Maya Joseph (16)
Hunger
There it was, stapled to the front door, rearing its ugly head once again: “Eviction Notice.” It surprised me for no apparent reason. Like trying that milk that you know has been sitting in the fridge for months, the level of chunk should not shock you, but it always does.
I opened the door (the handle was broken so you had to jiggle it a little bit to get it to give), sat down on the couch, and grabbed the remote control. There was a box of pizza on the table three feet in front of the couch.
“Happy’s Pizza,” read the box. Nice.
Wondering where I was going to find another hundred dollars, I nudged the top open with my shoe. One lone slice remained. Kicking off my red high tops, I outstretched a leg with toes spread like tongs. So close. Finally, I latched onto the crust and got it. My toes were champions. It amused me, I guess, because I laughed. Sort of. My laughs were getting washed over by those sullen undertones the streets of Detroit couldn’t help but dispense. I took a bite right from my triumphant foot.
That morning had started off so differently. I’d saved up almost enough to pay half the rent and handle the eviction situation. I had a shift at Lester’s Rock n Roll Shop, and I was going to pawn one of my guitars. I’d hoped that would cover the rest. I’d never done this before, paid rent. I had been living with a boyfriend but it had been too long and I had to leave. It’s simple: we are all fire, and we burn when you get too close. It was basic human preservation. I had no choice. Anyway, that’s why I moved back home, but my mom had apparently been gone for at least a month so the rent was unpaid and I had nowhere else to go.
Back to the morning. I woke up at seven A.M. and felt like shit. The morning is the first stage of the world’s attempt to annihilate you. Waking up, it just always hurts so bad. Once out of bed, I looked into the mirror for a minute. Chaotic blue eyes and lush, long, blonde hair stared back at me. I looked too much like my mom. At least she was pretty. Putting on my shortest jean skirt, I grabbed my guitar and started walking towards the bus stop. On the way there I thought back to the day I had found this guitar. It was on somebody’s lawn next to a sign that read, “FREE STUFF.” It only had four of its six strings back then, it was desperately out of tune, and it looked like a lost cause but I wanted it regardless. I’d changed the strings endless times and screwed on different pick-guards but it still had that same lost cause appearance. I’ve been told I’m a lost cause myself. Maybe that’s why I loved this guitar. It too had been given up on, and I liked how sad that sounded. As I crossed the street I stepped over some cracked beer bottles. A small rainbow reflected off their glass. I wished I was the type of person who could just see that rainbow, rather than the whole city of broken beer bottle dreams it was reflecting off of.
My mom had been living in this tiny apartment for the past eleven months, and I’d been a high school dropout for eight of them. I’m seventeen. Last Christmas Child Protective Services knocked on our door and a rigid lady with thin, straight, brown hair that was so dull it was practically grey, told me to pack my younger brother Nathan’s stuff up. I remember wanting to kill her as I watched silent tears spill out of his blue eyes and felt his soft blonde curls in my hands while he begged me not to let them take him away. My older sister—well, technically my cousin, Courtney, who grew up with me—was standing by my side, just as helpless, holding my hand. While I watched Nate’s heart break she watched mine shatter. I’m almost positive my mom’s boyfriend, Greg, called Social Services anonymously to get Nathan taken away. Greg was the worst person I had ever met. I wanted to kill him too. After that Christmas, Courtney and I stopped going home. Without Nathan to take care of there was no reason to breathe in that blood and alcohol smell that overwhelmed the apartment. That was one of those smells that can’t be identified as any memory other than childhood.
I walk to work everyday. Lester’s Rock n Roll shop is a small instrument and record store attached to an underground concert hall with a bar wrapped around the perimeter of the room and a stage in the front. As soon as you walk into Lester’s this thing hits you. I wouldn’t exactly call it a smell, although it triggers your whole sensory system. It inspires more of a feeling throughout your body, like tremors but in the form of an emotion more vast than fear, but I’m never scared by it, it just makes me bitter. The whole job makes me bitter.
