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Dustin glides his fingertips over the guitar strings. The heat and damp of sweat spreads over his shoulders as he softly lets out lyrics penned days ago. Where in the world did you go? I don’t know, I don’t know. Amber was supposed to be at his side. Amber was supposed to sing along, echo the lyrics.
A platter of carrot cake muffins and a pitcher of water sits beside the open mic sign-up sheet. Dustin scribbled ‘Dustin and Amber’ on the last line, then sent a text:  ‘We’re on in a few. Get here!’
“Dustin, sit down. You’re making me tense,” said his father, running a callused hand over his gray ponytail. His mother’s rings clinked as she wiped her glasses clean with the hem of her burgundy sweater, “She must have got caught up with something – lost track of time or fell asleep. She’s a good friend. She wouldn’t just abandon you.”
‘Seriously, get here,’ Dustin sent another text.
Finally, he gripped the neck of his guitar, inhaled and began to sing on his own.
Katie sits at a Parisian chair, winding an indigo scarf around her long white hands while Tyler’s straight-rimmed cap bobs along to the beat of the song. A few of Dustin’s familiar coffee shop customers make up the sparse audience:  Allen, the antique book collector with frazzled white hair; Margo and Bill, aspiring nature fanatics who explore the Door County parks and shores with vanilla lattes in hand. Suzanne, Amber’s fellow waitress sips a mug of tea while her children drink hot chocolate topped off with whip cream. Amber should be here. Amber was supposed to be here.

•                •                •

Dustin scans a freezer door at the Piggly Wiggly, a six-pack of Spotted Cow begins to weigh heavy on his gloved fingers. Tombstone? Jacks? DiGiorno? He rubs his cap against his itchy forehead.
“Can I ever go here without running into someone I know?” asks Amber, walking towards him with a smile.
“She lives,” mumbles Dustin. He wraps an arm around Amber’s shoulder, squeezing the soft, puffy down of her teal coat. Johnny Mathis croons from the speakers. Someone wants to kiss you and hold you tight.
“I’m mulling over the pizza selection,” he says, propping the six-pack in the crook of his elbow, thoughtfully rubbing his beard. She laughs. He peers in her blue plastic shopping basket – large pasta shells, three packages of rigatoni cheese, a green pepper, Ragu spaghetti sauce. “Pasta night?”
“I just need some Texas toast.”
“You know there’s like 800 calories per piece?”
“Thanks for looking out for my figure.”
“I’m kind of mad at you,” Dustin bites his lower lip, opens the freezer and pulls out a deluxe Jack’s pizza. Someone wants to say hello; I know he’ll never let you know.
“I just – stage fright.”
“Not what I heard.”
Amber exhales. Dustin notices a splotch of foundation over a pimple on Amber’s forehead, scrunched in thought, then the bottle of Sutter Home merlot beneath a generic bag of mozzarella cheese in her basket.
“He’s supposed to pick up the wine, by the way,” Dustin closes the freezer door.
“Now you’re a dating expert?” Amber forces a laugh.
“Amber, I know this guy. I went to school with him. He likes tractors and country music and hunting. He will never, ever leave this place.”
“Maybe I won’t either.”
“He is not…you.”

•                •                •

Weeks after leaving the Madison campus, settling into the apartment above his parent’s garage, Dustin walked down the familiar rickety wooden steps to Tyler’s basement, guitar in hand.
“The ladies love me,” said a brown-haired boy in cargo shorts perched at the edge of a worn blue couch. “I put a few extra cherries in their Old Fashions and bam – love.”
“Schmoozer,” smiles the girl leaning against him, wearing a lemon-colored sundress, the same color of her hair.
“Schmoozer? I’m a salesman,” he removed the cigarette hanging from his lips and pressed his forehead against hers.
“Guys, this is Dustin,” said Tyler. “This is Martin and Amber.”
“Hey man,” cigarette smoke spilled from Martin’s lips. Amber raised her can of PBR.
“A musician, sweet,” Martin pointed to Dustin’s guitar then rested his elbow on Amber’s tan knee.
“Aspiring,” said Dustin. Tyler handed Dustin a beer.
“I’m feeling good about this,” said Martin. “Magic. This will be magic. You live up here?”
“Grew up here, now live up here. I just graduated from Madison.”
“With what?” asks Amber.
“Philosophy,” Dustin sits on a dusty recliner, sets his beer on a coffee table littered with empty bottles of Bud Light, cans of PBR, and an ashtray stuffed with crooked cigarette stubs.
“Deep, man. What do you do?”
“I’m a barista,” Dustin laughed, “a walking cliché.”

Dustin and Martin set the guitars over their knees, played some standards, some Bob Dylan, some Rolling Stones, some Beatles, while Amber hummed and sang along, a sheen of sweat gleaming over the bridge of her freckled nose.

•                •                •

The winter air assaults Dustin as he follows Amber in the dimly lit parking light. She struggles to place the paper bag in her backseat.
“I’m sorry,” he sets his six-pack on the top of her car, the frozen pizza beside it. “You forgot your Texas toast.”
“I know,” Amber stands straight, shuts the car door and pulls keys from her coat pocket.
“Want me to go get you some?”
“No.”
“There is another open mic next week.”
“No, Dustin. No,” Amber shakes her head. “You’re always on my case about doing this and doing that, singing and writing songs. I don’t want to.”
“You did when Martin was here.”
“Oh my God, I am so over that.”
“So now you’re into making crappy plates of pasta for hicks?”
“He’s a farmer. He puts food on people’s table.”
“What a hero.”
“What do you do? Serve overpriced coffee and write sappy songs. You should just go back to Madison.”
“Whatever,” Dustin turns towards his jeep. Amber hesitates, then shuts her car door, turns over the engine. Dustin realizes he is empty handed. The car squeals off – brown glass bottles crash, sending fizzling liquid and foam over the black pavement, over the frozen pizza.

