My uncle’s execution is set for two weeks from now, which bothers my mother, not because it’s too soon or that he doesn’t deserve it, but because it’s happening on a Sunday. How could they do it then, she asks as she reads the letter aloud. Is nothing sacred anymore? A part of me is relieved, not that I’d say it—that these years of waiting will finally come to an end. His messy notes from jail, telling us he’s doing fine. Every letter signed with No complaints. My uncle, who once complained about everything, except for what mattered—the rising price of Menthols, the inconvenience of work. How few hairs he had left on his head. Always focused on himself, as if, when he looked out at the vast expanse of the world around him, all he saw was his own unshaven face.

A thing like that’ll get you killed, we warned.

But God forbid he’d ever listen.

My mother believes in justice, even if that means her own brother must go. We all have to make sacrifices—like families at war, who ration their food. Except for us, the war’s amongst ourselves. Either you work to save the planet, or you’re complicit in its demise.

By now, there’s no room for anything in-between.

I help my mother pack, since the execution’s scheduled for a glacier in Antarctica. Most of them are held there. It’s easy to ignore and no one takes blame for what happens–even knowing what we know now. The executed simply stand along the edge and wait for the glacier to melt. We board the boat with my uncle, his hands tied behind him, his hair neatly combed but thin. He is older than I remembered. More tired and bothered than his letters would suggest. I wonder if it matters to him that I’m here. If he is comforted by our presence or would prefer that no one saw. It takes four days to reach our destination. We eat with him and discuss whatever we like. I learn about his latest obsessions: his love of animals with giant teeth and TV shows from his parents’ time. I remind myself he’s part of the problem. But his eyes brighten when he speaks, two shining moons as the sun sets in the sea. I feel their warmth, his glow, when he smiles. With a spoon, my mother feeds him his favorite foods from childhood: chicken nuggets and mac and cheese and fruit loops in the morning. He is generous with his meals, insisting that I eat some. When he asks us where we’re going, we say, we are taking you to a glacier. Where you will watch the horizon for as long as you can before the ice gives way and the ocean swallows you whole. He laughs at this a little. He wonders if the earth has a belly and if it’s bigger than his own. I smile at this, until I don’t.

We try to prepare him for what’s to come. My mother bows her head and prays, as he peeks at her with one eye open. He loves when my mother says “mercy.” The sound of it on his tongue, as he echoes her prayer: Mercy for his sins. Mercy for what he must not understand. His hands are tied so instead of reaching for my mother, he leans his head on her shoulder, then mine. I press my ear to his, try to hear inside his mind. To know how a man at the end might feel. But it is quiet inside and empty, uncaring, unlike his eyes. I want him to know that I see him—not only now, but as the man I remember, chasing me through the backyard. When he paused to pick a flower and blew on the seeds so they scattered. He was a child in an aging world.

Complacency, we knew, was the enemy.

On the Sunday we were promised, my uncle steps onto the glacier, smiling as he’s told to move closer to the edge. We stand where the ice is solid, knowing it will melt soon enough—that where we are now will be forty feet of nothingness before the frosty, swirling sea. I imagine myself suspended, witness to this place but not a part of it. Two others move beside him, as they study the faint pink glow on the horizon. I wonder if they’re guilty of the same shared crime—of doing too little, too late, to help. To help what? This, I guess, as we stand there. My uncle chants, Mercy, again and again and again. My mother watches him, unmoved. The man who steered the ship clears his throat: It didn’t have to be this way, he says. I watch as my uncle aligns himself, the back of his hair tousled by the wind. He holds his shoulders straight, as if waiting for a command, but I want him to turn, to run, to get back on the boat and drive. To say to hell with it all, you can take my place in the sea.

But he waits as the captain follows his eyes to the skyline. It is dim, no longer pink, and only then, I promise myself not to look away.

Matt Barrett holds an MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro, and his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Sun Magazine, West Branch, TriQuarterly, The Cincinnati Review’s miCRo Series, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions, among others. He teaches creative writing at Gettysburg College and is working on a novel.

The new telescope was decades in the making. It made the Hubble look obsolete, the Webb amateur. Scientists promised a disinterested public that this will let us view the beginnings of the universe. We can unlock the Big Bang! What was once solid became a smokescreen, through which a frightening number of stars could be seen. Black holes became purple. Each galaxy was registered in crispy high-def. With every new image sent back to earth, scientists came alive. Group chats exploded, phones pinged, forums unfurled with wonder. What would they be witness to today?

