My First Valentine's with You (I Like Your Shoes)

By Sophia Larimore

Student Writing Awards, first place, creative writing category

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I am disgusting. I have been wearing the same clothes for three days now. Overworked from school and writing for its newspaper, I spent the night at his place to avoid driving home to gain a priceless extra 40 minutes of sleep.

I am poor. My foot had been injured since early November, so work has been impossible for me. I am at my college and away from my house, unable to get a new change of clothes. Forty minutes here and forty minutes back and that’s wasted money and time. 

I am at Plato’s Closet because I am disgusting and poor. My mother has sent me a small sympathy present/Valentine’s gift. The money that she has caringly given me to show her love will be used to make myself nice for my love. After hurrying around the store I finally find an outfit that will make me feel comfortable and be within my budget. I will fix myself to no longer be disgusting and poor.

I am extraordinarily late to my first Valentine’s date. But at least I have a new shirt, pants and shoes. Forty-eight for the whole outfit. Twenty dollar shirt (originally 60 dollars by the way), eight dollar pants, and a beautiful, pale-blue pair of Converse. Now I’m just poor.

I am in love with the shoes. After I first put them on, I realized that I had been wearing one size too small my whole life. They fit comfortably around my feet and simply let me exist as I am. Blue shoes, blue sweater, blue boy.

I arrive twenty-five minutes late. My boyfriend is upset when I ask if he likes them.

I am f r y i n g with heat inside the fancy sushi restaurant. Men and women are packed up and also cooking in the room like sardines. They smell just as fishy. The women stand in tight, sparkly, scaly, dresses showing off every curve and are decorated with extravagant makeup. They cling to their boyfriends and are elevated by their beautiful, painful, high-heels. 

I am sitting next to my boyfriend on the bench and with my heavy sweater that hides my breasts that have been compressed by not one, not two, but three sports bras. My dark, graphite-colored pants are wide and cover my legs. Then there are my pale blue shoes. Comfortable. Disgusting.

I am attempting to look like a boy, and I pulled it off. Now there was the issue of trying to not look like I was a middle school boy so my boyfriend didn’t look or feel like a pedophile. 

I am trying to make attempts to avert my eyes but cannot help staring at one particular girl’s shoes. They are golden at the sole and heel, but the straps across the foot are clear. Dainty. Elegant. Feminine. Her feet remind me of Cinderella, how in the books the step-sister had to cut off her toes in an attempt to fit in someone else’s shoes. I cannot imagine wearing the shoes, with the skin folded up on top of itself and the clear plastic sawing itself into my feet. Her feet seemed to be suffocating. 

I am still sitting on the bench twenty minutes later and breathe in. Our legs are glued to the plastic slipcovers at this point from sweat and alas, our noses will forever be stained with the smell of hard scaled creatures.

I am comfortable in my own shoes but others are not. There is not a single other queer couple in this restaurant. We stand out among the crowd like a sore thumb– or maybe a sore foot, in need of space. Glassy eyes flick toward me by the dozens and blood stained lips murmur in confusion about what I could possibly be. 

I am trying my best to stare away from the fish eyes staring me down and focus, again, on the needle tipped shoes. After wondering for a minute how long I could survive a woman “stepping on me” (probably around 8 minutes) my boyfriend tilts his head onto my shoulder. His soft hair tickles my nose.

“You know,” His face is near my ear and he is being sure not to speak too loudly. “I don’t mind how you look.” 

We are comfortably settled together when the waitress tells us our table is ready. 

*

We are together and lounging lazily on his couch back at his home. After eating more than our own body weight we are more than ready to never leave the couch. My boyfriend leaves the couch, to grab the cat, Loki, or “little man” as my boyfriend calls him, for an extra cuddle buddy and walks up the stairs. On his way downstairs along with the sweetest boy I have ever met, the cat lets out a purr. 

We are together in his cluttered room that rivals mine as he sets the cat down. I walk up to him and wrap my arms around his neck. 

“I’m sorry for being late,” I murmur. “Thank you for taking me out to eat.” 

“I really didn’t care if you were ‘gross’” He does air quotes as he talks to me. “I just wanted to spend time with my beautiful, handsome, partner.” 

We are then, for a moment, 

timeless. We are the pause  

before the next page. We are a photograph 

on a nightstand. We are the tension 

in the air

before the first “I love you”. We are cicadas 

before they let out that desperate scream for another. 

We are a pair of new shoes

in the mirror 

before a Valentine’s date. 

We are simply

together.

We cuddle the cat together on the couch, our little family. Rich. My boyfriend holds me to prevent me from falling. The three of us on the couch is a bit much. The capacity for the couch is just two boys. 

“So, did you like my shoes?” 

