"On That Night" by Mary Grimm

On That Night                                                                              

            On that night, we had to pool our money to buy cigarettes and then we smoked them huddled in a doorway, waiting for someone to pick us up and drive us to the party. It was cold and dark. Clouds were moving across the sky which was that deep blue of evening, the in-between time when the sky is not yet nightblack.
I was wearing a dress that was too short for the weather so I pressed myself between Gary and Jay. Their two warmths were interchangeable, both deep, both lamentable. It didn’t matter that I was sleeping with Gary and not with Jay. My body didn’t know the difference. I drowned myself in their heat and listened to them talk without listening, waiting for Jay’s brother who would deliver us from the cold.
The clouds swam across the sky. My dress rippled in the push of the wind. I closed my eyes and imagined sand in a jar, a green leaf pressed in a book about King Arthur who had been given a sword dripping with water. I didn’t want to be the lady who delivered swords, nor the queen whose only function it was to be unhappy. I spent too much time in the library, Gary always told me, submerged in books, but I was fine with that. When we got to the party, the band would refuse to play that song with the long instrumental part in the middle that made you feel like you were drowning, which someone always asked for and which the band didn’t know, and I would stay out too late and then have to talk to my mother when she stayed up to ask where I’d been.

 

Mary Grimm

Mary Grimm has had two books published, Left to Themselves (novel) and Stealing Time (story collection), both by Random House, and a number of flash pieces in places like Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a YA thriller. She teaches fiction writing at Case Western Reserve University.

Headshot: Joel Hauserman

Photo Credit: Staff