Prose On Your Tongue

I tell Lilian I’ll see her at my house when we walk onto the front lawn of High Riverbank and Bee is waving crazily at me, mouthing, “Come, come,” in that enthusiastic way she does. Lilian nods, pats my back, and we walk our separate ways, her towards the buses and me the parking lot; I notice Bee is standing among Sam and Nes, and there are a few basketball players that pass briefly by for a small chat before heading to their cars.

Bee fingers my belt loops when I get close enough and playful tugs me into the dysfunctional circle while grinning up at me. “There you are, Danny,” her light brown eyes glisten beneath a blanket of sunlight before she whispers, “we were about to leave without you, you know.”

“Right,” I smile. “Sorry.”

Nes slips an arm around my shoulders ( and with great difficulty; I beat him by a head and a half ) and pulls me down, closer to his level, frowning at Bee with a friendly air. “Don’t joke around with’em like that - he’ll believe you if you keep that up.”

Bee rolls her eyes, shoving his arm off of my stiffening body. “Shut the fuck up. We all know you torture him more than any of us.” She points blindly at Sam, who has just finished saying his farewells to some basketball player named Tommy and is spinning his car keys absentmindedly in his calloused hands. Sam looks a little blinding in the outdoors - his yellow hair is glowing, almost, and his painfully white skin doesn’t help much to counter it, although his dark eyes are a pleasant contrast. When he feels our eyes on him, he looks, and then he smiles curiously.

“What?” he asks slowly. His voice rumbles from his chest and crashes in my ears. I wonder if that was the effect he was going for. “Why’re you all lookin’ at me?”

Nes whips his head to the side, managing to get some of his curly fringe out of his eyelashes, and begins to walk to the pickup truck parked a few spots down from where we're standing. “Nothing, blondie - let’s just head home so I can finish my AP Psych project, alright?”

“No problem, cranky-pants,” Sam calls back, running up behind Nes in this weird wide-legged jog that he’s so accustomed to doing from his horrible years of his saggy jeans and no belt stage, rustling short, stubby fingers through Nes’ wild head of golden brown hair in an act of superiority. Nes slaps him away and soon they’re having a push fight across the asphalt on the way to the car, grunts raising and dancing amongst hollers and catcalls of the other students around.

Bee shakes her head and mutters, “At least you’re fucking smart,” to me before running to catch up to the other two. I can tell she’s trying to control herself from joining in on the fray, wanting to shove and pull some hair and wrestle here and there, but her ‘feminine’ image that she’s so desperate to portray on school grounds holds her back.

I walk to my usual spot in the backseat and let Bee get in as I watch the muscles in her back, peeking through her v-neck, contract as she lifts herself. She’s had a long while convincing herself that having a defined body shape still makes her a woman, and it’s a battle I’m afraid will be lifelong.

As soon as the pickup truck rumbles to life, Nes is fiddling with the dials on the dashboard, trying to find his favorite rap station. Some vile song blasts from the surround sound stereos and Nes hollers the lyrics right with it, not missing a beat, even if the song is right in the middle of its course. “Oh my fucking god,” Sam shouts, eyebrows narrowing, as he looks through the rearview mirror to safely reverse the car out of its parking spot.

I curl closer to the window as I fish out my tiny notebook from my back jeans pocket. Bee leans towards the front of the car and tries to jab at the radio, but Nes gets very close to her face and practically screams the chorus of the rap music to her; glaring, a closed fist gets just below Nes’ ribcage and shoves the air out of his lungs in a matter of one second, halting his lip-syncing. The car bursts into laughter while Nes wheezes and grabs at his midsection, folding into himself against the passenger seat window.

“Fuck, Bee!” he gasps. I glance up through the crack separating our seats and pass a concentrated smile at his scrunched up face, leafing through the pages to a poem written just hours ago. “Holy shit!”

Sam snorts as he turns the radio down to a reasonable level. “That’s what you get when you mess with Bee-Bee The Mighty.” Bee elbows him at that nickname, threatening to give him a punch to the gut, too, and he begs her to spare him, still laughing at a red-faced Nes beside him.

We soon turn down a wide road and the car slows in front of my house, the nearest one to school. “Thanks,” I hurriedly say, noticing Lilian sitting on the front steps on my lawn. “It was fun.” I rip the page out and stuff it in Nes’ gym bag, which is sitting between Bee and I in the backseat, before opening my door and jumping out.

