Quills and Frills - 8/16/14 Ally Malinenko, Aleathia Drehmer, Kristofer Collins

Ally says:

Emma Sings in Church

We take our seats in the church,

here for the noon day free concert

that they’ve been offering for 75 years.

It makes me wish the churches back home did this sort

of thing and then I remember that if they did

I wouldn’t be free at noon on a Tuesday anyway.

My weekdays belong to someone else.

I fidget, squirming in my seat

like a child,

behind me the pipes of the organ shine.

When the musicians come in I start.

They are all so young,

long hair and nervous smiles.

You can see the energy wafting off of them.

I look around the packed church,

my husband and I are the youngest people here

but we are not young,

not like these girls

who tuck their violins under their chin

fingers quivering with so

much potential.

When the soloist comes out,

her voice otherworldly

exactly the way Handel would have wanted

I feel something shift in me,

and for a moment I wonder if I will make it home

or if my plane will fall out of the sky.

I look at the program.

Her name is Emma,

this small girl full of so much sound

that I can feel myself breathe it in.

It tastes like buttermint and time.

It tastes like all that life

still ahead of her

begging to be filled.

For a moment I remember what that felt like

and then I close my eyes

and beg it to stop.


John says:

I’ve known Kristofer Collins for twenty-four years.  To put that on an understandable level I’ve known only my parents, brother, and intimate family friends for as long.  Kris and I met outside our geometry class in 1990.  Ah, to be wee lads again.  At the time he was on the staff of our high school literary magazine (he would eventually become the editor), and I was a fat and lonely kid with literary dreams.  What makes the stuff of friendship?  I don’t know.  But Kris and I formed a bond in high school that was solidified into a lifelong chum-hood in college, and has managed (albeit with some lumps along the way) to last into our 40s, that glorious time of family sickness, prostate exams, gray hair, and sore bones.  Here’s a sample of his work from the book Make-Out Party, an experiment in poetry where the last line of a poem is suddently the first line of the next:

i

pomes popping out all over

town infested with summer

jump my bones like a feud of

flowers are mondays all over

the world the same as my monday

is the earth just jelly

between yr weepy toes

sometimes writing pomes

is strange as this strange

as yr heart's lub dub

ii

as yr heart’s lub dub
speeds yr soles purple
is the new sky my good
friend a foreigner
you don’t speak the
language of office supplies
you don’t know the artist
but his name is hanging
west of the crumbled town

One of the great parts about knowing Kris for so long is that I’ve got to sit back and watch the guy develop as a man and as an artist.  What had once been dreams to him back when we were skipping classes to drink coffee, wander Pittsburgh, practice our Beatles impressions, and think we were the only people ever to discover Jack Kerouac, have now become realities.  Kristofer Collins is a true indie/small press renaissance man.  He is the owner of DesolationRow Records in Pittsburgh.  Kris is the author of six books of poetry: King Everything (Six Gallery Press 2006), The Book of Names (Low Ghost Press, 2008), The Liturgy of Streets (Six Gallery Press, 2009), Last Call (Speed and Briscoe), Make-Out Party (Coleridge Street 2013) and Pennsylvania Welcomes You (Coleridge Street 2013), which can be found in bookstores in Pittsburgh as well as HERE. He is also the publisher/editor of Low GhostPress and its smaller offshoot Coleridge Street which has published yourstruly, as well as The Trolleyman by Bob Pajich and The River Underneath the City by Scott Silsbe

Aleathia says:

Here is a poem from last November's poetry a day challenge:

Redacted Ideograms

We are born
into these slips of flesh—
a self-containing casket
taking a possible century
to decompose.

All the while
remora taking from us
silently leaving us
unawares .

The one life we have
eclipsed by daily minutiae
and bills to pay.

We miss the bigger picture.
We miss it all.

Aleathia Drehmer 2013

Quills and Frills-7/26/2014 Writing Prompt

This month's writing prompt required us to put our iPod's on shuffle and take the first line from the first song we heard and use it as the first line of a story.  The results are interesting.

