2026 Stanford Senior Anthology

STANFORDSENIOR ANTHOLOGY2026

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Gavin Jones

Michele Elam

Jayne Abraham

Keshav Jain Dhir

Victor Eduardo

Robin Huang

Audrey Kim

Skye Lyles

liyah nicole

Andrea Carolina Cortez Rodriguez

Sara Simoni

Logan Smith

Sophie Szew

Kushal Thaman

Jason Thompson

Caroline Wei

Lauren Yu

Opening Remarks

Introductory Note

“The Words I Have to Give” “Void”

“Un Encuentro en la Fontera” “Lady Lo” “IN HELL”

“The Prey of Love // Seyd-e-Esgh” “Playing In Your Face”

“Maladaptive” “Climbing the Bell Curve”

“Future Mother(s)”

“Blue Inventory”

O P E N I N G R E M A R K S

G A V I N J O N E S

Dear Graduating Seniors

A little while ago, I stumbled upon an article in the New York Times on the rise of radical and countercultural bookstores across the nation that began during the Pandemic and continues today. The article was called “The Rise of Bookstores with a Social Mission,” and it describes a movement of sorts – the emergence, from Los Angeles to Baltimore, of cooperative bookstores that have become indispensable anchors in neighborhoods suffering from widening wealth gaps, housing insecurity, and racial violence. These bookstores provide a kind of mutual aid to the marginalized and the poor in these ever-moretroubled times by offering essential resources and core educational programs calling for collective change.

According to one historian cited in the article, these bookstores prioritize their cause over their bank balance; they promote social movements through the books they sell; they create safe spaces for the curious to congregate; and they model their businesses after the goals of liberation and equality.

The article struck me as timely and poignant because I wanted to leave you with a concrete image as you begin your lives beyond Stanford and the English Department, something you might remember amid the swirl of vague congratulations and ephemeral advice that inevitably surrounds us at graduation time.

Think of how prepared you would be to open such a Bookstore, having surrounded yourselves with books these years, having immersed yourselves in the resonant relativism of the literary imagination, having carefully curated your personal canons, having struggled with creativity itself. Think of your commitment to the poet’s truth in this world of post-truth. Think of your dedication to artful intelligence in a world of artificial intelligence. Never have we been more in need of education as an ongoing pursuit in a divided world: for acceptance and understanding; for kindness and tolerance; for all those values would have encountered in your reading and your writing.

Of course, you may not be able to open such a Bookstore with a Social Mission of the brick-and-mortar kind. But I hope you will keep this image open in your

O P E N I N G R E M A R K S

G A V I N J O N E S

hearts and minds, as an ideal and an aspiration. Think of your inner Bookstore as a threshold, a way to keep alive your passion for knowledge and understanding, for the sanctity and power of the creative imagination. Think of it as a space to engage with different views and to make education a communal and continuing urge. Keep your doors open and your shelves full in your inner Bookstore with a Social Mission.

With congratulations and warmest wishes for the road ahead –

Gavin Jones Chair of English Department

Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities Professor of English

I

Dear Graduating Seniors,

Some of you may be familiar with these words by James Baldwin in his 1963 essay, “The Integrity of the Artist”: “poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” Baldwin wrote much on the role of writers and cultural critics as “disturbers of the peace,” as those who bear witness to the beautiful, painful, poignant complexities of human experience. But you might be less familiar with his comment, a few lines later in that essay, that “I think, in a country like ours, and at a time like this when something awful is happening to a civilization, when it ceases to produce poets, and, what is even more crucial, when it ceases in any way whatever to believe in the report that only the poets can make.”

I mention this line because I believe it speaks to how deeply important and meaningful is your choice of a degree sometimes dismissively referred to as fuzzy--especially in this historical moment. After all, you chose to become English majors and minors at a time in this country when the value of the arts and humanities is being again questioned and challenged in often cynical ways, which, as Baldwin suggests, is not just awful for artists writ large but for society itself. As he writes here and elsewhere, those who take up reading, writing, thinking as craft and/or critique are in many ways canaries in a coalmine; the degree to which they are valued, believed, and respected speaks to the health of a nation.

In this context, your English degree—whether in literary study or creative practice--speaks to a trust and belief in yourself that is also an act of some bravery. You deserve all the praise we can give you for your Stanford accomplishments, but I also hope you can take this moment to give yourself some much-justified praise for pursuing that which truly brings you joy, meaning, and hopefully also genuine fellowship with your peers, your professors, all the supporting staff and administrators.

Michele Elam Director of Undergraduate Studies

William Robertson Coe Professor in the Humanities Professor of English

THEWORDSI HAVETO GIVE

Jayne Abraham

The Words I Have to Give

English Major Creative Writing emphasis

Up until a little while ago, I thought I learned I was Black when I was 6, when my first-grade teacher introduced me as the new kid in class and also thought it appropriate to make mention of my skin tone, the fact that my mother is white and my father is Black and that is why my skin was the way it was, is the way it is. That was the first time I remember hearing anyone say anything like that about me and my skin. Thus, my initiation into the American racial landscape began.

But I was wrong. I was actually 2, or younger, when that all started. On the phone the other day, my parents and I were talking about my sister’s recent publication, “The Myth of the Blonde Beyoncé,” where my sister unpacks her decades-long pursuit of blonde hair, offering a commentary on the inaccessibility of normative beauty to Black women. My parents lamented how young she and I were when we became attuned to our difference. In one of the anecdotes in her essay, my sister is only 4 when she begins to take note of her skin, her hair, her Blackness. How old was I?

Two. My mom told me that at just 2 years old, I told her I wanted skin like hers –white skin.

When I was 2, I spoke Russian. Russian was my first language. It’s pretty difficult to imagine a version of myself that did not struggle with the hard consonants and seemingly indistinguishable sounds of the Russian language, a version of myself that asked for молоко (milk) when I needed it, that requested Russian lullabies from my mom and grandma and sang along.

My mom was born in Russia. Before immigrating to Russia from Nigeria, my dad spent a year in Kazakhstan learning Russian in preparation for the academic program at the university in Moscow where he would meet my mom, and where they would have my older sister in 1990. Because my parents were in school, my grandparents helped raise my sister. Each of them knows Russian. When my parents and sister would immigrate to Canada in the late ‘90s, they would all learn English. When I was born in 2004, Russian was the first language I would be given, English the second. When I started going to school, English was the one I’d keep. I have always felt I have a special relationship with language. I grew up in a multilingual household. Along with Russian and English, my dad’s native language Ebira circulated my household, mostly on Sundays when my dad would call family in Nigeria. I always felt closer to Russian, though – it was my first language after all. When my grandparents visit, I speak English to them while they speak Russian to me. For the most part, we understand each other.

Jayne Abraham

Reading and writing came naturally to me. I learned to read when I was 3. English was always my favorite subject. The right combination of words – in music, in books, in speech – has always been inexplicably satiating to me. I think that’s because languages abound in my brain and body – Russian, mostly dormant in my mind; Ebira, silently swimming in my blood; and English, the most accessible of all. Each of these languages, in its own way, informs my speech – in that way, each language informs me, who I am.

I cannot tell you precisely how each language informs my speech, my writing, my language. But I can tell you that when I hear my grandpa speak, the times his Russian doesn’t register coherently in my brain, I sometimes think he’s upset before someone like my mom translates his words into a sentiment often humorous, that often makes reference to my height, or asks why I’m always wearing pants that are too big. My grandpa’s voice is booming; sometimes it wakes me up in the morning when he and my grandma are visiting.

Like my grandpa, for most of my life, I’ve been told, by some person or another, in one way or another, that my tone can be harsh, my words too direct, my voice too loud. If Russian is no longer accessible to me in speech, then, it comes through in not what I say but how I say it.

Russians speak with a lot of conviction, so does my dad. Nigerians are passionate, dramatic, and funny. My dad is passionate, dramatic, and funny. I am passionate, dramatic, and funny. That plays into the tone thing, too. I speak with a lot of conviction, no matter what it is I am speaking about, because I am passionate and dramatic. Even when I’m trying to be funny, that passion and drama can be interpreted as too direct, too harsh, too much. And, indeed, sometimes I can be too direct and too harsh and perhaps, at times, too much.

English is my playground. It’s the language I feel I can be intelligent in, the language I can be funny in, the language I communicate best in. Rap music was my first love. In the music of rappers like MF DOOM, Earl Sweatshirt, Freddie Gibbs, A$AP Rocky, and more, I find delight in their metaphors, word play, clever rhymes that sometimes mean a lot, and other times don’t try to mean anything at all. Toni Morrison is my idol. I joke with my friends that if I could make a sliver of the impact that she made in her lifetime, I could die happy. To know literature and therefore language well enough to blow it all up. To garner and sustain attention because your writing is that good, that masterful, all the while crafting a story like never before. To stare unflinchingly at history and violence and Blackness and histories of violence against Blackness and say, I will write it in, and to do even more than that. I want to be a writer. I want to read so much so that I can write like that. I want people to pay attention to what I have to say, whatever that may be.

Jayne Abraham

I have been told that I am eloquent, that I am persuasive, that I am funny, that I am a good writer, that I have a way with words. To which language, to which part of me, can I attribute any of this? I don’t know and I won’t ever know. Maybe the power of language is in how it is received, how it is interpreted – in this way it’s at once in and out of my hands. I just know that there is power in language. It has the power to remind you of homes you’ve never truly known, homes that are yours and not yours, like when my grandpa calls me Евгения, my Russian name. Or when my dad calls me Princess, the English translation of my Nigerian middle name, Onyiohi. Or when my mom makes a typo I know she can’t help in a text to me, even though calling me “Sweetie” rolls off her tongue like English is the only language she’s ever known. Language has empowered me. It has given me the ability to speak to my own identity, never mind attempts by elementary school teachers to do as much. It has allowed me to listen and read and learn and write so that any desire for white skin feels far behind me now. It has allowed me to be critical of literature and identity in service of a nuanced, more holistic conceptualization of the complexity of racial and gender identity. I have power because I do not underestimate the power of language. The languages I harbor do not map neatly onto my life nor the way I speak, nor write, nor am. But they’re all there, they must be, somewhere, in my body, my mind, my mouth – the words I have been given and the words I have to give.

