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Houston County High School Literary MagazineFebruary Issue

Messages in a Bottle

Edited by Bugay, Bullock, & Whilden

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Table of ContentsProse………………………………………………………...3

Art…………………………………………………………...11

Poetry………………………………………………………..15

Edited by Bugay, Bullock, & Whilden

Cover art by Beth Brown

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Frame

“Aren’t you going to say hi?” Harriet asks. Lila says nothing. Cynthia, the nurse, has gone back

to watching a subtitled soap opera.

“Okay,” says Harriet, shrugging and picking up her guitar. I tear my eyes away from Lila’s,

vacant and staring straight ahead as they have been for the past fifteen minutes. There are

paintings on the wall – oil, or maybe acrylic. Three girls in full skirts, overlooking a lake. A

dignified lady draped over a chaise. There are at least seven hung around the room, and Lila

stares at the same blank spot on the wall.

“What do you want to play?”

No answer.

“I’ll just have to pick it myself.” Harriet begins strumming soft, bright chords.

There is a framed photograph on one of the shelves, dated 1991. In it, a woman stands by a man

looking to be in his early sixties, ruddy and rounded at the edges, with smiling crinkles behind

his eyes. My eyes dart from Lila to the photograph, and I realize suddenly that the woman in the

picture is Lila Norwich. They have similarly shaped noses, and the same arch of the eyebrows,

but looking between the photograph and the flesh-and-blood woman is like playing one of those

“spot the differences” games. Where the woman in the picture has sharp cheekbones and hair

firmly styled with what appears to be four cans of Aqua-Net, her twin on the hospital has the

chubby cheeks of a child. Her gaze lacks focus, and her hair is gray and clean, but lank.

I recognize the strains of “Stand By Me.” Harriet’s voice thrums with musicality, but it is not

showy. She maintains a low volume. “When the night has come,” she sings, “and the land is

dark, and the moon is the only light we’ll see” – Lila’s smile widens – “I won’t be afraid, no, I

won’t shed a tear.” Harriet freezes her fingers on the neck of the guitar and looks expectantly at

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Lila. “Are you going to sing it?” Harriet’s eyes are great and brown through her black-rimmed

spectacles. “Remember what you told me about why this song is important to you?”

Lila only makes a rough coughing noise in the back of her throat. I try to imagine her speaking,

and can’t. “Is that how it’s gonna be today?” Harriet smiles tightly, but not unkindly. “Or do you

want to try again?”

Lila Norwich coughs again.

“I guess we can give it one more shot.” Harriet begins to sing again. “You and I, a little toy shop,

buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got.” But this time, when she reaches the end of the

stanza and stops, Lila shifts a little in bed, fidgeting.

There’s a pregnant pause, and then she opens her mouth. “’Til one by one, they were gone,” she

intones, clearly and coherently. Her voice is tuneless, more like a rasping croak than a melody,

leaving the lyrics to stand stark. Harriet turns briefly to look at me, smiling, as if to say, See?

A stupidly broad grin spreads across my face. Lila understands. I feel surprised, but slightly

ashamed. I’ve underestimated how present she is, despite her detached appearance.

Harriet keeps on singing, and keeps on stopping before the last line of every verse. Lila finishes

each one with the correct lyric. I’m tempted to sing along, but the transaction seems personal –

almost sacred. These are Lila’s memories entrusted to Harriet. I am an observer, permitted to

watch but not to invade.

Harriet and Lila finish 99 Red Balloons and move on to other songs. They play Hit the Road

Jack and some old tunes I recognize as being by the Everly Brothers. When they’ve gotten

through just a few verses of Roving Gambler, Lila stops finishing the phrases. Harriet stops

playing. “Maybe we’ll stop that one there for today,” she says. “Lila, why don’t you tell Piper

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what that is on the wall?” She points to a framed document – a college degree. From across the

room, I can’t make out the words. “Lila,” Harriet repeats, “what did you go to college for?”

She blinks. Her fingers twitch. Her eyes narrow, as if she’s reaching for a forgotten thought. I do

that sometimes. I lose a thought and have to travel back down a trail of thoughts to find it. Is that

what it’s like for Lila Norwich? Does she have to follow threads to find her words? Finally she

speaks. “Nurse,” she says in the same croaking voice.

“I’m sure Piper wants to hear more about it,” Harriet says, motioning me closer. I tentatively

take a seat in a hard armchair shoved against the wall. In the interval between the question and

the answer, I take a longer look at the photographs taped to the wall across the bed. There’s a

picture of a young woman in an oversized leather jacket, carrying a couple of books and a

shoulder bag. I picture Lila in high school, sipping coffee in the morning, chatting with a friend

about a geometry test. I look down at my hot pink skate sneakers, picturing myself in the hospital

bed. I become conscious of my hands on the arms of the chair. I see them stubby, tremulous, and

wrinkled with age.

“Or you could tell them about Lewis,” says the nurse, who is flipping channels.

