In depth: a collection of short stories on Queer Adolescence

This thesis is a collection of fiction short stories written over the course of my undergrad degree, with some produced particularly for this project. In these stories, I explore themes that are of particular interest to me, including, queer adolescence and the intersections between queerness and religion. It also explores death and haunting as an overarching part of almost every story. The purpose is not to posit an explanation for these ideas but rather explore how they affect people's lives and try to share stories that capture the experiences of queer adolescence. The collection will proceed with a critical introduction explaining the connections and influences for the thesis, then will be followed with four stories ranging in length and topic.

IN DEPTH: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES ON QUEER ADOLESCENCE by Natalie Colby A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In English Approved: ___________ Lindsey Drager, PhD Thesis Faculty Supervisor Disa Gambera, PhD Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Scott Black, PhD Chair, Department of English _____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College May 2019 Copyright © 2023 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This thesis is a collection of fiction short stories written over the course of my undergrad degree, with some produced particularly for this project. In these stories, I explore themes that are of particular interest to me, including, queer adolescence and the intersections between queerness and religion. It also explores death and haunting as an overarching part of almost every story. The purpose is not to posit an explanation for these ideas but rather explore how they affect people’s lives and try to share stories that capture the experiences of queer adolescence. The collection will proceed with a critical introduction explaining the connections and influences for the thesis, then will be followed with four stories ranging in length and topic. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 1 GLOSS 11 THE SAME PATH 17 ALWAYS ONLY PARTIALLY 27 ANALOGOUS 41 iii 1 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION My sophomore year of college was a strange time; I was coming back to campus after living for five months in Provo, Utah, an otherworldly place. During this time I changed my major drastically from communications to Political Science and Sociology. I had just come out to my parents and my course load for the next year was a two-semester long and nine-credit total, novel writing class. I had previously taken an intro creative writing course and had written my share of the beginnings of novels as a child, but this was my first serious dive into creative writing, and it changed my college, and honestly my life trajectory. The task was daunting, 10 pages a week for an entire academic year. I did not have the most ideas about what I could write for nearly 300 pages, so I wrote what I know: being gay and growing up Mormon. At the conclusion of the class, I met with my professor and we talked about my future as a student and a writer; I mentioned my desire to go to law school and Michael Gills suggested instead I pursue an MFA. This moment changed a lot, it made me confident that my professor saw me worthy and even talented but it also helped me see the joy and passion I had for writing, how fulfilling this class was, and how much I learned about myself. I also dropped my sociology major and declared an English major. Although that novel is not included in this, it is crucial to my beginnings as a writer and my desire to write about deeply personal things. Throughout my creative writing classes, I’ve noticed a trend that I found to be slightly funny, slightly frustrating. Frequently, it was very hard for my not queer classmates to read between the lines and understand that there was something deeper happening in 2 most of my stories. This inspired me to write more stories that maybe only queer students would really understand because flagging and subtleness is such a deeply embedded aspect of queer culture. I realized this power when I did a reading of the first chapter of my novel for a group of professors and writers. While each professor commented on my work, there was one that said something to the effect that she and the character might have something in common, that there was an unspoken connection there. There was little in that first chapter to indicate that the character was queer, but one person could see that slight evidence and connect with it, and that was beautiful. In many ways, this thesis is explicitly queer but I hope as you read it, you can see how these standalone stories specifically connect to the queer community, how if you’re queer you might see the connection a few pages earlier than it appears in the story or see a character’s queerness before they can even see themselves. These stories are directly informed by these experiences and the work I produced in my novel writing class. This thesis is an amalgamation of work I’ve produced throughout my undergrad. As I wrote these pieces and other work in my undergrad, there became a clear collection of ideas that I was fascinated with. Each story deals with the experience of queer adolescence in a unique way. There is a line in the final story that I feel captures the feelings of the entire short story collection. The narrator watches a teenage girl, “Oscillating between the joy and pain of being who she was.” There is a particular joy in learning about your own queerness, finding a word or a place you finally feel at home in, but also realizing all the pain that you might soon encounter or even that you might cause. It’s important to me to capture these experiences because queer adolescence is often erased in many people’s minds. As they grow and struggle to figure out who they 3 are, queer people are least visible to the world around them. These experiences are crucial and life-changing and yet often they are so secret. For me, I experienced a variation of these things with a conviction that I was straight. In many ways, I was the unreliable narrator in my own life. As a teenager, I was tightlipped about my sexuality, and also very confused, I dated guys and told them I liked them. Even as I grew up, rage and frustration about the circumstances frequently clouds my interpretation of events, I place unfair judgment on people who were just trying their best and hold a lot of grudges and anger for those times in my life. Similar to many queer people, I did not get to live those foundational years fully as myself. The period filled with pivotal moments of codependent toxic homoerotic friendships, fear of being found out, and the excitement when things feel right for the first time, was something I lived mostly in silence or hiding. These deeply personal and life-shaping experiences heavily inspired this collection as well. All of the stories also deal with religious issues and the complicated connection between religion and queerness. As someone who grew up in the Mormon church, the experience distinctly affected my relationship with my sexuality and the rest of my life. I think it’s impossible to discuss queerness without touching on the complicated way that religion and social influences have on queerness as an identity. The Mormon church is especially staunch in its position that marriage is between only a man and a woman. There were many Sunday school classes I sat through that discussed “hating the sin, but loving the sinner.” My experiences in Mormonism deeply altered my ability to accept my sexuality and stunted my ability to feel my emotions. The prevalence of Christianity in the United States, especially in Texas where I grew up, and the state of Utah where I now 4 live, makes it impossible to discuss queerness without placing it in the context of the way Christianity constantly attacks it. Most of the anxiety surrounding queerness in the stories is surrounded by a church component, whether it specifically is the Mormon church or a more ambiguous Christianity. The characters are forced to confront their relationship with something so juxtaposed to the beliefs that surround them and question if they belong in the place that holds those beliefs so strongly. As many queer people historically have, these characters live “double” lives in a way. One way this is highlighted in the stories is through mirrors or foils of the main character in the characters that surround them. These companions in each narrative serve a different purpose for each story, but they help the reader see what might be missing in the characters' lives or the things they are most afraid of. There are many things that characters can not see in themselves, whether it be from stubbornness or denial, their mirror characters show them what they might dislike in themselves or not be able to see. Whether, it's through a friend, a love interest, a ghost, or another version of themselves, characters are forced to face people who highlight characteristics they both share, and they must grapple with it. Each story has a central character of a teenage girl discovering, exploring, or denying her queerness. The last 3 stories of the collection deal heavily with more intense subjects surrounding death, including potential issues of suicide and the afterlife. Death is a very strange thing, some people view it as a neutral inevitability in life, others an insurmountable tragedy. We often view death differently based on how old a person is when they pass or the level of tragedy and pain they encounter while they die. Religion is also so deeply connected to death, most religions focus on where you will go after you 5 die, and therefore prescribe a way to live while you’re on earth. Without the idea of an afterlife, what happens after you die becomes much more ambiguous and even scary. The stories deal with this concept, but also what it may feel like to feel dead while you’re still alive. In each piece, the story is connected deeply, but the forms vary widely in their own unique way, some move backward, others move through a repetitive calming exercise, and others move between the present day and the past that a character is working through, and other’s have more of a frame narrative. Through the form, it is my hope that different form types, and storylines that deal with similar issues, tell a unique story with different characters. In the following sections, I will discuss each story individually and also the forms I used, and how I hope the reader receives them. The first story, “Gloss,” tries to capture the feeling of anxiety and excitement of experiencing one’s first relationship or queer experiences. It is very rooted in reality and contemporary issues to help the reader get a good sense of what issues and feelings they will be encountering throughout the entire collection. It works through a repetitive structure of a therapy exercise that is meant to calm someone down when they are feeling particularly anxious. The form is meant to create a repetitive nature throughout the story, it gives it rhythm and also strings the feeling of anxiety throughout the whole piece without the narrator having to constantly remind the reader. The first time the narrator “works” through the exercise, it is surrounded by the anxiety she feels from some religious news, but the second time she goes through the exercise it's about excitement and some fear surrounding a crush she had on a girl. The contrast helps show the conflicting feelings within the narrator. The story concludes on the final part of the 6 exercise and leaves the reader with a finished narrative but not all the questions to be answered. The next story that the reader will encounter, “The Same Path,” captures the feeling of a friendship that toes the line of more than platonic. The characters are purposefully nameless to really try and capture the almost universal experience