Wake before the sun. Slip unnoticed past the hiss of your father’s snore. Past the mildew smell inside the closed-up caravan, the floor cold under your socks. Pull the curtain aside. Fog sticks to the windows like breath. Don’t think.

But you do. Just for a minute. No more. About your new friends and if this is what you want. Sneakers caked with dried mud. Hoodie thin at the elbows. Wheels thudding as you drop off the porch.

The road’s quiet. Gravel and split pavement. You push off, coast. The skateboard’s your ticket out of morning silence. Bearings whining. Wind slicing your eyes.

At the harborfront, the ships sleep heavy in their slips. Rusted cranes crane nothing. Gulls wheel overhead, stirred and angry. And there they are—the Kings.

Wren’s perched on the edge of a shipping container, laces undone, hoodie unzipped like he owns the air. “Took your time, Caravan.”

They all call you that. The boy from the trailers. The kid with the off-brand board and hand-me-down smirk. You try to look unbothered. 

They nod at you. You’re in. Mostly.

The Kings run the breakers—the rusted-out zone where sea meets metal and salt. They tag containers—rushed crowns, sloppy letters—and bomb the makeshift skate bowl behind the warehouses. Tell stories about cracking bones and breaking rules. You listen, sketch your own tags across a notebook’s pages. Laugh when they do. But sometimes the laughter sticks in your throat. Sometimes you wonder if they’d leave you broken, too.

This morning, it’s a schoolboy in the park. Backpack too big. Shoes too clean. Head down.

Wren steps into his path. “Hey. What’ve you got?”

The kid blinks. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t speak. Just waits like something worse is coming.

“C’mon,” says one of the others. “Be quick.”

The boy opens his bag with both hands like he’s afraid it’ll bite. Pulls out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. A five-dollar bill. His fingers shake.

You watch. Your chest feels tight. Like it’s laced wrong. Like something inside you wants to get out. You see yourself—before the Kings—walking home with a too-big pack and no one to step in. You remember your father staring at the TV while the world pushed you around.

The bill flutters to the ground. Wren steps on it.

You don’t move. Not at first.

Then you speak. “Leave him.”

Wren laughs. “You serious?”

You nod. Your voice cracks, but not like breaking—like cutting. “I’m done.”

Silence. Salt wind. A gull screeching somewhere above.

“You quit?” Wren says, spitting the word like it tastes bad.

You swallow. The wind slices harder now. You nod, knowing what it costs—your place, your shield, maybe more.

You bend down, pick up the five, hand it to the boy. He takes it without a word. Just looks at you, like you’re a twist he didn’t expect.

The boy hurries away and you push off. Back toward the road. The board rattles under you, steadying. Behind you, no one follows.

Back at the caravan, you don’t bother going in to see Dad still asleep, the TV flickering on mute.

You head to the back of the trailer, where the aluminum skin’s dented and forgotten. You stand there a moment, shoulders loose, breath even. Then you reach into your backpack and take out a Sharpie.

You draw a crown, your hand steady. Lines sharp. You step back. The crown broken. Tilting.

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Daddy always said our house was a lemon: all waxy and yellow out front but rotten in the back. We had mold on the porch, black widows under the stairs, and water moccasins in the yard where my brother and I played alligator, slithering through the overgrown weeds with both hands poised like jaws, ready to snap at any second. If our mother dared venture across the yard to pick wild berries, we would chomp down on her elbows until she fed us: warm fruit fresh off the vine, old ginger snaps turned to mush in the humidity. One time, the fridge broke down, and she fed us one improbable thing after another: a pickled herring and green bean casserole, mini pizzas made of ketchup and saltines, and something called “swamp pie,” where she whisked up the remaining milk and eggs into a custard, then poured it into a half-baked raspberry pie. We watched it bubble and set in the oven, our alligator hands eager to clamp down on the bloody-looking fruit. It tasted like that pint of ice cream we accidentally left out on the porch one night: all warm and goopy, so sweet we thought it would turn our teeth soft.

