Time for another night of babysitting grown ass men in MY coffee aisle fucking shit up

my take on the literary masterpiece, the chic diet

Firstly, I am no one. It’s part of my charm. My fifteen minutes of fame was years ago, when I had an instagram niche meme page. I didn’t even take any brand deals! And my posts averaged six thousand likes! Anyhow. I am hardly literate and well hydrated and carry a small sephora-CVS-hybrid worth in my mini tote bag. Here is my guide on how to live like me, the intermediate kitsch-rat, aspiring influencer. But like, in an apathetic, somewhat dissonant, ironic way. I like saying I live by dogmatic principles. But a lot of it, um, is just eating disorder rituals. But that’s not really important. You’re as hot as you say you are, and as much an authority on what you write so long as you say it with, you know, conviction. It’s kind of venerable how fucking delusional I am, actually. Giving any sort of advice like I’m anywhere close to the ritzy ideal of the amphetamine-areyouami label-american. New York, ideally. West Village, preferably. But I guess the kind of guide I can write is better suited to someone living in a suburb, in a house with the twelve-paned windows. I always thought those were so chic. SO quaint, in a somewhat luxe way. Like, Connecticut vibes. My parents used to drive me up there as a child to buy books and ice cream. Nowadays I’d opt for a matcha latte with novelty ice cubes, but I guess at the time it was pretty sweet. 

Because I popped a Vyvanse at like, 10pm, this next little bit could go one of two ways. I will write the most articulate, brilliant piece of literature of my life. Magnum opus, if there was a skinnier word for it. Or, I will get wrapped up doing something like folding all my last-season knits (which is part of my look, okay! I don’t have a job!) and fixating on a paragraph on how a girl’s collarbones are almost as identifying as a fingerprint, or a signature. I’m not a graphologist, but if you write your A’s with the little tail on top (like on a computer), you’re probably a snake. Nothing personal, just an observation. Also, I do have a biology final to study for. Not that I’m super anal, or even particularly committed to academia, but even in my precariously manicured (read that as separate terms; I did a good job on my nail polish, okay? But I happen to also be teetering on the brink of an epiphany or a collapse. Hence the use of the word precarious.) state, I know it’s important enough I can let one of my countless side-quests sit idle for a couple more days. 

The first section seems only natural to be about hydration. And the whole idea of drinking things, really. There was a section in The Chic Diet about Adderall dry-mouth, which deeply resonated with me. Once I bit off a chunk of a Nivea Strawberry Shine (my favorite lip balm, more on that later) and swished it around my mouth. Didn’t help. Really, really didn’t. Anyway, I suppose that even if it served no purpose for combatting my prevacatingly ingenious cottonmouth solution, I was able to milk a sentence or two out of the experience. “Do it for the Vine”, all grown up! And wearing bananapapaya resin hoops too. Side note, that Etsy shop is a parasocial enemy of mine. It stems from jealousy, which sucks, but hating from inside a club I’m adjacent to is much healthier than being a hateful individual towards people I would, you know, interact with. Daily. Or something. I stopped going to therapy because I felt stupid about going and I don’t live in the right kind of town to warrant vacuous $300 hours. Bitching about my well-adjusted parents and how desperately I wished my anxiety would just “go away” was plainly gross, and a waste. Like, pretty sure almost every problem I have could be solved by a couple painful conversations taking place during a hurricane. Such a shame it doesn’t rain much here. Anyhow, I digress. 

