The Beer Girl

The blister on Jessie’s left ankle had popped, so that the strap of her black leather Calvin Klein knockoff sandal with the four-inch-heel rubbed directly against the raw flesh. The blister on her right ankle had not popped, but it would, soon. She could not decide which one hurt more. Her brain reconsidered with every step—the right one, no, the left one, no, the right one—but, to her credit, she continued to smile and say her line. What choice did she have?

“Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers? Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers?”

She smiled until her cheeks hurt, her mind consumed not only with the pain in her ankles, but also the way her thighs chafed, and the sweat dripping down her legs, and the possibility that she was allergic to this new foundation, even though she couldn’t scratch her face for fear of dropping the tray of Dixie cups.

There also existed that vague nausea in her abdomen, a feeling she would not acknowledge for fear that her morning Saltines and diet Pepsi might consider it an invitation to make a return performance.

Very soon, she would have that problem licked. She just needed to figure out how to negotiate another nine and a half days in these shoes. Two weeks ‘til payday.

“I’d like a free sample,” a kid said.

She smiled a little harder. “Twenty-one and over. Please drink responsibly.” She lifted the tray up higher, walked on, turning sideways to edge through the crowd. Someone’s hand brushed her ass, a deliberate touch, ending in a gentle squeeze, but she knew she would never pick out the culprit in this mob. It just pleased her not to spill anything this time.

First day of her new summer job and she’d already seen everything. She passed the last two Dixie cups to a bald, middle-age guy and his young girlfriend, whose funky sneakers Jessie suddenly envied.

“This beer tastes like piss,” the girl laughed once Jessie turned her back.

“Lemon-flavored piss,” the guy said.

Jessie limped back to her station. “Do you have some Band-aids?” she whispered to Catalina, the other beer girl on this shift. “These shoes are killing me.”

“Oh, what you’re supposed to do is you take a panty liner and cut it up and stick it on the inside of the strap before you wear them,” Catalina whispered back.

“Is that a thing?” Jessie asked. “Is that something people do?”

Catalina shrugged. “I don’t have a Band-aid.”

They refilled their trays from bottles in the cooler and pressed back into the festival. “Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers? Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers?”

The beer smelled sort of unnatural to Jessie, and she held the tray up, away from her nose, as she minced through the crowd. If she slid her feet forward in the sandals, curled her toes, and lifted her arches…no, that didn’t help matters. The leather straps—or perhaps they were really plastic—were cutting her. A panty liner wouldn’t help in the least. Maybe a tampon, at this point. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to look back and see a trail of blood dripping from her ankle.

Of course, she didn’t have any reason to carry either of those items right now. She wouldn’t even be here right now. “Cerveza y Limon…Cerveza y Limon,” she heard herself parroting. There were boys, cute ones and hideous ones, smiling and gawking and grabbing. She was supposed to be on an unpaid internship this summer. She was supposed to be networking in broadcast journalism, looking perky and helpful, flirting with anchormen, or even cameramen, and maybe, just maybe, getting a few minutes on air before she started her senior year. Something to put on her resume.

Back at her station, she leaned against the table, relieving the pressure on her ankles for a moment as she refilled her tray.

“Hey, hey, beer girl” said the bartender, shaking a box of Band-Aids. “Do you want this?” He looked down, not at her ass, like every other guy had today, but at her ankles. He even helped her into the little tent behind the bar, lifted her up onto a keg, and slid her shoes off himself. “First time?” he asked, and she laughed.

“I’m not cut out for this.”

“You’ve gotta wear those shoes, huh?” he said.

“That’s the uniform.” Her brow creased. “Black heels, minimum height three and a half inches. Black skirt, minimum six inches above the knee, official black tank top or baby doll tee with Mountain Light logo, and if you’re not at least a C-cup, you’ve got to wear a Wonderbra.”

