Dawson is a senior at Greencastle-Antrim High School. He loves nature, tea, and reading. Art is his favorite thing to do because it lets him express his opinions and feelings while allowing him to be creative. Jack has been doing ceramics for a few years, even prior to his high school classes with taking private lessons. In the future, Jack hopes to become a ceramicist as his career.

     “Let’s get married,” Cory urged as Adair gazed up at the faded sky-blue water tower in La Rue’s town park. From below, the massive ellipsoid-shaped tank reached so high it looked smaller than the tall base and four support columns holding it up. Like a tiny insect body perched on long, spindly legs.

     “Seventeen’s plenty old enough,” he added, wrapping her in his beefy arms. “I’ll get a job at the plant and start saving for the diner like we planned.”

    Adair stiffened against him, hoping he didn’t notice. “Gonna walk home by myself,” she said carefully. “Need time to think.”

     Cory was sweet. It mostly felt like love. But that didn’t make the right direction certain, even if she was pregnant, which she didn’t really believe—probably just late again. Cory might be sure about a baby and all, but not her.

     Truth was Adair had always counted on being like her big sister Caroline, long gone from La Rue—a town you could drive through in three minutes—as soon as she was able to speed away. Long gone from Missouri, too. Caroline had magic. Said Adair did, too, long as town boys like Cory Briscoe didn’t keep it for themselves.

     Dizziness washed over Adair imagining Caroline atop the tower peering clear to Quincy, twenty-five miles east across the Mississippi on the Illinois side. She’d only been nine at the time, Adair still in diapers. Always told it in her storybook voice, amber eyes gleaming like she was watching a dream burst to life. “Crops danced in the fields, Mississippi waters glistened, and Quincy was vibrating and glowing like Paris,” she’d sigh, words wrapped in a layer of shiny satin with special sparkles and colors that other folks couldn’t see until she spoke them out loud.

     Adair still felt magic when she and Caroline talked by phone, like she was playing in a technicolor, surround-sound movie inside Caroline’s head. But Caroline’d been gone so long, empty spaces had started popping up where the colors and sparkles didn’t quite fill in. Her magic was losing its shimmer.

     Adair smoothed back her auburn waves, best feature on her, and kissed Cory before crossing Shelby Street with the burn of his puppy-dog-hurt on her back. If there was a baby—not that there was—no chance anybody’d suspect for a while due to her weight. But also because she was a Ewell. Name might not count for much outside this piece of Missouri, as Caroline liked to declare, but it sure counted here. Ewells got by on remembrances of their past prosperity, which had dwindled considerably over the generations but still impressed folks.

     Adair passed La Rue Savings & Loan, Maywood Hardware and hurried past Shotz’s Feed & Supply before Mr. Shotz could poke his head out to say howdy or insist Daddy come see the newest shipment.

     On the dusty edge of town past the Shell station Adair followed her favorite stretch of Highway 6 round the curve to her family’s aged farmhouse standing as it had for eons in a mess of white oaks, flanked by a giant barn, two battered cobalt-blue silos, and nothing but cattle, corn and quiet beyond.

     Caroline couldn’t see a future here, not one thing to help fashion a life for herself. And who could argue with her sight? She’d gotten the dream life she called for. Believed, and it happened. Said Adair could create a new life, too. Course she was right—Caroline had the gift of utter certainty—but how on earth would Adair tell Cory and her folks she was going Caroline’s way before they dreamed her too much in their direction?

     “Letter came from Desmond Beauty College,” Mom called from the kitchen as the screen door banged behind Adair.

     “Envelope’s on the table,” she added without glancing up from peeling potatoes in the old farmhouse sink, same one Grammy had used, and Ma Ma before her. Caroline liked to say no farmwoman looked decent past thirty-five. Men either. Got lumpy like dough people. Like Mom with rolls of flesh where her waist and hips should be. Or they grew stringy, brown and pinched from the sun and wind. At least Adair wouldn’t be a farmer’s wife with Cory—not that she was marrying him or anything.

