The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

    There’s a worm living in my head, I was on a flight back to the U.S. that afternoon, but it took two days before I was able to track down Hannah. She had moved out of Terry’s house after the funeral, the property apparently being absorbed into the family’s wealth much as his bank account had. Her new apartment back in her northwestern hometown was a big step down from the beachside mansion she had spent the last three years in. In fact, it reminded me a lot of my own place. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up. I fucked myself and now I’ve fucked you too I guess.” The girl sitting in front of me was a ghost of the Hannah I knew. She was cooperative enough—I’d half expected her to hang up on me when I finally got her on the phone, but she’d told me where she was living and agreed to meet. I was up there the next morning, and I had to work to hide my shock when I saw her. She looked like she had lost weight and hadn’t bathed ...

    There is music in my heart My best friend Terry died three months ago. I did the things a best friend does—I spoke at the funeral, I comforted his family, and I helped his fiancee Hannah pack up his things. Terry had been a constant in my life since junior high, despite all the obstacles that usually erode a twenty-year friendship like time and distance. We came from vastly different backgrounds from the start—I was from a small working-class household, while he grew up in a large family so wealthy that money wasn’t even really a consideration for them—just a given, like water or air. Yet growing up, his parents were always kind and welcoming to me, and while I was never close to Terry’s brother and two sisters, they were never stuck-up or mean. When I stayed with them during the funeral and the following few days, they were just as I remembered, and I could tell they appreciated having another person there that loved Terry and could sh...

    We travelled in a large shuttle bus of the kind I had always associated with class reunions and senior citizen field trips to see musicals. The seats were comfortable and there was food and a bathroom, but it was still hard to ride for so long after having been on the road so many days. We stopped every few hours to stretch our legs, and I saw that Pete and Marjorie were in a second identical bus traveling behind us. They looked okay physically, but neither of them would speak to me or meet my eyes when I tried to call out to them. Whether it was out of fear or resignation, they both bore the air of condemned prisoners, and after they ignored me the first couple of times, I gave up trying. I was mildly surprised that I wasn’t scared or worried about myself or them, but as time went on and the road unspooled before us, I felt the last remnants of my old self-doubt and fear falling away. It reminded me of watching a butterfly or moth shaking off...

    “Bell’s Palsy.” “What? You’re saying what I saw was Bell’s Palsy?” I knew what it was—I’d had a dentist who had it once. But it made one side of his face droop, not look like it was falling off. Marjorie nodded. “Yeah. Stress can trigger it, and his version of it is pretty severe and scary, but it happened once when we were teenagers. Last time it cleared up overnight, so we’ll see. He’s resting in his room now.” I gripped my hands together so tightly that the knuckles were white. “Look, there’s been a lot of weirdness the entire trip, and I…” Marjorie came and sat next to me, reaching over to put her hands on top of mine. “I know it. I’ve been focused on him too much, and I’m sorry. I just know we have the rest of our lives together and I don’t get to spend much time with him. And now…he’s just so upset about all this right now.” I pulled my hands away and leaned back. “You could have fooled me.” She fr...

    I was expecting Wizard’s Folly to be a dilapidated ruin. Tall grass and encroaching woods peppered with vine-covered skeletons that had once been buildings and stands. I half expected that we wouldn’t be able to get in at all, or if we did, we would poke around for half an hour before leaving dejected because the reality of the park fell so far into the shadow of what Pete’s story had built up in our minds. But nothing could have been further from the truth. As incredible as his story had been, the appearance and condition of the amusement park was even more awe inspiring. We entered easily through the front gate at precisely ten in the morning, all three of us looking around for signs of security in case the plan had somehow gone awry on the guards’ end. Within moments any thought of being caught had fled however, as we were all gasping at what we were seeing. Everything was in nearly perfect condition. The grass was cut, the buildings...

    We were off the interstate for the most part now, Pete taking us back routes that he said would be both quicker and more scenic. And he was right. We wound our way further west across the Mississippi and into Missouri, and by eight o’clock we were pulling into our stayover for the night, an older but nice motel on the outskirts of Kansas City. I was inexplicably tired that night, and after we grabbed a quick burger at the restaurant attached to the motel, I quickly fell asleep watching t.v. with Marjorie in our room. When I awoke, I had a moment of disorientation in the darkness of the unfamiliar room, and after fumbling my phone onto the floor, I finally woke up enough to grab it and see it was just past midnight. I reached back to Marjorie’s side of the bed, but it was empty. My first thought was that she was in the bathroom, but when I looked, nothing. I tried texting her, but a moment later I heard a buzz from where her phone had bee...