of queer people to have a friend that everyone can look to and see the deep, almost romantic connection, but to the character, it’s simply a friend that they care pretty deeply care about and were devastated and listening to break up songs when they stop being friends. The story starts from past the end, where the main character is dealing with some complex feelings and the reader moves backward through what leads up to this concluding moment. This form allows the reader to understand the feelings of the main character in the light of the tragic events that occur, and then as the story progresses backward the character understands the feelings within the context of the relationship that used to exist. The time of the story is messed with, while the actual time takes place moving forward, the direction moves backward and this allows the reader to build the story from the saddest part to a moment of hope. This story takes a much darker take on the experience and attempts to explore those complex feelings without a definitive answer about what they mean. “Always Only Partially” is less about a young girl's relationship with another person, and more about her relationship with herself. Adolescence haunts me, who I once was is nowhere close to who I am now, and I often struggle to reconcile those two people, as it does many other people. This story channels the things that haunt this character, the things that they once experienced and can’t escape but can’t really 7 remember either. It also tries to capture the way the character has to live to survive, to push away the feelings and emotions because they are entirely too much to handle, and end up losing sight of themself. The story shifts between two narrators who are the same person, one who feels so disconnected from the other person, that it’s practically two separate people. There is a back-and-forth between this disconnected narrator and the narrator that previously experienced her life, at the end the two begin to depart even further and the separation becomes more easily described for the reader. The story slowly departs from a reality that the reader might be familiar with. “Echo,” the last story was built deeply from my experiences in the Mormon church. One specific thing about the church that frequently gives people pause is the ordinances for the dead. This is meant to be a way to help people who have died make it to the highest tier of heaven, in this, someone gets baptized or does the ordinance in someone else’s name. This highly controversial experience is very crucial to this story. I’m particularly fascinated with what happens when you die and how convinced many religions are that they’ve gotten it right. Growing up in the Mormon church, I had many specific conceptions about where I might go when I die, a specific heaven or a spirit life. As I left the church, I began to wonder more about what the afterlife might entail. I frequently downward spiral about the idea of simply not existing after dying but similarly, before I left the church, I would spiral about the thought of living forever, of failing to make it to the highest spot in heaven, of never being worthy enough. This story attempts to grapple with both of those feelings through the most unlikely narrator of all of the stories. I thought it would be interesting for someone to witness these deeply personal experiences and realize in real time with one of the characters that they are queer. The 8 spectral, haunting, and death are other big themes in the stories. As someone who has frequently lived in fear of ghosts, this was an interesting twist to take among the stories, however, it feels very appropriate to try to tackle and understand these things that I deeply fear. This final story was written specifically for this thesis and I really wanted to get weirder when writing it than I had in previous works, so I really leaned into the more supernatural aspects of it. There were many stories and even a whole novel's worth of writing that did not make the cut for this thesis but, throughout my undergraduate, I have deeply grown as a writer and learned a lot about what makes a good story. I think powerful stories stand the test of time, they allow you to read them years later and still feel something. I read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson as a seventh grader, 65 years after it was published, I was sick to my stomach from the picture that the author painted of a seemingly normal town that is slowly revealed to be involved in murderous activities. Even now, the narrative gives me the creeps, but it tells such a timeless story, the fear of a society so cruel and emotionless rings true in every reader's mind. A good story also is something that you can identify with. This doesn’t mean vagueness though, a good story is so specific that it is universal, to be clear I heard this in a writing class and didn’t come up with it on my own but I think it's true. The stories throughout this collection are at times, incredibly specific experiences, but I know that in describing unique stories, people can in turn relate to the specificity within it. In the most contradictory way possible, a well-executed story is also up for interpretation and ambiguous. Samantha Schweblin’s Mouthful of Birds is a peculiar experience and the reader must grapple with the question if this young girl is actually 9 eating birds, and more importantly, what that could possibly mean. I have no idea what the purpose or message here was, but the ambiguity made for a very interesting discussion. The moral of the story should not be spelled out for the reader, because that’s too easy, people should be able to read it and gain different insights each time, and each person who reads it should be able to gain something new or different. Frequently, inclass workshops, people would encounter my stories and interpret them in a completely different way than I wrote it but that led to a completely different angle for the story and something much more interesting. Good stories should make you question things. When you finish reading this thesis I hope you’re not left with a nice bow on top of some stories. The conclusion of Yōko Ogawa’s Memory police, the book ends with a very unclear conclusion to a story that raises a lot of questions. In doing this, the magic and confusion of the book, its strongest aspect, remains in that magic. It defies the reader’s expectations in the most unique way, most twists are shocking because of the content, but to not explain the twist at all is even more powerful. Similar to how Ogawa makes the reader question, stories should make the reader question things about their perception of the world when they finish. I hope that when you read these pieces, you can understand something new but also have more questions than answers. Finally, good stories should be at least a little weird. I used to be very tied to the idea of realism and concrete ideas within my writing, I think this is evident in the first story in my collection. But I’ve learned the value in something that is just so bizarre, something that combines all the other important aspects in a story but they put in a package that captures a new experience. I think frequently of Franz Kafka’s particularly 10 infamous stories — I’ve read one in almost every single creative writing class that I have taken. I think we frequently read them because they were strange, they made you uncomfortable, but they work because of these things not in spite of them. I had to read Bloodchild by Octavia Butler several times to even grasp what was going on. Weird stories linger longer in the brains of the readers and make the reader ask more questions, they remove the reader from the monotony of daily life and they give them a new lens to look through. It is my goal that some of these stories are even a fraction of weird that I think is effective. In writing this thesis and editing my previous work, I’ve realized the power of finding new ways to write stories, the importance of writing stories you relate to, and the success in pushing something past what you could ever imagine it could be. I hope in reading these pages, you gain something if not a new perspective, maybe a new thing you could talk about to your friends, or inspiration for something you want to write — hopefully it's a little weird. I owe a million thanks to my thesis advisor, Lindsey Drager, who has exponentially improved my writing, given me so much of her time, and asked thoughtful questions that have grown what my stories could be. Her time and effort have been crucial to my success not only on this project but in my writing as a whole. 11 Gloss Name five things you can see. That’s what my therapist always said about halting an oncoming panic attack, any anxiety wouldn’t stand a chance against my killer counting and observation skills. All I needed to do was ground myself. Standing in the church bathroom, I noted the white tiles, the tan doors, the girls surrounding me in floor-length floral dresses, my friend talking animatedly across from me, and my toes in my heels turning red from the pressure of standing a little too long. Name four things you could touch. The itchy texture of the dress against my skin, the fake leather skin of my bible in my hand, the cool wall that I used to subtly stabilize myself, and the knots in my hair as I ran my fingers through. “So like I was saying,” my friend continued after moving out of the way for a mother and her daughter to get into the bathroom. “What she was telling me was so crazy, the kind of stuff they had to do to stay in church.” “Do you think it's true?” Denial was always my first line of defense. “Yeah of course, who would lie about that,” Iris said. “They made him like have sex with women, and shit to make him not gay it was so gross.” “Iris, language, we are in church.” 12 “Shut up, but yeah it was so bad to hear about, her brother left the church because they just kept making him try new things to not be gay, like movie stuff, electric shock, and everything, anyways we are late to class let's go.” She stormed out the bathroom door like it was our casual Sunday gossip about who broke up or who wore a bikini over the summer. Not about her friend from church camp whose brother was forced to do conversion therapy to stay in church, not when there was a message from a girl I was flirting with on my phone. Three things you can hear. The children singing some random song about Jesus’ kindness, the run of the water as people washed their hands and left the bathroom, and the beat of my heart in my throat. Deep breaths, 5,4,3,2,1 and then I could go to class. Over and over again, I ignored Mae’s text message asking to hangout. When I could walk out the door without crying, I walked to sunday school and sat down in the cold metal chair right next to Iris. During the opening prayer, I didn’t close my eyes and just stared at the floor counting any small piece of trash. I sat in silence throughout class, mulling over the information that Iris dropped on me 30 minutes earlier. “Obedience to God’s commandments is the best way to ensure your salvation in heaven.” I turned my phone over and over again in my hand, my foot tapped incessantly against the age old carpet, I tried to still it and it would not respect my wishes. Each of my classmates looked unbothered but I couldn’t forget the way Iris said those words so casually, they treated him like a test animal. When the hour hit and church was over, I couldn’t bring myself to wait around and listen to gossip. I rounded up my parents and forced them out the door. 13 Two things you smell, my own deodorant and the summer air as we finally left church. I wondered if they would do that to me. One you taste. The coppery feeling when you kinda think you might throw up. “What did you learn in class today?” “Oh just the basic mom, God loves me but I better follow his rules.” “Vivian, don’t joke about that.” “Sorry, can I go to my friends tonight to study?” “Only