Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: In her short fiction piece “Ashley” Kathryn Diaz pairs the directness of her prose with tangled complications relating to sexuality and friendship. The slippages in the telling demonstrate the vulnerability of the narrator, and Diaz expertly builds tension and movement in the reported text messages. Overall, the simplicity of language allows Diaz to gut readers at the end—this is an exciting story that demonstrates first person at the miCRo-level done right.
To hear Diaz read her piece, click below:
Ashley
When I was seventeen, I texted my best friend, Ashley: I wish I could be your boyfriend sometimes. You deserve someone who really knows you, who can just look at you and know exactly how great you are and get your jokes. You need a guy who will happily watch Will and Grace with you and stay up texting random things until 2 a.m. like we do. Someone who will tell you how pretty you are on the days you don’t believe it. And I try to give you as much of that as I can but I know it’s not the same, unless someone makes a magic wand that just makes it so lol.
I just mean it would be so much easier because I already like taking care of you.
I’m sorry if that was weird or something
I’m sorry, okay?
I stared at my phone for two minutes. Then three. Then five.
Three weeks before, we had gone to see Proof at one of our rival schools, and at the start of Act Two, Ashley brushed back my hair and her fingertips grazed my ear, so cold and so gentle I jumped in my seat. Oh god, I thought, did I fall asleep? We were dressed in our drama-club polos so the cast would know we were watching; I was supposed to be showing Ashley how to scout the competition. She was a grade below me, it was my job to show her how club politics worked, set her up for success, take care of her, but I’d fallen asleep and imagined her touching my ear with her soft, ice-drop-cool fingers. I’d felt them before, when we held hands under the table in class, they were just long enough that they could hook over the ends of mine in the smallest finger hug, but still. Why would I do that?
Ashley was already watching for my reaction, her face hard. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t be weird. “Keep watching the play,” she hissed.
I made a point of turning my whole head back to the stage, but I couldn’t settle on the action of the story. The girl couldn’t get her boyfriend to believe in her, the father was dead, everyone was missing a part of themselves, and Ashley was brushing my hair with her fingertips again. Slowly, in a way that couldn’t be an accident.
After thirty minutes, Ashley finally texted me back: It’s not weird. But I do hate it when you say stuff like that. All my life I’ve figured that even though I’m awful there’s bound to be one whole person capable of loving me. But if that person’s you then I’m done for.
Kathryn Diaz is a native Houstonian, proud Writespace alum, and media enthusiast. She completed her MFA in fiction at Cornell University, where she currently teaches students to unleash their own voice and let their creativity grow wild and crooked. Her work has previously appeared in Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Glass Mountain, and New Poe.
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