Novels by Jewella

AlexBy the time I get to the auditorium, the chairs are already halfway set up, metal legs screeching against the floor every time someone adjusts one an inch too far left. It smells like dust and burnt coffee and whatever cleaning solution Facilities uses when they’re trying to pretend a room is new again.I stop just inside the doors and stand there longer than I need to.The screen at the front is still blank. Someone is fiddling with the projector, tapping it like it’s a stubborn animal. A mic squeals, cuts out, squeals again. And a couple people laugh.This is it, I think.This is the moment where the thing stops being mine.Three days ago, it was still a timeline on my laptop, waveforms stacked like a city skyline, color grades I kept nudging warmer, cooler, warmer again because I couldn’t decide what honesty looked like in saturation. Three days ago, it lived in my headphones and in the quiet hum of my room at two in the morning.Now it’s… this.Folding chairs, a podium and

Alex~The first thing I notice is the time, because it’s already wrong.Seth is already gone when I wake up, which shouldn’t surprise me because practice mornings have been like this lately, but it still feels strange in my chest. The room holds onto him in pieces the faint citrus of his deodorant, his hoodie slung over the back of the chair instead of hung properly in the closet, the dent in the pillow beside mine that hasn’t smoothed out yet.I lie there longer than I should, staring at the ceiling fan as it ticks around lazily, trying to convince myself I’m rested.I’m not.My phone is face-down on the nightstand. I flip it over and squint at the notifications: three emails, two calendar reminders, a message from the queer collective asking if I can “just tweak the audio mix one more time,” and a low-battery warning because apparently even my phone is tired.I sit up, joints stiff, and drag my laptop closer with my foot.The project opens where I left it.Timeline stacked tight. V

Alex~The kettle’s been screaming for a while before I realize it’s not going to stop on its own.I’m on the floor, back against the couch, laptop balanced on my thighs, staring at the same cut in my timeline I’ve been nudging back and forth for ten minutes without changing anything. When the sound finally cuts through, it feels like it’s calling me out.“Fuck,” I mutter, pushing myself up.The kitchen light is already on. Seth must’ve left it that way when he came in from practice earlier, shoes kicked off too close to the door, gym bag slumped against the wall like it gave up halfway. The place smells faintly like sweat and detergent and whatever cheap soap he uses when he showers too fast.I turn the kettle off and pour the water that has been boiling too long. The mug’s already on the counter. I don’t remember putting it there.Seth’s in the bedroom, door half open. I can hear him moving around, drawers opening and closing, the low thud of something getting dropped and not picked

AlexSeth doesn’t answer his phone the first time it rings.I don’t notice right away. I’m halfway through trimming audio, headphones on, waveform pulled tight across my screen, when his phone starts vibrating on the desk beside me. Once. Stops. Again.I glance over.Unknown number.I reach for it out of reflex, then stop myself. It’s not my phone. It’s not my place. Seth is in the shower anyway, steam fogging the bathroom mirror, water hammering the pipes like it always does when he takes too long.The phone goes still.I turn back to my screen, tell myself it’s nothing. Spam. One of those automated campus surveys. Anything.Thirty seconds later, it lights up again.Same number.This time I pause the track.“Seth,” I call, raising my voice just enough to cut through the water. “Your phone.”“What?” His voice echoes, distorted. “Who is it?”“I don’t know. Unknown number.”There’s a beat. The water shuts off abruptly.“Can you—” He stops himself. “Just answer it. Put it on speaker.”Th

Jordan~ Sleep doesn’t come the way it’s supposed to. I don’t toss and turn, I just lie there, eyes open, listening to the radiator knock like it’s trying to say something and failing. At some point, my phone lights up again. I don’t reach for it right away. When I do, it’s not Alex this time. It’s an email. From: Exhibition Committee Subject: Final-Year Installation Walkthrough Schedule I sit up. The room feels colder instantly, like my body noticed before my brain did. I open it. Dates. Time slots. My name listed second from the top, right under someone whose work has been in two galleries already. Walkthrough: Mandatory. I read it twice, then a third time slower. This isn’t feedback. This isn’t suggestion. This is presentation. I swing my legs out of bed and stand there for a moment, phone still in my hand, grounding myself in the fact that the floor is solid and I’m not about to fall through it. I cross the room and open my laptop again. The

JordanThe studio is unlocked when I get there, which already puts me in a bad mood.It shouldn’t matter. If anything, it’s convenient. But unlocked means someone else beat me here, means the day started without my permission, means I’m late even when I’m not.I flick the lights on anyway.The room wakes up in sections. Fluorescent strips hum overhead. Dust lifts and settles. There’s this smell of paint and warm plastic plus a faint metallic tang that never fully leaves no matter how often the windows get opened.I drop my bag by the door and shrug out of my jacket. It lands over the back of a chair instead of the hook. I don’t even bother to fix it.The project is still where I left it.All of it.Mockups taped to the wall, curling slightly at the corners. A pinboard crowded with notes written at different stages of confidence. Sketchbooks stacked unevenly, spines bent, pages softened by overuse. My laptop sits open on the desk, screen dark, reflecting just enough of my face to look

