IS WHY, by Kathleen Glasgow
There is fighting again tonight. When that happens, Louisa crawls into her closet. Sheâs made a good world inside, far back, in the corner. A folded blanket. A tiny, gold lamp. A soft crocheted pillow. A box of Ritz crackers. One pen. Her book.
She canât write while the noise happens, so she stops up her ears with her hands and sings inside herself, where there is a beautiful stage, and a microphone, and itâs all hers.
In music class, her teacher always shakes her head and smiles when Louisa finishes singing. âL,â she begins, and Louisa secretly thrills at the abbreviation of her name. It sounds cool, like they are friends. Comrades. âYou kill me, kid. You really do. You realize youâre made of magic, right?â
The music teacher has purple braids, black clogs, and a series of colorful cardigans. She comes twice a week to Mercer High, her black guitar case strung across her shoulders, her earlobes shining with dozens of tiny silver studs.
âI practice all the time,â Louisa always answers.
Her parents fight all the time, is why.
Whenever Louisa tries to smile, her lips shake. So she never smiles.
The music teacherâs name is Crystal. âI can tell, L. Practice makes perfect.â
Louisa always wants to say again, âI practice all the time.â But she knows Crystal would not understand what she was really trying to say underneath what she actually said. Â She loves
Crystal, and she wishes she could be different, and see Louisa how she really is, but Louisa has been disappointed too many times by adults.
Adults are the most disappointing entities on Earth.
In the closet, when the floorboards stop vibrating, when the sounds of breakage and scuffling ended in slammed doors, cold silence, screeching cars, she writes. All the words that had banged around her brain whirled through her heart and poured from her fingers onto the pages of her black and white composition books.
Crystal told the class, âYou guys. Art. You need art to live.â She balled her fists. Louisa always held her breath when Crystal did this. Habit.
Sometimes one of her parents comes for her after the fighting, is why.
Crystal rolled up a sleeve. âYou can make yourself art. You can be a vessel for magic in the real world.â There were vines and birds and tea cups and dragons on her skin.
Louisa is very good with pens. She can turn bruises into blooming roses. She can turn scratches into slithering snakes. No one knows. No one has ever guessed. Even the school nurse, that habitually clucking, gray-bunned woman, never wonders at Louisaâs elaborately patterned skin. All sheâs ever said was, âYouâll get ink poisoning, you know.â
Everyone always says, Tell someone.
The pamphlets in the school nurseâs office. Text or call for help.
Flyers on the boards outside the gym. Â If you or someone you know.
Louisa traces them with her ink-stained fingertips. But she never calls, or texts, or tells.
Because even if the place where you are is bad, the next place could be worse. There is always another circle of shit, another layer of hell, hiding around the corner, is why. And maybe there wouldnât be a Crystal, or a box of Ritz crackers, or a composition book full of songs at the back of a warm closet in that place, is why.
Louisa has always been attached to the strangest things.
Sheâs fifteen. Things mean so much to her it hurts.
On the grass, her friend Shayna adjusts her fingers against the sky, fitting them to constellations. They are on a blanket on a hill and the night is warm. Louisa is looser, because she wonât be at home tonight, sheâll be at Shaynaâs. Shayna never cares about not going to Louisaâs house. âI have a television and a microwave in my own room. I live in my own goddamned hotel, practically, why would I go anywhere else?â
Shayna shrugged. âAlso, your parents are deeply unhappy. The House of Louisa is a bummer. I am not into being bummed.â
Shayna is light as a feather, quick as a bird. She is gold where Louisa is dark. Â
Shayna rolls over and takes some of Louisaâs hair into her hands, braiding it. âYouâre so gorgeous,â she murmurs. âThis hair. Like a red ocean. So jealous.â
She sits up and checks her phone. âTheyâre almost here. Donât be nervous.â
But Louisa is. There are always two boys, one for Shayna, one for Louisa. Â Shayna meets them at the mall, online, at the movies, handing out hot dogs at her job at The Wienery. An endless parade of boys on this hill on warm nights.
Louisa wishes it was River tonight, but it canât be. River goes to Barrow, and plays the cello, and has nice hands and too curly hair and is too thin and smart to be completely popular, heâs more on the outskirts of things, like Louisa. Sheâs not too far out, because Shayna protects her, and she can sing, so she has, as Shayna says, âThe whole drama queen thing going, like a freaking high school Amy Winehouse. Youâre just weird enough that people are interested in you.â
Kissing River had been like being underwater in a pool at night, which was something she and Shayna did often at Shaynaâs house in the summer time. Shaynaâs pool was deep and they liked swimming at night without the pool light on. Underwater, their bodies drifted dangerously close in the dark, eel-like. Electric. Louisa liked the feeling of drifting in water in the dark, not knowing when she might bump against Shaynaâs skin. It was a delicious surprise to make contact in the wet dark.
She said that to River, that one night, after they came up for air.
She said it again. âYouâre a delicious surprise in the dark.â
River said, âI could really get used to a girl like you.â
Louisa shifts on the blanket as Shayna pats lips gloss on her mouth. The well of sadness inside her is deep. Sometimes River would text her at night, very late, a series of thumbs up and pandas that she claimed for her heart. Â She would send back stars and roses.
River wonât be here, anymore, though. Not for a long time. What heâd done had even made the newspapers. The clipping was in composition book #6. Shayna had said, âHeâs a very complicated person, Louisa. Definitely perhaps too dark for normal adolescence.â
Shayna looks down the hill at two approaching figures.
She says, âStart your engines, girlfriend.â
After Shayna falls asleep beside her in the canopy bed, Louisa takes her composition book into Shaynaâs bathroom and fits herself into the tub. She writes:
This boyâs hands are murder
That boyâs hands are bombs
She wonders what her parents are doing. The things that are broken tonight that sheâll clean up tomorrow. Flecks of glass stuck in carpeting for weeks. Â
Two terrible people came together and made the mess of me
And now Iâm sewn up in my bodyâs misery
There might be a song here. Shayna has promised that tomorrow sheâll record Louisa singing. Shaynaâs older brother knows a band looking for a lead singer. They want a girl, he says, âSomebody kind of loopy and dark. Like your weirdo friend here.â Heâd laughed, but Louisa had latched onto it. Sheâs fifteen. She gets very attached to ideas and things.
She thinks for a moment and then catches sight of her arm. The ink on her rose is fading; you can see the yellow-blue of faded bruise underneath. The boy tonight had been a little messy; he must have rubbed it away.
Maybe, Louisa thinks, penning over the blurred rose, making it beautiful again, maybe this band will be something. Maybe they will love her voice, and her songs, and her red-gold hair that makes Shayna sigh. Maybe they will help her make magic in the real world out of the bits and pieces of broken-ness in her journals. Maybe they will be like Crystal, and sigh after she is finished singing, her songs like fingers trailing up and down their hearts and arms, making them shiver, and then maybe, maybe, everything will have been worth it, all of the things sheâs absorbed that no one wants to see, and sheâll be brave enough to sing out the truth of being a girl, because it hurts, it really hurts sometimes, so much, is why.
Kathleen Glasgow is the author of the New York Times bestseller Girl in Pieces.Â
Learn more about her: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads.
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