Girl of Class
BY ALISON SWANITZ
She traipses down the hall like she’s made of glass. Delicate, an ornate work of art carefully carved and polished to stand out from the rest, to shine. It seems to you that’s all she knows how to do anyway. Her hair is sunlight, it comes in woven rays, flawlessly braided together as one, flowing down her side, enhancing her crystalline features, reflecting off the morning dew coating blooming bellflowers in her eyes. Everyone knows her. Everyone sees her. The pale clouds dusting her remind you of the beginning of sunset, a slight glimpse of blush radiating a gentle warmth from her skin. It makes you wonder what would happen if you were to touch her. She seems so fragile, so helpless, like a single touch could break her. What would just a tap on the shoulder do? Would it do anything? Maybe she’d shatter, like the porcelain doll she is, fragmenting into a million pieces on the floor of your homeroom classroom. Or perhaps she would simply dissolve into a glistening mist and drift away out the window. Either way, you think it’d be a good riddance.
You aren’t like everyone else. You aren’t the subservient vast majority who feels an overwhelming, hypnotic urge to protect her. Her rosebud lips arched into a tender bow don’t intoxicate you. Her hands, uncalloused, soft, from lack of use in her comfortable life disgust you. You know her smile, it always appears hesitant, shy and laced with innocence, striking like lightning deep into the souls of its beholders, is fake. Everything about her disposition is fake, built upon each day by lie after lie. Secretly, you know she’s proud. She has the world wrapped around her dainty finger, what more could she want?
If you could, you would take it all away from her in a heartbeat. You’d tear her apart and reconfigure her into a mosaic of something grotesque and incomplete. You’d twist her perfect smile into its hidden, malicious form, and rip the sunlight from her hair, and pluck the bellflowers in her eyes. You’d turn the sunset on her skin into a raging storm, and callous her hands so that no one would ever be compelled to hold them again. Then maybe, just maybe, people would notice you too. You aren’t a girl of glass, or perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but you are real, and only you know, that girls made of glass are meant to be broken.
About the Author
Alison Swanitz is a 16 year old writer from Santa Ynez, California.
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