By Radia Jamee
“Mar?” “Mar!” “Mar!” Ayla is calling. Mar’s eyes open sluggishly, brimming with tears. Her
chest feels tight- her right foot tapping slowly against her left. She must have dozed off. She is
still in the car with them. As she blinks away the fog, the fabric on the car seat in front of her
makes her stomach twist with a sick, lingering sensation, like she can taste the surface on her
tongue.
“I think I need some air,” says Mar with a quiet voice. “I’m not feeling so good.”
The problem isn’t that Mar remembers the haunting nature of it all. Beyond the vivid flashbacks,
something feels off- like it wasn’t yesterday that it all happened, but it’s happening right now. It
almost feels like something invisible in the atmosphere is trapping her.
They stop by a gas station slumped against the side of the road. It is rather quiet, like time moved
slowly over here. A hand-scrawled sign on the window reads ‘NO BATHROOM’, and inside, a
bored-looking clerk is leaning on the counter. While the others go into the store to check out
random things, Mar stands outside to unwind. She notices a kid in a faded tank top sitting on the
curb, picking at a scab on his knee. A sun-bleached billboard leaning crookedly, which possibly
reads ‘Buy 1 Get 1 Free – CDs & DVDs Clearance!’ huh, quite out of date. Two idle cars are
parked near the pumps, an old silver Corolla with a missing hubcap, and a navy-blue Ford
Explorer with a cracked rearview mirror, windows halfway down. When she glances around, she
finds the kid on the curb staring at her from a distance with a complete lack of expressions on his
face. Something about his gaze is unsettling, and she immediately drops her eyes and turns away.
“Ayla, where are we going?” Mar inquires with a slight discomfort as soon as Ayla steps out of
the store.
“What do you mean? We are–” Ayla continues, but a sudden blast of a honking truck is drowning
her out, leaving Mar to watch her lips move in silence.
“Huh, what?” Mar asks again. Ayla responds with a smile this time,
“Do you remember the art museum near our school? I heard they’re planning to close it forever.
We thought it’d be nice to check it out one last time. I mean, of course, as long as you’re up for
it.”The art museum was just another hotspot in the city Mar didn’t really care about. She can’t even
remember why she agreed to come along, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the right time to walk
away. After all, when was she ever going to get the chance to see Nick again? “Sure,” she nods
with approval.
Nick wasn’t in the cafeteria that day. Or at least, that’s what Mar thought. The next morning, the
city was held idle beneath heavy rainfall– the perfect occasion to skip school, especially since
she hadn’t quite recovered from the day before.
But sooner or later, she had to return. She could only hide for so long. And so, after several days
of isolation, Mar found herself back in class. That’s when Nick came to her, to try to console her
in his own awkward way.
“You know,” he began, then paused, regretting it already. “At home, my mom sometimes makes
me something called nattō,” he cleared his throat and continued, “One time I took it to school for
lunch and a kid fainted when I opened the lid.”
“That’s not true,” Mar responded with an unbothered tone, but beyond her unreadable eyes was
some level of access she hadn’t consciously granted. She was a girl of few words, barely ever
conversing with people. But this was different. This was almost like she was letting her guard
down and finding a side of herself for the first time in perhaps…ever.
“No… No, it’s not. But I do like nattō, and it stinks. What I mean is that, I don’t think there was
anything wrong with what you were having for lunch that day,” Nick rushed the words out, like
he had rehearsed them and couldn’t stop once he started.
Was Nick really there when it mattered? If he had seen everything that went down in that
cafeteria that day, why hadn’t he come forward? Why didn’t he stand by Mar when she faced the
worst of it all alone?
But… he was there. He was the only one who was there. She was both disappointed that he
didn’t come forward that day, and secretly pleased that he cared enough to fake a relatable story.
One couldn’t have told from her face that a part of her heart was quietly softening.Mar looks over at Nick sitting across from her in the backseat of the car. He is wearing pastel
blue. He glances at her with a smile, and Mar feels her heartbeat slow down, her pupils dilate.
Their eyes lock for a second before he quickly looks out the window behind her, as if he has seen
something strange. Mar turns to look out the window. At first, everything seemed normal. But
then she sees the sign: “Buy 1 Get 1 Free – CDs & DVDs Clearance!”
Her heart drops.
“NO BATHROOM.”
The boy by the curb. The silver Corolla. The blue Ford Explorer. Everything is the same. The
boy is still picking at his scab. The clerk is still leaning on the counter- like not a single moment
has passed, although Mar is pretty sure that at least 30 minutes have passed.
“Why are we here again?” Mar’s voice trembles as she fails to mask the panic.
“What do you mean?” Kai looks at her.
“The gas station, we were here half an hour ago!”
“You’re-” Kai starts, but Salel cuts him off, “The GPS rerouted,” he says flatly.