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    “Fill this out, and just sign this one,” the woman behind the counter hands Amber a few papers scored with blank lines. “You don’t have insurance, correct?”
“Yeah,” Amber studies the bronze highlights gleaming from the woman’s scalp like sunbeams. She coughs, sniffles. “Correct.” She pulls a navy blue pen from an opaque coffee cup, as opaque as her skin, as the January sky looming outside the brick building.
“Okay, you need to fill out this one too. Have a seat over there,” the woman gestures to a green chair beneath a poster of a square-jawed man and woman with pouty lips beaming with health and happiness.
Amber rubs her blonde hair behind an ear. A man with a thick salt and pepper mustache looks up from an issue of People. “My wife can’t get out of this waiting room to save her life,” he chuckles. Amber smiles and scribbles her last name, first name, and middle initial.
“She talks and talks and talks,” says the man. “Do your boyfriend a favor and don’t talk that much.”
“Okay,” Amber offers half a smile, returns to completing the forms. Her ankles ache as she stands. Her forearms and fingers ache as she returns the papers.
“Deb,” the mustached-man exhales. “You ready yet?”
“Tom and I hosted the kids and grandkids for Christmas,” says Deb, wearing a blue headband over her frizzy blonde hair. She speaks to a young woman, nodding politely, holding a toddler with tortoise shell glasses on his plump, pink face. “We had a big dinner. The kids each made us an ornament.”
“How cute,” says the woman, adjusting the child resting on her hip. Amber coughs, returns to the seat and pulls her cell phone from her purse.
“Though, our eldest grandkid, Sam,” Deb continues, “he nearly started a hymnal on fire during the candle lighting at church.”
“Oh, no!” the woman laughs.
“I told Carrie – my daughter – I told her he was too short to hold that candle.”
“Would you give her a smack in the pants and tell her it’s time to go?” the man says as Amber closes her message-free phone.
“Not sure that’s appropriate,” Amber responds with a raspy voice, applying pomegranate-flavored Burt’s Bees chap stick to her still chapped lips, chapped from kissing Brian what-was-his-last-name? on New Year’s Eve. He wore a red and black flannel shirt tucked into faded jeans, a camouflage cap Amber lifted as the crowd sang along to Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup.”
“I hate Toby Keith!” she shouted. Brian smirked. The glitter from Amber’s lip gloss shimmered on his lips.
“Why?” He took a swig from his bottle of Budweiser.
“He is mean,” Amber’s black heels tottered beneath her. “He doesn’t like the Dixie Chicks because of what they said about George Bush. And I love the Dixie Chicks.”
Brian nodded and leaned closer, Red Solo Cup. I fill you up. Let’s have a party! Let’s have a party!
“Oh, horrible!” Amber laughed.
Katie tugged her tight black dress farther down her thighs as she sauntered between Amber and Brian, brushed her black bangs from her thick lashes and pecked Amber on the cheek, “Happy New Year’s, roomie!” Tyler wandered behind, kissed Amber and placed his plastic “Happy New Year’s” top hat on her head.
“Casey’s harassing strangers again,” Tyler shook his head and moved along to Casey, eyes glazed with drunkenness as he stepped closer to a bald-headed man.
“What did you say about me?” Casey yelled.
“Nothing. Calm down,” the man responded.
“Hey, you like venison jerky?” Brian shouted to Amber.
“Did you end up getting a deer?” Amber smiled. Brian passed her his bottle and held up seven fingers.
“Seven-point buck,” he said. “Hey, you Polar Plunging tomorrow?”

 •            •           •

“Oh, yep, those glands are swollen,” says the blue-eyed nurse who smells as fresh as a dryer sheet. “How long have you had these symptoms?”
“Three or four days.” The paper beneath Amber crinkles as she crosses one booted-foot over the other. She wonders if the nurse would seek out the possible source of the sickness:  kissing a stranger or jumping into frigid Lake Michigan with a crowd of half-naked strangers.

 •            •           •

“How did you even meet Brian?” Katie asks while hazelnut-flavored coffee brews in their meager kitchen.
“I served him at the restaurant,” Amber tightens the fleece blanket around her shoulders.
“That is too weird. His mom used to babysit me,” Katie pulls on the strings of her hooded Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. “They had so many cats in their barn; I loved it. Me and Brian and his brother would go up in his Dad’s deer stand and play. He would pretend he was a soldier and shoot bad guys from the stand.” Katie bites her lip and speaks softly, as if to herself, “I wonder if I have any yearbooks around?”
“I don’t need to see his yearbook picture.”
“Did you see that scar on his face? Down his cheek?”
“Yeah.”
“That was from a snowmobile accident a few years ago. It was bad. Like, he’s lucky. He nearly cracked his head open.”
“I feel weird knowing all these things about him,” says Amber as she reaches for a coffee mug.
“Everyone knows everything about everyone, Amber. Everyone knows you were kissing him. Everyone knows you two shared a towel after you jumped in the lake.”

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The chilled window of the Greyhound bus rattles against Amber’s skull. She exhales. She tugs off her red mittens and runs her fingers through her blonde hair, wispy with static. ‘8…9,10,11…12…13,’ she silently counts the silos dotting the gray skyline.

A man speckled with age spots turns the page of a paperback book. A woman secures a purple knit hat on her head as she coughs. A little boy with crusty sleep in his eye peeks over the seat in front of Amber. “Sam, turn around and leave the girl alone,” says the red-haired woman beside him. “Sit nicely by your mother, will you?”

Amber skips a Bon Jovi ballad on her navy iPod Shuffle. The violin intro to Dixie Chick’s “Wide Open Spaces” whines through the headphones. She wishes she was in her own car, left behind by the insistence of her mother, so she could sing the female country anthem freely, She needs wide open spaces, room to make a big mistake. She needs new faces.

Amber considers the faces of old, the onslaught of relatives – Aunt Carol, Aunt Whitney, Uncle Todd, Cousin Brittany, Amy, Theresa, Luke, her mother, her father, her sister, all of them – sure to ask dreaded questions over Eggnog and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”:  ‘Dating anyone?’ ‘Still waitressing?’ ‘You took the Greyhound?’

Amber feels the expanding pressure of coffee and 7up in her bladder.

“You want a piece?”

Amber pretends not to hear the voice behind her. She doesn’t want new faces, simply familiar faces. Katie, who sat by Amber in the dank and bare Green Bay Greyhound Station, drank from a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, swallowed and said, “Oh my God, this is like a ghetto.” Martin, miles and miles away, who Amber imagines would hold her hand just now, if he was on the bus. She imagines his thick, tangled hair on her shoulder while he counts silos too. She bites a fingernail. Then, a tap on her shoulder. She makes a show of removing her headphones, a violated ‘do not disturb’ sign in these public situations.

