Table of Contents

1. ALISHA ADAMS
   Water Resis­tant Pants
2. V. BOLF
   Delib­er­a­tions
3. TOM BLOOD
   there is a pigeon too old to fly
4. LILY-ROSE
   The Safe
5. ARIEL CLIMER
   Famous peo­ple come in all the time
6. MIKEO OJEDA
   Unti­tled
7. ANDY MICHELSEN
   Dodge
8. JORDAN DYKSTRA
   alpha­bet
9. WESLEY FRANCIS
   choco­late bars and base­ball cards
10. WESLEY FRANCIS
    sum­mer

---

ALISHA ADAMS

Water Resis­tant Pants

PART ONE
In the morn­ing, her father puts his hand on her shoul­der and says, ‘Let’s put that down and pray.’ He means the cup of water in her hand. He is stand­ing a lit­tle too far away for a com­fort­able arms reach and it takes them a moment to adjust. She sets down the cup and wraps her arms around his upper waist. She lays her head on the space that’s not quite chest and not quite shoul­der, and thinks about the shape of his torso, the new fat stuck beneath his ribs. She feels like a doc­tor lis­ten­ing for his heart, except doc­tors and patients don’t gen­er­ally hold each other this way. She is very calm and likes his prayer, which she hears with her eyes open.

Her father’s prayer goes like this: ‘We know in your word you tell us that if we com­mit our way to you, you will order our steps. Father, we pray that you will order her steps. Close doors and open doors to guide her to the things you have for her.’ Usu­ally she has more thoughts while her par­ents are pray­ing; more con­tempt and less patience. This morn­ing her thoughts are say­ing Yes. Yes. Only ‘yes’ isn’t an agree­ment, it’s a ques­tion, or a ‘sure’ — the kind of ‘sure’ fol­lowed by ‘why not.’ It just doesn’t seem pos­si­ble to agree or dis­agree with a prayer. That doesn’t make sense. Also, she appre­ci­ates her father’s fatherly way of seiz­ing the moment; of respond­ing to his daughter’s obvi­ous uncer­tainty over her future and rare open­ness to sug­ges­tions. She says ‘Thank you,’ and avoids his eyes with­out mean­ing to.

She is think­ing that noth­ing has promised her any­thing. There isn’t any­thing that has promised her a thing. She is promised noth­ing. She is think­ing there is noth­ing wait­ing for her, noth­ing for her to do. She believes in not doing things. If she makes deci­sions, she becomes respon­si­ble, and she’ll regret it no mat­ter what the out­come. She has a keen sense of embar­rass­ment; basi­cally, she’s reverent.

She is very seri­ous about lim­i­ta­tions. There’s a dis­tance between peo­ple that is sim­i­lar to the space peo­ple talk about when they say, ‘It all hap­pened in the space of ten min­utes.’ It doesn’t have any­thing to do with indif­fer­ence or length. Well, it might; how would she know? It’s an impasse. It’s like the time she peed her pants a lit­tle bit and the pee just pooled because she was wear­ing water-resistant pants. It did not absorb or dry. There’s no good faith, there’s no agree­ment; there’s not even any ‘agree to dis­agree’. This is the clos­est thing she has to an idea of God.

She won’t pur­posely touch anyone’s life but her own. That would be like walk­ing on sacred ground with­out tak­ing her shoes off, and her shoes are spike-heeled clown shoes, and she’s pee­ing down her leg; wet­ting and stab­bing sacred ground. This is very sad for her, to feel this way, because she doesn’t believe in fate. She won’t inter­vene, but she won’t say, ‘Let nature take it’s course.’ Every­thing is just a pos­si­bil­ity, like kind­ness. It’s only kind­ness because it doesn’t need to be. And when it does exist, unneeded, it stands out like an unpleas­ant pressure.

PART TWO
She takes all of YES: The Great­est Hits to choose what to wear. There are com­plex con­sid­er­a­tions: she will be rid­ing her bike 9 miles, she wants to impress a man she might see, and it’s warm now but will get very cold before the sun goes down. She show­ers in a shower cap. She just wants her body to be warm before she stands around star­ing at her closet. She is not shal­low — she never wants approval from more than one per­son at a time — but she can’t force her­self to dress with­out care.

She leaves the house at noon. She swears at a nor­mal vol­ume because no one else is home. Some­one has mis­placed her bike lock. She left it in a per­fectly good place, hung with the coats in the entry­way, but some­one thought to move it and now she can’t find it. Fuck­ing idiot, why the fuck would you move it? What fuck­ing dif­fer­ence does it make? And why wouldn’t you move it some­place where I could eas­ily find it, like my desk, you fuck­ing moron. I hate peo­ple. She’ll just have to lug her bike around the har­bor, keep it always in her sight.

