Flash Fiction
By S. Reddy
When some of the glow-in-the-dark stars started dangling precariously from a piece of ceiling paint and spinning on hot summer days, she decided they counted as shooting stars. Even as winter came, she secretly shivered under her covers just to watch them. And when all the stars fell by the end of third grade and she still didn’t have anyone pronounce her name correctly or sign her yearbook, she threw the yearbook in the trash along with the stars and decided to give up on this stupid, stupid, stupid wishing.
When she eats her first samosa on Newbury Street in November of her first year of college, she blinks and blinks and blinks again so her bright, new, human friend doesn’t leave or think she’s weird and she didn’t even know this whole time, these 18 years, that she even liked this food, that she even liked her country (which one is supposed to be her country again?), that she was something, someone, brown and patched up and broken and whole, and all for this subpar and overpriced samosa which her dad would have gotten for her from the Indian store for half the price and double the quantity. The yearning for something, for always wanting to be someone else, to breathe a different air, to be away from the onions and garlic and vegetables that she couldn’t ever properly enter into MyFitnessPal because it doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, doesn’t speak her language. The samosa, it means something. It means something and she doesn’t know it yet or she’s known her whole life. She’s brown when the sun starts setting, brighter when the moon starts setting and it all must mean something.
A couple years later, in her claustrophobic studio apartment she pulls open her spice cabinet drawer and pops the lids off the cinnamon and garlic powder and onion powder and cumin and coriander and mustard seeds and cardamom pods and ground ginger and all at once she pours the entirety of every single container on the countertop. Droplets fall on top of the small mountain she created, causing a tsunami, a monsoon, an earthquake, something larger than herself, and then it all turns to a mudslide.
She remembers now, the packaging of those stars, the bright blue color of flimsy cardboard that matched the color of the sticky tack she used to steal from teachers. Remembers wondering why all these kids and movies and quiz books listed invisibility as a superpower worthy of a multiple choice option when she would give up all the sticky tack in the world to be seen. The back of the package explained that stars need the darkness to shine but they also need the sunlight to give them energy. All these years later, she can close her eyes and picture the glow. It’s deep inside her—that longing, the taste, the smell of that bright pink room with the stenciled purple hearts.
S. Reddy (she/her) lives in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.