Glasses Half Empty: A New Short Story from Critically-Acclaimed Robby O'Daniel

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Everything went back to those wire-rimmed glasses.
As an outspoken advocate of the American Dream, specifically as it pertained to her Irish-American children, Lucille Blume professed that she always wanted her twin daughters to have it better than she did.
So instead of buying an extra bottle of Chardonnay -- to go along with the other bottles of liquor she'd purchased one evening -- she decided to send the money so that exactly one of her children could go on the eighth-grade Washington D.C. trip.
"It's all I have to give," Lucille said, as she popped the cork of her bottle of $50 brandy.
The cork flew up in the air, hit the tip of one of the propellers of the Blumes' rickety ceiling fan and struck Sophie Blume, age 13, square in the forehead. Contents of the brandy bottle bubbled up onto the floor.
"Oh, look what you made me do," Lucille said. She put down the brandy on the dark brown, broken-down coffee table, the one with all of Lucille's fine porcelain dolls adorning it, and went to get some paper towels.
Sophie's sister, Saoirse, of whom Lucille generously bequeathed the tidy sum of $60 just minutes prior, scrunched up her face, furrowed her eyebrows and focused on the ground. She moved her sneakers back and forth into a side of the spill on the shag carpeting, watching as the liquid made the light yellow carpet into brown. Her sneaker, with all the dirt of recess, made the brown into black.
"We're out of paper towels," Lucille announced, as she held up two Classifieds sections from the local paper like they were a newborn baby. She got on the floor, and the typeface ground into the carpet.
"But, Mom," sputtered Saoirse's sister, Sophie, between gasps of air. "Why does Saoirse get to go and not me?"
Lucille sighed, put her hands on her knees and looked at Saoirse. "You can't always get what you want in this life, dear. Besides your sister is older."
This was true. Lucille gave birth to the two babies on a hot, sweaty May morning. "You kept me up all night," Lucille would often say between swigs. Saoirse entered the world at 5:05 a.m. Sophie popped out at 5:10 a.m. As a result, forever Sophie would earn the label "little sister." And as a result, despite the mere five-minute age difference, somehow hand-me-down dresses, frayed books and the like all found her.
"But everybody's going!" Sophie yelped in the same kind of exasperated pitch as a man without an umbrella's "Oh, no" at a glimpse of the rain falling.
Saoirse nodded her head furiously. "It's true, Mom. Everyone is going."
Lucille held up the drenched newspaper sections with one finger and winced at the smell. "If everyone jumped off a bridge ..."
"That's doesn't have anything to do with anything!" Saoirse yelled. She stomped to her room. Her sneakers caused the whole room to shake, punctuated by a door slam.
Lucille raised her eyebrows sternly, as she deposited the trash. She made her way back to the bottle and poured herself a glass. She promptly took it to her mouth and turned it upside down. The glass slammed back on the table, and she tipped the bottle up to pour another.
Without looking at her, Lucille said, "Saoirse, Mommy needs some time to herself. Why don't you go to your room and do your homework?"
Saoirse beamed. "I already did it."
Lucille looked up, startled. "Really?"
"Yes."
"Surely there's more you haven't done."
"Nope."
"Perhaps something you forgot?"
"Nuh uh."
Lucille looked back down at the bottle. "Then go enjoy your free time in your room, please, dear."
Saoirse shuffled her feet. "I kind of wanted to play video games," Saoirse said, eyeing the Sega Genesis on top of the 13-inch television. The letters "sis" had been rubbed completely off the system to where it said "SEGA GENE." The ancient $20 Toys R Us sticker was still planted on the top right of it, like a stamp licked yesterday.
"No, dear, I have plans in the living room tonight," Lucille said. "Maybe another evening."
"But I got my homework done early to play video games."
"If you do as I say tonight, maybe another evening. I'm going to watch television out here, and I don't want you to see the smut that passes for television these days."
"If it's bad, then why do you watch it?"
"Because, dear, we own a television. It'd be a shame to waste it."
"Then can I watch television with you?"
"How many times must I say it, dear, you are never to watch television as long as you are in my house," Lucille said, as she clutched the bottle to her chest like she was accepting an Oscar. "It's filth, and it's certainly not fit for impressionable children. To think what my father would say at what they put on these days."
And they never did watch TV. The most Saoirse and Sophie had seen on the electronic box in their lives had been Channel One and Cable in the Classroom, which Lucille called a vicious marketing ploy by television advertisers to get their greedy hands on America's youth. "Shame on that Bill Clinton for allowing this to happen," Lucille often said in between swigs.
"But we don't even have cable TV," Saoirse said.
"What does that have anything to do with it?"
"Well, Veronica Watson at school says that they only show dirty stuff on the cable TV channels."
"Well, how on earth did Veronica Watson learn that, from watching that drivel? I have a mind to call her parents tomorrow morning."
"No, don't, Mom."
"No, I will," Lucille said. She put her glass and the bottle down because she was feeling noble. She seemed to look out past the dry wallpaper and cracked ceilings of the family apartment and into America itself. She put her arm around Saoirse. "You know, darling, if we don't do what's right and stand up for what we believe in, this world could go to hell in a handbasket."
"Mother, you just said hell."
"Do as I say, not as I do, sweetie," Lucille said. "And if you have any designs that we might end up like the Watsons with the MTV infiltrating this house, you can forget it. If the material wasn't obscene, the cost certainly is."
Lucille bent down and smiled at Saoirse. She smiled back nervously. Her lower lip twitched. "Now go to your room, sweetheart," Lucille said, squinting at the girl's face. "You have ugly bags under your eyes. Maybe you should think about getting some shuteye."
Saoirse's droopy face fell.