The ride is spec­tac­u­lar. Really, there is no other word. Sub­lime doesn’t cut it, because it doesn’t have the sharp edged con­so­nants to reflect the sharp bril­liance of the sun­light or the punch of her legs or her firm, quick smiles fly­ing down the hills. She over­takes a boy on a bike worse than hers. He’s slim, with calves that grow at angles from his legs, point­ing inward at each other. He has a boxy mid­sec­tion that sort of rocks from side to side when he ped­als. This is his weakness.

She passes him at the top of a hill and they both stop for a light. She breathes heav­ily and feels sat­is­fied and mashes her bangs back onto her fore­head. He is doing noth­ing. He looks younger, maybe 19, with the pos­si­bil­ity of a mus­tache. Only the pos­si­bil­ity, she thinks, and loves this face. The light changes and he speeds ahead.

The bike lane is nar­row and he leads. They are on the same path for nearly five miles. At the fourth light, she parks close to him and smiles. He laughs like a kid. He gig­gles archaically. ‘Hi,’ she says. She feels very pow­er­ful. A child swims in the pool of her mind: What will he do next?

At the fifth light they talk again. ‘Where are you going?’ she breathes. ‘Oh,’ he says. Was that a response? He is look­ing down. It occurs to her that he might not speak Eng­lish. Is this more excit­ing? Yes. It is safer. She lets her­self believe that he is arrang­ing their sequen­tial meet­ings. They are two beads on a length of thread and he is tying and unty­ing knots.

She does not feel amorous or attrac­tive, just lost; slid­ing; in the pool with that kid. What if he’s going to the har­bor, too, and I tail him all the way? What if when we get there we both walk up to the same lunch counter and I let him order first, and he orders fries, and I say, ‘I was gonna get the same thing!’ and he gig­gles and shrugs and under­stands me even though he only speaks Span­ish and then he says, ‘mi papas fritas es tu papas fritas.’ Her story stops because she knows that french fries is plural and she doesn’t know how some­one would actu­ally say that. But what if at the next light I grin and say, ‘Wanna race?’ no, ‘Race ya!’ like that, and speed off, and then we get caught up in a speed-match and then we can’t stop in time for a light, or a swerv­ing car, and our brakes screech and we crash into each other, and no one is hurt, not badly, and we are stunned for a minute, but then we laugh. We laugh good-naturedly. We laugh like old friends. And then he says, ‘what’s your name?’ his one phrase of Eng­lish, and we help each other up and walk the rest of the way to the har­bor, not really talk­ing but glanc­ing. A per­fect back­stroke. We are cho­sen by the crash, the dis­tance obliterated.

Sixth light: she asks him his name. ‘It’s Gio­vanni,’ he says, pro­nounc­ing ‘it’s’ with a long e sound. ‘Eetchovani?’ she says and he nods then sticks out his hand.

At the sev­enth light he speaks first. ‘Are you okay?’ Why is he ask­ing me this? Why wouldn’t I be? Oh God, its the hair. I look winded; I look beat. He thinks I’m fol­low­ing him. ‘Are you okay?’ means, What’s your prob­lem? She laughs and says, ‘Yeah.’ The sev­enth is a long light. The air feels very thin and the win­ter sun weighs noth­ing on her bare arms. A knit scarf col­lects sweat on her neck. The child pauses mid­stroke and sinks. He speaks English.

She rests a foot on the curb and looks over her shoul­der at the cars in the right hand turn lane. She looks ahead and he’s gone. She hoped to yell some­thing when they inevitably parted: ‘Bye Gio­vanni! Have a good Day!’ Prob­a­bly some­thing much shorter: ‘Bye!’ She ped­als straight ahead.

She is whizzing along. Up hills, down hills, always whizzing. Her scarf is a whizzing whir of gray. She imag­ines the bike is a mir­ror image of her­self: she is rid­ing her­self. Her feet are push­ing down on her feet; her hands are grip­ping her hands. She and her­self are per­fectly bal­anced. She stretches her­self to make wider rota­tions. She opens her eyes wide and feels the air cir­cling in and out. It is cold going in and cold going out. She drains the pool until it is dry as fos­sils. Spec­tac­u­lar.

PART THREE
It’s down­hill the rest of the way to the har­bor. The sun is pulling nee­dles out of the ocean. She has a moment of humil­ity in front of the white boats, the green nets, the naked masts with whip­ping strings. She feels the same sort of calm she had with her head rest­ing on her father’s upper chest. The com­plete cir­cle of rock and con­crete that pro­tect the boats is vis­i­ble from where she stands, at the grassy end of the bike path. Some­times a lit­tle head can be seen walk­ing the nar­row docks — a fin­ger­tip trac­ing a map — mak­ing the har­bor seem much big­ger than it is.

