Beautiful, lame, and tragic
Our first fiction preview from Issue Seventeen
In “The Blonde,” Julia Kornberg’s Issue Seventeen short story, an internet friend appears IRL, shaking up the lives of two Lower East Side writers and roommates. Tali and her new friend, Rue (or La Rubia, as our narrator calls her), initially seem more different than similar, but they share a past with anorexia and an affinity for a far-out podcast. As their bond intensifies, La Rubia’s motives appear increasingly sinister.
Read Kornberg’s story online today, and be sure to subscribe to receive Issue Seventeen when it arrives.
JULIA KORNBERG
During La Rubia’s visits early that year, she and Tali replaced their Reddit exchanges with long discussions about Tali’s readings, her bookshelf providing a series of topics about the titles La Rubia hadn’t read. The two became very close in a way I never understood, and often closed the door to Tali’s room and left me outside, like an idiot, imagining what they were doing.
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