by Callie Ann Marsalisi

Cousin Kacky is getting married, Mama tells them. Lou feels a surge of excitement that pulls her up onto her toes.

Kacky doesn’t live in Vernon, and her to-be-husband isn’t from there—which surely means, Lou reasons, that they’re getting married somewhere else.

“They might be,” Mama tells her. “But then they’re coming to Vernon to have a party with us! Isn’t that nice?”

When she asks Mama if they can go to the real wedding, Mama shakes her head.

“It’s too hard for me to take all three of you by myself. I only have two eyes to watch you with.”

“I’m ten,” Lou argues. “I don’t need watching.”

“But your brother and sister do.” Mama sighs. “Lulu, Kacky and her husband are doing a nice thing, visiting us. Please don’t make a fuss at them.”

“I won’t,” Lou concedes. She looks down at her shoes, and can’t help herself: “But can we go visit someday?”

Mama gives her a small half-smile. “When you’re older,” she says. “Now go outside and play.”

Lou goes outside and finds Nicky and Lizzy playing kick-the-stone. Lizzy stops to wave to her big sister and the stone goes into a ditch and for a moment all is lost, but Lou finds them a new stone and the game resumes. There are other kids in town, but not many, and some of them would rather run around in the fields or throw their stones in the river. Luckily, Lou and Nickyand Lizzy have always been just fine playing by themselves. When they get bored of the stone, they go into town.

Big Scott has a little bit of bacon for them, and Nan the Grocer has some coffee beans dipped in dark chocolate. Lizzy doesn’t like coffee or dark chocolate, and Lou thinks Nicky only pretends to, and she feels very grown up for liking both. The chocolate melts under her tongue and the beans crunch in her teeth and the bitter washes down the back of her throat.

Nelly and Bobby and Mimi are in town as well, and they trade the little gossip that their ears have picked up since they saw each other two days ago. There’s some time spent kicking at dirt and the boys kick at each other, but then the sun starts to set and it’s time to go home.

At dinner, Lou wants to try some of Mama’s wine because it smells so sweet and cold, but Mama says she has to wait a while, another three years at least, and Lou sulks. She’s almost tall enough to see over the counters and the adults talk to her instead of her brother and sister and she’s so impatient with being not a kid but not old enough for anything either.

Maybe Mama senses this, because she lets Lou stay up a whole extra hour after her siblings go to bed, until it’s well and truly dark. Lou is yawning and stumbling but knows she’s won a victory as she pulls the blankets up to her chin.

Only ten more sleeps until the wedding, is the only thought she manages before the night takes her.

A few days later and she and Mama are figuring out what she’s going to wear to the wedding. Mama has an old dress in blue and yellow that she wears to all their events, but Lou needs something new. She really wants a purple dress, but Mama is trying to explain to her that purple is very expensive, while also trying to keep Nicky and Lizzy from knocking over all ofthe mannequins, and Lou eventually agrees to try on a green dress that goes all the way to the floor. Green goes with Mama’s dress, but it’s not the same color, and both of these things are very important to Lou.

“Oh, Lulu,” Mama says. “You look lovely.”

The dress is very flowy, pinned with little brooches at her shoulders and tumbling down to the floor in drapes of fabric. It moves a lot when she spins, and she can pull her arms all the way inside if she wants to. Mama tells her not to stretch out the armholes before they’ve paid for it, so Lou takes her arms back out and spins again. She stumbles a little on the hem.

“It’s too long,” she says, crossing her arms.

“We can make it a little shorter,” says the modiste.

“Lulu isn’t tall enough,” Lizzy sing-songs. Nicky jumps in time. Lou tries to smack her sister, but Lizzy moves out of her reach.

Mama purses her lips and thinks for a moment. “Lulu, maybe we can try a shoe with a little heel.”

Lou feels her whole body light up. “High heels?!” She’s seen some of the women in Vernon wear high heels, which make them look so glamorous—too beautiful for their small town.

“Not too high,” Mama says. “But maybe we can find something that makes you just a little taller.” Her eyes glitter at Lou. “And if they’re uncomfortable, Miss Penelope can shorten the dress.”

“Of course,” the modiste says. Lou shakes her head. 

“That won’t be needed,” she says, a phrase she’s heard Mama say
before when men offer too much help. “I have six days to practice walking in them.”

“That is true,” the modiste says. She and Mama laugh, though Lou doesn’t know why. They buy the dress, stop to get Nicky and Lizzy a snack, and go next to the shoemaker’s.