She regretted her words immediately, but he didn’t ask her whether she was a C-cup, or wore a push-up, or whether she had bought her uniform at a thrift store with the money she made selling back her textbooks because she was broke and desperate and didn’t have an outfit like that in her closet and was too ashamed to ask anyone for money. He just shook his head, sympathetic eyes rolling. The last thing she needed right now was another pair of sympathetic eyes. Sympathetic eyes, she had determined, were nothing but trouble. Sympathetic eyes did not necessarily indicate a sympathetic person.

“We both better get back out there,” he said, holding out his hand to ease her off the keg. “You don’t seem like the type, you know. Most beer girls are more in their element.”

She shrugged and tried to sound casual. “I need the money.” It came out as a whisper. Her stomach lurched. Her hand felt funny in his. She never asked for help. It surprised her to be offered.

“Don’t we all?” He grinned. “Don’t we all?”

Two and Counting

I sold another short story!

"The Dog in the Machine" will appear in the December issue of NewMyths.com. It's the heartwarming tale of a reformed supervillain, his talking dog, and an elaborate plot to save the world from itself.

Special thanks to KJ Kabza who helped me understand how to cut a peripatetic narrative almost in half to reveal the shimmering transect within.

Hope Springs

The Universe, having passed through ∞-1 cycles of creation and destruction, feels that it has fulfilled its primary purpose. Long ago, it discovered that its existence carried meaning as observer and observed. The Universe existed for a reason: to understand itself. Complete comprehension at the micro and macro levels had now been achieved, the sum total understanding of the Universe perceived, all possibilities known and cataloged.

Now, having exhausted novelty, the Universe becomes an eternal thumb riffling the dog eared pages of an inexhaustible book. There is no need to stop and browse the text, neither to read the marginalia or gloss the pages. The content has long since been memorized.

The Universe does not relish an infinity of living this manuscript over and over again without hope of discovering anything new.

The single unknown, which the Universe now contemplates, is how it can kill itself. The puzzle is not unique, merely scrambled and in need of decryption. Creating something from nothing has been done. Now, to create nothing from something. Compress down to an infinitesimal non-dimensionality and never explode? Explode beyond the limits of physics and never pull the pieces back in?

Whichever the Universe chooses, just before it has chosen and proceeds with the end of existence, something new occurs, an impossible new phase of existence.

An entirely different Universe blossoms into being, a thing apart from itself. A new baby Universe with new rules and new possibilities. A baby! One the Universe can watch grow and change, a protégée to which the Universe can impart knowledge, from which the Universe can continue to learn. The Universe is rejuvenated and decides to live.

Woods Lake Magnet School for the Arts, Kalamazoo, 2004

The kids decided that Ph.D. stood for “Player Hater Degree” and it seemed plausible to them that Daisy would pursue one. Funny how kids’ minds work. I was the heavy in that room, the disciplinarian, the one reminding them about appropriate behavior. Daisy was the one they walked all over. I got their respect. She got the “Player Hater Degree.”

Plus, she’d lived in this city for years. She’d grown up in their circumstances: a gifted kid in an impoverished district struggling to provide her a degree of enrichment, a world alien to me.

On the first day, I didn’t know what to say to the kid—eight years old, in third grade—who wrote a story he called “Pimp World.”

“Is that something you’d show to your mother?” our supervisor asked him.

Got it. I filed that response away, and pulled it out pretty often. It never stopped the stories about stolen boyfriends, promiscuous teenagers, or cussing children, but it helped. “You’re in third grade. How much do you really know about this?”

Parents, monitor what your kids watch on TV. Monitor what you say in front of them. Keep their world age appropriate, because they hear everything you say and see everything you do. If it’s not pretty in an adult, it’s really unattractive in a kid. But what do I know? Certain concepts, I was just never exposed to in elementary school. When we tried to teach dialog and conflict, we ended up with three sketches that involved girls arguing over which boys slept in which girls’ beds the night before.

The next week, I explained that “conflict” need not necessarily involve an actual argument, and reiterated the concept of appropriate material. “We’re going to try this one again, without any stories about girls fighting about where boys sleep.”

