I’m Jeremiah. I’m a middle-aged white man in America, so that means I’m over-represented in the media and in the workforce. I’m also a pretty good writer. You can find out a lot about me in this journal, going all the way back to 2005.
For example, my day-to-day life is normal but interesting. What I consider my best slices of life are here, though sometimes things happen that are beyond insane. Speaking of insane, I’m bipolar and have ADD, and these things are so deep a part of me that I have to spend a lot of time making sense of it. I sometimes find myself thinking about the past, and I get a little nostalgic, sometimes sad, but I think about my friends and things are (usually) okay. I’m deeply steeped in pop culture, and I have some pretty serious opinions, though you’d never know that by talking to me. As I said, I write, and I reflect on my unusual process as well as my successes and failures at it quite a bit.
Basically, I like to write little essays that aren’t, with one or two exceptions, too long, and these are hundreds of them. Stop on by, take a look around, tell me what you think.
Through the month of April, I’ve been (asexually) smitten with an Iranian artist named Mina. She has a studio in the Brookland Arts Walk, a small plaza dedicated to bougie creativity. Every Saturday morning, weather permitting, the artists open their studios to the public, where they sell art and merch. Add in the food vendors and farmers who spring up, it really is the best way to spend a weekend morning, especially in the spring.
I’d been several times, but I’d never been to Kucheh Studios before last month, when I popped in and was stunned by the stark beauty of the woodcuts.
I was mesmerized by this woodcut, but I didn’t pick it up because I wasn’t ready to drop that price on a print. After thinking about it for two weeks, I went back and discovered that I was completely wrong about the price. It was twice as much as I thought it was. It’s worth it.
The first time I met Mina, she explained the protest symbolism in her work while I listened eagerly. Over the next week, I had to tell everybody about this experience. It was invigorating. The second time I stopped by, she invited me to a bazar she was sponsoring Friday evening. There would be food, music, and art.
Arts Walk is a Metro stop away, but there is a bike/running trail that leads from my station to Brookland. I’ve wanted to walk this path since I first saw it from the train, but it seemed daunting. A mile is okay—my station is about a mile away, and I walk that at least five days a week—but two seems like way too much. Friday, though … Friday was perfect, peak spring. The path I strolled along ran parallel to my train, so I’d seen the scenery already. However, I wasn’t blowing by this time, and I could appreciate the aggressive vegetation, industrial buildings, and graffiti from a fresh angle.
I was there before I knew it. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t a very big event. There were a half-dozen vendors, and not much of a crowd. However, it was only five p.m., and nobody else keeps my work hours.
Arriving early meant I got extra time with everyone. It started with Turkish coffee. This was because I was reading the menu on a table, and I was pounced upon by the most adorable teenage girl. While she made my drink, I tried to make conversation, but everything I said was more awkward than the last.
The thing about Turkish coffee is that makes Red Bull look like chamomile tea. Each cup comes with a warning label. I sat on a bench and sipped it, watching people drift through from the adjacent Metro station, until I could get rid of the cup.
My feet insisted on moving, and I found myself at a baklava table manned by the cheeriest woman I’d seen in some time. I thought there was only one kind of baklava, and it was baklava-flavored, but nothing could be further from the truth. she described each item on the menu like she was a sommelier. I chatted with her and her shockingly handsome husband about bazar culture, something I’ve missed from Doha. I left with four orange-cardamom baklavas. They are delicious.
My next stop was the guy with red bottles all over his little table. I sauntered in and listened to his pitch to the young lady before me. He sold herbal remedies in concentrated tea form, and he was passionate about it. Once he snagged me, he offered us both samples and explained which herbs, flowers, berries, and fungi combined to treat mild pain, depression, brain fog, and a number of other ailments. I asked if he had something for focus, and he had the perfect ginseng blend. He even took the time to tell me what ginseng is. He also said the word psychotropic, but that was probably nothing to worry about. He gave me some black tea on the house, and I sat down to listen to the taste of what colors smell like.
On previous art walks, I sat on a bench or a curb and doodled a bit. The energy is great, and there is always at least one striking person. That in mind, I brought a sketchbook with me and drew the guy with the potions.
I was there long enough, but I had to make two more stops before I would take the train home like the lazy American I am.