VOID KESHAVJAINDHIR

Prose subplan

The corpse falls to the floor with a wet thud. I pull my sword out with a squelch and, flicking my wrist, coat the walls with a fine splatter of blood.

I have barely taken my first step out of the cottage when the first undulating wails pierce the air from behind me. They are not the first that I have heard in such a situation. I know they will not be the last.

A short man clad in clanking armor waddles up to me, struggling with the slickness of the dew-covered grass. As he reaches my position, I stop and wait for Lloyd Astville to catch his breath.

“Master Marlon, how goes it? Has the insolent whelp been taken care of?”

“It is done.”

The rotund man’s face splits into a grin, and he begins to hop up and down in glee. Even obscured by the jangling of his ill-fitting metal armor, his cries are easily heard. “That’s what you deserve for moving against His Majesty! You scum! Filth! Pigs!”

“Enough.”

At this, the man immediately ceases his jeering, although not without retaining his smile. “As you wish, Master Marlon. While you were… busy, I received a summon from His Majesty. He wishes to know your progress.”

“Clean my sword.”

He blinks. “Pardon?”

I hold up my left hand, which still grips the hilt of my sword. In the cold morning air, the blood has already started to dry. “Clean it.”

“I… very well, Master Marlon.” He gingerly takes the glittering black blade from me, staggering under its weight. I watch as he stumbles towards his pack animal, a mule of somewhat advanced age. I can hear some of his muttering on his way. “Sword-cleaning… can’t believe…”

I feel my right knee buckle, and as I fall, I hear Lloyd cursing.

Placing one hand on the ground to steady myself, I twist to see my attacker. A child, no more than perhaps six years old, stands behind me. His face is contorted in an expression I most often see in warriors and barbarians – squinted eyes, crimson skin, panting mouth.

The hilt of a small hunting knife is buried in my calf, rivulets of red running down my leg. A shriek arises from the cottage, and I see the woman standing there with her hands over her mouth. She is still covered in blood.

She starts towards her child, but is stopped by Lloyd, who is now brandishing a sword of his own. “I’ll have your head for this, woman!” he roars. “Yours and your little goblin’s skulls will line the spikes of His Majesty’s gates!” Void

I hold up a hand. Lloyd immediately cows away and retreats. I pivot to face the child and place a hand on the hilt of the knife. The child’s eyes widen as I slowly pull the blade out and lay it on the ground. He opens his mouth, then closes it. His fists remain clenched.

The child’s face scrunches up, and he begins to bawl. His mother, once frozen by the threat of Lloyd, now rushes over. She scoops up her child and the knife, then pauses briefly.

“You’re a monster.” With tear-filled eyes, she hurries away into the hut.

Lloyd is hovering behind me. “...Master Marlon? Are you able to stand?”

I reach behind me and probe the injury, finding that there is nothing to probe. Where blood once ran freely now lies only a thin red line, which will fade in its own time. The backside of my leather greaves, however, is cleanly pierced and stained with my blood.

I lift myself up, stretch my leg, and walk away from the cottage, towards the mule. Lloyd hurries besides me. “Come, Master Marlon. His Majesty awaits.”

“My armor needs repairing and cleaning. See that it is done when we return.”

Lloyd gives a nervous chuckle. “It would not do to keep His Majesty waiting, Master Marlon… perhaps we should –”

“He will wait. See to my armor.”

“...Yes, Master Marlon.”

My journey back to the castle is uneventful. Nothing arises, other than the clanking of the mule and Lloyd’s cursing as he urges the beast to move quicker. And yet, I am wary for a reason I cannot describe.

Monster. That word, and the way that woman said it, has struck something within me. Her expression – wide eyes, furrowed brow, flared nostrils, tight lips – has put me into a state of heightened awareness, as though I should expect some attack from her at any moment. I cannot stop myself from searching, eyes roving across the grassy plain for a sign.

Upon reaching the castle, I immediately make for my quarters. Before I know it, I am standing in front of an ornate, dark wooden door. To my left, a portion of the wall silently slides open and a man steps out, head bowed. His smooth head, cleanshaven face, and simple white garb serve to identify him as a servant of the castle. The wall slides seamlessly closed behind him, and he lifts his head and faces me, observing me with flat, black eyes.

“Welcome back, Master Marlon.” He speaks with no inflection, and his lack of eyebrows or sclera makes him look somewhat inhuman. “A bath has been prepared.” He turns to open the door, revealing the insignia of a sword branded into the back of his head. The door swings open with a creak, and I follow him into my quarters.

My boots sink into soft carpet as I follow the servant to the bath, which is concealed behind another, simpler wooden door. The small room is plainly adorned, with sconces holding lit torches on either side; the bath occupies most of the room, leaving little space for much else. I recall Lloyd blustering that this was no bath, and he was, perhaps, correct by normal standards – it is simply a square basin with a hole in the middle for draining water. A bucket of steaming water sits nearby, with a small square of absorbent fabric draped on its rim.

I stand to the side of the bath and lift my arms up. The servant follows me inside, shutting the door behind him, and begins to take off my armor. I feel my muscles pulsating as the straps around my arms and legs are loosened and released. In a short time, my armor lays in a neat pile beside me, the ruined greaves on top.

“Sir Lloyd has sent for your armor, Master Marlon.” I turn to see another servant stepping out of another sliding wall. He speaks with the same tone as the man currently undressing me, and their identical appearance only serves to enhance their unearthly image.

He picks up the armor silently and turns to leave. I catch a glimpse of another brand seared into his skull – this one a square hammer – before the stone wall slides closed again, leaving no trace of a passage.

I face forward again, allowing the servant to continue to undress me. Upon the completion of this task, I step into the basin, arms spread. The servant takes the cloth from the bucket, soaks it, and begins to rub it across my chest. The steaming rivulets of water trickle down my stomach, across my right leg and down onto the floor, where they are sucked into the drain.

I close my eyes, mind turning once again to thoughts of that woman and her words.

I am aware of how the citizens of this kingdom see me. As I walk through the streets of the capital, I see them watching and hear them whispering. Marlon, the King’s left-hand man. Marlon, the royal assassin. Marlon, with his stark white hair and armor black as night. Marlon, with his piercing eyes, void of all emotion. Marlon, the man who single-handedly defeated another kingdom’s army in a single day. Marlon, the man who walks into battle because no horse would come near him. Marlon, the man who murdered a village for looking him in the eye. Marlon, the man whose loyalty to the King is unmatched. Marlon, the man…

None of these words have ever mattered before. But that word pushes past my recollections. Monster, I hear… and something comes to the surface of my mind. Blinding light. Piercing sounds. Blood. Blood everywhere.

I open my eyes. I am lying on a cold, smooth surface. The light shines into my eyes, and I attempt to lift my arms to shield myself. I find that I can’t. Squinting, I peer down my body to see the gleam of a metal brace of some sort entrapping my wrists. My unease

and agitation threatens to consume me, surging within my brain. And then they stop.

A dim pain surges through my abdomen, and I wince. Craning my head, I see my naked body and the countless thin, transparent strands protruding from every part of it, snaking down and away into places I can’t see. A mass of thick, reddish tubes protrudes from my stomach, bulging and pulsing on the tray they lay on nearby.

I hear the scratching of fabric on stone, and a man appears. He is tall, with slick dark hair pulled into a tight bun. He is clothed in some sort of alchemist’s gear, with a large flowing robe fastened by a heavy metal clasp at his throat. He looks down his aquiline nose and tuts.

“Oh dear, Marlon. You’re a bit early, aren’t you?”

My name isn’t Marlon, I try to tell him, but my voice won’t come. My name is H… H…

My blood runs cold as I realize I can’t remember.

“Well, I suppose if you’re here already, I may as well conduct some tests.” The man pokes at the large tubes, which begin to squirm. Sharp jolts of pain begin to spread throughout my body, and I realize with horror that the tubes are my own intestines. As I writhe and convulse, insides wriggling on the tray, the pain and abject fear increase until I can bear it no more. And then… they stop.

“Correct response to external stimulus. Good.” The man withdraws a syringe from some hidden pocket, already filled with a clear liquid. Flicking it once, he examines the tip carefully, then, without warning, plunges it into the side of my neck. I gasp with the pain, only to find that there is none.

Still reeling from the rush of events, I watch as my innards begin to rearrange themselves in the air before seating themselves back into my stomach in an orderly fashion. The gaping wound knits itself closed, sealing up like there was never a cut at all. I want to vomit, but my body is oddly relaxed.

“Regeneration capabilities function as intended. Good.” The man frowned.

“Unexpected side effect: Hair has changed color. Will monitor for side effects. Proceeding as normal.”

I feel the metal clasps release, freeing my limbs. I slowly sit up and slide my legs off the side of the bed. Feeling something trickling down my back, I swivel to see the man holding a thin knife, dripping with my blood.

“Negative pain response. Good.” The man smiles at me. It is a strange sight, and I cannot tell what kind of smile it was. “Come, Marlon. Let’s take a look at you, shall we?”

I stand up, gingerly placing my feet on the floor. I walk up to the object the man has proffered to me – a mirror.

Another man stands facing me. His dark hair frames his face loosely, falling to his shoulders. He wears simple garb, and his hands are calloused and worn. He leans on a dirtied shovel, watching me. I can see where his faded boots sink into the dirt, and

where his shirt is beginning to fray at the seams, and how the wrinkles on his forehead only seem to grow with each passing day.

He smiles at me. His smile – so full of warmth, and so full of pain. He turns away from me, revealing a cottage behind him. In the doorway I can see another figure, a woman beckoning to him. She holds a child in one arm, a babe scarcely old enough to walk.

