West Liberty University

by Dani Lewis

As a being in perpetual motion—both physically and mentally—my Nissan
has become one of the few constants in my life. It may have scratched, blue paint
from a winter where I couldn’t find a proper ice scraper and a dent in one of its fenders
from an ex backing into it with a trailer hitch, but it’s mine. I got that car my junior
year of high school and am writing this nearly five years into the future, graciously
aware of the fact that it’s still parked out in my garage and contains objects that
others may view as insignificant.

Among plenty of mundane things, it’s witnessed me writing and practicing
my high school graduation speech in its driver’s seat, sobbing over boys, girls,
family members, and strangers with my head resting on the steering wheel, and
sitting alone in mostly empty parking lots while listening to heavy rain or heavy
music in hopes of my emotions rolling out the cracked windows enough so that no
one would notice them when I got home.

Aside from its exterior scratches and dents, it has an obnoxious blue light
that matches my blue moments and shines into my eyes from the dashboard when
it’s dark outside and I flick on my high beams. It’s a little symbol that exists to remind
me that they’re in use, except the LED it depends on turns me into some kind of
moth and easily becomes the only thing I can focus on. It fills the whole car,
sometimes making it harder to see when I drive, but it’s always been there to
distract me from myself or remind me of brighter things.

That car’s light may be obnoxious, but its brightness also illuminates the
photobooth film that I keep tucked in the visor above my seat. The four pictures,
surrounded by ghostly cartoons of Kennywood Amusement Park’s “Phantom,”
offer reminders that I must stay in motion by giving me images of him. Is he a boy
I’ve cried over in that very car? Yes. But he’s a boy I’ve cried over out of pure relief,
my heart aching and yearning for him to be sitting in the passenger seat,
our music playing and our lips meeting again and again.

We’ve sat together on those plush, suede seats, retelling childhood stories
about vintage Pokemon games and emotional abuse. I’ve rested on those seats in
front of the wheel, on the passenger’s side, and stretched across the three connected
in the back in hopes of dispelling headaches and heartaches.

That busted-up Nissan has moved with me in more than one way and has
been a comfort during times when all I felt I had left was the annoying blue light on
the dashboard and baskets and suitcases filled with laundry and belongings in the trunk.
Its seats hold heat in the summer that induces a sweat along your spine, but
they’re all a part of a bubble that I’ve managed to hide in when the summer
heat is the last thing on my mind.

by Autumn Duckworth

My grandfather’s hands had always been a running joke within the family.
Once, upon meeting an NFL player, the athlete had told him that the championship
rings would never fit on sausage fingers like his. He proceeded to place the same
rings on my grandmother’s slender hands instead. Our family used to laugh and
compare our hands by placing them side by side to see the noticeable size
difference. This was before. His hands became a sore subject, and the
topic was avoided with reverence.

One minute the world was as it had always been. I had been spending
time with my grandparents in their kitchen/dining room area, laughing about one
of my many high school dramas. The next minute a loud bang echoed from the
kitchen where my grandfather had collapsed backwards on the floor, hands
slipping from the refrigerator handle. It was not the first time this had happened,
but it was the first time I had been in the room to witness it.

As a young man in 1965, he, among many others, was packed into buses
and involuntarily shipped off to another country to fight a war that wasn’t
asked for they had not asked for. Out of a sense of duty and patriotism, they served the
time the draft assigned them. He sat at one of the seats of the door gunners with
his hands pointing and firing the weapon he was assigned. The machinery rattled his
body as his hands shot endless rounds from the barrel. Strong arms guided the deadly
force while his fingers pressed down on the trigger for a succession of rapid fire.
In more serene moments, he worked on the maintenance of the Hhueys. His hands
meticulously worked on the rotors and engines of the carrier that would hover above
the battlegrounds. One mistake on his part could have sent the entire helicopter
to the ground. One step at a time, he worked his way through the bloodshed and
unpredictability of war in hopes to leave the effects behind him.

When he was a middle- aged man, his large, calloused hands worked dutifully
under the hood of a jet- black ‘68 Camaro. His steady grip held onto the wrench
that deliberately worked on the loosened parts within the compartment. They were
blackened with the grease from the car and moved with a practiced purpose.
Until motor vehicles became overrun with computers, his hands fixed them with ease.
Together, he and my father had built multiple cars from the ground up.

He had always seemed a jack-of-all-trades. His hands fixed vehicles,
hung pictures, switched light bulbs, trimmed trees, laid bricks, and poured concrete.
More than the simple labors, they cared for sons and a gaggle of granddaughters,
holding them when it was needed most. They wrapped around and cared for
a pair of hands that wrinkled with age in time with his own.

Presently, a tremble worked its way through the right hand up through the arm.
Tools sat in dusty boxes, and trees were torn out. He would sit in the corner of the
garage space, on a chair brought down specifically for him, as those more capable
than he worked on the vehicles housed inside. He was reduced to an opinion giver
instead of an active participant in the restorative process. His shaking would not
stop, it couldn’t stop. Instead, one hand sat perfectly still while the other
dangled dejectedly in his lap, quivering.

        While Vietnam had never been a fight he had entered willingly, he had once
held onto the idea that it was all behind him. He was able to disguise many of the
after-effects of the war, but Agent Orange had left its marks that were unconcealable.
Nearly fifty years after he had left the war, his physical capabilities had started to
slowly deteriorate. It all started with those hands that had accomplished so much,
hands once capable of many skills now grasping onto door frames and countertops
to keep him from falling. To keep him standing, still.

by Ashton Wronikowski

Once upon a time, there was a girl who changed the world, a girl with raven -hair,
hazel eyes, and freckles. She came into view slightly, softly —– as if her body was
purposefully trying not to be too much. Soccer kept her slim, years of running for
hours on end making her athlete’s build lean and graceful rather than solid
and strong. Everything about her was graceful, and beautiful; the thickness of her
eyelashes looking down, either in bashful avoidance of a compliment or in sleep
as she so often did. Her neck, curving to meet her clavicle and drawing eyes to
the sharp contrast of her shoulders. Her hands, musician’s hands, promising
melodies and other softness from each delicate fingertip.

There’s always this bullshit expectation of women to be all-and-nothing,
containing controversies, simultaneously being two totally different things at once. It’s
bullshit, and problematic, and somehow, Claire was. She held herself with
careful strength, cradling her loss and her hurt openly —– hoping anyone who
needed would see themselves reflected in her hands. She was quick with smiles
and faster with laughs, offering every part of herself to complete strangers. The word
stranger really didn’t have the same meaning for her as others, because they
were simply friends she hadn’t yet met.

If you go to the local bar and look at the ceiling, there’s an Irish flag pinned
with a small signature scrawled in the bottom corner, Claire #12 to commemorate
the years spent on the pitch about a mile up the road. Pete, the bartender, always
races to meet her —– asking about one more game of pool or darts, as if it’s one
of the few reasons he opens his bar every night. Whenever we go there
together, I can’t help but smile up at the stripes, at the idea of seeing her name even
when she’s thousands of miles and various time zones away, and think
of the night we met.

__________

Two hours had never seemed so long. The drive back from the
hole-in-the-wall tattoo parlor had seemed ages longer than the drive there with the
added throbbing of our new piercings. It was finally one of our few full weekends off,
and this group of teammates had decided to join in some harmlessly
irresponsible behavior. We were already scheming, saying we just needed to
keep it from our parents until a respectable amount of time had passed.

“What’s the plan now? When are you guys going to get ready to go out?”

The most important questions of any weekend always started like these:
Where are we going before the party? What are you guys drinking? Who’s going
to be there? What are you wearing? If every minute of the night isn’t discussed
a good three hours before the function, we won’t be going.

My answer failed to pass from my lips as we walked towards our
apartments and found the tell-tale thumping of bass coming from what seemed
like the complex itself, the bricks doing a poor job of hiding the gathering
within. As only a sophomore in my spring semester, I was hesitant to open our
neighbor’s door —– that required senior-level boldness for sure —– but we pushed
our fear aside to sate our curiosity. Opening the door, we found most of the
women’s soccer team gathered around our neighbor’s back
window. The speaker keeping post in their kitchen was the culprit for the bass
reverberating through the apartments, and Nicki Minaj began
serenading the collective.

