Monthly Archives: April 2022

The Cornish Sea laps, coating the daffodil-hued shoreline. Movements are as gentle and cyclical as the turn of each season – one wave spills into the next as dominoes set to fall in a predictably-fashioned line. 

Spring is a verdant season: abundant and full of the potential that surfs its way to the surface as a toppled surfer. Buds and new shoots spring from spongy holds, piercing the air with sage tendrils which reach up, and outwards, to the sun. They grow peacefully, navigating causeways as ships upon oceans. Their growth and progression is steady, but determined. They hope to find a safe harbour away from the building winds to come during autumn and winter, that notoriously travel inland, after roaring upon open seas. 

For now, they are perfectly safe.

Her forming landscape tumbles with springlike notions as a collage where each newspaper clipping holds a semblance of meaning. This is what she hopes to achieve painting Clythe Cliff and its snuggled cove beneath the rocky ledges. 

Seabirds glide above as they buoy on uplifts, easing their shifting paths to washy swells. She watches the depth of their flight as they fully elongate their wingtips, expanding to full splendour. They breathe in heady, awakening gusts as they seek small fish to luncheon upon as they hover above the glistening sparkles of the sea’s calm edges. 

Children frolic as their parents relax on stripy blankets upon the warming sands. Cries of enjoyment and hilarity, as they play with the spilling surf, rise frequently to the artist’s alerted ears. For it is Easter-time and children are enjoying two weeks where they are freed of the confines of school bells. 

One particular toddler catches her interest as he stretches his curious, chubby toes into the billowing white foam that unravels upon the sand. He jumps in glee, running back and forth between his watchful parents and the shore, excitingly anticipating the silly surf each time he returns. This game will keep him occupied for hours. His parents turn their bodies slightly towards each other, as they lounge, enjoying a few moments of ‘adult time’. The mother shields herself from the pivotal sun with a straw hat; it has purple flowers entwined along the rim. Her oversized Bridget Bardot sunglasses cover her eyes as she flirts, smiles daintily, as her husband leans in, whispering niceties and playful promises. 

The artist shuffles her feet, having stood statically for many hours as she captured the colourful markings of the bay upon her impregnated canvas. A tartan blanket is laid beneath her easel, poised above a gentle clifftop overlooking the expansive Cornish Sea. She places her paintbrush, dipped in cerulean blue to capture the hues of the sea, as she sits to take a stretch and a break from painting, upon the easel’s ledge. She opens a small wicker hamper and unpacks a silver thermos of hot coffee. Its dark and decadent liquid reanimates her senses as its pungent aroma lifts in the breeze as she takes steady sips from a bamboo travel cup, floral patterns adorning the outer surface. Her eyes remain fixed upon the shoreline activities and the hubbub of an unusually warm and pleasant April day. No showers – not yet anyway. The sky is clear, as untainted as white, untrodden snow.  

As she unravels her lunch of Cornish cheddar, crackers and chilli jam, she breathes in deeply, suckling the salty sea air. Her fingers are flecked with debris of paint. Yellow ribbons streak her fingers and flecks of primary colours coat her fingernails: shadows of the rocks, cliffs, seagulls and day-trippers that she has translated from sight into coloured semblances upon the canvas face. She ignores the metallic tang of the paint that clings to her fingers as she tucks hungrily into a well-layered cheese cracker, having built a healthy appetite. Sips of her filter coffee punctuate her mouthfuls of comforting cheese, and the tangy chilli notes from the jammy relish, as she enjoys the enriching view. 

Abruptly, unseen and very unexpectedly, the weather takes a dramatic turn for the worst. The aquamarine skies and the skittish yelps of children at play are snuffed out as a candle flame on a windy heathland. The change is swift, as quick and lethal as lightning bolts. Large pelts of rain dash upon her head and smear the still-drying paint. The breeze, no longer gentle, achieves a much firmer hold, displacing her water jar and held paintbrushes that have been left to soak, releasing their coloured bands as a depleted rainbow. 

Without further delay, she haphazardly bundles all of her artistry belongings together, repacking them as best as she can at speed. The canvas is wet, damaged perhaps irreparably unless it it protected soon. In a flurry, she unzips her plum-coloured Peter Storm jacket and wraps it around her artwork, as a lover stood out in the cold. She pats down the rising coat, billowing in the gusts, praying that the work is not damaged beyond repair and the touch of her brushwork – she hopes to be able to rekindle its tenacity and springlike hues if needed. 

