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She was watermelon. She was grape. She was the bandaid tin with the rainbow Zebra to Baseball Tobacco. She was cherry lips with large, inflating cotton-candy bubbles that grew and grew, and with each measure made his eyes widen until his heart popped. She was mint-white teeth and a blue tongue melting lollipops in minutes.
She was Jennifer Green. Jennifer "Spearimint" Green. A bouncy beauty with knobby legs and tight shorts, pink tees and horses. Connect-the-dot freckles on tanning cheeks, boombox blazing and black sunglasses over her eyes, flipping through Seventeen with neon-green nails. She was 1 year his older set high as a mature fourtheen, a million miles away it seemed, "experienced" they said, collecting her crinkled, frizzy sand-brown hair into sideways and upways that never worked as well as when she pulled it back into a scrunchie.
She was his neighbor since his family moved in when he was 5, had been part of the gang upon his initiation, and had been one of his best friends.
She was a girl - which he noticed only on that day. Not in the way that he noticed girls were girls who couldn't throw or knew nothing about anything about sports or cars or what should have mattered to him.
He hadn't seen her for over a week since he was in the hospital, but the day was sunny ....and the house was dark. Crutches under pits, he hobbles as a modern Tiny Tim, long legs in shorts, sneakers, and ball cap as he moved out of the house to his front lawn, hearing the rhythm of "Mmm Bop" playing next door. He thought about growing out his hair.
It was her that spotted him, though he noticed her first but didn't say, and he raised a hang to say hello, melting in relief that he wasn't being avoided. They ran, he remembered, but despite his resentment, he missed them. He needed them. He wanted to tell them what he saw, but upon swinging step by step over to her lawn, seeing her sprawled on the plastic lawnchair on the lawn just mowed by her father, he thought that it didn't matter.
"You okay? Greg says they had to put pins in your legs?" She said, curling her legs as she leaned over to dim the volume before patting the chair. Taking the offer, he sat down, but felt himself slanting at an angle. The air smelled of fresh cut grass and cotton candy, and he watched as she worked a wad of pink between her cheeks.
"Just a bit of fixing up and some stitches. Have to wear the cast for a while though." The crutches were set beside him, but slid down the foot of the lawn chair and clattered on the grass. He didn't care, and watched her look at his leg.
"Rough business. Guess you can't go running amuck with us for a while, huh? How long you have the cast?"
He shrugged, looking at it. "A few weeks. Months maybe. They have to check."
"MONTHS? Geeez. What are you going to do for months?" Or more importantly, what were they going to do with him for a month. They were movers. They all were. They ran the culdasac playing street hockey, going to the park, and going to Quik Stop to get Freezepops. His position in the group wasn't the strongest, and now he was further back. There were points in keeping up, and time away worried him. Friendships could change in days, and he already missed a weak.
"I'll get by. I'm pretty fast on these." He lied. "It won't be long. I bet it will be just a few weeks." Longer probably if he moved, but that was doctors. Adults. They didn't know better than what was important for him. He had friends, and he was young.
"Andy wants to sign your cast. Says leave a spot for him." She reached over, picking up a sheet and a marker she was using to circle things she wanted in her magazine. "..but I'm writing mine larger than his. That d**k can suck it." She moved off the chair, nearly making him fall over to the chance in weight, before sitting on her knees and writing between the black Sharpie names and ballpoint-blue wellwishes he recieved from his first day back from class. "We're going to Johnson's Park tonight. Greg has some fireworks we wants to set off. We're going to see if we can make them go up the slide. You wanna come?"
Her name was looping in pink in the dark shapes on his cast, and he watched as peppermint green eyes looked up at her. "Tonight?" He asked, and his eyes flashed to his house neck door, and the dark shadows inside. Sitting under the blazing sun, he felt protected, roasting and soaking the light, absorbing it's power into his skin.
Jenny looked over to his house and frowned. "If you parents won't, that's okay. They probably are still pretty steamed." Her head lowered, and he could feel her ponytail slid over her shoulder to brush his brownish-yellow, Betadine-stained knee, tingling his skin, but making him want to itch under his cast. He held it in, watching her hair swish gold and brown against his pale leg.
"Yeah. They are." They were, but it only served as an excuse. They were more worried than anything.
"Done!" She placed the cap back to her marker, and he noted it smelled of Strawberries, before she sat back down. Turning his leg slowly, he saw "Jenny" written with loopy letters and a heart jewel sticker beside it. It made him smile that she would declare herself his friend.
"Ya know. I'm really sorry, about taking you there. We shouldn't have gone to the house. I told Zack it was stupid. There wasn't even anything there. No old boxes or anything. We're lucky the whole thing didn't topple on us."
"It's okay. I wanted to go." He wished he never did. "It's already done." To which he looked away, watching as the tape stopped with a click.
It was quiet aside from her gum popping, and he turned to watch her blow a few bubbles before looking at her.
"I was really scared, you know. Back there. We thought you were dead."
He didn't want to talk about it. "Well, I wasn't." His hand went to his face to adjust his glasses before he scratched his cheek. It was too hot now.
The lawn chair creaked, and he watched her move before he tasted it. Cotton-candy and a whiff of something sweet mingled with coconut sunscreen. He'd always expected a smell of sweat for a girl who had run with them as much as any boy did, who would have her shirt drenched after racing for bragging rights down Jefferson Street, but she was floral, and beads of sugar were laced on her lips.
Rising up, she picked up her magazine. "Wanna play Sega with me?" She asked, but he shook his head slowly, dazed. With a shrug, and a "suit yourself", she walked across the lawn. A moment later, the swing-door shut, but the taste of cotton-candy still lingered. Sitting there, he suddenly felt as if he would be caught for sitting out on her lawn, as if the evidence on his lips would be held against him, and he rose up, taking his crutches before headed to his back yard, heart racing and mouth dry.
By the time he made it to the back porch swing and sat down, the flavor was already gone, and the reality of it seemed to start dissolving as quickly as the sugar.
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Licking his dry lips, he filed the quarters one after the other, and pushed E7, hearing the light clatter of the gum. Reaching in, he popped one from the silver sleeve and chewed. Sweet, minty, but it lacked the taste he was looking for - the nostalgia, the normalcy, and maybe the brief memory, a moment when he could actually be kissed without recoiling. Nights like this often pointed out voids in intimacy, and he doubted a few quarters would do the trick. However, he tested a bubble and smiled as it formed. It wasn't much, but recreating a moment like that had been stupid to think possible to begin with.
((Words: 1,45 cool )