“You guys! Hi!” Kaelyn, our neighbor, pulled Nina, Mack, and me into a
warm hug. “You guys are coming to hang out, right?” Her expression suggested
that anything besides an enthusiastic affirmative would be rejected,
so we agreed hastily.

“What are y’all doing out here?” Curiosity was addicting, giving us all
a buzz before our first drink. Kaelyn took us around her teammates cluttering
the apartment and back outside, where an intense game of cup-pong was taking
place. There were heavily accented yells from this side of the door, with waving
hands and expressive language that led us all to let out a laugh. I knew Anna,
her boyfriend Mark, along with Millie, but there was a third girl I hadn’t
recognized, with dark hair and light eyes that followed the other members
of the game with clear mirth.

After a round of introductions led by Kaelyn, I learned her name was Claire,
and it was made blatantly obvious that she was one of the coolest people
I had met. Her Irish accent carried softly across the tables, and her choice outfit
of a flannel, ripped jeans, and backwards hat suggested an easy comfort with
herself that made it easy to be around. As we shook hands and I answered
the silent questioning in her light eyes, I had a warm feeling in my chest that
shook off the last bit of the late spring chill.

__________

The rest of that first night was spent quickly, in a bit of a blur, as we
grabbed filled cups to fill our hands. I kept bumping into Claire Kelly making
her rounds, dipping in and out of conversations like water, being welcomed by
anyone and everyone she turned to. My friends had noticed me noticing her,
and wasted no time in planning our wedding.

“Can you all just relax? We have no idea if she’s even gay!” I attempted to
dissuade their scheming behavior and was given nothing but deadpan stares
or eye rolls in response.

“Oh yeah,” said Nina, dripping sarcasm on Kaelyn’s kitchen
floor. “She’s only wearing the lesbian’s uniform of Docs, a loose flannel, and a
backwards hat. If that girl is straight, I’ll go on the record for having a
shit gay-dar and never expect you to trust my advice again.”

To save myself from responding, I said I needed air, and I wound my way
around the room, dipping in and out of laughing conversations to finally
find solace outside. Leaning against the brick wall of our apartments,
I let a long breath out, watching the condensate travel off into the dark.

“Long night?”

I jumped a bit at Claire walking around the corner to sit against the wall,
gesturing for me to take my place next to her. That warmth I felt earlier in the
night was back, making it all too easy to sit in the grass next to her. She
offered me her cup, and laughed loudly at my subsequent wince. She told me
she drank Jägerbombs, and that they were popular in Ireland.

The minutes stretched languidly as the other topics came and went. We
discussed politics, foods, religion, family, sports, and school. First kisses, last meetings,
loves and hates. I don’t know how long we sat there, or when we finally
stopped talking and laughing to look at each other. That same look in her eye
from earlier litght a fire somewhere between my heart and my stomach. The possibility
of this seemed out of reach —–  that she’d rather be sitting in dewy grass
against the scratchy brick of my apartment than inside with her teammates
wasn’t real. She wasn’t tossing her glossy hair over her shoulder, wasn’t fiddling
with her hat nervously in her hands. I couldn’t be making her nervous, not when
it feltels like my own nerves wereare trying to crawl out of my skin. She touched
my hand, bringing my eyes back to hers.

Her eyes were ice in color alone, a slate gradient that made the dark
rings in her outer iris seem warm, heated, as we looked. We asked —– aloud or silently,
I don’t remember. We kissed.

__________

          When things end for no reason —– when it’s not the wrong person, or even
the right person, but just a good person —– that hurts the worst. You feel like
it’s your fault. It’s not. You guys are two pieces in the same puzzle, but you
just don’t fit with each other.

I heard those words last week on a barstool next to Claire, and it made me
think of the past two years. It went by so quickly. In that time, some mythic qualities
had faded. We had tried, for months —– she went back to Ireland that summer,
and we realized just how far the ocean is across. We blamed that at first,
needing there to be some reason that our pieces didn’t fit. There were
arguments and weeks of silence, but they never lasted. Even when we finally
chose others, moving away slowly from each other, we still smiled.
Just a little sadly.

Two weeks ago, we were gathered around the TV with my teammates,
glasses of wine in our hands. It’s called Someone Great, and I was crying, as was
expected of me at our movie nights. The main character was writing on the subway,
saying goodbye to a love of hers. She ends her letter to him, writing.

When something breaks, and the pieces are big enough, you can fix it.
I guess sometimes things don’t break, they shatter, but when you let the light in,
shattered glass will glitter. And in those moments, when the pieces catch the sun,
I’ll remember just how beautiful it was. Just how beautiful it will always be,
because it was us, and we are magic, forever.

I couldn’t help but look at her. Even if we aren’t in love, she taught me what
it meant to love. To listen first. To pick up sweets at the store just so it’ll make their
day better. To appreciate silence, the simplicity of it. To break it immediately
with a joke, because laughter is all the better. To check in, often, because,
often —, life is hard. To always have tea handy —– Barry’s if you can —– it fixes
everything, from stomachaches, to headaches, to heartaches.

She looked over and smiled, knowing, as she had the habit of doing.
Coming to sit next to me, she held my hand as if to say, don’t worry, we’ll be
okay. And she’s right. We will.

She’s dating someone now —– even if she won’t call it “dating” —– and
I’m so, so happy for her. I know the wonderfully kind, intelligent, caring, lovely,
brave woman this girl gets to hold close, and I only feel incredibly lucky and
grateful to have been a stop on her way.

A teammate said we were soulmates, and in a way she’s right. Claire
keeps a special place in all the hearts that she’s touched, and to have had the
chance to do the same is one I hold close. For cliché’s sake, we aren’t the happy
ending to the story. We don’t get an epilogue. But our chapter was one of my favorites.

by Dani Lewis

Back then, I could ride around on my bike for hours without feeling bile in the back of
my throat and inevitably throwing up. Imagining me, my brother, my twin sister, and our
neighbor peddling the loops that formed one big, mostly-paved figure -eight in our
neighborhood now just makes my head dizzy and my lungs burn.

That was in early middle school, before any childish heartbreak really happened and
mattered. No one put all their energy into messaging a boyfriend half-hearted reassurances on
the hour or convincing a parent to drive them into town to see their girlfriend on the weekend.
We just worried about peddling too quickly and accidentally popping our greasy bike chains off
the gears.

I stressed over taking enough ibuprofen to stop the aching induced by my braces as
they ripped a new path in my gums. My wildly crooked, overlapping teeth were already
adjusting, shifting downward, forward, and backward, but no orthodontist could tame my
energy. The dust yearned for someone to kick it into a cloud behind them, and I needed just
one more reason to avoid my basic biology homework.

The fear of a bike wobbling and sending me skidding across loose gravel at the bottom
of our hill had been temporarily dispelled. Instead, there was the fear that I would be the last
one to cross an invisible finish line in an unspoken race. Our quad wondered if we were the
only kids in the neighborhood and who else we could recruit for our next game of “Ghost in
the Graveyard” before the sun fell. We weren’t worried about cars coming around turns too
quickly or the dimming light forcing us to squint around in the night.

Now, that same children’s bike with the greasy chain and loose handlebars is simply
gone. Whether it was given to another child or finds itself rusting away, metallic pink paint
chipping and mixing into the dirt of some trash heap, I don’t know. I had traded it in for an
untouched mountain bike of the same color and heartbreak I never thought I’d be foolish
enough to face.

Instead of being oblivious, I stress about collisions with a fist, a wall, or the pavement
and how many paychecks it would take to replace a straight tooth my parents paid so much for
in the fifth grade. I come home to an empty house in an empty neighborhood and wonder if
I’ve simply gotten too old to spot any kids forgetting about schoolwork by slinking around
under the streetlights. I slam on my car’s brakes at any sign of movement alongside the road,
nauseous at the thought of ruining someone else’s life by not paying enough attention to mine.