if you’re home by 10.” “Ok, I swear.” Mae was over the moon when I texted her I was coming over. There was a twinge in my stomach of happiness and followed by the unsettling truth of where this could lead. I hurried to get ready and threw off the frumpy dress I wore to church every third Sunday. My bathroom mirror caught the six times I put on my mascara, cried it off and reapplied. In between brushing my hair, I would lean over the toilet, feeling the throwup rise and then settle back. When I closed my eyes, I was that random gay guy, being forced to sleep with people I wasn’t attracted to, sitting in a chair with little things connected to me, denying everything I was. Five things you can see. The text message from Mae that said she was baking cookies for my arrival, the array of makeup strewn across the counter, my eyes in the mirror when I stared too long, the pile of clothes I had to try on and pull off and the tissues piled in the trash can. 14 I hurried out the door so my mom wouldn’t see how far my shorts came above my knee, and didn’t bother to grab my backpack on the way out. When I reached her door, I didn’t have to fake a smile. “Come in, hurry” I hurriedly said hello to her parents, before she rushed me up the stairs and closed her door, yelling to her mom that we would be down for dinner in an hour or two. “Nice shorts.” “Thanks, don’t tell my mom I’m a slut.” Mae laughed as she fell on her bed. “How was church?” “Stuffy, boring.” “I can’t imagine why you would still go.” I rolled my eyes and joked it off. Four things you can touch. The smooth blanket on the edge of the bed, the brush of her hand against Mae’s shoulder as they laid next to each other, the different textured pillows, and the side of her face as she rested her palm on it. “Do you want to talk about it?” “No, let’s play a card game.” Mae looked worried but didn’t push, I didn’t want to talk about how damned I would be if the people at church knew the thoughts I was having about her right now. She had little ways of putting words together. We spread the cards in a specific configuration on the bed, Mae tried to explain the rules about it being something like almost solitaire but not alone. 15 “I don’t think I’m picking up on what you’re saying.” “Well just try it.” I did and it didn’t go well, but I wasn’t upset when Mae guided my hand to place the right card in the right place. The game lasted all of five minutes before we were laughing and the cards were spread all over the bed. I settled into her arms and we didn’t acknowledge the way her fingers circled my arm, I swallowed the nerves and touched her stomach mimicking the way she touched my shoulder. Three things. Mae’s heartbeat, the hum of cars passing through the neighborhood, and the music radiating from her family downstairs. This felt more right then earlier that day, I wondered whether or not I could live in constant fear that they would all figure me out at church and punish me accordingly. If they knew how much I enjoyed being in her arms and letting her teach me card games and how often I thought about the way she would wink at me in-between classes and the amount of excuses I would make to hang out with her. “What are you thinking?” She asked me. “Just about that stupid English test tomorrow.” “Mhm right, the stupid English test.” Mae moved closer to my ear as she slid her arm down to my waist. “Not where my arm is right now.” I looked up and smiled, catching her green eyes and eyeing her butterfly collar that popped out from the white vest she was wearing. “What are you really thinking?” Two things. Mae’s minty breath and the strong smell of her lotion that I couldn’t resist. 16 I leaned up to let my lips barely miss hers, like the butterflies on her collar had flown by close enough to feel a swish of air but nothing more and was shocked by my quick breath in. We waited there for moments, neither of us really breathed or moved, not wanting to ruin the moment but wishing it had already happened. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I pushed my head in closer to her lips, waiting for the confirmation, desperate to feel everything I was not supposed to. One thing. The taste of Mae’s lip gloss. 17 The Same Path After her They all asked the question eventually. If not through their mouths, with their eyes. You could see the sick curiosity that arose from it all, the courteous need to offer their condolences but the human need to know why. “Do you think she had a crush on you?” I couldn’t blame them, a gossiper at heart, I would want to know the same thing. Even the cool, progressive art teacher asked me it. 18 “Do you think she had a crush on you?” Anger was a peculiar feeling to have towards your best friend when she died. I had nowhere to go after it happened, just drove around in my honda civic that might crap out at any moment, banging the steering wheel so hard that I thought the doors might fall off. I screamed and closed my eyes mid-drive, everything driver’s ed had taught me not to do. Sometimes I’d even sit at the gas station at the edge of town, hoping to catch a glimpse of her inside. There was no catharsis though, the pain only grew more unbearable and the anger did too. “Do you think she had a crush on you?” As if her tragic flaw was being a lesbian and not being born into this god-forsaken town. When it all ended 19 No one forgot anything here, their big 80’s hair held all the secrets from decades past. They would never forget the lesbian who drove off the one bridge in our town the moment the last note in the graduation march was hit. We had to last one more month and we would’ve left for college. They shut the bridge down and wrote about it in the newspaper. I wish I would’ve heard about it in the newspaper, not from her scream and my out-of-body plea. She was mad again, something about me going to play volleyball with some friends without her, something about not being focused enough on leaving, and how she wasn’t sure if she could even do one more month. There was nothing else, and the car was filling up with water. The people around me wouldn’t call it what it was, they were too scared of what they would have driven her to. It was always her tire or the streetlight they never fixed, they were too scared to call it what it was. In all honesty, maybe I was too. Just before the end I got a boyfriend, he was nice and he was funny. We liked to go watch movies at the AMC. I let him hold my hand but we did not interlock fingers. She didn’t like him, refused to talk to me for days because I was “way out of his league and I can’t even believe you would stoop so low.” My parents loved him and he made my little sister laugh. She got mad at me more often, and I couldn't go anywhere without a nagging mom talking about grades, church or a boyfriend that wanted to hang out. I wanted to make it better, I saw the pain in her eyes when I talked about him, when I considered hanging 20 around for much longer after graduation. She wanted to hang out, I did too, but I had to go to his baseball game and she didn’t care for sports. We argued more and everytime she looked betrayed by my feelings, like I was abandoning, her, our future, our dreams for a relationship that would be over During her The week before the start of our senior year, she told everyone. I was happy for her, that’s what allies should be. No one else was happy for her, her parents were jerks and we cried on my bed, her head in my lap. I wiped her tears. I felt something else I couldn’t quite place, it made my stomach sink and I despised her almost a bit. All it did was make our lives harder, people started asking me if we were dating and I had to reassure them too often that we were just friends. People started to gossip about where the parenting went wrong or how she must’ve lost a few marbles around the way, people started to see me and her as the same. “So when are you going to come out?” she half-joked. I got mad, it was fine if she was gay but I wasn’t and it pissed me off that she thought so. “I don’t like those jokes.” “I’m not really joking.” She stared right into my soul, trying to tease out some information that wasn’t there. “Why would you say that?” I couldn’t breathe, I wanted out of here. 21 “C’mon, you know why. The summer, the hand holding the star gazing” “Those are friend things” “Are they really?” She sat up and leaned in closer to me, hovering barely over my face. I knew they were friend things only, I wanted to lean in with all my friends. Friends wanted to hang out for days on end, sure it was love but it was a platonic one. I couldn’t even force out a yes. We sat so close I thought that we might merge into one person, skin melting together, that we might become more inseparable than we already were. “Do you want them to be friend things?” I was scared to utter the words but I had no choice, not when she stared into my soul like that. “What do you think?” She leaned in even closer, my heart raced but I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t right, I don’t think you’re supposed to feel like dying when you see your friends face, I don’t think you’re supposed to always miss them or feel jealousy when they go on a date. I don’t think you’re supposed to want to lean in and close the gap. “Oh my god stop it, I’m not gay” She sat back hurt by my tone. I knew I had gone too far but it was all I could do to maintain my sanity. “Ok sorry, I’ll just go.” I wish I didn’t let her leave, I know she cried that night. Somewhere in the middle 22 Summer in the south was warm, she always donned a sundress and floppy hats to avoid burning. We laid in the field on the days when we didn’t have to work at the local gas station. Shoulder to shoulder, the places where our skin touched burned for hours. Her dress would swish at her knees and she would dance around until she was out of breath and then she would flop down back next to me. “Why do you never dance with me?” “I’d rather watch you?” “Lame excuse.” When we worked she wore a polo with a logo on her right tit, her nipples sat below it and I couldn’t help but stare. She hated wearing bras. Every guy that came in flirted with her, some even left their numbers and she was polite but never interested. The gas station was often the busiest place in town, the last place someone would hit before filling up on gas and soda and skipping out on the shithole. We would eavesdrop, winking at each other when we heard something to share on the drive home, people would talk about their parent’s affairs, traveling to the next town over to get an abortion, their road trips up north to try and escape the heat. The real juicy gossip was when they would talk about the people that made it out, we’d tune in and try to write everything down in our memories about how they did it, how we could maybe escape this place, together. After we locked the register, we drank slurpees and I would watch the drink drip down her chin and her neck and wonder how the cherry flavor would taste when mixed with her skin. I always let her choose the music, she had much better taste than me and it made her smile. The roads were in perpetual construction and so even in our sad excuse for a 23 town there was plenty of traffic to share the gossip from every person in our high school. We couldn’t wait to leave. We drove around aimlessly, the dice on my rearview mirror got dirty from leaving the windows down, my back seat was littered with sonic cups. We would lean the seats back when we found a new place to park and turn to each other, sometimes we would talk, other times I’d let her run her fingers down my arm and we would just look at each other. The DQ blizzards in the cup holder would melt and the seats would still be reclined. One night she convinced me to sneak out to go to a party, we got lost on the way there. I think she might have purposefully taken me on wrong turns. The stars were bright and we climbed on top of my car, her skirt was shorter than her sundresses normally were and it kept creeping up her legs. Her