Proper Action, by Treena Thibodeax

Special Sneak Preview: Barrelhouse Issue 22

Artwork by Kara Fox

“Attention. This is a lockdown.” Over the loudspeaker, the principal sounds like she’s chewing something she didn’t have time to swallow. “Take proper action.”

Alice, who had been teaching fractions and who had lost her fifth-graders’ attention some time ago, caps the whiteboard marker and points to the corner furthest from the door. Some ten-year-olds catch on to fractions and lockdown protocols right away, while the rest stare at her like a shoebox full of hamsters would if you suddenly took off the lid.

“Let’s go,” Alice says. “Quiet.”

Everyone says lockdown drills are just like fire drills. They have tornado drills as well, students trooping into the hallway to practice outrunning the flying glass. Last year the school won an award for disaster preparedness and a banner to hang in the lobby.

Her students press into the corner of her classroom near the sink, snickering when their bodies touch. You have to make sure no one can see them through the reinforced pane in the door. The drills don’t last more than a few minutes, but an actual lockdown would be longer. The first week of school, each teacher was issued an emergency bucket and a small bag of kitty litter. Alice keeps hers behind the spare paper towels.

The school safety team makes their way down the hallway, jiggling handles. When Alice backs out of sight, she bumps into something soft but unyielding and is thrown off balance, arms wheeling, until she lands hard on her ass. What she tripped over: Dakota, a student with a penchant for biting and an oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis in her IEP, crouching because she doesn’t want to stand.

“Dakota. Please stand up with everyone else, please,” Alice whisper-yells. She gets to her feet, too angry and embarrassed to assess if she is hurt. Dakota rolls her eyes and stands, executing a brief but lethal impression of Alice’s wild-armed fall that earns her a round of giggles.

“I’m going to call your mother,” Alice says.

“Go ahead,” Dakota answers. “She says you’re annoying.” Before Alice can respond, there’s a flurry of knocks at the door.

“Alice,” a kid saddled with the aspirational name of Excellence whispers. “It’s Hunter.”

The school had recently transitioned to using teacher’s first names, and Alice still isn’t used to it. She puts her finger to her lips. If someone is stranded out in the hallway during an active shooter drill, they’re supposed to wait.

Hunter quits knocking and starts yelling. Alice! ALICE! If this were an actual emergency, Hunter would get them all killed. Alice picks at her cuticles, stained with blue marker, and thinks of consequences she might give Dakota when the lockdown is lifted.

They all hide, and two boys both named Ethan make a game of stepping on one another’s September-white sneakers, and the rest just wait for it to be over.

* * *

“Hey,” Alice says to Serabeth, half-lifting a hand to wave and then stuffing it in her pocket. The music teacher is pregnant and hyperbolically lovely, a torch of beauty. It’s impossible to look at anything else when she is in the room. Alice smiles too big and then revises it so her teeth don’t show. And, because it feels awkward not to reference the pregnancy: “How are you feeling? How’s the future mathlete?”

Serabeth smooths a hand over the dome of her belly. “Stop. He’s not in there solving quadratic equations, trust.” She unpacks a tiny bento box of almonds and blueberries, and offers one to Alice. Alice pictures her washing those blueberries, rolling each one between her slim fingers. She takes one and lets it sit on her tongue, only biting down when the principal walks in with the trainer.

“You don’t know. He might like math,” Alice says, swallowing. “Babies love math.” Alice says stupid things like this to Serabeth all the time; she will replay them later until she wants to press a pillow over her own face.

Sometimes other teachers put their hands on Serabeth’s stomach without asking. Alice would never do that. She doesn’t touch anyone without permission. Even the kids: she pats them on the backpack.

“What’s good, ladies?” Kylee, young, white, and eager to try out new slang, hands them each an agenda. “How are you feeling?” she asks Serabeth.

“Going strong.” Serabeth hunts for a pen, and Alice gives her the spare she was holding for exactly that purpose. “Just seven weeks to go.”

“You’re due in November?”

“Yeah. Wish he could hang in there until break.”

“I’d be happy to donate sick-days if you need them,” Kylee says.

Serabeth once told Alice that Kylee only talks to her because she wants a black friend.

“I appreciate that,” Serabeth says. “Alice offered too. But I think I’m all set.”

The principal is standing with the trainer, and she claps out a syncopation for them to clap back at her: CLAP CLAP clapclapclap. It’s how you get attention when you’re used to dealing with children.

“OK, people, we’re going to start the ALICE training, but first I need to make sure that everyone signed in. Some of you didn’t sign in for the Implicit Bias training that last week, and you don’t get your certificate if you don’t sign in.” When she says implicit bias she looks at Serabeth. Other phrases that make everyone look at Serabeth are celebrating diversity and equity by design. Serabeth has her phone out and isn’t bothering to hide it. Kylee asks if she can have a blueberry and Serabeth nudges the bento box in her direction.

Alice dislikes Kylee. She can see the woman trying to work out a joke about the training, how the acronym sounds like it’s addressing her personally.

ALICE stands for Alert-Lockdown-Inform-Counter-Evacuation. They’ve been churning out new acronyms ever since Sandy Hook. Last week, they were given cut lengths of lumber to practice wedging under their door handles so no one could get in. Today they’re getting foam balls, which they are supposed to throw at the trainer while he pretends to shoot them.

“It’s very hard to aim accurately when things are coming at you,” he says. His name is Don or Dan. Alice is not sure which. He mumbles, and even when he wrote his name on the board, she wasn’t clear which vowel he was going for. “And I am an excellent shot. Our research shows that an active shooter will miss a lot more frequently if you throw things at him.”

They are supposed to teach their kids to throw things: books, pencils, water bottles. They are supposed to be vigilant.

“It’s not about trying to actually disarm the shooter,” Dan or Don says. “It’s about trying to distract him. Buy some time.”

Alice finds the phrase buy some time depressing. It circles in her head like something defrosting in the microwave, and while he’s talking, she watches Serabeth eat blueberries. Before her pregnancy, she was trying to start a run-club for teachers, but Alice was the only one who ever went, even though she hated running and went home coughing. Serabeth marathon-laced Alice’s sneakers for her,  set the pace and ran at her side, calling out mile markers in an encouraging voice while Alice ignored the burning in her chest.

 She’s used to ignoring how her chest feels around Serabeth.

“Are you mad at me or something?” Serabeth asks Alice after the training, while Dan or Don packs up the foam balls.

“Do I seem mad?”

 “A little.”

“I’m not mad.”

“OK.” Serabeth placates some stirring in her belly with the palm of her hand. “Will you walk me to my car, then?”

“I think I’m actually parked next to you.” Alice knows she is parked next to her. It was that space or the closer space near Kylee’s RAV4, license plate NO1MAMA.

After the ALICE trainings, no one wants to walk alone. Knots of women straggle out laughing too loud, Kylee trying to hector them into happy hour.

“Come on, Serabeth! One quick one,” Kylee calls, while Serabeth struggles to button her coat. It’s too cold for September.

Serabeth gestures at her stomach.

“Whatever, you can get a seltzer or something. Come on, Alice might actually come if you come.”

Alice wonders how many people at school know.

“Next time,” Serabeth says, and she loops her arm through Alice’s. “Get me out of here,” she whispers, and it feels like old times. They used to mouth Call the police to one another when they were trapped in conversations in the break room. It stopped being funny. Ever since the last school shooting, her mother texts her everyday at four o’clock: JUST WANTED TO SEE HOW YOUR DAY WAS?? She hates that Alice lives alone, keeps trying to talk her into getting a dog. She also says things like Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can’t find someone to marry, and all her stories involve her friends and their armies of grandchildren.

Because it’s only September, it’s still light out when they leave work. It makes Alice feel like she’s supposed to do something. Maybe she should go to happy hour; she always says next time. For a while, she pretended she had a pottery class she was rushing off to.

Alice crosses the parking lot with Serabeth. “How’s Carlene?” She has to say something, even if it’s to ask after Serabeth’s terrible wife.

Serabeth rolls her eyes. “She’s started running. You believe that? All that time I tried to get her to go with me, and she waits until I can’t.”

“You’re going to run again,” Alice says. “Soon as the mathlete is born.”

 “Yeah. But she’s coming home from these long runs, and pulling up her shirt to show me her abs, you know? She says she didn’t think pregnancy would be like this.” She sucks her teeth, waving at the kindergarten teacher who drives past them, her car full of stuffed animals. “She says she’s not attracted to me anymore.”

“Wasn’t it her idea that you two should have a baby?” Alice says. She can’t say you are attractive, no way, and she needs to stop the fantasy rolling down the track of her brain: sweeping Serabeth behind her, throwing things at Carlene.

Alice has only met Carlene once, and she could tell the woman was mean. She was the kind of person whose eyes lingered on the parts of you that bulged. Carlene asked Alice what she taught and when Alice told her math, she asked if the kids hate it as much as she used to, and Alice said yes, some of them.

“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was,” Serabeth says. “I think it’s been hard for her; she didn’t get very much attention as a kid, and now here I am, sucking up all the attention.”

You deserve it. Sometimes Alice scrolls through Serabeth’s photos on Instagram, handling them like sheets of glass, afraid of liking a selfie posted years ago. “Well. Pretty soon the baby will be the center of attention.”

“Truth.” They are at Serabeth’s car. Soon they will wave at each other. They only hug goodbye before summer vacation. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine.”

* * *

It wasn’t fine. Serabeth’s baby was born via c-section a month ahead of schedule, her blood pressure coming to a dangerous boil.

Alice’s class is doing decimals and practicing various routes they might take to escape the building in an emergency. She checks her social media feed for updates on Serabeth and considers asking Kylee if she’s heard anything. There’s a shooting at a concert in Hartford, and plans go up online for a 3D-printed assault rifle, and the teacher’s union sends an email around about bulletproof vests and backpacks. They pass around a sample vest at the staff meeting and Alice is surprised by the weight of the thing. Lately she’s been surprised by the weight of everything. She is slow and tired and the encroaching darkness when she leaves school surprises her, like she’s stayed at work longer than she intended.

Then Kylee comes over with her phone extended, shell-pink manicure twiddling the sceen. “Look at how cute Serabeth’s baby is.”

All Alice can see is how tired Serabeth looks, her smile weak, hair dull on the pillow. “Who’s this?” Alice asks, indicating a male arm, someone facing away from the bed.

 “I don’t know. A bunch of her wife’s friends from Equinox were there.”

Alice pictures people laughing, bumping into monitors. Someone doing burpees beside the plexiglass bassinet.

“You should go see her,” Kylee says. More pictures. She is holding Serabeth’s baby in some of them.

“Maybe I will. It looks like there’s already a lot of people there.” Alice’s throat hurts. She wants to say, Did she ask about me? “She’s probably tired. Was her family there?”

“No. Just her wife’s friends. But anyway. I saw the baby.”

 “Will you send me the picture?” Of Serabeth and the baby not you and the baby. No way to add that without seeming weird. Her throat definitely hurts. There’s always some cold or flu going around; they are haunted by viruses, howling from grade to grade..

“Sure. But don’t post it online or anything. She doesn’t want pictures of her son going up until he’s old enough to decide for himself about social media.” Kylee taps the screen, like she could like it anyway.

* * *

Alice isn’t sure what the text should say. She opens up a box and stares at it and then feels pressured because what if Serabeth happens to be texting her at that exact same time, something about work or checking to make sure her sub is taking care of the xylophones and not losing all the mallets, and she sees the pulsing ellipses, catches Alice at a loss for words? So instead she drafts on the back of the receipt for a stuffed elephant, I’m here for you if you need anything and I hear you have a lot of people there, is everything OK. In the end, she goes with CONGRATULATIONS!!! (she’ll edit that back to a single exclamation mark)  Can’t wait to see you and the baby. And then she’ll be sorry that she wrote on the receipt, because she should have given the receipt to Serabeth with the gift. What if they didn’t like stuffed elephants?

It’s just barely gone light in the morning when the kids get to school, and the school has reversed their policy on cell-phones, because so many parents want to be notified that their children have made it safely to homeroom, to third period, back in from the playground after recess. By seventh period, the kids have their foreheads down on the edge of the desks, their faces underlit and sleepy.

“Put your phones away,” Alice says. She leaves hers out on her desk, though. Teachers are supposed to always have their phones within reach. You never know when there will be gunfire, and also Serabeth might text her back. “Dakota, away does not mean in your lap. And you’re not allowed to have a glass water bottle at school. They’re dangerous.”

Dakota lifts her chin, her eyes like rocks. “My water bottle is dangerous?”

“If it breaks, it could cut someone.” She doesn’t threaten to call Dakota’s mother; the last time she called, she heard Dakota in the background, saying just hang up on her, and her mother had snorted, holding back laughter.

By dismissal, there’s nothing, and as the kids fill in their exit tickets, Alice appends to her last text: Let me know if you need anything.

* * *

The picture of Serabeth and her baby and Kylee goes up on the bulletin board in the main office. The baby is named Carlo, after his other mother. At school, they have another ALICE training, and practice making barricades out of desks. One falls but no one is hurt and Dan or Don gives advice on how to do it faster next time. Alice makes unsuccessful small talk with her coworkers, asking how was your day in a too-loud voice, offering a bent smile. In the ensuing awkwardness, she takes out her phone and scrolls through the news, reading about protests in far away places.

Serabeth finally replies to Alice’s text with a picture of Carlo. In the background, she can see Carlene; it looks like she is yelling.

After work, Alice drives to the crossfit gym where Carlene works as a personal trainer and watches her, striding across the rubberized mats in leggings and a tank top that shows off the muscles in her back. She thinks about how people must get hit by cars all the time, leaving the Crossfit gym with headphones in.

For their professional development time this week, the staff has upstander training. There are options, they’re told, when other people are being abused.

Option One: Confront the Harasser. Alice could wait until Carlene came out and chase her down. Your behavior is not appropriate, the upstander in the video says. If it continues, I will report it. But who is she supposed to report it to? If Carlene had crossed the line into physical abuse, she could call the police. But you can’t call the authorities just because someone is being an asshole.

Option Two: Document the Behavior. Alice writes down the things Serabeth tells her. Aggregated, they become a case for emotional abuse. She could give Serabeth this list. I know a good lawyer, Alice would say.

Option Three: Distract or Interrupt the Situation. Getting hit by a car would be a distraction. Setting fire to the gym would be a distraction. But even in these fantasies, Carlene just goes back to Serabeth in a worse mood.

That leaves Option Four: Follow up with the victim. Serabeth will be back at work in two weeks. By then, maybe Alice will know what to say. You deserve better than this, she practices into a mirror, but her lips twitch, and she thinks her eyes look too small and wet. It’s no use. She’s not assertive enough to be an upstander. The best she can do is wait.

* * *

When Serabeth comes back, she has a fresh haircut and newly minted circles under her eyes. She’s escorting a class of kindergartners to the music room and she stops to thank Alice for the elephant, but it’s awkward with the kids swinging their linked hands, staring at them.

“Carlo loves it,” Serabeth says.  “I mean, it can’t be anywhere near the crib because my mother-in-law is convinced it will fall in and smother the baby, but he stares at it from across the room.”

Alice had not realized that stuffed animals were a threat to infants.

“I’m glad. I’m sorry I didn’t come and visit in person, I just figured you were probably busy.”

“I could have used a visitor, actually.” Serabeth removes something from the corner of her eye. “I need to get these guys back to music. I’ll come by and see you at lunch?”

“Sure!” Too enthusiastic. “If you want.”

Alice brought lunch from home; she’s been experimenting with shitake mushrooms, but they stink when you reheat them, a damp odor like peeling off socks. She doesn’t want her room to smell weird when Serabeth comes upstairs.

I don’t like the way Carlene is treating you, Alice practices quietly, auditioning a light tone of voice and working her way up to a more serious one. She can’t make it sound appropriate. It is, horribly, none of her business.

Besides, lunch is half over, and Serabeth still has not shown up. Maybe she forgot. Cold, the shitake mushrooms are a disappointment.

Alice is putting the lid back on just as Serabeth slides in. “Hey, Al. Sorry, I got held up in the copy room. You busy?”

“No. I—”

The P.A. clicks on and the principal’s voice elbows in. “Attention all staff! This is a lockdown. Take proper action.”

“Oh, come on,” Serabeth says. “Seriously? During recess?”

They stare at the loudspeaker like it has more information to give. “Something’s wrong.” Alice locates her key and locks the door, her hands trembling. Just the two of them, state-mandated to turn off the lights and huddle in the corner. “They never—I mean, the kids are still eating...”

“You don’t think—”

“No. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing. Someone will let us know. Let’s just…” Alice gestures. Her legs wobble, and she looks behind her, like a loose child might be crouching there. “We need to go over there, where no one can see us.”

“Wow. You know Frank’s all in his feelings right now.” Frank is the literacy coach they just hired. He was USMC, and he wanted to argue at the last training over what he called their sitting duck strategies.

“We should probably stay quiet.”

“Seriously?” Serabeth’s breath smells like anise, and Alice can feel it against her ear when she whispers.

“Just in case.” Alice squeezes Serabeth’s arm, and wonders if she might leave her hand there a moment longer. “Like, if something’s up.”

“Yeah.” Serabeth shifts so she can get her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to text Carlene.”

“Totally. I’m going to text someone too.” Alice tilts her phone screen away. Her three most recent texts are robo-invitations to sign petitions. She could text her mother, but then her mother would show up at the school. If there are reporters outside, her mother is the person likeliest to show up on camera.

Alice sneaks a look at Serabeth’s phone. Babe we’re in lockdown. Have you heard anything about any incidents in the neighborhood? And, love you.

“Check Twitter,” Serabeth says. “I’m going to call the main office. Look.” She turns her phone to show a text from Kylee: ??? and what room are you in?

“God. Don’t tell her. She’ll turn up here.”

“Right? Swear to god, she is the one person who could find the whoo in an active-shooter drill. Lockdown-party!” Serabeth rolls her eyes and dials the main office and it rings and rings.

“No one’s answering?” Alice moves closer, waiting for screams, gunshots, but there’s only the quiet, warm and heavy as a quilt, covering the both of them. Serabeth checks her phone; Carlene does not text back.

“She’s probably with a client,” Serabeth says. Sun breaks through the window in a honey-colored bar.  “I’m going to take a look through the door.”

“No!” Alice grabs her wrist. The skin is soft. She has a tiny tattoo of a jellyfish there. “Don’t. What if there’s someone out there?”

“I’m not going to open the door, I’m just going to look out and see if I see anything.”

“I can’t think of more famous last words. God. Stay here.” An eely thrill of protectiveness unfurls in Alice’s belly. “Seriously, you’re somebody’s mom. I’ll go.”

Her knees crack when she rises and her guts churn in the quiet. Alice peers out the window at the corridor’s bleak desertion. She can see the dark classroom across from her, and if she presses her face against the plexiglass, the next room down.

“I don’t see the safety team,” Alice whispers.

And then Dakota stomps into view. She has her hood up, the unicorn one with the pink yarn mane. The plush horn bobs forlornly. She wrenches the handle of the classroom door across the hall, sniffling but all the doors are locked tight. Alice pulls out of sight. You never open the door during a lockdown.

“Anything?” Serabeth asks.

If she tells Serabeth, their time alone will be spent trying to find someone to collect Dakota from the fourth floor. Or maybe she will insist they open the door and shelter her here with them, and Dakota will inform Serabeth that no one likes Alice and ask what smells.

 Alice organizes her face so it’s blank and then writes concern on it. “Hey, do you want my sweater? You look cold.”

“I’m alright. Did you see anybody?”

“No. Nobody’s out there.”

“I thought I heard something.”

Alice shakes her head. “No, nothing. But you’re shivering. Take my sweater.”

Serabeth accepts it. The cardigan looks like a disguise on her. “I heard a school in Woodbury was on lockdown in October for three hours. Goddamned false alarm.”

“Yeah? Did they notify the parents? Like, an email blast or something?”

“I don’t know. I feel like everyone would just show up at the school, get in the way.”

“Yeah,” Alice says. She peels a stray GOOD JOB sticker off the sleeve of her shirt. “You probably would too.” She offers Serabeth the sticker, and Serabeth affixes it to the sweater. “You’re a parent now.”

“I sure am.” She draws her knees in and closes her eyes. “It’s hard sometimes. Somehow, I gave birth to a baby that doesn’t need to sleep. I swear, I could drift off right now. Carlene says she doesn’t like it. And I’m like, it will get better, this is just the newborn part and she’s like, no. I don’t like being a parent.”

“It’s a little late for her to say that now.” Alice revises her rescue fantasies so they include Carlo, although she doesn’t have a car seat, or a tiny place for him to sleep.

“That’s right. She keeps asking when I’m going to start running again. When I’m going to get my body back. Like, she asked me that with her actual face.” Serabeth scuffs at a piece of tape stuck to the floor with the heel of her boot. “She won’t get up at night to feed him. She says that her job is physical, so she needs to be rested. She won’t let my mother or my sister come stay with us. She says doesn’t want them underfoot.” Serabeth turns to face her. “And I am so damn tired.”

“You could always come stay with me,” Alice says, her voice low, heaving the words like cinder-blocks. “I have the room. I could help.”

Serabeth doesn’t answer, but her lips part. Is that a siren in the distance? It doesn’t matter. Alice puts her arm around her like it’s the last day of school, and then she’s tilting her face, working out the right alignment to kiss her. Her heartbeat is a sickening knock banging out the seconds before the lockdown is lifted, syncopating your CHANCE, your CHANCE, your CHANCE.

Only it’s not, because Serabeth pulls back so fast she bangs her head on the cabinet where Alice keeps the rulers and protractors. Serabeth puts her hand over mouth. “Alice—”

“Shit.” Alice forgets to whisper. “I wasn’t going to…” But she was going to. “I’m sorry.” She looks around, like there might be a better place to hide than this.

Serabeth gets to her feet, but there isn’t any place to go. “No, no. It’s OK,” she whispers, although they both know it’s not. When you’re locked in together, you have to pretend it’s OK.  Serabeth removes Alice’s sweater and hands it back and the GOOD JOB sticker falls off and they both stare at it on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Alice repeats. She listens for the reprieve of gunshots.

“No, I’m sorry. I kind of knew you were—I mean, I could tell.” Serabeth halts, and then forges on. “My marriage may not be perfect, but that’s my wife. And you’re a colleague. I’m not with that.”

All Alice can do is nod. “We better stop talking. Someone might hear—” Then there’s a knock at the door, and relief in moving toward the sound.

Serabeth grabs for her arm, and something, a fingernail or her wedding ring, leaves a scratch. “Alice! Where are you going?”

“I think it’s a kid in the hall.”

“We’re not supposed to open the door!”

“I can’t just leave her out there.”

“Her?” Serabeth is still whispering Alice’s name in increasing tones of urgency as Alice faces Dakota through the pane in the door.

There is a smear of blood on Dakota’s unicorn hoodie and furious tears on her face. She is wrenching the doorknob with both hands, until she sees Alice and lets go, reflexively pushing her hood off her head. No hoods or hats in school. They watch one another through the window.

“Leave her,” Serabeth whispers.

“I can’t.”

“I’m going to have to report this, Alice.” She takes out her phone. They are no longer friends. They are two women locked in a room together, hiding from a child. “You’re going to get yourself fired.”

“Please, Alice,” Dakota says through the window. The kid’s hair is a sweaty mess. “Can I come in?”

Alice raises her voice against the muffling thickness of the door: “What happened?” She points. “What’s that in your pocket?”

Dakota looks away and kicks the door frame and then finally holds it out: a blade snapped loose from a pair of scissors. “Ethan S. wouldn’t give me back my fucking pencil case. I barely scratched him, but he was bleeding and everyone started yelling.”

“If I open the door, will you give it to me? The scissor?”

“Alice, goddamnit! No!” Serabeth’s phone illuminates her face, a text message reflected in her pupils. Alice doesn’t need to read it to know she’s telling on her. About violating lockdown protocol, or filing a sexual harassment complaint, or maybe she’s telling Carlene about the attempted kiss, and Carlene is zipping her muscular frame into her jacket right now to come down here. It doesn’t matter. All the entrances have been sealed.

“It’s OK,” Alice tells Dakota through the door. She considers saying something about how everyone makes mistakes. “You’ll give me the scissors?”

“I’m still going to get in trouble. Even if I say I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Alice asserts. “But for now at least, you’re going to give me the scissor.” She removes the plank wedged beneath the doorknob.

“Alice,” Serabeth says. “I swear to god…”

Alice’s hands are empty. She has nothing to throw. She has no escape route planned, and no one she is obligated to protect. A breeze gets in, a window left open somewhere, when she opens the door and turns up her palm for the weapon.

Treena Thibodeau's work has appeared in The Rumpus, Pithead Chapel, Atticus Review, Lunch Ticket, Able Muse, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Tin House Summer Conference, and the Gulkistan Center. She directs the virtual reading series TGI (www.tgicast.com) and holds an MFA from Columbia University. Artwork by Kara Fox