It was one of those rare days where I was glad for Justin’s eccentric personality. With his everyday irritatingly loud voice and uncanny ability to talk non-stop for a whole half hour, he managed to make me forget about Anthony and Tommy Hayford. Well, almost.
As much as I had pushed the events to the back of my head, they had still managed to seep themselves back into the recesses of my mind, itching me, forcing me to have that little voice that whispered and recounted what had happened. I needed sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Maybe some coffee too.
“So I’m turning eighteen tonight,” Justin was babbling one of his epic, improvised speeches, “Or maybe I’ve already turned eighteen. I wouldn’t know because I don’t actually know what time I came out of my mum’s va—what time I was born,” Justin quickly and sheepishly corrected himself as he noticed a few people’s heads turn in alarm as we stepped through the hallway.
He was walking backwards, facing us so he was absolutely sure that we were looking at and paying attention to him, “This party is gonna be a blast isn’t it. I’ve always dreamed of being able to watch R-rated movies, with all that... you know.”
“That’s great Justin,” Christian nodded, slightly glazing over like Carol and I, “Now how about we all get ourselves prettied up so we can seduce sexy men.”
Carol quirked an eyebrow, “I’m really beginning to question your sexuality.”
He laughed nervously as Justin looped an arm around both their shoulders, leaving me on the side and completely out of the picture, “Whoever we seduce doesn’t matter, right?” he grinned cheerily, “What matters is that we look seductive and awesome.”
He returned to his usual position in the front, ardently leading the way to nowhere in particular. I cleared my throat.
Justin spun on one foot and opened his arms, “Yes, my darling Ashley, what is your question?”
I offered him a weird look, “Where exactly are we going?”
He gesticulated, “Well, that is all up to you, dearest. We may go to any place that is capable of making you so gorgeous that even the devils of hell cannot match up to you.”
“I’m sorry, but could you speak in a language that I can understand?”
“Anywhere you want,” he said quickly, slightly put off that I wasn’t able to comprehend his intricate sentence structure.
“Manicure!” Carol shrieked, rushing to the doorway of a fragrant store, “Oh, god, I’m absolutely dying here with my chipped nail. You guys can go ahead; it’s a must that I get my nails done. I’ll meet you guys at the food court later, yeah? Great! Love ya, bye!” she chirped as she excitedly stepped into the shop without waiting for an answer.
Thank God it was Justin and Christian; if it were two guys I hadn’t been hanging out with for the past five, six years, I’d be in the most awkward situation possible. Now Justin swung his arms around our shoulders; his arm rested uncomfortably on my short stature, and after a while he gave up.
“No offence, Ash, but you’re kinda short,” he grumbled disappointedly, “I mean from far away, damn, you’re tall. But close up you’re a rabbit, or maybe even a mouse."
I scowled at him, unappreciative of the fact that he compared me to animals.
“A very cute mouse,” Christian noticed my expression, while Justin remained completely oblivious as he basked in his own pride and glory.
“Anything you want, Ashley, my darling?” Justin asked, bowing in front of me, and walking backwards at the same time, “Yes! I want jeans! Let’s goooooo!”
He yelled the words as he spread his arms out, mimicking an aeroplane, and half-ran in a zigzag down the corridor towards the nearest shop.
“I don’t know him,” I told a man standing next to us. Christian shook his head and he grabbed my wrist and dragged me along as he briskly walked to catch up with him.
The shop we entered was freakishly gothic, with salespeople who wore black from head to toe, nose rings, unnecessarily attention-grabbing haircuts and tongues piercings. The clothes there seemed to be designed solely for people with weird haircuts, depraved expressions and no ass. I looked, and felt too much like a fish out of water in there for my liking, and was pretty sure Christian was feeling the same.
“Hey, Ash!” Justin called, “This will look awesome on you!” he dangled a very revealing top in front of my nose. My mouth fell open.
I closed it, “You know, I think I’m fine with the t-shirts in my wardrobe.”
“And I went through the trouble of finding it as well,” Justin gave me a disappointed pout.
“That look won’t work on me,” I sighed, turning to Christian, “Anything you want from here?”
“Not really, we just came here ‘cause he did,” Christian jerked his head in Justin’s general direction.
“You know, I find it a little awkward shopping with you guys,” I tugged at my sleeve nervously.
“What was that, Ash?” Justin called out from deep within the shop, “I thought you loved us, and now that you don’t, I don’t think I can live anymore!” he emerged from behind a messy rack of clothes on sale with a solemn expression on his face, “Oh, spare me this pain. Spear me with a toothbrush, and I’ll die peacefully, but only if you do it.”
Christian shook his head, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Am I really friends with you?” I cocked an eyebrow.
“Ah, but my darling Ashley, the real question is, are you friends, with this?” he thrust another skin-baring top in front of my face and I could see him grinning cheesily behind the ripped and dangerously thin fabric.
“No,” I looked around anxiously, only to be greeted with the attention of several pairs of heavily eyeliner-ed eyes, “You know what, Just?”
“Yes?” he took the top away from my face, his childish eyes sparkling with excitement, “You figured out that you want something?”
“Yes. I would like to buy a new bus pass. I’ve run out of rides.”
Justin carelessly tossed the top high backwards over his head and linked arms with me again, “Then let’s go!” and marched past the curious customers, out of the shop, with Christian following behind as meekly and nonchalantly as possible.
“Is it just me, or is he... high?” Christian whispered into my ear as I was tugged toward the newsagent via Justin’s arm that was linked with mine.
“Yeah,” I said, “But my question is... on what? Is it orange juice, or... that?”
Christian shook his head, “We should have a serious talk to him about that, but preferably not now.”
“Here we are!” Justin said cheerfully, kneeling on the ground and bowing gracefully, “It’s an honour to be able to do you service.”
I patted him on the head, “Just hope you’re not high on drugs,” I said half-jokingly, giving him what I hoped was a meaningful look.
He stood up and looked away; the cheerful demeanour had completely vanished, “What I do is none of your business. Hurry up and buy your bus pass.”
I walked into the shop feeling a small twinge of guilt and requested a pass.
“Concession? No concession?” the cashier asked as he browsed through the variously coloured tickets.
“Yes, for students,” I said, looking around, taking in the colour-coded pen arrangement, neat stacks of books, and newspapers.
One particular headline caught my eye; I was only too familiar with the subject.
I quickly paid for the ticket and looked outside. Justin and Christian were nowhere to be seen. I shrugged the matter off and decided that my curiosity was more important than finding them. After all, we were meeting up at the food court later and I wasn’t exactly on the best terms with Justin. I snatched the newspaper and scanned the article. There was a picture of a gorgeous blonde; truly a terrible fact that she had died so tragically.
A teenage girl, Sierra Milton, was found dead on the street in front of her apartment after allegedly jumping off her twenty-sixth floor balcony. Reports show that Sierra had been on hallucinogens at the time of death. However, police and detectives are being led into another mind-twisting case as further investigations have shown that a person may have been in the room with her at the time of her death...
-
Sierra examined herself in the mirror. Yes. She had grown to become a very beautiful girl—one with an angelic beauty that would have stopped most people on the street. Her guest would be shocked; he hadn’t seen her in years, and the last time he had seen her, he had hated her with a passion. It was a shame too, since she had had a crush on him at the time.
It was cold, but she had decided to go all the way. She was only wearing a teasing denim micro skirt, and a button-down shirt, with the thought of her guest ogling at her enticingly playing joyfully in her mind.
She wanted him to kiss her, touch her. Today would be the day.
She ruffled her blonde hair and pouted at the mirror after applying a fresh coat of lipstick. Oh, was she looking forward to this reunion. She’ll show him what a lady she had become, and he would regret ever hating her in the past.
Everything in her apartment was perfect. All clothes, blankets and even underwear were folded. There was nothing else she could do to appear more impressive than she already did.
Her heart started beating faster when she heard a knock on the door. No. Calm down.
She snatched a slip of plastic and put a small square of what appeared to be blotter paper into her mouth. Excitement started to bubble in her stomach.
When she opened the door, it was her that received the shock. Standing in front of her was an absolutely to-die-for teenager. His hair was shiny, and looked so soft it took all her will to not throw herself onto him and start running her hands through it. The adorable boy she knew before had blossomed into a beautiful rose.
“Hello, Sierra,” he with a voice and smile that made her knees wobble. She had forgotten all about flirting and burned with lust.
Before she knew it, the door had been slammed shut and her lips were crushed against his. His hand easily slid up her skirt and touched white skin beneath. She hissed slightly at the contact that set her skin on fire. As thought of before, his hair was irresistibly soft and she touched it over and over again. She straddled him and held him as close to her as possible, his hard chest pressed pleasingly against her own soft one, all the while not knowing where he was taking her.
One would think that at this moment, they would be making their way to her bed. But the boy had other intentions. He had taken them both onto the balcony.
Yes, she was beautiful. But she did not deserve to live.
Her hazel eyes stared at him with burning desire and she kissed him again, desperation evident in her actions. He pried her legs off of his hips and tilted her ever so slowly over the balcony edge.
Sierra was still longing for another kiss as she plummeted down twenty six floors to her death.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
5. bad habits
He ran through the corridor, the bright red balloon floating behind him like the tail of a kite. His right arm was plastered; he couldn’t move it. But that didn’t matter at the moment. He wanted to show Daddy his balloon.
“Daddy!” he called out, still running, “Daddy, look what I have!”
Whoa! What you got there, big guy? That’s what Daddy would say. He just knew it.
He was angry with his mother at the moment, and he knew she was angry with him. But he didn’t know why she was mad at him. He didn’t do anything. Did he? It didn’t matter much to him now. He wiped his tears and put on a strong face for his dad to see. He was mad at Mum, so he’d run to Dad. It always worked. Of course, before, he also had... he shook his head.
Don’t think about her, he thought.
It would only bring about terrible memories.
He wanted to stitch up his relationship with his father; ever since that incident, they had been drifting further and further away from each other. He knew that if he apologised for his behaviour after it, his father would forgive him and take him to the park, or at least piggyback him downstairs to make and eat a sandwich. Or something of the sort.
His small feet swiftly climbed the stairs to his father’s study.
“Oomph,” he grunted when he tripped on a step, letting the balloon go and float up. Realising that he couldn’t reach it, he frowned.
Oh well, he thought, Daddy will get it for me. At this thought, he smiled. It’d been a while since his daddy helped him with something.
He got up and turned into the study. The light was off. He could hear his mother calling him from downstairs. He would get to her later; he wanted to talk to Daddy first.
He switched the light on, and saw his father sleeping on the desk. But why did it smell so... bad? Like smoke from a fire, except there was no fire. He shook his father’s shoulder, but he didn’t wake up.
“Daddy?” he poked his head under his face and prodded his cheek. The smell drifted up his nose. He coughed.
“Daddy, I can you get my balloon for me?” he shook his father again, harder this time, “Daddy, stop sleeping!”
He propped his left arm on the table and decided to wait for his father to wake up. His mother called him again. Getting impatient, he lifted his father’s head up, and screamed.
His father’s eyes were rolled back. There was blood running down the side of his head. And then he realised the revolver on the table. And then he couldn’t hear anything; he could only see his father’s rolled-back eyes, and could only smell that foul smoke invading his nostrils, setting them on fire.
He backed into the corner, his eyes scrunched tight, covering his ears with his tiny hands, and screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
-
“Well, well, well,” the man called Anthony straightened up and looked directly at me, familiar stark blue eyes piercing my mind, challenging me. I widened my eyes in shock. I was a murderer-to-be and I was caught! Mrs. Hayford turned around, saw my and Carol’s head poked around the corner, and shrieked, spilling the contents of her drink on the floor.
“Oh! Gomenasai...” she muttered, bending down to clean it up.
“What do we have here?” Anthony said, approaching us, ignoring Mrs. Hayford. I frowned; if he was any kind of gentleman he’d help her.
“Umm... Mr. Hayford?” Carol said uncertainly.
“Yes, that is what most people address me as,” he nodded, somewhat proud, “Who might you girls be, intruding the house?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hayford! And... Mr. Hayford.” I squeaked. It felt slightly odd to be addressing Tommy’s father, “We—we were just delivering some goods, you know?”
I gasped. Mrs. Hayford didn’t know about the party. She wasn’t supposed to. If she found out that a party, with alcohol, with an invitation list of 900 people was being hosted in her very own house, she’d skin Tommy alive, after extracting his intestines and slicing them into thin pieces and eating them with a bowl of miso soup. Not to mention she’d put Justin through tremendous, unbearable torture for holding his party in her house.
So I added on hastily, “You know how this place is kind of my second home and all, right? I thought I should stock up a lot since my brother’s getting attacked by puberty and all, and he’s getting mood swings every five seconds like a girl on her period. Well, my point is that Carol was so kind as to help me get all the food here and no one was answering the door so I climbed through the back and I thought if I could open the front door—“
“Yes!” Mrs. Hayford clapped her hands and rubbing them together nervously, “You may... open the front door.”
Phew.
“Thanks!” I said in an unintentionally high-pitched voice, “Come on, Carol!”
“You know them?” I heard Anthony Hayford question Tommy’s mother as we swiftly left the room.
Carol, still dazed, came after me, “I didn’t know Tommy had a dad!”
“Neither did I!” I hissed, “I’m just lucky she wasn’t suspicious about us breaking in.”
“Yeah, lucky she was distracted by the spilt coffee or whatever she was drinking. Not to mention your superb excuse-slash-explanation. Did you rehearse it? Because it all came out in one breath. And wow Tommy’s dad is almost as hot as he is! I mean, yeah, you know. I’m not attracted to middle-aged men, but he’s like a George Clooney!” she raved.
I stared at her. She did not just hit on Tommy’s father.
She blinked and seemed to realise what she just said, “Yeah, let’s go open that door.”
“Shall we drag it to Tommy’s room? I mean, it is on the ground floor, and that way his mum won’t discover it. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe not.”
“I don’t care. As long as we don’t have to push it for too long,” she shrugged, and opened the door.
After we managed (somehow) to push that trolley another fifty metres, I slumped on Tommy’s bed, not caring if I crinkled his sheets or rearranged his pillows.
“Tommy owes us bigtime,” I groaned, my muscles deciding to ache now.
“Ugh! My nail chipped!” Carol said, disgusted, “I’m going to get a manicure tomorrow.”
“I’m sure me and the guys will enjoy watching you getting beautified.”
She sighed, mourning the loss of the corner of her nail.
“I don’t know what kind of guy keeps scented candles in his room,” Carol said, snooping around.
