There was a lens knocked out of Jonathan’s sunglasses. Whether it had fallen out or if it was an intentional fashion statement no one knew, but his left eye was forever obscured. His short black curls and deep-set frown made him look like the sort of kid who would argue back, but when teachers told him to take the glasses off, he would instead take a note from his back pocket and produce it like a cop did his badge. No one saw that note but the teachers, and none of them had given any indication of what it said.

Hari didn’t pay much attention to Jonathan. No more attention than anyone else, anyway. She spent most of her time with her head in her desk, drawing, trying her best to distract herself from the classroom around her.

An octopus’ tentacles curled around the edge of her notebook, and clownfish framed the date at the top of the page. In the centre, Hari was weaving flowers through the braid of an imaginary blonde girl, her loosely sketched smile nestled between two of the lines that littered the page.

“That looks like shit.”

She looked up. Jonathan was standing by her desk. His visible eye squinted down at her. He tossed down his textbook, slung his bag under the desk and sat down in the empty seat beside her. Hari watched him, her pencil hovering over a daisy she’d yet to finish drawing.

“Teach told me to sit here.”

“Why?” Hari said.

“I can’t sit by the window anymore.”

“Why?”

“’Cause.”

Jonathan nodded towards Hari’s drawing as he opened his textbook to a page they’d studied weeks ago. “Who’s that?”

“No one.” Hari closed her notebook and slid it under her own textbook. “Just something to draw.”

“You ought to give it up, you’re not very good.”

Jonathan hunched over his textbook; Hari assumed he was reading. She watched him take up his pencil and start circling random words dotted about the page. Then Mr Clark tapped his pen on the whiteboard, the lesson began, and all thought of the strange boy beside her drifted away.

“Who can tell me how many fish are in the sea?” Mr Clark began.

3.5 trillion.

Someone’s hand went up. Their answer was wrong. Another hand, and another wrong answer. The room went still, silent but for the light scribble of Jonathan’s pencil at Hari’s side.

“The correct answer was 3.5 trillion,” Mr Clark said. Hari lowered her head so he wouldn’t see her slight smile; she’d been chided for her silence before, so it was better to make out like she didn’t know the answers.

Hari glanced absent-mindedly over at Jonathan. The whole page of his textbook was scribbled on, leaving only the few words he’d circled. “Fish are just floating pebbles”, the words read. Hari didn’t know what it meant, but when Jonathan’s uncovered eye snapped up to catch hers, she knew it wasn’t meant for her to read.

*         *         *

Hari was drawing sea turtles. Their shells were wonky and misshaped. Their flippers looked more like flyswatters. She scrunched up her brow in concentration, but she couldn’t make the next turtle look any more convincing than the last. Her pencil laid motionless on top of her notebook long before Jonathan took his seat beside her.

“Why aren’t you drawing?” he said after surveying her.

“Nothing to draw.”

Jonathan dragged his textbook from his bag again and opened it on the table. Now that she was looking for it, Hari could tell that the first half of the book’s pages were crimpled, like they’d been scribbled all over. Jonathan opened it to an untouched page, and laid his chin on the book, his one eye darting across the words, his ppencil ready to single them out.

Mr Clark was still setting up his equipment on the teacher’s desk. Hari fiddled with her pencil. She didn’t know what to do if she wasn’t drawing, or answering class questions in her head.

Jonathan rose his head, but kept a hold of his pencil.

“Were you meant to be a boy?” he said.

“No,” Hari said. “Were you meant to be a girl?”

“Your name’s Hari. That’s a boy’s name.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Names aren’t gendered.”

“Yes they are.”

“My grandpa says all names are genderless. Like sea snails. They can be boys or girls.”

“Your grandpa’s wrong.”

Jonathan turned back to his textbook and circled another word. WRONG. Hari looked away. She didn’t want to read the rest of his words.

*         *         *

“My mum said I should apologise.”

Hari didn’t want to speak to Jonathan – she’d rather stare at the empty page of her notebook – but he persisted, his textbook left untouched in his bag as he spoke.

“I shouldn’t have said your grandpa was wrong. She said that was mean. And saying your drawing was bad. I thought it looked really bad, but apparently I’m not meant to tell you that.”

Hari said nothing.

“You’re meant to say thank you now.”

“Thank you.” She looked over at him, frowning. “Why am I thanking you?”

“For saying sorry.”

“You didn’t say sorry.”

“Well, I am.”

Jonathan took out his textbook and started on another page of circles and scribbles.

“Why do you do that?” Hari said.

He looked up. He’d just circled the word AMPHIBIAN. Hari knew what the word ‘amphibian’ meant, but she’d thought nobody else in her class knew.

“I like doing it,” Jonathan said, turning the page. “I like to make something interesting out of something boring.”

“It isn’t boring.” Hari pointed at a diagram in the top left of the open page. “That’s a plesiosaur. They don’t exist anymore. I drew a picture of one.”

Without thinking, she flipped open her notebook and pointed out the drawing.

“It’s not very good,” she said sheepishly, seeing the knot in Jonathan’s brow.

“Why do you draw badly?” he said.

“I don’t know how else to draw.”

“Why draw at all?”

Hari paused. She looked down at her notebook, its uniform lines coated in pencil grey.

“I like to make something interesting out of something boring.”

Jonathan smiled a little. Hari hadn’t seen him smile before, but this smile stretched up into his one visible eye and made it squint a little, just like it did when it caught the sun from the classroom window.

Jonathan turned back to his textbook, and Hari turned to Mr Clark at the front of the room.

*         *         *

Hari’s pencil curled around the smirk on a pirate’s lips. The pirate had short black hair and a patch obscuring his left eye. Waves spun around the base of his ship, which Hari had just started to sculpt when Jonathan slumped into the seat next to her.

“I forgot my book.”

“You can ask Mr Clark for a spare.”

“No, my book.”

Jonathan’s one eye was frowning. He slouched over his desk, half his face buried in his arms. He looked strangely lonely without a pencil in his hand and his eye scouring a textbook for words he could steal.

“You can use mine.”

Jonathan lifted his head as Hari handed him her textbook. His frown was lifting too.

“Just don’t use the aquatics chapter,” Hari said. “That’s my favourite.”

His gaze swept over her drawing, and his smile returned. “I know.”

Hari filled in the side of the pirate’s ship and gave it a sail. She drew fish in the ocean, a lighthouse in the distance, and a first-mate lurking on the deck who seemed to have the same dark curly mane and thick-rimmed glasses as Hari. The waves swirled like cursive letters. Hari didn’t know how to shade properly, but she mimicked Jonathan’s scribbling at the bottom of the ocean, where the crabs and seaweed lurked, casting dark shadows on the sea floor.

By the time class was over, Hari’s page was full. Jonathan smacked her textbook closed and pushed it over to her. She closed her notebook before he could comment on the jagged lines and uneven shading of her drawing.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said, and then he was gone.