He turns back to me one more time. I feel a sudden urge to call out to him, to ask him to stay. He smiles again, this one hiding sadness, perhaps. He turns away. Suddenly, I am left watching another man. His haggard, naked body is covered in scars from what I know to be heavy battles. Stark white hair hangs limply around his head, grazing his shoulders. His face holds nothing at all – no emotion, no memory, no personality. No humanity.

The alchemist claps me on the shoulder. “Well, Marlon. Congratulations. You are the first artificial lifeform – the original homunculus.”

I turn to look at him. He is not looking at me, but rather at his reflection in the mirror. His expression holds a hint of something indescribable, and it is deeply unsettling.

“Remember this well, Marlon.” He grabs me by the shoulders and spins me, forcing me to look into his pitch-black eyes. “You serve His Majesty. You were born for this purpose and this purpose alone. You have nothing else, because you were not meant to be anything else. Understood?”

I say nothing. I glance at the mirror again. Whoever this man was… somehow, I know him. And yet, he is not me. He was never me. My name is not his name.

My name is Marlon.

“Hail to His Majesty.”

“...ster Marlon? Master Marlon?”

I open my eyes to see the ground only inches away. Regaining some semblance of consciousness, I prop myself up and slowly get to my feet. The servant has been calling my name repeatedly – although he has the same expressionless face as ever.

A medical servant is also present. He waits patiently, seeing if I will ascertain that I need help or not. I wave my hand. He bows and exits through the open passageway the armory servant came through earlier, flashing a glimpse of the snake-wreathed staff emblazoned on his head.

I turn to my personal servant. “What happened?”

“Master Marlon, you seemed to have lost consciousness and collapsed on the floor. I signaled for medical services –”

I hold up a hand again. The servant stops immediately. “Is my armor ready?”

The servant bows. “Yes, Master Marlon. Your armor is in the bedroom.”

I step out of the basin, slightly unsteady on my feet. Stumbling out the door onto the carpet, I make my way to the bed. Its lavish appearance, with its four tall posts and gilded covers, does not hide the fact that it is too neat to ever have been slept in.

My armor lays in a pile on the bed, with the affected greaves newly restored. I begin to dress myself, waving away the approaching servant intending to assist. “Send for Lloyd,” I command. The servant bows and disappears.

The act of clothing and armoring myself serves to distract me from the incident, but it cannot stop thoughts pervading my head entirely. For the first time, I am experiencing what can only be described as confusion – a whirling storm that cannot be made heads nor tails of.

A pounding on the door awakens me from my thoughts. “Master Marlon?” Lloyd. “Are you ready? We must go and see His Majesty, now.”

I tug the last strap tight and stride to the door. Opening it reveals a red-faced Lloyd, huffing with the exertion of holding my sword. I take it from him, spending a moment to examine the grip and blade edge. “Good. We will see His Majesty now.”

Lloyd sighs in relief. “Very well, Master Marlon.”

Sheathing my blade into the scabbard on my right hip, I follow Lloyd through the winding passageways and grandiose halls, passing bowing servants and saluting guards. I hear Lloyd muttering every time we pass a servant. “Lowlife… subhuman… imposter…”

“Lloyd. What do you speak of the servants?”

Lloyd turns to look at me. “Oh, nothing, Master Marlon. I simply do not like their appearance, is all.” He gives a nervous chuckle.

“You dislike their look? Or their breed?”

“Well, I suppose I just don’t like the idea of all these false humans running around, looking the way they do. It’s unnatural.”

I look at him.

Lloyd’s face goes pale, and he stops walking to turn around to me fully. “My most humble apologies, Master Marlon,” he says, bowing quickly, eyes averted to the ground. “It had slipped my mind that you, er… you were also…”

“A homunculus.”

“Er… ah… yes.”

I step closer to Lloyd, who straightens with a start. “It is unnatural, but it is the place they were made to serve. Do not pay them any heed.”

“Yes, Master Marlon.” Lloyd wipes his brow and turns away, continuing the path to the king’s audience chamber.

The place they were made to serve. I say this, but even as I do, I can feel something in my mind rebelling against this. It gnaws at my thoughts, a hunger to disprove this notion.

If their place was to dote on the nobles of this kingdom, then my place must be that of the King’s bearer of sin; the one who carries out every great and terrible order he commands. It does not matter whether I am a “true” human or not, for as long as I can still be useful to His Majesty, I will have served my purpose. I can spy, and steal, and kill; that is what matters.

However, I have never felt the need to distinguish myself as one or the other –at least, not until this moment. I have long known Lloyd to harbor derogatory feelings towards homunculi and those he considers below him, but not once have I ever spoken against him for it, until today. As I watch his sweaty head bob down the corridor, my lip curls in true disgust.

That memory… it is mine, and yet I have never felt it. My earliest memory is of swearing fealty to His Majesty all those years ago, but I know that this new memory, which must have come before, is undoubtedly true. And now I am left to deal with this… feeling towards homunculi. My fellow homunculi. A need to defend, protect, shield. So antithetical to my very existence as an assassin and murderer, and yet it feels… better.

Lloyd stops again. Before us stand a set of double doors the height of three men, intricately carved with the finest craftsmanship in the kingdom. Gold adorns all of it, giving the whole room a delicate sheen. The guards on either side stand at attention, halberds held straight to let us pass. Lloyd gestures. “After you, Master Marlon. His Majesty awaits.”

I exhale a breath I was not aware I was holding. I place my hands on the doors, one on each side of the seam, and push. Despite their size, they open easily and silently, and I enter the chamber of the King.

UNENCUENTRO ENLAFONTERA

VICTOREDUARDO

Victor Eduardo

Un Encuentro en la Fontera

Growing up here, you hear stories of people in passing: stories of those who made it to The Other Side and never came back, or the ones who traveled from far down South just to never make it across; there are stories from those born in Este Lado who never really cared to move North—or perhaps did not see the incentive— and of course, the stories of those who still tread the careful dance of the border, the ones that wait in línea and are coerced into the back-and-forth drag between both sides.

Maria José married a woman from Sonoma County. He stayed the night with us in Tijuana and soon after, he was on her way North. He didn’t have papers, but had the phone number of a man who would help him get across. Now I hear they are raising a beautiful daughter in Santa Rosa.

Marco came from Colombia and used to live in La Revu. Now he lives in Camino Verde with his family, where they own a humble panaderia. He tells us his dreams, praying that eventually, his two sons might find their way further up North, or find work elsewhere.

There’s Leticia, an old friend of Ma, who came at her request from Veracruz. Ma tells us she lived here for 2 years, and when her boyfriend fucked up all their plans and she couldn’t find work, she returned back to Tlacotalpan. We see her sometimes when we go back to visit.

Our neighbor in San Diego, Nancy, now lives in Chula Vista. Her business took off. She still fills up her white van with Mexican artesanias from Rosarito, or mercados in Tijuana. She used to sell from a bodega in San Ysidro. Now, she seeks booths in the trendy weekend street markets of North Park.

And, of course, Maria, whose carcajadas we hear from our home in Tijuana. She sells American brand clothes under a red tent at the sobreruedas on Chilpancingo. Every Sunday, she takes the calafia to San Ysidro and walks to Las Americas Outlets to pick up new clothing items for the week. She hangs the clothes on a rack and on the metal frame of the tent, always well stocked.

We grew up here, stuck somewhere between Este Lado and the Other Side. Constantly dragged by the ankle from one side to the other. Pulled by the promised dreams of The Other Side, and the material realities of Este Lado.

Growing up here, in this imperial middle ground, everyone is always in movement. They may sit down with you to tell you a story or two, over tacos or tortas. But if you aim to catch them whole and complete, it may only be once all their life and labor has borne its fruit, after extraction; once there is nothing to be done or said but tell the story.

LADYLO ROBINHUANG

Robin Huang Creative Writing Minor

Prose subplan

Lady Lo

In the blinding steam

Weak, gathering flesh rotting flesh

Hair in free-fall around the nape

Suspended in the crackle frozen in defeat

An eloquent act a precious blessing

To rest, unaware

Finally the knot straining against her spine

Unravels into cursive strands

That she can then weave into a dizzying shroud

She finds the loophole her salvation

Breaks her fast with sweet drops of blood that she savors

Like nectar on her tongue

The reddening the deadening

Scrape out the yolk from the bright-eyed folks

Who cower in the face of dirty toil

She knows every secret every flowering in late spring

All those who drip sweat who swallow their vomit

With a blank face

Her choking thirst need not be quenched

Her groaning hunger need not be sated

She sings out in agony—

Wasn’t the dream to be an actress?

Wasn’t the plan to live forever?

She severed her brain for the people and staggered back offstage

Barreling down Nathan Road, past the ripened fruits at the wet market, past the old women counting their cents at McDonald’s

Robin Huang

Hallucinating

fantastical tragedies even the poets would swoon at

Wandering around the deserted park

Wondering what is left, what is to come

In this battle of luck disgorging the left-behind

In this time of howling loss

She still sought love or hope or warm rice

And plunged herself into the ocean looking for treasure

But that was too bold; the ocean spit her out

Daring to dream was a crime

What else to do but sob? But ululate?

But hiccup incessantly while mouthing for forgiveness

And wait for another life

To fling her cardboard out the window

And slam her cart against the pole

A perfect flurry of something only a madwoman can muster

Tearing the film off the naked mind that only demands more this endless want, this unbelievable blindness

That ignores that holy laughter, those holy tears

And instead fixates on the specter of success

Breaking their backs lifting it to the sky

And who really is mad?

Mahn Hohn—

I’m with you in Wanchai

I’m with you in Central

I’m with you in the tear gas

I’m with you in the hospital

Mahn Hohn—

Would you shield me from the fluorescent lights?

Would you hide me from these hospital gowns?

Would you hug me one last time?

