Sam Martin ’12, fiction writer extraordinaire, wrote this short story exclusively for HC Brown’s Glasses Issue.
She stole her father’s glasses, though they slid to the tip of her nose with even the slightest movement; she spentthe morning carefully pushing them back up with a forefinger as she packed for school. Her mother yelled ather to take them off, that they’d ruin her perfectly good vision, but she snuck them into the pocket of her backpack before running to catch the school bus.
When she was called upon to read in class, she pulled them out with a flourish and placed them firmly on the bridge of her nose, holding the third grade literature textbook upright so they wouldn’t slide away too soon. She couldn’t see a thing— just a blur of ink and white space— so she made it up, speaking with authority. The teacher failed to notice at first, having been distracted by something in the landscape outside the window, but a few of the other students noticed and exchanged glances and whispers. Eventually, a boy sitting nearby interrupted.
“That’s not what it says.”
The girl turned to him and examined him seriously over the rims of her father’s glasses. “It is.”
“No, it’s not. It’s talking about the cabin, not the wolves.”
“Hm.” She made a show of looking back over the text. Mostly, she examined a sketch of a deer placed in a little box on the side of the page, further illuminating the feeding preferences of the animal. “No, it says here, ‘Laura ran with the wolves all afternoon and they took her in as one of their own, on account of how she was so fast and clever.’” She looked back up at the boy. “My glasses are extra powerful, so it makes sense that you can’t read it right.”
“No, no. He’s right.” The teacher’s attention had finally been drawn back into the room. “Please read it properly, without those glasses.”
Sullenly, she complied.
***
The glasses broke with a bright tink on the asphalt at recess.
The girl’s face flushed. She had been wandering about, her fingers clasped behind her back, surveying the area. Someone had shouted to her and when she turned, she saw a soccer ball zeroing in on her face. She ducked just in time, but the movement shot the glasses straight down her nose to the ground.
Looking back up, now able to see properly, she recognized her assailant’s features—it was the boy who had interrupted her in class. He was laughing with his friends and so didn’t notice the girl’s approach until she was upon him. She pushed him hard in the center of his chest with both hands and, taken off-guard, he easily toppled backwards, almost somersaulting over himself. While the bystanders renewed their laughter, the boy leapt back up and retaliated with a shove of his own. They scuffled until a teacher wrenched the two apart.
***
When the girl’s mother picked her up, all scratched and muddy, she lectured furiously on irresponsibility, petulance, disobedience. The girl barely heard, though. She was too busy staring out the window through her father’s splintered glasses, enjoying the jagged confusion they wrought and the small peek of clarity allowed by the piece of glass still sitting with the pebbles in the schoolyard.