“...I hate to say it, but…yes.”

About the Author

Sophia Larimore is a journalism major at Illinois Central College who writes about anything that sticks in their brain. From love and queerness to feelings of despair and trauma, Sophia covers everything. When they're not writing, they're busy tending to their plants or playing video games. They hope to one day publish both a horror story and a collection of poetry, drawing inspiration from creators like Andrew Joseph White, Andrea Gibson, Will Wood, and Dazey and the Scouts. 

The Merits of a Dirty Car and Other Life Inconveniences

 By Emma Queen

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In the two years and nine months I have owned my car, I have not cleaned it once. Well, not exactly. It does rain, and a few months ago, I cleaned out the myriad of receipts and loose change collected in the cupholders and found a whopping dollar and thirty-four cents. My collection quickly began again, as a few days later I found a tails-up penny in a parking lot. Heads are supposedly lucky, but I am anti-establishment, so I consider tails the side that brings good fortune. 

Still, my car isn’t that dirty. Sure, there’s a small reddish-brown stain on the passenger seat that looks like blood, but it’s actually from an improperly sealed Tupperware of chili. Yeah, the vanilla scented air freshener tree hanging from the rearview mirror only just recently made it out of its plastic after owning it for months, but that’s because they smell too strong straight out of the package. Yes, I often have more hair on my clothes leaving my car than when I got in, but that’s what lint rollers are for. 

I should clean my car, I think, especially while writing this, and then I don’t. At the very least, there are no food wrappers, insects, or mold, just random bits of debris and a water bottle that has frozen and thawed a dozen times because I keep forgetting to take it inside. 

I have a few issues I need to address right now besides my obviously filthy car, but those feel like unfathomably large, hopeless issues despite being tiny in the grand scheme of things—so I’ll start small, because otherwise I will never start at all. 

First off, I need new tires. Abraham Lincoln’s copper face is starting to show more and more when I stick a penny into the treads of my tires to check how worn they are. Pennies aren’t even made from copper anymore; they’re zinc with an outer layer of copper, just little shells of themselves. When I look at a newly minted penny, I wonder if it knows what it could have been.

I also need a new license plate sticker. The neon orange one is peeling badly after I overenthusiastically scored it to keep people from stealing it, which has exposed glimpses of last year’s yellow sticker. It’ll probably cost more than the air cabin filter and windshield wiper blades I’ve been considering replacing. 

Lastly, I might need to get someone to look under the hood. In mid-December, I went to get my oil changed. My speedometer was at eighty-eight thousand miles or so, and I hadn't gotten my oil changed in what I presumed was a concerning amount of time. One of the guys working at the garage told me, “You still have a thousand miles left, you know. Forget what the date on the sticker says, you don’t have to get your oil changed until you reach the five thousand miles.” 

He was right, but I was already there, and who knew when I would be able to force myself to visit again? Another five thousand miles, probably. 

The other guy at the garage changed my oil, but at the end, he showed me the oil filler cap. It was a gross color, sort of like coffee with milk added to it with a hint of sludge, and even I know it’s not supposed to look like that. When I asked him what that color meant, the guy explained that it could be a problem with the head gasket. This is also the same oil place that once told me my transmission fluid is actually supposed to be red, not black—who knew?—so I trusted him when he said that I should go get it looked at some time soon. 

I worried the whole drive home and called a few auto repair shops in the area. Dan’s Auto Repair, or maybe it was Dennis’ or Dave’s, proved useful. Over the background noise of power tools filtering through, I told the shop owner on the phone the make and model of my car and the issue. Dan or Dennis or Dave told me that my model of car tends to need a lot of oil changes, so while the strange color could be a head gasket issue, it could also just be because I’d gone so long without an oil change. 

Besides the possibility of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars if something really was wrong, the whole thing was exasperating because I’d need a ride from someone, I’d probably have to get up early on a day off, and the mechanic would move my seat back. I wondered if the mechanics at the shop would judge how dirty my car is, but I also thought to myself, I should do that. I need to take my car in. Then I didn’t, but I don’t think it was just because of inconvenient scheduling and a fear of judgmental mechanics. 

The car is fine, I think. I haven’t checked the oil in three weeks, but I’m often running late and tired when I return, and so I forget to check. I’m tired and in such a hurry I can’t bother with something as ridiculous as routine maintenance and cleaning. Maybe I’ve just accepted that I’m sort of a mess, which unfortunately happens to leak into every other facet of my life, because containing that kind of thing is like containing a shaken soda can. 

I should clean that up, I thought the last time I opened a can of soda and half of it came bubbling out. I actually did, because I hate ants and I hate people who don't clean up after themselves. Hypocritical, I know. 

