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.

It was during their slow dancing that Rod saw the jaguar. He and Billie were twirling in the trailer to Kenny Rogers when Rod reached out and flipped the lights off for romance. That was when the kitchen went from bright to dark, and the outside went from black to blue, and out past the picture window he saw Priscilla the Peruvian jaguar crouching under the honeysuckle.

Rod grabbed Billie by the shoulders and stopped their waltz: “Don’t you leave,” he whispered. “You understand me?” Then he went and got his firearm from an old Ritz cracker tin under the loveseat and walked toward the front door. When he opened it, the hot night hit him in the face like his stepfather once had.

*  * * 

Last summer, when Priscilla had escaped the zoo, Rod had gone out and bought the handgun. The idea of killing a jaguar and becoming the city hero had lifted his depressed ass right off the sagging trailer couch and smack into the Cabella’s showroom, where he put the Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan on his nearly maxed-out Discover card. 

In the truck, he held the gun’s barrel to his nose; it smelled like what he thought a real man would smell like. Like metal and blood, which honestly, smelled the same. Rod knew: out past his windshield, the whole town was falling apart. Playgrounds and parks were closed. Local police were outfitted with tranquilizer guns. There was so much collective tension, the wind seemed to sing like a musical saw. For a brief while, Mount Cherry residents had tolerated the ransacked chicken coops, a Jack Russell here, a feral cat there. But the baby was the back-breaking straw.

Three weeks after Priscilla had outsmarted her mesh enclosure, an infant boy was snatched from a backyard quilt while his mother went inside for the cordless phone. Authorities found jaguar tracks in the mud near the driveway, the boy’s discarded diaper near a stream, one perfect little forearm under a Norway spruce two doors down. After that, townspeople no longer hoped to see Priscilla caged and rehabilitated. They hoped to see her spotted corpse laid out over the hood of the sheriff’s cruiser. They wanted someone to shoot her right between her lemony eyes, and that someone, Rod decided, was going to be him.

After Cabella’s, Rod went back to his and Billie’s trailer. It hung on the side of a wooded incline, like an Appalachian barnacle. Rod perched himself on the wood deck and held the gun out in front of him and squinted out at all the places Priscilla could be until the trees were a smear of chartreuse. Rod was fully aware that had never known himself. Sometimes he looked into the bathroom mirror and jumped, startled. The face he looked at was his own, but he never recognized himself. 

But on that first day with the gun, on the porch, looking out into the forest, Rod felt like he was close to self discovery. He held the empty gun out at the trees and aimed. Bam! He killed a deer for dinner. Bam! He killed Priscilla for Mount Cherry. Bam! He killed his stepfather for himself. Bam! He killed himself for his stepfather.

*  *  *

Billie turned off Kenny Rogers while Rod let the door close behind him with a hush. Rod stood motionless on the concrete blocks he’d stacked for stairs and listened. He wondered: how could he climb down from the porch without spooking the cat, how could he cock the hammer without the cat’s big ears twitching all around, how could he hit the cat between its big yellow eyes before the cat could hit him first. Rod moved slow and quiet. He peered around the corner of the trailer as mild as a breeze. He squinted in the dark toward the shadow under the honeysuckle. He wondered how much Priscilla weighed. He wondered if it would be a struggle to lift her, to drape her over his back. He hoped not. He hoped he could make it look easy. He wanted to lay that cat over his shoulders and walk straight into the trailer and have Billie say, “My word, Rod. What have you done gone and brought me?” so he could say: “Myself, Billie. I brought you me.”

Whitney Collins is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, a Best American Short Stories Distinguished Story, and winner of the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize and the 2021 ProForma Contest. Her stories have appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2022, Fractured Literary Anthology 3, Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror, as well as AGNI, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, and The Idaho Review, among others. Whitney’s previous story collection, BIG BAD, won the Mary McCarthy Prize, a Gold Medal IPPY, and a Bronze Medal INDIES. Her second collection, RICKY & OTHER LOVE STORIES, is forthcoming June 2024