“You’ll do better, Johnny,” I tell him. But he won’t listen. He stares out the window, resting his head against his palm, his free hand smoothing over his bushy sideburns. The street lamps moving over us flash his skin orange. I grip the steering wheel in one hand and slug his shoulder with the other.

He mutters something unintelligible, blinks, and goes back to staring. And I feel bad for the guy. I really do. A couple weeks ago, I was in the same situation, same story, but without the commitment or the five months. Her name was Joelle, but I called her Jo. She’d just gotten out of a three-year relationship she said was too safe. Predictable. No fun. She’d complain about it over cosmos at Dave & Buster’s, and I listened while vodka tonics warmed my stomach. We’d spend nights at my place, and in the mornings, she’d flip omelets, butter toast. It was like having Christmas once a week: frantic, but pleasantly peaceful. Then one night, she said it was over. She’d gotten back with her ex and couldn’t see me anymore. That’s when I took my trip to Cherries, so I figure Johnny could use the same thing. Some fishnets twisting around a pole and a lap dance later, and he’ll say, Stacy? Who the fuck’s Stacy?

Everybody’s braking ahead, so I take a detour down Ocean, past a closed-down Dunkin’ Donuts and a vacant lot with an overflowing dumpster. I squint to find a man in sweats standing in the shadows, rummaging through an old grocery cart. He presses a pillow to his face. I almost miss a stoplight.

“Just take me home,” Johnny mumbles. His head lurches forward as I brake, then rebounds into the padding. He puts his seat back. Turns away from me. “You’re driving like an asshole, and Cherries doesn’t sound like such a good idea anymore.”

I roll down my window to get some fresh air. The cold feels good against my cheeks. I rub them. “But you need this,” I say. “You need this or your balls are going to shrivel up and fall off. Is that what you want? You want your balls to shrivel up and fall off?”

I drum on the steering wheel with my index fingers. I always wanted to join a band, but I never had the rhythm—even slow dancing’s a problem. Jo could testify. I’m infamous for scuffing women’s shoes, big or small.

“I have work tomorrow,” he says.

“We all have work tomorrow,” I say. But I know what he means. He’s a lawyer, and he needs his sleep so he can be sharp and attentive while he’s in the office. Me, I run credit cards and take sweaty dollar bills from kids in a comic book store for eight hours a day. Not much to it. So I make a mental note to drive him home before daybreak.

The light turns green, and I step on it, and Johnny looks up, eyes wide as we listen to the set of Goodyears screeching beneath us.

# # #

I met Johnny in a British lit class back while I was still trying for an English degree and before I realized I was up to my neck in Stafford Loans with no desire to teach. Back then, Johnny only answered to John. He’d snap his finger for the professor during roll. I remember thinking he was a smug little shit, but I kept running into him at block parties around my studio, and we got to talking. He was friends with the same slut, Carli Bergstrom. She had a tongue ring, and she shared it freely. The last time I saw her, she was out back by some guy’s Jacuzzi where she’d led Johnny by the hand, and afterwards, everyone knew to stay clear of the water. That was the night I started calling him Johnny Apple Seedz, Johnny Boy, and then finally, Johnny.

# # #

“Every couple has their ups and downs,” he says. He’s still camped out on the passenger seat, fidgeting with the automatic windows, rolling them up, down, up. The wind rushes through the cab and into my hair. I’ve been growing it out since Jo left. I figure if I ever run into her, she’ll see I’ve changed, even if we don’t speak.

The carpool lane’s closed up ahead. We drive past several cones and a huge, blinking arrow.

Johnny rubs the stubble on his chin. He sits up. “Do we have any more water?”

“Check the floor,” I say.

He checks. “I don’t see anything.”

I take one hand off the wheel and fish under my seat. I try to keep my eyes on the road, but it’s tough when you’re looking for those damned plastic bottles—they’re always rolling on the ground somewhere because they never fit the cup holders. When my hands come up empty, Johnny’s CRV has drifted off the freeway and into the emergency lane. I use both hands to steer back into traffic. Somebody honks behind us, and I flash the emergencies.

“Are you still okay to drive?” Johnny says.

I tell him to sit tight. We’re almost to Cherries. But the truth is, I’ve only been there once and I don’t know where the fuck we are. We missed our exit somewhere back by the Queen Mary, and the signs are getting harder and harder to read at this speed. So I cut across two lanes and take Anaheim headed east.

Johnny tightens his seat belt. “Stacy said I wasn’t giving her attention.”

“That’s bullshit,” I say.

I hardly saw the guy. He’d take her out to dinner at Wood Ranch or Macaroni Grill. I’d call his cell, and it’d go straight to voicemail. Once, I scored last-minute Lakers tickets from a radio show, and by the time he called back the game was already over.

“Could you pull over? I gotta pee again,” Johnny says.

I swerve around a Taurus that’s going too slow.

“You did anything she wanted,” I say. “Like the Farmer’s Market on Sundays, waking up super early to pick out grapes and other lame shit like that.”

The light ahead turns yellow, and I punch it, speed us through just before the red.

Johnny grips the armrest. “Troy, really. You need to pull over.”

“I know. I heard you the first time,” I say. I start tailgating the grandpa in front of us, but I can’t cut him off. Both lanes are going exactly the same speed. I drum on the steering wheel. “Just hang in there. I’ll get us to Cherries. Don’t worry.”

# # #

I closed shop by myself on the night Jo dumped me. I’d sent Eric home early because he had a paper due in the morning. He’s a nice kid, and I didn’t want Comic World to ruin his shot for the Dean’s List. That, and I also wanted to call Jo about dinner while I locked the display cases and balanced the registers. She lives in Torrance, a long distance phone call, and I’d already exceeded the minutes on my cell phone.

Jo picked up on the third ring. Her voice sounded breathy over the line.

“What are you doing for dinner?” I asked. I’d counted out the minimum one hundred singles and twenty five-dollar-bills. I documented them on the company clipboard and rubber banded the excess. Then I dropped everything in the safe. “We can get dollar pizzas at Francelli’s.” I said. “My treat.”

Jo was silent for a while.

“You all right?” I asked. I straightened the X-Men cardboard cutouts, spun them so Wolverine faced the main entrance head-on. “Can I come over?”

I pictured her lying on her suede sofa, remote in one hand, phone in the other. The TV was always on, even when she wasn’t watching. She said she couldn’t stand the quiet. She came from a big family and she’d never lived alone.

“I have company,” Jo said, after a while.

“Well then, why don’t I bring pizza for all of us?” I said.

“No, Troy.”

I held the cordless in the crook of my neck while I restocked a couple Fathom comics that had fallen to the floor. The kids were always running wild, touching all the glossy covers, stamping greasy handprints on glass. If I were Spider-Man, I’d zap them with my webbing and hang them from the ceiling like flies.

