“You’re not going with the girls to Juárez next weekend?”

  “Nah.” Aida follows me and we stand by her trunk. “Belen will be fine. She doesn’t need to hang out with me every single weekend. And I’mma gonna avoid Zulema all week like the plague.” She laughs, each ha increasing in pitch. It reminds me of Woody Woodpecker.

  I chuckle until she adds, “It’s not like I haven’t been hanging out with Zulema since third grade.”

  Ouch.

  Here I am trying to make new friends while Zulema is trying to keep the one she’s had forever. She must feel like I’m stealing Aida away.

  “Maybe . . . we can invite them?” I say.

  Aida gets a thoughtful look and her voice gets pitchy. “Weee could . . .”—then her face morphs to sly and she belts out, forgetting all about being quiet—“Maybe some other weekend.” She snorts out giggles, elbowing me, and I crack up, too.

  I wipe away laugh tears. “All right, cool. See you Monday at basketball practice.”

  Aida has officially entered the Friend Department. I’m certain we won’t have to play the game of fakes anymore, if we were even playing. But honestly, no one can be completely real all the time. Being a little guarded is okay. I mean look at me. I have to stop getting paranoid and jumping to conclusions before knowing about situations better.

  I’m walking up the concrete stairs to my house when Aida whisper-yells, “Hey, biatch.” I turn just in time to catch the concha that’s flying toward my face. “Good catch,” she squeals, like a pet owner praising her dog for going poop. “You earned a pan dulce for the road. Also, I’ll make sure to tell Coach your reflexes are improving.”

  Smiling, I jog the last steps to my door. I’ve never craved my soft bed so much and I’m thankful Mom gave me a key. I’ll be sure to make myself get up early tomorrow . . . err, today, to have breakfast with her. The key goes into the lock, and I take a bite of the soft bread as I walk inside.

  Author’s Note

  Though this is fiction, it’s representative of real conditions at the border in the nineties. Many USA teens crossed over on foot or by car to socialize in the numerous bars and nightclubs along the Mexican border. When one is young, we tend to think we’re invincible, untouchable. I realize now how fortunate I am to have gotten back home each time, how insensitive and ignorant I was to the disturbing happenings that turned El Paso’s sister city of Ciudad Juárez into a war zone, how lucky we were to be able to cross back and forth while most Juárenzes couldn’t reciprocate. As grim conditions continued across the border, many of us watched helplessly and our visits to Mexico slowly faded, leaving a gap in our core that’s still there. This story only touches the scale and seriousness of the matters in Mexico at the time. Instead, through Rosa and the group of girls she teams up with for a night of fun, I aimed to drop the reader into a time of innocent youth in the nineties of the El Paso/Juárez area and take them along on the thrilling ride.

  Raising the Stakes in PAN DULCE

  by Emily X.R. Pan

  PAN DULCE has a classic setup: Our intrepid narrator is eager to cling to a sense of safety and invincibility, to brush aside the warnings that read as standard parental paranoia. “It’s no big deal, even if Mom thinks otherwise.” We can define stakes via these simple questions: What does the character want, and how much could go wrong? Right away the minor troubles begin: the slip on the stairs, the sweaty walk up the hill . . .

  PAN DULCE plays with our knowledge and expectations. As seasoned readers, we know how these things go. Trouble is on the horizon, and these trivial ironies are the first sign of it.

  What’s so effective about this story is the way it rockets us from typical interior conflict into the higher-risk stakes of conflict between Rosa and the world around her.

  As Rosa heads out, her worries begin to build on things immediately in sight. Any one of these could balloon into the main source of tension: Zulema and her aggressive antagonism. The feminicidio, which Rosa tries to brush aside by telling herself, “All teens go across to party.” The fake IDs, the cars on the other side of the border driving too fast, the mention of the older boys living so far away. These are all reminders of the uncertain territory our narrator has entered, and we’re waiting to see which of these will become the primary conflict.

