GetLit is a semimonthly series featuring works of fiction and creative nonfiction submitted by New School students. Each month has two opportunities to submit: an open call and a themed call. To submit your work or find more information, please visit GetLit’s submissions form.

This month’s open call fiction selection is “Looker” by Lydia Chiu.

Lydia (any/all) is a fourth-year, undergraduate illustrator and writer based in Lenapehoking (“New York City”) pursuing a BFA in illustration and a BA in literary studies for fiction writing. Lydia enjoys telling stories that focus on characters and their relationships with community, youth, and family.

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You used to look at me differently. You used to smile more. You used to be smaller, more vibrant, and so did your room. It was pink, and then it was turquoise, now it’s light green. 

But you used to visit me less. You would stand in front of me while your mother fluffed the skirt of your dress, brushed your long hair. You’d be gone the whole day, and I would be alone in your room, watching the sunlight move through your windows, reflect off of me, set in the distance. I wouldn’t see you until the evening. Your mother would help you out of that dress, usher you to the bathroom, tuck you into bed. I would watch over you in the dim glow of your night light, because you didn’t like the dark, and you were so small, sleeping like an infant, bundled and soft and peaceful. 

That room was a home for both of us. I felt the gentle, oily touch of fingerprints and the lingering kiss of stickers and the bite of scraping and residue and chemical spray and gentle wipe-downs. I saw you with the long hair your mother liked, the short hair you cut yourself, the panic and tears after you put down the scissors. I heard your arguments with your mother and saw you storm in afterward, malice and hurt in your raw, fleshy, rough-and-tumble body, and take refuge in the bed your mother used to tuck you into. You don’t use the night light anymore. You like to hide in the dark. 

The more time passed, the more time you spent with me. It was what I thought I wanted, but you no longer stood with your mother, you were no longer smiling with gaps in your tiny teeth and a frilly skirt over your tights. You looked at me with disgust. Up close, from far away; you looked at me with frustration, grabbing parts of yourself like you wished you could rip them away. You came to me more and more, and I only wanted to give you the company you yearned for, but you never looked at me like I did. I wanted to tell you I was sorry, but there was nothing I could do. 

It wasn’t me you didn’t like, was it? 

So I watched the dresses and hair your mother liked go unworn, stuffed under your bed. You wore more jackets, big ones that swallowed you up, and it reminded me of you when you were young, hiding from the dark in your swaddling of blankets, except now you were hiding from the light. I could do nothing as you detested me, avoided me, then late in the night would turn on the lights and come close, stare intimately, obsessively, miserably. I preferred the days when you would just go to bed. Anytime you came close to me I couldn’t make you happy. 

And then you disappeared. The sun kept rising, gleaming off of me, setting. The bed stayed pristinely made, untouched, no longer a safe haven to you. No longer a quiet contentment to me. A season passed where I saw no one but your mother, though only on the rare occasion when she would open the door, look around, a wistful expression on her face. She never came all the way in. I wondered how you would feel knowing that she looked for you, just like I did, day after day even though we knew we wouldn’t find you here. 

It’s when the days get short that I see you again. The door edges open, and you enter, tentative like you’d never been before. There’s a bag over your shoulder. Clothes I haven’t seen when you unzip it. You look different too, in slight ways, noticeable even through the film of dust that coats me. A little taller, maybe. Tougher. Your body moves differently, shapes shifting under your clothing in ways they didn’t used to. 

When you finally focus on me, I can no longer imagine the version of you who wore those bright dresses, those clothes your mother picked out. You wear the ones you have now better than any you ever have. 

You come closer, then, and I am as glad as I am afraid. I’ve missed you. There is every chance in the world that you will still hate me. That you will look at me and frown, that you will examine all the ways I disappoint you. 

But you step closer and run a hand through your hair, cropped fluffy, angular, a far cry from the uneven scruff you’d given yourself with your arts and crafts scissors all that time ago. You smooth your shirt, assured in a way I’ve never seen before. You look me up and down, and you smile.