I found Mina sitting at a table in front of her studio, carving a small tile. She had a very enthusiastic hello for me, which made me special. I took a woodcutting class two years ago, so I was familiar with the tools, but that was about it. I didn’t tell her because My woodcut was not very good.
She explained the material, the process, and more symbolism, while I listened to her, entranced, asking any question that might keep her talking. Eventually, people she knew stopped by, and I slipped away.
I was almost finished, but I wouldn’t avoid the siren song of my favorite cuisine, Lebanese. This booth specialized in man’oushe, a cheesy, heavily seasoned flatbread. Working with a Palestinian restaurant, they created new flavors specifically for the Kucheh bazar. I had the shawarma chicken and will recommend it to anyone who asks.
I had enough caffeine that I could vibrate through solid objects, but I went home anyway. I crashed about two hours later, well past my bedtime, but at least I slept. It was worth it.
I said, before I can draw this morning, I have to pay my rent. So I hemmed and hawed, and I procrastinated, and I finally, finally sat down to do it. It’s really complicated too.
1. Log into building’s home page using 2-factor authentication so I don’t have to remember a password anymore. 2. See what I owe. (It’s always the same.) 3. Click “Pay.”
And I can recover from the exhaustion of that for another thirty-one days. Huzzah!
In all seriousness, is anyone unsettled by how easy it is to spend money? I haven’t signed a credit card slip in almost a year, and it surprised the hell out of me. I can buy weed with my debit card. If there’s something I want but can’t find, I can go to an online retailer, who know who I am because they send me three emails a day even though I bought one thing from them five years ago. They have my credit card information, so all it takes is one click.
Paying off my credit card, one click. Buying something that you maybe can’t afford, one click. Getting takeout instead of shopping, one click.
Early in the morning, I enjoyed a rare latte, a spinach-and-feta croissant, and some art. After I’d spent two hours laser-focused on my project and the interesting people coming through the door, I had plenty of stimulation, which was all I wanted for the weekend. It never hurt to have more. I walked under the Metro tracks to the Art Walk, a combination of bakeries, roasters, and farmers. What made it the Arts Walk were the eight studios, open to the public, in the facing buildings. Many of them sell a lot of merch, and I’ve gathered quite the a stack of stickers from the watercolor artist.
The guy selling me Brussels’ sprouts told me, “The crazy weather this spring made it hard to tell when they’re ready. We had to put blankets on the crop, when it got down to the thirties, you remember that? It was just a few weeks ago. Did you hear it’s going to be ninety this week? Crazy. Good growing weather. This Brussels’ sprout here? This is how big the strawberries are. We want them to look like this Brussels’ sprout over here.”
I bought and apple butter because I want to try something.
The problem with the Art Walk is that artists were very rarely there. It was always their assistants manning the door and selling. I still had a lovely conversation about the weather with one of them. The weather was perfect, and I did another circuit of the studios and found one I’d always walked past. This time, I took a good look and was captivated by this woman.
With one or two exceptions, the prints featured the face of this woman, in stark black and white. One caught my eye: it was figure in a jar, defiantly smoking a rolled cigarette that stuck out of the glass, black smoke drifting up. I wanted to take it home with me, but it was out of my price range. I wasn’t ruling it out for the future.
I picked out a card and slid over to the table in the back, where the assistant waited. She was beautiful, but I found all Middle Eastern women beautiful. At the same time, she was invisible, dressed in black to blend in with the equally dark studio. I pegged her as early twenties, most likely a relative. She smiled warmly as I approached. I placed the card on the table and asked her how often they changed the art around.
“Whenever I feel like it,” she said, “Whenever I finish another piece.”
I stammered, “You’re the artist?” I told her everything I loved about her style, like the sass, and how I wanted to come back for the smoking jar. It was beyond cringe.
She’s my age, an Iranian refugee who was cartooning in a place that could get you killed. These images were protest art, done in that style. She explained how “difficult women” were depicted in state propaganda with unibrows and cigarettes to be as ugly as possible, and she appropriates the images. Propaganda describes difficult women as drunks, or “pickles,” so she put the unibrow woman in a jar with them.
She indicated a poster above her. The left side was a Vogue cover, and the right was a piece of art, clearly by her, but more detailed and much darker. This one had some red in it, to symbolize blood. During one of the protests, they dyed the river red, and there it was in the woodcut. She pointed out the letters of the city where a protest took place and the name of a victim of state-sponsored violence.
