Katie Krantz
Money to cover an application fee was a laughable concept.
“Sure, son, if you really want to,” she said, disbelief dripping from every syllable. Her swollen feet, holding miles walked, were up on the table. Wine swished. Her wedding ring fused to her finger clinked against glass with every rotation.
“I do. I liked the pamphlet. I think my grades are good enough,” I responded, excitement filling my stomach, inflating my tiny balloon soul. The balloon sat there, small and hopeful, after friends dared to conspire over the sticky lunch table. We whispered the most dangerous words ever spoken in Nowhere, Texas. What if you tried? The flaming bullet tore my brain to pieces. I pushed my hand through my hair to stop it, forgetting that I had recently buzzed it to cool down fieldwork for harvest season.
Mom snorted again, and took another sip of wine.
Melissa Ostrom
In November, on the day she lost her best friend, Madison, to Casey Sue Lipsey, Alice Podero got off the bus and stepped into a bug-riddled air. Then, when she turned and opened her mouth to thank Mrs. Fudge, the driver, Alice gulped something small and winged. Between coughs, she choked out a goodbye and made her way up the winding gravel driveway, lugging her backpack and gym bag on one side and her coat and art project on the other. It was too hot for the end of the day and much too hot for the middle of November—Indian summer, Mrs. D’Angelo had called it in first period gym before herding everyone outside. Whatever it was, Alice disapproved. The naked woods, heavy with the scent of fallen leaves, made sense; the swampy breeze slithering through the trees didn’t.
A beetle landed on Alice’s self-portrait. She shook the painting, but it clung to the thick paper, directly on the tip of the nose she’d painted too big. She tried slapping it off with her gym bag and ended up smearing its guts across a cheek. Two tattered wings stuck to an ear.
Growling, she stomped up the sun-drenched steps of the back porch. Box elder bugs, whole piles of them, formed clumpy rivulets on the gray siding by the door. So many bugs. Bugs everywhere. They disgusted her, and she fumbled with the doorknob, anxious to get inside and escape the buzzing infestation.