{"id":384,"date":"2019-05-08T01:44:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T01:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/?p=384"},"modified":"2021-04-04T13:08:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T13:08:58","slug":"snakeskin-prose-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/snakeskin-prose-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Snakeskin by Sam Resnick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Sam Resnick for winning the Prose Award in the Scripps College Journal 2019 Writing & Art Contest!\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>~<\/p>\n

Sarah\u2019s life felt like syrup, slow and sticky and too sweet. That is, until one bright Tuesday morning, when all of a sudden, there was a man standing in front of her. There was six feet of man standing in front of her. There was red hair and ropey veins and a snake tattoo on the back of his hand. Two days later, and that snake was coiling small circles around her bra, her belly, and she heard her mother\u2019s voice: the boys will want to touch you <\/span>there<\/span><\/i>, don\u2019t let them do <\/span>that<\/span><\/i>, good girls wait. But all Sarah could think was <\/span>this this this<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>This is what I\u2019ve been waiting for<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, Sarah closes her eyes. She sinks into the tub so deeply, the water splashes over the sides onto the bathroom tiles. She pulls at the softened skin around her nails. When she strips it too far, small droplets of blood spread into the water, suspended. The faucet slowly drips, and somehow, the sounds are even louder underwater. Maybe her ears are more sensitive. Her whole body feels more sensitive, too tight, stretched.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSarah?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her mom tries to open the bathroom door.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSarah, you know we don\u2019t lock doors in this household.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah holds her breath, hoping her mother will leave. She doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSarah, you\u2019re <\/span>sixteen years old<\/span>.\u201d Her mother sighs in that way Sarah swears only her mother can do. It sounds like all the balloons in the world are letting their air out at once. \u201cI expect you to be able to follow a simple rule. <\/span>Now open this door<\/span><\/i>.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, I was taking a bath. I\u2019ll be out soon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYour father and I expect you downstairs in five minutes for dinner.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her parents and two younger brothers\u2014twins\u2014are already seated. There is baked ham on the table. A spring salad, the leaves wilting in the stale summer heat. Bread her mother probably baked fresh that morning. She takes her seat across from the twins, and everyone closes their eyes to pray. But the moment Sarah does, she sees him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s good-looking in the way that people describe other people who have all of the right features<\/span>;<\/span> they just don\u2019t belong together. Sarah has spent a long time trying to figure out why John\u2019s features don\u2019t belong together. His nose is straight and strong. It makes her think of the triangles her geometry teacher used to draw on the board\u2014scalene. Which sounds like <\/span>\u2018scoliosis.\u2019<\/span> Maybe that\u2019s why he isn\u2019t handsome. She keeps pulling strips of skin off of her fingers, shredding the scarred tissue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSarah?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her first night with him. She had to tell her parents she was going to study for a chemistry test at Nathalie\u2019s house. Which meant she had to warn Nathalie that her parents would call to confirm the story. Which meant Nathalie had to race to the phone in her kitchen the moment it rang, before her own parents picked up and ruined the ruse. It was worth it though, to feel John spreading his fingers across her chest. She wondered if he was checking her pulse, the thump thump thump like her dog\u2019s tail wagging through the air, like someone knocking on the door to her body. More skin. She makes a small pile on the table in front of her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSarah.\u201d Louder now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The boys in the parking lot outside the diner where she met him at. They skateboarded circles around her like sharks, hands reaching, her flinching at their feelers. It wasn\u2019t until John came outside, and placed a heavy paw on her shoulder, that the boys scattered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Sarah James McCarthy. <\/span><\/i>You cannot ignore me at my own dining room table. Are you even listening?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to, <\/span>I\u2019m trying to<\/span><\/i>, she thinks. But her father\u2019s words uncurl at the edges, until she can see the strings of syntax like pearls beneath the sentences, floating through the air, whirred away from her by the fan on the ceiling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is wrong with you?\u201d Her mother speaking now, the twins busy throwing peas onto the ground.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t know. She can\u2019t remember what John first said, but it must have been something that made her pay attention, because boys had been trying to get Sarah\u2019s attention for a long time now, and then here was this man, and he wasn\u2019t a boy, and so Sarah paid attention. She can\u2019t remember what she wore either, though. And she can\u2019t remember what she ate, that night at the diner, before. These lost details will bother Sarah later on in life, when precise details like that become more important. But for the moment, it was enough that she remembers the feel of his hands on her skin. The way his calluses raised goosebumps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And now what does she have? This snake in her belly. Her skin on the dining room table.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She starts to cry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you do? Is there something you\u2019re not telling us? And stop doing that thing with your hands. It\u2019s disgusting.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The time before John, the beginning, it\u2019s getting hazier and hazier now. She can\u2019t remember what he said. What she wore. Was there even a time before him? How can there be one after?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The tears come faster now. They crawl like caterpillars down her cheeks. The kind of caterpillar that eats holes through the hearts of plants. The diner where they met\u2014it was called Daisy\u2019s. Or Delilah\u2019s. It was a flower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That, at least, Sarah remembers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Sam Resnick for winning the Prose Award in the Scripps College Journal 2019 Writing & Art Contest!\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,50],"tags":[52,25],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-volume20","tag-prose-award","tag-sam-resnick"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}