Free Split Just Right by Adele Griffin Page A

TO DESTROY something, anything. She thought of scissors, but a search through the house turned up only a tarnished silver butter knife. Nothing would stop her; she gripped handfuls of her shiny, waist-length hair and sawed at it until raggedy shanks of cerise lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, and jagged wisps fluffed out just above her ear. Her cats, Raison and Sprite, watched in fear, but her madness didn’t end there. She ran to her mother’s room and in a few minutes had shredded all her clothes to tatters, including her ugly cordovan zip skirt.
    “Finally, I’m free,” she whispered, clutching the knife in the air. Yet she could not quench this unbidden longing to slice, slash, and destroy. Suddenly the doorknob turned. Her father had come home! The knife sweat in her hand.
    The Lilac contest rules had been to write “a dynamic first page to anything: novel, short story, fantasy, or science fiction text—you be the judge. Let your creative juices flow!” I didn’t like the sound of the phrase “creative juices”; it made me think of my brain like a grapefruit, painstakingly squeezing out a sour trickle of pulp and seeds. But first place was a thousand dollars, then a five-hundred-dollar second place, and three more prizes of a hundred dollars apiece. And best of all—no entry fee.
    “Hey, Danny, you want to come with me to rehearsal?” Mom calls.
    “Why would I do that?” I shout, proofreading through my paragraph. I’m wondering about that word cerise. I don’t think I know exactly what that word means.
    “To run lines in the car? We could pick up Chinese, and you could see the dress rehearsal.”
    There’s only an open can of tuna, an empty pizza box, and some of Gary’s leftover Caesar salad in the fridge. It figures I’d have to be roped into watching Mom’s stupid rehearsal just to get some dinner.
    “Okay, hang on a minute while I get my jacket.”
    I close up my laptop and unfurl my cramped bones from the wobbling tortoiseshell, stepping out of it carefully.
    Mom’s on the phone, placing our order with Hunan Garden and snapping a raincoat over her Rosalind costume, which trails behind her in yards of worn brown velvet. A faded coronet of flowers is perched on top of her head.
    “You look crazy,” I tell her, frowning.
    “Shakespeare would have appreciated raincoats. Stratford-upon-Avon probably got its share of downpours, don’t you think?” She looks up at me and smiles.
    “No comment,” I say.
    Neither of us takes umbrellas, and Mom’s laughing as we dash out to the car. Her good mood makes my bad one worse. Old Yeller hacks and heaves a while before he hits his warming-up stage.
    “Old Yeller’s going in for inspection next week.” Mom pats the dashboard. “Come on, baby. There’s a boy. There’s a boy. Ten minutes, buddy, you can do it.”
    “It’s too dark to read this script.” I squint at the chains of words.
    “Never mind, lord help me if I’m not off-book by now … Danny, does this car smell funny to you? Like gas?”
    I sniff. “I can’t tell.” We drive in silence a while, sniffing and frowning at each other. I jump out at Hunan Garden while Mom drives the car around the block because she doesn’t know how to parallel park. Usually I don’t care about Mom’s bad driving but tonight, standing in the rain with soggy Chinese food bags and watching Old Yeller stalled at the red light across the street, I feel a burst of annoyance at her.
    “Is the defroster on?” I ask when I get in.
    The windshield wipers are chasing each other back and forth and don’t do much to rub away the fog that films the glass.
    “Broken.” Mom sighs. “Okay, I smell something for real.”
    “All I smell is your gross cabbage cashew whatever-it-is that you ordered. You should really get this stupid car into the shop tomorrow.”
    “Why are being you such a sulky teenager lately?” Mom hunches over the steering wheel and squints out at the black road. “By the way—huge