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Inventing Stephanie

Colleen Hummel

When it’s 2009 and summer in Western Montana, and you can smell the chlorine rising off the fountain at the park. When the little boys running towards the slides tell the other little boys How to Play the Game.

When you sit at a black patio table on the deck of a pub, on one of those hot summer days, and a man comes up and asks if you are Stephanie. And you think, No—do I look like a Stephanie?

And this man sits alone, thinking you lied to him, and you are Stephanie, aren’t you, he’s just not quite as cute as you pictured from the ad.

Really who knows what this guy thinks. He sits awkwardly on the bench, too tall to straighten out either his legs or his back, too big behind the small square table.

At last your friend comes and she sits down and now the man can get over his suspicions, the blow to his self-esteem, and drink his drink. He keeps his eyes on the table, on his tumbler.

Maybe he thinks, still, that you are Stephanie, you must be, and your friend happened by by chance, and through a strange signal he didn’t catch, women’s body language having a conversation men don’t get, she sat down. Because you begged her.

Your nachos come and no woman—“Stephanie”—has arrived.

He drinks his drink through a pair of tiny red straws and he looks lonely – eyes soft around the edges with an honest sadness, an emotion you associate with Good People.

Your fingers become greasy with cheese and chips and that screwdriver is the best screwdriver you’ve had in a long time. You don’t quite hold still anymore, you’re a little drunk.

And then she comes. Silky polyester shirt—sleeveless—bubblegum pink—with a faux diamond brooch at the center of the bustline, and jeans, rhinestones on the butt pockets. She’s probably 5’7.” Maybe not quite that tall, her sandals have a heel. She has chin length blond hair.

She smiles, sits, apologizes. He smiles. Their waitress comes.

You’re glad she came, her back is to you, you can still see his face, and a leering eagerness in his expression has replaced the sadness. Or maybe he’s never been on a blind date before. Or any date at all.

You watch him – a fourteen year old in a thirty-something body, skin a little pale, head a little bald, teeth a little too big, too front and center.

But Stephanie—did she describe herself as “petite?” “Slight build?” “SWF, 125 lbs., seeks friend for nice dinners, let’s talk about music, possibly more. NS only please.” (But she smokes—she has a smoker’s thick makeup on, hiding the gray her face is becoming.)

Because, honestly, in any world besides this one, no one could mistake Stephanie for you: slight brunette who travels with backpack.

Maybe you looked like what he’d pictured or hoped to find, under the dark green awning at the Old Post Pub, the brick wall cool against your back.

Maybe he’d hoped to walk up and see a serious girl, forehead a little creased, in a maroon blouse and pearls, a girl who spoke politely to the waitress, who sat still and didn’t fidget. Maybe, just maybe, 5’7” blond, 150 lbs. (she wrote the ad a little leaner, no judgement, your Driver’s License isn’t honest either), maybe that looked like you: 5’2,’’ brunette, no rhinestones.

The Stephanie who showed up was probably ten years older than you but maybe only four or five. A real woman. Not a girl who looked too young to be at a bar – a girl painting the lives of strangers while she fought the cheese covered corn chips, trying to get them to bend into the guacamole, all the while watching Stephanie and her date—a girl talking to her friend, sucking the last of her screwdriver from out of the ice—a girl, inventing.

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Colleen Hummel studied creative writing at the University of Montana in Missoula (B.A., 2007) and served on the fiction editorial board of UM’s undergraduate literary magazine, The Oval. In March of 2025, having been selected as a presenter, she gave a paper at the LACK V conference at Otterbein University. Colleen lives and writes in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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