A 16-year-old girl choose me one day in Boston. It was so
hot my lenses steamed up and got smudged with sunscreen. I am of the tortoise
shell variety but so are most of my friends, except for a couple which are
neon. We left the cart where I waited next to a Jamaican man for three weeks to
be bought and skipped along to the swan boats where the girl’s sister dropped
one of my friends from the stand in the lake to swim with the fishes and
couldn’t get her out. That summer I saw hours of trees fly by in car rides and
when the sun started setting earlier the girl threw me into a drawer until the
trees bloomed again. That summer I was pulled out for four airport security checks
and my friend, Cherry Lip Gloss, had to be thrown away at the second one. There was one plane ride where I was
bent because four books crushed me for about six hours. When the girl saw that
she tried to bend me back but it just hurt and didn’t help so now I sit
lopsided on her face. She didn’t use me a lot and I spent a lot of time at the
bottom of her friend’s bag next to some lonely pieces of forgotten lead. She
pulled me out especially for the time she went to the beach and I was so happy
to see the sun and the blue water but she instead forced me to look at her
book. Crime and Punishment was awful and I got really bored of it, and I guess
the girl got really bored of me because she replaced me with a straw hat and
left me on the towel where some sand scratched my lenses. I wasn’t happy.
Thankfully I fit in her bag and the hat didn’t so I got to go with her and the
hat was left on the balcony. Right after that, had to go through more airport
security and this time she hid behind me so the Italians wouldn’t see her cry.
Nobody knew and I felt proud. Later that day I got tossed on the pavement when
she hugged her mom. A moped barely missed me and some lady’s heel almost
stepped on me but her mom grabbed me and wore me for the rest of the day. She
put me on top of her crazy hair every time she talked to somebody in Italian so
I saw the sun a lot and got nice and toasty. That day I sat on the table of a
café and the girl’s sister dropped gelato on me and her sister, in my defense,
yelled at her. The Italians were not impressed, I think because I am so much
smaller than their sunglasses and I block out less sun. I try to block out as
much as possible but I have a lot of scratches and sunscreen smudges and I sit
funny on the girl’s face. But she still wears me because I match her hair and
remind her of the day when she got to ride the Swan Boats in Boston.
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