A light appears behind Lila’s eyes. “Lewis is my husband,” she says, laboriously forming each

word syllable by syllable. “He’s an electrician. Last week the light shorted out.” Between each

sentence there are whole seconds of silence, but neither of the other women in the room seem

particularly bothered by the pauses that seem so awkward to me. “Last week the light shorted

out,” says Lila. “Lewis figured out where the short was. He fixed it himself.

“We got married in 1965.” The cartoonish grin on her face softens into something gentler. “I

wore my mother’s old dress. It was short notice. I was just out of college.”

“What about your children?”

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“Colleen and Michael,” she rasps. “They’re sweet children. They do well in school. Lewis and I

are proud.”

Go on, Harriet mouths. Ask questions. I smile uneasily, trying to release the tension from my

shoulders. “How old are Colleen and Michael?”

“They’re twelve and ten,” she says. “They have big imaginations. Michael writes and Colleen

likes to draw.”

“I like to draw,” I say, looking first to Harriet and then Cynthia for reassurance.

“I used to draw when I was a girl. I liked to paint.”

Harriet nods, pointing at the paintings hung around the room. Although I probably knew it all

along on some level, it suddenly strikes me that they are Lila’s paintings. The individual blades

of grass, the stippled clouds, and the attention to ripples of light are all the work of the same

woman whose hands shook when she reached for the rain stick Harriet brought today. They came

from a mind that now finds it so difficult to brush the dust off of old synapses. I’m drawn by the

rich colors and the fine detail. Each frame is a window into Lila Norwich, a woman who day by

day becomes locked inside herself. “They’re beautiful,” I say. “I wish I could paint like that.”

Lila, still smiling a little, makes a small noise in the back of her throat, but doesn’t reply. “I’ll

take that to mean it’s time to go,” Harriet says, nodding at Cynthia.

When she closes the door behind us, Harriet says, “Her husband – Lewis – died five years ago,

and her kids are in their mid-forties. It’s not uncommon for dementia patients to regress like that.

They can kind of live in the past.”

Half-dazed under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hallway, I wonder what it would be like to

retreat into my mind and stay there, to be linked to what was outside me by tenuous physical

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connections. “She can’t express herself very well,” I say, “but I was surprised by how there she

is. I don’t really know how to say it any better than that.”

“It’s almost time for your dad to get here,” Harriet says, checking her watch. “We have to get

back to the main building.”

I follow her quietly, having run out of words. As we cross the courtyard under cloudy drizzle, I

am overly conscious of the weight I shift ably from foot to foot, the awareness I have of the birds

chirping in the cherry trees, and how short a time it could be before those things disappear from

my reality.

These thoughts will reemerge later at odd times, like when I inexpertly drag a paintbrush over a

canvas, or when I bend down to tie my shoes and think nothing of the way my fingers flex in and

out of loops and knots. But for now, as I follow Harriet back to the parking lot, searching for my

dad’s truck, I feel myself slipping back into my skin. I tuck the memory of Lila Norwich into a

pocket of my mind.

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AppearancesMichael A. Nappier

Albert Taylor drove home with the windows down. Humming along to songs he barely knew, he

smiled at the man selling flowers on the side of the road, and decided to buy a bouquet for

Michelle. Yellow and white roses bound with thin twine. How could she not love them? And

even if she didn't, the good news he was bringing with him would finally get her out of the sullen

mood she'd been in lately.

Slamming the door to his '67 Camaro and throwing open the front door, he entered with open

arms to embrace his wife after this incredible day. But when he walked inside she wasn't in the

parlor waiting for him like he expected. He called her name to no avail. She couldn't have gone

out. Albert had the only car and Michelle couldn't drive. After all, where could she possibly have

gone without him? The grocery store was well within walking distance and she never saw their

friends without him.

As he walked into the kitchen, shattered green glass scattered across the floor reflected light

into emerald patterns on the wall. He stood there bewildered for a moment, trying to understand

why it was there. Not that he didn't know what had happened. He had a vague memory of

coming in from the bar last night with an empty beer bottle and dropping it on the floor, or

maybe he threw it, he couldn't remember. Mostly he could place a scream after the bottle broke,

but that may have could have easily been the neighbor's cat again. The rest was completely blank

anyway. Alcohol can do that sometimes. But what he couldn't figure out is how the glass was

still spread out on the tile. Michelle knew that it was her responsibility to keep the house clean

while he was at work. If he could bring home the paychecks and keep her fed, the least she could

do was make sure he came home to somewhere that was halfway liveable.

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Immediately he went upstairs to grab the cash he had left on his bedside table. Roses be

damned. If his wife couldn't be attentive and keep a clean home, then she clearly didn't need the

money she presumably used to maintain it. His rage took such strong hold of him that he almost

didn't notice the unmade bed or upturned top desk drawer. Disbelief spread across his face. Not

only was she blatantly refusing to take care of her few menial responsibilities, she was causing

more of a mess in a state of pointless rebellion. Why would she have been searching through it

anyway? All he kept in it was the bills that he had to pay, spare pencils, the old 45mm his father

had given him, and the key to the safe in the den.

