Fiction '05

THE BAY GUARDIAN is pleased to announce the winners of its short-fiction contest, with thanks to the hundreds of writers who submitted entries. This year's judges – Stephen Beachy, Chaim Bertman, and Camille Roy – are all novelists, and they have awarded first prize to the story published here, "Adeline, No," by Jasmine Kitses. The second-place story is Sarah Fran Wisby's "Differences," and third place goes to Matthew Crain for "Asparagus." There are also two honorable mentions: Mira Martin-Parker's "Passive Transformation" and Barney Jones's "Veer: A Short Novel." The winners will read their stories at Modern Times Bookstore (888 Valencia, S.F. 415-282-9246) on March 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Adeline, no

By Jasmine Kitses

We took her down the field. We were going to have it out. We'd decided.

"she'scomingshe'scoming," went the whisper and there she was. Now or never. On the way to the spot we'd picked out, I kept on stumbling, clumsy nervous feet on grass. I looked down at their reluctance. It felt as if they knew something. She must've sensed what was happening, but she never dared ask, never even looked at me until she knew it was all over. She walked ahead of me and I could see she was nervous and it made me understand what power is and made me feel sick. Victoria was calm though, and she said, "This won't take long."

After the cracks had started to show, like fine lines on an eggshell, there was no chance of stopping them. Revelation after revelation widened the gap until a huge gulf had appeared between us and her. And I was the stringy piece of mucus stretched between the egg and its crown, my loyalties pulled taut and then left limp. She trusted me, and she had no idea. Once they'd realized what she was up to, and the extent of it had sunk in, they were livid. No one likes to be fooled. I felt like both the betrayed and the betrayer.

So they planned what to do with her: what they'd say and how it would happen, filling in her answers with their collective imagination, guessing how she'd react, and me fearing. Whispers in toilets – shescomingshescoming – and ominous notes passed between desks. We laughed at the story of the finger bat, the sheer ridiculousness of it, but shook our heads at some of the crazier ones. I worried about stories I thought might be true and was haunted by an image of her being sick in her cereal.

We reached the spot. Some boys played football, too far off to hear. I sat down and focused myself on the ball, watched it fly through the air and land, wordlessly, at some boy's feet, as if drawn in by a magnet. We were placed in a circle like stones and she sat there with her cat eyes looking from face to face, avoiding mine, like some added ingredient in a play that had already been rehearsed. She just sat in silence watching as Vic pulled the little book out of her bag.

She had saved me once so I'd reasoned that without her I'd still be drowning. Friendless and flailing in the corner and she'd said, "Come and hang around with us," and I'd been so grateful.

So much so that I'd never escaped the huge debt which I knew she had hung around my neck; I owed her something. That day on the field she tried convincing me that the time had come; she was calling in her debts:

"I do need help, you're right, help me ..."

But by then I was beyond her.

She made me her playmate and invited me to stay for sleepovers which would span whole weekends. She had a power that made me feel I should stay and wanted to. I don't deny it was OK at first. Her parents and siblings weren't like mine though, they were much older and it was as if her family had all grown up without her. At parties, she told dirty stories which intrigued us. How her brother Tom had taught her how to French-kiss, how she had watched her other brother Jack having sex with his fiancée through a hole in her bedroom wall. Maybe we encouraged her with our enthusiasm.

Number three, Vic announced, reading from the little blue book they'd compiled. I didn't need to look to know her hand was shaking. "You said that you had leukemia, you took Molly to the library with you to research it." Silence. The mention of my name made me twitch and I recalled the day she told me it was "fifty-fifty," could go either way, the doctors didn't know. Weeks later, she rang me up with the results:

"Molly," I heard the breath swell up in her throat, "... it's negative."

And I already knew.

"Number four," Vic continued from the list, and then she spoke at last and we all listened.

"No," she said, and I looked. "No." She was shaking now, her head moving from side to side like a spitting cobra, and I was strangely fascinated by it.

"No ... no ...," she stuttered and I knew she was waiting for me to speak and she was looking down at her hands and rubbing them and all I could think of was that noise she used to make with them, that sucking, sweaty noise and her fish paste sandwiches which she'd squash into a plastic wrapper and wave at people's faces and her double-jointed fingers which would snap bone on bone and her face and her cat eyes and the way she'd tried to touch me and then I wanted to hurt her and Vic spoke as if to someone very old and fragile:

"Adeline."

And I wanted to tell her how brilliant she was to make one word sound so completely crushing and we all looked straight at her and her head wobbled ridiculously and she was choking out pathetic tearless cries, and she was choking, and I was glad she was fragile ...

And I didn't say a word.