No one expected the eyeball. In the shot, it was the size of the moon as seen from earth, so bright it erased the stars nearby, as though it wore a thick skirt of eyelashes. Its iris wasn’t blue, or green, or brown; it was all of those colors, and others. Rust, aubergine, vermillion, onyx. The image of the eye had that uncanny quality to it, where if left on a desk or tacked to the wall, it would follow anyone around the room. Tracking in silence.

The eye was an immediate sensation. It was proof of alien life. Or of a higher power. Or evidence that Earth was all part of a simulation run by some uber-genius AI. Hashtags #fermisparadox, #getrightwithgod, and #bunkerbabes went viral. Membership to stargazing clubs skyrocketed. Money flowed like honey into the cups and coffers of space agencies around the world.

The team of scientists behind the telescope were whisked away to a private compound in Montana, which had a direct line to the president. They received calls demanding we need to see more. We have to beat the Russians to this. We need a movie! We need to send a crew! They did their best to soften expectations. They promised a series of still photographs, taken in quick succession. Milliseconds. From that, they could create a slightly jerky reel of the eye in real time.

The first film showed the eyeball blinking. This was huge; no one knew it had lids. It pulled shut like a spiral galaxy, black velvet corkscrewing until it covered the entirety of the white orb. It reopened, in reverse, like a flower unfurling in the sunlight. All of the scientists wept upon first viewing, clutching each other by the shoulders, gripping each other in the sleeve of a hug. Their faces stretched into large smiles, their eyes blinking slowly in unconscious imitation. The eight-second series gripped the world  for days.

The second film caused less of a public uproar, though the scientists were no less moved. The iris sidled to the left, with intention. Then moved back to the center, with its milky stare. And finally, before the photos cut off, it started to slide to the right. This looks like communication, the president inferred. But what is it trying to say? The scientists didn’t know. They needed more time, they needed more funding. Black money poured into their accounts from sources unknown.

What could one say about the art of the gaze? Eye contact was on the decline. Hours were spent looking at phones and computers, rather than another’s face. The scientists had to practice on each other, with glances that stretched like taffy into prolonged stares. Often, their faces moved closer by small increments. Their breaths broke the silence like soft moths bumping against a window. Then they mouth-touched, kissing, connecting. Twice, a pair of scientists ended up naked and coupling on the floor, their sweaty flesh suctioned to the white marble. One encounter, between a theoretical physicist and a cosmologist, ended in a pregnancy, the infant later named Iris.

The president didn’t know about the kissing and fucking, the intimate conversations that spilled like web-silk from the mouths of the scientists awoken to each other. For weeks, the entire compound forgot about the cosmic eye. They all took to staring at themselves in mirrors, in puddles. They walked around like clumsy puppies, paw-footed and giddy. It was only when the red phone rang that they re-emerged, though no one took the phone off the receiver. They knew what the president would ask.

The third film was easy to interpret. It was terror. The eyeball was rolling around in its space socket, if one could call it that. Frantic, unhinged. It never paused, not once. The scientists watched it first in silence, and then again in grief. They cradled each other and synced up their anxious breaths. The cosmologist put a palm to her belly. Beneath the lid of skin, her baby spun and kicked. You have to see this, Mx. President, the scientists said. But no one else should.

Once the film left their hands, however, they had no control. It did leak, of course. The reaction was not of horror or concern, but of malice, delivered via memes and self-described body language experts and  talking head segments. Where the scientists saw fear and discomfort, the public saw prey. They saw an undefended target. No one thought of the satellites pinging their signals around the sky, lobbing joke after mean-spirited joke through space dust and comets.

The last film the scientists took showed a rusty tear forming at the bottom of the eyeball. It dripped down onto the Pillars of Existence, made see-through by the telescope, and hardened like a clay-colored stalagmite. When they tried to take more shots, the eyeball was no longer visible. It was somewhere inside the hardened carapace of brown debris and with it, it took many thousands of stars, only briefly witnessed, and never again able to be studied. The line of communication broken, the president quickly lost interest and pulled funding.