Her eyes gaze down upon the quickly cleared beach, now that she has a moment to breathe, having secured her work. In the corner of her right eye, she spies a figure. The moving shadow is clad in heavy black, as ebony as night itself, with an entrapped child under their cloak. The child is forced, overwhelmed by the stranger or so it appears, allowing his small-self to be eclipsed. His white face is drained of colour, now pallid as white-washed alabaster. 

Suddenly, she makes the connection between the toddling boy in the frolic of the waves at the shoreline only half an hour before, and this terrified face. It is the same child. 

He must have been taken or misplaced by his parents somehow. 

The artist shouts down to the ominously cloaked figure whom has disguised themselves by a raised hood, submerging their face into inky darkness. She can make out no noticeable facial features or items of clothing at all beyond the façade of the dripping black fabric that encircles the stranger, rising in turrets with the uplifts of the gale. 

“Stop. Stop, I say. That is not your child. Let him go at once,” bellows her voice, more steely than she actually feels.

The hooded enigma swiftly continues in the opposite direction from the artist, hurrying a little. To her it appears as if he or she is making for the other end of the cove. The child inside the cloak moves awkwardly and clumsily having not his eyesight to guide him or the will to be guided by a stranger. 

“I’m calling the police,” she proclaims as she hastily taps 999 into her iPhone 9. Wet drips paint the surface in translucent globules, obscuring the numbers as she blearily types. “Police please.” 

A few moments pass. 

“A child has been stolen at Clythe Cliff. A hooded figure has a male toddler hidden under their cloak and is making their way along the sandy cove. The child is calling out for its mother. Help. Help. Send someone and quickly,” she stammers. 

“Of course. Stay on the line, madam, while I report this through to the police. I will keep on the line with you until a police officer arrives,” a calm female voice announces, endeavouring to reassure and soften her spiky angst. 

Minutes tick by as the folds of the charcoal cloak begin to obscure and diminish from the artist’s view. Thickened, duplicitous fog has settled upon the shore, muddying further her view of the stranger and the guileless child within the smudgy depths of the stranger’s hold. 

“Madam, five minutes. I’ve sent the nearest based team to you,” the operator’s voice assures. “Can you confirm if you can still see the child?”

As the artist looks up, she sees that the sea air has brewed into an even deeper and more penetrating fog – a well of moody stupor. In despair, she scans the stretch of the sands, seeing no movement or person at all. Beads of perspiration begin to drip down her back and forehead as her level of panic rises – plummeting to sky-high plains. She can feel the tormented thuds of her heart as her panicked thoughts stumble over one another, tripping in their frenzy. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

As she grabs onto the easel to steady her nerves, the beach is now just a cloudy haze. She looks to her artwork and sees that her coat has fallen from the canvas, not surprisingly in the ferocity of the building sea wind. 

She eyes the canvas – the self-same one that has wholly occupied each, and every, thought for the vast majority of the day. 

Shock.

Despair.

Alarm. 

No longer are the etched brushstrokes, floral and spring-like, visible upon the surface. No longer do the images reflect the joyous scenes of the morning’s merriment upon the sands. No longer is the artwork her own. It has been erased, completely tampered with by some unknown, malevolent force. 

For upon the canvas, her paintwork has been wholly obliterated from existence. Instead, there are two words, scoured in the deepest black as the hue of a crow’s wing at midnight: He’s mine. 

Meet the Author

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. Her poetry has been published in: The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Porridge Magazine, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine, The Pangolin Review, Derailleur Press, Giving Room Magazine, Chronogram and for the Ledbury Poetry Festival. She also has published a number of short stories and her first novel, Shelley’s Sisterhood, is due to be published shortly.

1.

I decided to name the car Henrietta the day me and Espi were driving it to San Jose for the Ariana Grande concert. I do this thing where I don’t think before I act, and so I was anxious and stressed about going to the show. I’d purchased the tickets over six months in advance, amidst all the excitement around thank u, next, and now that the excitement had passed the show seemed more chore than fun. I remember driving up the 17 and being terrified of Espi’s driving, zig-zagging over the mountain at a speed that’s much too fast, like every California driver. Always 10-20 miles over the speed limit. 