Hari flicked through her textbook, looking for where lead was scribbled into paper. She found the wrinkled page in the reptile section, which she had neglected to mention was her second favourite. Her heart sunk as she saw the page on gharial crocodiles coated in grey. Even the title had been scribbled on, a few letters of the word ‘gharial’ snipped off either end.

But then Hari read the message nestled in the textbook page, and smiled.

HARI. IS. COOL.

*         *         *

Jonathan didn’t come into school the next day, with or without his textbook. The absence of pencil scratching on paper made it hard for Hari to concentrate on Mr Clark’s lesson. Instead she made scribbling sounds of her own, drawing crocodiles across the bottom of a fresh page.

*         *         *

Jonathan was already sat at their desk before Hari arrived, his head and his pencil already buried in his textbook. He didn’t look up when Hari sat down.

“Where were you yesterday?”

Jonathan screwed up his face and circled a word. “My glasses broke.”

“So?”

“I can’t leave home without my glasses.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

Jonathan gripped his pencil tight. His sunglasses were a different colour than before, their frame blue where it had been green. The single lens was a reflective one; when Jonathan looked up at her, Hari could see her own face distorted in the space where his left eye should have been.

“What did you draw yesterday?” he asked her.

“How do you know I drew something?”

“You always draw something. What was it?”

Hari took her notebook from her bag and opened it on the table. The crocodiles were piled up at the bottom of the page, crawling over one another, webbed feet and pale claws scratching at scaled faces, jaws snapping at passing tails. Hari hunched in her seat. She noticed the crooked teeth of one of them, the unshaded belly of another, a tail too long for its body, a leg too short for its huge foot. But Jonathan was smiling.

“I like it,” he said. “Can you give it to me?”

Hari sat up straighter. “You think it’s good?”

“No, it’s terrible. That one looks more like a sausage dog.”

He pointed out the wiggly formation of a crocodile nearer the top of the pile and chuckled. Hari looked at the desk instead.

“But I prefer it like that.”

She thought he was joking again, but the sincerest curve of the mouth rested on his face when she looked up at him. The smile spread to her before she could help herself.

“So, can I have it?”

Hari nodded, and let Jonathan tear the drawing from her notebook.

It was only when class ended that Jonathan turned to her and said, “I forgot to thank you.”

“For what?” she said as she packed up her books.

“For the drawing.”

“Oh, ok. Go ahead.”

“Thank you for the drawing.”

“You’re welcome.”

*         *         *

Hari drew crocodiles every day for weeks. She practiced the same image over and over again, trying to get the proportions right, trying to keep her lines straight and not wiggly, trying to shade the right parts, until the drawings began to resemble the crocodiles in her textbook. She read the reptiles section of the textbook three times over and then ventured online, learning that crocodiles have the strongest bite of any animal in the world, and gharial crocodiles in particular are one of the longest types. She drew crocodile after crocodile after crocodile in every class except biology, where she alternated between sketching boys in sunglasses and books soiled in pencil markings.

When she was ready, Hari drew her final crocodile. It lounged in the centre of its own page on a throne of sand, beside a pool where the water rippled and glistened in sunlight. She folded up the drawing and hid it between the pages of her notebook.

Jonathan had his pencil gripped between his teeth when he sat down beside her. He got out his textbook and didn’t say a word to her. Hari didn’t know what she was meant to say, so instead she took the folded drawing out from her notebook and flung it over to his side of the table.

Jonathan flinched like he’d been attacked. He unfolded the drawing and stared down at it for a moment before turning to Hari. “What’s this?”

“I drew it for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you liked the crocodiles I drew. This one’s better.”

Jonathan considered the drawing for a few more seconds, then refolded the page and tossed it back at her.

“It’s boring.”

Hari sunk into her chair. “What?”

“I said it’s boring. It looks like any other picture of a crocodile.” He snorted. “I bet I could find the same crocodile in my textbook.” He flicked through the book’s pages until he found the part on gharial crocodiles. “See. It’s right there! They’re the same!”

Hari didn’t respond. She slipped the folded drawing back into her notebook and put the notebook in her bag. She watched Mr Clark’s lesson with distant eyes, forgetting every word once it was over.

*         *         *

Jonathan tapped Hari on the shoulder at the start of class.

“I asked my mum if I should apologise for yesterday,” he said, “and she said yes. I’m sorry for saying your drawing was boring. And mum already told me off for it so you really should forgive me. I’ve already been punished enough.”

Hari stared at the front of the classroom. Her notebook sat shut on her desk.

“So, do you forgive me?”

Hari screwed up her lips, then finally gave in and looked over at him.

“I’ll forgive you

“What’s the condition?”

“Tell me what’s wrong with your eye.”

“My eye?” Jonathan’s hand went up to his face as though expecting something horrible to be there. Then his confusion faded and he laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with my eye.”

He lifted his sunglasses for the first time, and the single reflective lens stared up at the ceiling. Beneath, his left eye was intact, unharmed, and the same hazel brown as the right one.

“You said you needed your sunglasses on all the time,” Hari said.

“I never said that.”

“Yes you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why do you wear them then?”

Jonathan shrugged, lowering the lens back over his eye.

“I like to make something interesting out of something boring.”

Hari smiled. “You’re not boring.”

“Maybe not, but I look way cooler with my glasses. Right?”

“OK.”

“So does that mean you forgive me?”

Hari opened her notebook, and took out the folded drawing that had been left neglected overnight.

“If you make the crocodile less boring.”

Jonathan huffed. “You can’t add extra conditions.”

“I just did.”

“OK, fine.”

Jonathan took the page and drew a pair of sunglasses on its face, only the left lens shaded in. He curled the crocodile’s rigid mouth into a smile, then pushed the drawing back to Hari.

“See?” he said. “It’s so much more interesting now.”

Hari took the page back, and scribbled out the drawing until only its head remained. Then she slipped it back into her notebook and pressed her pencil to a fresh page, ready to draw something new.

Image via Pixabay

Richard was nine years old when he first brought home the angel. Her name was Annabella Stick. She chose the name herself because it sounded pretty but solid. She didn’t have wings, he said. She was still growing them. He saw the glance that passed between his parents as his mum dished up cottage pie, and he didn’t care.

When she thought he was out of earshot his mum said, ‘It’s unusual at this age, I grant you. I’ve been expecting it for years.’

His dad, who’d stopped sailing when his right hand stopped flexing, went to the pub.

His sister Beth called him a freak and ate the last slice of Richard’s birthday cake.

His brother Will, with whom he shared a bedroom, snuck him out of the window and on to the V-shaped roof where all the big kids smoked, and gave him a puff of his joint. ‘Your brain’s already tripped,’ he said, as they smudged the stars with dirty great clouds of smoke.

Annabella Stick the angel, stayed with him through senior school, her wings growing large pure swan-like feathers when he took a punch in his left ear for Brendon Bates who had Asperger’s, and spreading even higher and wider when he deliberately dropped the baton in the 400 metre relay so that Tommy Li who had scoliosis, could beat him to the finish line.

