Page 4 of The Difference Between

Nothing.

“So you don’t eat?”

He looks at me; I will not lose my cool.

“What do you like to do?”

He. Does. Not. Speak.

And though I don’t care if he likes me, as everyone around us easily takes turns reading with exaggerated smiles, I’m losing a game I didn’t know I was playing. I hate losing. I won’t. I don’t care how much of a waste of time this is, I refuse. If I don’t get this kid to read to me, I might as well stamp failure on my forehead.

All that matters is you try your best! taunts me from the walls and makes my middle finger twitch.

I rip a sheet of paper from my spiral notebook, write can you please read with me so I don’t look stupid? then slide it across the table to him.

He looks from the words to me and reluctantly asks, “What’s it say?”

At this, a secret is revealed: Davy Crockett doesn’t hate to read, he doesn’t know how.

It softens me like a cold stick of butter in a microwave on high.

I thumb through the pages of the magazine. “It says I don’t like listening to people read so I was wondering if you’d let me read to you instead?”

A flicker lights in his eyes just fast enough for him to mask it. “I guess.”

I land on an article titled “Is Glass Broken?”

From the summary, I gather it’s about manufacturing costs and how recycling isn’t panning out the way environmentalists were hoping, but the first paragraph explains how glass is made—a seven-year-old might like that.

“Should we learn about glass?”

He shrugs and eyes the picture of a landfill covered in bottles.

I take it as a yes and begin. “‘The secret of making glass is found by mixing the perfect combination of silica sand, soda ash, limestone, and heat,’” I read. “And⁠—”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means if you have the right sand and enough heat, you get something pretty cool.”

“Hot sand?” He does a double take. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He’s intrigued; I continue.

I read about scientists being fascinated with the fact glass isn’t quite a solid but definitely not a liquid, triggering design trends focused on the fluidity of the material. The demand for glass is at an all-time high, which has led to increased energy use. I read about cullet, pieces of recycled glass that could potentially lower the cost of manufacturing if the costs of recycling weren’t so high and the process so flawed. I read about the waste in the process and that hardly anything recycled is really being recycled.

What a con.

“What does that mean?” he asks again.

“Means that glass prices will go up.” The next page is filled with bright images of glass-made items. A blue swirled faucet on a modern sink. A sleek, window-covered skyscraper. A display of colorful glass baubles hanging from an atrium ceiling made by a glassblower named Dale Chihuly at his current installment in Chicago. Even tech companies have hopped on the glass train, using it in wires and screens, trying to make it thinner and stronger. “And the people with the most glass will be the ones with the most money.” I point to one of the skyscrapers and grin. “I’m going to work in a building like that someday.”

“Hm.” He leans close enough to the picture his little nose almost touches it then points at one of the blue-green artistic baubles. “I like these better.”

They’re beautiful. Like a scene from a Dr. Seuss book was plucked from a page then turned into glass. “Maybe I’ll buy a chandelier made of them someday,” I tell him, closing the magazine. “I’m going to be rich.”

His eyes widen. “I’ve never met a rich person.”