As soon as Saoirse entered the room, she adjusted her brown, wire-rimmed glasses. If Sophie was to describe them: The glasses were sideways ovals of glass, connected beautifully by a long thin wire with an immaculate U-shaped curve in the interlocking middle. They were the perfect centerpiece to Saoirse's round-shaped face, and by all rights, they belonged on her.
Her mother had even said so. They went to the department store exactly one year ago to pick out the perfect glasses. Lucille only had enough money for one pair of glasses because of the liquor she had purchased earlier in the afternoon.
"Those glasses look perfect on you, Saoirse," Lucille said with a long smile, on the way back from the store. Her gaze in the rearview mirror turned to Sophie. "Don't you see, Sophie? You have a heart-shaped face. They would have hung loosely, dear, like a wire hanger without a cardigan on it."
Sophie frowned, fidgeted in her seat under the tight ropes of the seat belt and lightly felt her face with her right palm.
Both sisters had developed vision problems, so both needed glasses, but Sophie's came from a government-assisted program for needy families. Hers were horn-rimmed, not her style of choice, with wings on the side and looked like they came out of somebody's 1950s high school yearbook.
Her mother couldn't even sugarcoat it when they picked them up later. "Well you can see better, can't you?" she said.
They picked up Sophie's glasses two weeks after Saoirse's, which meant two weeks more of headaches and bad grades on Math quizzes for Sophie.
"Why don't you just buy her glasses already?" said her impatient sixth-grade math teacher at a parent-teacher conference.
Lucille broke down, crying hysterically. The parent-teacher conference ended with the teacher offering his whole box of tissues for Lucille to take home and his constant repetition of "I'm so sorry," with varying inflections.
The crying spell went away immediately as Lucille and Sophie exited the room. "Don't ever put me in that position again," was all Lucille said to her that day. Her breath smelt of rum.
So when Saoirse moved back those exquisite glasses, a calculated push back orchestrated by her index and ring fingers, Sophie felt a pang of pain deep inside her, like a knife cut to the heart. She rolled her tongue against her teeth and frowned.
Sitting on the top bunk, Sophie moved to the edge of the bed, letting her feet dangle in the air. Looking down at Saoirse, Sophie made a fist and was instantly clutching an invisible microphone. "Tell us, Saoirse, inquiring minds want to know: What makes you so special?" Sophie said.
Saoirse rolled her eyes. "God, Sophie."
Sophie let her invisible microphone drop to her side. "What's it like to live the way you do? Because, really, some of us are suffering over here."
Saoirse sighed and laid down on her bed, the bottom bunk, grabbing an issue of Rolling Stone that was next to her. The Backstreet Boys were on the cover. "The only reason you're suffering is because, well, as you would say, 'Mom is a bitch.'"
Sophie's mouth flew open. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never said that."
Saoirse mindlessly flipped the pages and scanned them. "Sophie, we live in the same room. Do you really think I'm not going to find out these things?"
Ignoring the wooden stepladder, Sophie suddenly pushed herself forward, jumping down to the floor. She turned toward Saoirse and glared.
"In case you've never heard of common courtesy, I'll tell you when I want you to read my diary."
"I didn't read your diary," Saoirse said, raising her voice an octave in protest. A beat passed. "Buuuttt if I did, so what?"
Sophie jumped on Saoirse and grabbed two handfuls of sweater. "What do you know?" she said, squinting her eyes and in a whisper, attempting to mimic those police interrogators she saw on television over at Veronica Watson's house.
Saoirse wrenched away and held up the crinkled Rolling Stone. "Hey, it took two weeks' allowance to buy this!"
"Apparently you read my diary more often than you read Rolling Stone."
Saoirse used her peripheral vision and eyed an old copy of Stone -- the one with Hanson. She wondered whether a rolled-up Stone cover would get Sophie off. She didn't really like Hanson anyway. "Listen, all I'm saying is that you can spend all your time writing to yourself about things you already know, or you can tell someone new."
"Like you?"
"And why not me? I'm your loving sister," she said, eyes wide with exasperation.
Sophie let go of her grip in defeat and moved off Saoirse, to the edge of the bottom bunkbed.
Saoirse took in the room. She saw the color pink dotted everywhere -- from the bed covers to the teddy bears to the make-up kits. "God, we are in such a girly cliche right now. All we are missing is our room having bright pink walls with hearts on them."
"Mom said the room would be pink, but the paint at Lowe's was too expensive." (A gallon of paint at Lowe's can cost about $20, but a pregnant Lucille bought liquor the afternoon she shopped around at Lowe's. And she's been too busy to go back to Lowe's in the past 13 years, she says.)
"Go figure."
Sophie mumbled out of the corner of her mouth as she bit her index finger. "Mom says we haven't refined our tastes yet, and she is good at choosing things."
"Mom says a lot of things."
A beat passed. Sophie eyed Saoirse. "You know, you are saying a lot about Mom after she gave you the money to go to D.C. and not me. Maybe I should have a little chat with her. She might change her mind."
Saoirse swung her legs off to the side, put down the Rolling Stone and got up. "You won't."
Sophie's eyes followed Saoirse across the room. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I have dirt on you too. But moreso because I know you. You wouldn't."
Sophie looked down at her dirty white sneakers and thought of the D.C. trip. "You don't know that."
"Look, it's not that I'm not grateful. I appreciate it. Honest." Saoirse rifled through her closet and pulled out a black Radiohead T-shirt. She traded the campfire warmth of the red sweater for the breezy cotton rebellion of Thom Yorke.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
Sophie's mouth was agape. "Maybe I really do have something to talk to Mom about."
Saoirse looked in the mirror and ran her long, thin fingers (made even longer by her economy-sized, painted fingernails) through her short, stringy blonde hair. She turned to Sophie. "Look, don't tell Mom about this, will ya?"
Sophie smiled, conspiratorially. "Are you going to see Bryan?" she whispered.
Saoirse pantomimed fixing her hair, imitating Lucille. She lowered her voice. "Sophie, perhaps when you are older..."
"Oh, shut up!"
Saoirse put an index finger to her mouth and then nodded and smiled. "If Mom won't let me play video games, maaaayyybe."
Sophie looked down at Saoirse's pink bedspread, straightening it out absent-mindedly. "Sometimes I wonder how we are even related."
Saoirse's mouth turned sideways, and she ducked to sit down beside Sophie. She put her arm on Sophie's shoulder. "Look at me."
A beat passed before Sophie did.
Saoirse continued, "There will be other trips."
Sophie looked up at Saoirse, not comprehending her perfect face but recognizing this being, from the same mother's womb and birthed the same day, would be going to D.C. and not her. Taking stock of her own bright red, curly, long hair, Sophie sometimes really did wonder how on earth they were related, let alone twins.
At lunch every noon at school, Sophie sits with a crowd of people, but she is alone. Those people she sits with belong to Saoirse's group of friends. Sophie eats her peanut butter and jelly sandwich (with the crusts cut off) and drinks her CapriSun juice packet in silence, looking from girl to girl as the speakers change.
Sure, she's attended her fair share of Veronica Watson sleepovers (who hasn't?). But moreover, Saoirse was invited first, and it was simply understood -- and proper etiquette in the 13-year-old female community -- to extend the invitation to Saoirse's silent twin sister. At the sleepovers, which occured approximately once a month, yet on seemingly random weekends, Sophie had an even tougher time being social. She couldn't even keep up with the conversation, as the girls ate marshmallows and talked movies, because she just kept gawking at the television -- this forbidden beam of technological light pouring into her slightly-visually-impaired eyes. Her favorite times were when Veronica's mother dominated the television. As the other kids groaned, as the television pilgrimaged away from VH1 and even further away from MTV, Sophie's eyelids ate Wolf Blitzer. They devoured Greta Van Sustren. She was a news cannibal. There was something so strangely wrong about being this "into" the news, like on sitcoms when a character entertains the notion of doing a threesome or masturbating in the elevator, but it was so captivating. She could hear the heartfelt words, the passion in everyone's voices as they yelled at each other about Bill Clinton and taxes and health care, and it was so strangely intriguing.
But at age 13, all Sophie could think about was how uncool this was. And she thought of Washington D.C.

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

10 years later

Sophie wiped her Washington Post keycard, opened the door to the newsroom and immediately heard murmurs akin to a school cafeteria. Sophie began walking to her cubicle, betwixt hundreds, in the middle of the flourescent-lighted space. Admist the clamoring of reporters, the hustle and bustle of finding sources, gaining interviews and tracking down facts, several greetings were thrown her way. They varied in inflection and tone, ranging from the formal ("Hello, Sophie, how are you doing this morning?") to the casual ("Hiya, Soph!") Sophie often wondered if one could tell anything about a person from this sort of thing.
As she sat in her swivel chair, the ass of her Khaki dress pants touching the plush chair, her eyes, hidden behind her new designer glasses, glanced unintentionally at a clipping she had tacked beside her computer. As a reflex, she smiled. It was a story she'd done, a profile of Ann Coulter. When she had sat across from the controversial conservative author to interview her, she remembered thinking to herself, "This is work?" The photo showed Coulter with a goofy, open-mouthed grin, the kind she often sported when talking to Sean Hannity on Fox News. She thought of her mother. Coulter felt a lot like her in spirit, though she'd probably disapprove of some of her coarse language, she thought.
Her gaze, stopping for a bit on her computer booting up, moved toward a plaque on the other side of her cubicle. It signified the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association's claim that she was somehow the D.C. metro area's writer of the year, though Sophie had no idea how, with all the excellent writing she'd read of her peers that year. She wondered what stories the judges were conjuring in their minds when they decided to call her writer of the year and subsequently, via the award's description, call her reporting "outstanding" and her commitment to investigation in the realm of politics in the area "exemplary."
From the day she walked in the door as a new reporter, she had the stigma of a rookie. In a whirlwind of a first year, she'd transformed herself into some kind of wunderkind. When several newfound friends were axed only two months after she began, she wasn't. Soon enough, she had heard that editors were talking about her as some prized possession to be protected.
"Well you don't have to worry," Seemingly everyone had told her in a million conversations about newspaper job security.
She didn't know why. Looking around the room some days, seeing all the fellow reporters typing away, digging into old newspaper clippings, scratching their heads and thinking about just the right lead to begin the story with, it sure didn't feel like she was working so much harder than everyone else.
And her writing -- gosh, sometimes it sounds so horrid and contrived, she had thought often. To begin a story about the chilly, cold-shoulder sessions that were reminiscent of some prominent political gatherings in the summer, she began by saying it was "Christmas in July" for American legislators. She cringed when she wrote it, but an editor, happening to be near, made her decide not to change it.
"'Christmas in July'!" the editor said. "Oh, wow, that's terrific. Where do you come up with this stuff, Soph? I was scratching my head all day trying to get a lead."
When they went to bars after work to celebrate -- usually just the end of a work day -- Sophie was almost claustrophobic. Tables full of 20 people from work, having five different conversations. Sophie would lose herself in listening to the karaoke sometimes or idly watching the baseball game on one of the televisions near the bartender until someone would snap her out of it with an offer at conversation.
But there was something different about conversation in the bar than it was, say, sitting next to an idol or even talking to a homeless person. Conducting journalistic interviews, there was a formula to it. There was a start and end point. Sophie could tell just exactly when she got what she needed for the story. She didn't even write down questions anymore. She was dogged in tracking down people, invading their personal homes or private time with family in order to get a scoop. But in the bar, even with the invitation of pals from work, she just couldn't tell where these conversations were going.


