The Glass Girl: Part 1

We’ve been planning this since we were eleven and everything was locked down, like maybe someday when we could go out in the world again, we’d really make it worth it. Buy a car together when we were old enough, spend the summer after graduation driving around, sleeping in hostels and camping in tents...

She and I would play Scrabble on this table, or backgammon or Go Fish.

Laurel lived in an artists collective in the woods in Upstate New York for years before she moved them to the city. The parents took turns teaching the kids in a yurt.

I’m going to need sustenance at Dad’s.

He might be lackadaisical about some things, but he’s quite particular about his beer.

The old people at the next table say “Shush!” in their own loud way.
“Shush yourself,” Lemon says as he moseys by them.

I have to be nice and put on my apron and haul plates of greasy burgers and salty fries and quesadillas, and wipe down tables, and fish tips from the bottoms of soda cups because some people think it’s funny to cram money between ice cubes.

Pretty much whatever Patty likes, she nails or glues to the walls of the diner. I’m especially fond of her penchant for gold-framed mirrors of various shapes and sizes.

I try to keep my voice neutral but friendly, because Patty once told me I sounded “huffy,” whatever that means.

It feels like a giant hole inside me sucking me in and churning me around as I break into bits until eventually I’ll just be nothing. Speck on the sole of your shoe. A fluttery mote you swat out of your face.

When he gets back into the car, he dumps a twelve-pack in the back seat. “Gonna drop you off and head over to Hoyt’s after. My turn for the libations.”

I would so much like to just chill now, after the art presentation debacle.

They retrofitted the old barn as an art studio, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas, they invite loads of people and there are these funky old musicians with long gray hair and tie-dyed T-shirts who play all sorts of interesting instruments in the studio after the potluck meal.

He’s got scraggly hair and black-rimmed glasses and seems older and doesn’t say much, just looks at me in the rearview mirror as I slide into the back seat.

Kristen lets go of my hand and she bounces up and down, up and down, red matte lipstick glowing, red-bowed ponytails flying up, down, up, down.