That wasn’t enough. It still doesn’t explain why nothing has changed from when they were at the
gas station earlier. But in that moment, Mar feels herself slipping back into the little girl she used
to be, the one who kept her thoughts buried, who learned early that speaking up meant being
dismissed. As her mind drifts and she gazes outside the car window, something catches her eye.
Someone was waving at her from a distance. She couldn’t make out his face, but he wore a khaki
suit, with a green tie standing out even from far away.
Unsettled, Mar sits quietly in the car, staring out the window. Her foot bumps into something on
the floor, and as she glances down, she sees a wedge of the Laughing Cow cheese. In that
moment, everything clicks. The people at the grocery store pretending she didn’t exist, her cart
vanishing without a trace, and then running into them. All these unlikely events couldn’t have
been a coincidence. They did it. She is far beyond asking why or how– years of experience had
taught her that they never needed a reason. This was their amusement, their twisted way ofpassing time. They seemed to take pleasure, maybe even pride, in confusing her, or any of their
‘inferiors’, watching them flounder, keeping them in the dark. Powerless. Helpless. Trusting her
instincts, Mar doesn’t speak. Instead, she scans the floor for other things that would turn her
suspicion into certainty. And there it is – the receipt. Faded, crumpled… like someone has been
tampering with it.
“Stop the motherfucking car!” Mar screams at the top of her lungs, her voice ripping through the
silence.
As soon as Salel hits the brake, she flings the door open, stumbles out of the car, and gasps for
air like she is drowning. Her hands are shaking violently, whether from fear, betrayal, or both-
she couldn’t tell. The world shakes beneath her feet, everything spinning as if the whole universe
is against her.
“Why did you do this to me?” Mar’s voice breaks as the tears finally come, “Why are you doing
this to me?” She struggles to breathe. “You could never understand this kind of pain,” she gasps.
“I can’t breathe. I’m not that little girl anymore,” her voice cracks, “and you have to let me go!”
“Mar what’s going on?” Ayla steps forward, her voice careful, “Can you please just talk to us?”
Mar raises her head slowly, blinking back hot tears. Ayla is standing a few feet away, with Salel
and Kai close beside her. “Talk to you? You were never my friends! All you wanted was to watch
me suffer and humiliate me!” Mar gasps for air before she continues, “Nick is the only thing still
linking us!” She pauses. She immediately notices- Nick is gone!
She stumbles backward, nearly tripping over her own feet. She turns and sprints toward the car to
look for him.
“Where is Nick?” Mar’s voice trembles with panic.
“Mar, you need to calm down,” Salel says softly- his voice calm, almost soothing- but his eyes
hold something unreadable, like a shadow of the devil himself.
“Where…is Nick?” Mar’s voice softens, like she’s about to pass out.“Marzia please, you need to listen to us,” says Ayla with her perfectly pitched voice and her
ever-so-elegant poise.
“My name, is MARHA!” Mar lets out a shriek, appalled, in shock and disbelief at the sheer
ignorance of these people. Or worse, in the realization of her insignificance after all these years,
how nothing has changed.
And that is the last thing she remembers.
I…I forgave them. After spending several years which felt like an eternity in the torment of their
miserable entitlement, I had not only set myself free, I had set them free too- of any grudges, of
hate, of poison. As your emotions mature, you realize, they didn’t do any of it for a reason. After
all, they were just children. So, I forgave them. But…did I, really?
Grandma had this very old, worn-off metal wardrobe at home- its once-grey paint chipped away
to reveal rust eating at the metal beneath. Sometimes the door didn’t close all the way, leaving a
faint crack of darkness inside, which looked like it was swallowing the light. The clothes from
that wardrobe always had a smell to them, like an old garage. I couldn’t quite place the smell, but
it reminded me of old pencils left to fade in drawers no one had opened in months, like a mix of
dry wood, dust, and something faintly metallic.
This time, it wasn’t clothes in the wardrobe. It was me. I was curled up inside, knees to my chest,
the warped metal grazing my arms. My chest tightened with every passing moment. I pounded
my fists against the door and begged for help. I could feel the cold seeping into my bones,crawling up from my feet, numbing my toes and creeping higher. All I could do was curl tighter.
I could see a dull string of light pulsed through a narrow crack like it was breathing. I couldn’t
see them, only hear them.
“She did it, we know she did.”
“She’s begging for attention, desperate for someone to notice her worthless existence.”
“She will rot in there, as she should.”
I could hear laughter, distorted voices.
I felt this anger in my bloodstream like nothing I had ever known. My cry for help turned into
something darker, something fiercer. I raked my nails against the metal, my heart twisting so
viciously that it felt like my ribs couldn’t hold it, like the weight of the pain would shatter
everything inside of me. It was as if my anger would devour me alive if I didn’t let it out. So
desperately I wanted to be freed, that I was willing to lose myself. My voice broke through the
suffocating silence- a scream that didn’t come from my throat but from deep within my soul, a
scream so raw it tore me into pieces.
