This is how much I hate you, Clara \\ Hannah Landis

Hannah Landis

—The way you smiled after our team demolished yours, in the volleyball tournament—

You smiled as brightly as the sun that wasn’t shining. Smug. Stupid.

I wish I could wear your smile and zip it off your straight, white teeth and plug it into mine, and it would look doubly as good on me.

That wouldn’t feel good, though, would it? To have your smile zippered on. Maybe it would feel like a popcorn kernel stuck in my teeth, in the back where it wedges under the crown and lives there forever, free of charge.

Clara, on the volleyball court, you didn’t smile at all.

I hate you, Clara.

You didn’t smile at all.

16 This is how much I hate you, Clara

I take the smile you never wore, rip it straight off your pretty white teeth and paste it on mine, interlocking puzzle pieces.

You scream, is this because I won the science fair in 6th grade and you dropped your volcano on the bus stop sidewalk?

No It is not.

It is about you and me and your stupid smile and your stupid white teeth and the stupid way you smiled even though you should have cried.