The house sounds different in the afternoon.Morning noise had been sharp and intrusive, filled with boots scraping concrete, voices bouncing off unfinished walls, the clang of metal on metal. It had been impossible to forget there were people everywhere, tearing the place open, leaving it exposed.Now the sounds are muted.The workers have moved upstairs. Their presence registers only as distant thuds, the occasional vibration through the floorboards, like a pulse rather than a disruption. The walls also feel thinner without being loud about it.The house feels… aware.I carry a towel down the hallway, bare feet silent against the floor, and lock the bathroom door behind me. The click is soft but final. Habit more than necessity. I’m not sure privacy exists here in any real way anymore.The mirror catches me before I can look away.I don’t recognize myself, well not fully.My hair is flattened on one side, tangled on the other. Sleep has left shadows beneath my eyes, faint but notice

I wake up to the smell of food. For a few seconds, I don’t know where I am. The ceiling above me isn’t my dorm ceiling. It’s too high. Too clean. The light slipping through the curtains is pale and winter-soft, not the harsh fluorescent glare I’m used to waking up to at school. Then my body remembers before my mind catches up. The bed is unfamiliar but warm. The sheets are tucked too neatly. There’s a faint masculine scent—soap, something woody, something that tightens my chest before I can stop it. Devon. I sit up too quickly, my heart thudding like I’ve been caught doing something wrong. The room is quiet, but not empty. From downstairs, I hear the clink of a pan, the low hum of movement, the unmistakable sound of someone cooking like they’ve done it a hundred times before. Of course he’s cooking. I swing my legs off the bed slowly, grounding myself. The events of last night rush back in pieces I don’t want but can’t stop: his voice in the kitchen, calm and controlled;

Harriet~ By the time we finish eating, the whole house smells like onions and pepper and something faintly citrusy that must’ve been on Devon’s hands. He barely speaks while we wash up. He just nods when I pass him a plate, grunts something that sounds like thanks, and keeps his gaze fixed anywhere except on me. It’s ridiculous because he’s seen every part of me, dragged orgasm out of me with a stranger’s ease, but now he can’t even look at my face. Fine. Two can play that game. The night settles slowly around the house. I hear the old pipes groan when he goes down the hallway to brush his teeth, hear his footsteps soften like he’s trying not to disturb me even though I’m the only other human inside this grey, too-quiet house. I take my toiletries to the bathroom, partly because I want to shower and partly because I’m avoiding the moment where we both lie in that room pretending the memory of last night doesn’t hover between us like smoke. I turn the water on hot. Steam fog

Harriet~No one talks about how weird your home town feels after not being there in a long while.The cashier is a woman I used to know but she looks older and more tired now and she keeps looking at me weirdly.The first grocery shop doesn’t have everything I need so I head to a second one.This grocery shop is much newer with more friendly faces. The attendants are super nice and friendly it takes me less than ten minutes to finish shopping and queue up at the counter.“Thank you,” a familiar voice says and my bones chill.How the fuck would I forget the voice that talked me through it.“Von?” He spins around and smiles.what am amazing coincidence.“Hey darling…” he turns to the cashier. “I’d pay for her shit.”Oh my fucking goodness, he is so sweet. She attends to ‘my shit’ and he pays and we leave together for his car. He opens the trunk and I deposit my stuff and he also gets the door for me.“Never thought I’d see you in broad-day light.” I tell him when he gets into the car.

Harriet~ “Hi mum, I just arrived.” I lie getting ready to head home. My foster parents have no idea that I’ve been back for a day now, came in yesterday, attended a party with Shirley and fucked a stranger named Von out of my own sheer stupidity and I can’t even find a place in me to regret it. I’m no longer a virgin but I can’t even tell Shirley the story because she probably won’t understand. “Hi darling, did you get my text last night?” I check my phone to see it had come in around the same time Von was giving me aftercare. Wait. “Mum what do you mean by I’d be spending the Christmas with Dev? I haven’t seen him in years and suddenly You're leaving me alone with him?” Dev was the boy who loved me like a sister just before we got adopted. After our adoption we grew so wide apart that he only spoke to my foster parents not me, for reasons I never knew. “Listen baby…” I cringe as the endearment, the lady person who called me that was a stranger and he was touching me

Harriet~ “Let’s go on a tour,” he says snatching the coin off the table. He wins and he wants to take me on a fucking tour? Disappointments settles in my throat and I gulp it down. He reaches for me again, putting his arm around my waist and leading me towards a staircase. We walk together silently each of us in our own world. I’m nursing my disappointment and he is… well doing his shit. We walk to the first floor and he leads me down a passage and stops beside a door and fishes out a key. I wordlessly watch him insert the key, unlock the door and guides me into the dark room before walking in himself and shutting the door. He flips a switch and the room is illuminated by a soft blue light that doesn’t lighten up the entire room but I can tell that it’s a bedroom that is well lived in. “Where…” “My friend lent me the room for a month, I needed us to get away from the noise.” The closes the door. He takes my hand and leads me to a soft divan and helps me to sit.

