Fiction Winter 2019 poetry all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Florian Klauer
Jan Allen
Eight States
Gwen Mullins
Our Way in This World
Erin M. Chavis
Lemon Lemon Lemon
Dayla Haynes
That Thing for What's in Between All the Stuff
Isabelle Ness
Celestial Body
Diana Bauza
Lani's New Moon
Sarah Blanchard
Two Out of Three
L. L. Babb
The Point
R. C. Kogut
Best Man
Elisabeth Chaves
Drummer Grrrl
Paul Attmere
Muriel
AJ Powell
Gone Days
Kimberly Sailor
Knots
Elisabeth Chaves
Drummer Grrrl
College students milled about in Becker’s driveway. Some sat in groups on the curb. It was obvious they knew each other, the crowd a mix of hipsters, wannabe hipsters, geeks, and drama whores. Stephanie had watched them, or versions of them, while pushing her six-month old daughter in her stroller across the campus quad: undergraduates who played Quidditch ironically, others who played for real; tightrope walkers whose older siblings, or parents maybe, had hacky sacked; proud and ashamed members of the university marching band; and, even a few who donned plastic and cardboard medieval armor and unabashedly jousted on foot next to the guys kicking a soccer ball.
What they all shared was the yellow pallor and glassy eyes of the medicated. Not the fun stuff anymore but the anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressants that had become this generation’s multivitamins. Her husband Brian was always complaining about the latest tale of woe e-mailed him in lieu of an assignment. Only these couldn’t be dismissed as in days of yore but were shared with the full raft of support services childproofing the sharp edges of higher education. That was her analogy. Like her newfound proficiency at the cryptic crossword, her brain’s excess capacity, formerly used to study medieval literature, now produced party tricks.
Everyone in the driveway seemed at least ten years younger than her, full of unrealized prospects. Some were good-looking in the promising way that the youth are. She spotted one kid who might easily model. Stephanie turned to leave, but a suburban street filled her field of vision with anodyne house after anodyne house, sterile green lawn after sterile green lawn, each planted with the requisite shrubs in soldier-formation, standing at attention, warding off all threats of interest, a landscape so barren as to make a rock outcropping appear biologically diverse. People hidden away. The occasional car the only sign of life. No sounds but the birds.
Her own street was no different, and so she turned back around, clutching at the drumsticks in her bag. Passing a parked car, she admired her flexed arm reflected in its window. She’d hung from her arms while giving birth to her daughter Eleanor, a thirteen-hour feat she’d endured without drugs.
The undergrads had now organized themselves in the driveway, waiting for a show. She wasn’t sure what the band’s sound would be. The ad described it as psych rock meets acid jazz. More like confused, but there weren’t any other bands in the area looking for drummers. There weren’t many bands period, which was surprising in a college town. But other than the frats, there weren’t many places to play.
The band tuned up in the garage, and the garage door kept sliding down inches at a time. Someone from the drive stood and jammed a ratty sneaker into the top corner of the mechanism to hold it in place. A guy wearing tight pants and a sweater that could have belonged to Stephanie’s middle school wardrobe gave a nod, and they began to play. She assumed the guy was Becker, the person ostensibly in charge who’d placed the ad for a drummer. He wasn’t thin, and his butt was too feminine. Still, put a guy behind a bass guitar, and a squishy ass mostly disappears. The timing was off, and Becker turned to the guy on drums, jerking his thumb. Someone else from the driveway jumped up and took his place. The substitutions repeated. There was no order, but it was orchestrated, like they’d all done this before.
After a few more auditionees had a go, some of the gathered students began to jabber on their phones, or tap them noiselessly, some left, some went indoors, some returned with bags of chips and oversized cups. Some of them had given her a few looks when she arrived. The obvious one who did not belong there. But she had occupied a space near the bottom of the drive, close to two guys who looked like bystanders. She’d been surprised when one—a clean cut male in a button-down blue shirt and khakis—had leapt up to have a go, half stumbling then righting himself into a handstand, an impressive feat on an uphill drive. He wasn’t bad, on the drum kit, even if he’d fallen off beat and pulled Becker out of rhythm too. But he knew the song. They all did. There were only three songs in rotation, but everyone except her seemed to know each one.
