Hypermobility
by Iliana Demas
“A Child of Cast Iron and Rust” by Brett Stout
A
APRICOTS
Fruits of sunset flesh I feast on in the summer. My aunt brought a crate, like she always does, and I gorged myself. 2, 7, 10, I was going for a world record. I displayed to my father the identical brown pits like they were Girl Scout patches I had diligently earned and sewed onto my vest, slowly. I threw up all night.
ANNE WITH AN E
The show that this year, I introduced to my mother. She was hooked. Every night, she would ask if we could watch Anne. I laughed because she was asking me for permission. I could never live in the 1890s, I proclaimed, taking my last Oxycodone of the week.
ACL
Crisscross section hidden in the depths of your knee. Something people only hear about in passing, like a soccer player tore it, she hooked up with him last night, have you seen their haircut and did you know that Mr. Havey is getting fired? A ligament that sabotages itself when the body is pushed to its limits. How are my limits different from my body’s?
B
BOULDERING
Scampering up an artificial rock. I’m not skilled enough for the real thing. PipeWorks: Sacramento, California, full of toned women doing acrobatics next to a silent partner with tree trunk legs. Full of 70-year-old men looping neverending candy-like ropes around their arms. Plenty of bare feet. Chalk permeates the air there. A girl in my history class told me that chalk never leaves your lungs. It stays with you forever. She told me I’m carrying my pride in my lungs.
Something I’m scared to return to.
C
CRACKS
Breaks in the rock. Jam a toe in. (See also: BOULDERING)
On my palms after an afternoon of work. I miss getting my nails done with my sister. I still can, but it’s not the same.
CHILDREN
Paper-mâché planets and sunny concrete days and four square and twisted ankles and gymnastics and stretched-out hair ties and Survivor and dislocated knees and for-profit car wash slash slime sales and blonde highlights and picked cuticles and The Big Toy and California State mandated gold rush reenactments and silent bruises and scrapes and scars.
COOPER
Someone I don’t laugh with anymore. 10 crunches. Our gaits would line up: brace 1, brace 2. Red and black. Crutches. Their own characters. I asked his middle name but still forgot. A boy who once told me I was everything, everything to him. He put me in a movie and hung the poster on his wall. I had known him a month. Pretty words distracting me like a crow. A girl dreams of this. His pennies were spilled onto a page I still keep with me. He told me he labored over them. When I look back, they were bottle caps.
D
DRESS
It meant restraint, church, and an inability to do cartwheels. My mom would beg me, Please, it’s only for four hours. Don’t you want to look pretty? The answer was no. Somehow I would end up in a dress anyway.
The staple of school dances. In Macy’s, my eye lands on The One. Made of the sky and the moon out in the morning. I send Lori a picture. She approves. But The One is still unworn, hanging like a too-wet bath mat in my closet.
DOCTOR
Haus, my neighbor, the father of my brother’s best friend. About 5’6. Knee surgeon. He told the technicians I was in AP Physics over the summer and they sped up our appointment. I was in regular physics.
Appointments, mostly during religion class. I like to show off my party tricks to them. Your weight can fluctuate up to 7 pounds in one day and so can your mood. Waiting. I could write a book in the time I’ve spent waiting in that one wing with the amputees and athletes. Mario characters looked down on me in the children’s ward, and I texted you-know-who, who said I have a flair for the dramatic. Luigi isn’t judging you.
E
EARLY mornings, spent with my dad on our drives through Midtown. We tisk at the state of the world. I flick a coin into a cup and a man tells us we look alike. I ask for Starbucks, even though I already know the answer (no). Waiting for me on a too-small tin chair, surrounded by dreadlocks and bikes, he types. He’s too scared to watch me. I want him to watch me.
EYEBROWS
A nice woman named Deborah’s art form. I didn’t realize how much my eyebrows affected how I looked until this year. She calls me honey and plays instrumental versions of 80’s pop songs. Popsicle stick to wax to skin to cotton strip to trash. You need to keep up with them when you’re away. For some reason, this is what everyone has been telling me.
EHLERS-DANLOS
A group of hereditary connective tissue disorders that manifests clinically with skin hyperelasticity, hypermobility of joints, atrophic scarring, and fragility of blood vessels. Asymptomatic, nonsyndromic joint hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and hypermobility spectrum disorders are the commonest phenotypes associated with joint hypermobility.
Words my family cannot hear. Eardrums protected by a new flap of skin that specializes in denial. I reach and reach for the highest apple, even though I know it’s rotten.
F
FARMER’S MARKET
A place of calloused hands and vegetable water. Not a haven for hippies, no, the livelihood for my family all those years ago. The earthy cardboard smell diffused with mildew reminds me of my grandpa who dropped out of school in the second grade to be a sheep herder. I wonder what he would think of the fact that we now frequently peruse them. Little girl Sketchers stepping on seagull feet and waltzing. (See also: APRICOTS)
FALL
A flash of light.
FREEDOM
Playing H-O-R-S-E with Mia and James and them, then getting a little too aggressive with three flags up in the pool. Zack’s Mighty Lime Tortilla chips dipped in store-bought guac. Monkey bars and soccer on the Mary lawn. Lakeside hikes, picnics. That week I read more than twenty novels so Harper brought me a sticker coloring book. (See also: BOULDERING, COOPER, CHILDREN, DRESS, FARMER’S MARKET)
An ascent.
Iliana Demas was born and raised in Sacramento, California. She is currently a senior at Interlochen Arts Academy, where she majors in creative writing. She has received silver and gold medals from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, been recognized as a YoungArts winner, and will be published in DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing 2025. In her free time, she likes to watch video essays, rock climb, and pretend she can sing. She will attend Northwestern University in the fall.
Brett Stout is a 44-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates mostly controversial work usually while breathing toxic paint fumes from a small cramped apartment known as “The Nerd Lab” in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. His work has appeared in a vast range of diverse media, such as art and literature publications by NYU and Brown University.