Читать книгу Rise Speak Change - Girls Write Now - Страница 50
ОглавлениеJames is the first character I have ever created. She is the person I hide behind in my writing and she speaks the words that I don’t say. I have gone mildly crazy with the power I have over her story.
This is dedicated to the night the criminals were born and rolled into blankets. Under the cracked ceiling, an infamous one-word story was whispered . . .
James was walking down the street, a flare of ombré, a surge of spearmint, and a book in her hand, slowly meandering from the sidewalk onto the curb strip as she became deaf and blind to the world. Her feet crushed the spring grass, stepping on water droplets and sprinkling them inches into the atmosphere only to fall back down to Earth. The sun was shining, the trees were dancing, and the people around her were talking, filling this quiet, empty world with meaningless noise and mindless chatter.
She hummed to herself, the sound echoing in her ears. It was a soft melody, coming from her raging mind, that flew into the air and out into space. NASA had just found three Earth-sized, potentially habitable exoplanets around a single star. That was the kind of headline she had always wanted to see. James was ready to be launched from this flaming garbage pile. She hoped that, maybe, the aliens who dropped her here seventeen years ago would finally come back to get her.
Would anyone notice if they did? Lately, it seemed to James that no one wanted to give a second glance to someone like her—someone who wasn’t filled with that obligatory happiness. They won’t bother with you until you’ve fixed yourself, because no one wants to willingly clean up messes.
That’s why James trusted her books. She wondered why no one else could understand this—that within their reach was a world that they could control. They could open it, read its secrets between the white spaces, and put it down before it got to be too much. They could touch and kill their monsters instead of running away, tripping over their mistakes and losing control. James always fought an internal battle, wanting to reach the last page, but at the same time, never wanting to reach the end of the story. She had become a nocturnal creature, falling asleep with the sun and surrendering to her tired eyes when everyone else had just opened theirs. She lived in the moments where nothing was real.
She let herself fall onto the ground, the cold grass shocking her nerves awake like volts to a dead heartbeat. She wanted to leave; to go home. She wanted to lock herself up in her room and let the music blast and blow up her eardrums so she couldn’t hear the bullets shooting out of everyone’s mouths. Being alone was so much easier.
Her sight blurred when she heard footsteps making their way toward her.
“What are you doing?” came a voice. Jude? Quick, make a joke. Make her smile. Fill yourself with that obligatory happiness.
“Becoming one with nature. Experiencing Zen,” James responded.
“On my front lawn?”
“Huh?” How did she . . .
“I saw you from the window. Are you okay?”
Is she okay? Definitely not. Jude tilted her head, looking worried. Her black curtain of hair spilled and looked like a starless night sky.
Jude tried again. “Well, you see, I thought you were dead because you weren’t responding to any of my texts.” She pinched James’ cheek and sat down next to her on the grass, hands tucked under her bony knees.
James felt a raindrop, and then two. It was drizzling. Not raining, not pouring. Thunder rolled the clouds. Jude was wearing James’ wrinkled black hoodie, drowning in the size of it. She looked small and insignificant, like she shouldn’t be in this big world. James was completely wrecked for her.
“I have a shitty crush on you,” James finally confessed.
Jude widened her eyes and blinked.
James continued. “Do you want to go out with me? Like on a date, or whatever. Be my girlfriend.”
Jude turned away. “That was horrible. You’re horrible. You want to go out on a date with me and that’s how you decide to ask?”
James shivered and lightning ripped the clouds. It was like the world was sending her a warning that this wasn’t her sanest idea. And now she began to think that maybe she should check herself into a mental hospital. I’m James Caster and I think I might be mentally unstable because I have a shitty crush on Jude Larimar.
“Sure,” Jude said finally smirking, “or whatever.”
James closed her eyes and laughed. It was suddenly so easy to laugh she almost cried.
The world disappeared around her and she escaped once again into her mind. She imagined a bridge, broken and tearing, and she walked across it without holding the ropes. It was a tightrope, a thin, barely visible piece of white thread, and she moved on her toes with her eyes closed. Below her was a pit of darkness that didn’t seem to have a bottom. She could hear the monsters rustling below. She could see their cruel claws trying to reach her from the abyss and pull her down. She spun and jumped above them. They couldn’t touch her. Not a single scratch.
Don’t Leave Me Alone.
To the Defenders of the Union
JAMIE SERLIN
This piece was inspired by the free write from our very first workshop on travel writing. At a time of great fear and uncertainty at home, this place has special meaning to me.
In a city of skyscrapers, we sometimes forget to look up. Have you ever walked by something—a building, a sign, a statue—a whole bunch of times before you ever really stopped to look at it? Or maybe you just noticed it for the first time from a different angle. Or maybe the light hit it in a funny way one day, and you thought, “Hey, has that always been there?”
I can’t claim I never noticed the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch. The marble behemoth that straddles Grand Army Plaza is pretty hard to miss. In the evening it glows a mystic purple, and the car headlights swirling around it make for a cosmopolitan scene that is almost Parisian.
But there is a specific angle from which this Brooklyn landmark takes on added symbolism.
For the runners who frequent the Prospect Park inner loop, the Arch marks the end of a 5k journey that winds through leafy woods and around the sprawling man-made lake, past noisy playgrounds and tranquil picnic houses, evading bikers, skateboarders, and vigorously power-walking Hasidic ladies. It sits at the crest of a brutal, serpentine hill, the kind that slowly saps the strength from your legs as it sucks the air from your lungs.
The first time I attempted it, reaching the top took every ounce of mental and physical endurance I possessed.
But the payoff, I learned, is a view like no other.
The towering arch—framed by regal Greek columns, adorned at the top by the winged goddess of victory—is inscribed with the words:
To the Defenders of Union.
It comes into view in the homestretch, the epic finish line of a one-person race. It is a portrait of resilience, a monument to resistance, a reminder of all the hills we are capable of conquering.
“You made it,” it announces.
“You are strong,” it affirms.
“Keep going.”
