Garden of Ink

Tinsley Everdale only liked things halfway there or halfway done. 

That’s why when she was seated at the tattoo parlor, fake ID propped between her thumb and pointer finger, she told the man with green pictures beside his eyes to stop inking. 

It was how it appeared in her dream, succulents bent at odd angles with various types of greenery in the background. Half a garden, just like she wanted. 

She couldn’t remember exactly, but she thought it was her aunt who exclaimed, “You’ve become a piece of art!” when seeing her forearm. 

“I’m always a piece of art,” Tinsley had declared, kicking off her crocs and heading into her room. 

It was hiding under the covers where she traced half the design with her nails like claws and finished her English homework. The homework was simple: write about a sad memory and include as many descriptions, metaphors, and similes that you could. 

This wasn’t very simple to Tinsley, though. She had too many sad memories framed in gold and hammered to her walls. 

But maybe she was overthinking it, like she did with a lot of things. Maybe it was as simple as writing about the ocean trickling down her cheeks when her parents disappeared or the way her dog’s eyes faded like a burnt-out lightbulb and that’s when she decided not to love anything again. 

Tinsley shut her eyes at this, and instead wrote about her breakup. 

She could still recall every detail—his eyes only mirrors to the outside world and the gap between their hands like mismatched jigsaw pieces. He tossed her the plastic ring she had given him four years before. She had said it was a promise ring, he said it was trash. 

As he was stumbling away, blind to the monster he’d created, she tugged on his sleeve. “I love you.” 

The mirrors shattered and suddenly all emotion was gone. He left shaking his head and muttering about timing and what an untrustworthy thing love was. 

Tinsley laughed to the sky to protect herself from vulnerability and cracked the plastic ring in two. One half she buried, the other half she hung from her neck. 

Tinsley Everdale only liked things halfway there or halfway done.

That’s why she didn’t finish her English homework and she fell asleep with her hands nestled under her chin and the half-ring twisted around her neck in a dangerous way. 

She woke up with the sun, stretching out her arms that told stories of childhoods gone wrong. Her bracelets jingled and chatted while she peeled her pajamas off. 

The black and blue shapes around her eyes looked like holes in her skin, and so in her mind she listed all the girls who would probably get pregnant in junior year of high school. It calmed her, seeing an invisible list laid out like that of people who would screw up like she had. Of course she only listed half the girls because she wanted to and because she was going to be late for school. 

As Tinsley was trudging back home from school, she stopped at the wine shop across the street from Titan’s Coffee and Pastries. She loved pastries, especially the ones coated in butter with sweet vanilla cream on the inside that she knew was going to stamp a frown on her doctor’s face. But today there was something more important she had to do. 

The windows were tinted and the air-conditioning breeze rushed to meet her at the door. It held her hand and waltzed over to the cashier’s desk. 

He was a man with freckles peppered on his face like rust on aged pennies and glasses that couldn’t seem to stay on his nose. And either he thought Tinsley wasn’t underage, or he seriously didn’t care. 

“What can I get you today, Ma’am?” he inquired in a tone that scratched her ears. 

Tinsley avoided the man’s eyes and thrummed her fingertips on his desk. She knew it was annoying him and it deeply satisfied her. “Could I see your stemware collection, please?” 

The man, whose name tag announced to the world that he went by Don, tapped his foot in all types of directions producing some rhythm that Tinsley didn’t and would never understand. 

He pulled out three wine glasses, one short, one tall, and the other one in the middle. The way they stood holding their bowls high made her want to gag and smash them all into smithereens. 

Tinsley was trapping her tongue behind her teeth when she said, “I’ll have the short one.”

He slid it over to her and put the two other glasses back where they belonged behind the desk. She tucked it into her pleather purse, handed the man too many bills and stumbled out of the store before he could change his mind, hand protectively on the spot where the glass was. 

She knew she really didn’t need it, but part of her was anger in a brown paper package, all tied  up with frizzy yarn. One day, when it was the right time, she’d crack the glass in half. There’d be a line running right through the logo of the wine shop but she wouldn’t care. 

Her aunt once told her it was okay to be angry as long as she didn’t hurt anyone. Tinsley lived by those words and that’s exactly what she was going to do. 

Tinsley Everdale only liked things halfway there or halfway done.

That’s why while she was sitting in a chair at the local piercery, the needle was stuck through only one of her eyebrows. She had been thinking of getting both pierced, but the way the woman with too much mascara looped the silver hoop through the hole pleased her too much. 

On the surface she had just wanted to look cool and have something rebellious on her face to match her forearm, but deep down it was because she’d been picking her eyebrow hairs out since she was a child. 

Perhaps that was her big secret, or maybe it was the fact that when she was walking home she took a free shelf off the side of the road and planned on carrying it home. But alas it only made it halfway there before she dragged it in front of some lucky recipient’s place. 

The wind ruffled her hair which she desperately wanted to shave. She knew the wind was a naughty thing that would tease her until she was underground lying in her grave. 

Across the street, she heard shouts. Her head whipped to the right and her eyes fell on a girl with stained cheeks and a boy with his hands shoved down his pockets. They were both around the same height and the girl had strawberry hair that snaked around her face. The boy had a long sweatshirt and was walking in the other direction while the girl shouted at him. 

Tinsley was going to keep walking when she heard something impossible. 

“I love you!” 

The girl’s lips were still forming the words when the boy ducked behind a car and disappeared. She wailed and rubbed the makeup off her face. 

Tinsley crossed the street with purpose and stood behind her, searching her up and down. “Here, take this,” she said, and the girl jumped and whirled around. 

“Who are you?” she asked, her eyes hopping back and forth from the tattoo to the piercing. 

Tinsley ignored her and yanked something off her neck. There was a snapping sound and she held it out to the girl. 

She let the piece of stretchy string coil in her small hands before dropping the half of the ring. It landed with a thump even though it was plastic, the fake diamond catching sunlight. 

“What—” 

“Don’t mess up like I did, kid,” Tinsley muttered, and strode away. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the girl fastening the ring behind her neck and sweeping it under her shirt. 

Tinsley smiled and laughed because she was free. She removed the strap of her purse and lifted the wine glass out of it. Her fingers let it slip onto the sidewalk. 

It shattered into a million pieces, glass flying everywhere. The pieces were jewels, glinting on something so bleak and rough. Tinsley picked up the logo of the wine shop, which had stayed whole, and crushed it with her fingertips. 

The sun applauded and birds dove into the ground. She traced her tattoo and pressed her lips together. 

And still, after all this time, Tinsley Everdale only liked things halfway there or halfway done.