legs were long, anyone could see it, but I stared extra long that night. The way they dented and curved, they were perfectly tanned and I might’ve touched them that night. Just slightly above the knee, then her calf. She nodded when I looked tentatively, I wanted more, her skin was electric. I was glad we didn’t make it to the party. That summer went on for years. We always returned to the fields where her laugh would echo. The grass was brown and crunchy from the sun, we learned to bring a fluffy blanket so we couldn’t feel the pricklyness of it. We watched the cars whizz by and she would make up stories about all the people that blew through our town. Her mascara would smudge from the sweat and I would swipe my finger under her eyes to clean it off. Our hair would get frizzy and I would drop her off looking like we had just rolled around making out for hours. Our lips never did touch, though, what a ridiculous thought, I don’t even know why I’d mention it. 24 I wish that summer was longer. In the beginning She sat next to me in our required drama class, I’d seen her around but wasn’t one to step out of my comfort zone and try to make friends with pretty girls who might ignore me. She was much better than I could’ve ever been at acting, her words held emotions and I was just trying to read the required words without stumbling over them. The first day she asked for a ride home and I was happy to oblige. No one who spent that much time putting on elaborate eyeshadow should be forced to sweat it off on the district bus. It was the only day that she had to direct me through the turns, how could I forget the way she said, “left here.” I almost missed it the first time and she grabbed my upper arm as we whipped around the corner, lingering to help direct me further. When we pulled up to her house, she didn’t go inside. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned in the seat and crossed her legs. “Do you hate it here too?” “In my car? Damn, right after I gave you a ride.” “No in this town, state, region, godforsaken place.” “I mean, of course, who doesn’t?” “Just making sure we're on the same page.” She winked and hopped out of the car, skipping to the door, leaving me in the driver’s seat utterly hopeless and only wanting to see her again. 25 Before her It was 6 months after my sixteenth birthday when my parents gifted me the car. It was not much of a gift, more of a situation where they were getting fed up with driving me around and if they got me a car I could take my little sister to school. It also meant I could sit at the gas station. I could dream about the days I would fly past it, with everything I owned in that back seat. I could watch the pretty girl smoke outside on the bench, I wasn’t sure she was old enough to do so, but I guess when you work behind the counter, no one checks what you grab. She took another drag, and tried to blow it out looking cool, but then she coughed so hard she dropped the cigarette. She wiped her mouth, and threw the cigarette in the trash. She looked around, like she hoped no one had seen her fail, but she quickly found my eyes. We locked gazes, and a smile grew on her face, she gave me a knowing wink, and I almost dropped the granola bar in my hand. When she headed back in, I threw my car into reverse as quickly as possible, my stomach turned like she figured me out. I knew her, because everyone knew her, she was a little more crazy than the average teenager in the neighborhood, she stopped going to church way before, because people loved to talk about anyone who was different. Everyone knew her, but at that moment, I was scared that maybe she knew me too, really knew me. 26 27 Always Only Partially If screaming into the void was productive, you might no longer find me there on the precipice of life and emptiness. You might instead see me fleeing back into the body I seem to float in and out of, a shadow of myself to many, and a person to more, but hollow to myself. No one tells you about the burden of haunting your own life, torn between the duties of cursing each step and dreaming of a better future. Some days, I felt my other self, the one that holds me back, waning, somewhere farther, almost out of reach, and I could walk faster and listen to people when they talked. I could hear music better and the sound of a leaf crunching would put a smile on my face. But most days it consumed me and yet left me soulless and empty, leaving the body to stand up only through the bones placed carefully together and a promise to stay very still. Some days I could remember what it would be like to grow up, to still have a grasp on who I was and what I felt. 28 — In the eyes of a thirteen year old, there might not be much more exciting than an ice skating birthday party. Donned in my finest sweatpants and thinnest scarf, I knew that I looked cool on the ice. “Look, I don’t even need the wall.” My arms were covered in goosebumps but I knew my outfit looked much better sans jacket, but I also kept it off to avoid impending sweat stains. There was a chill through my nose and red that grew on my cheeks. In the corner, my mom sat with a smile. She didn’t like to participate in these things but she would watch them with a careful gaze, take several photos that I was insistent on. She happily drove us there and today she didn’t seem annoyed by my off tune singing too much. The thrill of having friends and growing up was not lost. My friends and I sat and giggled at the older skater’s and their cool personalized skates. Linking arms, we skated leisurely around the rink, commenting on everyone’s skills compared to our confident efforts. “We should be ice skaters.” “I was actually thinking we should.” “Ok what would your costume look like?” “The rhinestones would be gold and the shade of the top half would be a bluey purple…” 29 Some actual skaters' jazz music routine played over the speaker, and we swayed and curved our hands to mimic her graceful movements. The ice smelled more chemicalesque than water, and we made sure to look out for the shavings that flew up and hit my arms. The rink was full of like minded children, trying to get a semblance of cold in the hot summer and the outside was lined with parents, ready to be back at home and away from the squealing. We had planned for a pizza dinner and a sleepover, which would inevitably include an ice skating movie that would further inspire our farfetched goals. In one less smooth turn, I caught on a divet in the ice, I felt my stomach sink and I floundered trying to stay up but instead grabbed my friend's arm, until we both hit the ground. Trying to brace impact, my hands went down first and I hit the solid ice. My palms were scraped and stung in a bearable but distinct pain, the same as when I’d skidded across concrete. Pushing up from the cold ice, the burning increased, my hip certainly started to form a bruise, the air was harder to get into my lungs, and when I looked over to my friend, there was a gleam in her eyes because we’d both gone down together, and I saw her shoulders move with joy. I couldn’t tell if my cheeks hurt from smiling or the cold, but there was a settling feeling to the way we laughed. — If I could remember those times, it was a good thing. If I could feel like that thirteen year old was me, that might be even better. If I could look at the people across from me and know them, really know them and sit there and describe what it felt like and see everything as someone who was actually here might see it, then I might be less likely to be unwillingly removed from my body. 30 Part of me likes to be bifurcated, part of me likes how there are seemingly no responsibilities and how I can pretend to not exist, but then part of me, the part that is desperate to crawl back home, feels guilty. To exist without aiding the other part of me, the real part, the one that has to go through conversations and pretend to listen and pretend like she has enough effort to care, was a hell of a sin. When she was an aging teenager, I could look at her and care less, but when I saw her as a child, it seemed much more cruel to abandon her. I squeezed my eyes and attempted to feel, I attempted to be careless and tangible. I tried to focus on the feeling of my pants against my legs and if I picked at the hangnail beside my nail, it would bring me back. It’s as if I was a puppeteer for my own body, I knew which strings to pull to move the legs forward or open a door, but I couldn’t change the expression on my face or the fact that my head was filled with cotton stuffing, something too thick to push anything through. — When I hit the last semester of my senior year of high school, my mom started to pack my lunch again. She had not done that since I was in the fourth grade. This was a futile attempt to keep me from slipping away. I guess control was the reason she would not allow me to skip on senior skip day, why when I cried to her about church, she made me get up, put on a dress and smile, sit with my ankles crossed, stockings covering my legs. Why I could not call any one of my friends' parents by their first names and why I had to take smaller bites when I ate and gossip less about my cousins. 31 Every car ride back from a soccer game, we sat silently. Today was no different, I would play songs, she would get mad when there was a curse word, I would try to hurriedly change the music. My little sister was always asleep silently in the back seat. My phone was almost dead and my mother seemed angry that I couldn’t even do that right. There were moments when she would look over and then quickly shift her eyes back to the road, I knew she saw the tears and when there was a moment when I had to blow my nose, I swear she laughed. I tried to not let my shoulders move, to stifle any noise that might accompany the pain, I pressed my mouth into my folded arms. “You’re not even officially rejected yet,” she huffed. “Okay, yes I’m sorry.” For months, I had waited to hear back about the pre-review of my college application, anxious and excited to leave home and become the person I was meant to be and go to that “liberal hell hole,” that my parents couldn’t morally justify giving their money to. I couldn’t wait to become everything they detested. It seemed implausible and bleak now. They hadn’t been confident in my ability to get in and now I doubted it so much as well. It frustrated me that she was right, I wasn’t rejected yet, but I had gotten a “possibly” which was significantly less confident of an admission team than a “likely” and only slightly more confident than a “not likely.” What it really meant was that I was not the worst possible candidate, but I definitely was not good enough to actually get in. I tried to look out the window, to not let my tears make her uncomfortable, but some selfish part of me wanted to be louder so she couldn’t continue to ignore me. I 32 wanted her to see what it was like to feel and be hurt. I wanted to remember moments in her life that felt so completely hope crushing. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t pray for you to not get in?” “Yes Mom, that’s so good of you.” It might’ve been a joke, I couldn’t tell. We drove and out the window pictures of suburban life blurred into other cars, and then back into different collections of strip malls and churches. We didn’t talk about anything. There didn’t appear to be any empathy on her cold face, it did not move except to ask me my plans for the next day. I silently pleaded for a sign that she felt things besides annoyance and anger towards me. That, maybe there was an ounce of sympathy for my pain, but she mainly seemed frustrated at the other drivers. Certainly, I was dramatic. Certainly, I lacked common sense and a bigger perspective. Certainly, being rejected from a college is a boringly typical frustration. And most definitely, I should consider how much harder other people’s lives were. And yet that predictor earlier, that subtle rejection and way of telling me that it would never happen, never come to fruition, felt like a death sentence. In the passenger seat, I tried to disappear, stay very still and just wait till I stopped crying, wait till it started to fade, if I tried hard enough, I could make the feelings disappear. I could not have to want to feel heard, I could just not feel. — If I breathed too hard, they might hear me, lying awake in bed, contemplating how to move on, how to move forward. When I woke up, they wanted me out of bed at 5 am 33 sharp. They wanted me to smile more, dress better and do more. I swear they could see all the secrets in my head. Each time we made eye contact it was as if they were reading my thoughts out loud, as if I was terribly bad at remaining discreet and they were being courteous because they did not expose me. Most nights I wanted to sink into the mattress, disappear from myself and everything around me. If I really tried I could succeed, but always only partially, I could separate so much that I could stand in front of my mirror and see nothing but a faint outline of what might be a creature, one look behind, however, would show me laying in my bed, trying to stay still while tears ran into my ears. They did not know yet how they might be disappointed in me, they didn’t know how far I wanted to be from what they wanted. — When they dropped me off at school, they smiled, but they ground their teeth behind their lips, desperate to ask me something about how I could do this to them, how I could break their heart with no concern or regard. My parents never really heard me when I spoke or really listened to what any words meant. I had told them lots of things last night, a last ditch effort to try and feel like myself, I thought I would be honest. And if I was hundreds of miles away, they couldn’t make a big deal about it. I tried to tell them in a way they might be receptive to, a calm, straight face with a slight smile. These were the unspoken rules of sharing hard news. “Hey so I don’t think I’m going to go to church once I get there.” “Alright we cannot control you.” “And maybe I might date a few girls.” 34 “Ok well we love you anyways” And then we went to bed, and we woke up when the alarm rang at 8 am, piled into the car and drove me to college. We spoke about what classes I will be taking and what jobs I might apply to on campus. We absolutely did not breach the topics of last night’s conversation. I was sure that in a few weeks I would hear all the terrible things they said from my sister. “Well, here’s your stop.” The next half of the day unpacking the car and I tried to remember that this was going to be my life for the next four months. They were not happy about where I went to college, I was not particularly thrilled either. The room was plain, the world around was filled with other students who shouted and cried in the parking lot saying goodbye and invited their neighbors over already to show them the decorations. While others socialized in the hallway, I just was trying to make my stomach stop flipping, I tried to make it all stop. Somehow my parents had mastered the ability to enter the most emotional seemingly amazingly unaffected. That’s how they got you, they’d pretend to not care, they’d act like it didn’t matter and then some days, they would tell you that they are ashamed of you. While we’d never had a lesson on it, I had learned there were many methods to this sort of fucked-up zen state that put you out of the misery of feeling a full range of emotions, some conscious and some unconscious and when combined, it was like a bad mix of meds. The main tool is distraction, think about something else, anything else, read a book, go workout, do homework, anything. If it was too much emotion for just distraction, you had to actively work against it, making sure that the emotions did not 35 seem real and therefore they couldn’t affect you. This one was a bit harder but much more effective. The most successful was when your body took over and did it for you, it erased any human-like ability to feel and replaced it with a peaceful nothingness. And it was satisfying and yet, it was not anything anyone would ever hope for. I wanted it so bad, but when I achieved it, I felt gross and wrong, and most importantly terrifying. My mom gave me a tight hug, but it felt like she was trying to cling onto someone I used to be, not the person I was now. “You be good now, make me proud.” There wasn’t any conviction in her voice, and it faded with the last word. “Yeah, of course, I can try.” They couldn’t see how I had changed, how I had tried to become something new, but failed to maintain any semblance of who I once was. In my dorm, I hung up photos that I hand-selected from my album of high school memories that were worth keeping around. She was skinnier, and her hair was longer, she had dared to wear out a shorter skirt that her parents wouldn’t approve of. Then, rebelling was fun. It was inconsequential. It was not yet a soul-crushing necessity. She was smiling big and the people around her seemed happy to be there, wanting to be around her. There was more color in her cheeks and a confidence that she was a cool and kind and funny person. And she stood tall, wrapped her arm around others, she was still all there. There was someone in her eyes, a personality and even joy. The next photo went up. She was smiling after a basketball game standing next to her parents. Her dad was pointing at her holding a basketball after she had won her first game sophomore year. I could almost remember the feelings. She was sweaty, and had 36 removed her shoes, and the photo was blurry, like she couldn’t stand still. The background is a gym, recognizable, one I have been in so many times before and yet, she still wasn’t me. It had been six hours since they left. I washed away the road trip and that final hug from my mom in the communal shower. There was a flimsy curtain that failed to hold in any of the water, but provided a small amount of privacy. I, then, got in bed, knowing that if I cried, they wouldn’t be able to hear me all those states away. I would no longer be who they wanted me to and in return, I would no longer be someone I recognized. Only in my future would they verbalize their hatred, say all the things they wished I did and how I had failed them, they didn’t see it coming but I did. They had not done it yet but I knew they would. They preached of unconditional love and I couldn’t believe it. I swear there was something different in their eyes. I couldn’t bear the feelings that flooded, it made me twist and turn and want to distort my body. Disappointing them was unbearable, the reality that whatever I dreamed of as a child was never going to come true made me feel once again helpless and unconfident. I felt like I shriveled when I felt things and like the world might collapse if I had to feel the full weight of the things inside of me. — The funny thing about being an echo of yourself is that people do not treat you any differently. They can’t hear the change in pitch when it comes back around, it’s too much like you. They continue to ask you to turn in your homework and they call you to talk 37 about your day, like you have a day worth reporting on. And then they get surprised when you fade away mid-conversation or forget to message them back. When you’re being pulled apart by either limb, you don’t have friends, only things to settle before its all over and when you’re possessed by the most melancholy demon, you don’t make it to class, but simply rot in the dorm bed that holds the same bedding as your childhood bed, clutching onto the butterflies that scattered the sheets. All these things were meant to help you escape the way feelings made you feel. Yet, somehow I also still had to get out of bed and get ready for the day. — Sitting in class, I tried to hear the words of my professor but she looked so unfamiliar. It had been a few months in the class. My fellow students were unaware and I sat very very still. My wrists felt different against my laptop and I wasn't sure why I couldn’t place them in a comfortable position. The moments when it started to happen were becoming more frequent, I wondered when there would no longer be gaps, when I would just become two separated things, fully unaware of each other. It is uncharacteristically cold outside of your own body and it is scary. To look across from you and see someone that you know, but that you can’t place and can’t feel connected to, it is unbearable.This was most days and I couldn’t remember the days that didn’t feel like this, that didn’t seem to fade each minute until the night hit and I could distract myself better. 38 The people around me seemed scarily unaware that I wasn’t there, that I wasn’t sitting next to them really, that I could see my body and I could recognize my clothes but that somehow I was several rows behind myself. I wondered if they noticed I had stopped bouncing my leg or picking up my phone to check for texts. “Weekend plans?” The girl next to me questioned the boy in front of her. “Yeah, I’m going to the game, then maybe hang with some friends.” I stood still behind them hoping to catch the rest of the room off guard and sprint to my body, to finally be able to move closer, to return. Every time I tried to lift a leg, it refused to budge. It was as if my body and my shadow were the same pole of different magnets, and I wasn’t sure which part of me wanted that. I was not dead. I was convinced death had to be more peaceful, there would not be as much struggle and fear and as the class went on it became harder to remember why I wanted to get back to that body and person. The classroom got darker and darker, the desks disappeared into the pitch black. Minute by minute the people faded as well, the lights from each person’s eyes dimmed, until I could only see the body I had once been in. And then the darkness started to shrink in on that body, I knew it would be suffocating and she couldn’t protest. I wanted to save her but I knew it was futile. I knew she was scared of the dark and even as only a remnant of her, I was scared of the dark too, and yet I couldn’t escape it no matter how hard I tried. It circled and consumed me and it wanted me somehow. I wasn’t sure what would be so desirable about a halfalive body and an unlively shadow of it. The gaping hole of deep darkness seemed to have plans for me and I couldn’t reject them no matter how hard I tried. 