The scientists were evicted from the compound, left blinking in the cold Montana wilderness, shielding their faces from the bright snow. The cosmologist and the theoretical physicist pleaded with the neurobiologist, the astro-chemist, the developmental psychologist to stay together, but the artifice of their intimacy—the close quarters, the thrill of discovery, the threat of extinction or mass salvation—was gone, and with it, their interest in each other. They looked away, looked to their phones for guidance, called taxis or family to take them home, scattering like birdseed until only the theoretical physicist and the cosmologist remained together. They absconded  under the harsh light of the unblinking sun, taking flight from anything with a lens. They wore scarves around their faces, sunglasses over their eyes. They spray-painted over any surveillance camera they came across. They promised to only look at each other and—when their baby arrived under the black scrim of a new moon—they promised to look at her, too.

Iris and her parents ended up in the mountains of Peru, living in the thin air where they could be as close to the sky as they could get. For years, whenever there was a full moon, they would stand outside, holding hands and gazing upwards, chins tilted so hard it hurt to swallow. Even though Iris didn’t know what they were waiting for, she held very still. She rarely even blinked. She didn’t want to miss it, the thing her parents lived for, whatever it was. But it slept, and never came back.

Quinn Rennerfeldt (she/they) is a queer parent, partner, and poetry/prose writer earning their MFA at SFSU. Her work can be found in Cleaver, SAND, elsewhere, Salamander, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, and The Pinch. Their chapbook, demigoddess semilustrous, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. She is also a reader for Split Lip Magazine.

Apartment in Downtown Wilmington, N.C.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Posted by Kelly M.

May 2024

Perfect place to go with best friend after a parent has died. Easy off-street parking for the car her mom left her that still smells like her mom did at the end – orange blossom perfume to cover up the smoke from the joints friend’s mom and friend would drive around with (for the pain). Friend would buy the weed, roll the joints in that delicate, careful way she has with things, and the two of them would laugh about their covert mother-daughter drug deals. Bathroom is modern and well-appointed. Plenty of hot water and pressure for the hours friend spends scalding her body and the hair she just cut boy-short (looks so different, but amazing on her). Two blocks away from coffee shop that makes strong cappuccinos, which are necessary after drive and also since pretty sure caffeine is the only thing keeping friend going, because she moves like she’s wearing one of those lead aprons for X-Rays. Coffee shop also has assortment of fresh baked goods friend has a bite or two of before pushing away, shedding crumbs on the breakfast table. Breakfast table is nice, maybe stone? Easy to clean. Couch is small, but perfect for sitting hip-to-hip with friend and binging Buffy. TV is good, picture with plenty of clarity to see Sarah Michelle Gellar’s flawless face (always want to ask friend, who is straight, if she’s not at least just a little attracted to SMG? But not the right time) and that commercial for dog food we can’t watch, because friend’s mother was a veterinarian. Friend and friend’s mom used to hate-watch The Dog Whisperer together, friend’s mom shouting back at Cesar Milan about all the ways he was screwing up while friend laughed. Appreciate boxes of tissues placed strategically around apartment. Good for grabbing and bringing when unsure what to do for friend when sobs jerk out of her. Mattresses are soft and comfortable – lack of sleep not at all because of bed, but due to friend’s snoring (likely a result of congestion from crying). WiFi is fast when Googling “Can someone die of grief/being very very sad?” and getting concerning articles about studies on elephants. Plastic cups in kitchen are very big, just right for mixing ginger ale and whiskeys the next morning, because friend says she wants to drink – and there’s room for heavy pours after intense first day and intense night of elephant mourning research and those times got up to put a finger beneath friend’s nose just to be sure, to feel the gentle puff of life, then fearing would wake/disturb her. Cute fish pattern on cups, their big lips make friend laugh a little and pucker her lips too and for a moment she seems like she could become maybe not entirely what she was before, but something near. Cups are also sturdy so do not break when friend suddenly throws one down and screams, “This isn’t fucking fair,” and “I don’t want to be here!” Beach is only about a fifteen-minute drive. Nice beach, good for coaxing friend out of the ball she’s made of herself in the passenger seat and down to the water’s edge, where the waves drift around the ankles neither of us bothered shaving, swishing at the fine growth of hair, as our feet slowly sink into the sand. I let myself take my friend’s hand for the first time ever and I try to charge mine with something like healing, as I squint up into the sky that is blue blue blue forever and with my heart say to it, Please, help me know what I should do.