Saoirse pushed a rickety shopping cart halfway down the aisle. Spotting the Meow Mix, she bent down to the bottom shelf and heaved the huge, economy-sized bag into the cart. Her legs remained straight as she carried it, and her back ached. The bag hit the top of the cart, and she pushed it over and into the cart with a loud clang.
Grocery shopping sucked, she thought, wincing at the pain. Yet it was somehow one of the only events in her week. She pushed up her cheap, horn-rimmed glasses and headed to the cash register.
She wore a baggy, lavender sweater and had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a sensible, workday ponytail. She threw her worn coupon book into the cart, its contents ripped apart so much that it looked like a dog had gotten hold of it.
As she found a suitably sized line and began placing her items to be scanned, she noticed the same words jumping off each box, each package, each carton: "free." She was living a fat free, sugar free, low-calorie life, she decided. She didn't remember when she decided. It just seemed right.
Her eyes, shrouded behind her cheap lenses, caught the smile of the cashier as he said, "Would you like this in a bag, ma'am?" He held up the latest Rolling Stone with Adam Lambert on the cover.
"No, that's alright," Saoirse said, reaching her hand out. Bags caused creases, and creases made stacks of Rolling Stones get too poofy and bloated for her liking. They took up more storage space that way.
As she tucked the Stone mag underneath her arm, she scrutinized the cashier's face more clearly. Squinting, he almost looked like Bryan. Her eyes dropped to the nametag.
"Ryan," she said, aloud.
"Yes?"
"Oh, sorry, just reading your name."
"Oh."
Saoirse tried to hide how mortified she was over that encounter. She always felt herself trying to start conversations with people at work or while doing errands over the dumbest, most idle things in her imagination like the weather or local bands. She constantly chided herself for it because people usually weren't receptive. Because it was weird to just have small talk with complete strangers. And it was an utter waste of time anyway, so why bother?
She sighed to herself, as she paid with cash. "You can keep the tip."
Ryan smiled. "Thanks."
Saoirse walked the cart back to her car and laughed. He probably thought I was hitting on him, she thought. I'm like 10 years older than he is. He's probably halfway to calling the cops.
She laughed so hard at the thought that she snorted, a sound drowned out by the opening of her trunk.
Hopefully he's not as much of an asshole as Bryan, she thought.  Her smile faded, and she suddenly started blinking more rapidly, the hint of moisture making her eyes sensitive.
She still cringed whenever someone said the word "abortion."
Looking back on high school, it felt like "A Tale of Two Cities" to Saoirse -- the very beginning, the carefree first act with no worries or complaints. Then the second act with all of its drunken mistakes and compromises with the future. Then the third act, sitting in her room and doing homework.
Sophie used to ask why Saoirse didn't hang out with her friends anymore. Saoirse just felt like she couldn't. It wasn't in her power. Things were different. The time when they were friends had seemed like such a long time ago so suddenly. And she didn't have the strength to deal with the sexually demanding Bryan or other sexually starved teenage friends. It was disgusting. She found solace in Sophie’s company that senior year.
Between drinks, Lucille had attributed her daughter's forced exile to hormones and nothing more. Sometimes Saoirse wondered if her prognosis had any truth to it. Even when she made friends now, at work at the music store, she was only chatty during work hours.
"Hey, uh, a few of us are going to see Sufjan Stevens downtown on Saturday. You wanna come?" said Ivan, a local stoner and hippie who came into the store all the time, mostly it seemed to flirt with Saoirse.
Saoirse really liked Ivan in the sense that he was good at conversation and kept her mind off things she despised thinking about. "Maybe some other time. I think I might be hanging out with girlfriends that night." She wasn't.
As she got in the car to haul her groceries back to her apartment, she thought of how empty it would be when she got there, how the sounds of her putting her groceries in cupboards would echo, how the dull tone of the air conditioning would vibrate and deafen her. She sighed again and turned the ignition on.


While the two were deeply saddened when they get the call, neither Saoirse or Sophie were very surprised when they heard their mother had died due to liver failure.
Sophie flew in on short notice for the funeral, which turned out to be quite a private affair. Sophie wasn't sure how private until she walked to the cemetery site and saw a preacher and only one occupied chair in the audience -- the white chair adorned with the back of an unforgettable blonde head of hair.
When Sophie went up to the front row to sit next to her sister, Saoirse mouthed a hello and waved, as if breaking the silence would damn their mother to hell. The sisters sat solemnly, sullenly staring at their feet or looking into the distance, as the preacher ran through the motions.
After this was over and the two had gotten a last look at their mother, ashen cold in death, they turned to each other and walked back together to their cars.
"Long time no see," Saoirse began.
Sophie squinted her eyes, computing. "Five years, I think."
"Why didn't you call?"
Sophie looked at the ground and shrugged. "Didn't know what to say."
Perhaps it was the emotion of the moment -- her mother's funeral had just taken place after all -- but Saoirse was feeling firey for the first time in a long time. "You could have said something," she said, grimacing. "Instead you just left us behind."
"Come on, the Post," she said.
"Yeah, I know, the Post, but you could have visited. You could have called. Hell, you could have sent an e-mail."
Sophie felt like her mother was not dead after all. She looked up at her sister's face and squinted. "What happened to your glasses?"
"What?!" Saoirse said, incredulously.
Sophie repeated, slowly and in wonderment, "What happened to your glasses?"
Saoirse blew up. "I don't know, Sophie. I got drunk at a party, got frisky with a guy, got my glasses thrown off and trampled on. Didn't have any money to replace them so I had to get this cheap, terrible pair. How is this important right now?"
"But you loved those glasses."
"So what? What does that have to do with me getting them broken?"
Sophie was silent for a moment and shrugged. In a brisk motion, she took off her glasses and held them out to Saoirse. "You should take these."
Saoirse sighed, exasperated. "What are you doing?"
"Take this pair. It's good."
"I don't want your glasses."
"Just do it. Take them from me. I can replace them. I haven't been in your life in ages. Let me," she paused, collecting her breath. "Let me do something for you."
Saoirse furrowed her brow, looking between the glasses and her sister's face, the outstretched hand and her unfocused, dazed pupils.
She took the glasses.

[Brak]

Guess what I'm not reading 

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Guess what I'm not reading 

[sexual tyrannosaurus]

Congrats, it took me till the newspaper/newborn sentence to get me to stop reading 

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

I skipped ahead at the umbrella part, saw that this was a TWO-PARTER, and gave up for now.

[A albright...]

Everything went back to those wire-rimmed glasses.

As an outspoken advocate of the American Dream, specifically as it pertained to her Irish-American children, Lucille Blume professed that she always wanted her twin daughters to have it better than she did.

So instead of buying an extra bottle of Chardonnay -- to go along with the other bottles of liquor she'd purchased one evening -- she decided to send the money so that exactly one of her children could go on the eighth-grade Washington D.C. trip.

"It's all I have to give," Lucille said, as she popped the cork of her bottle of $50 brandy.

The cork flew up in the air, hit the tip of one of the propellers of the Blumes' rickety ceiling fan and struck Sophie Blume, age 13, square in the forehead. Contents of the brandy bottle bubbled up onto the floor.

"Oh, look what you made me do," Lucille said. She put down the brandy on the dark brown, broken-down coffee table, the one with all of Lucille's fine porcelain dolls adorning it, and went to get some paper towels.

Sophie's sister, Saoirse, of whom Lucille generously bequeathed the tidy sum of $60 just minutes prior, scrunched up her face, furrowed her eyebrows and focused on the ground. She moved her sneakers back and forth into a side of the spill on the shag carpeting, watching as the liquid made the light yellow carpet into brown. Her sneaker, with all the dirt of recess, made the brown into black.

"We're out of paper towels," Lucille announced, as she held up two Classifieds sections from the local paper like they were a newborn baby. She got on the floor, and the typeface ground into the carpet.

"But, Mom," sputtered Saoirse's sister, Sophie, between gasps of air. "Why does Saoirse get to go and not me?"

Lucille sighed, put her hands on her knees and looked at Saoirse. "You can't always get what you want in this life, dear. Besides your sister is older."

This was true. Lucille gave birth to the two babies on a hot, sweaty May morning. "You kept me up all night," Lucille would often say between swigs. Saoirse entered the world at 5:05 a.m. Sophie popped out at 5:10 a.m. As a result, forever Sophie would earn the label "little sister." And as a result, despite the mere five-minute age difference, somehow hand-me-down dresses, frayed books and the like all found her.

"But everybody's going!" Sophie yelped in the same kind of exasperated pitch as a man without an umbrella's "Oh, no" at a glimpse of the rain falling.

Saoirse nodded her head furiously. "It's true, Mom. Everyone is going."

Lucille held up the drenched newspaper sections with one finger and winced at the smell. "If everyone jumped off a bridge ..."

"That's doesn't have anything to do with anything!" Saoirse yelled. She stomped to her room. Her sneakers caused the whole room to shake, punctuated by a door slam.

Lucille raised her eyebrows sternly, as she deposited the trash. She made her way back to the bottle and poured herself a glass. She promptly took it to her mouth and turned it upside down. The glass slammed back on the table, and she tipped the bottle up to pour another.

Without looking at her, Lucille said, "Saoirse, Mommy needs some time to herself. Why don't you go to your room and do your homework?"

Saoirse beamed. "I already did it."

Lucille looked up, startled. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Surely there's more you haven't done."

"Nope."

"Perhaps something you forgot?"

"Nuh uh."

Lucille looked back down at the bottle. "Then go enjoy your free time in your room, please, dear."

Saoirse shuffled her feet. "I kind of wanted to play video games," Saoirse said, eyeing the Sega Genesis on top of the 13-inch television. The letters "sis" had been rubbed completely off the system to where it said "SEGA GENE." The ancient $20 Toys R Us sticker was still planted on the top right of it, like a stamp licked yesterday.

"No, dear, I have plans in the living room tonight," Lucille said. "Maybe another evening."

"But I got my homework done early to play video games."

"If you do as I say tonight, maybe another evening. I'm going to watch television out here, and I don't want you to see the smut that passes for television these days."

"If it's bad, then why do you watch it?"

"Because, dear, we own a television. It'd be a shame to waste it."

"Then can I watch television with you?"

"How many times must I say it, dear, you are never to watch television as long as you are in my house," Lucille said, as she clutched the bottle to her chest like she was accepting an Oscar. "It's filth, and it's certainly not fit for impressionable children. To think what my father would say at what they put on these days."

And they never did watch TV. The most Saoirse and Sophie had seen on the electronic box in their lives had been Channel One and Cable in the Classroom, which Lucille called a vicious marketing ploy by television advertisers to get their greedy hands on America's youth. "Shame on that Bill Clinton for allowing this to happen," Lucille often said in between swigs.

"But we don't even have cable TV," Saoirse said.

"What does that have anything to do with it?"

"Well, Veronica Watson at school says that they only show dirty stuff on the cable TV channels."

"Well, how on earth did Veronica Watson learn that, from watching that drivel? I have a mind to call her parents tomorrow morning."

"No, don't, Mom."

"No, I will," Lucille said. She put her glass and the bottle down because she was feeling noble. She seemed to look out past the dry wallpaper and cracked ceilings of the family apartment and into America itself. She put her arm around Saoirse. "You know, darling, if we don't do what's right and stand up for what we believe in, this world could go to hell in a handbasket."

"Mother, you just said hell."

"Do as I say, not as I do, sweetie," Lucille said. "And if you have any designs that we might end up like the Watsons with the MTV infiltrating this house, you can forget it. If the material wasn't obscene, the cost certainly is."

Lucille bent down and smiled at Saoirse. She smiled back nervously. Her lower lip twitched. "Now go to your room, sweetheart," Lucille said, squinting at the girl's face. "You have ugly bags under your eyes. Maybe you should think about getting some shuteye."

Saoirse's droopy face fell.





As soon as Saoirse entered the room, she adjusted her brown, wire-rimmed glasses. If Sophie was to describe them: The glasses were sideways ovals of glass, connected beautifully by a long thin wire with an immaculate U-shaped curve in the interlocking middle. They were the perfect centerpiece to Saoirse's round-shaped face, and by all rights, they belonged on her.

Her mother had even said so. They went to the department store exactly one year ago to pick out the perfect glasses. Lucille only had enough money for one pair of glasses because of the liquor she had purchased earlier in the afternoon.

"Those glasses look perfect on you, Saoirse," Lucille said with a long smile, on the way back from the store. Her gaze in the rearview mirror turned to Sophie. "Don't you see, Sophie? You have a heart-shaped face. They would have hung loosely, dear, like a wire hanger without a cardigan on it."

Sophie frowned, fidgeted in her seat under the tight ropes of the seat belt and lightly felt her face with her right palm.

Both sisters had developed vision problems, so both needed glasses, but Sophie's came from a government-assisted program for needy families. Hers were horn-rimmed, not her style of choice, with wings on the side and looked like they came out of somebody's 1950s high school yearbook.

Her mother couldn't even sugarcoat it when they picked them up later. "Well you can see better, can't you?" she said.

They picked up Sophie's glasses two weeks after Saoirse's, which meant two weeks more of headaches and bad grades on Math quizzes for Sophie.

"Why don't you just buy her glasses already?" said her impatient sixth-grade math teacher at a parent-teacher conference.

Lucille broke down, crying hysterically. The parent-teacher conference ended with the teacher offering his whole box of tissues for Lucille to take home and his constant repetition of "I'm so sorry," with varying inflections.

The crying spell went away immediately as Lucille and Sophie exited the room. "Don't ever put me in that position again," was all Lucille said to her that day. Her breath smelt of rum.

So when Saoirse moved back those exquisite glasses, a calculated push back orchestrated by her index and ring fingers, Sophie felt a pang of pain deep inside her, like a knife cut to the heart. She rolled her tongue against her teeth and frowned.

Sitting on the top bunk, Sophie moved to the edge of the bed, letting her feet dangle in the air. Looking down at Saoirse, Sophie made a fist and was instantly clutching an invisible microphone. "Tell us, Saoirse, inquiring minds want to know: What makes you so special?" Sophie said.

Saoirse rolled her eyes. "God, Sophie."

Sophie let her invisible microphone drop to her side. "What's it like to live the way you do? Because, really, some of us are suffering over here."

Saoirse sighed and laid down on her bed, the bottom bunk, grabbing an issue of Rolling Stone that was next to her. The Backstreet Boys were on the cover. "The only reason you're suffering is because, well, as you would say, 'Mom is a bitch.'"

Sophie's mouth flew open. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never said that."

Saoirse mindlessly flipped the pages and scanned them. "Sophie, we live in the same room. Do you really think I'm not going to find out these things?"

Ignoring the wooden stepladder, Sophie suddenly pushed herself forward, jumping down to the floor. She turned toward Saoirse and glared.

"In case you've never heard of common courtesy, I'll tell you when I want you to read my diary."

"I didn't read your diary," Saoirse said, raising her voice an octave in protest. A beat passed. "Buuuttt if I did, so what?"

Sophie jumped on Saoirse and grabbed two handfuls of sweater. "What do you know?" she said, squinting her eyes and in a whisper, attempting to mimic those police interrogators she saw on television over at Veronica Watson's house.

Saoirse wrenched away and held up the crinkled Rolling Stone. "Hey, it took two weeks' allowance to buy this!"

"Apparently you read my diary more often than you read Rolling Stone."

Saoirse used her peripheral vision and eyed an old copy of Stone -- the one with Hanson. She wondered whether a rolled-up Stone cover would get Sophie off. She didn't really like Hanson anyway. "Listen, all I'm saying is that you can spend all your time writing to yourself about things you already know, or you can tell someone new."

"Like you?"

"And why not me? I'm your loving sister," she said, eyes wide with exasperation.

Sophie let go of her grip in defeat and moved off Saoirse, to the edge of the bottom bunkbed.

Saoirse took in the room. She saw the color pink dotted everywhere -- from the bed covers to the teddy bears to the make-up kits. "God, we are in such a girly cliche right now. All we are missing is our room having bright pink walls with hearts on them."

"Mom said the room would be pink, but the paint at Lowe's was too expensive." (A gallon of paint at Lowe's can cost about $20, but a pregnant Lucille bought liquor the afternoon she shopped around at Lowe's. And she's been too busy to go back to Lowe's in the past 13 years, she says.)

"Go figure."

Sophie mumbled out of the corner of her mouth as she bit her index finger. "Mom says we haven't refined our tastes yet, and she is good at choosing things."

"Mom says a lot of things."

A beat passed. Sophie eyed Saoirse. "You know, you are saying a lot about Mom after she gave you the money to go to D.C. and not me. Maybe I should have a little chat with her. She might change her mind."

Saoirse swung her legs off to the side, put down the Rolling Stone and got up. "You won't."

Sophie's eyes followed Saoirse across the room. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I have dirt on you too. But moreso because I know you. You wouldn't."

Sophie looked down at her dirty white sneakers and thought of the D.C. trip. "You don't know that."

