Wednesday Write-In #75

Well. So this has been somewhat of an unexpected morning, so far. I’ve finally managed to get something written for CAKE.shortandsweet’s Wednesday Write-In, however, as I’m sure you’ll all be delighted to know.

This week’s words were:

fly :: heatwave :: parchment :: beeswax :: boiling

And here’s what I did with ’em.

Image: sumosamtshirts.co.uk

On A Long, Hot Summer Night

‘Oh my God,’ I panted. ‘I. Am. Boiling! I don’t know how you’re sticking it.’ Shelley, lying beside me in her brother’s heavy Thin Lizzy t-shirt, didn’t answer.

This heatwave was like nothing we’d ever known. A couple of days before, a guy from the end of our road had fried an egg on the bonnet of his car, just to see if he could. Talk had been flying around town about a kid who’d got heatstroke and who was now a foaming, raging lunatic locked up in a darkened bedroom. My own brother had managed to get himself stuck in a patch of melting tarmac like a fly in a spider’s web – but I had a feeling he’d done that on purpose.

‘Will we see if someone can bring us to the beach?’ I asked. ‘Maybe Joe, or one of the other lads?’

‘Ah, no,’ said Shelley, in a weird voice. ‘Joe wouldn’t be bothered with us, would he? He’s probably off with that girl from Ballyconnell – whatshername. You know the one.’

‘No. Who?’ I said, rolling onto my front, leaning over to examine my friend’s face. ‘I thought you and him were, you know.’ Shelley was lying flat out on her back, her eyes scrunched shut. Her cheeks were a faintly boiled pink, and her long blonde hair was spread out around her head like she was underwater. My own mousy brown locks were plastered to my skull, and every inch of me was doused with sweat. Shelley looked like she’d dropped out of the pages of a magazine by comparison, even with the stupid shirt on.

‘Yeah. Well.’ Shelley’s lips were drawn so tight that they were barely visible.

‘Shel, what’s up?’ I swished away a curious wasp, buzzing about beside her head.

‘Mind your own beeswax, Trish! Honestly. You’re as nosy.’ Shelley sat up, suddenly, and started gathering her stuff.

‘Here! I’m only asking. Are you all right?’

‘God, yeah. I’m grand. Not a bother on me,’ she spat, flinging her sun lotion into her string bag. She scrunched up the parchment paper that had been around our sandwiches, and shoved it in between her bottle of water and whatever book she’d brought with her. She was always reading something, usually stuff I’d never heard of. But then, that wouldn’t be hard.

‘You don’t sound like you’re grand,’ I said, propping myself up on my elbow.

‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ she said, turning towards me. ‘You wouldn’t have a clue, anyway.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I licked my lips, tasting the horrible mixture of sweat and suncream on my skin.

‘I mean – Jesus. I don’t know what I mean.’ She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. Kissed golden by the sun, they made my limbs look like they were made out of toothpaste by comparison. ‘I mean, fellas don’t treat you they way they treat me.’

‘Yeah. Well, I know that.’ Fellas didn’t even look at me. They couldn’t keep their eyes off Shelley. Not just their eyes, either, most of the time.

‘I wish I was you, sometimes. It’d be great to have a bit of peace.’ A spike of pain drove itself through my chest as she said this. Yeah, being me is fantastic, I said to myself. Fat, ugly and alone. Bloody brilliant.

‘You’re such a cow, Shelley Malone,’ I said, hefting myself to my feet. ‘A stupid, selfish – ‘

‘Trish! God, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.’ Shelley looked up at me, squinting against the sun. Her face was blotchy, and her eyes were full of tears. My insides tied themselves in a knot as I looked down at her, sitting on the grass like a lost child.

‘Shel – look!’ I flopped back down beside her. ‘Just tell me, will you? I want to help.’ Really, I just wanted to know, but I didn’t tell her that. Shelley didn’t answer me for ages; she just sat there, breathing deeply, her face thrown back against the wide blue sky like she wanted to melt into it.

‘Well, unless you have money, or a way to get to England, you can’t help me,’ she said, her voice so quiet that I barely heard her. My heart skittered around while my brain absorbed her words, and I thought about the book in her bag. Her dreams of going to Dublin to study. The life she should’ve had.

‘Is it – is it Joe’s?’ I asked, putting my hand on her arm. ‘Does he know?’