If the ocean can be soggy and limp, then this is what it is. She walks her bike, guid­ing it with one hand, out on the break­wa­ter. Look­ing at the blue, open and heavy, she feels the absence of a story in her mind and begins to free-associate words. Play­ful. Obvi­ous. Nec­es­sary. Hap­pened. Pow­er­ful. Noth­ing. Cup. What? Sat­is­fied, she stares down at where the water meets the wall.

The ocean is flush against the con­crete and dark, as though there is no taper­ing of its depth. Here is a body that makes no allowances. She looks over the other side, where crabs tin­kle on the cracked slope. She con­tin­ues walk­ing, one hand on the bike, and looks for more heads among the boats. Her eye is fixed on a jerk­ing body in a yel­low rain­coat when she walks into a bench. The body is scrub­bing the hull of its sail­boat. She can hear music (Cur­tis May­field) faintly, from some­where. This com­bi­na­tion is pro­duc­ing the first feel­ings of ela­tion in her. If ela­tion is a spoon in her stom­ach, the dull end is press­ing upward and aim­ing for her heart, mak­ing a clean hole that is only a lit­tle painful. ‘That’s how strong my love is.’ Wait, Otis Red­ding? The ela­tion dimin­ishes. Her knee meets the plas­tic arm of a bench.

An older man and a younger man are sit­ting on the bench. The younger man has black hair and wears a pur­ple plaid shirt. He flinches when he sees her and looks to the older man for a sign of what to do. The older man doesn’t react at all. He has on a brown blazer with the sleeves rolled up. It doesn’t look summer-casual here by the ocean; it looks hasty and impor­tant, like a pro­fes­sor in his study. She backs up and walks slowly behind them and stops just past them to lean on the rail­ing and search for the yel­low body.

‘What do you want to do with your life?’ the older man asks, ‘Where have you been?’ The younger man mum­bles and flips through a note­book on his lap. He keeps look­ing up and down and she is pretty sure he is not actu­ally say­ing any­thing. ‘You want to buy a dig­i­tal cam­era and do what with with it?’ the older man con­tin­ues. More mum­bling and look­ing. ‘Take pic­tures,’ the older man answers. ‘What about your rela­tion to Henry?’ he asks. She moves away quickly and when his voice won’t leave her mind she takes it and feeds it piece by piece to the crabs.

PART FOUR
She gets home and goes straight to her bed­room. It’s late and every­one is asleep. There is noth­ing else to do; it has been a day. She unties her dress and slopes her shoul­ders so it falls off of her, then hangs it in her closet. She is wear­ing a tank top and tights under­neath and leaves these on and gets into bed like she is fit­ting her body into some­thing small. She is dis­ap­pointed in her­self because she spent the day behav­ing as though some­thing was always about to hap­pen. But of course noth­ing is ever bound to hap­pen and she should have known bet­ter. She won­ders if there is a dif­fer­ence between being bound to and being bound by some­thing. She can’t remem­ber what it feels like to be bound either way so she fig­ures things just aren’t.

She slips her fin­gers under the band of her tights. It feels nice to have them held there. She is sur­prised at how eas­ily she feels her­self. Between the points of her hips it feels like a tide is retreat­ing. She moves her fin­gers lower. She has never mas­tur­bated before and she is afraid of ruin­ing it by think­ing too much about this fact. Her eyes roll back and she thinks about spread nets and the slack weight of sails. She gets up on her knees and removes a wooden end-cap from one of her bed posts then tucks it under her­self and lays face down. It is long and painted green and she thinks of a minia­ture carved boat. She can’t believe it is work­ing. Lit­tle sharp breaths try to escape through the bridge of her nose; through her eyes. She can’t believe she is this acces­si­ble to her­self. It is like a dream. She leaves the lit­tle boat there a long time after she is finished.

She remem­bers the whole day at once, like look­ing up at the moon when you hadn’t thought to look for it before. She thinks about kind­ness and how very whole and puri­fied she feels. She feels like she could be the moon and also the per­son look­ing up at her­self. Did she open a door some­how? Did she do this thing her­self? Her father’s heart hadn’t made a sound. Even if her body can­not fit through she thinks how good it is to have a head out in the open. Yes. Yes.