"Look, it's not that I'm not grateful. I appreciate it. Honest." Saoirse rifled through her closet and pulled out a black Radiohead T-shirt. She traded the campfire warmth of the red sweater for the breezy cotton rebellion of Thom Yorke.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

Sophie's mouth was agape. "Maybe I really do have something to talk to Mom about."

Saoirse looked in the mirror and ran her long, thin fingers (made even longer by her economy-sized, painted fingernails) through her short, stringy blonde hair. She turned to Sophie. "Look, don't tell Mom about this, will ya?"

Sophie smiled, conspiratorially. "Are you going to see Bryan?" she whispered.

Saoirse pantomimed fixing her hair, imitating Lucille. She lowered her voice. "Sophie, perhaps when you are older..."

"Oh, shut up!"

Saoirse put an index finger to her mouth and then nodded and smiled. "If Mom won't let me play video games, maaaayyybe."

Sophie looked down at Saoirse's pink bedspread, straightening it out absent-mindedly. "Sometimes I wonder how we are even related."

Saoirse's mouth turned sideways, and she ducked to sit down beside Sophie. She put her arm on Sophie's shoulder. "Look at me."

A beat passed before Sophie did.

Saoirse continued, "There will be other trips."

Sophie looked up at Saoirse, not comprehending her perfect face but recognizing this being, from the same mother's womb and birthed the same day, would be going to D.C. and not her. Taking stock of her own bright red, curly, long hair, Sophie sometimes really did wonder how on earth they were related, let alone twins.

At lunch every noon at school, Sophie sits with a crowd of people, but she is alone. Those people she sits with belong to Saoirse's group of friends. Sophie eats her peanut butter and jelly sandwich (with the crusts cut off) and drinks her CapriSun juice packet in silence, looking from girl to girl as the speakers change.

Sure, she's attended her fair share of Veronica Watson sleepovers (who hasn't?). But moreover, Saoirse was invited first, and it was simply understood -- and proper etiquette in the 13-year-old female community -- to extend the invitation to Saoirse's silent twin sister. At the sleepovers, which occured approximately once a month, yet on seemingly random weekends, Sophie had an even tougher time being social. She couldn't even keep up with the conversation, as the girls ate marshmallows and talked movies, because she just kept gawking at the television -- this forbidden beam of technological light pouring into her slightly-visually-impaired eyes. Her favorite times were when Veronica's mother dominated the television. As the other kids groaned, as the television pilgrimaged away from VH1 and even further away from MTV, Sophie's eyelids ate Wolf Blitzer. They devoured Greta Van Sustren. She was a news cannibal. There was something so strangely wrong about being this "into" the news, like on sitcoms when a character entertains the notion of doing a threesome or masturbating in the elevator, but it was so captivating. She could hear the heartfelt words, the passion in everyone's voices as they yelled at each other about Bill Clinton and taxes and health care, and it was so strangely intriguing.

But at age 13, all Sophie could think about was how uncool this was. And she thought of Washington D.C.

[A albright...]

10 years later



Sophie wiped her Washington Post keycard, opened the door to the newsroom and immediately heard murmurs akin to a school cafeteria. Sophie began walking to her cubicle, betwixt hundreds, in the middle of the flourescent-lighted space. Admist the clamoring of reporters, the hustle and bustle of finding sources, gaining interviews and tracking down facts, several greetings were thrown her way. They varied in inflection and tone, ranging from the formal ("Hello, Sophie, how are you doing this morning?") to the casual ("Hiya, Soph!") Sophie often wondered if one could tell anything about a person from this sort of thing.

As she sat in her swivel chair, the ass of her Khaki dress pants touching the plush chair, her eyes, hidden behind her new designer glasses, glanced unintentionally at a clipping she had tacked beside her computer. As a reflex, she smiled. It was a story she'd done, a profile of Ann Coulter. When she had sat across from the controversial conservative author to interview her, she remembered thinking to herself, "This is work?" The photo showed Coulter with a goofy, open-mouthed grin, the kind she often sported when talking to Sean Hannity on Fox News. She thought of her mother. Coulter felt a lot like her in spirit, though she'd probably disapprove of some of her coarse language, she thought.

Her gaze, stopping for a bit on her computer booting up, moved toward a plaque on the other side of her cubicle. It signified the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association's claim that she was somehow the D.C. metro area's writer of the year, though Sophie had no idea how, with all the excellent writing she'd read of her peers that year. She wondered what stories the judges were conjuring in their minds when they decided to call her writer of the year and subsequently, via the award's description, call her reporting "outstanding" and her commitment to investigation in the realm of politics in the area "exemplary."

From the day she walked in the door as a new reporter, she had the stigma of a rookie. In a whirlwind of a first year, she'd transformed herself into some kind of wunderkind. When several newfound friends were axed only two months after she began, she wasn't. Soon enough, she had heard that editors were talking about her as some prized possession to be protected.

"Well you don't have to worry," Seemingly everyone had told her in a million conversations about newspaper job security.

She didn't know why. Looking around the room some days, seeing all the fellow reporters typing away, digging into old newspaper clippings, scratching their heads and thinking about just the right lead to begin the story with, it sure didn't feel like she was working so much harder than everyone else.

And her writing -- gosh, sometimes it sounds so horrid and contrived, she had thought often. To begin a story about the chilly, cold-shoulder sessions that were reminiscent of some prominent political gatherings in the summer, she began by saying it was "Christmas in July" for American legislators. She cringed when she wrote it, but an editor, happening to be near, made her decide not to change it.

"'Christmas in July'!" the editor said. "Oh, wow, that's terrific. Where do you come up with this stuff, Soph? I was scratching my head all day trying to get a lead."

When they went to bars after work to celebrate -- usually just the end of a work day -- Sophie was almost claustrophobic. Tables full of 20 people from work, having five different conversations. Sophie would lose herself in listening to the karaoke sometimes or idly watching the baseball game on one of the televisions near the bartender until someone would snap her out of it with an offer at conversation.

But there was something different about conversation in the bar than it was, say, sitting next to an idol or even talking to a homeless person. Conducting journalistic interviews, there was a formula to it. There was a start and end point. Sophie could tell just exactly when she got what she needed for the story. She didn't even write down questions anymore. She was dogged in tracking down people, invading their personal homes or private time with family in order to get a scoop. But in the bar, even with the invitation of pals from work, she just couldn't tell where these conversations were going.





Saoirse pushed a rickety shopping cart halfway down the aisle. Spotting the Meow Mix, she bent down to the bottom shelf and heaved the huge, economy-sized bag into the cart. Her legs remained straight as she carried it, and her back ached. The bag hit the top of the cart, and she pushed it over and into the cart with a loud clang.

Grocery shopping sucked, she thought, wincing at the pain. Yet it was somehow one of the only events in her week. She pushed up her cheap, horn-rimmed glasses and headed to the cash register.

She wore a baggy, lavender sweater and had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a sensible, workday ponytail. She threw her worn coupon book into the cart, its contents ripped apart so much that it looked like a dog had gotten hold of it.

As she found a suitably sized line and began placing her items to be scanned, she noticed the same words jumping off each box, each package, each carton: "free." She was living a fat free, sugar free, low-calorie life, she decided. She didn't remember when she decided. It just seemed right.

Her eyes, shrouded behind her cheap lenses, caught the smile of the cashier as he said, "Would you like this in a bag, ma'am?" He held up the latest Rolling Stone with Adam Lambert on the cover.

"No, that's alright," Saoirse said, reaching her hand out. Bags caused creases, and creases made stacks of Rolling Stones get too poofy and bloated for her liking. They took up more storage space that way.

As she tucked the Stone mag underneath her arm, she scrutinized the cashier's face more clearly. Squinting, he almost looked like Bryan. Her eyes dropped to the nametag.

"Ryan," she said, aloud.

"Yes?"

"Oh, sorry, just reading your name."

"Oh."

Saoirse tried to hide how mortified she was over that encounter. She always felt herself trying to start conversations with people at work or while doing errands over the dumbest, most idle things in her imagination like the weather or local bands. She constantly chided herself for it because people usually weren't receptive. Because it was weird to just have small talk with complete strangers. And it was an utter waste of time anyway, so why bother?

She sighed to herself, as she paid with cash. "You can keep the tip."

Ryan smiled. "Thanks."

Saoirse walked the cart back to her car and laughed. He probably thought I was hitting on him, she thought. I'm like 10 years older than he is. He's probably halfway to calling the cops.

She laughed so hard at the thought that she snorted, a sound drowned out by the opening of her trunk.

