**Coming Soon** A Story About Two Sisters and a Mid-’00s Mashup DJ
When Molly Mary O’Brien emailed us and asked if we would be interested in a short story “about a pair of suburban sisters who bond over a mid-’00s mashup DJ,” we said no. (We hollered yes, duh!) Better yet, we’re turning her story “Risky Business” into a zine, so we can really sink ourselves into the time and place of Jess and Nicole’s world. One of the things we loved about Molly’s story is that it is evocative of a moment — you can smell the PBR/cigarettes/coffee in the big Starbucks cup, feel the spandex, and hear the jingle-jangle of stacked bracelets — but, besides that, it is also about when someone intimate to you disappears in plain sight.
Look out for “Risky Business” coming later this month, and in the meantime, here’s a teaser:
He went on short and frequent tours of colleges because college students liked his music best, but when he wasn’t doing that, he DJ’d a weekly party at a small Los Angeles venue. He called the parties Risky Sundays, and young people would attend wearing nylon and sequins, smoking the kind of cigarettes that had a recessed tip you could easily fill with cocaine. Jess would look at the photos that were taken at the shows and posted online, and she vibrated with longing. She wanted to be there, listening to Risky Business mix his special music live. She wanted to get doused with cheap beer spilled by careless partygoers. She wanted to be all skintight and sticky.
That summer, both sisters were home in their smallish town. They were bumbling strangers in the hallway now, arguing about shared bathroom space in a perfunctory way. Jess swirled soft ice cream into cones for hot tourists at a lakefront shop. Nicole didn’t have a job. When Jess asked how she planned to make money to pay for things, Nicole smiled sideways and said she’d had a campus job and already saved a bunch of money for the summer. When Jess asked what the campus job had been, Nicole rolled her eyes hard and said, “Jeez, Jess, so many questions.”
Jess came home every night with sweet goo congealed on her forearms up to her elbows, too tired to figure out plans with the few friends who were in town. Nicole was going out every night and their mother was livid every night. Jess watched, somewhat amused, mostly annoyed, as their mother screamed at Nicole every evening before she disappeared. When their mother locked the door to the house before going to bed, Nicole punched in a screen window to come in late at night. When her mother locked all the windows too, Nicole slept on one of the lawn chairs in their backyard and came back inside in the morning. Then Nicole started staying at her friend’s apartment and the locks became a non-issue.
Near the end of the summer, Nicole came to Jess’s ice cream shop with a wicked glint in her eye. “We have free tickets to Risky Business in Boston,” she said, “we just have to get on the bus like…now.” Jess looked at her co-worker, elbow deep in an uncompromising tub of cherry vanilla, and back at Nicole. The vision of easy rebellion crystallized. Jess said something to her boss about how she all of a sudden didn’t feel very well and ran out of the ice cream shop with her hand over her mouth—fake-nauseated, actually giggling. Nicole followed her out, slamming the bell-looped door shut with a flourish. Ding!
Molly Mary O’Brien is a writer and video producer living in Brooklyn. She makes videos for The Alternative and her writing has appeared in PANK, Maudlin House, and Grandma Sophia’s Cookies. She also co-hosts a podcast about words about music called And Introducing, and she likes to go out dancing. You can find her on the internet on Twitter and Instagram and her blog.
