Crystal Grader by Tag Cavello (read my book txt) 📕

if smoked or injected. Once a user becomes addicted, he or she will go to colossal lengths to make certain their supply does not ebb. Once active within the brain, the drug provides its user with a rush of pleasure, followed by flushed skin and a dry mouth. Withdrawal symptoms are severe, and include pain, vomiting, and muscle spasms. The most common treatments for heroin addiction are through medication and behavioral therapy.

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(*For the record, I do hope that I am mistaken about this. And out of fairness to the town and its residents I would like to add that a great many of the old homes were also restored during the 1990s. These restorations I was able to witness for myself. They took place on State Street, Norwood Avenue, and in every other neighborhood, more or less, with early beginnings.)

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Now Monroeville is a very different town indeed, though one may not deduce as much simply by walking its streets. More of the same architectural styles may be used to describe its dwellings. More of the same elm, oak, and chestnut trees shade its quiet neighborhoods. There is a church, a library, a post office. Yet something which Norwalk lacks can be found here as well, and the best word I can think of for it is dedication.

Dedication to what, old man? I can already hear you asking.

But that’s an easy answer: to peace, tranquility, and order.

The streets, as I mentioned, are quiet, as well as perfectly safe to stroll at any hour of the day. In fact should local authorities catch you outside after 11PM (and they will if you chance such a thing, for law enforcement in Monroeville carries out its duties with strict regard towards the prevention of disturbances before they occur), you will be questioned as to your intentions. There is no such thing, therefore, as a late stroll in Monroeville. Goodness no. What are you up to, being out this late? Where are you going? How long will it take? These and other such questions you should be prepared to answer if you find yourself on the wrong end of a Monroeville cop’s flashlight. Nor is this dedication limited to law enforcement. Most residents adhere to it as well, and are happy with their way of life.

The first building was put up in 1812 by one William Frink, and later sold to a gentleman from Monroe, Michigan by the name of Seth Brown. In 1817 this same gentleman platted the town of Monroe, Ohio, which was later changed to Monroeville, as Ohio had already boasted a town by the former name.

The town grew to a size it was comfortable with…and then stopped. As a pleasant community of fishing, farming, and high school football, it stopped. The explanation is simple: Once Monroeville had what it wanted, it wanted no more. Would that we could all learn something from this.

Having said these things, it may be safe to point out that Crystal, in her youth, was utterly miserable in growing up there. As of this writing I have known her for fifteen years. She has faults. Oh! Countless faults! But I love her anyway. Perhaps Monroeville was a punishment for the kind of girl she was. If so, she wore her chains with a grim sneer, and a gaze that never wavered. Bravo.

22

 

Upon returning home from Norwalk, Crystal went directly back to the pad and pencil in her room. The theme she’d written there—how to cope with a broken heart—was still waiting. Beneath it, she scratched out a simple sentence describing what the novel would be about: A boy meets and falls in love with a girl, only to lose her to a devastating illness.

She stared at the page for a few minutes, chewing on her pencil. It was no good. Too depressing. With a scowl, Crystal ripped the page out, balled it up, and threw it across the room. She didn’t want her first novel to be a crier; hell, she didn’t want any of her novels to be criers. And in Jarett’s story about Vicky, tears were really all there were. They’d met in high school and had fallen madly in love. Jarett wrote dozens of letters to her, which he apparently never sent. They’d held hands in the hallways, exchanged kisses in cozy corners, gone out on dates at whatever malt shop had been swingin’ at the time. And then…cancer. For Vicky. A rare form of lymphoma that took just six months to kill her, along with the dream she and Jarett had shared.

“No way am I writing about that,” Crystal said to the empty room. “No way.”

He had related the story to her between kisses on the afternoon Lucretia gave them their little scare. Too hot and bothered at the time to consider its weight, Crystal had catalogued it instead, shelved its contents for later employment. Then, of course, had come the trip to Norwalk, which really had been nothing more than an attempt to stir up some ghosts to flame her inspiration. A near miss, that. She and Lucy had been able to locate the closed arcade where the couple had spent so much happy time together, and even infiltrate it. Yet there’d been nothing on the inside to indicate that once, not so long ago, Prince Charming and Cinderella held court here. There’d been no graffiti in the bathrooms (the stalls and toilets were ripped out), no heart-shaped carvings on any of the broken consoles, no initials etched into the wall where the payphone had been. Lucy, with her typical impoverished coordination, had tripped over a number of broken chairs and tables, encouraging Crystal to further petulance. Disgusted by all the dust on her clothes (and more than a little uneasy there in the dark with but a single flashlight), she’d given up the adventure after a mere twenty minutes.

Now she needed a new theme, a new topic, a new everything. Wonderful.

