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

And as far as Crystal knew, it was still winning. The house on Eagle View Drive was the best looking one in the neighborhood. The lawn was green. The garage door was electric. Paint shined on the windowsills. After years of strife, upper middle-class American living had at last deigned to grace them with its holistic presence. That it might one day decide to stop gracing them never even entered Crystal’s mind. It wouldn’t be fair to let it. After all, she’d never entertained thoughts of the tough times coming to an end.

Dry leaves rushed in front of the car as they pulled up, their music perfect for the dancing cardboard skeletons on the porch. Crystal stepped out on her side and stretched. The breeze, always strong up here, played through her hair. Elm trees swayed and creaked around the valley. In the empty park below, more leaves tumbled, gathering around the backstops of forlorn, empty baseball diamonds. Of course in any Ohio November it was indoor sports that carried the day, basketball in particular. Crystal knew better than to try out for her school’s team. She couldn’t dribble and her jump shot was nothing to make diary entries about, except perhaps for the sake of humor. No, for her, it would always be cheering. She had the grace for it, the balance, and most definitely the scream. Also, dropping from the top of the pyramid her squad sometimes made was a blast.

“Nobody wins without cheerleaders,” her mom said almost every Friday morning when Crystal came downstairs in her pleated skirt. “If you don’t believe that, look no further than the Cleveland Browns.”

“Earth to Crystal. Come in Crystal.”

She turned towards the house.

“Welcome back,” Lucretia said from the porch. “Everything okay over there?”

“Yeah, Mom. I was just daydreaming.”

“Let me guess: You’re on a Jack Frost kick and Novembers are starting to rev your heart.”

This made her laugh. “I can’t help it. It shares so many lonely spots with me.”

“Oh come on. You’re too young to know that song.”

“Yeah,” Crystal nodded, stepping onto the porch, “but I hear you singing it all the time. Adult Education, right?”

“I do not!”

Crystal’s fist went into the air by way of reply. “Afternoon in the homeroom, they’re about to let you go!” she sang.

“And the locker slams on the plans you had tonight!” Lucretia came right back with. Then, looking embarrassed, she reached into her purse for the house keys. “Do I really sing it that much?”

“It’s your favorite shower anthem. Don’t worry about it. I sing LFO songs when I wash.”

The keys jingled loose. “Yes, thank you for that painful reminder.”

“Stop it, you love those boys.”

“I like men, dear, not boys.”

“I’m not talking about sex, Mom, I’m talking about music.”

“Crystal,” Lucretia replied, putting the key in the door, “when everything is perfect they are one and the same.”

***

Minutes later Crystal stepped into her bedroom to get busy doing nothing for the rest of the day. Her mother’s remark about sex and music echoed in her mind, and she supposed that meant it should be considered further. Did it contain a clue of some sort to how all adults felt about the deed? The idea was a far cry from being ludicrous. In fact men sang their way into girls’ hearts on a regular basis. Rich Cronin of LFO had done it enough times. And yes, Crystal told herself, so had Daryl Hall, though not in this era. Most of the girls Crystal knew had never even heard of Hall and Oates.

Now for women the rules were different. A woman could not expect to sing her way into a man’s heart. Anyone who believed otherwise was a fool. Men simply weren’t impressed with the heights to be found in this arena. Indeed, a woman’s chosen ballad for the task (were she actually vain enough to undertake it) might bleed from the page with passion. Her voice, as it pealed out her pain, might be as high and pretty as the whitest clouds on a summer’s day. Yet still the object of her affection would likely as not do little more than nod and provide a forgettable compliment or two. A man’s appreciation (and this Crystal knew already, even at eleven) was far more associated with vision. That meant women had almost no choice when using music as a tool for seduction but to dance.

Crystal knew how to dance, but there was no way it would work for Powell, at least not at the outset. She needed to get her foot in the front door first. Earn the author’s trust. Then, perhaps, the idea of music becoming a fulcrum lever to other treasures could be considered.

Placing her mother’s comment on a mental shelf to be looked at later, Crystal stepped in front of her dressing mirror. Much to her pleasure, the girl inside of it did not look discouraged. Quite the reverse. Two blue eyes gleamed from the glass, sharp as a kunoichi’s cutting blades. Tufts of black hair, thick and wild as an elf’s, sprouted from her head. Every pore of the four foot, seven inch girl standing in front of her radiated confidence. She knew what she wanted, and where there was a will, there was a way.

***

“’I’m going to knock on his door’”, the girl decreed, nodding her head. “’Knock right on his door and then march right through it like the lady of the manor.”’

Hannah put down her fork. “What’s decreed?” she asked.

“It’s like a decision,” Crystal replied. “A hard, official decision.”

“Why not just use said?”

“’Because it rhymes with head.”

“So?”

“So it would sound stupid. Like when you play the clarinet.”

“Crystal,” Lucretia broke in, frowning. “Try to at least pretend like you’re grown up. Once in awhile.”

“Well she’s criticizing my story!”