Chloe says:


Toxic Zombie Apocalypse
by Chloe Drehmer


        They’re all on the road again, those dirty, mangy creatures.  For two days now, there has been this….. large disease which started out as a cure for cancer. Of course, it started out in a small lab two years ago by the famous scientists who were known as Dr. Jones-Parker and Dr. Petee. They tried over and over again to create the right serum to cure cancer and they were finally successful on October 31st 2032 (3 days ago).              All was great for the first day since 98% of the USA’s population had cancer, so they all raced for the antidote. Those people were cured at last!... or so everyone had thought.
         The next day, the cancer-“treated” patients were literally toxic! Acid fumbling out of their mouths, rotten flesh (if any at all!), and all they did was infect people, throw up acid, moan and groan or loose a few limbs at a time….. or separately..… whatever was the case.  Yes, these dirty things are Toxic Zombies a.k.a. TZs. My name is Adolse, I’m only 14 and I am willing to die soon in my free time. I am one of the youngest of the 500 or so survivors left who has a crappy shelter, no weapons, no food, and no water, and no freaking allies!
         This first day was very bad and very sad. First off, my whole family had cancer except for me, so I had no help from family. The people who weren’t infected probably ran into the woods to never be seen ever again (still, no allies). My only “ally” was this shelter….. at least for the moment it was.  I tried to sleep which I surprisingly did and then the first night ended…..
         Now it was time for the 2nd night, and it was okay. I was thirsty and hungry and just then had I realized that I was sharing my roof with a TZ. I tried to get up slowly but it saw me and (like all TZs) it tried to spew acid on me. It was quick but I was quicker (thank god for the track team who were all probably TZs by now!), and I got away safely and ran for the woods!  I quickly climbed a tree to find that I ran 1.36782157 miles to the apple tree farm, so I set up shop then fell asleep.
         Today was my 5,475th and final day and sadly, it was also my birthday, but I just couldn’t take living in this dangerous world, running away from fate (which was telling me to die, sadly). I don’t know why I jumped the cliff ledge (other than that main reason), but it happened. What I’m trying to say is, don’t end up like the other people and if there ever is a Toxic Zombie Apocalypse, just kick the bucket, it’s not worth living after that happens. Be safe.



                                        A HMN From - Adolse

Aleathia says:

Crème Filled Doughnuts
by Aleathia Drehmer

“Number ONE in acquisitions!” Brent screamed at the top of his lungs, “Let’s see you assholes take that away from me.  Come on! Come at me with your best shot!”

Brent stood on the ledge of a Wall Street high rise wild eyed and sweating.  Small bubbles of white spittle clung to the corners of his mouth as he raged.  He HAD been number one in acquisitions for his company and his heady nature caused him to gamble one too many times.  In his recklessness, he had lost everything for his clients.  He was a laughing stock on the trading floor.  He knew he could never face his wife again let alone his parents whom he had taken responsibility of care.  They all depended on him and he let them down.

His hands were shaking as he held the cool marble edges of the building.  He couldn’t stop yelling into the spring air, unsure if anyone could hear him…unsure if anyone even cared.  He was now stalling what he had started no completely convinced he wanted to jump.

To his right, Brent heard an office window open.  He couldn’t see who was there, but started screaming he was “number one” even louder.  He looked more closely and saw a woman leaning halfway out of the window.  She was plain.  He would have never noticed her in passing.  Her hair was pulled back to the nape of her neck in a severe bun so that her fleshy neck looked as if it had a tumor growing from it.  He noticed how her ample waist spread out on the sill like a comfortable blanket wrapped in a polka dotted candy wrapper.  Seeing her there caused Brent to stop screaming.

Paranoid, he thought the woman was with the police and started to inch further to the left.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you…doesn’t look like you have much ledge left,” the woman said.

“I don’t care what you think you fucking pig!”

