“First” by Lillian Cummins (fiction ’19)

First

Hot, dry Friday night, late September in Texas. Callie, Mina, and Emma get ready for the football game. Constrained during the week by the plaid skirts and button-down shirts of the St. Agnes School for Girls, they go all out. Callie pulls Emma’s purple miniskirt off and tosses it to Mina, sitting on the bed. Callie hates that she keeps getting taller. The skirt’s too short for her, and it’s too tight for Emma, who’s all boobs and hips. Mina’s Chinese so she’s small. She could maybe get away with it.

Emma leans into the mirror; her damp breath steams the surface. Her eyes take shape as she lines them in black. Pale and blonde, she’s a couple of shades away from disappearing altogether. The girls are at Emma’s house because she can take the car wherever, whenever she wants. Her parents are too busy getting divorced to notice.

“Anything else?” Callie says.

Emma’s pulled-down lower eyelid is a blood-red crescent moon. She rolls her eyeballs toward the closet. The accordion doors are hinged wide open, and a tongue of clothes spills out, licking the soft blue carpet. “Cropped jacket and matching shorts,” she says, circling the eyeliner above her head. “All black. Super cute.”

Callie pushes at hangers while Mina’s attention gets caught by an orange stain on her khaki shorts. “Damn,” she says. She licks her thumb and rubs the stubborn cotton.

“Try the skirt, my dear,” Emma says. She bats her eyelashes, thick with mascara, but Mina ignores her, scratches a bitten-down nail against the dry clot. The scraping is like ripping cardboard. The purple miniskirt lies abandoned on the bed, lapping against Mina’s bare, brown calf.

These are Callie’s best friends. She didn’t dare hope for friends at this new school. Last spring, when Aunt Rosa brought home two heavy plaid skirts, Callie didn’t know they were from St. A’s second-hand sale. Aunt Rosa held one up to the light and nodded with the kind of conviction that would make any fifteen-year-old nervous. “Ain’t so thin you can see right through them,” she said.

[…continue reading “First” at West Branch.]