Fake Grapes by Capri Fain

Fake Grapes, Surprisingly Squishy

I’ll be frank with you—I miss the grapes and don’t want you to have them. I’ve never been one for pleasantries, no reason to start now.

I miss the grapes, but you’d better keep them. They’re good for lots of things, I’m sure. Decorations. Food displays. Maybe you need a stress ball. You wouldn’t know that’s what you want them for, but these grapes have a way of giving you things you don’t want. You probably shouldn’t take my word for that, or anything, though.

I’m not the only unreliable one around! I learned that from Facebook—and these grapes. If you wouldn’t think of grapes as unreliable, you’ve clearly never had the seedless ones. I ate seedless grapes this time last year, and I must say, there’s nothing quite like the seeds in seedless grapes. They’re huge.

When I was in my 20s, I had a friend who loved grapes. You don’t believe me. You’d accept grapes being his favorite fruit, or even his favorite snacks, but you don’t believe me about how much he loved them, because you don’t know how many grapes he used to eat. He would always buy seedless. Seedless, green, and the biggest ones they had. The ones I ate last year were smaller, but no one told the seeds, they were huge. And bitter. What a funny little fruit, full of bitter lies.

The year before last, I had red grapes. When I was a kid, I used to think that’s what red wine would taste like. I should’ve known when grape juice tasted nothing like wine that grapes create a world of disappointments. Little let-downs follow grapes around, hanging onto the vines like little ghosts. They fall off like the rotten ones, half-shriveled. And then they’re in your house. Don’t worry about these ones, though. I used up all the bad luck on them, none of them will shrivel up and fall on you. These grapes are fake, and that doesn’t happen with fake things. They’re worse than dead things; they have no substance. There’s nothing to shed.

It’s been 20 years since I last saw my friend. There must be something big about 20, something extra disappointing. It’s over 10, the milestone that shocks you into realizing time has passed, but it’s not quite at 25 and it’s 30 away from anything impressive, like 50. I bought seedless green grapes again this year, expecting to enjoy them this time, because on big years you enjoy things. I didn’t enjoy these grapes.

They’re made of rubber, not grape. They remind me of a dusty decoration in an Italian restaurant. I don’t have one of those; I just have my house, and rubber grapes don’t go with anything in it. I can’t keep these.

The last time I saw my friend, he was lying on the floor of the nursing building. He was just like a pile of decorative grapes; he didn’t go with anything in the building. He wasn’t a nurse, and we weren’t supposed to be there. We weren’t supposed to be eating at their buffet, or snooping around their halls. He certainly wasn’t supposed to be on the floor, but I left him alone for a minute and when I came downstairs there he was, lying in the middle of the lobby. There were nurses everywhere, but none of them were in the lobby; it was just him and then it was just me.

I bought grapes at Albertsons this year, instead of Fry’s, and found out a couple days later that Fry’s had a deal on grapes, half off. When I got home, I opened up the packet and pulled the whole bunch out. I tilted my head back and grabbed one off the vine like I imagine Dionysus ate. The first grape was fresh and crisp, and the seeds were nasty. The second grape was chewy, and I didn’t taste the seeds. The third grape was made of rubber.

Like I said, you probably shouldn’t trust anything I say. You should buy these grapes though. I don’t want to be done with grapes but they’re done with me, so I can’t keep them. If you’re looking at a listing for fake grapes on the internet, I’d assume you’re incredibly dedicated to an aesthetic or you weren’t the one who did the choosing. Sometimes things have a mind of their own.

Capri Fain is a journalism, religious studies, and creative writing student at the University of Arizona. She’s been writing since her first masterpiece, “I suffer without my cheeseburger,” written by an 8-year-old and heavily reliant on early 2000s lolcat memes. Her work has grown quite a bit since then, but never been published. She hopes to change that, and focuses now on generally strange stories about everyday life.