“Look, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it,” she said. Then it sounded like the phone was changing hands and someone was covering the receiver. A man’s voice was in the background. It was too low to make out the words.

“Hello?” I’d stopped by the anime section, rested my back against a shelf.

Then Jo was back on the line. “I can’t see you anymore,” she whispered. “I’m back with Ben.”

# # #

“You have the bladder of a eighty-six-year-old woman!” I say, as Johnny rounds the corner of the gas station. He carries a key roped to a 12-inch hubcap. It slaps against his leg as he walks.

I wait for him in the florescent glow of the convenience store. I stumble my way toward the back aisle where Dasani water’s on sale, two for $2.22. Normally, I can’t stand Dasani—it doesn’t taste much like water, too smooth if you ask me—but I grab a couple and head to the front. The cashier’s flipping through a car magazine behind a wall of two-inch thick bulletproof glass. There’s a woman in a silver bikini on the page, leaning over a carbon fiber hood. I push the button and speak into the box.

“I want to buy these,” I say. I open the metal door and put the Dasanis on the tray.

He closes the magazine and coughs into his hands. Then he scans the labels.

I know Johnny’ll like the water. I’ll hold the plastic bottles out to him, and he’ll mumble something, and then I’ll bring up that night with the Jacuzzi and Carli Bergstrom. That might get a smile out of him. And I’ll punch his arm, tell him that the party never ends, that we’re headed to Cherries, which reminds me, I’ve almost driven a complete circle around downtown.

I tap the bulletproof glass with my knuckles. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Cherries is, would you?” I ask.

The man rips the receipt and brings his hands up around his chest, cups imaginary breasts. “You mean the titty bar?” he says, jiggling his hands. He grins, both front teeth missing. “You wanna take Pine down to Third, but if you pass the metro, you’ve gone too far.”

I thank him and wait for Johnny—this has gotta be the world’s longest piss.

# # #

Sometimes when it’s late and I’m feeling sorry for myself, I think about buying a dog. And not just any dog. I want an Akita Inu. It’s the largest of the Japanese breeds, a hunting dog, originally bred for pit fighting. I learned all of this on the Discovery Channel. How they make excellent guard dogs—loyal—and they don’t go ape shit when left alone for long periods of time.

I told Jo about these dogs one day while watching previews at the AMC. I leaned over and whispered in her ear. I wanted to buy one together. I’d found a kennel over the Internet that was close to her apartment. But Jo never took it seriously. She smiled and turned back to the screen, scooped a handful of popcorn, offered me some. Everything I said was a joke, and somewhere along the line, maybe not that night while we necked in the back row, but sometime shortly thereafter, Jo stopped laughing, and I stopped joking. I don’t know which came first. But I haven’t forgotten about my Akita Inu.

# # #

On my last trip to Cherries, the bar was packed with men talking loudly, men holding empty glasses, men waving twenties for the bartender. The cigar smoke dried my eyes. And a bachelor party was going on in the front row. The fiancé wore a cap with a rubber pussy on the bill. Someone had written whipped on the rubber with a red Sharpie.

But tonight, there’s no bachelor party. No crowd, just a couple suits huddled in the corner. Johnny takes a seat at one of the circular tables center stage, and I leave him with the girls, one of them a porn-star blonde.

One of the funny things about Cherries is the fact that none of these dancers could pass for under twenty-five, even with layers of cover-up, color filters, and dimmed lighting. Not one. I mean, in a place called Cherries, you’d expect college girls in plaid skirts and ponytails. I did on my first night, but who can stay mad with all this silicone?

I run over to Johnny with a couple pints of Pabst. I slide him one across the table. He takes a sip and yells at me over the music. His eyes are tiny slits. “It wasn’t about the amount of time we spent together.”

We watch the blonde rubbing a ball of yarn against her crotch.

“She said it wasn’t quality,” he says.

I had a girlfriend in college who said the same thing. She pulled me out of my friend’s green Chevy Nova while we were hot boxing before a football game. I couldn’t understand her. The whole point was to keep the smoke inside the car. I laced her fingers with mine. Held them there between us. This is quality time, I said.

The blonde kicks the air in front of me.

I whistle and pat Johnny on the back.

“I never liked Stacy,” I say.

He laughs and a drop of spit escapes him. He wipes his chin and turns his attention back to the stage.

Now the blonde’s rolling around in front of us, threading a piece of yarn through her toes. She works it up along her thighs and snags it in her mouth. Tugs on it.

I tell Johnny this is the life, and he nods.

# # #

Sometimes I wonder what Jo’s up to—if she still laughs that same infectious laugh (the one that made Mountain Dew dribble out my nose), or if she’s still taking salsa dancing at the Rec Center on Monday nights, if she still needs a partner. But I guess it doesn’t matter one way or the other. She’s out of my life, and I keep reminding myself, but it’s tough when you don’t have anybody else lined up.

Working at Comic World has its perks with its discount and early releases—Eric and me sneak our copies home the night before—but sadly, all of this does very little for my social life. So naturally, I don’t have anybody else to think about. It’s always Jo before I go to sleep. Always Jo with a hot shower in the mornings. But some days are better than others. Some days, I don’t even think about her.

# # #

Johnny downs the last of his beer and stands. “Troy, I gotta call her.” He pushes away from the table. His footing’s shaky, and he steadies himself against his chair.

I set my beer on the counter. I grab his arm. “You sit your ass down,” I say.

His eyes sharpen for a moment. Then they let up.

“Do you know what the fuck you’re doing?” I say. “Forget her. Move on. You’ll just make an ass out of yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” he says. He looks away. Closes his eyes. He’s quiet for a second. Then he sits, lowers himself slowly, gently. “I never thought this would happen.”

I shrug.

Monifa’s “Touch It” thumps out of the speakers. A brunette’s joined the blonde. They fondle each other’s breasts. The brunette tosses her head back in mock rapture.

After a while, Johnny confidently says, “No, Troy. I gotta call her.”

“Look, you don’t gotta do anything,” I say. “I never do anything I don’t want to, right? Don’t take shit from anyone.” I down the last of my beer. The glass clinks against my teeth, but Johnny doesn’t notice. He holds his head in his hands.

“Hey, buck up. A new routine’s coming,” I say.

The blonde walks off the stage, greeted by a weak applause and a few catcalls from the suits cracking peanuts in the corner. The one with the blue tie tosses a handful of empty shells over his shoulder and chews with his mouth open. He slaps his friend’s back. Their faces are red. They’re all smiles.

“But I’m not like you,” Johnny says. “I need somebody. I can’t be single.”

Which might be true. I don’t think I’ve known him without a girlfriend, or at least a prospective girlfriend.

“Let me get you a lap dance,” I say. I whistle for the blonde, but she pretends to be deaf.

He shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant.”