Lou wants to try on the big high heels, black and red and some of them sparkling, but Mama shows her to a row of sandals with just a little bit of height to them.

“Tall shoes take a lot of getting used to,” Mama explains when Lou pouts. “Why don’t we start small for your first pair and work our way up. You don’t want to fall during the wedding.”

Lou concedes that falling in her first pair of high heels would be pretty embarrassing. She tries on some of the sandals that Mama and the shoemaker show her. The first pair is too narrow, and her ankles start to roll back and forth before the shoemaker catches her arm and helps her
step out of them. The second pair are ugly and heavy, but Lou doesn’t say that they’re ugly because the shoemaker is a nice man and he’s being so helpful.

The third pair is a soft pink that goes with her dress like a flower with its leaves. The straps are delicate, but they hold her feet in, and she can walk in them without rolling back and forth. She looks at Mama and she knows that Mama knows too that this is the right pair. They pay—Lou doesn’t see how many coins Mama gives the shoemaker—and head home because
Nicky is getting grouchy and needs a nap. Lou hangs the dress reverently in Mama’s closet—she’s afraid what will happen to it in the closet she shares with Lizzy—and puts the shoes next to her bed so she can practice wearing them every day.

Only five more sleeps until the wedding. 

Only four more—

Only two—

The day of the wedding, Lou puts on her dress, takes it off to eat breakfast, and puts it on again a whole hour before they have to go. She sits delicately at the table with Mama and watches her put on mascara and blush and lipstick as Lizzy and Nicky run around in their pajamas, because Mama says they’re not responsible enough to put on their nice clothes yet. Mama lets Lou put on a little bit of blush before they leave. The wedding is pretty boring—there’s a lot of talking, and Lou has to sit still even as the grown-ups just say poetry at each other for a long time. She tries to not fidget, but the way her dress moves is so lovely, and she lets herself fidget just a little bit.

The party after is much better, with food and dancing, and Lou even gets to dance with Cousin Kacky, who looks like an angel in her big white dress. Kacky’s new husband offers Lou a hand, but she feels embarrassment creeping up her neck and pretends she doesn’t see him. Even with all her dancing, she’s not even a little bit tired when Mama tells her it’s time to go.

“Not yet!” she pleads. She can still see sunlight.

“Your brother is already asleep, Lulu,” Mama says, sounding almost asleep herself.

“Lou,” Lou repeats, feeling contrary.

“What?” Mama asks. She’s looking around for Lizzy.

“Nothing,” Lou mumbles, scuffing at the dirt.

“Wait here,” Mama says. “I’m going to go get your sister.” She walks off.

Lou, furious, looks at the beautiful tent with the hanging lanterns, the crowd still dancing, the cake sitting on the tables. She turns behind her and looks out at the soft, open navy blue of the evening.

She takes a step towards the edge of the tent. Another. She wants to stay at the party, but more than that she doesn’t want to go home yet. The party calls to her. So does the warm night.

She starts off walking, but quickly moves to a run, not wanting Mama to see her and call her back. She knows that if Mama calls, she’ll go. The party is near the center of town, and Lou runs first past shops and then houses, her new shoes thudding softly on the dirt roads. The houses get sparser and then stop entirely, and she’s in the meadow at the edge of town.

Lou stops, panting. The unmown grass tickles her shins, and bugs call all around. When she looks back, she can see a spot of light where Kacky’s party is happening, but she can’t hear it anymore. The night air is clean and cool in her lungs, and her legs feel strong from running. A bit of hair is stuck to her forehead, and she pushes it away with the heel of her hand.

She chews on her lips and pats at the skirt of her dress. She wishes she had pockets to put her hands in. She’s been to the meadow before, but never at night. The adults have always warned her never to go past the meadow, that she could get lost and never come back, that she could run into wolves and bandits and other monsters. But the moon is big in the sky, and the air
smells like honeysuckle. She doesn’t see any monsters.

She takes a few slow steps. Mama is probably looking for her. That’s if they’ve realized that she’s left yet.

Another few steps. Mama is probably worried. But when Lou comes home safe and sound, she’ll realize she can trust her, that she’s grown and can take care of herself. Mama will be so happy.

A few more steps, and she’s as far as she’s ever gone, even in the daytime. The night hums with life and possibility. She keeps going. The ground stays soft but solid beneath her, and the grass gets a little taller. It’s an easy walk towards the horizon, where she can make out the last of the sunlight slipping away. She goes by a patch of trees that remains still and silent and
monster-free. It’s a nice walk, and she’s glad she’s on it.

