So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,60

come down and ask me. It’s my job and I enjoy it,” Martha said.

“Thank you. The hot chocolate is really good.” Beth nodded.

She wouldn’t feel right wearing bright colors for at least a year after Paul’s funeral. No thin, dandelion-yellow vintage summer dresses; no grosgrain carrot-orange ribbons in her hair. Grief was a foggy liver-color seen through a glass, darkly.

Beth started to cry but didn’t want Martha to see her, so she took her hot chocolate and headed for the stairs. She’d try to call Paul again. If he wasn’t back soon she’d call the police, call her mother. Ask someone if she could borrow their car and go looking for him herself.

She heard the bell tinkle against the door and turned to see Paul in his hat, his puffed black jacket and red-laced hiking boots. He was holding a brown paper bag by the handles. It crinkled. He smiled up at her, stomped off snow.

Boy Smoke

My big sister, Tula, says her boyfriend, Finn, and his best friend, Kahlil, want us to go for a ride with them. I have a secret crush on Finn. Finn is a senior and quarterback-tall. He got suspended from the football team last week—weed and four Ds on his report card. His dad is the pastor of our church. Whenever I smell communion wafers and baptism pools, I think of Finnegan Grand.

“Kahlil likes you. That’s why he wants you to come with us,” Tula says. We’re at the end of our driveway waiting for the boys to pick us up. She puts on sugar-raspberry lipgloss and hands it to me so I can put it on too.

“He’s a’ight,” I say after I rub my lips together.

“Here they come,” she says, looking down the road.

Kahlil drives a dark green four-door wagon and stops it in front of our house so we can get in the back. He and Finn turn around and say hey. Finn reaches back and holds Tula’s hand for a second. I stare at the side of Kahlil’s face to see if I can tell if he likes me or not. I come up empty.

Finn wants to ride past Coach Cahill’s house. They promise they aren’t going to do anything to it.

“I’m in enough trouble with my parents,” he says, lighting a cigarette and rolling down the window.

“And if we egged his shit, he’d know it was us anyway,” Kahlil adds.

“Ruby, do you smoke?” Kahlil asks me.

“Cigarettes?” I ask, all flirty, hoping it will ricochet and wound Finn with bloody love for me.

“She’s never smoked anything,” Tula says, splitting her hair and pulling it to make her ponytail tighter. Finn hands her his cigarette.

“That’s cool,” Finn says, turning to smile at me through the tiny crack between the headrest and the car door. I want the sharp, dark tobacco taste of his mouth; I want to sleep in his soft T-shirts like Tula does. He gave her a pearl ring she only takes off for tennis practice. That’s when I put it on, pretend like he gave it to me.

Coach Cahill’s front door is wide open and Kahlil slows down. Finn tells him to stop.

“What the?” Kahlil says.

The porch bulb casts spaceship-light on the night grass. Coach is gathering a pile of clothes in his arms.

“Damn. His wife is throwing all his shit out,” Finn says, opening his door.

Coach’s wife comes outside. She has a baby on her hip. I get a hot, itchy feeling in my gut thinking about how scared that baby must be.

“Go back in the house!” Coach hollers to her.

“You can’t tell me shit anymore!” his wife hollers back.

“Coach?” Finn says, standing in the swimmy milk of the headlights.

I look over at Tula, watch her toss the cigarette. I chew on my thumb.

“What are you doing here?” Coach asks Finn. Coach’s shadowed shoulders droop in embarrassment like a robot powering down.

Kahlil kills the engine and lights, gets out of the car. The boys bend, start picking up stuff in the yard.

Coach’s wife walks over to us. She leans her head through the driver’s side window.

“You girls shouldn’t be here,” she says like a mom.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“We just came out for a ride,” Tula says.

“I don’t know what to do,” his wife says, shaking her head. Her face looks like a country song: smudged black eyeliner, red wine teeth.

“Do you want a cigarette? We can hold the baby in here so y’know…he doesn’t smell the smoke,” Tula says, pointing to Finn’s pack of cigarettes on the passenger seat.

Coach’s