A black girl with braids and six-inch heels steps onto the stage. The lights dim, but I can still see her huge leg muscles bulging as she struts. I picture those same legs wrapped around my waist, her thin arms holding on for dear life. I wink at her. She grips the pole with French-tipped fingers. The music’s stopped. And I’m waiting to see what the next song will be when the bartender starts working the fog machine. Small clouds puff out on both ends of the stage.

“Anyway, it’s getting late,” Johnny says. He does this fake, little yawn, checking the time on his watch. “I really can’t afford to stay out any longer. I won’t even have four hours of sleep.”

I slug his shoulder, same spot, and he winces. “Come on, Johnny Apple Seedz. When was the last time we went out? I bet you can’t even remember. I can’t.” I try to concentrate, but the beer gets in the way. “Don’t let that bitch hold you back. We never went home this early.”

His eyes narrow. He straightens his back. “But that when I was in college, and you were…” His voice trails off. He doesn’t want to say living at your mom’s, making minimum wage at Comic World. “We have work in a few hours,” he says. “We have responsibilities.”

“Oh, is that how it is?” I say. I can feel my face getting warm.

He shifts in his seat. He burps into his hands. “You talk about me not having balls, but you should look at yourself. At least I finished college. You, you’re still working an old summer job.”

“Fuck,” I say. And now it’s not even about the fog or the brunette and the new girl on stage. Or the friend who called me in dire need of a beer and a lap dance. Somehow I’m under attack. My job. My life. I think of all the times I proofread Johnny’s essays. Removed unnecessary commas. Rewrote a sentence or contextualized a quote. All the times I dragged him to National’s for Dollar Draft Thursdays.

Johnny bows his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he says. He signals to the barmaid for another round. He kicks the sawdust on the ground. “The whole situation with Stacy’s had me on edge all day. I haven’t been myself.”

I crack my knuckles.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he says. He rubs his sideburns.

“I never graduated, though,” I say.

“What?” he says.

“And I don’t know what it is to work a real job.” I stand.

Johnny sits back and folds his arms across his chest.

“I’m out of here,” I say.

Johnny calls after me. Calls again. I push through the double doors on my way outside, but I’ve forgotten he picked me up at my apartment. My truck’s still in its carport. I stare at the vacant lot—Johnny’s CRV parked illegally in the handicapped spot where I’d left it. I kick the gravel.

# # #

I sit against the curb. Honestly, I don’t know how our night got this way. It started off fine. Johnny and me working our way from Shoreline Village, shooting the breeze. The way our eyes moved from girl to girl, anything in a skirt. Or was that just me? I run my fingers through my hair. Squeeze my skull. Inside, Johnny’s probably still sitting center stage. Maybe the blonde’s come back for his lap dance. He’d like that. Take his mind off Stacy.

Maybe I should go back inside. Be the bigger man, like Jo always wanted me to be. The two of us would argue over stupid things—the way she’d wash my dishes, dripping soap into a bowl, then scrubbing it. I told her, It’ll get soap in it naturally if you’d scrub the damn thing in the first place—stupid stuff like that. And now, my best friend was drinking beers alone on a night the supposed love-of-his-life left him.

Then it hits me: I’ll push my way back into Cherries, past the bouncers, past the barmaid, past the bar and the circular tables that line the floor. Up to Johnny’s seat. And I’ll look him in the eye. Tell him I’m tired of being fucking used. Say it loud enough so that the DJ turns down the music, the girls stop dancing, and Jo and Ben hear me all the way in Torrance from the balcony of her luxury apartment. You can’t just call me whenever you need something, I’ll tell them. It doesn’t work like that. For Christ’s sake, I’ll say, I thought we were friends.

Tempest is a bad name for our brother because he is calm when he isn’t throwing his shoes. So calm that when he lost his thermos in John Crawford’s back yard—somewhere near the pool, he said—he didn’t even shiver. Forney and I were paralyzed. He wanted to recruit us to help him get it back. I said there’s no way in hell, Temp. That pool is tainted with Crawford black magic. How do you think it doesn’t freeze over in the winter?

Heated, Temp said.

Forney and I shook our heads. That pool is lined in marble. You can’t heat through marble. We told Temp this even though we weren’t sure. We just didn’t want to get caught sneaking around the holy pond. And we didn’t want to get tainted.

And how come it doesn’t get bird shit in it, I wanted to know. Clean as day, always. Forney threw me a glance that said how do you know how clean the Crawford pool is if you wouldn’t get caught dead sneaking around it.

It was this morning that Temp tried to round us up. I was standing behind Forney—that’s our brother. He was at the refrigerator drinking OJ straight from the carton and I was about to ask him was he born in a barn, but I knew he was born in California, so I didn’t. I just poked him in the shoulder and told him not to be gross.

You’re gross, he told me, and bleated my name like a sheep. Faun. Faaauuuun.

That’s when Temp came in with red cheeks and a runny nose. He clomped his trainers on the kitchen mat and big chunks of snow fell off and sizzled to puddles.

Unbelievable, I said. I grabbed the juice carton from Forney and drank out of it. It wasn’t that early—all the good cartoons were over, but I didn’t see why anyone would haul themselves out of bed before eight in the morning on a Saturday to go running. But that was Temp. On the track team. He was trying to make Varsity.

Temp stripped his mittens off, then wiped his nose. He’s king of doing things backwards.

Guys, he said. I dropped my thermos, I think, somewhere in Crawford’s yard.

I froze, gripping the OJ carton tight. It crunkled in my hand.

Leave it, Forney said.

I nodded.

Yeah but my thermos, Temp said. He rarely put any kind of value on objects, but this was his Turtle River Run thermos. He won it for coming in fourteenth or something in the Great Turtle River Run last summer—he lied about his age to get in—he was fifteen but tall enough to be eighteen and he was a good, calm liar. He was so proud of that thermos he wouldn’t let me or Forney even touch it. Not that we wanted to touch a thermos.

I said leave it, yelled Forney. He was eighteen and Dad was gone so he could talk to Temp like that.

I wanted to know what Temp was doing in Crawford’s yard anyway.

I just cut through. The cemetery was soggy, he said.

Forney and I made yeah right faces at each other. We knew the cemetery wasn’t any soggier than any other part of town—Temp just thought that in winter, when he couldn’t feel that the ground was firm under the snow, his feet would sink through into the graves below. I thought to say that if you can’t run through the cemetery in winter don’t go running in winter at all. You’re afraid of sticking your heel into a dead person’s eye socket but you’re not afraid of Crawford’s holy pool which is so obviously tainted that we’ve avoided it forever. But I didn’t say anything. They never listened to me because I was the youngest and a girl.

I was thirsty and stopped to fill my thermos up, Temp said.

I hope you mean with snow, Forney said.

Temp shook his head.

You don’t drink water out of Crawford’s pool! I shouted. Holy hell, Temp.

Oh come on, Temp said. At the very worst it’s just stagnant.