We were insatiable after that. Every new disaster was the perfect excuse for swamp pie. If a hard rain turned the backyard to soup, swamp pie. If a storm snapped the top off a pine tree and dropped it through my bedroom window, swamp pie. If Daddy got drunk one night and drove his pickup into the side of the house, doing himself no lasting damage but cracking the foundation in such a way that the basement flooded not all at once but slowly, over months, until we had to bail the mud out through the window, passing buckets down a line while mosquitoes swarmed around us, injecting their filthy saliva into our faces every chance they got, you bet we demanded swamp pie. We ate it at the tiny kitchen table, alternating between scooping up its innards and scratching our bug bites while mean-mugging Daddy through the window. He was talking to a contractor about prices. What we could afford and what we would just have to endure. We put our basement junk up on cinder blocks, made a game of chasing the silverfish and salamanders that wriggled in wet corners, their tails flashing in the slick.

Then the pipes burst. First flooding the bathroom with the cracked tile and the drain flies dotting the ceiling, their wings pasted in place by steam, then the kitchen, under the sink, while the pie shell was par-baking and my brother and I were crouched in front of the oven, alligator hands at the ready. We squealed when the water seeped out of the cupboard and in between our toes, the grimy nooks and crannies where we sometimes forgot to scrub. Daddy was still upstairs, banging around the bathroom, spitting swear words like sinkwater, so Mama tried to fix it herself, turning taps on and off, on and off, to locate the leak: that place where the pipe was rusted and swollen, the metal flaking off like pastry. My brother scrunched his nose up and said, P.U., P.U., while she wrapped the pipe up like a baby that just kept wetting itself. I splashed him with the floor puddle, kicking water toward him in gritty little waves polluted with bread crumbs and onion scraps, and he fought back, using his cupped hands to aim the water at my face. This would’ve escalated into all-out war if the faucet hadn’t exploded.

Water rained down around us like it did that one summer a neighbor tapped a hydrant and let all the children run through the spray until the sun sank down behind the sweetgum and fireflies popped up out of the bluegrass, their butts so bright we thought they looked like candies. Mama hollered for Daddy to get down here before the whole house flooded. My brother and I screamed with joy, slipping and sliding around the kitchen like it was our own private water park. We filled our bargain basket squirt guns with sinkwater, dammed the crack under the basement door with old beach towels, and held umbrellas over the counters so Mama could whisk up the custard and pour it in the pie pan. Once everything was in the oven, we started chanting, “Swamp pie! Swamp pie!” and waving the giant umbrellas around like shields, as if they could protect us.

When Daddy hollered at us to shut our goddamn traps already, my brother said we should build a fort with the umbrellas, layering the translucent panels over each other, until we were like two caterpillars in a cocoon, wondering what the world would look like once we emerged. Mama said something like, I told you not to yell at the kids anymore, and Daddy muttered, Maybe if you stopped coddling them I wouldn’t have to shout to be heard, then she snapped at him, Oh, we can all hear you just fine; everyone in town knows our business thanks to you, but I lost track of their argument because a glittery beetle with a back like an emerald crawled up my brother’s leg, seeking shelter from the flood. I wanted to trap it and put it in a jar, but my brother shielded it from me as if the beetle were a part of himself, one of the little tender bits we only let each other see when our parents were fighting, so I relented and told the beetle not to worry—we would shield it from the storm. When this was all over, we would go out and hide in the jewel grass, wait for the other beetles to rise up out of the muck and grace the world with their beauty.

Any minute now, I said. The pie was almost ready.

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

First came the birds, flapping in the same futile way I do when I swim—unable to make headway against the inexorable pull of a strange, incomprehensible physics. I ached to help them, but my manager screeched at me, gesturing toward a lineup of customers who couldn’t serve themselves. The birds couldn’t help themselves either, and unlike my classmate James they didn’t have jobs or rich parents, no money to draw people’s attention.

After the birds fell, the whoosh of fuselage through clouds heralded the plummeting airplanes. Unlike their feathered cousins, these loud metal birds roused people to action, even making a rubber-necking spectator out of my manager. The customers trailed into the road after him, and my shuffling feet now echoed through the store as if it were a museum on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. As much as I wanted to, I hesitated to follow my manager outside, for his favorite adage—one shared with my father—whispered in my ear: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Next came the raindrops, holding hands in neat formation, dragged from their cloudy homes before they were ready. Their cries on the pavement stirred my heart, because I, too, never felt ready—certainly not ready for the sky’s antics today or I would have skipped this horrid shift and held hands with my family too. When customers returned to the store, seeking shelter, I went looking for my manager in hopes I’d glimpse a toppling rainbow slicing through him.