Mahn Hohn—

You do not disappear when I blink

Robin Huang

There you stand there you are “Why would I disappear?”

If I dare love you, if I pinch your nose, would you disappear?

“Why would I disappear?”

Not in the cruel shrieks of summer heat, nor in the bygone sighs of winter pulse, nor now in dying autumn?

Will you fish out these words from your mother’s clamped mouth?

Will you understand my rusty eyes?

Will you look at this shriveled bag of bones and condemn it to age? Too insignificant for such a grandiose word, love

But the words would not come out

The words would not come out

All that escapes: A hum

Certainly too quiet to be heard.

Yet despite everything, There you stand Chanting

Hold on

Just a little while longer Hold on

Until in my dreams I wake up electrified in eternal bliss.

Between the beeps

“Hold on, Lady Lo”

INHELL AUDREYKIM

Audrey

IN

HELL

If I could send one cryptic message back to the land of the living, it would be, The thing you believe in might be the thing that destroys you. Worship selfishly — if at all. I would add instructions to burn the sanctuaries and steeples; to stop trying to appease the jealous, vindictive gods. I would tell the good ones to put their stock in Reincarnation, and all the rest to double down on Atheism and await the chaste kiss of death. My heart aches for the children who were dragged to sermons on Sunday and rejected God of their own volition, only to forever wonder if there was something lurking in the dead air of close-eyed prayer. I would tell them to make haste during the slurried minutes that drip down to death; to prepare for the shriek of angels sending a hammer through your skull. Try your damndest not to acknowledge them. They might be tricked into thinking you aren’t theirs to take.

If someone had just told me that; maybe I wouldn’t be in fucking Hell.

Religion is a curse. The cruellest curse of knowledge that ever was. See, it’s what you believe in that controls who gets to lay claim to your soul. When you’re young and naive, disavowing a religion that commands you to alter the substance of your being seems like a justified course of action. You live with the knowledge of God — and Heaven — and Hell — but you shove it increasingly further back, so that it recedes from the shores of memory altogether, and gets diminished to a dull, occasional hum.

(Until, the shriek of angels. Hammer swinging into your skull.)

Still, it isn’t quite as bad as the elders made it out to be. Whereas God regards all sins as being of equal weight, Satan takes a much different approach. He recognizes the injustices at play, the wrongdoings committed by those that promised to save us, and calls us “the dust.”

The dust swept beneath the infernal rug.

Instead of being made to rotate through Hell’s circles of suffering, Satan has the dust work the corpsefruit vineyards. We till the hard black soil, then plant the barbed seeds sixteen feet under the earth; in a week’s time, the low groan of tortured sounds will grow increasingly louder. On the seventh day, slimy black coils will break through the dirt and heave themselves onto the field, gasping for breath but finding only the noxious haze that harms but never kills. Sometimes the ones with soul residue stuck inside their heart caves will try and escape, but they never get far.

Audrey Kim

Surviving being buried alive keeps them exhausted long enough for us to stick silver stakes through their limp roots. We’ll harvest the corpsefruit with silver scythes as the sky curdles above us, red as the Nile River on the first day of plague.

Did you know — we’re forced to swallow our own tongues during the descent into Hell? Speech isn’t permitted, though I’m not sure why. (Should a rebellion be successful, where would we go? Certainly not Heaven. We’d put a stain on their white light.) Our lack of tongues forces us to use only the dark tunnels of our throats, which are like flutes that can produce only one sad note. When we hear the high pitched squeal of the bone whistle calling us out of the vineyards, we all shuffle down our lines as one lonely forest. Hollow moans float above the static of movement; they come from the ones with the courage to vocalize their sadness.

It’s not just our tongues that are taken, but our hair and our eyelashes. Women are given rough haircuts at the nape of the neck, and men are shaved entirely. None of it ever grows back, not even as lifetimes fly by. We keep our eyes, but the colors of our irises are blotted out, so that everyone’s dark pupils look like holes punched into their faces. I’ve grown thankful for the bleak garbs that conceal our ashen skin, which stretches like a thin layer of rubber over our ugly bones.

We, the dust, tend to one corpseflower at a time. If we so much as hold eye contact across the vineyard alleys, a black metal spike comes down from above as brutal punishment. But there is still a feeling of kinship that connects the dust: if only for the fact that we are all here on the basis of the same sin. This kinship is greatly felt when we commence our departure from the vineyard and march solemnly to the other evil that awaits us.

We crawl through holes in the ground to reach them; they are best described as casket-sized chambers. The material is native to Hell, but reminiscent of the overly sleek surfaces of black pianos; laying flat in the chamber, you become a violin trapped in its case. We shiver against the too-close walls and struggle against the human holdover of claustrophobia.

We are caged within a cage within a cage. Darkness into darkness into darkness.

Our vision fizzles and blurs as Satan gropes inside each of our heads, like he’s mutilating our eyes from the backside of the socket. Once he has what he needs, light is pushed through the swathes of darkness, coming just close enough to faintly illuminate images harvested moments ago. He summons the irrational fears, grating

Audrey Kim

sounds, and causes for panic; the memories that were formative for all the wrong reasons.

For an unbearable length of time, we are sensitive receivers of intimate pain. But, see, I wonder if this is Satan’s fairness: allowing us to return to the world — to the people — that we loved more than God.

earth

I grew up in blue-toned sanctuaries: blue lights, blue chairs, blue backdrop from which the wooden cross hung fixed. Over the years, I watched the congregation increase in number and the hair on Pastor Kim’s head grow finer, fewer.

“Let us bow our heads and pray.” Every Sunday, we obeyed.

Once, Pastor Kim kicked off service with an amusing hypothetical: If aliens descended upon our church, what would they make of the service? “To the nonbeliever, it’s almost ritualistic.” The fabric bags passed along the rows, filling steadily with money; lyrics projected on white panels, capturing the eyes of hundreds of people; the large man lumbering up the stage, orating in a voice that rises and falls like its own concerto.

This I wondered, at age twelve: Are churches just cults?

When I was thirteen, I felt for a girl. We met at the birthday party of my church friend.

“And this is Kylie,” Thalia said, pulling my hand into the hand of a tall girl with hair that fell like a tapestry over her sharp face. That day, she and I raced around a bright shopping mall looking for answers — to the number of pages in the birthday girl’s favorite book, and the price of green grapes at 99 Ranch, and other questions with solutions that were reachable by foot. We wanted so badly to win, we ran from store to store and jaywalked for the first time, arms swinging wildly, like we were wild things, reverting to our original nature. After completing the birthday scavenger hunt, we went back to the house to squeeze into a photobooth and swap silly hats back and forth. Hang back, I told her. We waited for the other girls to clamber out.

Somewhere not in Hell, we exist in the glossy photo strip: me and her, holding each other. Holding each other’s hands and shoulders.

Audrey Kim

At age seventeen, I did more than that with a girl the color of honey. We were introduced on the basis of both of us being queer Christians who wished to compromise our faith. At first, we analyzed the anti-homosexuality verses, compiling notes in a shared doc called THE QUEER CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK. But then, we had sex for the first time in her car, and each time she unraveled me, so did the grip on my faith loosen slightly.

Bit by bit. Kiss by kiss. Until something tricked, places switching, and God became something other than God and something else became God.

That same year, you learn that the threat of disownment could become solid and real. Not even at the age to be emancipated, your mother tells you anyways, “Choose me, or choose her, but if you choose her, you must leave.”

And your girlfriend who made all of this real commands you to save yourself. Except, she’s not just a girl, not anymore. She represents one future; a future that’s purer. The one that loves you always, unlike the other.

The darkness inside the darkness inside the darkness. Your past is there, playing behind whatever Satan shows you. The scrape of forks against plates, the time you nearly drowned in the Pacific Ocean; there’s your first girlfriend blinking back at you. Or your mom in tears. The images are overlaid onto each other, and you wonder if this is a confusing aspect of Satan’s magic or the last dregs of your humanity launching a pushback. These images clash as the years move back and forth, until the shapes fall into place, spindles and circles aligning, to at last present — the person who ruined it all for you.

She was my small group leader: a celibate-by-choice lesbian. I confided in her, and she outed me.

At eighteen, I lost everything I believed in.

heaven and hell

When we lift the lids off our caskets and crawl out from the earth, the red light of Hell hurts our eyes. Like staring into the nucleus of a volcano.

I hear that in Heaven, the divine lights stay on forever. So that the darkness must flee. When I was a child trying to comprehend how a place could be “perfect,” my

Audrey Kim mother used to tell me that everything was golden: from the grandest palaces to the tiniest salad spoons. Now, I wonder whether the people there ever get tired of the unchanging color palette, or miss the feeling of going to bed inside four walls they can call entirely their own. Strangely, the casket of memory mutilation feels like my own place. The experience of floating through visceral images can almost be compared to dreaming.

Outside, I rejoin the dust. There’s a sliver of time that grants a brief reprieve from labor and suffering, in which all our flocks wait off to the side of the vineyards, and wait for the corpsefruit seeds to fall from the sky. The seeds are the bodies of the ones that dared to con their way into Heaven; oftentimes, it’s the ones that repented right before death, only to be cast out upon entering the holy kingdom. They suffer a cruel fate of several stages: being compressed into seeds, planted, buried, harvested, stabbed, made into wine, consumed, pissed out, and circulated: spread thin for the rest of time. Their souls locked away in Heaven feel it all. And if they ever escape their imprisonment — making the journey into Hell to go searching for their bodies — well, they shall never be able to set themselves free.

But for now, the corpsefruit are glittering rubies descending with the lightness of spring bloom petals. The white spikes encompassing their bright red bodies are like a delicate armor. The dust waits for the corpsefruit to float into our blistered hands and prick our palms: the closest thing to human touch that we have here in Hell. We become mirrors of each other, with our hands outstretched and our dark eyes turned upwards.

