The pickles are silent. They have nothing to say.

I was sitting in my room a few minutes ago when I heard my mother yell my name at the top of her lungs (even though I can basically hear everything she whispers, from the basement where I live. Being on different floor levels just gives the household an excuse to scream sometimes.)

"SHADY!!!"
"WHAT!!!"

I waited silently. There was nothing. As usual. Then, louder,

"SHADY!!!!"
"...WHAT????"
"COME HERE!!"

I ran upstairs and kind of fell down on account of lightheadedness and by the time I got up to the kitchen I leaned on the counter so I wouldn't pass out. My mom was cutting up random vegetables and making a giant platter of the slices.

"Shady, look at these pickles."
"What?"

She brought out these nine little pickle slices on her palm and set them down on the counter.

"I want you to make a story of these pickles."
I had just been reading stories in my room, and was a little dizzy and confused and wasn't exactly sure if she was saying what I heard.

"Do you want me to eat them?"
"No! I want you to make a story of them!"
"Of what?"
"The pickles!"
"...Why?"
"Because look at them. They're like little faces. I was cutting up these pickles and thought to myself, Shady would look at these pickles and make a story about them or something. Aren't they just hilarious?"

I blinked. "...why is one of them broken?"
"Because it's laughing!"
"It's broken from laughter?"
"Look, look." She moved over next to me and prodded the pickle slices. "They're probably all telling jokes or something. Like - this pickle is saying 'hey' and this pickle says 'hello' and then that pickle says 'do you want to hear a joke?' and the other pickle says 'yes' and then the next pickle says 'there was a jew and a priest and a rabbi and they were all hilarious' and then that one pickle is, um, sneezing, and the other pickle is laughing with its eyes closed. Like this:"
She then squinted her eyes shut and opened her mouth as wide as possible and laughed very loudly.

"...can I eat one?"
"No. Here, you can eat these two. They are silent. They have nothing to say."
"I can eat them because they're not talking?"

As opposed to the pickles that are...?

"So can you think of a story or not?"
"I think this is the story. Can I get my camera?"

Quiet in a Crowd

It was before the game started, half past eleven, and we were sitting alone at the very top row of the stadium, under the rim of the fish bowl.

The world was spread out before us. I sat between Lafflin and Bobby, our sneakers on the seats in front of us, and our heads against the cool black wire. The sun was hot and the shade was calm and the rest of the crowd was far, far away. We could see our entire school sitting below like a colony of little ants, burning under a magnifying glass. They had no idea we had snuck away.

The players swung their bats and stretched their legs, chewing and kicking and jogging. Throwing and catching. One of them laughed.

It was hot way down in the benches, and we hated baseball anyways. So when we noticed the shade  way up near the clouds, the three of us practically ran. There were guards at every entrance, but somehow, one was left open. Maybe they were on break. Maybe they just missed us. Or maybe they figured there wasn't much reason behind guarding an entire empty section of seats.

We were sitting in the farthest corner, in the farthest row. We could touch the sky, if only we reached high enough.

Our eyes faced forward, palms in our laps. Things were quiet up there. We weren't saying much.

"I'm going to see my dad next week."
Lafflin looked at me, and looked away.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The generation holding hands. I laughed.
"He's really a pretty swell guy, when you know him. ...It'll be fine, really."
He looked at me. He looked away.

"What happens if they find us?" Bobby's low voice pitched, but no one bothered to laugh.
"Just hope the camera guys have mercy," I told him.

The city sat like a broken clock beyond the horizon of highway and factory.

"Did you know," Lafflin asked me, "this is the first time I've ever broken the rules?"
I looked at him and smiled. "I know," I said. And I did.

It was so peaceful, up there in the shadows. The speakers came on, and the National Anthem was sung by everyone but us. We couldn't really hear them anyways, and no one was watching. The two boys were embarrassed, and I was politically neutral, so the three of us just stood with our caps off and waited. We looked ahead, down the hundreds of rows, down so far it was downright scary if you leaned forward too far.

"I'm so scared I'm just gonna lean over and fall all the way to the bottom." Lafflin leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. "I hate falling..."
"You wouldn't hit bottom, man. We'd catch you." Bobby sure is reassuring, if nothing else.

There was something about the city I just couldn't get over, ever since the buses had pulled up. I pointed to the horizon of smoke and angles. "Hey - count how many cranes you see."

Lafflin takes games seriously. "Six."

"Six cranes. Look around the other way, and you'd probably see twelve more. They're everywhere,  man, building and building and... Why do they keep building? Why keep going up? Don't you think they'd be done at some point? They have to stop some day."

Lafflin squinted. His loopy eye twitched. "They aren't moving..."
"But see, that's - that's just the thing. They're all just... standing there. Like they're watching over it all, like - like angels of the streets. Sometimes it seems like there aren't even people up there controlling them. Like they just... built themselves. A city of cranes. Up and down and up and down. Just... building."

He had his squinty, thinking eyes. "Yeah..."

None of us wanted to leave. The game was about to start, but way up in the clouds, it was quiet, and we were alone. Watching the cranes watch us.

The crowd in the noontime sun was cheering and singing and shouting. Holding up signs, holding up gloves, calling out names and hoping for a win. But up there, right then, we were alone. Alone above the crowd, and peaceful above the chaos. The wind gently brushed against us in the shadows where we hid.