Instead, I was greeted by the cool touch of descending clouds, demoted from their lofty perch. I recalled how James had gushed on and on about flying amongst the clouds, in business class no less, and now maybe I would experience that too. James had a nice smile and arm muscles that reflected his summers spent on his uncle’s farm. But, even though he had promised to work this job with me, he spent his time chasing Jenny, whose gorgeous nails attracted magpies and boys alike. In this dreamlike world, fine droplets obscured all the nice smiles, strong arms, and expensive nails, and who’s to say it’s not better off this way?

The sky compressed around my feet and my head finally pierced through the clouds as the air rarefied, transforming Earth into a spaceship, the vastness of our galaxy hurtling past me. The forgotten five-year-old within me cheered, as my astronaut dreams escaped from under the heel of my father and careened into the unknown. The vanishing oxygen didn’t bother me, for we had all—me and James and even Jenny—become equally tiny under the stars.

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

The first time I ask God for a sign, He leaves a dead mouse on the sidewalk. 

I see it, curled up next to Mom’s wilting dahlias, on my way to the school bus. At first I think it’s a gray rock. Then, as I get closer, a miniature stuffed animal. But there are flies buzzing all around it. Its perfect, tiny paws are drawn up near its face. It doesn’t smell, at least.

Okay? I say, my hands steepled together, but God has His Do Not Disturb sign up.

I don’t know why God would leave me such a disgusting message. I don’t need rabies, or scurvy, or whatever it is dead mice can give you. And I don’t need a reminder that the flowers Mom and I spent hours planting last summer are already dying. I just need to know if Mom will be okay. And yes, I’ve heard all about His Mysterious Ways, I know He’s not supposed to hand out easy answers, but it’s not like my question affects nations, or important people, or the fate of the world. It’s just my mother. And isn’t God allowed to break the rules when He wants to? 

After school, while Dad slices an apple, I ask him if God has ever talked to him. Not just the in-your-heart bullshit, but actual words.

Dad says to watch my language. He explains that God doesn’t talk like that. Not His style. 

“Remember that story?” he says, referring to the one single time he, not Mom, made me wear a flowery dress and dragged me to Sunday school. “After the Ark landed on the mountain and all the people and animals came out onto solid ground, God put a rainbow in the sky. It was His way of promising that He would never destroy the world with a flood again.”

“Is that real?” I ask.

“Of course rainbows are real.”

“No, I mean the story.” 

Dad doesn’t answer, but he does give me cheese cubes with the apple.  

A few days later, God leaves me something else: a deer track in the mud. I wasn’t supposed to cut through the park, and now I wish I hadn’t. What am I supposed to do with a deer track? At least the mouse was a real thing. A deer track is just a hollow. An emptiness.

But then again, who am I to question God? I hold my breath, listening for the snap of a twig. Looking for a flash of tan fur. Maybe this is a good sign, after all. When Mom was healthy, she loved seeing deer wander through our yard, even though she complained that they bit the heads off our zinnias and brought ticks. 

But I don’t see a thing. Only trees and more trees. Dad says deer spook easily, but Mom always used to find them. Also snakes, painted turtles, and birds zooming overhead. She taught me the difference between cranes and herons and geese and swans. 

“Cranes migrate south for winter,” Mom told me, when I was eight and she was someone who told me things, “but they always come back. They nest in the same spot every time.” 

I squint at the deer track and try to figure out what it looks like—a coffee bean, or two tadpoles, or a heart split down the middle.  

Does this mean Mom will wake up early tomorrow and make coffee and be waiting at the kitchen table when I come downstairs, smiling like sunshine, her tortoiseshell glasses on, hair piled up in a fluffy bun like a puffball mushroom? Does it mean her heart is broken forever?

God, I plead, be more specific, please.

And maybe He’s finally listening. Because at dinnertime, Mom comes downstairs and makes soup. She walks to the corner store to buy fresh bread, and the three of us share tomato bisque and bread and softened butter. Mom cuts another slice of bread, lays it on my plate, and I think of the story of the fishes and the loaves. When she brushes her hand against the back of my neck, a shiver crisscrosses my whole body. 

“You need a trim,” she says softly. “Should we do a haircut tomorrow?”