Pink and black rubber bands held a wire in place across a child’s teeth, forcing them to
fall back in line with what would soon be the rest of life’s rigid expectations. I could be clueless
then and dread hearing my father shout from the front porch for me to come back inside to
shower, but now I wish I could go back to a time when parental concern tinged his voice at all.

by Ashton Wronikowski

My parents first found out I could read in church. The sun was streaming
through the stained -glass, and in one of his less remarkable miracles, my tiny finger
was following along with the sermon in our missalette. At four years old, I thought
God was my grandfather with a beard, but I know better now. Church was a checklist,
demanding regular attendance and just enough attention to be able to write biblical
verses on protest signs. It was always about the performance, and even back then
it wasn’t mine to give. My faith didn’t matter —– we went in order for my family
to be seen doing what they were supposed to be doing on a Sunday morning.
The morning mass was our half an hour of idle time that we worked to earn back
on our chore day. My salvation was earned not by study in the word or hours of
service, but by Jesus seeing me seated in the fourth pew back, nestled between
my grandparents, with holy water still dampening my forehead. My grandfather
used that water as a mirror to see his own faith reflected upon my mind, and I was
eager to oblige, my small spine bending to hold up standards and beliefs that were
hidden between hymnal pages and dry communal wafers.

He’s the one who first introduced God to me with the medallion I still
wear against my throat. It’s cool to the touch, the thick chain weighty around my neck,
and the clasp in the back is tangled in the thin hairs at the back of my
head. It’s my nervous habit, grasping it like this —– the metal biting into my thumb
and forefinger just enough to leave a bit of an impression without being too noticeable.
Feeling the front of the medal, my fingers trace the lines that I know label the
figure of St. Jude, the patron saint of the lost.  Before this necklace was mine,
I remember it on my grandfather, cussing and praying around the house while
he looked for misplaced keys and forgotten coffee mugs. The medal around my
neck belonged to another chain, one that was finer and lighter with a smaller
clasp —– I broke it last summer. The new chain is a bit smoother, contrasting
against the rough curves and lines of the medal. The added weight around my
neck isn’t from a new chain, but the world itself without a god to hold it
up —– even if I didn’t ever notice him there in the first place.

With the added weight, it’s somehow still comfortable hanging just
below my breasts, almost at the base of my sternum. It reminds me of the rides
to church in the morning. The sun wasn’t awake yet, but we were; the mist rolling
up over fields —– corn, beans, cabbage —– and the cool summer air crawled in
through the window and raised the hair on my arms. There was soft music playing
on the radio, but I’d rather listen to Grandpa talk about his dreams from the night
before and tell him mine. In the middle of my story, he interrupted and asked
me if I saw the hippopotamus hiding among the oak trees we passed. I knew
I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help but whip around and face his
laughter at my gullibility.

The drive to church was longer than the service. Grandpa liked it that way,
said Father Fritz was efficient with his sweaty hands and beady eyes. We anointed
ourselves with holy water on the way in and would be stepping back into the
morning sun before it had fully dried. Each melodic hymn seemed to be timed,
with each scripture chosen for its brevity. The homily would be some softer
rendition of what I now know as fire and brimstone theology, with a well-timed
quip about how warm it was in hell. Jesus stared down from his cross into
my wide eyes to question if I had remembered to tell every sin at my last
confession.  My grandfather’s medallion glinted in the sun as we finished with
the Lord’s prayer, the rhythm of our voices ringing through the
sanctuary like bells.

My grandpa and I would end up driving home before my grandmother
had even woken up, and we’d tiptoe into the house with matching grins. I was on
coffee duty while he cooked breakfast —– she took hers black, with a splash of
water from the sink; he, with cream and two spoons of sugar. I used to take mine
with more cream than coffee, and my mug next to theirs looked full of the milk
we used for our pancakes. As years passed and my hands got steadier,
he started letting me help by the stove —– and I started letting Grandpa make
my coffee. He would cast magic on the mug and make the spoon stand straight
up among the steam. Now that he’s gone I take mine black, without the water,
and I’ve figured out how to stand the spoon up.

***

Going to church continued on as normally as possible, even after
grandpa left us and cancelled our dream recountings and coffee
makings. Routine was important after a loss, and for a while, part of me didn’t
mind —– the Latin in our hymnal was familiar, like a lullaby, even if it still lacked
any meaning. After our mourning period, however, we realized we were still
searching for something outside those four walls. Through another friend,
our family found a Christian church, and we slunk out of Catholicism unceremoniously
like thieves in the night, hoping the congregation wouldn’t notice our
absence. Things were different here —– there were no books to follow along with,
they had live bands to lead us in “worship,”, and hands were raised instead
of clasped. Though these additions were aesthetic only, we told ourselves the
lights and the music were God coming back to us, as though he was a relative
we’d finally made the trip to go see. It seemed perfect, and there was another
addition to this church family that motivated my faithfulness, even
if my parents weren’t aware: Gavin.

Gavin Schade was many things indeed, but HOT was all my
16-year-old brain could scream at full volume when he got within a
20-foot radius. A year older, the youth group leader had a head full of brown curls,
that seemed to —– for lack of a better term —– flop perfectly on his forehead
and just hit the tops of his slate-gray eyes. Depending on what he was wearing,
they appeared bluermore blue, and sometimes even green. His lanky form was so
different from my own, muscular already from years of competition,
but I couldn’t help but stare in wonder at him in the parking lot on
his skateboard. Hidden deep down, I felt guilty for my main reasoning
to be at church: this boy, who barely noticed I was breathing. Even at 16,
I was mastering my deflection, asking what better motivation to immerse
myself in a community with Godly people? Wasn’t that what He wanted?
To enter into relationships with other believers? Something along
those lines, I was quick to tell myself.

It was a thought reinforced at our youth group’s annual Christian
conference, before our first session. A sudden rumble among the crowd of
students distracted me from examining Gavin’s face that afternoon. I had to
make sure my internal scream stayed internal when he grabbed my hand,
and he yelled, “Stay together!” The doors finally opened after what seemed like hours,
and we were carried through by the storm. The room was dark, with low
lighting pitching shadows across the auditorium —– and we were hurtling along
the aisles, politely pushing our way past other groups, scrambling to find a row
we could claim. The boys and girls we competed with were surprisingly
ruthless. Having no concern for their remaining group members, they were
content to throw coats and with insincere smiles, say, “Oh I’m so sorry,
I don’t think you saw —– we have this whole row.” I raised my eyebrows
at Gavin and the others, who shrugged with an implied, I told you so.

We had just settled into our seats when the band took to the
stage. Everyone seemed to know who they were, screaming lyrics to songs
I had never heard. I made sure to bounce with them all, closing my eyes
and raising my hands in supplication. I didn’t have a reason, but I learned
very quickly —– people really respected those sharing private moments with
God in the open for everyone to notice. There were five or six songs played,
and all I recognized was Gavin’s cologne as he was leaning in close to
whisper to me, “Don’t worry about not knowing the words; you’ll pick them
up soon.” My knees were weak as the pastor came to relieve the musicians
from the stage, opening up the conference’s first group session in the
Indiana Wesleyan’s auditorium.

The sermon given was a look at Jesus’ interaction with a poor woman
at a well in a part of the desert. This area was traveled by Gentiles, and
He wasn’t welcomed. She was known to be living in sin —– finding another
partner outside an abusive relationship was frowned upon —– and Jesus was
kind to her. He told her that he knew her and loved her anyway;, all her flaws
and imperfections were more than welcomed by him. He forgave and let her
on her way to gather water from the well safely and to share the good news:
she was loved. As the opening pastor shut his Bbible, he seemed to stretch
his gaze to meet every pair of eyes in the auditorium.

“This woman had six men in her life. Six previous husbands who came
and left, who abandoned the poor woman. She wasn’t enough on
her own. She was lonely, she had a hole in her heart needing filled. Jesus is the
seventh. He takes in all, he patches the holes. He makes whole. He saves,
he cleans, he loves.”

My heart began to pull underneath my grandfather’s medallion I never
took off, feeling pressured in my chest. I knew I wasn’t like this
woman —– I hadn’t even had one man, let alone six. But there was a longing
to be chosen, to be picked regardless of the ugliness. To finally be enough,
even if it would never really be enough. The momentary cure for insecurity
had been found —– and there He was again. I was twelve again, timing my
Sunday mornings by the length of homilies and choral arrangements. My eyes welled,
and I could almost taste his apple pancakes. I heard sniffles around me,
and my eyes registered the bowing of heads, the raising of hands in my peripheral
vision. I looked over to Gavin, and saw him as the picture of faithfulness,
a soft smile across his lips as he saw the tears in my eyes. I brought in a
breath and felt a hand reach for mine, slightly sweaty but still delicate. There was a
lacing of fingers, and Gavin squeezed his grip around my hand, rooting me
in place. I finally felt what everyone had been talking about for
weeks —– the pit of the stomach assurance that something big was happening
not just physically, but spiritually. I felt God and my grandfather in that auditorium,
with Gavin Schade’s sweaty fingers sweetly grasping mine.