I’m in Hell. And save for this speck of time, I’ll cycle through pain and suffering. But why should I wish that things were different? Living an untruth is just another circle of hell. Why should I wish to enter Heaven? A God of hatred should not be God at all.

For eternity, I’ll cradle the corpsefruit with my hard and soft hands, then press them gently into the earth.

Which is more than just dust.

THEPREYOF LOVE//SEYD-EESGH

SKYELYLES

Spencer Demera

The Prey of Love // Seyd-e-Esgh

at twenty-three i feel myself

At twenty-three I feel myself a body, Ungrateful and writhing, Awakened by the complicated urge to age, to stretch Far from the skin of my childhood, taut and uncomplicated, But i am, still am on the same planet caught In dizzying turns around the same great star, One of many in this great galaxy Of galaxies, and from This beauty mark on the universe's cheek I wanted to be small again, And felt myself from some perspective Where I still am.

An 84-year-old mother

An 84-year-old mother in El Wafa Elderly Caring Home will finish the ironing, setting out two uniforms on the soft bed for tomorrow. only then will she be a mother, she says, when her duty is done. one of her children will wear the uniform, she says, will win the essay competition for 1963, she says, and the other will have been in a bag, on the ground, an island in seas of gunfire, as free as the flying space between fingers and rocks in soldiers’ memories, she says, will be singing on the day when the american-bought vehicles lumber out of the village,

out of every settlement, she says. daisies will grow over his resting place, she says, when the 84-year-old mother sets out two uniforms on the soft bed, one will wear it, will be careful on the way to school, she says, study hard so you can learn where your sister went, she says, why her family are steadfast, how to await good news while pressing one ear against the line between life and the past, she says, she says that waiting is necessary, that aging is inevitable, and that grieving is human, but forgetting, impossible. at my age, she says, there is still so much more living to do.

lollipop for Michael i giggle whenever we find each other, faces red and round––inside my cheeks a tanging taste like something sweet and purple, turn me to a pillar of simple sugars hidden underneath a paper skirt you show me my enjoyment matters most. a muse is one thing, being together is another, take my hand and break the round earth down to running distance-sized pieces,

Skye Lyles

make it sweet again treat it like candy and let us share it together.

お姉妹へ

お姉妹から離れたのは、

ざんねんながら

本当である。

昔の幸せな時期が終わった後、

お互いに⾔える親切な⾔葉がもう

⾒つけられなかったからだ と⾔ってしまえば嘘くさい。

何故は愚か、今 どうするかと聞くも無駄だから、

こう⾔って済もう：

やっぱり⼤したことないけど、

もう⼀度⼦供の頃に

戻ることさえできれば、

あんたたちの為に

洗濯も掃除もせっせと してあげるのにね。

to my sisters, to the end

as much of a shame as it is that I am separated from my sisters, it is the truth. to say that it’s because whatever kind words that we could say to each other

became impossible to find feels like a lie.

Asking what to do now, let alone asking why, feels like a waste so I would tell them this and call it a night:

it’s really no big deal, but

Skye Lyles

if we could just go back to the when we were children just once, the laundry and the dishes, I would do them all for you, diligent, and never once complain.

that dog

i watch her run, long-legged down locked-door hallway where i throw the treat, she saw it and I can’t throw too well, I don’t know why, it slid under, and then she pawed beneath the door and looked at me, expectant i didn’t know how to tell her that what a lock is, that i don’t have the key, that i’d have to wake up tomorrow morning really early when the people who clean the building come and ask them to unlock the door, and she’d probably be sleeping by the time i searched and found what was really just a fragment of the treat, so she should forget about it, but she can’t forget, because these things matter to us differently, this is her whole life all of it, without a tense, all just along the blinking of an eye, all muscle and sinew, breathing and rolling, digging, clawing, whining, scratching and pawing and wanting something just out of reach, when the one with the power to fix it doesn’t hurt like she hurts, would rather forget. across the hallway floor she writhes and sounds so disappointed, so hurt, she looks up at me with two big black eyes, as if she wonders why, and i do too. every day she has come back to that door. I will get up and get it tomorrow.

Skye Lyles

ekphrasis: october 31st

my mother said why do you need to write about vampires? capes and hats and spit-slick plastic fangs? why do you need to drink blood? can the love of Christ pour from neck to mouth on a dark october night? why do you need to do that? the pagans celebrate it, run naked into the silvery-moon, make themselves vessels of the devil, summon something dark. he gon’ follow you home, make you do things your body not meant to do. the bible is meant to change us, my mother said, be in the world, and not of it. so we all collect, wide-open souls, and pray, become the mouth of god channelling something that feels like the body of christ. she said write something else.

Alone in my room the full moon slinks into the room, shows herself to me at night, when she drops her cloudy robe I grip my bible, my teeth stab its leather neck I suck the pages dry, toss away its hollowed corpse, red ink of Jesus’ words dribbling from my canines I am still hungry. I will go down the hallway and make more disciples.

PLAYINGIN YOURFACE

LIYAHNICOLE

Logan Palmer

Playing In Your Face

I guess our meet cute would be Joe Brown Park in 2015. Back when my head was so greasy she and this other girl used to laugh about it. Despite her disdain for the shine n jam in my hair, we became friends, best friends. And we ended up at the same middle school, in the same class, a year later. And it was like that, same school, same class, until now.

“I thought you said we were going to a beach.” Jade is hugging herself tightly. Shockingly, she’s only wearing my hot pink cropped shirt—that I didn’t say she could borrow—and jeans. I’m confused because she's been married to the same black leggings since we were in high school.

“I did. This is it.” On cue, I motion to the beach scene.

“This ain’t a beach.” Jade looks around for the girls in their bikinis.

I giggle because I expected this. It’s why I failed to mention on the drive down here that the beach we were going to was not for basking in the sun. Or why I didn't fuss when she slipped my shirt on. I knew this would all make my surprise better. Five months ago when I first came here, I also expected bikinis and the sun. And I don’t know maybe even people swimming. But nope. Not in Half Moon Bay.

“It’s a beach,” I tell her, “it’s just a cold one.”

I could see her wanting to say What the fuck, but she mentioned on the drive here that she’s trying to complain less, so she swallows her disappointment.

“Let’s just go inside.” She forces a fake smile with no teeth. It’s the same face we used to make in middle school when our after school care teacher asked us to help the younger kids with their homework. We’d love to Ms. Ellis.

“Here, I got you something.” I reach into the backseat of the car and hand Jade the Stanford sweater I bought her. I folded it neatly since I didn't have a gift bag or card. “Surprise!”

“Oh shit!” She really smiles now. She slips the sweater on over her head. "Mhm yeah,” she yells to the cars in the parking lot, “I go to Stanford bitches!”

As the significantly taller friend I hold the door open to the diner. We both wait for someone to tell us Come on in baby. But it's just a bell attached to the top of the door that greets us. We've only seen restaurants like this in movies. It really is a beachtown diner. Framed pictures of the ocean. Coffee pots instead of machines. Quiet. Even the waitress who sits us at our booth. Her apron tied at her waist. Her red hair pulled into a ponytail. Her lil notepad flipped to a clean page.

Jade scans the diner. “I haven't seen a Black person since I was at the aiport… at home.”

“Everybody in my dorm is Black.”

“Nah they don't count.”

This comment couldn't slide at school. It's not really acceptable to discount someone's Blackness anymore. I let it slide though. We're off campus.

“Can I get you ladies something to drink?” I wonder if our waitress thinks we go to Stanford, or if we're just one of those people who buy school merch for the aesthetic. She's on the younger side though so maybe she'd assume we're students.

“Yeah, uh could I get uh ,” Jade talks in an exaggerated New Orleans accent, “a fruit punch but make that with no ice could ya.”

Ever since Jade worked at Canes during Covid she orders her drinks with no ice. She learned there that restaurants shorthand you so they can make their drinks last longer.

“Can I get a water with lemon?” Ever since I started spending my own money, I stopped paying for drinks at restaurants.

“Okay I'll be back with your fruit punch, no ice, and water with lemon.”

"Thanks," I say to our waitress and I remember how people at school are always adding so much to the end of their thank yous. You should hear the way they say it. It feels condescending even though they're just saying thank you. I think it's the way they say it while they nod their head up and down. As if they’re so grateful that someone decided to take this job today and be of service to them.

I watch the waitress's ponytail swing when she leaves our table. I wonder if it does that naturally or if she is purposely tossing it side to side like that.

“Bruh you didn't catch on.”

“To what,” I ask Jade.

“The accent. You didn’t do your accent.”

“Oh. Nah not today.” Me and Jade used to do this all the time. Talk in a deep New Orleans accent. We really liked to do it when we were just right outside the city in Kenner or sometimes even Slidell. It was like a bit for us. NOLA girls take Kenner. But we hadn't done it since the summer before either of us went to college. I feel like I haven’t even sounded like home since then.

“So,” Jade catches me off guard, “why haven’t you introduced me to that boy?”

“What are you talking about?” It’s the boy I flew to DC for at the end of winter break to spend time with.

“That lil mixed boy. Is he mixed?”

“Yes he is.”

“So you do know what I’m talking about.”

“Here you ladies go.” Our waitress slid our drinks to us. “Are you ready to order or do you need more time?”

“More time. Thanks,” Jade says quickly.

I didn’t want to look at Jade. So I squeezed my lemon into my water. I flipped through the menu. “I think Imma get a breakfast sandwich today. What about you?”

“Kay.” I hadn’t heard my nickname in months.

“Jade”

“I’m not doing this with you.” Jade snatched the menu from me. “I’m gonna get pancakes. Like I always do. Now talk.”

Jade and I planned this trip three months ago. At the peak of my relationship with the boy. Well I guess I shouldn’t call it that. He never asked me to be his girlfriend. He also never said he had feelings for me. We just made it a habit to go to Oakland together every month. And he would always grab me by the waist so I wouldn’t walk on the side of the street where the cars were. He bought me a master class so I could learn how to turn my ideas into projects with Issa Rae. He napped with me.