     “Well, what’s it say?” Mom wanted Adair to go—“beef up her options”—though she never admitted it outright cause Daddy couldn’t stomach another daughter leaving.

     Adair ripped open the envelope, belly flip-flopping, oddly gratified to see an acceptance—even if she wasn’t going. She hadn’t breathed a word yet, but Caroline was paying her tuition at Berkeley, out in California, where her new boyfriend was about to start teaching.

     “Got in,” Adair announced, feeling a smile pull at her lips before it evaporated in the cool of Caroline’s whisper: “You can do better.”

     “Ain’t pretty enough to be a beautician,” Bennett, Jr. announced at dinner, exploding into a giggle-fit that rattled everything on the table. “Or skinny enough.”

     “Hush your mouth,” Daddy hissed. “Adair, what’s Cory say about this?” 

     She watched her pile of mashed potatoes, every eye on her, even her baby brother Wyler’s.

     “Cory want you over in Quincy all the time?”

     Mom gave Daddy a roll-eyed look, but didn’t speak up. Adair heard it in his voice: he didn’t trust her to keep a boyfriend solid as Cory. Caroline believed she couldn’t do worse. Daddy feared she might not do better.

      Caroline saved all her babysitting money from age twelve on, plus most of her wages from the Dairy Queen over in Stebbensville. Day after high school graduation she took off for Chicago, biggest city she could imagine getting to in that old green Malibu she bought from Terry O’Brien for $200. Adair was eight, and thought she’d never lose the ache of watching Caroline roar away.

     Made it far as Des Moines, Iowa, the first night where she met Dean Gebhardt, age 58, owner of the Cozy Stay Motel she checked into. Turned out he also owned three other motels and a small apartment building on the city’s northeastern edge. She never got to Chicago, but Dean gave her the start she needed to become the Caroline she was set on becoming. When he died of a heart attack four years after they married, she inherited enough, even with his grown kids getting most of it, to enroll in Drake University, located near the heart of downtown, where she began studying literature and art history.

     Might seem Caroline was just aiming to appear cultured. But she’d actually been eating up Hemingway and Jane Austen—all the classics—since she learned to read, like she was born knowing the titles. She spent hours, too, in the school library poring over books about the world’s great artworks. Couldn’t tear Caroline away when she got lost in a story or absorbed in vibrating colors on canvas. Folks finally had to conclude her appreciation was as genuine as her uncommon good looks.

     No surprise she and Lyman Chang fell for one another after she enrolled in his seminar on 20-century world art. He not only loved Japanese watercolors and modernist sculpture like she did, but also traveled regularly for research. With his encouragement Caroline had started collecting animal-themed paintings, ceramics and clothing on their trips to Europe, South America and Asia. She now wore snake bracelets and leopard-spot scarves and planned to launch a store in Berkeley called Wild Things once they got settled. They were also arranging an August wedding, even though she’d barely been widowed a year.

     Hard to fathom such a makeover could happen so quick. Sure, Caroline was a Ewell. Family viewed itself as high-born, but not show-offy. Ewells had stayed in La Rue for generations, opting for slightly grander versions of esteemed country occupations—like farmer and town banker—over education, city sophistication and flashier vocations.

     Course that never suited Caroline. She simply didn’t fit the place—arms and legs and daydreams always spilling over the edges. Didn’t quite know where to go, but her mind seemed bent on just the right path out of town, like she carried a precision compass in her genes—genes that never showed up in any other Ewell. In fact, Caroline remade herself so completely—shining herself up so brightly and unleashing her wildest reveries so fully—Adair sometimes didn’t recognize any part of the old Caroline, inside or out.

     “Let’s get married tonight,” Cory’s text read.

     Adair’s mind clicked into clarity, “Meet me in the park,” she texted back. Tonight was it. She had to tell him—sweet as he was, despite all the plans they’d dreamed together, even with a possible baby—she could do better.

      Outside, the evening was settling in. Not a car in sight. Always felt like things were about to happen in that hush between bright day and nighttime. They never did, but the possibility felt realer then.