***

I gripped the backside of the medallion where the cross was carved into
it three weeks later in a tattoo shop. After my obsession with Gavin subsided and
the real world came calling I found myself adrift again, lacking someone to blame
when things went badly and someone to praise when the world made
sense. Even still, today my arm continues to read a Bbible verse, Romans 12:2,
and I remember imagining my grandfather reacting to the permanent rebellion I chose
to etch into my skin. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind. Disappointment, shame,
horror —– but resignation and acceptance of how his faith looked on me. The
mismatched medallion and chain pairs nicely with the ink of things that don’t
really belong —– a sort of “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” game, instead
reflecting another life, another person. The face of Saint Jude has worn since
my grandpa last had it —– reflecting use and desperation in each softened
ridge. The tangible reminder of his hand-me-down religion continued to both comfort
and unsettle me —– offering to take the weight off my shoulders for a few
minutes to save me from becoming Atlas. There are days when I want to find a
church in a quiet town and sit in the pew, to see the light bleeding from
glass-stained windows and hear the organs playing woefully from the
choir loft. I’d flip through the books and remember the psalms, the rhythm of each
song, and the cool comforting touch of holy watermarking my forehead on
all those Sunday mornings.

by Madison Cavicchia

I just want to get it over with.

My stomach is in knots the entire Sunday service. I rub my ten-year-old
fingers against the little indentations marking up the cool metal chair I sit in.
My legs dangle back and forth, swishing the long sparkling skirt I picked out the
night before, worn to impress Jesus and all the mothers peering from their seats.
Now — it’s time. I am instructed to change out of it so the water won’t ruin the fabric.
Instead, I walk toward the front of the congregation in an old pair of athletic shorts
and an oversized, grey t-shirt.

I climb the steps and enter the vat of water, warm from all of the ring lights
surrounding the pool. Right in front of the area is a large video camera projecting
this moment onto two large screens mounted on either side of the preacher’s grand
stage. All eyes in the building dart from screen to screen bearing witness to my
first intimate moment with God in HD. I face them in anticipation, waiting for
Him to wash over me with conviction, to flip some heavenly switch in my brain that
lets me revel in a sermon’s message, resonate with scripture.

          “Now, why wait any longer? Get up, be baptized, and wash your sins away,
trusting in him to save you” — Acts 22:16

The pastor starts praying over me. I hold my nose in preparation for what
is to come — temporary drowning. He stops praying and moves my arm
away. It is blocking the camera’s view of my face. He recites the prayer again, then
asks me, “Madison, do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

I paused. I don’t know.

I don’t know what happens after I graduate fifth grade or what I will have for
lunch this afternoon. I don’t know how I will grow into the freckles on my face.
I don’t know when boys will start liking me back. I don’t know if my best friend
will always be my best friend. I don’t know if I could ever decide to replace my baby
blanket with the Lord as a means of comfort and peace. I don’t know how to receive
prayer’s invitation during math tests or in hospital rooms. I don’t know if I’ve ever
felt God’s omnipresent hand intertwining against my sparkling pink-painted fingertips.

          “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have
received it, and it will be yours” — Mark 11:24

I blink and stare at him, answering with a wide-eyed: “Yes.”

I just want to get it over with. I hold my nose shut again, as he
submerges me under the camera-lit water.

          “And that water is like baptism that now saves you — not the washing of
dirt from the body, but the promise made to God from a good conscience” — 1 Peter 3:21

When I reemerge, everyone cheers for me the same way they do for others
the first Sunday of each month — with their “hallelujahs!” and tears. The crowd
rejoices so loudly I can’t hear god. I look down at myself. I am not the same girl I was
before. Now, I am just sopping wet.

by Chris Nau

I take a long sigh of relief as I crash into my freshly made bed. School
was long today, and I have plenty of work to keep me busy for the whole day,
maybe longer. It’s times like these, when I am on the verge of collapse, that he
shows up, makes life a little more painful, and a little more interesting.
“What should we discuss today: morality, religion, or something more personal?
An idle mind can no longer learn.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to discuss something so early.” I lean back into the chair near my
room’s desk, “I don’t think I’m in the mood today, maybe later?”
“Oh c’mon it’ll be fun. We both know you aren’t gonna start the homework til tonight or
tomorrow, so let’s chat.”
I try to ignore him. “What is there to discuss? We pretty much went over all of my
problems and flaws I know of, yet am unable to change.”
“Because you don’t want to change.”
“No, because I don’t think I have to.”
“What’s the difference? Saying “I think” or “I don’t know” doesn’t make you wise,
and if anything is a non-statement, it means nothing.”
I’m starting to get emotional. Stay focused, he’ll only leave or give
up on his terms. “I said that because, despite how I view myself, I am content
with who I am.”
“That’s a load of bullshit. You should only be content with yourself
when you are truly happy, and you, my friend, are not happy. You are numb at best,
and depressed at worst. The weight of your own self doubt, anxiety, and fear
threatens to smother you, yet you do nothing. If anything you are content to not change.”
He’s right, but that was kind of out of line. I feel on fire, and I snap
back, “If I try to change, I could fail to do so and become worse than I was
before. This version of me is fine, not much room to change into something better,
only something worse.”
“Why do you consider changing as a negative? Only because there is a
risk of becoming worse?”
“”Well, yeah.”
“So, let’s say, hypothetically, that everytime you did change yourself,
it was for the better. That regardless of what you did, it was always “good”.
Would you be happy?”
“Of course.” I realize that my guide here is trying to lead me
somewhere. While I don’t fully feel like following him around today, he
seems very keen to direct my attention to something, here, in the world of
knowledge he resides in.

“And would you say that, eventually, you would change into someone
who might be “perfect”? That is to say, that if you changed for the better all
the time, then eventually you would change into the perfect being, as that
would always be better than not being the perfect being.
” I’ll play along, following the sheep into the wolf’s den and see what
hides within. “Logically, yes. Changing for the better means that I’m getting
better. What’s wrong with being perfect? Isn’t that what drives us?”
“Yes, the pursuit of perfection is something we share, but we should
never aim to truly be perfect.”
And like a skyscraper crashing down, what I thought I knew
about myself is destroyed and the debris begins falling into place, creating
something greater and stronger than before.
Being perfect
“implies there is no more room to grow, not more room to improve”
no more potential, no flaws
“no ambitions”, no ‘me’. “We can’t be perfect”, because it doesn’t exist.
We should aim to be the best version of ourselves, ever-changing,
failing, and trying again.
Because we aren’t perfect, we have infinite room to grow. We can
be good at an infinite amount of skills, and with that we have an infinite amount
of tries, “until our time runs out.”
Yes, until our time runs out. Which is why we can’t be afraid
of change, since we don’t have the time to do so.
I am imperfect.
That’s what makes us perfect.

by Creed Kidney

I open my eyes. I am standing in front of my house, 55 Timmi Lane, and everything is
tinted a pale, cornflower blue. The grass shifts gently beneath my bare feet as the trees that
cradle my home rock themselves to the bidding of the breeze. Their sound has always
comforted me, a gentle white noise against all the mental cacophony, but there’s none of
that right now. No extra sounds in my head, no wayward thoughts and anxieties bouncing
back and forth. I take both of my hands to my ears to cover them. I can still hear the trees.

My hands themselves are not in any way blue, and I appear to be as I always have
been. I proceed toward the front stoop of my home.

I gently turn the knob and the door gracefully enters into the home, no push
required, and no wooden screech of obstinance; it just easily lets me inside. Curious, I close
the door behind me; it was naturally just as easy and entered back into its pocket quietly,
though I can still hear the trees.