She falls asleep free asso­ci­at­ing mem­o­ries. Bike. Boat. Limp. Rela­tion. Yel­low. French fries. Wind. Fuck­ing idiot. Crabs. Ocean. Dis­tance. Pee. She knows this feel­ing now. She is not embarrassed.

---

V. BOLF

Delib­er­a­tions

if some­body were to walk into the room
right now hold a gun to my head & say:
“you have 15 min­utes before I kill you,”
i would con­tinue read­ing this book and
sip­ping this cup of cof­fee & at the end of
15 min­utes if not ready i might at least feel
con­tent at the point of death, which is more
than most peo­ple & not after all a bad way to go.

---

TOM BLOOD

there is a pigeon too old to fly

you can’t say he is wait­ing for a wheel bump but he is
wait­ing for a ride to the lake, it’s like the white dove we wait
to run more sim­i­larly to a moun­tain, like the sleep­ing old man
always on that bench in the park, more and more always
and from moths, moths search­ing empty skies in a brief time
like as elves’ remarks at our death when we pour as water
  into wilder­ness
oh bear dream when

and moun­tain
let us replace the win­dows with dreams stuck in hon­ey­suck­les
like eagles in the cham­ber, to be a sun­rise I am ready
evap­o­rat­ing dawns arrive and we pic­ture an older reli­gious
  per­son
in mer­cu­r­ial robes cap­tur­ing our frames though we shud­der in the
  sprock­ets
fol­low­ing our moun­tain door­way of days, in the pega­sus heat
when the wands dis­sect our eyes into cauliflowers

tem­ples of trees, day­light fires the funk into my jewel mind
and a sea of star eyes, empty head bands, far inside the salmon
blue winds strum, the crane runs
all is ice

---

LILY-ROSE

The Safe

Pref­ace: This story is based on the actual hap­pen­ings of an eleven year old.

