The Emerging Writers Prose Award brings together a writer at an early stage in his or her career with a writer from the Middlesex student body who also shows promise of being at the beginning of a career in writing. This year brought Sarah Gerkensmeyer, author of What You Are Now Enjoying, together with this year's winner of the Emerging Writers Prose Award, Sarah Kate Read '13.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Sarah Kate has been a passionate contributor to all aspects of life at Middlesex in her four years on campus. An accomplished writer, artist, and athlete, Sarah Kate founded the graffiti club on campus, completed her AP Studio Art portfolio this spring, and captains the girls' varsity crew team. She has also been active in the community service club, organizing fundraisers like Relay for Life and the 20/20 Spring Fling.
Below is an excerpt from Sarah Kate's winning short story Marbling. The full version is also available.
“Miss Mari?” Mari didn’t even look down when she heard his voice, but she practically groaned in relief from the odd silence.
“Yes?” Was that her voice? So, timid and high, like untuned violin strings.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.” She looked down. He’d stopped cleaning, and was looking up to her. God almighty, he was a Carmelli. Strong features, and steady hands with those blunt fingernails, clipped to avoid accumulation of blood and bits of meat. He had a workingman’s charm.
She wanted to be charming as well. “I say a lot. Anything in particular that’s got you thinking?” She attempted a smirk, but felt a little too old for it, and stopped.
“About the marbling and all.”
“And?”
“I was thinking.” He shook his head a little, almost laughing, and Mari felt a little giddy. “Maybe people are like that too.”
Well, that was not what she expected. Maybe a so-I-bought-beef-with-higher-fat-content comment, but not something that required higher thought. Not that she thought Cosmo was stupid, but she didn’t fantasize that a young man with his particular set of interests sat around wondering the criteria of human character. She started to smirk meaning for it to be to herself, at Cosmo sitting with the beef fingers immersed in ground chuck pushing his neurons to fire one after the other, pushing, reaching.
“I know it’s stupid.” He turned back to the practically clean wall, and began to scrub again. The green disinfectant permeating Mari’s senses as it slid across the white. “Never mind me.”
“No, no, Cosmo. Tell me what you mean.” Affected by some unintelligible force, Mari slid down from her stool and sat behind the register across from Cosmo.
It was cramped, and Mari had to curl her knees up to her chest like a girl scout at her first sleepover to avoid invading Cosmo’s space further. But, he didn’t seem to mind, so she let her feet relax towards him. He faced her, and obviously grappled with the words to say.
“Well, I-“ His brows quirked together, and he looked very much like a Carmelli, “you know how some meats have a look about them? It’s like you can tell there’s something good in them just by a look.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I’ve been looking at a lot of meat lately, and a lot of people too, you know, my family and the customers,” he paused just long enough to make Mari lean in, “and well you.”
Mari didn’t say anything. She looked at Cosmo, thoughtful, hardworking Cosmo, and he started to take on a different shape in her mind. Fill in another shape, one that had been melting away into the drains in the floor.
“And, I see Nikki and Nancy and Leroy and all of them, and they don’t have it.” He breathed in. All the while staring down at the backs of his green hands like a script hung from his knuckles. “And, well, you, Mari, you got something really good in you.”
It wasn’t that physically Mari froze it was that time hiccupped for a single second, and someone forgot to make the clocks twitch forward. Mari saw herself in her minds eye, and saw a woman easing out of her prime. Not an ugly woman easing out of her prime, but a once pretty lady in her mid-thirties. She saw a body marred by tangled lines of stretch marks underneath jeans that bagged oddly from bending to lift deliveries. She saw Princess Peach cringe at lifting pork shoulder. She stared at Cosmo in her spare timeless moments, and saw a young man from a family butcher shop, who thought about things, and worked hard. How could he look at her more than the woman past her prime? How could he see this “marbling”?