All the boys say it’s dumb. We roll our eyes when the girls talk about the Insta account they’ve set up so no one gets the same dress. We smirk at the way they shy away like nervous ponies when we pass them in the hall—as if they expect us to break into song or whip flowers out of our ass—but really, we’re just as bad. Each of us trying to outdo each other. Jackson plastering Sofie’s locker with a hundred Post-It Notes. Zach cruising through the parking lot towing a bunch of balloons. After school today, Mikey played his guitar on Hallie’s front porch while a group of us held signs that spelled P-R-O-M-? I was the question mark. You wait too long, all the good ones will be taken, Mikey says. As if they’re essay topics. Or seats in a theater. As if we all want the same thing. So, yeah, I’ll pick some girl and come up with a plan like the rest of the guys, and everyone will pat me on the back and say it’s about time, and then we’ll move on to the limo plan and the after-party plan and the what color cummerbund plan and I’ll keep pretending. Maybe my whole life. Because it’s only a dance, right? And I’m only a question mark.

***

Kathleen Latham is a poet and short fiction writer living outside Boston. Her work appears most recently in The Cincinnati Review and electric pink and has received awards from Writer’s Digest, the Bridport Prize, and Bath Flash Fiction. You can find her at kathleenlatham.com or on Instagram @lathamwithapen.

We recently published Brittany Redd’s haunting “Basement.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the speculation as to why the basement was closed off — but what I really wonder is where is this basement? What kind of building hosts it?
This story was inspired by my old middle school. I started middle school in the historic old building, but finished it in a new building that had substantially less character and looked more like a hospital than a school. The old building was more or less just left vacant to rot. One of the features of the old building I never got to enjoy was a pool that was supposedly in the basement. There were all kinds of rumors going around about why we were changing buildings and why we couldn’t use the pool. Most of them involved drownings and hauntings, which I could never corroborate with any news articles when I looked it up later.

2) Of course there’s one true answer to all the questions, one true reason why the basement was closed off. Or is there, really?
I think there is an answer, but the beauty of this story is that whoever knows the truth never bothered to share.  The mystery created a need to mythologize in the absence of answers and the speculation is almost certainly more interesting than the truth.  

Because it was too expensive to clear out the mold.  Because some rich kid got hurt in the pool down there and the parents threatened to sue.  Because they kept catching kids trying to smoke down there.  Because they found a body down there and needed to cover it up.  Because even after they’d cleared it out, people could still hear voices, screaming.  Because the lights were always flickering.  Because they thought they could get more government money out of a new building.  Because they worried about terrorists sneaking in through the Red Scare tunnels.  Because they got a lot of money to hide some MKUltra shit down there.  Because the last place they ever saw those moms that went missing a few years ago was close to that building.  Because the kids who snuck down there last summer never were the same when they came out, glossy-eyed and vacant.  Because people kept having the same dream about it every time there was a full moon.  Because the HOA thought there might be homeless people living down there.  Because of geocaching and Pokémon GO.  Because they built a containment lab.  Because they found too many skeletons, too many ghosts. 

***

Brittany Redd is a teacher and writer in Thailand. Her work appears in Funicular Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere.

Listen, it’s not as if I caused the accident, just that I was standing right there at the Maple Avenue intersection when a giant lady started screeching and clapping her metal hands, that’s how it came across, because some people have a strong visual sense but I have that with hearing and always want to describe the sound, so when Dad pffts gas at breakfast, after he leaves for the store, Mom says, “No need to comment,” and when I protest, she shakes her head, wheezing like playing a flute, “I can always hear the words you’re not pronouncing, Samantha…phweee…the noise in that head of yours when you’re…euhhh…not talking,” so I shouted, “Excuse me for breathing!” which isn’t fair, since her asthma’s no joke, but she treats me like I was seven, though I’m almost fourteen and can do ten chin-ups at the school gym, where Big Bad Larry oinks as he works on his pecs in front of his stupid lover-girl Whatsername, who says “Wowww” with three syllables, both of them hateful the way the whole school is, from annoying Arnold with the same sexist jokes every day, menacing Martin who mutters threats as he waves a box cutter, that girl Esperanza who thinks no one can understand her Spanish insults, the Denton twins who’re always imitating me, to Zelda Zebra, which isn’t really her name except that’s not the point, which is that I walk home instead of taking the bus, because I might be dead now if I did, with at least a dozen kids left in the seats by the time the semi smashed into it, some of them smacked half-out the open windows, but it didn’t stop there because the bus rolled over on its side, groaning like a rusty gate, and then this cotton silence, no kids moving at all, and for one stupid moment, I announced  that I was happy about this, until the cops and the ambulance came, and one of the EMS guys threw up blehh, at which point I started running nowhere, anywhere to escape the noise in my head, yet by the time I got home two hours later, word must have gotten out about the accident, because Mom rushed over to hug me, but then she looked at my face and the words I couldn’t say, and do you know what she told me?