“Hey man, just cause I’m fat doesn’t give you the right to call me a pig.  I have feelings too you know!”

“Well….aren’t you with the police?” Brent questioned.

“No you dumbass, I’m not.  I work in this office and all this damn yelling is really making it hard to concentrate.”

“I should just fucking jump then is that what you’re saying?  You want me to jump?” he said with heated passion.

“Man, it doesn’t matter what I want or what I think.  I just opened the window to see what all this “number one” bullshit was about.  Seriously—does it matter that much?  Being number one?”

Brent stood there quiet, his body starting to slacken.  Did this woman have a point?  What was he throwing his life away for, because he failed?  Brent wasn’t sure anymore.  It all felt like a horrible dream.

He was startled by the shrillness of the woman’s voice.  “Hey…dude…I’m gonna leave the window open for you.  Just stop screaming, ok?  I just can’t take it anymore.  If you jump, that legacy is on you.  If you don’t, you can come in, I’ve got doughnuts.  Crème filled and everything.”

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Janet.”

“I’m Brent.”

“Good to meet you.  Ok, I’m gonna get my work done now.  Have a nice day.”

She put her heavy body back through the window and Brent suddenly felt alone and very near the reality of his situation.  It wasn’t a great time to remember he was afraid of heights.  He inched along the ledge carefully and only let out his breath when he felt the lip of the sill under his dress shoes.  He eased a leg back through the window, balanced there awkwardly he imagined, and moved the rest of his body through.  He let out a heaving sigh.  He turned and there was Janet standing in her polka dot dress.  Her face was full of Boston Crème doughnut, the chocolate smeared over her upper lip, smiling.  She picked up the box and extended it out towards him.

Brent reached out and took the lemon filled jelly doughnut.  He bit into it with gusto.  The powdered sugar sprinkled down on his black suit.  He smiled with her ready to not be number one.

Teeth Meet Nail

by Ally Malinenko

“Call my name.”

“What?” I say, sleepy into the phone. I fumble for the clock on the nightstand.

3:11

Jesus Christ.

“What?” I say again.

“Call my name.”

“Danielle….It’s late.”

There is nothing but silence on the other end.

My throat is foggy and I cough to clear it. “Danielle.”

“Call my name.”

“Go to sleep.”

“You won’t play?”

Her voice is light, soft. I can picture her face, her long dark hair. The way it used to fan over my pillow, over my own face at night.

I used to sleep soundly, buried in that hair, like a bird in a nest. Then, something changed. And it started to choke me, twisting its way into my mouth.

Suffocating.

“Danielle…”

“Do it.”

I sigh.

“Call my name,” she says again, sing-songy, letting the words just hang there.

“Ninety to nothing—”

“Watch me run,” she says before I can.

“I have to go now.”

“No,” she says. I hear that tears quiver inside her. It makes me wonder about the last time I went to the ocean.

“Is he there?” she asks.

“No.”

Her indignation is put on. It’s Cherry-Coke flavored.

“He’s on call tonight.”

“Sure…..ugly girls know their fates.”

“Are you finished? I want to go back to sleep.” This is, of course a lie. There is no way I’m going back to sleep.

“Wait….”

“What?”

“Just wait…” I hear a click and know that it’s the sound of her placing her fingernail between her incisors and biting down. When she fishes the loose nail from her tongue, because Danielle doesn’t spit, heavens no, anything but that, her words are momentarily garbled. “You missed a good show tonight.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“You did.” She says this with conviction as if to remind me that I’m missing out on a lot of good shows these days. I stretch and scratch my stomach.

“Big house?”

“Yeah. Martin says he wants to add another performance.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Her voice rises at the end and I hear another click as teeth meet nail.

“Yeah, good for you.”

“Ah,” she says exhaling. “Good for me.” Then after a pause, “I’m assuming you know about Layla.”

“I heard.”

“Are you coming to the service?”

“Probably…I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to go? I think you should go.”

