The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender

Author:Aimee Bender [Bender, Aimee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-80446-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

DRUNKEN MINI

There was an imp that went to high school with stilts on so that no one would know he was an imp. Of course he never wore shorts.

He bugged the girls; he had a few friends whose parents were drug addicts; he was the greatest at parties—he’d take any dare. He propositioned mothers. He told stories about airplane sex. He claimed he knew everything about women. They were all fifteen; no one dared contest that.

One thing he didn’t know was that there was a mermaid at the school; she was a sophomore as well. She wore long skirts that swept the floor and one large boot covering her tail and she used a crutch, pretending like her second leg, which of course didn’t exist, was hurt.

She was a quiet one, that mermaid; she excelled in oceanography class, but she also made an effort to not be too good; she didn’t want to call attention to herself. On every test she missed at least three. (What is plankton? A boat, she wrote.) She was very beautiful; hair slightly greenish which everyone attributed to chlorine. Eyes purplish which everyone attributed to drugs. The girls called her a snob. The boys shoved each other and agreed.

The imp sat behind her in the one class they shared: English. He had a perpetual monologue of jokes going on under his breath. Did you hear the one about the square egg? he’d say to himself, laughing at the punch line before it even happened. Often, it never happened anyway. One day he reached forward and dipped a strand of her long mossy hair into his beer. He snuck beer into class, no problem. He was a clever imp. He’d poured it into a Coke can.

What he didn’t know was that her hair had nerves; it was different than human hair; it was not dead skin; it was alive. The mermaid felt the change instantly and woozed with contentment: liquid. Lifting. Home.

Had the imp lifted the can, he would’ve been stunned: it was so light! Where did the beer go? Had he looked closer, he might’ve seen it riding up the strands of her hair, brown droplets on a lime escalator, sucked up by that straw of a lock, foam vanishing into the mane in front of him, the mane he pictured at night floating over his small shoulders when he was in his bed, naked, eyes closed.

Snob queen. Hair green. Mine.

The mermaid got drunk off the beer. She had very low tolerance. There was no alcohol allowed underwater.

That day, she exited English class swaying. The imp picked it up right away; he thought: man, she’s a party girl, too! She’s perfect! Drunken Mimi!

He worried about taking off his clothes. He worried about her hand, grazing to his knee—what are these wooden poles doing where your shins should be? she’d ask. She’d have a puzzled look in those purpled eyes. Snob, he’d think. He worried, but still, he tracked her through the halls; the way she leaned, hard on this drunken day, was sexy.

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