The last would-be new band member was ejected, and no one rose to replace them. The model had already taken a turn. He wasn’t just looks, but he wasn’t much more. Stephanie wavered; an energy urging her to get up started from her deltoids traveled through her rotator cuffs and bisected, sending currents down her triceps and biceps, before rejoining in her forearms and exiting at the wrist, firing shocks down each finger and thumb. But her sore backside had other plans and remained planted. She rocked, and the guy in the khaki pants who’d resumed his seat grunted, “Just do it.” She gave him a look and pulled herself up as gracefully as she could. Having given birth six months ago, her body still wasn’t entirely her own.
She stepped between the remaining clumps of students pebbling the drive. Her sticks were in her hands, extending from them like her own fingers did. Becker looked at her impassively and waited for her to sit behind the kit, but only just. He launched into a new song, a fourth, with a fast and unpredictable beat, more messy than measured. She felt for the rhythm, trying to predict its next move, but the song darted around like it had ADHD, like it spent all its time on screens. She thought maybe they were messing with her, because her concentration was consumed with groping after the beat, and she hadn’t bothered to notice whether the song itself was intelligible. It may not have been a song at all, but them just riffing, improv, discordance. Maybe this was them trying to be punk, and like all attempts, it was wannabes playing instruments badly but sort of together. When the song finished, or when Becker decided it was done, he flashed a grin and gave her the finger.
She spent a second trying to work out what it all meant, and then in the next second she chucked one of her sticks at Becker’s head, shouting “Pecker!” He ducked, and the stick shot out onto the drive striking the model in the chest who stood next to a guy Stephanie thought she recognized. The model yelled “Bitch!” and everyone in the driveway jumped to their feet. The glazed-over looks of the checked-out or too-cool-to-care transformed to bloodthirstiness. A different kind of zombie. The kid in the khakis shouted “fuck yeah!”
Stephanie wasn’t sure what to do, so she stayed behind the kit. Becker flicked an eye to the guy on guitar who started to play. The keyboardist joined in, and so did the other guitarist, and then Becker, and then the dude standing next to the model tossed the stick back to Stephanie. She caught it confidently, like a triumphant moment in an 80’s teen flick. This go-round she could not only follow but also lead, and as the song built, she pushed the beat faster. Everyone in the drive pogo’ed or body slammed, and the sweat marks on her armpits extended down toward her waist. Her ass hovered imperceptibly over the drum throne, as she reached for the ride, and her quads burned. She could feel her womb quivering, threatening to slide out, and she squeezed her pelvic floor tighter. “Kegel, damn it, kegel,” she whispered while her hands danced and her sticks flew. Becker turned toward her, and she savored the look of concentration on his face.
When she got home, still high, Brian met her at the door, their daughter Eleanor in his arms. She pulled her out of his and into hers, twirling the baby around, blowing raspberries into her exaggerated cheeks.
“PT that good?” Brian asked.
“Just good to get out of the house,” she smiled.
Her midwife had prescribed physical therapy for the almost fourth-degree tearing. The surgeon who’d sewn her back up after delivery described the damage as a starburst. Stephanie imagined her baby shooting out like a divergent beam of light, searing the edges of her vagina as she exited. Even after the stitches healed, things felt a bit . . . wobbly. And then there were the hemorrhoids. But PT for her punani was beyond the pale. That though was the excuse she gave Brian—that he had to watch Eleanor while she finally made it to her first appointment. She hoped there would be need for a second.
During the night while she nursed the baby for the third time, the text came. Outside it was dark. “See you at 5” was all the text said. She’d given Becker her number before she left. There had been a few more songs with her on the drums. Then the handful of remaining undergrads congregated in the garage, shuffling among the knots of extension cords and tangled leads that she herself had almost tripped over. “You should come back,” Becker told her, his bass leaning against an amp, his ass out in the open. Not, you’re in the band, or anything committed. Just, come back. When, he left undetermined. It shouldn’t have made her feel so good to be accepted by some twenty-somethings who shared her passion for music though little else. But she was excited again, like when she was pregnant.
The baby woke at seven, giving Stephanie maybe five interrupted hours of sleep. She contemplated rolling over to tell Brian, “I’m in a band.” But she wasn’t exactly, and he would get up soon to go to work, dress in a suit, sit in an office, read difficult material and relay it to a lecture hall full of open and shut minds. She remembered where she saw that guy before, coming out of Brian’s office when she’d stopped by with Eleanor to bring him his forgotten lunch.
