Half of what I say is meaning less

The pistachios came in a long cylindrical tube of plastic. The long narrow shape was supposed to mimic the child-like novelty of Abbazabba packaging. Instead, it lined up the nuts in shells, some with mouths gaping and others with mouths pinched along the sides and just the narrow top squeaked opened, the packaging lined up the nuts like a strand of DNA, a spiral of revolution.

Lauren snipped off the top of the package, the heat-sealed grooves wouldn't give to her prying. The nuts tumbled out into the cups and made a sound like pebbles hitting half-filled Coke bottles nestled into a stream bed for the sake of keeping them cool, though in the end they would be forgotten.

She took an odd pleasure in rolling the coarse bodies in her fingertips, feeling the salt of the nuts and the oil of her fingers combine to make her sticky. She broke open the shell, listening for the sound of crushing bugs as the hinge of the shell snapped and made one into two. Sometimes it was quick and well-oiled, as though the pistachio had opened itself for her. Other times, it was terrifying, peeling her nails from the quick as it exerted its own force against the force Lauren exerted. As if it didn't want to be eaten.

"Ridiculous," Lauren murmured as she raised the nut, slid it into her mouth were she would bite down on it with her molars, worrying the whole time that the nut would win and break one of her teeth in the end.

But pistachios were infinitely better than sunflower seeds, which she had choked on once. She wasn't experienced enough in separating the seed from the shell. She kept the shells in her mouth for too long, until they turned the consistency of thick sodden card stock. Like a birthday card floating in the toilet.

Her father had to slap her on the back, hard enough for a green hand print to emerge the next day. She spewed seed and shell fragments over the windshield and dashboard. Henry swiped his hand over the window surface on the drivers’ side, smearing the spittle and the oil of the nuts.

They pulled over, partly to see if she was okay, but mainly to clean the windshield to see out of it. Why did she have to stuff handfuls of sunflower seeds into her mouth? Why not one at a time, or at the most, five? She didn’t need the eat the whole bag then and there?

Lauren had shrugged that slow roll of the shoulders, where you can feel the muscles lift and rotate the bones and the joint. “I don’t know,” inevitably tumbled from her mouth, at which point Henry turned away from her and didn’t talk for the rest of the drive.