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I’m so convinced that if I open the lid, I’ll find pebbles and gravel that I’m surprised to see splashes of purple fruit along the side. Nina grunts and puts her hands on her hips, and this time, I totally earned the—I told you so—look.
“I didn’t blend rocks or bullets,” she grumbles defensively.
I inspect the plastic container. “Jesus and a chicken. The pitcher is actually cracked.”
She gasps. “I can see that.”
I move the thing over the sink and take a closer look inside. It just looks like smoothie goo. Were the berries that hard? I don’t think any fruit could be that bad. It doesn’t make sense.
I upend the pitcher into the sink.
Clang, clang, whomp, bang!
“Aahh!” Nina covers her mouth with her hands and leaps back.
I want to leap back too. What on god’s green earth is going on? Did the blender blow itself apart? I pull the blades up and inspect them. They’re bent in spots but not broken. Nothing looks like it flew off it, and other than the motor, which appears to be intact, nothing could just shred itself off of anything and bounce around in there.
I turn on the tap, rinse the pitcher out, then pour it over the goo in the sink. When all the fruit washes away, curled-up bits of metal start glistening at the bottom.
“Holy—holy chocolate bananas! Did you…did youblenda spoon?”
The look on Nina’s face can only be described as instant horror. “Oh shit!”
“What’s oh shit?”
The little foot-to-foot dance she’s doing says that theoh shitis a hard yes. “Oh my god. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit! I’m so sorry. I…I may have forgotten that I left the spoon in there for a second while I put the ice cream back in the freezer. I was going to pick it up and lick it and then put it in the sink. I didn’t want it making a mess all over the counter, with melting ice cream and stuff.”
“So you decided to blend it instead?”
“I forgot it was in there! It was an honest accident.”
“A silly one,” I commented.
I expect her to fight me on that. I’m not being very nice. Shit happens. I know that. I’m just glad the container or the base or both didn’t explode.
“Itwassilly,” Nina admits quietly, though I barely hear her. When I look back over at her, she’s wincing like she expects me to turn around and lay into her for the next hour.
Which makes me feel…like a total douche pickle. I don’t like the twinge in my chest or the spasm feeling in my stomach as it tightens, loosens, and tightens again and feels like someone dumped ice water all over me. It’s not a good feeling. Not at all.
I walk over to the trash can and toss the pitcher in and follow that up with the motor and the blades. If that sound at the end earlier was any indication, the thing is totally fried. I don’t even want to attempt to use it again.
“I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt,” I say gruffly. “Or attempt to drink the smoothie without knowing there was spoon shrapnel in it.” I carefully scoop the pieces out of the sink and throw them in the trash too.
“I’ll buy you a new one. When…when I get back home. I’ll get my parents to…uh, that is if they’re not broke when my grandparents disown them. I…shit. I didn’t want to think about that.” She tears up again like she did the night before, and seeing her eyes get huge and misty, her lips all wobbly, and her face folding in on itself…well, it is like getting in a fight with a huge lizard. Have you seen those kinds of lizards? Those things will fuck you up.
Seeing her vulnerable is the ass-kicking lizard in my life. And those tears? I’d do anything to stop those tears, and not just because seeing people cry is upsetting. It’s especially bad when Nina does it, though I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because she’s so cheerful all the time.
She drives across the country, her car breaks down, and she has to walk miles down a gravel road in the hot sun while wearing fuzzy flip-flops? She’s still all smiles.
Facing down my mom and granny? She cooks breakfast with a smile.
At the lawyer’s office? She tried to maintain her smile, even if it was tough.
Walking into the coffee shop after that lawyer’s appointment, bearing two huge bags of thrifted clothes and proudly showing me a new pack of granny underwear from the pharmacy down the street because, in a small town, there were super limited choices? All smiles. She was so, so happy, even though half those clothes were totally the wrong size, but again, limited choices. She was going to make them work. Sheismaking them work.
She’s making all this work.
But right now? Not so much. Her parents might have lied to her and betrayed her, but she tears up whenever she thinks about them getting screwed over. She doesn’t want to hurt her family, even though they hurt her. I was so angry and annoyed with mine that I moved out to the middle of nowhere. But not her. She’d never abandon the people she loves.