I don’t say anything—I don’t want to spook her. I don’t want her to pull her hand away.

“See?” Dad says, wiping a spatter of red from his chin. “Look at you, up and at ‘em.”

Mom smiles in a way that makes me think of dead prairie grass.

That night, I hear her crying—not loud, not angry. She sounds like a kitten trapped under a basket. Dad’s voice rumbles through the floorboards, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I press both fists to my eyelids and try to picture her smiling—the way her eyes used to sparkle—but all I can see is that stupid deer track. I hope the deer is smart enough to stay off the road. 

The next morning, Mom stays in bed, the floral comforter drawn over her like a garden. She tells me she won’t be able to cut my hair today. She tells me she’s sorry.

I crawl into bed with her. She pulls me close and lets me stay there, even though I’ll be late to school, even though she probably just wants to sleep. Something taps against the window—a long, pointed beak, or a twig, or an arrow. Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. Maybe there’s a rainbow stretching across the sky, a promise that He will never again destroy my mother in this particular way, and I only need to look up to believe it. 

I close my eyes and burrow under the blankets. I can feel my mother breathing next to me, our bodies rising and falling like the flood. 

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Analena stepped around the tangle of vines and leaves. For nearly thirty years, she’d tended this garden’s dark and fertile soil. She bent and selected a summer squash, yellow and plump, lying heavy on the earth. Its skin felt hard, ripe. She used her knife with a practiced hand to cut the fruit loose from its vine. Maybe Javi would eat this. She’d cook its flesh soft, mash it with a fork.

She pulled carrots from the garden then reached for the peas. Later, she would add these into the skillet before stirring in arroz. In the past, she would have included pork. Her husband liked meat, but chewing was difficult now. There would be enough for the hospice worker to take a plate home. He had caring eyes, and Analena appreciated the help he’d given in securing the new medical equipment for Javi.

Analena stepped toward the tomato plants and caught sight of the strange light glimmering in the indigo sky. A second sun, Betelgeuse. The dying star had appeared a few months ago, on an icy morning in May; every day since then, it rose above the horizon to lead the sun across the sky. Its cold light was as bright as the moon’s, though it lacked the lunar softness. It shone with focus and violence, an unshakeable, judgmental gaze.

Analena pulled two ripe tomatoes from their vine and placed them into the metal bowl she used to collect vegetables. A buzzing rose from the zucchini leaves, a patch of green along the wooden fence that separated her yard from the next. Analena cocked her head and listened. Kneeling on the earth, she pushed aside clutches of leaves to find a tomato had fallen and rolled there. The torn and gnawed flesh lay open and exposed. Ants probed the tear and picked away the paler parts along the circumference. The buzzing grew louder, lifting from the sick decay.

Analena peered into the tomato’s cavity at a wasp half hidden and dying there. With the dull edge of her knife, she nudged the insect, and its wings flared into an angry blur, unable to fly. Bent at its tender thorax, it slipped farther into the fleshy cavern. Analena thought about ending its suffering with a quick flick of her blade, but when its wings beat again, she didn’t have the heart to kill it.

“Hi, Ana.” A voice at the fence startled her, and she steadied herself with one hand in the dirt.

Colleen, her neighbor, peered above the wooden slats; she gave a small laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Analena grabbed the fence rail and used it to stand up. Embarrassed, she glanced at Colleen. “It’s all right. I’m just collecting vegetables for Javi’s lunch.”

Colleen disappeared for a moment, and Analena heard her place a step stool against the fence. Colleen stepped up and gazed down into Analena’s garden, scanning the rows of radishes and carrots, the vines heavy with tomatoes and runner beans.

“Your garden is coming along.”

Analena’s eyes moved over the plants. “Javi still loves the smell of fresh food cooking.”

Colleen nodded. “It’s hard to get used to, isn’t it?”

Analena glanced toward the bedroom window where her husband slept. Inside, Javi’s rattling breaths pushed back against the morning light. It was hard, watching the man she loved for forty years fade into the darkness of that room. Analena had stepped into the yard eager to work with her hands, thirsty for daylight.

“The supernova, I mean.” Colleen tilted her head toward the star. “Sometimes it feels like we’re not even on Earth anymore. Like we’re on some alien planet.”

Analena nodded. The star’s relentlessness frightened her. “I wish it wasn’t there.”