A wiry boy sporting black-framed glasses and a UW-Green Bay sweatshirt offers a foil-wrapped stick of gum, “You want a piece?” The boy beside him, with thick brown eyebrows and a sparse goat-tee, folds his hands and avoids eye contact with Amber, who smiles, shakes her head, and replaces the removed headphones.

‘I hate the bus,’ she thinks as the colossal vehicle turns into another Shell gas station.

 •            •           •

Women with bright-colored skirts, headscarves, and pea coats flood the florescent-lit bathroom. Amber stands in line behind a plump woman in neon pink sweatpants who sets off the automatic hand-dryer as she moves forward. “What the hell?” she shouts over the sound, “What is up with this thing?” She turns her exasperated expression to Amber, who offers a tight-lipped smile and notices bubbles of saliva at the corners of the woman’s mouth.

“Nobody uses these things anyway,” mumbles the woman to no one. “They’re useless.”

  •            •           •

Amber inhales the scent of cigarettes as she follows a lean man donning a worn denim jacket on the bus. She steps over the feet of a few sleeping passengers, past the pleasant smile of a gray-haired woman in a lavender scarf, to the eager gaze of the boy in black-framed glasses.

“Where you riding to?” he asks as Amber slides into her seat.

“Deer Hill,” she pulls the iPod from her pocket.

“I’ve never heard of it,” he leans closer. Amber can smell his deodorant. The little boy in the front seat climbs his backrest to peer at Amber once more.

“It’s there,” she answers.

“How many people did you graduate with?”

“Like 70.”

“Have you seen Cars?” asks the squeaky voiced boy, missing a front tooth.

“I have,” she answers.

“Do you remember, you remember Tater?”

“Honey,” the woman grips his forearm.

Amber opens her mouth to say, ‘It’s okay,’ but is interrupted by, “What’s in Deer Hill?” asked this time by the thick-browed boy.

“It’s tiny, uh – a gas station, post office, like five churches.”

“Mom? Mommy?” a whimper comes from the back of the bus. A toddler with lopsided pigtails and watering eyes peeks from behind a seat, “Mommy?”

The boy in glasses laughs, “I think someone just left their kid on the bus.”

The girl meets Amber’s sympathetic eyes. “She’s coming, sweetie,” Amber says.

The girl walks swiftly from her seat to Amber and thrusts her head on Amber’s lap.

“Oh my God, seriously,” she whispers, rubbing her hand up and down the girl’s back, thinking of the tears and snot certain to spot her jeans. The man with age spots turns another page.

“What do you do?” the boy in glasses asks as Amber gazes through the bus window, wondering who is parent to the whimpering child.

“I’m a singer,” she lies.

“Whoa, really?”

“Yep.” Heat rises up her neck as she realizes how suddenly she lied, without thought.

“What kind of music?”

“Folksy…my boyfriend sings with me, and plays guitar,” Amber says quickly, rubbing the girl’s back. ‘You’re so insecure, Amber,’ she can hear her mother saying. ‘No one cares what you do.’

“What’s wrong with her?” asks the little boy, peeking from between the blue seats.

“She’s just scared,” Amber says. “It’ll be okay.”

The boy’s mother turns, rubbing her red hair behind her ears, “Who’s girl is that?”

Amber shrugs.

“I hate the bus,” the woman shakes her head. “Unbelievable.”

  •            •           •

“Lily, we got you roast beef,” a man’s voice booms down the isle. The girl raises her head, wipes her forearm against her cheeks and hugs the man’s red wind pants. A woman carrying an Arby’s bag shuffles behind.

“That was weird,” whispers the thick-browed boy, rubbing his palms over his knees. The bus jerks forward.

“I waitress too,” Amber admits, covering her ears with the headphones.

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Katie sips tea at the counter showcasing new evergreen and Santa-red yarns. Amber sways with a chubby-cheeked, five-month-old baby on her hip, gazing out the knitting shop window.

“Wow, look at those snowflakes,” Amber whispers in a high voice. “Look at those pretty, pretty snowflakes.”

Tessa, the blue-eyed baby, studies Amber’s nose instead. So Amber carries her around the shop, which smells of coffee and rose-scented perfume.

“I have good days and bad days,” sighs Margaret, knitting a sock with charcoal-colored yarn at a worn table with a dozen other white or gray-haired ladies knitting hats or scarves or sweaters with their aged hands ribboned with bluish veins. “I know what needs to be done, but without Bob…or Joanie,” Margaret looks upward – a vain attempt to keep the tears from skimming down her wrinkled cheeks. “And Tessa’s dad is a good-for-nothing.”

“We are here for you,” says Barbara, setting down the start of a green scarf and resting a manicured hand over her heart, over the Bucky Badger logo on her sweatshirt.

“Look at her with – ” Margaret turns to Amber, “What’s your name again?”

“Amber,” Amber bounces with the baby.

“You want her?” Margaret pushes her gold-rimmed glasses further up her sloping nose and shakes her head. “She’d be happier with you.”

“Oh, no, Margaret,” the ladies chime in, “You’ll be fine. Tessa needs her grandma.”

Amber exhales and offers a smile, which many of the knitting ladies return; but Margaret’s attention falls on her yarn, “Damn cat hair all over.”

Amber kisses Tessa’s soft forehead and misses her mother. “Poor girl,” she whispers.

“Well, what?” Margaret starts up again, “She’s just a bit younger than Joanie. Joanie would want a fun mom for her daughter, not this old bag. We don’t have to talk about it anymore. I’m stupid and old and should not have come today.”

“Margaret, of course we want you, you’re going through a hard time,” chime the ladies once more.

Margaret blows her nose while Evelyn, her wrists sparkling with Pandora charms as she pearls a cream-colored cap, tells Margaret how beautiful Joanie was in the white casket, like an angel. The baby grips Amber’s pinkie and Amber hums and taps her palm against Tessa’s exposed, plump calf. “You’ll be okay,” she whispers. “You’ll be okay.” She suddenly wonders who will show Tessa how to shave her legs. Does Margaret even shave anymore?

 •              •              •

Amber’s own mother opened the vinyl curtain speckled with pink rosebuds and set her freckled leg on the yellow bathtub sweating condensation, exhaling steam. Black mascara ran down her mother’s red cheeks as she explained the mechanics of the plastic Bic razor in hand.

“You don’t hold too tight, and go against the grain of your hair,” her mother demonstrated, gliding the razor up the side of a narrow calf, “except where it might be sensitive.”