Without thought, I make my way up the stairs, turning left at the landing and
making my way down the hall, looking longingly at the closed, ghostly blue door.
Everything is still blue, but it seems to be only the bare bones of the home I once knew.
There are no badly taped pieces of magazine or cardboard to my door, and no decorations
adorn the walls of the second floor, nor the rooms of the first. As the whispers of the trees
soothe me further into a state of hypnosis, I clutch the doorknob to my room.

The foundation of my time here is all that remains: a bed, a nightstand, a dresser and
wardrobe, and a bookcase. My closet doors are gone, revealing rows upon rows of
labeled cardboard boxes.

“Early Memories,” “Mom,” “Competitive Swimming,” “The Marshall County
Fair,” all compartmentalized individually and neatly. I don’t know if I’m able to speak, but
there’s nothing I really want to say; I feel an itch on my face for a need to be reactionary, to
be excited or confused, but all I can hear are the trees.

My eyes are drawn to a particular row of boxes, the first one labeled, “Zachary.” I
slowly move towards it, my body moving with the pulsing sway of the forest around my
childhood home. I gently remove the box from its space in the assorted wall. I hold it in my
hands for a moment, sliding off the top with an air of caution.

*

I open my eyes. I am sitting in the chapel of the high school I attended as a
freshman, Wheeling Central Catholic. I can no longer hear the trees. My vision unclouded
from the cornflower hue, I look at him. Zach. He’s sitting next to me. I like to think that
he’s my friend. We eat lunch together with his two twin brothers. They say I am a good
friend to have. I am very happy.

It is Day as a Knight, where eighth graders are allowed to come to the school to shadow
other students, participate in fun activities, ask questions, and be sent home with free
stuff knowing full well that it would be the last free thing that school would ever give them.
I had been ostracized by what felt like all my friends for even considering the notion of
going to Wheeling Central, as it broke the natural pilgrimage all Marshall County
students must take, that which ultimately leads them to the holy city of Moundsville,
West Virginia, basking in the glory of John Marshall High School.

I am out of place. A sore thumb in a catalog of perfectly manicured fingers, but he talks
to me. We get along very well, and it makes me excited to think that I have a friend.
We spend the day together, side-by-side, and he explains many things to me, and I, him.

At the end of the day, when people are finding their parents and shuffling into
minivans, we seem to get lost in the mix. My ride isn’t there yet, so I look for him,
possibly for comfort, or maybe for a ride; I also desperately want to get his number
so we can talk over the summer and further prepare for high school
together. I can’t find him.

*

I feel myself being drawn away from the memory, sliding the lid of the box back
into place. I don’t enjoy the ending.

The next box is labeled “Ethan P.” I smile to myself, trading the box I have for the
one still in the mix.

*

I open my eyes. I am laying in my bed at home. The walls are only starting
to be filled up with different clippings, drawings, and notes. My first bookcase broke,
so a random assortment of books and other various tchotchkes are piled on the
floor, lining my wall. I hold my phone above my face, waiting for an answer;
the screen lights up and it vibrates in my palms; a message from Ethan flashes
across the screen. I smile.

He has the same name as my best friend, and he makes me laugh. He’s very
talented and we’re lucky to have a lot in common. He goes by Chip, for some reason;
I think it’s cool and different, but I always call him Ethan. I started calling him
Pondie—Pond Scum, when I’m upset–he thinks it’s funny.

I stay up until the wee hours of the night to Skype him. We both want to
make sure that our parents aren’t awake to hear us. We laugh and joke with one
another and change our profile bios to each read “997 miles” because it’s how far
apart from one another we are. I absentmindedly scroll through Greyhound bus
ticket listings as he talks about his friends from school.

I make him a birthday present and ask my mom to help me ship it to him.
She’s very confused and upset, yelling at me in the car about how I’m going to die
alone of AIDS and burn in hell. I hope he likes the gift.

*

I close the box slowly, half-wanting to remember but always longing to
forget. I miss him.

I reach for the next box, “Henry,” and almost stop myself. I look around,
as if hiding something, and easily draw the box out.

*

I open my eyes and I’m looking into his. They’re deep brown in color and
handsome, but I can’t go any deeper, I’m only able to take him in on a surface level.
His olive skin is gleaming under the neon lights, the bridge of his strong, Roman
nose, catches flares of pink and green from the ceiling. He smiles softly as he holds
my waist in his hands, the only thing keeping me from melting into a puddle on
the floor. John Legend’s, “All of Me,” plays in the background.

There’s a group of girls on the other side of the room, watching us intently,
even two of the counselors for the camp stand on their toes on stage to look at us.

“Should we just get this over with,” I ask him, nervously, not knowing how to
initiate absolutely anything.

“What?” he asks.

I kiss him, wanting to pull away fast when all I can hear is the sound of girls
screaming, but sink deeply into it when he pushes back towards me. I get nervous
and put my head in his chest, laughing.

I felt love in the basement of Marshall’s Student Union that night.

*

I quickly shutter the box before I’m reminded of anything else, perfectly content
in that being all there is to remember about Henry.

I keep the box out, thinking I might return to it, as I draw out the next,
reading “Ethan H.”

*

I don’t open my eyes. I’m immersed in a passionate make-out session in the front
seat of Ethan’s Toyota Tacoma. It smells atrocious. An olfactory cocktail of sweaty
soccer equipment and mango Juul pods seem to exhaust all my senses, but I don’t think
Ethan would have it any other way. Thankfully, he smells amazing. His cologne battles
all the scents of the truck in my nose as I lose myself further and further into his
intoxication. My brain is on fire.

He takes a hand and puts it up my shorts. I pull away from him, surprised,
asking him why, sprinkled with interjections of no and how I thought we were having fun.
He reassures me that we are having fun, but that we could always have more. I ask
if we can keep kissing.

We’re focused entirely on each other again. He reaches over. I’m half expecting him
to put one of his hands up my pants again, but instead takes my hand in his. I smile,
clasping his hand tight as I kiss him deeper.

He takes my hand and moves it over to his side of the truck, putting it on his
crotch. I open my eyes, confused, as he whispers in my ear, “Do something with it.”

*

I take a minute to process the memory, always getting caught up in the last
few minutes before I ask him to take me home. I struggle to move the box from my lap.

There’s one box left in the row. I recognize it as being freshly organized,
with new bits and pieces being added every day. I smile, reassured, as my mind
drifts away from the night with Ethan H., the heartbreak of Henry, or the longing for
Ethan P. and Zach. I brush my fingers against the label “Ean.”

*

I open my eyes. The room is dimly lit, a soft pink emanating from behind the TV
across from me. The soft pitter-patter of rain can be heard as each drop meets the
roof of the condo, sliding down the gentle slope to kiss the Tudor windowpane.

I’m in his bed, covered and warm by a plush new bedspread I like to think he
bought for us. He sleeps quietly beside me. I look at him in the rose-colored light,
tracing his silhouette with my eyes.

I shift my body closer to his, putting my head on his chest and laying a hand
on his left shoulder; he awakes for a second, accommodating me, and gives me a
gentle kiss on the forehead. I feel safe.

I lie upon his chest and think of everything he is to me, how important he is to
my life, my story, and how very lucky I am to have found him. Never would I have
imagined that I would be able to have someone like this, to have someone like him.

I close my eyes. I can hear the trees.

by Madison Cavicchia

The month of November trickled in like a gentle blue stream. This is when I
met him—a boy I hardly batted an eye toward at first and don’t particularly want to
name now because I hate that he still has so much control over my current emotional
whims. I don’t want him to have that kind of power over me anymore. Though, he is not
even the scum of the worst person I have ever been interested in–not by a long shot.
I don’t even think he is a bad person at all. I think he just stepped out of his integrity
for a moment. He was just human. He was just a human being, and my entire life
fell apart, respectively. That probably didn’t help us, either.

I wish my world hadn’t crumbled before my feet after December.

Thanksgiving had just passed, and work was finally picking up again. I was
back at the local gift shop where I had worked during the holidays between school
semesters. For sale was anything breakable and terrifying for clumsy hands like mine
to touch: expensive wedding champagne flutes, hand-blown Christmas ornaments,
and vases with blue and green polka dots that distorted your face like a funhouse mirror
if you looked into them. This was the first minimum-wage job I had not only learned to
tolerate, but to actually enjoy because of the busy yet not overwhelming atmosphere
and my coworkers, all of whom quickly became close friends. No matter the age or
life-course that led them to this job, we all, on a personal and professional level,
understood one another. We laughed and cried together, and when it was time to work,
we moved as one, a well-oiled machine, singing holiday jingles all the while.

