All The Nice & Lovely Things

3 - Off To The Circles

Chapter Three

Off To The Circles

She kept her foot to the floor until she remembered that Gnash had manys a speed camera.  She stopped for gas and more coffee, bought bars of cooking chocolate to suck on.  The smell of petrol clung to the cotton of the jumper, and she flipped her sunglasses back on.

A call from Jemma told her that she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she didn’t meet her for assignment titles, so she swivelled to the left when she got back to town, heading to the docks.  She steered with one hand and gulped mineral water with the other, replenishing the tears she hadn’t lost.  Needed to pee.  Hypnotherapy made her want to pee.  Yet, she’d survived.  Grateful to have survived the session, and also content that she wanted to continue surviving, instead of bleeding suicide.  Images of dangling pocket watches and sleep made her heave, and she clamped down her stomach with more chocolate.

The road to Grammar was shared by the beach, both on the only pseudo-motorway the west had, derelict and quaint, built so that boats could be beached closer to help.  Only half the road was properly chipped, broke her heart to drive it.  Metal pylons and spruce limbs.  Marshy land to the right, even marshier land to the left.  Only through pauses in growth could the beach be made out.  Well, beach was a misdemeanour, anyway.  Only during a day like this, when wind could drag the plastic away to let shine the black sand beneath, to let the water thrive through treks of dog prints and broken glass.  Sive and Sile hugged the inlet, tall, broad, one with proud with the blowhole, watching the tide.

She’d only ever spent time on the swings and slides by the shorefront, shoes kicked off and jeans rolled up, with no intention of meeting the water, just looking the part.  She’d buy chips and burgers and throw onions at seagulls.  The water scared her.  It fed the lake.

Let her shoes fall off as she freewheeled, darting below sea-level as she met bumps and hump bridges the pamphlets heckled.  The high school obviously had never been a priority, as the amount of cars that ruptured on the dirt track to it was amazing.  No curbs, no flower beds.  Smoothing had been ordered years ago, but all that had arrived was more steaming aggregate.  In the boot, she had heavy coats and cans of glass resin for when she met turbulence.  Then she’d just stopped going. 

The school itself had been under continuous construction since the ribbon had been cut.  1978.  An anonymous pocket kept it going.  When work ended, there would be apocalypse.  Construction Winnebagos broke up the campus, bright colours against the drab exterior of a miraculously good-looking building, and the constant smell of Portland cement was a narcotic for those who played outside.  Why have drugs when you can snort the windowsill.

Though catering for two hundred hung-over teenagers, and fifty infants in the basement nursery, Grammar barely hit the three-story mark, enforcing a decree of cardboard prefabs and garden classes.  Art was done outside as much possible, Biology and Math were divided by Chinese privacy partitions.  Large gardens leading to the foot of the cliff, where a pool and tennis court had been stamped.  Wrought benches led to the front office, shadowed by sways of purple-veined butterwort and white chocolate roses.  It was even better in the vinyl sun, light and airy and warm.  She hated it and parked.

People turned their backs to her at the door, the brave met a gaze she didn’t have to return.  She met Jemma inside, by the loft of lockers, and photocopied sheets in the spacious library, asking Paul the librarian exactly what he did to avoid paying.  The end of lunch had the corridors in heat, and conversation assaulted the lower airspace.  After being chastised for missing half the day, and then getting a slap on the shoulder when she let it slip that she intended to miss the rest of the day, Jemma rung the rest of the girls to complain about their fallen comrade.  In the hallways, people parted for the two girls.  Kere got most of the girth.