Hopefully he's not as much of an asshole as Bryan, she thought.  Her smile faded, and she suddenly started blinking more rapidly, the hint of moisture making her eyes sensitive.

She still cringed whenever someone said the word "abortion."

Looking back on high school, it felt like "A Tale of Two Cities" to Saoirse -- the very beginning, the carefree first act with no worries or complaints. Then the second act with all of its drunken mistakes and compromises with the future. Then the third act, sitting in her room and doing homework.

Sophie used to ask why Saoirse didn't hang out with her friends anymore. Saoirse just felt like she couldn't. It wasn't in her power. Things were different. The time when they were friends had seemed like such a long time ago so suddenly. And she didn't have the strength to deal with the sexually demanding Bryan or other sexually starved teenage friends. It was disgusting. She found solace in Sophie’s company that senior year.

Between drinks, Lucille had attributed her daughter's forced exile to hormones and nothing more. Sometimes Saoirse wondered if her prognosis had any truth to it. Even when she made friends now, at work at the music store, she was only chatty during work hours.

"Hey, uh, a few of us are going to see Sufjan Stevens downtown on Saturday. You wanna come?" said Ivan, a local stoner and hippie who came into the store all the time, mostly it seemed to flirt with Saoirse.

Saoirse really liked Ivan in the sense that he was good at conversation and kept her mind off things she despised thinking about. "Maybe some other time. I think I might be hanging out with girlfriends that night." She wasn't.

As she got in the car to haul her groceries back to her apartment, she thought of how empty it would be when she got there, how the sounds of her putting her groceries in cupboards would echo, how the dull tone of the air conditioning would vibrate and deafen her. She sighed again and turned the ignition on.





While the two were deeply saddened when they get the call, neither Saoirse or Sophie were very surprised when they heard their mother had died due to liver failure.

Sophie flew in on short notice for the funeral, which turned out to be quite a private affair. Sophie wasn't sure how private until she walked to the cemetery site and saw a preacher and only one occupied chair in the audience -- the white chair adorned with the back of an unforgettable blonde head of hair.

When Sophie went up to the front row to sit next to her sister, Saoirse mouthed a hello and waved, as if breaking the silence would damn their mother to hell. The sisters sat solemnly, sullenly staring at their feet or looking into the distance, as the preacher ran through the motions.

After this was over and the two had gotten a last look at their mother, ashen cold in death, they turned to each other and walked back together to their cars.

"Long time no see," Saoirse began.

Sophie squinted her eyes, computing. "Five years, I think."

"Why didn't you call?"

Sophie looked at the ground and shrugged. "Didn't know what to say."

Perhaps it was the emotion of the moment -- her mother's funeral had just taken place after all -- but Saoirse was feeling firey for the first time in a long time. "You could have said something," she said, grimacing. "Instead you just left us behind."

"Come on, the Post," she said.

"Yeah, I know, the Post, but you could have visited. You could have called. Hell, you could have sent an e-mail."

Sophie felt like her mother was not dead after all. She looked up at her sister's face and squinted. "What happened to your glasses?"

"What?!" Saoirse said, incredulously.

Sophie repeated, slowly and in wonderment, "What happened to your glasses?"

Saoirse blew up. "I don't know, Sophie. I got drunk at a party, got frisky with a guy, got my glasses thrown off and trampled on. Didn't have any money to replace them so I had to get this cheap, terrible pair. How is this important right now?"

"But you loved those glasses."

"So what? What does that have to do with me getting them broken?"

Sophie was silent for a moment and shrugged. In a brisk motion, she took off her glasses and held them out to Saoirse. "You should take these."

Saoirse sighed, exasperated. "What are you doing?"

"Take this pair. It's good."

"I don't want your glasses."

"Just do it. Take them from me. I can replace them. I haven't been in your life in ages. Let me," she paused, collecting her breath. "Let me do something for you."

Saoirse furrowed her brow, looking between the glasses and her sister's face, the outstretched hand and her unfocused, dazed pupils.

She took the glasses.

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

Albright no

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

Actually that helped make it readable.

Let's do this.

Everything went back to those wire-rimmed glasses.

As an outspoken advocate of the American Dream, specifically as it pertained to her Irish-American children, Lucille Blume professed that she always wanted her twin daughters to have it better than she did.

I love two sentences that have nothing to do with each other.

So instead of buying an extra bottle of Chardonnay -- to go along with the other bottles of liquor she'd purchased one evening -- she decided to send the money so that exactly one of her children could go on the eighth-grade Washington D.C. trip.

What? Since when do parents have to pay the equivalent of expensive liquor for a school field trip? And I don't understand the setup here. Is she so poor that she can only afford to send one daughter on a school trip, but not so poor that she can conceivably buy a bottle of chardonnay to go along with more liquor?

"It's all I have to give," Lucille said, as she popped the cork of her bottle of $50 brandy.

The cork flew up in the air, hit the tip of one of the propellers of the Blumes' rickety ceiling fan and struck Sophie Blume, age 13, square in the forehead. Contents of the brandy bottle bubbled up onto the floor.

Useless descriptions. She's in the 8th grade so we can already surmise what age she is. What is the point of describing this action in the first place?

"Oh, look what you made me do," Lucille said. She put down the brandy on the dark brown, broken-down coffee table, the one with all of Lucille's fine porcelain dolls adorning it, and went to get some paper towels.

What are porcelain dolls doing on a coffee table, and why is there a coffee table in the kitchen?

Sophie's sister, Saoirse, of whom Lucille generously bequeathed the tidy sum of $60 just minutes prior, scrunched up her face, furrowed her eyebrows and focused on the ground. She moved her sneakers back and forth into a side of the spill on the shag carpeting, watching as the liquid made the light yellow carpet into brown. Her sneaker, with all the dirt of recess, made the brown into black.

"A side of the spill?" What? Why is there carpeting in the kitchen? The bit about the sneaker making the carpet brown/black/whatever is tedious.

"We're out of paper towels," Lucille announced, as she held up two Classifieds sections from the local paper like they were a newborn baby. She got on the floor, and the typeface ground into the carpet.

Classified sections. Why is it taking two paragraphs to describe someone wiping the floor?

"But, Mom," sputtered Saoirse's sister, Sophie, between gasps of air. "Why does Saoirse get to go and not me?"

We already fucking know that Saoirse is Sophie's sister and vice-versa. "Sputtering" is sufficient enough without going into how this sputtering fit into her breathing patterns.

Lucille sighed, put her hands on her knees and looked at Saoirse. "You can't always get what you want in this life, dear. Besides your sister is older."

This was true. Lucille gave birth to the two babies on a hot, sweaty May morning. "You kept me up all night," Lucille would often say between swigs. Saoirse entered the world at 5:05 a.m. Sophie popped out at 5:10 a.m. As a result, forever Sophie would earn the label "little sister." And as a result, despite the mere five-minute age difference, somehow hand-me-down dresses, frayed books and the like all found her.

Two "as a result"s in a row, I love it. This graf should've ended right after "Little sister."

"But everybody's going!" Sophie yelped in the same kind of exasperated pitch as a man without an umbrella's "Oh, no" at a glimpse of the rain falling.

You mean it's kind of low-pitched? Because men generally have lower pitches than 13-year old girls?

Saoirse nodded her head furiously. "It's true, Mom. Everyone is going."

Lucille held up the drenched newspaper sections with one finger and winced at the smell. "If everyone jumped off a bridge ..."

How do you hold something with one finger? Just say "newspaper," not "newspaper sections."

"That's doesn't have anything to do with anything!" Saoirse yelled. She stomped to her room. Her sneakers caused the whole room to shake, punctuated by a door slam.

The third sentence is not a sentence. Why is Saoirse mad when she's the one who gets to go?

Lucille raised her eyebrows sternly, as she deposited the trash. She made her way back to the bottle and poured herself a glass. She promptly took it to her mouth and turned it upside down. The glass slammed back on the table, and she tipped the bottle up to pour another.

Tedious description of a simple act.

Without looking at her, Lucille said, "Saoirse, Mommy needs some time to herself. Why don't you go to your room and do your homework?"

I thought Saoirse just went into her room?

Saoirse shuffled her feet. "I kind of wanted to play video games," Saoirse said, eyeing the Sega Genesis on top of the 13-inch television. The letters "sis" had been rubbed completely off the system to where it said "SEGA GENE." The ancient $20 Toys R Us sticker was still planted on the top right of it, like a stamp licked yesterday.

What purpose does describing the Genesis in minute detail serve?

"How many times must I say it, dear, you are never to watch television as long as you are in my house," Lucille said, as she clutched the bottle to her chest like she was accepting an Oscar. "It's filth, and it's certainly not fit for impressionable children. To think what my father would say at what they put on these days."