As of writing this, a can of soda has not yet been spilled in my car. That is extremely fortunate, as it would become a magnet for every single hair floating around in there. There’s already plenty of that, and because of it, I’ve been meaning to vacuum. Hell, I could even take the whole thing through a car wash as a bonus. My friend who knows things about cars, like what a timing belt is, told me that rust can form if the winter’s road salt isn’t washed off. I should do that, but I haven’t.

The funny thing is that it didn’t start out like this. When I left the dealership with crisp paperwork in hand and two thousand dollars missing from my savings account, my first real car was as pristine as a new used car can be. It stayed that way for a while. Like many things, there was never a single defining moment in which a sugary drink was spilled or a bag of chips exploded into a million crumbs—just a slow decline that progresses until one day, you get in your car, suddenly notice the mess, and think, Man, I need to vacuum. And then you don’t. Not today, anyway.

 

About the Author 

Emma is a student at ICC who at first followed a career path that would pay more than her knack for writing. It turns out that well-paying careers are for posers, so now she’s an English major with plans to someday transfer to ISU and become an editor. She lives in Peoria, Illinois, and her hobbies include writing and cross stitching.

Conversations with my Ten-Year-Old Self

 By Scott Jackson

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It was a nice spring afternoon in Pekin. I sat on a bench at Mineral Springs Park by the lagoon, overlooking many people walking and enjoying the spring day. As I relaxed, I thought back to my past self I wondered about many things. How would we each think of where the other is in our time frames? But how far back would I go for my past self? Maybe ten would be a good time to revisit. Although ten-year-old me would be over playing on some swings and maybe—

A small figure appeared out of the corner of my left eye, I looked over and I saw my ten-year-old self next to the bench waving at me. A slight wave is returned back to him. My past self smiled and said, “Hello, how are you doing today?”

Being careful on how to respond back while trying not to make eye contact, “I suppose I'm doing fine for now. And you?”

“Oh, I'm having fun. But now I have to wait for my folks to come back. “They left to get some food to bring here.” He looked at me, and the bench, then asked, “Can I sit down, please?”

“Sure, go ahead.” He sat on the left side of the bench; we looked at both the trees and the sky above us with the clouds barely going by.

He began to ask a question, “Are you—”

I started to slowly nod my head thinking here comes the major question.

“Are you my dad?”

I stopped nodding and turned my head to look at him, “What? No. No.”

“Are you another uncle I have from somewhere else?”

There were so many uncles from different places when I was young. “No. Although I'm old enough to be at this point.” I looked him in the eyes, and he noticed my eyes look the same, yet different. “I'm you, just older.”

“Oh.” He began to figure it out, yet my ten-year-old self might just be fine with this answer. “So, you're like me in the future. Like those movies.”

I nodded my head to sort of answer, “In a way, yes. But not exactly.” We both just sat there looking at the scenery around us. I kept thinking if this might be awkward for the both of us, or just odd for my younger self. “Part of me misses coming to this park. It has changed so much since I was you.”

“Why do you miss it?”

“You, I, we, I had to move away at some point.”

My past self jumped off the bench and stepped over in front of me. He motioned for me to lean in close, then grabbed my beard to feel if it was real. “Wow, I grow out a beard like that? You must be wise.” He let go of the beard and sat back down to my left side.

I giggled a bit before I said, “I guess it depends on the day and situation. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm just a fool.” We both laughed about that part.

“Why am I here?” My past self asked me, which I had to ponder for a moment or two to think about that.

Something came to my mind, but I had to figure out how to say it properly. “Well, considering we may not remember meeting after this, maybe we would like to know what we think of what we would or could become. Since I am from your future, I'd ask you what you would think and,” I'm not sure if I should say this last part due to not being sure my ten-year-old self would understand. “Would you be proud of who I've become?”

“Why don't you ask our mom?”

Inside I screamed, “Mom isn't alive in my time.” Then I decided to ask, “Well, wouldn't we or ourselves be the better judge of each other?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “You may be right.” I quietly let out a sigh of relief. “So, what have you done?”

Then I pondered on how much I should and/or shouldn't share with my past self. “Oh boy, where do I begin? We graduated high school alongside some friends. Currently, I'm tackling higher education, which took me a while to get there.”

My past self looked on in wonder and amazement.

“We end up acting on screen and stage.” I saw a 'wow' come from his mouth after that. “You will end up visiting California and Florida. We'll see many sights we never expected. And meet many people we wouldn't believe possible to meet. So, what do you think?”

My past self sat back up from laying down to listen. “Wow, you've done so much with your life. A part of me does envy you. I look forward to what happens.” I grinned a bit, because not everything single thing was told to him, well the parts that he wouldn't like. “I guess I could be proud of myself for doing all those things. But were there any scary parts?”

