Stella Nickerson
Featured Writer
Stella Nickerson's story, My Candle Burns, won an
award in the Eudora Welty writing competition. Stella
graduated from the Mississippi School for Math and
Science in Columbus. Prior to that, she attended school
in Aberdeen. She is now attending Brigham Young
University, planning to major in engineering.
My Candle Burns
Tilly discovered
Stirlings her first week on the Sewanee campus and loved it. She
loved its yellow walls, the white wicker porch swing, the magenta
flowers the size of dinner plates that grew on either side of the
steps. She loved the random collection of furniture crammed into its
rooms—overstuffed armchairs, a paisley sofa, beaded curtains,
lace-trimmed pillows. She loved peppermint hot chocolate served in
deep blue mugs, banana nut muffins, bagels with cucumber cream
cheese, and milkshakes. And she thought she might really, really
like the boy behind the counter. He had dark hair that curled
just a little and deep-set eyes. And sideburns.
That morning it rained,
but didn’t really mean it, the pale gray sky trickling water that
made the world slick and dewy and spattered across Tilly’s glasses.
The bottoms of her jeans dragged in puddles—she knew they’d be all
crusty hard by time she got to class. But she liked the rain anyway,
liked the cool feeling of it as it gathered in her hair and
especially liked coming in out of the rain, into Stirlings.
“The usual, please,” she
said to the boy behind the counter.
He blinked at her. “Uh…
excuse me, what’s that?”
Tilly felt herself blush
hot beneath the cold hair clinging to her cheeks. “Peppermint hot
chocolate. Small. And a banana nut muffin.” The boy behind the
counter whisked away to the pile of deep blue mugs and the row of
silver canisters filled with flavored syrup back against the corner,
murmuring something to the girl behind the counter—her hair was
short and blonde; she wore silver rings in a line up her ear. Tilly
sank onto the sofa and felt like putting her feet up on the
tile-topped coffee table but stopped herself. She took her book from
her purse, and read:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!
She had a sudden image of herself, thinner than she
was, with no glasses, lounging on the paisley-patterned sofa and
smoking a cigarette. The anti-smoking campaign way back in middle
school claimed that cigarettes never make you look cool, but Tilly
knew they did—not if you were some pimply seventh-grader, no, but if
you were in your twenties, and just rumpled enough, and not sitting
properly on whatever furniture you chose, and, most importantly, you
had that look, that
I-am-fine-with-getting-cancer-when-I’m-fifty-because-right-now-I’m-young-and-I-am-just-that-
sophisticated” look.
Tilly heard the clink of china and realized that
the girl behind the counter had appeared by the sofa and was sliding
a blue mug onto the coffee table, followed by a muffin on a yellow
plate. The electric light glanced off the girl’s earrings.
Tilly imagined a candle burning at both ends, and
put out her hand to touch the girl’s wrist. She gave Tilly such a
look that she was reminded, immediately, that you don’t touch people
like that, not strangers. But she’d already done it, so she might as
well pull her hand back and say:
“The boy behind the counter… What’s his name?”
The girl blinked. And then, after a second’s pause,
she laughed.
Tilly took a deep breath, trying to will her face
from getting hot and red. “What?” she said.
“It’s nothing. Or—it’s something, but you wouldn’t think it’s funny.
Inside joke.” She turned, as if to walk away, but then seemed to
change her mind and faced Tilly again. “You must really like our
muffins to walk all the way up the mountain from the high school
every morning.”
“I don’t—I’m a student here. A freshman. I live in
the dorms.”
The girl’s eyes went mock-wide. “Wow. You must be
some sort of prodigy, then, off to college at your age.”
“I’m eighteen.”
The girl threw up her hands, as if in defense.
“Okay, okay. I believe you already. Chill.” Then she grinned.
“Stirlings welcomes your service,” she said. “And we hope you come
again.” She moved back behind the counter, where the boy was
swirling whipped cream onto someone’s coffee. She leaned over to
him, whispered something in his ear. He laughed, and his dark curls
shook.
Tilly picked up her mug and leaned back into the
paisley upholstery. She sipped hot chocolate, and the steam rising
from the cup fogged up her glasses. She imagined herself with silver
rings up both ears and studs in her nose and lip and eyebrows.
Someone would ask Didn’t that hurt? and she would shake her head—she
was far too hardcore to feel pain. Someone would run his hands along
the lines of her face—because if she were fantasizing anyway, why
not—and would feel the contrast between her soft skin and the cold
bumps of metal. He’d whisper You feel like a cyborg.
Tilly smiled. Yes, exactly, a cyborg. You will be
assimilated.
“Hey, you, where are you from?”
Tilly looked up to see that the girl behind the
counter had returned.
“What?”
“It’s him that wants to know.” The girl raised her
eyebrows suggestively.
“Mississippi,” Tilly said, though the muscles in
her face felt tight.
“Jackson? Because, you see, I’m from Memphis and
he’s from Birmingham, and we city people have got to stick together
in this place.”
“I’m from Splunge. It’s not a town. Just a place
with some houses and a church and a gas station.”
“Well, once someone puts in a McDonald’s you’ll be
in the Big Leagues, won’t you?”
“Yeah.” Tilly stared past the girl at the wall
opposite with its hand-drawn menus and black-and-white photos of the
campus. She clutched her blue mug, let it warm her fingers, and said
nothing more. The girl behind the counter laughed again and walked
away.
Tilly picked away at her muffin and sipped away at
her drink and thought of a candle burning at both ends. When she
dared, she glanced over at the boy behind the counter and his
sideburns, the girl behind the counter and her earrings and short
hair. They mixed drinks, toasted bagels, took orders, told each
other jokes and laughed at them. Tilly thought that that they were
each an end of a candle, burning down.
She took a napkin from the dispenser on the coffee
table and a pen from her purse and wrote something down. She looked
at what she wrote and wished she had either friends or foes to share
it with. But there was the boy behind the counter.
She took another napkin and rubbed at her mouth,
since experience had taught her that her lips were probably ringed
with chocolate. Then she stood, wiped the wet hair back from her
face, pushed her glasses up her nose, took the written-on napkin
from the table, walked up to the counter.
“Can I help you?” asked the girl behind the
counter, smirking.
Tilly frowned. The boy behind the counter had his
back turned to her, pouring milk into a deep blue mug. She’d just
have to speak loudly.
“My candle burns from one end like candles are
supposed to. Or maybe I don’t even have a candle, I have one of
those energy-saving light bulbs that’s supposed to reduce global
warming. They may be dim, but I think they’re plenty lovely.”
She dug into her pocket and put a quarter, a
nickel, and two pennies into the tip jar shaped like a fish. And
then Tilly walked out into the rain.
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