Convinced their paths were destined to intertwine, he kept his distance from little Suzie Bradshaw. His own path was so well-lit, he could already see the intersections where Suzie would bump into him, each time a little taller, a little more experienced, a little less admired. His brother Will however, older and more popular than Richard, with a path that shimmered like a motorway in the summer heat, developed a few secret habits along the way that he insisted on sharing with his kid brother. On Richard’s eighteenth birthday, when the pills he’d taken turned Annabella Stick’s wings blood-red and his heart to jelly, she cradled him through the night, waited for him to wake, and told him three things before she left.

‘Go outside and see the world, Richard. Protect the people you love,’ she’d said, scattering him with fragile feathers. ‘Grow your wings and fly.’

Thirty seconds later and he’d have missed it. The phone sliding out of view beneath the duvet as he came in. The echo of a smile that wasn’t meant for him. Bare legs folding beneath her like he’d not watched her sleep last night.

Thirty seconds. A few more indecipherable words from Psycho Med when he stopped him in the High Street; another foodie joke shared over the deli counter with Sally Jones, his favourite lady in Asda; a quick check-in on old Ted’s gnomes as he passed by his front wall. A heartbeat and he’d still be whole.

‘What’s in the bag?’ Suzie nodded at the carrier in Richard’s hand.

He tightened his grip. ‘Sticky toffee pudding. It was reduced.’

She glanced away, slid her legs over the side of the bed and pulled his T-shirt down to cover her thighs. Her hair, darker now than in school, honey-coloured, still smothered her shoulders and inched towards her waist, made her look like a teenager despite the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the tattoos on her arms. ‘So, what’s for main course?’

And he couldn’t help himself. He smiled. ‘Macaroni cheese. I’m making the cheese sauce from scratch, Sally told me how. I bought plain flour and everything and borrowed a dish from my mum.’

‘Right.’ She sat back down on the end of the bed. Apart from the two plastic foldaway chairs pushed under the half-moon table screwed to the back wall, there was nowhere else to sit. There wasn’t much room to stand in the bedsit either and if they tried to make dinner together, they’d be joined at the hips.

‘You do like macaroni cheese?’ He was unsure now. ‘I can rustle up beans on toast. I’m a whizz with a tin opener, you know.’

She shook her head and he pretended she didn’t roll her eyes at him. ‘It’s fine.’

‘I was going to pick up flowers for you, but they were a bit, you know,’ he shrugged, didn’t want to say expensive.

‘It’s fine.’

‘I didn’t know what flowers you liked. My mum likes carnations, but I didn’t see any. Only roses, red roses, and, well, they’re for Valentine’s.’

She studied him then. Unsmiling. And for an instant they were back in school, Richard sliding the single wilting red rose into Suzie’s tray when he was supposed to be tidying the glue pots. She’d known all along that it was him. He could see it in her eyes.

‘It was okay, that you believed it was Jonno. I knew it would happen anyways, at least that’s what I told my mum would happen, and she said, “Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye,” in her Scottish accent that she loved to drag out of the closet and pretend was hers when it really only belonged to her dad. My Papa.’ Richard sucked in air. Told himself to stop chatting shit.

He released the carrier onto the counter, wiped his palms on his jeans. He took a pint glass left by the previous tenant, from the cupboard, filled it with cold water from the hot tap and placed it on the table before he remembered he didn’t buy flowers. She was watching him, so he left it there like it had some place to be.

‘Job for you.’ He handed her a rusty cheese-grater and the remains of the cheese from the fridge and lingered over the bottle of Asti borrowed from his mum, missing the way Suzie rose slowly, holding the grater by her fingertips to avoid any contact with her baby-pink acrylics. ‘What?’ he faced her and smiled. ‘You do know how to grate cheese.’

‘Give me some credit,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ he shook his head, his fringe flopping over his eyes. He needed a haircut. ‘I just thought. I don’t know what I thought.’ With a blunt knife he scooped butter into a small saucepan and turned on the hob. He couldn’t remember what order Sally had told him to prepare the dish. Was it: pasta first and then the sauce? He should’ve paid more attention, he thought he had, but it was difficult to concentrate now with Suzie wearing his T-shirt, her denim shorts and vest hanging above their heads, drying on the makeshift washing line. They looked slimy. He can’t have rinsed them properly and the more he studied them the more he thought he could smell the damp, like potato peel, oozing across the room.

Yesterday, she’d been alone on the bench overlooking the harbour when he spotted her. Earphones in, she didn’t hear him. Jumped when he tapped her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ he’d said, hands held in front of him so she’d know he wouldn’t touch her again. ‘Hey.’

Suzie stared at him; eyes large with tears.

‘Richard. Richard Hope-Michaels, or HP sauce. Daddy’s. St Bon’s school.’ He raised his eyebrows at her, but she tipped her head back, closed her eyes, swallowed. He saw the bruise on her neck. Saw the colour bleeding through the makeup on her cheek. ‘Wait there. Don’t move,’ he said.

He ran all the way to the local Coop, knowing he’d catch little Andy on backshift; he owed Richard a favour after the whole ‘possession of illegal substances’ situation. When he returned, chocolate Cornetto in his hand, she was on her feet, bag over her shoulder. ‘Here,’ he said. She made no move to take it, so he added, ‘It’s what we give my sister when she needs a hug. Ice cream.’

She smiled then. Took the treat from him and unwrapped it.

‘Can I sit with you?’ he asked.

‘No.’ His heart fluttered and then skipped when she said, ‘Let’s walk, Richard Hope-Michaels from St Bon’s school.’

Two hours later, his lips dry and cheeks aching, he suggested a cup of tea at his and had to stop himself from jumping with joy when she agreed. Suzie wanted to talk. And eat. And sleep. And that’s exactly what Richard allowed her to do, no interference, no judging, a big grin on his face when he imagined how he’d tell his mum the following day. ‘Guess what! Suzie Bradshaw slept in my bed last night!’

But he’d put too much flour in with the butter and it wasn’t blending with the milk, and he’d not put enough water in with the macaroni so it was sticking to the bottom of the pan, the air clotted with the smell of singed pasta. His forehead was hot. His fingers shaky. And Suzie had grated a mountain of cheese so now there’d be none left for him to have cheese on toast for his breakfast. ‘That’s enough,’ he said.

She stared at him, right through his eyes and into his soul. ‘You didn’t say how much you needed.’

‘I know. I thought you knew.’

She sat back down on the bed, stroked her phone beneath the duvet. He wanted to ask her who she was messaging but his brain cells were tapdancing around his skull and confusing his fingers and Sally had said this dish was super-easy, but she lied.

They ate in silence. Well Richard ate, he’d not had a thing since breakfast and his jeans would be around his arse if he didn’t fill his belly, and Suzie made tiny sandhills with her pasta and stared at the tines of her fork.

‘You’re quiet,’ he said, his voice making her jump.

Tears squeezed onto her lashes like tiny snow-globes he thought. He reached for her hand, but she snatched her fingers away before he could make contact. ‘Don’t think bad of me,’ she said.