“I'm afraid with much of life, there will always be scary and dangerous parts. Although at my point, I don't think I've come across anything too dangerous yet.”

“Do I grow out of the things that I’m afraid of? One major thing I'm afraid of is heights.”

I answered back, “At my current age, I mostly just fear falling the wrong way. In a way, it's something we both still fear. Don't worry, some of your fears you will grow out of.” I patted my past self on his head, as he bit his fingernails. “Along with outgrowing some of our bad habits.”

He then asked, “Are there things we still like when we are older?”

“Oh yes. Movies, comics, wrestling. Some of the food, at least the ones I can have. Trust me, your foods may change slightly but it'll still be yummy.” He giggled. “You do a lot more reading when you grow up, but you will still have your favorites.”

“Like the Hobbit?”

I nodded. "Yes, and there will be a few movies tying into that story to look forward to as well. Someday.”

“Your future sounds awesome; I want to be there and see it myself. Do you have a job?”

Again, I wondered how to explain his future, but this time about my employment situation. “Presently I do, yet I've got through so many jobs that you would like to tackle at some point. Some of which aren't even around when you are currently. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for many things.” My past self lets out a sigh of disappointment.

“I suppose I could wait.” He looked up at my face, as we were both smiling. “I think our mom would be proud of us, too.”

My smile cracked as did part of my voice, “I wish I knew. I miss her and our folks.”

The past self started to piece something together. “Wait, are they gone in your time?”

I teared up, sniffling, and slowly nodded. “Yes. I'm afraid most of them have. I've outlived them.”

As he looked at my face and saw me crying, he caught me off guard by asking, “Do you need a hug?”

I slowly shook my head, “In a way, I've always needed one since they all passed. I used to be such a good hugger when I was younger. Although you aren't there yet.” We both got off the bench. I lowered down to one knee and embraced the hug with myself. I whisper to him; “I will always miss being you.”

He whispered back, “And I'll always look forward to being you.” In a way, we accepted what we were, are, and what we will become. As we parted, I said to him, “Give my love to long ago.” My past self ran away waving at me.

Opening my eyes, I found myself still there on the bench overlooking the lagoon. Noticing that the sun was about to set, I stood up and started walking away from that bench. Yet, I stopped to feel my cheek and tears were there. I will always cherish and miss pieces of my past, and I know that my past will always look forward to the great things ahead of him.

 

About the Author

Scott Jackson is a native of Central Illinois where he lives with his girlfriend and four cats. He loves video games, musicals, comic books, 80s and 90s nostalgia, Doctor Who, and overall, a good story to enjoy. After finally reaching his limits with retail work, he decided to re-invent himself by going back to school to pursue his dream of becoming a writer and teacher. In his spare time, he picks up extra roles in local films, helps out with a local community theatre, and continues to work on his first novels. Currently, he is the Vice President of Scholarship for ICC's honor society Phi Theta Kappa. He is told this would be his last year at ICC and is due to graduate in December 2025.

When I Sing, I Don't Stutter

By Logan Lewis 

Student Writing Awards, second place, creative writing category

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To be honest, I don’t really know for sure how I got my “signature” stutter. My mom says it came when I was very little (I mean I still am little, but more like younger) and I bit my tongue: so hard it drew blood but not in a cool Gene Simmons way. The way that I remember things was I got my stutter on the day that dog attacked me. That was the day I got the scars on my face that made me feel the need to wear my face long and my hair longer. Eh, I kind of feel better knowing I outlived that mongrel in dog and human years. 

It’s hard to say whose story is correct because if I say my account is right that’d be biased but saying that my mom’s account was the truth would be wrong. No matter what happened that caused a glitch in my head, I got stuck in speech therapy for seven years of my life from kindergarten to the sixth grade. I didn’t realize until years later (the other day to be exact) that it was even called speech therapy: my two speech teachers in those seven years just called it speech class. Man, I miss it when everything was sugar-coated. 

Besides my stutter, I was also in these “classes” for the inability to pronounce words that start with r and for the ability to talk ridiculously fast.

I don’t remember much about my first speech teacher other than she kind of gave up on me, which always sucks. The second one I remember a lot about. He was from Olney, Illinois: home of Albino Squirrels and at least two St. Louis Cardinals. I still see him every once in a while when I’m at work. It’s always nice to see him because he’s one of the few teachers I had before I started college who actually cared and wanted to inspire me instead of discouraging me.

As I was about to leave middle school and transition to junior high, I kind of was content with the fact that my stutter wasn’t going to be cured no matter how much learning I endured. This kind of bummed me out, but at least I got over the problem with r words and now I can say Robert Redford! If only I knew any movies that he was in. 

