Throwback

by Tricia Park

Sabrina and Mindy giggled and over Mindy’s shoulder, Sabrina spied a boy: sandy-haired, with glasses. When they made eye contact, she looked away, only to glance back, feigning interest in his pile of textbooks, an open laptop. He was still staring. “I think he’s looking over here,” Sabrina laughed into her mocha latte. As Mindy pretended to look up at the painting nearest them – a large portrait of a dour farmer, by one of the starving barista-artists – the boy ambled over and dropped a tiny slip of folded paper, seemingly by accident: "you are very fetching," it read, and a number. Fetching, they wheezed later, even though Sabrina secretly relished the old-fashioned word, feeling like an Emma or a Lizzie or an Elinor, as they sauntered to the sound of honking cars, into the city lights.

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Tricia Park is a violinist and writer. A Juilliard graduate, she received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since her concert debut at age thirteen, Tricia has performed on five continents and received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career and Fulbright Grants. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, F Newsmagazine and Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology. She has a podcast called, “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy.” Currently, Tricia is pursuing her PhD at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Program for Writers and is Associate Director of Cleaver Magazine Workshops.