I get paid to restring and assemble guitars all day and waitress during shows at night. Sometimes, I play for an audience of rum covered napkins and cigarette butts, if Rick, the owner, doesn’t have a better plan. Before I had this job I was busking on the street for cash. It wasn’t awful. People liked my songs and I got by, but I rarely fell asleep in a bed.
When I got to work that morning Tristen was already there. Tristen should have been a rock star. I was sure of it. He looked like an even more angsty version of Kurt Cobain. Long blonde hair that rejected all forms of domestication, and an aura that made me want to believe he was born from the womb of Detroit herself. The best and worst part was he had told me he was crazy in love with me. I don’t know if he’s society’s conceptualization of attractive, I can never tell those things. What I do know is that I’d let him kiss me if he tried. He should have been a rockstar, but nobody listened to his dreams, so instead he works at Lester’s with me, selling instruments and knowing way too much about Fenders and way too little about algebra to do much else in this world.
When I walked in and saw him I truly hated him for a second. He looked like such an asshole, sitting there, reading “Charisma,” a fucking beauty magazine. He was so intrigued. What a dick.
“It’s all a lie,” I informed him. He could be gold. I was trying to save him.
Tristen looked up. “How you doin’, Sammy?” He smiled and it made me mad.
I was still on the magazine. “That right there is the reason you wake up hating yourself. It’s the reason people say things like ‘be yourself,’ but ‘yourself’ should be the cover of that magazine, and you should be flat like paper, and the person you are should just be a malfunction you spend life trying to fix.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. I’m not crazy. Then he smiled. Again. What the hell? The nerve of this boy.
“What’s with the guitar? You got big plans tonight?” Tristen asked me. I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me. I can never tell those things either.
I sighed. “No, I need to pawn her so I can pay my mom’s rent.” It made me so sad. I loved this guitar. It was me.
“Nah, fuck that. How about this? You perform tonight. Rick was going to give me a hundred bucks, just take my gig.”
He was like this all the time, overly kind to me. It made me want to stab him with the screwdriver I was using to attach the pick-guard to the body of the guitar. This one was light blue and it reminded me of my brother’s eyes, which are slightly more shallow than my own. I became pissed off at Tristen. I always do when I’m sad. Rage just hurts less than melancholy. At least for me.
“Why would you give that up?” I was being a real motherfucker. I started to hate myself too.
“I’m not sure.” He looked at me like I was artwork protected behind glass, something you can only touch with your eyes. “Maybe I just want to hear you sing and make that guitar right there sing too.” He didn’t smile this time, but his eyes did.
Fuck you. I paused and thought for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Only because I need the money though. Thank you.” I smiled, just to mess with him, and he melted.
7:40, twenty minutes until my gig, and I was standing there, looking into the mirror of the dressing room. I was short, around 5’1”, but I never felt like it. I still had on the same tiny jean skirt, white tank top, and red converse that I’d been wearing all day. I looked like chaos. It dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten since the day before. I was tuning my guitar when Rick came into the dressing room. He didn’t even knock. What if I was half naked?
“You ready, princess?” He was talking through a disturbing smile. Rick always watched me in a way that made me feel hollow, like flesh and bones and nothing more. I didn’t mind it. At least he never tried to get inside my head and figure me out.
“Yeah, I’m ready whenever.” I was trying to sound confident but I ended up sounding bored. He walked out. I was apparently supposed to follow him.
It was a Friday night and Lester’s was packed. From the stage all the bodies just pushing against each other seemed like an organism with one heartbeat. That single organism was intimidating as hell. I don’t get particularly nervous, ever, before performing and I don’t have stage fright but I’m somehow still so uncomfortable with singing for crowds of people. Crowds, they don’t get it or care enough to try to get it. The good thing about Lester’s is that nobody cares enough to try to get anything. Everybody there was always united by this overarching lack of purpose. The room was filled with a whole bunch of just-trying-to-get-through-today people who wanted to rock.
