--
"I see you're about as good a cook as I am." I lowered the fork and the small tin of cold baked beans I'd found in the yellow cupboards. I'd heard the cruiser returning from another shift. "No, it's okay," Gordon said. "I brought takeout." The smell of kimchi and noodles filled the air. "How's your homework?" he asked.
Mom asked too, before things were very bad.
"I've done most of it," I said; my mother would have told me more about Ms Harper's questions, about the work she'd done before she changed. She needed me to know it. "I'd like to go out for a walk."
"Not until you've-- Well. If you're nearly done, then," Gordon said. "Come back before it gets dark. Have you taken the pills?"
"Yes." One; one-half. I had a headache; but I didn't wish to obey Ms Enn. Perhaps it had made me scribble down nonsense mixed with the words I knew.
"Get to know the area, that's good. Son," he added, still awkwardly. "I have to be in at work early tomorrow--but if you're up then I can drop you off. Do you remember the way I told you?"
It's easier to remember words on pages than spoken words, for me, but I recited it with a few hints.
"And sign yourself up for driving lessons," Gordon said, spearing kimchi between the takeout's plastic chopsticks. "When do you have gym?"
It was one of the hardest classes to hide from. "Tomorrow." I cleaned the last of the bean sauce, then took it to wash. The leftover food could be in the fridge for a night.
He doesn't act like a monster. I know he's not a monster. Shadows danced nimbly as the girl on stiletto heels on the underside of the cupboards.
"Have some of this," Gordon said, mouth full. "Cousin of one of my officers runs the restaurant. Twenty-four-seven opening hours.
"I do eggs and bacon myself," he added. "Fried fish. And a mean rissole with a pasta bake. Cat used to make omelets and paella..."
It took me a moment to realise who. She didn't like her new friends calling her Cat.
"I know," I said quickly. Onions, crinkled ham, potato and bell peppers, sliced up and fried thickly with oil and butter in the pan-- But mostly it was cans, ramen, simple and cheap, or what Mom called foraging. "Mom...taught me. A little."
"You'll learn more in your class. Useful stuff," Gordon said. "I wish I'd the time to learn. She's near to a saint, that woman."
Like the saint?
"Which woman?"
"Melissa Enn, of course. Don't tell me you didn't go to her--" Gordon frowned. I told him I had.
"The Independent Living class was her idea," he said. "Teaches all sorts for the skills they'll need to take care of themselves. The sacrifices she makes for the kids in her care... How did you find the class, Xavier?"
I thought back. I hadn't hated it.
"Fine." I stood.
"Don't stay out too long," Gordon cautioned. I picked up the small bag.
"I won't."
--
Cool air, scudding clouds, green grass, growing rain. There were heavy fields of trees by the town; I wandered along the side road, growing damp and feeling cleaner. There was nobody I could see; it was all calm and quiet. Along the dirt road I saw a trail down to grey gravestones below a hill, at the very outskirts of town. Wind blew through pine needles, rustling in the rain. I walked between them, almost losing sight of the roads, and sat on a rock below the quickly greying sky. Still-light rain spattered on the sheet of lined paper.
It would have felt wrong to do this under my father's roof.
Mom.
(Like she'll be conscious enough to read it anyway. She didn't know who I was or talk at all when she woke up.)
The plane didn't crash. I didn't run away.
(I'd've done anything to get away from staying with that crowd in the home. I'm pretty sure you'd say I did.)
Get better, if that's possible. I could be with you again in less than a year. If I had a way of looking after both of us.
The rain smudged the paper, even with the thin ballpoint. I moved it under a wider branch.
It's raining here. You can tell from the paper. I remember you telling a story about a grim grey place that rained all the time. But I see a lot of green.
There are at least some people who hate me here, but I know what I'm like. A girl who doesn't move like people usually move, as if she's something only shaped like a person, a white stiff oil slick cut out like a Roman statue. And a girl I scared away from me, a chess piece around her neck. And her friends, the quiet boy who showed me around. I don't like the click of the counselor's nails. I don't want to be in a crowd of people, but it's less easy for me to hide here. They've been warned about me.
I don't hate it here. That's always been enough.
Gordon is trying.
Some things you know beyond a doubt are real. Like the changes in a growing onion cell, or like turning triangles upside down and across, where there can only be one answer because of the constant threads that hold the world together. But I can read stories, too, where things are as complicated as we've always known they were. There's no ogres or monsters here, but there's enough to be confused and dizzied when there are too many people.
My head hurts. I could take more pills, but I refuse to lose myself to either that or the dreaming world that's taken you.
Until next letter.
The sun went invisibly behind the grey horizon, and I set off back to Gordon's house.
--
Edited by Blue-Inked_Frost, 01 October 2012 - 11:19 PM.
