James
I sit on the back porch watching as my cousins, aunts, and uncles walk around, talking,
laughing, gossiping, like they actually enjoy our completely-on-the-surface every-other-
monthly visits. I take a chug of my bottle of Coke and watch as one of my cousins, Cassandra,
who is three months younger than myself, watches all of us with her warped perspective of the
world. Her obviously-dyed pitch black hair blows slightly with the wind and she quickly pulls
it back in front of her shoulders, fixing a chunk of it so that it rests over half of her right eye.
She does this so often that, while the rest of her now-fake hair is clean, (even if it is filled with
toxic chemicals,) this particular chunk of her hair is oily and disgusting-to the point that it
almost looks like she just stepped out of the shower. She fixes her hair with her right hand,
which has a black fish-net glove over it that shows only the tips of her fingers, and covers her
pinky entirely. The lack of covering at the top of these gloves reveals black finger nail polish.
Her thumb has a white blob on it that, upon closer inspection, (which I was given earlier when
I was forced calmly to greet her with a fake smile though she did not even attempt to put one
on,) is actually a tiny skull and crossbones with tiny fake jewels where the holes for eyes should
be.
"Hey," I say, walking up behind her. She looks at me and puts down the phone she was
texting on. "Hey."
"So..." I pause, and she waits, looking annoyed, "why...um, why are you...like this?" I ask,
blushing. Honestly, I don't really care that much. She's probably just the typical I-hate-the-
world-so-I'm-going-to-rebel-by-dressing-weird emo teenager, but right now, I have absolutely
nothing better to do, and over-emotional teenage girls typically have pretty entertaining rants,
so I figure, what the heck? "This. That's one way to put it." She gives me a half-smile, "Have
you ever listened to Good Charlotte, James?"
"Yea. Who hasn't?" She smiles wider and looks out at my yard. "Have you ever heard the song
All Black?"
"I think so, yea."
"The song talks about the night...Joel, the singer, he says in the song that he feels free during
the night, that that's the only time he feels alive."
"Alive."
"Yea."
"So you're saying that's how you feel," I reply. She smiles wider and looks up at me with her
thick-black-outlined blue eyes. "No. Just making conversation." I raise my eyebrows and she
laughs, looking back at the yard. "Um...right," I say. She picks up her phone again and
continues texting. "I'm gonna go back in the house," I say, already walking away. She makes no
reply, not even a hand motion or a tip of her head. I swear, I'll never understand girls.
Especially young, hormonal, moody girls who either honestly have temporarily messed up
minds or just like to pretend they do in order to mess with the minds of the people around
them.
© 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment