Read Online Box Girl by Lilibet Snellings - Free Book Online Page A

through a straw. Behind the anonymous screen of that squawking drive-through speaker,I had no issue boldly proclaiming, “You know what, make it a large.” Like a true friend, Rachel finally intervened. “Maybe you should switch to frozen coffee drinks,” she suggested.
    That “real person” who strutted up Forty-second street like she owned the goddamn place was now buried under fifteen pounds of fast food milkshakes and two years of stroking other people’s egos. “You have amazing eyes,” I’d say to one of our models. “And those legs!” I’d also turned into the type of person who thinks it’s appropriate to wear a hoody sweatshirt to work.
    In high school, my girlfriends and I would often say, “Stella’s gotta get her groove back.” Why the title of an all-black comedy about middle-aged women became the mantra of our teenage lives, I did not know. All I knew was, this Stella needed to get her groove back.
    I gave Francine my two-weeks notice, and, just like Shelly Long, she could not have been more supportive. She knew I wasn’t long for this world. Francine helped plan a going-away party on my last day of work, which landed on a Jersey Friday. It was supposed to be a civilized, drop-by-the-office-around-six-for-wine-and-cheese affair. We invited all the models, and many of them came, some bearing gifts. (I had legitimately become friends with a few of them.) One of the models (the red-headed and, it turned out, very nice “Nina”) gave me a Def Leppard CD and a bottle of Patrón. That gift, we decided, needed to be opened immediately. Within minutes, the low-key affair turned into, well, whatever you get when you mix a bunch of underweight models, tequila, and hair metal. People were dancing on the desks, and at some point, I initiated a rolling-desk-chair race. As I waited for a cab to pick me up (my car stayed there until the morning), I nudged Dave to tell him the party was over. He was passed out, facedown on his desk. For unknown reasons, his shirt was off, and a backpack was strapped to his back. His Mets T-shirt was in a heap beside his chair.

Paper Planes

    Every month there is a new installation in the box, each conceptualized by a different artist. Sometimes the back wall is covered in a collage of Polaroids. Sometimes it’s painted in bold, modern stripes. Sometimes it pulses with Dan Flavinesque neon lights. While some installations are quite pleasant to be a part of—a tranquil surf video projected behind me, say—others are more unnerving.
    For a month, green paper lanterns and pink plastic flowers of an undeterminable variety hung from the ceiling of the box. I couldn’t sit up without one of them hitting me on the head. While that was annoying, it was actually the least troubling part of the installation. Behind me, on the wall, were pictures of odd little dolls in poses that failed to be cute: at the beach, in a rose garden, in a wedding dress, peering over a sunflower. The worst was a picture of one doll holding a smaller, even creepier doll. No matter what these dolls were up to, their expressions remained unchanged: foreheads too large for their faces, eyes of alien proportions. Dozens of bug-eyes fixed on me, for seven hours straight.
    Some installations are three-dimensional to the point of interactive. These can be a bit of a nuisance. Once, the box was filled with dozens of paper airplanes, all different shapes and sizes, hung at various heights from the ceiling by fishing line. The creator of this installation had asked that the fan be left on to create the effect that the airplanes were flying. While I’m sure this was a dazzling display to see from the safety of the lobby, it was a shitstorm to be stuck inside—a million adorable airplanes swirling and loop-de-looping their pointy little noses right into my face. After pulling one too many out of my hair, which was whipped into a beehive