by Ryan Almroth
Jude shakes her head. “Don’t be so quick to believe everything you hear, boys. You ought to know that when you’re the one standing your ground, it’s a lot harder to toss away other people’s judgments.”
“We’re sorry,” Karim says again.
“Yeah,” I mutter, then take a deep breath. “We shouldn’t have just let them say those things, especially without thinking about how it can hurt you. And how false it was. Truly. We’re sorry.”
Jude looks at each of us for a long moment. “I appreciate that. I don’t always expect kids to understand their mistakes right away. I hope you’re not going to only internalize your words, but that maybe you’ll work to change other people’s thoughts too.” She nods to me. “Perhaps you can start with that sister of yours.”
“Of course,” I say.
“And someday,” Jude says, “I hope those boys will have the courage to apologize to you two as well. And if they dare try any shit, you kids always have a safe place here.”
Jude’s various assortment of teas proves more delicious than I could’ve imagined. I accepted her offer out of politeness, not expecting to like it as much as I do. As we drink tea, she tells us about Dinah. About the life she’s lived in her nearly fifty years, many spent with her wife. About the cottages they dreamed of moving to and the gardens they wanted to plant.
It’s past sunset when my parents pull up in their car after calling my phone and receiving directions from Jude, and Karim’s have okayed him to catch a ride home with us. Mom and Dad don’t conceal their worry when they see me, and Jude shakes their hands with a flawless air of confidence. Their gratitude comes out like a flood, and while their prejudices still shine through in the uncertain ways they shake Jude’s hand and compliment her house, their relief prevails.
The bandage on my ankle makes hopping almost bearable, so my mom and Karim help me to the car with their arms under my shoulders while my dad talks to Jude. I hear him thanking her again, and once I’m in the car, Karim sits beside me and my mom goes to join them.
“You know,” I whisper to Karim as we watch Jude talk to my parents. “As much as I love and appreciate you standing up for me back there, I really wish you’d quit pulling the bravado act out of your ass when people come at you with knives.”
Karim chuckles. “Yeah, maybe it was a bit of an inopportune moment. But how can I be your knight in shining armor if I’m not assertive in the face of danger?”
“You can start by not confusing bravery with stupidity,” I say. When he looks down and nods halfheartedly, I grab his hand and intertwine my fingers in his, squeezing as hard against his knuckles as the cuts on my palm allow. “I’m serious. I thought they were going to hurt you.”
Karim’s expression softens as he meets my eyes again, and he returns the strength of my grip. “They didn’t.”
“They could have. They would have if Jude hadn’t come.”
He cracks a smile. “But she saved our asses, and I doubt they’ll try anything again.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, staring straight ahead against the thought hammering in my head. I have to swallow the sob to prevent it escaping my throat. “I almost thought you might leave me behind when I fell.”
In my peripheral I see Karim staring at me in horror. “I’d never leave you behind, Nic. I’d never. How could you think that?”
It’s impossible to meet his eyes, so I fix my gaze on my nervous fist clenching around the fabric of my jeans. “I’d understand if you had.”
“I’d never. Would you have left me behind?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think that I would?”
I don’t have a good answer. “When they came to us and you stepped forward, I was afraid you were going to fight them before I realized you just needed clear space to run. Maybe, I thought—maybe, you just wanted to run.”
When I finally look at his face in the absence of any response, he’s wearing a perplexed expression. “What do you mean?” he slowly asks. “I was putting myself between you and them in case it came to blows. I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.” He glances behind me to make sure my parents are occupied with Jude before he kisses my cheek. “Nic, I swear sometimes you don’t think you deserve help. I can’t believe you’d ask Jude why she helped us. She’s just a nice person who cares. And I care too.”
He takes my other hand in his to stop me wrenching at my jeans, and I can’t help my smile. I look out the window to watch Jude assuring my parents of something and shaking their hands again.
“Are you okay?” asks Karim.