Amber remembers nodding, invigorated by this new knowledge, and privilege. Who will show Tessa to carefully navigate around her knees?

  •              •              •

“Now, who picked out her outfit?” asks Barbara. “Was that you? It was beautiful.”

“That was me,” Margaret smiles with some pride. “I would have put her in this purple dress she wore as a bridesmaid, but then the…marks, from the accident, would have shown. And she wore that green cardigan all the time.”

“So lovely, very nice, good choice,” chime the ladies.

  •              •              •

“This is kind of awkward,” whispers Katie, pulling Christmas yarn patterns from a UPS box. “I knew as soon as Margaret pulled in that this wasn’t going to be good. It’s only been like three weeks.”

“I want to keep her,” Amber kisses Tessa’s soft head.

“Yeah, she’s so cute,” Katie pulls her black hair into a ponytail and organizes the kits by difficulty. “You have any plans tonight?”

Amber shakes her head, “You?”

“I might go to Tyler’s and watch him and Casey play ‘Call of Duty’ if you want to come,” Katie laughs.

“Sounds like great fun,” Amber says to Tessa with wide eyes. “Last time I watched them play that game I had nightmares.”

“You want me to hold her for awhile?”

“No, I want her,” Amber twirls slowly, and Tessa opens her mouth and blinks rapidly in response to the sensation. Amber sings softly while the ladies discuss pumpkin pie recipes, Baby mine, dry your eyes. Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, baby of mine. “Did you know Joanie?” she asks Katie.

“Not really, she would have graduated when I was in like third grade. Honestly…Tessa is probably better off.”

“With Margaret?”

“Well, lots of people will help out. It’s Door County,” Katie rubs Tessa’s back. “She’ll be fine.”

  •              •              •

The ladies pack up their projects, drain their coffee mugs and hug one another goodbye. “Happy Thanksgiving,” Margaret says as the door bell jingles and chilled wind seeps in the shop.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Amber and Katie respond.

“Don’t pay attention to all my blubbering today, okay? Don’t tell your mother I ruined opened knitting.”

“Don’t worry. You didn’t ruin anything,” says Katie, holding open the glass door while Margaret secures Tessa’s pink cap.

“I think I’m in the anger stage, or whatever. The funeral director gave me some handout. Well…tell your mother I say hi when she gets back from Florida.”

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Amber leans against the bar, munching on cheese curds, skimming through a recent issue of Us Weekly. She’s not eating because she particularly wants to, or needs to, but because it’s fall and the restaurant is slow – no more silverware to roll, no more ketchup bottles to fill. She would have a few dollar bills in her apron had she not made a coffee concoction hours earlier – a mix of creamer, Hersey’s chocolate syrup, butterscotch and diner coffee that gave her a burst of energy that suddenly dissipated and sent her to the ladies’ room with a rumbling stomach and sweating brow.

“Amber?” Susanne knocked on the door. “You have a table. You want me to take them?”

Susanne took the table, the four-dollar tip, and wipes clean pint glasses while Amber sips on 7Up and reads about the supposed late-night texts exchanged between Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt.

“Amber, if you’re not careful you’re going to gain fifty pounds this winter,” Susanne says.

“I know,” Amber says. “I have to stop.” She pushes the basket away, “I’m bored.”

Suzanne tosses the curds in the trash, pulls on the gold cross around her neck and exhales. They’ve already swapped life stories in the slow pace – Amber spoke with tears in her eyes about “the hole in her heart,” about a summer love who left Door County to pursue music.

“I’m here to tell you that you will be fine,” Susanne said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Well, I’m forty-two, and I know this feels like a big deal now, and it is, but it isn’t. You just have too much time to think about it.”

Amber disliked Susanne in that moment – her cropped hair and tight thin lips, from which usually came ‘Amber, get more ice,’ ‘Amber, check on table nine,’ ‘Amber, tuck in your shirt.’

“But, I love him,” Amber said.

“Sweetie, I remember Martin – I married the same kind of guy and you know what I got – a totaled car and a nasty divorce.”

Amber bit her lip.

“But hey,” added Susanne, “I learned the serenity prayer, and I got two wonderful kids out of it.”

•             •            •

Amber rereads Brittany’s postcard tacked to the schedule board while the kitchen boys – Jordan and Tyler – drink from brown coffee mugs and discuss last night’s escapades.

Hey Gang,

I miss you all so much! New York is fabulous! I don’t feel much like Carrie Bradshaw walking down the sidewalk. I think people can tell I’m not from here. haha.

“Dude, when I woke up, Casey was passed out on the kitchen floor with a brick of cheddar cheese in one hand and a bottle of ranch in the other.”

“Are you serious?”

The Goldsteins have taken me everywhere – the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, and Chinatown.

“There was white drool down the side of his face. He was snoring like an ox.”

I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook. Tonight we are going to take their kids to The Lion King. So exited!

“Too bad Amber wasn’t there to lick it off.”

“You guys are so gross,” Amber shakes her head. The boys erupt in laughter.

I am craving our bacon cheeseburgers and curds!

Love,

Brittany

•             •            •

Finally, four men in blaze orange jackets and caps wander in and perch around a bar table. Amber hands menus to the two older men:  one with a gray mustache who glances at the beer taps and one with a gray beard who smiles politely. She hands menus to the two twenty-somethings:  one with red cheeks and dark eyebrows and one with brilliant brown eyes who says, “Thank you.” Amber smiles.

“You glad you aren’t sick in the bathroom?” whispers Susanne as she pours four pints of Miller Lite.

Amber laughs, and then places her waitress pad over her lips, wondering if the boy with brown eyes is local, single, bored.

“Yes. I think so. I don’t know,” answers Susanne.

Amber places the chilly glasses on the table. “You guys get any deer?”

“Almost,” says Mr. Mustache. The other men chuckle and the brown-eyed boy shakes his head with a grin.

“If Brian over here could get a decent shot off,” says Mr. Red.

“I know I grazed it,” he says.

“That’s not enough,” Amber flirts.

“You hunt?” he asks.

“Maybe,” she says.

“You from up here?” asks Mr. Red.

“My first winter,” she puts her tray at her side.

“No kidding, why haven’t we ever seen you around?” asks Brian.

“I’m sneaky.”

