BY LAUREN SPINABELLI
Here’s what we all know. Here’s what girls know. Here’s the pink threads that are stitched inside of us. The little glass figurines collecting dust on our dressers. The bobby pins hiding in the far corners of our purses:
All those jump-rope songs. Stella-Ella-Olla. Miss Mary Mack. How to fold a piece of notebook paper into a fortune-teller. A cootie-catcher. MASH. Your entire future determined by the peppermint-swirl of a #2 pencil. The smell of nail polish remover. The way it stings the peeling skin around your cuticle. The way it tastes when you peel the skin around your cuticle with your teeth. How you can throw your hair into a ponytail without thinking about it. Your fingers just know. You just know. How you can use a chunk of eraser as an earring-back if you lose yours. How to take your bra off under your shirt. How to change shirts entirely without showing so much as your belly button. How to walk with wet toenails. Curling-iron burns. How to braid. How to check your friends for blood. How to get the blood out.
The way the last words spoken at a sleepover hang in the darkness. How it feels to wake up first. How your sleeping bag feels itchy-hot in the morning. How your insides feels itchy-hot, too. How your friends breathe in their sleep. Their messy hair. How the morning light is so orange-pretty you could cry.
Lauren Spinabelli is a writer currently interning at Tin House Books in Portland, Oregon. She is a recent graduate of The Pennsylvania State University. Her work has been published in Elite Daily, Mud Season Review, Strangelet Journal, and Bop Dead City.