Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Five

Winnie's hair was soft as it was long, and blonde as it was dirty from our swim in the river earlier that day. With her head in my lap, I gently combed my fingers through her locks and watched her pouty, rudy-red lips mouth the lyrics to the Lynard Skynard song she had insisted on playing as soon as my bedroom door closed.

    When she caught my gaze, she dropped her eye in a dramatic wink and blew me a kiss. My throat ached and the truth sat thickly on my dry tongue.

"Winnie, can I tell you something?"

"Anything," she grinned, rolling so she was on her tummy and holding her chin in her palms.

"Griffin enlisted," I measured my next words carefully, "and I don't know what my feelings are about it."

Winnie, a good listener when there was someone else's name on my tongue, raised her eyebrows and then puffed out a surprised breath.

"I don't love him," I conceded, "but I don't want him to go to Vietnam."

Winnie, silent and stoic as ever, stared past me and pulled her eyebrows together. She was probably thinking about her mother and the fact that she didn't have to go off to war to die, but just lie in bed and wait for it to come to her. Or maybe she was thinking about what she would do if Roy enlisted or was drafted. Oh, the outfit she would wear to see her sweetheart off at the train station; with a silk scarf tied around her long locks and black sunglasses over her teary eyes, she would wave him off for the last time with delicately gloved hands. How beautiful she would be, a mourning sweetheart.

"That's tough," she commented, "I'm shocked. He wants to go? Did he say why?"

I laid on my stomach, too, and kicked my feet up in the air. Winnie and I were almost nose to nose, only her copy of Seventeen separating the ground between us.

"His grandpa did it, his father did it, so he wants to do it. Generational stupidity, or something like that."

Winnie laughed, then ran her hand through her hair. It was almost a shame that she had no one to wave off with Chanel-esque gloves.

"Bogue. Totally bogue, Plain."

There was a beat where we both shrugged and I collapsed with my hair fanning on the floor below her chin.

"What if he dies, Win?"

I imagined that the last time I ever saw him was fleeting, perhaps driving past me in his pickup on his way to the train station. He would see the war, see the way soldiers lived, see the way they killed other humans, see the bacteria and blood and shit and hate it. I imagined him afraid, suddenly, no longer the fattest fish in the pond. He would die afraid, perhaps after stepping on a landmine or receiving a shot to the chest that was painful but quick or maybe from a grenade that would send his remains home in a tissue box.

Winnie was nearly silent except for the hum in her throat. She looked at me upside down, smiling very small and very sweet.

"Then he'll meet our John Lennon God before us."

Winnie's smooth legs rubbed against mine habitually as she floated off to sleep a few hours later, hair braided back, but face still smeared with red lipstick and crumby mascara. It was nearly dark in my room, but I could make out the outline of her face, so symmetrical and docile.

"Win," I whispered, not knowing if I wanted her to answer.

"Plain," she returned, half-asleep.

"You're my best friend."

She threw her arm over my shoulders and pulled me close so my face was in her neck and her chin was on top of my head. She smelled like a rose garden at dusk.