(A while later, Dane told me Californians got away with this because you’re less likely to get pulled over here than in other states, where ticketing is an important monetary resource for the police departments. Here, we just pay higher taxes.)

It felt special, somehow, that he’d loaned us the car to go. We’d only really been friends for a few weeks, and more than friends for just over ten days, but he seemed sincere in his offer, and so I accepted. I hated the bus. 

Henrietta was only a few years younger than me, having been made in 2003. She was old enough that the black was faded, and her plasticky nature showed through to the point where sometimes, in the right light, you’d think she was purple. She was also always covered in dust and leaves, from being parked in the church parking lot under a big tree. I hated that her windshield wipers never worked, and so the view was never as good as it could have been. 

I connected through the weird bluetooth plug Dane had, and played country music loud enough for us to hear even when we were going fast. Old cars do this thing where the faster you’re going, the less you can hear inside, and that’s another thing that drove me crazy. 

But I’m loyal to a fault, and so even though she had many things to dislike about her, I loved Henrietta. More for what she represented than what she really was, but still. She was my boyfriend’s car, and I loved watching him drive it, and so I loved it as well. For a long time, she was also the only car I’ve ever driven, and Dane had been the only one who’s ever taught me how to drive. 

When we got to San Jose and tried to find parking, Espi almost killed us when she turned the wrong way and we almost got hit by another car straight on. But Henrietta was quick, and when Espi turned the wheel sharply to the right, Henrietta didn’t even screech before coming to a halt on the sidewalk. “We almost just died”, Espi was out of breath when she turned to me. I was laughing at that point, already texting Dane about the quarrels we were putting Henrietta through. 

Henrietta’s parking brake also almost killed us. The car had a habit of driving even with it on, and you wouldn’t realize it unless you had to go uphill and almost floor it to hit a solid 45. Me and Espi were already on the road by the time we realized the parking brake was still on, and then when we pressed the button and pushed it down the car shot forward a little too haphazardly, making our seatbelts work a little bit harder. 

On our way back after the concert, we both had to shine our flashlights at the shifter because the lights on it didn’t work, and so we couldn’t see what gear we were shifting into. And even if the lights had worked, the letters on it were so faded that you might not have been able to see them regardless. And so we drove off, shining my flashlight at the shifter. 

When we got back to Santa Cruz, we stopped at Safeway. We didn’t often have the luxury of having a car to go grocery shopping with, and so me and Espi stocked up on things for the apartment that would usually be too annoying to bring on the bus – toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods. The Safeway was the only thing open past midnight in Santa Cruz besides the Donut store, and the roads were quiet. I grabbed the Earth Balance butter Dane liked, because I knew he was out. 

Espi dropped me off on the curb of Porter College, where Dane’s apartment was. She drove off in Henrietta and I said it was okay, that I’d walk over the hill to College Nine in the morning. 

Me and Dane drove to San Jose many times over the course of those couple of months, but that first drive with Espi stuck with me. I haven’t spoken to her since, and that was kind of the last thing we did together before parting ways for summer. I ended up spending more time in that car than in my own apartment over spring, even when summer was coming around and making her interiors hot enough to burn the bottom of my thighs. 

2. 

Three weeks into our relationship, Dane had to travel down to San Diego to look at the school he later ended up transferring to. He asks me to come with him. It’s an 8 hour drive, and we’d have to spend at least one night at his parents’ house, an hour and a half away from our final destination. 

Dane is stressed, and his TMJ starts acting up before we even get to King City, a location mostly used for truck drivers to pull into and rest. We pull in and Henrietta, being the tiny Toyota Matrix that she is, looks like an insect next to the imposing and positively American looking trucks surrounding her. We go into the convenience store, buy me a banana and him some Tylenol, but I know it’s only a temporary measure. Every time his phone rings during the drive it’s his mother calling, and his jaw locks again. 

The drive is long and warm, and if you’ve ever taken the 5 up or down you know that a large part of it is just desolate farmland. Henrietta treks on, her air-conditioning just slightly too weak to really make any difference. In my black jeans, I feel the heat of the black seat transfer into my thighs and butt, just like I feel the heat from the ceiling transfer into my head. We listen to Dane’s playlist, and there’s something about Henrietta that will always be pop-punk to me. As in Blink-182 pop-punk, the stuff that’s old and somehow timeless, bright and sunny San Diego days and checkered Vans. 