“He doesn’t like that,” I said, speaking for Tommy, “People looking at his stuff.”
“I know. But he isn’t here now, is he? Nail clippers, couple of CDs,” she continued digging out small treasures of his table, “Oh! I love that band!”
“Maybe you should stop,” I repeated myself, “Tommy doesn’t like people looking at his stuff.”
“And I like looking at people’s stuff. Things weigh each other out, Ash. Oh, look!” She held up the Yellow Pages I saw the other day, “He’s stalking someone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He might be.”
“Changing the topic!” I paused, “Maybe we should explain ourselves to Mrs. Hayford? I mean, not that we haven’t already. It’s just we didn’t explain very well.”
She jumped up happily, “Yes! Let’s go see Tommy’s dad!”
I shook my head and left the room. Mr. and Mrs. Hayford were deep in conversation, their heads dangerously close. I had an urge to just clonk them both together and cause them great pain, because they were obviously dirty-talking Tommy.
“I mean, he never helps around the house, he always comes home so late! All he lets me do is worry!” Mrs. Hayford said, distressed.
I wanted to grab her by her hair and say to her that she was never available for him and doesn’t even have time to worry about anything but her precious convenience stores. Not to mention that her negligence was the cause of his absence from home. I loudly cleared my throat.
They both silenced, and snapped their attention to us.
“Sorry about our—”cough, “intrusion earlier. I mean, no one was answering the door.”
“We knocked,” Carol added, helpfully.
Mrs. Hayford nodded, “That’s quite alright. It was our fault for not answering.”
Mr. Hayford, however, was less understanding, “Do you regularly climb over people’s back fences if nobody’s home?” he demanded.
I flinched, “No, I—we—I’m just a—”
“They are very good friend of Tommy,” Mrs. Hayford hastily answered for me with her excellent grammar.
“I see,” Mr. Hayford said, obviously not convinced. I also wanted to grab him by the hair and tell him that he shouldn’t be judging us.
The awkward silence that followed tempted me further. I was greatly enticed, believe me.
“Yeah,” Carol said cautiously, “I think my mum wanted me to do something for her. See ya, Ash. Bye, Mrs. Hayford,” she bowed, “Mr. Hayford.”
Mrs. Hayford bowed, Mr. Hayford nodded. I didn’t know whether to be jealous, pissed, or understanding of the fact that she just left me. The situation was painfully awkward and I also wanted to concoct an ingenious excuse to get me out of it, but it would be too suspicious, especially after Carol just departed.
I contemplated the idea of asking Mrs. Hayford whether she knew Ella or not, but decided against it when I remembered Tommy’s reaction to the mention of her name and I didn’t want to risk Mrs. Hayford to break out into one of her unstoppable hysterics.
“So, Ashley,” Mrs. Hayford decided to shatter the silence, “I can’t help but notice that the food that you are stocking up on was all soft drink and chips?”
I laughed nervously, shifting my gaze to Mr. Hayford, who looked amused. He’d better not think I was a gluttonous pig, “You see... I... love potatoes, especially flavoured ones. I mean, you can’t find flavoured potatoes in the supermarket, they only come as chips. My mum used to make flavoured potatoes for, umm, lunch. Well, not lunch, but afternoon tea or something. Yeah, Daniel and I loved dipping them in Fanta and Coke.”
Mr. Hayford raised an eyebrow, “Really? That’s interesting, I‘ve never heard of flavoured potatoes. I’d like to try some.”
Crap.
“Ahh... well, you see, the recipe to make them was really complicated, couldn’t be memorised, and she lost it, so I don’t think we’ll ever be eating the real thing ever again,” I said, sighing sadly.
“Pity.”
“Yeah.”
Mrs. Hayford looked disbelieving. Tommy owed me his ass, I swear. His mum probably thought I was slightly deluded, or... retarded, as he would put it.
“I can leave,” I pointed hopefully to the front door, “If I interrupted something important.”
“No!” Mr. Hayford said immediately, shaking his head.
Damn.
“No, no, no,” Mrs. Hayford agreed.
“So you were talking about Tommy before?” I decided to pry.
“Yes, we were,” Mr. Hayford said icily, obviously unimpressed by my nosiness.
“That boy have such bad habits. He eats the cucumber straight from the fridge!” Mrs. Hayford exclaimed. I raised an eyebrow, “And he stay out so late every day, and he always flicking that infernal lighter of his on and off. Why does he even have it, anyway? He doesn’t smoke! Or does he? I don’t know because I don’t see him at all. Hell—” I flinched at the word, “He could even be doing marijuana!”
“Excuse me?” a cold voice demanded quietly. All heads turned towards the threshold. Mrs. Hayford’s face looked consumed by guilt. Tommy stood there, his face questioning.
“Tommy!” I said happily. I bounced to him and hissed quietly into his ear, “You didn’t tell me about your dad.”
He paled, “W—what?”
His breath seemed to have been cut short as he realised who Mr. Hayford was, a shocked and appalled look slowly etching itself on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was at a loss for words. His eyes, the empty, clueless blue, were wide and lost.
“Wha—what are you—who?” he attempted to muster some words. He started shaking, his stance weakening.
“You’ve gotten really handsome and... rather thin, I must say,” Mr. Hayford smiled and opened his arms, “Thomas—”
“Don’t,” Tommy seethed, tone completely changed, his words laced with malice, “Don’t call me that.”
The atmosphere between them oozed hate and anger. It seemed to drop below zero degrees, causing my hairs to stand on end and my skin to break out in goosebumps. Only Mr. Hayford attempted to stay and keep his voice composed.
Mr. Hayford fazed, “But Thomas, my boy—“
“Don’t think you can just come in here,” Tommy yelled angrily, pointing at the floor, “All welcome, and act all fatherly—” he spat the word, “thinking that you can replace him, because you can’t!”
“Tommy, that’s enough.” Mrs. Hayford warned him.
“Thomas—”
“Don’t call me that!” he shrieked, voice rising. I jumped at his tone.
“Tom,” Mr. Hayford corrected himself slowly, “I’m just here to—”
“I don’t want a father,” Tommy said, then dragged his icy blue orbs to meet with the other pair, “And I don’t need one, so you can go and fuck off.”
I cringed at his words but didn’t move away from him.
“Tommy!” Mrs. Hayford said, horrified, “You will mind your language when you are talking to your uncle!”
Uncle?
Mr. Hayford put a hand out, signalling that he was fine. He slowly walked to Tommy, “Tom, I’m not trying to replace your father, but you do realise that he’s not going to come back, right?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think this topic is upsetting him,” I said, folding my arms. I tried to look confident, but it was so painful. I’d never seen Tommy create an outburst of anger, and it hurt me that I couldn’t do anything about it.
His face—I had never seen it so shook up, so hurt. It was like he had been sawn in half, and was being stitched back together, slowly. The look on his face. I never thought I’d ever see it.
Tommy was going to cry.
“Yes, let’s stop,” Mrs. Hayford quickly agreed, oblivious to her son’s emotions, “Tommy, go to your room.”
I was still taking in the fact that Tommy was on the verge of tears when I realised that he was no longer beside me.
“Daddy!” he called out, still running, “Daddy, look what I have!”
Whoa! What you got there, big guy? That’s what Daddy would say. He just knew it.
He was angry with his mother at the moment, and he knew she was angry with him. But he didn’t know why she was mad at him. He didn’t do anything. Did he? It didn’t matter much to him now. He wiped his tears and put on a strong face for his dad to see. He was mad at Mum, so he’d run to Dad. It always worked. Of course, before, he also had... he shook his head.
Don’t think about her, he thought.
It would only bring about terrible memories.
He wanted to stitch up his relationship with his father; ever since that incident, they had been drifting further and further away from each other. He knew that if he apologised for his behaviour after it, his father would forgive him and take him to the park, or at least piggyback him downstairs to make and eat a sandwich. Or something of the sort.
His small feet swiftly climbed the stairs to his father’s study.
“Oomph,” he grunted when he tripped on a step, letting the balloon go and float up. Realising that he couldn’t reach it, he frowned.
Oh well, he thought, Daddy will get it for me. At this thought, he smiled. It’d been a while since his daddy helped him with something.
He got up and turned into the study. The light was off. He could hear his mother calling him from downstairs. He would get to her later; he wanted to talk to Daddy first.
He switched the light on, and saw his father sleeping on the desk. But why did it smell so... bad? Like smoke from a fire, except there was no fire. He shook his father’s shoulder, but he didn’t wake up.
“Daddy?” he poked his head under his face and prodded his cheek. The smell drifted up his nose. He coughed.
“Daddy, I can you get my balloon for me?” he shook his father again, harder this time, “Daddy, stop sleeping!”
He propped his left arm on the table and decided to wait for his father to wake up. His mother called him again. Getting impatient, he lifted his father’s head up, and screamed.
His father’s eyes were rolled back. There was blood running down the side of his head. And then he realised the revolver on the table. And then he couldn’t hear anything; he could only see his father’s rolled-back eyes, and could only smell that foul smoke invading his nostrils, setting them on fire.
He backed into the corner, his eyes scrunched tight, covering his ears with his tiny hands, and screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
-
“Well, well, well,” the man called Anthony straightened up and looked directly at me, familiar stark blue eyes piercing my mind, challenging me. I widened my eyes in shock. I was a murderer-to-be and I was caught! Mrs. Hayford turned around, saw my and Carol’s head poked around the corner, and shrieked, spilling the contents of her drink on the floor.
“Oh! Gomenasai...” she muttered, bending down to clean it up.
“What do we have here?” Anthony said, approaching us, ignoring Mrs. Hayford. I frowned; if he was any kind of gentleman he’d help her.
“Umm... Mr. Hayford?” Carol said uncertainly.
“Yes, that is what most people address me as,” he nodded, somewhat proud, “Who might you girls be, intruding the house?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hayford! And... Mr. Hayford.” I squeaked. It felt slightly odd to be addressing Tommy’s father, “We—we were just delivering some goods, you know?”
I gasped. Mrs. Hayford didn’t know about the party. She wasn’t supposed to. If she found out that a party, with alcohol, with an invitation list of 900 people was being hosted in her very own house, she’d skin Tommy alive, after extracting his intestines and slicing them into thin pieces and eating them with a bowl of miso soup. Not to mention she’d put Justin through tremendous, unbearable torture for holding his party in her house.
So I added on hastily, “You know how this place is kind of my second home and all, right? I thought I should stock up a lot since my brother’s getting attacked by puberty and all, and he’s getting mood swings every five seconds like a girl on her period. Well, my point is that Carol was so kind as to help me get all the food here and no one was answering the door so I climbed through the back and I thought if I could open the front door—“
“Yes!” Mrs. Hayford clapped her hands and rubbing them together nervously, “You may... open the front door.”
Phew.
“Thanks!” I said in an unintentionally high-pitched voice, “Come on, Carol!”
“You know them?” I heard Anthony Hayford question Tommy’s mother as we swiftly left the room.
Carol, still dazed, came after me, “I didn’t know Tommy had a dad!”
“Neither did I!” I hissed, “I’m just lucky she wasn’t suspicious about us breaking in.”
“Yeah, lucky she was distracted by the spilt coffee or whatever she was drinking. Not to mention your superb excuse-slash-explanation. Did you rehearse it? Because it all came out in one breath. And wow Tommy’s dad is almost as hot as he is! I mean, yeah, you know. I’m not attracted to middle-aged men, but he’s like a George Clooney!” she raved.
I stared at her. She did not just hit on Tommy’s father.
She blinked and seemed to realise what she just said, “Yeah, let’s go open that door.”
“Shall we drag it to Tommy’s room? I mean, it is on the ground floor, and that way his mum won’t discover it. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe not.”
“I don’t care. As long as we don’t have to push it for too long,” she shrugged, and opened the door.
After we managed (somehow) to push that trolley another fifty metres, I slumped on Tommy’s bed, not caring if I crinkled his sheets or rearranged his pillows.
“Tommy owes us bigtime,” I groaned, my muscles deciding to ache now.
“Ugh! My nail chipped!” Carol said, disgusted, “I’m going to get a manicure tomorrow.”
“I’m sure me and the guys will enjoy watching you getting beautified.”
She sighed, mourning the loss of the corner of her nail.
“I don’t know what kind of guy keeps scented candles in his room,” Carol said, snooping around.
“He doesn’t like that,” I said, speaking for Tommy, “People looking at his stuff.”
“I know. But he isn’t here now, is he? Nail clippers, couple of CDs,” she continued digging out small treasures of his table, “Oh! I love that band!”
“Maybe you should stop,” I repeated myself, “Tommy doesn’t like people looking at his stuff.”
“And I like looking at people’s stuff. Things weigh each other out, Ash. Oh, look!” She held up the Yellow Pages I saw the other day, “He’s stalking someone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He might be.”
“Changing the topic!” I paused, “Maybe we should explain ourselves to Mrs. Hayford? I mean, not that we haven’t already. It’s just we didn’t explain very well.”
She jumped up happily, “Yes! Let’s go see Tommy’s dad!”
I shook my head and left the room. Mr. and Mrs. Hayford were deep in conversation, their heads dangerously close. I had an urge to just clonk them both together and cause them great pain, because they were obviously dirty-talking Tommy.
“I mean, he never helps around the house, he always comes home so late! All he lets me do is worry!” Mrs. Hayford said, distressed.
I wanted to grab her by her hair and say to her that she was never available for him and doesn’t even have time to worry about anything but her precious convenience stores. Not to mention that her negligence was the cause of his absence from home. I loudly cleared my throat.
They both silenced, and snapped their attention to us.
“Sorry about our—”cough, “intrusion earlier. I mean, no one was answering the door.”
“We knocked,” Carol added, helpfully.
Mrs. Hayford nodded, “That’s quite alright. It was our fault for not answering.”
Mr. Hayford, however, was less understanding, “Do you regularly climb over people’s back fences if nobody’s home?” he demanded.
I flinched, “No, I—we—I’m just a—”
“They are very good friend of Tommy,” Mrs. Hayford hastily answered for me with her excellent grammar.
“I see,” Mr. Hayford said, obviously not convinced. I also wanted to grab him by the hair and tell him that he shouldn’t be judging us.
The awkward silence that followed tempted me further. I was greatly enticed, believe me.
“Yeah,” Carol said cautiously, “I think my mum wanted me to do something for her. See ya, Ash. Bye, Mrs. Hayford,” she bowed, “Mr. Hayford.”
