"Why do I have to wear this?" Submission 15 by Lee Martin

“Why do I have to wear this?” said Maria, tugging at the black satin skirt as she bounced on the passenger seat of her father’s van. Her feet dangled a few inches off the floor.

“It was your mother’s. It always brought her luck.”

“I know what it brought her,” replied Maria, scowling.

“These things happen.”

The van hit a pothole and bounced, sending her father’s cigarette flying onto the floor. He reached down to pick it up, cursing.

Steam rose from vents in the sidewalk, the feeble breath of life for crowds huddled around them.

Offices glowed orange from the morning sun. Everything smelled like coffee, grease, and cigarette smoke.

“I miss her to. Believe me…and now we’ll have to start back at square one.”

Maria looked out her window; it felt like the van was just wiggling in place while the world passed. She could see her own round olive face in the window.

“This was your mother’s too,” said her father as he reached over and pulled an old make-up kit from the glove box. Maria pawed through it while he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I don’t want to!” cried Maria.

“We have a family to take care of! Look around you! Why don’t you think about someone else for a change!”

The van rattled along while Maria began choosing a lipstick.

“These things happen! If it wasn’t for your mom…” He snubbed his cigarette in the ashtray. “We all have things to do. I have things to do. Your brothers, too. It took us time to get used to, too. But this is how things really are! You’re old enough to know now. Just do as you’re told, and you’ll be fine,” said her father.

The van came to a stop next to a sand-colored building with dark windows and a few lewd posters on the walls. Glass and what looked like blood speckled the stairs. Maria’s cheeks burned despite the bitter cold. She climbed down from the van.

“I love you,” said her father. “Make sure you bring me all the money you make. If you don’t, I’ll know.”

"Just This Once", Submission 14 by Lee Martin

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         “Three…two…one…” said Sara, looking at her watch. Lena stood next to the stone stairs of the porch.

         “I still feel the same,” replied Lena.

         “Well, cheers,” said Sara, sarcastically raising her cracked crystal glass full of sparkling cider and tapping it against Lena’s. She turned at the sound of fireworks a few blocks away. Sara looked back at her watch; only seven hours until her flight home.

         “Any resolutions?” asked Sara. Lena stared down the dim street hoping to catch a glimpse of some cheap sparks. “Lena?”

         “No. No diet, no goals, and I think I will actually take up smoking.” They laughed. “Nothing too simple.”

         “Come on,” said Sara, grabbing Lena’s thin arm and pulling her up the stairs into the large suburban mini-mansion filled with black jackets, spaghetti straps, and conversations that mixed into one haphazard mélange. Some kids ran out the door and onto the lawn with armfuls of firecrackers. “Let’s pretend we are rich tonight, Lena. Just tonight I want to feel like I matter.”

         They weaved between the parents that danced and the parents that compared portfolios. They circled the room twice; neither new what to do. The minutes were ticking away fast; they could feel the memory of their month together begin to fade into a blur…into something that “happened a long time ago.” No one in the room noticed the pair of 12-year-old girls. No one ever did.

         Lena found some stairs and pulled Sara up into a darkened room filled with expensive wooden shelves and generic books, and reached behind Sara to close the door to the drone from the floor below.

         They sat together in an ugly red leather chair and held hands. Lena pulled an atlas from the shelf.

         Sara sighed and turned to a map of North America and Europe. “I wish the world was this big,” and spanned part of the length of the open pages with her hand.

         “We would only be nine inches away,” said Lena, “and that couldn’t keep us apart.”

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