“He cheated on me.”

“What?”

“Ladies ready to order?” The waitress had a huge smile on her face. I wanted to ask her what’s funny about that, but maybe she just has to look like that. Maybe she wants a good tip.

“Can I get the breakfast sandwich with a side of fruit?”

“Yes of course, and for you,” the waitress turned to Jade.

Jade stared straight at me. “Can I get a pancake with a side of bacon?”

“Okay, I’ll be back with your orders.” The waitress never scribbled anything in her notebook, but she kept it in her hand flipped to that clean page like she wanted to. “Need a refill?”

“No no no we’re okay. Hurry along.”

“Jade, that was a little rude.”

“I don’t care. Cheating? Y’all were dating?”

I picked Jade up from the aiport yesterday afternoon. About 30 minutes before then I had lunch with a friend. It was our routine, so when she told me she had something to tell me, I suspected nothing. I assumed it was gossip, or maybe a TV show she heard someone talking about that she thought we should watch, you know something

normal. But no, she told me she was going to start dating the boy. She told me she just wanted to let me know. She told me she talked to her therapist, and her mom, and her sister and they said it was okay.

“Well no we weren’t dating.” I remembered how my Mama always said what separated my Dad from her other boyfriends is that he actually asked her to be his girlfriend. “We just spent every single day together and sometimes did boyfriend/girlfriend shit.”

“Did y’all fuck?”

“No.”

“Kiss?”

“No.”

“Well he didn’t cheat. Played in your face for sure. But he didn’t cheat.” “I know.”

I drank the rest of my water with lemon and Jade sipped on her fruit punch. This is where I’m supposed to cry and say how could he and she is supposed to tell me he’ll regret this and you deserve so much better. But instead we just sit in silence. I thought about how the girl and him lived upstairs across the hall from each other. And I wondered if after hanging out in my room, if she’d go upstairs to his room. And I wondered if I could really be mad. But then I remembered how she definitely knew I liked him. And he definitely knew I liked him. He didn’t have to like me, but when did he have the time to like someone else. And why didn’t he like me?

“Breakfast sandwich for you” The waitress broke our silence. “And pancakes and bacon for you.” She stood there for a second like she was waiting for something.

“Oh. Thanks,” I remembered.

“Well are you gonna show me how she looks,” Jade asked after my first bite.

“Who?”

“Please. The girl. Show me how the girl looks.”

“Oh. Yeah one second.”

I pass my phone to Jade. The girl’s Instagram is up. I’ve already unfollowed her. First

liyah

friendship breakup in college. I watch Jade’s face as she scrolls through her page. She is unsatisfied with her sorority squat poses and blonde friends.

“Okay so she got boobs.” Jade keeps scrolling. “And you just too Black for him. Clearly he want a white girl.”

“Everything okay with you ladies?” I thought about telling our waitress that it would be better if he wanted a white girl that was actually white instead of a Black girl who could act like one. But instead, I just hoped she didn’t hear.

“Can I just get more fruit punch?”

“Yes of course.” Her ponytail really just swings.

I should probably cry right about now. Jade has hit the nail on the head. What are the odds? The same girl who talked too white for all her middle school classmates is too Black now. I know my skin is dark, my hair big, and I rap too much Lil Wayne but did he forget I also get down with Ariana Grande?

“How do you know they’re dating,” Jade hands the phone back to me.

“She told me.”

“Why would she tell you?”

“Cause we’re friends and she wanted to let me know.”

“She knew about y’all?”

“Mhm” The more questions Jade asks the more my eyes want to burn.

“Here’s your fruit punch. Do you need anything else?” God she really wants this tip.

“Um, some napkins would be nice. Thanks” My eyes betray me now.

“Do not let this get you down.” Jade is not going to slide into the same side of the booth as me and hug me. We are not those types of friends. “I keep telling you everyone is not your friend. That lil girl is not your friend.”

“I don’t even care about her.” I gotta look at the front door behind Jade’s head. I can’t see her see me like this. “It’s him. I liked him. I really liked him.” It felt like he took care of me while I was out here. “I just can’t believe I was so wrong. I thought he liked me too.” Am I just gonna like every boy that acts like he’ll protect me?

“Kay, you don’t even know these people.”

“Here’s your napkins.” The waitress hands them to me.

I finally let my eyes meet Jade’s eyes.

“I think we’re ready for the check,” Jade tells her.

The waitress nods her head “I figured.”

MALADAPTIVE ANDREACAROLINA CORTEZRODRIGUEZ

Maladaptive

Daydreaming

Don’t know when music stopped being enough to untangle the mess of thoughts in my head. Don't know when the castles and histories in my mind fell, then faded into soft static–a quiet static that reverberated loudly and traveled across the black hairs that grew from all around my feminine body.

Or when I drove then walked kneeled and crawled slowly to the ebbing Coast—

There I stood, feet planted on the wet sand looking as she, who is me, grows gills on her cheeks and fins from her neck and a smile on her lips and swims past the golden horizon that spills liquid gold, a trail of fire, on the troughs and crests of the blue Sea.

She will miss the sun refracted on the back of a polished abalone and the way it shines that elusive rainbow, that iridescent nacreous film, she once used to describe the colors behind her closed eyes.

She will forget the world its deadlines and headlines and timelines that ran her to the ground, to the sea

Andrea Carolina Cortez Rodriguez

and will learn the rhythm of that new hymn that beckoned her to tread deeper and deeper into the white horizon.

Meet Me Halfway

There walks a woman with too much of me buried deep within the grooves of her finger prints and I hope I’ve left enough of me to level the furrows and ridges so that the signature of her minutiae is barren like me.

There she walks in her glacial motion as the pulsating halo crowning her head irradiates and pierces me, until I feel my eyes prick and sting like pixels dancing on a static screen.

I wonder then if you remembered those long, sweet nights: we, a dark amorphous mass, shrinking and swelling and making new geometries under navy sheets as the morning caved in.

I beseech the universe and all things divine to grant me one last wish: for your eyes to pierce mine again and set my skin ablaze–a merciless flame.

I’ve grown to savor the liquid fire that thrums through my veins which delivers a ghost of what you once supplied and what my body now craves.

…

At night I remember the outline of you

Andrea Carolina Cortez Rodriguez

as I thrash and burn, trembling feverish skin slickened with a film of briny perspiration from the heat stroke of being near you again too soon.

Through the tremors, I feel the heavy currents of past memories inside me turn and furl and press against me, and I go feather-light as all the good, tender pain flares and ebbs all over.

I pray wordlessly to once again run my finger round and round atop your soft skin and hear my favorite songs play once more.

I pray wordlessly that you wish it too.

CLIMBING THEBELL CURVE

Sara Simoni

Climbing the Bell Curve

Then try to measure your life through the glassy touchstone Magnifying the twisted crescent from which you stand, A rock climbing wall with faded colors, the bell at the top of a seaside cliff. When the slamming doors and sleepless nights dissolve into Echoes from “remember whens” and bricks built on “one days,”

A slide you can’t go down because it only goes one way Until you saw how high it got and how the music changed. The air is clean, the girls less mean, parents stay to play a game. Between the towers of letters and hours telling you to climb higher Take a peak at the other side, not enough to break a bough Just enough to see the silence rising up from the ground

A distant warning to stone pushers: what goes up must come down.

FUTURE MOTHER(S)

LOGANSMITH

Logan Smith

Future Mother(s)

I am a woman with an empty womb the government tells me I need to fill. They say birth rates are declining Roe v. Wade falls birth rates plunge still. Now, they say it’s male loneliness.

In my dream I’m flying, but instead of airport security I find my senator in a TSA uniform. “Here”, he says, “you can place it here”, I look down, my hands are empty. “Place what?” “Your uterus” I laugh. He pulls out a knife the tear across my abdomen splits with blood.

I’m not in the airport anymore I’m in the hospital ten years from now with my loving husband giving birth to our first son. My vision goes black and I know I’m dying I turn to my husband my sweaty hand clutched in his “Please”, I plead, “Save the baby. But make sure they save me too.”

I look up to see the doctor shaking his head he is the president and he’s holding my uterus in the grey airport security bin. Blood labors out of me from the hole where my uterus used to be.

Logan Smith

When I open my eyes I’m not alone there’s a thousand of us holding out babies, caressing their small hands and kissing their fragile foreheads. We’re all naked, our stomachs stitched up one stitch too many.

Around the room are paintings of the pill and diaphragms, arm bars, IUDs. I watch a woman tear one from the wall, she kisses it, she has no baby. I wonder, did they take her uterus too?

BLUE INVENTORY SOPHIESZEW

Sophie Szew

Blue Inventory

After Terrance Hayes

Creative Writing Minor Poetry subplan

Mami’s foaming mouth & melted TV snow on electric toothbrush. Freeze because if I move hand to clog ear it might drip & seep into arteries. Sun lines around squinted eyes & cartoon sunface. Grease & staples & sloppy alphabets not crumpled enough to be on purpose. Why is everything so crisp & skin from sunburn last week like fuzz on fall leaves that don’t exist here. Strollers roll over sleeping toes & wake them up. At the bottom of the hole I see bed & jump to excuse the burp no one heard & tug on ears after sneeze to salute the dead. Salúd es lo que me falta & we sharpen Baba’s book corners on pimples reinventing our chins during her quinceañera & my Bat Mitzvah. Eraser shaving clay & next month I’ll be strong enough to rip pencil grip & stop dotting skin with butterfly clip. Highlighter nail polish & glowstick juice bittermelon lemonade. Bendy straws & I hate being named after a flea & now I cry when we pass that sunflower field on the way to San Diego. Blue Terrance & Blue Borges & my legs have always been this Blue. I promise Mami’s & Baba’s are like this too. Snakegirl & sweatbeadboy & icepackhands & illusiontricks & maybe if I froze them they’d make a cute anklet. Two more hours till blue raspberry Otter Pop & can I put my pencil down now.