“I didn’t hear any criticism. I heard a question. At any rate you shouldn’t be reading at the dinner table. It’s obnoxious.” She poured more wine into the glass by her plate, then raised an eyebrow. “Is it a romance story?”

“Yes.”

“Hot?”

“I escaped from a burning building today, Mom. Of course it’s hot.”

The older woman shrugged. “Well cut out one of those rights. You can’t say knock right on his door and then march right through it.”

“Wow,” Crystal said, flabbergasted. “Now I’ve got both of you bearing down on me.”

“Would you rather we falsely praised you to the moon like a couple of nitwit morning zoo sidekicks?”

Hannah smiled and let out a plastic laugh. “Oh, Crystal, you’re so funny! I love everything you do! Everybody should listen to this show!”

“All right, all right!” Crystal snarled. “Point taken! You don’t have to beat me over the head with it!”

“Daisy Head Mayzie!” Hannah sang. It was still her favorite book, and for obvious reasons, Crystal’s hair made her think of it all the time.

“Beach blonde bimbo!” Crystal trilled right back.

“Dumb dizzy dweeb dames,” Lucretia chimed in, happy to join the opera. “You need to stop fighting, because later you’re doing the dishes, and then you’re cleaning the porch, there’s still pumpkin shit on the railings.”

Hannah’s shoulders slumped. “Okay, that definitely sucks the melody out of the moment.”

“Agreed,” Crystal said, picking up her fork.

“Aw, my poor little babies. Will the tyranny never cease?”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Plates rattled; glasses jingled. Crystal’s thoughts went back to her romance story. After a month’s worth of composition, she’d been feeling less serious towards it of late. But suddenly it seemed like something good might come of it after all.

“Hey, Mom,” she said. “About that hot story?”

“Yes?”

“What would my heroine need to do,” she proceeded, “to win over the man that she wants? Any ideas?”

“You’re asking me? Crystal, honey, I couldn’t win a dirty look from a gay flight attendant.”

“Come on! I know you have information. Cough it up.”

Another swallow disappeared from the wine glass. Crystal waited. Her mom had always maintained a sense of humor about losing Brandon Genesio down that bike trail five years ago, never blaming herself without a wink, a toss of the hair, a sideways smirk. His act of abandonment, she knew (as did they all by now) had been one of pure cowardice. Ineptitude with the bearing up of family responsibility. Now, at the request for love advice, Lucretia had come back with another joke. It didn’t change a thing. Her self pity was still a sham.

“Well,” she began, “I haven’t actually read your story, so I don’t know the circumstances of your heroine’s plight. But what she might want to do is find out the man’s weakness when it comes to sex.”

A silvery clatter came from under the table as Hannah dropped her fork.

“Easy, dear,” Lucretia told her. “All I mean is that different people have different, specific things that…well, that turn them on. Crystal, if your heroine can find out what that is for the hero, she could use it to her advantage. Break down his defenses.”

“I see,” Crystal said, with a dreamy, appreciative nod.

“Good,” Lucretia replied. “So try it. Write a scene where she finds out what he likes. Then write another where she gives it to him.”

“Oh I will, Mom,” Crystal promised. Her heart skipped as she spoke. “Thank you. I will.”

5

November was typically the time of year for Crystal to lose her patience with the weather. She lost it, and it stayed lost until the beginning of May, when the near constant rains of April which followed the brutal freezes of February and March at last came to a stop. God, Ohio winters were the worst. Six months of frigid death (six, Crystal always told anyone who would listen, not three; if the weather was too cold to go outside in a skirt or shorts without a jacket then it was winter), illustrated in colors of gray and black. And brown, of course. One mustn’t forget brown. There was always plenty of muddy slush to be found along the February streets of Monroeville, always plenty of last year’s foliage rotting in the park, always somebody’s ugly bare lawn to look at, with a rusty snow shovel by the porch, a melting snowman next to the dog house. That same dog house would always include an empty water dish tipped over amidst copious piles of petrified shit, and sometimes Crystal wondered: Does that shit come from the dog or the snowman?

All of this she endured, year after year, for the pleasure of experiencing the rude party guest that was summer. The season that arrived late and left early whenever it could—or so it always seemed.

At least this year had been different. It was less than a week ago, on Halloween night, when the air had been warm to the point of balminess. This afternoon—Friday—was cooler, but still more than comfortable enough to walk from the school to Jarett Powell’s house in her cheerleading uniform. In fact covering the four blocks to Jackson Street made her warm, and by the time she reached Powell’s private drive (which began where Jackson Street dead-ended) she had taken off her jacket.

The driveway plunged into a wooded area before sloping down to a cedar bridge that crossed a lazy creek. Though she suspected she was a city girl at heart, Crystal found the scene pleasant enough. Leaves tumbled from the majestic heights of trees that had lived here since Abraham Lincoln’s time. Black squirrels dashed to and fro, stockpiling groceries for the coming winter. She could also hear Chubby barking from somewhere near the house.

On the other side of the bridge the driveway rose up again to a kind of plateau. Here, it split into two lanes that wrapped around a copse. In front of the copse was a parking area. And in front