smile I couldn’t subdue. “Good” she lowered her tone and set her eyes on my lips, setting them on fire, “lets be bad together okay?”
“Okay” I couldn’t help but whisper; the black smoke was wrapped all through me, including my vocal cords. She kissed me and freed me from her control. “We’re skipping class today and going to the lake”.
‘We’re’ referred to the whole group, not just the two of us. When we got there Mitty was swimming the backstroke in a bikini that was flowery just like her. Lie lifted her dress over to reveal a black bikini, that suited her just as well as Mitty’s did. I wasn’t much of a swimmer, especially in lakes, and neither was Snakey apparently. “It’s so freeing though, it’s like being one with nature, with the original mother”, sometimes I think Mitty is high, sometimes I think everyone else is and she’s the most sane, I don’t know. Niche came a little later; she got her feet wet while she read a book that was translated from Japanese.
Even though it was meant to be cold this time of year, it didn’t seem to reach us here by the lake, nothing did. It felt like we could talk and laugh as loud as we liked and no one would notice, no one would come looking. I made a mental note to come here alone one day. Talk turned to the future when Snakey said he was going to be a professional gamer, and get paid and everything for it. He said after that he would review games and be really controversial just so people would always come to hear what he had to say, ‘once people don’t care what you have to say, its over’ he said. Mitty said she was going to be like Tarantino without the blood, and more love. Lie said she was going to smoke cigarettes and boss people around. Niche was going to travel, travel everywhere and send us all postcards, and she was going to read all the books and write her own poetry. I didn’t know what I wanted from the future, I was just trying to get through each day, its hard to think about the next day and the day after that and the day after that, I just get into a panicked daze, I know I’m panicked but I don’t really know what for. All I knew was I wanted to be a dad one day.
“I really hope my secret about wearing boys underwear comes out” Niche had said randomly at one point, it may not have been randomly to tell the truth, but memories blur and fade, shrink and stretch. “This isn’t a joke though,” Mitty said, finishing braiding her hair, “people keep their secrets for a reason, some even keep them from themselves. I mean some are locked away to protect other people’s feelings and some are locked away to stop someone from falling apart entirely. Who ever is doing this is just evil, they had their secrets stolen or something and now they’re trying to burn us all”. Secrets aren’t a necessary part of life, I had to disagree with Mitty, I mean, that’s why you feel all relieved and lighter after you’ve told someone something they didn’t know before. Secrets rot inside you and make the rest of you, the good parts, rot too.
Then talk turned to love, as it always seems to do if you talk long enough with a group of people. Snakey talked for a good half an hour on his perfect partner. They would have to play video games, or at least one so we can play together. They would have to be able to cook. Generous lover. Presents. Soft hair and loads of stamina. More featured on his list but I zoned in and out. Niche loves words; people change too often. Mitty said how love was this energy that we all needed to live, like she actually inferred that we would die without love, ‘not like die die, but you would be like a zombie’, she said. “You need someone to hold you and kiss you and let you know that everything that has happened was good because it brought your lips to theirs. You need someone to treat you like art so you can make art. You need someone to fuck you senseless so you can leave your mind and just feel. And only love can destroy you”, her eyes grew darker I think, “and you need to be destroyed to rebuild yourself stronger.” Lie took to throwing rocks and anything near her into the lake; I asked her what she thought about love, “meh”. Splash.
As we were walking back to our rooms someone somewhere had lit some fireworks. It was dark and the colours glowed off everyone’s face as they exploded and the vibrations found our bones. The only other time I had seen fireworks in person was in a different city and my hands were cold and the ground was muddy.
Snakey came over to my little home to play some video games before bed, it was cool to have some guy time, I never realise how much I miss it sometimes. We talked about celebrities we thought were ‘hot’ and video games that were ‘epic’ and our most ‘badass’ moments. Snakey beat me three straight times but he wasn’t a sore winner or anything, so I didn’t mind.
6
Anthony Drew told his girlfriend that she was his first kiss, really though it was Ms. Sarry, the maths teacher. Ms. Sarry told Anthony Drew that she didn’t normally do this and he was special, really though she does and he wasn’t. Ms. Sarry even does more than just kiss her students.
I tried to call my sister but she didn’t pick up, not even on the third call, so I left her a text: Hey, I’m sorry about Anthony he’s a dickhead, people are horrible but I’m here for you like you were for me (I contemplated a smiley emoji but decided against it). I didn’t think this website was going to affect me, I forgot about the people connected to me.
Maths was cancelled so Mittsu and I went to Lie’s room; well Mitty held my hand and dragged me along with her smile. Lie was so happy to see us, I don’t think I’ve ever smiled as big as she did so early in the morning, my smiles don’t appear in the a.m. She had wine glasses and it made the wine taste differently, I think I preferred drinking from the bottle. They gossiped while I looked around her room. She didn’t have any posters, which I thought was very mature of her. Instead, Lie had seemingly built loads of bookshelves, I say built because they seemed specified to her collection, which was vast. She basically had shelves for walls and all her books seem to fit in them perfectly- I think her books were ordered in size and colour. With Blu-Tack she stuck all manner of things to her ceiling- I noted several dream catchers, crucifixes on dirty silver chains, some key rings, some shoelaces and a thread with buttons all along it. Her bed was unmade and I noticed a book just about visible from underneath her pillow. “Oh yeah, Rebi” Mitty said taken me out of my room scanning, “I’m having a party tonight, music themed, so dress up as a musician or singer or something kay, its in this vacant church a little way from here, Lie will take you anyway”.
For Mitty’s ‘music themed’ party Solid Snake went as A$AP Rocky- he wore his hair in a ponytail with a few strands loose, and his most ‘fashiony’ clothes. He used foil to make a ‘grill’ for his teeth (I don’t know how comfortable that was for him). Niche went as Sylvia Plath! ‘Poetry is music’ she had said before anyone could ask her about her costume. She looked like a nice English teacher from the 80s, with too much dark eye makeup on, and no one knew she was actually Sylvia Plath until a guy asked her on the walk over to the party. Lie was Morrissey, more specifically from the This Charming Man video. Her very open shirt meant that no one really looked at the rest of her costume and no one really cared. She was carrying flowers, which she gave to Mitty when we eventually found her in the party. I went as Hayley Williams from Paramore. Lie helped me with the whole costume really- I was wearing a black crop top that she didn’t mind writing B.O.Y across, and some black jeans which she made some rips in. Randomly she had an assortment of hair dyes in her closet for me to pick from, I decided to go blonde, which Lie was very excited about. And after all that she did my makeup, a lot of eye makeup, blush and a crazy lipstick colour later and I was (my rendition of) Hayley Williams. I liked being Hayley, it felt free and fun, maybe it was the clothes, or maybe it was the makeup, I think that mostly made me feel beautiful or more like art I should say, it made me feel like art. What better feeling is there than art?
I took LSD for the first in that vacant church. It had beautiful stain glass windows that I was surprised to see because I just assumed a kid would throw stones at them. I was glad that they didn’t because they looked so pretty, they glowed as God held us in his arms that night and everything was okay
. The words on Niche’s wrist danced and she laughed as I tried to catch them for her because I thought she would want her tattoo to stay where she picked it to be. Her laugh was really pretty, it looked so magical as it left her mouth I tried to eat it when no one was looking. I saw a girl in the crowd between the blurs. She had her hair in a ponytail that exploded in slow motion when she swayed her head to the vibrations. She had wings above both her pretty baby brown eyes. I tried to grow wings to fly to her but my feet were melting into the floor and I forgot how to grow wings. It didn’t matter because she came to me and held my hand and pulled me through the pool of the collective consciousness. She asked me if I was enjoying my trip and her words tickled my neck. I wondered how she knew I was exploring the curves of her body. She drew a wheel on my forearm, like a pirate ship wheel, with eight things, eight was my favourite number how did she know me? Was she me? Were my thoughts being displayed live on my forehead? I’ve never seen my forehead in person. I