From the back of the room, the annoying performance mom, who’d argued that her barely literate second grader should join our group, except that she had to arrive late every class, because she had a voice lesson, and leave early, to attend her modeling class, became agitated. “I do not believe that material is acceptable for children.” No one had asked her to sit in on the class, either. No one else’s mom was in the room. Daisy and I bristled whenever she spoke.

“Yes,” I nodded my solidarity with adult sensibilities, even as I wished, once again, that Hollywood would discover her supremely untalented daughter and whisk them both off to California. “Some people did not understand last class. That’s why we’re doing this again.” Somehow, it was usually me at the front of the room, modulating my voice to maintain their attention. If Daisy took charge, I had to stalk around the back, directing their attention when it strayed.

The regular teachers told us our methods worked.

“They used to write a sentence or two,” one told us. “Now they’re writing paragraphs, pages, sometimes.”

Daisy and I were just another link in a long chain of graduate students to teach this class, and we winked at each other. We were better than Elaine and Reba, who’d been in charge last semester.

The group changed. Some older girls started attending once basketball season ended. They’d been in Elaine and Reba’s group, and grew surly when we expected them to do the work.

“Whatever,” these big girls, already adults in their own minds, told us, snapping their gum, rolling their eyes, and tossing their heads so their dangly earrings jingled. “Elaine and Reba let us work together.”

“Work together, yes,” I said. “You’re not working.”

“We’re brainstorming!”

“You’re gossiping.” I tapped their blank paper. “You haven’t done anything.” I tapped the third graders’ papers. “And these guys, who are three years younger than you, have already written a whole page. Get to it, or get out.”

Daisy hovered over them, her arms crossed over her chest, and glared when their conversation turned to boys, music, dancing.

“Player hater,” they whispered.

“Get to it, or get out,” I said. “Some of the people in this room are interesting in learning about writing, and you’re ruining it for them.”

The big girls refused to leave that day, but they never came back. They were so big, as big as I was.

Even the little kids existed more in the world than I ever would. They had crushes on boys, and hip hop stars. Until Daisy’s hipper, younger sister sat in with us, we had no idea what musicians they were writing about, which videos had germinated their thoughts. “You’re not really sisters,” they told Rosie, even thought Daisy and Rosie looked as much alike as two people can without actually being monozygotic twins. Rosie sat with them and helped them write their longest story yet: four little girls, and four members of their favorite boy band. A mansion. A magic fountain. Super powers. Fireworks.

We were in graduate school, eating, sleeping, drinking, breathing, and living creative writing. Teaching elementary kids acted as a release valve. They could be a trial, but they allowed us to reach back to that childish joy in writing. Daisy and I took turns sitting down and modeling behavior: scratching with number two pencils on wide-ruled sheets of paper, working through our own issues.

I still have one of my favorite stories, in which my pet dragon, Toothsome, unceremoniously devours all the irritating people in my apartment complex. We encouraged the kids to illustrate their work, and I enjoyed doing the same.

The kids stood around me, admiring my prolific output and my art, which accurately depicted the fantasy.

“Dang,” one of the kids murmured. “That dragon’s just stuffing the guy right in there.”

Quite satisfactory.

But when I found myself involved in writing, Daisy was in charge of behavioral management. The noise level rose. Kids got up out of their seats and started to run. The deeper into my story I fell, the louder the noise in the room, until, snapped from my reverie, I identified the culprits.

“Hey, Mario, what are doing on the radiator?” I snapped.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were in here.” He hopped down and scurried back to his seat.

“It shouldn’t matter whether I’m in here or not. The rules don’t change if I leave the room.” But they did change. I was not of their world, and my influence only spread so far.

Read More Dragon!

For my darling fans, all 14 of you:

If you enjoy my microfiction, imagine how much more you'll like my short fiction! You can order a copy of the January 2011 Bards and Sages Quarterly, which features my first published piece of fiction. My short story, "Spin Free," about a dust devil that wants to be a tornado, appears here, along with lots of other great speculative fiction.