“You don’t have to be worried about it, Ana. It’s too far away to hurt us.”

“I know.” She spoke softly. Her face flushed, and she turned to look back at her tomato plants. She shouldn’t have shared her worries. Colleen had a habit of talking down to her like she was too old to make sense of the world around her. Analena watched the same news as everyone else. The scientists explained how incredibly lucky they all were to be alive during such an event. No one had seen a supernova with the naked eye since 1604; in truth, it was the vastness of those centuries spilling toward them that scared Analena more than the thought of any star exploding.

A stifling silence lay thick between the two women. Analena shifted her weight and lightly brushed an ant from her arm. Behind her, the buzz of the dying wasp rose from the leaves.

“How is Javi doing?” asked Colleen, breaking the silence.

“He’s in bed now. I called hospice last Monday.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ana. Javi’s a good man. I feel bad that Jerry and I haven’t been able to visit more. We had to move my mother into assisted living, and Jerry’s been picking up extra hours at work.” She gave a light laugh. “Life’s a bit hectic in our house these days.”

“It’s all right, Colleen. Thank you for thinking of us.”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the house? It’s a lot of room for just one person.”

Analena felt her breath catch in the warming air. She looked up at Betelgeuse, burning in protest of its own death. They said it was over ten million years old.

“I’m sure you could sell this place easily if that’s what you wanted. My cousin’s a realtor. I can call her when you’re ready.”

Anger flared within Analena, rising from her throat as the words burst out. She glowered up at her neighbor. “Javi’s still alive, Colleen.”

She stepped back from the garden. Her mind screamed to look away, to turn and run into the house. Instead, she fixed Colleen with an unshakable gaze. She would not crawl away and hide from this.

“Of course,” said Colleen, “but…”

“No. Javi is lying in there trying to breathe. I won’t bury him while he’s still fighting for life.”

“I’m sorry, Ana. I didn’t mean…” Colleen’s face flushed and her jaw clenched.

Analena would not look away, not this time. 

Colleen glanced back toward her own house. “We’re thawing elk meat from Jerry’s hunt last fall. I know Javi likes venison. We’d like to bring some of the meat over early next week and visit him.”

Next week would be too late. She wanted to grab this woman and force her to gaze into the darkness of that bedroom, wanted her to see the sick shadows cast by that dying light in the sky. Instead, she only nodded, letting Colleen turn and slip back behind the fence.

In the tree branches above Analena, a blackbird flitted and rustled the leaves. Morning shadows were giving way to harsher sunlight. Analena stood at the edge of her garden and felt the summer creaking past her. She gazed up at Betelgeuse. Yes, she thought. Next week would be too late.

This star had existed for an eternity, watching the first sailors cross vast oceans, witnessing ancient rituals offered to long-forgotten gods. Betelgeuse had a right to burn with anger, to light up the heavens, and die with conspicuous outrage.

Living things are different, she thought. They crawl into caves and hide under leaves to die. Going to ground, her father used to say. They curl themselves around their hearts, knees to chests, as if ashamed by the brevity of their existence. Here then gone. 

The wasp buzzed from the leaves behind her, a final effort to lift itself from the rotting fruit.

Javi would wake soon. She should go inside to sit beside him. But she wasn’t ready to let go of this moment. Not yet. The sun’s warmth caressed her skin, and her shadow glazed the leaves on the ground beneath her. Analena exhaled a long breath and lifted her face toward the sun, as if she might hold onto its light.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

In the time it took for Troy to realize I was truly pissed and finally leaving him, I’d already rammed my car into the side of his brand-new, jacked-up, man-confirming, white-knuckle Dodge Ram. 

In the second it took to dent the passenger-side door hiding the purple-lace thong I’d found wadded into the seat crack where I thought I’d find my lip gloss, Troy screamed like I was actually cutting off his balls. His hands clawed at his face, which was as red as a boiled lobster, and I never craved tender flesh so bad in my life. 

