Megan's "The Gray Shirt"

The Gray Shirt
by Megan Stewart


I lent her a bag of clothes. I didn’t mind because 9 months earlier, I had lost all of mine to fire. So, the selfish desire of keeping them all to myself didn’t faze me. They were only things and they wouldn’t last. They were all larges and some were donated. They would hang off my back or flow from my waste, so that I never needed to suck in, which always felt uncomfortable. But, I figured she would need them to cover herself more than I did. She had a brace wrapped around her torso and circling her neck.

“Wow, Meg. I’ll probably wear these every day,” she said with this overly cheesy smile, which almost distracted me from her ocean blue eyes.

She threw her shirt off quickly to try them on. The mobility was shocking for a girl in a body brace. She had a sports bra over the brace because her breasts were pressed down and pushed to the sides. It must have been made for an old woman. It was huge and clipped in the front, so she could easily get it on and off. She threw on a gray, short sleeved shirt with a hood that was on top of the pile. The gray was swished with black in a horizontal direction. This was her favorite. I laughed to myself. This gray shirt was donated to me after my house burnt down. It was my favorite.

For four months, Britt must have worn that shirt twice a week. It was big enough around her body so that the large bulks of plastic from the brace were barely seen in the back. The front came down into a wide V. She would wear tank tops underneath because she didn’t want the metal bars to show in the front. Even though her body was oddly hidden, everything about her face was clearly pleasing. Her hair was a bright, shining blonde that hung oddly over the bulkiness on her back. I always noticed the thickness of her pretty hair before I noticed the brace. Her eyes were brighter than “pretty blue eyes” and more noticeable than anything else about her. She had an unspeakable joy and never spoke of the pain. She had fallen fifty feet from a rope swing in September.

She puts the bag of clothes back in the back of my car, which was filled with junk. I was in the process of a move into a secure home for the first time since the fire. It was December now and the brace was off.

“I won’t need them anymore and they were too nice to keep from you,” she said.

I peeked into the brown shopping bag and saw that gray shirt sitting on the top. I wanted it now. I hadn’t cared in September if I had any of the clothes or not. But now, even though it was already big and possibly more stretched out, I wanted it back. It may have smelt like hospital from all of the visits she took.

Maybe it would smell of bandages and ointments from the wounds she had healing underneath. It didn’t smell like donated clothes or smoke anymore. I wanted it back.