“I’ll think about it.” I roll over, my back sore. The bed feels hot. I lay a hand across the empty mattress and wonder what Paul’s night is like. Has he saved any lives? Has he dipped those hands into the blood of another human? Why would anyone want to be a doctor? I asked him that when we first met. He laughed, taken aback by my question and in his surprise his eyes lit up. That was the first time I had seen him like that. Do you want to save lives? I asked him. Are you doing God’s work? He cocked an eyebrow at the mention of a deity. Jon, he said to me, I’m undoing God’s work. God made disease and death. Decay. Rot. I preserve. I fight to keep life. I’m a most unholy crusader.

He reached across the table of that posh restaurant – more expensive than I could ever have afforded and brushed his fingers over the skin of my hand, so lightly like it was only the thought of physical touch.

And, he asked, what about you? Why do you act? Because you want to know every life you could have lived? Or because you’re afraid of this one?

“Layla was your friend,” Danielle whispers through the phone. “You can’t abandon all of us.”

I can hear that she’s crying. She probably knows that I know this and expects me to comment.

“I’m going to go. It’s just… you know…. I hate funerals. They’re so depressing.”

“No time for the dead in that fancy new life.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Don’t bring him.”

“Danielle…”

“I’m serious. I hate the way he looks at us. Like we’re vagabonds. Druggies. Freaks. Like he wouldn’t lay his doctoring hands upon us. Don’t do that after we lost our Layla.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true.”

“You don’t know him.”
            “I don’t need to. His name is Paul. That’s all I need to know.”

“What does that mean?”
            “It means ‘small.’ Small Paul. Is that what he is?”

“Goodbye Danielle.” I pull the phone away from my ear and I can hear her calling my name. Jon, wait. Jon, wait…I’m sorry. Her voice is tiny and airy like an evil pixie. I bring it back to my ear and I hear her whispering, “Please don’t hang up. Come on Jon, don’t hang up on me.”

“I’m tired,” I say. “I want to go back to sleep.”

“What time is Prince Charming back?”

“Usually around 7 or 8 in the morning. He goes right to bed then.” I think about Paul climbing into bed next to me. How he will fit his body against mine. How the smell coming off him will be the hard soap from the hospital. Clean. Bleached. Raw but still Strong. Behind that will be the faint sterile scent of the rubber gloves he pulls on and off each day. The powder he uses to keep away irritation. He will snore. His arm, over my waist will be heavy with the weight of a night spent pulling the dead back from the brink.

Pulling and succeeding. Pulling and failing.

“I knew you would come out. I’m not stupid. I knew it…us….we wouldn’t last… I just didn’t expect it to be with a straight.”

“Danielle…”

“You know what I mean.”

I count ten seconds. I’m about to tell her I have to go but she beats me to it.

“Anyway, I have to run.” She’s light and breezy as if it was the middle of the day and we were normal still.

“Okay.” I give her this. She needs it and I understand that.

“Call me later.”

I nod and then remember she can’t see me and instead say, “Sure.”

“Call my name….” she sings it. High and light. She has a beautiful voice. For a moment it melts inside me and I sink into the mattress. Suddenly all I want is for Danielle to sing to me. I think of her pressed against me. How light her arm always was around my waist. “Call my name….here I come. Your last ditch lay, will I never learn…”

She laughs at the end. “Ciao, darling.”

I listen to the dial tone before I drift off.

Quills and Frills-5/24/2014 Writing Prompt

Savory
by Ally Malinenko

Wet cardboard. Warm wet cardboard.

Think of wet cardboard – where it’s pulpy on top, a mushy consistency but the bottom is still firm and then leave the whole thing in the sun so that it’s baked warm to the touch.

That will give you some idea of what this is like when I actually put a slice of pizza in my mouth. The bigger problem is that it still smells just like pizza. Mouth-watering cheesy delicious pizza.

This is life without the sense of taste – the life I now live.

In the beginning I thought it was a just a cold.