What’d it taste like?

Like water, Faun. That was Forney again. When he used my name like that I knew the question was dumb. You can’t taste evil, he said.

Evil tastes like sulfur, Temp said.

Forney told him to shut up.

Then what happened, I asked.

After I drank it I don’t remember. Pretty soon I was almost home and realized I didn’t have it anymore. I must have set it down to tie my shoes or something.

Oh well, Forney said. Say goodbye to your stupid thermos.

I bet you, I said, that John Crawford will find it out there and trace it back to you.

Temp didn’t look scared.

You’re lucky, Forney said, that he didn’t come out and kick your ass when you were there. Actually, he said as an afterthought, he wouldn’t have to. You drank out of the pool so you’re going to get sick and die anyway.

Temp rolled his eyes. I’m going back to get it, he said.

We hated Temp just then because we loved him too much to let him go alone.

# # #

Mom had told Dad to get his voodoo stuff out of the house. He didn’t bother to correct her—it was occult paraphernalia but he was used to the way she dismissed it. He dealt only minimally with voodoo, and coasted more at the Cayce and Kreskin speed. Forney and I loved to hang out in his office at the back of the house, goofing off with divining crystals and dowsing rods under the little velvet-draped table where he gave his readings. Sometimes one of us would giggle and get Dad’s pointy boot in our kneecap. We were amazed at how seriously his clients took his predictions and insights. He told us being swarthy helped. He didn’t have to wear a turban or beads to legitimize, the way white ladies did.

Your money troubles are about to end. Your daughter is coming home soon. Your precious Taffy is king of the dogs in heaven—yes, they have a place there too.

Temp said, I asked Dad to read my fortune and he told me I’d get a boot up the ass if I didn’t get those dishes done before Mom got home. And you know, he was right.

You’ll find love with someone new. That new car isn’t so far out of reach if you save. Your husband is being unfaithful.

Oh thank you thank you thank you Ernesto.

Temp said, anybody could have told them that.

Everybody goes through financial ups and downs. Soon is a relative term. All dogs go to heaven, and people fall in love—whatever that is, and put money away for something they want and if you suspect your spouse of infidelity, there must be a reason.

Thank you Ernesto. You have an amazing gift.

You know you can count on me, Mrs. Bjorklund. Mr. Gustafson. Miss Olson. Betty Lundstrom.

Dumb Swedes, said Temp.

Mom, being a Swede herself, and a Lutheran, had it Up to Here and told Dad to pack up and get out and stop coloring our minds with hoodoo.

But Dad told me to listen to my dreams, because they meant something. And I did, and he was right. He was always right. I dreamt about trains derailing before they did. I dreamt about our aunt crunching crab claws between her teeth and she told us she had throat cancer the next day. I dreamt about Temp and Forney and me all on a trampoline, laughing, and Mom bought us one after Dad left.

# # #

John Crawford was a priest before he came here. Temp said he left that church because of his mustache—they wouldn’t let him keep it so he quit. I said that was a miserable lie—father Henry has a mustache, and Temp said I had a mustache. I pushed Temp into a snow bank and he didn’t cry out or even whine, he just got back up and went on walking, because that was Temp.

Forney said John Crawford left the clergy because of something we mustn’t speak of. That’s the way he talked. We mustn’t speak of it, children. I wanted to push him in a snow bank too but I didn’t because although Forney was smaller than Temp he was meaner and would have not only pushed me back but made me eat the snow I fell in.

Whatever the case, there used to be nothing but an elliptical mound of grass at the back of the Crawford house, and none of us had a problem cutting through on our way home from school. Then one day about four years ago, as if out of nowhere, this pool cropped up. Rectangular, about twelve feet long and four feet wide. Deep as my ankles only, I guessed, because I could see the bottom. At first we went huh, and kept on walking.

But not long after we dreamt about it. Forney and I dreamt about the pool on the same night. He dreamt I fell into it and it was deep—and when he tried to pull me out he fell in too, and then Temp came and stood at the edge and just looked at us down there with the surface blurring his face. Then Temp was John Crawford.

In my dream nothing really happened at the pool. But the sky was dull and heavy and something in the wind droned ugly like a broken bagpipe, and the air stunk like rot and something, somebodies, peered out from behind tangled trees along the edge of the street, their limbs blending into the roots, the gnarls and whorls in the bark indiscernible from their faces.

It hurt my stomach to recall it.

When we came across it the next school day, we froze. I’d taken a step toward it but Forney clapped a hand on my shoulder. At that moment we both looked up and gasped—John Crawford was standing at his back window, with the curtain pulled aside, watching us. Temp fell backwards on his butt as if Crawford’s stare had knocked him down. Forney and I pulled him up and we all ran. We never cut through Crawford’s back yard again.

But Temp is an idiot and he forgets so here we were stopped at the edge of Crawford’s property line, just standing still, swaying a little bit, looking out onto the pool.

In Arizona we all had our own rooms—adobe colored bunkers hung with pastel curtains that were always lit from behind. Dad had his own house then; the cleaning lady being the only woman who ever came inside and she never complained, though I watched her cross herself each time she stepped across the threshold. Forney said she did it for show—all Catholics did everything for show.

He hung his dream-catchers, god’s-eyes, beads and mandalas everywhere. Skulls and dragons littered his shelves and windowsills, wearing Technicolor dream-coats of colored candlewax. I believed every single thing had meaning and function but Temp, big know-it-all, said it was a hodgepodge. I asked him what a hodgepodge was.

A bunch of stuff from all over that doesn’t connect, he said.

Doesn’t connect to what, I asked.

To itself, he said. He was so smart. A hodgepodge is a singular term for a plural collection.

Dad doesn’t collect plurals, I said. He collects mysticals.

Mysticals?

That’s what I said.

My room was full of them and I wouldn’t let Forney or Temp touch them. Forney didn’t care so much but Temp thought it’d be funny to break in there and stack them all up on my bed and say poltergeists did it. He had me thinking I had poltergeists in my room for twelve days straight until I caught him and whaled healing quartz at his head. When we came home to Minnesota, Mom blessed us.

# # #

Can you see it anywhere, Forney whispered.

Temp stretched his long neck around to get a better look. He said nothing for a long time. Forney sighed disgustedly beside me, and I turned to my left to look at him. He chewed the cuticles of his delicate fingers and I noticed how much both his hands and his mouth looked like Dad’s.

Damn it Tempest can you see it?

Temp shook head no. This is stupid, he said suddenly, clapping his mittens together. Let’s just go look.

I shook. What if John Crawford comes out, I said.

Then I say I lost my thermos, Temp said.

No, I didn’t like it, but I followed my brothers across the snow to the pool. My bones felt thick and sore, and suddenly they didn’t work at all, and I crumpled at the corner where the marble met the ground.

Faun, Temp whispered. What are you doing?