In the moments it took for me to back up and crash into that truck again, gravel rocketing like bullets off the wheels of my car, Troy had sworn at me using all those names women are called when they have a mind to do what they want. But those names were nothing I hadn’t heard before. None I hadn’t heard him call me before. But I didn’t stop. I kept battering that door, waiting for him to jump off the porch and throw himself between me and his truck, desperate to save what was left of everything I’d ever done for him—loaning him thousands for some crazy get-rich-quick bullshit scheme after I worked overtime cleaning rooms at the roach motel out on the highway, all while saving up so I could go to school to be an x-ray tech; covering for him when the cops wanted his whereabouts the night enough Oxys were stolen from the local pharmacy to drown everyone in that godforsaken town; cutting off Daddy when he asked me to come back home, telling him I needed to make my own choices, even though I knew I was making all the wrong ones, and Daddy knew it too. 

In the minute it took for me to do enough damage to that truck to get Troy’s grease monkey buddies riled up when they saw, I imagined all those dented edges fighting them, white flakes peeling off in ribbons like Troy’s sun-burnt skin when he went blast fishing with those assholes, those self-professed good ol’ boys who drank beer in our living room and ordered me to get them another cold one during commercials starring better looking versions of themselves. They’d have to work real hard to hammer and suck my rage out of the body of that truck. But they’d try. And they’d probably imagine me as they did it, blaming me for their failure, calling me all those names again, names that made me want to trash everything Troy ever owned or cared about. When I drove away, I saw him in my rear-view mirror kneeling beside twisted metal like he was praying at an altar for some kind of miracle, bargaining to take it all back. Like somehow, he’d become a better man.

In the hour it took for me to get my shit together in the Dairy Queen parking lot, I’d jerry-rigged my bumper back on and sat on the trunk of my cherry-red Chevy Cavalier dreaming of going home, of starting over and living up to that potential everyone told me I had, and I realized I’d had in me all along, regardless of what Troy and every other boyfriend tried to convince me of. I guzzled that peanut-butter milkshake like I was dying of thirst. Because I was. For salt, for sugar, for piercing cold. For that brain-freezing focus. For that thick creamy fat on my tongue. It all melted into such warmth, such sweetness, that I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit like me again.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

The kids want to know what it feels like to be killed by lava. 

I tell them many would have retreated to the countryside, or run to the sea, thinking it wouldn’t reach them there. I tell them most would have suffocated before the lava reached them. 

I point at an image on the screen, What’s this?

A statue!

I affect a grimace, Not a statue.

They cock their heads, thinking. Murmurs travel through the classroom; I tune into one, Dead body.

I nod, This is a person frozen by lava. I don’t have better words. Mummified by lava? Fossilized?

One boy gets back from the toilet and looks over his shoulder at the white board, God, what’s that! I tell him to tuck his shirt in and take a seat.

They ask if any animals died too, so I close out of the slideshow and Google the Pompeii dog. I tell them to cover their eyes if they don’t want to see something too sad. 

They erupt, they ask, Why does it look like that!

It’s contorted into a ring shape, limbs flailing and mouth open just enough.

Because it was in pain.

They squirm. They don’t want to look at the dog anymore. I return to the original slideshow, where we see the face of the “statue” turned to the black sky and its knees gathered to its chest, a final protective gesture.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Crow calls puncture the icy air. In the silences between—our snowshoes punching a trail behind us—we make small talk like we have practiced in class. In my pockets I tuck his facts, the siblings and cactus-spotted landscapes of his youth, the book clubs and home brewing of his present. I save them like squirrel-stashed pinecones, as if the same snow-damp air that balloons my lungs might soften his details to something digestible, something familiar.

He will no longer be my teacher. This is what he told me after the asking, in the in-between of the classroom and the hallway, blurry chalk-print hands on his trouser legs betraying the nervous fingers he gripped in stiff fists as the other students streamed past to their night shifts, to their cramped apartments. He told me two times, as if I maybe did not understand the significance, as if I am wet behind the ears. We will be breaking no rules now if I agree to go on a date with him, he said. It was touching, his earnestness. His nerves shivered across his forehead while he waited for my answer. Like he no longer was the expert of verb tenses or slippery idioms sketching strange pictures in my head. Like this time I owned the words he needed to borrow. So I rolled the bones with my yes.

It is a yes I now wish to swallow back. We cross over our own tracks, looping a noose around an unmapped patch of forest. Shadows curl blue in the hollows, darker than they were on our first pass; dusk drops suddenly here. When I point this out, he does not worry. He dismisses my suggestion that we retrace our steps, like he ignored me when I told him his snowshoes should go each on the other foot.

“Just a bit further,” he insists. “This must remind you of home.”

