[lj idol] week six | "step on a crack..."
[break your mother's back...]
*
Lily tilts her head back lazily, ribbons of sun-bleached hair tangling tight in the long-dead grass. She blows perfect smoke rings into the oppressive summer haze that hangs above us and I arch my eyebrows high, a non-verbal show of appreciation for her superior skills.
If I can just count to thirteen before she breaks the silence… one, two, three… nine, ten…
“Chocolate or vanilla?” The sound of her voice bounces around inside my skull.
“What?” I say, lost. Still counting desperately but nowhere near where I need to be.
“Ice cream, cake, milkshakes, icing; chocolate or vanilla?” She rolls towards me slightly. Her t-shirt lifts and I can see the smooth skin that covers her hipbone. “Think hard,” she warns, serious, dire. “Despite appearances to the contrary, this question does come with a right and a wrong answer.”
Ash drops, drifts.
‘Be careful with that,’ I want to say, my imagination already conjuring the whip and whirl of raging wildfire, blackened tree stumps and whole communities, razed. I stretch my fingertips forward instead; press them fiercely against the exposed roots of the giant Moreton Bay Fig that is dappling the late afternoon sun.
Touch wood…
“Have you started the English essay that’s due on the 9th?” I ask, ignoring her silly question for reasons I can’t begin to fathom.
Lily laughs, flips her hand over in front of her face and examines the chipped façade of pale green on her nails. She sits up suddenly then, presses the still smouldering butt against the side of a rock before reaching for her drink bottle and dousing the entire combination with a squirt of water.
I exhale. Slowly.
“Do you think I’m hot?” she says, apropos of not a thing, staring at me with eyes that are too big and too round and too blue to be real, her feet curled beneath her, knees bruised and dirty.
I blink. And it’s another question I’ll never know how to answer.
There are wasps inside my chest cavity. Mosquitos and midges and cabbage moths.
Her hand, the one that had been casually manoeuvring her cigarette just moments earlier, drops into the dust next to mine, two fingers reaching out to poke at my palm.
Cold hands, warm heart…
“So, do you?” she repeats, and her voice is softer this time, lower. Less sure of itself.
I nod because I cannot speak. I am airless and empty and I have no use for words.
I nod.
She picks my fingers up, I let her. My eyes track the movement of our twined digits curiously, like maybe they’ve separated from us and are lifting of their own accord. I dare a glance at Lily’s face. I barely recognise her in that moment, lower lip caught between white, white teeth, jagged fringe resting on her lashes.
I hold my breath, tight. Imagine daisy petals coming loose, one by one by one.
She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me…
The expectant silence is split into shards by Lily’s phone as it bursts to life with a series of chimes I vaguely recognise.
She pauses, or maybe I only imagine that, the faintest beat of sour disappointment. But then she’s dropping my hand and shaking out her hair and bouncing effortlessly to her bare feet.
She flips open her box of cigarettes and proffers them in my direction.
“One for the road?”
I pretend to consider the offer seriously before shaking my head, punctuating the movement with a slow, “Nah.
Thanks though.”
She shrugs and closes the lid with her thigh, then shoves the packet to the very bottom of her backpack, tossing her towel and drink bottle in on top like maybe her mum doesn’t already have one thousand clues.
“See you Monday, yeah?” she says, light, as though the last five minutes have been lost into the drone of distant traffic and stammering, stuttering heartbeats.
“Yeah,” I echo, a forced kind of casual. “See you Monday.”
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus
the missing stair
in another castle
nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent
build a better mouse-trap
*
Lily tilts her head back lazily, ribbons of sun-bleached hair tangling tight in the long-dead grass. She blows perfect smoke rings into the oppressive summer haze that hangs above us and I arch my eyebrows high, a non-verbal show of appreciation for her superior skills.
If I can just count to thirteen before she breaks the silence… one, two, three… nine, ten…
“Chocolate or vanilla?” The sound of her voice bounces around inside my skull.
“What?” I say, lost. Still counting desperately but nowhere near where I need to be.
“Ice cream, cake, milkshakes, icing; chocolate or vanilla?” She rolls towards me slightly. Her t-shirt lifts and I can see the smooth skin that covers her hipbone. “Think hard,” she warns, serious, dire. “Despite appearances to the contrary, this question does come with a right and a wrong answer.”
Ash drops, drifts.
‘Be careful with that,’ I want to say, my imagination already conjuring the whip and whirl of raging wildfire, blackened tree stumps and whole communities, razed. I stretch my fingertips forward instead; press them fiercely against the exposed roots of the giant Moreton Bay Fig that is dappling the late afternoon sun.
Touch wood…
“Have you started the English essay that’s due on the 9th?” I ask, ignoring her silly question for reasons I can’t begin to fathom.
Lily laughs, flips her hand over in front of her face and examines the chipped façade of pale green on her nails. She sits up suddenly then, presses the still smouldering butt against the side of a rock before reaching for her drink bottle and dousing the entire combination with a squirt of water.
I exhale. Slowly.
“Do you think I’m hot?” she says, apropos of not a thing, staring at me with eyes that are too big and too round and too blue to be real, her feet curled beneath her, knees bruised and dirty.
I blink. And it’s another question I’ll never know how to answer.
There are wasps inside my chest cavity. Mosquitos and midges and cabbage moths.
Her hand, the one that had been casually manoeuvring her cigarette just moments earlier, drops into the dust next to mine, two fingers reaching out to poke at my palm.
Cold hands, warm heart…
“So, do you?” she repeats, and her voice is softer this time, lower. Less sure of itself.
I nod because I cannot speak. I am airless and empty and I have no use for words.
I nod.
She picks my fingers up, I let her. My eyes track the movement of our twined digits curiously, like maybe they’ve separated from us and are lifting of their own accord. I dare a glance at Lily’s face. I barely recognise her in that moment, lower lip caught between white, white teeth, jagged fringe resting on her lashes.
I hold my breath, tight. Imagine daisy petals coming loose, one by one by one.
She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me…
The expectant silence is split into shards by Lily’s phone as it bursts to life with a series of chimes I vaguely recognise.
She pauses, or maybe I only imagine that, the faintest beat of sour disappointment. But then she’s dropping my hand and shaking out her hair and bouncing effortlessly to her bare feet.
She flips open her box of cigarettes and proffers them in my direction.
“One for the road?”
I pretend to consider the offer seriously before shaking my head, punctuating the movement with a slow, “Nah.
Thanks though.”
She shrugs and closes the lid with her thigh, then shoves the packet to the very bottom of her backpack, tossing her towel and drink bottle in on top like maybe her mum doesn’t already have one thousand clues.
“See you Monday, yeah?” she says, light, as though the last five minutes have been lost into the drone of distant traffic and stammering, stuttering heartbeats.
“Yeah,” I echo, a forced kind of casual. “See you Monday.”
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus
the missing stair
in another castle
nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent
build a better mouse-trap