So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,12
his hip. I was ovulating. Maybe that was why I was feeling so dizzy and lonesome.
“I’m naked and you’re asking questions.” I pouted.
“I’m sorry. I’m worried about you,” he said. Cloying. I told him to stop. Told him he was giving me a headache. I shut him up by writing surreptitious, canary, chamomile in his mouth with my tongue. He pushed me back and I spread across the bed slowly. Like a flag unfurling on the Fourth of July. Like every damned army in the world was watching, standing to salute.
Winona Forever
Limerence. As if someone had smeared my life lens with dewy Vaseline, I got this dreamy, floating feeling around Crystal. I loved that her name was Crystal. Like, her mom thought the word crystal was pretty so she named her that. Crystal’s sister was Amber. Of course her sister was Amber. Was. Because Amber’s boyfriend got drunk one night two years ago and drove his car into the river with Amber in it. No one knew exactly what happened, but everyone knew two eighteen-year-olds shouldn’t die. That kind of thing never made sense anywhere, to anyone. Crystal wore a necklace with Amber’s picture in it and sometimes when it was late and we were in bed together talking and making lists with the TV on, I would touch Crystal’s neck and open the locket and look at Amber staring back at me with glossy lips and those same Winona Ryder–brown deer eyes Crystal had. And we’d cry and cut ourselves together sometimes. Go to her bathroom window and open it, hang our heads out far enough so we could share a cigarette.
I was obsessed with Winona Ryder and got my hair cut the way she had it in Reality Bites. It’d come out the year before and Crystal and I had been to see it three times already at the cheap theatre. My mom had taken us to see Mermaids in the theatre when it first came out. Amber went with us too and when we were walking out, my mom had told the three of us we reminded her of Winona and we told her she reminded us of Cher, because she did. I didn’t have any siblings and Crystal and Amber were the closest things I had to sisters. When Crystal and her family lost Amber, I didn’t feel outside of them like it was something I couldn’t understand because I wasn’t blood-related to them. Crystal and I had been friends since kindergarten, I’d known them both almost my entire life. It was like I lost my sister too. Crystal and I both got obsessed with Winona Ryder because seeing her onscreen made us feel like we’d been hanging out with Amber again.
Lucas, Beetlejuice, Heathers, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, Edward Scissorhands, Little Women. I especially loved Heathers because my name was Heather. And sometimes when I was in front of the mirror, Crystal would point to me and my reflection and go, look, Heathers! It was a dumb joke we loved. Sometimes everything about my life felt like a dumb joke to love. Amber’s death drew us closer to one another, and we were already close. But now, we never even spent a weekend apart. We watched the Winona movies in Crystal’s room with the door closed because it bothered Crystal’s mom the way we watched them over and over again. Crystal’s mom thought Winona looked like Amber too, but it wasn’t comforting for her like it was for us. Crystal had a big bedroom with her own bathroom and a TV and a VCR and a stereo. We could do whatever we wanted in there, like it was our own apartment. At my place, we could watch the Winona movies in the living room because my parents didn’t mind. And my dad’s best friend worked at the video store, so he would hook us up and give my dad sweet deals when we bought the VHS tapes. I had them on a shelf in my bedroom because they were as precious to me as my books. Crystal and I shared the collection, but the movies stayed at my house. We had a pact that we’d never watch the Winona movies alone, only together. And even if one of her movies happened to be playing on TV, if Crystal wasn’t with me, I’d close my eyes and change the channel or leave the room completely.
Crystal and I would write WINONA FOREVER on our arms sometimes. Sometimes on