The den! He hadn't checked it since he got home. Probably a good thing too. With the state

the house was in, he wouldn't be surprised if the dust he had spilled from his ashtray hadn't been

vacuumed from the floor. He didn't know if he could contain himself. Michelle was going to hear

it from him when she finally got home. She probably thought he would hold back after the

neighbors complained last time. Shouldn't she know better by now? Slamming the door behind

him with a crash like a gunshot, he left the house and headed out to the bar, where the people at

least had an excuse not to be reasonable.

Next to a leather recliner in the den, a 45mm pistol lay on the ground with the safety off, and

a pale hand hung limp from the arm of the chair with a thin tan line from a missing ring on one

finger.

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College EssayAnonymous

Over the course of these applications I have made it known that I am a part of my high

school swim team. What has not been revealed is what I would consider the most uncomfortable

thing to have ever happened at a high school swim practice, and undoubtedly the strangest event

ever to have occurred in my own life.

It is a known fact among swimmers that it is a very poor decision to swim on a full stomach.

Having had experience with the negative effects a body full of food can cause, I was relieving

my bowels prior to practice. It was a Tuesday, and I was wearing my favorite pair of GAP brand

boxers. As I was nearing the conclusion of my purge, I made a shocking discovery. Our pool's

locker room was normally well supplied with all necessities; hooks for towels, clean benches,

paper towels, and so forth, but on this fateful day it was my misfortune to discover the horrific

lack of toilet paper in the worst scenario possible. I was trapped. There seemed to be no escape.

As I tried to control my heart rate through breathing techniques (not very pleasant considering

my previous endeavors), I felt something around my ankles. Having gone previously unnoticed I

reached down to grasp the soft, supple material of a certain pair of GAP brand under-drawers. I

knew what I would have to do. Mustering all of my available strength I tore into the boxer shorts,

ripping long, wide strips of my previous thigh companions. The pain in my heart was far greater

than any damage the under garment received. One strip took the place of the missing TP, the

other wiped a tear from my face.

Through great hardships, perseverance, and in the end, the cunning of a fox, I was able to

save myself the shame of an incomplete bathroom trip. All it cost me was the left half of a pair of

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men's boxer shorts, whose other half still holds a special place in my heart and underwear

drawer.

Next page:Chloe Smith10th grade

Above:TreetopsNathan Long12th grade

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The NursemaidNathan Long

12th grade

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Horse at Baguio Botanical GardenM.J.

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Untitled PoemBree Wright

If a creepy caterpillar can be some awing butterfly

If awkward noises can become eloquent words that evoke endless emotion

If pain and heartache can make lovely poetry and stronger, better people

If chemical reactions can create love

If physics can create tender music

If sinners can get into heaven

If dirt can become a master piece on a blank canvas...

If trash can be a man's treasure

If dissonance can be pleasing

If pain can be a person’s comfort

If a bratty, detestable child can still hold a mothers adoration

If God can still want someone who has rejected him and sin against him hundreds of times

If ignorant people can still be valued as wise

If relationships can still burn full of passion after many years of the same 'boring' things

If an old tattered doll can hold so much sentimental value that a little girl is sure to have her

before escaping a burning house

If all of these things happen

Just imagine what

Something as magnificent, dazzling, and brilliant as you can become

And just what you could possibly mean to all of those who choose to be around you.

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What am I?Nijia Pinkney

What am I?

What will I be?

I am treated as if my years on this earth is meaningless. The time I've spent and the things I've

seen, that will provide the answer to most questions, is deemed useless. I've seen the cruelty and

I've seen the love. I've seen the sacrifices that were made and I've watched my friends fall. I've

seen the history that was created and I've seen the result of my actions. I've watched the families

that grew inside the homes I've created and I watched people enjoy their lives around me. Sadly,

I stand alone. It's been years since someone came to me. No one has ever wondered about how I

felt. I've been through this world's good and bad moments and I provided as much help as I can.

But no one cares. I've given compassion when needed. I've sat and listen to many issues. The fact

that I can save mankind from suffering is completely invisible, just like me. What am I? What

will I be? No one will know. For no one ever thinks about the life of an 100 year old tree.

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Bells

There are words that hang between us,

echoing in my head like the bells of Notre Dame.

Ringing. Loudly.

Sending vibrations from my head

To the tips of my fingers

That it makes them fidget

And makes me wonder

Why I don’t

reach out.

Am I too afraid

to see the conclusion

or

the inception?

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Beating Winter BluesWe’re all busy, and the weather is cold and fairly icky. Here’s what warms up HoCo students.

Treat yourself to an actual breakfast – Chick-Fil-A has free coffee! Nathan, 12th

Put cinnamon in your hot chocolate. Christian, 12th

M.A.C. eyeliner.Caelyn, 10th

Bath bombs.Chloe, 10th

Game of Thrones with popcorn.Nijia, 11th

Jazz music with saxophones and cellos and trumpets. No singing! Just instrumental. Amirah, 10th

Gospel music, and sometimes hip-hop and R&B. I listen to some country, but not much. I try to read my Bible. Ashleigh, 12th

A good book and finding new musicians. Beth, 10th

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