Glass Cutter

Menlo was an interesting Washington town. It had been settled a few miles east of Boundary Bay in 1905, and about five square miles had developed since then. The nearest town, Bellingham, was about fifteen miles south, and sometime in the 1920’s, a turnoff from route-5 had been built so that travel between the two areas could be made more easily.

The most interesting thing about Menlo, though, wasn’t just its placement. It was how cut off it was from the rest of the world, despite just fifteen relatively straight miles of a two-lane strip of asphalt. The town never seemed to have caught up with the times. Door-to-door salesmen were still common; no name-brand stores could be found outside of its one story mall; and the one theater present didn’t have the capacity or room to play more than two movies simultaneously. There were repair places like Rick’s Auto Body Shop and not Pep Boys; there were grocery stores like Charity and not supermarkets called Costco, restaurants like Annie’s Bar & Grill and not Ruby Tuesday, and fast food joints like Robin’s Egg Blue and not McDonald’s; there were department stores like One Stop Shop and not Wal-Mart and bookshops like Nanny Brook’s New & Used Books and not Barnes & Noble; and everyone in town knew just who Rick, Annie, and Nanny Brook were, who Charity had been named after, and who owned Robin’s Egg Blue and One Stop Shop. The place had seen some innovations throughout the years, however, like iPhones and an Apple Store, convertibles and a Mercedes-Benz dealership, and an unlimited texting plan offered from the town’s only wireless phone carrier.

In Menlo, everyone knew everyone, but no one ever said hi to just anyone. Mr. Weston, Delilah’s dad, would wave to me if he passed Nanny Brook’s when I was working and no one else was on the street to see him, but if he saw me walking with my mother at the mall, he would drop his head and pretend he didn’t even know us. It was all about reputation in Menlo, and whenever everyone could possibly know everything, it was imperative that you made sure to always be on guard.

It was people like Oliver Sykes that made it most interesting. People knew him—or at least knew of him—but nobody waved to him if they saw him unless they were his current flavor of the week. When Delilah had gone out with him, she’d run to his side, hug him tightly, kiss him passionately; but the second he’d said, This isn’t working anymore, she’d walk past him with nothing more than a smile on her lips. If at school, it was okay for her to wave to him, but if ever spotted outside, no communication could ever fit with our populace.

Oliver Sykes intrigued me most because of his ability to have secrets. Everyone knew that during the winter of his second grade—the first time he’d went through it—his father had left him and his mother with a small Post-it note on the kitchen counter saying, This isn’t working anymore. They also knew that the reason he’d been held back was because of a hospitalization following two weeks after. He was only seven at the time, but he’d been intelligent enough to understand the concept of not wanting to live anymore; and so young Oliver had taken a knife to his wrists one day after school, was rushed to the ER to replenish his blood supply, and was hospitalized for a month and a half after due to suicidal tendencies and depression. The schooling system required a student to attend at least thirty-two weeks of the thirty-six-week session, and with his hospitalization, he’d only completed about thirty—hence why he’d been held back and sent to Delilah’s and my grade.

After that time, the Sykes family—all two parts left of it—had become eerily quiet. Ms. Sykes had gotten a job at the town’s doctor’s office as a receptionist, but she’d rarely ever spoken personally. She would laugh and converse, but she never talked about Oliver. I knew this because Delilah’s older cousin, Marisa, had known this as one of Ms. Syke’s co-workers.

Oliver had grown especially quiet after his hospital release. He’d always been shy, but the type of silence that had taken precedence after his father’s leave was different from what had only been nerves. It was more like a storm brewing inside the small eight-year-old’s body, waiting for release and the permission to destroy everything in its path.

No one ever saw the storm fully run its course, but it had certainly started taking shape. He’d started listening to screaming music whose band members’ bodies were entirely tattooed; he’d begun wearing tight clothes and shirts with macabre designs of death and murder; he’d instituted what the town dubbed immoral principles within himself, sleeping with older girls from the community college and doing drugs with the older guys; he’d started getting his own tattoos permanently colored into his body. He’d established a name for himself, and it went along with infamy and destruction.

The stores that sold the clothes and records he’d buy, the girls he’d touch in all the wrong places, the guys that would supply him with a single inhalation to oblivion, and the artists that stained his ideas onto his skin had never been spoken of. As far as anyone would acknowledge, Oliver Sykes was the first and only of his kind; and though they meant something different than my own belief, I eventually had the honor of learning the truth in that statement.