39 There were no other people I could haunt. I was forced to trail behind her, watching life happen to something I used to be a part of, something I could still occasionally reach. And no one seemed to reach out and try to fix it, it was as if they didn’t even notice that she and I were being split in half. It was as if they didn’t see her any differently, they thought lifeless eyes were typical, and they didn’t even miss me. The void called me to dangle my feet into the hole and attempt to make a noise, but no noise was found within me, she sat behind me, I could see it desired to do the same but there was no way to move her body the 10 feet necessary, the soul had been gone too long, nothing had called me back for days, so I continued to haunt and scream, and her body slumped at the shoulders and then at the waist, I was too far gone and separate from her. We both warred with the desires inside us, her eyes reached mine but she couldn’t lift anything else. If I wasn’t chained to a feeling of numbness I could maybe merge us back together. I crawled for what felt like hours to reach her face. When I got to her, I could feel her breath on me, shallow and quick. We stayed in that position, holding each other's eyes, mine hollow, hers full of fear. If we looked away, we might lose each other forever. Behind us, I can faintly hear the clock tick. Right when I thought we might not be able to hold each other any longer, the professor let the class out. She mustered up the strength to stand up, turned to the door, and walked to the car. I followed behind promptly, and then I got in the passenger seat. “You shouldn’t drive.” “You don’t get a say anymore.” She felt abandoned, I could imagine. “What did we accomplish through this?” 40 I didn’t even give her a smile, I wasn’t sure. It’s hard to remember what the original goal was. We drove home, and I closed my eyes, I could predict the turns into the neighborhood, and started to feel like I was 10 years old sitting in the back of the car. I could smell the air freshener that my grandmother used to hang on her rear view mirror. When I opened them, for a split second I was in the drive seat too, but it was a fleeting moment. She got out of the car, slamming the door and locking it before I could even get out. She didn’t look back all the way up the sidewalk to the front door. 41 Analogous The water was always lukewarm, it slowly filled the jumpsuit and weighed you down to the intricately tiled floor. I felt heavy from the soaked linen and the eyes that gathered around me, seemingly pushing me further and further down in the water. The boy who sat next to me in church pushed his fingers into my back, and gave me a nervous smile. It was all a little strange and we were maybe too young to be doing all of this. The names were read off, and he slowly lowered me under the water each time, I was only there for a moment, with my fingers plugging my nose and my eyes squeezed shut, when I came up for air and opened my eyes, the water would drip into my eyes, I only had moments to wipe it off before the boys shaky and cracking voice went again. I felt the mascara run with each knew dip under, and when I came back up, the boy seemed to give me a pitying smile, like he could see my lungs sealing up with every new name. In front of me appeared a name that seared itself into my memory. His voice cracked out, “For and in behalf of, Janice Greenwood, who is dead.” ———— 42 I swear my body jolted and if I had a stomach I would’ve vomited. I looked around and saw that no one could hear my heaving. Hearing my name, seemingly brought me back to life, or more like a halfway place between being alive and knowing you’re not. In front of me, an acne filled boy, dunked a barely out of middle school girl all the way under the pool. The water rippled as the girl rose back out of the water, she used her free hand to wipe the water off of her face and took a deep breath. The men hovering above gave a nod and made a check and then there were only seconds above surface before she had been dunked again back under for a name I did not recognize. I sat at the back of the room, surrounded by teenagers of varying degrees of annoying, ones who would have no doubt laughed at me in a past life. The walls of the room were covered with photos of Jesus, and in the middle there was a bathtub of sorts, held up by cows. It was a sterile room, the older people were probably 30 years younger than me and the outfits were abhorrent. Men in suits observed the water from a perch, they had little pieces of paper and pencils, periodically checking off the information on their sheet. It was a strangely efficient process for a church. Inside the water was a young teenage boy and girl, wearing white jumpsuits. The boy looked up at the men, while the girl grabbed his arm with one hand and poised the other hand ready to plug her nose. I wonder if the water was warm, maybe, I’d walk up and dip a toe in. I felt out of place in my green monochromatic fit and I knew my daughter would make fun of me for always being dressed wrong if they were here. The seats were itchy and a strange pattern of green and brown spots, almost like a paint splatter. The water had a faint chlorine smell that told you there was nothing really too 43 sacred about it, inside, the pool was tiled with small white tiles that looked clean and without personality. There were doors to a girls and boys bathroom on either side of the pool and teenagers slipped out of the door occasionally, returning back to sit on the benches, until another man pulled them into a different room. There was clearly a routine that I was not informed of, there was nothing exciting about the way everyone moved. I felt like life was being sucked out of me just being in the room with them. The eeriest part of it all was how silent they were, whenever there was a whisper, it was met with a glare from an adult a few feet away and a teenager hanging their head in shame. The older women wore skirts down to their ankles and ill fitting sweaters. They looked like they would rather be anywhere else than in this ugly room. Growing up, everyone knew the Mormon kids were a little strange, but I’d never seen it up close like this before. I knew they would never willingly let me in here, so I guess there were some perks to no one knowing you’re hanging around. The kids seemed bored to be there, one was dozing off next to me, another fidgeting with the bible sitting in front of him. They didn’t seem to care too much, except for the occasional girl who was particularly engrossed in the whole event. In her eyes, tears welled up, she held her hand over her heart and she looked like this was a day she had been waiting her entire life for. When you die, it starts out like a bad case of sleep paralysis. I tried to move my arm and leg. I wanted to stand up. I wanted to yell and thrash and talk to someone but there was nothing I could do. The worst part about all of it is that when it happens, you can still hear for quite some time. My wife's screams were the loudest, I could hear decades worth of loneliness in a single decibel. The hospital room was sterile too, the 44 flowers had wilted and their scents had faded. The screams echo in my ears now, all these years later. I kept desperately trying to open up my eyes, to get one final look at her, and tell her something, anything. I don’t know where these fucking mormons got my name, and, yet I’m here and I fucking hate it already. When the girl had done the movement for several more names, she went to leave the water, her foot slipping slightly on the steps, and hurried into the towel held up by an older lady, her eyes closed and she looked down, seeming to shake her head at the embarrassment of her almost fall. Some kid next to me said something about how the worst part was how they would go see through and cling to your bodies, how it made them feel uncomfortable. The room didn’t pay her any attention, however, as she slipped into the bathroom. The girl reminded me of my daughter, who was no longer that young, she seemed quiet and reserved. When they all filed out of the building and into their ride home, she hurried into the car, put on her seat belt and set her eyes on the window and the lights that would soon blur past. I didn’t want to get in the car. I didn’t want to be here in the first place. I turned around to head back to the flowers that lined the temple, and suddenly I was yanked at a high speed as the car left the parking lot. I tried to run the other direction, but it was a pointless attempt. I was somehow connected to this girl now. Everytime I attempted to stay in one place or even walk away from the car, I was pulled back like a boomerang. It was as if I couldn’t get more than a few feet away from her at any given time. 45 The girl was quiet, she did not seem to care about the music being played or the conversation on the drive. I wondered if she could sense the way I now loomed over her shoulder as she mindlessly started out the window. Rural Utah was not exactly my ideal location for hanging around. I took a road trip through Utah once. My wife wanted to go north towards Montana and I wanted to indulge her, so we tried to avoid all the Mormon stops and laughed about how they would never let a pair of lesbians into their little buildings. We did not stick around long enough to get yelled at or look too closely at what was going on. I wish I could tell her they brought me in there, I can hear the way she would laugh at the white jumpsuits that made them look like they were in some heaven themed prison. When we reached what was likely her house, I was dragged out of the car and up the stairs. Her room was bland, nothing of what you’d expect from a teenager. I don’t understand why she wouldn't put up a poster or even paint her room a bright color for ambience. I tried to sit politely in the chair at the desk, but it was uncomfortable. When I moved, I found myself directly between Cory and an older lady, whose eyes were tired and her pants were covered in different colored stains. “Hey mom, I was going to go to bed, what do you need?” “Just don’t forget your lunch I left in the fridge for the morning. Goodnight Cory.” 46 The girl nodded and turned to stare at the backpack on the floor, turning to look at her, I got a better look. Cory’s eyes had dark circles under them and the brown eyes didn’t even bother to raise to look at her mom. She was short, maybe 16, her clothes slouched off her shoulder and her skirt was pinned together to fit right around her waist. Her hair was a bit greasy, I guess I couldn’t blame her, she was dunked in that pool several times and she held it back with a ponytail. The necklace that hung on her seemed something straight from the kid’s jewelry section at the store. She moved to the mirror and picked at her face, occasionally she’d pick up her phone and I think she would look for a text from someone. Then she’d put it down. It had only been an hour, but I was already trying to plot some sort of escape, some way back to the peacefulness of death. When she got in bed, she stared at the ceiling. I thought I saw her cry but it felt intrusive to watch her while she seemed to be so solemn. I took a seat on the ground and watched the door silently. This was not as entertaining as I imagined, somehow who thought they could be dunked in the name of Jesus for me, certainly had to have more to think about and do. It was hard to find things to do once you’re dead, you can’t necessarily hang out with anyone and it’s almost too painful to go back to where you were before you died. The only thing you are left with when you die is emotions. So now, I would sit and remember how it felt to be in love, how it felt to laugh, and maybe I could even spend my night thinking about how it felt to cry silently in my bed and want to sink down into it as a teenager. 