I press my lips together. “So, can’t you extinguish it?”
The employee shakes her head. “If it makes you feel better, the fire may look real and you may even feel heat emanating from it. But it is not real.”
“Or,” I say, “I could make myself truly, one hundred percent, want to go there.”
The employee sighs. “Ma’am, we don’t have much time left. We have a strict schedule to keep. So, I’m afraid you’ll either have to leave now or come back after you’ve sorted out your issues.”
I shake my head and turn to the flame. Extinguish. Extinguish, I think to myself. But the flame continues in all its glory. And why is that? I ask myself. I want to leave this sad place. And the moment I ask the question, the flame flares and spreads, growing higher and wider. The tiny doubt I had in my mind — the tiny doubt that insisted I must be grateful for what I was given, that I must not hurl it all away and leave for my own sake — grows across the Transport System. Each memory of my mother glows like embers. My mother agreeing to take up extra shifts so she could cover my college tuition. My mother cooling tea by pouring it from cup to cup as I studied past three a.m. My mother standing in front of me protectively when I decided to cut my hair short and my father charged at me with anger. I shield myself and back away from the sparks caused by the fire rising in the pit, but the employee stands still, unperturbed. She taps her feet impatiently and glances at her watch.
I close my hands into fists. As I do so, I feel the metallic coldness of the ring. The ring is cold, though I stand in front of flames. The fire is not real, though my doubts are. And yet, when I look around, I’m still standing in a garden. When I back away, my feet sink into the garden’s lawn, bringing me into its cooling embrace. As much as I want to stay behind, I also want to leave.
My phone vibrates. You’ve texted me. Goodness, this is taking forever. I can’t wait to get on the phone with you.
I imagine talking with you tonight. I will be in my bedroom, wrapped in my blanket, listening to you all night from underneath, for I am too afraid of being caught by my mother. I will place the laptop next to me and try to get a hug out of its metallic body. But it will not be the same.
I want to be there with you. I truly do.
I look at the pit again, hoping the fire disappears. It doesn’t, and it isn’t that much of a surprise. As heartless as my mother would make me out to be, I am also human. This wasn’t supposed to be easy anyway.
I would’ve happily dragged my mother here, pulled her into the garden with me. We could’ve gotten that pink saree together, listened to those ‘90s songs together. But she doesn’t see my joy. She thinks my eccentricity (as she likes to call it) roots from a strange compulsion, one I must fight. She thinks it’s choiceless unhappiness, and tries to pry me from its displeasure. She doesn’t see that I choose this and wouldn’t choose anything else. That I choose you, and wouldn’t choose anyone else.
The employee looks at me. “I think you should return later. We need to move on to the next passenger.”
No, I don’t have another time. Once I return home, I doubt I’ll be able to come back here. I clutch the leaf in my hand, draw in a deep breath, and run towards the fire.
Running through the pit of unreal flames hurts more than I thought it would. My hands singe, and I hear the crisp crackling of the flames. When I open my eyes, I find the hems of my shirt lighting up, the flames climbing gently, teasing my skin with its deadly fingers. But its burning prickles soon shift into the warm touch of fingertips. I look up, and there you stand, wearing a black kurta as I predicted. Your hands clutch and crumple my shirt. Your eyes widen as they meet mine. We are so close, our noses almost touch.
“You’re here,” you say.
“I’m here,” I whisper, my lips curling into an overflowing smile. I reach for you, praying you aren’t a mirage like the garden. But my finger touches your very physical, breathing body, and tangles with your long, smooth hair. I slowly trace a finger along your jaw, draw it past your neck, and into the unbuttoned part of your kurta. You crack a little smile. You let go of my shirt and wrap your hands around my waist.
“You should’ve told me you were coming,” you say.
“I’m telling you now,” I say.
You pull me into a warm embrace and I sink momentarily in the pleasure of your levelled breathing. Then, suddenly, you pull away. You laugh awkwardly and turn to your right. Only then does the world around us materialise. I find us underneath the thatched roof of a boathouse. The sun glares down on us, and we continue to glide on glittering water. When I look to your right, I find three gruff people staring at us with bewildered eyes.