The day he and I met, I arrived at work first, not expecting anything new,
certainly not life-changing. Then, I heard a doorbell ring, as my manager walked
through the double doors with a face I did not recognize.

This must be the new name I saw on the schedule, I thought to myself. I was a
little surprised because I half expected the new hire to be, yet another retired individual
who was bored out of their mind at home, looking for something on the weekends to
pass the time. This person, however, was certainly not an elderly man who’d sit behind
the counter his entire shift, paid to watch me do all of the work. He was young
(I guessed around my age), he was tall, and he had blue eyes.

My manager walked him over to me, and he smiled as he introduced himself.
Well, I couldn’t exactly see the smile behind his face mask, but I could tell it was warm
and genuine because of the way his eyes crinkled upward. That was the first feature
I noticed about him apart from his dark curls and good-postured stature. This was the
very same grin he left me with the last time we saw each other, smiling blue eyes
and a face covering.

He didn’t say much, like me, which I found intriguing. When he did speak, I always
found myself laughing. When he didn’t speak, he was always watching, bright blue eyes
observing with care every customer who came in and out of the building, every piece
of glass sold, and me with all my silly quirks: quiet humming, nail tapping on the
countertops, and general uncoordinated nature all included.

And I, too, observed, with my little blue eyes, his mannerisms. It was a dance we
did with our separate gazes. Sometimes, they would intertwine, and we would lock eyes
for just a brief moment, blue to blue, then quickly turn away, diverting our attention to
something far less absorbing like a dusty Santa sculpture that was probably older than
me or the muddy carpet floors. In that instant, I always wondered what he was thinking
behind those pretty blue eyes, but I never asked. I should have.

I had a funny feeling his favorite color was blue. Maybe it was because of his
eyes; I am not sure. I think it was his energy, like moonlight, that convinced me. I could
look at any person and see their energy, their aura. My best friend is yellow as a
sunflower, my brother is electric purple, I am ballet slipper-pink, and he is the
embodiment of the night sky over the salty ocean—blue.

Most often, he and I worked together on Sundays, so one Saturday evening in
December, I raided the cabinet behind my bathroom mirror in search of the perfect blue
nail polish. I needed to test my theory. After much deliberation, perhaps too much, I finally
settled on Sally Hansen’s number 710–a navy shade named Beatnik, referring to the
1950s Beat Generation or the color of the 1969 Ford Mustang, I have no clue.
Nonetheless, I sat at my desk, turned on my pink headlamp for maximum lighting,
and spent the next hour primping, filing, and painting until all of my nails were as blue
as the midnight sky. Then, I went to bed with a smile on my face for the first time
in a long time.

It turns out I was right; his favorite color is blue. As soon as he arrived at the
gift shop, he quickly took notice of my hands and complimented my nails. He liked them;
they were pretty. In my head, I was giddy like a child who finally convinced their parents
to take them out for ice cream. My little scheme had worked. On the outside, I was calm.
I asked him if blue was his favorite color, and he replied, chuckling, “yes.”

Throughout December, we grew to know each other little by little. What started
as a simple hello quickly turned into sharing childhood stories, photos of pets, and
favorite foods during breaks and in between rushes. Our closeness and soft fondness
for one another grew more and more apparent with each memory we created,
decorated in tacky Christmas tinsel. Certainly, it was all in my head. This never happens
to me. Things don’t work out for me. My other coworkers firmly and enthusiastically
assured me otherwise.

It was a frigid and slow afternoon sometime after Christmas. The icy blue weather
made it so that I could count the number of customers who came into the shop during
my seven-hour shift on one hand. We were bored out of our minds, he and I, and so
were the other two people scheduled to work that evening. This time, we were all
stationed at the ice cream parlor next door to the glass shop, filled with sweetly
scented candies and overpriced holiday decor. After an unsettling length of silence,
Emily (who also, like him, smiled ferociously with her eyes) suggested that we gather
behind the front desk, prop up her phone, and watch a movie. Emily is a bubbly girl,
filled with silly puns and a natural love to laugh. She had worked at these shops the
longest of all of us, five years, and always found ways to bend the rules for the sake
of some fun whenever she could.

Before we started the movie, he and I scooped ourselves some ice cream.
He gently handed me a bowl and spoon and chose vanilla with cherry while I decided
on black raspberry. Then, we went over and sat together on the fraying black mats
covering wooden laminate floors. We sat in our own little space, leaning against bubble
wrap containers and boxes and slowly leaning in toward each other, space blue
sweatshirt against cranberry cardigan. It was the same blue sweatshirt he wore
almost every time we worked together, and I had become accustomed to envisioning
him in it, sleeves rolled to the elbows and arms crossed, always next to me.

After the movie ended, Emily pulled me away from the blue sweatshirt and into
the back room. She jumped up and down like an excited child, pulled down her face
mask, and loudly whispered:

“You guys look cute together!”

I was then informed that apparently everyone else that worked in these gift
shops thought we did, too. Apparently, he definitely had a crush on me because he
was a completely different person when I was around. Less sulky and sullen. He stood
up straight in his blue sweatshirt when I was around. He lit up like a flickering candle
flame when I was around. Me.

Emily then proceeded to quickly Google our astrological star sign compatibility,
just to make sure the love was real. Two water signs, a Cancer and a Pisces:
a rare but perfect match.

Rare, unusual, and out of the ordinary. That is what the doctors told my father
as his sister lay dead in a hospital bed on January 23rd, the day my family’s life
changed forever. January 23rd. The day I realized December was over.

Just two weeks earlier, my Aunt Megan had gone into surgery for a small
cosmetic procedure; she had recently lost some weight and wanted her loose
skin tightened. It went smoothly, and her recovery was going well until it wasn’t
anymore. Her recovery was going well until one Saturday morning when she
stopped breathing and never began again.

Staring at the skirt of my royal-blue dress during her funeral, anxiously
fiddling with the hem, I zoned out for a while and impulsively thought a lot of things,
some of which I am not proud to admit. I was irritable. Her ceremony had been split
up into two incredibly long days because of the virus–some of the longest days
I have ever lived. And I was so cold. Standing outside and sitting inside, no matter
where I went, no matter how many pairs of tights I wore underneath this blue dress,
I was shivering.

I was angry, too. I was angry that her stupid boyfriend of fewer than six
months, Al, who was old enough to be my dad when my Aunt was barely thirty, was here
in a suit and tie, sighing woefully, inviting all of his friends and family to bid their
tearful goodbyes when they had only ever met her once. Al was taking up too much
space in this cold room, making it about his sorrows when it should have been about
my grandmother—crying in a black folding chair. It should have been about
my parents—desperately searching to find pictures of my Aunt to display because
she never liked having her photo taken. It should have been about my
brother—hiding in the back room. It should have been about me—in charge of
picking out the right scarf to cover the giant gash from the hospital tube on my Aunt’s
already bluing neck.

Immediately I felt guilty for being so cruel in my mind to someone who was
simply grieving, and I stroked the bottom hem of my blue dress even more frantically.
I also felt guilty because I was still thinking about him, the boy from the gift shop.
Before we parted ways, he had told me he was quitting to go work for a funeral home,
and I half hoped it was this one just so he could comfort me. Just so I could see
him again, his blue eyes and blue sweatshirt, because we enthusiastically exchanged
numbers, and he promised to call. Twice, he promised. But he never did. He never
did and I don’t know why and I think I still miss him. Maybe I am just missing the
rose-tinted idea of December most of all. Missing the other shades of blue.

Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water. Blue is
both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue up
with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what it is
meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the waves
or float with them.

You can’t choose between navy blue or royal; you get them both.

In late May, I went back to work, and by mid-August, I put my sapphire-blue
uniform shirt on for the very last time. I couldn’t do it anymore, and I hated myself for it.
I hated unearthing this shirt from the depths of my closet, buttoning it up, and fixing
the sleeves, for the first time since December. It would be my first time back at the
gift shops since I’d lost my Aunt and that stupid boy broke my stupid heart. It would
be my first time back since I lost a piece of me, the part of your brain that tells you
the tick-ticking sound from the clock means that time is passing. I must have lost that
some many months ago because for me, time had stopped progressing the day
before January 23rd.

