“Cast Through”
I hand the slinky to my brother. It’s a cheap plastic thing that oscillates between shades of
pink, teal, and yellow. I don’t even remember where I got it. While it is rotten with the memory
of arcades and party favors, it keeps its secrets and reveals nothing. It was simply unearthed, a
lost artifact found while cleaning my room.
He holds one end, standing at the top of the driveway. And so I walk backward, bare feet
stumbling over loose rocks and flattened weeds. I hit asphalt, and the rough surface digs into
tender flesh. My brother gets smaller as our distance grows.
I watch the colors spiral and separate. Yellow-blue becomes yellow and blue. Magenta is
a smudge in the distance, just visible if I tilt my head and glare against the light. I wish for a
moment that the slinky was longer. The one that strains against my fingers is barely larger than
the palm of my hand. With another, the kind large enough to sit like a shackle on my wrist, I
could walk for miles before it gave in.
The tunnel unwinds, sections becoming spirals, spirals becoming lines. It is just barely
tethered together by will, nothing more. My brother shouts something. I look at him, blinded by
the setting sun. I squint at its orange-pink-purple hues, all colliding in one wild brushstroke.
The plastic snaps.
“One”
She will not remember this day. A rented room is packed full of shadows that flit from
wall to wall, reverberating with echoing silence. Dim, washed-out colors paint every surface as
darkness grows around the edges. Now, she knows about the pale pink of her too-large shirt and the frilly lace of her socks. But this is not something she recalls, not even an imprint in the back
of her mind.
As for them, they know that none of this will linger in her memory. Not even snippets of
sound or color. She will ask, time and time again, driven by a maddening desire to know herself.
And every time, they will regale her with new details. The joy of sinking milk teeth into
uncharted sweetness. The shine of buckled shoes kicking against plastic. But she will never
remember. Because while this is a celebration of her, it is not for her. It never was.
She wields a spoon half her size with fine motor skills gradually built up over time. A
tiny fist clenches in the remnants of a cake, the feeling of which she can conjure up in weak
imitation. The rest of its pink icing is smeared across her face with reckless abandon. A gurgling
laugh bubbles up and she reaches for the camera, for whoever lies behind it.
“Five”
She waves at princess after princess. The figures she has idolized and replicated for her
few years of life, all brought to glorious reality. They float by, giggling at the curls the humidity has lovingly woven into her hair. A gloved hand attempts to smooth back a few flyaways. The
satin leaves crackling bursts of static behind instead.
Rough, glittery material scrapes against her shoulders, but she doesn’t linger on it.
Doesn’t think about the phantom presence it will have years from now. Nor does she think of
how critically she will view her idol, much less the monopoly that sold her off. Now, here, things
must be simple. They are not (they never were), but they should be.
As if he can sense this paradoxical distress, her brother begins to cry from his place in a
BabyBjörn. Realistically, it was spurred on by noise, a lack of rest, or a multitude of things
provoked by a day in the boiling sun. As if summoned, a mass of swishing skirts and fawning
faces gather to press kisses to his shockingly large forehead. She stares at every smudge of red,
pink, and brown stamped into his skin. As suddenly as they came, they leave, and she starts to
walk again. Clinging to her parents’ side, knowing not to run off without them.
“Seven”
Her socked feet slip against PVC, desperately seeking purchase on a frayed rope ladder.
Working against the shaking in her knees, she moves at the impatient urging of the child behind her. Finally reaches the top and stares out over the haze of red, yellow, green, and blue that fills
her vision. Screams, shouts, squeaks, and an endless roaring echo off every wall. The ceiling
seems just close enough to touch. That child pushes her again, the same boy who will throw
wood chips in her eyes two years from now.
She wobbles as her feet sink into that fragile surface. Knees still shaking, she tries to
search for her mom. Keeps her eyes off the growing distance between herself and the ground.
The boy sighs and moves around her to fling himself down the slide. Going headfirst, which she
knows not to do.
