Atmospheric Dynamics

Olivia Ragan

Nimbostratus: 

is always in your face. He’s that one guy who sees the glass as half empty and he will rain on your parade. Literally. He lives in a studio apartment in Portland, Oregon and enjoys drinking semi-expensive champagne after managing a popular boutique in the Pearl shopping district. His favorite character from Winnie the Pooh has always been Eeyore. On particularly good days, he meets up with his coworker Iris and they fuck before parting ways again. He’s never eaten a Voodoo donut. 

Cirrus:

cannot survive without coffee. She has a weakness for NARS matte lipstick— Volga in particular. It’s a deep plum in the container, but softer on her lips. She thinks it’s sexy—the lipstick and the color name. She’s always worn her curls loose, bouncing and defying gravity. She won’t tell anyone, but she can’t sleep without the fluffy sheep stuffed animal she was given as a baby, and her favorite season is winter. She’s training to be a middle school English teacher, but it’s more work than she’d thought it would be. Her favorite perfume smells like vanilla and cinnamon. 

Stratus:

is the pre-algebra teacher at the middle school Cirrus is interning at. He’s three years out of college and he shares a creaking old house with five other people. It’s a weird place—he found it from an ad on Craigslist. He has the basement room, but it doesn’t matter to him. He’s always a little scattered, and sometimes he loses his students’ homework. They’re conniving kids, but he’s bribed them to stay quiet with a few well distributed packs of Jolly Ranchers. His older brother, Nimbostratus, lives in the same part of Oregon, but is kind of a dick. They see each other sometimes, but they try to ignore each other. His hair is already tinted grey. He was planning to dye it back to its previous color, but he forgot. Whatever. He thinks he can pull it off. 

OLIVIA RAGAN is a ninth grader at Denver School of the Arts, where she studies creative writing. She won first place in the Tulsa City County Young People's Creative Writing Contest in 2013. She has been published twice in the literary magazine Calling Upon Calliope, and she won an honorable mention in poetry in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She finds inspiration in feminist blogs, her baby sister, and overheard conversations. She's composed of blankets, mint tea, and bicycle grease.