Page 15 - Vol. VI #1

“Look at you!” said Lily to Rachel. “You’re huge!” Rachel was eighteen, had come late to blossom- ing—height, bulk, long, frizzy black hair, even
her little pouchy breasts. Clothes didn’t lie right, hair an uncontrollable razzmatazz, zits red as her cupid-bowed lips. She shimmered with resent- ment at her mother, slammed doors, slammed her body against her too-thin mattress, hated
the sweet, sleazy boys of Grade 12, the narrow, dark duplex of her childhood, the long tunnel of adolescence from which it seemed she would never emerge. Alice handled her with great care, because Rachel was a grass fire and the wind was picking up.
“The deck of cards, use-softened, had
sat on the sideboard every day of her life...”
“God, Lily,” said Rachel. “You think I’m fat? I’m big-boned or something. I can’t help it, just like those girls with anorexia.”
“Aunt Lily was not saying you were fat,” said Alice. “You’re not fat! Your BMI is just where it should be.”
“You’re a D cup, aren’t you?” said Lily. “Sexy! I’m jealous, really.” She herself wore a yellow sweat- shirt that bulked out from her hollow frame, her matchstick arms. To compensate, she always wore huge, junk-silver and turquoise rings on every finger.
“You should be,” said Kelly. “Now how about some party hats?”
Lily leaned close to Rachel. “When your mother was your age, she’d stuff her bra with toilet paper.”
“Lily, that’s a load of crap and you know it,” said Alice.
“Oh, so you were listening,” said Lily.
“I’ve got things on my mind.” Alice nabbed the server as he went by and asked for another vodka rocks. Things on her mind, she’d told her sister. Indeed.
Like the $25,000 she’d stolen from Spinlux ear-
6
~
(continued on next page)