Winner of the 2025 Inaugural Prose Contest
You and Nick are on a break. Sally suggests kayaking. Get the blood pumping, get a tan, explore the uncharted islands on the Hudson River on her day off from the Bible Camp she’s been working at all summer. Sally carries a hardback Nancy Drew novel she fashioned into a purse; she got the instructions from the pages of Seventeen. She has an Altoids tin she keeps her weed in. Lipstick and body glitter, stick-on tattoos and mini packets of confetti. You never know when a party will break out.
It isn’t until you’re out on the water that Sally jokes about Boy Island. It’s no coincidence you paddle in that direction. You’re on a break, after all. Nick cannot hold against you what happens on a break.
Boy Island, Sally tells you, is where the college boys swim. One of the girls at Bible Camp told her all about it. The boys are tan and gorgeous. Sometimes they have beer. And if you catch them under the right light, she says, their clothes come right off.
***
Nancy tried not to think about Boy Island too often. But she thought about Sally every April, when she saw pigeons, when she saw rainbows. She never told Nick what happened there.
Never told her husband, Lucas, either. She never told anyone the answer that added up in the aftermath.
***
There are boys like mermen, like lizards sunning themselves on the rocks. Boys with and without shirts, tight bodies and bright swim shorts. Their own boats are docked. A few girls had reached the shores before you and Sally. There are no shadowy figures or broken clocks. Just flesh and sunlight and the smell of hot dogs sizzling on a portable grill. A blonde boy offers you one. He tells you his name is Clay. He’s a sophomore. You take, and you eat.
***
When school started, Nancy got back together with Nick. He took her to the Homecoming Dance. She’d forgotten Clay’s last name if she ever knew it at all. Sally cornered her in the bathroom. She expected her to ask for a pad; their cycles had synched and Nancy had been crabby for a few days already, snapping at Nick and crying on the sofa to the video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Look at them, she sobbed. These beautiful girls, so full of life. Steve Forbert is Cyndi’s boyfriend and they’re so happy together.
She was sore and craving Fritos. She was horny for Nick and the taste of orange Tic-Tacs.
But Sally didn’t need a pad. I’m late, she said, in a whisper that echoed off the sink and the towel dispenser. And I’m not ready to be a mother.
***
At your 20-year high school reunion, you find out that Nick’s wife, Becky, went to Sarah Lawrence. You ask her about Boy Island. She pretends she doesn’t know what you’re talking about. You wonder if you’re crazy. You wonder if it was a story you wrote or a dream you had. You wonder if your college ex was right, that you just make up scenarios and arguments in dreams to give drama to your suburban life.
Later Becky finds you at the bar. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Nick, she says with a mischievous smile over the salt rim of another rocky margarita. But I know all about Boy Island. She speaks fondly of it, and you wonder if she also made out with Clay, the two of you just swapping boyfriends back and forth across time. You feel bad for your own fond memories, slipping away from the campfire with Clay’s arm around your waist, but even Sally gushed about how she couldn’t wait to go back there. Just one more empty check-box on a list that never came true. You don’t mention any of this to Becky. No reason to taint the memory of Boy Island.
***
Sally’s cousin Jessica knew A Guy who would do the job for $200. There was no Planned Parenthood for her, not without her parents’ permission, not with the risk that someone from her church might see her. Her parents would have sent her away like her aunt did their cousin Miranda. Miranda came back broken. Her baby died, she said, and the nurse blamed her milk, but she knew better. The nurse smothered her. That’s what they did in those places. If the baby wasn’t born right, they took him away and brought back an empty blanket. To remind Miranda of her sin. To remind Miranda of her shame. She overdosed on pills a few months later, still clutching that tiny cotton blanket.
But Jessica knew A Guy at her college. He was in med school, she promised. He knew what he was doing, could get the right combination of drugs for her, same as he got for her sorority sisters. No knitting needles or coat hangers. Just $200. A small price to pay for a secret.
***
You take the kayak out from the same point. You want to tell the boys. Maybe they’ll give you some money, own up to who the father is. Maybe you just want to see Clay again. You wonder why it couldn’t have been you instead. Your father would have taken you to a real doctor. He would have listened and understood. You had the solid relationship that Sally didn’t have with her parents. None of this was fair.
You paddle up river, down river, until you begin to think it was all a mirage. There are no boys on any of the rocks, no canoes, no grills, just a few empty beer cans that could have been left there weeks ago. But the baby is real, and he’s growing fast. There isn’t time to solve a new mystery. The letters and the lockets are not paying for The Guy.
There’s a rumor going around school that Sally’s a slut. Boys keep coming up to her and asking for blow jobs. It’s always the church girls, they tell her. Sally tells them to go fuck themselves. Isn’t that your job? they taunt, until all she can do is storm off to class. You can’t help but silently judge her too, a little bit. Why didn’t she have condoms in her Nancy Drew purse? She knew the rules. How bodies worked. They raised their flour-sack babies together in health class. But you don’t tell her any of this. She doesn’t need your judgment on top of everyone else’s.
***
Sally was buried two days before Thanksgiving. Her obituary said she took ill suddenly.
The Guy took her to the basement of his frat, gave her a Xanax for her nerves, then two shots of vodka to wash the pills down with. She aspirated on her own vomit and he panicked, called Jessica and told her to leave his name out of it. Otherwise he might tell everyone why she was there in the first place. He might even say who brought her. Jessica complied. She had no other choice. Her scholarship was on the line. He still kept the $200 she gave him.
Sally was buried in her homecoming dress and the half-heart necklace Nancy gave her for her Sweet Sixteen. Nancy wished she had a temporary tattoo or confetti to place in her coffin. She might find a party when she arrived in Heaven. She hated the thought of sending Sally into the afterlife unprepared.
Nick held her hand through the service, only letting go when she had to go up to the podium to speak. After the burial, Sally’s parents handed her a box. In it was her Tiffany bracelet, her diary and her Nancy Drew purse. We thought you might want these, her mother said. Sally would want you to have them.
***
You break up with Nick for the last time. He takes Chrystina Cooper to the Valentine’s Day dance while you watch Talk Soup at home alone. It doesn’t feel right to have a life while Sally lies cold in the ground. You take off the Tiffany bracelet only to shower and to sleep. You never take off the broken heart around your throat.
In April you receive a slim letter from Sarah Lawrence College. Dear Nancy, it is my honor to inform you…
You do not know what you owe Sally, what vengeance or remembrance might look like.
Last December The Guy was arrested and charged with assault, possession, practicing medicine without a license. But you know you can never return to Boy Island, even if it is real. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair.
There are other colleges.
You tear the letter into confetti.
Libby Cudmore is the author of Negative Girl (Datura, 2024) and The Big Rewind (William Morrow, 2016) as well as the Wade & Jacks PI series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Tough. Her work has been published in Smokelong Quarterly, The Dark, Stone’s Throw, Dark Waters, Shotgun Honey, Orca, Monkeybicycle and The Coachella Review, as well as the anthologies At the Edge of Darkness, Burning Down the House, 120 Murders, Shamus & Anthony Commit Capers and the Anthony-nominated Lawyers, Guns & Money (which she co-edited with Art Taylor). She is a 2005 Binghamton graduate and a four-year Barrelhouse Writer’s Camp alumni, and the recipient of the Shamus Award, the Black Orchid Award and the Oregon Writer’s Colony prize.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 