***

David Galef has published over a dozen books, including My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize), How to Cope with Suburban Stress (Kirkus Best Books), and Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook. Forthcoming this fall: the short story collection Tradeoffs. He runs the creative writing program at Montclair State University and is the editor in chief at Vestal Review.

We recently published Kelly McElroy’s heartrending “The Dive.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the details here, the specificity. How much the narrators remember of this night! All except that one thing. That one devastating thing. Do you think any of them might remember more than they are revealing? Or was this one thing truly missed amongst the rest of the night?
I think it’s certainly possible that one or more of the girls remembers more than the collective narration claims. I was really interested in playing with the idea of blame here, and how the narrators try to shift it off of themselves, emphasizing the action they took once they realized what was wrong as opposed to the mistakes they made along the way. I think there is also safety in numbers; for one of the girls to admit that she realized something was wrong sooner would be to step out of the collective and invite greater scrutiny. Better to stick with the rest of the group’s story.

2) But, oh, the details! Those secret looks! The shyness, the fear of revealing yourself to the others. Do you think this, perhaps, is what kept them from noticing?
Yes! The girls are so caught up in how they appear to each other. They are self-conscious about feeling self-conscious, all wanting to seem confident and cool in their bodies. The irony, of course, is that they’re so busy thinking of themselves that they end up not seeing each other, and this self-obsession is what keeps them from noticing the most vital detail of the night.

We’ve already been drinking for hours by the time we get the idea to go to the ocean. The water is only a five minute walk away and wouldn’t it be a waste of our night if we didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to swim? Our mothers would be horrified to know where we are and what we’re doing but we slip off our clothes, tops first because we are less self conscious of our breasts than we are of our lower bellies. We slide our shorts and our underwear off quickly, trying to seem indifferent to nakedness like we undress in front of others all the time, and then we are streaking down to the water, kicking loose sand up behind us. The moon lights quick snatches of skin as we run, a curved waist, a sharp shoulder blade, a dark nipple, our flesh glowing against the black sea we dive into. In the ocean we are all the same body. The borders between our skin and the water and each other are fluid. It might be the alcohol or the fact that we were already unsteady back on land but when the waves toss us around we are not frightened. We appreciate the disorientation, the push and pull of the tide. We are warmer down here than in the night air and it is a comfort, but still after a few moments of weightlessness we reluctantly swim back to the shore, the thrill having passed, and race up to where we piled our clothes. We throw back on our t-shirts and shorts but not our underwear, because we are soaking wet and no one wants cotton underwear clinging to them when they are coated in sand and seaweed and salt. We are halfway back to one of our homes, bare feet on street pavement, socks and panties balled up in our hands, when we remember that the neighbor’s house is under construction and no one is home. The pool sits like a glowing orb in the backyard, waiting for us. Carefully, but not as carefully as we think, we climb over the fence that separates their property from ours. We undress, more shyly this time because the pool is lit up from below and we can see each other now so clearly. We pretend we are not looking but we are, glimpses of bodies through the broken prisms of the water. Later, no one will be able to say how long we were in the pool before we realized that one of us was missing. They will ask us again and again and we will say we don’t know we don’t know we don’t know and they, our mothers and later the police, will ask how could we possibly not know? And we will repeat it again like it is our penance. What matters, we will insist, is that when we did realize that someone was missing we peeled ourselves dripping out of the pool and put our clothes back on again, hurrying this time, exposing more of ourselves than we meant to. First we checked the house, checked the bedrooms, because maybe she just went upstairs and went to sleep, but she was not there so we went back to the beach but she was not there either. There were just her clothes, still piled in the sand. The moon cast its indifferent glow on the waves and we wondered how we could have missed it. She must have been so quiet as the sea pulled her under, away from us.