Marcus MatthewsThe pen swirls between my fingers coming to rest between my index and thumb in rapid succession, One might say I was bored, but in reality, it was all I could do to still myself as the thoughts ran their wild course through my mind. My fingers jerk each time I think of Orion and the gun.“Take care of him” My brother Dane had requested simply.Giving him a 44 magnum pistol had not been part of what he requested and I’m pretty sure he’d have my balls on a stick flying high over his pool-house if he found out, but then again the crazed look in his eyes had been something I’d recongized. It was the same fire that had been in Dane’s eyes for Miranda all those years ago before he became a money conscious prick.The door bursts open as I oblige myself to a taste of scotch, and a burly looking guard I frankly don’t remember hiring walks in.“Sir,” he says simply waiting for my signal before he continues, I raise my glass to him and he steps back “The quarry has arrived and he

Paloma“You sure you don’t want to stay?” Casey asks for the billionth time that morning “I could as well just tell my parents to come at a later date or we could-"“It’s fine Casey” I reassure her again. “Besides you haven’t seen them in God knows how long, it would be selfish of me to let you pass up the opportunity.”“But-” she opens her mouth to raise another argument.My hands are faster and I raise it to silence her.“Enough Casey” I say, blowing my sweaty hair out of my face as I haul my suitcase from my room “I swear if you ask me one more time I’ll shove this suitcase so far up your arse you’ll sneeze bra, if you really want to help, then help me bring the luggage to the door.”She smiles and obliges me and I heave a breath as she takes the box off my hands.“It’s a two week stay,” she says huffing “Why do you need so much and how do you even have so much stuff, are you moving?”“Its stuff I need” I tell her “Just help me get it to the door would you.” Certain strings of exp

OrionIt had been a week since she was discharged and still my fingers has not learnt to uncoil the gun, I wonder how she will react if she found that I had been sleeping right outside her apartment with a revolver in my hands like some crazed paw patrol squad. I counted down the time until Casey’s parents would arrive, then she would have to stay with me for awhile and then maybe I’d finally get some shut-eye.It has been quite unmemorable this past week with some days leaving a bitter taste trailing down my throat like when I had to grovel back to join the team, the all too enthusiastic glint in the coach’s eyes made me want to vomit. I hated that he got to win like that but in the end I’d grovel before a thousand worlds if it will keep her safe.The night was awfully quiet save for the occasional hooting of the owl and the constant ticking of my watch, I should sleep even if it’s a little but I cannot bring myself to do so, even if she has begun to notice it, there’s too much on my

PalomaA string of expletives escapes from my lips and he winced, with a strength I did not know I possess I leap from the confines of my bed and rushed headfirst towards him, my fists raised high up in the air, he did not stop me but he sure did not expect as my arms wraps around him, crushing myself into his chest.“Thought you weren’t coming back.” I whisper into him, “why the fuck didn’t you come back, you had left, I could not-”In that moment he lifts my face up placing a deep kiss on my lips and silencing me, it was right, something I was hoping for, like an addictive drug that I had gone too fucking long without, it was relief, we finally break away from our kiss, his hands still cupping my face as we stare into the endlessness of each other, he opens his mouth to say something but a deep clearing of someone’s throat kills off whatever words were to come out.“Orion in love.” A deep voice says from behind him. “Never thought I’d see it come, your father must be absolutely livi

PalomaWe have lived almost everywhere before, from shanty houses to trailer parks, things kind of got awry when dad left and having little next to nothing.Didn't seem to help matters. I vaguely remember her now but for all the mystical things in the world, things didn’t come close to Mama Lupé.It was a dark time for me with dad gone, I was nine and Mom’s habit of drugs and drinking had begun to become less of a hobby and more of a daily routine, it was expected that without a job that we would be kicked out and the landlord had been lenient enough, mom was not picking up her act and soon the need for money had us out on our backs and into the streets.This was perfect scene for Mom anyway and I only remember him as Luca but he was one of the worst moments of my life but still I had nowhere to go, stuck in a trailer park with Mom’s dealer and new love interest, it was in the next trailer I met one of the most interesting women.Her skin was what drew me to her in the first place, I’

Chapter Twenty SevenOrionFocus on her smile.Focus on her smile.Focus on her smile.My eyes betray me once again and my gaze drifts over her, I wince annoyance and a gain the cloud of annoyance falls so much so that her voice seems far off, drifting off with the cold air that blew from the air conditioning."Orion,” she calls to me. “You seem off, I'm fine you know, you really don't have to-"She stops when she catches my gaze and for a moment our eyes linger telling the truths that our lips were afraid to say, I knew her enough to know when she put up the fake facade, that show of strength when when really it was all jelly underneath the iron facade, it didn't make feel better, it made me feel worse and I feel her cold hands against mine, she notices my looks and squeezes my hand, looking up to the ceiling, she blows a breath."Fine, it's stupid to say I'm fine," she says. “Any idiot can see I'm not fine, is it your fault? Could this have been avoided? Maybe.” I grunt interruptin