These shell beads I hunted down just for this story — I wanted something paperlike as well as just a nice bead, something that could be written on. The writing, glazed black ink (well-baked and safe for nearly anything you could do to it, this writing will not fade from memory) are excerpts from the story, of the narrator’s own musings: “movements a careful ballet of hot espresso and soup and witty banter” strung around the necklace, and “leather-bound journals with elegant heavy pens” around the wrist. The pendant is for Valentine(s): what image does his name inspire if not a heart? The black beads I chose for their resemblance to stray blots of ink, scattered from hasty scribblings.

Sarah B. Evans

I tried to make this bracelet festive, to focus on the party scene at the climax of the story rather than Dunbar’s anxieties. I tried to show the award ceremony as it would seem to others in the story: oh, isn’t it all pretty? Isn’t it fancy? Aren’t we grand? The beads I chose for their color — champagne, of course — and the way their facets reflect light so well, making the strands quite shiny. The locket comes to you empty, to stand for Dunbar at the moment he’d wanted so long. It is also for the buyer, a place to hold their own memories.

Sarah B. Evans

As a student surrounded by people like Heidi everyday, she felt to me like a very real character who really deserved to be canonized in beads. The braided cord I used was for her particular hairstyle, which added quirk to her character and, I think, to the choker. The more colorful glass beads dotting the piece are for her memories, the things she so valued and that ultimately undid her: they’re colorful, vivid, and the faceted, chunky shapes of the glass were something I like here as not only a contrast to the darkness of the necklace, but to represent bits, fragments, of memory. The silver chain is for pretty, and in places, to represent Heidi’s memories tied to her mind, unable to forget anything. And the bit of frayed cord in the center is to represent the surgery, the severing of her hippocampus.

Sarah B. Evans