47 The crying stopped around 3 a.m., and I felt a little grateful for the peace and quiet, but even more guilty for being angry at a clearly dejected and despondent teenage girl. She was guilty of something though, dragging me and what was left of the decomposing body of mine into her pitiful life. I thought about what my wife may say to Cory. She always knew the right words to make any situation seem bearable. She knew when words were not needed at all, something I always struggled with. In the morning, I tried to stay out of the way. She tried to make breakfast as the kids around her screamed, why couldn’t a smaller family have sucked my ghost into their sad and chaotic life? The oatmeal in her bowl desperately needed sugar. As I walked past the counter, I knocked the spoon she was going to use onto the floor. When she turned around and spotted the spoon, she sighed and gave her little brother a dirty look. The house was messy, the kids running around, and Cory didn’t even seem to be phased by my lame attempt to throw off her morning. Cory did not engage in the conversations at school and her peers seemed to pass her by as well. She sat mostly still but she occasionally glanced in my direction, I couldn’t tell if she could sense me or if I was simply standing under the clock, and she desperately wanted 3:30 to arrive. I would’ve stood further but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get myself more than 100 yards away from Cory. So instead of leaving entirely as I desperately wanted, I hovered around Cory, wondering if she could sense me or if her frantic looking around was something of a more common predicament. I wondered if her whole life was this dull. It's hard to maintain anger at someone who seems without excitement or a life worth living. It’s almost funny to think that this 48 girl was supposed to represent me in some fucked up practice. I wondered what Cory thought about it, she didn’t seem particularly interested in anything. The walk home was silent, but it was the first time I saw Cory with a friend. Somehow, I still got an ache watching her live, even if it was a particularly monotonous life. I was jealous of what she might get to experience throughout her life, all the experiences she had yet to encounter. More though, I was angry at her for thinking that she could use my name for her feel good about Mormon rituals; that she thought because some greasy boy dunked her in a pool, I would now be going to heaven. No one thought I was going to heaven then and I don’t think they would start thinking that once I was already dead. The girl next to Cory seemed a bit more excited to be there and see Cory. She poked Cory all class and when school was over she ran after her to walk next to Cory. “What if we went to the park instead of home Cory?” “I don’t know Anna, you know how my mom is?” “Wow it’s like you don’t even want to hang out with me.” Anna said with a smile. Anna skipped ahead and Cory followed, mirroring the other girl's smile. They made it to a park, and laid on the bottom of a slide next to each other. Cory didn’t appear to be much of a talker, but she listened . I sat on the bench far from them and kicked some wood chips. The girls sat up, almost concerned and looked around. I felt almost scared when they looked right at me but then I remembered they couldn’t see me. 49 “What was that about?” “I don’t know, probably some wind, just try not to think about it.” Cory’s words were as if she was convincing herself to not worry about the change in the air around her, the way her hair might blow the opposite way of the wind on the occasion. She closed her eyes again, and relaxed her face, likely the first time I’d ever seen her try to relax. The park was falling apart and the slide had a huge crack down the middle that the girls had laid one of their jackets down on top of to avoid the plastic that poked out from it. The sun was still out, but I could imagine they were still cold, as patches of snow that hadn’t melted yet spotted across the field that surrounded their tiny island. They had dropped their backpacks on the wood chips, and hadn’t bothered to even text their parents that they might be home a bit later than normal. There was only one swing in the whole park and the seesaw seemed to have lost its spring years ago. It was about as sad as all of the other things in Cory’s life, it was like she didn’t even need me to here to make her life any worse than it already was. Soon, Anna closed her eyes as well, because the sun was too bright and shining directly at them. If I closed my eyes too, I could forget why I was here and why I was cursed to follow around this bland girl. I could remember the way me and my wife would lay and watch the stars after we drove up the mountains, trying to hide from the world. I could pretend I was watching my daughter's soccer game in the field across from the park. I could forget how it felt to be robbed of these moments too young and forced to follow around some boring girl who thought she could borrow my name for a few moments without any sort of consequences. 50 When I opened them, the girls had moved closer together. Their fingers crawled across the jacket slowly, until they brushed against each other. “How was your temple trip last night?” “Boring and long.” It felt rude that she would say her stealing my name and using it for her fucked up little church things, was boring, but I couldn’t blame her, she was hanging with a rather bland crowd. “Ew, I’m sorry they make you go to those things.” “It’s alright, it's just some time to get out of the house.” My anger faded slightly at the way her voice had no inflection and her face didn’t lift with any sort of expression. “And who the fuck is Janice Greenwood anyways.” I sat straight up from slouching on the bench and it felt like they could almost see me across the park, like they maybe knew me. I felt more shaken by the name here than I did in the temple. Why did Cory remember it? Could she see me? I thought as a ghost, I was supposed to be making other people more scared in their everyday lives. “Sounds like a badass lady.” “Yeah she was one of the many people they dunked me under for.” I laughed but the sound never actually left my body, you don’t get to make sounds when you’re dead. The smile on my face wasn’t a real smile because there wasn’t a real face to have it on, but I could imagine what it felt like to turn up the sides of my lips, I could pretend I was smiling if I just remembered what it felt like. The only thing I had was the empty emotion’s of when I really was the badass lady that people really knew. 51 “Well, do you know when she died?” “No Anna, they just tell me the name, push me under the water and voila, that random person is on their way to heaven.” Where I was, wasn’t anything like I’d assume heaven is. “Well, do you think we could find something about her, maybe?” “Anna why” “Because it’ll be fun, let’s see” Anna drew her phone from her back pocket and went straight to google. Seeing someone type my name was bizarre, but the photos that popped up were worse. The first was a headshot of me, one taken weeks before I died, the next, a wedding photo. The girls looked at each other and then back at the photo. “Do you think that’s her wife?” Anna asked nervously, like it was a scary thing to admit that gay people exist. “Well yeah probably.” Anna looked quickly at the phone and then Cory’s face, trying to read her reaction. “Oh obituary, yeah, that’s the goldmine.” The words on the screen pulled up a three-paragraph summary of my life, where I went to college and the job I worked at the public library for 30 years, and that I was survived by a wife and a kid. It said something about being kind and caring, which might’ve been a generic line they put in all obituaries. I’d never seen anyone be called mean and cynical after they died, especially not in their obituary. “Oh yep, wife for sure.” 52 They both looked at each other expectantly, probably curious who might divulge their opinion on the subject first. I just closed my eyes and tried to pull at the emotions of having a wife. When I met her, we were about Cory and Anna’s age. We were young and obstinate and we knew that people wouldn’t like the way we held hands on the way to the corner store and how we laughed loudly enough that the old men on their porches would yell at us to keep it down. It was back in the day when people really didn’t like lesbians, I mean I think they still don’t like them now, but back then, we should’ve been much more careful. My wife was kind and strong, she never cared about the stares, she worked hard to help us have a normal life. I would do anything to go back to our house, which she decorated with our friends' art and the brightest colors. Where she would dance in the evenings and hum a song about being grateful in the mornings. I was always convinced she had it all figured out in life, more than any of these religions that claim to have the answers to all the secrets. And she always had time to sit down and laugh with me, her smiles were frequently so big her eyes struggled to stay open. Her gray hairs caught the sun and shimmered, and even as she got older, I’d never seen someone so graceful. I felt like I was stabbed thinking about how pretty she might look now. I would be content to go over our memories together for an eternity. And yet, I’m at a park, waiting for these two girls to pass judgment on my life. “Well what do you think about Janice now?” Anna asked, looking anywhere but Cory. Cory's eyes seemed to re-read the line about the way I frequented a lesbian bar and often closed the bar down in my younger years. She lingered again on how my wife and I 53 would host dinner parties for friends, getting noise complaints into our thirties. The word lesbian can be more haunting than a real ghost, Cory stared at it, long, holding her breath. “Well she still seems pretty badass,” Cory finally muttered. Anna turned her head to look at Cory with a slow smile forming and reached across towards Cory’s face. I knew the look in her eyes, that scared feeling of thinking something could never happen but wanting it so bad. The teenage longing of hoping one day you can go through with it, and really actually kiss her, and maybe one day you could tell your mom that you did it too, and that your mom might be ok with it, maybe even be happy for you. They didn’t say anything else and just watched each other. I averted my eyes back towards the wood chips, trying to avoid looking at the moment ahead of me. It was a thing no one else should be privy to, and yet I was uncontrollably tethered to her, if I tried to walk away, I’d just be yanked back and forced to sit and watch people around me live. Maybe Cory and I were more similar than I’d ever wanted. It’s harder to be angry at a person, when staring at them was like looking in a mirror. The sun started to set and the wind picked up a bit of pace, but neither of them moved. When the warmth of the sun was almost completely behind the mountains and the girls had grazed every finger individually over each other’s entire face, they stood up and began the rest of their trek home. I refused to pick up my feet, so I was unwillingly dragged across the pavement. If I was wearing shoes, the soles would’ve been worn through. 54 Cory occasionally glanced backwards and seemed to shiver at any sign of someone following her, whether it was the tree branch that swayed when I pushed right through it, or the occasional dog that seemed to bark at my non-existence. While the mornings here made my heart race, the evenings in Cory’s house made it ache. Her younger sister curled up in her mother’s lap while she got her hair brushed and Cory laid on the couch, her eyes drifted closed and then back open, and she looked at peace watching the news. That peace might’ve been hard to come by in her family, but she seemed to relish in it, like a cat that lays in the sun for hours on the perfect spring day. I could ruin her peace like she ruined mine. I thought about pulling down the curtains or frantically flickering the lights, but it all felt too cruel for this quaint family moment, one I wanted to crawl into and replace a few characters to experience again. Eventually, Cory scarfed down a casserole of sorts and made her way to her room, dragging her feet up the staircase and to the foot of her bed, where she kneeled and pushed her head into the blanket draped at the edge. When she screamed, I did too. Her’s were muffled by the bed, mine the blanket of heaviness that blocked me from reaching out to Cory, shaking her shoulders and forcing her to let me go home. When she was done with her screaming, she intertwined her fingers together, and turned her eyes toward the ceiling. She began to mumble words that resembled “God” “help me” and “I hate it here.” The half-hearted prayer was over before it really even began and then she climbed in bed, and subjected me to the worst part of haunting someone, when they sleep and you have to sit and wait for them to wake up and ponder all the terrible things you might’ve done to receive this fate. 55 I wondered if she could pray to her little god and tell him to let me go, I never wanted to be saved in the first place. I wasn’t sure if the baptism brought me here, or if it was simply the utterance of my name that trapped me, but either easy, it was definitely fucked, that these snobby self-righteous people thought they could show me a better after-life then the one I had already been subjected to. And yet, when I turned to see the fading 16-year-old it was hard to maintain my anger, all I could remember was the pain and longing that could only be replicated in the eyes of someone who wanted more than whatever