Mrs. Hayford bowed, Mr. Hayford nodded. I didn’t know whether to be jealous, pissed, or understanding of the fact that she just left me. The situation was painfully awkward and I also wanted to concoct an ingenious excuse to get me out of it, but it would be too suspicious, especially after Carol just departed.
I contemplated the idea of asking Mrs. Hayford whether she knew Ella or not, but decided against it when I remembered Tommy’s reaction to the mention of her name and I didn’t want to risk Mrs. Hayford to break out into one of her unstoppable hysterics.
“So, Ashley,” Mrs. Hayford decided to shatter the silence, “I can’t help but notice that the food that you are stocking up on was all soft drink and chips?”
I laughed nervously, shifting my gaze to Mr. Hayford, who looked amused. He’d better not think I was a gluttonous pig, “You see... I... love potatoes, especially flavoured ones. I mean, you can’t find flavoured potatoes in the supermarket, they only come as chips. My mum used to make flavoured potatoes for, umm, lunch. Well, not lunch, but afternoon tea or something. Yeah, Daniel and I loved dipping them in Fanta and Coke.”
Mr. Hayford raised an eyebrow, “Really? That’s interesting, I‘ve never heard of flavoured potatoes. I’d like to try some.”
Crap.
“Ahh... well, you see, the recipe to make them was really complicated, couldn’t be memorised, and she lost it, so I don’t think we’ll ever be eating the real thing ever again,” I said, sighing sadly.
“Pity.”
“Yeah.”
Mrs. Hayford looked disbelieving. Tommy owed me his ass, I swear. His mum probably thought I was slightly deluded, or... retarded, as he would put it.
“I can leave,” I pointed hopefully to the front door, “If I interrupted something important.”
“No!” Mr. Hayford said immediately, shaking his head.
Damn.
“No, no, no,” Mrs. Hayford agreed.
“So you were talking about Tommy before?” I decided to pry.
“Yes, we were,” Mr. Hayford said icily, obviously unimpressed by my nosiness.
“That boy have such bad habits. He eats the cucumber straight from the fridge!” Mrs. Hayford exclaimed. I raised an eyebrow, “And he stay out so late every day, and he always flicking that infernal lighter of his on and off. Why does he even have it, anyway? He doesn’t smoke! Or does he? I don’t know because I don’t see him at all. Hell—” I flinched at the word, “He could even be doing marijuana!”
“Excuse me?” a cold voice demanded quietly. All heads turned towards the threshold. Mrs. Hayford’s face looked consumed by guilt. Tommy stood there, his face questioning.
“Tommy!” I said happily. I bounced to him and hissed quietly into his ear, “You didn’t tell me about your dad.”
He paled, “W—what?”
His breath seemed to have been cut short as he realised who Mr. Hayford was, a shocked and appalled look slowly etching itself on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was at a loss for words. His eyes, the empty, clueless blue, were wide and lost.
“Wha—what are you—who?” he attempted to muster some words. He started shaking, his stance weakening.
“You’ve gotten really handsome and... rather thin, I must say,” Mr. Hayford smiled and opened his arms, “Thomas—”
“Don’t,” Tommy seethed, tone completely changed, his words laced with malice, “Don’t call me that.”
The atmosphere between them oozed hate and anger. It seemed to drop below zero degrees, causing my hairs to stand on end and my skin to break out in goosebumps. Only Mr. Hayford attempted to stay and keep his voice composed.
Mr. Hayford fazed, “But Thomas, my boy—“
“Don’t think you can just come in here,” Tommy yelled angrily, pointing at the floor, “All welcome, and act all fatherly—” he spat the word, “thinking that you can replace him, because you can’t!”
“Tommy, that’s enough.” Mrs. Hayford warned him.
“Thomas—”
“Don’t call me that!” he shrieked, voice rising. I jumped at his tone.
“Tom,” Mr. Hayford corrected himself slowly, “I’m just here to—”
“I don’t want a father,” Tommy said, then dragged his icy blue orbs to meet with the other pair, “And I don’t need one, so you can go and fuck off.”
I cringed at his words but didn’t move away from him.
“Tommy!” Mrs. Hayford said, horrified, “You will mind your language when you are talking to your uncle!”
Uncle?
Mr. Hayford put a hand out, signalling that he was fine. He slowly walked to Tommy, “Tom, I’m not trying to replace your father, but you do realise that he’s not going to come back, right?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think this topic is upsetting him,” I said, folding my arms. I tried to look confident, but it was so painful. I’d never seen Tommy create an outburst of anger, and it hurt me that I couldn’t do anything about it.
His face—I had never seen it so shook up, so hurt. It was like he had been sawn in half, and was being stitched back together, slowly. The look on his face. I never thought I’d ever see it.
Tommy was going to cry.
“Yes, let’s stop,” Mrs. Hayford quickly agreed, oblivious to her son’s emotions, “Tommy, go to your room.”
I was still taking in the fact that Tommy was on the verge of tears when I realised that he was no longer beside me.
Friday, August 13, 2010
4. father
“So where did you and Tommy go yesterday if you didn’t go to his place?” Carol raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow as she grabbed about two dozen packets of different flavoured chips with her thin, perfectly tanned arm.
“Why do you want to know so badly?” I asked acidly, “You’ve asked that so many times and I don’t want to tell you.”
“I’m merely curious,” she said, sounding a little desperate, “and why aren’t you telling me anyway? I’m, like, your best friend!”
Because I was a nice person, I didn’t tell her that I considered Tommy to be my best friend, and that I had a hunch that she liked Tommy. Like, like liked. And that I didn’t like it.
We were in the local supermarket, buying about 1000 bucks’ worth of food for Justin’s precious 18th birthday party since he decided to invite the entire student body, which was about 900 people. Carol, being the obstinate stickybeak she was, naturally asked me about what I did and where I went with Tommy yesterday. It’s like she had to know everything.
“Umm...” I said, wondering if I should tell her about the amazingly... nice place we went to.
“I can see you’re going to ace English this year,” she snorted, “now tell me!”
“Why do you want to know so badly?” I hissed, at the same time wondering whether I was being too obvious and secretive. I grabbed four raspberry Fanta bottles and she took plenty of lemonade, cherry soda, and juice.
“Do we really need that many drinks? I’m worried about Tommy’s water bill. I mean, people are gonna be peeing and... vomiting... all night,” I frowned, looking at the load of drinks in the trolley.
“Yes. People get thirsty in parties, especially if they’ve been trading saliva with someone.”
“You would know.”
“Shut up. Now stop changing the topic and tell me.”
“You wouldn’t know where we went even if I told you,” I mumbled, really not wanting to tell her about what I thought of as Tommy’s and my secret spot now.
“I don’t care. What was it like?” she said, getting excited, even though I wasn’t planning on telling her. She must’ve taken my reply as an ‘introduction’ of some sort before I actually told her about the place.
“Umm... nice?” I supplied, helpfully. ‘Nice’ would be the understatement of the year.
“Gee, Ash, that tells me a lot,” she rolled her eyes, “Did you guys go to a sizzling hot club and have sloppy teenage sex? Are you going to be the pair that will contribute more fucked up and unwanted kids into society?”
“Carol!” I gasped, horrified and slapping her arm, “Mind your language, missus! Me and Tommy aren’t like that!”
“I’m only kidding,” she said, winking, “but you wish you were.”
I sighed, “Maybe. I mean not in the teenage sex way but, you know and... yeah. Besides, he doesn’t see me in that way. More like a little sister, I guess.”
Til Ella’s 21st...
There was no way he would see me in that way, because he had this... Ella. The sad, nostalgic look on his face flashed back into my mind, causing me to tremble slightly.
The flames from hell...
What flames from hell?
“Or a sex machine,” Carol said bluntly, snapping me back to reality.
I quickly shouted the first thing that came to my mind so as to cover up for my spacing out, “Carol!”
“Okay, okay. I’m just saying it’s a definitely possibility.”
“We’re not having sex!” I exclaimed, exasperated.
We stopped speaking so loudly when we remembered that we were in a public supermarket, and noticed that there was an old lady staring at us, not even trying to be discreet about her mortification of the younger generation that hers worked so hard on conceiving.
Carol looked at me, then smiled and with a sugar-coated, thick-as-honey sweet voice, said, “Hi. Sorry, what was that? You wanted to know where the jam is? It’s in aisle three.”
I couldn’t help but giggle at her nonchalance. The old lady, startled by Carol’s overly exaggerated casualty, hurriedly scuttled away like a scared beetle. I was just glad she wasn’t one of those pissy old ladies who acted like they had PMS twenty-four-seven.
“Weird...” Carol muttered to herself, shaking her head. And just when I thought she wouldn’t press on the matter, “So, where did you and Tommy go?”
“For the last time, I don’t want to tell you, Carol,” I sighed, swinging my arms back and forth pointlessly as we strolled along the yoghurt and milk.
“Fine,” she pouted, “If it’s that precious to you, I’ll keep my nose out of it.”
“Good,” I said bluntly, though I was tempted to boast to her.
She muttered something about reverse psychology and how it didn’t work on me. Well, you’re right, Carol. It doesn’t work on me. Unless Tommy used it... well, Tommy shouldn’t have to use it. I’d listen to anything he said, and it didn’t matter whether it was good or bad; all that mattered was that he was happy. I’d commit a sin for him, even if it meant going to hell.
“So are you excited about Justin’s party?” Carol said in a completely different tone; surprisingly brightly for someone whose countless attempts at prying proved to be fruitless a few seconds ago.
“Of course!” I said, the words dripping heavily with sarcasm, “I can’t wait to be all intimate with drunk people who are already preoccupied with going down each other’s throats.” I looked pointedly at her.
She looked a little offended, but took it as a joke nonetheless, “I swear I won’t do that! Okay, maybe I will, but I can’t help it if I’m sexy.” She winked.
“Yeah, whatever, Carol,” I rolled my eyes, “Shall we pay for these now?” I made my way to the cash registers.
“Yes. Wait up!” she quickly clanked up to me in her six-inch heels, drawing plenty of male eyes to her and her legs. When she caught up to me she chirped, “So, what are you wearing? If I were you, I’d go for something low-cut, you know? Something sexy, so that Tommy will notice you...”
“Ew. No thanks, Carol,” I loaded the goods onto the belt. The cashier’s eyes widened as he looked at the daunting task before him. He looked from the food to us, the food, back to us, and arched a questioning eyebrow. I knew what he was thinking: we were going to pig out tonight; big time.
Carol winked at him and shrugged at me, “Your funeral. Let’s go shopping tomorrow. I can make you look nice without sexy clothes.”
The cashier began his challenge of scanning all our items with great collectedness and ease.
Beep.
“Yes, lots of people manage to get married without showing off too much cleavage, you know?”
Beep.
“Carol will make you absolutely beautiful for tomorrow night!” she said proudly, busting her buttons, “So let’s go shopping!”
Chorus of beeps.
Carol and I watched him scan the rest of the items for what seemed like ages.
“That’ll be nine hundred and eighty-six dollars and sixty-five cents,” the cashier said, finally finished. He looked just about ready to quit his job.
“Oh, snap. We’re lucky Tommy’s loaded,” Carol whistled, blinking her eyes rapidly.
I gave the money to the check-out-dude, who seemed to be rather surprised that we were paying in cash, “You’ll never run out of change again,”“Fine. Shopping tomorrow,” I said impatiently, “What time?”
“Shall we say... 11 at the fountain? Bring Tommy with you. I’ll get Justin and Christian.”
“We’re shopping with them?” I groaned, “Thanks,” I added to the cashier, who nodded.
“Have a nice day,” he said in a fatigued tone as he turned to the next customer, “Hi, how are you today?”
Then Carol said in a very loud voice, “Shit.”
“What?” I said nervously, looking around to see her, again, drawing a lot of attention.
“Shit,” she said, louder this time.
“Do you maybe, want to keep the volume down please?” I said desperately. I hated getting disapproving looks, especially from people I didn’t know. Especially from old people I didn’t know. And believe me, a lot of them were quite the elderly people. I just wanted to say to them as politely as possible: I don’t know this person!
“How the fuck are we going to carry all this shit?”
I looked at the sea of shopping bags. Oh, damn. She had a point.
“Shit," I said, but softer than Carol. I’d never sworn in unnecessary situations, but I felt it was necessary for me to swear. You know, to express my annoyance and anger.
“I know, right?!”
“I’m getting a trolley, or maybe two. There is no way in hell, or even heaven that I’m going to carry all this home. Would your mum mind if she picked us up and dropped us off at Tommy’s?”
“Don’t know. I’ll give her a ring,” she said, whipping out her expensive phone, “Hi, Mum?” she explained our little situation in fluent Swedish.
I pushed the trolley over and proceeded to load everything on. This was going to be rather difficult to roll around. Carol closed her phone and slipped it into her bag.
“Well?” I said, desperate and hopeful.
“We have 10 minutes to load this crap into the trolley and take it to the car park on roof level.”
-
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Hunter,” I said, scrambling out of the car.
She chuckled softly, “Anytime, Ashley darling.”
“Really, really, thank you!’ I almost cried, “If you want, I’ll kiss the ground just to show you how grateful I am.”
She blinked her round blue eyes, “I don’t think that’s necessary, love.”
“Of course,” I grinned sheepishly, “but thank you!”
“Tell Thomas I said hi,” she laughed heartily.
“Will do, Mrs. Hunter,” I saluted, closing the door to her sleek Mercedes.
“Ash, are you going to help me take this to Tommy’s or not?” Carol called me from where she had already successfully made it with the severely overweight trolley.
“Coming!” I called, and again to her mother, “Thanks!”
“Bye, Ashley! You girls have fun!” she drove off. Maybe I overdid it just a little bit.
I ran up to Carol and helped her push the trolley. It made very loud and clattering noises as the plastic wheels scraped across the pavement. We approached Tommy’s very... big house; what he gets for having a mother who’s the owner of a chain of convenience stores.
“I always wanted a house this big,” Carol sighed longingly, staring wistfully at the enviably clean, cream-coloured house.
“You already have a house bigger than this,” I reminded her, “And it has marble tiles. Tommy has floorboards. Now, keep pushing.”
“This is going to be a bitch to get up the stairs. Should we call Justin?”
I shook my head, “You know Justin. He’d say he’ll be here in five, but he’ll be here in forty-five.”
“Fine.”
It only took us ten minutes to get the trolley up the fourteen steps to Tommy’s front door.
“That should be in the Guiness World Record book,” I panted, “Who can get to the top of a staircase with an obese trolley the fastest?”