Someone clutching an Oscar is probably very proud of their achievement, but Lucille doesn't sound proud, so why use that analogy? She sounds fearful, reactionary...

And they never did watch TV. The most Saoirse and Sophie had seen on the electronic box in their lives had been Channel One and Cable in the Classroom, which Lucille called a vicious marketing ploy by television advertisers to get their greedy hands on America's youth. "Shame on that Bill Clinton for allowing this to happen," Lucille often said in between swigs.

So Lucille routinely denounces Bill Clinton? Or just Channel One?

"No, I will," Lucille said. She put her glass and the bottle down because she was feeling noble. She seemed to look out past the dry wallpaper and cracked ceilings of the family apartment and into America itself. She put her arm around Saoirse. "You know, darling, if we don't do what's right and stand up for what we believe in, this world could go to hell in a handbasket."

That first sentence is an abomination. The second sentence has no meaning.

More to come, unfortunately

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

As soon as Saoirse entered the room, she adjusted her brown, wire-rimmed glasses. If Sophie was to describe them: The glasses were sideways ovals of glass, connected beautifully by a long thin wire with an immaculate U-shaped curve in the interlocking middle. They were the perfect centerpiece to Saoirse's round-shaped face, and by all rights, they belonged on her.

Why is Sophie's description of them relevant? "Sideways ovals of glass," oh good, I wasn't sure what glasses were for before I read this. How can something objectively be connected "beautifully"? Oh right, Sophie is "describing" them. And "by all rights, they belonged to her."? Well yeah, they're her glasses, so why is it necessary to point this out explicitly?

Her mother had even said so. They went to the department store exactly one year ago to pick out the perfect glasses. Lucille only had enough money for one pair of glasses because of the liquor she had purchased earlier in the afternoon.

Ah yes, alcoholics are known for scrimping to buy their kids glasses.

"Those glasses look perfect on you, Saoirse," Lucille said with a long smile, on the way back from the store. Her gaze in the rearview mirror turned to Sophie. "Don't you see, Sophie? You have a heart-shaped face. They would have hung loosely, dear, like a wire hanger without a cardigan on it."

They're twins but they've got different-shaped heads. So they're not identical?

Sophie frowned, fidgeted in her seat under the tight ropes of the seat belt and lightly felt her face with her right palm.

Seatbelts aren't made of rope and this description of fidgeting is entirely too long.

Both sisters had developed vision problems, so both needed glasses, but Sophie's came from a government-assisted program for needy families. Hers were horn-rimmed, not her style of choice, with wings on the side and looked like they came out of somebody's 1950s high school yearbook.

In other words, hers were horn-rimmed, and they looked like horn-rimmed glasses. Also "government assistance program".

I'm going to take a second to notice that you get very descriptive of completely irrelevant details, but gloss over something that could use a bit more detail. So instead of saying "Both sisters had developed vision problems," say "Both had blurry vision" or "Both were near-sighted." Small but a more meaningful piece of context, unlike what material the seatbelts were made of.

Her mother couldn't even sugarcoat it when they picked them up later. "Well you can see better, can't you?" she said.

Stop telling, start showing, nig.

They picked up Sophie's glasses two weeks after Saoirse's, which meant two weeks more of headaches and bad grades on Math quizzes for Sophie.

"Why don't you just buy her glasses already?" said her impatient sixth-grade math teacher at a parent-teacher conference.

Lucille broke down, crying hysterically. The parent-teacher conference ended with the teacher offering his whole box of tissues for Lucille to take home and his constant repetition of "I'm so sorry," with varying inflections.

"With varying inflections." What the hell does that mean and why is it relevant for inclusion?

The crying spell went away immediately as Lucille and Sophie exited the room. "Don't ever put me in that position again," was all Lucille said to her that day. Her breath smelt of rum.

"Smelt" is what you do to metal. "Smelled" is the past tense of "smell."

So when Saoirse moved back those exquisite glasses, a calculated push back orchestrated by her index and ring fingers, Sophie felt a pang of pain deep inside her, like a knife cut to the heart. She rolled her tongue against her teeth and frowned.

Just fucking say "when Saoirse pushed back her glasses." ORCHESTRATED BY HER INDEX AND RING FINGERS. Good god it must take you 30 minutes to describe eating breakfast.

Sitting on the top bunk, Sophie moved to the edge of the bed, letting her feet dangle in the air. Looking down at Saoirse, Sophie made a fist and was instantly clutching an invisible microphone. "Tell us, Saoirse, inquiring minds want to know: What makes you so special?" Sophie said.

Making a fist and clutching a microphone are two different things. Just say "clutching an invisible microphone" or something.

Saoirse sighed and laid down on her bed, the bottom bunk, grabbing an issue of Rolling Stone that was next to her. The Backstreet Boys were on the cover. "The only reason you're suffering is because, well, as you would say, 'Mom is a bitch.'"

Lied down. Just say she lied down on the bottom bunk because you already said Saoirse's bunk was the top one. Was the issue of Rolling Stone next to her the whole time? Or was it next to the bed or something? Also, who is saying that?

Ignoring the wooden stepladder, Sophie suddenly pushed herself forward, jumping down to the floor. She turned toward Saoirse and glared.

Is it relevant that she ignores the stepladder? No.

"I didn't read your diary," Saoirse said, raising her voice an octave in protest. A beat passed. "Buuuttt if I did, so what?"

What the fuck is your obsession with pitches and octaves?

Sophie jumped on Saoirse and grabbed two handfuls of sweater. "What do you know?" she said, squinting her eyes and in a whisper, attempting to mimic those police interrogators she saw on television over at Veronica Watson's house.

Police interrogators on TV rarely whisper when accosting a suspect, so that's retarded. The sentence is also garbled. You describe what she says, then her eyes, then back to how she says it within the span of like 10 words. Dumb dumb dumb.

Saoirse wrenched away and held up the crinkled Rolling Stone. "Hey, it took two weeks' allowance to buy this!"

Two weeks to buy an old Rolling Stone?

"Apparently you read my diary more often than you read Rolling Stone."

Yes we understand the magazine's name is Rolling Stone.

Saoirse used her peripheral vision and eyed an old copy of Stone -- the one with Hanson. She wondered whether a rolled-up Stone cover would get Sophie off. She didn't really like Hanson anyway. "Listen, all I'm saying is that you can spend all your time writing to yourself about things you already know, or you can tell someone new."

She "used" her peripheral vision, as in, she just gave sideways glances around the room, trying not to focus on anything so she can spot it out of the corner of her eye? Or that she can only focus on things outside the center of her vision? Or did you mean to say "Out of the corner of her eye she spotted...", like how people normally talk?

And now why are you calling it "Stone"? Nobody calls it "Stone." "Tell someone new"? The hell does that mean?

"And why not me? I'm your loving sister," she said, eyes wide with exasperation.

Why not say "she said exasperatingly" while you're at it.

Sophie let go of her grip in defeat and moved off Saoirse, to the edge of the bottom bunkbed.

More words. More. Just keep throwing as many useless words out there as you can.

Saoirse took in the room. She saw the color pink dotted everywhere -- from the bed covers to the teddy bears to the make-up kits. "God, we are in such a girly cliche right now. All we are missing is our room having bright pink walls with hearts on them."

I can't imagine anyone saying this.

"Mom said the room would be pink, but the paint at Lowe's was too expensive." (A gallon of paint at Lowe's can cost about $20, but a pregnant Lucille bought liquor the afternoon she shopped around at Lowe's. And she's been too busy to go back to Lowe's in the past 13 years, she says.)

Okay, so Lucille is willing to part with $60 to send her kid on a field trip, but too cheap to spring for $20 for a can of paint.

Sophie mumbled out of the corner of her mouth as she bit her index finger. "Mom says we haven't refined our tastes yet, and she is good at choosing things."

Mumbling out of the corner of your mouth is redundant.

A beat passed. Sophie eyed Saoirse. "You know, you are saying a lot about Mom after she gave you the money to go to D.C. and not me. Maybe I should have a little chat with her. She might change her mind."

A beat? Is there a fucking metronome playing? Also who's speaking?

Saoirse swung her legs off to the side, put down the Rolling Stone and got up. "You won't."

Just say she got up. She got up off the bed. Jesus Christ.

Sophie's eyes followed Saoirse across the room. "Why do you say that?"

WHO IS SPEAKING.

Sophie smiled, conspiratorially. "Are you going to see Bryan?" she whispered.