As I got into high school, I was sadly ridiculed for stuttering and my crazy taxi-style motormouth in my sophomore English class. My friend The Shaggy Dog told me on the way to a concert earlier this year that he remembered me getting ridiculed for my stutter and fast speech by a girl who’s one of those miserable people who probably went on to become a nurse or something like that. I had honestly forgotten about most of that in the present. He’s a good friend who I love like a brother, and he’s always been there for me and told me not to worry about her when this was going on eight years ago. 

I never really felt embarrassed to stutter or say that I had a speech impediment before or after any of that. I got reprimanded for stuttering by various people who saw it as “impolite.” I was very sheepish to admit that I couldn’t really help it. It was a way of life for me. Sometimes I tend to talk fast, but that problem has been mostly cured throughout my life. I only really use this fast speech just for fun when I mess around with people. One memory seems to live rent-free in my mind whenever I think about it: the week I lost my stutter. 

I was at work on some random night of the week that probably ended with a y and there was a family with a little kid probably about seven or eight or so. This kid was telling me about her day at school and her weekend plans while I stood there and rang up the odds and ends that they were purchasing. 

“T-t-t-t-t-today at sc-c-c-c-c-c-h-hol, I learned h-h-h-ow to t-t-touc-c-ch type t-t-t-t-the alphabet,” this kid who was perhaps around seven or eight said. 

As I stood there and finished ringing them up her dad then felt the need to apologize to me for his daughter’s stuttering. 

“It’s t-t-t-t-t-t-t-totally ok-k-k-k as y-y-y-y-y-y-y-ou can see I s-s-s-t-t-tutter myself,” I managed to pass through my lips and out of my mouth as I finished ringing them up and bid them a good day and a nice weekend. The next day, I went through my day as usual: work, errands, life, thinking out loud, faking smiles, and saying hello to those I knew and everyone I’d met. It didn’t really dawn on me until the day was getting done with that something was different. The day after that I was at school and a close friend of mine said something to me in the middle of our study/talking about music before our next respected classes started time that literally made time stop. 

“Logan, this might sound strange, but I literally haven't heard you stutter once today.” I froze and put down my Ukulele on the table with a thunk.

“Wait, I haven't stuttered once in this last hour or so?” 

“Nope, not once.” 

I was literally flabbergasted: I’d never, ever gone a single day of my life in the last however many years without stuttering. I was rather mixed with emotions at this news. I felt a little giddy that I could spend my time now being able to talk somewhat normally. It hit me pretty quickly that something was off when I didn’t stutter the next day, or the next day, or days and days after that. 

I started to get a little depressed: despite how it made being able to do something as menial as say thank you or bless you or have conversations about 1980s movies and 1990s arcade games that your friends have never heard of or ever played. My stutter was a part of me, and it was now gone at this point. I don’t know for sure what happened, but when I thought about it, it seemed that that kid at work somehow shocked my impediment out of my brain. This myth was busted a few days after I stopped counting the days and started to feel more confident in the way I spoke. I woke up one day, got ready, and drove to school to meet up with my friends for lunch. 

“Oh, h-h-h-heya guys. Ho-o-o-ow’s it going?” 

It happened: my stutter had come back just like a bad habit after New Year's. I looked up and a million thoughts started racing through my head, namely me being relieved that my stutter, which was thought to be a temporary childhood thing, had stuck around long enough to make me realize that it was more of a long-term life sort of thing. I felt like my old self and for the first time, I felt like I needed to be more confident about my speech impediment and just stop apologizing to people for my constant stuttering. 

My friend reminded me of this memory from high school. I didn’t exactly know how to respond to this because I’d never thought about her or high school in a long time and now, I want to know if she actually became a nurse or not. I remembered something I discovered a long time ago when I was reading about musician Kele Okereke of Bloc Party: a musician who stutters, but doesn’t appear to stutter when he sings. This also made me think of a conversation I had with my dad about my stutter and how it seemed that I didn’t tend to stutter when I was singing baritone in two different school choir stints I did. I thought about all the music I’ve heard and the music I wrote and about all the reasons why I decided to play guitar and write songs after my first bout of depression towards the end of high school. 

My friend knew of my plans to start a band this year, and he and his girlfriend were there to hear me talk about all the songs and poems I’ve written and how I want to be a sappy writer who has books and CDs in the bargain bins all over the world. He was there during our junior year the next year when I started to study literature and the noisy rock music that had inspired me to get a guitar and sing my heart out to anyone who wanted to hear me sing about my life and the good times and bad times, the heartbreakers, the earthquakes, Hell and highwater and everything in between. I’ve never been good at math or science, or much else really, but I’ve always felt okay enough to speak my mind, no matter how many words I can’t let escape my mouth. Sometimes I write until my hand cramps; thankfully, I taught myself to be semi-ambidextrous and why I buy so many notebooks. One way or another, I wanted to find a way to vent my frustrations and my salvations and listening to music and loud guitars and singers gave me the push I needed. 