‘Even if he did, d’you think he’d care?’

‘But there has to be something we can do, right? Isn’t there?’

‘Who’s ‘we’?’ she said, and at her words it felt like the sun had gone behind a cloud. I shivered, my skin prickling, as I looked at her. ‘There’s only one ‘we’ here, and it’s not me and you.’

She grabbed her bag and rose to her feet, and I watched her walk away. Part of me knew, even then, that she was never coming back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Wednesday’ Write-In #67

This week’s words for CAKE.shortandsweet’s Wednesday Write-In were:

‘free sample’, ‘sear’, ‘clan’, ‘daytripper’ and ‘spray’

Image: shaman-dalie.blogspot.com

The Lifesaver

We spilled out of the bus straight onto the hottest sand I’d ever known. It was hard to keep my towel up, handle my backpack and struggle into my flip-flops simultaneously, but it was either that or sear off the soles of my feet.

‘Come on, love,’ sighed Dad, watching me struggle. ‘You don’t need that towel. Give it here.’ But my knuckles whitened around my grip, and he gave up. I’ve literally just come out of hospital, Dad, I snarled at him inside my mind. Leave me alone! No matter who told me the scars weren’t visible, or that ‘they weren’t as bad as all that,’ I knew the truth. They curled around my shoulder like a clan of thick, red slugs, their line marching straight down over my breastbone for good measure, and I hated them.

We stumbled to the sunbeds that had been laid out for us, the ones sitting beneath the sign marked ‘Daytripper,’ complete with a badly painted portrait of the Beatles. I allowed myself a grin as I thought about the song, and Dad jumped all over it straight away.

‘Smiling, are we? What’s rare is wonderful,’ he said, his voice like sea spray, light and cool. My smile dried up. I chose my sunbed, I laid out my things, I pulled on a cardigan and struck out for a walk.

‘Don’t go far! Do you hear me?’ cried Dad, but I didn’t even turn around. For a minute, I wondered if he’d follow me, and then I remembered he’d be torn between coming after me and staying with all our stuff, and I knew which one he’d pick.

I let the cool water splash over my legs as I walked in the shallows. People were really starting to arrive now, in their droves; the beach was soon full of accents, parasols, arguments, impatient children being slathered in sun lotion, tattoos and portable radios and noise, noise noise. I walked faster.

Sweat rolled down my back and coated my arms like a second skin. Beneath my cardigan, my skin prickled and flushed, but I just walked, and walked, the sun beating down on me like an interrogation light. Why isn’t your mother here? it asked me, even though it knew the answer. Where did you get all those disgusting, ugly scars, eh? They look like they came from a car accident. Were you driving? Was it your fault? 

I woke to find cool water washing up and over me, my arms and neck bare, my hair askew. I tried to sit up, wondering what had happened, but my head felt like it was being split, like a log beneath an axe. With tears in my eyes, I flopped back down.

‘No, no, no,’ said a gentle voice, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It didn’t hurt, but I swallowed back a yell of pain anyway. I looked and saw fingers lying on my scars, as if they weren’t there; a hand helping me to sit up, as though I deserved it; a kind, gentle face looking at me like I was a normal person, and not me.

The person helping me wore a red swimming costume and a yellow jacket, and then it began to make sense. A lifeguard, I thought. No wonder he was being so kind. It was his job, that was all. He left me sitting, breathing, while he went to fetch what remained of my waterlogged cardigan, and then he began to lecture me, gently. I couldn’t understand his words, but I knew just what he meant. Silly to wear a cardigan in this heat! What are you, crazy? You’re lucky I was here, and that you didn’t drown! And your scars? They’re not so bad, right?

I started to cry and he frowned at me, his brown eyes full of concern and confusion. His words dried up. Then he threw my soggy cardigan to one side and held up a finger as if to say ‘just a minute – don’t go anywhere,’ before shrugging off his jacket and wading into the water. I watched as he bent, scooping up handfuls of tiny, wriggling fish, before turning around and walking back up the sand toward me.

He spread out his catch on the sand and picked up one fresh sardine, holding it out to me like a free sample, and he smiled. Then he nodded at something behind us, and I turned to see a pit full of coals dug in the sand about a hundred yards away, and a small crowd around it laughing and joking and eating the freshly roasted fish, straight from the sea.

I turned back to him and smiled, and I let him help me to my feet.