Mitchie’s mechanical pencil shatters into a hundred billion trillion pieces. “Dewanda, behave!” the teacher screams at me. She don’t know us or our names or remember that Dewanda goes to a new school now. So we don’t call her…
This story struck while I was on a cheap evening cruise, aboard a janky boat, worried I would be tossed into the East River. It was cold. I was uncomfortable. But once we stopped to look at Lady Liberty, everything shifted from rocky to romantic. Stars suddenly appeared. The Statue of Liberty was stunning. And, like me, and maybe you, she was stuck.
How might this giant force who had no way to shelter in a storm, no say in when a friend would drop by for tea, and no way to pop uptown for milkshakes fare in matters of the heart? I wanted to expose her love life. Interrogate her terrible exes. But when I couldn’t hear her voice or crack a chuckle thinking of who she’d crush on, I lost interest.
Excitement for a premise can sink quickly. My advice: Whenever you can throw a story overboard without feeling compelled to jump in and rescue it, let it go. Redirect that energy and misery to the persistent stories that float back to the surface and follow you to land. Some will. One’s been clinging to me for fifteen whole years.
Okay. I was still on the cruise when Icon showed up. She loved the statue and hated her teacher and that was that. Icon was stuck too. In Indiana, at an indifferent, underresourced school that could not care for her. She cracked me up and mattered so much, right away, probably because I could see and hear her. And also because she’s a Black girl aching to be somewhere, anywhere, else. As almost all of my stories and personal essays show, I don’t know how to write about anything else.
Growing up isn’t easy. Icon had a bunch of perspectives and problems. Sometimes she felt too adult, other times too little, and not in a real-life or interesting way. So, I got the scissors, played barber, and snipped away at paragraphs. Turning a story into a flash is one way to get clarity.
It became clear that the most immediate matter was between Icon and Mitchie. When you’re young and your best friend is your world and you’re your best friend’s world, betrayal is confusing and heartbreaking. And probably inevitable, when there’s that much feeling. Humans, young and old, excel at disregarding and hurting the people we love most. There are many reasons we do this; some are ugly, but some, as we see with Icon and Mitchie, are beautiful.
sheena d. is an essayist, humorist, and doodler based in New York City. Her writing has received a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellowship, won the Miriam Chaikin Prose Award, and made the Longreads Best of 2022 list. Sometimes she’s on Instagram at @bookofsheena.
