01. SUMMERTIME: writing

Summertime. The sun was beating down. Oftentimes the lawn is dry: yellow and spindly; sparse unplucked straw; a balding crown of packed earth, but a recent spell of rain has left it greener, fuller, more virile, and it makes for at least a somewhat pleasant viewing. A private sanctum (remarkably sizable) from the unconquered places outside, even if they were only really shielded from view by tin fencing.

She retreated almost to the back wall, as far from the house as one could really get. She'd never smoked in her parents' home before. Not that she wasn't allowed, but it was still an odd thing to do; a taboo acquired osmotically from the cultural surrounds that made it feel, at least through her perception, awkward from both sides. 'Intellectually I don't have a problem with this, in fact I somewhat approve of it, but the white, conservative hegemony outside nonetheless infringes upon my thoughts and tells me I'm not supposed to,' was what she might have heard in her dad's mind, if she happened to read it in a moment of honest self-reflection. She was no telepath, but with her dad, she sort of thought she didn't have to be.

It wasn't a cigarette, mind you, and nobody on that property would have approved if it was, but a joint, rolled as a send-off gift by her only group of local friends and inscribed with fond expletives that she thought were rather crass and would not repeat in writing if given the chance, but still appreciated. She lit it with one of the lighters she had been gifted alongside it, never having previously owned her own. She was by no means a seasoned veteran.

The girl - her friends would have been alarmed to hear her characterized that way - was about to leave home (for the second time), see, and travel interstate in doing so. Tomorrow, in fact. She did not fancy having to smuggle ganja through an airport, and thus felt compelled to smoke it now - there was little question of just discarding it, - even if there was still packing to do.

The sun and her had also not served too many terms together, and in the full heat of day it seemed almost to be scrutinizing her from above with a bit more curiosity than it thought decorous. As time went on and ash filled her lungs, she increasingly wished it would not, but she had resolved to enjoy a last bit of that pleasantly dry summer sun that she would see a lot less of in the tropics. She turned over the little grey lighter in her hands. It was stenciled with a picture of E.T. She'd not seen that movie. Movies?

When she eventually got up, the grass felt like a coarse brush to her feet and it prickled her electrically. She returned to the damaged, third-hand packing box that she had left earlier on the lawn along with the packing tape and the (packing?) scissors (there was no real space to work inside). It probably should have been a simple task to patch it all back up to working condition, the kind of thing her mother could have done in minutes flat with furious, rigid and efficient motions (particularly if she had been asked to do it), but her daughter - she would not have characterized them that way - had never had that kind of energy to her. She more took after her father, in that way - in most ways.

For now the girl worked alone, unless the wordless comings-and-goings of family members could be counted. She clumsily - more clumsily than usual - plastered bits of half-severed cardboard over other, larger bits of cardboard and tried to hold them there while extricating her hands from the tape that clung to her fingers, which peeled off with a sound that was strangely like scissors cutting through paper. Then, of course, it would just stick again, some other way, and the glue would still occupy the plane of her touch in the previous place, and the place before that, and pretty soon the tape and her fingers felt synonymous, and she found herself just trading the sticky cellophane between different digits and enjoying the tactile sensation and the tearing sound. It was stupid, but it felt more satisfying than any little goal on a mental checklist of packing objectives ever would, and it elicited far less anxiety.

She wanted to go. She just didn't want to leave.

A good deal of time may well have passed that way, for eventually she found herself sweating under that sun. Her senses retreated deep into her body to cope with that stifling heat, focusing solely on the line between her eyes and her fingers - and her fingers themselves. Still, after a while the sun seemed not to be an enemy at the gate, but the very agent of enervation, and perhaps she could no longer reemerge from that feeble state if she wanted to - at least not without tremendous effort.

Bits of adhesive were exhausted and discarded by way of haphazard application to the ostensible project. She could hear them crackle between her fingers and when their folded edges were smoothed down upon the card. After a while, she began to imagine that crackling noise was her own skin - or, if not something quite so grim, then more vaguely her personage, - sizzling and spitting. She would be cooked alive. She came to lie down upon the grass, and it was horribly comfortable. She could hear her parents bickering back inside. How long before someone would emerge to chide her?

Just a little longer, she thought.