Alright you know what? I'm stopping right here. You haven't learned a damn thing from your first story, CK. You can't stop tossing as many meaningless descriptions in your writing as possible, so I have to climb over shit like "Sophie smiled, conspiratorially." So if you ain't learning then there's no point continuing this.

[The Crooked Banister]

Sophie wiped her Washington Post keycard

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

ADJECTIVESADVERBS

[The Crooked Banister]

When you write do you think "Yeah this sounds like what I imagine books contain" and base your dialogue and uh, everything, off of that?

[The Crooked Banister]

PS. Love the new name y'all. 

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

Tomorrow I'm going to eat breakfast and then write about it for 30 minutes.

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

Tomorrow I'm going to eat breakfast and then write about it for 30 minutes.

I kinda think we all should.

[Webcam ham.]

I'm in.

This is awful, Robb. Awful.

[A albright...]

I had oatmeal; dried, rolled oats, topped with yellow mushy applesauce to make it more palatable and taste better. I added hot water and stirred the concoction until it had the consistency of a thick paste; like spackle, except edible. I also had a strawberry, banana, and mixed berry smoothie; all ingredients having been put into a blender and blended with milk to create a delicious, healthy, frothy, healthy morning beverage. It reminded me of breakfasts back at home, except I had to make it myself and, though I often ate oatmeal at home, I never really had smoothies until I started living on my own and making them myself, like a hermit with a fruity beverage fetish.

[Brak]

Breakfast is for nerds

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Holy shit did this really exist

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

The youthful, vibrant face of Mikey turned into a circular, shocked expression of amazement as he laid his naive, confuzzled eyes on the multi-colored, vibrant animated box of the sugary sweet Nerds cereal.

Mikey reacted with a deep-throated expression of his bewilderment.

"Whoa", Mikey exclaimed in a nasally, unknowing voice stemming from his slimy, wet tongue through his chapped, fuchsia lips into the Oxygen-filled atmosphere in which the soundwaves could vibrate to the nearest ear.

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

Mikey deep-throated

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Answer the first post

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Awww, you guys! I come back here and find that my short story has 24 replies and another thread created in tribute to it. Wow, I feel so popular suddenly. Thanks everyone for reading my story.

To OVK: I've taken several creative writing classes, and every single one of them denounces the "Show, don't tell" cliche as being a cliche. It's what creates meandering stories with no plot. Now is that ironic that I say that, considering I sometimes slip into overdescription of simple things? Yes, probably. But I think things like Sophie feeling her face are relevent because her mother just critiqued the shape of her damn face.

And try to like read something in context. Or try not to be dense, I don't know. I don't understand how you are so baffled at the stuff with the mother. The inconsistencies in her spending are due to her selfishness and alcoholism and her favoring Saoirse over Sophie is due to her favoritism. And all the stuff about Clinton and Channel One is because she's crazy.

When did I say anything in the beginning was happening in the kitchen? Answer, I didn't. Believe it or not people can be in the living room, go get paper towels in the kitchen and come right back. Also how is "Her sneakers caused the whole room to shake, punctuated by a door slam." not a sentence?

All the stuff with the glasses is because that is the key prop of the story. Sometimes things that are mundane are actually paid close attention to because they represent more than just glasses. In the context of the entire story, hopefully this would come across.

I don't understand your confusion with who is speaking. It's clear that whoever is doing an action is speaking, and the paragraph breaks only come with a change in speaker. You know, like how books and screenplays and essays and journalism stories and everything ever written is? Isn't it obvious that a paragraph with "Saoirse ate a sandwich. "This is a tasty sandwich." that Saoirse is speaking? You'd probably be like WHO IS SPEAKING HERE?? Thanks, though, for the slip-up early on when I said that Saoirse screamed instead of Sophie.

You understand what a beat is in music, and that's half the battle, OVK! For help, here's a definition from Dictionary.com: "Theater. a momentary time unit imagined by an actor in timing actions: Wait four beats and then pick up the phone." Follow the clues. Could this mean like a period of time in which nothing happens or there's a moment's hesitation? Could it??

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Yo can someone who read that post tell me if it's another story

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

To OVK: I've taken several creative writing classes, and every single one of them denounces the "Show, don't tell" cliche as being a cliche. It's what creates meandering stories with no plot.

All this shows is that you have absolutely no idea what "show, don't tell" means.

Also, descriptions are great when they actually contribute meaningfully to what's important in the scene. In your case, it's the writing equivalent of someone filming a parade and spending 90% of the time with the camera zoomed in on the shirt buttons of the guy standing next to them in the crowd.

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Yo can someone who read that post tell me if it's another story

It is Joe

btw I'm Joe. It is, CK

Tell me what show, don't tell means OVK, goddamn it by all means you son of a bitch

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

I'm not OVK

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Whoops it read like an OVK post

Tell me essel

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Or rather show me

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

*points to dick*

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

From the Wikipedia page for "Show, don't tell":

The issue of when to "show" and when to "tell" is the subject of ongoing debate.[9]

According to novelist Francine Prose:

    [The Alice Munro passage] contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers—namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out.

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

So the moral of the story is, don't be an idiot who takes general guidelines literally, and understand what people are actually telling you

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Don't ask, don't tell, don't show

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Don't ask, don't tell, don't show

yes Joe, a rule we should all follow

and no essel

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

Thanks everyone for reading my story.

I didn't read your fucking story. Because it sucks.

To OVK: I've taken several creative writing classes, and every single one of them denounces the "Show, don't tell" cliche as being a cliche. It's what creates meandering stories with no plot. Now is that ironic that I say that, considering I sometimes slip into overdescription of simple things? Yes, probably. But I think things like Sophie feeling her face are relevent because her mother just critiqued the shape of her damn face.

Does the shape of her fucking face matter so much that it's a critical plot point? No. It has nothing to do with anything. And you know what makes a meandering story with no plot? Describing things that have no relevance to the story.

And try to like read something in context. Or try not to be dense, I don't know. I don't understand how you are so baffled at the stuff with the mother. The inconsistencies in her spending are due to her selfishness and alcoholism and her favoring Saoirse over Sophie is due to her favoritism. And all the stuff about Clinton and Channel One is because she's crazy.

I don't get that. Why does she care about Saoirise? That's not established. She just does? That's not good enough. Maybe if you spent more time illustrating the relationship than the fucking Sega Genesis, maybe it wouldn't be confusing.

All the stuff with the glasses is because that is the key prop of the story. Sometimes things that are mundane are actually paid close attention to because they represent more than just glasses. In the context of the entire story, hopefully this would come across.

It doesn't come across because I didn't get that far because I couldn't get past how awful the prose was.

When did I say anything in the beginning was happening in the kitchen? Answer, I didn't. Believe it or not people can be in the living room, go get paper towels in the kitchen and come right back. Also how is "Her sneakers caused the whole room to shake, punctuated by a door slam." not a sentence?

You didn't say which room it was. Normally when I picture someone opening a drink, I picture a kitchen. I guess using adverbs was more important than setting basic scenery, though.

And it's technically a sentence but the latter half is a dangling whatever.

I don't understand your confusion with who is speaking. It's clear that whoever is doing an action is speaking, and the paragraph breaks only come with a change in speaker. You know, like how books and screenplays and essays and journalism stories and everything ever written is? Isn't it obvious that a paragraph with "Saoirse ate a sandwich. "This is a tasty sandwich." that Saoirse is speaking? You'd probably be like WHO IS SPEAKING HERE?? Thanks, though, for the slip-up early on when I said that Saoirse screamed instead of Sophie.

You're supposed to say who is talking, because sometimes someone does an action and while they're doing that action someone else speaks.

You understand what a beat is in music, and that's half the battle, OVK! For help, here's a definition from Dictionary.com: "Theater. a momentary time unit imagined by an actor in timing actions: Wait four beats and then pick up the phone." Follow the clues. Could this mean like a period of time in which nothing happens or there's a moment's hesitation? Could it??

It's a stupid word to use in a stupid story that's about a pair of glasses and I couldn't care less.

[Webcam ham.]

And try to like read something in context. Or try not to be dense, I don't know. I don't understand how you are so baffled at the stuff with the mother. The inconsistencies in her spending are due to her selfishness and alcoholism and her favoring Saoirse over Sophie is due to her favoritism. And all the stuff about Clinton and Channel One is because she's crazy.

I don't get that. Why does she care about Saoirise? That's not established. She just does? That's not good enough. Maybe if you spent more time illustrating the relationship than the fucking Sega Genesis, maybe it wouldn't be confusing.

This was really funny. I laughed and it gave me the hiccups.

[Brak]

This all seems like an awful lot for a dumb story written by CK