By Alice Martin
It’s hot outside. Too hot. Flip-flops-melting-into-asphalt hot. Smells-like-gum-and-gasoline hot. So, we go to the mall.
We start with Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. The air there tastes like sugar-butter, and it’s right by the entrance, so we can stroll by nonchalantly, as if we hadn’t planned anything at all. If we’re lucky, they’ll be giving out free samples in little paper cups. We choose the cups with the biggest pieces of pretzel and suck the bread until it’s nothing but the memory of salt. Then, we say, we’re full now; we don’t need anything else.
Next is Cache. Cache, we all whisper to ourselves. Like “cash,” but fancy. The store has a wall of floor-to-ceiling display windows. Faceless white mannequins wear elaborate dresses, their hands held out for nothing, their petite wrists cocked just so. None of us have ever bought anything from Cache. Our moms, with their mascara-caked eyes and sweat-stained, two-sizes-too-small T-shirts, don’t shop there. We imagine movie stars, if our small suburban town had any, would shop there. Later, we will realize it’s the Buena Vista neighborhood moms who buy those clothes, and that knowledge will make the shop villainous, their merchandise an evil stepmother’s wardrobe full of false promises and betrayal.
But for now, we assign outfits numbers and vote on the best ones. Most days, we don’t actually like anything in the windows. But there’s something about the way the dresses fall heavy, like drapery, around those shiny, thin bodies. There, behind the glass.
We have to walk through the Macy’s to get to the other side of the mall. We sweat as we make our way across the desert of white tile, past Clinique counters and moody perfume ads. Perfect white teeth the size of our hands biting into plump red lips. Nonexistent breasts, studded with bones, veiled in glitter. White-coated women behind the counters dab and spritz and cap. The room smells like highlighter and is filled with mirrors. We grab at free samples and run.
The other side of the mall feels like a secret, like we’ve traveled through a looking glass. We each have a favorite place here: Claire’s for the one of us who likes shiny, nonthreatening earrings and clean, fur-lined pillows; Hot Topic for the one of us who collects pre-ripped T-shirts and easily broken studded belts; Charlotte Russe for the one of us who feels like she could punch a hole in someone’s face with the heel of a stiletto. We claim them like they are outcomes of the personality tests in the backs of magazines.
This is me, we proclaim, tugging the others toward our storefronts. We may be us, but this one is me.
Me, our arms strain.
Me, our eyes burn.
Me, our voices crack.
We look to each other, wild-eyed and tense-limbed, our hands turned to claws.
Doesn’t this look like me? We beg each other. Doesn’t it?
Delirious, we stop at the Food Court to hydrate. It’s a cavernous space where people’s voices echo in a cacophony of fake sound. We forget our earlier promises that we don’t need food and buy tray after sticky tray of the stuff: greasy lo mein noodles, crusty tater tots, cold pizza with sheets of cheese, a dry-looking apple turnover origami-ed into a cardboard sheath.
We eat it all, even after we are no longer hungry. Nearby, a woman at a kiosk stops ill-fated prepubescents, like us, to ask if they’ve tried Proactiv Solution. We pick at the spots on our faces, poke the pooches in our bellies. Then, we gather what we bought with money we saved from skipping school lunches, or stole from our mothers’ purses, or got for touching a boy’s penis in the school bathroom. (We don’t tell each other these things.) We drag our purchases down a level, to the atrium.
There’s no reason to go to the atrium, but we do it every time. We are pulled here, to the airy heart of the mall, like moths to a fluorescent light or fingernails to a scab. In the atrium, the mall opens up to us. Escalators and elevators and walkways with glass railings careen and cross above us. We can see everything, but nothing sees us. In the center of the atrium, a carousel spins. Our cycling eyes trace its route, and our heads tumble into what feels like forever. The tinny, old-fashioned music makes our hearts ache for a time not so long ago when we would have ridden the carousel, let all the stores and the people blur together before our eyes. Now, instead, we look upward, to the heat pouring through the skylight. We squint up at the light from down in our pit.
When we leave, we will return home, to our mothers and sisters and grandmothers, to televisions that play reruns and sports highlights and George W. Bush’s face. We will try on the things we bought here and look in the mirror and feel disappointed. Too fat, too short, too tall, too thin, too pale, too shallow-chested, thick-lipped, scar-skinned, bug-eyed, hunch-backed. We will bury that disappointment away with our purchases beneath our beds. We will not forget them, but imagine them dusted and molding, waiting for us like the monsters we once believed lived there.
