Hello! So excited for the first post of the 2023 Arrow – Hackley Middle School’s Arts & Literature Magazine!!!
Stay tuned for more posts to come over the next few weeks and then keep an eye out for the hardcopy, published version coming soon.
Here’s our first student work: drumroooolllll please!!!
Nick F. ’28
Short Fiction Project
by Olivia H. ’27
The lemonade-yellow house glares at me just the way Aunt Minnie used to. The red roof is Aunt Minnie’s hair, the same shade as mine. The candy-apple-red door is her stuck-out tongue, mocking me. I take a deep breath as I look at it. This is the last time I’ll go in. New owners move in next week, and the house is almost completely cleared of Aunt Minnie’s things. This is the last time I’ll have to step into this mothball-ridden depth of Tartarus. I walk up the cement steps, eying the spongy green mold growing in the cracks. Why any person would want this dump is beyond me. I unlock the front door and walk straight down the hall. No need to look around; I already know what I’ll see – an empty living room to the left, a bare kitchen to the right. Six months spent cleaning this place. All alone. All alone except for the ghosts of the past, and God knows I don’t want to see them again. But that all ends today, I remind myself as I climb the rickety stairs at the back of the house. I reach the top and enter the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Neatly labeled boxes line the wall under white squares of paint saved from the monotonous nicotine gray of the rest of the room by pictures of the countryside, which I’ve already taken down and put into several large boxes labeled “Goodwill.” It took forever to stack them all. Aunt Minnie always had a thing for art. On the other side of the room is the closet. I walk over and open the door. An avalanche of dusty garments rolls to the floor. I sigh. Great. Just great.
I kneel down, pulling out my phone and my earphones from my backpack. I gently push back my hair and twist the buds in. I pick up my phone and open the NBC app. The news anchorwoman, Sally Cormic, provides me with my only company these many Sundays I’ve spent in this house, cleaning up a dead woman’s mess. I space out as I ruefully remember the day my family refused to help to do this last job. Like me, they have bad memories of Aunt Minnie, but I’d say that I have it worse. However, ever the dutiful one, I’ve come to complete this last favor. After all, someone had to. Sally is talking about some stolen artwork. Some Van Gogh portrait. Art isn’t really my thing. I tend to curate more historically-centered pieces for the Madison History Museum. This train of thought reminds me of a piece I’ve been trying to obtain. The stubborn MET doesn’t want to let go of it. I pick up a red scarf and see a light at the end of the tunnel, a bit of wooden floor. I notice an odd crack in the wood. I knock on the floorboard and an echo bounces back. A hidden compartment.
I pry open the loose floorboard and find an old, beaten shoebox. Something exciting? It could be money! It could be hordes of silver and gold coins… from the Roman era! Yes! Those would be great on display at the museum! I open the shoebox, my heart full of hope, and I see… a key. How disappointing. I pick it up. On one side I make out a small Yorkie dog. The Westy storage company sign. I flip it over. “#308.” This is a storage unit key. I groan. Another thing to clean out. The key is as bumpy as the diorama of the Himalayas at the museum and rusty as the leaky pipe out front, which is to say, old. Who knows what kind of junk has piled up in the unit over the years?
I walk across the parking lot at Westy. That is, the second one which I’ve visited today. I had assumed that the key would belong to a unit at the Westy in Jerryville, Wisconsin. It’s nearest to Aunt Minnie’s home. But curiously, there was no storage unit #308 there. I am now in Madison, a full hour away. I live in Madison for my work, but why would Aunt Minnie rent a unit here instead of in her hometown? Reaching the door, I pull it open. A security guard is reclining in an office chair, his cap pulled over his eyes. A faint droning sound exudes rhythmically from beneath the hat.
“Heavens to Betsy!” he exclaims, startled. My footsteps must have woken him up. He quickly pulls his cap back onto his head. He sees me and smiles.
“Howdy, Ms. Lawrence,” he calls chipperly in his Texan drawl. I stop, unsure of what to say.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you might have the wrong person,” I offer. “My name is Camilla. Camilla Mazzala.” The security guard rises. It’s a slow process. He plants his hands on the armrests and shakily pushes himself up. He stretches out his back and walks over. His name tag reads, “Frank.”
“My mistake, Ms. Mazzala,” he says. “It’s just you look very similar to a Ms. Lawrence who often passes through.”
“Really?” I ask, “Usually I find that my red hair really sets me apart from other people.”
“Actually, darlin’, that’s what made me think you were Ms. Lawrence. Although, she usually has a red hat coverin’ her eyes and face. Anyhow, what brings you here, peach?”
“I’m here for unit 308,” I say.
“That’s just over yonder,” Frank explains as he points to the right.
“Alright, thank you.” I start walking the way he was pointing.
“Anytime, darlin’!” he calls as he gets back in his chair and covers his eyes with his hat again.
I unlock unit 308. “Maybe something interesting could be in here,” I tell myself as I start to open the door. “Maybe the boring box was just a guise. Afterall, why would she have hidden the key if it was just a bunch of boring junk?” A bunch of boring junk. That’s what the room is filled with. A mess, like the rest of Aunt Minnie’s things. I walk further into the unit, disappointed. Nothing. The boxes are filled with the same random assortment of items as her house. Just a boring, average, uninteresting storage unit.