“Hey y’all, I’m Samara.” I smiled and the organism hollered. “Are you ready to rock?” Fuck yeah they were. “This one’s called Furor and it goes out to you, T!” I was looking Tristen right in the eye and laughing into the microphone. He was grinning. This was fun.
The rest of the show was just burning fingers and sweat. I had one more song, but when I looked out into the crowd I’m not sure what even happened. I just suddenly felt like the entire room, no, better yet, the entire world, was far away, unreachable for somebody barely five feet tall like myself to ever dream of grasping. It confused me, like infinity. All these people stood in front of me but none of them were truly there. We were all living in oblivion, constantly changing, evolving. There were endless versions of each singular identity in Lester’s that night and yet there were only one hundred people accounted for. I was terrified by it, the idea that I would never be an individual. I was forever changing, waxing and waning like the moon and the tide. It scared me so much. Maybe I didn’t even know who I was. Maybe nobody was officially anything. Maybe Tristan's looks were right, and I made no sense.
I thanked the audience, I think. I don’t really remember. Then I got off the stage without doing my last song. I was walking back to the dressing room with my guitar slung across my back when Tristen came over and hugged me. Somehow Courtney was there too. She hugged me as well. I began to wonder when she got there. They were both smiling at me and talking super fast with way too many hand gestures. Time felt warped. They were moving so quickly and they seemed to be everywhere, like I was suddenly in a room of mirrors. Courtney’s eyes looked huge, not as blue as mine but still pretty. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Everything about them was distorted. I think they were complimenting me. I honestly have no idea. I was just smiling and laughing. I couldn’t help it .
“Samara?” Tristen was leaning into my face. He had great eyelashes that he didn’t deserve. I thought he was singing a song about me until he said it again: “Samara.” This time it was more forceful and things were coming back into focus. Damn you, Tristen. I was on a high. It was much more fun.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m listening.” I was talking way too loudly and I sounded like an idiot.
“Here’s the hundred dollars I promised you, five twenties.” He handed me the money and for a moment I had no clue why.
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed, again way too loudly. “Thank you. Tonight was crazy.” I was looking at Courtney now. She looked pretty. I felt so anxious.
“Well, you killed it, baby girl.” She sighed. “I have to run. I’m supposed to be at work. Halley’s covering for me right now.” She hugged me tightly. I began to realize how much I’d missed living with her. She had been my best friend my whole life. We moved out around the same time, but she’d stayed with a consistent boyfriend since, whereas I’d been all over the place. As she walked out her soft, rich, brown curls bounced on her shoulders.
I looked up at Tristen. That boy was totally my type. A tortured musician, too smart to stay in school. If I had a boyfriend material checklist he would fit all the boxes. The problem was he cared too much, and he knew me too well. Tristen was like fire, too, and I was always cold but I’d rather freeze than run the risk of getting burned by him.
“Can I walk you home?” He was staring, not looking, staring at me.
“Yeah, you can.” He looked surprised. I laughed at him, but I couldn’t blame him for being shocked. I never let him do anything for me, in fear that I’d start to love him or something. That night I felt so empty and void. I didn’t care if he walked me home or kissed me or even burned me half to death. I guess I was too lost, tired, and lonely to care. I packed up my guitar as we walked out of Lester’s and into the night air. It wasn’t particularly cold but the atmosphere was crisp. We walked for a while talking about the show and The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album, but I was hardly there. My mind felt distant and I had no clue how to bring myself back together. I really felt like a mess.
