A Passing Thought

It was a late, Sunday afternoon, bordering on dusk, when the people of Hill Ville began to notice The Girl. Small and slight in stature, pale, blonde, with thick, dark bags under her eyes. She walked the streets of Hill Ville that Sunday afternoon with a bounce in her step and a small smile plastered to her otherwise vacant face. Red, worn Converse tap-a-tap-tapping on the concrete brought a collection of nosy paper people from their suburban boxes to the streets. Sharp eyes, and sharper tongues still, twitching and whirring to the beat of ill-hidden contempt. Dirty and strange and unkempt, the girl wandered contentedly beneath the setting sun.

"Nowhere better to be at dusk, it's disturbing, that's for sure," clucked a woman to the grocer one day. "Parents must be falling apart, letting her run amok in the night." Her voice rose easily over the din of other shop goers, which faded immediately as curious ears turned subtly toward the disturbance. Everyone, of course, knew the topic up for discussion. Scarcely an ear in the whole of Hill Ville had escaped the tale of the strange Girl threatening the peace of their respectable town.

Sometimes she liked to sit here, in the park, by the fields, not far from the mountains at the edge of town. It smelt nice here. Sometimes people came; teens weighed down by camping equipment and stolen alcohol; small children tugged quickly away by their mothers before they spotted the swings; the occasional parked car, shaking and creaking among the taller patches of grass. But mostly they didn't; mostly the park, and the mountain base, and the fields in between were empty in the evening. Flower buds had begun to bloom among the weeds and the discarded soft drink cans. That was probably why it smelt nice. Or at least part of the reason. But the air itself, laden with hints of eucalyptus, and dinner, and the approaching summer humidity, was also probably why it smelt nice. Evening smells, and bush, and the bark in the park. She could also see the stars better out here, or storms approaching from the east. Poetic weather. Tonight it was cloudy and tense. Maybe it would rain? The washing would get wet. That wouldn't be nice.

"I reckon. She could be quite good looking too, if she cleaned up a bit, won't find a good bloke going the way she's going." replied the butcher to his apprentice. Droplets of blood and snippets of muscle flecked his already gore-stained apron as he hacked into a freshly thawed carcass.

"Don't find many natural blondes these days, do ya?" his apprentice ventured, pausing briefly from his work, sodden meat tenderiser in hand, before pulling another slab of steak onto the counter.

"My Billy told me the other day that she lives down by the mountain, in a treehouse or somethin'" said the butcher.

"Really? My mate, Steve, reckons she lives in one of those places round the other side o'town." "What, by the Richards's?"

"Yeah." The butcher laughed, slamming his knife down on the bench beside him.

"No wonder she's gone rogue! Bunch of snobs, the Richards and their lot, y'know what they say about kids with money, gotta be quacks or lawyers or beaten senseless."

I'm sitting by the park and I can see her again. She's walking her usual path, alone. It's almost midnight now, she's been by the mountain for hours. I think she probably would have been in the park but we got here first. She looks kind of ghostly from far away in the moonlight, transparent and frail. I'm pretty sure at least one of us cracked a goth joke, or a ghost joke, or a vampire joke or something when she first came past. Maybe not, it was a while ago.

The streets were noisier than usual today as she pursued a familiar path. Children and parents alike staring and glaring. It was a nice day. She could see the sun, setting slightly slower than expected. Maybe she would walk somewhere else. Maybe if the sun was going to stay out a little longer she could see some more places, some new places. But she did like her spot in the park.