Page 127 of The Glass Girl

It’s getting downright freezing, too. It’s December in thedesert, which means it’s friggin’ cold, no matter how thick my jeans and socks are. I don’t know why they didn’t have us wear long underwear, too.

I’m getting really frustrated that my spindle work is going nowhere. I decide to redo my notch. But the sun’s going down and I’m losing light, so I have to dig my flashlight from my pack and it’s way at the bottom.

Brandy is starting to lose it over at her spot and she asks Tracy for help.

And you know what Tracy brings her? Some sort of actual fire-starting contraption that’s not a lighter but something akin to a tiny cell phone and does what a lighter does, and suddenly, Brandy has a spark that she desperately, lovingly blows, practically crooning to it as she transfers it delicately to her bundle andbam.

A fire.

I look over at Josh. He’s sitting in front of a small, tidy fire, warming his hands. The flames glow on his face.

He’s not even paying attention to me, he’s so pleased with his fire. I look around. Everyone has their own little fire but me. And Billy.

Then something happens in me.

Like, a crack that starts spreading wider and wider, revealing stuff. Because I hate my unfire. I despise my nonfire.

And inside that crack is a bunch of stuff I have hated over the years.

I start frantically rubbing the spindle again.

This fire is the second grade and Hayley Mitchell pouring a tub of glue over my head and me having to get all my hair cut off to get it out. I mean, that was a shitty thing to do, right? But she was eight and so that stuff happens, you move on, blahblah. But I guess I haven’t, because there’s Hayley Mitchell and her mean self in my unfire.

This unfire is Hayley Mitchell all over again, taunting me. Telling me I’ll never fit in, I’ll have glue on my head forever.Glue girl.

This unfire is me getting my period in sixth grade, before everything went haywire and they sent us home and we didn’t go back for an entire year, and not realizing what had happened until a teacher pulled me aside and said, “Dear,” because I had a big red spot on the back of my jeans. I swear to god, for years after, when someone would call me “dear,” I’d flinch, thinking I had blood on my pants.

This unfire is my first period and those bloody jeans.

This unfire is Dylan calling metoo much.This unfire is another example of me not being normal, because across the camp from me, I can hear Billy yell, “I have a spark!” and Phil getting all excited and then Josh asking me if I need help and evenCharlottehas a fire.

Tracy is in front of me now, taking out that infernal fire-making contraption again. And look, here comes Phil.

Great, now I have a crowd for my unfire.

I tell them to go away.

It’s so cold. I’m losing control of my arms. They feel like warm rubber and I’m trying to rub that spindle so hard and so well and still it’s refusing me.

This unfire is everything, all of it, the whole past year and what guy breaks up with his girlfriend in a parking lot? JFC, sit down with her and hold her hand and do it. This unfire is my parents not breaking up sooner and my dad not having the balls to tell us he had a girlfriend before just planting her in his apartment one night. This unfire is Laurel thinking it was okayto give me schnapps anddyingon me and me afraid to tell my mother how that felt and this unfire is me for letting everything awful take root in me and grow there into something too tough and strong for me to fight.

I can hear them cooking tofu hot dogs and roasting marshmallows over their fires and I think I even smell hot chocolate and I can’t stop the eternal waterfall of silent tears that’s drowning my face.

Then I see a spark. Some shit-tiny little spark. A flick of orange, and I throw my spindle away and bend down and blow and it gets brighter and smoke comes up and a little flame appears, a beautiful tiny flame, and I hold my bark over it and soon enough the bark’s on fire and I swear to the stars above and everything else that if that bark will just stay lit until I get it in my tinder bundle I will stay sober until the end of time and

I have a fire. I shout it out.

“I have a fire!”

Everyone cheers.

I grab some rocks and make a ring and place my branches and twigs in just the right way like Phil showed us and add more twigs and more dried grass and there it is. And I thought I would stop crying, but I haven’t.

It’s like I’ve opened something that can’t be closed.

Tracy comes over and sits down and pats me on the back and says, “That’s a swell fire.”

“It is,” I say.

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