Staying hydrated. It is essential to my character, my persona, if you will; to never be without either an elegant metal bottle (I’m loyal to the smooth enamelled S’well ones, printed to look like marble or a semi holographic solid) or a little 16oz tumbler with a metal straw. Hydroflasks were some of the worst things to happen to society. I want to preface this claim with the fact that I wanted one in the same way a teenage girl wants a new iPhone so she can keep up appearances with her dermatologist-dad friends who still have the XR, by the way. But I ended up spending the money on like, a minidress at Brandy Melville before it fled my city. Or maybe a Fresh Sugar tinted lipbalm. For the better, even though the dress has a busted zipper now and the lipbalm tube has inevitably gotten dinged and dented by the other contents of my mini-totebag. Unlike a car, though, a couple scuffs on your laptop or your luxury lipbalm tube looks kind of cool. Like, you’re not someone who values the pristine, unused quality of an item that was ambiguously intended to be used versus displayed on Instagram.  Now, I’m wondering why this paragraph about hydration is so fucking impossible to stay on track for. I literally drink several litres of water a day, and more tea on top of that. And sometimes an almond milk latte if I can budget it in. Not that I’m so anorexic I can’t afford a 45cal latte. They’re just not that important to me. Anyhow. Drinking lukewarm (on the cool side) water is better than ice-cold. Partially because I just get it out of the tap of my ensuite and I can’t be bothered to wait for it to run cold enough every time, and it just seems wasteful. Plus, there is something so.. skinny about drinking water at an “obscure” temperature. Trust me, I want to know why my thought process is like this too. My favorite tea is blueberry tea foraged in a side aisle at my local supermarket. I love a good commercial, high-end steep or fruit infusion as much as the next girl. Maybe more. My pantry is filled with tins labelled with things like “emerald jade organic” and “magic potion”, which is really just currants and butterfly pea flowers. But there is a necessary glamor about drinking dirt-cheap tea on the daily. Seriously, a box of 25 sachets is like, $3. At a higher point with my, um, Adderall problem, I spent like several times that on pills. I didn’t really need to include that, and could have linked the price point to the cost of a drugstore lipbalm, but I wrote it in. And I’m married to it, stubbornly, as all amateur writers should be when they wittle in a somewhat indecorous little joke. This tea is sooo good because it has a strong fruit-reminiscent taste (not as sweet as a fresh blueberry, but who wants that anyway?), it’s zero-calorie, it’s the most GORGEOUS color ever. The latte, the third drink in my little trifecta, is nothing special. But necessary. The trick is to use a milk frother to whip up sugar free syrup with instant coffee and a little bit of hot water in a glass. It’ll make the most luscious foam.. Top it off with almond milk. My dad is a coffee purist, owning both an upstairs keurig AND a downstairs one (among other more analogue methods, but I can’t name-drop, so what’s the point?), so he hates this drink. Now, calling oneself a plebian is so unglamorous and teetering on self-deprecating territory, dangerously close to insecurity. But I can use it here because I am at least posh enough to have a different pair of earrings for every outfit I could possibly come up with, and I only wear Patagonia if I am in a situation where I just have to wear fleece. Like I was saying. It’s such a simple drink, certainly not a delicacy, and… I had a joke about the word plebian but I keep getting up to refill my water and I fear I have forgotten about it. 

Next section; the importance of a good tinted balm

In the intro I alluded to how a girl’s collarbones function essentially as an identifier, the way a signature or fingerprint does. This is a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But one’s ultimate tinted lipbalm is  actually extremely indicative about who you are, as a person, as a member of society, even… 

If you are loyal to Dior Lipglow, I have a couple questions. One; did you shoplift one tube, once, and refill it with cheaper stuff afterwards? I did that. I consider it one of my better-kept secrets, but now you know. Might as well explain the catalyst for my parent’s first separation now, and the horrifying experience that was meeting my dad’s Manhattan sugar baby (?) at the age of thirteen, wearing an overalls dress from, like, Topshop or something else equally embarrassing. .. Kidding. I digress. It’s such a fancy lipbalm, and good too! It smells like thin mints! But I could just never justify cell phone monthly installation payment money on something I will inevitably talk off. I do own three, but two I stole (before I lost the nerve, somewhat unfortunately) and one, a boy(not)friend bought for me. This is not something I feel any remorse about, because his house was easily four thousand square feet and his sisters had a dedicated all-glass room for their shared peloton. Oil money. Ugh!

My personal favorite lip balm, and I have tried a frightening amount, has got to be the Nivea Fruit Shine collection. The frosted one is shit-ugly. Hideous. But the strawberry one is the love of my life. It’s such a pleasant red, looking healthy and rejuvenated and really completes any look. Only downside is it will always, hopefully not always, remind me of Charles. Kissing Charles, specifically. And him asking me what lipbalm it was, because he knew I was somewhat frivolous and definitive and would have a very long answer. But for whatever reason, I simply stated it was from “out of town”. Not really sure why I said that, but it plagues me (minorly) to this day. Of all the things to make up.. .. The peach one is a perfectly demure spring classic shade. Cherry exists too, but the only tube I have ever had the fortune of owning was purchased in Costa Rica and lost somewhere on the way home. Honestly tragic, it was the juiciest shade. Blackberry is perfect too, but I have to layer it with either peach or untinted lipbalm to avoid what I imagine TooPoor would choose if she believed in tinted lipbalm. I don’t mean this hatefully, I think she’s a queen, but super dark, smudgy makeup suits the eyes better in my opinion. Or something. Or something.

Afraid to bore the reader, I have to move on now. Maybe at a later date I will release an addendum on my ultimate lipbalm buying guide. But also, that is so deeply personal (and everyone needs the excuse of “hunting for the perfect staple shade!!”), so it is really not my place to have any authority on something so intimate and subjective. Etcetera. 

Moving on; Decorating your room

Here is a section I lifted out of my memoir document. It fits, because as enigmatic as I hope I am, I am also quite unchanging.

 I just pushed three hangers and two tiny strappy tops with the tags still on, off my bed. Most nights, all, these days, actually; I spend in my large but cluttered bedroom. I have a little ensuite with a jetted tub I’ve never used because I just never get around to it. There’s a plush grey rug, spanning the expanse of the room (covering an ugly cherry wood that doesn’t match the rest of the house; no clue why. I never asked, and the previous owners were eager to sell so they could finally ditch this town and retire in Montreal for the bagels, or Hawaii for the monk seals. Point is, I’ll never know) with loose beads and loose pills and little shards of glass from plier-crushed beads. I vacuum every day. The whole room tells you exactly the kind of person I am; the clutter I possess, the encapsulation of the projects I start, start, start and the hours I don’t sleep for and the clothes I tried on (these to sell, these to cut up with kitchen scissors; thrifted lululemon and aritzia and heaps of knits and plaid fabric..) I would not say the room is a mess. Lived in, maybe. Chopsticks and mugs and gum wrappers. Single dangle earrings. I just finished the last of my Creme Brulee eos lipbalm; disguised as a relic of 2015, I was gifted it Christmas of ‘20. I think my next waxy conquest will be a tinted Burt’s one I palmed a while back, before I lost the nerve. Peering around the room you will see shopping bags strewn about the mouth of my walk-in closet. Every surface has something shiny or colorful stacked up on it. Cluttered, busy, but intentional. Except for the walls, which are bare. Bare and gray and miles-tall when I lie flat on my back, high out of my mind, willing things to change but knowing I’m responsible for a first step I will always be too scared for. Bare, pristine, no gumtack. Empty, Like they’re waiting. I wait around a lot. It makes sense. That was an awful lot of words about my stupid blank walls when truly it does not bother me that much; I really just don’t get around to it. I have other things on the ground to tend to, like post-email nausea, addressing envelopes, marrying wire and bead.  Writing a document I care about because I am determined and I am alive, alive, alive, goddammit. 

Excerpt over. The memoir is coming out when I get famous, or something earth shattering happens. Like I become the world’s least remarkable entrepreneur, and I get retweeted by Colorpop. I don’t want to be the next Elizabeth Wurtzel. I read two of her memoirs one restless night, absorbing it to make up for the nutrients I didn’t that day (you can laugh. I think that is pretty clever), heart breaking a little bit. She writes about her struggles so intrinsically, you either get it, or you don’t. Anyway. She had the books and the fame from it, and she wrote more memoirs than I think a single person should. That is admirable. Aspirational, even. But I do not want to be like her. Where was I? Oh. Yes. Decorating/adorning/filling your room. Your room should serve as the kind of place to watch a movie (if you believe in film. I don’t) and put on ridiculous glittery eye makeup, or smoke an ~artistic cigarette~ or stay up all night on the phone, which is different from staying up all night simply on your phone. Chatting with someone you are tepidly in love with is much more exciting. Not chic as the whole affair is so juvenile, but fun regardless. It’s somewhere to keep your worldly possessions, too. I know I have a lot! Also, it is kind of thrilling to hide things in your room in little crevices only you know about. Now, unfortunately, everyone reading this will know too. But, like, I trust you not to really.. do anything about it. I keep my extra juul pods in the sliding box my apple pencil came in. That box is almost more useful than the pencil itself. I’m somewhat morally opposed to the iPad. Whole culture is so embarrassing! I have a tea tin with an ounce of golden teacher shrums in it. This is tossed in my closet among tins filled with other things, like lace trim and buttons. Which makes it actually a pretty terrible hiding spot, I see now… Anyhow. Keeping benign little secrets like that is so fun. You can tell I don’t have siblings. I sort of wish I did, but it is easier to believe there is something aristocratic about being an only child. Not sure if older-sister me would be egalitarian enough to share things. But that’s prophesying, which is kind of a waste of time. I live in the now, in a room positively cluttered with meaningless things that mean the world to me, chewing on my lip because my mouth is just so dry and 5gum is just not an after-8 indulgence. To live truly kitschly, you have to have somewhat hideous decor. Now, do not confuse dissonant, or incoherent, with what I mean by “hideous decor”. The kitsch room has as many surfaces to look at as possible, while also shying away from too many shelving units. Then you risk your room looking like a storage unit or something. When my mom renovated (re: paid someone to do it) our New York house so we could sell it, all our stuff was stacked up in a Cubesmart self storage. It was sort of horrifying, seeing my childhood home reduced to plastic storage tubs piled what felt like thirty feet high. Anyway. It’s just not an  inviting way to store things; I imagine it makes your room look like your stuff is all trapped in gelatin. The more fussy, tiny things you have out in the open, the better. Nail polish. Earring trees. Bowls full of rings and lighters and water color pans perched on your windowsill. A rack with the tackiest assortment of knits and bucket hats and baguette bags. And so forth.. Quickly surveying someone’s room is so telling. Bonus points if all your books are spine-in, except for your favorite ones, because you don’t want people to get the wrong idea. (that you read). 

personal

I’ve been able to sleep until six the last few days.  I’ve been on this miserable eight to four sleep schedule.  I ordered a silent vortex coffee grinder specifically to be less annoying in this regard.   Even if I could literally just grind the coffee the night before.  I also bought a rug cleaner for the first time in my life.  It’s amazing the things you don’t realize you need for a home let alone an office.  Last night I received an email from LinkedIn asking me to weigh in on a conversation about higher education.  The only public facing social networking site I really use actively I pay for.  They bought a service called Linda.com years ago.  It was probably the most important site to me for instructional videos.  These days it is included on the platform so I spend a fair amount of time keeping my job skills plausible.  I learned pretty hard the last six months that my professional network had all but evaporated.  A hard thing to face when you worked with your friends for over twenty years.  But people have to move on.  I sometimes make decisions that seem smarter in retrospect.  You could even mistake it for premonition but I just call it good judgement.  I made the decision to start the process of becoming a LLC.  It was pretty easy to do once you paid the four hundred dollars.  There’s services out there online that will do the legal part for you.  I chose VS consulting as the name which becomes real around mid December if the Secretary of State accepts it.  They asked me to cut the ribbon virtually.  I congratulated myself in silence but this is pretty much the first place I’ve shared the news with.  My mom didn’t quite understand what I had done and my dad is an accountant.  I haven’t told him yet either.  I got the idea seeing some of the people who still work at my old job starting their own side businesses.  Crazy to see people still employed having extra jobs in this economy.  But for the most part I don’t really compare my experience to anyone’s anymore.  So I just look forward.  There are a lot of ways I generate income.  Some of them aren’t very lucrative.  I released another ep Monday.  Three of my friends from across the world I never really talk to bought it immediately.  It makes sense because my music is how they know me.  So that’s how they keep up with me.  From there, Bandcamp revenue share Friday passed with little or no fanfare.  It still doesn’t change the fact I owe taxes on the income above a certain amount if I report it.  We all know how the rich hate paying those taxes.  And the whole world now knows that I work for a LLC on the premier professional social networking site.  It’s a win win for me because I can still look for a job but I appear employed.  It’s also a nice buffer in these times for your resume.  In retrospect, every article I read says the end of December is a perfect time to start your own business.  Mostly because January 1st allows you to start with a fresh balance sheet and good accounting.  So if anything my New Year’s resolution is to be cleaner and more concise about everything.  Even if the rest of society’s ethics and accountability gets muddier as COVID-19 and the election process drags on.  The only things I really have to worry about this next year are documenting my spending, opening up a business checking account, and deducting business expenses.  Sounds like a job to me.

There are tools you need for a job.  I bought a year long subscription to Creative Cloud.  I had it for free for years.  I worked in a visual communications department for ten years.  I saw the most amazing work every morning hung up outside my office.  It inspired me to learn about print making and screen printing.  I even owned Adobe stock at one point because I realized Microsoft Office wasn’t doing my resume much justice.  I shudder to think how many jokes were cracked by the Workday staff over my Chanel submission.  Truth is nobody called back for interviews at any of the places I applied.  And this doesn’t really stop me from keeping my eyes out for a position anywhere.  But if we are talking about generating income, I can do that all by myself.  I can also hire people and deduct more business expenses if I felt that was an option.  Which starts to get into the meat of why the job market and economy is so fucked up in America.  A lot of people didn’t fall in line on a balance sheet when COVID-19 came crashing down last February.  And when the fiscal year came time to start fresh, they thinned their liabilities.  Companies are now thinking in quarters rather than years at this point.  And small businesses like myself also have to think the same because I now owe the IRS money every three months.  The accounting side of it doesn’t really bore me.  I’ve done every IT role in the business pretty much over twenty years.  I guess that’s why LinkedIn calls on me to offer an opinion.  I’ve never had to be this hardcore about the finances.  Another great reason why I spend so much time in spreadsheets aside from writing on the internet.  It’s much easier to approach a professional consultant with twenty years of experience with an invoice than it is to tether them to your payroll with benefits.  I’m always having to think six months ahead myself.  This has an advantage to it insofar that I don’t often look back.  You pay your taxes and you move on.  There are many things I could do to generate income.  I could make a zine and sell it quarterly on bandcamp along with shirts.  I could post flyers around the neighborhood offering after christmas tech support.  I could scour the net for opportunities to audit galvanized IT departments.  I could do all this with more confidence if I could say I am employed.  I could also hire someone to help me.  But I could do none of this and deduct expenses without applying for a sole proprietorship.  And truth be told I already have to claim this for the New York Stock Exchange.  So if you had to put a label on what I do now it isn’t really that much different from any other business.  The state’s richest men started as LLCs.  They’re also the biggest pricks who pay the least taxes.  Trickle down economics is a funny concept.  Businesses offer jobs they deduct from their income therefore paying less to the pool.  This would be fine for small income generating businesses.  But Ken Griffin would say otherwise as he and other rich people benefit from this structure.  They say the American Dream is owning your own business.  So welcome to my personal nightmare.  I hope you don’t mind me taking the itemized deductions after how I’ve been treated.

I don’t actually know how it’s going to work out.  I just know I don’t want to appear unemployed while corporate America expects me to wink and make them more money.  There are investments that have worked out for me as volatile as they might be.  One Chinese company I invested in has made the CEO twelve times richer.  I own four hundred and twenty shares of that company in a brokerage.  My intent is to hold on to them for the long term possibly making someone richer at my own risk.  I could short the entire next year to my heart’s content.  My credit scores have gone through the roof.  Nobody has had any answers for me on what to do.  Nobody has coached me.  I read.  I think.  I come up with solutions to my problems.  And I put money in the right places.  That doesn’t mean anything is a sure thing.  Especially when my government finds it more advantageous to punish other countries while forgetting about it’s own people.  I am absolutely in the dark about everything.  Everything except running my own business in America.  I already have income I have to report over the next three years due the CARES act.  So that is income I will deduct.  This is how it works here in America.  You seize the means of production and you go to work.  If it seems backward for me, you wouldn’t know the half.  My life is so fucked up in terms of how hazy and confusing other people have made it.  People invaded my life on pretenses that I can’t even begin to explain.  And part of being a strong, responsible adult is engineering your way out of these problems.  And for the most part, I’ve engineered myself into a fort that overlooks the CTA train.  And a small portion of that fort can be written off as an office.  Which in some ways if you do the math makes rent and utilities cheaper in the long run.  I don’t make the rules.  This is how America works.  A LLC gets a tax id number.  It allows you better options for retirement savings with a SEP IRA.  You can apply for business accounts and waive taxes on business purchases.  Even the family dollar around the corner has a sign in the window reminding me I can apply for tax free status.  Maybe they’re mostly to blame for planting the idea in my head.  I’m the one who made the call to apply.  Nobody held my hand.  You could also get audited by the IRS.  And I’m sure the IRS would have to figure out how I got into this situation in the first place.  Maybe they’d offer me a job. There’s other fantasies in my life I could imagine happening more than that waking nightmare.  Like actually having money to retire.  I could be travelling around the world cleaning up the mess mark to market accounting has left on big business.  The scars on economies the rich have pock marked on the middle class.  Or I could just keep generating income and be my own boss here in my kitchen.  The one thing I do know is that is sexier to be confident enough to move ahead with your own plan slowly than to short a bunch of stocks disruptively and brag about it on the internet.  You could call it my three year plan.  Don’t ask me how bonds factor in that equation.  I’m not a spy.  What I am is a guy that is trying to be the solution and not the victim.  And that guy doesn’t ever want to be a burden on the people I love.  So that guy is going to keep doing what he does.  And I’m not going to lie that you inspire me to do so.  As sexy and confident as I’m born to be.  <3 Tim

The Photograph

The prompt was to START a story with words on the back of a photograph and I just couldn’t be bothered to keep my mind on that. Originally I started with it, but I lost my thought in the process of telling the story and the whole thing changed.

Instead, you get this.

The Photograph

by MH Tucker

The old attic was something that Kaliegh had always been afraid of. The place was never used and to get up to it you had to pull on a string that dangled from the ceiling at the end of the hallway in her grandmother’s house. That string brought down stairs which also had to be pulled  and by the time all of that was done, the open mouth of darkness was ready to swallow you up.

Darkness and tight spaces didn’t agree with her, neither did the idea of rooms seldom used. Using a place kept the bugs and the spiders away. Not using a place, well, she didn’t want to think about it. There was a similar attic out in the garage behind the house and that one was always full of raccoons. Their nests, built of insulation pulled from the walls, would always come tumbling down on your head along with all the poop that was in them. While no one had ever had such a shower in the home attic, Kaleigh still made sure that her brother was the one at the bottom of the steps when the mouth of their destination opened up for them.

“Okay, you first,” she said, reaching out to place both palms on the ladder from behind as if she needed to steady it.

Her brother narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you going to do, send me flying?”

“Huh?” Kaliegh blinked and stared at his face, framed perfectly between the steps of the very solid ladder that she clung to.

“You’re on the wrong side. Push from there and the whole thing closes up. You want me squashed?” He slapped her hand off of the pale wood and tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “Come this way, coward.”

She frowned at him and thrust her hands to her hips, but didn’t move. “I’m not a coward.”

“Won’t go up here though, will you?” Her brother tipped his chin up toward the darkness.

“I will, just not until you’ve gone up first,” she huffed.

Rolling his eyes, Jason started his climb. He was all confidence and perfection, something she wished that she could claim to have even a smattering of. The square patch of oblivion sucked up his head, then his shoulders, and finally his stomach before he let out a grunt and the rest of his body disappeared in one swift motion.

“You okay?” She called up to him, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Yeah.” The answer came with another grunt and was followed by the sound of something scraping against the floor. “Just hard to get up those last few steps. Kinda full up here.”

Kaleigh imagined piles of boxes topped with quilts and lamp shades, smothering the attic above her with the Hollywood ideal made from every horror movie ever imagined. She hated horror movies almost as much as she hated the room above her head.

“Okay,” Jason said at last. She heard a click and then the black square over her head was replaced with the sharp golden glow of a bare light bulb. “Come on up.”

After taking in a deep breath, Kaleigh braced herself for the unknown and began to climb, forcing herself to take each step. There were only seven flat slabs of wood for her feet to touch, but the effort of pushing through her fears left her in a sweat by the time her head broke through the gap in the floor. Jason’s hand reached down in front of her face before she had a chance to take in what might be around her, almost making her leap back with surprise.

“Let me help you up,” he insisted even as she yelped and tried to jerk away. 

“You’re gonna fall. Take my hand.”

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She complied, but only so that she could slap her palm to his to try and make him pay for the torments he was putting her through. Thanks to her position she couldn’t put enough force behind the movement and she ended up swatting more than striking, which she found utterly disappointing.

Before long she was standing beside her brother in a small space with an inverted V made of golden beams of wood. The floor was cleaner than she expected, empty in the center, with the traditional box piles pushed to the edges of the space. No lamp shades or quilts, but there was a stack of blankets on the floor. They had a dip in the center of them, as if someone’s cat had once used it as a place to sleep and left behind the evidence as a void.

“Well,” Jason said as he let out a long breath. “I guess we should start going through all of this stuff. Figure out what we’re going to keep and what needs to go before the house sells.”

“How are we supposed to know what Mom wants to keep and what she wants to toss?” Kaleigh eyed the plain brown cubes with suspicion. Their task seemed a whole lot bigger without any sort of parameters to fall back on.

Jason shrugged. “All we have to do is figure out what’s inside and label anything that isn’t. Everyone else will do the rest once they’re done dealing with the furniture.”

“Sure seems strange, sending Grandma off to some apartment building when she doesn’t really need to go.” Kaleigh patted the blankets and a plume of dust erupted from them. Any thought she’d had of sitting on them rushed out of her mind faster than the particles that filled the air. Choosing to kneel on the hard wood of the floor instead, she reached for the nearest box and opened it. Already at work on the other side of the room, Jason grunted through the effort of moving one of boxes to where he could open it. “Better for her to go now than wait until it is too late. It’s a good place and there will be people there for her if she needs them.”

“Yeah, well, she won’t.” The need to defend her grandmother’s strength and longevity filled Kaleigh’s heart. “It’ll be ages before she really needs a place like that.”

There was a pause and the sound of cardboard scraping against itself before Jason chuckled. “Seriously. How many cookbooks does anyone need?” Kaleigh lifted up an envelope of sorts from the box she was investigating. “This one is all pictures.” The yellowed flap drifted up as she displayed the evidence of her claim, tempting her with a glimpse of what was held inside.

“We don’t have time to go snooping,” Jason reminded her, even as her fingers pulled the prints from their snug home.

Ignoring his words, Kaleigh began to flip through the stack, trying to work out where each point in history might have been captured. None of the pictures seemed to be from here. Instead, they were snapshots of a life somewhere else, in a place filled with weathered wood, metal railings, and people in fancy outfits. “Wonder where these were taken,” she muttered before turning the stack over in hopes of finding some kind of answer.

Rectangle after rectangle came up empty, giving her little hope until she reached one that read simply, “Not Georg.”

“Huh. Someone can’t spell, I guess.” Muttering to herself, Kaleigh turned the picture around to stare at the grayish image there. In the distance, on an old, wooden pier, a man was walking away. He seemed large, though there wasn’t really any evidence to prove that since he was alone, and his balding head was tipped upward. It wasn’t as if he were looking up at the sky, but maybe to something off in the distance that the photographer refused to let anyone see. In one hand he held a jacket, in the other, what looked like a scrap of paper. “I have so many questions,” Kaleigh told herself as her brother leaned closer, unable to resist a peek. When she noticed him looking she turned the image around to show him the words and he frowned.

“Of all the things to put on a picture.” His brow furrowed in confusion. “I mean. Grandma knew some famous people, maybe it’s someone’s way of hiding who the person really is? Looks like he’s dressed for a show, right?”

Kaleigh went back through the images to weigh the visuals against her brother’s suggestion. Most of them looked like they could have been taken at a theater or a party either before or after. She nodded. “Maybe. We could always go ask.” “Ask me what?” Their grandmother’s head popped up from the hole in the floor, her bright smile lighting the room more than the bare bulb ever could.

“What’s this picture all about?” Kaleigh held it up even though she was sure she was too far away for any details to be clear. “It says ‘Not George’ but George is spelled wrong.”

“That’s because the man in that photo is German. His name really is Georg.” Her grandmother pronounced the name “Ge-org” as she eased her way up the ladder and pulled herself to a sitting position on the floor. Her wrinkled hand reached out and Kaleigh handed over the photograph, scooting closer in hopes of getting the whole story.

Her grandmother stared down at the image, one finger running along the wood of the pier as if the grains were truly raised and could scratch at her skin. “A friend of ours was in a show that night and we all went to go see it. I took this in what turned out to be the last moments of his life as a single man. Didn’t know it at the time of course, but he was about to meet the woman of his dreams.” “So why does it say he’s not Georg then?” Kaleigh’s tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar pronunciation of the name, but if her grandmother was offended by the attempt, she didn’t say anything.

“Ah. When he met his girl, she asked if that was his name and he just said ‘no’ as if he hadn’t understood a word she’d been saying.”

“But he wouldn’t, though, right? If he was German?” Jason’s voice came at them through the squeak of permanent marker as it scraped out a message on the cardboard he held.

Their grandmother laughed. “No, he understood her. She was German too. He was so awestruck that he just couldn’t get his tongue to work.” She sighed and closed her eyes, then handed the photo back to Kaleigh with a sad smile. “Probably the best picture I’ve ever taken,” she said. “One of those accidents that comes along once in a lifetime.”

History seemed to fill the room in that moment, pressing in on Kaleigh from all around. She got the impression that there was much more to this story than what they were being told, but she didn’t want to push any further. Maybe in a time when things weren’t so hectic she would ask about it again and be able to hear more of this mysterious tale of the man who wasn’t someone even though he was. For now, she put the image away with the rest and picked up her marker, forcing it to squeak out the word “photos” before capping it again.

When that job was done, her grandmother clapped her hands once, and made a joyful announcement. “Now. I know you two just started, but lunch is ready so how about we go eat and then you can finish this up with full stomachs?” Always thinking with his stomach, Jason dropped his marker and made a dash to help their grandmother down the attic steps. “Sounds great.”

Their grandmother laughed and thanked him, then made her way slowly through the mouth of the room and back into the rest of the world that she would soon be leaving behind. Kaleigh watched her go, then looked over at the box and imagined all of the memories trapped inside, bits of history that meant so much to some people and yet nothing to the rest of the world.

“It’s a box of magic,” she told herself. “And I won’t lose the key to keeping it alive.”