Diana Gong
Diana Gong is currently a sleep-deprived junior at the highly esteemed Aragon High School. She has always been an imaginative child. She has taken art classes for eleven years, and grew up constantly drawing in her sketchbook and dreaming up storylines. In the 8th grade, a great man named Mr. Shrewsbury guided Diana through her first creative writing class, and she has been hooked ever since. She tends to write short stories and memoirs that are usually funny, occasionally vulgar, and sometimes introspective. Please note, though, that she most definitely does not use humor to avoid addressing emotional conflicts! Ha, ha! On rare occasions when she is not playing tennis, doing art, or dying at school, Diana enjoys fishing. Since she was ten, Diana has pursued aquatic game up and down the Californian coastline, and also in many lakes and rivers.
Fear
The second set.
Five-four, deuce.
Match point is a poor moment to mess up,
But I do it anyway.
Squeezing the grip with pale knuckles
The sweat running down my palm
Feels slick as road ice.
I am about to skid off course
Any second now.
Strings meet ball, and
Ball meets net.
It does not take long
For anger to rear its hideous head,
Snarling and slithering and covering my eyes
With crooked claws.
I lose quickly.
Failure is nothing to be afraid of.
Or so I tell myself.
I can’t breathe in
Waters black and swirling.
The suck of the swell chains my body
Below the surface,
Where the world is deaf
As I gasp for air.
Bitter saltwater fills,
Stretches my thin, aching lungs
Almost to the point of popping.
Shadows creeping in the corners of rooms,
The darkness that spreads
At the flick of a switch,
Jaws snapping and engulfing me whole
Makes me feel like I am
Drowning all over
Again.
Every movement is tracked by
Beady eyes.
He was here before me.
That does not mean I accept him.
Sitting on the shelf for decades,
Dust blankets his cap and his shoulders.
Red corduroy faded to
Rusted blood.
Waiting.
Planning.
He is only a stuffed monkey,
But I know he fully intends
To rise one day
When the moon is stretching with
One eye open
And we are all trapped in
Unfortunate slumber.
My eyes fly open, but
It is too late.
His furry grasp is upon me.
Marshmallow Frogs
The bags of crimson and azure candies crinkled as I shuffled through them, looking for the marshmallow frogs. For some reason, Taylor loved those the most. I thought they were a far cry from the original gummy bears, but I guess either way it was just corn syrup. Joseph leaned against the wall and glanced at me through tired eyes.
“Are you done yet?” His thick-framed glasses slipped a little down the slope of his nose, and he nudged them back in place.
“Yeah, hold on,” I replied, scanning the rows of Haribo gummies. He has night contacts but he doesn't wear them; I secretly wonder if he does that on purpose so he can wear his cool hipster specs. “Ah ha! I knew you were in here somewhere.” I grabbed the candy I was looking for and paid for them at the register.
Joseph and I walked out of the cozy little deli, which was snuggled into the very left corner of the Edgewater shopping center. In July, the air at night was cool and pleasant. How long had I dreamt of doing this? Taking a stroll on a clear summer night, with only Joseph at my side? I still cringe when I remember that suffocating feeling that plagued me for eleven years. Eleven years of friendship, and eleven years of secretly eyeing him with… affection? Is that what it’s called? It sure as hell wasn’t love. I was angry at myself for liking him at all: he was one of my best friends. I thought I was an idiot, that nothing could possibly be worse than the hot mess I was stuck in. I was wrong.
We glanced at the black waters of the lagoon swirling past. In the daytime, the water had an unnatural turquoise tint, like pool water on steroids--the kind of color that you know is fake but is still nice to look at. Joseph was like that: smart and attractive, but deeply insecure. He didn't even try out for soccer after playing the sport for nearly eleven years, saying something about there only being a varsity team and no jv, how the team “wasn't that good anyway.”
We were almost passed Lucky’s when I stopped abruptly. I’d forgotten to write a note at the bottom of drawing I was holding; I was going to give that to Taylor, too. I befriended her in middle school, but we didn’t become close until our sophomore year of high school. We got married, but we decided to keep it an open relationship. I sat down on the edge of a flower trench and fished in my pocket for a pen. “Dear beloved wife,” I wrote in capitalized, blocky letters. It was a sort of inside joke we had, one that was revealed through a twinkle in the eye and a twitch of a smile.
Just as I finished writing the note and glanced up, I saw Joseph quickly look away and pretend to study a piece of ground-gum that apparently captured his attention. Staring at the piece of gum, I saw that he was wearing weed socks. The closest he ever got to weed were probably the weeds in his motherś tidy little vegetable garden.
Before we approached the crosswalk on Edgewater Blvd., Joseph hesitated. He partially turned towards me, so that the profile of his face looked sharp in the dusky twilight. His eyes narrowed and he stuck his thumbs in his pockets.
“Are you gay?” he asked.
The question itself didn't bother me much. I’m not. It was how serious he sounded when he asked it; beneath all those homophobic slurs that he and many other boys flung around, I couldn’t tell if there really was that seedling of hate rooted within him. I like to think that he was genuinely curious, but another part of me wonders if, given a yes to his question, he would recoil in disgust, and our friendship would be jeopardized.
“No.” I said it a little more forcefully than was needed. I didn’t want him to have any trace of doubt; the way he mouthed “gay” sounded forced, hesitant, and weary, and it scared me. It scared me, and hurt me to think that this boy I’d liked for most of my life wasn’t even certain if I liked boys at all. I visibly cringed. I didn’t have a right to be indignant, since I never disclosed to him my gooey, suffocating feelings, yet I was indignant anyways. What an idiot I was. Clearly, I was irresistible to males.
“Sorry,” he managed. He then said something like, “I was just confused, that’s all. My bad,” along with a few more apologies. Under the glow of the street lamp, I could see the blood rising to his cheeks. He rarely got flustered like that.
We walked all the way down Edgewater, turned left, and arrived at Taylor's door. Warm yellow light flooded out when Taylor opened it; the light didn’t reach Joseph, who was standing in the dark at the bottom of the porch steps. She grinned when I handed her the marshmallow frogs and the drawing and wrapped me in a brief hug. Self-consciously, I glanced back at Joseph, one of my oldest friends, and saw the shame in his downcast eyes. I imagined that perhaps he was sorry for jumping to false conclusions, or perhaps he was just embarrassed of making himself sound ignorant. Either way, that night made Joseph seem transparent, all the way to the insecurity at his very core: the same burning insecurity that compelled him to rapid-fire homophobic slurs for the sake of maintaining some skewed interpretation of masculinity. Not all the hipster glasses and weed socks in the world can cover that up. Ever since we went off to different high schools, I felt that suffocating affection dissipate little by little. That night, they disappeared.
