The Maple Street Press
The Maple Street Press was simply meant to be a summer project. Something to stave off the humdrum of humid afternoons. Billie had been exiled. Her mother, tired of her sighing around the house all day, had demanded she get a damned extracurricular or she would make her write book reports until September. Nora was always scrawling something or other in that splotchy composition notebook of hers anyway, and had been eager to “explore other creative mediums.” At first, the paper seemed like a good excuse to spend all summer together. With their legs dangling over the pink painted platform of Billie’s treehouse. Like every summer before it. But now Billie was afraid this would be their last.
“Billie, c’mon!” Nora called over her shoulder.
Bikes rattled over rocks and swerved potholes. The air buzzed buggy and velvety blue. The neighborhood, an incongruous grid of clapboard houses, compact brick abodes, and a few near-forgotten Victorian vessels, chimed with crickets and katydids. In the summer, the town of Dolton remained mucky and warm well past sunset.
Billie pedaled harder, until her knees grazed her chest. She was out of breath, and the aquamarine cruiser she’d begged for last summer was now a size too small.
The pair slowed as they passed an expanse of open field. Blotted candy colors rose from the horizon. Blinking lights in shades of yellow, pink, and blue, dotted the dark. From the road, the girls could feel the contented merriment of the county fair: the mechanical spinning and whirling of rides, the bright bells and whirrs of carnival games, the comfortable hum of the crowd. The ferris wheel was still turning lazily, and Billie felt a surge of warmth for Nora. She knew Nora must feel it too.
Nora loved every stomach-churning, teeth-rattling contraption. But Billie had screamed so hard on the kiddie-caterpillar ride in first grade, that the teenager operating it had brought it to a halt before it even completed a full rotation. But every year, they’d sit across from each other on the ferris wheel. As the wheel rose, the green grid of their town became tiny and unintimidating. Once the ride reached its apex, complicated parents and confusing peers no longer belonged to them, but to the neat little doll world below. Sometimes Nora would joke about what would happen if the wheel went rogue, if it took off, spinning, switching directions, barreling through town, but Billie knew nothing could possibly shake it loose.
They hadn’t gone this year. That’s why Billie had to write that story.
“Shit, isn’t that your Dad, Billie?” Nora whisper-shouted. It still sounded like Nora was playing dress-up in someone’s ill-fitting heels when she cursed.
They were coming up on the dark intersection where Thorpe split Maple, the fair’s technicolor haze at their backs. A blue station wagon tattooed in too many bumper stickers was heeling at the stop sign, The Who seeping from an open window.
“Oh my god, he thinks we’re at your place, Nora!”
Without warning, Nora cut her front wheel to the left, barreling through a gravely abandoned yard. She’d upgraded since last summer, and was now haphazardly helming an elegant olive green bike with a sleek woven basket.
Nora was leaving Billie behind. Just like she had all year. There’d been the hair straightener Nora had received at Christmas. And the game of spin the bottle at Jessica Keene’s thirteenth birthday. Billie hadn’t even known about it, until she’d spotted August Alexander making eyes at Nora during third period. Billie had never kissed a boy. And that Christmas, she’d asked for a deluxe art set complete with crayons and colored pencils.
“Hey!” Now, Billie bent over her handlebars to heave over the curb. Streamers the color of dragonfly wings twirled stupidly around her wrists as she rerouted.
They tore through an untamed lawn, dry, scratchy weeds pricking their bare legs. Tires flattened stalks of stinging nettle and bundles of blue chicory. Behind them, Billie’s dad’s car huffed away from their convoy, the Classic Rock Hits of 98.5 trailing behind him.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Billie hissed once the yard spit them back out onto the pavement. “You should’ve signaled that you were turning.”
“Listen,” Nora said coolly, tossing her electric blue hair behind her. “The Maple Street Press was my idea. I had to make an executive decision. Anyway, I knew you’d follow. Like always.”
“You could have at least clued me in before going-off road,” Billie’s throat felt hot. “Plus, I’m the one who found the typewriter. I should get some say.”
Because they’d both been sentenced to spend time outside, the two had tic tacked the inaugural edition of The Maple Street Press on the old yellow typewriter. Since nothing ever happened in “Dullton” as the town’s more restless residents were apt to call it, the two had conceived fictional articles for the paper. The tales had flown from their fingertips like magic.
“That stupid, spooky typewriter is what got us here in the first place!” Nora shot back, firmly adjusting the messenger bag at her hip. Ever since they’d excavated the sickly yellow-hued device from Billie’s parents’ shed, Nora had taken to dressing like an investigator in an old film.