By the time we pull into Temecula – the city closest to where Dane’s family lives –, it’s cloudy and almost dark out. It’s also the first time I get dressed inside Henrietta, pulling on a new pair of jeans and fresh shirt, changing my sweater out for my jean jacket. Anyone who’s ever had to put on jeans in the back of a small car will know what a feat that is, especially in a crowded mall parking lot on a Friday night. I joked that Henrietta is the first car to see me naked since adulthood, and it was true, at the time. And even though there have been other cars since, you never forget your first. 

When we make our way to his parents’ house, another forty-five minutes away, we drive by the neons one more time, and I like to watch the morphed reflection of them on Henrietta’s hood. She smells like fifty different smells after the all day drive, but I’m already so attached that sitting down into the passenger seat after Dane is muscle memory. It’s my reaction to his action. 

Before we get there, in the middle of nowhere at 3000 feet altitude, he pulls over onto a patch of dirt, and we can overlook the mountains on both sides. The stars are bright and clear, and I look up at them through the window. He tells me it’s the last cell service spot, and it’s still 5 miles away from his house, so he texts his mom and then turns off the engine.

We climb out of the car, and I lean on my door, still looking up at the brilliant sky, uninterrupted by light pollution. He comes over and, against the car door, presses up against me, and we kiss. I can’t help but think that this is something from a movie, but then again, I don’t think Henrietta lives up to the part of the sexy car that the love interest drives. 

When we get to his house, the dirt road there leaves us in a cloud of dust around me when I step out to open the gate. The car is noisy on the gravel up the driveway, and I’m nervous. When cars make that much noise arriving, that means whoever’s inside knows you’ve arrived. The first time I see his house’s bright yellow front door is through Henrietta’s windshield. 

I can tell that Dane is nervous but determined to get it over with, so we step inside and take off our shoes, and sit with his family in the living room. He’d told me that his dog, Charley, would bark at me, but he doesn’t. He sits on my lap while I talk to his mom and dad and sister, and after a little while we go to bed, being careful not to make any noises that would imply sex, because Dane is still getting used to the idea of having a girlfriend over at his childhood home, and it’s all fine by me. 

The next morning we’re up by six, and on the road by seven, to see the school. It’s pouring rain, which is unusual, and it’s the first heavy rain I’ve experienced inside of a car in California. It feels comfortable, like I could fall asleep, but it’s loud because of the water on the road and Henrietta’s poor insulation. Still I lean my head against the seatbelt, trying to find a comfortable position, and Dane has his hand on my thigh. He only ever drives one handed, and any concerns I have for my safety aren’t enough to make me let go of his right hand. 

Dane decides he wants to drive back that same day, and the drive is chaotic and a little tense, with me making sure to never fall asleep and keep him talking, keep him awake. In hindsight, we should’ve waited until Sunday to drive back, but he was adamant he wanted to be back before then. We listen to Avicii on back roads that the GPS sends us through, and at one point Dane says it feels like he’s dead. 

“Slap me,” he asks. 

“Where?”

“On the face.”

I do, and for a moment he wakes up. 

“It still feels like I’m dead, though. Like time isn’t real.” 

I know exactly what he means. We were both exhausted and borderline hallucinating, and when I think back to that drive, Henrietta the only car on the road for miles on end, it’s a little scary that we did it. The music loud and the base rattling the plastic speakers, no longer fit to play music at any volume at all. 

Dane is playing a song for kids, about the moon. 

Moon, moon, moon, shining bright. Moon, moon, moon, my night light. 

When we finally get back to his apartment, carrying our backpacks and hoodies and trash and the blanket, I don’t think we even took a shower. Just changed into pj’s and slipped into bed, exhausted and borderline delirious, cramping ourselves into the twin bed that we slept on that whole quarter. Dane’s open mouthed breathing was like a soothing white noise machine, and falling asleep felt like slipping from one dream into another. 

3. 

I wasn’t really bothered to go into quarantine. I was actually pretty relieved. 

Because of our particular situation it had gotten quite awkward to still be staying with Dane and his roommates on campus, and going back to his parents’ sounded like a great way to get some space that was just ours, even if it was just his room. 