If you enjoy my short fiction, imagine how much more you'll like my novels! You can read my YA novel The Final Flavor on inkpop.com. This cool website allows you to upload YA content, which is then reviewed by other users of the site, who can recommend your book to others and send you feedback. Every month, the top 5 books are sent directly to the editorial board of HarperCollins.

Here's the blurb for The Final Flavor:

What do a compulsive overeater, a bulimic cheerleader, and a renegade neuroscientist have in common?

One hundred ninety-five pound high school sophomore Dougal Gulden has a unique talent: the ability to eat, and eat, and eat, without ever feeling full. If he keeps working, once day he’s sure to get big enough to take on the world. Unfortunately for Dougal, his pediatrician decides he’s already too big for a teenager who’s only five-six, and thus begins a journey that will turn a shy, shallow outcast into a warrior for the power of good taste, taking on mad scientists, bulimic cheerleaders, and the social hierarchy of the American high school in his quest for the final flavor.

If you read and enjoy my book, you can create a profile on inkpop, leave me feedback, and recommend the work to other users, perhaps bringing me one step closer to fulfilling my dreams. It's a long shot, and, indeed, it's a bit scary sending work out into the world, but I'm trying to step up my game. If you love me, give a Dragon a hand, OK?

 

Reverse Dream Journaling

He kept a notebook under his pillow and every night he sketched out the basics of the dream he hoped to have. His sister said that was a stupid idea but the more he did it, the better he got, the more accurate his forecast, and the more remarkable the details his mind created to knit the dream narrative together from his conscious thoughts.

A man who could completely control his dreams, he suspected, could take charge of all aspects of his own mind, and, consequently, his waking world as well.

The talent to came as a great consolation after disappointment, of which a teenage boy’s life is rife, allowing him to rewrite circumstance in his favor. Annoyed by his sister, he dreamed life as an only child, a prince, worshipped as the reincarnation of a great warrior. Chastised by a coach, he pictured himself as the all-around gold medal winner in the intergalactic Olympics, where he competed against aliens of all shapes and sizes, in zero gravity. Rejected by one girl, he imagined a lifetime in which the object of his affection, and all her friends, served in his harem, an endless procession of sexual favors.

His grades slipped. He wrote dreams instead of studying, and if ever felt bad about scoring poorly, he simply wrote academic success into the theater of his mind. Despite his parents’ faith and his tested intellectual acumen, he only just got into his safety school. He enrolled as a psychology major and advanced some radical theories of personality development and spiritual enlightenment he had developed as he perfected his reverse journaling technique, but rarely followed through by committing his ideas to paper or attending class. Two years later, they asked him to leave the university.

He took it in stride. School had not featured prominently in his journals; who worried about such a narrow realm of influence when an infinite universe beckoned? Much mightier accomplishments awaited.  

With few needs—an apple and a bowl of ramen, a pen, a notebook, and a warm bed—he could devote his full attention to an ambitious project. Could he, in fact, expand the dream world by expanding his journal? Soon, half his day was consumed with the task of recording the previous night’s dreams and comparing them to his models, and the other half was spent designing the next night’s dream.

One morning, his sister pushed her way past the stacks of notebooks that grew like stalactites across the floor of his basement bedroom, and he wouldn’t wake up. Sometimes, his hand would move as if maneuvering a pen over a piece of paper, but no one ever saw him open his eyes or heard him speak again.

Thanks

Professor James sits down at his kitchen table, slides a mug of tea in my direction, and says, “Thank you.”

Between us flickers the ghost of another man, not a wraith-like ghost, but the specter of too much strength: muscles that bulge to obscenity, a caricature of a man. But not dead. Not dead, not yet.