“You and your ideas,” Carol said, exhausted. She knocked on the door.
We waited for a few minutes. No answer.
“Isn’t Mrs. Hayford off work today?” Carol asked.
“Well, it’s a big house,” I shrugged, “Knock again.”
She did. No answer.
“Shall we check around back?”
We left the trolley on the doorstep, hoping that nobody would be cheap enough to bother going up those steps to get a packet of chips. We climbed over the fence into the backyard where the swimming pool was.
“I’ve always wondered why he never uses this goddamn sexy pool. It’s so big! If I had it I’d be using it every day!” Carol said longingly.
“Shush!” I scolded her harshly, “We’re not supposed to be in here, remember?” Realisation dawned; I hissed, “We’re trespassing. I feel like such a—such a... murderer, breaking into a house. What if all murderers start off like this? First they sneak into a house to see if anyone’s home. And then it—it morphs.”
Carol rolled her eyes and walked on. I scurried after her. We abruptly stopped when we heard voices from the kitchen.
“Oh, honestly, Anthony,” Mrs. Hayford sighed, “I can’t wait until I get that boy out of here.” She spoke about Tommy as if he were a pebble in her shoe.
Someone laughed softly, and spoke in a British accent, “Don’t be too harsh on the poor kid.” A man.
I risked a glance around the corner. Mrs. Hayford was sitting with a mug in her hand, her back facing us. A tall, lanky, dark-haired man in slacks and a tie stood facing her, his eyes a flawless blue.
“Who is that?” Carol whispered, nudging me painfully in the ribs.
I stood there, shocked.
Tommy’s... father?
“Why do you want to know so badly?” I asked acidly, “You’ve asked that so many times and I don’t want to tell you.”
“I’m merely curious,” she said, sounding a little desperate, “and why aren’t you telling me anyway? I’m, like, your best friend!”
Because I was a nice person, I didn’t tell her that I considered Tommy to be my best friend, and that I had a hunch that she liked Tommy. Like, like liked. And that I didn’t like it.
We were in the local supermarket, buying about 1000 bucks’ worth of food for Justin’s precious 18th birthday party since he decided to invite the entire student body, which was about 900 people. Carol, being the obstinate stickybeak she was, naturally asked me about what I did and where I went with Tommy yesterday. It’s like she had to know everything.
“Umm...” I said, wondering if I should tell her about the amazingly... nice place we went to.
“I can see you’re going to ace English this year,” she snorted, “now tell me!”
“Why do you want to know so badly?” I hissed, at the same time wondering whether I was being too obvious and secretive. I grabbed four raspberry Fanta bottles and she took plenty of lemonade, cherry soda, and juice.
“Do we really need that many drinks? I’m worried about Tommy’s water bill. I mean, people are gonna be peeing and... vomiting... all night,” I frowned, looking at the load of drinks in the trolley.
“Yes. People get thirsty in parties, especially if they’ve been trading saliva with someone.”
“You would know.”
“Shut up. Now stop changing the topic and tell me.”
“You wouldn’t know where we went even if I told you,” I mumbled, really not wanting to tell her about what I thought of as Tommy’s and my secret spot now.
“I don’t care. What was it like?” she said, getting excited, even though I wasn’t planning on telling her. She must’ve taken my reply as an ‘introduction’ of some sort before I actually told her about the place.
“Umm... nice?” I supplied, helpfully. ‘Nice’ would be the understatement of the year.
“Gee, Ash, that tells me a lot,” she rolled her eyes, “Did you guys go to a sizzling hot club and have sloppy teenage sex? Are you going to be the pair that will contribute more fucked up and unwanted kids into society?”
“Carol!” I gasped, horrified and slapping her arm, “Mind your language, missus! Me and Tommy aren’t like that!”
“I’m only kidding,” she said, winking, “but you wish you were.”
I sighed, “Maybe. I mean not in the teenage sex way but, you know and... yeah. Besides, he doesn’t see me in that way. More like a little sister, I guess.”
Til Ella’s 21st...
There was no way he would see me in that way, because he had this... Ella. The sad, nostalgic look on his face flashed back into my mind, causing me to tremble slightly.
The flames from hell...
What flames from hell?
“Or a sex machine,” Carol said bluntly, snapping me back to reality.
I quickly shouted the first thing that came to my mind so as to cover up for my spacing out, “Carol!”
“Okay, okay. I’m just saying it’s a definitely possibility.”
“We’re not having sex!” I exclaimed, exasperated.
We stopped speaking so loudly when we remembered that we were in a public supermarket, and noticed that there was an old lady staring at us, not even trying to be discreet about her mortification of the younger generation that hers worked so hard on conceiving.
Carol looked at me, then smiled and with a sugar-coated, thick-as-honey sweet voice, said, “Hi. Sorry, what was that? You wanted to know where the jam is? It’s in aisle three.”
I couldn’t help but giggle at her nonchalance. The old lady, startled by Carol’s overly exaggerated casualty, hurriedly scuttled away like a scared beetle. I was just glad she wasn’t one of those pissy old ladies who acted like they had PMS twenty-four-seven.
“Weird...” Carol muttered to herself, shaking her head. And just when I thought she wouldn’t press on the matter, “So, where did you and Tommy go?”
“For the last time, I don’t want to tell you, Carol,” I sighed, swinging my arms back and forth pointlessly as we strolled along the yoghurt and milk.
“Fine,” she pouted, “If it’s that precious to you, I’ll keep my nose out of it.”
“Good,” I said bluntly, though I was tempted to boast to her.
She muttered something about reverse psychology and how it didn’t work on me. Well, you’re right, Carol. It doesn’t work on me. Unless Tommy used it... well, Tommy shouldn’t have to use it. I’d listen to anything he said, and it didn’t matter whether it was good or bad; all that mattered was that he was happy. I’d commit a sin for him, even if it meant going to hell.
“So are you excited about Justin’s party?” Carol said in a completely different tone; surprisingly brightly for someone whose countless attempts at prying proved to be fruitless a few seconds ago.
“Of course!” I said, the words dripping heavily with sarcasm, “I can’t wait to be all intimate with drunk people who are already preoccupied with going down each other’s throats.” I looked pointedly at her.
She looked a little offended, but took it as a joke nonetheless, “I swear I won’t do that! Okay, maybe I will, but I can’t help it if I’m sexy.” She winked.
“Yeah, whatever, Carol,” I rolled my eyes, “Shall we pay for these now?” I made my way to the cash registers.
“Yes. Wait up!” she quickly clanked up to me in her six-inch heels, drawing plenty of male eyes to her and her legs. When she caught up to me she chirped, “So, what are you wearing? If I were you, I’d go for something low-cut, you know? Something sexy, so that Tommy will notice you...”
“Ew. No thanks, Carol,” I loaded the goods onto the belt. The cashier’s eyes widened as he looked at the daunting task before him. He looked from the food to us, the food, back to us, and arched a questioning eyebrow. I knew what he was thinking: we were going to pig out tonight; big time.
Carol winked at him and shrugged at me, “Your funeral. Let’s go shopping tomorrow. I can make you look nice without sexy clothes.”
The cashier began his challenge of scanning all our items with great collectedness and ease.
Beep.
“Yes, lots of people manage to get married without showing off too much cleavage, you know?”
Beep.
“Carol will make you absolutely beautiful for tomorrow night!” she said proudly, busting her buttons, “So let’s go shopping!”
Chorus of beeps.
Carol and I watched him scan the rest of the items for what seemed like ages.
“That’ll be nine hundred and eighty-six dollars and sixty-five cents,” the cashier said, finally finished. He looked just about ready to quit his job.
“Oh, snap. We’re lucky Tommy’s loaded,” Carol whistled, blinking her eyes rapidly.
I gave the money to the check-out-dude, who seemed to be rather surprised that we were paying in cash, “You’ll never run out of change again,”“Fine. Shopping tomorrow,” I said impatiently, “What time?”
“Shall we say... 11 at the fountain? Bring Tommy with you. I’ll get Justin and Christian.”
“We’re shopping with them?” I groaned, “Thanks,” I added to the cashier, who nodded.
“Have a nice day,” he said in a fatigued tone as he turned to the next customer, “Hi, how are you today?”
Then Carol said in a very loud voice, “Shit.”
“What?” I said nervously, looking around to see her, again, drawing a lot of attention.
“Shit,” she said, louder this time.
“Do you maybe, want to keep the volume down please?” I said desperately. I hated getting disapproving looks, especially from people I didn’t know. Especially from old people I didn’t know. And believe me, a lot of them were quite the elderly people. I just wanted to say to them as politely as possible: I don’t know this person!
“How the fuck are we going to carry all this shit?”
I looked at the sea of shopping bags. Oh, damn. She had a point.
“Shit," I said, but softer than Carol. I’d never sworn in unnecessary situations, but I felt it was necessary for me to swear. You know, to express my annoyance and anger.
“I know, right?!”
“I’m getting a trolley, or maybe two. There is no way in hell, or even heaven that I’m going to carry all this home. Would your mum mind if she picked us up and dropped us off at Tommy’s?”
“Don’t know. I’ll give her a ring,” she said, whipping out her expensive phone, “Hi, Mum?” she explained our little situation in fluent Swedish.
I pushed the trolley over and proceeded to load everything on. This was going to be rather difficult to roll around. Carol closed her phone and slipped it into her bag.
“Well?” I said, desperate and hopeful.
“We have 10 minutes to load this crap into the trolley and take it to the car park on roof level.”
-
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Hunter,” I said, scrambling out of the car.
She chuckled softly, “Anytime, Ashley darling.”
“Really, really, thank you!’ I almost cried, “If you want, I’ll kiss the ground just to show you how grateful I am.”
She blinked her round blue eyes, “I don’t think that’s necessary, love.”
“Of course,” I grinned sheepishly, “but thank you!”
“Tell Thomas I said hi,” she laughed heartily.
“Will do, Mrs. Hunter,” I saluted, closing the door to her sleek Mercedes.
“Ash, are you going to help me take this to Tommy’s or not?” Carol called me from where she had already successfully made it with the severely overweight trolley.
“Coming!” I called, and again to her mother, “Thanks!”
“Bye, Ashley! You girls have fun!” she drove off. Maybe I overdid it just a little bit.
I ran up to Carol and helped her push the trolley. It made very loud and clattering noises as the plastic wheels scraped across the pavement. We approached Tommy’s very... big house; what he gets for having a mother who’s the owner of a chain of convenience stores.
“I always wanted a house this big,” Carol sighed longingly, staring wistfully at the enviably clean, cream-coloured house.
“You already have a house bigger than this,” I reminded her, “And it has marble tiles. Tommy has floorboards. Now, keep pushing.”
“This is going to be a bitch to get up the stairs. Should we call Justin?”
I shook my head, “You know Justin. He’d say he’ll be here in five, but he’ll be here in forty-five.”
“Fine.”
It only took us ten minutes to get the trolley up the fourteen steps to Tommy’s front door.
“That should be in the Guiness World Record book,” I panted, “Who can get to the top of a staircase with an obese trolley the fastest?”
“You and your ideas,” Carol said, exhausted. She knocked on the door.
We waited for a few minutes. No answer.
“Isn’t Mrs. Hayford off work today?” Carol asked.
“Well, it’s a big house,” I shrugged, “Knock again.”
She did. No answer.
“Shall we check around back?”
We left the trolley on the doorstep, hoping that nobody would be cheap enough to bother going up those steps to get a packet of chips. We climbed over the fence into the backyard where the swimming pool was.
“I’ve always wondered why he never uses this goddamn sexy pool. It’s so big! If I had it I’d be using it every day!” Carol said longingly.
“Shush!” I scolded her harshly, “We’re not supposed to be in here, remember?” Realisation dawned; I hissed, “We’re trespassing. I feel like such a—such a... murderer, breaking into a house. What if all murderers start off like this? First they sneak into a house to see if anyone’s home. And then it—it morphs.”
Carol rolled her eyes and walked on. I scurried after her. We abruptly stopped when we heard voices from the kitchen.
“Oh, honestly, Anthony,” Mrs. Hayford sighed, “I can’t wait until I get that boy out of here.” She spoke about Tommy as if he were a pebble in her shoe.
Someone laughed softly, and spoke in a British accent, “Don’t be too harsh on the poor kid.” A man.
I risked a glance around the corner. Mrs. Hayford was sitting with a mug in her hand, her back facing us. A tall, lanky, dark-haired man in slacks and a tie stood facing her, his eyes a flawless blue.
“Who is that?” Carol whispered, nudging me painfully in the ribs.
I stood there, shocked.
Tommy’s... father?
Saturday, July 31, 2010
3. dangerous water
We didn’t go to Tommy’s place.
We didn’t even get on a bus to Tommy’s place.
We didn’t go anywhere near Tommy’s place.
I could hardly recognise where we went. It was a lake surrounded by several rocks and a mini forest of trees on the other side. There was a small, abandoned house perched up with the trees; the kind of house that was like a fairytale cottage with a chimney, kind of like in Snow White. I’d like to have gone up there.
I vaguely recalled coming here before for a picnic with my parents and my little brother Daniel, but back then it wasn’t this beautiful. I knew Tommy came here often but this was the first time I’d ever been here with him. If he wanted to be somewhere that barely anyone knew about with me, then obviously he had something to tell me. Or maybe he was just bored. The latter meant that I had skipped school for no reason, so I hoped that he did have something to tell me.
He stopped walking and sat down.
I propped myself down next to him, the grass half tickling, half itching me, “Why are we sitting so far from the water? It’s so pretty. You know, I bet the swans are jealous of it, and all the other birds too, because it’s just too pretty for them. That’s why there are no birds around here. They’re scared of being condescended by the pretty water. Yes.” I nodded vigorously. It made sense. I knew it did. When he didn’t reply, I added, “So since the water is so pretty, let’s go closer!” I squealed, jumping up. He grabbed my ankle; a grip so icy I yelped.
“No,” he dragged me back down, “It’s dangerous.” He caressed his right elbow gently.
I frowned, “It doesn’t look that deep.”
“You could fall in anyway, and the creatures that you can’t see might suck you in deeper, past the sea floor, and you’d get lost forever. I could jump in after you, search for you, and probably drown trying.”
“Did you eat some bad peas at lunch?” I raised an eyebrow.
Without a reply, I gave up on trying to get closer to the water. We just sat there, watching the waves ripple and splash on top of the small rocks. The water was a pristine blue; a huge contrast to Tommy’s eyes, which were amber against the sunlight. The scene in front of us could’ve been a painting—it seemed too pure, too perfect to be true. The trees were topped with lusciously green leaves and the lake gently glistened under the sun. It really was like a fairy tale.
