By: RDV
It was the dawn of change for Nadine, sixteen, on the fat camp and grumpy as an inevitable consequence. From her window seeped the sound of the neighbors’ afternoon ruckus, faithfully presided over, and which they unsuccessfully tried to conceal by honking up Black-Eyed Peas’ Don’t Lie in maximum volume. She idly wangled away from the bed to reach for the Oreo cookies of last night’s upset snack. Beside them stood a cup of nearly spoilt milk, reeking of fermentation and discolored. She exhausted both, ignoring the prelude of nausea that had since begun creeping its way to her throat. Then she landed back on the bed as though somebody just pulled the rug from under her.
At he same time her mother wondered what her daughter had for lunch and after reassuring herself that she, Nadine, hadn’t yet died of famine, she focused her eyes back on the house of card in her hands.
Her playmate, Katrina, had neither the talent nor luck for the game. Loss after staggering loss, she went locking herself up first place on the player list as her husband stayed back in the house, struggling to keep things in good condition although he never really knew the first thing about hushing the kids up.
A few feet short of ten meters loomed the basketball court. Gavril, high school point guard, had no idea what he just agreed to do when he decided to do his friend a favor. He kept his pound of hashish underneath his underwear drawer. Reagan, another friend, just managed a quick draw, setting the match in a runoff. At the rise of pleasure, to his misfortune, he committed a flagrant foul in an attempt to fly-swat an opponent. It gave his teammates’ girlfriends something to grouch about , and their scowl and growl were hard to miss amidst the craze.
Away from all this disorder, at the hindmost part of the village lived a girl named Rosalie. At the present she was clutching a silver charm bracelet, a souvenir from her memorable childhood, entrusted to her by a lovely boy named Axel. Axel and his family moved away several years prior after convincing their offended neighbors that they were pleased to make their acquaintance but they just couldn’t stay in one place in the span of three years. On a lucid day in May, their bags were carried off far, far away. It left Rosie lambent for days.
Her sister Madeleine was given a curt ultimatum by her sweetheart. (If you care, now’s the time to show it!) She didn’t, but what harm would it do to pretend? She began contemplating on how to be expansive, how to keep the relationship well-lubricated, but for whose benefit, she didn’t know. Days later, it occurred to her that she would have to make up a thousand lies before he decided that all this affected her. She eventually threw all caution to the wind and cut him out of her life.
Between Rom and Melissa, they could honestly tell that their son had gender issues. They tried to force a confession out of his mouth, believing that this ridiculous secrecy caused him to suffer his head off. Homosexuality didn’t grow around the place; but if their son admitted to it, they’d love him not the less. They missed by a mile though, since all there was to it was that their son was a crack-peddler. They’d have to guess again.
Their other child, Carol, lately got into the habit of biting her nails, something like a blast from her toddler-hood. Not knowing that she was being criticized for it, she went to watch a horror movie as an occasional treat, and there bit her nails for hours on end. Her date, Ryan, ironically found it cute and made a point of hinting that it was so.
Ryan though had a different story. He had to use the most of what he knew to weasel himself out of sure failure, in Economics. Against the self-evident truth of his hopelessness, he planned in detail to cheat his way out with a perfect score. Explanation could wait later.
Nize of the upper town rebelled against the notion of Christianity. Pretty, proud and fierce, she wrote essays, dark poems and other various pieces about religious deception. She did so with passion, despite the fact that her knowledge was practically limited to the preposterousness of the bible and the non-appearance of the divnites included in said articles.
And Reese who adored her was never sure why and how she turned into a beast of darkness, the exact opposite of his ideal wife. He couldn’t make her see the light in any way, form or shape. The other day she told him to jerk off. As he stared back at her, he dreamed of instilling in her the nobility she lacked; love, beauty and truth, and his eyes blazed with how much he wanted to say to her. In vain.