In the following Monday’s lesson she shared as much of this with Jarett as she felt able, without revealing that his own past lay hidden in the weave of the project. To her complete surprise, his reaction turned out to be one of sympathy, and with an eagerness that she found almost self-supportive, went on to describe a number of ideas of his own that had taken hold, grown a few small buds, and then died as suddenly as they’d been born.

“Don’t worry about it,” he kept saying from his accustomed teaching chair. “Don’t worry about it at all, Crystal. It’s happened to every single writer who’s ever lived. In fact part of being a writer is having the balls to let go of an idea that isn’t working.”

“I’m not worried,” she said, “just…kind of pissed off that I wasted so much time on it.”

“Don’t even be that. Don’t bring negativity into your work. Gets you nowhere. And,” he went on, just as she opened her mouth to respond, “I want to point out that you didn’t waste time on anything. This idea is part of the road that you’re on. You stopped, you considered it, you passed it by. Simple as that.”

Crystal smiled. She was more than happy to take his advice, but left that day with no promises as to when any fresh material for the assignment would come about. She also left that day in a bit of a temper. Twice during the lesson she’d attempted a sexual coup on his body; twice she’d been rejected, with several not nows interspersed with panicked glances out the window. Clearly Jarett was still in a dither about what had happened the week before.

“Don’t worry about scrapping ideas,” he reassured, for maybe the twenty-seventh time, shooing her out the door towards Lucretia’s car.

“Jesus, Jarett, why don’t you just pick me up and throw me off the porch?”

He apologized, waving nervously at Lucretia as he did so. “I don’t want her suspecting anything.”

“I told you, she doesn’t. It was just a joke.”

“All right.”

But he was still talking out the corner of his mouth, still waving at Lucretia.

Crystal left him to it. Her shoes kicked up gravel as she stormed across the drive, got into the car, and slammed the door.

“Good lesson?” Lucretia asked, bemused.

“Yeah,” Crystal sneered, “loads of fun.”

Her frustration continued into the evening. Intending to follow Jarett’s don’t worry about it instructions to the letter, she went upstairs after dinner and filled a bubble-bath for a long, relaxing soak. With the door locked, she took everything off, then went to the mirror. The girl looking back had grown breasts over the previous year—small ones, true, but breasts all the same. It was about time.

She took a deep breath, liking the way they rose on her ribcage, held it in…

And just like that, another idea for a novel hit her.

No, she thought, shaking her head, no more work. Go away.

Yet the idea was persistent. It floated in her mind like the mist that now fogged the room. Still refusing to breathe, Crystal shut her eyes tight. It was a mistake. In the darkness behind her lids, the idea gained color, clarity.

A female escape artist who sees herself as invincible tries the ultimate underwater escape…and pays the ultimate price.

Theme: the danger of pride.

“Damn,” she blew out, needing air. “Crystal, give me a break, what do you know about the danger of pride?”

Her lip twisted as she reached out and wrote the word fuck on the steamed-over mirror. Nevertheless, the idea had possibilities. Annoying ones that made her stomach ache. Letting go of the love story based in Jarett’s childhood had not only been logical, but liberating as well. She’d entertained no thoughts of starting up with something else, and if Jarett didn’t like that, then so be it. Now along comes this woman, whoever she was. This so-called escape artist.

“Not tonight,” Crystal told her out loud. “Not tonight, and maybe not even this week, so you can just shut up right now.”

Satisfied by this decree, she stepped into the tub and didn’t get back out for an hour.

 

Another reason Crystal wasn’t keen on doing work had to do with the calendar. It was spring break week, which meant that students of all ages and colors were doing their level best not to think about school in any guise it chose to haunt in. Hannah, now eleven, had recently gotten her own cell phone, and spent a great deal of time these days in her room using it. Crystal saw her only twice a day—at breakfast and dinner. This was okay with Lucretia because it gave them less opportunity to squabble over what she referred to (always with rolling eyes) as kid nonsense.

About the squabbling Crystal couldn’t help but agree. She and Hannah had indeed been fighting a lot lately. Not that it mattered. They were sisters, yes, but more and more, it seemed like that relationship existed in name only. They were two different girls—or so Crystal had always thought. The things she knew about Hannah consisted mainly of the dolls she played with, the clothes she wore, and the sticks and stones she threw.

This week the battlefront was quiet, which surprised Lucretia, as both girls spent much of it cooped up in the house together. They ate their meals whilst barely exchanging a word. Every so often during these rituals Crystal would glance up at her mom to find her wearing the expression of a woman stumped on a crossword. But their temporary truce, as Crystal could have told her if asked, was by no means complicated: The weather had turned balmy for the first time since last September, signifying the official death of winter. That, Crystal knew, tended to cheer everyone living north of the Mason-Dixon Line up for at least a week.

Indeed, she slept with her window open on most nights during