I feel sick, I said.

Oh bullshit, Temp said. Get up.

Leave her alone, Forney said.

It’s here somewhere, Temp said, jogging the length of the pool.

My eyes swam across the still surface—it was clean, not a speck of dirt, no feathers, no leaves anywhere. And no ice. Snow soaked through my jeans. My ears ached.

Faun, get up, Forney said. Crawford’s coming. He pointed at the house at the head of the pool. A man with a mustache was coming slowly toward us, in jeans and a lumberjack flannel, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Here it is, Temp said. He held his trophy up triumphantly and beamed at us but the corners of his smile fell as John Crawford’s shadow fell over him.

Jesus, I thought. Legs, start working. Get up. Get up and run, you idiot!

I did. My muscles re-hardened, locked into place and I rose from Crawford’s white lawn and stumbled, then ran. I didn’t know where I was going. Just—away. Then I was falling against the side of the house, then I found a door, then I was inside the Crawford house, standing in the kitchen, my boots melting and dripping on the linoleum. No one was inside the house. The TV hummed low and calm. Everything in the Crawford house was cream and beige. Very calm. Men spoke outside—three men, no boys. Why didn’t I hear boys’ voices? Crawford and my brothers. I heard my name. I panicked, turned, and found another door. I went through it. I was in a closet. I shut the door and stood in the dark. It smelled like a grandma—lavender and mothballs—and soft fabric brushed my face. I stood there in the closet and let my heart drum hard and I breathed, in and out, in and out until my heart calmed and my breathing plateaued and soon I was just standing there, in the soft dark, where it smelled nice, and I felt suddenly safe. I breathed in and out, measured, calm. My heart was quiet. This couldn’t be right. I listened to the TV.

# # #

Dad started appearing on Star Scopes on our third visit. We horsed around in the green-room—they gave us lemonade, which we threw on each other and tortilla chips so hot no kid’s taste buds could take them. These we crumbled and put in a potted cactus. I said I could impersonate a cactus better than anyone, and demonstrated to the make-up lady and asked could I get on Star Scopes with my cactus impression. I stood still against a painted backdrop of adobe huts, my arms cocked like a swastika. She patted my head and gave me more lemonade.

He looked bigger on the screen. We sat in back, rapt. Our Dad, on TV. He sat in a vinyl chair the color of toothpaste and spoke to people on the phone—their voices floated around the room like ghosts at a séance—though a sleek silver telephone sat untouched on the table between Dad and the host—some guy with hair like Einstein and turtlenecks in every shade. I kept asking why Dad didn’t pick up the phone, and Forney kept shushing me. Was it mental telepathy? I marveled. Dad’s power had to be real if it was on TV.

Dad had grown his mustache out and was waxing the ends. He spoke in a thick accent we’d never heard at home. The host called him Brother Nestor. As if the constant heat and sunshine and cacti and yucca weren’t confusing enough, now my father was practically speaking in tongues on television.

Temp said it was just cable access. Only people in Tucson, awake between three and four in the morning, could see it. That didn’t mean a thing to me. I grabbed the remote and tried to shove it in his ear.

Every episode ended with Brother Nestor saying, listen to your dreams. Listen to your dreams, Faun, he said, looking right at me, without words, his mouth no longer moving.

# # #

Faun!

Forney first.

Faun!

That was Temp.

Faun?

Who was that? A gentle voice. It’s okay, honey, come out. Was that Crawford?

A laugh. Who was laughing? At me? Who would dare?

My brothers’ voices. Calm. Joking with Crawford.

She freaked out, someone said.

I guess so, said the gentle voice. That’s alright.

I didn’t freak out, I thought. Who said that? I have instincts.

Come out, Faun.

I was thinking in there though. I was thinking about Dad on the television and wondering why Temp, the smartest, he fastest, the best at everything, couldn’t take dreams seriously, even after a man on television, who happened to be the only father we’d ever have, told him to.

# # #

Come on, dummy. It’s okay.

And because I couldn’t show them my confused face, and wouldn’t cry out of embarrassment, I started laughing too. I’m in here, I thought but didn’t say. I decided it was a game. We’d planned it—hide and seek, in John Crawford’s house. Not at all ridiculous. I let them look for me a little bit more.

Maybe she’s in the basement?

Did she go out the front door?

Faun! Damn it, come out!

It’s okay, Crawford said. She panicked. I suppose I look pretty mean.

She sure can book it, Temp said. She should get on the track team.

Forney laughed. Crawford laughed. I laughed too. And I knew then that they were right there, outside the closet door. Time to come out.

I opened the door. It was all a big joke. I was laughing.

Ha, ha. Here I am.

There you are!

What are you doing in there?

I don’t know.

Did I scare you, honey? That was Crawford. He was smiling. He looked like a nice man.

No, I said. I was never scared. I got mud on your floor. I’m sorry.

That’s okay, he said.

At the outside of the house, Crawford told us to tell our father hello, should we see him any time in the near future. I still remember when he told me to build this pool, he said. When I first moved here, I had a hard time adjusting to the place. He told me to build something, to make it my own. He motioned at the pool.

We all looked at it. Our reflections were bigger than us.

# # #

Walking home, none of us said anything for a while. But then Temp spoke.

It’s just a reflecting pool, he said. I noticed his inflection then—he sounded like Dad.

What’s a reflecting pool, I asked.

He shrugged. It reflects, he said.

Reflects what?

Your face.

Your face, I said. I meant it to sound mean, like a comeback, but it didn’t. It just sounded like an echo.

Forney stopped walking and pulled his hands out of his pockets. He looked up, then down, then across the street. I’m going this way, he said.

What’s that way, Temp asked.

I don’t know, Forney answered.

It’s longer, I said. It will take you twice as long.

Forney said, I just want to go that way. You two can go your own way. I’ll see you at home.

Temp shrugged and mumbled whatever, we don’t care, see you at home, but I was frowning. I was making that face that I hate to see in pictures—the one that reminds me that I will always be the girl, the youngest, the one who doesn’t get it when everyone else does.

Forney had always gone my way. I’d done something wrong.

As Temp and I walked, we got closer and closer together, until his arm was around me and he kind of shoulder-hugged me and pulled me off balance. I told him to quit it, it was already slippery enough, and he let go, and sort of laughed. He made a noise like he was going to tell me something important but I didn’t want to be lectured so I said something instead.

You’re going to say it was just a stupid dream, I said. But Dad told me—

When Dad told you to listen to your dreams, he didn’t mean your literal dreams. He meant follow your heart. He meant know what you want and go after it.

I thought he meant when I was sleeping, I said. Why didn’t he tell me? Now I feel like an idiot.

It’s alright, he said. You know, I hate to tell you this, Faun, but you’re pretty naïve.

What?

You believe a lot of dumb stuff. You always have.

I said nothing. I looked at my shoes. Temp went on talking.