•             •            •

The steam rising from Amber’s hot tea warms her cheeks. She leans against the bar and rereads the 10 digits scrawled on the departed hunters’ Guest Check, left among empty glasses and ketchup-smeared plates.

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“Katie, you really shouldn’t do that,” Amber says, pulling out the stringy, sticky insides of a pumpkin. Tyler listens from the couch, biting into another slice of DiGiorno deluxe pizza while Casey pours more spiced rum in his apple cider. Dustin strums his guitar on a blue armchair.

“Well, I’m so aware of it – especially in the winter,” Katie says, drawing lines with a black Sharpie over her hollowed out pumpkin.

The two girls sit at a little round table in their new two-bedroom apartment above Katie’s parent’s yarn shop. Open and closed cardboard boxes the boys carried up rickety wooden steps in the wind and drizzle are scattered across the green carpet.

“Yeah, but if you keep doing that it’s going to come back coarse and darker. Just leave it alone. You won’t even notice it after awhile. See, look at mine.”

Amber leans over her pumpkin. Ribbons of Katie’s long black hair slide down her shoulders as she examines Amber’s freckled face.

“What are you guys talking about?” Casey calls. His finished pumpkin bearing a Green Bay Packers’ logo rests at his feet.

“Katie’s lip –” Amber begins.

“Shhh – no! Don’t tell them,” Katie laughs.

“They have the same issue.”

“They’re talking about the hair on their upper lip,” Dustin announces. “Their lady mustaches.”

“Don’t talk about that stuff,” Casey says. Tyler laughs and opens Katie’s laptop, wondering how these girls became such fast friends, realizing that this is the happiest he has seen Amber since Martin visited.

“Oh my God, like we’re not supposed to have hair,” says Katie.

“So when do you start working?” Amber settles back into a worn wooden chair and examines her pumpkin. Dustin continues to strum. Casey directs Tyler to a website that reveals the user’s “Spirit Animal.”

“I’m a wolf,” Casey says, with a seriousness that stirs Tyler’s curiosity.

“Mom and Dad are leaving for Florida on Tuesday. And the yarn group meets that night – so, I’m supposed to supervise that.”

“Are you going to head down to Florida at all?” Amber asks.

“Oh God, I don’t really want to. It’s like a Jimmy Buffett fest. My parents hang around tiki bars all day and get tipsy. By the afternoon there are 45-year-old divorcees hitting on me.”

“I hate Jimmy Buffett,” says Dustin.

Tyler removes his straight-rimmed Billabong cap and answers a series of multiple-choice questions:  ‘Do you like crowds?’ Yes. ‘Do you daydream?’ Yes.

“Amen,” Katie says. “When we went to Las Vegas, the first place we had to go to was Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. It was like hell on earth. Dad loved it.”

‘Do you believe in soul mates?’

He thinks of Amber and Martin, of Martin running his hands through his shoulder-length hair before taking Amber’s hand. She followed him…everywhere. Are they soul mates? He thinks of Martin sitting outside bars, on beaches, near a campfire, always with a cigarette in hand, making plans to start a band and tour the country while Amber rested her legs across his lap and twirled her hair.

He remembers the string of distraught texts from Amber, weeks after Martin left for Portland, finding her head over the rusty toilet in her lonely cottage as she vomited. He pulled back her golden hair while she asked if she was pretty.

“Amber, come one.” The vomit on her chin, the snot under her nostrils, and the tears streaking her cheeks glistened.

“Why did I even meet him?” She clung to Tyler. He rubbed his palm up and down her spine. “Dude, Martin’s awesome,” he said. “But, come on – he’s one of those guys that will never grow up.” As he spoke those words he thought of himself.

“He misses me though, right.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Did he ever say anything about me when he was here?”

“You know he always said nice things.”

“Like what?”

“Like…he would say, ‘Amber, she’s so steezy.’”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m just…I’m just scared I’ll never feel that way again, never again in my whole life,” her shaky voice trails off, and then she laughs. “I sound like Baby in Dirty Dancing.”

“I’ve never seen Dirty Dancing,” Tyler admits, feeling the dampness of her tears, snot, and vomit on his shoulder.

 •                •               •

Tyler exhales and watches Amber smile as she takes the Sharpie from Katie. Do you believe in soul mates? He looks at Katie and feels the same hazy intrigue and discomfort that girl provoked in him all their years at Gibraltar – when he slipped a corsage on her wrist for junior prom, when she would chew on the tip of her pen in Mr. Kolstad’s algebra class, when they held hands behind a row of port-a-potties at a high school football game. Now she’s back from college, from her three weeks in Europe, and he’s wondering if she’s more excited about meeting Amber than reuniting with him at Fall Fest.

‘No.’ He clicks.

“You’re a prairie dog.” Casey says. “Is that good?”

“It says I’m quick-witted. Lame.”

But maybe a squirrel is appropriate, Tyler thinks, a Midwestern homebody. The day before he searched plane ticket prices for Southeast Asia, sitting in the same bedroom he has had since he was seven years old, rubbing Tucker’s boney head, the lab sighing – as if he even knew Tyler wouldn’t go anywhere – because he doesn’t like crowds and he doesn’t know what he wants.

Dustin strums a Beatle’s tune. Amber hums. Katie starts to sing, carving her pumpkin, Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. There will be an answer, let it be. Well, isn’t this fitting, Tyler thinks, closing the laptop.

____________________________________________________________

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“Kiss me!” a woman with freckled cleavage and curls hairsprayed to a crisp shouts in the midst of the crowded dance floor at Husby’s. It’s Fall Fest and Amber laughs and dances with three girls she’s never met wearing pink feather boas and plastic tiaras.

“Kiss me!” Mrs. Crispy Curls smacks both hands on Amber’s cheeks and presses her red lips against Amber’s mouth.

“I like you,” the woman says, her eyes hazy and bloodshot and barely focused on Amber’s.

“Thank you,” Amber laughs, then sings along as the band plays “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” I’m hot sticky sweet, from my head to my feet, yeah. Green, blue, and red lights flash over the crowd. Amber wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, tastes sweat and a hint of the Miller Lite she drank when toasting the end of another season with Tyler and Dustin.

“You know that woman?” the skinniest of the boa-wearers asks Amber.

“No,” Amber shouts over the crowd singing. Pour some sugar on me. Ooh, in the name of love.