Only a few days had passed since the first day of school. Slowly, high school was getting back into its groove. Students no longer arrived early, and teachers no longer cared to give amnesty for unfinished homework. The conversation between Delilah, Tommy, and myself over the walk from lunch to chemistry had slowly lost its focus on Oliver and quickly moved onto other things—the weather, the teachers, the upcoming parties, et cetera—and by the fourth day, a Monday, Tommy had also given up on inviting me to speak.

On the second day of classes, the first full day, Miss Grey had announced that the person we shared our lab table with would be our partner for assignments until the end of the year. Oliver had grown quieter than he’d been the first day—he’d greet me with a murmured, Hey, occasionally ask to borrow a pencil, and would sometimes try to convince me to take his answers for my own credit—but he no longer bothered explaining how he knew certain things, and I no longer bothered asking.

The fifth day of school was a Tuesday, and it was when the swing of how things would proceed started taking over. I went back to doing my homework while at work because there was never any other work to do at Nanny Brook’s; I went back to staying silent when around Delilah’s friends; and I also went back to getting anxiety before chemistry everyday.

The night was cooler than usual, the temperature falling well below sixty, and I kept the door to the bookshop closed for this reason. Nanny Brook—who was actually Mrs. Brook to everyone outside of her grandchildren—didn’t really believe in turning the heat on until the month of November rolled around, and she also didn’t really believe in air conditioning, which was why I had usually propped the door open for the course of my shifts. There was an eery silence that took over the night on Maplewood Boulevard, Menlo’s main street, but the change in noise was relaxing to me because it was rare that anyone in Menlo was ever quiet.

I was working on a sketch for my AP art class when the bell above the front door dinged loudly, and I peered up from the unfinished portrait to lock eyes with—of course—Oliver Sykes.

“Hey,” he greeted, shooting me a small, attractive grin. He approached the cash register desk, where I stood. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the tension building up in my body. “Yeah,” I replied dryly. “New and used books are my calling.” I felt my cheeks warm from my own awkwardness.

He chuckled and glanced down at my sketchbook. “Jim Morrison, huh?” He tilted his head to the side to get a better look at my drawing.

“Um—” I cleared my throat. “—yes.” The heat in my face kept building up, just as the stupidity in my words did the same.

“Looks like you’re more of an artist than a bookseller.” He straightening his neck, a smirk on his lips.

I merely peered at him blankly, trying to process his statement. Of course it made sense, but Oliver had this habit of making me feel dumber than I really was. Had it been anyone else saying it, I might’ve responded with something witty, like, Yeah, well art doesn’t pay the bills—apparently paperbacks do, but since it was Oliver Sykes infiltrating my very own work space, the best I could come up with was a dumbfounded stare.

He chuckled and shook his head, turning to start a slow amble down the center aisle, still perfectly in my view. “I’m looking for a book,” he declared, studying the shelves before him. “It’s called Aphrodite.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, despite the fact that he wasn’t looking at me, and glanced back down at my portrait. “Like aphrodisiac?” I asked, peering back up to find him standing back at the desk, just a few feet in front of me.

A soft laugh came from his lips, and it was such a melodic sound that it actually raised goosebumps on my arms. The pain in my stomach only grew worse at the conscious realization that I was beginning to find him truly attractive. I only tensed more at the idea that I was being just like every other Menlo girl, despite my deepest wishes not to be.

“No,” he replied, “like the book by Pierre Louÿs.” The continued blank expression in my face must’ve given him the idea that I didn’t understand what he was talking about—because I didn’t understand what he was talking about—and so he quickly added, “The one with the French title and the ethel?”

I almost had to laugh at how stupid I must’ve seemed to him—because saying there was an ethel in a book’s title meant nothing to me, seeing as I had no idea what an ethel even was. The realization that I probably seemed dumber than Delilah and her friends at that point felt miserable.

“Ah, nevermind,” he quickly concluded, probably under the impression that I was mentally retarted.

“We might have it,” I offered as I turned my attention to the computer monitor. “It’s called Aphrodite: Mœurs Antiques by Pierre Louÿs?”

