So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,14

kissed some more, and I was genuinely surprised when the sun rose, like the night should’ve been extra-long since everyone was so devastated. The gravity of Amber’s death was weighing us down, so why not the sun too? Crystal and I cut ourselves together in the morning. Same spot on our upper thighs, stinging and bleeding; we put on fresh Little Mermaid Band-Aids and watched Mermaids, finishing off the bottle of schnapps in her room and getting drunk pretty fast because we hadn’t eaten. And when we puked, we barely had anything to puke up. We both took showers, washing our hair with the same Herbal Essences shampoo every girl at our school used that fluffed up against the boy-smells of gym, weed, and matte Drakkar Noir.

“My breath smells like a funeral,” Crystal said. “Winona Ryder looks so much like Amber,” she said again before she fell asleep in full afternoon sun. I brushed my teeth twice before I went home.

* * *

I was jealous of the boy Crystal liked, but that wasn’t fair because I liked a boy too. Crystal liked Jamie and I liked Tristan. Jamie and Tristan were best friends. They lived in the same neighborhood, so we’d drive past their houses sometimes to see if they were home, to see what they were doing. Crystal’s mom hadn’t let Crystal get her license even though it’d been two years since Amber died. She didn’t like her riding in the car with me that much either, so we didn’t let her know how much we drove around. My parents had gotten me a little white hatchback I loved and Crystal and I called it the white rabbit after one of our favorite songs. I kept our flower crowns hanging around the rearview mirror and we’d put them on whenever we drove past Jamie and Tristan’s houses. We thought it was good luck, that it would help us be able to see them, that they’d be out in their yards. Sometimes it worked. We went to school with Jamie and Tristan, but we got a special thrill when we saw them outside school. Once, we had our flower crowns on and Jamie and Tristan were out in Tristan’s driveway skateboarding and listening to Nirvana. The whole thing was so nineties, so grunge. Jamie even had a flannel shirt tied around his waist.

“Hey,” Jamie said, walking over to the white rabbit. He stuck his head in a little and was so close to Crystal I thought she was going to die. Her shorts were really short and we weren’t cutting ourselves anymore, so there were no Band-Aids, just a couple pale, smooth scars. I looked down at her pretty legs, her purple-glittery toenails and flip-flop feet on the floor of my car.

“What are y’all doing tonight?” I leaned over and asked.

Tristan came over to my side so I turned to him. My car was sitting right behind the driveway, out of the road. I turned the engine off.

“Skateboarding,” Tristan said.

“What are y’all doing?” I heard Jamie ask Crystal, but I didn’t turn around. I was looking at Tristan and his big brown eyes and my sadness flipped on because I thought about Winona’s Bambi eyes and Amber’s Bambi eyes. Tristan asked me if I wanted to smoke with him, so I got out and leaned on the hood of my car while he lit my cigarette.

“My parents are in Florida,” Tristan told me. “And I like this,” he said, touching my flower crown. Would the good luck be doubled or go away completely now that Tristan had touched it? Only time would tell.

“Thank you,” I said.

Crystal and Jamie were talking to one another quietly, almost like they were already dating. I could tell Jamie liked her by how he looked at her. I saw him reach out to touch her necklace and Crystal let him. She didn’t even flinch and my jealousy ratcheted up, but dropped down low after I pulled my car up Tristan’s driveway and we went inside and Tristan kissed me for the first time up against the wall in his kitchen with Crystal and Jamie sitting right there in the living room.

“You’re cool with this? Because I like you. I like you a lot,” Tristan said with his hand pressed on the wall next to me. The ice-maker in his humming refrigerator rattled. I would’ve had sex with Tristan. I wanted to. But I hadn’t had sex with anyone and I was waiting. For something. But