Host, Ryan, is very communicative, and allowed us to stay for an extra three days. Would highly recommend.

Wendy Elizabeth Wallace (she/they) is a queer disabled writer. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and has landed in Connecticut by way of Pennsylvania, Berlin, Heidelberg, and Indiana. They are the editor-in-chief of Peatsmoke Journal and the co-manager of social media and marketing for Split Lip Magazine. Their work has appeared  in The Rumpus, ZYZZYVA, Pithead Chapel, SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @WendyEWallace1or at wendywallacewriter.com.

I.

The summer we moved to Florida was the same summer Bug Juice premiered on the Disney channel. We were living at the Westin hotel in Fort Lauderdale. We spent our days house hunting and our afternoons swimming in the hotel pool. We didn’t have any furniture. We didn’t know where we were going to school come fall. But it was June, and then July. And every Saturday night, I’d beg my brother to let me watch Bug Juice for the twenty-two minutes it aired.

There was a curly-haired girl named Stephanie. She said the girls in her cabin were mad at her because all she cared about was boys. They called her “boy crazy.” I watched Stephanie slow dance with boys at camp; I watched Stephanie walk around twirling her hair, flirting.

In the hotel elevator, I practiced slowly blinking my eyes. I played with my hands.

I wanted to sway on a wooden dance floor in the middle of the woods.

II.

I drank a Java Chip Frappuccino every Wednesday night during Lit Theory. I hated the class, but I liked using the green straw to spoon out whipped cream and lick it to stay awake. I wore Hollister sweatpants and Target flip-flops. My favorite top was this halter top that said I love you to the moon and back across the chest.

My boyfriend was forty-two. He worked as a financial advisor at some bank in Boca Raton. All we ever did was peck on the lips because I told him I was still heartbroken over someone else. He lived in a high-rise near the beach that had a lobby and a front desk. We met because he came into the sports bar where I worked. He was eating wings and drinking beer but I knew it wasn’t really his kind of place. He slipped his number into my checkbook.

He took me to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino. He lost money, I remember. If he’d won, he was supposed to buy me a purse.

When we got home, he started yelling. I wanted to ask, Why don’t I feel real? But instead, I sat there on the edge of the bed and let him yell. It was easier to sit there and take it.

III.

A boy I dated in camp had just moved to California. He was in Anaheim, just around the corner from Disneyland. He didn’t have a car, so I drove the hour south from LA and picked him up from his halfway house. He brought a friend with him so I knew right away it wasn’t a date. He looked so different, anyway. At camp, he had shoulder-length hair that all the girls begged to run their fingers through. But when he opened my passenger door, his head was shaved into a buzz cut.

We drove to an indoor gym with trampolines and bought an hour’s worth of jump time. He was making friends with all the little kids there, helping them flip into the ball pit and running races back and forth along the canvas floor. I was sweating through my t-shirt from all the jumping.

At camp, we’d only kissed in the dark outside of the Great Hall. We’d had the kind of unspoken love that drew us together until he got kicked out for smoking weed. For the rest of the summer, he wrote me letters that I had to hide from the other girls. They thought it was ridiculous to pine for someone who wasn’t even there.

IV.

I met Andrew at a bar on a Tuesday night. Jen got mad at me and left. She didn’t have a car. She had to walk to the closest bus stop and get herself home. I kept texting her but she didn’t answer.

Andrew saw me sulking and took me to the dance floor. I hadn’t even finished my first drink when he asked if I wanted to go home. He meant my apartment up the hill.

It was the first time I had sex that hurt. He was sweating a lot. He was sweating so much his hair was wet. I kept thinking about how I’d need to change my sheets. I wondered if I had enough coins for the laundry. And then his wet hand slid across my back.

I kept texting Jen all night and she didn’t answer. I knew I’d made the wrong choice, but there was no unchoosing.

V.

The last boyfriend I had asked me out by sneaking a note into a pack of Reese’s Cups. I wasn’t in the mood for chocolate, but he kept begging me to open the fridge and have the candy he brought.

I took us out to sushi for dinner, this place in Westwood that looked like somewhere they’d film a movie. It was a two-story restaurant with crystal chandeliers and gold columns. I paid for dinner because I could.