Tristen and I were only ten minutes away from my apartment when I saw them. Three kids all under age ten, with dirt layered on their clothing and smudged on their cheeks. They were huddled around what was clearly their mother. The youngest was a boy with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and blonde curls that would have been golden if they weren’t caked with grime. Next to him was a girl with curly brown hair pulled up into a ponytail of total mayhem. She seemed to be the oldest. Despite her youth, something about her was mature. Next to her, staring me right in the eyes, was a little girl whose own eyes were huge and blue, similar to the boy’s, but they had much more depth, like they could hold more tears. She had blonde hair but it wasn’t curly. It was luscious and straight and long, almost half the length of her body, and it looked like a doll’s. She was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, no pants and no shoes. I recognized her immediately. Tristen saw them too. He began to say something, I forget what, as I pulled out the cash he’d given me earlier. The cash that was supposed to pay my mom’s rent.
“Sam, come on, you need that money.” He was shaking his head and holding onto my arm. I looked up at him for a while confused as to why he was shaking his head.
“I know, but that was me.” I nodded towards the girl with the deep blue eyes. “That is me.” I was walking over to her, or to myself, I guess. I wanted her to know that it gets easier, not necessarily better, never good, but easier. She would grow up and find my guitar and move out and have sex and meet Tristen and live the rest of her life confused, but it would at least get easier. I didn’t get too close as I held the money out to her. I hated when people got too close when I was little. I still do. She took it, never taking her eyes off me, like she knew who I was or something. Her mom did not acknowledge me. I walked back over to Tristen. His eyes were asking me why. I could never explain it to him. He wouldn’t understand the way that little girl’s eyes were a mirror image of my own. During the rest of my walk home my legs were lead and I felt artificial and desolate so I held Tristen's hand. I wondered if maybe the rage, the confusion that was inside me, was hollow, nothing more than another wonder of the world. Just a crater with no clear reason for existence. I think they call that hunger.
Maya Joseph is a sixteen year old from Boston, Massachusetts with a love for writing, hip hop, and Star Wars. She’s a sophomore at Newton South High School and a tutor at the Boys and Girls Club. She plays guitar, electric and acoustic, and desperately wishes she could sing. She can’t sing. Maya is a typical middle child with an older brother and a younger sister but she’s close with them regardless.
Hunger
There it was, stapled to the front door, rearing its ugly head once again: “Eviction Notice.” It surprised me for no apparent reason. Like trying that milk that you know has been sitting in the fridge for months, the level of chunk should not shock you, but it always does.
I opened the door (the handle was broken so you had to jiggle it a little bit to get it to give), sat down on the couch, and grabbed the remote control. There was a box of pizza on the table three feet in front of the couch.
“Happy’s Pizza,” read the box. Nice.
Wondering where I was going to find another hundred dollars, I nudged the top open with my shoe. One lone slice remained. Kicking off my red high tops, I outstretched a leg with toes spread like tongs. So close. Finally, I latched onto the crust and got it. My toes were champions. It amused me, I guess, because I laughed. Sort of. My laughs were getting washed over by those sullen undertones the streets of Detroit couldn’t help but dispense. I took a bite right from my triumphant foot.
That morning had started off so differently. I’d saved up almost enough to pay half the rent and handle the eviction situation. I had a shift at Lester’s Rock n Roll Shop, and I was going to pawn one of my guitars. I’d hoped that would cover the rest. I’d never done this before, paid rent. I had been living with a boyfriend but it had been too long and I had to leave. It’s simple: we are all fire, and we burn when you get too close. It was basic human preservation. I had no choice. Anyway, that’s why I moved back home, but my mom had apparently been gone for at least a month so the rent was unpaid and I had nowhere else to go.
