Story: Small Towns, Modern Loneliness
Written by Michael Kurt | Cover Illustration: Laura Helsby
Description: As summer starts, Hailey Serton reflects on the end of high school and who she’ll be in college.
An Excerpt
Hailey Serton’s mother annoyed the shit out of her. Despite the many years they’d spent living in a small apartment, they had not become bonded by their shared experience of her teenage life. So when she got home late from the Melville Shakespeare Festival, Hailey gave the living room a wide berth in hopes that the undoubtedly strong smell of cigarettes could not be detected on her summer dress.
“Did you have a good time?” her mother called, turning away from what she was watching on the living room TV.
She had not had a good time, actually, but was too tired and too dirty to be trapped in a conversation about it. “Sure,” she called back.
There was a pretentiousness to anything Shakespearean around which Hailey could never fully relax, despite many years of community and high school theater. Fern Michaels, who had asked her to take the bus with him to Melville, thought she might like it, which, given the kind of person she was, was not entirely surprising, but deeply disheartening.
Hailey’s mother followed her almost all the way into the bathroom. “How was the bus?”
“It was a long trip. Especially back,” she replied, closing the door.
When Hailey met Fern last year, she was quickly able to convince him to wait with her in the parking lot after rehearsals. Her mother was chronically late and Fern was chronically lonely, so she was doing him a favor. What she did not expect, however, was that Fern’s mother would circle the school for a half hour before finally offering to drive her home. So, by the time Fern asked her to go to the festival with him, she felt that she’d owed him many times over.
Through the bathroom door, Hailey’s mother asked: “Did he try anything?”
“Who?”
“That boy.” Her mother didn’t like his name, and avoided saying it. “Fern, or whatever.”
“Did Fern try anything at the Shakespeare Festival in the middle of a crowd of theater dorks?” Hailey traced what looked like Central America in dirt on her leg and noticed a burn mark on one of her socks, which was regrettable, but fine. “No. He didn’t try anything,” she said, and wondered for the first time why he didn’t go by his middle name, which was Thomas.