Saving Sloane Winters

Teak C. Richardson
Keywords you, nincompoop, Sloane, Iron, Mummy

“C’mon, you scab,” grins Riley. He’s got his excitement everywhere, in his tapping hands, in his wide smile, in his colourful old Rusty shirt. “It’s gonna be fun! Watching girls dance on tables, blackmailing the kids under eighteen! They’re underage, and we aren’t! Fuck yes!”

Now, Riley’s a real happy person, and when he’s happy—it’s infectious. But he hasn’t got enough of his happiness to share today, and that’s because it’s fake. He just pretends, for my sake.

“Shut up, Riles. I don’t want to go,” I scowl, and lie down on my bed, lie in my pit of self misery and die. “Who’s is it, anyway?”

“Mandy Sommers, she invited everybody ‘cool’ year ten and up. More presents, more amber liquid, more drunk horny kids, more people to blackmail,” there’s his grin again, and I almost want to tell him to stop it.

“What the fuck is with you and blackmailing, Riley? Are you high, or something?”

He scoffs, and picks up one of my shirts on the ground and places it neatly into the laundry basket. Riley’s too clean for a teenage guy, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. “I don’t do that shit anymore, mate. And speaking of being high,” he straightens up and glares at me. “Did you do anything stupid when you were at Sloane’s? She looked traumatised when I got ya.”

I look away, just like Sloane; Riley’s got this air around him that makes you want to spill everything. “We talked.”

“Is that all you did? Didn’t make up and make out, or anything?” He jokes, runs a hand through his sandy hair and his eyes are running through my mind—I swear, he’s telepathic.

“No,” I say shortly, and tug on a plain red shirt. “I’ll go with you to Mandy’s party then, goddammit, you persistent fucker.”

Beaming like a Chesire Cat, Riley bounds down the stairs and we’re in his car, driving to wherever this party was.

“You’re lucky I put up with your girly shit,” I growl, as we’re in front of a big two storey home, with booming crappy music and people vomiting on the front lawn.

But I’m thinking as I see his smile falter, that I was lucky that he put up with my own miserable shit.

I was lucky that he was still around. I was a burden, and he was a good friend.

_____________________

I saw her Iron Maiden t-shirt before I saw her. It didn’t even stand out from the crowd, nothing that I would purposely turn my eyes to look at. It was just one of those times that your eyes see it, but you don’t actually look.

But then I heard a familiar voice. Tristan Forjac’s; to be exact.

He’s pushing through girls to get to a girl with long hair that looks white in the light, a red cup of liquid in his hand as he places it in her outstretched hand. She grins, and tugs her shirt down from where it had ridden up to show her freckled stomach.

And I think, I know her, as I see familiar old combat boots, and how she keeps her hands limp at her sides but they twitch, maybe the painting artistic side of her. She might want to paint her sentence out instead.

Sloane.

Tristan looks breathless, but who wouldn’t push through heaps of inebriated kids to be near someone like Sloane Winters?

Says something to her, but I can’t comprehend the words that slip through his grinning lips, but I’m guessing it’s something like: let’s drink so we can have mindless sex and not remember anything when we wake up.

Probably not.

Would it be pathetic if I said I was jealous?

I didn’t know shit about what was happening between them, and yeah, it made me happy that whenever Tristan leaned closer to her she’d smile quickly and take a step back, but he was a step away from her, wasn’t he?

And I was words, heartbreak and metres away from her.

“Have fun, you wanker,” scowls Riley, as he ducks underneath an arm of a hammered kid with a Mohawk. “Pick up a girl or something, y’know.”

“I’ll pass.”

But Riley’s eyes are where mine are fixed, and he gives this sort of sad smile. “Talk to her, fight for her, do whatever shit that’ll take that depressed look ‘bout your face and get her. Get the girl, Teak. It’s sorta clear you need her.”

“Not while Forjac’s there, Riles.”

“Whatcha talking ‘bout? She just went out to the pool. Wearing that Iron Mummy something t-shirt, eh?” he shakes his head at my nod. “No wonder, you’re practic’ly perfect for each other. Listen to the same crappy music, you both.”

“Like Rihanna’s any better.”

Riley turns pink at the mention of his secret fetish, but pushes me forward like you’d push someone on the swing. Supportive but they’ll always let go, so you can be brave and do it yourself. “Go, you tosser.”