"We should go."
I looked at him. "We really should, shouldn't we. We really, really should."

If we do all that we're told that we should, we wouldn't get done half the things we really want to.

A Tribute to the Striped Brown Jacket

Somewhere, there is a striped brown jacket.

Maybe it's hanging on a tree.

Maybe it's in the back of someone's car.

Maybe it's even on someone's back.

And maybe they even checked the pockets, and happened to read a slightly important and meaningful letter, which was hidden on the inside.

But wherever it happens to be, it isn't on my back. 

And that worries me.

Three years ago, the striped brown jacket found me (half asleep) as a gift from my stepdad. It was soft and warm and way too big for me. Plus, the zipper was on the wrong side.

It was the best security blanket I had ever seen.

...

It got stuck on a pole while we were playing tether ball at recess in sixth grade.

It stood up with me as I read out loud a response I had written for a reading test. (The passage was about Elmer, and how scared I am of heights.)

It was used as a rope of safety to pull kids across a tight rope wire strung across two trees.

It sat in my lap on the bus ride back from outdoor lab, as I tiredly asked Elmer why his eyelashes were so long, and he tiredly asked me if he needed to cut them, and we tiredly ended up completely asleep, subconsciously trying not to fall onto each other.

It went with me to middle school.

It was there that time I killed Quoc.

It sat in an empty orchestra room as I played my first real concert.

It held pencil after pencil after broken pencil in the roomy pockets which are now riddled with holes because of them.

It got rained on at the airport.

It got discolored from the sun.

It got slept in on a hardwood floor on the most scariest night of my life.

It got cried on.

It got drooled on.

It got laughed on.

It got completely covered in a snowstorm, along with my glasses, and everything else we couldn't see.

Its pockets held countless snowballs, thrown with great aim and precision. 

It accepted them willingly.

It got a bit of permanent paint on the edge of its sleeve in art class.

It was worn by a three-year-old girl who got cold at the grocery store.

It was worn by a teenage girl who got cold in the wind.

It was worn by another teenage girl who got cold in life.

And it was worn by me.

It was a blanket, a tent, a rope, a winter coat, a hiding place, an identity, and a friend. Before, I was the girl in the striped brown jacket. The striped brown jacket knew me like no one ever could. It's been across an ocean. It's been across a life. It's spent the past three years covering the arms of a tree monster, and I think it's done its job.

What worries me now is not that its gone.

What worries me is that maybe - wherever it is, and whoever may have found it - maybe they don't know its story. Maybe they don't know it's been through sand and snow and storm. Maybe they don't know it met a hailstorm as it fell. Maybe they don't know it's seen a hawk dive out of the clouds. Maybe they don't know about that bus ride, that orchestra concert, that snowball fight, that story - everything that ever happened to it in the past three years.

Everything that happened to me.

I left it on a tree, of course. 

It's not like anyone would steal something as worthless as that old rag. There's probably more holes than fabric in it anyway. But when I went back for it, it was gone. It was nowhere to be found.

I pointed to the tree. "I think it's gone," I said.

"Your jacket?"

"...Yeah."

"Whoa. That's kind of a big deal, isn't it?"

"No, it - she - there was a letter in the pocket, and..."

"You've had that for a while, haven't you?"

"Oh, just catching on now? Really, Elmer?"

"They're giving out free balloons over there."

Elmer was carrying a yellow balloon without a string. He was balancing it between his hands. 

He doesn't seem to notice things.

I punched it towards the sky, forgetting that rule about how sometimes balloons go up and not down.

"Shady!!"

"I forgot!"

"Well it's gone now."

We stood in the crowd and watched it float.

"It always belonged to the sky."

I'm not yet sure if that thought is comforting. But it's still nice to watch things go up.

The Princess and the Goat

Every time my five-year-old sister draws me a picture, it is always of the exact same thing.

A princess and a strange deer-like animal. Smiling.

I've thought to ask her about it, but really, what is there to question?

We were sitting in the back of our parents' mini van one day and I asked her if maybe she wanted to draw me a little story about her princess and goat. She got out her pen and notebook and solemnly drew the classic intro.

"The princess and the goat were talking."

"Okay," I said. "Then what happens to them?"
I expected a dance party or something. They seemed so happy.

She'd never answer right away. She'd just quietly take out another sheet and draw some more.

"Strangers came."

"...Strangers?"
She drew the hands and arms then. "They're really big. AND scary."
"What- what did the strangers do to them?"

"The strangers stole them."

"Did the goat fight back?"
"No."
"Did the princess fight back?"
"No. They just screamed and screamed."
"..."
"..."
"...What did the strangers do then?"
"They took them away."
"Where did they take them to?!"

 "Jail."

"...jail?"
"Jail."
"Were they sad?"
"Yeah. They were crying."
"How did they escape?"

"The guard was sleeping, and the princess sneaked through the cage, and stole his keys."

"Then what?!" I was getting excited.

"The person woke up."

______

She put her notebook back in her bag. She put her pen back in the cup holder.

"Did- sh- what? What happened then??"

"That's just the end."

"'The person woke up'?"

"That's what happened. He woke up and chased them and chased them."

And that was all.

The end.