Perfect Girl - Weebly

and Destruction” lectures.
“Every thirteen minutes, someone dies in the United
States from a car crash. Every thirteen minutes!”
I’d heard it a gazillion times before. My mother has a
freakish memory for mortality statistics. That’s probably
why we still live in Delaware. Last time Mom checked, only
twenty-one people had been murdered in a year.
“Because it’s the smallest state in the U.S.!” I remember
saying.
“The second smallest,” Mom said. “But Rhode Island
has more homicides!”
My mother hung a right on Forty-second Street and
headed for the east side of Manhattan. I couldn’t shut my
mouth . . . literally. I was speechless, but I couldn’t keep my
jaw closed. There were so many people, so much color! Taxi
yellow, neon pink, green, turquoise. It looked as though the
buildings were alive and dancing against the sky.
“Help me watch for pedestrians,” Mom said, still sweating.
“They have no regard for cars here.”
I watched for pedestrians, for celebrities, for homeless
people, for the entire circus that whirled around us. I don’t
think my mother took a normal breath until she was at
Aunt Marty’s apartment clear across the island, near the East
River, in a neighborhood called Sutton Place.
“We made it,” she said, exhaling. There was no neon, no
homeless people. The only humans I saw were doormen and
women with little dogs and big black sunglasses.
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