The path gets more wild as she travels it, and after a while her new shoes start to pinch. She adjusts her feet in them but it doesn’t help. Just a little pinch, she thinks, she can ignore it, but before too long it becomes too painful to ignore. She kicks the shoes off and takes them up in her hand. Still shiny and new, but they seem lesser now, smaller. The shine has faded.

As she continues, she becomes aware of the growing darkness and the inert dangers that it might hide—sharp rocks in the path, stinging insects, a twisted ankle. She picks her steps a little more carefully, shoes swinging in hand. She adjusts her grip to keep the straps from snaring around her fingers. 

She goes up and over a small hill, and at first she thinks she’s simply out of breath, but as the ground levels out again it becomes clear that the sash tied around her waist is too tight. She fingers the knot at her back, the one her mother had tied for her hours ago. It should have gotten
looser as she walked, not tighter, but it’s digging into her flesh. She unties the band, slips it from the dress, and wraps it around her right hand and wrist like a fighter she once saw. Shoes in one hand, sash in the other, she continues on into the night.

In a copse of trees up ahead, there’s a wide, low rock that resembles nothing to much as a bench. Lou dumps her shoes in the dirt and lays down on the rock, after feeling first to make sure it’s neither damp nor inhabited. Her dress hikes up on her thighs and she tries to tug it back down to her ankles, but it won’t reach. She blows air through pursed lips and lays there morosely,
lower legs exposed.

She could just go home—there’s nothing out here. But a part of her thinks: nothing out here so far. She shifts on the rock. Her back is stiff.

The thought causes her to freeze. Her back is stiff? That’s never happened before. She takes inventory of her body. Her toes are pinched from the shoes, her back is stiff, her scalp is sore from her hair being up...she doesn’t feel herself.

She sits up and takes inventory. Besides the tender scalp and the too-short dress, she finds...breasts. Hips. Her fingers, what she can see of them in the light, are long and elegant. When she moves her legs, she can tell that her left knee is weaker than her right. She tells herself not to panic. She’s in a grown body now, but she’s still herself. But even as she thinks that she can tell her thoughts have changed, too. She’s thinking like a grown person
as well. She tries to figure out how old she is now, and the number 30 floats ephemerally through her mind. But she doesn’t have thirty years of memories. Does she? 

Nothing. Nothing between leaving the wedding and now, at least. She stands and starts walking again, hoping she’ll think better when she’s moving. The dress luckily still covers her modesty, though she feels colder with it blowing around her upper legs.

The more she thinks about it, the more her life does feel long, longer than her previous ten years. She feels tired enough to have existed, plausibly, for thirty. But she’d had a childhood, hadn’t she, of only ten years? She tries to recall turning ten, but there’s a blank in her memory. She tries to remember her siblings turning five, turning seven. But the only event she can recall
recently was cousin Kacky’s wedding—and cousin Kacky wasn’t from their town. Had Kacky ever been a child? Not at the same time as Lou.

She realizes she’s pinching herself, feeling her thighs and hips and face and breasts. Trying to get a sense of the realness of them, but also needing something for her hands to do. She can feel a shake in her muscles that’s threatening to ferment into panic if it’s not released.

She touches a tree as she passes and realizes that the branch is rotted and ready to fall off. Looking for a way to channel her energy, she drops her things, grabs the branch with both hands, leans back into her heels, and rips. A limb the size of her new, adult leg serrates off the tree with a hollow, fireplace sound. The dead wood bites into her palms and Lou drops the limb into the dirt with a soft thud and a spray of dust. It’s the most noise she’s made so far, but now it’s not loud enough. She screams, wordless, and it fades into sobs in a voice that’s unfamiliar.

She’s lost her life, two decades of it, but when? Did the road age her that much? Or did Vernon hold her back? As hard as she searches her memories, she can’t get a sense of time passing in the little town. If she went back and got Nicky and Lizzy, would they age, too? Are they also stuck, perpetually waiting to grow up? And what about Mama, or any of the other adults? What about Mama.

There’s a rustle in the trees to her right. Lou freezes, her knees bent like she’s going to run. She looks down at the tree limb she dropped, just visible against the darkening shadows on the ground. She’s not used to her new height, but she thinks she could grab it and stand back up fast enough.

The sounds are person-sized, but just one person. She scoops and holds the branch out in front of her like she and her siblings would hold the sticks they pretended were swords.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” a man’s voice calls from the trees. “I’m too old for that.”

She doesn’t relax her stance until he walks out into the moonlight, and she can see indeed that he’s quite elderly, that he has a branch of his own he’s using as a cane. He leans against it and tilts his head at her almost playfully.

“I surrender,” he says. “You can put your weapon down.”

“Who are you?” she asks. Again that different voice.

“I’m a groundskeeper,” he says. “It can be a long stretch between towns out here, so I help people make sure they’re still going the right way.” His staff seems to move independently, and she realizes there’s a small, big-eyed brown bird sitting on the end of it.

“What’s your name, dear?” the groundskeeper asks.

“Lou,” she answers automatically. “Louise,” she clarifies.

“Which would you like me to call you?”

She feels her spine straighten. No one has ever asked her that before.

“Call me Lou,” Lou says.

The man nods. “Lou,” he repeats. He twitches his stick in the direction she’s come from, and the bird fluffs its feathers indignantly. “You’re from that way, yes?”

She nods. Intrigued and no longer frightened by this man and his bird, she lowers the tip of her branch to the ground and leans on it as he does. “I ran away from home. But I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“How will you know when you get there, then?” asks the groundskeeper.

She opens and shuts her mouth a few times. “I guess when I have somewhere safe to sleep?” She forces a laugh, becomes aware of the spent tears on her cheeks, wipes them away.

He smiles at her. “Is there something you’re running from?”

She looks around, as if the things she’s running from will appear in front of her. “A party?” A wet, sob-stained laugh bursts out of her. “I was at a wedding, and I didn’t want to leave...so I ran away.”

“It wasn’t your wedding, was it?” he asks with a touch of concern.

“No, no,” she says. “I’m too...it was my cousin’s wedding. I wanted to stay, at the party, but my mom was making me leave and I didn’t want to, and for some reason I thought running was better...” She feels like she’s not making any sense, looks down at herself, at the ground so much further than it was a few hours ago. “I wasn’t like this, when I left. Something happened when I came out here.”

The groundskeeper nods. “I’ve seen people from your place before. You’re older now, than you were when you left.” It’s not a question. “Not just a few hours older, but...”

“Twenty years.” The words deflate her.

He lets out a low whistle. “That’s a long time. That’s a long, long time.”

It is. The feeling crashes over her again, and she plops directly down onto the ground, without giving a damn about dirt or rocks or her outfit or the man standing before her. Like a child. But isn’t that what she is?

“I don’t understand,” she sobs.

The man huffs and taps his stick against the ground in agitation. “I don’t either,” he says. “I wish I had the answers for you. But no one from your place seems to have any, and I can’t get them myself.”

They sit there feeling sorry for themselves a few minutes more, until the crying starts to give Lou a headache. She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. She’s suddenly grateful that her older self doesn’t need glasses—when did she start thinking of practical things like that?

“You said you’ve met others from my town?” she asks the groundskeeper.

He nods. “And all of them having the same experience as you.” He squints at her. “Doyou remember anyone leaving your town? Leaving Vernon?”

She shrugs. “People moved,” she said. “Nobody running away, not that I can remember.” She looks up at him. “Where do they go?”

He offers a hand to her, and she lets him help her up, the walking stick doing a fair bit of the work. The bird takes off briefly and lands back on the groundskeeper’s shoulder, cawing disapproval at the movement.

“Some of your people went back,” the groundskeeper says. “I don’t know what happened to them. And some went on. I don’t know what happened to them, either.”

“So that’s it?” she asks him. “Back or on?”

He smiles. “Isn’t that always it?”

“Couldn’t I stay here, with you?”

“Do you want that?”

“No.” She hiccups. “Not really. No offense.”

He waves it away. “My shack in the woods is no place for a young person like yourself,” he says. Gently, he wipes a tear from her face. “You deserve more of a life than that.”

She starts to cry again at this gentle kindness, and hides her face by looking down the road ahead of her. On. Some of her people went that way, and they never came back. Either they found what they were looking for, or...

She looks down the road in the other direction. Back. Where nothing would change, except her.

“I have to keep going, right?” she asks him. He doesn’t answer.

“But I have to go back first,” she continues. “My siblings.” They might be adults out here, too, she realizes. “And my mama.” The word trips over her adult teeth.

He looks her over like he’s scanning a newspaper, and she wishes she could read the same things he did.

“All right,” he says. “Go get them. Come back to me together.”

“I will,” she says. “I promise.”

He takes one of her hands in both of his own and leans in. Lou feels herself flush, unsure what it means or what to do when a strange man comes close to her face. But the groundskeeper only kisses her on the cheek, squeezes her hand, and lets her go. 