I woke one day and the pancakes on my plate at the diner tasted – well... puffy. Only puffy. Like biting into a mouse-sized mattress. It was spongy and soft. Springy even. But there was no taste.

I put the fork down.

“What?” my girlfriend asked. She sat across from me both eating and thumbing through her phone.

“These don’t taste like anything.”

She rolled her eyes, speared a piece of pancake from my plate with her fork and popped it into her mouth. I watched the muscles of her jaw work.

“They taste like pancakes,” she said swallowing. “You’re probably getting a cold. Don’t be sick for Sunday’s thing. I know you don’t want to go but I promised Denise.”

I nodded, dipping a finger into the pool of syrup on the plate. I licked only cold mucus. Slime trailed down my throat.

Next was pasta. Noodles were worms. Spaghetti sauce has the same consistency as Elmer’s glue. Onion were slugs – hard on the outside and then a pop of warm mush inside. I gagged on those.

She ordered Chinese food. I got nothing from it but the slick acrid oil from the fry cooker. Vegetables gave me only something elemental – dirt and root, the birthing bed of life.

Every beverage was water. Coffee was hot water. Wine was cursed by some hypocritical bastard deity. Scotch on rocks was the first thing that gave me something – but that something was only the bitter tart left over of rubbing alcohol.

At first I panicked. I took swigs of hot sauce. My throat raged in fire but otherwise nothing. My tongue lay inside my mouth – a dead useless thing.

For the first few months I took over cooking. I over-salted, over-spiced everything. My girlfriend burst into tears at the dinner table while I raged in the kitchen.

When we made love, the sweet tang of her skin – the taste of her - was lost to me. I mourned that one most of all.

Eventually I stopped eating. Food had no meaning without taste. My weight dropped severely. My once toned body withered.

The doctor told me not to worry. He gave me brochures that told me taste usually returns. It would all be over in a year or two at the latest. A year or two? My stomach roiled. Was I supposed to live two years like this?
"Is it ever permanent?" I asked.
In answer, he pressed his pillowy lips together until they were nothing more than a white line.

Time passed. In small doses I sometimes found something. One time ginger popped in my mouth, barking attention from listless taste buds. I nearly died that day. It wasn’t much but it was something. Every forkful was another shot fired in this war. When I got something from food, it was a gift. I cursed myself for not appreciating it before.

“I think I got this,” my girlfriend said when I opened the door to our apartment. She stood over the range, enveloped in the aromatic wafting scent of something Indian. She looked stunning, her dark hair, her large eyes. I dropped my bag to the floor and wrapped my arms around her, nuzzling the nape of her neck. I pressed my lips to her skin and inhaled the scent of her. I wanted to tell her I loved her. To thank her for trying. To apologize for what our life had become but she’s too busy detailing the ingredients in the pan before her. I let my tongue just graze her skin. Give me something, please. Just the salt of her, I’ll take that even.  I close my eyes.

“I checked with the Doctor. He agreed that it was worth a shot. We’re going to wake that tongue of yours up, baby,” she said, adding another large dollop of yogurt sauce and curry to the mixture. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Nothing. Not even the salty flavor of her sweat. Her flesh was no different than the chicken she pushed around that pan. I tell her I won’t worry. I turn towards the spice rack and open the hot sauce. I shake some onto my tongue. I let it sit there like a pill I can’t swallow. And I pray to a god I’m starting to hate.


Untitled
by Joseph Bouthiette Jr.

This is how I learned to fall.

Maybe I’m losing weight, maybe I’m stumbling in a loss of my sense of weight. Or maybe I’m losing my sense of the ground. The ground, our perpendicular lover, but I’m growing more acquainted with her with every fall. Through her, the continents rumble and through me, the outpour of freshly opened scrapes. With each step I risk embracing her once more, my inner ears spinning like clouds in the wind. I close my eyes in that moment of uncertainty.