I think, he said, that a lot of the stuff we remember—the stuff we think really happened, was probably just a dream. I’ve realized that we make stuff up to make it easier. We tell ourselves lies. So I forget about old stuff—memories. But you—you seem to get stuff tangled up in there—he pointed to my head—and you remember things a certain way only because you think it was that way. And it wasn’t. Most things—well, you were just too little to know.

I don’t even know what you’re talking about, Temp, I said.

Dad never levitated, he said. Our dad cannot levitate.

The tips of my ears began fill with blood.

You told everyone in the third grade that Ernesto Cruz could levitate. Do you know how embarrassing that is?

I—

There really isn’t anything you can say now to fix it, Temp said. It spread up through the grades to me and to Forney and Forney hated you for it.

My eyeballs ached. My throat got tight.

Forney would never—

He loves you too much to say so, Temp said.

He did, though, I said. I saw him—

Faun. Stop it. No one can levitate. You read about it somewhere and decided it was true.

I’m not making it up, I blubbered. The dam broke. Tears squirted out of my eyes like I was squeezing lemons.

Forget it. You’re still the same way. Someday I might be able to talk to you but—you’re only thirteen.

Fourteen, I said. Temp, don’t you remember when you fell down? When John Crawford saw you?

I didn’t fall down, he said. I slipped on some ice. God, dum-dum, it was winter out.

I reeled it in and stopped crying, but it took a while. I looked around. Snow covered everything. The sky hung white—as if it didn’t know itself from the ground. As if there was no difference. My breath came out like a ghost.

It’s always winter out, I said. Temp, why does it seem like it’s always winter out?

Go to Arizona, then, he said. You and Dad can bilk the gringos out of their hard-earned cash. He laughed at his own wit. I stopped dead and he kept walking for a while, then turned around and looked at me.

What?

I was thinking this: that Dad never bilked anyone. That his clairvoyance laid not in his ability to see what was going to happen, but to assure everyone that yes, something was going to happen. Things won’t always be this way—so just keep breathing and going and heading forward and sooner or later you’ll get there.

But I didn’t have the words to say it.

Well? Temp stared at me. Come on.

I shook my head. Go ahead. I’ll walk alone.

Fine, he said. He jumped up and down a few times to get his blood going, then took off in a full sprint toward home.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to go home yet and feel the weight of my brothers’ pity for me. I didn’t want to cut through the cemetery because Temp’s fear of sinking had seeped into me, too. I wasn’t sure what to do. So I stood there at the intersection, and waited. I knew if I waited long enough, if I tried, if I really concentrated, I could put two inches between my feet and the ground. Just two inches. It wasn’t that much.

When the Recruiter came, the children rushed to see him—to watch the polished black hide of his BMW stalk the narrow streets. They pushed their faces against the windows, smeared fingerprints over its waxed sheen. Their little legs churned beside its chrome tires until they could not keep pace; they were not as fast as Wei.

The Recruiter measured Wei, making substance of myth. He pushed up her sleeves and the legs of her shorts and wrapped his sweaty thick fingers around her limbs. He marveled at her musculature. Never had he seen someone so strong, so young. As he examined her, his eyes widened, the whites spreading large and round as if to consume her.

A letter arrived the next day. If her parents released her to the state, Wei could study at the Sports Academy, where she would receive room and board, where her athletic gifts would be fed and bred to their full potential.

“We have no choice,” her mother said. “Otherwise, Wei will grow to be a farmer. Like her sister.”

Wei looked at Wen, who dropped her head in shame. Already sixteen, Wen showed little promise of anything. She was not fast, not strong. It took her twice as long as Wei to thresh the bundled paddies after each harvest.

Her father said nothing. All week he paced the creaking boards of their front porch, the way he did last summer when the rains came too early, too forceful, and washed the seeds from the soil.

Wei would be honored to serve her country, he wrote back. We are grateful for this opportunity.

# # #

Before she left, Wei’s father bought her three new shirts—plain white, wrapped in plastic. She was afraid to open them, to let the pristine threads touch the air that smelled constantly of fertilizer and mold.

“Do you know why the recruiters come to here for students?” her father asked, the night before she left. “Because we can endure more hardship. The poor know how to work. How to suffer.”

Wei studied the fingers knotted in his lap—his dark and hardened skin—and she nodded.

“Work hard,” he told her. “Come back a world champion runner.”

# # #

But Wei did not become a runner. At the Academy, they forbade her from long runs. They stripped her of flight and freedom and grounded her with heavy, wedge-soled shoes. They taught her a new sport: weightlifting. There were more medals in weightlifting, she was told. In the Olympic Games, there were eight divisions for men. Seven for women. A total of fifteen golds for the taking.

Wei’s mornings began before the slightest glimpse of sun. She woke to knuckles on her door, dressed, and dragged her steps to the gym. The wood platforms smelled of salt water—dried sweat and tears. The floors had been gouged by years of dropped iron.

Wei trained first with hollow pipes. She learned to pull with her hips, to drop quickly and catch the weight in a squat. When she graduated to rubber plates on iron bars, she learned to wrap her palms when they bled. She bound her shins and knees so the bar wouldn’t scrape so hard.

In the few hours between lifting and sleep, she learned to read a little, to write a little. She did not learn algebra or chemistry, but she wrote papers titled “I Must Try Harder” and “I Cannot Disappoint.” The wall of the weight room decreed: “Uphold the honor of your country,” and these words, too, she learned. These she repeated as she cleaned the bar to her shoulders. She recited the phrase between huffed breaths before hoisting it overhead.

She claimed her first national gold at age fourteen. By the next year, she earned a regular salary—enough to send money home. She saw her family only twice a year, sometimes for just two hours at a time. She learned not to miss them, not to miss anything. She learned to live only in the moment, in the rapid heartbeats before the jerk. She found constancy in the feel of so much weight pressing her to the earth.

Her family had no television. They could not afford to visit and when they wrote, they sent short phrases: work hard, behave. Wei began to resent their absence, envisioning the full meals they ate without her. She envied unremarkable, talentless Wen, who would never know the terror of hearing 90kg fall to the floor.

Every day began with the same bowl of porridge, with boiled chicken or poached eggs. Wei drank pungent herbal teas meant to promote endurance and muscle growth. Her coaches stood behind her to ensure she finished her portions. The Chinese phrase for “endure” means literally “to eat bitterness,” and Wei thought of this—of her father’s words—every morning as she gulped her tea.

Wei swallowed her bitterness, and she triumphed. At age 19, on televisions across the globe, she snatched a new world record. Hundreds of thousands watched as she heaved 111 kg—more than twice her weight—from floor to overhead with one explosive thrust of her body.

Her knees quavered only once before she rose from squat to standing, a nation’s yearning clenched in her chalked hands. The weight bent the bar on both ends. The metal bowed with strain, but Wei stood until the judges called the lift complete.

