Morse Code Messages

Davie lived down a long stretch of land. Her house was large and flamboyant. It was right smack dab in the middle of a green forest, brick, and had a wrap-around porch that made for great camp-outs and endless hours of gossiping and sipping iced tea.

If you walked from my house to hers it was a good three miles. Once you hit the one mile mark you were on her property. The long, winding driveway was gravel and hurt the bottoms of your bare feet if you were walking back from the lake or the beach. We used to walk the long, treacherous miles just to sit in the middle of the tall, itchy grass watching the deer early in the morning as they fed and ran from the awakening of the sun.

Her father was the local judge and he spent a majority of his time behind an oak desk, fining and refining rednecks with no money. Her mother was one of those cliché parents that drank red wine out of a champagne glass, painted her nails a light rose color, wore her skirts just above the knee and had sex with random men from other towns that no one had ever heard of, but everyone knew were far enough away.

I was fascinated by Davie’s mom. Her blonde hair was always curled and hanging down in tiny ringlets. Her lips were painted in expensive lipsticks and equally expensive cigarettes hang out of the corner of her mouth. She had a cluster of blemishes on the lower left side of her face and her eyes were large and round, reminding me of the doe that grazed on the side of the road. And they were a vivid green, just like the grass the deer would eat.

Davie dubbed her mother a tramp, I dubbed her mother a glamorous woman.

Anyway, Davie was raised by Ms. Patty. She was a large black woman that spoke about the past and treated all of us as her own. She made cookies and pies and sweet iced tea and tangy pink lemonade. She was large and round, with hair on her upper-lip and wore an apron around her waist. She had a thick southern accent and no children or husband.

Ms. Patty was always the one that answered the door and directed me up the stairs, to Davie’s bedroom. So, when she answered the door it didn’t surprise me. I took the stairs two at a time, which probably wasn’t too ladylike, but I didn’t really care because it was Davie’s house and it’s not like anyone was going to judge me for it.

Davie’s bedroom was painted a light pink and the trim was this odd shade of green. Her bed had a canopy and a fluffy white blanket that reached all four edges. A white desk sat on the wall and a vanity was toward the corner. It was pretty and girly and just everything my room wasn’t.

Davie looked like her mother, no matter how much she tried not to. She wore her curly blonde hair down and her large green eyes were always squinted just a bit, almost like she was trying to minimize their size or something. She was tall and tanned and, all around, peppy. Davie liked to smile and laugh and crack jokes that just weren’t funny.

But that was Davie and if she weren’t like that it would’ve been strange.

When I walked into her room she was smacking gum like an elderly man and sitting beside her window, a cigarette perched between her lips.

She smiled largely, showing off her dimples. “Hey!”

I nodded my hello, sitting down on the edge of her bed and folding my feet up underneath myself. “I haven’t really talked to you in a while.”

“Yeah,” Davie shrugged, “I’ve been busy.”

“So,” I coughed, trying to figure out what to say. It had never been awkward between us -- between any of us -- and it was just odd. I’d always been the quiet one out of our group, but it had never been hard for me to talk to them. And it most definitely had never been hard for me to talk to Davie.

“Oh! I have something to show you.” Davie stood, her skirt falling around her knees. She was dressed in something that reminded me of her mother; a white blouse and a dark green skirt. She was barefoot and the cigarette she was once smoking had since been tossed out of the window carelessly.

Davie clucked her tongue twice, smiling over at me. When nothing happened she clucked her tongue again, which sent a small Pomeranian dashing into the room. Sally, Davie’s poorly named dog, had been around since we were nine. Her dad hadn’t been around for Christmas that year and as a “please forgive me” present he told her she could have anything she wanted.

That “anything” just so happened to be a dog.

I remember all of us piling into her dad’s sleek Ford, bubbly over getting a dog. Officially, the dog was Davie’s but in all of our heads the dog was ours. It was something her dad was giving all of us, not just her. And at the tender age of nine we had all piled around the small, white dog and named her Sally.

“Look at what I taught Sally!” Davie sat down on the edge of her bed, hoisting up her skirt. Reaching down, she pulled Sally into her lap, glancing over at me. “Watch, watch,” Davie shoved the poor dogs face in between her legs, widening her eyes. “She licks, like a boy. Isn’t that cool?!”

I flushed, nodding timidly. “Yeah,” I whispered, “really cool.”

Davie shrugged, sensing my uncomfortableness. “I figured you wouldn’t be interested in it. You’re always so boring, ‘Key.”

I frowned over at Davie, “I am not.”

“Yeah,” Davie chuckled, plopping down on her bed beside me. “You are. Mickey Luther -” Davie spread her hands out before her face, as if spreading words out before our faces. “- The most boring girl in Key West, Florida. Or, no, no, wait! The most boring girl in the world!”

I climbed off the opposite side of Davie’s bed, huffing. “You’re a really bad friend, Davie Miller.”

My hand touched the knob on her door before she grabbed my shoulder, turning me around. A bemused smile tugged at the edge of her lips as she frowned down at me. “I’m sorry, ‘Key.” Davie pulled me into a hug, muttering how sorry she was, but that we both knew it was true. I was the most boring girl in the world.

Davie pulled out of the hug, quicker than she usually would. “So, what do you wanna do?”

I shrugged, standing in the middle of her light pink bedroom, looking extremely out of place. “I was thinking we could go see what everyone else was doing.”

Davie looked away from her closet, where she had been pulling out a light cardigan. “No one is at home,” she extracted herself from the depths of her closet, shrugging into the cream cardigan. “But I know where everyone is.”

I don’t really know what I felt when Davie told me she knew where everyone was. I think it was a mixture of jealousy and feeling left out. How come no one had told me where they were going or what they were doing? It was almost like Davie was much more important than I was. But I pushed the feelings aside, giving Davie a tight smile.

“Okay,” I followed Davie out of her bedroom, the smell of cookies wafting into my nose. “Lets go see what they’re up to.”