Leo Rosen­berg was a curi­ous child. He was unable to sup­press his desire to dis­cover. He enjoyed look­ing through his mother’s draw­ers and wal­let. He looked through his father’s brief­case and suit­cases. He read his older sister’s diary and scoffed at her imma­tu­rity. He searched the his­tory on his brother’s com­puter. If there was some­thing that could be revealed, Leo was in the mid­dle of it.
     Leo Rosen­berg was a sneaky child. He was curi­ous first and for most but this curios­ity led to a life of secrecy. Stand­ing at a mod­est height of 4’9”, he had suc­cess­fully man­aged to med­dle unde­tected. His mother had always sus­pected some­thing. Although, she was dis­tracted by the fact that Leo was also fas­ci­nated with fire.
     He waited until his par­ents left him alone, which they often did. Though his mother was a nur­tur­ing mother, she was also an obe­di­ent wife. His father came first in the house­hold. His older brother, sec­ond. His sis­ter, rarely and Leo fell last on pri­or­i­ties. He did not mind. He enjoyed the time alone.
     He only started small man­age­able fires in the back­yard but most of the time spent alone at the house involved snoop­ing. In search­ing through his brother’s top dresser drawer, he found sev­eral con­doms and rem­nants of a mar­i­juana cig­a­rette. This was some­thing that Leo could pos­si­bly use as black­mail in an upcom­ing dis­pute with his brother. He enjoyed, also, read­ing love let­ters writ­ten to his sis­ter. He thought it was embar­rass­ing, the amount of reverie and bla­tant lies the boys scrib­bled on their com­po­si­tion paper.
     The only thing he had not been suc­cess­ful in recov­er­ing was the inside of the fam­ily safe. The safe was kept in his father’s office. He had been attempt­ing to get into this safe for the three years pre­vi­ous. He had taken his father’s stetho­scope only recently, to try and guess the com­bi­na­tion. Upon research on google.com: search­ing for “how to open a com­bi­na­tion lock safe”, he started to attempt to hear for the sup­posed click. Some rotary com­bi­na­tion locks can be manip­u­lated by feel or sound in order to deter­mine the com­bi­na­tion required to open the safe but it was not work­ing.
     One Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Leo woke up to the sound of two cars pulling out of the dri­ve­way. One was his father’s sil­ver Mer­cedes. The other was a blue hybrid SUV. The air was fresh in his room. He got up and walked to the win­dow and watched as the gate closed. It was eight A.M. and he after he was cer­tain, he made for garage.
     The garage was not con­nected to the house. It was a small garage made of rot­ting wood and cov­ered in chipped brown paint. There were twenty or so boxes as well as sev­eral bicy­cles with flat tires. The garage was moist and cov­ered in dust. He made his way through the rub­bish to the tools. He looked for a drill. The drill would become the key to the safe. He was cer­tain of it. He found wrenches and screw­drivers, a power sander, sev­eral rusty ham­mers, an infi­nite amount of nails but no power drill. He found bits. He was frus­trated. It was now nine A.M.
     He made his way through the neigh­bor­hood. The Goldstein’s garage was eas­ily entered. He had learned this the pre­vi­ous year when his curios­ity led him to pick the lock and enter through the side of their garage. He felt ashamed when he was in their house, but not enough to post­pone the inspec­tion of the Goldstein’s closet where he found noth­ing of inter­est.
     He walked up to their fence and with a quick glance to make sure no one was watch­ing, Leo took him­self over the fence and walked stealth­ily through the damp grass. A Lexus sedan was still parked in their dri­ve­way but he was pre­pared to take risks. When he got to the garage, he took out his junior high I.D. card and slid it in to dis­en­gage the lock.
     He walked inside to the well-kept tool table. He located a power drill with a vari­ety of drill bits and left the garage and was over the fence in under a minute.
     Most safes are sus­cep­ti­ble to com­pro­mise by drilling. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers even pub­lish drill-point dia­grams for spe­cific mod­els but these are guarded by both the man­u­fac­tur­ers and lock­smithing pro­fes­sion­als. How­ever, Leo had found an inter­est­ing dia­gram of a sim­i­lar safe online and was pre­pared to try it out, no mat­ter what the con­se­quence. The drill-points are located close to the axis of the dial on the com­bi­na­tion lock.
     His father’s office was the far­thest room away from the fence. This posed the threat of Leo’s inca­pa­bil­ity of hear­ing any car pull into the dri­ve­way. He was unable to resist the temp­ta­tion and had to put his idea into effect. He reached into his pocket and removed the dia­gram and set the drill down in front of the safe.
     The safe was a stan­dard safe with a com­bi­na­tion lock in the cen­ter. It seemed sim­ple enough. He removed the drill from the case and went to work. He marked the drill with a wash­able marker. He began to go to work, attempt­ing to drill the cor­rect places.
     What Leo did not know was that in some safes, there is a glass re-locker. It is a piece of glass mounted between the safe door and the com­bi­na­tion lock. It is equipped with wires attached to the edges. These wires lead to sev­eral ran­domly located, spring-loaded bolts. When an attempt is made to open the safe, the drill or torch breaks the glass, releas­ing the bolts.
     When the drill entered the front of the safe, the re-lockers went into effect. When the bolts were released, Leo knew he had failed. He knew there was no other way to han­dle this except with brute force.
     He made his way back to the side garage and found a dolly, took the safe and wheeled it to their back yard. Leo was not a strong child, but was able, to hoist the safe up into his tree house. He let it go onto the con­crete to the left of the tree house but when the safe dropped, it remained in tact.
     “What is going on here?” his father asked. Leo stood still. He was unsure of what to say. He thought it was per­fectly obvi­ous what was going on. “Leo Ronald Rosen­berg, tell me what is going on here?”
     His father’s eyes were set on Leo’s. He evaded con­tact and after three min­utes of silence. He spoke, “I was try­ing to get into your safe. I don’t know why. I just wanted to see.”
     “This is a very expen­sive safe. This is my busi­ness,” his father said. He was speak­ing very sternly but it did not affect Leo.
     “I am sorry,” he said. He was sorry that he did not suc­ceed.
     “Do you want to know what’s in the safe?” his father asked.
     “Yes.”
     “Okay.” His father walked over to the safe and quickly dialed the com­bi­na­tion. Leo saw it as he did. 12 – 31-7. Noted. His father pulled out some cash; some jew­elry he said belonged to his late grand­mother and a small black CD case.
     “See, it’s noth­ing Leo. Now get this back in my office. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Get in your room until your mother gets home.”
     That black CD case. What was it? What was in it, Leo won­dered. He could not rest until he found out. His father did not put it back in the safe. He took it into his office. That night both par­ents scolded him and when they went to sleep, Leo snuck into their room and into his father’s office. He looked through the room. He opened the top drawer of his father’s desk with a paper­clip and voila, the black CD case. He opened it. To his sur­prise, it was a col­lec­tion of porno­graphic DVDs. In the very back pocket of the case was a small plas­tic bag full of white pow­der. Leo held the pow­der close to eye. He opened the bag and smelled it. Odor­less. He stuck his fin­ger into it and put it in his tongue. His tongue went numb.
     Leo quickly put it back into the case and the case into the drawer and tip­toed back into the room. That night he lay in bed and thought about his father. Leo Rosen­berg wanted to ask why, after all the lec­tures about drugs, he had the audac­ity to do such a thing. His mother was a nice woman, after all. Was it some­thing that they both did? He thought about telling his sis­ter and brother about it, just to tell some­one else. But instead he just lay in bed thinking.