So we loaded up Henrietta, and I could tell Dane was feeling sad. The car was filled to the brim, with Dane’s guitar and bass hanging over my head on the passenger side, my backpack and computer on my lap, my other belongings in a box at my feet. I had two suitcases in the trunk, but mostly I packed light. Dane’s the over-packer between us and he’s bad at packing, so it definitely felt like we’d gathered all of our belongings to flee the zombie apocalypse. In a way, that’s what we were doing. 

A pandemic meant that a lot of the time we spent outside the house looked very different from before. Dane started Doordashing and I went with him, happy to be driving around, looking at the empty streets outside the window. When this all first started, it was still cold, and I remember feeling safe and warm, watching the world through tinted windows. It felt like an extension of the house that was just ours, even more private than Dane’s room, because no one could come in, because the doors didn’t open straight into the living room. 

Delivering food means you get to know a lot of restaurants, you get to form opinions about how long it takes them to get orders ready, you get to smell food in the car and be hungry, and you get to drive to people’s houses and put down bags at the door. Especially during a pandemic, you don’t really see anyone. Restaurants make sure to set the orders onto tables at the front, and customers make sure to select ‘contactless delivery’ when ordering. For the most part, it was just spending time with Dane, driving around in Henrietta, listening to music and watching the Great British Bake Off. 

(Or The Office, or Parks and Rec, or Psych, or Sherlock, or Chuck, or Scrubs.) 

We’ve been through most drive-thrus a suburban town like Temecula has to offer. You have the classics: McDonald’s, Steak n’ Shake, Wendy’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Raisin’ Cane’s. I am now expertly acquainted with most fast-food fries, I know exactly what my order is every time with the limited items that don’t contain meat or dairy – there’s not a lot of them. I can confirm that the best technical fries are from Five Guys, but that the most comforting ones are from McDonald’s. 

Then we had our more adventurous eats, from the restaurants we didn’t even know existed until we got an order from them. Chinese fried tofu and eggplant, coconut paneer curry, hawaiian teriyaki chicken. Endless poke bowls, with the house sauce. Crab stuffed dumplings dipped sweet n’ spicy. Heaps of garlic naan bread that we would pick up later at night, after our shift was done. New York style pizza, with garlic knots and the salad that had too many olives. The mixture of smells became familiar enough that I knew it had penetrated the surface. Henrietta would never smell the same. 

She will forever have the slightly oil smell of old fries, I think. As much as Dane tried to keep her clean, just having the bags in the car for too long meant the smell clung to the fabric seats, along with the smell that naturally occurs when two people spend a long time in an enclosed space together. Anyone who’s car-camped or had to spend a long time in their car would know what I’m talking about. 

Henrietta was instrumental in making sure both of us didn’t lose our minds while quarantining. Sometimes we would go on drives just around Aguanga, the town where Dane lives. There’s no one for miles at some points, but moving and rolling the windows down is more helpful than you’d think. A car may feel like an enclosed space, but at least it moves. I’ve come to appreciate that more than I ever thought I would, especially as someone who doesn’t drive. 

Quarantine was also when we said goodbye to Henrietta. Dane is an irresponsible car owner, and we once drove 2000 miles through Arizona mid-summer and not once considered changing her oil. When we brought her back, she sounded like an eighteen-wheeler, wheezing her way up the driveway. Dane’s dad, who makes a living off of cars, was upset. 

Dane decided to sell her this year and get a newer car, to last him the rest of his college years and beyond. The search was long and annoying, especially because, being out in the middle of nowhere, not having a car can be really isolating. The closest grocery store is over thirty minutes away. 

What was good about selling Henrietta is that Dane found her the perfect new owner, the exact same age that Dane was when he first got her. He made an Instagram post talking about how he’s happy that his first car became someone else’s first car. 

And that’s what I love about Dane. He sees poetry everywhere, even the most mundane of exchanges. He takes pictures, he makes an Instagram post, and ponders over the caption for hours. His first car wasn’t glamorous or even cool, but both of us loved it anyway. When I asked him about his choice, we said he wanted something to drive friends around in.

Now, when we Doordash, it’s in a 2010 Volkswagen Jetta. It’s sleek and silver and Dane hates the seats; turns out Germans don’t prioritize comfort over function. 

Meet the Author

Constance Mello (she/her) is a Brazilian scholar, writer, and teacher. She graduated with a degree in Cultural Studies and Gender Studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and is currently pursuing a dual Master’s Degree in English and Creative Writing. Her writing has been published in The Ilanot Review, Fearless She Wrote, and Latinx Lit Mag, and was a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. 