Brian couldn’t watch the baby that evening, and babysitters were too expensive for their budget. So she texted Becker after breakfast, “Can’t. Tmrw?” She tensed and waited, watching Eleanor push a chunk of banana around her high chair tray. The baby squeezed it hard in her fist and shrieked. Stephanie checked the phone. No reply. Eleanor was smiling at her, looking for a response. She beamed back and said “Silly Billy,” then threw the phone onto the table.
That afternoon she met another mom, Angela, for coffee. They’d been in a birthing class together. Angela worked in HR at the university. Most people in the town worked at the university. Most people in the surrounding towns did too.
“Working part-time is exhausting,” Angela half-joked. She was the same age as Stephanie, and also a transplant from the West Coast. But she’d adopted the look of their new mountainous home and dressed like she could as easily go for a hike as input salary data into a computer.
Stephanie smiled. Eleanor and Angela’s son Dylan looked peaceful, slumbering in their respective strollers.
“It takes so much to get Dylan to daycare and then myself to work. Once I’m there I have to pump. By the time I’m actually working it’s time to go home. It’s not fair to Dylan either, because I can’t really be the mom I want to be. I mean, how can I be engaged when I’m so tired? He must sense it, my lack of enthusiasm when I’m reading Little Blue Truck. I can barely ‘beep.’ Why do you keep checking your phone?”
Stephanie was tempted to say, because you’re making me insane. Instead, she said, “Sorry, I’m waiting to hear from someone. It’s rude.”
“That’s fine. I try not to let Dylan see me on my phone too much. Do you know they’ve done studies and infants whose moms are always on their smartphones have developmental disabilities?”
Stephanie struggled to pay attention. “Where were they published?”
“Oh, I read about them somewhere. Facebook maybe. Anyway, how are you?”
“Not bad. Just trying to keep a six-month old entertained,” Stephanie said as she shifted on the hard chair.
“I know what you mean. Dylan is so active already. I can see his mind whizzing away, and I’m afraid our activities aren’t stimulating enough. I’ve been watching some YouTube videos. At work actually!” Angela laughed. “I hope my boss doesn’t have one of those programs tracking my Internet history.”
“How do you have time to surf the net? I thought you barely had time to work.”
Angela paused and looked at Stephanie carefully. “I guess you don’t have to worry about that. A boss, or sneaking videos at work. You must have lots of time to do what you want as a stay-at-home mom.”
“Yeah, I’ve become a day trader and am already earning a six-figure salary.”
Angela’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “You’re such a bullshitter!” She laughed loudly. “That’s why I like hanging out with you. Too funny!” She laughed again.
Eleanor and Dylan both startled and began to cry.
“I think that’s our cue,” Stephanie said standing, her bottom thankful for the relief.
“Oh, don’t go. I don’t have to be home for another hour. Dylan’s having trouble with solids. We’re doing baby-led weaning. And I want him to take the right approach to food. His dad is a little overweight . . .” Stephanie’s phone vibrated but Angela ignored the interruption. “. . . We should do this again. Maybe next week?”
“I’m busy. You know, the day trading.”
“You are too funny. I’ll call you.”
Stephanie read Becker’s text. She may have said to Angela, “Great, looking forward to it.”
Outside the coffee shop Stephanie told Eleanor, “Your mommy is going to do things differently. No more wasting her time with boring people. No more watching her life go by. You’re cute, and mommy loves you. But this motherhood shit is not getting the better of me.” The text read: “Good thing you can shred. Tomorrow then.”
Becker was tightening a nut on the Hi-hat when she arrived the next day, his ass jutting out like the bow of a ship. “I can do that,” she said, moving to take over.
“Go for it.”
“Sorry about yesterday.”
“It is what it is.”
“I hate that phrase.” She wasn’t being rude on purpose. She was just sleep deprived, and it was her experience that it didn’t pay to be too nice. Most guys didn’t want a female on the drums to begin with.
Becker eyed her warily. “Yeah well, nice to have you back. We’ll get started when Josh gets here.”
Stephanie eased herself onto the throne and began to do some stick warm ups and arm stretches. Becker tuned his bass.
