Three
Tina let me borrow her dark brown mini skirt for the weekend. The skirt was short enough on her, and me, being three inches taller then she was, made the skirt look like it was made for a toddler.
I had been foolish enough to believe her when she told me that the skirt looked "totally flawless" with my nude four-inch pumps; and I was currently making my way down Main Street, clicking along and feeling like a stripper the whole way.
Why did you at all think that this was a good idea Amber? I thought to myself, having to stop and think before I instinctively reached down to pull down the length of my skirt.
It's time to grow up. No more fairy tales; Fairy tales don't get you what you want.
I looked down at my exposed legs; freshly shaven and glowing in the light of the midday.
This apparently does.
Delicately as I could manage, I jogged up the steps into the neighborhood bookstore that stood on the corner of Main Street and Second; pulling open the fading green wooden door and letting it click softly behind me.
"Reading is entirely unattractive..." Tina had told me; acting more and more like a relationship councilor and less like my best friend with every conversation that we had.
I remembered the days when she kept those long blonde locks tied back into pigtails as we both read the "Magic Tree House" books on the carpeted floor of this very bookstore.
Of course, this was also before her mother became an alcoholic and her brother had gone off to live with their dad in Arizona. I remembered her fourteenth birthday party in particular; her mother had stormed into her bedroom where seven of us sat clustered watching a movie and passed out into a vomiting spell on Tina's pink carpeted floor. Something changed in Tina that day; the books disappeared and boys became more prominent then ever before.
Still though, even as she traded books for boys and BJ's, I kept my track record of exploring the bookstore that we had both once held so dear.
Books were like another way of life to me; a gateway on to another planet that couldn't be accessed by the naked eye and closed mind we seem to keep when we are in the grasp of reality.
Didn't we all need that?
Maybe Tina didn't think so...
Maybe it's because her childhood had been pulled out from under her legs so young, and the snap into adulthood had not been an easy one.
Sometimes I wondered how different she might be if her mom never picked up the bottle; and Tina was allowed to read another chapter of her childhood.