Amber coughs, then burps, and recalls all the food and drink swirling in her stomach:  a Bloody Mary, a corn on the cob saturated in butter and salt, a pumpkin pie in a cup, a brat lined with ketchup and pickle relish, and Miller Lites.

“We’re going to the bathroom,” one of the girls informs Amber, who nods and continues dancing, continues burping, watching sweat drip down the lead singer’s whiskered chin. Amber’s plastic flip-flops stick to the floor filmed in spilled beers and cocktails. The bottoms of her jeans are probably fifthly.

“Hey,” a boy in a neon pink shirt approaches her.

“Hey,” she smiles. Mr. Pink places a hand on her side. He smells like an ashtray.

“I like your shirt,” she says, trying to dance in rhythm with his jilted movements.

“I like your face,” he responds. “You gotta a boyfriend?”

She almost says the truth, “No, I do not gotta a boyfriend,” but hesitates and scans the crowd:  the tall bearded server from Drink Coffee who gave Amber a burnt Monster Cookie for free leans against the wall sipping a beer, the fresh-faced Wilson’s girls dance with large purses hanging from their shoulders, the tan and lean kayak guides nod along to the song, and the Patrick Swayze look-a-like bartender from the Blue Ox flexes his biceps for the red-haired intern from American Folklore Theatre.

“He’s over there,” Amber turns away from Mr. Pink towards Dustin, wearing a green and orange flannel shirt, watching the band like he’s watching a documentary.

•                •                 •

“Uh, I am sick of boys,” Amber says. “I need water.”

“We could do better than these guys.” Dustin motions to the band and offers her his cup.

“What is it?”

“Miller Lite.”

She pushes the cup away, “God, my stomach.”

“I’m craving macaroni and cheese,” Dustin says. “We should go to Tyler’s and make some.”

Amber fans her face. “Where is Tyler?”

“Making out with…” Dustin cranes his neck and points across the bar. “I don’t know – some girl he went to Gibraltar with, I think.”

“That’s – I’ve met her. Oh no, that’s Katie. She was at this bonfire and started going on about this trip she took to Paris, like suddenly she was Miss Travel Channel.”

“Annoying,” Dustin says.

“So annoying.” Amber recalls Katie’s smug freckle-less face and fur-lined hooded sweatshirt as she explained with authority the difference between Parisian men and American men. “Like three weeks in a touristy city makes you an expert.”

Dustin nods. Amber exhales. Mrs. Crispy Curls is kissing Mr. Pink on the dance floor.

“Don’t you wish it was like the old days?” Amber looks past Dustin at the elk mounted above the bar adorned with Mardi Gras beads.

“What?”

“Like the girls would wear dresses…and corsages. The boys would wear ties. Couples would dance with a bit space of between them, or cheek to cheek. How cute would that be?”

“We could do better than these guys,” Dustin says again.

Amber considers her lack of girlfriends as the three boa-wearing girls pass by.

She wonders why Dustin would compare their three or four ‘jam sessions,’ consisting of Dustin strumming cords while Amber hummed along, to a full band performing for a crowded bar.

“Could we?”

“Yeah,” Dustin’s eyes widen. “I just wish you could play an instrument. And wrote some more songs.”

“Well, I’m not a songwriter, Dustin.” Amber recognizes a white-haired man taking a shot at the bar. She served him. He tipped eleven percent.

“Oh, here comes Tyler,” Dustin says.

“I think I’m gonna go,” Amber turns and a flip flop sticks, she loses her footing, there is nothing to steady her. BOOM. Her left elbow and left hipbone hit the floor.

“Owe, owe, owe,” she sits up and rubs her elbow, while Dustin stands over her laughing.

“Fall down fest!” announces Tyler. “Fall down fest!”

“Amber, oh my God.” Katie extends her hand. Amber reads J’adore Dior on Katie’s white shirt, notes how well she pulls off blunt bangs and skinny jeans.

“Thanks.” Amber rubs her hip and scans the crowd. “Great, now I’m the girl who fell down.”

“Oh no, your butt is all wet,” says Katie. “This floor is disgusting.”

“It’s not funny,” Amber laughs, pointing to Tyler and Dustin, still chuckling.

“Forget them,” Katie says. “Let’s dance.” Guilt pierces Amber as she takes Katie’s hand and follows her to the middle of the crowd. Guilt, and then gratefulness.

“I’m sick of boys,” Amber shouts as they begin dancing.

“Amen,” Katie shouts back.

________________________________________________

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“Oh, Humphrey Bogart,” Amber’s mother sighs on the other end of the line.

“Still, I don’t get it – he’s not as good looking as the other guy,” Amber studies the cover of Casablanca, the film she turned off minutes earlier. “He has a lisp and big teeth and he’s probably like 5’5”.”

“Sweetie, everyone liked him. And let’s be honest, I don’t think the boys you think are attractive are attractive.”

“Come on,” Anna tosses the cover on her kitchen table – a card table littered with other rented DVDs and the remains of her free meal from work in a Styrofoam container:  the crust of a BLT on wheat, a few potato chips and full container of coleslaw.

“So, how are you?” her mother asks.

“Oh, fine.” Amber scans the corners of her damp little cottage, searching for cobwebs.

“How’s Door County? Are the leaves turning colors?”

“They are. Everything’s changing,” Amber can hear her voice change to a light shrill. Her chin quivers. “Everyone is leaving, Mom. Brittany just took off for New York; Casey is all sad. Gina’s gone…Kyle wants to go to Southeast Asia…now Tyler wants to go with him. Martin’s long gone.”

“I don’t know if you should have spent so much time with him when he visited.” Her mother exhales.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. It’s fine.”

“Are you still sure you want to stay this winter? You know, don’t tell them I told you this, but your sister and your father are taking bets on how long you’ll last.”

“Whatever.”

Amber pictures her mother on the brown leather couch rubbing Tootsie’s furry white head. She wishes her mother were running her delicate fingers over Amber’s blonde hair. She wouldn’t even mind watching “Dancing with the Stars” or “The Biggest Loser.” “How’s Deer Hill?” Amber asks, curled up on a second hand loveseat with rough flannel upholstery, resting her feet inches from a borrowed space heater, sporadically scanning the ceiling for spiders.

“Good! Laura cut my hair yesterday, so, that was nice. Her baby is three months away, you know.”

“Oh, that’s cute.”

“And everyone is all up in arms about the new addition to the high school. They painted over that atrocious mural in the gym, remember, that one with those deer with the disproportioned bodies.”

