Girls

Sitting on the hood of her car, in the middle of the deserted supermarket parking lot- a box of Turkish Delight open between them.

It was much later than the legal curfew, a chilled Thursday night. A school night. A bottle of strong whiskey frisked from a parent's liquor cabinet being passed back and forth. The foreign sweet on their tongues, washed down with the faint hint of reality settling in. You couldn't see the stars, for the safety lighting of the parking lot glared down too harshly. The obscurity of a suburban world in which two girls existed getting drunk for the sake of forgetting. This had never happened before. They were good girls, not the type to party on weekends, not the type to be lured into the backseat by boys. Not the type to break curfew, even. Just the type to rewind the internal tape recorder with a little whiskey, a little cold to make the bones reset. They were not the type to spray paint the girls' bathroom mirrors black, and be suspended for it. Suspended for vigilante work to make girls realize beauty. But it was ok, it was vacation for righteous anger. It was a scratch off lotto ticket that won them 5 dollars, to be spent on a can of spray paint. It was their first box of Turkish delight, the warm hood of the car. It was time to leave, and their bodies knew it, always straining for the next best thing. Always trying to make them see, we are older, we do not belong here. The fishnet hose on Fridays, the feminist buttons pulled from thrift store coats. It was the stench of black paint rolling off the mirrors, dripping down the cheap faucets. 

So old for their 17 years, ready for boys that didn't ask for sex, ready for art galleries far away, ready for mornings in sunny apartments. And maybe it was naive, maybe it was too many suburban nights crawling onto the roof. Maybe it was the Friday football games. They wanted out, didn't know how to get there. Didn't know how to buy a bus ticket, even. They'd never tried to run away. Girls don't run away these days, for fear of demonized men, for fear of the loneliness of being female. Why did the girls at school all wear such caked-on make-up? For the boys, to get what was supposed to be wanted. 

They remembered baby dolls, dressing them in bright polyester clothes and taking them for walks. They remembered not knowing where they came from, mythical babies out of hospitals, maybe? And then they knew, because they were girls. The female sense spurring them on, and they did not know why boys didn't feel this way. Isolated. Now they knew, the boys wanted to take away the isolation, in the only way they knew. Which was, coincidentally, the wrong way. But the school girls didn't realize.

But the girls on the hood of the sedan knew it was not the way to fix the holes in their souls, it would never be the answer. The vintage magazines they found in the attic long ago as girls, the figures of women in bathing suits. Hourglass with tiny waist. Was this how womanhood went? No, no. Womanhood was not tiny waist. It was too much hips, too much waist, too much feet. It was trying to curl your hair and burning all your fingertips. 

One sitting girl had a scarf tied around her head, much like driving scarves women wear in convertibles. Her skirt falling around her knees. The other, brown hair fluttering in the autumn wind, ratty tennis shoes gripping the slick car. They were not pretty girls- not the girls with full lips or busts that escaped their shirts. No, just slightly comely. Not homely. Not the girls boys looked at, even the ugly boys with bad nails who took girls in their cars up to point for horrible things in the big backseat. They were not backseat girls.

They were the ones who knew to get out. The clever girls with pearly teeth who knew, a smile gets you everywhere. It got them bubblegum when they were six, ice cream at twelve, and now good grades on presentations they did not care for. The presentations they thought were one step to getting out. But maybe not now, not after the paint. Life was quickly separating- before vandalism, and after. They were two worlds now, the past swiftly departing from the present. Quickly departing into whiskey on school nights. The confusion of female, of teenaged. A point staged to make vocal that girls were pretty things without make-up. But no, no. Things were never so simple as one can of paint. Not so simple as a bottle and some some sweets. They debated going back into the brightly lit supermarket for cookies and mouth wash. No need to go home smelling of bars and clubs. A strong need to drown the bubbling stomach acid with those half-baked supermarket cookies. The good kind, soft all over. The girls though everything was ok that, soft all over. Girls could still be beautiful, politics still effective. Boys could be better, softer like that. 

Cookies to weigh them back down to this world, gravity a force not strong enough by itself anymore. Few things can stop girls with raw spirits. But they would wait. Wait out the suspension storm, ignore the looks in the halls. Perhaps they would be heroes, probably still unnoticed. Nobody would ever know what they meant by the black dripping paint. They would be too far away by that time. Gravity lost effect everyday. They were departing from this life, the suburban aesthetic. The parking lot dropping away beneath them. 

Girls with an excess of soul do not stay put too long, they know better. The wandering in their spirit leads them to far better places. Better than 1 am Thursday whiskey with contemplated cookies. Better than trying to rip your fishnets to be a punk. Better than sitting on the hood of a car. And so this was being left behind like heavy clothing in the spring. So they are leaving, swiftly into women with power. 

Women with perfectly rounded nails and strong opinions. No need to stay. And so this world fell away with a an empty car and a half eaten box of Turkish delight.