Being sent to the principal’s office as a fully grown adult is its own kind of humiliation. 

I sigh, sitting back on the wooden bench, shifting to attempt comfort while I wait. But these empty minutes are filled more with the fear I will be fired rather than scripting an apology. Because I am not sorry. 

Being my first year in this district, I wanted to make my mark. I’m only a few years out of undergrad, my bachelor’s in education still shiny on the wall. I have been jumping around from school to school, never sticking more than a long-term substitute. One teacher gave birth and the other had surgery. So it goes. 

Finally, after enough rejected applications and savings made from substituting, I received an offer from the best school district in the county. I had had my eye on it, a step in the far-off future. Landing this sped up my five-year plan into about one and a half. 

Being assigned 11th grade English is a high honor for me. It was the year I had truly fallen in love with the subject, diving into every text and soaking up every word of analysis from my teacher. I wanted to be that teacher for my students. 

It isn’t enough to read literature. Without living in the time of writers, how are we to truly experience it? Pride and Prejudice has so many adaptations, but we’ll never know which is truly correct without Austen here to tell us, and without contemporary readers to back up that choice. Realizing this, my original lesson plans all had to be scrapped. To fully understand a piece, my students need to live it.

When I read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in 11th grade English, I distinctly remember my classmates. They were more memorable than the text. (I’ve subsequently read it since and thoroughly enjoy it.) There was a group of nasty girls, the leader being Pam, and Pam just seemed to hate this mousy one. She was quiet and held great insight on the texts we read. She would have made a great English professor, not stuck at my current level teaching thick-headed children. Regardless, she never spoke up, and the lack of eye contact from her was perfect fodder for Pam and her cronies. They enjoyed making hell of this girl’s existence. Only for 50 minutes every week day, but it was enough. 

I only caught glimpses of the torment. They would “accidentally” run into her in the hallway just before the door, making a mess in front of everyone, stepping over her in degradation. Further, they would drop things in her hair: gum, bits of paper, pencil shavings. Sometimes she would doze in class, and the girls sat around her in the back of class. Their barrier hid their nature, the mouse coming out a fool every time. 

Their cruelty mirrored Miller’s work, and I recalled it heavily when I read it later in life. I knew my students needed that. Lessons from a text to apply to their lives. A real life simulation of mass hysteria, accusations from thin air, and someone at the end of a pointed finger to take all of the blame. 

Classes began in earnest, with days of going over syllabi and students’ favorite summer memories waning, and the real work began. I couldn’t start with my Crucible project right away. I first had to find the nasty girls, and then the mouse. 

The mouse was easiest to spot. Nearly like my own. A pale thing, she kept her head down and her bookbag on her back, even when stuffed into the narrow desks. Most eyes looked upon her with pity, and finding any malice was impossible. Where was the evil in these children? Children are wicked! Yet I see no evidence of it!

I realized then they simply needed encouragement. Through the paperwork I have access to as a faculty member, I was able to find the locker of a particularly bright, popular girl. She waved hello to everyone, smiled brightly, and always asked about the night’s reading (college syllabi will be her best friends). But I knew under that soft, homecoming queen exterior was wickedness waiting to be unleashed. She had the potential, she only needed a match. 

And so I gave her one. 

Alongside evil, romantic longing is just as easy to spy in students. Our bright star, our Abigail Williams, certainly wished to be closer to the football player. Who wouldn’t? He is our John Proctor: Abigail wants him, but he cannot love her back. This means he will be one hanged. 

I knew I couldn’t actually hang any students; think of the paperwork! And so I decided, in this cut-throat academic field, as a class to be noted on transcripts sent to colleges, I decided the tests would create the accusations. 

Our Abigail is academically driven, but to an unhealthy degree. The way her face falls when she receives a mark not to her standard. But what if our Goody Proctor scored better than her? And at the hands of cheating? What would she do then? 

The plot was simple. I gave tests as any teacher does, and ignored the grades to determine new ones for my scheme, as any teacher does. Abigail originally scored top of her class, which is so boring time and time again. I gave her an 83 percent. Goody Proctor scored just above at 85. This never happens. It’s enough to catch her eye.