‘Why would I think bad of you? I…’

Her chair scraped backwards, scuffing the rug into clumsy ridges. ‘Don’t,’ she said. She reached for her clothes, his T-shirt riding up and exposing black lace. ‘I can’t stay. I have to get back. Jonno’s waiting.’

His eyes searched for her phone, invisible beneath the mountain of duvet. It had always been Jonno for her.

In primary school show-and-tell, Suzie had produced a bronze medal she received for Best Junior on the Nursery Ski Slope. They were nine, and Richard’s angel about to make an appearance. Miss Simpson, to Suzie’s tightened shoulders, had enquired about the different kind of snow in Lake Tahoe and it was Jonno who yelled, ‘Yeah, Miss, it’s yellow,’ to sniggers from the boys and eye-rolling from Suzie’s friends.

After, on the playground when Richard approached her from behind, intending to cloak her embarrassment with kind words, Jonno had spotted him first and pointed, called him a perv, and there’d been that look, like it was he, Richard, who’d pissed on her snow. And later, Valentine’s Day, when she discovered the wilting red rose he’d left in her book-tray, it was Jonno who walked out of school with his arm around her shoulders, his fingers sneaking towards her tits, his mates shuffling along behind them hoping he’d ditch the girl and head to the rec for a kick-around.

In senior school everyone knew they would be together. Destined for Prom King and Queen. If you knew them, you wanted to be them. So, when Jonno got caught sending dick-pics to Lilly Fisher, it was like a fairy-tale with the wrong ending. Suzie was seen sharing her earphones in the languages-corridor with Jonno’s best mate Zol. She stopped wearing Jonno’s coat and wrapped Zol’s Burberry scarf around her neck instead. She wore shiny red Doc Marten’s to school even though the headmaster set her detention every night for a week and her mum came in and complained. Coloured the ends of her hair witchy-green. But summer of year ten was pre-written, inevitable. They got back together at the rec where, rumour had it, Jonno took her virginity up against the twisted old oak tree Richard had climbed as a kid.

No surprise her bruises couldn’t keep her away now. They were wired together, Suzie and Jonno, like there was an unseen current passing back and forth between them.

Richard stacked their plates without scraping them, said, ‘Have pudding before you go. Please.’ He removed the packaging, placed it in the microwave on a cracked white china plate. ‘Is this microwavable?’ he addressed Suzie’s back. ‘I wish they’d tell you what’s microwavable and what isn’t. How is anyone supposed to know?’

She escaped to the bathroom he shared with the bedsit next door and returned wearing her own clothes. His T-shirt she left on the end of the bed. He stared at the revolving pudding, counting down the seconds. Ping.

‘Do you have ice cream?’ she asked.

He waited on the balcony while she applied makeup. It was more walkway than balcony, linking his bedsit and next door, and reached by the Gothic wrought-iron staircase that wound around the outside of the house. The building was crumbling but if you squinted over the roof of the Tesco Extra across the road, the sea stretched all the way to Ireland. Or the moon.

With his coffee he swallowed the pills bought earlier from Psycho Med. Tried to dim the pain in his heart, and in his shoulders. He twisted his neck from side to side, blinked to still the confusion of colours above the water at the end of the road. The fishing boats were fuzzy like his tongue, he thought. Shit that coffee must’ve been scalding.

He wished she wouldn’t leave. He didn’t want her to leave. Go back to Jonno, with his fists and his dick-pics. But, he understood, she was never really here. He closed his eyes, circled his shoulders. He wished he knew how to save her. Wished he’d been there sooner, where she might’ve noticed him beneath the oversized knitted sweaters and the home-trimmed fringe.

It’s an angel’s flaw, his mum always said. ‘Wrong place, wrong time.’ She never explained how she came by this information, but he’d accepted it as the truth. ‘Stick ‘em in the right place and there’s no crap left to fix.’

Suzie appeared behind him, all pink lipstick and wide eyes. She stood on tiptoes, kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

He stared at the lights floating on the boats as she left. Watched the patterns like a kaleidoscope, twisting and spiralling, concentrated on the white pain in his shoulders, tried to imagine that she wasn’t running downstairs to the courtyard. Around the wall to the road where the BMW was parked up, out of view, with the engine running.

Away from him.

Go outside and see the world, his angel said. Protect the ones you love. Grow wings and fly. He’d done none of these things. He’d hibernated and slept, listened to rock music and played X-box. Closed his eyes and waited for Suzie to come to him. As the water blurred, a sparkling mirror of lights, he knew where he’d gone wrong. See the world, she’d said. Not travel the world. You needed money to do that, and Richard had never had money. Probably never would have. He sucked in the salty air, the peace that living so close to the water had always instilled in him, and he understood that this was his world, however badly he’d treated it. He opened his eyes wide and the world came into focus.

He couldn’t let Suzie go. Glancing down at her long bare legs, he saw the little girl starting primary school, blonde hair in a thick rope down her back, sparkly pink rucksack over her shoulder, wide eyes bright and accepting because she understood the world she was born into. Her purity of heart deserved better than the endless cycle of fights and lust and popularity she’d accepted as her lot. And he had to protect her.

His shoulders erupted with white-hot pain and, head down, he clenched his jaw as his wings broke free, unfurling and folding back in on themselves, heavy with the weight of a thousand glowing feathers.

Richard placed his right foot onto the lower rung of the railings. It was easy if you didn’t second-guess it, didn’t stop to weigh up the options. Left foot on the top bar, he barely breathed before he jumped.

Another thirty seconds. One mouthful of pasta chewed and swallowed, one sip of Asti to wash it down, one more glance at the messages on her phone and she’d have missed the snowy-white feathers from his broken wings as they scattered at her feet.

Denise wanted to write books when, aged four, her dad read The Song of Hiawatha to her. Her novella Devil on Your Back was published by Salt in 2014. More recently, she was longlisted for the 2019 Bath Novel Award with her YA crossover novel I am Winter.

Image via Pixabay

‘Tis about seven o’clock that morning.

Robert Downes has barely slept, so acute is his anticipation. He leaves his bedroom in darkness, and walks towards the meadows by a meandering scenic route: through the grassmarket, up the west bow, tarrying beneath the castle and cathedral. Downes starts down George IV Bridge, stopping there awhile. He is not yet tired of the view from the new construction. So much of the city is changing. So much of the world. His heart is heavy. His mind racing, hastily drafting involuntary lines. A couplet. So that our feet shalt not mix with dirt/ Man raiseth his streets o’er the Earth.

Downes repeats the couplet, counting out the syllables with his fingers. Are they a regular meter? He is uncertain. What is the next line? Should he prove his worth, or perhaps build a hearth… Does the phrase “heavens hearth” mean anything? After giving the matter careful consideration, Downes supposes that sadly no, it probably does not.

He wonders if his thoughts need a variation in meter, sonnet form perhaps. He tries fragmenting his feelings into two alternating rhyming patterns that play off each other, allowing their sonic effect and literal meaning to contrast for comical or profound effect. The attempt is futile and gives him a headache. He sits down.

The sun rises on greyfriars. Downes points to the graveyard, “mortality! Thou speaketh!” he declares with theatrical astonishment. He takes unsteadily to his leg, his arm outstretched toward the graveyard.

Downes has lived in the city for three years now. He was well-aware of the location greyfriars, even in the dark. He walks among the tombs muttering to himself: Byron, Shakespeare, Blake. When the light turns from orange to yellow, he steels himself and marches to the meadows.

Professor George McGonagall rises at six that morning. He tells his wife that he has important business to attend to. He kisses her farewell, assuring his return by evening meal time. He has three daughters. He says goodbye to them all. He then meets his coachman, Andrew, at the gates of his house. Andrew doffs his cap and muttering the word “sir”. He is ready, just as he said he would be. Andrew flashes the two muzzleloading pistols he has procured. McGonagall nods dutifully and silently enters the coach.

They ride towards the city. McGonagall allows a moment for quiet tears. He reminds himself that this is duty. This is the blessed process of superseding. It is necessary. Without this process, there is no progress. The germs of a poem begins to formulate in his mind: Process-progress. Civilisation is needing-superseding. Is there any potential in this as a composition?

No, he concludes. Not really.

The grievance between the two issued two days previously, at a public lecture. McGonagall had been invited to speak on modern poetry. As a renowned professor in the city of Edinburgh the hall was crowded, the attendees hearts were light, and free of sorrow.

Among the thronged faces, McGonagall spied his former student. Their relationship was close. Downes often visited the professor’s office to debate the classics, tentatively they had begun sharing their own writing between themselves.

A moment of wild candour had led the professor to call out to Downes that day, publicly proclaiming the brilliance of the young man’s writing. Downes, as differential as he was irradiant, had disputed the claim and insisted on the superiority of the professor’s work.

“I never meant to hurt you, speaketh vice unto to virtue. How can a man not weep at such words?” McGonagall had shouted.

“You make beauty from science sir,” Downes replied. “We are here not from God, but providence/ Like otters, trees, and cormorants.”

They quoted each others words further, though soon their voices were lost among the laughter of the thinning crowd.

It had been a mortal humiliation.

McGonagall knew this was a day that would be remembered for a very long time. His reputation, his authority, the trust in his aesthetic judgements was publicly undermined.

In the heat of the moment he had demanded the duel, to reclaim lost honour, aye. But also to conclusively settle the matter of who indeed was Edinburgh’s greatest living poet.

McGonagall’s coach arrives at the meadows. Andrew disembarks and opens the carriage door. The professor exits with a mournful sigh.

The Meadows are dry that morning; the grass, frozen. Downes stands some way off, beneath a tree, his face contorted by frustration. As Andrew and McGonagall approach, they hear him utter, “I suppose now, it is no matter.”

“Well met, sir,” exclaims McGonagall. “I confess, I was uncertain of finding you here.”

“Truth and bravery are kin sir. A host of resisitudes have my back. My heart is pure, my hands are steadied.” Downes would demonstrate the fact, but he feels their tremors.

“Lo then, thy kin protect me too. Truth is my sole preserve. As for bravery: here I stand, setting the challenge, but doing so compassionately. I offer one final opportunity for your repentance and rescinding of your comments.”

“A generous offer sir, befitting of your august personage. However you know I can do no such thing. I stand by my words as though they were a most precious lover. You sir, are the greatest wordsmith in this city. Far better than I.”

“Sacrilege!” The professor’s voice near-breaks. “Your words move me like no other. In profession, I am master and you the student; but in reality, I have nothing to teach you of feeling, of love. The expression of the soul cannot be taught, you have the gift! I beseech you sir, see sense. Repent. Else my most remarkable contribution to this literary world may be to deprive it of a flowering genius.”

“Master please, it is I who risks depriving the world of beauty. Your words are honeyed logic. You are Newton and Shakespeare, expressed as one. And if you are Newton, I, I simply squat at your feet, hoping for beautiful crumbs to obey your law.”

With both men refusing concession, Andrew brings forth the pistols and presents them one apiece. Initially Andrew was to stand only as the professor’s official second; yet Downes had no one prepared to act as his and so Andrew now stands for them both. The poets had co-authored an official statement, declaring their intention to duel, and their willing compliance in the endeavour whatever the consequences. All three sign the statement; they do so weeping and embracing.

Andrew supervises the loading of the pistols with powder and lead balls. He positions the poets back to back, pistols raised to chest-height. Andrew clears his throat.

“Dearest gentlemen. We are here today to resolve an issue of great honour and dignity. I will now count to twenty. Each number representing a step you must take forwards. Once the twentieth step has been taken, you must turn and fire your shot. Understood?”

The poets affirm their confirmation. Andrew begins to count, slowly. As the count reaches double figures, the poets hands are visibly shaking. As Andrew commands the fifteenth step he hears McGonagall omit a sharp gasp. At sixteen Downes’ knees seem to shake. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. The men visibly stiffen. The word twenty is simply that, a word. It is the same as the last nineteen, and yet Andrew cannot help but pause. When the word does emerge, the emission is quivering and weak.

The poets make their final step. They turn. It is impossible to know who is faster; their shots near-simultaneous, like grounded fireworks. The air is filled with the smell of gunpowder.

Both men crumple. McGonagall falls, silently, backwards and sideways. Downes cries out in pain as he falls to his knees and then collapses forwards.

Andrew is confounded by their accuracy. He had made assumptions that neither man would prove proficient at arms, that perhaps, at the worst, one of them might sustain a minor graze. He rushes, first to his friend and master. Death has not relaxed the professor’s grip on the pistol, it points still at his own chest where he has shot himself in the heart at close range. The blood pumping out across the white of his shirt. He surely perished on impact. Such moral clarity! Such nobility!

However, Andrew cannot comprehend how Downes has also fallen. Andrew then races then to the dying man and asks what has befallen him. Downes drops his pistol and rolls to look upwards at the coachman, pointing to a shot clumsily executed in his stomach. He is panting, trying for words. Andrew deduces what has transpired. There can be no other explanation. Downes too has shot himself.

“The… the… professor… Does he live?” Downes manages.

Andrew cannot speak the truth. He crouches and nods, cradling the dying man’s head. Downes is trying to say something else. Andrew leans in, begging the poet to repeat his final words.

“Then… I depart from this… this dingy earth/ light the… the fires/ For I arrive, at… at heaven’s… heaven’s hearth.”

Image via Pixabay

Fair play is taken seriously in Last Chance even if we don’t hold our politicians to a consistent standard, or any standard at all. We do love elections, though, and prefer them over auctions, bake sales, barn-raisings, and charity fundraising benefits. You’ll seldom find disappointment if you don’t look for it. In Last Chance, campaigns never end. Your hands could chap from the constant door-to-door flesh-pressing. Our voters focus on the pageantry, the expression of free speech, the motorcycle Globe of Death.

“Frisky” Clinchett’s yard was barely large enough for a lawnmower to turn around, but Honey and Candy crab-walked in the dust and faced off. They shrieked and hissed at each other, pausing only to rip up and fling clods of dead grass or light another cigarette. Neighbors and passersby had gathered at a respectful distance. We knew the combatants threw wild and they packed some power.

Identical twins Honey and Candace Sweet were born at exactly the same instant, a medical miracle featured on the front page of the Last Chance Gazette & Intelligencer. Their mother filed for divorce three minutes after the remarkable birth. Even as infants, each twin attempted murder on the other and it never stopped. Candace, or Candy as we called her, managed the day shift at Carl’s Chicken Shack. Honey was Last Chance’s long-serving Postmistress.

In less than half the usual one-hour response time, the twins’ childhood friend, Constable Arlene Nelson, Last Chance’s most courageous and only law enforcement official, arrived at the scene.

“Candy! Honey!” Arlene said. “I love you girls! I love both of you real bad but you got to quit fighting in public. Take it behind closed doors the way regular people do.”

“This here she-devil sold my wedding dress,” Honey wailed. “How am I supposed to get married if I got no damn dress?”

“You ain’t never getting married anyway because you’re too mean and stupid and ugly,” replied Candy, who for good measure chucked a mailbox at her sister.

“Now, hey you two,” said Arlene, who had her own problems but nobody ever asked how she was doing. “Run each other through a wood chipper if you want but stop vandalizing and trespassing poor Mr. Clinchett’s private property! He’s got no part in this!”

“If I’m ugly, what are you, she-devil?” Honey said, ignoring Arlene.

“Makes me the pretty one is what it does!” Candy swung a garden hose and whipped it toward Honey, who was too quick and ducked. The brass nozzle caught Arlene across the ear.

The twins froze like angry wax museum dolls. Arlene backed up one step before replanting her boots on the sidewalk.

“As your friend, I might deserve getting my bell rung,” Arlene whispered, and everyone had to shut up to hear her. “But. Not when I’m wearing this here badge. What you done is felonious assault of a duly-appointed peace officer, which is me.”

She retrieved her cap and brushed it off across her pants legs.

“What did you expect when you went in together on a wedding dress? You two can’t even share a glass of iced tea. What if you’d booked yourselves a double wedding? What about it?”

Candy and Honey knew she was right. The I-forgive-you hug they gave each other seemed sincere but who can say?

“You girls go on and get,” said Arlene. “I’ve got cases to crack and whatnot. Candy, you owe Honey for half a dress. Problem solved.”

“I’m sorry about the hose nozzle lighting you up, Arlene,” Candy said. “I didn’t mean it. Can I still count on your vote?”

“Scoot, you crazy persons!”

Arlene cradled a cold soda pop against the soreness. Her ear swelled up big, along with her frustration.

“For years I’ve followed orders, put my butt in harm’s way. Grabbed criminal intent in a headlock and whiffed its foul breath. Is my keg of potential truly tapped? Don’t I deserve betterment?”

The crowd of onlookers had dispersed. From the handlebar of Constable Arlene’s motor scooter dangled a folded piece of paper. A campaign flyer; betwixt its creases smirked the smug face of puffy Councilman Everett; worse than his picture was the formal declaration he would run for mayor of Last Chance.

“I’m for you if you’re for me. If you’re not for me, then go to Hell. VOTE EVERETT!”

“What kind of damn deal is this, poking election materials into official government vehicles?” Arlene said. “Smacks of a clear conflicted interest!”

With a growl, Arlene shredded the flyer into tiny bits of Councilman Everett. The fragments fluttered in the breeze.

“I never imagined destroying evidence could feel so satisfying. If anyone asks, I’ll say I spread the candidate’s message far and wide.”

The field of declared Last Chance mayoral candidates continued to swell like a tick: Arlene’s Uncle Hubert, Candy Sweet, former political trickster Barrymore, and now Councilman Everett, to mention a notable few. Almost all of them bemoaned the constant influx of vagrants, drifters, transients, hobos, tramps, and especially tinkers, although it was agreed, off-the-record, the tinkers kept our cutlery unsurpassably sharp, and for a reasonable fee. No one had seen the current mayor in months, nor could they recall his name or physical description; sporadic casual grifting was the only proof he still held the office. Would he file for re-election? Betting odds changed daily.

Jazzed by feelings she couldn’t quite grip, Arlene fired up her scooter, motored into Last Chance’s business district, and parked. When she threw open the doors of the Last Chance Gazette & Intelligencer’s office, our newspaper’s editor and publisher, Loyd English (that’s “Loyd” with one “L”), sat upright and giggled with anticipation.

“Constable!” Loyd said, sliding a crossword puzzle into his lap. He leaned forward and a hand-carved pipe jutted from his grin. “What’s going on? Do you, maybe, have a scoop for me?”

Breathless and sweaty, Arlene paused while the rough thoughts tumbling inside her brain became smooth and semi-precious. She ignored the office’s immodest display of awards plaques and trophies, all of which were noticeably hand drawn or formed from gold-painted modeling clay. On Loyd’s desk rested an un-shredded copy of Councilman Everett’s leaflet.

“Yes, sir, I do have some information you might classify as newsworthy,” said Arlene. “I’m not here to tell you your job, but the headline could read something along the lines of ‘Last Chance Top Law Enforcement Official Throws Cap Into Ring Of Mayor’s Race.’ But you’re the wordsmith.”

She held his gaze; her daddy used to say staring made everyone think you were credible and sincere. Loyd flipped past pages of doodles and cat sketches before he found a clean notebook page.

“What a blockbuster, Constable!” he said. His eyes danced the boogaloo. “Can you reveal to me the new candidate’s identity?”

She snatched the pen from Loyd’s hand, scribbled in his notebook, and stomped out of the office. In less than a minute she covered the distance to the Farm & Fleet store, which also housed the Last Chance municipal offices. Quicker than you can poach an egg, she’d typed a letter requesting temporary leave and dropped it into the absentee mayor’s inbox.

Arlene cogitated while she scootered herself home. Sure, someone could lock themselves out of their truck, or a shoplifting spree might terrorize Last Chance, or paramilitary tramps and vagrants invade, but she had to take risks if she wanted to meet up with her destiny and give it a surprisingly firm handshake. But what came next?

Her long-vanished daddy, thrice-elected and habitually prosecuted former Mayor Lowell “Fuzzy” Nelson, always mustered sage political advice or many other flavors of it:

“Kitten, public service is the only vocation for energetic people unburdened by consciousness of guilt.”

“Government bounces into guardrails most days, but some days it don’t. On days it don’t, be quick to take credit!”

“Speak with conviction and you’ll avoid convictions.”

“A good campaigner puts voters behind the wheel of a broke down truck and reminds them how good it feels to drive with the radio on and the wind in their hair. A great campaigner makes bald folks believe they have hair.”

Arlene knew better than any of us what sort of fight lay ahead. Despite her upbringing she had scarce appetite for the liver and onions of politics, but the presence of Councilman Everett tipped her into the skillet. She saw past his puffy exterior and recognized his shriveled-as-a-prune heart and demagnetized moral compass.

“Poor Dolly,” Arlene sighed, referring to the councilman’s besieged and oft-maligned wife. “What she must be going through!”

Road miles vanished behind a cloud of exhaust and Arlene’s ruminations. Her plan, as she understood it, was to go home, change into civilian garb, collect her weighty thoughts, and embark on a mayoral quest. In a jiffy she was at her own door.

“Better bring a change of clothes in case my persistent campaigning keeps me away overnight.”

She didn’t own a suitcase but a backpack would do.

“I’ll need relief from my rigorous repetition of talking points. It’d be nice to surround myself with agreeable touchstones and so forth.”

Arlene gathered a few tokens and bits of memorabilia: photographs, a threadbare plush toy (missing one eye), citations of meritorious conduct (signed in red ink by the mayor), letters from Dolly.

“Who knows, I may need a nibble here or there in order to prop up my faculties.”

In no time at all, she cleared the fresh food from her refrigerator.

Arlene carried her cargo outside and strapped it to the scooter — her official Last Chance Constabulary transportation she’d paid for with her own money, same as her uniforms. She mounted up, revved the motor, and let hot blood burn her cheeks while she pondered. Last Chance and public service beckoned, back there in the gathering dusk. Within those well-trod boundaries awaited the opportunity to build upon her controversial daddy’s legacy and submit to the gravitational tug of pre-ordained fate.

Arlene cranked the scooter’s throttle wide open and accelerated in the opposite direction. She wondered if she could ride quickly enough to catch up and pass the setting sun.

In Last Chance and elsewhere you can love something or someone and yet find co-existence impossible. Does gasoline not lust for the safety-tipped match? Your nice red shirt adore chlorine bleach? What about pickup trucks and booster rockets? The attraction is irresistible because passion promises to bind everything and makes it strong as cement. If bringing these partnerships together ends in mutual destruction, so what? The split atoms release energy, which makes the world spin a smidge faster. Maybe this boost speeds us to our life’s ultimate destination, even if we don’t know the place’s name or exact whereabouts, or who will be there to bid us enter and find warmth.

Image via Pixabay

The little girl and boy were screaming.

Not the bad screaming.

Not Mia’s screaming.

Lucretia stood in the outer schoolyard, looking through the fence that separated her from the scene of the crime she had created two months prior. Of all the kids packed into the limited pen designated for kindergarten students, her eyes and ears couldn’t help but track the running, laughing—For now, she thought—screaming little girl and boy, engaged in the age-old interplay: the fluttering of the little girl’s long hair; the little boy’s outstretched hand; the former barely outrunning the latter, whether by choice or biology, laughing, screaming, most times out of exhilaration, sometimes because a primitive thought told her she was in genuine danger; the way the invisibly tethered pair navigated the other children, who were merely sitting ducks oblivious to the fast-paced game of tandem sparrows; the little boy finding a latent gear, accelerating, reaching with a clawed hand, closer, closer, closer; the little girl abruptly turning to avoid his fingers; the chase slowing down—this time—to recover for an encore, or dying altogether, the dangerous game saved for something as distant as another day, or as close as the next recess.

And outside of this customary exchange, outside of this playground within a playground, Lucretia felt relief, for the little girl and boy had yet again successfully avoided recreating the history that had taken place in there.

She and Mia’s history.

A history she had forgotten until last week.

Lucretia had looked forward to the first day of school. Her mother had dropped her off at the side of the building, wished her good luck on her first day of school, and drove away to the job that paid their rent. Mia’s mother, on the other hand… well, if she had work, she had clearly called in sick so as to protect her daughter from Lucretia.

It was in the gymnasium, where the buzzing student body waited to be assigned their new teachers, that Lucretia had felt the summer’s sunburns in her gut, the summer’s scraped knees all over her body, for she had seen for the first time how and in what condition Mia had spent her summer—thanks to that single moment in June.

Thanks to Lucretia.

The little girl and boy were screaming again.

Not the bad screaming.

Not Mia’s screaming.

Not yet, Lucretia thought.

She looked away from the potential violence, and focussed on the one obstacle she would need to overcome if now was indeed the time to do what she hadn’t any real courage to do. But when the obsidian eyes of Ms. Jackson, perched atop the steps leading to Lucretia’s assigned door, met hers, she panicked, resorting to blindly surveying the vast schoolyard available to her.

She knew her new world by heart: the field that was home to two continental versions of football, haloed by quintuplet tracks; faded baseball diamond; fully-loaded play area—just some of the perks of becoming a full-day student in the first grade.

The perks, however, did nothing to perk her up.

Everyone was out here, relishing their twenty minutes outside the stifling classrooms, trying to capture as much of the lingering dog days as possible. Everyone who stole glances of Mia, who never saw, but must have felt the judging eyes. Everyone who gossiped, but pretended otherwise, as if the school was ripe with other Mia’s.

Everyone was out here.

Except Mia.

Lucretia could bear the Mia-less vista no longer. Heavy guilt shepherded her heavy legs toward Ms. Jackson. She could have claimed to have felt ill—she was, after all, sick with nerves—but opted for a watered-down lie that the hateful teacher would likely deny. “Can I get a drink, Ms. Jackson?” Her voice cracked, supporting her cause.

Ms. Jackson smiled, opened the door, and held it for the stunned Lucretia. She eyed the teacher as she crossed the threshold. The woman indeed appeared to be the same Ms. Jackson who had cradled and cooed the wailing Mia on that day in June; the same Ms. Jackson who glared and yelled at the culpable Lucretia. Doesn’t she remember me? Lucretia mused. Doesn’t she remember what I did?

The hard handrail felt like a slippery serpent of electric nerves. With legs of quicksand, she began the long ascent. She caught up to her pounding heart upon reaching the second-floor landing. There, the pair of heavy doors guarded against her, protecting whom she sought. But they were no match for a mousy thumb pressing the latch.

The click of the stairwell door did nothing to interrupt the hushed voices wafting over to her from the opposite side of the hallway. While the volume of the conversation rose with every step toward the only open door, specific words refused to clarify themselves. Still, Lucretia discerned two voices: one she knew, but scarcely heard during class; the other could have belonged to either relief or dread, for Mia’s mother was prone to classroom visits between the usual drop-offs and pick-ups—which contributed to the list of gossip topics.

Please be Mrs. Atwood, she thought.

Lucretia reached the door, and listened for whether or not she would abort her mission. When her heart, thudding in her ears, skipped a beat, she heard not dread, but relief—Mrs. Atwood!—and turned the corner just as another thought occurred to her: Mia’s mother could still be in there, not talking.

Two pairs of eyes looked up at her from their respective desks. One pair looked back down just as quickly. The other pair held her gaze. “Hey, Lucretia.” There was a tinge of surprise in Mrs. Atwood’s voice. Surprise turned to concern. “You okay?”

Lucretia knew she looked as dishevelled and antsy and nauseous as she felt. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Just…” She couldn’t lie about needing a drink; she had passed the fountains on her way over.

“Too hot outside?” Mrs. Atwood offered.

“Yeah,” Lucretia exhaled, relieved for the out.

“Well, you can take your seat if you like. Recess is almost over, anyway. Speaking of…” Mrs. Atwood rose from her desk. “Girls, I’ll be right back. Gotta use the ladies’ room.” She turned to the damaged thing at the far end of the second-last row, peeling a tangerine. “We’ll talk some more about it later, okay, Mia?”

Lucretia wondered if Mrs. Atwood saw the pain, suffering, and sadness that animated Mia’s barely nodding head. She wondered if Mrs. Atwood knew that she was responsible for those emotions. Of course, she does, Lucretia reminded herself. Mia and her mother and Ms. Jackson for sure told her what I did.

Mrs. Atwood flashed Lucretia a smile on her way out.

Victim and criminal were alone.

Lucretia remained at the door. Staring at Mia, like the other kids. Talking about her, like the other kids, except her conscience was the mouth, tongue-tied, inarticulate. Her meagre vocabulary boiled down to a single thought: Just do it, chicken!

Paring herself from the linoleum, Lucretia shuffled toward the row of desks in a wide arc, simultaneously avoiding and gravitating toward the back row. Her eyes never left Mia, who busied herself with her tangerine. As she drew reluctantly closer, Lucretia was afforded a profile view of the baseball cap—a major topic of gossip—that never left Mia’s head. Having reached the beginning of the back row, she then trudged the never-ending trudge toward her ill-placed desk at the very end.

Each timid step brought her closer to Mia.

Each fearful step brought her closer to the damned baseball cap… and what it hid.

Each outright terrified step packed more and more of Mia’s citrusy snack into her nose.

Standing behind her chair, which sat behind her desk, which sat behind Mia, Lucretia wondered why Mia’s mother—who had witnessed the unfortunate seating plan during several of her visits—allowed the criminal so close to her daughter.

Lucretia heard Mia’s chewing slow, saw her back stiffen, growing uncomfortably aware of Lucretia’s presence, and the lack of chair legs scraping against the floor.

Chicken! Chicken! CHICKEN!

She collapsed, rather than sat in, her poorly-assigned seat, and couldn’t help but fall into the week-long habit of studying the bit of naked scalp visible under the rim of Mia’s baseball cap. She memorized the bony ridges, the shallow pockets, the pronounced point where the skull met the spine, the precise number of pink and red bumps. She knew each of Mia’s five beauty-marks intimately, and no matter how many times her eyes played with them, she couldn’t settle upon a shape, pattern, or design. She believed that if the school day were longer, she would finally be able to count each terribly short bristle of thin hair.

A fresh burst of tangerine invaded Lucretia’s nose. The odour divided itself: southbound, to her stomach, where it mixed with and churned breakfast; northbound, to the mysterious region of the brain where scent converted to imagery. There, she saw that bright June day, not too dissimilar from the little girl and boy outside. Did he catch her? she wondered. Is she crying?

Chicken! that other part of her taunted.

What if she doesn’t believe me?

Chicken!

What if she screams and cries again?

Chicken!

What if she hits me?

CHICKEN!

Another burst of tangerine perspiration. This time Lucretia didn’t see the little girl and boy, but another film entirely: the claustrophobic kindergarten playground; Mia clutching the back of her head, bawling in Ms. Jackson’s arms; Lucretia trying her best not to join in on the bawling, but failing, trying to give back the long brunette strands of hair wrapped around her stubby fingers; Mia blaring her refusal; Lucretia covering her blubbering face, her snotty nose detecting something flowery, something fruity.

Yet another surge of Mia’s tangerine, and Lucretia realized that Mia’s envied, rope-like hair had been washed in tangerine-scented shampoo that day in June.

“I’m sorry.” Lucretia craved to be heard, perhaps even to be forgiven, and yet she didn’t understand why Mia was turning to face her.

“For what?” Mia asked.

Lucretia couldn’t believe the question more than the fact Mia was actually talking to her. Did she forget, too? Like Ms. Jackson? Does her mom remember?

Mia started to turn away.

The tangerine had completely assimilated with Lucretia’s stomach contents, and out came a vomit of sorts: “I’m sorry for pulling your hair and for making you cry and for making all your hair fall out of your head and eyebrows and everyone talking about you and looking at you and not playing with you and making you not want to go outside and play…” As she purged, she saw the most peculiar thing: a smile. Mia had never looked so pretty. Lucretia thought Mia had been pretty on their last day as kindergartners, when she had asked if she’d like to play tag, but this was…

…beauty.

Lucretia sealed her spewing. She noted a sliver of pale orange flesh stuck between Mia’s big teeth, somehow enhancing her beautiful smile.

“You didn’t pull all my hair out, Luke,” Mia said, her voice tickled by a suppressed laugh.

Lucretia—“Luke” to her only friend, Mia—saw two of the girl before her. Both Mia’s lost their beautiful smiles as they took Lucretia’s hand, and asked her why she was crying.

“I thought I…” Tears drowned the thought. “I thought I pulled out all your hair when we played tag that time.”

“No,” Mia said, beautiful smile nowhere on her lips. “I was sick.”

“Sick? Like a cold?” Lucretia sniffled as if she bore the illness.

“I got leukemia,” Mia said, the word somewhat shaky on her tongue.

Lucretia tasted the foreign word. “Lu-Luke-Mia?” She beamed. “Luke-Mia? Like our names?”

Mia smiled another one of her rainbows, tangerine pulp and all. “I never thought of that.”

“What’s Lu-Luke-”

“Leukemia,” Mia corrected. “It’s a bad sickness, but I don’t got it anymore because the doctor gave me medicine, but the medicine makes your hair fall out. My mom is going to come to class one day soon, and help me and Mrs. Atwood tell everyone about it.”

On the one hand, Lucretia was relieved to be off the hook. On the other, she now wished she had been the cause of Mia’s hair loss. “Is that why you don’t want to go outside?” The regret of the inquiry came as swiftly as Mia’s radiant smile faded.

“I want to, but I can’t do too much stuff, like running. I don’t like the way the other kids look at me, and stuff.” Now it was Lucretia’s turn to wipe her duplicate self from Mia’s brimming eyes.

The school bell rang, setting off an uproar outside.

Mrs. Atwood returned as if on cue. “You girls okay?” She hadn’t noticed the swollen eyes. They smiled. “Mia, all good?” An extra smile from Mia.

Once again, Lucretia was gifted with the back of Mia’s baseball-capped head, the way she would remain until the glancing and gossiping kids were summoned outside for more for-granted play. She leaned forward, and whispered each word louder than the next, for the rowdiness was racing up the steps. “If you want, I can play with you outside next recess.” She saw the beauty-marks closest to each of Mia’s ears rise ever so slightly, and she knew her friend was smiling.

And though the children were screaming in the hallway—not the bad kind of screaming; not Mia’s screaming—Lucretia caught Mia’s whisper: “Maybe we can play tag.”

Image via Pixabay