---

ARIEL CLIMER

Famous peo­ple come in all the time

I had never seen fake boobs before but there they were, held only by a mint, ribbed tee and always in order for some rea­son. I had never seen fake lips before, but there they were, deftly smeared with only a thin layer of pip­ing hot lip­stick, and spout­ing unbal­anced pro­por­tions. I had never seen a baby poo­dle wear­ing a sweat­shirt before, but there it was, all neon and pink, “Loves Heavy Pet­ting,” always want­ing more meat­balls that it could stuff down its tiny throat.

I’ll just have a 99 cent cheese­burger with sur­real ketchup smeared all over her face. Oh and uh, yes, poo­dle meat please. I’m on a diet.

---

MIKEO OJEDA

Unti­tled

---

ANDY MICHELSEN

Dodge

I was eight years old when they told me that he died. I didn’t cry when they told me because I didn’t know what to think. One minute I had an older brother and the next minute he was gone; van­ished and never to be seen again. And I was left to fill his shoes as the older brother.
     Edward Mel­rose was a hard work­ing and reck­less son of a bitch. I idol­ized him and watched his every move closely in order to grow up just like him. He would work until his fin­gers were raw under the watch­ful eye of my father. Whether it be chip­ping lum­ber out back under the trees and sun or paint­ing the shed until dark Edward never let a drop of sweat go unde­served.
     I remem­ber ask­ing him once to throw a ball with me in the yard and his reply, “Work before play Andy. Always work before play,” stuck in my head all through my child­hood and youth. But he promised we’d throw the ball after he fin­ished pulling up the weeds around the house. I dropped my glove and ball and set to pulling the weeds up with him. The hours seemed to fly by like migrat­ing geese above in the skies. We never said a word to each other until the last patch of fox­tail was uprooted near the front steps, but by then the sun was nearly gone from the sum­mer sky and sup­per was on the table.
     “Don’t worry brother, we’ll toss that ball tomor­row I promise,” Ed said as we washed up. I knew that there was no chance of us play­ing catch the next day or the day after that.
     Between work and sleep and school Ed was a wild child. He liked to ride bikes in and out of traf­fic down­town and drink beers and smoke with his older friends down by the tracks. There was no telling what kind of trou­ble he was get­ting into when he was out of the house. I remem­ber find­ing his cig­a­rettes in his room one night. He snatched them out of my hand and told me to keep quiet. He said, “Hard work deserves hard play. Maybe you’ll under­stand when you’re older but for now lets keep this our secret okay?” I told him okay but lit­tle did he know that our folks were already onto him. Friends of the fam­ily would call up the house late at night and com­plain to my mother about some shit Ed had done. When he’d come home there would be all kinds of yelling and slam­ming doors. One night when he came home drunk as a skunk Ed landed a jab on our pops in a fit of rage and things between them was never the same.
     But Ed kept up his hard work ethic around the house and as much as his grades suf­fered for it, Ed kept up his wild side too. And then it hap­pened.
     After walk­ing my younger brother Louis home from school he and I came through the front door of a house that was emo­tion­ally starved. My par­ents were sit­ting at the kitchen table hold­ing hands and not talk­ing. My mother had tears in her eyes. Louis and I walked in unsure of what was hap­pen­ing.
     “Sit down boys,” my father said.
     “Where’s Ed?” Louis asked as we took our usual seats across from them.
     “Your brother won’t be com­ing home. He died tonight while he was hors­ing around on the tracks. Don’t you boys go out there any­more?”
     My mother began to weep even harder. Louis got up and held my mother as tears ran down his face. But I could not cry. I couldn’t even think straight. Thou­sands of mem­o­ries of my brother ran quickly through my head. I got up silently and went up to my room and laid on my bed look­ing deep into the wood grained ceil­ing. Gone. So many parts of my life had van­ished along with my brother. I won­dered what life would be like with Ed miss­ing. I knew that I needed to pick up where he left off and work my ass off to help my par­ents for­get.
     That com­ing school year I felt like I had a mark on my face. Every­one stared at the boy who’s brother died drunk and laugh­ing on the tracks. Rumors were tossed all around school about how Ed died or how drunk and stu­pid he was, but after a few months things sim­mered down. Even the teach­ers acted funny like I was a dying can­cer patient. They under­stood the grief my fam­ily went through and wanted to help. But I didn’t want their sym­pa­thy. I only wanted to move on.
     Through all of junior high and high school I hit the books hard and worked even harder at home. I grew four inches the sum­mer before my sopho­more year and came to school big­ger and stronger than most of my class­mates. My hard work had finally paid off. I didn’t join the foot­ball team or any­thing like that, but instead con­tin­ued with my stud­ies and even picked up a job down­town load­ing trucks. The work wasn’t glo­ri­ous by any means but it kept my par­ents happy and kept me out of trou­ble. I strived hard to be the older brother that Ed never was. Each night I would help Lou with his home­work and make sure he under­stood. I pulled him around the house with me when I wasn’t at work and showed him how to till and plow and tell when the oranges were per­fectly ripe that they tasted like heaven. Lou was a good learner like me but he couldn’t seem to put mem­o­ries of Ed behind him.
     One night at the din­ner table Lou started talk­ing about how Ed used to whis­tle to him­self while he worked, a habit that he had taken from our father. Lou smiled to him­self at the mem­ory but my par­ents looked at each other with worry in their eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was but some­thing didn’t seem right. That night I dreamt of Ed for the first time since his death. All of eight years gone by in the mean­time. I dreamt of Ed on the tracks lying there like he had just been hit by that train only he wasn’t dead. He sat up and looked at me and asked, “Andy, why do you for­get?” I stum­bled back and tried to run but my feet were heavy. As I turned around to look at Ed on the tracks my feet gave way and I began falling over a ledge. I awoke in a cold sweat and walked to the sink to throw water on my face. I went back to my room and threw on a coat. The sun was just com­ing up over the hill. As I pulled on my coat I felt some­thing in the pocket. A pack of cig­a­rettes. I looked again at the jacket and real­ized that I had put on Ed’s old jacket instead of my own. I went out on the porch and lit a cig­a­rette as the sun came up and lit up the wheat fields bright and golden. A flick­er­ing image of Ed danced around in my head.