The mouse’s score stayed the same. She has a different role. As Tituba, she will write notes to allude to the truth of how Proctor received his grades; thus creating the rumor, being the source of all of the trouble. I believe her will to be weak enough to agree that she wrote it (though she will not) and to name others if pressured (she will be). 

The first stage had exactly the reaction I had hoped for. Abigail’s face contorted in self-loathing and disappointment. Especially because she believes she understood the material. I make a point to place Proctor’s test face up, as he sits next to our fair maiden. She notes the grade, angers more. Though I am not in her head, I can picture the cogs turning, swearing to study harder, be better, and beat him out. Boys only want smart girls anyway. 

As the tests get easier, she will fail more.

With each one her grade fell lower and lower, and his grew higher and higher. Instead of a two percent difference, it eventually grew to twenty and even thirty percent. Her grade for the class plummeted, and I got several tear-stained emails begging to let her retake. I reminded her of the policy I stated at the beginning of the year: no retakes, and no cheating. Cheating will result in suspension, whereas retakes are only examples of a poor student. 

She stumbled into class most days angry, frustrated, full of self-hatred. She needed an outlet. I gave her one. 

In the mouse’s handwriting, I slipped a note in Abigail’s locker that does not give away all pieces to the puzzle, but enough for the clever girl to put it together. Another test comes and goes, another fail and pass for the star-crossed pair. But now she eyed him curiously, almost cat-like. She believed she was on to his secret. 

Another note is planted, this time in the locker of one of Abigail’s friends. It only takes a handful of bad grades and rumors on pink paper to get on the wrong end of teenage girls.

I had expected to have to force the hands of my students. I thought I passed Abigail, her friends in the know, and the mouse talking in a corner of the hall, but I believed it was about a rather confusing paper I assigned. I would not have been able to write it either, but teachers are there to make their students better. So if they can be smarter than me, then I have succeeded.  

One fateful day, after Abigail received a truly abhorrent grade–just above the threshold of failing–she exclaimed, “I’m tired of this! He’s been cheating this whole time!” 

The stunned silence of the class was immaculate. I was certain this would go on for weeks before anything happened; I was afraid all it would amount to was more weepy emails. Instead, Abigail stands, pointing fiercely at our Goody Proctor, her eyes like hellfire.

“It’s not fair!” one of her friends added. Other voices joined in. Questioning ones, angry ones, fearful ones, but one was missing.

“Do you have something to add?” I asked the mouse. She shook her head frightfully.

“Come on, you’re the one who told me,” Abigail said. Her friends chimed in the same.

“I– but I didn’t–”

“You told us in the hallway one day! Admit it! You know who’s cheating!”
“There are multiple cheaters in this class?” I asked. I couldn’t believe how far this had gone.

“She knows it. Tell them!” Abigail shouts, her voice stinging my ears. 

The mouse is silent, frozen. Abigail screams.

Her voice is barely comprehensible, anger and frustration and tears mixed. She screams of the unfairness of it all, her hard work, his lack of work, how the whole world is against her. The room erupts, and before I have a chance to introduce them to the classic that is The Crucible, the principal arrives.

“He’s ready to see you now,” the secretary tells me. I heave up, ready to face my punishment. It will be far beyond what I really deserve–a medal perhaps? A documentary about me–but I will take it diligently, as Goody Proctor does in the play.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asks me even before I sit, spit flying from his chapped lips.

“Only what I felt was necessary.”

“Causing a psychotic break in one of your brightest students is hardly necessary.”
“We’re about to read The Crucible. Do you know it?”

“Witches and whatnot.”

“Baseless accusations, mass hysteria. That is what my students needed to understand.”

“You went too far. You went too far.”

“Alright,” I concede, throwing my hands up. “I’ll tone it down next time.”
His face is the picture of incredulousness. “There won’t be a next time! You’re fired!”

“Is this my exit interview?”
“You’re dismissed. Immediately.” Security was not far behind to escort me out.

As I walked to my car, I saw the faces of my students in the window. They stared at me wide-eyed, the mouse most of all. I had expected her to hang, but it is I walking to the gallows. And they are witnesses. 

Meet the Author

Gabby Buchholz is a Creative Writing student at Lindenwood University. When not writing, she is an avid reader and defender of young adult literature. This is her first publication, and she is excited to begin this journey. She would like to thank her cat, Percy, for his continued support.