  The waves of Rosa’s everyday worries feel true to life, and we settle into the rhythm of it—just as our narrator has. At this point we are expecting this to be the story of a girl who goes dancing, who perhaps will have some interesting encounter at a club or a memorable experience with a boy. Then, just as those exciting possibilities are deflating, the author hits us with this:

  In the moonlight, something gleams inside the trunk, something nestled inside the hollow of a tire that the container was resting on.

  This moment punches home the gravity of the border situation, and we understand the seriousness of Rosa’s circumstances. This is where the stakes rocket up.

  I love the title of this piece, too, because it gives us the sense that the story will be something light. We are prepared—as Rosa is—for a certain kind of experience, completely different from what we would have expected in a story called GUN. And that’s why, when we hit that peak, it’s startling and sobering in exactly the right way.

  Story Prompt: Enigma

  An enigma is something, or someone, who is next to impossible to understand. Characters like these can offer mystery to your stories, and sometimes a touch of magic.

  Create an enigma of a character—human or inhuman, mythical or wholly real. At their center should be a compelling secret, something this character has been hiding for a long time. Ideally this secret is surprising and would change how you think of that character forever after. Maybe it will even rock the whole world of the story.

  Now write about the moment when the deeply buried truth about your enigma of a character is finally revealed.

  Who gets to see the truth? What changes now that the secret is known?

  Solace

  Nora Elghazzawi

  “In the space of just a few pages, SOLACE takes us on the beautiful, hopeful journey of a young woman trying to find her way back to herself. It’s a lovely story of new love, recovery, and a magical garden.”

  —Nicola Yoon, author of The Sun Is Also a Star

  The truth is, I am okay now. But it was easier when I wasn’t.

  Laila alone. Laila sleeping and Laila weeping in the graveyard, Laila who starved herself thin as a Ramadan moon. All of these were me, and in a way, they are still me. They are the Lailas of my marrow, the roots I have carried to the tail end of seventeen. Sometimes I forget their weight, but the reminders always resurface like ghosts: in Mama’s worried glances when I don’t finish a plate; in the somber way Baba still kisses me good night, on the crown of my head, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish; and in the garden I’ve kept for the past year, which begs me every harvest:

  Eat.

  “No tomatoes?” Gabe asks, peering over the register. I smile as he gestures to the three packets of seeds I’ve picked out: cucumbers, carrots, lettuce. There was once a time when this would’ve been a meal for me. A couple hundred calories, half a day’s worth of food.

  Now, with the seeds spread in front of me, I feel a strange sense of awareness. These seeds could feed a family, could give so much life and time. Food grows so people can grow, but they both take such painstaking care. Be it a girl or a garden, it sometimes gets far too difficult.

  To grow. To be.

  “No tomatoes,” I tell him with a laugh.

  When I first began gardening, I started with tomatoes because I hated them. I thought I wouldn’t eat them, and I thought right. But Mama didn’t like that, so I decided to appease her and only picked out “the good stuff.” She also doesn’t like how I’m constantly hanging around “that no-good, bad-luck Briar boy.” But here I am.

  With Gabe Briar. Still smiling.

  After I pay, Gabe disappears into the back. When he returns, his stare is full of something I’m still unused to. He doesn’t look at me like the rest of Reves does. Never did, not even when I was gaunt and ashen and bug-eyed. Laila Saab, spirited away, halfway to the grave along with her brother. Poor thing, all that’s left of her is bones.

  I wonder what they say about me these days. Nearly eighteen years old and living like she’s eighty. Gardening and stuck on that Gabriel Briar. Such an awful shame.

  I had so many dreams. I have so many dreams. They shift and change and pass like the tide, but they always come back to haunt me no matter how deeply I bury them. I used to dream about the stage. Gleaming lights, songs, and sweat. The lilt of music in my throat, clearer than water.

  But then everything went silent.

  I started to dream about Jad and his ever-sleeping face. I dreamed about his casket and how small it was. Moon after moon, I relived the nightmarish day I stopped using the word brother.