Back to the morning. I woke up at seven A.M. and felt like shit. The morning is the first stage of the world’s attempt to annihilate you. Waking up, it just always hurts so bad. Once out of bed, I looked into the mirror for a minute. Chaotic blue eyes and lush, long, blonde hair stared back at me. I looked too much like my mom. At least she was pretty. Putting on my shortest jean skirt, I grabbed my guitar and started walking towards the bus stop. On the way there I thought back to the day I had found this guitar. It was on somebody’s lawn next to a sign that read, “FREE STUFF.” It only had four of its six strings back then, it was desperately out of tune, and it looked like a lost cause but I wanted it regardless. I’d changed the strings endless times and screwed on different pick-guards but it still had that same lost cause appearance. I’ve been told I’m a lost cause myself. Maybe that’s why I loved this guitar. It too had been given up on, and I liked how sad that sounded. As I crossed the street I stepped over some cracked beer bottles. A small rainbow reflected off their glass. I wished I was the type of person who could just see that rainbow, rather than the whole city of broken beer bottle dreams it was reflecting off of.
My mom had been living in this tiny apartment for the past eleven months, and I’d been a high school dropout for eight of them. I’m seventeen. Last Christmas Child Protective Services knocked on our door and a rigid lady with thin, straight, brown hair that was so dull it was practically grey, told me to pack my younger brother Nathan’s stuff up. I remember wanting to kill her as I watched silent tears spill out of his blue eyes and felt his soft blonde curls in my hands while he begged me not to let them take him away. My older sister—well, technically my cousin, Courtney, who grew up with me—was standing by my side, just as helpless, holding my hand. While I watched Nate’s heart break she watched mine shatter. I’m almost positive my mom’s boyfriend, Greg, called Social Services anonymously to get Nathan taken away. Greg was the worst person I had ever met. I wanted to kill him too. After that Christmas, Courtney and I stopped going home. Without Nathan to take care of there was no reason to breathe in that blood and alcohol smell that overwhelmed the apartment. That was one of those smells that can’t be identified as any memory other than childhood.
I walk to work everyday. Lester’s Rock n Roll shop is a small instrument and record store attached to an underground concert hall with a bar wrapped around the perimeter of the room and a stage in the front. As soon as you walk into Lester’s this thing hits you. I wouldn’t exactly call it a smell, although it triggers your whole sensory system. It inspires more of a feeling throughout your body, like tremors but in the form of an emotion more vast than fear, but I’m never scared by it, it just makes me bitter. The whole job makes me bitter.
I get paid to restring and assemble guitars all day and waitress during shows at night. Sometimes, I play for an audience of rum covered napkins and cigarette butts, if Rick, the owner, doesn’t have a better plan. Before I had this job I was busking on the street for cash. It wasn’t awful. People liked my songs and I got by, but I rarely fell asleep in a bed.
When I got to work that morning Tristen was already there. Tristen should have been a rock star. I was sure of it. He looked like an even more angsty version of Kurt Cobain. Long blonde hair that rejected all forms of domestication, and an aura that made me want to believe he was born from the womb of Detroit herself. The best and worst part was he had told me he was crazy in love with me. I don’t know if he’s society’s conceptualization of attractive, I can never tell those things. What I do know is that I’d let him kiss me if he tried. He should have been a rockstar, but nobody listened to his dreams, so instead he works at Lester’s with me, selling instruments and knowing way too much about Fenders and way too little about algebra to do much else in this world.
When I walked in and saw him I truly hated him for a second. He looked like such an asshole, sitting there, reading “Charisma,” a fucking beauty magazine. He was so intrigued. What a dick.
“It’s all a lie,” I informed him. He could be gold. I was trying to save him.
Tristen looked up. “How you doin’, Sammy?” He smiled and it made me mad.
I was still on the magazine. “That right there is the reason you wake up hating yourself. It’s the reason people say things like ‘be yourself,’ but ‘yourself’ should be the cover of that magazine, and you should be flat like paper, and the person you are should just be a malfunction you spend life trying to fix.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. I’m not crazy. Then he smiled. Again. What the hell? The nerve of this boy.
“What’s with the guitar? You got big plans tonight?” Tristen asked me. I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me. I can never tell those things either.
I sighed. “No, I need to pawn her so I can pay my mom’s rent.” It made me so sad. I loved this guitar. It was me.
“Nah, fuck that. How about this? You perform tonight. Rick was going to give me a hundred bucks, just take my gig.”
