C4 antho - Chamber Four

Everything Is Breakable with a Big Enough Stone ~273~
* * * *
Lyla grew three inches. Everything changed. She moved
out of the closet, into the hall. Her sisters tripped over her
legs when they stumbled out of the bathroom. When Lyla
sucked on the corner of her pillow, she prayed no one would
see her and scold her for gross habits she should have outgrown.
Her tape deck was stolen. Her father sleepwalked
into walls. Lyla danced on air and, in the morning, found
herself on the kitchen floor or coiled into a pretzel in her
mother’s garden. Some mornings, she woke up with a prize
in her hand. A sweaty piece of candy. Or a seed, which she
recognized from home-school as the kind that grew guava
plants with sun and soil and water. One morning she woke
up on Coconut Coast, without knowing how she’d gotten to
the other side of Kauai.
* * * *
On her eleventh birthday, her father bought her a convertible.
The car had platinum rims and silver spokes. Redcolored
paint appeared to melt off its fenders. Diamonds
studded the black leather steering wheel, catching the glimmer
of the sun’s rays on the clear blue ocean. Some days,
though, Lyla refused to touch them, wore white gloves, took
long naps, walked to Fat Man’s Cave and hid in the damp
cool craters instead of climbing the hill to the marijuana
fields, where her father parked the car beneath a tree split in
thirds by lightning. Most days, Lyla pretended she didn’t
hear her father calling, and he sent a driver to pick her up.
The driver, Kirby, was as skinny and shy as she was. “Yes,
Ma’am,” and “Certainly, Miss,” he said, blowing smoke out of