Materials Needed by Kyle Weik

*THE BLUE FROG 1^st PLACE WINNER*

Introduction by Guest Judge GINA CHUNG

In the deeply affecting “Materials Needed,” an adolescent protagonist gradually comes to an understanding of their queerness as well as their desire to become an artist. I felt increasingly devastated by this story with every reread, moved as I was by its deft portrayal of emotional isolation and queer loneliness, but part of what makes this story so remarkable is its simultaneous sense of hope and quiet determination. By the end of the story, the protagonist now has a better sense of themself and who they mean to be, and it’s a powerful, indelible moment. Each line in this story feels carefully considered and exquisitely wrought, and not a word is wasted. 

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Glass

I was sitting in First Baptist when the quarry blasts first hit—rattling stained-glass windows and Pastor Chuck’s prayer. The entire congregation gathered on the front lawn, flipped their hands into sun visors and watched orange smoke plume. A sign of the end times, they whispered. I believed them, so that night I stole Mom’s bottle of red and escaped to Jake Miller’s. We drank down to our socks and jerked each other off with Electric Melon sweat, kissing until his braces cut my lip. “You’ve gotta drift when you hit those corners man,” he slurred, after finishing me off at Mario Kart too. I didn’t know how, and no matter how much I toggled I could never get back on track. “I’m trying,” I told him.

Paper

I shared a bedroom wall with my parents, so I was used to explosions. When I was in middle-school I papier-mâchéed my leg and pretended it was broken, hoping it would bring them together. I didn’t know a lot back then––how art imitates life, how paper and glue couldn’t fix any of it. It was the year Dad worked doubles and Mom drank them, and neither of them noticed my limp. When I showed up to school, everyone flocked to me like pigeons to bread. Oh no, what happened? I smiled and asked them to sign my cast.

Dust

The quarry blasts continued over the coming weeks and left behind cracks in our bathroom tile. We called my uncle––a former basketball star turned plumber-electrician-mechanic––who caulked it with wads of tobacco, and every time we took a shower it wept blood. But nothing could be done about the rust. It drifted in from the quarry and swiped every lawn chair and trailer on our block, until one day my five-year-old niece licked it off her finger thinking it was pixie dust and jumped off the roof. Our whole family went to the hospital. Most of us understood—we had wanted to fly away at some point too, but my niece was the only one who had the balls to try and now had the broken bones to prove it. We cleaned out the hospital’s vending machine within minutes and Grandma slipped into a Nutter Butter coma, while I argued with my cousin over the best way to die: burning, drowning, or freezing. Grandpa licked cheese dust off his fingers and said we were both wrong. The answer was getting struck by lightning, because it was quick and you would never see it coming.

Rock

One weekend I met up with Jake and his friends. We caught a movie and went to the quarry afterwards; got high and threw rocks into the open pit, and listened to them echo beneath the butter-soft sun. A fish fry joint? A bowling alley? Another bar? We wondered what the quarry would become once the mining was over. I wanted a museum filled with beautiful things, where I could display my artwork one day. “You sound so gay right now,” one of the boys said. Jake laughed and the sound opened a pit in me, but I had never smoked before. Maybe this is what it felt like. The next day I texted Jake and asked if he wanted to come over, my parents were gone and we could order pizza. He didn’t respond. 

Oil

I got caught trying to steal a set of oil pastels from an art supply store, and after an hour passed and my parents didn’t answer the phone, the manager let me off with a warning. Outside the sky was smeared charcoal and the wheat fields shivered. I thought about the materials needed to become a real artist, how I was going to get them, and why it was so expensive to be who you wanted to be. I passed a scarecrow halfway home, his arms outstretched, as if he was still waiting for answers.

Gold

By summer the quarry became a lake. No one knew where they got all the water from, but it was the only one within a 20 mile radius and families from all over came with their ice chests and towels, including my own. “The secret to a perfectly toasted bun is brushing it with olive oil,” Dad explained, as he set up the grill. Mom ignored him and brought out a box of warm wine. I saw Jake kissing a girl under the tire swing, their bodies glistening and wet, like bronze sculptures I could look at but never touch. And when my sister passed me the sunscreen, I slathered myself in olive oil instead. I flipped onto my belly and felt the rocks press into my chest. And I stayed like that all day, eyes closed, praying for my skin to turn gold. 

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KYLE WEIK — Kyle (he/him/his) is a queer Japanese-American writer based in Los Angeles and a current SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellow. His work appears or is forthcoming in Ghost Parachute, Variant Literature, Emerge Literary Journal, Vestal Review, and elsewhere. You can find him on social media at @kyleisamu. 

Art by JIKSUN CHEUNG — Jiksun is a painter and writer from Hong Kong. His stories have been published and recognized in the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction, The Molotov Cocktail Winner’s Anthologies, Wigleaf, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. His art is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Short Story, Long, and a mystery novel to be published in 2025.