IN WHICH THE FUTURE SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO ISLA — KELLE SCHILLACI CLARKE
/No one in her first-grade class believes her when it’s her turn to share. They’re too busy wiggling their teeth, shoving Legos in their mouths, talking about their stupid dogs. The teacher asks what day/month/year it is, where they are on the Mood Meter—red, green, blue, or yellow—and they respond like trained bears. When asked, Isla says she is a mix of green, blue, and red, but not yellow. Never yellow.
She is green because of all the kids in the world, the Future chose her to visit the night before, balancing their celestial body on the edge of her bed frame, trapping Isla tight. They said Isla was “smart beyond her years,” used the word “brilliant,” and this made her feel important. They conjured beige holograms between their fingers, weaving prophecies that looked like old-time movie projections, swirling in dust. “Why is everything so brown?” Isla asked, and they sighed heavily, bringing their hands together on their ample lap. “This isn’t about that,” they said.
She is blue because of the things she will miss: snow, bananas, hot chocolate, the monarch butterflies she saw last spring at the Science Center. On their way out of the exhibit, she and her mom had stood perfectly still in a chamber between two doorways, being dusted by employees for “hitch-hikers.” The lady found a bright blue one clinging to Isla’s hair and gently lifted it out, saying, “You can’t sneak away like that.” Isla kept the ones she’d tucked beneath her ruffled skirt.
She is red because no one will listen to her—not about the butterflies, the Maldives, or the maple syrup. Her little body fills with rage very quickly, like a tea kettle with only a small amount of water inside, how swift she is to steam and boil. She feels it bubble in her belly and she can sometimes stop it there, before it takes over, but it’s getting harder.
“Why so angry, Isla?” asks her teacher. “How can we get you back to green? Class, do you have any ideas?”
But Isla doesn’t want to borrow Marisel’s stuffy, doesn’t want to be friends with Lamar, who pulls her hair and asks why she always wears boys’ clothes, wishes Buster, who reeks of tuna and leaves gummy wrappers beneath his desk, would back off. She knows what happens next. She knows where they all end up, she’s seen it before her very own eyes. It’s this dull space in between that’s making her head explode.
She coughs, her throat filling again with thick phlegm, and she asks to see the nurse. Hall pass in hand, Isla approaches the office doors, but at the last moment pivots and walks toward the exit instead, pulled by the force of sunlight streaming through the school’s front windows, flooding the entrance in a bright glow. She walks through the glass doors and straight into the heat of it, finally feeling the wash of yellow overcome her small but brilliant body.
Kelle Schillaci Clarke is a Seattle-based writer whose stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, LEON Literary Review, Gone Lawn, Superstition Review, and other literary journals. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and was recently named the 2021-2022 Pen Parentis Writing Fellow. She can be found on Twitter @kelle224 and at her website: www.kelleclarkecreative.com.