     Sometimes, like tonight, Adair didn’t mind that nothing ever changed. Sign outside town had read La Rue, Missouri, Pop. 719, long as she could remember. Wasn’t actually too different from when Mom and Daddy were little, mostly same families and shops, except for occasional changeovers like Harold Stice selling his minimart to Debbie Burley and her husband in 2008.

     Sometimes, like tonight, Adair didn’t mind the quiet either. May was her favorite month, right before the hard heat of summer when everything was just beginning to grow, sweet and young, corn barely pushed through the soil. Not a peep yet from crickets and cicadas. By July, they’d drown out every other sound. 

     Sometimes, like tonight, Adair even craved the coziness of Cory’s big arms forever. Didn’t mean to feel a pull toward him—Briscoes sat several steps below Ewells. Just came over her sometimes without warning. Didn’t help that Daddy talked him up—called him a throwback. To before Cory’s great, great, great grandpa, Marshall, lost most of the family fortune in a bad land deal, and proceeded to drink away what remained. Following generations slipped into stagnation … and worse.

      At least Mom and Daddy could admit some families come back from ruin. Not like Uncle Glynn and Aunt Mina over in Belleview who believed they were better than everybody cause of their Ewell blood. In their estimation once folks slid into the trash heap, they were all but certain to stay trash, a black mark nothing could erase like a brand burned into flesh.

     Course Caroline sounded the same, but Adair recognized something beyond ordinary snobbery. Caroline didn’t contend to be the only special one. She regarded all folks as special, even the lowest of the low. They just had to locate it inside themselves.

     “Most people get locked in a box of expectations before growing into their full selves,” she explained once. “It’s a choice they make, even if they don’t know it.” Meaning no matter who you were—trash or not—if you didn’t kick up a better life for yourself, you clearly believed in limitations and were doomed to become whatever you were set to be at birth. A notion Caroline couldn’t fathom or abide.

    Course anyone would tell you Adair had to eventually climb the water tower. After all, Caroline did and it changed her life, gave her answers that made everything clear. Adair needed answers, too.

     She stood alone in the park eyeing the rusty steel ladder rising up one of the tower’s support columns. She scoured the horizon for Cory’s truck, heart pounding loud as it ever had. No sign yet. The stores were all dark, even Mr. Shotz’s. A ghost town. She was a ghost too, craning her head up toward the tank, a place where life might make sense.

     Adair grabbed the ladder, fire-red fingernails glinting in the remains of daylight. She kicked off her favorite jeweled flip-flops and hoisted herself up rung-by-rung, above small square stores, unfussy homes and aging doublewides planted along tar-patched streets.

     Two headlights made their way along Route 6 in the quiet dusk. Cory. Her stomach lurched, but she kept climbing. Had to see the Mississippi. And Quincy. Buildings just beginning to twinkle with lights. All that traffic and restaurants and movie houses a twitter.

     Cory’s truck slow-crawled around the park and stopped beneath the tower. Sweat trickled down Adair’s temples and the back of her neck. She paused to rest, praying he didn’t spy her before she got where she needed to go. High enough so his thoughts couldn’t reach her. Caroline’s either. Or Daddy’s or Mom’s. High enough to hear only her own free thoughts for once. High enough for what touched Caroline to touch her.

     Adair imagined Cory slouched in the driver’s seat, arms across his barrel chest, worry fastened on his face. Did she get hit by a car or fall in a ditch? Cory showed everything he was thinking. Just came natural to him.

     Up she climbed and up, panting, straining to reach the balcony that circled the tank. She heaved herself over the handrail and looked out, bracing for a view of Caroline’s world. But it wasn’t there. Only the world she’d seen a million times. Red lights blinking on the radio tower to the east. Her folks’ farm to the west. Adair could almost hear the low cluck of hens settling in for sleep and barn cats readying to hunt the dark pastures.

     Below on Knox Street, her best friend Kimber’s clapboard house stood same as always, rear-ended by an old summer kitchen where they’d played dress-up endlessly as kids. Next door, Miss McChristie’s family home, once the finest place in town with its cross-gabled roof and wraparound porch, sat nearly haunted. At street’s end, eroded gravestones in the town cemetery marked lives of family and neighbors stretching back two centuries.