He nodded, his face clearly lighting up. “L-O-U-Y-S, with a diaeresis over the Y;” and because I probably was mentally retarted at that point, “...the two dots.”

I typed the title and author into the search engine Nanny Brook had had her nephew set up for the shop’s inventory, and a small pixelated image showed up next to a paragraph that looked to be written in gibberish italics. The image said Aphrodite at the top in maroon capital letters and Pierre Louys in a matching font, smaller in size, at the bottom. Between the two texts was a square image in gold unicolor of a woman before a pond, standing next to a tree.

“Is this it?” I asked, gesturing for him to come behind the desk to take a look.

He walked to my side, standing just a few inches away, and nodded. “That’s the hardcover English translation. Do you have it here?”

I clicked the image, and a page with the book’s information—its original French publication date and a biography of its author—appeared with a small table beneath it, stating that there was exactly one in stock at the shop.

He pointed at the table. “You guys have one?”

I nodded back to him. “It appears that way.”

He grinned and turned to me. “Could you possibly help me find it?”

I glanced at him and took a step back, away from the handsome features of his face shimmering in the dim light of Nanny Brook’s shop. “Yeah—yeah, of course,” I stammered, swallowing hard. The proximity in which he’d reached beside me, the way he’d infiltrated my personal bubble so carelessly, literally threw me back, and the subtle smile on his lips told me he’d known this all along.

I walked down the first aisle of books, closest to the entrance, and searched for the section with all A book titles. I knew he was close behind me—I swore I could feel his breath down the colllar of my gray Pink Floyd tee-shirt—but I tried to ignore him. There was no reason why I should’ve been so nervous around him because he was just like every other boy in Menlo. He wanted to be an individual, he wanted to go against the conformist beliefs, and he wanted to be noticed—just like how every teenager in the town felt.

I could only try to ignore the small voice in the back of my mind that said, Except he is different because he is all those things—an individual, different and against the conformist beliefs, and more than noticed in everyone’s everyday lives. I wanted to tell myself it was still no reason for my body to react the way every other stupid girl’s did.

“So why Jim Morrison?” he suddenly asked, making me jump from how startlingly close his voice sounded.

“Haven’t you ever heard of personal bubbles, Oliver?” I muttered, regaining my balance only after backing into the bookshelves against the wall. The tone of my voice came out sounding more irritated than frustrated, and I felt bad.

That was until he snickered and came back with some smart-ass comment. “You know, in theory, I’m allowed eighteen inches—which is about where I was before.”

I glanced down at the distance between us and estimated a yard, which was pretty much all Nanny Brook’s aisles permitted.

“It’s also about how far I sit from you in chem,” he added, “though I would say that the lab tables allow for closer to two feet.”

“Well maybe you should invest in Dr. Hall’s Handbook For Proxemic Research while you’re here,” I retorted. It was the first witty comment I’d ever been able to bring myself to make to him, and the realization that I just had to stop thinking when he was around suddenly became as obvious as Delilah’s Mercedes in the school parking lot. Oliver Sykes wasn’t necessarily smarter than anyone—though I would’ve bet that he actually was—but he was much more fluent than anyone, including myself, and his confidence was more apparent than anyone’s, especially myself. I just kept trying to remind my brain that it was still no reason to make me come off as a babbling brook.

He smiled at my comment, rather than gaining defense. “You’ve read it?”

“Yes.” I felt my body relax, and I almost wanted to stay defensive—and offensive—to him, but my conscious told me there was no reason to.

I was only growing hostile towards him because I was feeling like he was trying to overcome me like he did everyone else, but my mind told me it was everyone else’s experiences with him that I was letting shape my own; and despite how I regarded myself on a better level than most of the desperate high school student body, I knew I was not above wanting to be different. My reasons compared to the others’ were different, but I still wanted the individuality they all sought, and that was why my body was letting go of its discomfort—because I didn’t want to be like everyone else and judge Oliver Sykes so harshly and, most of all, so blindly.

“It’s why I prefer to give people two feet,” I added. “Within eighteen inches is my space.”

He smirked. “Does it make you uncomfortable when I breach that, then?”

I still couldn’t bring myself to smile back. “Yes...very.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “So please stop breaching it.”

He chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “Are you under the impression that a defensive posture is actually gonna stop outside organisms from attacking you? You realize Edward Hall said in his book that the very act of calypsis turns out to be overall pretty useless, right?”

I took a breath to argue and tell him that he was being a prestigious punk—I thought he’d appreciate the cultural reference—but he continued on before I got the chance; “If I’m determined to fuck with your head, I’m gonna continue standing in your personal space, regardless of whether you’re crossing your arms or not. Lucky for you, though, I don’t mean to fuck with your head; so what d’you say we find this book?” He smirked, a bit of cockiness apparent in his upright posture, and held his hand out. “Truce?”

I eyed his hand with skepticism but decided to accept his half-assed apology anyway. “Truce,” I agreed, shaking it.

I went back to the side of the shelves with A titles and skimmed through the spines for an Aph- blend in silence.

“So you never answered my question about Jim Morrison,” he commented after a while, his eyes on the spines, as well.

I glanced at him, seeing he was crouched down and studying the bottom two shelves about a foot and a half away from me.

“Why I’m drawing him?” I questioned, peering back at the shelves.

I saw him nod in my peripheral. “You don’t seem like The Doors type. In fact, I’m actually quite impressed to see you wearing a Pink Floyd shirt.”

“And what exactly is The Doors and Pink Floyd type?” I replied incredulously, as if he had a say in what defined a person’s musical taste.

My brainwashed mind—the one that wanted to judge Oliver Sykes just the same way everyone else did—tried telling me that he was just like everyone else when it came down to it, but most of my conscious ignored this thought and continued on trying to believe that there was something greater in our town than our town itself. That was what I wanted to believe, anyway; but his arrogance made it a little bit more difficult to convince myself.

He peered over to me, and I returned the look. “Why are you avoiding my question?” he asked.

“I’m not avoiding your question.” Although I was. “I’m just curious about what you mean.”

His lips curled into a smirk once more, and I got the impression that he was enjoying my newfound backbone—and momentary lapse of a filter. “Okay, fine—you answer my question first, and then I’ll answer yours.”

I pursed my lips. I had my reasons for not wanting to answer his question, but the better part of me found nothing wrong with his curiosity. It told me that I’d maybe even be able to find peace in sharing.

“My dad was really into them,” I finally answered, “and the prompt was to draw something that meant a lot to us.” I thought my response had been sufficient, but he continued studying me with an expectant look that I continue, and so I did; “I don’t have any pictures of my dad—without my mom, at least—and so I figured I’d draw something to represent him instead.”

I looked away from Oliver and back at the book spines. “Happy now?”

He straightened up next to me. “What was he like?”

Maybe it was the tenderness in his voice, the seemingly sincere care, that made me feel like I could answer. There was no part in me that had really wanted to, but yet I still did; “A lot like you, actually,” I murmured. My father had been the town’s delinquent of his own generation, and how he and my mother had ever come to marry, I could never figure out. “He was into all that acid rock and stuff.

“My mom’s family hated him.” I laughed at the memory. “My grandmother would come over sometimes when he wasn’t home, and she’d sit me down and tell me to never end up like him. She’d say he was a bad influence and a terrible excuse of a father.” I bit my lip and peered down at the gray carpet in the hopes that it would keep my emotions from spilling onto my face. “...but he was a better person than anyone I know of.”

Oliver leaned against the bookshelves and urged me to continue with his silence.

“He would let me stay up late with him on the weekends,” I obliged with an odd sense of comfort, “and we’d listen to bands like Pink Floyd and The Doors. He’d put his record player in the middle of our living room and hook it up to this ridiculous set of speakers.” I snickered, remembering the sight of messy wires and a wooden box centered in front of our outdated couch. “They were so ghetto-rigged now that I think about it, but he loved them. He put so much work into making them sound good—and they did to me. There was this crackling noise in the background, but it always sounded like it was part of the music. The songs just wouldn’t have sounded right without it.”

I sighed then. “I sometimes wish he and my mom could’ve switched places. I think I’d be a better person now if they had;” and that was something I’d never admitted to anyone. By that point, though, if I could’ve chosen anyone to hear it, Oliver Sykes would’ve been the person. I was confident that my secret would be safe with him forever—and that was an odd sort of trust that I had in no one else.

“What’s keeping you from being that person now?” he asked, his voice gentle.