“Why couldn’t they have done all these updates when I was there?” Amber twirls her hair and peers out the window that rattles with each breath of wind. Shadows spread over the gravel driveway leading to her secluded little cottage. “Remember how orange that place was – the lockers, the bleachers, the doors? And like nasty, ‘70s orange.”

“It looks really nice now,” her mother says. “They had a nice lunch in the cafeteria for the community – barbeque sandwiches, potato salad, and a huge cake from Mega Foods, with the creamy frosting, you know, like the kind we got for your graduation party.”

“Yeah, that’s good cake.” Amber wonders about living with her parents again. No rent. A rust-free shower. A refrigerator full of grapes, yogurt, leftover casseroles and take-out Chinese food. Maybe she could get her job back at Bath and Body Works?

“So, that’s what’s going on here. You’re father started coaching football, you know, so, he’s lost his voice from all the shouting.”

“God, he needs to take it easy on them. They are only like 16.”

Maybe it would be pleasant to visit Laura, her old classmate, visit her new baby, and catch up on life. Maybe rekindle a romance with her high school boyfriend, who still sends regular emails, some that simply read, ‘Hey. I miss you.’

“Well, the boys do what he tells em,” her mother says. “You have any plans tonight?”

“No, I think I’m going to stay in.”

“Call a friend, Amber. You’re too young to stay in.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you.”

 •            •            •

The sun has set. Amber regrets not talking a walk, her legs restless and her mind spinning. She has plans. She made plans. To stay in one place – after a winter waitressing in Minneapolis, another gallivanting throughout the UK, she decided to stay in one place.

She considers painting her nails, reading the Bob Dylan biography on her nightstand, or re-watching Casablanca to understand what all the fuss is about. Call a friend. Amber opens her cell phone and scrolls through her contacts. “No…no…no…no,” she sings up and down the scale, then hesitates on Martin.

She focuses on relaxing her jaw, do re me fa so la te do, pressing the edit option, do re me fa so la te do, then erase, do re me fa so la te do. “Erase contact?” She bites her lower lip, presses OK.

____________________________________________________

Copy and Literature Editor Sally Slattery has spent every summer season writing and waitressing in Door County since graduating from Winona State University with a BA in English. She also enjoys packing up for adventures in such places as New Zealand, Croatia, and Madison.

 Nik Garvoille has gotten his hands dirty with painting, designing, writing, hiking, working & making comics in Door County for the last six years. Website: www.nikenji.com

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“This isn’t the most pleasant hike,” Amber says. The rifle hanging on Casey’s back bounces with each step. Tyler takes a hand out of his black coat, “come on,” he waves her towards them.

Chickadees sing. Amber wonders why she came along, stepping over exposed roots and around muddy patches.

“What are you two talking about?” she asks. Casey’s vacant eyes gaze forward under his Green Bay Packers cap while the creases of Tyler’s smile grow, “If zombies attacked,” he says.

“Seriously?”

“Would you survive, Amber?” Tyler asks, lowering his voice. “Would you stand with us?”

“If zombies attacked, I would probably lie in a corner and pretend to be dead,” she steadies herself by taking Tyler’s forearm.

“They know.”

“If I’m dead?”

“If you’re faking it. And how pathetic would that be if you pretend to be dead and they get you and you didn’t even destroy one.”

“How do you destroy one?”

“You have to smash its skull.”

“Oh, God.”

Ephraim’s church bells echo over the tall pine and birch trees, shedding golden leaves. Casey exhales. Amber bites her lower lip and whispers, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine,” he scratches the whiskers that have grown since the week before, since Brittany pulled Amber into a bathroom stall at the art gallery.

 •           •           •

The bronzer on Brittany’s cheeks created hazy, glittery tears while she sputtered out, “I think I’m going to leave. The Goldsteins’ want me to move to New York with them and be their nanny and I think I should.”

“Really, wow,” Amber said, tugging on a length of toilet paper and handing the wad to Brittany. “How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you should go. You’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”

“I just…I just don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“What?”

“Be with Casey.”

Amber nodded, “Okay.”

  •           •           •

Casey lines up a shot, pointing towards the treetops to a weathered green target speckled with bullet holes. Tyler elbows Amber and whispers, “maybe don’t talk about Brittany.”

A shot goes off.

“Shit,” Casey exhales and cocks the gun, squinting his eyes and pulling the trigger. A hole appears in the outer ring of the target.

“Sweet,” says Tyler. “Nice shot.”

Casey hands the rifle off to Tyler.

“Do we need a permit or something to shoot the gun?” asks Amber.

“Amber,” Casey shakes his head.

“Well, I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I just want to shoot something.”

“Listen to yourself,” Amber says, pulling her gray hood over her windblown hair. “You sound like such a hick.”

“He is a hick,” Tyler laughs, struggling with the rifle.

“Did she say anything to you?” Casey says softly.

“Who?” Amber asks on impulse then realizes the obvious. “No, not really,” she lies. [flashback] “I think you just need to let her go to New York and see what happens.”

“I give her a month,” Casey says.

“What do you think makes some leaves gold and others red?” Amber asks.

chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee, chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee

“You know what I’ve always wondered,” says Tyler. “How do magnets work? Like, it completely baffles me.”

“Something about opposites,” Amber says.

“Tyler, give me rifle,” Casey says.

A little black-capped chickadee sings amongst the green pine needles.

“Casey, are you seriously-”

He points the gun upward. She closes her eyes and whispers, “Why? Why? Why?” Why does everyone leave? Why does everything change? She wishes Brittany was beside her. She wishes Martin was calling. Suddenly, she misses her mother. The gun fires. Amber opens her eyes to a puff a feathers floating gracefully to the mud.

“Holy crap, Amber – did you see that?” Tyler laughs.

“Casey! Is that illegal what you just did?” Amber walks on, tears pooling in her eyes. “Poor bird.”

“He had it coming,” says Casey.

_____________________________________________________

Copy and Literature Editor Sally Slattery has spent every summer season writing and waitressing in Door County since graduating from Winona State University with a BA in English. She also enjoys packing up for adventures in such places as New Zealand, Croatia, and Madison.