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked through those double doors again,
but it certainly wasn’t anything like this rush of emotion—a twisted sort of deja vu.
I walked in bravely, donning my blue uniform, only to crumble at what I saw, or the lack
thereof. It was so empty. Everything: the shelves, the countertops, the faces of the
few coworkers that remained (Emily included). This ice cream parlor was a ghost town,
but my memories lit it up like Christmas lights in the most painful way. Holiday memories
of a time when I didn’t feel so blue, memories of grinning eyes, navy nails,
and sweatshirts. Moments of shared ice cream and laughter and excitedly watching
my family exchange gifts beside the highly decorated pine tree in our living room.
My entire family. And I couldn’t even bear to peek into the glass shop next door,
completely gutted out and under construction, locked up tight and closed for everyone,
especially me.

Suddenly everything was blurring together. I was a girl in a haze, somewhere
in the atmospheric space of hanging up her winter coat because the seasons are
changing even when she still feels the cool, blue chill in her bones, stepping into
the beating sun.

I had to get out of here. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror at work
on that first day, I hated myself. Most of all, I hated that I had to go back to this
goddamn gift shop every day. I couldn’t move on.

So I left.

The last time I wore that straight jacket of a blue uniform was on a hot and
sunny day in August. And it hurt immensely to leave, but it hurt even more to stay.

Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water.
Blue is both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue
up with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what it
is meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the waves
or float with them.

The waves of blue come and go. Just the other day, I realized that it was
September and that soon enough I was going to have to relive December and January
once again. I also came to the unsettling realization that I was going to have to do
this for the rest of my life, stumbling through the beauty and pain in each calendar date
I crossed out during those months. A time most families come together to celebrate,
mine was no longer whole. Yet another space had been hollowed out with a carving knife,
one less chair at the dining room table, one less voice to fill the room.

Lying on my carpeted bedroom floor, I glanced upward at my wall collage,
eyes dancing from funny quotes, floral designs, movie ticket stubs, and pretty envelopes
until finally reaching a poem. “Holidays” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, taped to the
elephant grey wall underneath my light switch. It was a parting gift from my tenth-grade
English teacher, Mrs. Pole, a petite woman with shoulder-length dark brown hair and
one of my favorite laughs. She hand cut and taped it on a bright baby blue notecard for me,
the same blue notecard I gave to her on the first day of school with my name,
phone number, activities I enjoyed (namely the piano lessons I would give up shortly),
and my goal for that year, 2018—to do well in calculus. I let out a jaded chuckle at the
thought that at age sixteen, my greatest worry was passing a math class. Then, suddenly
I peeled myself off of the floor. Something pulled me to get up and read that sonnet
again. I stood and mumbled each line to myself:

The holiest of all holidays are those

            Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

            The secret anniversaries of the heart,

            When the full river of feeling overflows;—

The happy days unclouded to their close;

            The sudden joys that out of darkness start

            As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart

            Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!

White as the gleam of a receding sail,

            White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,

            White as the whitest lily on a stream,

These tender memories are;— a Fairy Tale

            Of some enchanted land we know not where,

            But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

Mrs. Pole chose this poem for me because she said she saw me in it.
She also wanted to give me something to remember her goodbye. Mrs. Pole was
freshly pregnant and moving with her husband who also taught at the high
school to Austria to be with his family. She announced this exciting news a few weeks
prior, as my friends and I ate Chinese food for lunch in her classroom.

When she called me over to her desk and handed me the blue notecard,
my entire body filled to the brim with excitement. What a rare and sentimental gift,
sharing a piece of something, the words you read that eventually become you,
with someone else.

She said she saw me in it.

I stood there and read it over and over again in my bedroom. A pretty
string of words, I know. But I cannot see myself in them anymore, not in-between
“sudden joys” or “happy days.” I certainly could not see myself standing
broad-shouldered and alongside its name-sake and central
theme–holidays. At least, not right now.

Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water.
Blue is both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue
up with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what
it is meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the
waves or float with them.

At the moment, I am standing toe to toe with every single shade of blue.

by Anonymous

If you took a few minutes to think about the names of places you might find in a
children’s fairytale, something like the Village of Adena would jump right off the page.
Maybe it comes from the word “village” and how it seems more imaginative than modern
words like “town” or “city,” or maybe it’s the way the name rests comfortably in your mouth.
Either way, it almost hypnotizes you with its embrace, forcing you into romanticizing
your experiences there and to save them, like myths, to share with friends, family, and
even yourself in the future. It might be enough to make you sick, actually. Such nostalgia
washes over you, not quite in the way that dread or heartbreak does, but in a way
that’s enough to make you homesick for a mystical place you almost didn’t realize was
once alive and real and sinking its teeth into your impressionable, little mind over ten
years ago. Perhaps a simple name is enough to trip the wire in your brain that traps
you in your memories of an intoxicating place you once called home.

For me, Adena was very much a real place. It sat a bit farther west in Ohio and
was the farthest away from my hometown of Martins Ferry that I had ever lived. It was
placed comfortably in one of the little valleys making up the east side of the state and
was perfectly new to me. In fact, following my parents’ divorce and my father’s remarriage
to a woman most accurately described as the “evil stepmother” one might find in a
children’s tale, this village was the first place we attempted to find our footing again.
Of course, for my brother, sister, and me, our parents’ separation meant that we would
be passed from one town to the next, depending on the weekend and which parent
would have us in whichever town they resettled in during that time, but I couldn’t deny
the excitement and sense of magic that fell over me when I knew we’d be going to
the village. It was perfect with its hills for our restless feet to wander on, worms and
spiders and fireflies for us to pluck from the earth, fifty-year-old trees, dead and alive,
simply waiting to challenge our growing muscles and lashing their vines just above
the ground, tempting us to take one big swing into empty space. Of course a child
would fall so heavily in love with a house and the memories made in a neighborhood
so distracting and inviting.

I feel confident in saying that any newcomer would feel such an alarming
connection to Adena as well. Perhaps it wouldn’t be to the extent that developed in
me over so many years of growing and finding myself drawn down there by some magnet,
but it would be enough to make them feel the ache of some loss when leaving it again.
The journey down the hill and through the tunnel of trees that arched over the road
as you moved nearer and nearer to the village sent you spiraling like Alice and made
it hard to come back out. From an adult’s perspective, the branches were simply safety
hazards in the event that a forceful enough storm came through, but from a child’s,
they were inviting and comforting and embraced you, reminding you of all the potential
a person or place had in terms of growing stronger and moving upward. The worn
down houses placed among them had character to us. We looked forward to greeting
the bear carved from a decaying stump in someone’s front lawn, hoping it would
come to life, and the moment the asphalt road turned to brick beneath the trees, we
knew we had transported to our new fantasy, even if the actuality of having a new
stepmother was what took us there in the first place.

Whether she influenced him or it was simply my father’s idea to live there, I will
always have an acute feeling that my stepmother was the one who dragged us to Adena.
Without giving her too much credit, the eeriness of that home simply oozed from every
chipped wall, shredded carpet, and dim room, which would make sense considering
we were seemingly living with one of the witches from Hocus Pocus. It was like she
picked the most ominous-feeling building she could possibly find in the Ohio Valley,
dropped us off there, and left the village to do the rest. The initial hill had already
propelled us down into the neighborhood like a set of stairs turned slide in Scooby Doo,
and it was almost as if the only upward direction we could go in an attempt to escape
was up the crumby, gravel driveway that led to our home, standing out like a sore
thumb—or perhaps a witch’s finger—on what seemed like the only other hill around.

Of course, there were other houses there, too: preppy, pretty, little houses with
their rose bushes, fenced-in yards, and paved driveways. But oftentimes ours was enough.
Yes, my siblings and I frequently found ourselves admiring the others in hopes of finding
kids our ages to explore with, but even without them, we were up to our necks in
entertainment from the outside world alone. Sitting atop our solitary mound, the other
houses cowering in the shadow of ours, the life that seeped from the acres of woods
behind us or the pull of the open bike paths below reeled us in and reminded us of the
potential of our imaginations. At the ages of seven and nine, the three Walton children
did not mind the company the village offered, or the lack thereof.

