the calm .

part 1: [clink, clink, rustle, rustle]

I straighten my back and breathe in the lightly polluted air. The garden service must've come today. It smells of freshly cut grass with a hint of roses. Is it the smell of roses? I don't know. I'm not very good at identifying roses. Someone told me once that roses don't really grow in Cape Town. I refuse to believe that. Cape Town is too magical to not produce roses. It's the naïve part of me. The childlike part of me that still believes that Father Christmas still exists, as well as the Tooth-Fairy. I never believed in the Easter Bunny, though. That one just didn't make sense...to this day. There wasn't a storyline to follow that myth. There was the Bible and, even though I didn't really understand much about the Bible then, Jesus' resurrection made way more sense than the damn Easter Bunny. Just imagine.

I shake my head, chuckling. I turn my head to the side in order to look away from my crazy thoughts.

Oh crap. He's right next to me. I hate it when I get lost in my thoughts and my world, as much as I love it, because then this real world hits me with surprises that aren't very welcoming.

After quickly looking away (blowing my cover of being unbothered by him), I turn to face him and look him directly in the eye in order to redeem myself. It's received by a scoff, half a smile, rolling eyes, followed by them gazing into the sky. I look away. Realising how ridiculous I must've looked. I must stop pretending that I'm hard. When really, I'm softer than my custard thighs.

I slowly turn to him. He's in the same position. Like some type of statue of some type of drop-dead gorgeous Greek god or some—

Neveah, Bro! Chill! He can smell your thoughts!

"Why are you moving your hands like you're having some type of argument?" his hazel eyes stare at me in genuine confusion.

Did I really gesture myself to keep myself in check? Wow. Perfect.

"It's nothing, really. I do that when I'm hungry. It helps pacify the hunger, or some hippy crap like that. I don't know how to lie about my weirdness because I didn't even realise I was doing that. So yeah." I say, tired of trying to act as if I have my crap together and that I don't have real types of conversations in my head that translate into real life without me realising it. Argh!

At this, he bends down, as if he were to propose (and this is not me getting ahead of myself...It's more for description purposes you know? Like poetry or whatever else I say in my blog). He leans in, as if to get a better view of my thoughts.

Shh, you crazy bitch of a brain! Hush. Don't let him see you. Think daisies and banting and tanning and all that stuff you're supposed to think. Don't let him see that you're more than that, or else he'll be more interested and curious and—

"What were you doing in your head, before I questioned your karate-chopping-of-the-air...and what are you doing in your mind, right now?"

Dammit.

"What are you talking about?" I look him in the eye, mimicking that stupid smirk that, for sure, now, must be how God painted him, because really now?

"You know." He's a feisty one, isn't he? He bites back.

Grrr...

STOP IT, NEVEAH! FOCUS!

"No. I do not. I do not, because I know that you wouldn't understand the fact that my brain, my thinking, isn't a photocopy of this 'perfect' world." I can play this game too.

"So, you were thinking..." he points at me, as though he's just found the missing piece of the puzzle.

"What? Aren't you used to girls thinking?" I roll my eyes and look away. He's figuring me out...or does he already have me figured out?

"No. I'm not. However, my mother and older sister are both extremely intelligent, thinking women, therefore, it must be women who think and not girls." He doesn't try to make me look at him. You know how when people are looking at you and stare harder in order to make you look at them? He doesn't do that. He remains calm. Annoyingly calm.

"Smooth." Whatever.

"So, you won't tell me?"

"Tell you what, exactly? I'm a girl. I don't think." I look him in the eyes. Annoyance begins to bubble beneath the surface of my skin. My well-known attitude makes her grand entrance.

He looks away...at the source of a loud sound—Hadedas create a beautiful silhouette in the bluish, orange-ish, purplish, reddish sky.

"So, you won't then." He gets up and positions his bicycle ready to leave, "Okay." He shrugs and straddles his seat. He doesn't make eye contact. However, he's still cool and calm and unbothered, which makes me bothered, "You will, though. Trust me...and at that point you won't even have to tell me your thoughts. I'll know."

Clink, clink...rustle, rustle.

His stupid silhouette forms as he cycles down the hill of my neighbourhood. I imagine it exploding.

"stupid." I mumble as I get up and dust myself off...careful not to disturb my friends. I take a deep breath. The broken house has always been in my vision, but suddenly it becomes my focus...and the stupid mailbox.

"Stupid!" I say louder now. How dare he? How dare he think he knows me and how dare I start to believe him!

I still hear the faint music that is his bicycle chain. A sound that becomes the soundtrack of my evening. His face being the music video of song of this day. This odd day.

Okay, but there's this scary black bird chilling on the mailbox and it's ruining the romance.

I start my walk down the street to the second house after The Thokholoshi House – home.

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