I let my hair out and allowed it to stream according to the wind direction. It was my best and most admirable feature, in my opinion. Tommy gently held a few strands in his cold hands and looked at it in admiration and... almost nostalgia for a moment.
“It’s so light...” he murmured, as if in a trance. I blushed, “Why is it so... long?” he muttered, almost to himself.
I cleared my throat, “Maybe because I grew it.”
“Right. That is a rather reasonable explanation.”
I laughed. I was beginning to worry about the fact that he was quite silent the whole journey to this place, but now he was back to his old self. Asshollish, but always managing to make me smile or laugh. I almost forgot that I was supposed to be at school (but I really did want to skip that math class).
“So, you made me ditch school just to come here with you. What’s your explanation, mister?” I demanded, crossing my arms and pretending to be all high and mighty.
“I just wanted you to come with me,” he shrugged loosely, lay on his back, and closed his eyes.
“You’re tired again, aren’t you?” I sighed, lying down beside him.
“Maybe,” he whirred out, not opening his eyes.
“You should stop coming home so late,” I accused, “Even I don’t know where you go or what you do so late at night... or so early in the day.”
“I’m sorry, Ash,” he said quietly, “Personal stuff.”
I understood. Whenever he said ‘sorry’, you could bet your life that he was being serious. I knew because I knew Tommy, and I knew how he was with his personal life. And that didn’t only include objects in his room. Without him telling me, I could deduce that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his mother, and he didn’t have a father that I knew of. To him, his home ‘reeked of his mother’s smell and her cooking’, to put it in his exact words. Mrs. Hayford was working most of her life.
Outside of home it was for Tommy most of the time.
“You’re uncomfortable,” he said loudly, “Don’t let me get to you. This is a really nice place. Enjoy it while you can.”
I smiled and relaxed in my position. I stared at the sky, examining the pretty fluffy formations that we humans called clouds. It seemed rather ridiculous that something so cute and white was actually stinky and full of raindrops.
“Can you see the bunny?” I asked, “That one right there. It’s looking down, though,” I pointed to the cloud.
“It looks more like a dying rose to me,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if he could see further if he did so, “being engulfed in flames...” his voice drifted off, and he closed his eyes again.
Even though he wasn’t looking, I frowned upon him. Sure, make me laugh and smile once, then ruin the whole afternoon by destroying my fantasy. I couldn’t look at the cloud in any other way now, and it wasn’t drifting away. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks to you and your morbid mind.
I breathed out and sought out some more cutely shaped clouds. I found a rocking horse and a dragon but decided not to alert the oh-so-innocent Tommy about it since, one: he’d spoil the image for both the prettily shaped clouds and move on to comparing the rest of them to god knows what, and two: he looked so peaceful and serene, his slight form so gently still on the fresh grass.
A soft breeze misshaped the clouds and flexed the long grass around Tommy. They softly swayed around him, like little fairies daintily dancing around a beautiful flower. Because that was what he was; a beautiful being in the cruel world he lived in.
His face twitched. Just lying there, I realised how vulnerable he looked and smiled. I reached out to stroke his cheek, but stopped myself because I knew that would wake him up (from past experience, and, well, he was an abnormally light sleeper).
Abruptly, he gasped, his eyes snapped open and he sat up. Startled, I jumped up. He inhaled, exhaled quickly and looked around him. His eyes were wild, still amber.
“Did you...” he started, then blinked, “Were you watching me the whole time?” his tone changed suddenly, from confused to somewhat quizzical.
“Uhh... maybe?” I said, looking around and pretending to look for something. No way was I going to get caught out again. It was just too embarrassing, “I was just looking for more clouds.”
“On my face?”
“Don’t be so up yourself,” I scoffed, “I was just looking at you because you woke up like a little kid who just had a nightmare.”
He looked slightly offended. Pleased, I stood up.
“Where are you going?” he asked, already recovered from the slight humility he had just suffered.
“I... don’t know,” I said and looked around where I was standing. Why did I stand up? Tommy smirked at me as I slowly sunk back onto the grass. Damn, why couldn’t I embarrass him without embarrassing myself a few seconds later?
He didn’t lie down again. He kept his eyes wide open, as if afraid to fall asleep again.
“So...” I said, “Did you have a bad dream?”
He coughed, then laughed, “No. Well, yes. I was dreaming about you,” he teased.
I slapped his shoulder, “That’s mean.”
“You know what, Ashley?” He stood up, “I don’t care!”
“Now what are you standing up for?” I questioned.
“Unlike you, I have a reason. I have something I want to do,” he answered, and briskly walked away.
Obviously he was leaving the option of following him to wherever up to me to take up. Well, I followed him, even though I knew very well that whenever he does this, it’s usually when he doesn’t want to be followed. Also, I didn’t really like the idea of being left alone in a place I didn’t know, no matter how pretty it was.
I was glad I ignored my mind’s protests and warnings against a potential deathly cold glare from Tommy and followed him because we ended up going to the cottage I saw and wanted to visit earlier. We walked for fifteen minutes in silence, but filled it up by breathing in the scent of fresh grass and enjoying the breeze.
“I come here when I need to think,” he told me before opening the door.
“You think?” I asked, amused.
“Of course. I’m very pensive.”
I rolled my eyes.
The cottage was rather unkempt and rough-looking. Well, it was to be expected, being abandoned and occupied by Tommy, who didn’t have the word ‘tidy’ in his vocabulary. Before us was a wide stretch of chipped brick wall; the smudged graffiti on it had faded somewhat. A large, dead tree arched over itself nearby, sending dark, misshapen shadows trickling over the long grass; I saw it looking out the heavily cobwebbed and dusty window with busted frames.
On the back of the door was three words scrawled in red permanent marker and judging from the way the ink smudged (quite terribly) from left to right, the person who wrote it was left-handed.
Til Ella’s 21st
Under it was a sequence of crossed-out numbers starting from fourteen. They stopped counting down at nine.
I beamed toothily at the back of Tommy’s head. He looked startled and nearly jumped back in surprise when he turned around and saw me grinning at him like an idiot.
He recovered, and frowned, “What?”
“Who’s Ella?” I swooned, clasping my hands together and putting them on the side of my tilted face. I pasted what I knew was an annoyingly sweet smile on my face and hoping that my eyes twinkled so I looked like a love-crazy girl from dramas.
He turned his head away from me and looked up out of the window. I bounded to him, making giggly noises and slapping him on his back, “No need to be shy, Tommykins, you can tell your Ashes anything!”
Actually, I was rather jealous, and I would be at any girl who had a closer relationship to Tommy than I did.
He muttered, almost inaudibly, an answer to my question, “You don’t know her.”
Come to think of it, who was Ella? Did he even know who she was? I mean, anyone could’ve written her pretty name on the door; it wasn’t necessarily Tommy who wrote it. There were plenty of left-handed people out there. Then again, he did answer as if he knew her.
I knitted my brows together, deciding to push further, “Well, can I meet her?”
He laughed bitterly, emotionlessly, then smacked his lips and sharply inhaled as if he had eaten something spicy that hurt his tongue, “No.”
I was stung and bit my bottom lip. Did he have to keep this girl who may or may not be his girlfriend a secret from me?
But all the hurt and disappointment faded away and transformed into awe as he whipped out a thick black marker and wrote something on the door in his own speedy, jagged writing.
The immediate smudges caused by the side of his left hand made the dark ink appear to be thick, oozing black blood, the grim nature of the words emphasised.
Then he turned around, smiling at me bitter-sweetly, as if he were remembering some good times. The pain etched on his face was unreadable, yet unbearable for me to watch, and my heart slowly shattered when I saw a single, glistening tear roll from his eye.
The flames from hell took her away from me.
We didn’t even get on a bus to Tommy’s place.
We didn’t go anywhere near Tommy’s place.
I could hardly recognise where we went. It was a lake surrounded by several rocks and a mini forest of trees on the other side. There was a small, abandoned house perched up with the trees; the kind of house that was like a fairytale cottage with a chimney, kind of like in Snow White. I’d like to have gone up there.
I vaguely recalled coming here before for a picnic with my parents and my little brother Daniel, but back then it wasn’t this beautiful. I knew Tommy came here often but this was the first time I’d ever been here with him. If he wanted to be somewhere that barely anyone knew about with me, then obviously he had something to tell me. Or maybe he was just bored. The latter meant that I had skipped school for no reason, so I hoped that he did have something to tell me.
He stopped walking and sat down.
I propped myself down next to him, the grass half tickling, half itching me, “Why are we sitting so far from the water? It’s so pretty. You know, I bet the swans are jealous of it, and all the other birds too, because it’s just too pretty for them. That’s why there are no birds around here. They’re scared of being condescended by the pretty water. Yes.” I nodded vigorously. It made sense. I knew it did. When he didn’t reply, I added, “So since the water is so pretty, let’s go closer!” I squealed, jumping up. He grabbed my ankle; a grip so icy I yelped.
“No,” he dragged me back down, “It’s dangerous.” He caressed his right elbow gently.
I frowned, “It doesn’t look that deep.”
“You could fall in anyway, and the creatures that you can’t see might suck you in deeper, past the sea floor, and you’d get lost forever. I could jump in after you, search for you, and probably drown trying.”
“Did you eat some bad peas at lunch?” I raised an eyebrow.
Without a reply, I gave up on trying to get closer to the water. We just sat there, watching the waves ripple and splash on top of the small rocks. The water was a pristine blue; a huge contrast to Tommy’s eyes, which were amber against the sunlight. The scene in front of us could’ve been a painting—it seemed too pure, too perfect to be true. The trees were topped with lusciously green leaves and the lake gently glistened under the sun. It really was like a fairy tale.
I let my hair out and allowed it to stream according to the wind direction. It was my best and most admirable feature, in my opinion. Tommy gently held a few strands in his cold hands and looked at it in admiration and... almost nostalgia for a moment.
“It’s so light...” he murmured, as if in a trance. I blushed, “Why is it so... long?” he muttered, almost to himself.
I cleared my throat, “Maybe because I grew it.”
“Right. That is a rather reasonable explanation.”
I laughed. I was beginning to worry about the fact that he was quite silent the whole journey to this place, but now he was back to his old self. Asshollish, but always managing to make me smile or laugh. I almost forgot that I was supposed to be at school (but I really did want to skip that math class).
“So, you made me ditch school just to come here with you. What’s your explanation, mister?” I demanded, crossing my arms and pretending to be all high and mighty.
“I just wanted you to come with me,” he shrugged loosely, lay on his back, and closed his eyes.
“You’re tired again, aren’t you?” I sighed, lying down beside him.
“Maybe,” he whirred out, not opening his eyes.
“You should stop coming home so late,” I accused, “Even I don’t know where you go or what you do so late at night... or so early in the day.”
“I’m sorry, Ash,” he said quietly, “Personal stuff.”
I understood. Whenever he said ‘sorry’, you could bet your life that he was being serious. I knew because I knew Tommy, and I knew how he was with his personal life. And that didn’t only include objects in his room. Without him telling me, I could deduce that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his mother, and he didn’t have a father that I knew of. To him, his home ‘reeked of his mother’s smell and her cooking’, to put it in his exact words. Mrs. Hayford was working most of her life.
Outside of home it was for Tommy most of the time.
“You’re uncomfortable,” he said loudly, “Don’t let me get to you. This is a really nice place. Enjoy it while you can.”
I smiled and relaxed in my position. I stared at the sky, examining the pretty fluffy formations that we humans called clouds. It seemed rather ridiculous that something so cute and white was actually stinky and full of raindrops.
“Can you see the bunny?” I asked, “That one right there. It’s looking down, though,” I pointed to the cloud.
“It looks more like a dying rose to me,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if he could see further if he did so, “being engulfed in flames...” his voice drifted off, and he closed his eyes again.
Even though he wasn’t looking, I frowned upon him. Sure, make me laugh and smile once, then ruin the whole afternoon by destroying my fantasy. I couldn’t look at the cloud in any other way now, and it wasn’t drifting away. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks to you and your morbid mind.
I breathed out and sought out some more cutely shaped clouds. I found a rocking horse and a dragon but decided not to alert the oh-so-innocent Tommy about it since, one: he’d spoil the image for both the prettily shaped clouds and move on to comparing the rest of them to god knows what, and two: he looked so peaceful and serene, his slight form so gently still on the fresh grass.
A soft breeze misshaped the clouds and flexed the long grass around Tommy. They softly swayed around him, like little fairies daintily dancing around a beautiful flower. Because that was what he was; a beautiful being in the cruel world he lived in.
His face twitched. Just lying there, I realised how vulnerable he looked and smiled. I reached out to stroke his cheek, but stopped myself because I knew that would wake him up (from past experience, and, well, he was an abnormally light sleeper).
Abruptly, he gasped, his eyes snapped open and he sat up. Startled, I jumped up. He inhaled, exhaled quickly and looked around him. His eyes were wild, still amber.
“Did you...” he started, then blinked, “Were you watching me the whole time?” his tone changed suddenly, from confused to somewhat quizzical.
“Uhh... maybe?” I said, looking around and pretending to look for something. No way was I going to get caught out again. It was just too embarrassing, “I was just looking for more clouds.”
“On my face?”
“Don’t be so up yourself,” I scoffed, “I was just looking at you because you woke up like a little kid who just had a nightmare.”
He looked slightly offended. Pleased, I stood up.
“Where are you going?” he asked, already recovered from the slight humility he had just suffered.
“I... don’t know,” I said and looked around where I was standing. Why did I stand up? Tommy smirked at me as I slowly sunk back onto the grass. Damn, why couldn’t I embarrass him without embarrassing myself a few seconds later?
He didn’t lie down again. He kept his eyes wide open, as if afraid to fall asleep again.
“So...” I said, “Did you have a bad dream?”
He coughed, then laughed, “No. Well, yes. I was dreaming about you,” he teased.
I slapped his shoulder, “That’s mean.”
“You know what, Ashley?” He stood up, “I don’t care!”
“Now what are you standing up for?” I questioned.
“Unlike you, I have a reason. I have something I want to do,” he answered, and briskly walked away.
Obviously he was leaving the option of following him to wherever up to me to take up. Well, I followed him, even though I knew very well that whenever he does this, it’s usually when he doesn’t want to be followed. Also, I didn’t really like the idea of being left alone in a place I didn’t know, no matter how pretty it was.
I was glad I ignored my mind’s protests and warnings against a potential deathly cold glare from Tommy and followed him because we ended up going to the cottage I saw and wanted to visit earlier. We walked for fifteen minutes in silence, but filled it up by breathing in the scent of fresh grass and enjoying the breeze.
“I come here when I need to think,” he told me before opening the door.
“You think?” I asked, amused.
“Of course. I’m very pensive.”
I rolled my eyes.
The cottage was rather unkempt and rough-looking. Well, it was to be expected, being abandoned and occupied by Tommy, who didn’t have the word ‘tidy’ in his vocabulary. Before us was a wide stretch of chipped brick wall; the smudged graffiti on it had faded somewhat. A large, dead tree arched over itself nearby, sending dark, misshapen shadows trickling over the long grass; I saw it looking out the heavily cobwebbed and dusty window with busted frames.
On the back of the door was three words scrawled in red permanent marker and judging from the way the ink smudged (quite terribly) from left to right, the person who wrote it was left-handed.
Til Ella’s 21st
Under it was a sequence of crossed-out numbers starting from fourteen. They stopped counting down at nine.
I beamed toothily at the back of Tommy’s head. He looked startled and nearly jumped back in surprise when he turned around and saw me grinning at him like an idiot.
He recovered, and frowned, “What?”
“Who’s Ella?” I swooned, clasping my hands together and putting them on the side of my tilted face. I pasted what I knew was an annoyingly sweet smile on my face and hoping that my eyes twinkled so I looked like a love-crazy girl from dramas.
He turned his head away from me and looked up out of the window. I bounded to him, making giggly noises and slapping him on his back, “No need to be shy, Tommykins, you can tell your Ashes anything!”
Actually, I was rather jealous, and I would be at any girl who had a closer relationship to Tommy than I did.
He muttered, almost inaudibly, an answer to my question, “You don’t know her.”
Come to think of it, who was Ella? Did he even know who she was? I mean, anyone could’ve written her pretty name on the door; it wasn’t necessarily Tommy who wrote it. There were plenty of left-handed people out there. Then again, he did answer as if he knew her.
I knitted my brows together, deciding to push further, “Well, can I meet her?”
He laughed bitterly, emotionlessly, then smacked his lips and sharply inhaled as if he had eaten something spicy that hurt his tongue, “No.”
I was stung and bit my bottom lip. Did he have to keep this girl who may or may not be his girlfriend a secret from me?
But all the hurt and disappointment faded away and transformed into awe as he whipped out a thick black marker and wrote something on the door in his own speedy, jagged writing.
The immediate smudges caused by the side of his left hand made the dark ink appear to be thick, oozing black blood, the grim nature of the words emphasised.
Then he turned around, smiling at me bitter-sweetly, as if he were remembering some good times. The pain etched on his face was unreadable, yet unbearable for me to watch, and my heart slowly shattered when I saw a single, glistening tear roll from his eye.
The flames from hell took her away from me.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
2. orange juice
“Orange juice,” Justin took an attractively noisy slurp out of his juice popper and elbowed me, causing me to create an unsightly scrawl on my work, “I love orange juice.”
“We know,” Carol sighed, “and that’s already on our shopping list for this oh-so-exciting birthday party for you so, please, for a minute, shut up about the orange juice.”
“Hey, easy on the birthday boy, Carol,” Justin said, raising his hands in surrender.
“You’re not the birthday boy yet, kawaii girl,” Tommy pointed out innocently. I stifled a snigger. Tommy always called people names with adjectives from his own language. I guess it was kind of payback after being harshly picked on in junior high for being just about the only half-Asian in the school, and it had become a habit obviously, because Justin was one of the few that didn’t bully him.
“Jealous are we, Hayford? Someone’s birthday isn’t until all the way at the end of the year,” Justin sneered.
“Now now, children,” Christian coaxed, casting a glance at Justin, “If we can’t play nicely, then we can’t play together.”
Carol blew raspberry with her cherry chapsticked lips.
“Yes, mother,” Justin and Tommy said solemnly in unison.
“I’m a dude, fags. I have a dick.” Christian rolled his eyes. Justin coughed.
“Really?” Carol quirked an eyebrow, “How big is it?”
“Carol!” I hissed, “You don’t just ask guys how big... it is!”
“What about hot dogs? I love hot dogs too!” Justin squealed, like a girl, out of the blue.
I had already lost interest, and so had Carol. While they were discussing their male sex organs and body parts, Carol and I were trying to make sense of all the x’s and f’s in my polynomials (I had a test tomorrow and was so screwed). Christian had been silenced by Carol’s question and was absent-mindedly poking his lunch, some of the peas rolling off. Tommy was also occupied with his lunch, except most of it was going into his mouth rather than off the table.
“Son of a bitch!” Justin shrieked. We all turned to see what had caused Justin’s humorously high-pitched outburst of anger. People sitting around us in the lunch room, who had been peacefully eating their food, also turned around. There were a few laughs and snickers, some amused smiles, but mostly an entertained silence.
Justin had managed to squirt his orange juice all over his school shirt, “I fucking ironed this shirt yesterday, man!” he whined, desperately fumbling for a napkin or tissue to clean his shirt.
“You iron?” Tommy quirked an eyebrow questioningly. Justin glared at him.
When he realised that just about the whole school was on the verge of laughing at his stupidity, he just grinned peevishly and yelled, “Come to my party this Saturday, at Tommy’s house. There’s gonna be heaps of food and... well, just come!” With an extra emphasis on the last two words.
That was Justin.
They laughed. There were excited murmurs, along the lines of ‘Tommy’s house? That’s hot!’ Soon, people, one by one, returned to their own small, quiet conversations. It took a while for Justin to notice that we were all still staring at him.
He arched an eyebrow, “What?”
“Smooth.” Tommy stated.
“Sexual innuendo much?” I laughed.
“You just have dirty minds,” he retorted defensively.
“And you don’t?” I challenged.
“Of course not,” he said indignantly.
“That would be why you put such an obvious stress on the last two words. Just come, eh? Not horny at all,” Christian snickered, gently placing a hand on his thigh.
“Dude,” Justin jumped up, looking at Christian with a shocked look on his face, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Leave the poor guy alone, Just. It’s not his fault you’re such an irresistible casanova,” Tommy drawled, barely amused and not looking anywhere but at his food, which he was still carefully putting into his mouth.
Justin grinned, obviously pleased, but seriously said, “Just because I’m an irresistible casanova doesn’t mean that dudes,” he shot a glance at Christian, whose ears went pink, “Can just go around groping around my crotch!”
“’Fuck’s sake,” Tommy said, taking in a grateful mouthful of peas, “Get over yourself.”
Justin opened his mouth to shoot out a cleverly thought-out retort but Carol got to it before him, “How can you eat that?” she shivered, “I hate peas. I mean, I know they’ve, like, zero fat in them and everything, but they taste like shit.”
“Honey, I’m a vegetarian,” Tommy said with his mouth full of healthy greens and throwing a triumphant look at Justin, “I actually think they taste pretty good.”
“No shit, bony ass.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, genius, if you’re so smart—”
“I never said, or implied that I was smart.”
I stared at him for a moment, feeling stupid, “Whatever. Help me with these polynomials. They’re giving me a migraine,” I groaned, massaging my temples with two fingers.
“Can’t be bothered,” he yawned.
“Meanie.”
“Slut.”
“Oi. Do I always have to be the father—” Christian started, nervously shifting away from Justin.
“Mother,” Justin interjected.
Christian fumed, “You want more orange juice on your precious shirt, pretty boy?”
Justin raised his hands in surrender for the second time in five minutes.
“Oh, mumma,” his said, attention abruptly swerved, whistling at a busty girl in a denim micro skirt, “I gotta invite her to my party. I’ll be right back,” he hastily got out of his chair, “Hey, girlie!”
“I thought he just invited the whole school?” Carol shook her head, “I don’t get that kid sometimes.”
“You know the fucker he is,” Tommy shrugged, taking in a mouthful of carrots. Carol cringed.
Justin bounced back happily after a few minutes, “I got a girl, and her number. Score!”
“Man whore,” Christian commented with a cough. Justin raised a fist.
“Hey...” I warned.
“Hey, if you wanna use my place for your party you’ll put that fist down,” Tommy said calmly, “Unless you want to hold your party where your parents are home. Also, you’re going to be the one who fills up the pool because I’m not going anywhere near that shithole.”
Justin’s face scrunched up, and then he sat down.
“You could at least be happy for me,” he wailed.
“I thought that with age comes maturity,” I said.
“No, it’s ‘with great power comes great responsibility’,” Christian corrected me. I nudged him.
“I was conjugating it,” I hissed at him, “So it fit the context.” He gave me a weird look.
“How many chicks have you slept with in this past month, anyway?” Carol asked like an interrogator, and it was funny of her to ask that because being the sexy blonde she is, she was quite the hooker as well.
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered, pretending to think.
“You’re such a pimp,” Christian sighed, “how did we become friends again?”
“You pissed your pants in third grade and I took you down to get new shorts.”
“Right.”
“Seriously, Christian?” Tommy choked on his food, “Third grade. Who still pisses their pants in third grade?”
Christian went red in the face.
“What do you think happened to that girl who fell off her balcony?” I butted in, changing the subject and darting my eyes at Tommy to see his reaction to my interest in the topic. He stopped eating and gave me an amused look.
“You mean that hot girl?” Justin piped, “I heard she went a bit woozy in the head ‘cause this hot guy visited her and she couldn’t think straight.”
“She didn’t fall, she jumped,” Tommy said.
“Oh? You know that because?” Christian asked casually.
“Did anyone actually listen to what I just said?” Justin asked, waving his hands around.
“She was on hallucinogens. The police found LSD in her.”
We all turned to Justin.
“Whoa,” he raised his hands, and lowered his voice, “Just because I—my brother has some doesn’t mean I gave some to some random chick, even if she was hot. It could’ve been my brother anyway.”
“I still think you should give up on it,” I mumbled anxiously, restraining myself from going on a rant and slightly afraid that he would lash out on me. He was pretty sensitive about it.
We sat in an awkward silence. Either we all felt uncomfortable about Justin’s addiction to drugs or we didn’t want to talk about such a grim topic. I immediately felt guilty about bringing it up and made a mental note never to do it again.
“Well, I’m wagging school tomorrow to go food shopping,” Tommy said, changing the topic. I telepathically said thank you to him.
Justin grasped his shoulders and shook them, pretending to cry emotionally, “Thank you!”
“Off,” Tommy brushed him off as if he were a bug, “By the way, Ash, you’re coming with me tomorrow.”
“What?” I asked, looking up, “I have a polynomials test tomorrow!”
“Obviously you aren’t ready for it, so just come,” he rolled his eyes.
“Listen to your good daddy,” Christian said with a great, big cheesy smile.
“Fuck you. I’m not married to you,” Tommy said, disgusted.
“I’m cut, Tommy!” Christian raised a hand to his forehead, “Say you love me beyond the seven seas, say you can’t live without me, and I shall live!”
Tommy slowly raised an eyebrow.
“You’re supposed to comply,” Christian sighed, “Never mind.”
“That was stupid.”
“Shut up.”
“So Ash, you coming?”
I hated being pushed into things, but I couldn’t find the energy or will to deny Tommy. “Fine, I’ll come... but you’re paying for everything.”
“Don’t worry, Ashley,” Carol patted me on the back and winked at Tommy, “Tommy’s loaded.”
“Exactly why I’m friends with him,” Justin grinned, earning him a hard slap on the back of his head, “Ow.”
Tommy shook his head, “Come on, Ashley, let’s go,” he ordered, standing up.
“Where?” I groaned, “You’re ruining my education!”
“My place,” he said, ignoring my comment.
“I wanna go to your place,” Carol whined.
“Me too,” Justin said with the same tone. Tommy glared at both of them.
“You’re turning me into a truant,” I cried, “If heaven doesn’t forgive me for this, I will personally start a war against you!”
“Man, Ashley you’re one weird chick,” Justin said, “Most girls would kill to go to a house as posh as Tommy’s, with a guy as sexy as him.”
Tommy shot him a menacing look, obviously not flattered by Justin’s unnecessary... compliment.
“Consequence for befriending me,” Tommy said, ignoring my feeble threat and not bothering to respond to everyone’s comments, “Now, come on.”
“Didn’t you not want me to be over the other day?” I said, stubbornly staying in my seat.
“Yeah, but I’m bored and I don’t want Justin, Carol or Christian over at the moment.”
“Gee, thanks. Nice to know you love me,” Carol said, turning her nose up, “You do realise you’re leaving me with Christian and Justin, right? I mean, that’s like, leaving me to be completely consumed by the flames of hell!”
Tommy flinched.
“Nice to know you love us too, Carol,” Justin piped.
“Don’t worry, Christian,” she said sweetly, “I love you.”
“Oi...”
“Coming, Ash?” Tommy said again, getting a little impatient.
Again, I couldn’t find it in me to refuse Tommy’s request. I reluctantly got up and put my books in my bag, “I’ll see you guys later then,” I said apologetically.
Carol shrugged, “Have fun.”
“Get. It. On.” Justin said, making unethical movements with his hips and arms.
Tommy had already gotten bored and begun his beeline to the exit. He didn’t look back to see whether I was following him or not; not that I was expecting him to. He just briskly walked out, drawing many eyes to himself as he easily glided past several tables. I hurriedly swung my packed bag over my shoulder and scurried after him.
“Wait!” Justin’s voice echoed across the cafeteria. Many heads turned at the familiar voice of the guy with the juice on his ironed shirt. Tommy turned around; a bored and indifferent look on his face. I turned around as well, definitely not expecting something important.
“Don’t forget the orange juice!”
“We know,” Carol sighed, “and that’s already on our shopping list for this oh-so-exciting birthday party for you so, please, for a minute, shut up about the orange juice.”
“Hey, easy on the birthday boy, Carol,” Justin said, raising his hands in surrender.
“You’re not the birthday boy yet, kawaii girl,” Tommy pointed out innocently. I stifled a snigger. Tommy always called people names with adjectives from his own language. I guess it was kind of payback after being harshly picked on in junior high for being just about the only half-Asian in the school, and it had become a habit obviously, because Justin was one of the few that didn’t bully him.
“Jealous are we, Hayford? Someone’s birthday isn’t until all the way at the end of the year,” Justin sneered.
“Now now, children,” Christian coaxed, casting a glance at Justin, “If we can’t play nicely, then we can’t play together.”
Carol blew raspberry with her cherry chapsticked lips.
“Yes, mother,” Justin and Tommy said solemnly in unison.
“I’m a dude, fags. I have a dick.” Christian rolled his eyes. Justin coughed.
“Really?” Carol quirked an eyebrow, “How big is it?”
“Carol!” I hissed, “You don’t just ask guys how big... it is!”
“What about hot dogs? I love hot dogs too!” Justin squealed, like a girl, out of the blue.
I had already lost interest, and so had Carol. While they were discussing their male sex organs and body parts, Carol and I were trying to make sense of all the x’s and f’s in my polynomials (I had a test tomorrow and was so screwed). Christian had been silenced by Carol’s question and was absent-mindedly poking his lunch, some of the peas rolling off. Tommy was also occupied with his lunch, except most of it was going into his mouth rather than off the table.
“Son of a bitch!” Justin shrieked. We all turned to see what had caused Justin’s humorously high-pitched outburst of anger. People sitting around us in the lunch room, who had been peacefully eating their food, also turned around. There were a few laughs and snickers, some amused smiles, but mostly an entertained silence.
Justin had managed to squirt his orange juice all over his school shirt, “I fucking ironed this shirt yesterday, man!” he whined, desperately fumbling for a napkin or tissue to clean his shirt.
“You iron?” Tommy quirked an eyebrow questioningly. Justin glared at him.
When he realised that just about the whole school was on the verge of laughing at his stupidity, he just grinned peevishly and yelled, “Come to my party this Saturday, at Tommy’s house. There’s gonna be heaps of food and... well, just come!” With an extra emphasis on the last two words.
That was Justin.
They laughed. There were excited murmurs, along the lines of ‘Tommy’s house? That’s hot!’ Soon, people, one by one, returned to their own small, quiet conversations. It took a while for Justin to notice that we were all still staring at him.
He arched an eyebrow, “What?”
“Smooth.” Tommy stated.
“Sexual innuendo much?” I laughed.
“You just have dirty minds,” he retorted defensively.
“And you don’t?” I challenged.
“Of course not,” he said indignantly.
“That would be why you put such an obvious stress on the last two words. Just come, eh? Not horny at all,” Christian snickered, gently placing a hand on his thigh.
“Dude,” Justin jumped up, looking at Christian with a shocked look on his face, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Leave the poor guy alone, Just. It’s not his fault you’re such an irresistible casanova,” Tommy drawled, barely amused and not looking anywhere but at his food, which he was still carefully putting into his mouth.
Justin grinned, obviously pleased, but seriously said, “Just because I’m an irresistible casanova doesn’t mean that dudes,” he shot a glance at Christian, whose ears went pink, “Can just go around groping around my crotch!”
“’Fuck’s sake,” Tommy said, taking in a grateful mouthful of peas, “Get over yourself.”
Justin opened his mouth to shoot out a cleverly thought-out retort but Carol got to it before him, “How can you eat that?” she shivered, “I hate peas. I mean, I know they’ve, like, zero fat in them and everything, but they taste like shit.”
“Honey, I’m a vegetarian,” Tommy said with his mouth full of healthy greens and throwing a triumphant look at Justin, “I actually think they taste pretty good.”
“No shit, bony ass.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, genius, if you’re so smart—”
“I never said, or implied that I was smart.”
I stared at him for a moment, feeling stupid, “Whatever. Help me with these polynomials. They’re giving me a migraine,” I groaned, massaging my temples with two fingers.
“Can’t be bothered,” he yawned.
“Meanie.”
“Slut.”
“Oi. Do I always have to be the father—” Christian started, nervously shifting away from Justin.
“Mother,” Justin interjected.
Christian fumed, “You want more orange juice on your precious shirt, pretty boy?”
Justin raised his hands in surrender for the second time in five minutes.
“Oh, mumma,” his said, attention abruptly swerved, whistling at a busty girl in a denim micro skirt, “I gotta invite her to my party. I’ll be right back,” he hastily got out of his chair, “Hey, girlie!”
“I thought he just invited the whole school?” Carol shook her head, “I don’t get that kid sometimes.”
“You know the fucker he is,” Tommy shrugged, taking in a mouthful of carrots. Carol cringed.
Justin bounced back happily after a few minutes, “I got a girl, and her number. Score!”
“Man whore,” Christian commented with a cough. Justin raised a fist.
“Hey...” I warned.
“Hey, if you wanna use my place for your party you’ll put that fist down,” Tommy said calmly, “Unless you want to hold your party where your parents are home. Also, you’re going to be the one who fills up the pool because I’m not going anywhere near that shithole.”
Justin’s face scrunched up, and then he sat down.
“You could at least be happy for me,” he wailed.
“I thought that with age comes maturity,” I said.
“No, it’s ‘with great power comes great responsibility’,” Christian corrected me. I nudged him.
“I was conjugating it,” I hissed at him, “So it fit the context.” He gave me a weird look.
“How many chicks have you slept with in this past month, anyway?” Carol asked like an interrogator, and it was funny of her to ask that because being the sexy blonde she is, she was quite the hooker as well.
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered, pretending to think.
“You’re such a pimp,” Christian sighed, “how did we become friends again?”
“You pissed your pants in third grade and I took you down to get new shorts.”
“Right.”
“Seriously, Christian?” Tommy choked on his food, “Third grade. Who still pisses their pants in third grade?”
Christian went red in the face.
“What do you think happened to that girl who fell off her balcony?” I butted in, changing the subject and darting my eyes at Tommy to see his reaction to my interest in the topic. He stopped eating and gave me an amused look.
“You mean that hot girl?” Justin piped, “I heard she went a bit woozy in the head ‘cause this hot guy visited her and she couldn’t think straight.”
“She didn’t fall, she jumped,” Tommy said.
“Oh? You know that because?” Christian asked casually.
“Did anyone actually listen to what I just said?” Justin asked, waving his hands around.
“She was on hallucinogens. The police found LSD in her.”
We all turned to Justin.
“Whoa,” he raised his hands, and lowered his voice, “Just because I—my brother has some doesn’t mean I gave some to some random chick, even if she was hot. It could’ve been my brother anyway.”
“I still think you should give up on it,” I mumbled anxiously, restraining myself from going on a rant and slightly afraid that he would lash out on me. He was pretty sensitive about it.
We sat in an awkward silence. Either we all felt uncomfortable about Justin’s addiction to drugs or we didn’t want to talk about such a grim topic. I immediately felt guilty about bringing it up and made a mental note never to do it again.
“Well, I’m wagging school tomorrow to go food shopping,” Tommy said, changing the topic. I telepathically said thank you to him.
Justin grasped his shoulders and shook them, pretending to cry emotionally, “Thank you!”
“Off,” Tommy brushed him off as if he were a bug, “By the way, Ash, you’re coming with me tomorrow.”
“What?” I asked, looking up, “I have a polynomials test tomorrow!”
“Obviously you aren’t ready for it, so just come,” he rolled his eyes.
“Listen to your good daddy,” Christian said with a great, big cheesy smile.
“Fuck you. I’m not married to you,” Tommy said, disgusted.
“I’m cut, Tommy!” Christian raised a hand to his forehead, “Say you love me beyond the seven seas, say you can’t live without me, and I shall live!”
Tommy slowly raised an eyebrow.
“You’re supposed to comply,” Christian sighed, “Never mind.”
“That was stupid.”
“Shut up.”
“So Ash, you coming?”
I hated being pushed into things, but I couldn’t find the energy or will to deny Tommy. “Fine, I’ll come... but you’re paying for everything.”
“Don’t worry, Ashley,” Carol patted me on the back and winked at Tommy, “Tommy’s loaded.”
“Exactly why I’m friends with him,” Justin grinned, earning him a hard slap on the back of his head, “Ow.”
Tommy shook his head, “Come on, Ashley, let’s go,” he ordered, standing up.
“Where?” I groaned, “You’re ruining my education!”
“My place,” he said, ignoring my comment.
“I wanna go to your place,” Carol whined.
“Me too,” Justin said with the same tone. Tommy glared at both of them.
“You’re turning me into a truant,” I cried, “If heaven doesn’t forgive me for this, I will personally start a war against you!”
“Man, Ashley you’re one weird chick,” Justin said, “Most girls would kill to go to a house as posh as Tommy’s, with a guy as sexy as him.”
Tommy shot him a menacing look, obviously not flattered by Justin’s unnecessary... compliment.
“Consequence for befriending me,” Tommy said, ignoring my feeble threat and not bothering to respond to everyone’s comments, “Now, come on.”
“Didn’t you not want me to be over the other day?” I said, stubbornly staying in my seat.
“Yeah, but I’m bored and I don’t want Justin, Carol or Christian over at the moment.”
“Gee, thanks. Nice to know you love me,” Carol said, turning her nose up, “You do realise you’re leaving me with Christian and Justin, right? I mean, that’s like, leaving me to be completely consumed by the flames of hell!”
Tommy flinched.
“Nice to know you love us too, Carol,” Justin piped.
“Don’t worry, Christian,” she said sweetly, “I love you.”
“Oi...”
“Coming, Ash?” Tommy said again, getting a little impatient.
Again, I couldn’t find it in me to refuse Tommy’s request. I reluctantly got up and put my books in my bag, “I’ll see you guys later then,” I said apologetically.
Carol shrugged, “Have fun.”
“Get. It. On.” Justin said, making unethical movements with his hips and arms.
Tommy had already gotten bored and begun his beeline to the exit. He didn’t look back to see whether I was following him or not; not that I was expecting him to. He just briskly walked out, drawing many eyes to himself as he easily glided past several tables. I hurriedly swung my packed bag over my shoulder and scurried after him.
“Wait!” Justin’s voice echoed across the cafeteria. Many heads turned at the familiar voice of the guy with the juice on his ironed shirt. Tommy turned around; a bored and indifferent look on his face. I turned around as well, definitely not expecting something important.
“Don’t forget the orange juice!”
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
1. candles
“Give it back!” I shrieked, but it was a shriek of pure delight and unconstrained laughter as Tommy held my lucky scrunchie over his balcony. I didn’t really care about it. It wasn’t even that attractive (actually it wasn’t attractive at all—it looked like it was made out of straw). I only thought it was lucky was because it was the scrunchie I was wearing when I first bumped into him.
Thinking back to the time, why did I have to be wearing such an ugly scrunchie when I met him anyway?
“Just how badly do you want it?” he teased with that uncontrollably soft but sneering voice of his, balancing the scrunchie precariously on one finger. I loved his voice; it was soothing and slipped into a whisper whenever he spoke quietly. Tommy wasn’t nice—pretty far from it. He didn’t care about anything very much and took things to the limit.
“Don’t drop it,” I warned. I could tell he knew I wasn’t exactly serious. Even if I was, and he dropped it, I couldn’t be angry at him. Nobody could ever be angry with Tommy. At least, not entirely.
“Why, are you gonna dive after it? Kind of like that bitch in the apartment the other day? The one who jumped off her balcony when she was on some kind of hallucinogen.”
I stiffened at his coldness, “Don’t talk about her that way.”
“Did you know her?”
“Well, no, but—“
“Then you shouldn’t care,” he said offhandedly, “for all we know she could have been a very, very bad person.”
“Or a very good one.”
“I doubt it.”
“How would you know, Tommy Hayford?”
“I don’t.” And with that, he dropped my scrunchie. I saw it coming. Even so, I let out a startled cry and took a step after it. Tommy quickly reached out and held me firmly on the shoulders, as if afraid that I really would leap off his balcony.
“Luck isn’t in a scrunchie, Ashley,” he murmured. I didn’t say anything. I just watched the straw-coloured bundle fall into the ocean below to be engulfed by the crashing waves, my heart sinking. I knew I was being silly, I knew Tommy would tell me I was being silly, but it felt like a part of me disappeared along with the scrunchie. It was, after all, my lucky scrunchie.
“You look upset,” he commented, then released me. I looked down, my long blonde hair falling down my face as I did so to conceal it.
“I’m not,” I lied stiffly, “It’s just a scrunchie. It was ugly anyway.”
“It wasn’t lucky,” he said quietly, then walked back into his room, “how did that start off anyway?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one who...” I thought for a moment, “No, actually I really don’t know. Don’t you just hate it when you want to say something but you forget what you’re going to say? I mean, it’s so annoying ‘cause it could’ve been something really important but you forget it! It’s also annoying this way because we can’t even remember what made you drop my—”
“Whatever, Ash,” he cut me off loudly and leapt onto his bed, the side plank ramming into the already chipped wall as he buried his head in his pillow. He had made that a habit—jumping onto his bed rather than calmly sitting on it like a normal person.
“I’m so tired,” he yawned, closing his eyes and lying face-down on his pillow, “Give us another pillow.”
“No ‘please’?” I asked expectantly, already knowing what he was going to say.
“You know I don’t say that.”
“Whatever.” I tossed a pillow, deliberately at the back of his head. Without lifting his head, his hand searched for it, found it, and placed it under the other pillow. Honestly, he slept so much in the day I sometimes wondered whether he was nocturnal or not and more than often questioned his night time activities.
“You’re welcome,” I said, rolling my eyes when he didn’t say thank you. Not that I was surprised; he didn’t even know the meaning of the word etiquette.
As he languidly lounged on his single bed, I took a leisurely stroll around his room, poking my head into places here and there. It struck me as odd for him to have a single bed of which his feet were only centimetres from the edge; with a house as grand as his, you’d think every room would have a king sized bed and an ensuite.
The massive pool in his equally massive backyard was, as far as he was concerned, a huge waste of space. His mother never had any time to swim in it, and his father... I didn’t even know if his father existed. I’d never seen him in my life, and Tommy never—I repeat, never—breathed a word about him.
The pool spent its days dry and empty. Of the eight years I had known him, it never had a single drop of water in it, except after rain. Pity, and a waste. I’d like to swim in it.
I’d been to his room many times and as far as I knew, there was always something new in it every time I go over. Today, he had an attractive 10 kilo Yellow Pages open on his table.
“Oh, Tommy-poo,” I sang.
“What?” he asked, a little irritated. He always got annoyed when I added a suffix to his name so as to make him sound a little weirder than he actually was. Or maybe it was because I was interrupting his nap; he treasured that too.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked, holding up the Yellow Pages and tapping the open page.
He opened one eye and said, “People who bullied me for being half Asian in primary school so I can track them down and kill them in the most painful, bloody, and gruesome way I like.”
I flinched, “Killing is a sin. You’d go to hell.”
“You always say that.”
But there were always some things that were always there. For example, he had exactly eight candles standing up around the room. I sniffed one. It was scented with strawberry. Pretty.
They weren’t dumped there; it was obvious he had put them exactly where they were. And there were always eight of them. Well, last year there were seven of them, and six the year before that. I guessed he was just adding to his collection.
“You know I don’t like that,” he muttered. Tommy wasn’t very outgoing when it came to his personal things. Still, he appeared to be tired and didn’t even make a twitch to stop me. Instead, he mumbled, “You know, one day you’re gonna find something you wouldn’t like to see.”
“Why, you got something disgusting hidden in here?” I teased.
“Yes, I’m one of the three witches from Macbeth,” he said idly, still not moving.
“Oh, no!” I feigned distress, “Are you going to tell me I’ve got to avenge my dead father because my uncle killed him because he wanted to get into my mum’s pants because he wanted to be king because he wanted to rule the world?”
“That would be Hamlet.”
“Oh.”
Someone opened the door. I jumped and knocked over one of the scented candles. I swore under my breath and cast a glimpse over to Tommy, praying that he didn’t see me drop one of his precious, carefully placed candles. He didn’t. If anything, he had fallen asleep.
“Oh, hello, Ashley,” Mrs Hayford said a little cheerily, bowing; that touch of an Asian accent still hadn’t failed to slightly amuse me.
“Hi Mrs. Hayford,” I replied politely with a toothy grin, bowing back at her.
“Stupid boy,” she shook her head. Tommy had fallen asleep, “he always come home so late and now look at him!”
“He’s just tired,” I said, a little defensively.
“Maybe he wouldn’t be if he don’t come home at 3 in the morning yesterday.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, when he wake up, tell him I want to take him to the... doctor,” she said, and then briskly left the room, muttering some Japanese under her breath. The little hesitation before she said ‘doctor’ told me that was exactly where he wasn’t going. Or maybe it was just her influent English.
I looked back at Tommy. He just slept there, his lanky arms wrapped around the pillow under his head. I always wondered about what he planned to do with his half wasted life. Maybe he would become the first person to be like a crocodile and eat his own babies.
I walked over to him and sat at the foot of his bed, near his cold, surprisingly small feet. A weird thing about Tommy—he got cold so easily that it was a little strange. I could almost feel a cold... aura being emitted from his presence. Maybe his mother wanted to take him to the doctor to check it out.
I reached over and brushed a lock of his dark, silky hair from his pale face. His face scrunched up, and he opened his dark violet eyes, eyes I found so beautiful and mystical because they changed colour in different lightings.
After I was finished being mesmerised by his eyes, I jumped from his bed, “You’re such a light sleeper,” I said, visibly but unintentionally appalled.
“Why,” he stretched, “did you want me to stay sleeping?”
“N-no,” I stammered, “I was merely checking your feet out. They’re hotter than you.” Exaggerated wink.
He smirked, “So, you look like you have something to tell me.”
“I hate how you always know what I’m thinking,” I mumbled, and sighed, “Your mum thinks you’re a lazy pig and she wants to take you to the doctor so she can confirm her theory that you have some kind of laziness syndrome. I’d also like to let you know I think you have it too, because you’re always sleeping half the time I’m around you. Even in school. Did you know that if you sleep during class in a class of thirty people, you have a 96 percent chance of getting caught by the teacher and yeah?”
“Intriguing,” he mused.
“Yup, make sure you tell me all about your diagnosis.”
“Sure thing,” he said, ruffling my blonde hair, “Now...” he gestured to the door, “Go home.”
I stood there, staring at him, “What, again?”
“You heard me,” he shrugged, “Go home.”
“Why?” I cried.
“Because I said so.”
“Tommy, you’re such a meanie poo,” I wailed childishly.
“You’re supposed to be used to it.”
“I’m never talking to you ever again!”
“You said that the last time I kicked you out, and look who’s here.”
“But I always come here! It’s like my second home and everything,” I pouted, “I might as well have my own bed here.”
“Yeah, and this is my first and only home and I’m telling you to go to your first and official home.”
“Why?” I asked again, tugging at my sleeve, “What if the Green Goblin comes in and kills you?”
“I’ll get my cauldron and cast a spell on him.”
“What if he knocks over your cauldron and spills its boiling, bubbling contents all over your floor?”
“My mum will kill him for doing it because she’s gonna have to clean it up.”
“What if your mum’s not home?” I asked viciously. He didn’t have an answer to that. I knew he didn’t.
“I’ll get out my magical wand and turn him into a teddy bear,” he said, expression bored.
“What if—”
“Ashley, go home.”
“Fine.”
He stood under the yellow kitchen light and showed no remorse as I sadly turned and left, forcing myself to tear my eyes away from his beautiful, clear blue eyes.
Then, “If the green goblin does come here, make sure you don’t kill him,” I warned him seriously, “Because if you do, you’ll go to hell while I’ll be going to heaven and we won’t be able to play with each other anymore”
“It’s not like I’m not going anyway.”
Thinking back to the time, why did I have to be wearing such an ugly scrunchie when I met him anyway?
“Just how badly do you want it?” he teased with that uncontrollably soft but sneering voice of his, balancing the scrunchie precariously on one finger. I loved his voice; it was soothing and slipped into a whisper whenever he spoke quietly. Tommy wasn’t nice—pretty far from it. He didn’t care about anything very much and took things to the limit.
“Don’t drop it,” I warned. I could tell he knew I wasn’t exactly serious. Even if I was, and he dropped it, I couldn’t be angry at him. Nobody could ever be angry with Tommy. At least, not entirely.
“Why, are you gonna dive after it? Kind of like that bitch in the apartment the other day? The one who jumped off her balcony when she was on some kind of hallucinogen.”
I stiffened at his coldness, “Don’t talk about her that way.”
“Did you know her?”
“Well, no, but—“
“Then you shouldn’t care,” he said offhandedly, “for all we know she could have been a very, very bad person.”
“Or a very good one.”
“I doubt it.”
“How would you know, Tommy Hayford?”
“I don’t.” And with that, he dropped my scrunchie. I saw it coming. Even so, I let out a startled cry and took a step after it. Tommy quickly reached out and held me firmly on the shoulders, as if afraid that I really would leap off his balcony.
“Luck isn’t in a scrunchie, Ashley,” he murmured. I didn’t say anything. I just watched the straw-coloured bundle fall into the ocean below to be engulfed by the crashing waves, my heart sinking. I knew I was being silly, I knew Tommy would tell me I was being silly, but it felt like a part of me disappeared along with the scrunchie. It was, after all, my lucky scrunchie.
“You look upset,” he commented, then released me. I looked down, my long blonde hair falling down my face as I did so to conceal it.
“I’m not,” I lied stiffly, “It’s just a scrunchie. It was ugly anyway.”
“It wasn’t lucky,” he said quietly, then walked back into his room, “how did that start off anyway?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one who...” I thought for a moment, “No, actually I really don’t know. Don’t you just hate it when you want to say something but you forget what you’re going to say? I mean, it’s so annoying ‘cause it could’ve been something really important but you forget it! It’s also annoying this way because we can’t even remember what made you drop my—”
“Whatever, Ash,” he cut me off loudly and leapt onto his bed, the side plank ramming into the already chipped wall as he buried his head in his pillow. He had made that a habit—jumping onto his bed rather than calmly sitting on it like a normal person.
“I’m so tired,” he yawned, closing his eyes and lying face-down on his pillow, “Give us another pillow.”
“No ‘please’?” I asked expectantly, already knowing what he was going to say.
“You know I don’t say that.”
“Whatever.” I tossed a pillow, deliberately at the back of his head. Without lifting his head, his hand searched for it, found it, and placed it under the other pillow. Honestly, he slept so much in the day I sometimes wondered whether he was nocturnal or not and more than often questioned his night time activities.
“You’re welcome,” I said, rolling my eyes when he didn’t say thank you. Not that I was surprised; he didn’t even know the meaning of the word etiquette.
As he languidly lounged on his single bed, I took a leisurely stroll around his room, poking my head into places here and there. It struck me as odd for him to have a single bed of which his feet were only centimetres from the edge; with a house as grand as his, you’d think every room would have a king sized bed and an ensuite.
The massive pool in his equally massive backyard was, as far as he was concerned, a huge waste of space. His mother never had any time to swim in it, and his father... I didn’t even know if his father existed. I’d never seen him in my life, and Tommy never—I repeat, never—breathed a word about him.
The pool spent its days dry and empty. Of the eight years I had known him, it never had a single drop of water in it, except after rain. Pity, and a waste. I’d like to swim in it.
I’d been to his room many times and as far as I knew, there was always something new in it every time I go over. Today, he had an attractive 10 kilo Yellow Pages open on his table.
“Oh, Tommy-poo,” I sang.
“What?” he asked, a little irritated. He always got annoyed when I added a suffix to his name so as to make him sound a little weirder than he actually was. Or maybe it was because I was interrupting his nap; he treasured that too.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked, holding up the Yellow Pages and tapping the open page.
He opened one eye and said, “People who bullied me for being half Asian in primary school so I can track them down and kill them in the most painful, bloody, and gruesome way I like.”
I flinched, “Killing is a sin. You’d go to hell.”
“You always say that.”
But there were always some things that were always there. For example, he had exactly eight candles standing up around the room. I sniffed one. It was scented with strawberry. Pretty.
They weren’t dumped there; it was obvious he had put them exactly where they were. And there were always eight of them. Well, last year there were seven of them, and six the year before that. I guessed he was just adding to his collection.
“You know I don’t like that,” he muttered. Tommy wasn’t very outgoing when it came to his personal things. Still, he appeared to be tired and didn’t even make a twitch to stop me. Instead, he mumbled, “You know, one day you’re gonna find something you wouldn’t like to see.”
“Why, you got something disgusting hidden in here?” I teased.
“Yes, I’m one of the three witches from Macbeth,” he said idly, still not moving.
“Oh, no!” I feigned distress, “Are you going to tell me I’ve got to avenge my dead father because my uncle killed him because he wanted to get into my mum’s pants because he wanted to be king because he wanted to rule the world?”
“That would be Hamlet.”
“Oh.”
Someone opened the door. I jumped and knocked over one of the scented candles. I swore under my breath and cast a glimpse over to Tommy, praying that he didn’t see me drop one of his precious, carefully placed candles. He didn’t. If anything, he had fallen asleep.
“Oh, hello, Ashley,” Mrs Hayford said a little cheerily, bowing; that touch of an Asian accent still hadn’t failed to slightly amuse me.
“Hi Mrs. Hayford,” I replied politely with a toothy grin, bowing back at her.
“Stupid boy,” she shook her head. Tommy had fallen asleep, “he always come home so late and now look at him!”
“He’s just tired,” I said, a little defensively.
“Maybe he wouldn’t be if he don’t come home at 3 in the morning yesterday.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, when he wake up, tell him I want to take him to the... doctor,” she said, and then briskly left the room, muttering some Japanese under her breath. The little hesitation before she said ‘doctor’ told me that was exactly where he wasn’t going. Or maybe it was just her influent English.
I looked back at Tommy. He just slept there, his lanky arms wrapped around the pillow under his head. I always wondered about what he planned to do with his half wasted life. Maybe he would become the first person to be like a crocodile and eat his own babies.
I walked over to him and sat at the foot of his bed, near his cold, surprisingly small feet. A weird thing about Tommy—he got cold so easily that it was a little strange. I could almost feel a cold... aura being emitted from his presence. Maybe his mother wanted to take him to the doctor to check it out.
I reached over and brushed a lock of his dark, silky hair from his pale face. His face scrunched up, and he opened his dark violet eyes, eyes I found so beautiful and mystical because they changed colour in different lightings.
After I was finished being mesmerised by his eyes, I jumped from his bed, “You’re such a light sleeper,” I said, visibly but unintentionally appalled.
“Why,” he stretched, “did you want me to stay sleeping?”
“N-no,” I stammered, “I was merely checking your feet out. They’re hotter than you.” Exaggerated wink.
He smirked, “So, you look like you have something to tell me.”
“I hate how you always know what I’m thinking,” I mumbled, and sighed, “Your mum thinks you’re a lazy pig and she wants to take you to the doctor so she can confirm her theory that you have some kind of laziness syndrome. I’d also like to let you know I think you have it too, because you’re always sleeping half the time I’m around you. Even in school. Did you know that if you sleep during class in a class of thirty people, you have a 96 percent chance of getting caught by the teacher and yeah?”
“Intriguing,” he mused.
“Yup, make sure you tell me all about your diagnosis.”
“Sure thing,” he said, ruffling my blonde hair, “Now...” he gestured to the door, “Go home.”
I stood there, staring at him, “What, again?”
“You heard me,” he shrugged, “Go home.”
“Why?” I cried.
“Because I said so.”
“Tommy, you’re such a meanie poo,” I wailed childishly.
“You’re supposed to be used to it.”
“I’m never talking to you ever again!”
“You said that the last time I kicked you out, and look who’s here.”
“But I always come here! It’s like my second home and everything,” I pouted, “I might as well have my own bed here.”
“Yeah, and this is my first and only home and I’m telling you to go to your first and official home.”
“Why?” I asked again, tugging at my sleeve, “What if the Green Goblin comes in and kills you?”
“I’ll get my cauldron and cast a spell on him.”
“What if he knocks over your cauldron and spills its boiling, bubbling contents all over your floor?”
“My mum will kill him for doing it because she’s gonna have to clean it up.”
“What if your mum’s not home?” I asked viciously. He didn’t have an answer to that. I knew he didn’t.
“I’ll get out my magical wand and turn him into a teddy bear,” he said, expression bored.
“What if—”
“Ashley, go home.”
“Fine.”
He stood under the yellow kitchen light and showed no remorse as I sadly turned and left, forcing myself to tear my eyes away from his beautiful, clear blue eyes.
Then, “If the green goblin does come here, make sure you don’t kill him,” I warned him seriously, “Because if you do, you’ll go to hell while I’ll be going to heaven and we won’t be able to play with each other anymore”
“It’s not like I’m not going anyway.”
what's the time, mr wolf?
It's story time :D
dis gonna be lyk feeownah's c.i.r., except longahh, hardahh and moor sacky (suckable;] )
lyks mai grammah? as yoo can shee dis stooree is gownna bee epickally perfehkt in grammah an spellin. howp yoo lyk it!!
<3
dis gonna be lyk feeownah's c.i.r., except longahh, hardahh and moor sacky (suckable;] )
lyks mai grammah? as yoo can shee dis stooree is gownna bee epickally perfehkt in grammah an spellin. howp yoo lyk it!!
<3
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