Play Nice

by Rachel Harrison

It’s hope, is what it is. It’s sweet but also pretty desperate. Pretty boring.

Real

“Clio Louise Barnes,”

I wish I had simpler tastes, but I don’t.

“I grew up in a haunted house.” “Bullshit.”

Lower East Side Cinderella.”

I like that

Maybe it isn’t his cologne that I’m smelling but the persistent stink of someone else’s failure.

Whatever the reason they’re calling, I’d rather hear it from Daphne.

baby Cli.”

so cute

She adapts to the circumstances, fits into whatever space she’s allotted; the queen of appeasing.

He’s too pure for this world and we love him.

Love you with a cherry on top.”

That’s all he is to me, body heat. If there is an afterlife, if any of the wild things my mother believed are true, she’s somewhere watching me, proud.

Me too girl

I’d rather you girls open your legs before you ever open your hearts,

instead I see my mother, the traces of her face in my own, and I remember she’s gone. She’s dead,

My father. Steady and reliable, the captain of the ship, the benevolent king of our lives, his love as sure and powerful as gravity.

do. By showing us how important it is to be in complete control of your emotions. It’s too dangerous the other way around.

I’m the family’s social lubricant, the special sauce.

cut from the same glorious rigid bitch cloth.

swell of memories, the ghosts of past me,

but I love looking at Leda’s face. It’s art.

No stains from my mother. Only scars.

Demon of Edgewood Drive: The True Story of a Suburban Haunting.

Our family scapegoat is gone. Whose fault will everything be now? Still Mom’s? A dead woman’s?

We’ve always been good at sharing, never the types to fight over toys or clothes or the spotlight.

wonder if love can be ugly. If it can do the wrong thing. Bad things. I wonder if it can ever really die.

Maybe there’s no right way to mourn someone who hasn’t been in my life for eighteen years.

That’s why she loved me most, I think. I bear no resemblance to Dad.

childhood like mine doesn’t exactly invite reminiscing.

all the places to go. I can accept her dying, but I can’t accept her dying there.

Men are all the same, Mom once told us, but it’s the ones who try the hardest to convince you that they’re good that you really have to watch out

Men love when you’re callous.

It’s the next best thing to burning it to the ground.

She left it the same. It’s a bug in amber. A time capsule.

One visit to the house, and I’m entertaining the possibility that maybe a place can make you crazy.

us. A house full of women. A safe place for us to be. I’d paint it pink. It’d smell like vanilla and nail polish remover. It’d be ours.

But I love men. I just don’t trust or respect them.

Memories are so easily manipulated.

wonder if she misses her old self the way that I do. If part of her wants to stay out late, come traipse around the city with us,

But I’ve never been any good at controlling my impulses. It’s not in my nature. Apparently, it’s genetic.

The world will drive a woman insane, then point at them and laugh.

If we don’t remember something, how can we be sure it never happened?

Sometimes, I loved my sister so much I felt like I might explode.

It’s that part of me wants to believe she wasn’t crazy.

“You’re a deviant for the sake of deviance.”

Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.

Maybe delusion is an eagerness to believe. A desperation for it.

Sometimes silence isn’t peace; it’s war.

‘Our demons get us all in the end.’

He’s so pretty, even with his red eyes. His natural lashes look like the ones girls I know pay for.

It’s real, and now I know it. But I also know that no one will believe me.