I grad­u­ated high school near the top of my class in the midst of an unbear­ably swel­ter­ing sum­mer. The papers said it was, “The Hottest Since the Dust Bowl.” I didn’t pay any atten­tion to the heat though. I stuck around after high school and kept on work­ing at the load­ing docks. The work was steady and it paid half decent so I was happy. I also wanted to be at home when Lou grad­u­ated. I wanted to make sure he stayed down on his stud­ies. My folks were happy to have me around the house more often too since school let out. But there was a small part of me that wanted to get out into the world. “Not until Lou grad­u­ates,” I would tell myself.
     Four years, six girl­friends, dozens of cig­a­rette packs, three pro­mo­tions, and one car wreck later I was there in the bleach­ers watch­ing Louie take his diploma, smile, and wave. It had been a long four years liv­ing at home with my folks while every­one else I talked to from high school was out in the world doing things and going places I could only dream of. Louie got a job at the mar­ket bag­ging gro­ceries. I only con­tin­ued to talk to two of the girls I dated. My hard work on the docks paid off and I was given the posi­tion of “day shift sec­ondary man­ager.” Which basi­cally meant that I was in charge of receiv­ing papers and han­dling routes for the morn­ing loads. It was less stren­u­ous than load­ing up the trucks and it was nice to have morn­ing shifts instead of evenings. But with Louie out of high school I put in my two weeks and pre­pared to leave town.
     I had enough money saved up to live com­fort­ably with­out work for a while. Free­dom from work was a strange lux­ury for me and I was deter­mined to take advan­tage. In the fall after Louie’s grad­u­a­tion I kissed my mother and hugged my father good­bye. Louie helped me load up my bags. “You’re a good brother Louie,” I told him. “You’ve got a whole world ahead of you now. Don’t sit around here and wait for it to come to you.”
     “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “You go find your place out there. I’ll be on my way soon enough.”
     I waved to them as I drove west towards the ocean. I had only seen the ocean in pic­tures and movies. I imag­ined that the sand would feel like clouds under my feet and that the salty breeze would stir some­thing great within me. I spent six days on the road to the Pacific Ocean. I stopped a hand­ful of times to see the sights and rest my legs. I met a girl named Abbey at a post office in Ridgedale. I was mail­ing a let­ter home to my mother. Abbey was work­ing at the counter and asked where I was from. She said she could tell that I was from out of town by my voice and by my hair. I resented both remarks but said noth­ing of it. I told her about my trip to the ocean and how I was just pass­ing through.
     “Do you have plans for tonight or are you on your way out?” she asked.
     “That all depends,” I replied.
     “On what.”
     “On whether you have plans for tonight,” I told her.
     Abbey had no plans and we had din­ner that night. The next day she quit her job. The day after that we were on the road together bound for the ocean blue. We stopped in San Fran and rented a small one-bedroom apart­ment and paid two months rent in advance. The ocean was every­thing I dreamt it to be and the city life was excit­ing and busy. It was unlike any­thing Abbey or I had ever known.
     Two months passed and Abbey and I were on our way South along the ocean headed for Big Sur. We had heard about the place from locals in San Fran prais­ing it for its views and peo­ple. Abbey and I fit­ted right in.