I don’t know who any of these people are. I don’t know anything about protests in Iran and why they ran this image in ten magazines. I could have asked, but I would forget everything she told me. I just wanted to hear what she had to say.
We didn’t talk about the war.
I ran out of questions to ask, and mostly, I wanted to gush all over her. She looks like she can cuddle like a champ too. I’m trying to be better about graceful exits, so I turned around and stumbled under the weight of this person’s spirit.
I sat at a table and drew some more, feeling braver for having met her.
The summer of 2008 was a weird one. Kate stepped off a curb the wrong way, and all that was left of her ankle complex was smithereens. They had to construct something in her leg that looked less like prosthetic bone and more like a bookshelf, and it took her a long time to walk again.
Since she was confined to a wheelchair following surgery, we went to a lot of movies. One of them was Speed Racer, the Wachowski’s follow-up to The Matrix Trilogy. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a Bad Movie. It was Hard to Follow and Cheesy. Plus there was an obnoxious little boy and a chimpanzee.
The problem was, I didn’t hate it like I was supposed to. I loved it. In 2026, it might be my favorite movie (maybe tied with Prey). It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. On one level, it’s a devoted adaption of a legendary anime. On another, the cast is not phoning it in at all, like an Oscar winner would in an MCU movie. Emile Hirsh is a great Speed, polite and determined, Christina Ricci shows us with hard sass as Speed’s girlfriend, Trixie, and John Goodman and Susan Sarandon go right for the heart. It’s cheesy, it’s predictable, and it’s sincere. It’s a masterpiece of directing, art, action, sound-mixing, style, and hope.
I can’t remember all the movies we saw that year, but I remember the big two, and there wasn’t an ounce of sincerity between them. The first one taught you that universal surveillance was fine, as long as the person doing it is a The Big Billionaire Hero. If you’re a hero, you’re going to turn to evil anyway, unless you’re the guy who drives around in a tank and blows up other people’s cars for no reason. The second blockbuster taught that you can sell weapons that blow up brown children as long as you’re charming and smarmy and say, “Oops! My bad!”
While I enjoyed watching The Dark Knight and Iron Man, they were ultimately about rich people being better than us. Meanwhile, we have a colorful, optimistic movie where a working-class kid with talent, who is honest and polite, can overcome capitalism. America, being the cynical country we are, made the cynical movies hits while Speed Racer was labeled as terrible.
I loved the cartoon growing up. I had no idea how groundbreaking it was at the time, just that I needed to wear a red ascot. Speed Racer is the direct cause of a car crash in Hopatcong, New Jersey in 1981, in which an automobile on the top of the hill rolled into someone’s garage, which was caused by the emergency brake being released, and the five-year-old who did it refuses to accept responsibility.
I tried to watch it when it aired on MTV (RIP) in the mid-nineties. It wasn’t horrible, I want to be clear about that. I just couldn’t connect with it as well because of the animation standing on its shoulders, and the shoulders above that. I’d like to watch it now, when I would more appreciate the artistry of it.
I bring this up because, I came across an ad for a perfectly legal, you-can’t-prove-anything Lego kit for Speed’s iconic car, the Mach 5. (His name is Speed. Deal with it.) This weekend, I committed to building it.
Twenty-one March was the second day of spring. In 2026, it fell on a Saturday. I had an errand to run in DuPont Circle, so I thought I’d stop by the Emissary, a café I’d left a scathing review for, but have returned to since and have thought it was okay. I tried to bring my New Year’s friend here, but it was closed on the Eve.
The clientele skews young, as it is smack dab in the middle of the second-trendiest district in D.C., and I enjoy people-watching. I was also looking for a place where I could have breakfast and some time to draw. Now that they’ve backed off on the table service thing that failed me before, it was going to be smooth.
If it wasn’t for the clientele. In the way in, I held the door for a family with a goddamned covered wagon. One was a toddler, and Dad was holding her. The other was running in circles. No one was using the wagon. From what I could see, there’s nothing you couldn’t do with a covered wagon that you can’t do with a double-stroller. Except the latter gives you a place to park your Stanley Cup.
Mom was dedicated solely to getting the wagon down the five stairs. There was a handicap ramp. I know because I was walking down it. I opened the door for Dad, who propped it open for the rest of the family.