“Yeah, I’m better,” I say. “You remember that jar of honeysuckle I asked you about?”
“Obviously. You don’t shut up about it.”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “Stop teasing. I’m thinking, let’s try to make one for Jude. I think she’d like it, maybe to remember her wife.”
He laughs. “You sure we can manage that?”
I shake my head. “No, it’d be impossible. It’s the effort that counts, though, right?”
“I’m sure we can think of something better to do to thank her.”
THE HEAT of summer brings with it an internet recipe for honeysuckle jelly that Karim and I disastrously fail at following correctly. It’s less ambitious than collecting a jar of nectar, but we still prove incompetent at making it work time and time again. After enlisting Stella’s help, she mocks us for our inability to follow some simple instructions. It’s an arrow to her confidence to find out the woman she’s been ragging on is a generous person, but after an adjustment period, she becomes set on becoming as friendly with her as we are. My parents don’t ease up on urging us to be careful in the woods, but they have little to fear while my ankle sprain heals.
By the time we bring the leaky, sticky jar of honeysuckle jam up to Jude’s house, I’ve stopped needing crutches. I lean on Karim any time my ankle complains on the climb up the rocks, but several weeks of healing have almost erased my limp. Jude’s delight at the gift means more tea and stories for us, and she invites us over in the afternoons and gives us a place under a roof where I can hold Karim’s hand in peace.
The next time we run into Christian, Mike, and the twins, Karim thanks them for making us realize that witches and fairies look out for each other. If any of them have a rebuttal, they don’t dare to voice it, especially when Jude’s visits to Mr. Green’s house have turned into casual hellos and stops by mine, which become more involved anytime Karim and I are both there. She followed through on her promise to discuss their delinquency with their parents, and they think twice about stepping near the woods again.
In the middle of summer, we help Jude plant a honeysuckle bush in front of her house. It has fragrant tubular flowers blooming in bright pink and yellow. Goldflame honeysuckle, the bush is officially named. We all just call it Dinah.
DANIEL OKULOV is a part-time writer and full-time neurotic from the Washington metropolitan area. Despite considering himself a semireclusive goblin, he is active in online support groups for other LGBT and neurodivergent people, and he advocates for self-acceptance and recovery. He strives to challenge social issues and represent minorities in his writing without limiting himself by genre. He loves his pets more than socializing with new people, but that doesn’t stop him from being a hopeless romantic with a soft spot for heartwarming relationships and happy endings.
Starlight Sundress
By Alec S. Lefeber
After Adrienne and Emily broke up, Adrienne turned to substance abuse while Emily’s drug of choice was religion, and she dropped out of school to pursue a life in the Pentecostal church—and purge herself of her feelings for women. Can they ever reach an understanding when their lives have taken such drastic and different paths?
I ALWAYS considered myself the type to slip quietly into the night sky, without so much as a note. But here I am. I don’t have much to say, and the stars are going out now. It’s hard to write. The handwriting was sloppy, almost indistinguishable in parts
as the note continued. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I pushed you away. I hope you are happy. There was more room on that half sheet of notebook paper, and the pen idled beside it, eager to write, but Adrienne was no longer around to finish writing. It was to become just another set piece in the disastrous shrine of her bedroom, another one of many things left unsaid.
Her bedroom was trashed with crumpled fast food wrappers and a smashed picture frame with a torn photo of her and her ex-girlfriend, Emily. Orange prescription bottles were lined up on Adrienne’s dresser like bowling pins, stolen souvenirs from her friends’ medicine cabinets. Behind the arrangement was a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka. It tasted like old nail polish, but it got the job done. A cross necklace encircled the heaping garbage can in the corner of the room.
Excellently camouflaged within the midst of the trash tornado was Adrienne herself, a brunette seventeen-year-old, covered in a concoction that reeked of vomit and her own urine. She lay frozen in time, propped up on her side with an arm for a pillow, floating among the stars, unmoving beyond her slow, heaving breaths. Then, a flicker of the eyes. A pounding of drums. She was awake; more important, she was alive.