Things set­tled quickly in Big Sur and before I could even dig my feet into the soil Abbey and I were mar­ried into a cozy cabin just at the edge of town and I net­ted myself a job writ­ing book reviews and a lit­tle jour­nal­ism for a local paper. They were hes­i­tant to bring me along at first but I showed them a cou­ple pieces I had done on my trip and with a lit­tle sweet-talking they let me on board. It was a great job that didn’t pay well, but it freed up time for me to work at home. I wrote let­ters home to my folks and to Lou in New York at school. Abbey and I main­tained a half-acre lot of mixed crops that we sold in town as well.
     The peo­ple in the area took us in as their own and we were sort of bonded to the area. The com­mu­nity was so tight that strangers were spot­ted out quickly and eas­ily. Every now and then a drifter would linger for a while and peo­ple would get to know them like they were fam­ily.
     About two years into our time at Big Sur and on a driz­zling April after­noon, Nancy, our near­est neigh­bor came up to the porch while I was writ­ing under the awning.
     “There’s a man in town who says he knows you, Andy,” she said from under her umbrella.
     “Oh yeah?” I said as I looked up from my pad.
     “Yeah, I think you bet­ter come down and check it out.”
     I took Nancy back into town with me and we drove up to the cof­fee shop as the down­pour picked up. There was a man sit­ting on a bench under the awning smok­ing a cig­a­rette. I got out of the car and held my jacket over my face to block out the rain. The man was older than me with thin stub­ble on his chin. He was dressed in jeans and a cor­duroy coat.
     “Andy Mel­rose?” he asked.
     “Yes. And you?”
     “Well I shouldn’t think you’d rec­og­nize me. After all I’ve been dead to you for fif­teen years.”
     My blood ran cold. The stranger looked at me sharply. I stared back into his face and found the brother I once knew. The flick­er­ing image had come full cir­cle and was before my eyes. The face smiled back at me but I had to be sure.
     “Your name?” I asked.
     “Edward Thomas Mel­rose.”
     “You are a ghost. Where have you been for so long?”
     “I’ll buy you a cup of cof­fee and tell you all about it,” he said and threw his arm over my shoul­der and brought me inside.
     Ed told me how our folks had sent him away to live in Chicago with our Aunt Marie, my mother’s sis­ter whom I had only seen pho­tographs of. Ed said that it was pun­ish­ment for his unruli­ness and that he was to never speak to our fam­ily again. I felt betrayed and bit­ter towards my par­ents, but Ed said he was glad for the way things turned out. He said that he knew it would be best for Louis and I if he left. I could only agree. I looked at my youth with­out Ed as bless­ing only because I strived harder once he was gone. He under­stood. Ed and I had become stronger peo­ple apart from each other and each of us grew in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion and for a dif­fer­ent rea­son.
     Refill after refill, Ed and I talked for hours about where we had been. I told him about Abbey and my job. He told me about his job in Chicago as an archi­tect. After a final cup we loaded up his bags and drove back to the cabin.
     “How did you find me?” I asked.
     “I saw your name in a paper. I flew down as soon as I saw it and your edi­tor gave me the address.”
     “Have you talked to Louie?” I asked.
     “No. I wanted to see you first. Where is he at these days?”
     “New York.”
     “New York…” he trailed off.
     That night Ed, Abbey, and I stayed up all night telling sto­ries. The next day we drove to the air­port and bought three tick­ets for New York.
     “New York…” I thought.

---

JORDAN DYKSTRA

alpha­bet

---

WESLEY FRANCIS

choco­late bars and base­ball cards

it’s dim and dusty
in my grandmother’s
house and I crouch
beside her rock­ing
chair, root in her
purse and remove a
sin­gle dol­lar. i leave
through the front
door, the crum­pled
bill clamped tight
between my sweaty
fist, and i run down
to the liquor store
to buy a pack of
Topps base­ball cards
or a choco­late bar.
i break it into tiny
squares and let one
melt on my tongue,
so sticky and sweet,
the taste of betrayal.

sum­mer

we slept like sol­diers
in hand-carved trenches on
the verge of war. our
mat­tresses placed on the
car­pet, closer to the ground
where it was cool. we woke
early and bleary-eyed, cursed
the weather, peeled wet
sheets from our skin
and tried to get back to sleep.