Free The Checkout Girl by Susan Zettell

void between the now glittering snowbanks. Martial music blares. And there’s Darlyn, red car coat done up to the neck with white bone buttons, white tights, white mid-calf boots with white tassels. Darlyn strutting down the runway, eyes ahead. She throws her baton into the air and it rises, disappears into darkness, gone, gone, gone. Flashes into sight, so fast. Darlyn marching in place, arm out, snatching the baton. Six high steps forward, up it goes again, no hint of exertion, no vapour from her perfect lips.
    â€œDarlyn, you’re the champion of the world!” Kathy shouts from the sidewalk.
    Darlyn catches the baton and turns.
    â€œKathy,” Darlyn shouts back. “Groovy.” She smiles as she walks, twirling one hand to the other; the air is strobing.
    â€œDo you have a cigarette?” she asks when she reaches Kathy.
    Darlyn Smola could be “Baton Barbie.” Full high breasts (less buoyant than Barbie’s appear), spare waist, slim hips, slender legs, fine wrists, ankles and neck and all of it, every single bit of it, muscle. Brown eyes as depthless as milk chocolate. Red earmuffs over brown hair pulled back in a shiny ponytail. Perfect Darlyn, everything in proportion except her nose, which is not large so much as not small. Not a perky baton twirler’s nose, nor even a formal Scottish nose. A Smola nose, her mother points out. From her paternal grandfather, Margaret says. Strong, long, foreign and entirely masculine.
    Darlyn’s nose always made her seem old and serious when she was little. More so because she was little and it wasn’t. Looking at her friend, Kathy sees Darlyn has grown into her nose. She’s taken it over, and she’s become beautiful.
    â€œYou don’t smoke,” Kathy says.
    â€œHow do you know? You’ve been away for ages.” Darlyn says. She shivers. “Can we sit in your car?”
    â€œBe my guest,” Kathy says.
    Heat on, windows steaming and rolled down an inch so they won’t be asphyxiated, Darlyn goes through Kathy’s box of 8-tracks.
    â€œI never listen to this stuff unless it’s at a dance or something,” she says. “Oh Leonard, sexy Leonard. Put him on.”
    They lean back in the seats while Leonard sings about the Sisters of Mercy.
    â€œI love that line,” Darlyn says, and she sings in a sweet un-Leonard-like voice, “It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.”
    â€œCan’t twirl to it, though,” she sighs.
    â€œHave you tried?” Kathy asks.
    â€œGod, no. I still live at home, Kath. Get real. My mother listens to Gilbert and Sullivan and Gregorian chant, my father to polkas and Elvis. And to Bobby Curtola if he’s being wild. There’s only marching music for me. No, my friend, I haven’t had a chance to twirl to Leonard. Don’t think he’d appreciate it anyway.”
    â€œBet he loves women in tights,” Kathy says. She snaps Darlyn’s stockings and dust drifts through a thin slice of light from the porch. Darlyn takes Kathy’s hand and holds it.
    â€œWhy did you stop writing me?” she asks.
    â€œOnce I finished writing about the pretty mountains and the pretty ocean and the wild and wonderful characters in our communal house, I ran out of good things to say,” Kathy tells her.
    â€œDoug?” Darlyn asks.
    â€œAs I said, I ran out of good things to say.”
    â€œYou could have called when you got home.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Kathy says.
    â€œI missed you,” Darlyn says. “I’m glad you’re home.
    â€œAnd I’m glad you came out to practise.”
    Leonard’s singing about eyes soft with sorrow and they sing with him, “Hey that’s no way to say goodbye.” And they laugh.
    â€œRemember when Mrs. Norris used to come out with the axe?” Darlyn says. “She’d walk beside George’s car when we got home from a date. Then