Page 31 of Past Present Future

When you sip my witch’s brew

I’ll add some broth

And stir the cauldron

And feed it back to you.”

The laughter comes easily, buoyed by the alcohol.

Kait slides her phone into her pocket and takes a little bow as we show our appreciation with a round of silent applause. “Thank you.”

“You have a gift,” Tegan declares.

“The gift of really freaking out my parents.”

“I’m confused,” I say. “Is it a love potion or poison?”

“Unclear.”

“I wonder if there’s some hidden meaning there,” says Sierra, ever the literary analyst. “Why go for the toenail when a fingernail would ostensibly be much easier to acquire?”

Felix volunteers, sharing a heartfelt ode to his childhood dog that makes a few of us tear up. Then Owen, who wore the bowler hat on the first day of classes, pulls out a battered notebook and reads a snippet of a short story in which everyone is possessed by alien life-forms except for him.

“Who’s next?” Tegan asks.

I chew on the inside of my cheek. Part of me wants to push myself, but I’m not sure I’m ready quite yet.

I think back to Bernadette’s, the club in Seattle where I read a piece of my work during that open mic night in June. Romance author Delilah Park had been in the audience. Listened to me. Somehow, I’d gotten onstage on wobbly legs and the words had spilled out.

Of course—Neil was there. At the time, that had made it seem all the more frightening, but maybe the truth was that his presence was a unique kind of comfort.

One that I don’t have here in Boston.

Unless I create it for myself.

So I lift my arm, a little shyly at first, and then stretch upward with more conviction. Maybe it’s the cheap wine or maybe it’s the literary camaraderie, but this is fun. “I’ll read. For context, this is a story I never finished about a girl who finds a lamp with a hot genie inside and falls in love with him, naturally. This is a scene where they’re arguing.”

“What more do you want from me, Belinda?” Axel threw up his hands exasperatedly.

I felt myself blushing, whether out of rage or lust, I couldn’t decide. What I said next was probably the most unpredictable thing I had ever said or ever would say.

“Damn it, Axel! I wish you would just kiss me.”

Suddenly, his whole facial expression softened. I was more than a bit taken aback when he spoke. I thought maybe he’d get up and leave, or turn me into a toad or something. But what he did was as far from turning someone into a toad as you can get.

“You don’t need to wish for that,” he murmured, and then he leaned in.

It was so easy to write back then, wasn’t it? Alone in my room, no pressure from anyone except myself—and that was barely pressure. I was writing purely for the love of it. Even if I can laugh at it, that girl was so carefree about it all. She kept it from people, sure, but when it was just her and the blank page… there was magic.

The night devolves into chaos, my head spinning delightfully and the laughter flowing more freely than the teen angst. We talk about the class, our pasts, our loftiest dreams for our writing.

“National Book Award or bust,” Tegan says, and we cheers to that.

Felix: “New York Times or bust.”

“I just want one person to tell me something I wrote made an impact on them,” Noor says, and all of us murmur that yes, we’d love that too.

Suddenly a too-bright light sweeps across the gazebo, one that isn’t coming from any of our phones.

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