“I’ve never seen you play before,” he said.
“I haven’t. Not here.”
“Why not?”
“Just busy. I haven’t played in a while, okay?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“Guess I’m a natural.”
“Me too.” He played the bass line from a Katy Perry song. Stephanie laughed. He turned to her again. “Why with us?”
She was caught off guard, not having expected to play twenty-one questions. She hadn’t expected a guy like Becker to give a shit. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to play with us? You’re like ten years older. At least. And you’re good.”
“There’s not exactly much going on in this town.”
“Well, I like that you’re kind of an asshole, and mysterious too. If only you were hot, then maybe we’d get fans.”
“Don’t make me throw my stick again.”
Josh arrived with some excuse about having to study for a midterm. They began to practice, and Stephanie felt herself uncoil. She locked into the beat and forgot about everything else. Even Becker started to look cute. The band wasn’t good. The music mostly sucked. But even out of dross, she could spin some gold. Her muscle memory took over, and she played complex grooves and difficult fills. Suddenly Becker stopped playing. She pulled herself up and waited.
“Jesus, stop making us look so shit,” he said.
Connor, the guy on keyboard, said, “I thought we were sounding good. I’ve never heard us sound good.” Josh nodded in agreement. So did the other guitarist, Kevin.
Becker continued, “But it’s obvious she’s carrying us.”
“Sorry I didn’t realize you guys were a bunch of posers,” Stephanie said. “Your ad said you played gigs.”
“We do. We have,” Becker said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, at a frat,” Kevin said.
“Great.”
“I’m talking to people.” Becker took a few sips from a flask. “There will be others.”
“What happened to your last drummer anyway? Whose are these?” She hit the pedal on the bass drum.
“He committed suicide,” Becker said.
“What?”
“Shitting you. He moved.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to play with you, that’s cool. I don’t have to.” Stephanie held her breath.
“You can stay,” Becker said. “Just don’t be so . . .” He stared at her. “Don’t be such a rock star.”
That evening after dinner, once Eleanor was in her crib for her first stretch of sleep, Brian reached for Stephanie’s waist while they stood in the kitchen. He let his hand drift downward.
“Not now,” Stephanie said.
“Then when?”
She pushed him away. “I’m not in the mood.”
“But you look hot.”
She looked down at her shirt stained with spit up. “Really?”
“Yeah, you’re like a taut string, and I want to pluck you.” He put a hand between her breasts and grabbed at her bra.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?”
“I need to sleep. PT wore me out.”
“Ok, as long as that’s all it is.”
“What else would it be?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
In bed, she waited for Becker’s text. “You down tomorrow?” it read. What was with these guys? Didn’t they have anything else to do? “Have plans,” she texted back. “Monday?”
“Whatever,” he replied.
She wanted to tell Brian, but he would laugh, find it hilarious she was in a band with guys that could be his students. Or he’d be pissed she was playing drums instead of taking care of her infant daughter or pelvic floor. Instead of finishing her dissertation comparing the use of scatology in Swift and Rabelais. Instead of finding a job that could take them someplace better. He’d always said she was the one with the career potential, and here she was wasting it. But she could remind Brian that he met her at a gig, when her band opened for the band that opened for Sleater-Kinney. That he’d fallen hard for the badass behind the drums. That if he ever wanted sex again, he’d have to let her find that person who’d dropped out of sight sometime last year. But she wasn’t sure it was so straightforward. Everything made sense to her when she was playing, but she couldn’t translate a rhythm into words.
“What’s that noise?” Brian mumbled, reaching out a hand for her, feeling around on her side of the bed.
“Go back to sleep,” she said.
He found her butt and gave it a gentle pat. She quickly squeezed his hand and moved it aside.
