Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Ariel: Breakable

(Ariel: unedited)

500 calories. 30 grams of fat. 45 grams of sugar. So much sugar.

“Dessert is sugar, and sugar is fat, and fat the enemy.” Ariel twisted her fingers around the plastic of her straw, the narrow yellow and red stripes merging as they spun. It reminded her of the waves – undulating, dizzying, and suddenly uncontrollable. She watched it slip from her fingers and fly across the table, spattering milkshake droplets across the back of Price’s veined hand.

For a split second, it reminded her of stars, wet and white and bleeding from the morning sky. Then he shook his palm, stirring them together before he wiped them away. “Finished?” He was watching her, eyes narrowed.

He knew. He knows. Fighting the rising panic, she shrugged her shoulders, feeling each joint screech together in protest. “Kind of.” She stole a glance into her cup – half empty. She had risen to a grey sky today, feeling half-empty, and nausea churned in her stomach as she thought of visiting. Of being discovered. Of waking up to find herself half-full, the emptiness fading through her plaster ceiling, leaving nothing but a hollow remnant behind.

“You gonna tell my why this scares you so much?” Price pushed his glass aside, resting his fists, unclenched, upon the table. He curled and uncurled his fingers absently as he spoke. “You said she was a friend. A best friend. I don’t get it, Ariel….so why did you ask me to come?”

I don’t know. She lowered her shoulders from their shrug, where they had frozen, bones encased in exhaustion. But you do, her angry, spiteful voice chimed, how could you not?

“I…uhm, didn’t want to come alone. Portland’s pretty far, you know.”

“No. I didn’t.” He picked up her straw carefully and slid it onto the tray that sat between them, wedging it around a crumpled hamburger wrapper and a pile of runny ketchup packets. “It’s only an hour away.”

“Two, both ways.”

“You could have asked your aunt.” The glassy darkness of his eyes mirrored her frame, her uneasy expression, her wince.

“She’s been busy.”

“Grieving.”

It wasn’t the words, but the tone – the voice of a boy recently acquainted with grief, such a new and cold emotion that his sympathy for Iris had been diminished by his own sorrows. “She’s not grieving. She and Anya are planning a wedding.”

“Sister?”

“Brother.” She ducked his inquisitive stare, catching the corners of his dull smile as her hair fell, merciful and black as ink, into her wavering image of a boy she knew nothing about. A boy she was trusting with one of her cherished secrets – her unusual, albeit volatile, friendship with Katrina.

It occurred to her, and not for the first time, that he was a stranger. It was like a gathering of clouds over the sunshine – he revealed the side he wished her to see, and she did the same. The full light, stripping shadows from the deepest, darkest corners of truth, was still unknown. She didn’t wish him to see the unknown, either – the bits, like her eating, that she suspected him of figuring out already. It seemed too horrific a thing, or a collection of things, to ever be told.

She planned on keeping her secrets in a heart-shaped box, held fast with the snaking veins of her faint existence, held tight into her chest until it ceased to beat.

And then, of course, the secrets would cease to be secrets – just like her, they would be gone forever.

“Come on.” Price slid out of the booth, eyes never leaving her face as he extended one hand towards her. “You might miss visitation hours.”