Read Splinters of Light for Free Online Page B

“One!”
    “Happy New Year!”
    There was a flurry of hugs, and then her mother said, “Go on, Ellie.”
    It was her job to open the door and let in the New Year.
    “Nah.”
    Her mother looked instantly hurt, as if Ellie was doing it specifically to pain her.
    “Why not?”
    Ellie shrugged. “I don’t want to.”
    “But . . .”
    “If it’s that big a deal to you, why don’t you just do it?” Ellie didn’t mean to sound like a kid in the playground—
No,
you
play with Joel
—but it was too late to take it back. “I mean, I always do it. Time for someone else to have a turn.”
    “But . . .” Her mother just kept sitting there, looking like she was going to cry or something.
    “I can do it—,” started Mariana.
    “Fine.”
Ellie stood and then stomped to the door. She flung it open. “There. Are you happy?” She looked at her mother, who looked horrified.
    Ellie’s cheeks were on fire and she knew she shouldn’t say another word, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Come on in, New Year!” she yelled into the darkened street. She heard fireworks and the faint pops of gunfire. “Do your worst!”
    Then Ellie flounced—she could feel herself doing it even though she hated herself for it—upstairs, tossing over her shoulder, “I’m tired. You two just keep drinking. You can have my lemon and honey. Happy fucking New Year.”
    Two gasps. She got
two
gasps out of it. This year was going to suck, and she would never figure out where she was supposed to apply to college and for what, and it would be her fault for not opening the goddamned door when her mother told her to. But she’d gotten a rise out of them both. She mentally patted herself on the back so hard that if she’d done it for real, she would have knocked herself all the way to the ground. It almost made up for feeling so terrible.

Chapter Seven
    EXCERPT, WHEN ELLIE WAS LITTLE: OUR LIFE IN HOLIDAYS, PUBLISHED 2011 BY NORA GLASS
    Valentine’s Day
    When she entered kindergarten, Ellie got her first taste of the way popularity works, thanks to Valentine’s Day.
    Ellie was well liked by the children in her class. Her teacher said she was a pleasure to teach. She got along well with most. I predicted no trouble for her.
    But do mothers ever get that right?
    That first year, one girl named Sissy got all the good cards. There were rules, of course, that every child had to give one card to every other child. (I wondered about the singlemothers of five, the women who could barely get protein on the table at night, let alone afford two boxes of Valentine’s Day cards for each kid.)
    There were no rules, however, about what kind of card had to be given.
    Sissy got five cards with chocolate attached. She got three oversized foil cards and two filled with glitter. One of her cards sang. Sissy was a pretty child, with long blond perfect hair. She wore black shoes that shone every day, never scuffed. She had a light singsong lisp and a way of dispensing random hugs that made even the playground moms smile at her harder, hoping to be graced with one. Everyone wanted to be her best friend, including Ellie.
    Ellie asked if she could make Sissy a card, instead of giving her one of the Peanuts cards we’d bought. I didn’t understand playground politics yet. I thought it would be sweet. I even thought perhaps Sissy would choose my daughter to be her best friend. I wanted that. I pictured kindergarten to be something like my yoga group. After you went a few times, you were accepted, greeted happily, and embraced upon leaving. In my mind, Sissy was the equivalent of my friend Lily, a woman who looked right into your eyes when she asked how you were, a woman I’d been so pleased to have been chosen as a friend by. So I understood.
    I helped Ellie glue the handmade hearts onto the construction paper card. Ellie knew her letters by then and composed the words she often put in cards she made for me, “I love you.” She added, “Your friend,