Glass Slipper/Fairy Godmother

I gripped the razor blade between my fingers like a tiny wand. “Are you sure you know how to use that?” He asked, slurring his words. He was 18, perched on the edge of the counter, dangling his bleeding foot over the sink like a question. I smiled placidly. Immediately, I felt as sober as the fluorescent lighting. “Don’t worry,” I said, my movements calm and sharp as I slid the blade against his skin. A few seconds later, triumph: “See?” I held up the offending piece of glass. He laughed, amazed. “How did you know how to do that?” and then, without waiting for an answer, “Can I have a kiss for being so brave?” 

I studied him in the light. He was grinning widely, tanned from the sun, blonde and blue-eyed and impossible. He had appeared suddenly, limping off someone’s boat. I never found out whose boat or how he cut his foot. All I could feel was the music thrumming below me, shaking the house. Bodies moved in and out of the hallways. He was still grinning his dimpled smile, staring at me with shining eyes. I liked the way he looked at me, like I was someone else. I touched his injured foot lightly. “I don’t even know you," I said quietly. His smile deepened and he pulled me close, whispering something I knew I would forget. So I kissed him. “You taste like apple juice,” I said and we both laughed; the spell was broken. His friends came to pull him away and he stumbled, his laugh still echoing against the tide of voices.

By morning he was dead, killed in a drunk driving accident. I kept the piece of glass. “Something to remember me by” he had said cryptically, placing it in my hand. Then he limped out the door to his fate, his face already blurring in memory. For years I would wonder - should I have gone after him, this random boy I met drunk at a high school party? Told him coyly to make me remember some other way? Maybe I should have bandaged his foot properly, to kill time. Maybe he would have stayed, and missed the ride that ended his life. “Does anyone know how to use a razor blade?” he had asked, his feet wet from the boat, trailing blood on the floor. He was lost even then, asking to be saved. How could I resist? For once, I would be useful: a hero in my own broken fairy tale.

Maybe I should have just kissed him longer, past the laugh bubbling up in our throats like a shared secret, past the name I cut out like a bad memory. Maybe, maybe, maybe to infinity. But then, we all think we’re God at 18.

A version of this post was written as part of a writing workshop prompt in the class, "Sudden Truths: Flash Memoir" taught by writer Blaise Allysen Kearsley.