Destructive (On Hold)

Disputes

The shop assistant's fingernails had a pattern; lilac, black, lilac, black, lilac. The other hand was identical. I imagined that her toenails must look like that too, but I couldn't tell due to the fact there was a bench up to my chest clogged with jars of gumballs and lollipops separating us.

I nervously handed her the coins, dropping them slowly into her outstretched hand as she raised her eyebrows with impatience. I was nervous because I thought maybe Aunt and Uncle had already sent out a search party for me, or worse - were looking for me themselves.

But what if they didn't care? What if they just considered me a minor financial loss and shrugged it off without so much as a second thought? Well, that would be great. A bit insulting, but great. Fantastic.

Not realistic though.

The clerk did not have a nametag because it was a dairy I had walked into and I guess the middle class people that usually visit the dairy in the morning to purchase milk for their coffee or their kid's cornflakes did not care about those who waited on them.

She was Indian, and had very shapely arched black eyebrows and slender arms. She was chewing gum and looked bored. A few years older than I.

Calypso was waiting outside. I knew she didn't travel in the daylight and did not like people giving her strange looks, which she recieved quite often due to her raggedy state. We had walked all through the night and not slept at all. So I'd been up a full day and a night, and was becoming very tired. I was buying two bottles of water for Calypso and I, and a packet of Skittles. 

I finally emerged into the dazzling sunlight, squinting after being enclosed in the darkness of the dairy for so long. Calypso's lip curled and then she grinned when she saw what I'd bought.

"Good. I'm real thirsty," she announced, and snatched the bottle from my hands. Usually I would have thought this a rude thing to do, but from my knowledge of her previous circumstances and the fierce way she was chugging the entire bottle made me rethink my assumption.

"Yeah," I agreed awkwardly, and hitched a thumb over my shoulder. "I suppose we should find some place to rest for a while then?"

Calypso's big brown eyes glanced at me momentarily, but she didn't cease drinking. Eventually she lowered her head and pulled the bottle away from her face, reluctantly, as if she was addicted to the bland, boring taste of water that so many take for granted. "Yeah," she gasped, regaining her breath, "I'm a bit nocturnal. The Others, you see, don't like seeing homeless people in their habitat. They think it gives them a bad name. Sometimes, people chuck stuff at me. But I just ignore it. Sometimes, they real stupid and absent-mindedly throw somethin' real valuable. Scored a watch once," she paused to smile, "but then it got stolen again."

Over the time I had spent with her, it appeared she could be very composed and articulate when she wanted to. She said in the early years she knew a lady that halped her with her learning, but she can't remember her that well, or much about her childhood at all. She could just remember that the lady's head was adorned with masses of choclate brown ringlets, glinting gold in the sun. Calypso had told me a lot of stories in the small space of time we'd spent together. They'd usually consist of phrases like 'The Others' which meant people that weren't homeless, people with a priveliged lifestyle. I didn't want strangers to throw stuff at me. But I reasoned with myself; it's better than it being Aunt throwing stuff at me. I rubbed my cheek automatically. I fancied becoming nocturnal myself.

"Right. Let's go."

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Of course I couldn't afford a fancy accomodation at a hotel - or a crappy motel filled to the brim with scuttling cockroaches. We had to save what little money I had for food.

We found a fairly private spot at the end of an alleyway, concealed in the darkness of the towering gray buildings that surrounded it. The buildings were apartment blocks, and it appeared a lot of those who lived there were quite poor. There were washing lines strung across the alleyway, from one apartment window to another, clothed with checked shirts and ties with snails on them and stained blue baby jumpsuits.

Calypso's old 'home' had looked luxurious compared to this dump. There was vomit in a corner, and pieces of glass from beer bottles in the midst of it. It had obtained a horrible stench from many bar nights gone wrong. There were black round garbage bags spilling their foul contents onto the dirty concrete, and toppled-over trash cans. Grafitti was scrawled across the walls, inappropriate words used over and over in all different colors. A few 'WEST SIDE"'s were visible in the neon orange, and then, 'EAST SIDE HO" beneath it in the lime green.

It looked like every creepy set for a horror movie in which a young woman is being pursued by a vampire or serial killer.

I peered at Calypso to see what her reaction to this ugly alley was. She did not look shocked, replused, or any of the feelings I was experiencing. She looked like she'd seen it before.

I interrupted the silence with, "You know, I'm sure there must be some place better than here. I am most certanly not using a bag of trash for a pillow and a diseased rat as a teddy bear."

"All right," she said quietly, emotionlessly. We turned away and out of the dump, out onto the street were accusing eyes followed us at every corner.

"Hoods! Get out of town!" someone yelled as their Rolls Royce car swerved round the corner.

"Jerk!" I yelled back, hurling a beer bottle that was lying around by the neck at the back of their car. Calypso gasped. I blinked, wondering what had come over me. It was a bit of an overreaction, but I just couldn't stand to watch people being called names who had no control over their current state.

The glass bottle crashed into the rear window and cracked into smithereens with the impact. It barely damaged the car but it sped to a halt all the same, and a fuming, red-faced man stepped out of the car with clenched fist to inspect the non-existent damage. I stood on the sidewalk, paralysed, clutching Calypso's sweaty hand in mine.

"You little - look what you did to my car! This car is expensive! A historic car! And now there's a crack in the bloody window! Do you know how much this cost me?" he shouted at us, causing a scene in the middle of the road.

"I dunno, maybe as much as it would have taken to feed hundreds of starving kids in Ethiopia?" I retorted quickly. It was lame, but it got him yelling.

He raged on for a few more minutes, and a traffic jam began piling up and people began to honk loudly at the rude man. 

"Get over it, you twat! We're trying to get out of here!" someone yelled out their window.

Finally, he obliged, and sent us a dirty stare as he got into his car and slammed the door shut.

As soon as the traffic deteriorated and the Rolls Royce was very much out of sight, Calypso and I began to laugh simultaneously.

"He so deserved it," I said, nudging her.

"Yep," she said, and laughed again. I guessed it had been a while since anyone had stood up for her.

And so we continued in what we hoped was the vague direction of what we hoped was London, attempting to find a clean place to rest on the way.