The Journey Prize Stories 25 (28 page)

I said, “They described the lemon trees as
evergreen
.”

She said, “Well. I don’t suppose they lose leaves.”

We bought coffees from an espresso bar across the street and carried them back to the fountain – a rectangular pond like a wading pool, with a hunk of granite in the centre for the spout. In fact, I’d seen the fountain used as a wading pool a few times. And as a birdbath. And as a urinal. But such is public art.

I offered her a piece of my croissant – one stuffed with chocolate, so what I said was,
“Pain au chocolat?”

She said, “No, thank you.”

I sipped my coffee.

She said, “I’m not supposed to have this, but you want to hear?” She outstretched her iPhone, the white wires of earbuds looped around her thumb.

I nodded.

“One of the survivors posted it on YouTube. I downloaded the video file before they took it down.”

She offered me an earbud and plugged the second into her own ear. We bowed over the phone. I could feel the friction of the space between our foreheads. There’s a point where technology mimics the past. iPads like slates, like the Flintstones, like chisels. The iPhone felt divinatory – as though we should be bent over a bowl of water.

She tapped the screen and opened the file. She pressed PLAY.

Rain blew into the camera, diagonal sheets of it into the aluminum, into brown water. The camera jolted up and you
could see people, their orange life vests, crowded onto the wing. The rear slides had extended. They floated uselessly, like boneless arms, or slapstick rubber chickens. What you could hear was shouting – passengers shouting to passengers in the water –
Grab here – Grab my hand –
passengers shouting to passengers to swim away –
Dive – Before – it goes –
crew shouting to passengers to stop shouting. What you could hear was rain. Drumming into metal, into hard water, pinging off the life vests. And a continuous chime from the interior of the aircraft, ding ding ding, like your door’s open, like a friendly reminder before you leave the parking lot. And there, in the corner of the frame, you could see her treading water. She had floated the farthest from the wreck, her hair starfished out around her shoulders. She drifted farther from the plane with every paddle. Her mouth opened and closed, but not in communication, her eyes unfocused, or focused on a distance. She was singing. You could see she was singing.

To fold a paper crane, your paper must be square. With sixteen newspapers and scissors from Reception, you can cut a lot of squares. I began with a lifestyles story on the 2002 Miss America. I pressed her face right in half. Then I folded the same line onto the reverse side, whitespace for an AT&T ad. I followed the dotted diagram from www.papercrane.org. I ignored the video how-tos and the photographs. For my sister, there was no such thing as Google.

April found me at 8:30, after she cycled back to work for her phone. I had moved to the floor at this point, to the strips of paper I snipped from the squares. I stored the completed
cranes in an emptied recycling box – fired them from where I sat, like paper planes. Paper cranes. Nose first into the box, or onto the surrounding carpet.

When she saw me, she backed up, then stepped forward, then stood very still. “We used newspaper for my guinea pig,” she said. “You look like my guinea pig.”

“You have a guinea pig?”

“I left my phone.”

“Okay.”

“When I was twelve.” She folded her arms over her ribs. “Her name was Rosa.”

She helped me fold cranes. We plugged in her iPhone. We listened to the soundtrack from
Evita
on repeat.
Don’t cry for me, Argentina
. By midnight, we needed to borrow another recycling box from the lab across the hall. I noticed we both folded A3 so that Joy Vernon’s face pointed outward, from the tail of the crane, or the wings.

I think I can fit the cranes into three oversized boxes from UPS. I’ll mail the Polaroid of my sister with the first parcel. In the photo, she hovers a blue gingham crane above her head. She balances the wings between her fingers like she will demonstrate flight. Like she knows the crane will stay suspended when she drops her hands.

Steven Benstead
is the author of two novels. His short fiction has appeared in
Grain, Prairie Fire, Pierian Spring, Secrets from the Orange Couch
, and
Manitoba Myriad
. He wrote the text for
Winnipeg: City at the Forks
, and has recently completed a new novel, tentatively titled
Soldier, Soldier
. He has worked in Winnipeg as a bookseller since 1983.

Jay Brown
is a writer and librarian living and working in Toronto. His short fiction has appeared in
The Vancouver Review, Grain, Prairie Fire
, and the anthology
Darwin’s Bastards
. “The Egyptians” is his second work to appear in
The Journey Prize Stories
. He is currently at work on a novel.

Andrew Forbes
has published music and film criticism both online and in print, and his fiction has appeared in
The Feathertale Review, Found Press Quarterly, Scrivener Creative Review, The New Quarterly
, and
PRISM international
. He is a co-founder and senior editor of the sportswriting website
The Barnstormer
(
thebarnstormer.com
), and he has recently completed his first collection of short fiction. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario, with his wife and three children.

Philip Huynh
’s stories have appeared in
The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire
, and
The New Quarterly
. “Gulliver’s Wife” was the runner-up for
The New Quarterly
’s 2012 Peter Hinchcliffe
Fiction Award. He is working on a novel, along with more short fiction. He lives in Richmond, British Columbia, with his wife and twin toddler daughters.

Originally from Halifax,
Amy Jones
is a graduate of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at UBC. Her short fiction has appeared in several Canadian publications, and she was the winner of the 2006 CBC Literary Award for Short Story in English. Her first short fiction collection,
What Boys Like
(Biblioasis, 2009) was the winner of the 2009 Metcalf-Rooke Award, and was short-listed for the 2010 ReLit Award. Amy currently lives in Thunder Bay, where she is working on a novel.

Marnie Lamb
earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor before living abroad for two years. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including
filling Station, The Nashwaak Review, blueprint, Room
, and
The New Quarterly
. Currently, she is working on a collection of Japan-themed short stories, which includes “Mrs. Fujimoto’s Wednesday Afternoons,” and a young adult novel. Now a Toronto resident, she runs Ewe Editorial Services, which provides copy editing, indexing, and permissions research services.

Doretta Lau
is a journalist who covers arts and culture for
Artforum, South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal Asia
, and
Bazaar Art Hong Kong
. She completed an MFA in Writing at Columbia University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in
EVENT, Grain, Prairie Fire, PRISM international,
Ricepaper, subTerrain
, and
Zen Monster
. She divides her time between Vancouver and Hong Kong, where she is at work on a novel and a screenplay. In 2014, her short story collection will be published by Nightwood Editions.

Laura Legge
is equal parts the Socratic paradox “I know that I know nothing” and the Shaquille O’Neal rap song “(I Know I Got) Skillz.” She’s honoured you read her story, and hopes to meet you sometime so you can tell her some of yours.

Natalie Morrill
is a multi-genre writer from Ontario, and is finishing an MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in
Ultraviolet Magazine, filling Station
, and the anthology
Lake Effect 4
(Artful Codger Press, 2009); she also has new poetry forthcoming in
CAROUSEL
. Her work has been recognized by the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (Silver, 2013 Showcase Award for Fiction). She’s at work on a novel set in post-war Austria: so far, this involves at least one magic fish.

Zoey Leigh Peterson
’s fiction has appeared in various publications, including
The Malahat Review, Grain, PRISM international
, and
The Walrus
. “Sleep World” originally appeared in
The New Quarterly
, where it was the winner of the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award. Zoey lives in Vancouver, where she is at work on a novel about the whole Emily situation.

Eliza Robertson
grew up on Vancouver Island. She studied writing and political science at the University of Victoria, and pursued her MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East
Anglia, where she received the UEA Booker Scholarship and the Curtis Brown Prize. She has been twice long-listed for the Journey Prize and was a finalist for the 2013 CBC Short Story Prize. She is the regional and overall winner for the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She now lives in England, where she has started a PhD.

Naben Ruthnum
lives and writes in Toronto, and has previously published in
Riddle Fence, Joyland, Qwerty
, and
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
. His pseudonym, Nathan Ripley, recently completed a thriller called
Scrapbook
. He’s currently working on a novel based on the characters in “Cinema Rex.”

For more information about the journals that submitted to this year’s competition, The Journey Prize, and
The Journey Prize Stories
, please visit
www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize
.

The Dalhousie Review
has been in operation since 1921 and aspires to be a forum in which seriousness of purpose and playfulness of mind can coexist in meaningful dialogue. The journal publishes new fiction and poetry in every issue and welcomes submissions from authors around the world. Editor: Carrie Dawson. Submissions and correspondence:
The Dalhousie Review
, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2. Email:
[email protected]
Website:
www.dalhousiereview.dal.ca

EVENT
features the very best in contemporary writing from Canada and abroad, from literary heavyweights to up-and-comers. For over four decades,
EVENT
has consistently published award-winning fiction, poetry, non-fiction, notes on writing, and critical reviews – all topped off by stunning Canadian cover art. Recent stories first published in
EVENT
have gone on to win both the Gold and Silver National Magazine Awards in Fiction in 2012 and 2011, and the Western Magazine Awards in Fiction in 2012 and 2010.
EVENT
is also home to Canada’s longest-running annual non-fiction contest, and a Reading Service for Writers. Editor: Elizabeth Bachinsky.
Managing Editor: Ian Cockfield. Fiction Editor: Christine Dewar. Submissions and correspondence:
EVENT
, P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, British Columbia, V3L 5B2. Email (queries only):
[email protected]
Website:
www.eventmags.com

filling Station
is Canada’s experimental literary magazine.
fS
exists to promote innovative and original poetry, fiction, and literary journalism while encouraging dialogue among local and national writers, assisting the creative advancement of Canadian literature, and bringing this important work to the reading public. By consistently providing an exciting contrast to more traditional literary and arts journals,
filling Station
remains unique among literary magazines both in Canada and abroad. Managing Editor: Caitlynn Cummings. Fiction Editor: Jon R. Flieger. Submissions and correspondence:
filling Station
Publications Society, P.O. Box 22135, Bankers Hall RPO, Calgary AB T2P 4J5. Email:
[email protected]
Website:
www.fillingstation.ca

Grain
,
the journal of eclectic writing
, is a literary quarterly that publishes engaging, diverse, and challenging writing and art by some of the best Canadian and international writers and artists. Every issue features superb new writing from both developing and established writers. Each issue also highlights the unique artwork of a different visual artist. Editor: Rilla Friesen. Associate Fiction & Nonfiction Editor: Kim Aubrey. Associate Poetry Editor: Adam Pottle. Art Editor & Designer: Betsy Rosenwald. Submissions and correspondence:
Grain
, P.O. Box 67, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 3K1. Email:
[email protected]
Website:
www.grainmagazine.ca

The Malahat Review
is a quarterly journal of contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by both new and celebrated writers. Summer issues feature the winners of
Malahat
’s Novella and Long Poem prizes, held in alternate years; the fall issues feature the winners of the Far Horizons Award for emerging writers, alternating between poetry and fiction each year; the winter issues feature the winners of the Constance Rook Creative Nonfiction Prize; and the spring issues feature winners of the Open Season Awards in all three genres (poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction). All issues feature covers by noted Canadian visual artists and include reviews of Canadian books. Editor: John Barton. Assistant Editor: Rhonda Batchelor. Submissions and correspondence:
The Malahat Review
, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Station CSC, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 2Y2. E-mail:
[email protected]
Website:
www.malahatreview.ca
Twitter:
@malahatreview