Work in Progress - A Good Reading

Everyone is worried about what they're going to say when it's their turn.

It’s quiet here, comfort like I’ve never known.  Images pop into my mind: my best friend is here, her basketball shoes, my dad, the big Lakers game (everything at the same time).

We have conversations about my life, my best friend, how I coveted her food.  Food envy turns into wanting the shoes and then her same eyes, and hair and her house (a shade of pink, “Pale Camellia,” she said), and her parents too (they could afford the tickets to the big Lakers game and the signed basketball shoes).

My new best friend gives me Star Crunch and Crème Pies.  I forget my lunch, even though Grizzly packs chili.  I keep forgetting my lunch.

Girlfriends chatter at school.  Grizzly’s new boyfriend, the man that hunts the elephant turns into a girlfriend.  Julian becomes Jillian.  And she is psychic.   She looks just like my Aunt too.  Bossy, perfect hair, unbreakable nails.  Her clothes are pressed, she even smells like a field full of flowers (but strangely none of them are wild, they’re grown in a lab).  Jillian tells me, “A good reading means not knowing.”  And she tells me I eat too many spicy foods at lunch.  I laugh.

Jillian doesn’t know about the forest.  But I remember what the trees showed me about my life.