A week later Stephanie sat on the examining table, the thin sheet of tissue paper below her, a thinner cotton sheet on top. The nurse had handed it to her, the sheet, folded up into an untidy rectangle. “Everything off below the waist. Underwear too. You can use this.” As usual, Stephanie didn’t know what to do with the sheet; it could cover a double bed. She could wrap herself in it three times. Should she drape it around herself like a cape and when the doctor walked in she could whip it open, flasher style? Today she settled on spreading it around her like skirting, like she was a Christmas tree and the sheet covered the mechanics keeping her upright. She bunched it around the back of her ass and considered tying it. But she didn’t want the doctor to have to unwrap her. It was a long wait between nurse and doctor. So she stared at the model uterus, at the small resin baby that fit in it upside down. Eleanor was passed out in her stroller, oblivious to the gynecological world. There was a pelvis too that looked like the jaw of a shark. Stephanie studied the cervical dilation gauge and wondered again how any woman’s undercarriage stayed intact. A soft rap on the door preceded the doctor’s entrance, a woman in her fifties, she guessed, who’d sewn her up.
“So, you’ve been having issues with incontinence?”
“No.”
The doctor sat in front of the computer monitor presumably reviewing Stephanie’s chart.
“Oh right, I see,” she said, her back to Stephanie. “You’re having problems with bowel movements. The hemorrhoids?”
“That’s what I thought, at first. But it’s getting worse.”
“How so?”
“More painful.”
“More blood?”
“No, not really.”
“Just more painful?”
“I feel like I have to shift things around, to get it out.”
“Manually?”
“No, I have to sort of squat and lean from side to side. Shift around. And breathe. Honestly, it feels like giving birth all over again.”
“Did you treat the hemorrhoids with the steroids when I first told you to?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I could handle them.”
The doctor stared. Stephanie could tell she wanted to say something.
“What?” she asked.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” the doctor said.
“I’m not.”
“Then fill this.”
Stephanie reached forward for the slip of paper. “You don’t want to check?”
“You have a monster hemorrhoid, and you’re in denial.”
“Seems common enough.”
“Most people seek treatment.”
“Is there some sort of meeting I can attend, for other deniers like me?”
“Go to PT, like I told you to.”
Stephanie didn’t have time for PT, now that she was playing again. She could handle the pain. Physical pain was her thing, an opportunity she seized. How else could she demonstrate to herself that she was strong enough? Most mornings, after breakfast, she deposited Eleanor in the contraption that kept her standing while she swatted at things that bobbled. Then Stephanie ran to the bathroom. The urge to unload was as overwhelming as the impossibility of getting anything out. She practiced the breathing exercises the midwife had taught her for labor. It was like she relived it every morning, the horror and triumph of Eleanor’s birth. The act of turning herself inside out and showing everyone what she was made of. Each morning it took longer, too. Minutes ticking by, as she tried not to strain, Eleanor getting fussier, and Stephanie trying to ignore both demands. She focused on the drumming then, that other thing that made her invincible. In the afternoons at Becker’s, she forgot about the mornings, and in the mornings, she tried not to think.
After practicing together about a month, her daughter Eleanor got sick, and Brian got busy with work. She thought about telling Becker she was away, but she knew that would guarantee running into him somewhere in their pokey town. So she kept it cryptic, texting him to say she had a thing. Each day she sent a variation of the same. At first Becker replied with jokes about the important lives of adults. The following week, with Eleanor still under the weather and Brian being a jerk—staying late at work just because, Becker’s responses became more abrupt, then stopped. Stephanie was jonesing for band practice. Withdrawal made her an asshole. She felt shimmers of embarrassment that she needed the drumming to stay sane, especially when it was so pathetic, her and some college kids who sounded no better than the day she first joined them, who would never play anywhere else than that garage. It didn’t help that she’d even started to fall for Becker’s marshmallow butt.
She figured they’d all be in the garage, just like every other afternoon, and she needed her hit. So after she’d made the handoff, quickly giving Brian the details of her continued need for the PT appointments, the details painted in very broad strokes, she squeezed Eleanor goodbye and headed over. She was right; they were all there, even Josh was on time. Becker acknowledged her arrival with an eye roll.
“Sorry about last week,” she said.
“Last two weeks.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“Whatever” he said, before taking a gulp from a tall plastic cup.
Some other undergrads started to arrive, ones not in the band. Stephanie ignored them and warmed up. When Becker was finally ready, he began to play one of their old standards. Stephanie was already bored, but she drummed along, keeping a somewhat wobbly Becker on beat. More students showed, Becker kept chugging whatever was in the cup, and, after the third song, a skinny boy who looked maybe thirteen, a child prodigy she imagined, walked over to the drum kit and waited, like he was expecting her to get up.
She stared back at the kid, her sticks tightly gripped together in her right hand.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I called next,” the boy replied.