He was like this all the time, overly kind to me. It made me want to stab him with the screwdriver I was using to attach the pick-guard to the body of the guitar. This one was light blue and it reminded me of my brother’s eyes, which are slightly more shallow than my own. I became pissed off at Tristen. I always do when I’m sad. Rage just hurts less than melancholy. At least for me.
“Why would you give that up?” I was being a real motherfucker. I started to hate myself too.
“I’m not sure.” He looked at me like I was artwork protected behind glass, something you can only touch with your eyes. “Maybe I just want to hear you sing and make that guitar right there sing too.” He didn’t smile this time, but his eyes did.
Fuck you. I paused and thought for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Only because I need the money though. Thank you.” I smiled, just to mess with him, and he melted.
7:40, twenty minutes until my gig, and I was standing there, looking into the mirror of the dressing room. I was short, around 5’1”, but I never felt like it. I still had on the same tiny jean skirt, white tank top, and red converse that I’d been wearing all day. I looked like chaos. It dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten since the day before. I was tuning my guitar when Rick came into the dressing room. He didn’t even knock. What if I was half naked?
“You ready, princess?” He was talking through a disturbing smile. Rick always watched me in a way that made me feel hollow, like flesh and bones and nothing more. I didn’t mind it. At least he never tried to get inside my head and figure me out.
“Yeah, I’m ready whenever.” I was trying to sound confident but I ended up sounding bored. He walked out. I was apparently supposed to follow him.
It was a Friday night and Lester’s was packed. From the stage all the bodies just pushing against each other seemed like an organism with one heartbeat. That single organism was intimidating as hell. I don’t get particularly nervous, ever, before performing and I don’t have stage fright but I’m somehow still so uncomfortable with singing for crowds of people. Crowds, they don’t get it or care enough to try to get it. The good thing about Lester’s is that nobody cares enough to try to get anything. Everybody there was always united by this overarching lack of purpose. The room was filled with a whole bunch of just-trying-to-get-through-today people who wanted to rock.
“Hey y’all, I’m Samara.” I smiled and the organism hollered. “Are you ready to rock?” Fuck yeah they were. “This one’s called Furor and it goes out to you, T!” I was looking Tristen right in the eye and laughing into the microphone. He was grinning. This was fun.
The rest of the show was just burning fingers and sweat. I had one more song, but when I looked out into the crowd I’m not sure what even happened. I just suddenly felt like the entire room, no, better yet, the entire world, was far away, unreachable for somebody barely five feet tall like myself to ever dream of grasping. It confused me, like infinity. All these people stood in front of me but none of them were truly there. We were all living in oblivion, constantly changing, evolving. There were endless versions of each singular identity in Lester’s that night and yet there were only one hundred people accounted for. I was terrified by it, the idea that I would never be an individual. I was forever changing, waxing and waning like the moon and the tide. It scared me so much. Maybe I didn’t even know who I was. Maybe nobody was officially anything. Maybe Tristan's looks were right, and I made no sense.
I thanked the audience, I think. I don’t really remember. Then I got off the stage without doing my last song. I was walking back to the dressing room with my guitar slung across my back when Tristen came over and hugged me. Somehow Courtney was there too. She hugged me as well. I began to wonder when she got there. They were both smiling at me and talking super fast with way too many hand gestures. Time felt warped. They were moving so quickly and they seemed to be everywhere, like I was suddenly in a room of mirrors. Courtney’s eyes looked huge, not as blue as mine but still pretty. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Everything about them was distorted. I think they were complimenting me. I honestly have no idea. I was just smiling and laughing. I couldn’t help it .
“Samara?” Tristen was leaning into my face. He had great eyelashes that he didn’t deserve. I thought he was singing a song about me until he said it again: “Samara.” This time it was more forceful and things were coming back into focus. Damn you, Tristen. I was on a high. It was much more fun.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m listening.” I was talking way too loudly and I sounded like an idiot.
