By Michelle I. Linder
Featured Art: “Butoh” by Elowyn Frey

It’s Saturday night. The sun is almost down but not quite. Like the sky’s getting ready for bed but taking its time about it. Just letting a few streaks of color show up here and there. Maybe God accidentally left a red sock in with the whites and turned the whole thing pink. Pink is our favorite color. 

We spent the entire afternoon putting our hair up and painting our nails neon orange and bright green at Leeandra’s house. There’s another word for that color, called chartreuse. Leeandra’s mom taught us that word. She likes French things. Champagne and croissants and she even went to Paris once. She has a whole album of pictures and when she has too much to drink, she cries while she flips through it, the tips of her manicure shaking. 

While we were doing our nails, one of the neighbors was blasting a radio through an open window. The preacher thundering about how the devil himself walks amongst us. Exactly as the Good Book hath foretold. He is called the Devil and Satan and we know him because he has the mark of the beast. But the preacher said his power is nothing compared to ole’ Elijah: “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents back to their children.”  

Their hearts got turned away. Adults never understand that part. 

After we got tired of looking in the mirror, we went for a walk past town hall and the gas station until we reached the liquor store. That’s where we are now. It’s set between the arcade and Monkey Wards. Some of the places have nice awnings in different colors. Others have torn ones or none at all.  

The Cash and Carry on Main Street has a gray awning, ripped and stained. The little bell above the door goes all tinkly every time someone goes in and out. We have on our short-shorts and tight T-shirts and tube socks, hanging around the sidewalk in front of the store kicking our Keds against the curb. Not much to do on a weekend in southern Ohio if you don’t count playing Pac-Man or picking your nose. Yippee.  

That’s how we came up with the idea of getting someone to buy us a six-pack. Just one beer each. No big dealio, señores and señoras. We don’t even count Leeandra, she’s only twelve and not even wearing a training bra. Tatas flat as a cornfield. The rest of us are fourteen years old except Ivy who’s thirteen and only here with us because her stepsister Tanya is too busy swapping spit with her boyfriend to keep an eye on her. Seven is a magic number.  

That’s the one, we say when we catch a glimpse of our prime suspect. The man is old as dirt and has long, stringy hair and a dress-up shirt with a filthy collar. Sure looks like he could use a few bucks. 

Get us some beers, we say as he heads inside, holding out the twenty-dollar bill we got from Ivy’s mom’s purse.  

Just came to get my smokes he says. He reminds us of a mole caught in the sunlight desperate to hide. Then he reaches for the money. 

A six-pack of Coors—Light! Keep the change we shout and throw the bill at him. When it falls to the ground Leeandra picks it up and puts it in his pocket and we all scream.  

He takes the money out of his pocket like he’s about to give it back. Then he glances toward the sky and hurries inside.  

We flip our hair and pinch our cheeks and take a Polaroid. Flirt with some college-age boys who walk by while we wait for the old man to come out. Swat at a few nasty bugs.  

We don’t hear the chime again for a few minutes. After a while a noise from the back of the store catches our attention, so we run to a narrow alleyway along its side and peek around. There’s a dumpster swarmed by bees; they’re after something sticky-sweet. Two people are talking nearby. One of them is the old man. He’s holding our beer. The other is a lady who’d sooner dig her own grave than pick up a hairbrush. It smells like someone took a piss. Maybe it was him. We back up and use our secret hand signals to make a plan. 

All we want is what’s ours by rights. 

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The old man’s standing there holding a six-pack just as sure as you please, while the sad-sack lady he’s talking to shakes his hand and walks off. He starts to leave in the other direction, taking our beer with him. We come up behind him, stealthy. That’s a word from our spelling test.  

Hey give us that beer. 

He’s got that look again. Like he’s saying a prayer but forgot the words. 

This here’s my beer he says. Ain’t fixing to buy you no beer. 

We look at each other, then back at him. That’s when we notice him trying to read our T-shirts in this stealth way that’s super-obvious. Like telling a secret so loud everyone can hear.  

You like this? we say. You like young tatas? Girls like us? 

We’re so mad now but happy and embarrassed, too. Our tummies are a swarm of bees mixed with pink roses and ripe strawberries.  

You want us to show you more it’s gonna cost you. We want some of those wine coolers that taste like Kool Aid. Oh yeah, price just went up. Mm-hmm. While we say it, we’re forming a circle around him, our movements slow and sure.  

We can’t let him take our money, get nothing in return.  

You better give us our beer or else give us that twenty dollars back. If you don’t, that’s stealing and we’ll call the cops on you.  

Don’t have the money. Gave it to my friend who’s in a bad way. Can’t give you this beer under no circumstances anyhow. That’s betting a minor he says and he could go to jail and he been in already, did a nickel out at Lucasville and has no mind to go back there. No sirree. He licks his lips when he says it and searches for an opening. We close ranks around him. Seven of us standing in a circle.  

Then it happens. He puts his hand out and touches Leeandra’s breast. We’re sure he has. Seeing Leeandra, you can’t think any different. Plus, we all feel it. His dirty hand brushing against us like a scab. The claw on his index finger catching on our thin summer T-shirts. That’s what we get for asking an adult.  

The number seven is special. Ivy’s stepsister Tanya said so and she’s the total opposite of a parent or teacher. Seven is probably where you find the spirit of Elijah. We look at each other again and make the sign for old men who touch us without our permission.  

Kick him we say. When we kick him, he grunts a little. Then he falls to the ground and moans. The beer falls, too, and one of the cans splits open and fizzes over the sidewalk. 

Kick him harder, we say. A swarm of something, gnats maybe, buzzes around him. We kick til the swarm flies up and off him and it’s almost dark now, but the sky is still streaked with pink. 

I don’t want no trouble he keeps saying. 

We kick him seven times each. Seven times seven that’s forty-nine. Plus x punches and y scratches to the square root and that’s about 463. We learned that equation in Mrs. Johnson’s math class. Nobody likes her.  

Please he says please stop. I just want to go home. He looks to heaven and curls into a little ball. An unopened pack of cigarettes peeks from his shirt pocket. Some of the gnats are clustered around a streetlamp now. We kicked him too much and they flew off to the light.  

Forgive me he says with a sigh. His right arm is sticking out from his body at a weird angle. 

Leeandra says it’s not true, it’s a lie. He didn’t touch me. But it’s too late. We keep going until he’s lying there still as a possum. Kicking and punching until the spirit of Elijah goes out of the swarm and the pink night and everything. 

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Michelle I. Linder is a writer, human rights activist, and former diplomat. She holds a BA from Wellesley College, an MFA with a concentration in fiction from the low-residency program at Augsburg University, and is an active member of the Indiana Writers Center fiction critique group. Though she aspires to write happy endings, things rarely work out that way for her protagonists, like Ted Yamashita in her story “Killer Wives Club,” which was featured in the anthology What’s In the Body Bag; or the ghost of Dmitri Shostakovich in her flash piece “Conversations with Mitya,”, published in Figwort Literary Journal. She is currently at work on a supernatural thriller about a private investigator/Indiana Pacers cheerleader who can’t stop encountering ghosts.