     Caroline had climbed the tower and saw possibilities splayed out forever, providing wings sturdy enough for lift-off. But Adair saw none of that. No wings sprouted for flight. There was only the great weight of her belly and thighs, maybe a baby, Cory below, a line of Ewells stretching backward and forward in time. She clung to the handrail, squeezing every muscle against the mighty gravitational pull.

     Maybe she was trapped by limitations of her own making. Or caught in expectations handed down from her folks. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt them or leave their love behind. Or wasn’t gifted enough to see what made her special. Maybe she lacked imagination and guts to do better. Or couldn’t muster motivation for the tough work of reinvention. Or maybe, just maybe, the world in sight right now was just as consequential as the world that might be, more in beat with her heart. And maybe she was too. Maybe all these things were true at once.

     Adair watched the familiar details of her world fade to sunset orange. A kind of magic. But not Caroline’s kind.

     Fact was she didn’t feel someone different inside, no true soul waiting to take shape. Grief pounded against her, like waves buffeting the muddy Mississippi riverbanks. Helplessly, she watched Caroline’s dream for her crack open like a giant egg. Jagged pieces plummeted to earth, sending up a cloud of shame. But also the first inklings of relief.

     Maybe there was a baby and she’d marry Cory. They’d build a ranch house near Mom and Daddy’s farm with flower beds and a big lot for dirt-biking. Maybe she’d go to beauty school and open a home salon while Cory ran the diner. Or just raise kids. Cory wanted four. Or she might enroll in community college and marry somebody else. Or no one at all. There were choices. Not Caroline’s life-upside-down kind, but choices nonetheless. Choices sitting squarely before her in the midst of all she knew.

     Slowly, Adair lowered herself down the ladder, allowing gravity to slide her from rung to rung. She’d seen what she needed to see—wasn’t climbing higher than she stood right now.

     It was her choice, and hers alone, to become who she was set to be at birth.

Author Bio
Sidney Stevens is an author with an MA in journalism from the University of Michigan. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including The Wild Word, Finding the Birds Literary Journal, Viscaria Magazine, OyeDrum and The Centifictionist. Her newest story, “Night Trolley” will appear in the Summer 2021 issue of The Woven Tale Press. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Newsweek, New Works Review, Sure Woman, and Nature’s Healing Spirit, an anthology from Sowing Creek Press. In addition, she’s had hundreds of nonfiction articles published in print and online, and has also co-authored four books on natural health. Learn more at www.sidney-stevens.com.

pulling your linens 

hard against the mattress. like flags at airports,

tight in high winds. piling 

old sheets in the corner

and putting down new ones – 

our tangled scent and memory

given way to smells of chemicals.

I don’t know if I like this;

replacing the comfort of odours

with something that comes from a bottle,

which smells the way that someone 

has decided flowers smell,

but I know you do. and really,

who wants dirty bedlinens? 

I’ll like this just as much

when we’re both asleep tonight. 

I tuck it at the corners

and strip the comforter

for new covers.

you are in the kitchen

sorting the rest of the washing. it’s winter,

walls batting cold 

like a horsetail with flies. 

I feel that I could take your laundry

and pile it with my fingers.

push it down

like leaves in compost.

fall in it backwards

and sink.

Author Bio: DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)

It’s Sunday morning and the mice are going to church.

I can hear them rushing through the rafters over my head

to meet at some undisclosed central spot in my house. 

Because I don’t try to find and destroy their church, 

and I let them worship in peace

I hope their religion isn’t based on getting rid of me. 

It’s Sunday afternoon and the mice are coming home from church,

and their pace overhead seems slower, more thoughtful, this time

as though they have weighty thoughts to reflect on

or perhaps gratitude is guiding their steps now, 

and they’re enjoying coming back with their families

perhaps thinking of the future, making some great plans

that hopefully won’t affect me. 

Author Bio: Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest full-length poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).

The little girl and boy were screaming.

            Not the bad screaming.

            Not Mia’s screaming.