I pull out a menu and step aside so I wouldn’t waste anybody’s time. The family marched ahead of me and proceeded to waste everybody’s time. For starters, they had not read the menu. The elderly couple behind them had the courtesy to get out of line to decide what to eat.
While I was waiting, this leathery woman with unconvincing hair color steps behind them, which is not behind me. I call out, “The line’s over here.” She says, “I’ll wait over here, thanks.” I step between her and the family, who seemed to be at a different reading level than I. She backs away.
Message received.
After I finished this fake movie poster …
I stopped by a boutique dispensary I’d visited with my New Year’s friend to ask them their professional opinion about something. She was very knowledgeable and helpful. She was unable to directly help me, but she made a lot of helpful suggestions. She was also wearing a strapless corset and cleavage like the Marianas Trench. That last bit is not important, but it’s not the kind of thing you see every day.
The weather was the Platonic ideal of weather, and I didn’t feel like going home, so I found an Adirondack in the circle that gives DuPont Circle its name. I had intended to work on some more art, but I was distracted by all the people I observed, circumnavigating the fountain, having lunch, chatting, and soaking up the sun like lizards. Everyone seemed so happy. That last bit is not important, but it’s not the kind of thing you see every day.
Behind me was a drum circle chanting, “Impeach! Resist! Replace!”
Directly in front of me, a young woman who looked frumpy in her little summer dress and the bad posture sat down on the fountain. She immediately set about disassembling her twin braids. When she was done, she sat up straight and shook her hair out, and suddenly she was Hollywood glam.
And I still haven’t mentioned the woman carrying a pair of parrots on leashes. That last bit is super-important, and it cannot be stressed enough that it’s not the kind of thing you see every day. I found the chess tables, and I requisitioned one to start some new pieces.
Then someone got hit by a car. I ran over to help, but I also wanted to see what happened. A sporty BMW convertible, the driver on the phone and looking irritated, had hit a homeless man. There was no blood, and he was trying to get up, but the concerned citizens wouldn’t let him. One directed traffic. I was not needed. I don’t know what I would have done anyway.
On my way out, I saw a young woman painting. I chose not to harass her because I don’t want to be a creep, but it felt good to know I wasn’t the only one. After using the solar-powered public toilet, I made my way home,
I’ve made it my mission to stop and appreciate the little things that made me happy as a kid because they’re all still here, like the satisfying crunch you get from stepping on a dead leaf in the autumn, or a clod of snow in the winter. In the spring, there’s the blossoms, including the first ones I’ve seen this year.
I’m not an idiot. I know that our country is doomed, and all the freedoms I cherish could be gone tomorrow, but yesterday … Yesterday was a good day.
You might know from reading my posts that I’ve been on vacation over Thanksgiving, and I got the suburbs of New York from the suburban side. Joining me on my trip was Owlman.
We mostly chilled out.
Pictured: Chilling out:
There were foes to be taken down.
Oh, my gourd!
Look at this mess!
“Let’s get out of here, chum.”
He’s even putting together a band.
A one-man band.
Our host is an accomplished photographer, and he won awards for his Lego Star Wars portraits.
Owlman got to know the studio mannequin:
How many times to I have to tell you, Owlman, you can’t touch the equipment!
But all good things must come to an end, and I left for home today, refreshed and relaxed.
Thanksgiving, while my hosts were occupied, their five-year-old daughter found me, first thing when she got out of bed.
It had to do with the watercolors I had given her and her eight-year-old brother the day before, to the soundtrack of Spaceballs. He wasn’t as moved, but she taught herself how to use them because she was smart enough. Remember, she’s five. She doesn’t understand most of the words that come out of my mouth, and she has the grace, precision, and attention-span of a concussed monkey on mushrooms. She wasn’t afraid to ask for help, though.
Meanwhile, I was painting a self-portrait for my new sketchbook. She found this fascinating, not as fascinating as what she was working on, but fascinating indeed. She handed me the sheet of watercolor paper and told me to draw a picture to paint. I told her I would, first thing in the morning, and Her Majesty deemed this acceptable.
When I asked, she told me she wanted a portrait of herself and her Chihuahua, Wendy, who looks like she just drank two Red Bulls and swallowed 100 milligrams of Adderall. Before everybody else awoke, I sketched away while Owlman gave me some pointers.
She was delighted by my work, and I took a photo of it before it was defaced.