  Then I dreamed of disappearing. Inward, like a crescent. I roamed through those years half-asleep, and I’m scared, you see, because even though I’ve started to wake up, it’s not like life waited for me. I’m terrified even when I’m Laila in the garden, away from the music I miss and the brother I still cry for. I’m Laila who can eat birthday cake even though it has tasted rotten to me ever since I realized Jad would never blow out nine candles. I am Laila without laughter or melodies, and once upon a time, that wasn’t Laila at all.

  Yet when Gabe hands me a packet of rose seeds and gives me a crooked grin, I am none of those things and all of them. I’m me, and it’s enough.

  “These came in yesterday,” he says. Our fingers brush when he places the packet on my palm, and my stomach flutters, warm as a candle. “Um. In case you have the time, you can . . . have them. Grow them.”

  “Thank you,” I say, a touch too serious. He waves me off like always, tells me they’re only flowers. But the calm quiet between us says otherwise.

  Thank you. Even though I don’t repeat it, I think he understands.

  Reves is a small town with large opinions. The number one being that it’s spelled Reves, not Rêves, thank you very much. The good old folk living here don’t have time for fancy letters, for e’s with houses on top, or as I later learned from a quick Google search, e with circumflex. Bent e, like a crescent moon. A bent dream, an unbent dream. In ballads and poems, dreams are always pure, open. But what happens when your wishes get all warped and twisted? What happens when you want ugly things and they come true?

  What does that say about you?

  Reves is an odd name for an odd place in the sleepy Midwest. Really, it’s where dreams come to die. Where dreamers burrow and hide. There’s an old, buried hunger that permeates this town like a great poisoned vein. We feed on it as it feeds on us.

  Like a spell. Like magic.

  I honestly don’t know if it’s the bad or good kind. Bent or unbent.

  Jad, though. He only found beauty in Reves, when we moved here a lifetime ago. The birds didn’t get spooked when he came near. They lingered, brought him gifts. A cat’s eye marble, bright like a parachute. A pearl as pink as sunrise. Glass shards that never cut through skin, no matter how jagged their edges.

  The trees can talk here, Jad told me. They love when kids climb them, play hide-and-seek around them. They love when birds sit in their nests and sing. Did you know, Laila? You sing like a bird.

  I love when you sing, Jad said. I love you.

  If only I’d said it back more often: I love you too. Because I did—because I do—and if I can swear on anything, it’s that Jad had all the kindness in the world inside him. He drew out the good in me like water from a well.

  Together we used to skip stones along rivers, eat summer fruit until our bellies ached, laugh at stupid jokes, and dance like fools on our kitchen floor. We fought, broke each other’s toys, made wishes on eyelashes, and snuck snacks upstairs when Mama and Baba were fast asleep, and I loved him, I love him so. We were happy—God, I was happy—just being his big sister, watching him grow.

  But then the accident happened. And the thought that burst inside of me like a nova, like a wildfire, like a hundred thousand fallen loves and trees and stars was this:

  It should’ve been me.

  I feel the same even still. And maybe I’m not at the brink anymore—maybe I’m eating and breathing and living just fine—but my heart is starved. It remains barren, longing for happiness and for punishment in equal measure. So I plant this garden, sow these seeds, and I feed my neighbors, my parents. I feed myself, food and lies, and promise the unforgiving mirror, Someday I’ll be whole.

  Someday I’ll be.

  In school we talk about the future. Our futures, specifically, which is pretty unfortunate. There’s a class for history, but there’s no class for the Future, capital. In twenty years, we’ll have planes that run on solar power. In a hundred, you’ll be able to meet people in dreams. Before we grow old, they’ll make the moon into a common tourist attraction.

  Miss Reed, our senior guidance counselor, brings this question to class instead: “Where do you want to be next year?”

  Some students volunteer their answers, but I don’t know what to say. When I was a child, if you had asked me where I saw myself in the future, I would’ve told you, Grown. Grown up. Going places. Maybe singing somewhere, my family cheering me on. After all, the world is big, and what child dreams of being small?