Lou takes a few steps, then a few more, her strides feeling shorter and slower on the walk back to Vernon. The groundskeeper’s bird follows her for a quarter of an hour, then at some invisible line turns and goes back the way they’d come. Lou’s insides constrict, but she suppresses the urge the follow the bird and keeps marching towards home.

She notices the sensation of weight melting off her first, her breasts and hips receding and her body shrinking back to lanky adolescence. Somehow, she’s closer to the ground, now, too. She feels smaller, and colder, and starts to run a little to get home faster.

She steps on a sharp rock and yelps, holding her foot and trying to see in the darkness if she’s bleeding. Where are her shoes? Her new shoes! She had put them down at some point when she was talking to that man.

Mama would be so mad. New shoes that she’d worn once, and already she lost them. Plus, it was dirty out here. And she’d been gone for so long, everyone would be really worried.

Luckily, the lights of Vernon appear sooner than she expected. She picks up her pace, sprinting past the houses on the edge of town and back to where the wedding was. Her own reflection flashes by in the windows and she knows there was something important she had to tell Mama and everyone else. Something about the man in the woods.

The party has died out, and only a few people are still sitting under the big tent. There’s Mama, and Cousin Kacky, and a few of the older people in the village. None of the men or children are there.

“Mama!” Lou screams as soon as she can see them.

“Lulu!” Mama jumps up so fast her chair falls over. Cousin Kacky puts her hand to her heart. Some of the older folks start to talk loudly.

Lou hardly hears them. She hits Mama like a boulder rolling down a hill and breathe-sobs into her soft and perfumy embrace. Mama’s arms hold her so tight that some of the shiny fabric of her dress stuffs itself into Lou’s mouth. When she can’t breathe anymore Lou wriggles herself out of Mama’s grasp and looks up at her.

“Are you okay?” Mama asks. “Are you hurt? Did anybody hurt you?”

“I’m okay,” Lou says. She shakes her head. “I just went into the woods. There was nobody there?”

The last part comes out as a question without her meaning it to. Cousin Kacky is looking at her with a strange, tight smile, which she opens up into a real one when she catches Lou staring.

“Why did you go to the woods?” she asks. “Did something happen?”

Lou looks down at her bare, dirty feet, embarrassed at her whole adventure. “I didn’t want to leave,” she says.

Cousin Kacky laughs. “Could have fooled me!” she says.

Mama puts a hand on Cousin Kacky’s arm and tells her that she should go enjoy her wedding night; Mama will take care of things from here. Most of the old folks start to leave, too. Mama sits back down so they’re eye level and puts her hands on Lou’s shoulders.

“Don’t you ever do that again, Lulu,” she says. “You hear me? You’re too young to be running off on your own like that.”

Something tickles at Lou’s brain, an urge to say No I’m not, but she knows Mama is right. “I’m sorry,” she says instead.

Mama stands up, slowly, as if the night has aged her. “Let’s go home,” she says. “Mister Stephens is watching your brother and sister, and I imagine he wants to get home to his own family.”

A wave of feeling rushes through Lou, some inescapable sense of loss, and she suddenly starts crying. The sobs are choking and grating, as if she’s been crying for some time already.

“Oh dear,” Mama says. “This better not be teenage orneriness already.”

Lou doesn’t know what the word means, but it doesn’t feel right. This feels like waking up from a bad dream, but knowing that the dream was real. It feels deep within her, and if she knew the word existential, she would use it. She doesn’t know what to do with the feeling, so she holds her arms up for her mother.

“Oh,” Mama says, softly but not without some pleasure. With a grunt, she heaves Lou up into her arms, not caring that her nice dress is getting pulled every which way. Lou presses her head into the space between Mama’s neck and shoulder and tries to smush down the feelings inside her. The bad-dream-feeling is still clawing at her, but it’s so late, and all she can do is hope
it’ll be gone by the morning.

“You’re getting big, girly,” Mama says. “Try to stay this little for a while longer, okay?”

---

Callie Ann Marsalisi is a linguist and lifelong theatre kid who originally hails from Connecticut (although not Vernon). She previously lived in Boston before moving to Wilmington, where she resides with her fiancé and their big-headed dog. When not writing, she can be found reading (of course), baking, and working backstage with the Chapel Street Players in Newark.

Callie primarily writes character-driven fiction with speculative elements, often featuring LGBT+ themes and characters. Her fiction has appeared in Cleaver Magazine’s 50th issue, and her research has been published in the journal Aphasiaology. She is currently looking for a home for her first novel.