Category: Fiction

The quilted red pleather door held a diamond shaped window dead center, and hinged onto a smoky room, dim with neon beer signs and hanging pool table lamps.  Johnny Paycheck crackled on the jukebox and every barstool, save two, stood empty.  Three men in faded Levis, pearl button shirts, and mesh-backed baseball caps threw darts. The ancient woman behind the bar looked quizzically at a man bringing a young boy into a bar at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night in the middle of the winter, then gave us a welcoming smile.

It had been a frustrating few weeks at school. Individually, a number of white students had displayed their bias in the usual ways—not so funny “jokes,” being adamant about slavery and the Civil Rights Movement being “so long ago,” half-compliments, stereotyping me and my friends—and I wasn’t having it. I fully understand how it’s necessary to let a lot fly—I mean, if I stop to correct someone every time they show their lack of racial understanding, I’ll never get anything done—but enough was enough.

Cody gave his approval of his mother’s new boyfriend. “Before, you had no life,” he said. Diana had to agree with him.

Mateo invented a game where we try to guess the item being pawned by the appearance of the customer.

Murmur to me the song of our time.

The one from our dreams, the one that hurts: