Page 25 - GRANADA

Snowbird
by A.T. Olvera
The heat beat down on the Sonoran Desert, just as it did all year round. Though it was November, the old glass thermometer that clung to the window of my father’s convenience store still held upwards of ninety. The air conditioning was on the fritz but Father refused to fix it since “It’s going to cool down any day now.” He’d been saying that every year since my mom passed ten years ago. She had always been the handywoman of the family, so it was likely his Chicano Honor held that he not admit to not knowing how to fix something, nor that he pay someone to do the fixing.
“Uh, excuse me?” someone asked, slamming down their drink. “Can you explain this to me?” she said, gesturing at the slushie on the counter. She was one of the women who frequented the shop, a soccer mom with a bright-pink cardigan and hair pulled back so tight you could barely see the wrinkles that had begun to form across her face.
I looked down at the drink, which I’d noticed had sloshed out and onto the rack of lighters beside the register. “It’s called a slushie, ma’am. It’s a frozen beverage-”
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content warning: mild gore