            Lucretia stood in the outer schoolyard, looking through the fence that separated her from the scene of the crime she had created two months prior.  Of all the kids packed into the limited pen designated for kindergarten students, her eyes and ears couldn’t help but track the running, laughing—For now, she thought—screaming little girl and boy, engaged in the age-old interplay: the fluttering of the little girl’s long hair; the little boy’s outstretched hand; the former barely outrunning the latter, whether by choice or biology, laughing, screaming, most times out of exhilaration, sometimes because a primitive thought told her she was in genuine danger; the way the invisibly tethered pair navigated the other children, who were merely sitting ducks oblivious to the fast-paced game of tandem sparrows; the little boy finding a latent gear, accelerating, reaching with a clawed hand, closer, closer, closer; the little girl abruptly turning to avoid his fingers; the chase slowing down—this time—to recover for an encore, or dying altogether, the dangerous game saved for something as distant as another day, or as close as the next recess.

And outside of this customary exchange, outside of this playground within a playground, Lucretia felt relief, for the little girl and boy had yet again successfully avoided recreating the history that had taken place in there.

She and Mia’s history.

A history she had forgotten until last week.

Lucretia had looked forward to the first day of school. Her mother had dropped her off at the side of the building, wished her good luck on her first day, and drove away to the job that paid their rent. Mia’s mother, on the other hand… well, if she had work, she had clearly called in sick so as to protect her daughter from Lucretia.

It was in the gymnasium, where the buzzing student body waited to be assigned their new teachers, that Lucretia had felt the summer’s sunburns in her gut, the summer’s scraped knees all over her body, for she had seen for the first time how and in what condition Mia had spent her summer—thanks to that single moment in June.

Thanks to Lucretia.

The little girl and boy were screaming again.

Not the bad screaming.

Not Mia’s screaming.

Not yet, Lucretia thought.

She looked away from the potential violence and focused on the one obstacle she would need to overcome if now was indeed the time to do what she hadn’t any real courage to do. But when the obsidian eyes of Ms. Jackson, perched atop the steps leading to Lucretia’s assigned door, met hers, she panicked, resorting to blindly surveying the vast schoolyard available to her.

She knew her new world by heart: the field that was home to two continental versions of football, haloed by quintuplet tracks; faded baseball diamond; fully-loaded play area—just some of the perks of becoming a full-day student in the first grade.

The perks, however, did nothing to perk her up.

Everyone was out here, relishing their twenty minutes outside the stifling classrooms, trying to capture as much of the lingering dog days as possible. Everyone who stole glances of Mia, who never saw, but must have felt the judging eyes. Everyone who gossiped, but pretended otherwise, as if the school was ripe with other Mia’s.

Everyone was out here.

Except Mia.

Lucretia could bear the Mia-less vista no longer. Heavy guilt shepherded her heavy legs toward Ms. Jackson. She could have claimed to have felt ill—she was, after all, sick with nerves—but opted for a watered-down lie that the hateful teacher would likely deny. “Can I get a drink, Ms. Jackson?” Her voice cracked, supporting her cause.

Ms. Jackson smiled, opened the door, and held it for the stunned Lucretia. She eyed the teacher as she crossed the threshold. The woman indeed appeared to be the same Ms. Jackson who had cradled and cooed the wailing Mia on that day in June; the same Ms. Jackson who glared and yelled at the culpable Lucretia. Doesn’t she remember me? Lucretia mused. Doesn’t she remember what I did?

The hard handrail felt like a slippery serpent of electric nerves. With legs of quicksand, she began the long ascent. She caught up to her pounding heart upon reaching the second-floor landing. There, the pair of heavy doors guarded against her, protecting whom she sought. But they were no match for a mousy thumb pressing the latch.

The click of the stairwell door did nothing to interrupt the hushed voices wafting over to her from the opposite side of the hallway. While the volume of the conversation rose with every step toward the only open door, specific words refused to clarify themselves. Still, Lucretia discerned two voices: one she knew, but scarcely heard during class; the other could have belonged to either relief or dread, for Mia’s mother was prone to classroom visits between the usual drop-offs and pick-ups—which contributed to the list of gossip topics.