FAMILY STYLE KUSHALTHAMAN

Family Style

We order what we always order and someone laughs before the punchline. Someone is always laughing before the punchline. The waiter brings water and bread and we break the bread and someone says remember when we couldn't afford this place, when we split one entrée four ways and called it dinner, counted it celebration. Someone's phone lights up. Someone is always leaving early. We order what we always order. The wine arrives and we pour and someone says we should do this more often, and someone says we really should, and we lift our glasses and someone takes a picture and someone says don't post that and we laugh and we drink and the city lights up outside the window like it has always been lighting up, pinprick crowns atop honey facade grids. We order dessert. Someone can't stay for dessert. We order it anyway. Before this table, there was another cheap table, a table with legs that shook if you laughed too hard and we laughed too hard on purpose to see the plates wobble. Before many fine plates there was one large plate, a ridge chipped bone-white and the orange juice jug we rationed like a small country. Before this table, there was the cafeteria table, four elbows on the counter and our navy school blazers that exposed a loot of stolen tangerines, thin-skinned, pocket-warm. Ten more summers and winters from now we will order what we always ordered and someone will laugh before the punchline. Someone will still be laughing before the punchline, or someone new will laugh and we will hear the old laugh in it, or we will be alone and the waiter will bring much water and bread by habit, and we will break the bread and tell ourselves remember when we couldn't afford this place, when we split one entrée four ways, when someone was always leaving early, when someone's phone was always lighting up, when someone said we should do this more often and we meant it, when we lifted our glasses and someone—

who was it?—took a picture, and someone—was it you?— said don't post that, and we laughed, we were always laughing, laughing too hard on purpose to see the plates wobble, was it the wine or the orange juice that spilled? The city once flared up beyond the hazy pane, now glass grids left fallow, windows unlit one by one. No one will stay for dessert. We will order it anyway.

DAYDREAM JASONTHOMPSON

Jason Thompson

Daydream

“So are you ever gonna spill who you keep bailing on us for?” Jonny asked before his mouth was finished with the Lucky Charms in front of him. “Like its pretty much become a daily thing at this point,” he continued. You see it isn’t like I didn’t want to tell him, and Jimmy, and Franklin. The three occupied the rest of the (once grey) sauce-stained couch with bowls left only with flavored milk. But it’s not like I did either…

You see, she is just different. Unique. Peculiar. As if the universe finally got sick and tired of playing my overly unremarkable solo campaign and created a Player 2 just for me. She’s just like me. Well, obviously not exactly, she’s leagues more attractive with jokes that get more laughs than I could ever dream. But still, she likes me.

They just couldn’t understand. Sure they’re my friends, but even I can’t comprehend the situation at hand. Explain to me how a woman can look prettier when she cries, each tear a diamond too expensive for even Besos to buy, dripping down her caramel-colored check leaving an irresistible glimmer in her darkchocolate-dyed eye.

How I am supposed to explain that when she is in the passenger seat of my 2015 Civic she tells me she wants to hear my music. So I do what any other man would do, and fill the queue with some songs that I know she will like and some I know that will sound brand new. I look to her and then back at the road because at any minute her rounded chin and bratz lips could cause me to swerve and damage the most beautiful song her God has brought into this world. But then there’s a stop sign or red light, and I glance to see her mouthing the words to a song that she shouldn’t like, one she shouldn’t know, but she chooses not to sing aloud as to let me feel that I was the star of the show. Little does she know.

There’s just no way for them to see how she heals the introvert in me. I usually sit still and listen, ask questions so they'll talk some more, then reveal how I’d never noticed that before. But with her I don't feel like she’s keeping score because she’s just like me, she likes – me. She’s quiet, curious, and is too scared to overshare. But slowly I’ve learned, like me, she just wants someone who is there. No, not simply in presence, or showing up with presents, but remembering, and laughing, caring, and staring, and laughing, not caring, and sharing that we are wanted, appreciated, and wanted some more.

“Helllllo, Earth to Jason?” I can’t even think straight anymore.

YOURROOM

CAROLINEWEI

Caroline Wei

your room

it is just the moon through the glass and the stars changing on your face as you turn in bed dreaming about it again

English Major Creating Writing emphasis

LAURENYU DUAL

Lauren Yu

Dual

“Omigod! Do you remember Aiden,” Cynthia goes, smacking her hand on her knee. She turns and giggles to our new friends from orientation. “You gotta hear this.” Her eyes are big and her mouth’s an O, like when she found out I’d had a crush on Kevin With The Rolling Backpack, or when I sat on spilled root beer at our high school’s homecoming football game. You can trust that some things about our friendship never change, except, now, most of the beers are real.

I take a drink from mine and think, but it’s all coming up blank. Head hurts and it hurts worse trying to focus. I wish I had a better tolerance for drinking, it already seems like the most important thing to learn in college.

“What Aiden? You mean Adrian? Like Adrian Wright, the math olympiad kid?” I turn to the new friends, Jonathan (Minnesota, blond, studying economics), Thomas (Korean, quarter-zip, undecided), Elizabeth (plays squash). “He was our high school friend, he’s at Dartmouth now.”

The three nod. They’re all sunk into the bean bag Cynthia and I dragged in on move-in day. We’ve thought a lot about our room configuration and agreed that a bean bag would help guests feel welcome → encouraging spontaneous hangouts → making our dorm room THE hangout spot → fostering many friendships that will last us a lifetime. I might be sending family Christmas cards to Jonathan, Thomas, and/or Elizabeth in twenty years if everything ends well.

The three pass around different flavors of hard seltzers from Cynthia’s fridge, all of them sitting snug in the same dent in the bean bag.

Cynthia reaches across to me and shakes my leg like I’m a stuck vending machine, goes, “No, Aiden! Y’know! You tried to get me to meet up with him—euch! You played games with him. Dark knight-something-something.”

Oh, wha- oh, wow. Wow! Aiden. @dark_knight03. A sucker punch of a flashback. I CANNOT believe Cynthia remembers, and I tell her that.

“Crazy story huh,” she says.

“Yup,” I go.

A moment passes and we listen to the current song playing low on Cynthia’s speaker, something from some playlist of top 100 pop songs.

Cynthia starts, “So! Katie used to play, what was it that you did, Marine… something?”

So we’re going into it. “Ah, yeah.”

Jon, Tom, and Elizabeth ping-pong their looks between me and Cynthia while we talk. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, they look like a multi-ethnic Cerberus.

They lap from their drinks and I tell them, “Um. It was Marine Mania. You ever play that game? You guys know it, right?”

Lauren Yu

No from Jon, mm from Eliza. My little cousin does but he’s, like, fully a baby, Tom says.

“Ah. Well, it was a thing I did when I was around fourteen, really. I used to play Marine Mania a lot—not anymore, these days, my hobbies are more tennis and running! But it’s this online game you play with other people. You’re a pirate, and in the game you steal treasure from other ships and defend your ship—”

“And she was really good too,” Cynthia adds. “You were practically addicted— Marine Maniac! I swear this girl played every night.”

“Thanks, Cynthia. But, really, just a hobby for me. Anyways, uh, if you’ve played, you know you can play in different modes, like singleplayer or multiplayer if you want to do duos, or trios. But multiplayer’s always more fun, so, y’know, I liked to find people online to play with.”

“And you used CHATROULETTE! She used ChatRoulette! You guys remember that?” Cynthia asks the three.

“Oh yeah, I was using ChatRoulette,” I say. “No, I don’t think it exists anymore, probably banned at this point. I got lucky with the strangers I talked to, though. I didn’t ever match with anyone super creepy. I’d use the website and put my topic of interest as ‘Marine Mania’ so I’d only talk with people who were into it too.”

“Real quick—drinks?” Cynthia interjects. “Anyone? God, I’m thirsty, you guys want to get topped up too?” Cynthia gets up, upturning her hand like she’s holding a bottle going GLUG, GLUG, GLUG. “I know your drink,” she points at me, smiles. “You guys, what do you want, Jonathan, Thomas, Elizabeth: Truly, High Noon, White Claw, white wine, red wine, soju, beer, lemonade, tea—the hard kind?” Jon/Tom/Eliza nod.

“O-kay, be back so soon. Keep it going, I know this story!” Cynthia whisks my cup out my hand, collects their cans, and goes into the other room with our desks and minifridge.

My cupless hand feels empty. It needs a cup. Where was I? “I’d meet people on there and play games with them, and there was this one person who was super fun to play with. Dark—or, I mean, his username was @dark_knight03, like from Batman, but I learned his name was Aiden. We had such a good time playing together that we friended each other and agreed to play together the next day, then we kinda ended up doing it over, and over again.”

I’m fumbling the delivery, but, hey, I’m remembering my story at the same time I’m saying it! Even clowns get to practice their acts before they perform. There’s so much to say about Aiden, also nothing at all. For the longest time, the most important thing I’d known about him was that he was maybe the best Marine Mania player I’d ever met. He was a great duo partner, for sure.

Wow—we were friends, weren’t we. At least, I’m pretty sure I was his best friend, and I’m 100% confident I was his best friend who was a girl. Just because of

Lauren Yu

the general vibe of it all, of ChatRoulette and Marine Mania, and, also, him.

“He stole the laptop he played on, it was a school-issued Acebook meant for assignments.” Jon/Tom/Eliza gasp and laugh, they chime, wow, that’s crazy.

Really, though, it was sorta admirable at the time. That he could be so excellent at Marine Mania when he was playing on a laptop whose best feature, put in all its ads, was that it’s recycled out of water bottles and sometimes diapers. And still, tapping on diaper keys, talking on a microphone that sounded like it was at the bottom of a well, Dark Knight was in the Diamond league while I’d been stuck in Silver for forever.