She was so excited, she scrambled all over her house to show Mommy and Daddy. Daddy was working, and Mommy was not feeling great, but they both appreciated my staggering genius.
As I prepared myself to talk her through the process, she disappeared for a few minutes, returning with a deck of Uno, a game she loved. She instructed me on the intricacies of the game, but I’m don’t think some the rules were regulation. When I won best out of three, she didn’t like Uno anymore. Next, she showed me a game called Sleeping Queens, and I’m pretty sure she cheated.
Next, she wanted to paint my picture. I critiqued and encouraged her, but she was horrified by the smear of blue paint she put there. I suggested it might be a magical portal. She added in her reaction, and maybe there should be a tree in the background, and told me she was going to write this down, followed shortly by, “Jeremiah, I can’t write. I’m five.”
I asked her what her what her favorite color was. “My favorite color is gold with sparkles. My favorite color is pink. My favorite color is purple and orange, and blue. But it has to be a dark blue.” Luckily, I have a pink pen (and I’m confident in my masculinity).
I watched as she used her delicate brushstrokes to enhance my inspired lines. (Delicate brushwork below).
She had planned on composing an intricate background, but after finishing the tree, she took me outside to play on her tree swing in her pajamas, and then hide-and-seek.
This one was challenging for me because here aren’t a lot of places for a man my size to hide. I told her this and pointed out that it took her six seconds to count to ten. Graciously, would count to thirty from then on, and she also gave me tips for places to hide, such as Rock Taco in the distance.
Rock Taco is what you might expect if you’re thinking about a rock taco. Getting on all fours, she soiled her pajamas. To hide, I would have to lay down on the mud and the decayed leaves. She took me on a sweep of the perimeter of her two-acre backyard, twice, her armed with a tree-branch sword to keep the thorns at bay.
She had explained that we would take another circuit, which I sighed and accepted. Instead, she asked me to help her gather acorns for the squirrels, then she wanted to show me her favorite climbing tree. My knees and back ached watching her perform her best tricks. “This is the easy one. It’s really hard.” Finally, we came back inside, and I went to talk to my family for the holiday, only my mic wasn’t working. When that was over, I laid down on the bed and woke up an hour later. Downstairs, she waited for me because she made me a bracelet.
Actually, she made it before I came. I love wearing bracelets, so I am honored to be wearing one of her fine pieces. We beaded for a while, but the string we were working with was too thick for most of them. Usually, that kind of frustration would make me flip the coffee table—her too—but we held it together. I think neither of us wanted to embarrass ourselves in front of the other.
After that, guests started filtering in. The group were all related to the hostess, and the whole time, I had no idea who was related to whom. This morning, I had it explained to me. The hostess’s brother was here, as was his wife and twenty-year-old attitude problem. Also there was their mother, and her sister-in-law’s mother, who was spry, charming, and witty. I thought she was my dad’s age, but she’s ninety-three!
To help out, I took the overwhelmed little girl upstairs, where she could enjoy some well-deserved screen time. The rest of the evening was spent discussing non-alcoholic beer, which I enjoyed for the first time (note: I did not say “consumed for the first time”), New Mexico, the intrusion of algorithms into our lives, Teslas and Cybertrucks, and politics. The latter was delightful because all of us agreed, as in everyone at the table had the same views.
As the weight of the off-Broadway-style food took hold, and the other guests left, desperate to get home before they lapsed into comas left.
The girl was too tired to sleep, but a soft pillow fixed that. Mommy and Daddy, who both had a tough day, settled in for the night. As for me, I barely got into my pajamas.
I got this wild hair and started fantasizing about turning my New York-adjacent adventures into an animated series, populated by some of the people who made it so memorable.
[Names withheld to protect the innocent. It helps that my likenesses are rubbish.]
Christmas, you get presents. Thanksgiving, you get to indulge yourself. Halloween is that day when you get to be someone else, and that made it my favorite. I’ve been Optimus Prime, John “Hannibal” Smith from the A-Team, and a Ghostbuster named Murphy.
The coolest Halloween experience I ever had was generic Jedi for my seventh Halloween. (“Bow, or whatever, to the adequate might of Jedi Master Temu!”) On the other side of the barrier that separated the older kids was a generic Sith, carrying a red lightsaber to match my yellow one. He came over, and we talked over the fence for a long time. about Star Wars, we talked about what the fifth grade was like, and he wanted to get a better look at my lightsaber. After recess, I never saw him again, but I looked everywhere.
