The night is bitter. My teeth ache, frozen down to their roots. I prod them with my tongue. Sharp splinters blossom from each socket, like shattered kernels of hard winter corn.
“Sheila?”
No answer. We were on our way to the Homecoming keg party, but now I’m alone.
Grains of asphalt and powdered glass whip in the wind. It blows right through me.
***
Sheila is laughing at me.
“Lighten up, Marie.” One hand on the wheel, one on her phone. Voice sweet-tart. “We don’t wanna be late.”
Hurtling down the highway, trees blurring past, the curve by Johnson’s farm up ahead. She tells me to smile.
***
Shards of white gleam in the starlight. My teeth, crusted into the frozen roadside soil. Eyeteeth. The molar I chipped in middle school.
I cannot resist touching them.
***
I’m scared, but she wants a selfie for her socials. Right now.
“Sheila, please slow down.”
She rolls her eyes, lifts her phone. It reflects the glow of the dashboard. “Say cheese!”
***
I must gather each of my teeth before I can go. They cry, needful, longing to press themselves close, one against the other. I pry them from the frost and the dirt.
I cannot find them all.
***
Sheila’s hair is longer now. Scars race up her arm, shining striations, tissue softer than bone.
My teeth clink. Chimes in the wind, milk-shot pearls nestled in my hands. A collection, incomplete.
Her car is new, not even a scratch to mar the showroom finish. Heater blasting, she’s hugging our curve near Johnson’s farm. Homecoming, again.
I cannot let her go to the party alone.
But she doesn’t know I’m here. Not yet.
“Sheila.” I cup the fragments of my smile, hold them out for her to see.
She screams, mouth wide, and—oh—those teeth. I grasp her jaw, caress her perfect enamel with the grit of my fingerbones.
“That’s it,” I purr, plucking her unbroken, living teeth, the ones I need to complete my set. The ones I need to move on.
Her car spins and slams into the ditch. She shatters across the night, her fragments taking my place in the cold dark.
Finally, I can do as she asked—and my smile is dazzling.