He knew more about the game than anyone else. Aiden could tell you the date each weapon was added in the shop, the top players, the creator’s hometown and birthday. And he’d say all these things in a voice so flat you’d think he was being sarcastic, but that’s just how he was. He might’ve been a prodigy. Can people be considered prodigies for these kinds of things, lame things like games for Tom’s baby cousin? Surely, right? A savant, maybe? Once I told Aiden, half-joking, that if he’d put even a little bit of those smarts into studying for his tests, he could get into Harvard. To that, he said that none of those pretentious Harvard guys probably even play Marine Mania.

“It was like all he did was practice playing, he was obsessed.” Was he, like, a weirdo? someone on the beanbag goes. She met him on ChatRoulette, of course he was, another one of the three heads says. Weirdo? “I mean, yeah.” For sure.

I remember one night in particular. His avatar faced mine while we waited for the game to begin. @dark_knight03 had huge muscles, an anchor tattoo, and an eye patch.

CaptainKat, he said—oh my god just call me Katie, I said back—Katie, he said. Since we’re been playing so much together I wanted to tell you, I feel like you should change your avatar. We can do a Bonnie and Clyde thing.

But I liked my avatar. He was a barrel-shaped guy with a handlebar mustache and scars that made him look like he had some grander backstory, and I explained that all.

It’s just, man, so weird hearing you talk over the mic, and then looking over and seeing that. Cause…your voice is so nice. And, imagine, you could match your peg leg with mine.

He got shy in a way that annoyed me, then the game started so we talked about other things (they’re invading, defend, go, go, go!) but him saying all that earlier left me in a pissy mood. After the game I logged off the call, and went and changed my avatar to be even hairier and barrel-er than before.

Ugh, he really could be annoying! I felt like a trainer spraying a dog with water,

Lauren Yu

teaching him some things he should’ve known were okay and not okay to say. Hey, that’s weird! Hey—maybe don’t! Especially whenever he’d go, wow, Katie, you’re actually not too bad at this, especially for a—hey!

But the fun of playing and good feelings of winning always outweighed the annoying bits. There’d be a ping on my laptop, and a message asking if I was free that night, and, really, what else did I have going on? Cynthia definitely wouldn’t want to play. So then Aiden would call and we’d be up until four, just playing. It’s bad luck to end on a losing game and, of course, when you’re on a winning streak, you have to keep it going! The latest we’d ever stayed up playing was until six AM. He skipped that day of school, I took a power nap and still went.

“We’re not even at the funniest part!” Cynthia’s back in the room, hands me back my drink, gives Jon/Tom/Eliza sloshing cups of something mixed and dark. She leans in like she’s telling them a secret.

“This guy.” She looks down the line, at J/T/E one-by-one. “Who Katie met on ChatRoulette, who could’ve been anywhere in the world—he lived literally just ten minutes away from where we were.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I tell Cynthia and J/T/E—she can entertain them for a minute while I take a breather.

Man, the hallway lights are bright. A good decision for us to string up fairy lights in our room so we can use them instead. When Cynthia and I thought about hosting in our room, we wanted the atmosphere in the room to be more warm, friendly instead of bright, generic. Think of a Bohemian coffee shop—I mean, how easy is it to hang out in one of those?

But the whiteness of the hallway makes everything feel clearer. Plus it’s nice to not have the music on, now I can think. Oh, I forgot to leave my cup back in the room. Do I double back, leave it there? Eh. I need air. Dump the bad beer in the sink, take a second to stand and breathe.

Oh man. Aiden. @dark_knight03. At one point we must’ve been trading messages and calling practically every day. We talked about non-game things too, about school and parents and all that. He’d had a lot of complaints about both things, mostly because he didn’t care a lot about how people (including the parents and others) cared about school.

Something about the late night loopiness and the fact I didn’t know him know him made him easy to confide in. When I got my first ever C on a paper, he was the only person I told. He told me back that he normally got nothing but C’s. He laughed, told me my future is forever ruined and that the two of us will have to be scrappy and skim off trashcans and live off of half eaten burgers forever. I laughed and he was cool that night—wasn’t an asshole about it and didn’t mention it any more, we just played game after game until late.

Lauren Yu

I did something like that for him once when he hopped onto a call, totally quiet. From his end, mostly just the little buzzing noise his awful laptop’s microphone would make. But we played a couple duo games, lost most of them, and was about to round out the night when he told me, way more serious than he’d ever been, that he’d been suspended from school. Probably en route to expulsion too, he said—for what, he didn’t say.

Wow, I said back. Um, I hope everything ends up okay.

What could I have said? Expulsion was nothing I knew how to deal with. We played more games until we won one, and, before we really logged off for the night, he told me thanks.

What’s Aiden doing now? I’d bet everything I have he’s still playing Marine Mania. He’d told me that he wanted to be on the American team and represent the country at the world championship—yes, it’s a big deal, yes, they get paid! Last year’s competition was all the way in Amsterdam!

To get there, though, he’d need to be scouted. Do well in regional Marine Mania competitions so he could get to state competitions, where all the American team scouters were watching. Ugh, but he’d need to be better than those stupid kids competing in the regionals, and a bunch of Fillmore kids were insane Marine Mania players, so stiff competition.

Fillmore? I’d perked up. As in, Fillmore in California, Southern California? Fillmore with the Fillmore Mall?

Um, Aiden went. Ye-ahh.

That’s my city! I told him.

This is when I found out that my friend (?) @dark_knight03 was living in the same state, same county, and in the town right next to mine.

I should head back to my room now, right? I’ll head back.

“Hellooo,” Cynthia goes, blinking against the sliver of hallway light before the door shuts behind me. “I was telling them about Yogurtland.”

Whoa, you REALLY met up with this guy? J/T/E asks.

She told them? “You told them?”

“No, I was waiting for you to come back! I talked about how you wanted to introduce him to me, everything up ‘til the Yogurtland.”

I think about how to tell this part. “So, there was this one night where me and Aiden were calling, playing a game. He was, um, feeling really awful.”

He’d been wallowing, can’t remember why, but he was playing so poorly it seemed like a cry for help. He’d sigh so huge that his bad laptop audio would hurt my ears, then I’d ask what’s up, and he’d say nothing, he’s fine.

No, obviously something’s up, just say it! And he’d be like, no, it’s alright, I wouldn’t get it, then rip a sigh again.

Lauren Yu

“. So I thought: he’s my age, and we’ve been, like, friends for at least half a year. It felt like it was time to meet each other face-to-face. Just to talk. We didn’t really need video to play together. Just our microphones. But I tell him, we can meet up in the Fillmore mall, at the Yogurtland, and we could finally meet one another after so many hours of conversation.

A sigh, an mmmm. More thinking.

Then @dark_knight03 tells me, alright, let’s meet.

No! - J/T/E.

“Yeah.”

J/T/E asks a good question, they wonder how I’d be able to tell it was him there.

“I thought I’d just be able to tell, can’t explain to you why, though. A couple days later, on the day we’re supposed to meet up, my mom drops me off at Yogurtland. It’s pretty busy, and I’m waiting there for him to come. I send him a message, hey, I’m waiting! And he doesn’t come for a whole half hour.”

“At this point, I run into Katie!” Cynthia explains. She’d been there by chance, at the mall to buy sweatpants. “And-”

“And, I tell Cynthia everything.”

“You didn’t want to at first!”

“Okay, yeah, but I did! And that’s when I ask if you want to join.”

“So I sit with you and wait for Aiden to show,” Cynthia says. “But asshole blows us off!”

We waited for another thirty minutes there. Families came in, then a whole soccer team, then some other people here and there, a lot of other middle schoolers. No one who seemed like they’d be @dark_knight03, that guy too tall, another guy too confident-looking.

It was closer and closer to closing and we spent it with Cynthia asking questions about this all. She was invested, her mouth doing an O and her head sunk into her palms. We waited another half hour. Sent @dark_knight03 a message, then another, then six more asking where he was. Eventually the place closed and I’m seething pissed, ticked off I waited for all that time but grateful Cynthia was there.

“That night he sends me a message to play a game and I ignore it, cause I’m still annoyed.” u awake? “He sends me another one the next day like everything is chill and fine, and he keeps sending them.”

u awake?

u up?

free tn?

wanna play a quick game??

“I’m letting it marinate, letting him learn his lesson, y’know, cause he wasted my time. I was gonna give it a week. You get it, right? Like, how rude was that, for

Lauren Yu

him to just not show?”

I’m missing playing though, and I get back on ChatRoulette to find other duos. No one’s as good at @dark_knight03, and not a single person is as fun to play with. “And then—”

“Get this. Guess what he messages her!” Cynthia says.

J/T/E can’t guess.

“He tells her ‘KYS’!” She gasps big, then says it in a whisper. “Kill yourself! And, you won’t believe this—a picture of the two of us, sitting there and eating the yogurt. God, I was terrified for my life.”

J/T/E gasps.

Ah. “Yeah, all that.” I tell them. “And then he blocked my account. Haven’t talked to him since.”

Not much more to say to that. J/T/E’s pretty quiet. In the background, on a low volume, the Poison Clan tells us to Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya.

I kill the speaker. “Hey, sorry Jonathan, Thomas, Elizabeth, but I might have to kick you out. I think I’m gonna turn in tonight, feeling a little tired.”

J/T/E get to their feet. On the way out, Tom asks for a last seltzer for the road, pulls it from Cynthia’s mini-fridge before he goes. Sure, sure. I wave nicely, they bow out nicely enough, then, finally, they’re gone.

Cynthia turns to me. Lets out a huge sigh, rolls her shoulders like she’s taken off a yoke.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” she says, flicking on the overhead lights and gathering up their empty cans from the floor. She flicks her fingers, gesturing to me to get an extra garbage bag. “Weren’t those guys a BORE? Ha! Good thing this dorm’s so huge. Don’t think we’ll be sticking around them.”

She turns the speaker back on and the pop music continues. Yeah, I tell her, helping clean up the trash.