Brenton
itumeleng kganyago
Shea
Always Eighteen
AhmedStars in my Head Part One Chapter 3.
November 20th 2007 12:45
SHARNEE’S BOOK.
I believe;
Suicide solves nothing.
Love is important.
Lust is not love. Not at all.
The media are arseholes for giving people anorexia.
Cigarettes taste like shit.
Drugs are not worth it. I would know.
I love Michael. I love Faith.
I think they can love each other.
I can save Faith.
There is no God.
My God is love.
I like vodka. So sue me.
I will save Faith.
I will save her.
I believe;
Suicide solves nothing.
Love is important.
Lust is not love. Not at all.
The media are arseholes for giving people anorexia.
Cigarettes taste like shit.
Drugs are not worth it. I would know.
I love Michael. I love Faith.
I think they can love each other.
I can save Faith.
There is no God.
My God is love.
I like vodka. So sue me.
I will save Faith.
I will save her.
“Will you go out with Faith for me?”
“Eh?”
Sharnee and Mike sat opposite each other in either fork of the tree, bare feet circling over the water’s glossy mirror-face. The heat melted in the dry brown-tipped leaves, flitting spirals bursting randomly from the tree. The chooks clucked noisily from the pen nearby.
“I’d like you to go out with her for me. She tried to top herself, yesterday. I think she needs to…”
“She what?”
“Slit ‘em.” Sharnee cracked off a small twig and slid it down her arm. “Tried to anyway. Didn’t have the guts to go further.”
“That’s getting a bit cruel.”
“Shit Michael! I’m not bloody saying it’s a good thing! The bloody opposite actually! I want to help her. She needs a bit of love in her life. I thought maybe you could help her.”
“By pretending to be her boyfriend?”
“By being with her. By loving her. By letting her now there is someone out there, apart from me.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re practically the only person who can.”
They sat silently for a while, swirling there feet around each others. Sharnee reached up with her browned foot and slid it down Michael’s leg.
“We’d better get going,” she said. They began to move out from the branches, landing on the soft squashy earth. The chooks cackled noisily beside them. Across the grass-patched dirt, various toys littered the ground. A colorful plastic motorbike lay on its side.
They went through Sharnee’s back door, letting it slam and bounce back before clicking shut, while a loose corner of flyscreen waved in the weak breeze. Sharnee scooped up her bag on the way.
“Are youse goin’ now?” called out her mum from the cluttered hallway.
“Yeah!” called out Sharnee, turning back to Mike. “Y’ got y’ bag?”
“Yeah.”
“Good”
They left the house and walked down the hot pavement road. They wore their school uniform; white shirt, tartan skirt or charcoal pants, vomit green tie and stiff bronze mushroom shaped hats. The air sweltered between them, small birds jumping energetically from dead branch to branch poking out a nearby fence.
“What if she says no?”
“She says no she says no. Deal with it.”
“OK”
***
Faith sat in class, staring through the maths board. The teachers words became an echoing surreal mass in her mind.
The same happened in science. When the teacher asked her a question, she answered. When asked to come up to the front, she came. She was no person, she was no being. She was a robot, whose brain-dead piteous body left no sign, never any sign of where she had been.
At lunchtime, she pushed the library door open, as some big shot education department executive left. As she moved her arm, the sleeve of her shirt slid up, revealing her criss-crossed arm. The man saw her arm, and for an eternal moment, eye-contact and left.
Faith stepped in and shot down her arm, shaking slightly. She sat in a beanbag and took a book, stared at it’s blurred mass of words. Just blurred masses, like her life had become.
Slowly Michael entered the room.
“G’day”
His words twisted into meaninglessness around the curves of her mind. He walked over to her. She stared into a book, with blank devoid energy, not reading, not seeing, not hearing.
Mike knelt beside her. She seemed locked in a trance.
“Faith?”
“Mmm,” she mumbled quietly, to no one. Michael looked at her quizzically and tapped her hand. She stayed still. He looked at her blank face and hit the book out of her hands. It spun across the carpet. She stared, blankly into space at first, but then at him.
“Michael? Why are you here?”
“I wanted, to, ask you, out, sorta thing.” He practically cringed as he said it. He sounded like a total dickhead.
“Oh.” She paused, as if returning to reality. “Oh. OK. Yeah sure. Tomorrow?”
“Yeah” he said, still cringing. She nodded, stood up and left the room.
***
George was walking home from school when the Tin Man stepped out from around the corner and pushed him to the side.
“I’m in a hurry you moron! Get out of my way!”
George turned slowly, looking at the man oddly. He wasn’t really one to discriminate, not with his black nose and whiskers. But really; something in that man’s voice, through his harsh uneven vocals screamed pure insanity.
“Maverick?” he asked, half-whispering to himself.
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