“This is a beautiful river,” I say, and all three people beam with pride.
“It definitely is, and we will be maintaining it together, won’t we?” you say to them. Then you turn to me and whisper, “Why don’t you wait over there? I’ll be with you soon.”
“Will it take you long?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Not after you’ve come here,” you say.
I quietly head to the other end of the boathouse. From there, I can see that the three leaders occasionally look at me. But my location is still more discreet than it was initially. As I sit on one of the bamboo chairs placed there, my phone vibrates. It’s my mother. I reach to cut the call, but decide to pick it up.
“Hello?” I ask.
“Have you reached safely?” she asks.
“Yes. I’m with her. She’s a big deal here. She’s talking to three other leaders and mediating between them,” I say. I wait for a response, but there is only breathing. So I say, “You know you can come here, right? You don’t need money or a visa. This place has no borders. It’s not like our country. Thanks to her, of course.”
My mother says nothing again. I sigh. I almost pull my phone away from my ear and cut my call. But then, I hear her clear her throat. Perhaps she was crying.
“Your haircut looks good. You know that, right?” she says.
I smile, and I’m not sure why, but tears roll down my cheeks. “You’ll come here,” I say. “You’ll be down with this. Eventually.”
Swetha S. was born and raised in Coimbatore, India, but is currently in Malaysia, studying English with Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Out of Print magazine, Dust Poetry magazine, and other literary magazines. She is also a freelance editor at Tessera Editorial. She is currently working on a YA novel that won The Word Editor-Writer Mentorship 2020.
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
Midnight Confetti
by D.K. Marlowe
Maeve is born of storms and turmoil. Her mother’s screams call forth rolling thunder. Her mother’s hands, red and raw from too much dish soap, tear at the seafoam-green hospital sheets.
And Maeve: she arrives quiet, the midwife’s hands around her, palm to elbow cocooned like a driftwood rowboat.
And like that, she travels onward, always a stillness in an ocean of froth and agitation. Between the sky and the water, she is the drop of oil.
Only a drop, never enough to shift the sky. Never enough to divot the sea.
The report cards, the faceless friends that filter in and out of her life like shadows behind the static on TV channels that don’t exist.
Merit. Achieved. Merit.
Meets expectations. Meets expectations.
And like that, squeezed out the other end of high school like the last bit of toothpaste.
And then.
Stuck.
The churning ocean is endless now, a never-fading blue-and-green mess of paying rent and studying and dropping out and searching, searching, searching for something to anchor to.
How is it possible to feel so stagnant, so strung up like a flag, yet adrift?
* * *
Late nights fold safe over Maeve like a blanket. When it rains, the streetlights blur, bleeding yellow and green across the black street. Her boots fall heavy with each step
, Maynard Keenan crooning in her ears. Slick lawns slope away from the street, and she marks a dark trail through the grass to her flat full of drop-outs who never comment on the green flecks and damp spots across her torn jeans and leather.
One of these nights she walks and doesn’t stop until she winds up back at work the next day. The afternoon shift at the cafe never was a good anchor, but it feels like a wayport, a stop between the place she is now and the place she’s supposed to be. Reuben looks her up and down, disbelief curdling with resignation over his clotted cream face, and pulls her aside.
Maeve knows she looks like death. She stinks of cigarettes and yesterday’s clothes. Dark circles ring her eyes, her jeans dirty with mud, blades of grass like midnight confetti.
Nod, nod, nod.
When he’s done, nothing calls sweeter than an early smoko break. Pull the last Marlboro from the crumpled box. Head to the alley out back.
Fuck. Fucking lighter.
Ciggie behind the ear. Back through the door, the flaking wood like electric blue pain au chocolat catching her fingers. Bright green Bic lighter on the break room table. There’s a flash of something on the greyscale CRT, Maeve’s fingers still on the neon plastic.
That girl. That fucking girl is back.
And maybe it’s because she resents being pulled to the present, jerked from her detached safety, but she shoves the cigarette back in the crumpled box and the lighter in the front pocket of her apron where the docket pad should be.
The rubber of her Docs squeaks on the tiles. She clumps them hard and beats Aiden to the counter, ignoring his scoff of protest.
The girl.
The fucking girl.
She’s short. Freckled round face split in two by a glowing smile. This week her hair’s pink, divided as usual into four space buns. And… god, she’s wearing a damn strawberry dress. Of course she has a fucking strawberry dress.
Maeve gives her a searching look. “Back to mess with the pastries?”
The girl’s fuschia-dyed brows shoot up, revealing glitter eyeshadow. “Mess with them?”
Like she doesn’t know. Maeve refuses her the pleasure of an eyeroll. Instead, she hits her with a long, slow blink.
At least the girl has the grace to blush. “Even if I did somehow replace all the Chelsea buns with almond croissants, wouldn’t you say it’s a vast improvement?”
Maeve’s lips twist. The customers loved them. Flakiest, softest croissants they’d ever had. Reuben, on the other hand, got it into his shiny head that Maeve had spent petty cash on them.
She grips the edge of the counter and leans forward. She kind of wishes she’d taken smoko so she could stink out the Space Girl.
“I had to pay for the loss.”
Space Girl pouts.
That song about titanium screeches from the speakers, interrupted by a jarring premium ad. Whether you’re up in the clouds or going way underground —
Maeve sucks her teeth. “D’you actually want anything?”
Hesitation flits across her face, the flash of a silver coin in a clear fountain. “Would you like —” She clamps the question behind tulip lips. “Turmeric latte.” She grins wide again. “Please.”
She has a gap between her front teeth.
A cute gap.
“Tsch.” Maeve shoves the EFTPOS machine at her, then stalks away to make the espresso. Turmeric bloody latte. Last week it was red velvet, and Space Girl had a smudge of dirt on her nose. Week before, a matcha frappé, her obscenely bright yellow coveralls flecked with paint.
Every week. Every bloody week she bugs Maeve. In small ways, small and irritating ways. And it has nothing to do with the drink orders.
One day, in the time it took Maeve to stretch the milk, Space Girl redid the specials board, adding stars and frogs in colourful chalk. Not two weeks after that, Maeve’s dead pothos somehow surged back to life, vibrant and leafy green. No one but Space Girl was there.
Maeve smacks the milk jug on the counter and starts the pour.
It bothers her that she can’t rationalise Space Girl’s weird happenings. It bothers Reuben, that’s for damn sure. Each week, with her big hazel eyes, her dresses paired as often with gumboots as vintage sandals, Maeve has to account for the girl’s presence and the incidents that follow.
Maeve examines the latte art.
“Fuck.”
She made it into a heart without thinking. The tug of her last cigarette behind her ear is strong.
She shoves the lid on with a twist of her mouth and thrusts out the coffee. Space Girl stands there for a moment, cradling the cup between her small fingers, rocking on her toes. Like she’s expecting something. Or working some droll thought through her sparkly brain.
Maeve turns on her boot.
* * *
An upturned milk crate makes a poor seat for her bony arse, but at least it’s quiet in the parking lot. Nothing but the low hum of air conditioning units, the muffled clatter of a dozen kitchens. Gum and old napkins are pressed into the chipseal, cigarette butts overfilling an old coffee jar.
The smoke is hot in her throat, her lungs, that buzz of lightness in her head easing her tight chest.
She’s pushing on ten minutes for smoko. Aiden’ll come storming back here if she lags any longer, so she crushes the butt into the concrete and gets to her feet.
The low splutter of a motorcycle pricks the static of the afternoon, like switching suddenly to a different channel.
Space Girl has a motorcycle.
It’s an old-looking thing, emitting a rumbling gurgle. Midnight black with delicate stars sprayed across the tank. Handlebars low and straight beneath a single circular headlight. Space Girl slings a leg over and drops into the seat, the toes of her black boots grazing the asphalt.
She hitches the frothy skirt above her knees, and Maeve presses herself into the side of the building.
With a dainty movement, Space Girl flicks up the kickstand, and it clatters like the opening rapport of a snare drum. She presses a helmet over her head — it’s a yellow one with cat ears attached. The one from that anime Maeve has never bothered to look up. Maybe she will, tonight.
Space Girl’s face is golden with a grin as she tears out of the lot. Off up the road.
“Idiot,” Maeve whispers into the sharp sting of the exhaust fumes.
She doesn’t know who exactly she’s addressing.
* * *
There are only so many fuckups one can make at a cafe. Maeve isn’t bad at making coffee, and she’s good with closing up. It’s quiet, and she can put whatever she wants on the radio. But everything about her offends the customers, from her black-dyed hair, to her Doc Martens, to the smoke clinging to her clothes, to the natural sneer her face seems to fall into.
There are only so many fuckups, and Maeve’s the biggest one.
Her schedule grows sporadic, the gaps between shifts widening like long stretches of deserted road, the days disappearing with her paycheck in the heat shimmer. She calls Reuben, and he laughs her off the phone.
Her fingers shake, slippery on her scratched-up old Samsung.
* * *
Another midnight walk.
She wishes it were raining, drops sliding down her leather jacket, alighting on her eyelashes like salt crystals. But it’s a cloudless night, and she’s alone with her thoughts for too long. Streetlamps pass overhead like bright ghosts.
A motorcycle putters up behind her.
She stops. Throws back her head. Sighs.
Maeve turns to face Space Girl. Her legs are swinging off her motorbike like a kid on a see-saw. She’s stuck star stickers across her cheeks, covering some of the bigger freckles, and she’s wearing some kind of peasant blouse under loose denim overalls. Maeve tries not to glance at the bare skim of flesh below her shirt as Space Girl turns the key and the engine chokes to a stop.
Cricket song presses into the silence, and the silence presses into Maeve, and Maeve presses down and down upon her heart.
The moo
n is a crescent, a bent needle sewing the dawn to the night.
“You haven’t been at the cafe.” The girl’s voice is a hesitant hush.
Maeve bites the inside of her cheek. “Fired.”
“This isn’t America. You can’t just get fired.”
“No contract.”
Maeve waits for it. The scoff, the roll of the eyes, the condescending look that tells her how stupid she is, not demanding a contract from the only place willing to hire her.
But it never comes. Instead, the girl sticks out her hand. There’s dirt under her nails, a bit smudged along her wrist.
“Abigail.”
Maeve stares down at her hand like it’s a viper.
Space Girl leans closer, her motorcycle tipping precariously. “It’s my name.”
“I figured that much out.” Maeve lets her gaze rove over the bike. There’s a basket on the back, spilling over with herbs and vegetables. Like a damn harvest. “Bit old-fashioned.”
She shrugs. “It suits me.”
Maeve slips her hand out of her pocket and takes Abigail’s. Her skin is soft, bar a few calluses peppered across her palm like little cherry pips.
“I’m Maeve.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What?”
She taps her own chest. “Nametag.”
Maeve withdraws her hand, a flush crawling up her neck, curling over her ears, catching on the piercings.
A car streaks by, tyres hissing on the asphalt. The headlights paint Abigail in gold for a moment, the stars on her cheeks glittering.
Maeve rolls up her collar against a sudden chill. “Nice meeting you. I guess.” She turns and strides away.
“Hold up!”
The bike doesn’t start up. Maeve walks a few more metres before stealing a glance over one shoulder. Abigail is pushing the bike along like it’s one of those kid’s bikes, her toes barely making contact with the road.
And Maeve, who’s never stopped for anyone or anything in her life, slows. It feels like pushing against a current, like plunging an oar into a river and diving down an unknown inlet.
It makes her heart race.
Abigail catches up, the suspension of the old bike creaking softly. The helmet presses her cheeks in, and her eyes are alight with a slash of silver moon.
It Gets Even Better Page 10