Gingerly, she sits and begins to inch forward; the material crackles, barely audible over
all the noise. A little girl jumps in celebration behind her, sending out rolling waves of force. Her
grasp slips, and she slides, stomach and heart rising into her mouth. Wind rushes through her
hair, static snapping at her fingertips; silence grasps her throat, strangling the scream that tries to
escape.
Impossibly gently, she hits the foot of the slide and scrambles to move out of the way of
the next survivor. Carpet scrapes along the bottom of her feet as she runs, slips on her light-up
sneakers, and is herded into another room. Sat in a blue-backed chair, she lays her head against
the cool table and tries to hold back tears. Bouncing in their grandmother’s lap, her brother
smacks a meaty hand against the speckled, slightly sticky surface. A patchy grin spreads from one ear to another as more children flood into the massively tiny room.
“Ten”
She squirms against the vinyl of the booth seat, picking at a crack in its material. A
snow-coating of parmesan rests on the remaining half of a paper-thin slice of pizza. Grease is
sinking through its lilypad plate. The world is a trembling waveform of noise and sensation. A
million faceless children laugh and chatter in harmony with the dull roar of recollection. Near the
hallowed ground of the prize counter, a mascot’s specter holds a fleecy paw out to her brother.
He shakes his head, invisible blond eyebrows contorting as he clutches a handful of tickets close
to his chest.
She takes a sip of soda and turns to look at the Barbie doll posted like Atlas in a box
outside her seat. This titan is just shorter than her, with the long blond hair she grew out of years
ago. Clad in a pink bandeau one piece, all stiff limbs and smiles. She isn’t afraid of her. This
figure will be a friend for years, and her silhouette will lurk in the shadowy mirror’s edge for
even longer.
Shreds of sparkling paper settle like ash on the table. Wide eyes stare at the alarm flashes
of dozens of games vying for her attention. That band must have rattled to life, unhinging their
clicking jaws to let music spew forth. Their tune doesn’t linger. She turns from her plate and
steps away from the dissolving feast. The passing echo of a friend takes her hand before
sweeping her away to the photo booth.
“Fourteen”
She pushes through the doors at the head of a huddle of friends, other girls with hair as
long as hers. The carpet is a cacophony of vague stars and asteroids, a coalescing explosion of
purple over faded ink. Its smell shuffles around in her mind, welcomed in that familiar way but
resistant to the offer of words. Something buttery and sweet, with an underlying note of sweat.
Dozens of bodies gather in loose lines, giving up money hand over fist for food that
deserves much less. Screens, posters, and cardboard stands guard every wall underneath arching
ceilings. A pale yellow light creeps through high, pointed windows to settle onto the floor. Dust
floats through the air like a million flecks of white paint.
They bypass the ghostly ticket booth and follow an employee’s guiding arm, passing by a
million more frames of faded iconography on their way. Another set of doors, and they’re there.
Face to face with that wonderful expanse of silver, climbing up to tiptoe around their delicate
seating arrangement. The kind where she sits in between the two girls who not-so-secretly hate
each other but distances herself from that girl who is more of a friend of a friend than a friend.
Each of them put more thought into it than it deserves.
But she doesn’t think about the fact that she will stop talking to many of these friends in
less than a year. Doesn’t think about the friend she will talk down from various ledges over
dozens of late nights. Doesn’t even think about how hard she will cry over this movie an hour
from now, prophetically moved by the story of a boy her age hiding an unimaginable secret from
his entire world. She tries to ignore the crushing weight of such a lonely existence, and she
doesn’t think. She doesn’t even know.
“Seventeen”
They swallow around the itch in their throat and glance towards the paper. Eyes flit
between phone and pencil as it traces over twisting, splintering curves. That raspy scratching is
inaudible past the music in their ears, but the vibrations of it hum in their bones.
Charcoal rivers are raised as the phone begins to settle onto the table. Endless lines unfurl
into the gentle arches of a familiar face; they pick up the sketch board, exchanging the pencil for
a rounded kernel of pink. Curved edges are pressed and flattened until the paper grows thin with
every adjustment made.
Eyebrows grow darker, and each curve becomes sharper. The hair is too long but stripped
of that fine, wispy quality that drifts in front of their eyes. After being hidden behind cloth for
over a year, the rose pink of their mouth is put on full display. All those battles between what is
and what could be are gouged out as an infinite number of scars on an empty field of white.
Something is said, and they stop, surfacing from that dark cloud. Lungs lined with fruit
flies, they exhale a muffled thanks for the wishes of happiness and celebration. Smiling eyes
gleam above a wall of blue before turning away as they return to their phone. It blinks awake
with a reminder to pick up their brother after school. Then another detailing the simplistically
elaborate plan their dad dreamt up for dinner. They like the message, unthinking as their throat
burns with developing sickness.
“Nineteen”
Juggling a bag, drink, and his phone, he waves his thanks to the driver and turns away.
Dragon puffs of air burst forth from his mouth as he steps gingerly around the sidewalk, back
still aching from being less aware just that morning. A bundle of friends drifts by, laughing as
one of them shoots off to slide across interlaced brick.
He flows around the group, phone sliding back into his pocket and free hand coming up
to adjust the canvas bag sliding off his shoulder. Thin plastic carves into his other hand, straining
against his pinky and ring fingers. Its weight pulls against the prematurely worn cartilage in his
wrist. The pain of it all burns with torturous cold. It’s just a few more steps and one cruel flight
of stairs before he returns home.
Then, it’s a process of shedding layers of jackets and bags before clearing a place amidst
a coating of study guides. A rattling tray of dice is unceremoniously poured into a drawstring
bag, their use nullified by the canceled game used to make room for a few hours of last-minute
studying. With that new space, he lays out food that clings to fragments of warmth, mixing
noodles and broth with a mountain of chicken and vegetables in a deli container. As he slurps up
a steaming forkful, his laptop is opened and navigated away from a mind-numbing wall of notes.
A disappointing sting twists at his mouth as he closes a newly completed character sheet.
Instead, with a movie pulled up and set to play, he lets the opening credits fade into the
background as he opens his phone to check into his flight. A throwaway message affirms its
landing time to his brother. He decides to call him anyway. The teenager on his screen almost
makes him forget about the round-faced, straw-haired boy that he used to be. He tries not to think
about the fact that his baby brother, this eternal twelve-year-old, is almost taller than him. Instead, he chooses to think about nothing beyond the aching pain in his wrist as it crackles with
lingering static.
“White Light”
Plastic snaps and splinters of teal and pink collapse into each other in an instant, reeling
back to lash at my hand. The pain of it rings out, that sharp sting stripping my senses down to
their most primal. A shout leaps from my mouth and the slinky falls to the ground, spiralling out
kaleidoscopically over concrete.
My brother runs over, muffling his laughter with one hand and holding the remaining
fragment of slinky with the other. He picks up the other half and holds it in front of my face. I
squint at it, massaging my fingers to eliminate the remaining fizz of pain.
“Look at that. I didn’t think it would actually break,” he says in awe.
“Yeah,” I take my half from him and stare at the sharp point of its end. The fade from
blue to green suddenly cut short by our force of will. Yellow and its eventual march through blue and pink is nonexistent, left to the swirls of color that my brother swings wildly through the air.
He flings it into a nearby tree, jumps up to tear it down.
The sun is setting, painting everything in that orange glow and seeping to rest behind my
eyelids. The stinging is gone. I idly toy with the twisting threads in my hand, overcome by the
weight of being able to separate every microcosm of this thing’s very being. The ability to
consider each minute fragment as the whole. I listen to the gentle rattling of plastic on plastic as I
pull it apart and clap it together like disappointing cymbals. I watch pink-blue-green be divided
into pink, blue, and green, and back again.
I turn to him, that familiar weight settling deep in my chest as I ask, “Want to do that
again?”
A creative nonfiction devotee, Dru Van Dyk has loved writing for as long as they can remember. While their style has evolved during their time at Northern Arizona University, the scale of their works always stays close to both of their homes: Colorado and Flagstaff. They can be found on Instagram @dru.vdk
