October 31, 2016 “Hi.” The voice says “Ren,” but the face that stares up at Emery has lipstick and there’s a navy blue bow in her sleek hair. Sitting in one of those plastic chairs around Emery’s table, inky blue dress falling off the edges, she cups her chin in her hands and bats dewy eyelashes at Emery. James saunters in, wearing a jumpsuit of some kind, intricately stitched
I swiped the back of my arm across my damp forehead and watched Jimmy Rush’s freckled hand fist the frog. It had taken him maybe ten seconds to pluck it out of the brook that ran along the collection of three-family apartment homes where we lived. The banks of the little stream were packed with frogs and toads. He held it out at arm’s length, his goofy grin slicing through
When she walked into the restaurant a few months ago, she looked like she had just stepped out of a Rolling Stone ad. She was wearing skinny jeans, jump boots laced only half way up, a loose white T-shirt with some vague black logo, and dark-rimmed glasses. She wore a gray fedora tilted on her head at an angle, too, resting on her messy, dirty blonde hair. Her dark eyeliner
Mid October 2016 James stares at his phone, willing the text notification that school is closed into being. It does not materialize and he rolls over in bed. His phone beeps. He grabs it. Hi, Ren texted in Japanese. There is a lot of snow. James groans. Your room is right across the hallway from mine! Why can’t you get up and tell me?! It’s too cold. Also, we
“Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.” –Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses
Late September 2016 Though Ren is sewn to James, through the fact James is usually a good sempai, helping Ren with homework and navigating the community college, and through a combination of shared ethnicity, the ability to speak Japanese, James’ English, which helps order at McDonald’s, and the fact that James is gorgeous — James can be a pain in the ass. He is — what is the word? —