I swallowed hard and bit down on my cheek as I peered at him for the first time since I’d started speaking. “Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Not everyone in this town can get away with just doing whatever they feel like.”

“If you think your dad would’ve made you a better person, then whatever you would feel like doing wouldn’t be bad,” he argued. “Maybe you’d stop pretending—and that would be a good thing.”

I felt my eyebrows knit together. “I don’t pretend,” I defended, only half believing my own statement. “I just don’t do whatever I feel like. This town would find a way to blame my behaviors on my dad, and he just doesn’t need that—it wouldn’t be fair to him when he’s not even here to defend himself.”

“And who gives a shit about that?” he quickly countered, not even missing a beat. “The only reason you care about that now is because you feel like you have to—but maybe he would’ve raised you better than that. Maybe he would’ve raised you to understand that not everyone is picture perfect, and fuck anyone that thinks they are.”

I couldn’t say anything because my first instinct was to disagree with him. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he had no real conception of how the world worked, that he needed to eventually contend with reality at some point; but the one second it took me to try and formulate sentences was also the one second it took me to realize that I had no real conception of how the world worked and that I was wrong, that I eventually needed to contend with reality at some point. My life consisted of the beliefs formulated by the people of Menlo, the same people I so deeply hated in my own mind, and Oliver Sykes was merely an example of what life was like in the real world—different, original, and happily unpredictable.

I didn’t want to be in Menlo for the rest of my life. I wanted to move on, go to college somewhere outside of the shit hole, and I wanted to do things with myself, use my talents for greater goods than what that very shit hole wanted; and at that moment, I realized that my expectations were real beyond the boundaries of the town. I suddenly became overwhelmingly aware of the fact that past route-5’s turnoff, life actually had a course of its own, and it wasn’t controlled by a fascist society. Individuality was welcomed out there, no more than fifteen miles from the very town that suppressed it so desperately.

“So what’s stopping you from being the person you want to be?” he asked after a long moment of me staring at him speechlessly.

I glanced back at the bookshelf and happened to land my stare on the spine we’d been looking for all along. I pulled it out and handed it to him, still silent.

“I don’t know,” I finally answered as he took hold of the hardcover.

We both walked back to the front of the shop without another word. I quickly took my place behind the cash register desk, scanning the book’s barcode, still quiet and still ruminating about his question. I didn’t know what I’d said that had finally left him without words, but I suddenly wanted him to speak and spill all the dirty secrets of how to fix the mold of Menlo to my own standards.

“Six dollars and forty-two cents,” I murmured, still unsure of what to do with myself now that I’d actually come to terms with my defeat.

He finally spoke again as he reached into his back pocket for his wallet; “What’re you doing Saturday?” he asked.

I took the money he handed me, counting a five-dollar bill and two singles, and answered as I gathered his change from the opened register drawer; “I usually work at the diner on Saturday nights,” I answered; and when he didn’t respond immediately, I added, “...but I get off around eleven most of the time.” My heart raced with the possibility that he would ask me to make plans, but it raced even more at the notion that I would accept—because I was over being defined by a mind that wasn’t mine.

He smiled, dropping the 58¢ into his pocket, and said, “Let me pick you up this Saturday after your shift. I’ll take you to Seattle and have you back by early Sunday evening. My friends are having a party, and I think you’ll have a lot of fun.” He must’ve sensed my hesitation at the word party because he quickly added, “I’m not drinking or anything—and you don’t have to, either. It’s more of a get-together, really.”

I handed him his receipt and nodded without too much thought. “Okay. I’ll go with you on one condition, though.”

He nodded. “Alright, what is it?”

“You stay out of my personal bubble for at least the rest of the week;” and we both exchanged friendly smiles.

“For now,” he agreed, grinning. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Amanda. Thanks for the book;” and without another word, he left the shop, the bell chiming upon his exit.

I peered down at my almost finished sketch in thought and quickly grabbed my pencil to finish it.

I came to the conclusion then, as I added dark shades of lead to Jim Morrison's grayscale irises, that Oliver Sykes had actually been a friend to me—and a better one than I’d ever previously had.

Jim Morrison’s picture had meant a lot to me because it’d represented my father, but at that moment, it meant even more because it represented the newly ignited flame in me that I knew my father would’ve wanted me to have.