Cameras panned to her coaches.

“We planned to break the world record,” they said, “and we did.”

# # #

Her parents declined invitations to watch Wei compete. They did not explain. She stopped seeing them altogether until at last the press found her village. Wei imagined fleets of vans and satellites storming the streets of Tongli, rubber tires marking thick treads in the mud. In the dining hall, with a bowl of herbal soup, Wei watched her parents on the fuzzy screen.

“She sends us pictures,” her mother said. “Such callused hands. How will she find a husband when this is over?”

Wei set down her bowl and studied her palms—scaled permanently with scabs. She shamefully recalled the photo she sent her parents from Qatar, following the Asiad, hands splayed, arms spread in a V for Victory.

“We have been farmers for generations,” her father said. “We hope she can find a different job when this is over. The life of a teacher is better than that of ten farmers.”

Before the camera turned away, her mother added, “We hope that she will do well quickly, so she can start a normal life.”

Beside Wei, her coach said, “Finish the soup.”

Wei tipped the bowl against her mouth. The last drops drained down her throat, and her stomach filled with anger. She abhorred their ignorance—their dismissal of her life’s work and all it had given them. In the televised feed, Wei noted the ripe watermelon on the kitchen counter, the new crops sprouting beyond the open window. On the wall: a calendar from Suzhou University, where Wen now studied with a portion of Wei’s monthly pay.

# # #

Wei stopped sending pictures. Every month the government divvied her salary—some for her country, some for her coaches, some for her family, a little for Wei. She plunged wholly into her training—into timing the pull of her shoulders, perfecting her posture in the quick drop, weight on heels, elbows forward. By the Olympic Games she reached the pinnacle of her career, poised to claim yet another gold for China.

This time, the reporters reached Wei. Translators relayed her words in a dozen languages.

“I hope to do well for my country,” she told them. “It has given me everything.”

# # #

The stadium was bigger than any Wei had ever seen. Hundreds of seats filled with cameras and flash bulbs—rows of rippling red cloth and yellow stars. But for all the activity, the room fell remarkably still, holding one collective breath as she stepped to the stage.

Wei felt every muscle quiver. She struggled to steady the hands that could carry 100kg of steel. She folded her fingers over the bar, trying to ignore the gazes, trying to shed their expectation. She focused on the small details—the familiarity of scored metal grips imprinting her palms, the comfort of her opening crouch.

With a yell, she cleaned the weight to her shoulders, bracing the bar at her chest. A second scream, a tearing of her throat and lungs, and she launched the bar higher. Arms locked, left leg lunge, step back into a single plane. Hold.

The horn signaled a soundstorm. An eruption of confetti and applause. Wei’s body ached as she dropped the weight and watched the bar bounce, but she could not hear the crash over the roar of her countrymen. Her back throbbed as her teammates clapped her shoulders. A slow soreness sank between her joints, deeper and more persistent than anything she’d felt in training.

They announced her name in three different accents before she mounted the podium. Her callused grip closed on a bouquet of clustered flowers, and she pressed her fist to the strange skitter of her heart. The first notes of the anthem overcame the cheers, and she watched as her flag climbed the far wall. The medal was cold and heavy against her belly.

Between the horn’s sharp notes, she heard sniffles. Wei turned to see the Ukrainian lifter—a distant second by 30kg—weeping at the bands of blue and yellow rising beneath the Chinese flag. Wei envied the pride in her face. The totality of her joy.

# # #

Within hours of the ceremony, the ache became a throb, became a persistent, pulsing pain. Wei iced and massaged to no avail until she withstood examination by expert physicians. Degenerated discs, a weakened heart, shoulder strains and inflammation in both knees. Her body had endured a lifetime of beating, and it could take no more. She was dropped from the team.

Wei was stripped of her schedule, of her 6:30 trainings, of her hefty bowls of stew. She watched as the school bussed in new students—fresh, sturdy young girls with sprinters’ builds. Wei was given a job in the cafeteria—a pitiful wage, and a dark room behind the kitchen. She collected trays, soaped dishes, and washed the empty bowls still stinking of ginseng and ma huang. Her joints ached upon waking and worsened by the hour. The body whose strength had plucked her from poverty now failed her every day.

The simplest tasks were struggles, every step a strain on taxed knees, a tortured spine. Her muscles rebelled against years of discipline. The medicine did not help. The scant sessions of physical therapy seemed longer and more painful than any of her training. Then the Academy kicked her out.

Insufficient funds, they said. She would have to leave it all—the walls that had reared her, the tables that had fed her, the halls she had mapped since childhood. Wei was surprised by how easily her things could fit in a suitcase. How light that suitcase was, even in her weakened arms.

Go home, they told her. Your family will help you.

Wei thought of her family—everything her father had wished for her. Come back a world champion runner. Come back a teacher. Come back something better than what you’ve become.

On the bus to Tongli, she studied her open palms—the calluses from metal bars replaced by calluses from broomsticks and mop handles, from scrub brushes and water buckets. What did she think she would do, Wei wondered, when this was over? She had lived a lifetime in the seconds between the clean and jerk, spent herself in the perfection of minutiae that now served nothing.

# # #

Few passengers remained by the time the bus entered Tongli. When the ground featured more water than earth, Wei knew she had returned. Many of the same houses remained, where canal-washed laundry hung beside drying slabs of meat. The walls slouched with rot, softened by unrelenting moisture.

Wei was surprised to hear footsteps—the chorused patter of bare feet in mud. The children ran to the bus. They pressed their faces and fingers to the windows. Their wondrous eyes searched the empty benches until they found Wei—one of only three passengers—seated near the back.

“She’s here!” they shouted over their shoulders. “Wei has returned.”

The bus pulled into the station and the children fought to take her hands. They swung their arms with hers as she turned the corners, crossed the bridges, followed her memories to her childhood home.

“What was it like?” they asked. They begged for stories of the distant cities, of the foreigners who came by the planeloads, of the places from which Wei had sent pictures to her parents.

After Wei left, her stories had remained, feeding off generations of longing. The myths inflated. Her fifteen minute 5k became twelve, became ten. They said she ran so fast she kicked loose the bricks from cobbled streets. They said the winds changed when she moved.

So many children had raced from her father’s gate to Taiping Bridge, just to place their footprints over hers. Their steps etched a new route into the earth—a road paved by bare feet and wishful thinking.

# # #

Wei followed the flattened path to her family’s farm. The fields had expanded. Beside the green stalks of rice paddies there were small orchards and chicken coops. Through the scent of rain and dirt, Wei smelled ripening peaches. The children skipped beside her as she walked, her bitterness rising with each breath of summer fruit.