She had only a moment to consider her continued existence before sirens went off in her head. There was no time to react. Adrienne heaved. She missed the trash can almost entirely, vomit flowing freely over her shirt and lap, soaking deep into the carpet.
“Fuck,” Adrienne moaned. She inched away from the puddle of filth and rested her head on a clean patch of carpet. Her jogging pants clung to her legs like damp dead weights. “Fuck,” she repeated. She made the effort to grab the ibuprofen and take in some water, keeping the pill down long enough for a cold relief to pulse under her brow, and soon was able to open her eyes without the bright light searing into her skull. The sun blazed outside her window, and the snow-topped trees reflected white into her room. It would be a beautiful sight on any other morning.
“Adrienne? Are you awake?” called a soft voice from the beyond the door.
Receiving no answer, Emily popped the door open and poked her head inside. She winced as the smell of the room hit her all at once, sweat and piss and shame and vomit, but entered the room all the same.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Adrienne roared. This sudden burst of anger did not agree with her, however. Her stomach churned, and in the next instant she found herself engaged in intimacy with the trash can, leaving Emily dazed as she bore witness to Adrienne’s vomiting. After expelling what she could, her chest in agony, Adrienne scurried to the bathroom to wash her hands. She scrubbed extra hard over the scars on her wrists. In the mirror appeared a skeleton, matted brown hair dangling lifelessly off her skull.
Adrienne slinked back into her bedroom, carefully sidestepping the embarrassing puddle of bodily fluids, and sat beside Emily.
Adrienne cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Far from the first time,” Emily said. “Where’s your mom?”
“Away with my aunt for the week,” Adrienne said. “What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like that?”
“I asked you if you wanted to come to church with me today, but you didn’t reply, so I wanted to check up on you.”
“Why?”
“I just felt the conviction.” She glanced around the room, taking it all in, her gaze lingering on the vodka and pill bottles. “It seems like I was right. Thank God.”
As if she were blinded before, Adrienne properly saw Emily for the first time. Under her thick winter jacket, Emily wore a long sundress that flowed down to her ankles, continuously patterned with a pastel floral design. She wore no makeup, but even without it, her face was radiant. Given the cross keychain dangling off the yellow purse, Adrienne finally pieced it all together. “So, you’re a Jesus freak now,” she said.
Emily brushed off the insult with a soft smirk. “I started going to church in August,” she began. However, the nauseating odor of the room and Adrienne’s repulsive state stopped her. “Maybe you should get cleaned up, and we can go, eat breakfast, and talk through this.”
Adrienne felt too ashamed to argue, wearing the remains of her ego on her shirt. Wordlessly, she headed to the shower. She stripped and turned out the lights, creating another world for herself inside the ceramic bathtub. The cold water was a cool waterfall washing away her shame. She imagined herself in the Amazon, her hair flowing beneath the natural forest water, with animals roaring and insects chirping mere feet from her as the stars twinkled overhead.
After ten minutes beneath the waterfall, Adrienne emerged from the shower and navigated the bedroom only in her blue bathrobe. She stopped in front of a crumpled-up piece of notebook paper—it was her note. She stuffed it in her purse. Emily’s gaze was fixed squarely on her phone as Adrienne put on a pair of black leggings and a loose-fitting Panic! at the Disco T-shirt.
“Ready to go?” Emily asked.
“If we must.”
Sitting in Emily’s car, it seemed as though the past seven months hadn’t happened. It was the same old Elantra. There was the same eucalyptus air freshener adorning the rearview mirror. It was the cleanest car she had ever been in, except for—yes, there it was—a small blood stain on the passenger seat from when Adrienne had cut herself while they explored in the woods together. Emily never complained, but Adrienne knew it was the one blemish in an otherwise pristine vehicle.
