and they got on their knees, and they cried, tgif.
There's a grassy area outside the classroom where Flag and Joy have their sixth period. We stayed there for an hour after school today, because we were tired and it was a nice day and maybe also because none of us had sat on grass for some time. Sat on grass and felt it, anyway.
In Flag's ear the sunlight was a flare of pink like wobbling sliced ginger. There was a great deal of sunlight. It made me think slowly.
I have no amusing convos to record today because this morning my mother and I were angry with each other. I'm pretty sure we said funny things in the flabbylipped grip of our anger, but I can't remember what they might have been. See, last night I wrote an essay for the national merit finalist app, and she told me to change the ending, and I changed the ending, and I went to bed, and she changed the ending for me. To fit the character limit, she said. I don't know. She deleted some things and added others. I wish she had woken me up when she realized. But I shouldn't have left it to the last minute.
I never know what to do with anger. It happens so quickly and it's so-- so physiological. Even now my eye feels bruised. Like there's a broken spring sticking into the cushiony cup of muscle on the underside of the socket.
But okay, we were sitting in the grass, or lying in Flag's case. Grass in our jeans and making maps of our elbows, the thin flesh there a mass of creases. Flag's smile curved, bluish pink, in her uptilted face, and when I could look away from that, there was her eye, too, glittering opaquely in the long stretch of her cheek. Her ear a window.
"Are we going?" I asked her. She said, "Probably not."
Joy laughed. She stood up, too. The sleeve of her jacket was rolled up to the elbow, and her forearm was sharply cut up into a dark color like the damp earth and into very light color, almost like my skin but with almost no red in it. Her hand hung limp against her thigh. The way it was broken up by the shade, along the line of the vein, made me want to stop time so I could see. The bangle around her wrist threw a strange, transparent tassle of yellow... shadow, maybe, or light, down and out onto the jut of her wristbone.
Flag and I watched her walk off a little while later.
Belle joined us, when she was done asking last year's English teacher for recommendation letters. We talked about. I don't know. I pulled up grass, first in blades, scaly on one side and stiffly sheened between my fingers, and then in clumps of white roots with the complexity of green hanging, inconsequential, off the end.
I had more to describe-- I generally do-- but it was also very physiological. And I've been friends with these people for so long. It's all a little odd, this business of movement. Sitting in the warmth of a blinding sky, and still, movement.
In Flag's ear the sunlight was a flare of pink like wobbling sliced ginger. There was a great deal of sunlight. It made me think slowly.
I have no amusing convos to record today because this morning my mother and I were angry with each other. I'm pretty sure we said funny things in the flabbylipped grip of our anger, but I can't remember what they might have been. See, last night I wrote an essay for the national merit finalist app, and she told me to change the ending, and I changed the ending, and I went to bed, and she changed the ending for me. To fit the character limit, she said. I don't know. She deleted some things and added others. I wish she had woken me up when she realized. But I shouldn't have left it to the last minute.
I never know what to do with anger. It happens so quickly and it's so-- so physiological. Even now my eye feels bruised. Like there's a broken spring sticking into the cushiony cup of muscle on the underside of the socket.
But okay, we were sitting in the grass, or lying in Flag's case. Grass in our jeans and making maps of our elbows, the thin flesh there a mass of creases. Flag's smile curved, bluish pink, in her uptilted face, and when I could look away from that, there was her eye, too, glittering opaquely in the long stretch of her cheek. Her ear a window.
"Are we going?" I asked her. She said, "Probably not."
Joy laughed. She stood up, too. The sleeve of her jacket was rolled up to the elbow, and her forearm was sharply cut up into a dark color like the damp earth and into very light color, almost like my skin but with almost no red in it. Her hand hung limp against her thigh. The way it was broken up by the shade, along the line of the vein, made me want to stop time so I could see. The bangle around her wrist threw a strange, transparent tassle of yellow... shadow, maybe, or light, down and out onto the jut of her wristbone.
Flag and I watched her walk off a little while later.
Belle joined us, when she was done asking last year's English teacher for recommendation letters. We talked about. I don't know. I pulled up grass, first in blades, scaly on one side and stiffly sheened between my fingers, and then in clumps of white roots with the complexity of green hanging, inconsequential, off the end.
I had more to describe-- I generally do-- but it was also very physiological. And I've been friends with these people for so long. It's all a little odd, this business of movement. Sitting in the warmth of a blinding sky, and still, movement.