Shall I remain firmly rooted in place? Or shall I fall, a sheep to my gravity’s shepherd? Then I open my eyes, spine clattering against hard earth and eyes full of clouds. Through her, the dirt, I now embrace my true love, her, the sky.

This is how I learned to fly.

[Author's note: this is a remix of sorts of my prose poem "How I Learned to Fly" which can be read in its original form here. Stole a lot of lines from it that I liked for this piece on the loss of the sense of balance. Both are needlessly abstract and silly, but enjoy!]

Trampoline
By Aleathia Drehmer

Bonita was exceptionally clumsy.  Her mother had reminded her of this fact whenever she could and the opportunity arose often.  She used to tell Bonita that grace stopped by while she was sleeping and never bothered coming back.  It was not very surprising when Bonita awoke on the stretcher in the Emergency Room with her face bandaged.

The last thing she remembered was jumping on the trampoline with her friends.  She daringly did a back flip, feeling invincible as she bounced so high, and now she was here.  The ER was noisy—so many bells and whistles, so much chatter between patients and families, and medical banter of doctors.  Bonita looked around the room.  She could barely see over the bulky dressing across her nose.  There was a pain there like insipid fire, yet, she wasn’t really in pain.

Her mother sat there beside the bed with a look on her face that was equal parts irritation, “I hope you’re ok” and “I told you so”.  She said nothing to Bonita, so she said nothing back to her mother.  In their shared silence Bonita noticed she couldn’t smell anything.

It’s just the bandage, she told herself.

Well if it is just the bandage smarty then how come you can’t smell the gauze or the blood? She questioned.

She was very puzzled, but at 14 years old what did she know about noses and a person’s sense of smell?  All she knew was that her nose hurt and her face wasn’t too far behind it the longer she lay there in wonder.    Bonita counted the dots in the ceiling tiles while she waited in the swirl of noise around her. The doctor came into the room and told Bonita’s mother, not Bonita, that her nose was broken and there was nothing they could do about it.  She would have to see the specialist in a week.

Bonita cringed.  Specialist.  That meant a lot of money and she knew that her mother didn’t have the cash to pay for any of this.  She suddenly felt tiny inside as if she were a painfully heavy burden on her mother.  The doctor suddenly looked her in the eyes, standing over her smiling and chuckled.  “And you young lady are going to have a pair of black eyes.  Don’t blow your nose or there will be bleeding.”  Bonita nodded at the doctor and thought it was strange he thought this was all funny.  She did not mention her loss of smell.  She didn’t think it was permanent anyway.

The week passed and Bonita wore the purple badge across her face awkwardly.  Her friends made jokes and Bonita laughed as she always did when she hurt herself being clumsy, but inside she felt a darkness brewing.  Her food was tasteless and bland no matter how much salt or spice she used.  She could not smell the lilacs blooming beneath her bedroom window, or smell the early summer air with its sticky heaviness.  Bonita couldn’t even smell her brother’s horrid gym sneakers that he left closed up in the bathroom.  She was sort of glad of it, but at the same time it was a scent that told the story of her life.

The specialist told her she was fine when she mentioned she couldn’t smell properly.  He told her sometimes that happens with trauma, but he assured her it would come back.  Anosmia he said.  That was the real word for it.  He expected her to look impressed, but she struggled with the concept.  What will I do if I can’t ever smell again? She thought.

Many more weeks passed and Bonita became sullen.  She could smell nothing and the world slipped by her as if she were not even there.  She could not identify with the everyday workings of her own life.  It felt desolate and all her natural joy at being alive drained away into the grass she was standing on but could not smell.  Bonita thought of dying.  She dreamed of smelling the blood and the last threads of air in her lungs as they collapsed on themselves.  It would be so much better than this torture, she thought, seeing the world and not enjoying it.  She stood there in the yard a long time with this final ending.  Bonita smiled and put her arms out as if to be taken up into the heavens.

Bonita!!! God damn it, for the last time, dinner is ready!! Her mother shouted from the window.

Not this time, she thought, not this time.