“What the hell?” she said, scanning the faces of the other guys who stared down at their instruments.
“We didn’t know if you could commit,” Becker answered.
“Commit to what?”
“To the band.”
“What band?” she said. “This isn’t a band; this is an assemblage of jerk-offs who hang out together in your garage every afternoon. It’s like I’m back in high school, and I’m waiting for your parents to come out and tell us to keep it down.”
“Only my dad lives here.”
“Seriously?” Stephanie asked. She looked Becker up and down, scrutinizing his flabby figure. Then she looked around the walls of the garage and noted for the first time the careful order of lawn care instruments and power tools. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You’re a freshman?”
“Senior.”
“In college?”
Becker laughed.
“We’re in high school,” Kevin answered. “All of us.”
“I thought you were in college. I’ve seen some of you,” and she waved her stick in the direction of the driveway, “on campus.” Stephanie scanned the crowd for the guy’s face she’d recognized. The guy she knew she saw come out of Brian’s office. He was down by the bottom of the drive, intently staring at his phone.
“You!” she shouted, pointing her stick.
The guy looked up, but the face was different, rounder, the eyes less in the know.
“Seriously?” she said to Becker. “You guys are all in high school?”
“Yeah,” he said and took a step toward her, looking like he was going to vomit, but snagged his bare foot on a cord. She thought about the rugs sitting in the rear of her hatchback—impulse purchases she’d bought when she was shopping for nursery furniture for Eleanor’s room, now that she was old enough to have her own. The rugs that would prevent accidents like this one from happening. That would sit on top of the snaking cords more experienced bands knew to cover. Then she realized she knew all along they were just kids, and like an experienced mom, she caught Becker mid-trip before his head hit the floor.
The next afternoon Stephanie stood at the pharmacy counter. Eleanor was strapped to her chest in one of those wrap things that took her a couple days to figure out. The stunned expression worn into the pharmacist’s face suggested he found life as disorderly as the curls sprouting from his ears.
“These work, huh?” she asked, while she waited for his assistant to package her prescription-strength suppositories.
He turned his ear toward her. “Say again?”
“The butt supps,” she shouted. “They really do the trick, huh?”
“Oh yes, they’re quite effective.” She knew he’d be speaking from experience.
“Can I pay for this here?” a guy behind her said.
Becker put a gallon of cheap orange juice on the counter. He glanced at the baby but hadn’t noticed Stephanie.
“Hey, hey,” she said.
“Oh shit, I didn’t see you. You have a kid?”
“Yes, I’m a procreator. Guilty as charged.”
“Are you teaching her to drum?”
“We’re still working on picking up Cheerios. Beats are a ways off.”
“Sorry about yesterday.”
“What, it’s not every day I get puked on. Oh wait, it is.” And she waved a burp cloth at him.
“I guess the volume was a bit different though.”
“That it was.”
“It’s the cheap liquor. My stomach can’t handle it.”
The pharmacist held up a clear plastic bag with the suppositories and placed it in a paper pharmacy bag. He handed the package to her.
“For my husband,” Stephanie said to Becker.
“Married, too. That sucks.”
Stephanie admired the profile of Becker’s pincushion bottom and thought about giving it a slap, to see what it would sound like. She imagined it would make a noise like footfall on waterlogged turf. Or maybe it would produce a more muffled sound, like the thud from her stick striking a rubber practice pad. Instead, she said, “I’m thirty-three.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s practically middle aged.”
“It’s not easy being a loser.”
“I know.”
Becker twisted around to pick up his orange juice. His glutes twitched almost invisibly in his tight jeans, his pillowy eighteen-year old unmarred butt having barely flexed.
“Tomorrow then?” he asked.
Eleanor began to fuss, and Stephanie jiggled her up and down. As she bounced, she listened to the suppositories shake in the paper sack.
Some things were maybe better put behind her.
Elisabeth Chaves
lives in southwest Virginia with her husband and young son. She has a JD and a PhD in planning and governance. Her story, “Maggie,” placed third in Bethesda Magazine’s Fiction Contest, and another story, “Lady’s Slippers’ Reward,” will appear in the Frankfurt anthology Open Bookcase 2. She is currently a student of the Humber School for Writers and is working on a novel.