Billie wanted to tell Nora she didn’t need to follow her. That she hadn’t even wanted to start a newspaper. The Maple Street Press had simply seemed like a good excuse to spend all summer together. She wanted to ask why this summer felt so different.
Billie squinted at her plastic purple watch under the street light. They only had thirty minutes. It would have to wait.
When they reached Main Street, Nora and Billie abandoned their bikes in a clanking heap. From the pocket of her wrinkled shorts, Billie reluctantly revealed a shiny keyring.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this. We can’t actually break in.”
“Oh please, Nora. My sister said the seniors always sneak into empty buildings just to hang out. We actually should’ve been doing this all along.”
“We could just go back to my place. We can have a sleepover up in the treehouse and my dad can order Chinese from that place you like.”
“Billie…” Nora rolled her eyes.
“How do we really know we even have to do this?” Billie pleaded. “Maybe all that stuff was just a coincidence.”
Nora’s first story had been a farcical tale about a pie baked from bewitched blueberries. The fruit was harvested from a mountaintop creek, and possessed stunning hair-growth capabilities. Shortly after publication, Billie had been reading her horoscope in the treehouse when Nora rattled up the ladder to report that hairless Father Hewitt had been gifted the winning pie at the fair’s annual competition. That next morning, sources said he’d been seen exiting the rectory sporting an impressive set of mutton chops.
“That was no coincidence,” Nora said solemnly. “Your mom owes us anyway. She’s the one who had the bright idea to sell our typewriter at the rummage sale.”
“C’mon, she didn’t know.”
“Billie, do you really want to just hang back? We’re losing time.” Nora looked adult and exasperated, one hand on her hip, like the older girls Billie sometimes saw arguing with their moms at the mall a few towns over. “Anyway, I’m going in. The longer you make us wait, the more suspicious it’s gonna look if someone walks by.”
“Fine.” Billie sighed.
The stolen key snuck them into Ms. Browning’s downtown office building, Town of Dolton Design Co. A miniature of Billie’s second grade school photo rattled from its metal ring.
“She’s gonna kill me.”
“She’s not gonna find out.”
Ms. Browning’s office building was all oak desks and checkered floors. Clunky gray computers dwarfed every surface.
“Over here,” Billie whispered, waving Nora into a corner office.
The mosaic of plastic pins on Nora’s bag rattled as she tossed it to the ground and hurled herself into a desk chair. Cracking her knuckles, she slammed her hands onto the letters of a black typewriter.
“God, Nora, take it easy. My granddad gave my mom this typewriter when she started her own business. Don’t type so hard.”
The rigid skeletal machine was older and more complicated-looking than the one the pair had set up in the treehouse newsroom on Maple Street. How could they know if this typewriter would even have the same effect?
“Final night of local f-a-i-r,”
Every rise and fall of the chiclet keys pounded through the empty halls. The mechanics of the old machine, a mystery to them. But since the paper’s original typewriter, the one that had somehow made things happen, had been disposed of for $50, Dolton Design Co.’s token typewriter was their only shot.
Nora typed slowly, one green, polished finger at a time.
“Shh,” Billie scolded, her eyes darting towards the front door. “Not so loud.”
Nora huffed.
“What if someone’s still here?” Billie worried. “What about a janitor or a squatter or something?”
“Squatter? Billie, get a grip. Plus, the entire town’s at the fairgrounds.”
“We’re not.”
“Well, obviously.” Nora retorted.
For her second story, Nora had covered the local theater troupe’s annual performance of The Spirit of the Hills, a well-worn folktale of ancestral curses and bad blood. It was one that all local children grew up hearing by bedsides and bonfires. Nora had auditioned for a role in the play last year, and been rejected.
In her article, “Horror in the Hills,” Nora wrote that this years’ outdoor performance had gone swimmingly. No fudged lines, no forgotten cues. Performers had embodied their parts so well, the audience agreed it was as if they had become their roles. When the final curtain fell, actors found to their horror that they had, in fact, transformed into their characters. They could hardly remember who they had been before. The Bloodsucker longed for a taste of O negative, Townsperson 2 possessed an inexplicable rage towards Townsperson 4’s descendants, and The Reverend felt an aching burden to expel evil.
The day after this year’s performance, Billie’s little brother told her he’d stood behind someone in line for the Wonder Wheel. They’d worn black sweeping garments and sharp canines. Their partner, with whom they held hands, had two dark bruises on their pale neck.
Now Nora snapped, “We’re not having fun at the fair, because someone had to unleash total mayhem with the most ridiculous story of all time.”
“Wait, what’s that?” Billie froze.
“Your story, dude– ” Nora rolled her eyes.