“I’m going, mum,” I look around the darkness, and nobody’s out here, except for a figure sprawled out on the concrete, feet in the water.

“Tristan, are you there?” comes her voice, she sounds odd. As if she’s gonna burst out giggling any second, as if she’s completely and utterly smashed.

“Oh, it’s you,” she says, and takes a swig from a bottle. She doesn’t say it rudely, or flatly, but curiously.

Awkwardness fills the air, as I hesitantly sit down next to her, but when I stare at her, I decided that maybe it was only awkward for me. She had this expression that she didn’t care for anything at the moment, but maybe my arms.

“You know, I’ve never actually seen a real tattoo, the permanent ones, before you. I had a Finding Nemo one, but it was one of the crappy ones you rub on with a sponge. But then you come along!” she giggles, and reaches for the bottle I had taken from her. “And instead of maybe a butterfly on someone’s arse crack, I get two armfuls!”

She’s got her painter hands on my arms, looking at every single thing I had printed permanently onto my skin. I can feel her warm breath on my fingertips, I pull them away.

“How many have you had?” I grimace when she grabs for the alcohol again, and chuck it carelessly into the pool.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Beer, vodka, tequila. Whatever shit you drank. How many?”

Feeble looking and confused, she says, “I... I don’t remember.”

She directs her blue green gaze to the pool water, and frowns. “Am I pretty, Teak?”

So she was drunk. Sober Sloane never showed any doubt of herself, it was always confidence, and she had enough to give to everyone. She was just that kind of person, she made you feel strong.

“Sure,” I supply. What are you supposed to say to an inebriated teenage girl?

“You didn’t even look.”

So I turn my head, and to be honest, she looks pathetic. Staring up at me with wide eyes, angry red crescents on her freckled flushed skin. And yet, she was so goddamn—

“Beautiful,” I swear, I’m not thinking. “You’re beautiful.”

She’s suddenly all quiet. “You shouldn’t compliment people like that, Teak Richardson. It doesn’t really suit you.”

“Fine, you’re horrendously ugly.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

I feel like throwing my hands up in the air and being dramatic. “Make up your mind! What the hell do you want from me? The truth?”

“The truth would be nice,” she replied honestly.

“You know the truth.” And she honestly should, I threw it at her face on the porch of her front house two weeks ago.

“I’m probably going to do something I’ll regret later, won’t I?”

“Maybe,” I shrug, and then she’s got her hands in my hair, and my hands are on her hips again.

Her lips haven't changed, they were still slightly chapped, the slight feel of chapstick, she still tasted like citrus and her mouth still pushed against mine and--

I pull away.

"What the hell?" she mutters, there's a sort of rasp to her voice, as if I stole her breath away from her. That gave me some sick satisfaction.

I might've stolen her breath, but she had taken mine and dangled it in front of my face, as she pulls the collar of my shirt towards her. "We're not doing this while you're drunk, Sloane."

"Why not?!" she exclaims, her mouth-- the one I want to kiss-- is moving quickly. "I'm sick and tired of all this 'no' business with you! I'm sick of us floating around and not doing anything! Well, guess what?"

What? I almost feel like saying, but it sounds pathetic, even in my brain.

"I'm doing something about it now. I'm being the brave one and not ignoring what I feel! I'm bloody tired of not getting what I want! I lied when I went to your house, when I said I didn't want you anymore. I still want you, and I'm not ignoring it this time. So please, just fucking stop resisting it, because I know you want it too. Just stop with all this... floating about and just fucking kiss me already!"

Well, you heard the girl.

_____________________

We end up at the back door of her house.

“The climbing up trees to get into your window is cooler,” I comment casually, as she clumsily picks the lock with her bobby pin.

“I live in the attic, nincompoop.”

Nearly sober, and she’s leading me up the stairs and up another into her room.

Never been here before, but it’s exactly like Sloane. A blank canvas or two underneath the bed, her school uniform hung neatly, various junk scattered, a scarlet carpet, a bed pushed up against the wall, old floral curtains hiding the darkness behind.

She ignores the bed, and collapses onto the carpet, pats the spot next to her, and I lie down there too.

Silence, but a comforting, purring kind.

“I’m sorry,” I say after a while, turn on my side and she’s fallen asleep. Her tangled hair, her mouth slightly open, her crinkled t-shirt— she's nothing really special, but completely and utterly mine.