Universal by Hally Rae Winters

The E.T. Parking Lot is already busy by the time we get there. We laugh in the backseat as one of our moms drives in silence. She is in a bad mood and none of us know why or care at all. The world is ours right now and she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know about the single edible in our pocket that we will share between the three of us, or the boys we are meeting up with, or the things we will get into in the dark tunnel where King Kong has a fist fight with a dinosaur. The shaking tram car will be where we touch each other like we’re in water being tossed about by waves and our bodies are everything and no one’s.

We should be able to do all that we want, but instead we sit with a group of kids who all wear the same yellow shirt. They look like Minions we say. Banana we say louder and louder until the camp counselors ask us to stop. If we weren’t good girls, we would still be saying banana. Instead we blush and say sorry and feel everyone watching. We read their minds. They want what we have. We know what it means to be teenagers. To be told to enjoy it. Enjoy what, we ask.

While the boys pretend to punch the animatronic shark that attacks the tram, we pretend to be afraid of the shark and the man with the knife outside of the Bates Motel. What a thrill to pretend to be afraid of a man with a knife. We love it and so much more. Our love is spilling out and everyone wants a piece. 

When we see the women dancing at the beginning of the Fast and Furious sequence we say it’s stupid as we try to get our boyfriends to look away. They agree it is stupid, so stupid, but they don’t look away. 

When the tram enters the car racing scene, we hear perpetual gun shots like something is missing. The dark faux parking lot fills with these gunshots, and we’re not sure what to pretend. Our hearts beat like crazy. Behind us kids cover their ears. In front of us adults look side to side. All we say is what’s going on as we hear adults reassuring the kids that it’s broken. 

What’s broken, we say. 

The ride they say again and again. It’s broken. 

We don’t speak the whole way up the escalators. 

When we see Dracula, we shake off our real fear and hide from him in the bathroom to giggle. In the voice of Squidward one of us says Oh no, he’s hot. Do you think if he touches us he’d be able to read our mind, we ask each other. Yes. We say most definitely all men are like that. 

But we don’t think this anymore. Instead we think all men are like God in that they want us to be afraid of them. We are not like God though. We are not like the trees to be protected or cut down and we are not like sand pushed by water. We are not like the wind blowing pollen to other flowers and we are not like the moon pulling at water. We are not like anything except each other and we are slowly drifting apart because this is the last summer before college and we are going toward a great something we can’t quite put our fingers on.

Hally Rae Winters is a writer from Los Angeles. Hally was awarded the CalArts post-grad fellowship as well as a residency with Sundress Publishing. Her work was shortlisted at Flash Frog and Fractured Lit, and her writing can be found at The Masters Review, Thirty West, Laurel Review, and more.

23 January 2026