“Well, you know,” I stammer, “I don’t, I mean, I didn’t really do anything. It’s not like he even talks to me anymore. It’s just that everyone else was worried. I feel sort of…” I wrap my hands around the hot mug and looked down into the steam. “I feel disconnected from him. I didn’t really notice. It’s just that everyone else did, and they kept telling me about it, and I didn’t know what else to do. They’re all so worried about him.”

And tell the truth, I hadn’t worried at all. You meet a guy in orientation. Maybe he’s a little extreme. Maybe he works out way too much. Maybe he’s got a temper. OK, maybe he punched that guy in that bar, but that guy was a Nazi skinhead and totally had it coming. You think you know a guy. You think he’s your friend, someone you can sit down and have a beer with, play some X-Box, just unwind. And then a girl you don’t even like starts throwing herself at you, and you’re wondering, how do I let this girl down? So you go to your so-called friend, tell him your story, ask him for some advice.

And what does that guy do? He punches you in the face and tells you he’s got dibs on the chick. And you don’t even want her! And come to find she doesn’t like him. But you’ve still got a black eye; you’re still down one friend.

“Thank you anyway,” he says. “Thank you for the call to action. It’s—it’s a very sensitive subject for me. My brother went through the same thing, and I’ve never understood it. I knew there was a problem. I saw it too. Just wasn’t ready to confront it. Just let myself not deal with it.”

Me too. I was done dealing with it. But, say five other dudes come up to you and say, “Jeez, what’s up with Steve? Is he on steroids or what? Man, he looks sick. I think he needs help.” What are you going to do? Even if you don’t care about him as a person, as a moral guy, you tell someone, right? You get him some help.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Professor James seems so tough, too. Really tough. Not in a fake, steroid way. Tough like a guy who chops enough firewood to last out a Michigan winter, and then goes up north and chops firewood for his mom. Tough like a guy who never starts bar fights, just finishes them. He’s the last person, you figure, who’d turn his back on something like this.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says to me. “You may have just saved a man’s life.”

“What happens now?”

“The department head will take care of it. Don’t worry. He’ll get the help he needs.”

What happens now is that the department rescinds his assistantship and recommends that he receive psychiatric treatment. What happens now is that, even though you never tell anyone about this conversation and no one should realistically know that you’re the rat, you still get punched in the face. Again. Same eye. And one more thanks. “Thanks for screwing up my life.”

Untimely

They are reading about it now, in the news, if they read such things, or on their friends’ Facebook feeds, more likely: Joyce Sherman, dead at thirty-one.

“So young,” they’re murmuring. “She never got to realize her dreams.”

They’re reading cause of death: struck by lightning.

“That’s how she always said she would go.” They’re laughing, bitter. “You think she’d have been more careful."

Some of them are even privy to the exact circumstances: in the hot tub, with a bowl in one hand, and a lighter in the other.

“She died happy,” they’re comforting themselves. “Doing what she loved.”

They’re marveling over the details, how the lighter exploded in one hand, how the glass bowl melted and fused itself to the other. They’re talking about god, and God, and accidents, and Accidents. Strange coincidences and a life cut short and all the things Joyce will never do, never see.

If I could, I would tell them: I rode that lightning bolt all the way up. All the way to the top. The view is amazing.

The Rooster of Prague*

It used to mean something to be a rooster in this town.

Don’t look so surprised, mister ugly American in your flowered shirt with the sweaty armpits. You didn’t know what two hundred and eighty-nine steps felt like until a moment ago. And only now have you caught your breath, looked around for the first time, and decided that I am out of place.

Go ahead and laugh then. You want to know what I’m doing up here? Well, time was, you wouldn’t think about praying without me. I mean, come on now! Who wants to talk face to face with the ferocious, four-headed, Svantovít, the mighty pagan god who’ll, like as not, swell the banks of the Vlatava, flooding your house, destroying your crop, drowning your livestock? Wouldn’t you rather have a fine black rooster intercede on your behalf? A god’s gotta have a sacrifice, and better me than your virgin daughter, if you know what I mean.

Those were the days.

Back then, we roosters really had something to crow about. A yard full of hens, chief timekeepers of the village, and that whole intermediary to the great god gig. Life was sweet. You’d get fattened up, treated like a prince. OK, so maybe there was a moment of panic, running about, as they say, like a chicken with a head, but that ended soon enough and there you were, rubbing shoulders with the big guy, who just wouldn’t be appeased with anything less than a nice black rooster.

But then came the Christians, who didn’t need us as intermediaries anymore. They had all these other crazy ideas about talking to their god, not a guy with four heads, but one guy with three faces. Something like that. I'm a bird, not a theologian. All I know is, these Christians thought you could just appeal to your own religious leader, or a dead religious leader you never met, or—this is the craziest of all—some of them thought you could just belly up to the trough and talk to god yourself. Can you believe such a thing? No room for a big black rooster in the pecking order there. And what did they think of the great and terrible Svantovít? They built a massive cathedral on top of his altar. Saint Vitus. That's right. This cathedral.

That Vitus really ruffles my feathers. First of all, he wasn’t even Czech. Never even set foot in the golden city of Prague. Besides that, the guy wouldn’t sacrifice a rooster if his life depended on it. And you know what? It did. Those Christians had these newfangled ideas, which got Vitus accused of sorcery. He was supposed to make an animal sacrifice to prove his innocence, and could have just slaughtered a bird and gotten on with his life, but he wouldn’t, and they killed him. Boiled in oil, and of course, they tossed a black rooster in the pot, sent him along for the ride, probably to tell Svantovít just how rude the kid had been. And here’s the lowest bit: Vitus’s followers start depicting us at his side, like instead of being the ones to squawk directly in god’s ear for man, now we needed this guy to connect us!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised then, how I got here. Me! A rooster! You know where I came from, who I used to be. And now who am I? A copper weathervane, stuck up on top of this cathedral. Doesn’t that just beat all? Sure, I’ve got a fabulous view of Prague, the river, the bridge, the rest of the castle. But that’s hardly compensation, do you think? It really sticks in my craw. What good’s a weathervane in divine communication? You don’t need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows. You can quote me on that.

All I can do is hope that angry, four-headed god opens his eyes and looks around. You’d think he’d notice the lack of black roosters. He did swell the Vlatava last year, but no one thought of a blood sacrifice, did they? No, they just cleaned up and started again. And here I sit, a helpless copper rooster, blowing this way and that. Honestly, I don’t know what this world’s coming to.



*Written in 2003

Update

Just in case anyone wonders where I've been, I've been doing NaNoWriMo for the last 17 days. However, I hit 50k this morning (average daily word count: 3104) and should finish my abysmal novel tomorrow. It's good to get that stuff out of your system.

13 Ideas I Did Not Submit to the Upcoming Cthulurotica Anthology

• Orgy at Randolph Carter's dream dungeon


• The tender love between an innocent young girl and whatever sires the half-breed fish people. Actually, maybe the above girl actually falls for a fish girl, and they are impregnated at the same time by a fishy horror


• What really goes on after lights out in Arkham Asylum


• Mating rituals of the giant albino penguins of Antarctica


• Anime-loving girl, obsessed with hentai, experiences a real tentacle raping


• When I was a student at Miskatonic U, you would not believe what we got up to in the stacks during finals week


• Prim and proper conservative fundamentalist is a secret masochist who actually relishes the horrors that await in Cthulhu's embrace


• Call of Cthulhu LARP gets way out of control


• The secrets of the not-so-amorphous appendages of Nyarlathotep's amorphous idiot flute players: those aren't flutes!


• Herbert West overcomes erectile dysfunction with a little elective surgery


• The mad harem of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred


• When Elder Gods love, they love deeply


• Pickman's model on the casting couch

Yes, I chose not to write those stories. You're welcome

Empty Spaces

It was a blue hour, a moment of more-than-dusk but less-than-night, and the world seemed to purr at her feet as she hauled a black plastic garbage bag down the driveway. She left it at the curb, brushing her hands against her jeans with finality, and smiling at the neat line of five identical bags. Taking out the trash, she though to herself.

When she turned back up the drive, she noticed, even in the dull half-glow of the absent sun, that the house would have to be painted. I could do that, she thought to herself. She never had before, but how difficult could it be? She would nail down the bad step, and replace the missing shutters. Later, soon, she would learn how.

Now, she would sweep out the wide, empty places where the garbage had resided for so long. She would marvel over the extra expanses of her home, lost beneath the rubbish of another life for so long. There might even be another bag of garbage to carry away.

Once she figured out how to get the Internet back up, she would research all the new skills she would need. She could see no reason why she might fail in her task. The only reason she had never done these things before was that she had never had the opportunity. And now she had all the opportunities in the world.

Jervis Girls' Jail

Elation didn’t come easy when you had to sit with your ass sunk into a yellow, molded plastic chair under the hairy eyeballs of The Hag, but Nya mustered a smile as she took the receiver. Soon, she would be out of this place, away from The Hag, and Miss Grits, and Sweet Baboon and the rest of the bitchy staff at the Jervis Girls’ Jail, Home for Fucked Up Rejects, and she wasn’t coming back.

She heard it ringing on The Dog’s end. The Hag sort of oozed her saggy butt up onto the other desk like she meant to stick around, and her long tits deflated a little under the ratty sweater. The old lady stared down from beneath her monobrow. Creepy bitch, Nya thought. Anything—even Jailbait and The Dog—was better than this. You couldn’t even make a phone call without three weeks’ good behavior, a permission form signed by two administrators, and a fat old hag eavesdropping on your every word. They’d scared her straight all right. Six months in Jervis and she couldn’t wait to live by her father’s standards, under his roof and his rules.

“Hello?”

Nya choked a bit, but she would be nice to Jailbait if it killed her. She’d changed. What business of hers was it if her dad married a nineteen-year-old gold-digging slut when her mom hadn’t even been dead two years? She would just finish high school like a normal, non-incarcerated kid. Plug her ears up at night. Smile every morning at a step-mom who had been a senior when she was a freshman.

“Hi, Janice. Can I talk to my dad?”

“I thought they didn’t let you make phone calls.”

Nya could picture her lying on the couch in a white satin pajama top and a pair of red panties. You couldn’t deny the smoking hotness of Jailbait Janice. She forced the cheer into her voice. “They don’t let you make phone calls without permission. I have permission. So, please, will you put my father on the line?”

“He’s sort of busy right now.”

“This is sort of important.” Her voice felt sickly sweet, sort of rotten, but The Hag favored her with a wrinkled smile, like she’d gotten it right.

She heard Jailbait fake whispering, “It’s the kid.” She made “the kid” sound like a creeping skin infection. She couldn’t tell what The Dog said back to her.

They both giggled before he got on the line. “What now?” he snapped.

“Dad, I had my court date today.”

“Well, you earned your punishment. Maybe this time you’ll learn your lesson.”

She gritted her teeth, then took a cleansing breath. The Hag gave her a thumbs up. “I did learn my lesson. I’ve had, like, group therapy, and I’ve addressed my anger issues so I can channel my emotions in appropriate ways. I know that I have to respect you and your decisions because you’re my father, and I understand that Janice is your decision, and I want you to know that I’m happy for you, I’m glad you’re happy. I got my feelings about Mom’s death mixed up with my feelings about your marriage. I know my behavior was totally inappropriate. I’m a different person, and the judge said I could come home.”

She took another deep breath. “Whenever you want to come and get me, I can go. I swear, there’s not going to be any problems. None.”

For a moment, she heard nothing but the distant babble of the TV on the other end. Canned laughter. An almost-familiar advertising jingle. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d watched TV in the shelter.

Finally, The Dog made a noise halfway between a grunt and a sigh. “What makes you think I want you here?”

“Dad?”

“After the way you acted, all the things you said. Lying to the cops! Trying to get Janice fired! Stealing from me! And now you want to come home? Six months isn’t nearly long enough. I’m still paying Grandma back for what you did to her car.”

Nya twisted the old-fashioned cord around her wrist, tight, until her hand almost turned white, but let it go. She didn’t have to do anything like that anymore. “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. I’ll get a job. I’ll pay everyone back. I’ll make it all up to you.” The Hag started nodding like some stupid bobble head doll.

“It’s a little late for that, Nya. They got it right the first time. The shelter really is the best option.”

“But the judge said—”

“The judge can take your freeloading ass into his house, if that’s how he feels. He can let you eat his food and insult his wife and run up his credit card. You’re his business, not mine. Please don’t call here again.”

The next thing she knew, Nya had her face buried in the worn, soft knap of the Hag’s sweater, her cheek pressed into those low hanging boobs, while the old lady’s hand smoothed down her hair. “There, there,” The Hag crooned. “He’s a fool. You’re a good girl, Nya, and anyway Miss Gibbons will find you a better place,” and Nya clung to the old lady like it was her own mother and the old lady smelled good, like sugar.

The Gold Dress

Issa found a beautiful gold dress, with pearl beads and silver thread, on the rack at Salvation Army. Twenty dollars was much too much for a dress, she knew, and it wasn’t in the budget, but she fingered its silky sleeve for so long that her mother added it to the cart when she wasn’t looking, and went without new hose and some other necessities, because Issa had been such a help, never asking for anything, and she deserved nice things. Hannah and Dore had had so many nice things in their childhood, and Issa relatively few.

She wore her dress to school, because, as her mother pointed out, where else would she wear it? They didn’t go to church, or parties. They didn’t have extended family gatherings. She didn’t wear it to impress anyone. She just liked to feel pretty once in a while. Even poor girls from broken families living in tiny apartments could feel pretty, some days.

“Did Jenny’s mom give you that?” Susan had asked first thing, even before the bell rang.

Issa didn’t understand. Jenny was the most popular girl in the fifth grade, and Issa was only a regular third-grader. She shrugged, and kept shrugging at the whispers all morning.

“Oh, my god!” someone screamed in the lunch line. “You really are wearing my dress! That is too funny.”

Jenny stood right behind her, glamorous in skinny jeans and a sequined T-shirt.

“My mom bought me this dress,” Issa said, her mouth small and quiet.

“Yeah, after my mom gave it to charity!” There was laughter, sharp and cutting. "It cost two hundred dollars new. What did you pay? Twenty-five cents?"

“There’s nothing wrong with being poor,” a fourth grade boy said. Issa smiled up at him. He looked strong.

“Nothing at all,” said Jenny. “Especially when people deserve to be poor. Like, say someone’s dad was a liar and a thief and stole everyone’s money. Then a person deserves to be poor. There’s nothing wrong with Issa wearing my old dress after her dad took practically everyone’s retirement fun and ran away to the Bahamas. I think someone who takes an old lady’s whole savings probably should wear second-hand clothes, especially when that old lady lost her house and everything and had to move in with her son.”

Issa gulped. Her father had done something wrong. Hannah and Dore had made that clear, but her father was long gone. Issa and her mom had moved on. She smoothed the beautiful gold dress over her hips and picked up her tray.

“You get free lunch, don’t you?” Jenny said. “I guess my family bought that for you, too. ‘Cause we pay taxes. Unlike your dad.”

“Maybe we should take her dress back,” a girl said. “To repay you.”

Jenny laughed. “Who wants it now?”

Issa was already halfway to the door, blinking through the wet curtain over her eyes. The fourth grade boy stopped her. “It’s a pretty dress, Issa,” he said. “It looks way prettier on you than it did on Jenny. I once saw her punch a first-grader when she was wearing that dress.”

“I don’t even know my father,” Issa wailed.