“Here’s the hundred dollars I promised you, five twenties.” He handed me the money and for a moment I had no clue why.
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed, again way too loudly. “Thank you. Tonight was crazy.” I was looking at Courtney now. She looked pretty. I felt so anxious.
“Well, you killed it, baby girl.” She sighed. “I have to run. I’m supposed to be at work. Halley’s covering for me right now.” She hugged me tightly. I began to realize how much I’d missed living with her. She had been my best friend my whole life. We moved out around the same time, but she’d stayed with a consistent boyfriend since, whereas I’d been all over the place. As she walked out her soft, rich, brown curls bounced on her shoulders.
I looked up at Tristen. That boy was totally my type. A tortured musician, too smart to stay in school. If I had a boyfriend material checklist he would fit all the boxes. The problem was he cared too much, and he knew me too well. Tristen was like fire, too, and I was always cold but I’d rather freeze than run the risk of getting burned by him.
“Can I walk you home?” He was staring, not looking, staring at me.
“Yeah, you can.” He looked surprised. I laughed at him, but I couldn’t blame him for being shocked. I never let him do anything for me, in fear that I’d start to love him or something. That night I felt so empty and void. I didn’t care if he walked me home or kissed me or even burned me half to death. I guess I was too lost, tired, and lonely to care. I packed up my guitar as we walked out of Lester’s and into the night air. It wasn’t particularly cold but the atmosphere was crisp. We walked for a while talking about the show and The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album, but I was hardly there. My mind felt distant and I had no clue how to bring myself back together. I really felt like a mess.
Tristen and I were only ten minutes away from my apartment when I saw them. Three kids all under age ten, with dirt layered on their clothing and smudged on their cheeks. They were huddled around what was clearly their mother. The youngest was a boy with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and blonde curls that would have been golden if they weren’t caked with grime. Next to him was a girl with curly brown hair pulled up into a ponytail of total mayhem. She seemed to be the oldest. Despite her youth, something about her was mature. Next to her, staring me right in the eyes, was a little girl whose own eyes were huge and blue, similar to the boy’s, but they had much more depth, like they could hold more tears. She had blonde hair but it wasn’t curly. It was luscious and straight and long, almost half the length of her body, and it looked like a doll’s. She was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, no pants and no shoes. I recognized her immediately. Tristen saw them too. He began to say something, I forget what, as I pulled out the cash he’d given me earlier. The cash that was supposed to pay my mom’s rent.
“Sam, come on, you need that money.” He was shaking his head and holding onto my arm. I looked up at him for a while confused as to why he was shaking his head.
“I know, but that was me.” I nodded towards the girl with the deep blue eyes. “That is me.” I was walking over to her, or to myself, I guess. I wanted her to know that it gets easier, not necessarily better, never good, but easier. She would grow up and find my guitar and move out and have sex and meet Tristen and live the rest of her life confused, but it would at least get easier. I didn’t get too close as I held the money out to her. I hated when people got too close when I was little. I still do. She took it, never taking her eyes off me, like she knew who I was or something. Her mom did not acknowledge me. I walked back over to Tristen. His eyes were asking me why. I could never explain it to him. He wouldn’t understand the way that little girl’s eyes were a mirror image of my own. During the rest of my walk home my legs were lead and I felt artificial and desolate so I held Tristen's hand. I wondered if maybe the rage, the confusion that was inside me, was hollow, nothing more than another wonder of the world. Just a crater with no clear reason for existence. I think they call that hunger.
Maya Joseph is a sixteen year old from Boston, Massachusetts with a love for writing, hip hop, and Star Wars. She’s a sophomore at Newton South High School and a tutor at the Boys and Girls Club. She plays guitar, electric and acoustic, and desperately wishes she could sing. She can’t sing. Maya is a typical middle child with an older brother and a younger sister but she’s close with them regardless.