Years later, when we have left this town and bought houses and yoga mats and cars and stainless-steel cookware and blouses that cost more than our mothers’ whole wardrobes, we will tell ourselves that we barely remember this place, each other, this feeling. But then it will come back to us, as deep as a breath, as hot as the sun burning invisible crowns onto our heads. And we will still be there, peering up through the escalators, our stomachs lined with grease, our muscles twitching with an ache we can’t name. We will be drawn back here, searching for the bittersweet comfort of nostalgia, only to find a disappointment that had just begun.
This is such a beautiful, nuanced, impactful piece. You capture the period details perfectly.
Beautifully, beautifully written. Each perfect detail lingers. Thank you.
Can’t fault the writing, excellent descriptions, easy to imagine but. It reads like a diary of events without any crescendo, tension or story arc. I’m sure you can do better and I would be keen to read it.
I can see an arc in this winning story! Iona Wall
I loved it. That last paragraph just had me, and held everything before it so well: that’s exactly what it felt like to go ‘home’ after decades away.
What a top-notch artist, you are, Alice Martin. Beautifully written, with a refined sense for poignancy and sadness. Even writing a commentary becomes banal. Please continue with your extraordinary writing.
Anita Lekic
Portugal
Wonderful writing – I would call it prose poetry for the excellent imagery. Well done 🙂
The end is devastating, and true. What a fantastic slice of the rumbling psychological horror of contemporary culture.
This story flowed through the mall and I was one of the girls as they visited the stores. So well written.
Loved it Alice. Original images, acute attention to detail. You’ve captured the emotional rollercoaster so well, beautifully written.
This is beautifully crafted. The story arc, the tension, the crescendo is so subtle some people might miss it. But it’s there in the way the characters move through the mall further away from their dreams and into what they’re settling for now and again at the end. This is just so well done.
I was really drawn in to this – well done
good
This is incredible – thank you for sharing with us! Vivid and moving, with a real kicker of an ending. I can’t wait to read more from you.
This is a great piece of writing, evocative and immersive. Not what I would call a story, but great writing nevertheless .
Well-done miserable commentary on our suburban sprawl mall consumerist wasteland. After she moved out, I always wondered about all those unworn clothes under my daughter’s bed.
This is utterly enchanting. I felt as if I was transported back to the mall.
I absolutely loved it.
So enjoyed this detail rich, imagery strong, emotion packed story. I could see, hear and feel everything in that Mall.
Spectacular, start to finish. The smell, fee and taste of that mall linger in me, along with the story’s elegantly powerful end.
This is one of the most finely crafted stories I have read in a long time. I can see why it won the Editor’s Choice Award!
Breathtakingly beautiful and desperately painful. Great read.
I can see why this is #1 for 2021. The story engages us immediately: “It’s hot outside. Too hot. Flip-flops-melting-into-asphalt hot. Smells-like-gum-and-gasoline hot. So, we go to the mall.”
Once we’re in the mall, rich detail keeps us engaged, but the story arc pulls us in slowly, subtly, until, “years later,” we learn its true import: “We will be drawn back here, searching for the bittersweet comfort of nostalgia, only to find a disappointment that had just begun.”
Brilliant story! Congratulations Alice. Beautifully written. xx
Beautiful story. Everyone’s comments reflect that as well. I am only starting out as an aspiring writer and I have a lot to learn, but the one thing I can recognize and love is honesty. I feel that in your story, the emotion in it. The details are perfect, but the story is far beyond that. Internal. I love the way you captured that and it inspires me to keep leaning. Thank you.
Nostalgia is a thief. I saw myself in these girls. I was one of them. This brought me back to 2004 instantly. What an excellent commentary on our culture and the victims we can become to it.
Bravo! Alice Martin. Love the narrative, the flow, and the insightful climax. Mall trips — for me — will never be the same. Well done. Keep writing!
Lovely piece of writing. So heart-rending and achingly clear, it takes me back to my own, considerably earlier (think Reagan Era) “mall days.” It’s an effortless read, which means, of course, that it was damn hard writing. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, Alice and congratulations on a well-deserved win!
Thank you for writing and sharing this wonderful piece with us. I was too young to roam the mall in 2004 (also in the wrong country), but I could feel the emotions hitting me like a wave as the story carries on. Honestly, I had a spilt second reaction of wanting to turn away from the page because how strong it was and I needed to catch a breath. You have a way with the words and imagery.
This is lovely. Thoroughly enjoyable, multi-sensorial. Would love to read more from this author.