I then responded to him with my voice trembling with a glint of confidence, “I don’t worry about it anymore. You see when I sing, I don’t stutter.”

So, damn it, that’s what I want to do. 

Now I just need to learn how to sing. 

 

About the Author

Logan Lewis is a student at Illinois Central College going for an associate’s degree. After ICC, he is planning on transferring to Illinois State University to get a degree in writing and is thinking about becoming a professor. Recently, he's been straying away from humorous writing to writing with more "heart on his sleeve"-like feelings with serious and hopeful themes, along with occasional humor. He wants to spend his life being silly, playing guitar, and writing songs, poems, and stories. His heroes are God, his parents, Mister Rogers, and Andy Warhol. His biggest writing influences are Harlan Ellison, Arthur Rimbaud, Doug Hopkins, Elliott Smith, and Kurt Cobain. You can usually find him at Guitar Center, thrifting for cardigans, or screaming songs by The Gin Blossoms in his car. #skipLogan 

 

 

Pain, Probably

By Katja Mahannah

-

He was harsh, I’m sure. Must have been, right? ’Cause I woke up bleeding. That was the first time I ever got high, and I didn’t even want to be. He told me that it was normal to feel dizzy; he told me that it was normal to not feel anything; he told me I was going to pass out.

*

Maybe she fell over, hit her head, and passed out then. Maybe the drugs had nothing to do with it. It is surely possible that she fell on top of something and it made her bleed. Maybe no one was in the room after she passed out, and the next two hours were just quiet and peaceful. It could be that she was locked in a room for her own safety. There was a fire escape. She could have climbed out that way. She could have saved herself. 

*

I came over to hang out with him and play Grand Theft Auto V. We never did. As soon as I walked in, I was welcomed by his ma, who spoke either Tagalog or Filipino, neither of which were clear nor understandable to me. In any case, she knew little of what I was saying, and vice versa. She couldn’t save me. My teachers in the north always said that delinquent children were the ones who smoked weed, the ones who put mixes in their bongs, and that they were the ones who created all our problems. I was a straight-A student, a daughter of two teachers, and a devout, Christian child. I was sixteen years old. That didn’t change how little I fought back from being forced to take that mix of drugs or how willing I was to go upstairs and sit on the couch in his room. 

*

She may have wanted it all to happen. She was wearing something soft, and we all know that girls wear soft clothes to get people to feel them. She probably meant it all to happen. She could have called someone when his dad brought home a gallon bag of weed and threw it on the kitchen table. She could have asked for help when his older sister came into the room with her boyfriend. She really could have texted or called anyone for help any time before he took her phone, powered it off, and hid it in another room that he would lock within the next two minutes. They could have saved her. 

*

I knew it was a bad idea to go into a boy’s bedroom. I was in eighth grade, and my ma had always told me not to go into boys' rooms. That didn’t change where I went that day: right into his room. At first, when I went up there, he just sat next to me on the couch in his room and very awkwardly tried to make conversation. We had been friends, you know? We met in a physical education class and bonded over competing against each other in races, class units, and school-wide tournaments. I, of course, won more than he did, but there was never a day that passed where he hadn’t passed me doing laps in the gym. He played baseball (that should have been my first clue, or a red flag, as they say), and he was always very fast on his feet. I wasn’t. Especially not that day, I suppose. 

*

Her laughs could be misconstrued as awkward ones, but who knows? It may have been that she was easily-bruised, and it may have been that her numb body was a result of euphoria, not of fear or drugged inhibition. She could have dreamt it, you see. People tell crazy, made-up stories all the time. You can’t believe everything you read, and she does have quite an active imagination. Maybe there was nothing that she needed saving from.

*

No amount of dreaming could build up the sensations I felt that day. Sensations seem like a misleading word to use here; nothing I felt on that day was a good feeling, and nothing that I felt the day after was any better. When I “woke up,” after having passed out on the floor next to his couch, I was naked, bruised, and bleeding on his bed. The door had been locked when I passed out, but it was cracked open when I regained consciousness. Laying the wrong direction on the bed with my body contorted and twisted, I first noticed how bare I was, in many ways. Sure, there was a blanket partially covering my chest and waistline, but there was nothing covering me, you know?