Nik Garvoille has gotten his hands dirty with painting, designing, writing, hiking, working & making comics in Door County for the last six years. Website: www.nikenji.com

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Brittany smears lip gloss over her pursed lips. She thinks of Mrs. Goldstein’s white pants and the delicate way she poured pinot noir in a clear crystal wine glass while Brittany reported on the children’s good behavior.
“The kids adore you, Brittany,” Mrs. Goldstein had said. “Have you given any more consideration to coming back to the city with us? Your own room and bathroom, we would show you the sites, and Joe works with many young people we could introduce to you.”
Brittany smacks her glossed lips, runs her fingers through her long brown hair and thinks of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, high heels and yellow taxicabs, Spiderman swinging from the Empire State Building, and the homeless begging along the sidewalk.
A pile of firewood rattles in the bed of Casey’s black Dodge Ram as he pulls into her driveway. The horn blares.
“They have free food, right?” Casey smiles. “Is this okay, what I’m wearing?” He points to the Nike logo across his red t-shirt and adjusts his Green Bay Packers cap.
“I think so. How have we lived in Door County practically our whole lives and never been to an art opening?” Brittany calculates:  four years at the University of Eau Claire, a few weeks in Orlando, and five days in Colorado. And Casey:  four years in the Army, a few weeks in Orlando, and five days in Colorado. Alicia Key’s soulful voice sings in Brittany’s head. These streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, let’s here it for New York, New York, New York.
“Well, Amber’s all about it and says there is free food,” says Casey.
Brittany turns up the radio. The lead singer of Rascal Flatts whines about lost love.

•         •        •

The screen door of Amber’s cottage slams behind Brittany and Casey. Amber blows on her newly painted purple nails. “Casey, I swear there are at least two or three spiders in this place.”
“On it,” Casey rolls an issue of Newsweek. He paces around the pea green couch and long coffee table with a 13” television, fake flowers in a smudged glass vase, and Amber’s waitress apron.
“Like your footwear,” Amber says as Brittany tightens her gold sandals.
“Thanks, I like your skirt,” Brittany says.
“Thanks,” Amber sways her hips; the indigo fabric dances around her bare knees. “It’s flouncy.”
Casey moves to the bedroom, perches on Amber’s quilt.
“Have you heard from Martin at all?” Brittany asks.
“No,” Amber’s face reddens. “Just the ‘Portland is amazing. I miss ya’ text.”
“I think he’s afraid of intimacy.”
“That’s what my mom said too.”
A loud slap reverberates off the walls. “Got it!”

•          •         •

Brittany examines the glossy stoneware, the abstract paintings. Casey texts at his hip.
“I wonder, like, if I took a picture of that could I just paint it at home?” whispers Amber, gesturing towards a canvas splayed with fuchsia.
“$2,000,” Casey closes his phone then bites into a crispy egg roll. “Man.”
“Is that supposed to be an ear…or a garlic clove?” laughs Amber.
Brittany walks ahead and sips merlot, wondering what words she would use to describe the harsh liquid:  ‘robust,’ ‘nutty,’ maybe ‘full-bodied.’ Her arms feel weak. A lady wafting floral perfume drinks her wine with ease. What words would she use, Brittany wonders, glancing to the woman’s companion, an elderly man with a gnarled cane, unkempt beard, and thick-framed glasses. She imagines they have walls lined with art, cupboards filled with handmade stoneware dishes. She imagines they frequent New York City.
“Dustin is coming,” says Casey. “I told him about the egg rolls. Those egg rolls are amazing.”
Brittany moves across the room, to a row of canvases devoted to Door County themes:  Wilson’s Ice Cream Parlor, sailboats in Eagle Harbor, Anderson Dock, and sunsets.
“Oh look, another lighthouse,” a young man with knit cap and wrist wrapped with various bracelets points to a painting and smiles.
“People love it,” Brittany smiles back.
“I’ve met you before or seen you around,” he says. “I’m Sam.”
“I’m Brittany.”
“What do you do?”
“I am a server…and do some babysitting. You?”
“Barista.”
“Oh, I love coffee,” Brittany is aware of how over excited she sounds by his occupation, and by his attention. “What brings you to the art opening?”
“Art major.”
“Good for you. Perfect – Door County is full of artists. You paint?”
“Uh – I do. But I primarily work with multi–”
“Brittany!” Casey shouts. “Get –”
Brittany cuts him off by raising a single finger – a gesture she often employs with three-year-old Grace Goldstein and five-year-old Lucas Goldstein.
“I’m sorry. What were you saying?” Brittany shakes her head.
“Multi-media. I collect any garbage or objects I find in nature and try to make something out of it. It’s like recycling while showing how wasteful we are.”
“Wow.” She’s certain he has visited New York City.
“So, what brings you?”
“The free food and wine,” she laughs, holding up her glass.
“Pinching pennies?”
“No, I don’t really – I come for the…culture.”
“Brittany,” Casey stands a few feet away and points to the wine table, “You want another one?”
“No,” she shakes her head.
“I do!” Amber says, twirling her blonde hair with her pointer finger.
“Those your friends?” Sam asks.
“Yeah, well – they’re good for killing spiders,” Brittany chuckles and takes another sip of wine. “So you – ”
“I don’t get it. They go stomping around, killing spiders?”
“No, not in the wild,” Brittany coughs, the merlot itching her throat, “just at my friend’s house.”
Sam’s eyebrows launch to his knit cap – an expression of disapproval.
“See,” Brittany swallows. “My friend Amber lives in this crappy cottage and gets these crazy fast, black spiders. They are seriously fast. So when my boy-…when boys come over they are obligated to check for her.”
“Why doesn’t she just take a glass and trap them and let them outside?”
Brittany coughs.
“It’s just,” Sam exhales, “the spiders aren’t hurting her.”
“Okay, really,” Casey puts his hand on Brittany’s lower back. “$950 for a painting of Cana Island?”
Casey smiles at Brittany, who smiles at Sam, who looks Casey up and down.
“Dude, have you tried the egg rolls?”
Brittany coughs. “I need some water,” she grabs Amber’s hand and tugs her towards the ‘Restroom’ sign.

_____________________________________________________

Copy and Literature Editor Sally Slattery has spent every summer season writing and waitressing in Door County since graduating from Winona State University with a BA in English. She also enjoys packing up for adventures in such places as New Zealand, Croatia, and Madison.

Nik Garvoille has gotten his hands dirty with painting, designing, writing, hiking, working & making comics in Door County for the last six years. Website: www.nikenji.com