Red is the glow of a bonfire burning low between stolen glances. 

Red is a plastic cup filled with sour liquid that stings like a sunburn. 

Red is the burn of cranberry vodka as it stains clean white porcelain.

Red is the hem of my sundress, pushed up around my waist. 

“Red looks good on you,” he grunts into my hair, sticky with liquor and vomit. “Brunettes always look hot in red.” 

Red is blood circling the drain, coiled like smoke from a fired gun.

I stare at the red nail polish still sitting on my bathroom counter. It’s the only red thing I own that I haven’t purged yet. 

Red looks good on you.          

“Your eyes look red,” my mother says over a plate of burned toast. “Have you been crying?” 

“No,” I say. It’s only a half-lie. I don’t cry on the outside anymore. I don’t have to. Inside, it never stops.

The lie is red, too, but not red like cranberries. Not red like my sundress. Red like stolen rubies, pilfered from an old woman’s purse. Red like cheeks flushed with heat as urine trickled down my leg in first grade. Red like the crotch of my underwear when my body had finally decided the time for baby dolls and diaries with little silver keys was over. 

I pick up the nail polish and turn it over between my hands. CRIMSON POWER, the bottom reads. It was a red that business executives chose when giving their big presentation, the one that would earn that promotion they’d been working toward for two years. It was the red of Wonder Woman’s breastplate as she stands over her enemies, high-heeled boot on their necks, golden lasso shimmering between her palms.

I place the polish in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and shut the door. 

#

“So. You coming?” my best friend, Bree, asks. Her cropped shirt is red, like Wonder Woman’s, emblazoned with the logo of her favorite clothing store. My sweatshirt is black. Plain. I pull the hood up tighter around my face. “Please tell me you are,” she pleads.

“No.” 

“What?” 

I push around the red apple slices on my tray. “I said I’m not going.” 

Bree rolls her eyes and folds her arms across her red shirt. “And why not? Sam’s parents are out of town, which means it’s only going to be, like, the craziest party of the year. You have to go.” 

“I don’t feel like it.” 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Ugh, what’s up with you? You’ve been such a downer lately, Liss. It’s ruining my senior year vibes.” 

“Sorry,” I say. I am. I am not.

“Whatever.” 

I pierce the red flesh of the apple with a plastic fork, then trash my lunch without taking a bite. 

#

A nurse comes and unwraps my grandmother’s legs, then peels the thick hospital socks from her feet. Her toes are gnarled, like the roots of an old oak tree, bumpy and overlapping. Her toenails are painted red. I stare at them for too long, and she notices. 

“Age does funny things to the body, doesn’t it?” she says beneath a smile. She pats my thigh with a trembling hand. “Don’t worry. This won’t happen to you. My feet spent decades in shoes two sizes too small.” 

“Why?” I ask. 

She shrugs. “It’s just one of those things the ladies did back then.” 

I shake my head. She misunderstood my question. “Why do you paint them?” 

At this, she laughs. The sound is red, like the sky at sunrise after spending a night counting stars. Red like the strawberries we’d sneak from her garden, tart and fresh and filled with sweet juice. “Why shouldn’t I?” she asks. I don’t respond. “Because nobody sees them anymore? Because I’m a withered old lady stuck in this hospital bed? You know, when your grandfather was still alive, he drove me every Sunday to the salon to have them done. Twenty years we did that, and he never missed a week. Why should I give up that up just because things are different now?” She wiggles her toes as the nurse takes her blood pressure. “There are just some things in life you can’t control, sweet. Things that happen that aren’t your fault. But you paint them anyway, even if nobody sees.” 

#

I stare at the bottle of CRIMSON POWER on my bathroom counter. The water from my hair drips down my back, sliding down the curve of my spine. “Red looks good on you,” it whispers. 

Red looks good on you. 

Red looks good on you. 

My phone vibrates on the back of the toilet, and I check it. 

Bree: cara’s here. leaving soon. u sure u don’t want to come? 

I hover my thumb over the screen. The nail is pink. Naked. 

Me: Yea. Gonna binge some bad tv and sleep in 

Bree: suit urself 

#

Music thumps in my chest as I park on the street behind a line of cars, my stomach like water set to boil. Inside, students stand in clusters of three or four, talking and laughing between sips of colorful liquid. Some I recognize. Most I don’t. When Bree sees me, she throws her hands around my neck and squeals, her words already thick and clumsy, as though trapped in a spider’s web. “Liss! Ohmygod, what’re you doing here? You said you weren’t coming!” 

I pull away and tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Changed my mind,” I say. “I didn’t want to miss out.” 

She grabs my hands and squeezes them, then notices my fingernails. “Damn, girl! Red?” She winks at me. “Hot.” 

Red looks good on you. 

The music changes and Bree squeals again. “Ah! S’our song, Liss! C’mon, we have to dance to this one.” She tugs for me to follow her deeper into the party. 

I smile. 

And I do.

– Millie Kensen

Author’s Note: This piece is about taking back power after trauma, and about navigating idealistic views of strength versus weakness.