blond bowl cut and a new box of Legos. What sort of cake would Charli’s young mom have made? Would it have tasted like cigarettes? Did Charli look at that Batman Lego birthday present and feel something in her stomach drop, or was this years before the feelings of gender dysphoria would surface? I could almost smell the burning of the cake before Charli’s mom threw it out and went to get a premade one from the supermarket. Charli strapped in the back seat, cake balanced on her lap. More Batman. She didn’t even like superheroes. The way it tipped out of her lap as she struggled to get out of the car, catastrophic amounts of white and grey and green icing against the aging pavement, her mom screaming and snatching her up by the crook of her arm and banishing her to her bedroom. She is screaming now, actually, in front of the women’s restroom, mascara and snot really wrecking her funeral home drag. “Get out!” Charli’s mom sobs at us. “Get out, just get the fuck out!” And, the sunshine. Patches of grass to pee where ever we want. Blacktop to conquer, forties to drink, normies to taunt, and friends to save. No more funerals, this year, please. Our little hearts and tiny bladders just can’t take it. We’re outta there, rolling from the funeral home parking lot into a world of great mystery. But not before we key Charli’s stepdad’s car.
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