Suburbia

She dabs gently at my cheek with a small cotton bud soaked in rubbing alcohol and I feel sharp trickles of pain waterfall down the side of my face. I wince.

“Don’t be such a baby,” she murmurs to me, “Your face is actually looking okay, now that all the mud is off.”

She finishes wiping my face and throws the now crimson cotton bud into the bin. I turn and look at myself in the mirror: the left side of my face has a long graze down the side and I have a small cut just above my right eyebrow. A small bead of blood squeezes up from its sopping depths and I reach up to wipe it away. Eve sidles up beside me.

“See, not half as bad as before.”

“Eve…” I can feel a hundred words in my mouth, jostling to be spoken and bumping against my lips, but only one tiny syllable slips out, “Thanks.

A blush smatters across her cheeks, “No problem” she says as she leans her head against my shoulder. Immediately her nose wrinkles up in distaste as she realises how dirty my shirt is, clogged up with dried blood and dirt.

“You can’t go home wearing that,” she says matter of factly, “Here, come with me, I’ll find you something else.”

I follow her down the hallway to a large white bedroom where the sparse belongings in the room are tidily shelved and stacked away. The one word that immediately pops into my head as I look around is sterile. I wonder for a moment if the room has ver been lived in at all. The bed is perfectly made and the pictures on the wall are perfectly placed in exact parallel to everything else in the room.

Eve immediately heads towards the chest of drawers on the opposite side of the room where she pulls them open and proceeds to take what looks like every single piece of clothing out and onto the bed. I drift over to the bedside and look down at all the clothes: Armani, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein... every single piece is designer.

Eve then strides over to me and starts holding up all the different sweaters, t-shirts, vests and shirts until she finally decides on a non-descript white polo, it’s Ralph Lauren price tag the only signal of it’s value.

“Put that on and I’ll put your gross one in the wash,” Eve tells me as she starts to sort the shirts back into their drawers.

“Whose room is this?” I mumble through my shirt fabric as I pull it over my head.

“Oh, just my parents,” Eve says breezily.

“Will you Dad not mind me taking his shirt?”

“He won’t even realise it’s missing, trust me,” Eve comes back and picks up my discarded shirt as I drag on the polo, “He’s not home enough to even know what he owns.”

I peek up at her from the polo collar, “And are you okay with that?”

Eve strides away from me, bloody shirt in hand, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” she calls to me over her shoulder but there is a hard note in her voice which tells not to broach the subject any further.

She patters down the stairs and I hear her setting up the washing machine as I wander out into the corridor. A door is ajar at the end of the corridor revealing another bedroom.

“Is this your bedroom?” I call to her, “The one at the end of the corridor?”

She starts to head back up the stairs as she says, “Sure is, you can go in if you want.”

I tentatively head down the corridor and nudge the door open with my knuckles. The sun is starting to set and it’s orange glow is starting to shimmer through the window to crowd the room with a peachy fuzz that seems to drip off all Eve’s belongings. Her bed is draped with blankets of all different materials and colours and her desk is scattered with all manner of knick knacks that she has treasured and kept over the years. From the ceiling hang delicate pieces of gauze and glittering trinkets that cast iridescent light onto the walls that flit about like dragonflies.

I turn to see Eve standing in the doorway, watching me examine the room. She walks over and sits cross legged on her bed of blankets. She looks around all the different corners of the room before her eyes settle on me. I feel her eyes pull me towards her and I sit beside her on the bed. We sit face to face listening to a bird chirp outside her window.

“This is my safe haven,” she whispers to me.

I stare at her for a few moments before murmuring back.

“Yeah, I’ve been looking for one of those.”