***

Kelly McElroy is a fiction writer from New Jersey, whose work has previously been published in Flash Frog. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Bowling Green State University.

(CW: implied sexual assault)

She could have said no. (She did eventually.) But she could have said no right away. Could have said no, I don’t want to leave the bar and go with you. Could have just stayed at Jasper’s with her glass of whiskey and cherries. Could have said no to the cigarette. No, thank you, I do not want a cigarette. Or, she could have taken it, tucked it behind her ear, and that could have been all. The end. No. She did not have to go outside with him. Did not have to stand in the street, smoking, watching the moon fail to rise. And even if she had, she could have said no then. Afterward. She did not have to follow him back to his lemon-yellow Cadillac. And even if she had followed him there, she could have stayed in the fresh cool night air. She did not have to open the boat of a door and climb in. Did not have stay in there either. She could have said no then. Returned her body to the bar. And while he drove—Stevie Ray Vaughn vibrating her skull—she could have asked him to pull over. Or she could have opened the door and jumped. Could have simply walked the winding country roads home. It was a thick dark night, but she could have walked those roads sightless. (She knew them so well.) And when he pulled onto that dirt road with the apple trees on either side (an orchard), she could have said stop (she did say stop). She could have run through that orchard like her life depended on it. Stumbled past tree trunks over knobs of apples in the dust. And again, when the next door presented itself, a ripped screen thing with a metal frame, she did not have to walk through it. Did not have to enter the trailer. No, she could have left. And when he offered her a swig from that water bottle (whiskey, he said), she could have kept away from it. Could have not swallowed it deep and long like she did. Could have not coughed and laughed. Could have pushed his hand away when he reached for her face afterward. Could have said fuck you (she did say fuck you eventually). And when he peeled her clothes off layer by layer, where was she? She could have said no then. Could have stopped him. (Where was she?) Silence. Not in her body. No. She was back in the orchard, curled into the branches of an apple tree. No moon. Just fog. Imagining herself fog, drifting, dissolving. And now, not saying no, a time before the bar: flick of mascara for the eyelashes, spritz of perfume on the collarbone, a bit of lipstick. Could have stayed in those moments, before the trailer, before the dirt road, before the Cadillac, the cigarette, Jasper’s. Could have not gone there at all. 

***

Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer from California. She is the author of two forthcoming collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, Red Hen Press) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, forthcoming from Chestnut Review Books), Without Woman or Body (Poetry, Finishing Line Press), and Edge of the Sea (Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.

I tossed the used diaper, I buckled the seatbelt, I put my daughter into her stroller, I checked four times to make sure I put my daughter into her stroller, I lowered her visor, I pressed the lock button on my car keys four times; someone reassure me that I tossed the used diaper, that I buckled the seatbelt, that I put my daughter into her stroller, that I checked four times to make sure I put my daughter into her stroller, that I lowered her visor for the sun is hot today and fizzles downward onto her tufts of brown hair; at the trailhead, I turn us around to recheck the car is locked; the only thing that calms her is for me to roll her stroller two steps forward and one back, and in the lulling I say shhhh, darling, shhhh to stop her fussing; shhhh goes the river beneath the pedestrian bridge; shhhh go the trees above the long winding trail; if I do not continue this forward forward backward forward forward backward she will wake up; she will again cry; (When was the last time I rested in the eyes of someone I didn’t realize loved me as deeply as I do her? What is the normal amount of fear this loving should hold?); Every few minutes I lift the visor because I am convinced a quiet daughter is a dead one.

***

Kenny Mitchell is a writer from Nebraska who graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 2024. He is currently living in Bloomington, Indiana studying for his MFA in fiction writing at Indiana University, where he serves as an associate instructor and the fiction editor of Indiana Review.