I watch the teeth of his snowshoes bite through the crust and flick up powder from underneath. The sun no longer sparkles the snow. Nothing of this feels like home.

The trail unfolds to a field. As we cross the meadow, our talk becomes not so small. He tells me of the woman he says stole his job at the college, of the daughter he sees every other weekend, of the voting he will not do because too many contenders are corrupt. He tells me of his friend who believes immigrants are vectors of disease and crime, that they should be rounded up, imprisoned, shipped away. “Not the ones who came here the right way, of course,” he adds. He floats these ideas to me, swiveling his head to watch them land. 

I ice my ears to them, ice my face to betray none of my thinking. It is not logical that out here, dwarfed by the expanse of white-frosted pines and white-blanket sky, he seems larger even than he did in the cramped classroom with walls the same ill green of the hospital tent, of the helicopter that plucked me from the fighting in the nick of time, of the uniforms on the men who stitched back together my skin and sent me into this familiar snow and unfamiliar syntax. A shudder—of cold, I pretend to myself—xylophones up my spine. 

At the trailless far edge of the clearing, tree shadows stretch, warning us away. I wish to heed them, but I do not suggest again that we backtrack, do not use the word lost. It would change only his mood, I think, not his mind. 

“Looks like a dog.” The print he points to is larger than my mittened hand, tipped with crisp triangle claws. Here, under drooping cedar branches, blood and feathers mark the snow. 

“Wolf,” I correct him. 

He smiles with too many teeth. “Good thing you’re with me. These woods are dangerous.” 

The commotion now flapping inside me cannot be pretended away; I cannot tell myself it is only butterflies in the stomach. I breathe to trick my heart back into rhythm, breathe to grope toward some floating hope, but all the lift has left my lungs. 

The snow crust holds a pink-stained scallop of wingtips where the bird pushed off. I know I cannot join in her escape; gravity has cracked me open and pinned down my pieces. I can only squint to the now-silent sky, wishing her safe in the deepening blue.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

My nephew Moe is hungover. Even though he’s only 17, I had him sample the product last night. That way, he knows what he’s hawking. Before he took each Troll Shot, he stroked the Troll’s long, colorful hair as if apologizing for unscrewing the top of its head and downing the liquor inside. Moe moves in slow motion, but he’s a good kid.

From behind the steering wheel, I explain All 4 Fun’s business model to Moe as he loads the final box of Troll Shots in the back of the company van. “Nostalgia sells, baby,” I say, turning the key in the ignition. Moe climbs into the passenger seat. I agreed to hire him last week when his dad, my younger brother, threatened to kick him out if he didn’t get a job after dropping out.

Moe unfolds the day’s itinerary and reads aloud the first stop, Pair-a-Dice. I mostly deliver to dive bars. Their clientele fits our demographic of both remembering these things and liking to get plastered. I pull away from the curb, the sound of whiskey sloshing inside the Trolls’ plastic bodies.

I told my brother it was an orientation when he dropped Moe off last night. I almost invited him up for a drink before I thought better of it, thought of the ensuing lecture. Instead, I flipped my punk-ass little brother off as his BMW rounded the block. 

Drunk, Moe and I talked about how I came up with the idea after seeing an old photo of his dad’s Troll village, about how his dad had built the village outside our house with tree bark during a summer in the early ‘90s, about how I’d kept the neighborhood boys from destroying it and him.

“Old meets new,” I said, bringing a Troll and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s together.

Moe crashed on my futon. I texted my brother that Moe was spending the night so we could get an early start in the morning, and he just sent back a thumbs-up. I wanted to reply with how hammered Moe had gotten, with how we’d shit-talked him the whole night. I even typed a few words before deleting them.

My little bro wasn’t always such a dick. When we were kids, he was tethered to me like a shadow. I’d sit on a lawn chair inside our parents’ old garage, and he’d show me his Trolls, would tell me what job each of them had in the village. When we got older, we even hit the bars a few times. I’d order a pitcher of Budweiser, never letting him pay his half, and we’d discuss some sports team’s chances and other pointless bullshit that wasn’t so pointless since we were together. 

Then he got a job selling insurance, started drinking red wine, started pretending he came from somewhere he didn’t. He started telling me to buy this insurance policy or invest in this mutual fund as if he knew what was best, like a little bit of money somehow made him better than me. 

