Jewellery’s Only For Poofs and Italians

1.     

Nora wiped her hand, sticky with ice block, against the wooden fence which, to nobody’s surprise, would later be the culprit of the throbbing splinter in her finger.

“Nora!” a voice rang out from the balcony above. It was her cousin – she’d taken the last cola Sunnyboy from Grandma’s freezer.

She peered about then squeezed through the gap in the fence where a plank was missing, into Mean Lady’s overgrown backyard – there were spiderwebs on the shrubs, spiderwebs hanging mid-air, their owners big and black and gangly. Last summer, Nora’s cousin had run right into one, and after swatting wildly at his own face, he’d stripped down to nothing – his Spiderman togs still decaying in the garden, discoloured and stomped into the dirt an entire year later.

Either Mean Lady no longer lived there, or she’d given up on taming the roaring vegetation, its insects, its vines. They hadn’t heard her yell this summer, but her yard carried a silence with it, the kind of silence that watches you, the kind that guards like a watchdog, ears pricked up, and at any time might come sprinting around the corner.

Nora was on the brink of suddenness, and trod with care, the crunch of leaves resonating through the yard, her pulse in her ears.

Then came a distant crunch, and Nora froze, her eyes searching for the culprit. Through a distant gap in the fence—another missing plank—came a shoe, then a leg, a mop of brown hair, startled eyes, a gasp.

“Wait!” Nora half-whispered, half-shouted (had she said anything at all, or had he read her lips? her outstretched hand?).

He paused, half of him still on the other side of the fence like an orange cut in halves. But then came his second leg, second shoe, second arm – he was whole, and he was staring at her.

2.     

The ray of bathroom light beneath Nora’s bedroom door was like a lightsaber. She lay in the dark and watched it glow, listened to the toilet flush, the faucet, the bathroom cabinet which clicked open then closed, the doorknob. The ray of light vanished beneath her door, and she held her breath as Grandma’s muffled footsteps—slippers on carpet—pit-a-patted away.

As Grandma’s bedroom door clicked shut, Nora jumped out of bed, diary and pen in hand, and folded herself up on the carpet by the nightlight (which she’d been using again since her cousin had her play The Grudge on Funnyjunk). The warm glow flooded her diary pages, and she put pen to paper.

Today, I met a boy in Mean Lady’s backyard. He climbed in through the second portal where Mrs. Davis used to live and said his dad moved in a few weeks back, that he’s here for the summer. His name’s Alex and he has big brown eyes, but the soft and shiny kind, like Christmas beetles. I wonder if he’ll stay long enough for Christmas – I spent my pocket money on the fancy poppers this year. Winners get measuring tapes (Grandma), mini playing cards, dice and stuff. I think Alex might like the dice, or the plastic comb. He had beautiful, brown hair up to his shoulders. “Locks,” Grandma would call them. I’ll ask him tomorrow. He said he was having chicken for dinner and that he’d bring me the wishbone.

Nora shut her diary and climbed into bed, pulling the sheets over her head.

3.     

“What did you wish for?” asked Nora.

Alex wished his father was kinder. It was an instinct, a reflex – he didn’t even have to think about it. It’s what he wished for on birthdays, what he wished for on dandelion clocks, what he wished for on the only shooting star he’d ever seen. “If I tell you, it won’t come true,” he said instead, burying the bone.

Nora adorned it with tree bark and leaves and flower petals, just as she’d adorned the graves of dead beetles and the ladybugs she’d once killed when she’d forgotten to puncture holes in the lid of her lunchbox – they’d all died overnight.

“Why’d you cut your hair?” she asked, plucking a daisy bare.

Alex shrugged. His dad had done it – he looked like a girl, he’d said.

4.     

Alex is so handsome with his hair cut short. Turn to the back of this diary to see my illustration of him. I’m not much of an artist, really, but I think I captured the sadness in his eyes. I think Alex has lived multiple lives… he has the face of a ninety-year-old. Sometimes.

He got the bigger end of the wishbone today. I wonder what he wished for. If I’d gotten it, I’d have wished for us to be friends forever. If you turn to the back of the diary, you’ll see the illustration of the friendship bracelet I made him. I think he’ll like it – he said he liked blue.

P.S. Alex has a strawberry-scented yo-yo, and I’ve promised to show him my scratch and sniff stickers!

5.     

“Is that too tight?” asked Nora.

“It’s perfect,” said Alex, and she fastened the bracelet around his wrist with a knot she’d learned in Scouts – they’d even given her a badge for it which was on her bookshelf back home.

They sat in silence a while, picking blades of grass from the ground, drawing circles in the patches of dirt.

“Do you ever have trouble sleeping?” asked Alex.

“Sometimes,” said Nora. “I dream that everyone I love dies.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yup,” said Nora, and on those nights, she’d cry into her duvet until she fell asleep from exhaustion.

“Do you ever have nightmares?” asked Alex.

“I died the other night. I was sitting on the edge of a big hole like a volcano but then I woke up.” She’d gone to the bathroom immediately afterwards to wash her face, sure that she’d survived something, sure that it hadn’t been her imagination.

“What about you?” continued Nora, but Alex only shook his head.

6.     

He didn’t like the coffee one – he said it smelled foul like fancy dog shit. I asked him if he smelled dog shit, and he cackled. “Cackled.” Grandma taught me that word over dinner. She gave me the last bit of her rocky road from Darrell Lea, and I told her she was as rare as a unicorn. She liked that, and the illustration. I used up all my purple glitter on it, but she said we’d buy more. I also told her about Alex. She said it sounded a lot like love, and she told me how she’d met Grandpa – how he’d worn the most hideous trousers she’d ever seen, but there was a sparkle in his eye she’d never forget, a sparkle she’d fallen in love with. Alex has beautiful eyes, and his eyelashes are as thick as toothbrush bristles. “Bristles.”

7.     

Alex swung higher and higher, but all Nora could see were the plum patches on the backs of his arms.

“Why are there bruises on your arms?” asked Nora.

“I… fell.”

Alex kept swinging, and all the while Nora was waiting for him to tell her, tell her what had happened. And all the while, Alex was waiting for her to ask again. If she asked again, maybe he’d tell her. If she asked again, he’d sob in her arms and tell her everything. But she didn’t ask, she waited, and Alex kept on swinging.

She didn’t want to burden him – he’d tell her when he was ready… and he’d tell her why he’d removed her friendship bracelet, surely.

If only Nora knew…

Jewellery’s only for poofs and Italians.

8.     

Alex removed my bracelet, but I didn’t say anything… Instead, I arm wrestled him and lost. And then I ate a clover for having lost. I wish he knew how sad he made me. I wish he knew I spent the entire evening preparing a treasure hunt for him. Something red. Something blue. Something old. Something new. Something that rhymes with ‘sock.’ There are fifteen items on the list, and I can’t wait to show him! I would do anything to see him smile… I’m so tired of his old sulkiness. He’s a little younger than me actually, and yet he sulks around like an old miserable person who’s gone to war. Grandma says I shouldn’t say stuff like that because I don’t understand the “magnitude” of it. “Magnitude.”

P.S. the backs of Alex’s arms were bruised. I’ve never seen that shade of purple before… I’m waiting for him to tell me everything, but I think he needs to trust me first. I will be trustworthy. The most trustworthy. The trustworthiest.

9.     

Nora sat on the swing in Mean Lady’s backyard, the rusty creak resounding through the garden – even the spiders seemed to shake on their webs. She waited ten minutes, fifteen, twenty, an hour, her treasure hunt in her trembling hands. Something within knew Alex wouldn’t come. Something within knew that if he were to, he’d have been punctual.