So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,37
aloud so your mouth can remember it.
On the way to the ice cream shop where you work, Owen tells you he sent Malcolm and Malcolm’s rugby buddies over to Nick’s place. To tell Nick not to bother you anymore. To leave you alone. Owen says they’re not going to like, hit him or anything, but just let him know it’s not cool and to stop it. You feel rescued although you hadn’t been brave enough to come out and ask for it. Malcolm texts Owen as you’re sitting with your ice creams outside of the shop. Owen shows you his phone, holds it straight out at you, proudly.
Done. He wasn’t acting so tough with five dudes on his porch. Tell her to let us know if he ever bothers her again.
You get tears in your eyes. You cry easily. Owen is your new favorite friend. Friend. You think about the word, how pure and sweet it is. How it means so much, even though you take it for granted. The mystery of it. A person who will fight for you, protect you, lend an ear without expecting anything in return. You know there are good guys out there because Owen is proof. You want to write a poem about him, one he can keep in his back pocket and pull out and read aloud the way he does sometimes. You can’t find the words to say thank you, but know Owen can feel them. Can probably taste that sweet-pink gratefulness in your ice cream as he takes a bite. You picture Nick with a purple-black eye, his wince-face, his tender arm in a sling. You like thinking Owen is keeping that violence from you, protecting you that way too. You think of how easily Owen threw Nick’s phone. You picture it sinking and sinking down into the river until it can’t sink any further. You picture yourself sinking and sinking down into the rushing, dirty-coin-colored river until you can’t sink any further. You picture yourself rocketing out of the water in a flash of white light, right out of this vacuum-valley. You reach over to take a quick bite of Owen’s ice cream and, like a mirror, you both put your hands on your foreheads and ow-laugh at your matching ice cream headaches. You’re eating too fast, but you can’t help it. You have to. You have to eat it all before it melts.
Bright
The summer I stopped brushing again, let the wind dread my hair; we camped in the desert. Peed on sage. I wanted to eat sage, grow a squat sage bush inside of me, watch the roots scream-sprout from my ears, my fingers, my feet. Same summer we were in the forest when there was a cougar loose in Discovery Park. Hunting, its paws pressing heavy. Cracking sticks. Clicking brambles. Smushing grass. We made our way out of the trees and stopped at King’s Hardware for Skee-Ball and tallboys of Vitamin R. Can you hear it—slick thump-rolling and bar chatter-hum lifting? Can you hear the back door chunking closed? Listen again. No. Those are the drunk white boys at the campsite listening to Eazy-E, N.W.A. They’re rapping, pretending to ride Jet Skis over the gravel. I made my girlfriends laugh when I called them chodes, but who were we to judge? If you dropped a record needle into the rock dust, Band of Horses would start playing. We ate salmon with lemons, drank beer for breakfast. Played Marry, Fuck, or Kill under the high noon sun. David Duchovny as Fox Mulder? Always yesyes. That evening it rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained. Goose bumps of rain popping on tent-skin. Branch scratches of rain on tent-roof. Drunken rain slipping down half-empty wine bottles, wild rain ssss-ing out campfires. We packed up in the morning, slicked our fingers over metal poles and cold-dripping canvas. Talked to sweatshirted strangers about the double rainbow hooping us. Watched an ant line of young girls in hippie nightgowns walk down a hill. I got drunk on the