          Wilderness

Soon, we were so caught up in mapping out every inch of our surroundings that
we often forgot our parents were even there. Perhaps this was simply another of my
step-witch’s ploys to get us out of her hair as well as my father’s, but little did she know
how much good it would do us in terms of our own witch-like training. Since we had
such easy access to the woods in our backyard, our botany knowledge was constantly
increasing. I distinctly remember how thrilled we were to discover the numerous blackberry
bushes lining the perimeter and the wild, white onions the size of marbles growing
right beneath our feet. Having lived in “the city” until that point, the fact that we could
actually eat those organic plants was mind boggling to us. We even vowed every
year to bake the biggest berries into a pie or a tart that would fill the house with the
most sugary perfume, except it took every ounce of energy to prevent us from devouring
our main ingredient beforehand. Of course, we had no intentions of including
the onions in any kind of dessert we dreamed of, but it had gotten to the point where
nearly every day we would trek the edge of the trees and our open yard, hoping that
the bushes would magically and fully replenish themselves and that the earth would
spit out more onion stalks since we had yet to grasp the concept that plants simply
did not grow back that quickly and were utterly fascinated by the idea that they might.

When struck with the realization that these newfound ingredients would take
a bit more time to sprout for us again, we found our entertainment in the aging swimming
pool that also stood, although hardly, in our backyard along the tree line. Although
we knew better than to eat or drink anything that lived in the rain water that filled it over
the months when no one lived in our house, we still found joy in admiring its contents.
Instead of something truly edible like a pie or tart, the contents filling that old pool and
water made up a different kind of recipe; one that seemed to replicate a witch’s brew
in our childish minds. As is typical of pools in need of draining and a bit of tear-inducing
chlorine, ours had become overtaken by algae and leaves. But given its proximity
to the hickory trees, uncontrollable weeds, and berry bushes, this mucky, stew-like
water also concealed hundreds of sentient “ingredients”: the tadpoles of gray treefrogs.
We would watch them dart and float about in their cooling brew as if a sorceress had
left and forgotten about them, and when we were lucky, our father would offer us a
bucket or two to scoop them all out. Of course, none of us dared to taste that
mixture since only the witch who stirred it knew the kind of spell or sickness it would
put on us, but we enjoyed considering what it could do, nonetheless.

          Companions

Like the frogs we released into the branches above us after watching them
sprout their legs and turn a shade of neon lime, animals were just as significant to
our adventures in Adena as the plants and wild foods we discovered. Naturally,
whistling robins fought over the worms living among the onions in the ground and
chipmunks kicked up the pebbles in our driveway as they skittered out of reach of
black rat snakes. But in mysterious and witchy fashion, a cat had become much
more significant to our time in the village than any other creature.

In even more episodes of our coming-of-age, my siblings and I often slunk
away from our hub on the hill by crossing through our neighbors’ backyards. On most
days, we weren’t in search of anything in particular, but in true magical fashion,
Adena chose one summer day to offer us another friend in the form of a kitten, or
what some might view as a witch’s pet or familiar if they also believed in magic.
Considering the mysterious nature of our neighborhood and the mystical training we
felt we were receiving by living there, it only made sense that we would come across
that kind of companion living with two other kittens in a rose bush along the road. And,
believe it or not, we had no intention of keeping any of them despite our childlike
desire for a pet, except one of them felt a connection to us and made her own plans.

The cat was a calico instead of a solid black one—Adena not wanting to
fill too many witchy cliches—and her black and ginger patches painted over white fur
helped us recognize her in our yard when she followed us home from that flowery
bush one afternoon. Initially, my father despised the idea of taking in a cat, especially
if one following us home meant there was potential for all three of them to, but she
simply wouldn’t go anywhere else and his heart was evidently a bit too big to let her
survive any longer without us. So, the kitten became ours, and while we only kept her,
my siblings and I had taken inspiration from the atmosphere around us to name the
trio of kittens we loved visiting so much: Daffodil the calico, Petunia the brown tabby,
and Rosey the tuxedo. The Village of Adena had gifted the Walton witches
their own familiar.

          Transportation

In order for us to even discover the area of Adena in which Daffodil was
originally found, we first had to learn how to get there. When we weren’t busy
attempting to fly by entangling ourselves in the usually sturdy grapevines that attached
themselves and grew alongside the hickories behind the house, the pool, and the
blackberry bushes in the woods, we needed another alternative to getting around.
Typically, witches are portrayed as using enchanted broomsticks as their preferred
method of transportation, but we simply did not have access to that kind of magic.
Instead, my brother, twin sister, and I were fortunate enough to get new bicycles when
we moved to the village, perhaps as another sort of peace offering from the step-witch.
Nevertheless, these new bikes were plenty quick enough to get us around, and our
neighbors could frequently witness us zip about based on the shades of pink, purple,
and orange we rode upon.

Obviously, we did find ourselves traveling by foot on the terrain that wouldn’t
exactly warrant a troop of kids with weak muscles and senses of balance to peddle their
bikes, but our arguably unsafe and incredibly long hill of a driveway was the perfect
launchpad for propelling us down into the village. After a few rocky starts and a whole
lot of breaking in brakes out of the rightful fear that we’d wipe out entirely before reaching
the bottom, we learned which rocks and ruts to avoid, at least for the most part.
In fact, I remember quite distinctly the time that the gravel interfered with one of my
little brother’s quickest flights. He, my twin , and I were just leaving the house, my sister
having already made it to the bottom, my brother following her, and me still parked at the top.
Our father and step-witch watched our departure from the safety of our three-pillared
porch, and just as our eyes skipped from my sister to my brother, he skidded around
the soft left turn that made a hook at the bottom of our driveway. Except, instead of
leaning his bike into it at the perfect angle to propel him down the road, his tilt fell a
bit too flat, sending him grating over the gravel for nearly ten yards.

By the time he stopped, my sisterly instincts had kicked in, and I was zooming
down that same treacherous route to reach him. Luckily, nothing was physically broken
or wrong with him, but the interaction that followed between me and my parents left a
few cracks in my own mentality. I remember screaming and feeling enraged at the fact
that when I looked back up at the house, sitting up there on its stupid hill above me
and my little, crying dove of a brother, my father and step-mom didn’t make a single move.
Neither of them made an effort to rush down the hill as I did, neither of them picked
him up off the ground and dusted the dirt from his scrapes, and neither of them cared
about the situation until twenty minutes later when the step-witch put another
stupid charm on my gullible father. Over that span of time, she had insisted the he
force me to drag my bike back home, yell at me for screaming at them for their lack
of support and concern for my brother, and shut me away in my ominous room in that
creepy, old house in Adena for the rest of night, putting my flying lessons on hold.

          Reality

After that point, I reflected on how living in Adena truly made me feel. I had lived
in that village and learned so much from my experiences there that it was almost
heartbreaking to know that it would hurt me in any way. I was dragged and dropped
there because of a woman who I knew did not really care about me, I fell under her
spell as well as Adena’s, and I found myself ultimately burned by the reality of
the situation. I did not want to associate that neighborhood with her. Instead, I wanted
to look back on the knowledge I gained, whether it was truly magical or not, and
prevent any spite or evil from affecting the person I wanted to be in the future.
Unlike her.

As of today, I would like to think that I’ve done a lot to prevent such a thing from
dulling my magic. At nearly twenty-one years old and over ten years later, I can
happily say that that step-witch is not even a part of my life anymore. Of course,
her defeat means that my family and I no longer reside in the village that left this
mysterious imprint on me, and yet, I never allow myself to go more than a couple
months without thinking about it all. With my new, adult perspective, I’ve come
to understand that I don’t have to let those incredibly life-altering events like cheating
and divorce ruin the events and experiences to come. Even considering how damaging
her sorcery could have been for us, I’ve found that I can’t shake whatever curse
that woman cast on me to make me think so fondly of The Village of Adena.

I can admit that the simple lessons I learned there were enough to distract
my childish mind from harsh realities. Back then, I spent my time picking wild berries,
deconstructing a froggy witch’s brew, caring for a new, furry companion, and zipping
about on my shiny, pink bike. And now, whenever I especially miss that perfectly
creepy place, all I have to do is look down at the tree frog and blackberries tattooed
on my leg and find myself transported back there again.