I didn’t feel safe; I didn’t know what happened; I didn’t even know where my clothes were or what time of day it was. What I know for sure is that there was no part of my body that had feeling, there was blood between my legs, in my holiest of areas. To the extent of my memory and confirmed knowledge, this is how that date ended: I got out of his bed, put on my underclothes, leggings, and green, chenille sweater, re-braided my hair, tied on my rose-printed, black velvet combat boots, walked down the creaky stairs, and had the most confusing encounter I had ever had with a date; he smiled at me politely, gave me my phone (after running up and down the stairs to unlock a room where he had hidden my phone earlier), and let me go outside, where my sister was parked in the driveway, ready to drive me home.

 

About the Author

Katja Mahannah is an ICC student. She is a writer with an acquired taste; she is not afraid of the truth. Katja works in ICC's Academic Support Center, doing what she does best: policing grammar and judging the general lack of commas. Outside of necessities, Katja loves to write and clean. If you got to know her, though, you would know that she cares more about Jesus and her own, growing family than anything.

 

The Box

 By Chae Santana

-

The Birthday Card

The birthday card I got from Frank sits in the box. It’s one of those things that I keep because throwing it away feels final. He wasn’t really meant to be my father, but at one time I thought maybe he could have been. I wanted it to work out. I wanted him to be the one who didn’t disappear. I guess I only called him “dad” for a short while, and after everything that happened it was never going to be more than a card. I don’t feel anything when I see it, but I still keep it. 

 

The Stickers 

I still have the superhero stickers he gave me. I don’t even like superheroes. I never did, I think they’re unrealistic, but I still keep the stickers. They were from my first kiss, back when everything was lighter. He died shortly after in a car accident. He was only thirteen. I don’t know why I hold on to them, maybe because it reminds me of a time when things were simpler, when there were no hard truths to face or things left unsaid. Or maybe it's just the last thing I have of his and can’t let go of.

 

The Hard Drive 

I kept the hard drive full of photos from the Phoenix trip with my sister. People used to mistake us for twins, and during that time we were inseparable it didn’t matter what we faced together. But something shifted I don’t know when. She’s different now, we’re different. There’s resentment that hangs in the air when we talk about anything at all. What we have now doesn’t fit with the people in those pictures. I miss her. I miss the way we used to be, though now I'm not sure what that was. I look at the photos often.

 

The Letters 

I have all the letters from my father’s side of the family. They used to reach out every few months, showing me how much they wanted to know me. I thought I meant something, they were excited and wanted to be close. But now we barely speak. The letters stopped coming and I stopped waiting for them. I look at those letters sometimes, tucked away in a box. They don’t really feel like they belong to me anymore. Now I wonder if they ever did, we are all connected by blood but even that feels like it’s worn thin. 

 

The Friendship Necklace 

The friendship necklace from Haley, It feels like a cruel joke now. She wasn’t really my friend; I knew that but wouldn’t admit it. She made me audition to be her friend, I was ten and too naïve to know what that meant. But I wanted it, I wanted to feel like I belonged. I wanted someone to choose me, and in the end, she chose everyone else but me. I don’t know why I kept the necklace; it's just a cheap piece of metal. But it's the closest thing I have to what I thought friendship could be. 

 

The Perfume Bottles 

I kept the two perfume bottles my mom gave me one Christmas. It was one of the first real gifts I’d seen in years because Christmas wasn’t something we could usually afford. She said, “I got you your favorites.” One was my sister's favorite, and the other was a scent I liked when I was eight. I’ve worn vanilla products for years now and my bathroom is full of various lotions and oils. I guess she never noticed. I didn’t say anything, just smiled, said thank you, and kept them. They still smell the same. I've never used them.               

The Gift Cards 

There’s a stack of old gift cards in the box. Dave and Buster’s Chuck E Cheese, various random places we said we’d go back to. We never returned but I always thought we would. Maybe we’d get another weekend where things felt light again. When everyone had fun when no one was angry or tired. I held on to them like miniature promises, like proof that we could feel that happy again if we just had more time. Now they just feel like expired memories, they'll never buy anything, but I can’t throw them out. Maybe we’ll go back.    

 

The Coin 

There’s a foreign coin in the box, but I have no clue where it’s from. Its design is strange and faded, and the language doesn’t look familiar. I think I found it on the ground somewhere. It doesn't feel valuable or rare, It just feels out of place. I told myself I’d Google where it came from (I didn’t ), so now it's just a mystery sitting at the bottom of the box. I do not know why I kept it, maybe it’s because it never tried to mean anything, it was just there like background noise and stayed put. 

 

About the Author

Chae Santana Is in her first year at ICC. She likes to spend her free time reading, traveling, or watching true crime. She's majoring in sociology, and likes to write as an outlet. 

