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  Welcome Home © 2017 by Eric Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Flux, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Edition

  First Printing, 2017

  Book design by Jake Nordby

  Cover font by Tup Wanders

  Flux, an imprint of North Star Editions, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending)

  978-1-63583-004-0

  Flux

  North Star Editions, Inc.

  2297 Waters Drive

  Mendota Heights, MN 55120

  www.fluxnow.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  For those who’ve been found

  And for those out alone,

  For those still searching

  And for those who’ve come home.

  Contents

  Carlos and the Fifteen-Year-Old Heart1

  by Adi Alsaid

  Strong Enough13

  by Karen Akins

  The Sign 20

  by Erica M. Chapman

  Up by a Million 30

  by Caela Carter

  Mama’s Eyes41

  by Libby Cudmore

  A Kingdom Bright and Burning58

  by Dave Connis

  The Inexplicable Weight of Mountains70

  by Helene Dunbar

  Webbed 86

  by Julie Eshbaugh

  Life: Starring Tallulah Grey 95

  by Lauren Gibaldi

  Salvation112

  by Shannon Gibney

  Twenty-Seven Days126

  by Jenny Kaczorowski

  Ink Drips Black140

  by Julie Leung

  Upon The Horizon’s Verge149

  by Sangu Mandanna

  Lullaby158

  by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Census Man176

  by Mindy McGinnis

  Invited 183

  by Lauren Morrill

  Empty Lens 192

  by Tameka Mullins

  A Lesson in Biology 204

  by Sammy Nickalls

  Tunneling Through 214

  by Shannon M. Parker

  Broken Stars 224

  by C.J. Redwine

  The Snow-Covered Sidewalk 233

  by Randy Ribay

  Deeply 246

  by William Ritter

  Meant to be Broken 254

  by Stephanie Scott

  Moving the Body 272

  by Natasha Sinel

  In Pieces 289

  by Eric Smith

  Peace of Paper 295

  by Courtney Stevens

  Happy Beginning 309

  by Nic Stone

  The Take Back 321

  by Kate Watson

  Jar of Broken Wishes 333

  by Tristina Wright

  Introduction

  “Did you know Superman is adopted?”

  Sometimes it’s Superman. Other times, someone will bring up Batman or Spider-Man. Whether it’s Aquaman, Gambit, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, superheroes have given us a way to quickly give adopted kids and foster children a place to potentially see themselves in the world’s pop culture.

  But there’s a problem with that.

  Not every kid feels super all the time.

  Superman can fly away from most of his problems. Batman? As the affluent Bruce Wayne, he has enough money to make them go away. And Spider-Man, even though things are certainly rough for him as a super-powered teenager, for the most part always has Aunt May and Uncle Ben to turn to during times of emotional turmoil.

  Welcome Home was inspired after talking with many authors and realizing there was a lot of room for other kinds of adoption stories.

  Stories of kids struggling to connect with their new families (Dave Connis’s “A Kingdom Bright and Burning”), former families (Erica M. Chapman’s “The Sign”), and the idea of even having one in the first place (Mindy McGinnis’s “Census Man”). And what of teenagers who find themselves as the person giving someone away, or as the person being taken away, not as a baby, but as a young adult? What’s it like to wrestle with those feelings?

  Enclosed in this collection are stories not just about family, but of friendship and first love, of finding strength in both solidarity and togetherness. Stories that remind us that not all reunions are happy—some are sad, scary, and downright dangerous. Sometimes these stories are told in familiar places, with two people in a coffee shop (Randy Ribay’s “The Snow-Covered Sidewalk”), and other times they take you across space (Matthew Quinn Martin’s “Lullaby”) and time (Sangu Mandanna’s “Upon the Horizon’s Verge”). Some read like fables (Adi Alsaid’s “Carlos and the Fifteen-Year-Old Heart”) and others like updates from a friend’s blog (Tameka Mullins’s “Empty Lens”).

  It’s my hope that no matter where these stories take place or whom they are about, you’ll be able to see yourself in them. To know that there are people like you who have felt the same way, who have laughed and cried, felt angry and hopeless.

  We can’t all feel like Superman.

  But that doesn’t mean we can’t all fly.

  edited by

  Eric Smith

  Carlos and the Fifteen-Year-Old Heart

  by Adi Alsaid

  Carlos Herald was born to a couple of strangers in a hospital in Mexico City. Not long afterward—a feeding, a medical checkup, a nurse’s hurried coffee break—he was put in the arms of Janice and Cody Herald, two longtime Iowa residents who’d relocated to the Mexican metropolis a few months earlier, and who, for unknown reasons, were stuck in the year 1985.

  They hardly noticed anymore, except for the earthquake, and Carlos wouldn’t either until the age of six. His first-grade classroom: colorful construction paper posters, an animal-alphabet decal on the wall, an inexperienced teacher standing in front of the whiteboard. Carlos loved her flower print dresses, the softness of her voice. But she liked to give lectures and, one day, unaware that the subject matter of genetics was far too ambitious for her audience, she let slip an innocent comment about Carlos’s parents being unlike everyone else’s.

  Twenty-five sets of eyes looked in his direction, and six-year-old Carlos slouched in his seat. He didn’t understand what Ms. Nancy had meant, but he did not like how it made him feel. Ms. Nancy went on, oblivious: Carlos was not inheriting certain things from his parents, unlike most people. Someone in the back snickered. Carlos slouched further, a terrible hollow in the pit of his stomach.

  This incident led to confusion, curiosity, and the eventual question posed to his dad a few nights later during story time. Cody was leaning near the soft orange night-light, reading in his mellifluous voice when Carlos interrupted the Roald Dahl tale. “What makes our family different from everyone else?” he asked, the hurt still clinging to his voice.

  His dad slipped a finger into the book and closed it gently, immediately understanding. He called Janice over, and when she entered the room he gave her a look. “Already?” she asked. He nodded, and sh
e sighed, then came to sit at the foot of Carlos’s bed. Carlos loved the weight of her on the mattress, loved how close they were to him, even if the quiet moment that followed was a little scary.

  “Yes,” Cody admitted finally, “we are different than others. Your mom’s blue eyes have nothing to do with your brown eyes. My red hair has nothing to do with your brown hair. These colors will never mix, because they are part of different palettes.” Cody brushed hair out of Carlos’s eyes, and Janice laid her hand on his foot, which was poking out from beneath his Looney Tunes covers.

  “And yes,” Cody went on, “you live in a future world that we will probably never know or understand.”

  “But we love you,” Janice cut in. “And our relationship is no different than anyone else’s, no matter what decade we inhabit or whose genes you’ve inherited.” Some of the words were hard to understand, but they sank in anyway, absorbed through his heart, not his head.

  After that there were a couple of years more of confusion—not necessarily about his relationship with his parents, but from navigating the effects of a decade he’d never lived in. Then the hell of middle school, the awkwardness of well-meaning friends who didn’t understand, the meanness of those who did not mean well though they thought they understood. Every year, the earthquake. It was always forgotten by his parents by the time January came around and 1985 reset, and Carlos did not know how to warn them.

  Until Carlos turned fifteen, when the only thing that seemed to matter to him was a girl.

  That Carlos loved a girl at fifteen would not have been of any interest to anyone. Everyone loves someone at fifteen, usually recklessly. Fifteen is more or less when love begins, whether you have loved your family for your entire life or whether you won’t admit to loving anyone for another ten years.

  The fifteen-year-old heart does two things well: it fears, and it loves.

  Lianne Lucy moved to town the summer before sophomore year, arriving in a flurry of moving trucks and little, bespectacled siblings. From across the street, Carlos watched her carry in box after box overflowing with books, not trusting the movers to treat them with enough reverence. Carlos tried to resist falling inexplicably in love too quickly, because he never believed the love stories that unfolded in fast-forward. But his heart resisted the criticisms and gave itself up so quickly that he didn’t even have time to eat breakfast before the organ forced him to cross the street and say hello.

  His friends would later tell him that first encounters with love interests should always be electronic, and that he had made a mistake. Maybe Carlos’s upbringing in a 1985 household disagreed, or maybe the attraction was too strong to adhere to current first-hello norms. When he walked onto her lawn, Lianne eyed him as if she knew his heart had thrown itself across the street and Carlos was just following behind. She put her hands in the pockets of her dress and waited for him to speak.

  Carlos wasn’t particularly talkative, nor particularly prepared, since he believed speaking before breakfast should always be avoided. The only thing that he could think to say was “hi.” Lianne lobbed the word back at him like an expert conversationalist, which put Carlos right back in the position he was in at the start of this paragraph. It was hot outside, and he could feel his t-shirt clinging to his lower back, his least favorite feeling in the world.

  “My parents are stuck in 1985,” he said, not sure why.

  Lianne did not seem impressed, but she didn’t turn away. Her warm brown eyes blinked once, and then she smiled. “Cool. Tell me more.”

  He couldn’t shut up the whole day, telling her every single thing about his parents that he knew. How they didn’t have cell phones, and so they didn’t constantly check in like some parents do. Unlike his friends, who always had to scroll through Documentaries about Depressing Things or Old, Vaguely Misogynistic Romances, Carlos’s Netflix account remained solely his, the suggestions perfectly suited for his tastes.

  He told Lianne about New Year’s Eve, and how every year at the massive neighborhood party his aunt and uncle throw, Janice and Cody Herald arrive with party hats that wish everyone a happy 1985. He did not tell her about the earthquake. Lianne kept her hands in her dress pockets most of the time, and she laughed as if no one ever told her to be wary of boys who cross the street to say hi before they even have their breakfast.

  When he got back home, he was so giddy that he did all his chores for the week in one frenzied hour before bed. His mom raised an eyebrow at his dad at the sparkling kitchen floors, the dusted blinds, the garbage out at the curb, and an empty bag tucked perfectly into the bin.

  “Weird,” Cody said, folding his newspaper, wondering if maybe this was some unique form of teenage rebellion. But Janice, who had been peeking through the blinds intermittently throughout the day, had a better guess.

  “My baby’s in love,” she whispered.

  With the free time their son had provided for them by tidying up, Janice and Cody popped in a VHS of The Karate Kid. They held each other close, thinking not so much of Mr. Miyagi, but rather of Carlos and how fast he was growing up.

  It was a logical expectation that Lianne would attend Carlos’s school in the fall, but it was a convenient twist of fate that put her in three of his eight classes. And who knows what wonderful thing was to blame for the seating arrangement placing them side-by-side. At first, he could only smile at her, say hi, maybe bring up another strange eighties thing about his parents. But Carlos eventually got better at saying things that made sense and could lead to conversation, and by the second week of school, they became close friends.

  He kept his love to himself, not yet sure what to do with it or if Lianne would welcome it. At home, his parents smirked whenever he mentioned her name, which he did many, many times. He never quite caught what they meant by these smirks. Instead, he’d take advantage of the fact that his parents seemed to be okay with him talking about Lianne. Talking about Lianne was one of his favorite things now.

  Some of his friends liked to mess with his parents whenever they came over. They’d do this by bringing up current events and modern technology, amused by the way the Heralds’ eyes would glaze over at the mention of Wi-Fi, delighted by how the Heralds would laugh hysterically whenever someone mentioned that Michael Jackson was white and dead.

  Lianne, though, was fascinated by them, fascinated by 1985 and how it felt to still be there. The first time she came over to do homework with Carlos, she was polite and nonchalant about their eightiesness.

  Cody and Janice were nervous that day, probably more so than Carlos and Lianne. They paced in the living room, unable to sit still on their chintz couch, worried that Lianne would flee at the ugly pastel carpet that constantly needed cleaning, the neon wallpaper, the ubiquitous rubber-necked lamps. They were worried that Lianne might not understand, and that Carlos would blame them for it.

  They heard the jingle of keys in the front door, and both of them leaped into positions of imagined casualness. When Carlos pushed open the door and saw them standing the way they were, he hesitated for a terrible second in which it seemed as if he might be regretting everything. Then he stepped inside, casting a smile backward at Lianne, who waltzed in confidently behind him. She looked straight at Cody and Janice, eyes warm with kindness. She ignored Cody’s perm and Janice’s shoulder pads. She said nothing of the furniture. Instead she waved and smiled, then cleaned her smudged glasses with the hem of her skirt as Carlos introduced everyone.

  “We’ve heard so much about you,” Janice said. “You’re just as lovely as . . .”

  “Mom!” Carlos interrupted.

  Janice blushed, and Cody put a comforting hand on his wife’s back. The room tensed for just a second, fears approaching reality. Then Lianne slipped her glasses back on and said, “It’s really nice to meet you guys.”

  That night, textbooks splayed on Carlos’s bed between them, Lianne surprised herself by cutting the distance betwee
n them in one literal fell swoop and kissing Carlos for the first time. He felt as if he was traveling through dimensions, even though every ounce of his being remained exactly where it was. More than that, his entire consciousness became focused on the spot where their lips met, not forgetting himself, but exactly the opposite, realizing where he was entirely. The kiss was imperfect (he kept his mouth open when Lianne kept hers closed), sloppy (a streak of saliva on Carlos’s chin), yet transporting all the same.

  They kissed again, a little better this time: less slobbery, fewer teeth. Then they turned their attention back to their homework for a second, although any attempt to focus led them right back toward each other. Downstairs, Janice and Cody cleaned the dishes that had piled up during dinner, listening to Prince on the radio. Cody would swear several 1985s later that the glass he broke that night was the result of a surge of joy that shot down his spine the very moment Carlos was kissing Lianne. Janice, a committed eye-roller of all things New Age, would never admit that she felt the same surge of joy.

  Four weeks later, Carlos and Lianne got to spend a full night together for the first time when his parents celebrated their anniversary at a nearby bed-and-breakfast. They weren’t quite sure which anniversary it was, because their condition made math tricky, but they felt as if they were about due for an important one.

  Carlos and Lianne used the occasion to feel a little more grown-up. They ordered pizza and watched movies in bed, less clothed than they normally would be if his parents were still around. They tried to be simultaneously cool and appreciative about this, which resulted in a fair amount of giggling, touching, blushing, and one pizza slice dropped face down on the carpet when Lianne could no longer hold onto it through her laughter. Mostly chaste, they fell asleep in each other’s arms (and legs, and more).

  At 7:19 a.m. Carlos woke up in a panic, suddenly recalling the date.

  On September 19, 1985, at 7:19 a.m. Mexico City was struck by an 8.0-magnitude earthquake that completely crumbled more than four hundred buildings. And every September, Carlos’s adoptive parents from Iowa relived it, gripped in the terror of shaking, especially when you’ve never known shaking quite like this before.