GIRL REFLECTED IN KNIFE

For a traumatized, lonely girl, fantasy and reality become difficult to distinguish.

Eight years ago, Destiny found the lines blurred between her real life and Arantha, the fairy-tale world she created as an escape from her mother’s substance abuse. Now her mother is newly sober, but 17-year-old Destiny has little faith that it will last; she already carries much emotional damage. Things seemed to be heading in the right direction with a summer job and whirlwind romance with college football hopeful Ryan, until Ryan called off the relationship Destiny thought was fated. Heartbroken and miserable, Destiny finds that her art is pulling her back into Arantha. The reappearance of her long-lost imaginary friend, Tosh, precedes the shocking discovery that she’s pregnant. A split-second lie meant to buy her a moment to process this shock snowballs as Destiny tries to outrun inevitabilities in Arantha and the real world. Destiny’s fantasy world is grand and magical while her daily life is gritty and often unpleasant; Rissi draws both with care and precision. The complexity of the subject matter is matched by the delicacy of the language, and the raw authenticity of the characters’ feelings makes for a breathless, mesmerizing tale that’s presented with care and awareness of its sensitive topics. Destiny and Ryan are cued white, and there’s some racial diversity among the well-crafted secondary cast.

An emotionally immediate yet ethereal and darkly fantastical tale woven through with threads that ring all too true.