“Shh! No, that.” She silenced Nora’s hovering hands with a wavering palm. “I hear someone.”
A screaming voice was nearing the unlocked front door.
The pair swapped wide-eyed terror.
Had another one of their accidental newspaper prophecies already come true?
Billie had only written the article because she knew it would make Nora laugh. A big belly laugh like the kind that used to fill their stomachs when they had slumber parties in the treehouse. She couldn’t remember the last time Nora thought something she said was funny. So she’d written about the ferris wheel. That it’d come loose from its stable support and gone bouncing down Main Street. The runaway wheel careened across town, tumbling down the street, and barreling through traffic.
Now, Nora abruptly stood up. The cluster of charms she wore crowded on her wrist let out a painfully loud metallic jangle.
“We should get down!” Billie seethed through her teeth, diving below the desk.
“We have to see what’s going on,” Nora insisted. “If it’s already started, we have to help out,” she said with an annoying valiance to her voice.
“We don’t know for sure yet,” Billie worried. “We should stay where we are.”
“I can’t believe we made it out of there!” a girlish tone outside trilled.
“Oh my god,” Billie breathed. They’d done it. She’d done it. She’d screwed everything up. She looked around in the dark. A pale beam from a nearby street light made the room glow gray. Billie was pretty sure Nora had stopped breathing, her deep hazel eyes glowed still.
Nora was going to hate her. Billie thought this summer that she’d gotten Nora back. Her Nora, who was befuddled by boys, and who collected handfuls of cloudy quartz by the river. Nora, who had cried when her mom cut her bangs too short, and who made up stories so spooky and real, they would both silently agree to sleep with the bathroom light on. Nora, who would pile on ridiculous layers of her sister’s old sparkly, feathered dance costumes and belt an opera into her hairbrush when no one else was home.
Nora would return to sitting at the theater table at lunch period and drawing around her eyes with dark pencil, like she had the entire month of May. Guffawing big, while someone showed off an unidentifiable, yet impressive celebrity impersonation. And Billie would have to watch from across the cafeteria. Everything was going to change.
“I can’t believe you made me go in that weird fucking fun house,” the voice squealed. “I almost peed my pants, Jason.”
Laughter.
Billie and Nora sighed. They heard sneakers skipping across the street, and soon, the giggling grew distant.
Nora returned to writing. “All in all, the 50th Annual Dolton County Fair concluded without fanfare. Families piled into their minivans, carnies packed up their magic tricks, and–”
“God, please hurry up.”
“Don’t criticize my process while I’m undoing what you did,” Nora shot.
“–and perhaps most importantly, revelers loaded off the ferris wheel before the ride was brought to a silent halt.”
“Ok great, let’s go.”
Nora ceremoniously pulled the paper from its post and slammed it onto the russet desk with an authoritative open palm. “Let’s never do that again,” she sighed, leaning against the metallic cool wall of filing cabinets.
“How do we know if it worked?” Nora asked.
“The fair should be ending in five minutes,” Billie reported. “If nothing happens by nine, we gotta be in the clear.”
“Can we wait here? I’m gonna puke if I have to get back on my bike.” Nora slid to the floor.
“Yeah!” Billie smiled relieved, sitting criss-crossed on the icy tiles. It was going to be ok. Everything would stay the same. Nora was scared too. Maybe now was the time to talk to her. To put everything back into place. If she didn’t do it now, she knew she wouldn’t get the chance again.
It was quiet. Billie didn’t know how to begin.
Nora fished a peppermint from a nearby bowl, twisting off the plastic, the wrapper crackling in the silence. She loudly rattled the hard candy around in her mouth like an arcade pinball.
Billie braced–
Then, the room was struck by a loud bang.
Nora screamed, “Christ!”
Gong, Gong, Gong…
Billie laughed, “sorry, my mom’s creepy antique clock,” she chuckled in between gongs. “My dad hates having it in the house.”
From down the hall, the clock languorously counted nine.
Outside, The empty stretch of Main Street was silent. Then, a rumble, like a summer storm rolling in, crept up the still asphalt. A rhythmic metal pounding striking the pavement. It had started and couldn’t be stopped.
Maple blueberry cereal bars
Ingredients
3 tbsp butter
6 cups marshmallows
3 ½ tbsp maple syrup
6 cups rice cereal
1 cup freeze dried blueberries
Instructions
Prepare a 9x13 baking dish.
In a large saucepan, melt butter on low heat.
Add marshmallows and stir.
Stir in maple syrup and remove from heat.
Add cereal and freeze dried blueberries to the marshmallow mixture.
Pour cereal mixture into baking dish. Flatten with spatula. Allow to cool before cutting.