Bee doesn’t seem to notice. “See you tomorrow, Dan! And don’t forget about our bonfire night next week!” Sam grunts his agreement while he pets Nes’ shivering shoulder and I smile at all of them, thanking Bee, and walk off to a distracted Lilian.

“Hey, Lulu,” I say as I walk past her and use my keys to open the door, fumbling noisily with them to snap her out of her daze.

Marking her spot in her book, she gets to her feet, smiling faintly. “Had fun with the crew?”

“The crew?” I snort. I get my door open and walk inside, followed closely by Lilian. My house is warm - bordering hot - and it stinks of some burnt chicken or rice, of some sorts. The living room television is blaring the news that vapid, paparazzi-hungry people watch, and it sounds like something is sizzling from the kitchen.

I can hear my mom’s nasally voice screeching before it subsides into pig-like laughter, coming deep from her stomach. “Lyle - I told you to stop talking about that!”

My father says something inaudible, especially with all the commotion already filling the air, and my mom does her ear-splitting laugh once again, except this one is laced with incoherent gasps.

“Nutty-family,” Lilian jabs from behind me. Suppressing the urge to roll my eyes, I brace myself and venture into the kitchen to make Lilian and I known.

As soon as my father sees me, his jolly face lights up and he waddles his way over, slipping an inflated arm around my waist since he’s too short to properly reach my shoulders. “The zombie finally makes himself known!” My mum makes another laugh and this only encourages him persist in his taunts. “You finally come down to get some more fat on you?”

I begin to say something, but it wavers off when my mom makes an unnecessary, loud inhale and rushes Lilian. “And there’s Daniel’s partner in crime! Are you going to stay until I finish dinner, dear?” Lilian and my mom embrace one another in the way female’s do - their arms all familiar and tight - and Lilian nods enthusiastically.

“Yeah - I love your cooking!”

This makes my mom hum and puff with pride.

My father finally removes himself from my waist and places his hands on meaty hips. Looking between us, he asks, “So what’s the agenda for today, you two? More studying and reading up in his room?”

“And alone?” My mom says playfully, hopefully, and it makes me a little sick. I look at Lilian frantically, trying to get her to look at me so she can get the message and leave with me, but she doesn’t even as much as glance at me.

“It’s not like that,” Lilian laughs, tucking some hair behind her ear, but she says it mysteriously, like she’s in on something with my mom and father that I don’t know. That makes me more than a little sick. “We’re just studying.”

“Oh - I know —”

“Okay, I’m gonna be upstairs,” I sniff, snatching my backpack on my way through the living room and reaching the stairs. They all three say something, but I can’t hear because of the loud, blaring television, and I feel like I wasn’t meant to hear in the first place, so I make my way back up the stairs and towards my bedroom.

I close the door behind me, hoping Lilian heard through all the ruckus and got the hint, and then drop down onto the rug in front of my bed. I manage to get out my notebooks and a few romance novels from my backpack before I hear Lilian’s rushed, light footsteps coming up the stairs and down the hallway, and I feel a little relieved she’s away from my mom and father. She slips her flat body inside, saying, breathlessly, “your parents are lovely,” before she sits opposite to me.

I pick up one of my favorite works, A Midnight Spent Drowsy, and flip mindlessly through each worn, smudged page. “Yeah - they’re great,” I deadpan. Lilian replies with something I’m certain is sarcastic and belittling as I place my attention on the book in my shriveled hands, running my eyes across each magnificent word. The female love interest, Amelie, had just run about two miles through several neighborhoods, in the middle of the night, to get to her male love interest’s, Peter's, house before he left to study abroad for several years. She wanted to spend time with him until dawn and she didn’t want to waste anytime. The descriptions of her racing thoughts as she rushes to her lover still makes my spine shiver with longing, with desperation that one day I may be the Amelie or the Peter for my Nes.

My daydreams are silly and fruitless, but that’s exactly what they are: mine. And without them I don’t know where I’ll be.

I watch as Lilian’s pink mouth moves while I recall the contents of my secret poem that’s probably resting in Nes’ backpack, daydreaming. one hundred or one million miles / with no bridge or crossing / cannot keep me away. / i will rip pieces of my love / and build a pass straight to you.

“Dan,” I finally hear Lilian as she nudges me. “You’re being stupid again - smiling like that.”

I think to apologize, but then I realize this is nothing to feel sorry about.