I lock the door to unit 308, defeated. Another thing that I need to clean up for Aunt Minnie. She never did anything for me, but here I am dedicating so much time to wrapping up her life. I sigh. The key gets jammed in the lock, and I pull at it until it flies out onto the ground. I bend down to pick it up, tightly gripping it so that it can’t slip out of my grasp again. I open my backpack and drop it in. My palm stings. I bring it up to my face to inspect the imprint which the key left. It almost looks like a number. I turn my hand to see the print at a different angle, and find I was right. However, it isn’t just one number, but two. It reads ‘308+307.’ I look up. 307 is adjacent to 308. This time, I don’t get my hopes up. By now I know that there was nothing interesting or mysterious about Aunt Minnie. She was just a mean, middle-aged woman who drowned and is gone. Gone forever. I probably just didn’t see the ‘307’ because of how misshapen and rusty the key is. This is probably just an overflow unit that Aunt Minnie owned. I walk over to the door of unit 307 and unlock it, expecting to find just another room full of junk. Inside, I find some old pieces of art. Just some excess stuff that couldn’t fit in the last unit. I walk closer and look at one of the paintings. It’s actually pretty good. It has a man with orange hair, and it kind of reminds me of that famous one of the night. “What’s it called?” I ask myself. I grin proudly as I remember. “Starry Night! Vincent Van Gogh painted that!” I pause. Wasn’t a self portrait of his stolen this morning? I reach out to touch the painting. Surely this is a mistake. This is just a copy of the famous painting. Aunt Minnie did have a lot of paintings hanging in her house. She was an art lover. Yes. That makes total sense. My finger grazes the painting. It’s bumpy; real paint. There is no denying it. This is no copy. This is the Van Gogh portrait which was stolen this morning.
The police arrived a few minutes ago. Detective Sofia, a lanky young blonde woman, approaches me.
“Ms. Mazzala, did your aunt, the owner of this unit, have a history of stealing?” she asks.
“Not that I’m aware of. And she couldn’t have stolen such important things without anyone in my family knowing,” I respond.
“Then why is there priceless stolen artwork in a storage unit owned by her?” she implores.
It’s a good question, but I don’t want to get too involved with the police or with memories of Aunt Minnie. I just want to return these paintings and move on with my life. “My aunt is dead. She has been since May. How could she have stolen an art piece this morning?” The detective purses her lips and contemplates for a moment.
“Are you sure that she’s dead?” she asks.
“Excuse me? Yes, my aunt is dead! She drowned in May, as I told you before.” I say, trying but failing to stay calm.
“Did they ever find the body?”
“No. She drowned in the ocean, and her body got swept away. But I promise you that my aunt is very, very, dead. And I would appreciate it if you would stop accusing me otherwise.”
“My apologies, Ms. Mazzala. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a little late for that.”
“I’m going back to the station. I want to see if I can dig up any dirt on possible suspects. The rest of the officers will be out in the next few minutes.”
“Alright,” I say ruefully. The detective walks away. How dare she, questioning the deadness of my aunt. Of course she’s dead. Right?
I watch the last of the policemen leave, my arms crossed. I sigh as I look into the now empty unit 307. I lock it. As much as I say I don’t like my aunt, she did take me in as a kid. When my mom was sick, about to die sick, I lived with my aunt for a year. She took good care of me. Made me my own bedroom in her house. That was the first room I packed up after she died. After my mom passed, my dad couldn’t keep it together. My aunt thought that he “wasn’t a stable parent.” She took me away from him. Even though he sometimes forgot to feed me, came home late each night smelling of whisky, I loved my dad. I wanted to be there to help him, for us to go through this together. But Aunt Minnie took me away from him. I never forgave her. I walk over to unit 308. The police snooped around in there too, so I have to relock it. I take one last peek inside and see a box labeled “Lilith.” Lilith. That’s the name my aunt used to call me. She always told me how my hair looked just like the girl in the Lady Lilith painting. She started calling me Lilith as a joke when I lived with her. I walk over and gently open the flaps of the box. It’s filled with pictures. Pictures of me, riding a tricycle as a chubby toddler, holding up a perfect test, my face wired with braces. I start to cry.
I step out of the bathroom. I was in there for a while, reliving memories of Aunt Minnie. Contrary to my normal, not all of them were bad. I’m ready to go home. I can’t be here anymore, in this place that brings me such mixed emotions about my aunt. Before today I knew. I didn’t like her. No, I disdained her. Now I’m not so sure. I walk back to my aunt’s units. I make sure unit 308 is locked. It is. I already locked 307, but I check, just to make sure. Instead of staying firm as I expect, the door opens.
I gasp. Inside sits the painting of Lady Lilith. I touch it. Not the copy. Next to the painting is a pair of red glasses. I walk behind the painting. Nestled into the frame is a stop sign. This is a message. I hear it loud and clear. “Stop looking, Lilith.” My aunt is alive.
I speed towards the exit, my hands in my coat pockets.
“Camilla? When did you come back in?” Frank asks in an annoyingly amiable voice.
“Sorry, Frank. I can’t talk now,” I reply angrily. I need to get out of here.
“That’s what you said a few minutes ago. You walked out of here madder than a wet hen.”
“What do you mean I was in here a few minutes ago? I was here the whole time!” I ask, fed up.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Mazzala. Sometimes I get confused. I reckon it comes with the wrinkles,” he apologizes. I huff under my breath and exit.
“Bye, Camilla!” Frank calls. I lift one arm in salute. I speed across the parking lot, looking at the ground. How could she be alive? How could she pretend to die? What is happening? I bump into someone. “Excuse me,” I say. The woman, wearing a bright red hat, nods and waves her hand in forgiveness. I keep walking. Could it just be a coincidence? If she is alive, where could she be? She couldn’t have gotten far, I wasn’t in the bathroom that long. Besides, with the red hat Frank was talking about, she should be easy to… Realization dawns on me. I turn around, but Aunt Minnie is gone.
Delilah M. ’30