( These stories were written from a single prompt.  What if you freakishly lost one of your senses, what would your life be like?)

Quills and Frills - 5/17/2014 Ally Malinenko

Ally says:

I wrote a book. Well actually I've wrote a couple and they are all in various stages of existence much like when you were in biology class and were shown cell mitosis.

Pop Quiz: Is this mitosis or meiosis and does anybody care?

You remember that right? Prometaphase, Metaphase, Anaphase. My 10th grade biology teacher is smiling right now. Somewhere.

So the one of these books in particular is coming out via a small press called BookFish Books. It's called This Is Sarah.

Cover design by Anita B. Carroll at Race-Point.com

Here's the blurb on the back cover:

When Colin Leventhal leaned out his bedroom window on the night of May 12th and said goodbye to his girlfriend, he never expected it would be forever. But when Sarah Evans goes missing that night, Colin's world unravels as he is transformed from the boyfriend next door to the main police suspect. Then one year later, at her memorial service, Colin makes a phone call that could change everything. Is it possible that Sarah is still alive? And if so, what is he willing to do to bring her back?
  As Colin struggles with this possibility, across the street, Sarah’s little sister Claire learns how to navigate the strange new landscape that is life without her sister. While her parents fall apart, Claire is determined to keep on going. Even if it kills her.
  THIS IS SARAH is a meditation on loss, love, and what it means to say goodbye.

It is being released in June and to be honest, aside from my usual anxiety (read: crippling self doubt) I am excited to have Colin and Claire's story out in the world. I packed a lot of my left over emotional baggage into a big fat suitcase and handed it to Colin. When he walks off with it, I can only imagine it will be good. After all, writing is often quite a catharsis, right?

That said, I should forewarn it's full of filthy language, drug use and gratuitous sexual references. You know, it's for teenagers.

Here's an excerpt if you're interested. Please consider this an uncorrected galley as we are still in the editing phase so any grammatical mistakes are 100% my fault and not the fault of the staff at BookFish who are,  without a doubt, quite lovely.

The chapters alternate between Claire and Colin. This is from a Colin chapter:

In the first few days after Sarah disappeared, the police treated it like a runaway. And I guess, to someone who didn’t know anything about Sarah, that would make sense. I mean, she did get into her car and drive off that night. It must have seemed totally possible that Sarah just ran away like any other pissed-off, confused teen.

Except she wasn’t.

She was happy. We were happy.

And during those days, those first important weeks of handing out posters and talking to people I started to feel like Sarah needed me to save her.

This felt both foreign and familiar, because she was never the sort of girl that needed saving, and I always kind of wanted her to be. I mean, I love that Sarah was strong and independent and everything, but sometimes I just wanted to be the hero. And now here she was―needing it on such a grand scale―and here I was―ready and able to do the saving.

Ready to knock on the right door, ready to talk to the right person who would say, 'Yeah you know, now that you mention it, I did see her car on Route 7 right past the old farmhouse.' And then we would go there, cop sirens blazing, and we would find a clue, and then another, and the police would kick down the door of the farmhouse, guns drawn, and the monster would be there, and there would be a shootout and screaming. And then I would run to the basement and Sarah would be there―afraid but okay―and I would take her home and love her.

That’s the stupid sort of shit I thought in the beginning.

Pathetic, right?

Instead, nothing happened.

Well, not nothing, exactly; disappointment happened. Pain happened. Crying happened. Anger happened.

Time passed, and my parents worried over me so much that therapy round one happened. Then therapy round two.

Things were found. Dogs were brought in―mangy, ugly things that knew how to nose around in leaves and riverbeds and find horror and fetch it and bring it home and break your heart. But that’s still a month down the road in this story.

What happened right after the search parties, and the first few days that added up to a week, was that the police came for me.

If you made it to the end of this very long post, I just want to thank you for being awesome. I'm at @allymalinenko and allymalinenko.com if you want more info on THIS IS SARAH or you know any other crap I'm cobbling together.