Not so undercover anymore.
I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. That might sound cute, but I wrote because I was a lonely child with a bad case of anxiety and shyness and only one or two friends at a time, sometimes none. Or at least, that’s how it felt. I was convinced I’d be alone for the rest of my life, growing up to be a lonesome spinster with long white hair and only a garden to keep her company. Sometimes, I still feel that way.
by Alexandra M. Landeros
Written in November 2014 for submission to The Austin Chronicle short story contest. While the story was not selected, it’s currently under revision for future submissions. Excerpt below.
As the night went on, the musicians attending the festival were getting rowdier, drinking beer and whiskey, picking on their instruments around the campfire until they slurred the lyrics and distorted the melodies. Although the official program was over, the campfire parties went on all night. Aurora wished she could let herself loose.
But the more everyone drank and laughed, the quieter Aurora would become, drifting into silence, barely brushing her fingers against the strings, whispering the words. She put her guitar away, no one noticing, not even Jake. She walked over to him, lightly tapping him on the shoulder. He turned, still playing his guitar.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Jake.
“I’m going back to the tent.”
“You’re being a sad-sack. Why don’t you just enjoy yourself?”
“Everyone loves your songs, Jake, easy for you to say.”
“So play ones that people will like.”
Aurora walked off without replying, and about ten feet away, she turned around, hearing Jake sing one of the tunes everyone loved, a tongue-in-cheek song about the border patrol. You sound just like Randy Newman but with Terlingua soul, people would tell him. While the other musicians wore t-shirts and flannel shirts, Jake stood out in a vintage suede jacket embroidered with a desert scene and scuffed cowboy boots. You have style, they’d tell him.
If it hadn’t been for Aurora, Jake would never have known about this festival, out in the middle of nowhere in Terlingua, a quicksilver mining ghost town near the Mexican border in the northern Chihuahuan desert, with the nearest city about seventy-five miles away. She was the one who had inspired him to write the song about the border patrol anyway, when she told him about one of her cousins from Mexico who had crossed over illegally to Arizona.
Want to read more? Contact Undercover Mexican Girl.