We mostly hung out in Westwood, my neighborhood, my neck of the woods. We saw a lot of movies. We once saw a Kung-Fu movie about a Samurai who leaves home and goes on this long adventure. There’s a love interest, but he leaves her to go find his true purpose.

Halfway through the movie, my boyfriend wanted to leave. We got frozen yogurt and he said it was stupid that I only got mochi in mine. But that was how I wanted it.

When he told me he was moving, as in leaving the state, I gave him a plastic bag of stuff he’d left at my house. It was mostly full of things he could easily replace like a spare toothbrush and some vitamins. I folded up his silver bomber jacket nicely before shoving it into the bag with everything else.

Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018 and her debut novel, The Brittanys, is out now from Vintage. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

One Wednesday morning my husband Jerry brushed his teeth and then disappeared. He is still gone. I lay awake in our bed each night, wait for the sound of his keys in the lock, and study his birds. I prefer to keep our bedroom sparse, but Jerry likes whimsy. So I let him line the window sill with these porcelain birds, most of which are white and faceless. Smack dab in the middle of them sits this single brown owl that’s been expertly painted. Its wings are open, its claws are stretched behind a fist-sized body. It watches me with sad eyes when I wake in the morning and before I go to sleep at night. But my husband will return.

When we first married, Jerry wrote me bad poetry and fried spaghetti on a hot plate. He was passionate about grating fresh parmesan. We would lounge on the double bed in our studio and argue about the Iraq war. He was a pacifist and I was not. Still am not.

Later, after our boys were born, we would hire a sitter and walk to this joint downtown called the Duck Inn Bar & Grill. There were ducks everywhere. Wooden mallards lining the bar, duck head handles for the beer taps, and a gigantic sign above the ladies’ restroom that read Duck Girls with an image of a cartoon duck wearing a fuchsia bow around its head. One of the duck’s wings rested on her hip while the other wing rested below her chin as if she was blowing a kiss. Jerry and I got to know the regulars, one of whom was a maudlin 50-something named Cheryl with shaggy blond hair and a long, lean body. Cheryl was always whisper-crying in the bathroom. If one of the guys at the bar wasn’t too drunk to notice, he’d yell Duck Girls! as we walked out of the bathroom together below the sign. Cheryl would turn towards the wall and swipe the mascara from under her eyes with a shaky finger.

Most of the regulars came to the Duck Inn to escape the inevitable boredom of life. They came for conversation, to see something different than the stained beige walls of their ordinary kitchens. Take Cheryl. She spent her days taking care of her frail father. In the mornings, she organized his pills. In the afternoons, she read him the local Phoenix news. And in the evenings, she took a god damn break and drove her rusty pickup to the Duck Inn.

Now that I think about it, Cheryl wasn’t always whisper-crying. Once in a while, Blondie would blast through the speakers and she would dance in circles with her hands in the air, her T-shirt hugging her breasts and waist. One time, Cheryl grabbed the inflatable duck and kissed it long and hard. One way, or another, I’m gonna find ya, I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha, she belted as she smooched that giant plastic thing. My husband stared and stared as she hopped and sang. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Nicole Hart is a lawyer living in Westchester, New York with her husband and two children. Her flash and poetry have been published in Bath Flash Fiction, BULL, Flash Flood, JMWW, The Lumiere Review, and Whale Road Review. You can find her on Twitter @nicolehart_blog.

I stole the notebook.

Is this a sentence? I’m looking for hands. Take a stand here.

Yes? Do we all agree?

Anthony, I welcome you to remove your earbud and join us.

Even if your music is off, your extraction of that plastic snail consoles me as a gesture of respect.

Thank you. I stole the notebook. Why is this a sentence? Kylee?

Because it feels complete?

Yes, I just repeated Kylee’s answer in that radically ambivalent way I have of making you uncertain whether I’m validating or questioning it. Bear with me. I’m seeking to destabilize my position in the locus of power. If this feels hypocritical, that’s because it probably is.

What makes the sentence feel complete, Kylee?

There is a subject and verb, though I sense that’s the answer you believe I want rather than a conclusion you’ve reached for yourself. I can work with that. Is a subject and verb enough?

Anthony?

Just stretching. I see. Kaden?

