'Glitter' by Didi Wood

Glitter is for other girls, the pretty ones, the princesses, whose fathers are doctors and lawyers with houses in Addington Bay, with gardeners and guesthouses and motorboats and beach rights, not girls like you from Addington Station, with weed-choked yards, jacked-up cars, falling-down fences, and dads who smell of sweat and blood from cutting meat all day long at King Kullen.

Glittery tutus for ballet class, glittery ribbons for long, shiny braids, jars of red and blue and silver and green and gold glitter for whatever they want, whenever they want it. Your family can’t afford ballet, your mom chops your hair too short for ribbons, and the only time you get close to one of those glitter jars is in school, before Christmas, when you’re allowed to sprinkle some onto your snowflake.

“Just a bit,” says the teacher. She clamps her hand over yours, flicks the jar. The merest pinch of glitter drifts downward. “There you go,” she says.

But it’s not enough. She hands the jar to the next girl, a peppermint-lip-glossed blonde in a fluffy red sweater with candy-cane buttons, so pretty, so clean and shiny and right. Her fingernails are painted red to match her sweater, and there’s a tiny, perfect snowman detailed on one thumbnail. She inverts the jar and shakes, hard, over and over, until her snowflake is covered in silver, until there’s not a bit of paper showing. Magic.

“Could I – ?” you say, and the teacher says, “It’s not your turn.”

Wait for recess. Say you need the bathroom, then slip back into the classroom, silent but for the fluorescent buzz. Kneel on the floor, gather the glitter that has fallen, forgotten, red and blue and silver and green and gold, all that glitter, all of it, cupped in your hands.

But there’s dirt, too, and pencil shavings, and dry grass, and short, dark hairs. Eyebrows? Lashes? Never mind. Never mind. Pluck away what you can. There’s still enough to change everything. But how? Swallow it, become the shiny pretty perfect girl? Throw it, watch them stumble back in terror?

There’s the whistle, they’re lining up, they’ll be here soon. Stand before your feeble snowflake, open wide your tiny hands, make a wish, blow.

Magic?

Is it?

Blink past the tears.

Blink.

It hardly stings at all.