Years later, I wore the world’s worst Halloween costume and drank vodka in lieu of eating something and went to a rock concert and drank a lot of beer and had another jack and coke and said something to That Moby so bad it got me thrown out of the bar and soaked my friend’s couch with vomit.
Once upon a time, when I was much thinner, I’d shave my mustache, throw on a green T-shirt and go as Norville Rogers, with the nom de guerre of Shaggy. I pulled off an amazing Crow, thanks to the incredible makeup skills of my friend M.
Last year, I enjoyed the holiday with M in Colorado, walking the neighborhood and scoping out the decorations.
I’ve been doing it solo so far this year.
For pagans like Kate, Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced SOW-win; don’t say it like it’s spelled or a witch will laugh at you), is the most sacred day of the year. It’s Christmas and Easter rolled up into one, with all the celebration and feasts and prayers. It’s when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and you can commune with those that have gone before. It is here I lost the true meaning of Halloween (candy and costumes).
I had a very, very nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more, say no more Halloween night in the East Village while the parade went by. On my own, I liked to stop in the neighborhood for a drink and watch Bleeker Street lit up with people having a good time.
Two years ago, I was recruited for the Pumpkin Task Force at work. We wanted to kill at the First Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest, so I said, sure, I’ll help. There were five of us. I bring this up because 20 percent of the group did all the work. I designed the pumpkin:
It was based on the mascot for the American Society of Hematology, Red.
I went to the art store that knows me by name and bought acrylic pens (on the company card). And I said, “You guys do the rest.” My boss offered to carve the pumpkin if someone would draw the face based on my design, but no one did. To say I was disappointed would understate it.
Imagine my surprise when someone asked if I was helping with his year’s contest, closing in two hours. I said no, not after last time. Later, I came across the pumpkin, and someone had written “CARVED” in large letters on it. I hauled it over to the break room and attempted to hose the Sharpie off. I had brought my art markers with me, so I applied them to the pumpkin, using my old design.
It was then that Sera, a work acquaintance, swept in with tubes of acrylic paint, and I was able to work in style. She used to paint, with oils, but she moved into a smaller apartment and can’t fit her easel. While I applied cadmium red to the face, she made hands out of paper plates.
We took it to contest, where it was clear we were not going to win.
Sera and I agreed that we would be more prepared next year.
The party was loud, as parties tended to be. There was an open bar, and I had a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t stick around.
I was there long enough to puzzle over the group of people who all knew each other, dressed in yellow shirts and overalls. but this Every one of them was wearing glasses, but that’s not that weird. It was weird that they had all had nametags. At first, I thought they were the caterers, but they were all wearing different types of yellow tops.
The only nametag I paid attention to was the cute blonde, named “Lou.” I thought Lou was the best name for a pixie woman, but I also had to remember was that this was a costume. She probably didn’t even need glasses.
Someone dressed like Wednesday, someone dressed like Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation. There was an axolotl. There was a woman riding “a goose,” “no, an ostrich,” “maybe a swan,” “that is an ostrich,” “that is definitely a goose,” “hey, what’s that you’re riding? I told you it was an ostrich.”
I went to the work party to see me win fifth place, and they announced that the pumpkins were going to be judged in twenty-four by a panel of the building superintendent’s Instagram contacts. So I left.
Then it hit me. They were Minions. They were fucking Minions.
I’ve been writing a bonkers novel called Subterraneaus Obscura about the mysterious world underneath Washington, D.C. (which has nothing to do with politics). It’s about three adventurers wearing suits who journey their way through ratweillers, the Mongolian death worm, organic server farms, Gnome Town, etc. They are:
Ember—thrill-seeker. They discovered the underground and keeps recruiting people to explore it with them. They’re optimistic and friendly, and they can’t hold their berry beet smoothies.
Juliette—career criminal. After committing the crime of the century, she is swept up in Ember’s wake when she is almost hit by a Metro train. She’s pretty relaxed, considering.
Mazel—charmed ad absurdum. Cursed with supernaturally good luck, Mazel is on the run from her father, the wealthiest man in the world. Her good fortune gets glitchy underground, so she follows Ember to see if it will run out.
Jeremiah Murphy 