  Not me. Not then.

  But things are different now.

  My grades aren’t terrible or anything. Some of them are kind of amazing. But can you build a life on a few high marks? Can you rebuild a dream that way? There are too many Lailas inside me, and those dreams of mine have gotten so tangled. I can’t tell you what I want anymore without opening a Pandora’s box of grief and yearning. A dream is most beautiful when you fight for it. But the only thing I ever fought in my life was hunger, until I found blind solace in it, like a girl bewitched, like a fool.

  I can hardly stand to see myself in the mirror. How am I supposed to see myself in ten years? Five years?

  One?

  I visit Gabe’s shop after class, which has become something of a ritual for me. I’m kind of a loiterer, actually, considering I don’t buy things every time I stop by. I don’t think he minds too much. At least I hope not.

  We drink tea by the door. Gabe always makes me a special cup, adding lavender and enough warm milk to sweeten it. I say enough, but I know from the taste and the color exactly how much he’s put in.

  I cannot forget the numbers. Forty calories, my brain supplies, like it has been so terribly programmed to. I want to smother the thought, stanch it like a wound. But scars don’t work that way. Sometimes they ache and feel like they’ll open, even when you know you have no blood left to give. As long as you keep going, there will always be more work to do.

  Better. I have to do better. So I say, “This is delicious,” because it’s the truth. I’m okay, I remind myself, because if I say it enough, it won’t be a lie.

  Gabe smiles, and it almost reaches his eyes. When he turns to pick up his own cup, I glimpse his profile. Sharp jaw, long lashes. That tiny, starry birthmark on his neck. With a flush, I drop my gaze to his hands, hands that handle plants and pots and flowers so gently that it’s hard to believe they ever knew a different shape of work.

  A different fate.

  Gabe Briar’s past is no secret. He’s a year older than me, and two summers ago he was being scouted. Baseball, pitcher, star: these were the words that followed Gabe like a beacon. Then someone from out of town chose to get drunk and drive through Reves on a Thursday night and trampled all over Gabe Briar and his dreams. He was walking home from practice. It was a regular day, and if I’ve learned anything, those are the days you have to watch out for.

  The doctors called him a miracle. Said he would make a full recovery. And he did. But healing takes time, and when you’re young, nobody tells you that. No one tells you how to trade out scholarships for surgeries, how to find solace in the little milestones along the way. But Gabe did all of this and more, has been strong where I’ve never been.

  In the end, Gabe didn’t play again. He could’ve tried, could’ve trained and left Reves and all its fickleness behind. Yet he chose to stay, living with his grandmother above this shop until she passed away last winter. And that’s when the whispers set in. Runaway mother, deadbeat father, a grandmother in the grave. People say anything grown from this shop will bring sickness, bad omens. But I wonder what they would say if they knew the truth.

  This place isn’t cursed. It’s magic. Gabe and the garden he helped me make are magic.

  What I haven’t told anyone, not even Gabe, is that I don’t ever use all the seeds he gives me. Just one at a time. One seed is enough for an entire patch of cucumbers or cabbages. A whole root-work of carrots. I water a plot once, and rosebushes bloom.

  I spend all my spare time in the garden, tending and working, so that I can have this. My own secret bit of magic. Prayer-filled food, wish-made flowers. Like I said, I’m selfish. Foolish. But I’m just a girl who has been many girls before, and is trying to figure out which one I am now.

  By the time we finish our tea, the moon is rising, and Gabe says, “I’ll walk you home.”

  He stands up, and I’m stricken with a new-old sense of longing. It’s a fragile, glassy feeling, but I am no good with fragile things, so I quell my heart and say, “Sure.” Say, “I’d like that.”

  Mama doesn’t make tea like Gabe’s. She spoons in so much sugar and honey that my teeth ache before I even drink it. But I never say a word. This is a habit born of worry, of having a daughter who nearly disappeared on her. Mama used to look at me like she could see my gravestone, clear as day. And I will never unknow that. Never.