Please be Mrs. Atwood, she thought.

Lucretia reached the door and listened for whether or not she would abort her mission. When her heart, thudding in her ears, skipped a beat, she heard not dread, but relief—Mrs. Atwood!—and turned the corner just as another thought occurred to her: Mia’s mother could still be in there, not talking.

Two pairs of eyes looked up at her from their respective desks. One pair looked back down just as quickly. The other pair held her gaze. “Hey, Lucretia.” There was a tinge of surprise in Mrs. Atwood’s voice. Surprise turned to concern. “You okay?”

Lucretia knew she looked as disheveled and antsy and nauseous as she felt. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Just…” She couldn’t lie about needing a drink; she had passed the fountains on her way over.

“Too hot outside?” Mrs. Atwood offered.

“Yeah,” Lucretia exhaled, relieved for the out.

“Well, you can take your seat if you like. Recess is almost over, anyway. Speaking of…” Mrs. Atwood rose from her desk. “Girls, I’ll be right back. Gotta use the ladies’ room.” She turned to the damaged thing at the far end of the second-last row, peeling a tangerine. “We’ll talk some more about it later, okay, Mia?”

Lucretia wondered if Mrs. Atwood saw the pain, suffering, and sadness that animated Mia’s barely nodding head. She wondered if Mrs. Atwood knew that she was responsible for those emotions. Of course, she does, Lucretia reminded herself. Mia and her mother and Ms. Jackson for sure told her what I did.

Mrs. Atwood flashed Lucretia a smile on her way out.

Victim and criminal were alone.

Lucretia remained at the door. Staring at Mia, like the other kids. Talking about her, like the other kids, except her conscience was the mouth, tongue-tied, inarticulate. Her meagre vocabulary boiled down to a single thought: Just do it, chicken!

Paring herself from the linoleum, Lucretia shuffled toward the row of desks in a wide arc, simultaneously avoiding and gravitating toward the back row. Her eyes never left Mia, who busied herself with her tangerine. As she drew reluctantly closer, Lucretia was afforded a profile view of the baseball cap—a major topic of gossip—that never left Mia’s head. Having reached the beginning of the back row, she then trudged the never-ending trudge toward her ill-placed desk at the very end.

Each timid step brought her closer to Mia.

Each fearful step brought her closer to the damned baseball cap… and what it hid.

Each outright terrified step packed more and more of Mia’s citrusy snack into her nose.

Standing behind her chair, which sat behind her desk, which sat behind Mia, Lucretia wondered why Mia’s mother—who had witnessed the unfortunate seating plan during several of her visits—allowed the criminal so close to her daughter.

Lucretia heard Mia’s chewing slow, saw her back stiffen, growing uncomfortably aware of Lucretia’s presence, and the lack of chair legs scraping against the floor.

Chicken! Chicken! CHICKEN!

She collapsed, rather than sat in, her poorly assigned seat, and couldn’t help but fall into the week-long habit of studying the bit of naked scalp visible under the rim of Mia’s baseball cap. She memorized the bony ridges, the shallow pockets, the pronounced point where the skull met the spine, the precise number of pink and red bumps. She knew each of Mia’s five beauty-marks intimately, and no matter how many times her eyes played with them, she couldn’t settle upon a shape, pattern, or design. She believed that if the school day were longer, she would finally be able to count each terribly short bristle of thin hair.

A fresh burst of tangerine invaded Lucretia’s nose. The odour divided itself: southbound, to her stomach, where it mixed with and churned breakfast; northbound, to the mysterious region of the brain where scent converted to imagery. There, she saw that bright June day, not too dissimilar from the little girl and boy outside. Did he catch her? she wondered. Is she crying?

Chicken! that other part of her taunted.

What if she doesn’t believe me?

Chicken!

What if she screams and cries again?

Chicken!

What if she hits me?

CHICKEN!