After stopping at McDonald’s for a greasy cure to Moe’s hangover, I drive into Pair-a-Dice’s parking lot. On their signage, dice hang like coconuts from a faded palm tree. Inside, a few drunks are already sipping on tallboys, surrounded by license plates mounted on the walls. Moe carries in a couple boxes of Troll Shots stacked one atop the other, while I head to the back to collect our check.

I knock on the door to the back office and imagine the bar manager handing me a check with a one followed by an infinite number of zeros written on it. I imagine tearing the check in half in front of my brother to show him how much I care about money, to show him that who he’s become isn’t that special. 

Someone shouts, “Weren’t you ever taught to share?”

I rush back into the bar. One of the drunks has Moe pinned in the corner next to the ATM with one hand while he paws through a box of Troll Shots with the other. I grab the drunk by the back of his shirt and fling him to the sawdust-covered floor. The box of Troll Shots he was digging through rips open, and Trolls scatter everywhere like fleeing villagers.

“I’m here,” I say, trying to put the box back together, trying to fix what’s broken.

Moe looks at me, but I see my little brother. Old meets new, I think, and I’m back in my parents’ garage. A bully dusts himself off, staggers to his bike, and pedals away. I promise my brother I’ll always be there for him, no matter what, and I gather up the trolls, careful not to grip them by the hair.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Not prayers nor writing lines nor even palms caned bloody would be enough to discipline Savvas, the worst student of our class, Ms. Antoniou said. So she made him stand in the corner of our classroom balanced on one leg with his back turned to us, and this lasted for years.

This is the only way children like him learn to behave, Ms. Antoniou said regretfully as she sealed the classroom from the rest of the school, and the world. Seated dutifully at our desks, we watched her swallow the key.

Christmas holidays came and when it snowed outside, we made miniature snowmen on the windowsill, then saved the water in empty crayon baskets for drinking. Easter followed and a bird left us its eggs to decorate with pastel watercolors before frying them on hot metal during a sunny day. School closed for summer break, and we stayed then also, sending paper planes out to our parents, saying we hoped they had fun on their vacations to seaside villages or mountain ones, kiss our grandparents for us but, no, we can’t come with because we’re being obedient, we are good examples for bad classmates to mimic, and aren’t our parents proud of us?

They sent back postcards sometimes, if their busy schedules allowed them, until they too forgot about us like the janitor and head teacher and principal already had. And we forgot about ourselves, our former selves, growing taller, surpassing every marking on every height chart of past first graders, then that of the second and third and fourth graders, the fifth, the sixth, and then there were no charts left in this classroom to surpass. But despite our best efforts, our bodies were diligent things, they didn’t stop growing until we wondered if we would be tall enough our heads would pierce through the roof.

Years passed in clusters of hours and days and weeks. We learned arithmetic until we discovered our own math theorems; soon we could recite all our classroom’s books forward and backward, and we invented new directions of recitation until we needed no other nourishment to sustain us; we could chew inked paper and spew out answers to the universe. Early on, the other teachers had climbed rickety ladders to our barred windows to slip us food and water and other contraband, but those offerings had trickled to a stop long ago. We watched the class’s pet rabbit grow old and die, and we sucked the marrow from its skeleton, fighting over the most fragile of bones.

What else did we do?

We danced, we bickered, we married each other and made fake flower crowns out of colorful paper. And someone put a wreath on Savvas’s head too as he wobbled on his one-legged perch. We thought he might fall but he didn’t. There, on the white-chalk-dusted and pencil-shavings-strewn floor, he flamingo-balanced as we slept curled under our desks with our old backpacks as pillows.

And when Ms. Antoniou grew old and died like our pet rabbit had, we wheeled her corpse upon her teacher’s chair so that it faced the opposite corner Savvas did. This was the only gift we knew how to give him. Soon our teacher was bones and we fashioned flutes out of them. We sang, we all danced together while Savvas swayed. But no one dared talk to him, if he could still talk, and some of us thought he might not have a face at all anymore, on account of us not having seen it in so long, his features slipping away from memory. And Savvas’ crimes? His mischief, his disobedience, the reasons behind the prayers and the written lines and even the palms caned bloody, why Savvas stood in the corner on one leg facing the wall? Well.

We forgot those, too. 

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson