Papergirl by Lena Kinder

At midnight, Yvette runs a paper route. She goes to the distribution site, fills her car with newspapers. They look like burritos wrapped in blue and orange plastic bags. Morning Herald is printed in sans-serif at the top of each. The papers lie in chaos across her dashboard, on the floor of her sedan, on her lap. The tan of her seat cushions are stained black, dramatic like paint strokes. The blue wrapped newspapers are priced regular. The orange run advertisements and give her five cents extra per delivery. Each week, she delivers six-hundred of these.

The drive always makes Yvette nauseous. The roads she takes are curved. Hills lift and drop her. She looks for reflectors on mailboxes. They let her know what kind of paper each home receives. Some elderly clients wait for her, even in the dark. She wishes that their eyes were reflective too. Like the eyes of a deer. Glowing and green. Yvette worries that one day, she will hit them with her car. She thinks about this often. That these clients make it to their eighties only to be run over by their papergirl. They stand at the foot of their driveways, and even walk up to her window, but they never talk to her other than a thank you or you’re late. It makes Yvette think about the trajectory of her life. Sometimes, she thinks about hitting them, just to see something new.  

Towards the end of the night, around 5 a.m., when the sky starts to show the first hints of warmth, Yvette finds herself in limbo, between asleep and awake, and she pretends that the road she rides is the back of a basilisk. Thick, black scales. Two bright yellow stripes. Vivid and venomous. She turns on her flood lights. She watches the road closer, looking for it to move. In her blurring vision, Yvette wills it—makes it slither, makes it writhe underneath her tires. The road that is a snake curves, and Yvette sees the hazards of a car blinking in the distance. The flashing lights are tilted and stagnate, and, from their position, she can tell that the driver has gone off road, a good amount off road, into a field of high grass. Yvette rolls to a stop, holding her headlights over the path made by this other car. She feels a dilemma arise in her: pull over or keep driving.

“Hello,” Yvette calls out. She waits for an answer. “Hello,” she says again, louder. 

In the early morning darkness, frogs sing from the fields, but there is no answer from the car. Yvette keeps her engine on and steps into the grass. Her shadow elongates itself toward the other vehicle. She slowly walks. The caution in her seems to soften the ground at her feet and her steps are nearly silent, but the sickness in her stays.

The car is a deep navy. If her headlights were not shining on them both, it would blend seamlessly into twilight.

“Hello,” Yvette says, knocking on the driver’s side door. The windows are tinted, and she cuffs her hands around her face and tries to look inside, with fail. She knocks again. Again. Then, she pulls on the door handle, and it opens, quick, against her body weight. Inside, there is no one. Yvette stares at the car in disbelief. She pokes her head into it, looks through the compartments, under seats, in the trunk—all empty, all nothing. Yvette steps back, away from the car, feeling the tall grass on the edges of the path brush against her. The touch wakes her up, makes her more aware. She notices that the frogs have stopped singing. The sun is up. And the road which was a snake is now again a road. The navy of the car is vivid now, oceanic. Yvette stands alone in the field for a moment longer before closing its door and returning to her paper route. 

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LENA KINDER — Lena has an MA in creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Hollins University. Her works can be found in or forthcoming from Pinch, Crow and Cross Keys, the Quarter(ly), and more. She is the editor-in-chief of Folklore Review. For more, visit: lenakinder.squarespace.com 

Art by SANDY LITTLE — Sandy is a South African-born, UK based visual artist and illustrator whose practice is rooted in drawing and digital art. She completed her Honours degree in Fine Art at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein in 2012, where she specialised in both traditional and digital mediums. Little has worked as an arts and design lecturer for the last 13 years thereafter she committed to becoming a full time artist and freelancer. Little can be found on Instagram under the handle AngryLittleCrayon where she shares her art and music from her band Big Fright.