Why did “I” steal the notebook? Thank you for taking this seriously.

No, really, assuming the notebook isn’t invented for the purpose of this lesson, why steal it?

I see your hand, Kylee, but I’d like to give Anthony a chance to answer this. Anthony?

Because.

Very clever. We both win.

Because I stole the notebook. Is that a sentence?

Let’s hear from someone new. I’d cold-call, but I haven’t learned most of your names yet.

You refuse me?

Fine, Kylee, go ahead.

No, because of the because, yes. Because is a subordinating conjunction. Does anyone understand what it means to be made subordinate?

Anyone besides Kylee?

Do you realize you’re experiencing it now?

Yes, Anthony?

It is. It’s always this hot in here because it’s one of the outer circles of hell. No, seriously, if there were windows, I’d open them. That’s why I bought these fans.

Consider this: It is. Is that a sentence?

It is! Excellent.

No, we cannot prop that exterior door.

You are not the first to inform me this classroom is the hottest in the school. Perhaps you could have some compassion. You get to leave when the bell rings. I have to stay.

Quick, bonus challenge! What’s the shortest sentence in English? Kylee?

Nope. Kaden?

I’m? That’s essentially what Kylee said.

Yes, it’s two letters.

Anthony, please close the door and return to your seat. Remember that shooting in Texas? Yes, Texas is far away, but if there’s a shooter here, we want the door to be— I see your point, but we’ll just have to hope the shooter isn’t in the classroom.

No? Oh, you mean as a sentence. No.

You want a hint?

Think.

That’s your hint.

I’ll tell you at the end of class if you haven’t figured it out. Back to the lesson: I stole the notebook. Is the notebook necessary?

Kaden, I see you nodding.

Because you can’t steal something that isn’t there.

Interesting, but not what I wanted you to say. Let’s try another approach.

Must you see this notebook to believe it exists, or can I tell you it’s the size of an old-fashioned postcard, that its softbound covers bear a full-color bounty of heirloom vegetables: rosettes of lettuce and bouquets of chard, the veins of each cabbage leaf articulated with aching precision—Anthony, have I even begun to make you care?

Each vegetal specimen is labeled in a font from the last line of a sadist’s eye chart, suggesting the world from which this notebook was stolen is a third the size of our own. A model, perhaps. From “whom” was it stolen? “Who” stole it? How do I know “who” is “who” and “who” is “whom” apart from the fact that “I” stole it?

Simple. It’s a matter of subjects and objects. Who does the action to whom.

Kaden, I feel like I’ve lost you.

Kylee, while I appreciate that you’re either taking notes or working on the bonus challenge, I fear you, too, might be missing my point.

Look. I need your eyes. Here’s a notebook covered with vegetables divorced from any evidence of the dirt that produced them. They resemble eggplant emojis scrawled with Sharpie, but still.

Whose notebook is this?

Yes, Anthony. I stole your notebook to teach you the grammar of agency.

Now, write in your notebooks for the next seven minutes: Tell me what you’ve learned from this object lesson. Specifically, consider the implied “you” in that sentence. Can you imagine yourself as a subject, even when you aren’t on the page?

Anthony, why aren’t you writing?

Sorry, here’s your notebook. Kaden, do you need help?

Go ahead and write those thoughts down. Don’t mind me looking over your shoulder.

Intriguing observation, Kylee, but try to go deeper.

Anthony, why are you putting away your notebook? Please speak up. Wait, I said that door needs to stay—

Well then.

Can anyone put what just happened into a sentence? Kylee?

Hold on, Kylee—why are there so many shuffling papers and slamming books? There’s no reason to pack up.

The bell hasn’t rung! I haven’t given anyone permission to leave! Kaden, come back!

Don’t think I can’t write you all referrals!

Well, Kylee, it’s down to you and me. Believe it or not, I’m on your side. You remind me of me.

Oh. You’re only here for the solution to the bonus challenge?

Everyone else figured it out.

Go.

Jules Fitz Gerald (she/her) grew up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and now lives in Oregon. She earned an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and recently attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Tin House Summer Workshop. Past honors include selection for a Fulbright U.S. Student Grant in Creative Writing and a Lighthouse Works fellowship. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Fourth Genre, Raleigh Review, Tampa Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. She taught high school English for six years.