Another burst of tangerine perspiration. This time Lucretia didn’t see the little girl and boy, but another film entirely: the claustrophobic kindergarten playground; Mia clutching the back of her head, bawling in Ms. Jackson’s arms; Lucretia trying her best not to join in on the bawling, but failing, trying to give back the long brunette strands of hair wrapped around her stubby fingers; Mia blaring her refusal; Lucretia covering her blubbering face, her snotty nose detecting something flowery, something fruity.

Yet another surge of Mia’s tangerine, and Lucretia realized that Mia’s envied, rope-like hair had been washed in tangerine-scented shampoo that day in June.

“I’m sorry.” Lucretia craved to be heard, perhaps even to be forgiven, and yet she didn’t understand why Mia was turning to face her.

“For what?” Mia asked.

Lucretia couldn’t believe the question more than the fact Mia was actually talking to her. Did she forget, too? Like Ms. Jackson? Does her mom remember?

Mia started to turn away.

The tangerine had completely assimilated with Lucretia’s stomach contents, and out came a vomit of sorts: “I’m sorry for pulling your hair and for making you cry and for making all your hair fall out of your head and eyebrows and everyone talking about you and looking at you and not playing with you and making you not want to go outside and play…” As she purged, she saw the most peculiar thing: a smile. Mia had never looked so pretty. Lucretia thought Mia had been pretty on their last day as kindergartners, when she had asked if she’d like to play tag, but this was…

…beauty.

Lucretia sealed her spewing. She noted a sliver of pale orange flesh stuck between Mia’s big teeth, somehow enhancing her beautiful smile.

“You didn’t pull all my hair out, Luke,” Mia said, her voice tickled by a suppressed laugh.

Lucretia—“Luke” to her only friend, Mia—saw two of the girl before her. Both Mia’s lost their beautiful smiles as they took Lucretia’s hand, and asked her why she was crying.

“I thought I…” Tears drowned the thought. “I thought I pulled out all your hair when we played tag that time.”

“No,” Mia said, beautiful smile nowhere on her lips. “I was sick.”

“Sick? Like a cold?” Lucretia sniffled as if she bore the illness.

“I got leukemia,” Mia said, the word somewhat shaky on her tongue.

Lucretia tasted the foreign word. “Lu-Luke-Mia?” She beamed. “Luke-Mia? Like our names?”

Mia smiled another one of her rainbows, tangerine pulp and all. “I never thought of that.”

“What’s Lu-Luke-”

“Leukemia,” Mia corrected. “It’s a bad sickness, but I don’t got it anymore because the doctor gave me medicine, but the medicine makes your hair fall out. My mom is going to come to class one day soon and help me and Mrs. Atwood tell everyone about it.”

On the one hand, Lucretia was relieved to be off the hook. On the other, she now wished she had been the cause of Mia’s hair loss. “Is that why you don’t want to go outside?” The regret of the inquiry came as swiftly as Mia’s radiant smile faded.

“I want to, but I can’t do too much stuff, like running. I don’t like the way the other kids look at me, and stuff.” Now it was Lucretia’s turn to wipe her duplicate self from Mia’s brimming eyes.

The school bell rang, setting off an uproar outside.

Mrs. Atwood returned as if on cue. “You girls okay?” She hadn’t noticed the swollen eyes. They smiled. “Mia, all good?” An extra smile from Mia.

Once again, Lucretia was gifted with the back of Mia’s baseball-capped head, the way she would remain until the glancing and gossiping kids were summoned outside for more for-granted play. She leaned forward, and whispered each word louder than the next, for the rowdiness was racing up the steps. “If you want, I can play with you outside next recess.” She saw the beauty-marks closest to each of Mia’s ears rise ever so slightly, and she knew her friend was smiling.

And though the children were screaming in the hallway—not the bad kind of screaming; not Mia’s screaming—Lucretia caught Mia’s whisper: “Maybe we can play tag.”

Author Bio: Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi has spent a decade penning award-winning short- and feature-length screenplays, while working as a full-time artisan baker. His prose work explores the trials and tribulations of ordinary people embedded in ordinary and extraordinary environments and conflicts. His short stories have appeared in over 45 literary journals worldwide, and was a finalist in the Blood Orange Review Literary Contest. In addition to several short pieces, he is currently working on his debut novel.