She had learned suffering as a way of life, accepted the stiffness of her body upon waking, learned to stretch through the rebellion of her battered limbs in order to move out of bed. Daily she ate only white rice and cabbage. On rare occasions, to keep starvation at bay, she fried two eggs and ate them bite by slow bite, licking every drop of bleeding yolk from the bottom of the bowl. Meanwhile, her family had flourished—their land glutted on her blood and labor.

She left her entourage at the door, promising the children that yes, she would visit them later. She would tell them of the lands they had only conceived of in legend, bridge distances they had crossed in dreams.

The front door had no lock and Wei pushed it open. She was assaulted by the smell of stewed chicken, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame. She wanted to weep at the richness of the air.

Wei’s mother screamed when she entered the kitchen, dropping her near-empty bowl. Grains of rice scattered on the table. Twinned chopsticks rolled to the floor. Her father, whose back was turned, twisted in his chair.

“You returned!” her mother said, at last.

Her father jumped from his seat.

“Sit,” he said. “Come, sit down.”

“Are you hungry?” her mother asked, already at the stove. She frowned at the last ladlefuls of stew—more food than Wei had seen all week. “I can cook more.”

Wei took the bowl in both hands. The weather was too hot for soup, but Wei enjoyed how warmth seeped through the ceramic, through the dead skin of her palms and into her bones.

“How did you have time to leave?” her father asked, “We thought you were too busy.”

“Busy?” Wei repeated.

“Yes,” her father said, “You succeeded beyond our dreams.” From the kitchen drawer, he pulled a plastic binder. It bulged with newspaper clippings and the postcards and letters she had sent in her early days of competition. He turned the pages, “After the Olympics, they have not reported anything. We assumed you are teaching the new students. But these small town newspapers are lousy; they are only interested in the big news.”

Wei took the binder. She started from the beginning: the junior championships, the local games. Then eventually, the nationals, the Asiad—locales increasingly distant and exotic. She watched as her body and face hardened, as her smile flattened beneath resolve.

Local Girl Lifts Herself from Poverty said one article. Tongli’s Own Wonder Woman.

An interview quoted her father: “I see other children playing in the fields, sitting on the knees of their grandparents while my daughter suffers. We are heartless parents.”

“My heart hurts,” her mother said in faded black ink, “seeing her lift so much weight. We do not go to see her compete. I cannot bear to watch it.”

In the last one, her sister spoke, “She was so little. We asked too much.”

The headlines stopped with Wei’s Olympic gold. The full-color photo featured her in a split jerk. Behind her, the crowd raised banners and cheered, a blurred array of wide smiles and open, hollering throats. But Wei’s face was mute with resolve—her mouth a single, rigid line.

Wei closed the binder. For her family, her story stopped there—a world record braced by her locked arms.

Wei asked about Wen; where was she?

Her mother plucked a photograph from the refrigerator door: Wen, aged gently, plump and pale, beside a man and child. She had married a scholar, and taught at the elementary school.

“This is your niece,” her father said, pointing to the gap-toothed grin, the bangs shorn flat above a familiar, shortened brow. “You are her hero. She tells everyone about her aunt, the strongest woman in the world.”

“We hope she will continue to work hard,” her mother said. “We believe she can leave Tongli.”

Her father added, “She is not an athlete, but she is the same as you—diligent.”

Diligent. Wei considered the phrase. Its individual words meant “use strength.” Wei used strength in eating bitterness; she endured with diligence. For what? For this girl with soft, untanned arms. This petite frame with thin shoulders that bore new and bigger dreams. Perhaps this girl could do more than endure. Perhaps her children would never taste bitterness. For the first time since retiring, Wei felt it again: the tremendous pride of lifting something larger than herself.

“Now that you are home,” her mother said, “you can finally meet her. I should fix your room.”

Wei recalled the bed she had not seen in twenty years. She thought longingly of the faded quilt passed from Wen to her. So perfect in its plainness.

# # #

Her former bedroom, once shared with Wen, now served for storage. Imagine the liberty, Wei thought, of having things to store. Wen’s desk had become a sewing table, covered in scrapped cloth and needles. The wooden bunk from their childhood stood in the corner, its bare mattresses wedged between the bedframe and the wall.

Wei’s mother searched the closet.

“Help me for a moment,” she said and offered a folded sheet. Wei reached for it, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. Her mother gasped.

“Your hands,” she frowned. “I am waiting for you to retire. Then I will not need to worry.”

Wei wriggled between bed and wall, wrestling with one end of the mattress. She nudged her fingers beneath the pallet and pushed. Wrong. Lifting from her arms and not her core. The wrongness pitched through her shoulder and spine. The pain cleaved instantly through the dull aches, the perpetual soreness—her body screamed and the mattress crashed to the floor.

“Wei, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Wei curled onto her side, teeth clamped on tongue. She seized heavy breaths into her lungs, willing her throat to unclench. She tamped the tears in her eyes, the wails in her chest. She could not cry. She could show no weakness.

# # #

The next day, Wei packed her things. On her own, she stripped the mattress, lifted it and left it to rest against the wall. In the darkness before dawn, she cracked and coaxed her body to life. She penned a note with her coarse-skinned hand: I must return to my duties. Just another day—she asked herself. Perhaps she could stay one more day. But if she did not leave now, she feared she’d never find the strength again.

Wei folded her clothes into her single bag, walked to the station and waited. She knew not where to go, but her legacy lay in trailed footprints; her destination did not matter. She boarded the bus on brittle knees. Through the window, she watched the children race from bridge to bridge, small bodies silhouetted by the sun. Their bare feet slapped the stones. Wei smiled at their constant, forceful cadence—a rhythm set by hope, spurred by stories, sustained by the strength of a woman’s silence.

Welcome to Breakwater Review No. 8! Kick off your shoes and stay awhile. We’re thrilled to have you!

In this issue we’re proud to present 8 first-rate poems, three pieces of unique fiction, and marvelous visual art by Christie Michelle Stewart and Maria Ivanov. Enjoy!

-The Editors
Breakwater Review

—Acts 17:23

Walking across the midway,
I saw a tent that travelled
all the way from Russia with a promise
of things we’d never seen before.

As I looked carefully at the objects
of childish wonder, the altars
inscribed to unknown beasts,
I felt the soft touch of ignorance.

Most were dead—
the Chupacabra, the jackalope,
the bare-breasted mermaid rigid
under scratched glass.
What made it work was the living—
the two-headed calf that cowered
in the corner, the shaved wallaby
(said to be the world’s largest rat.)

More than twenty years now, I am standing
inside this tent again. How well the stitches
are hidden on the alligator boy from Borneo.
I can barely see the duct tape on his tail.

The feathers of the thunderbird have thickened,
and Ropen’s claws now rest
beside a cast of Caddy’s shed,
but one pedestal is bare—

an open proclamation of curiosity.

A calliope calls the curtain
as the thylacine falls asleep
inside her kennel, and the last-known
unicorn stamps his hoof.