it was she had. Cory didn’t do much sleeping, rather she tossed and stared at the wall, and then turned and stared at the ceiling, occasionally she would lay on her stomach and curl into a little ball, before flipping again trying to get comfortable. The scratching against the sheets every few minutes was starting to wear on my patience but there was not much control I had to change anything here. I wondered if my daughter tossed like this at night after I died. Was it that pain and longing that made her stay up all night? Was it this pain and longing that stopped me from walking farther than the doorframe back to peacefulness and nothingness? There was no telling when this night would end. So I counted the threads in her rug and wished desperately that I could sleep too. As the days dragged on, I got better at tuning out the sounds of the morning and of school. Probably the worst part of all of this is having to attend high school again. But in the evenings, I would close my eyes and pretend I was in my living room watching my favorite movie and sipping some tea and on the floor sitting criss cross was my wife and my daughter, and they were putting together a puzzle. Death was more painful when 56 you knew what you were missing, I wanted to go back to the lack of consciousness, I don’t think people were meant to have thoughts and emotions forever, that might be a fate worse than death itself. After school one Wednesday, instead of taking the long walk home, Cory’s mom’s minivan was parked in front of the high school and Cory climbed in the front seat. Another downside of being a ghost, you can never call shotgun. “Are you ready for therapy today?” “I’d prefer not to go mom.” “We really think it might help sweetie.” Cory just huffed and resigned to her fate. The therapist's office was about what could be expected, there were some lovely fake plants and smooth jazz in the waiting room. The room Cory walked down to was pretty small and the couch she sat on didn't have any space for me, so I sat on the windowsill and stared at the parking lot view. “Tell me about your week Cory, how are you doing?” “I’m ok.” “Ok Cory, how about you give me a rose and thorn then.” Cory sighed deeply and thought for a few moments. “Ok Rose, uh, I had a nice walk with a friend the other day.” I laughed at the word friend, but kept watching out at the people pulling in and out of the parking lot. “That’s good, and your thorn?” Cory sat longer thinking this time, as if she couldn’t choose just one bad thing that had happened to her this week. I could name a few on my own, but being haunted had to be at 57 the top of the list. I wondered if she noticed the way I made her pencil roll off her desk at least 10 times during her math class. “Thorn, would have to be, crying myself to sleep every night.” “Ok do you want to talk more about that?” “I’m sure my mom has already told you everything.” “Cory, me and your mom don’t talk about anything.” Cory gave the therapist a look that read, I’m not an idiot and chuckled a bit to herself. “Fine, I hate myself, I hate doing church shit, I hate looking at my family and knowing that they will hate me one day.” I caught myself laughing at church shit, but then stopped myself when I remembered that this church shit that she hated, was the only reason I was here. Even if she hated all of that church shit, she still did it. “Ok do you want to talk about why they may hate you?” “I’ve just been thinking about why I would think I’ve got it right on whichever one is the right church, it just can’t be. And the temple stuff is a little fucked.” I looked in her direction and I could see the fear in her eyes. I could see the way she tried to hide something deep in herself and avoided any eye contact with her therapist. She wasn’t saying something else, but at least she admitted what she had done to me, waking me from a peaceful nothingness of death, to a conscious state of longing for the life I once had, was wrong. I sure as hell wasn’t on a one way train to heaven right now, it certainly hadn’t worked. I stared back out the window the whole time, my wife was a therapist, and I could almost imagine her sitting across from Cory. She always asked the best questions 58 and listened intently. I would give anything to have another conversation with her, where she would say something clever and I could laugh for about five minutes. She held my hand until I died, and for what could’ve been days after. I died on a Wednesday mid-day, on a day kind of like this, when you should be at work, maybe off for lunch with a coworker. I should’ve gone to my daughter’s soccer game that weekend and cooked dinner afterwards for the neighbors, I should’ve never met Cory. Cory should’ve never used my fucking name. I think I could see that she wished she hadn’t either. After therapy, Cory went home and tried to work on her homework. I was so bored that sometimes I would blow the pages of her textbook when she went to take notes. Cory would look around and shake her head, then look back at the page. Dinner that night was chaotic and then I was dragged upstairs. Cory sat down on the floor and hung her head into her hands. I sat criss crossed across from her. I want to tell her all the things I told my own daughter whenever she had moments like this, felt like the world was crashing down because you’re a teenager and what else could the world feel like. I could see the way she looked at Anna, the fear in her eyes since when her therapist started any questions. I knew she was just waiting till someone figured her out. I tried to shout her name, “Cory” “Cory, you’re ok, you’re going to be ok.” We sat in silence. “How do you even know that?” 59 I swear she looked up and we made eye contact, I knew she recognized mine from the wedding photos. Sure, my hair was grayer and my face more wrinkly, but for a moment she looked scared and then relieved. We really looked at each other, I felt elated and real, I thought maybe she could see me again, maybe I could really really help her, maybe she could set me free. Her pupils grew and she closed her eyes, then opened them again. I laughed out of joy that for a moment, I was real again. I hadn’t faded into nothingness, not really. “Janice?” She smiled, then laughed, and turned away. “Something might be getting to my head.” Cory said, before looking back at me again. This time, I laughed too. “Why are you here?” I couldn’t tell if we were really talking right now, or if she was imagining me here as well. “You brought me here, Cory.” “Could you leave my room please?” “I wish I could.” “Janice, do you think it would be ok if I was like you a bit?” I smiled, yelled of course, and thought about all the things I would tell her about why being like me was more than okay. But her face fell and then she started to cry again. I tried to cry out to her, I wanted her to know that it would be more than ok, but it looked like she couldn’t hear me this time. “Oh, good it’s looks like you’re gone” 60 I knew it was too good to be true she couldn’t really see me, but for a moment, I thought I might’ve reached her. I wanted to scream again, but I knew it was futile, just like every scream so far. I was not here, I was not real, I was simply a conglomeration of all the pain and happiness I had felt during my lifetime, doomed to relive especially the worst moments, for what might be eternity. Cory cried herself to sleep on the floor that night, so I took the bed. I stared at the ceiling, more hollow than I’d ever felt before, hope was not an emotion ghosts really got to feel. The days continued to happen on and I became more sure that I would never be let go, that Cory would never somehow untether us and let me go back to peaceful death. It was like an endless torture device that Cory was unknowingly wielding. Today, as Cory and Anna headed on their walk home, they took a new turn and walked around pointing out houses, explaining how they might remodel them to be cooler and more them. They talked about how they might adopt a cat, and it was like I was listening to a recording of my wife and I. She smiled at Anna, but when she turned her head away, she would let a few tears fall, and hit the pavement, before turning back. Oscillating between the joy and pain of being who she was. That night, when she knelt at the edge of her bed. She didn’t pray to god, instead, I heard a much more familiar name, and my heart sank again. “Janice, do you think one day I could have a wife like you did?” 61 I knew even if I screamed, she wouldn’t hear me, but I smiled because I knew she would. “Janice I’m sorry that they stole your name for that —” I held my breath. “Thing. I know that you would’ve hated it.” “Janice, I bet heaven isn’t real, I hope not because forever sounds like way too long to feel this much.” I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t forever till she brought me here, or they did, or maybe some higher power did. It was beginning to become very fuzzy who I should be mad at in this whole situation. I was desperate to tell her something, anything, I tried screaming again, I started knocking her books off her desk and turning on and off the light. However many weeks I had been here, was too many weeks sitting helpless and unable to communicate anything with Cory, to give her any reassurance that the things she was worried about would one day be miniscule. It was too many weeks living with the unbearable pain of remembering my life, and how I could never return, too many weeks of closing my eyes and seeing my wife’s smile, something that had never faded in my memory, no matter how many years of eternal sleep I had already endured. Cory looked pleased almost when the door began to open and shut in my doing. Her smirk told me that she possibly did see me that day, she knew that all the minor inconveniences that she had endured were at my hands. “Janice, wherever you are,” She looked around the room. 62 “I hope you’re happy and free and not subjected to the boring place that might be Mormon heaven.” I laughed, thinking about how happy and free I was until I was brought here. I flickered the light again, trying to tell her that she probably wouldn’t have to endure any sort of thing. She shook her head and then squeezed her hands extra tight. “I said,” she took a deep breath closed her eyes, and started louder with her next line. “Janice I hope you’re free” I began to laugh again, thinking of how free I tried to be during my life, how free I could’ve been wit— ———— The wind that was blowing my curtains back and forth settled, and this time the light stayed off. I always live in fear of encountering something else, some sort of spirit or ghost. But I could almost feel Janice’s presence, as a strong confirmation that one day, sometime soon, I might be ok. I wondered if she was really gone, or if she just stopped messing around the room to appease my praying. That’s the realest I’ve ever felt while praying in a good while. I climbed into bed, laid on my back and stared at the ceiling again, and let the tears stream into my ears. I thought about what my life could be like if it looked like Janice. I pulled up her obituary again, then I went to her wifes facebook, then her daughter’s instagram. Her daughter had Janice’s eyes, at least what I thought I saw. I clung the photo close, my guardian angel. 63 In a moment of more bravery than I’d ever possessed before, I sent her a message. It might’ve been creepy but I had a feeling Janice would approve if she was still here. I still cried for her though, this time with a smile on my face. I wondered if Anna had time tomorrow for an even longer walk home. If we get the chance to stop at the park, maybe we could sit a bit closer together. Maybe, I could bring her home for dinner and sneak up to my room after dessert. If I sat next to her on top of my bed, maybe I’d feel less compelled to cry myself to sleep. Maybe I’d feel a bit more complete, a bit less hopeless. Name of Candidate: Natalie Colby Date of Submission: May 15, 2023