The snowbanks lined the curbs next to everyone’s driveway, a natural barricade between the cars and the residences. The beautiful blue skies allowed the snow to shine brilliantly. The roads glistened, growing damp from the melting slush. The world was immaculate.
After a few minutes of driving, Adrienne finally snapped. “What the hell is wrong with you, Emily?”
Emily jolted upright, almost turning the vehicle into oncoming traffic. “What?”
“What happened to you?” Adrienne repeated. “I sleep with Marcus—which I’m through apologizing for—then you break up with me, drop out of school, and join some cult? Oh yeah, I know all about those Pentecostals in town.” She hissed the words. “No one has heard from you in months! And then you suddenly show up at my doorstep the night after I try to—” She quieted herself to a whisper. “—kill myself. Who do you think you are? My guardian angel, swooping in at my ‘time of need’ to take me to your cult? Because of some conviction?”
Emily kept her composure through the whole beratement. “You really don’t remember last night at all, do you?”
Adrienne froze. And then, there it was, in the far reaches of her mind, somewhere in the tunnel of lost memories, vague recollections of stray text messages and a phone call. “We talked. That’s all I remember,” she whispered.
“Yes, we talked. You were saying some strange things. You said you wanted the stars to go out? That the sun was too bright? I wasn’t sure what you meant, because it was the middle of the night, but it seems like I was able to talk you out of whatever situation you were going through. But what did you mean by that? It was crazy talk!”
“I don’t know,” Adrienne said. “I was drunk! I was high on painkillers. I’m surprised I could make coherent sentences.”
Emily touched Adrienne’s hand. “You’re okay now. He made sure of it. He put me back in your life to make sure you were safe,” she said. “God loves you.”
Adrienne rolled her eyes. “Don’t.”
“I’m serious.” Emily’s hands were shaking. “He loves you so much, Adrienne. You don’t even understand the depths of how much He loves you.” She began to choke up. “But I suppose this must all come as a bit of a shock to you.”
“Just a little bit.”
“After we broke up, I was going through a really rough time. I didn’t want to eat. I just… didn’t want to be anymore. I was just so tired all the time. I didn’t want to commit suicide, I just wished I could stop being alive; not die, just vanish into thin air. I felt so numb.” She spoke quietly, but without shame. “I slept with anyone who
thought my ass looked nice. I did a bunch of drugs. I tried cocaine, I tried acid. Smoked a lot of weed. All of that, just to feel something. Anything.”
Adrienne’s eyes widened. “You did a bunch of drugs and hooked up with everyone in school? Why didn’t I hear about this?”
“When did I say it was only people from the school? This was over the summer. And no one wanted to be associated with me after they found out I became a Christian.”
“Why not? They could say they fucked the devil right out of you,” Adrienne suggested.
Emily was stone-faced. “It doesn’t matter. After a while, I needed a change. My cousin, who also goes to my church, saw my downward spiral after I bought weed from one of her friends and he told her about it. So, she invited me to go to church with her. It was either that, she said, or she would tell my parents everything. So, I went. I was skeptical, and I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. My cousin took me right up to the altar, and everyone in the church laid hands on me.” She shone so beautifully as she spoke, transported into the divine universe of her spirituality, just her and God, with Adrienne as an inconsequential onlooker. “And I felt it, Adrienne. I felt God.”
Silence wafted through the car for a moment, a delicate cloud of tension.
“I can’t explain to you what that’s like. But afterward, I knew there was no going back. I dropped out of school, got my GED, and devoted my life to Christ and Christ alone. I never looked back until last night, when you called me.”
Adrienne bit at one of her nails. “Well, shit, Em. I just don’t believe in that stuff, you know?”
Emily shook her head. “Come to church with me. Just once.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good—”
“Adrienne, after what you tried to do last night? If you think you have nothing to lose, if you can just throw away your life, why not do everything in your power to find some meaning?” Emily was becoming heated. “Please, I really would like you to come. Do it for me.”