One Square Mile

By Kristin H. Sample

Sample captures the unavoidable ugliness and beauty of the female adolescent experience in One Square Mile. This collection is the embodiment of the joyful awakening and ongoing confusion of growing up. — Shira Shiloah, best selling author

 

One Square Mile is infused with the nuances of youth and the nostalgia of a close bygone era. I loved Sample's quick, heartfelt prose. I looked forward to reading each story and its lovely way of traversing adolescence in the pre-internet days. I loved every minute of reading this collection. — Jessika Grewe Glover, Another Beast's Skin

 

One does not so much read One Square Mile as inhabit it[,] stories that so precisely [makes] you ache with longing for somewhere you've never really known until now. — Kathy Knapp, American Unexceptionalism

 

Elizabeth Bauer is a girl from a working-class family on Long Island in the 90s. She had her first kiss there, her first love and rejection. She grew up in that tiny town, having done everything from killing a slug with salt on a neighbor's porch to discovering the Playboy channel via illegal cable at a sleepover. But nothing is really about Elizabeth.

At times uplifting and heartbreaking at others, One Square Mile recalls what it's like to figure out how to be yourself, how difficult and exciting growing up will always be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Mad Duck Coalition
• Release date: May 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9781956389173

Book preview

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Praise for One Square Mile

Infused with humor and nostalgia, these exceptionally well-crafted vignettes of coming-of-age in early 1990s multicultural America will leave you wanting more from debut author Kristin H. Sample.

— Shira Shiloah

best selling author

One Square Mile is infused with the nuances of youth and the nostalgia of a close bygone era. I loved Sample’s quick, heartfelt prose. I looked forward to reading each story and its lovely way of traversing adolescence in the pre-internet days. I loved every minute of reading this collection and look forward to what I see next from the author.

— Jessika Grewe Glover

Another Beast’s Skin

Relive your own childhood with a collection of stories that perfectly capture what it is to be a messy, confused, free-thinking young woman surrounded by the eccentric characters that shape her life. Sample perfectly encapsulates the complications of her experience — complications at once unique and universal.

— Taylor Hartley

The Mists of Dullahan

"Kristin Sample captures the unavoidable ugliness and beauty of the female adolescent experience in One Square Mile....This collection is the embodiment of the joyful awakening and ongoing confusion of growing up."

— Elizabeth Weiss

Essayist for Playboy, Marie Claire, and Forbes

"One Square Mile is both universal and unique. Readers of any generation will see something of their own experiences in Liz’s, but it is Sample’s voice that makes these stories so memorable."

— Leah Richards

Not of the Living Dead:

The Non-Zombie Films of George A. Romero 

"One does not so much read One Square Mile as inhabit it — again and for the first time, thanks to Sample's attention to details that feel at once familiar and fresh. These are coming-of-age stories that so precisely evoke a particular time and place it will make you ache with longing for somewhere you've never really known until now."

— Kathy Knapp

American Unexceptionalism:

The Everyman and the Suburban Novel After 9/11

"With stunning creativity and charm, [these] stories make you want to be a child again — to see the world through eyes full of marvel and delight. Read One Square Mile. Savor it. Then share it with those you love."

— Sasha Panaram

Professor Fordham Univeristy

Table of Contents

mascara & aunt lyla’s room

the marins go to the ren faire

nonna who kills slugs

optimo drug store

amy packer

the rabbit I finally lost

the need for revenge

you’re a woman now, liz bauer

junior high variations

molly who is good at everything

bored

dancing

the sleepover

a good education

bread

lightning bugs

Standing in the line at the

food court, I try to be myself.

But I forget how I usually stand when I’m myself.

—Susane Colasanti

mascara & aunt lyla’s room

July, 1991

I’m at my Oma and Opa’s house. My father is downstairs in the living room talking to my Opa, eating a liverwurst sandwich, and talking about soccer and the Persian Gulf. Lucky for me, Aunt Lyla is home and lets me come upstairs to her bedroom.

The air conditioner in the window makes the bedroom feel like a walk-in freezer. I rub my toes in the blue and white shag carpet and notice how the rug kind of looks like oceans waves in National Geographic.

Aunt Lyla drags out an old Barbie camper from the crawlspace beside her bed. It’s intact but suffers from a little mold and a really terrible shade of orange like the couches at our house before my mother replaced them with matching furniture from the big store on Old Country Road.

Do you want to play with this? Aunt Lyla holds up the camper. You can’t have it though. I’m saving it for when I have kids, she adds and pulls it closer to her chest.

I shake my head vigorously. No, I don’t play with Barbies anymore. I’m about to start sixth grade. I’m lying. Just the other day I played Barbies with my friend Nicole across the street. We spent hours choosing outfits and setting up a small cocktail party for the dolls. Nicole even poured her Sprite into a tiny Barbie pitcher. It spilled and now the floor of her Barbie mansion is a little sticky.

Aunt Lyla looks at the camper once more before placing it gingerly back into the crawl space, Yeah, you are getting old for that. Aunt Lyla stands tall and wipes invisible dust from her acid-wash jeans, But you should save your Barbies for your kids.

Sometimes I imagine getting married, but I never think about being a mother. Still, I pocket the advice because after someone gets married, they have kids…and those kids might need Barbies.

Aunt Lyla is the youngest in my father’s family. My father is the oldest. So, Aunt Lyla and I are close enough in age that she could be my older sister.

Can I put on makeup, Lyla? I ask.

Aunt Lyla, she dips her chin down and purses her lips slightly.

Aunt Lyla, I smile and bat my eyelashes cartoonishly, Can I put on makeup?

Yes, but you have to wash it off before you go home, Aunt Lyla opens a drawer and takes out several plastic bins with eyeshadow and blushes and lipsticks. She has more make-up than the woman who sells Avon to my mother.

I jump up from Aunt Lyla’s waterbed that her boyfriend Sal bought and go to the vanity. Behind me I hear the flannel sheets rub against the bed frame as the water jostles.

Sometimes, I get to lay down on the waterbed. The liquid mattress surrounds the sides of my body. I feel like I’m floating in the pool…but with soft sheets and fuzzy blankets. I even asked for a waterbed for my twelfth birthday, but my mother said girls my age didn’t need waterbeds.

I adjust myself in the vanity chair and move Aunt Lyla’s makeup mirror closer to me. The sides of the mirror glow with little circles of light. If I get close enough to the mirror, everything else in the room goes blurry and I can imagine that I’m in the dressing room before a rock concert.

I read the buttons at the bottom of the mirror.

sing room before a rock concert.

I read the buttons at the bottom of the mirror.

Daytime                 Work               Nighttime

The buttons make the lights around the mirror change colors.

Daytime—bright yellow with a bluish tint.

Work—greenish, fluorescent lighting like the classrooms at school.

Office lighting makes everyone look sick, Aunt Lyla moves behind me.

I press the Nighttime button. The rosy light agrees with my face. I look older, like someone people would take seriously, maybe even someone who has a waterbed. I sweep some blush color on my cheekbones.

Aunt Lyla dips her head in front of mine and applies some mascara. All of a sudden—like magic—long black wisps appear on the end of her eyelids. Eyelashes that could reach out and grab you.

Aunt Lyla snaps her body back up and stands next to me. She tosses the sides of her hair. She smells clean like hairspray and Jean Nate body splash.

Can you braid my hair, please? I ask sweet and prayerful.

My mother doesn’t braid hair. Only ponytails. And I haven’t figured out how to braid my own hair just yet.

Yeah, Aunt Lyla answers finally, "but I gotta do it quick. Sal