Citizen Girl Read Online Free

Eyes. Mine. That’s verbatim what you said. We agreed that I was ready to—’
    ‘You only hear what you want to hear. I never said—’
    ‘But you did!’
    ‘Did I?’
    ‘Remember, you said that it was a great starting point for me and if I wrote my findings up, I could do it.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘PRESENT!’ I feel like I’m speaking Martian. Is she deaf?! Am I crazy? Shaking, I point my paper-cut-riddled index finger in her pruny face. ‘Look, you! I know what I said. I said it and you said it and I’m doing it’cause that’s what we said I’m going to do. So … just say that I said just now what I just said and you heard. Say it, I’m—’
    ‘Fired.’

2. Choking on My Parachute
    The buzzer on my decrepit intercom rattles my tiny studio, rousing me from what is snowballing into a month-long power nap. I lift my head in the dusk-darkened room, pulling the phone from where it’s embedded in my face. BBBBUUUUZZZZ. After soliciting every remotely charitable women-for-women organization in the tri-state area, I passed out a few days ago while trying, in vain, to get through to my oldest friend, Kira, BBBUUUZZZ who’s cruelly abandoned me to dig a well in some BBBUUUZZZZ godforsaken country with one fucking phone and an inordinate number of water buffalo BBBUUUZZZ. I’m cosmically dumped and everyone else is off on graduate odysseys BBBUUUZZZ while I stifle another sob and wait for whoever is torturing me to realize that they’re pushing the WRONG BUTTON .
    BBBBBBBUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZ! BBBBUUUZZZZ! BBBBBBBUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZ!
    Muthafucka.
    I rouse myself from the futon, pull my bathrobe tighter, and shuffle to the door through a snowbank of pro forma rejection letters.
    BBBBUUUZZZZ!
    ‘Hello?’ I ask tentatively, holding down the ‘Talk’ button, blood draining from my head.
    Static.
    ‘ Hello! ’ I cry into the wall.
    Crackle. Crackle.
    ‘HEEELLLOOO!!!!’
    ‘It’s me.’ Whoosh, whoosh, crackle, crackle.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘YOUR BROTHER! I’M COMING UP!’
    Shocked, I press the button firmly with an added jiggle at the end, undo the multiple locks, and step out onto the landing, blinking beneath the bare bulb. I hear Jack trudging upwards, thumping something heavily against every stair. He emerges, Cubs hat first, dragging our mother’s ancient plaid suitcase, and looks squarely at me. ‘Been sent to rescue you.’ He flexes a hint of bicep before leaning back against my neighbor’s front door to catch his breath. He lifts his cap off to run a hand through his tangled chestnut mop.
    ‘Rescue me?’
    Jack gives my old bathrobe a once-over before raising an eyebrow with disdain. ‘Yup. Grace says you’ve stalled.’
    Following inside, I drag the suitcase down the path between the we-regret-to-inform-you’s, lock the door, and do my best to scrape up some semblance of dignity in furry parrot slippers. But Jack’s already thrown off his coat, chucked aside the empty Mallomars packages, and dropped onto my futon. ‘There’re muffins,’ he says, clicking on the Knicks game.
    ‘Jack! It’s not safe for a fourteen-year-old to be wandering around this neighborhood alone. It’s rife with junkies and pimps and … and … drummers.’ I kneel down to tug at the suitcase’s chipped gold zipper to find two Tupperware bowls of Grace’s oatmeal pecan muffins nestled between my grade-school skating trophies. I hold up my dusty Twelfth Night costume in disbelief. ‘ This is what I need right now? Pantaloons?’
    ‘Mom packed it. Said you needed to “reconnect with your root accomplishments” – there’s a note.’ I find a piece of torn paper bag marked by Grace’s editorial red ink: ‘Get on with it.’ I bite into a muffin to quell the lump in my throat, swallow, and dial home.
    ‘Chatsworth Writers’ Colony.’
    ‘Hey.’
    ‘Hey, chica.’ My mother’s voice drops to an intimate timbre. ‘I only have a minute – that poet has locked himself in the pantry, trying to “rebirth”.