Drowning in Silence

By Chae Santana

 -

She was different, the other kids often whispered about her, murmuring cruel things about her home life. They teased her for things beyond her control, I never joined in, but I admit I never spoke out either. I wish I had. But, I wanted to be liked. I wanted to belong, and on that day I wanted more than anything  to prove I wasn’t just a girl in floaties. 

That was why I climbed on the diving board that day. It wasn’t bravery that brought me up there but desperation. Desperation to be seen. To jump, and maybe, land among the kids who, for reasons I couldn’t explain, had a power over me. I wanted to show them that I could be like them. Like the girls who didn’t wear floaties, the girls who didn’t need them. I wanted to feel like I belonged. I wanted to be accepted. 

As I stood at the edge, knees bent, ready. I had no idea what was unfolding behind me. She was taking off her floaties, her lifeline. Without a word, without any warning. I hadn’t known it then, but she was making a choice I didn’t see coming. 

Then the screams erupted. 

I turned to see a limp body being dragged through the water. Then words broke through the panic “She tried to jump! She hit her head! I don’t know how long she’s been under!” 

The yelling hit me hard and echoed off of the pool’s wet tiles. It was hard to know what was happening at first, each of us clueless. The air was thick with the scent of chlorine , but beneath that was the unmistakable odor of fear. I watched as the lifeguards moved with a speed that felt unnatural, their voices quick, urgent, cutting through the tension like a blade. The water, which had just been playful, now felt like a hungry beast, something dark that could swallow us all.  

“She’s not breathing!” and within a few moments “No pulse.” 

I should have been horrified. I should have been terrified. I should have been devastated or sick with dread, but all I felt was relief. A deep, visceral relief that it wasn’t me. The selfish thought twisted through me faster than I could grasp it. It could have been me. It should have been me. 

I had been on the diving board only moments away from the same fate. I wanted to prove myself too. I took off my floaties to jump, to feel like I was worthy of their attention. If I had gone first, If I had acted just a moment sooner, It might have been my body lifeless, sinking in that same water.

The relief curdled, and something darker rose in its place. I felt as if my life was worth more than hers.

At that moment, I didn’t see the tragedy as her small body bobbed lifeless in the water. All I could think was that she had stolen my chance. She had taken the very thing I was so desperate for. Visibility. Her tragedy, her very life had become a roadblock between me and the validation I craved. 

Then came the guilt. It was cold and sharp, cutting through the darkness that had settled in my heart. How could I feel this way? How could I feel relieved? I was supposed to be the empathetic one. The girl who felt everything. The one who cried for fictional characters and dreamed for a world where no one ever suffered. And yet here I was, glad that it wasn’t me.

All of the sounds surrounding me blurred into a white noise, the crying students, the shouts for 911. I remember the young lifeguard, likely not much older than we were. His face pale and his hands trembling as he counted compressions. His chest heaved with broken sobs between each press, but his hands never stopped. The sickening rhythm of his desperation echoed throughout the room, the unforgettable sound mixing with the dreadful whispers of my peers. Combined, it had felt as if time itself had bent around that moment, stretching and pulling, the world was holding its breath.  

Someone, maybe a teacher or maybe just another student pulled me off of the diving board. I don’t remember who or how. All I remember is walking past her, past the frantic attempts to save her, past the cold body with foam seeping from its lips, and walking away.

The bus tumbled along, indifferent. I started out the window and imagined her still floating there, lost. The water wouldn’t let her go. I saw her blue lips, her arms limp like seaweed, her eyes glassed over.  To me she had never left the pool, instead her body stayed behind. She was sinking beneath the surface every time I blinked. 

I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything anymore. It was as if the whole world had fallen silent, and I was stuck in it.

When I got home, my mother and grandmother tried to talk to me. They wanted to understand what had happened, how I had felt. I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t find the words for a feeling I didn’t understand. I stared at the tv behind them, pretending to listen but really hearing nothing. I didn’t know how to process what had happened. All I could think was about how I felt nothing for her, how that absence of feeling seemed to confirm everything I had feared about myself.

In the days that followed rumors began swirling. Was she dead? Will there be a memorial? The silence around the situation only made it worse, amplifying the shame I had felt inside. How could they cry for her? These were the same kids who never spoke to her, who teased her when she wasn’t around. How was it that they could feel something I couldn’t?

Then, we learned the truth. She was alive. Stable. In the hospital. 

But still, I felt nothing. I was numb. I was empty.

She never came back to school. I never saw her again, never learned if she recovered. Her absence should have weighed on me, but it didn’t.

 It was as if she had never been there at all. 

 

About the Author

 

Chae Santana is in her first year at ICC. She likes to spend her free time reading, traveling, or watching true crime. She's majoring in sociology and likes to write as an outlet.