Through the Backyards
Together their tea-stained teeth stroke the wonders of aortic obsession and self-deprecation / Bade / Candre
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This long bugger is the product of long periods of self induced distraction from the larger things in life. To understand the dynamics of the whole Candre situation, I do suggest you read 'Wet Gold' and 'Sugary Nonsense'.
So I guess, enjoy or endure it.
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letters / candre
numerals / bade
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an interlude.
She's alone in the street. The pavements is littered with the few crushed bodies of her cigarettes, the empty eyes of the sleeping houses watch her as she paces around the lone figure of the peeling black street lamp. Like a candle, it brushes her face with warm secrecy as her quiet eyes survey her surroundings. The galloping tract of a distance train can be heard, as the wind carries across the sounds of distant civilisation. A siren too screams out against the night, but she knows, like the trains, its source is far away. It can't be here, not here where there is no life, no death. Not yet.
Her hand rises to her face, illuminated by the sudden flicker of a flame flashing from her lighter, to lick its way round her cigarette and breath it into life. The lamp casts light across her face, elongating the shadows of her eyelashes down her cheeks, the pronounced figmented lines looking like the tracts of tears. The stormy eyes slowly look round.
Unseen by the dark haired woman, a man appears, his shoulders shrouded in a dark mist. He walks, one step in front of the other, sauntering towards the unaware woman, the button on the front of his overcoat glinting in the half light, his black patent shoes make soft, rhythmic noises. Her heels clack against the ground, as she turns to meet the man's breathing, as the light from the lamp that once illuminated her face, gleams off the cool barrel of a newly revealed pistol.
The streetlight fades away to black, a sudden harsh crack rings out, and the curtain descends.
Jade bows a little too quickly, the belt of her mackintosh cutting into her stomach as she bends her spine in acceptance of the loud applause. As soon as she's left the wings, she's ripping the black fabric from her shoulders, as she finally allows herself to pour into a plastic chair. The air is hot with vacuous appraisal, only given with the unspoken recognition that it will be handed back, gushing from one insincere mouth to another.
She feels deflated, as the weight of her lines leave her, the need for their memory floats up to mingle with the incessant cries of the crowd. She begins to slowly peel away her makeup, the processes of shedding the skin she has been dolled into is soothing. Costume discarded, she sets about finding her own clothes in amongst the bustle of moving students. In the darkest corner she can find, she slowly begins to redress, taking her time to piece by piece become Jade again. She takes a second sitting in the dark to breath, to remember that it's finally over and she is free, before pushing her self up from the floor to leave.
She opens the doors out into the warm husk of air and finally greets the summer
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a)
He'll watch from afar as she erupts into the room.
He's sitting on the couch, but feels the need to stand, acknowledge her entrance. Her pigmented eyes rove around the heaving room and finally, from between the branched arms, spots him, awkwardly standing there, waiting for her attention. She mouths his name and he mouths hers.
Cat.
She tilts her head slightly; she's almost wistful in those large doey eyes, before she presses closer into the crowd. She pushes into the middle of the room, and he loses sight of her.
He follows her movement from the sidelines, his path hindered by the sticky tract of the floor and the rapidly rising tide of empty bottles.
She dances, as she always does. She's revolving slowly, as though trapped in time, in-between spilt seconds, caught, continually rotating. Her arms are outstretched, brushing across shoulders and faces. They don't notice, she doesn't notice; her eyes are half shut, thin, black butterflies quivering with every shudder. She commands the space and his eyes dutifully follow. Camera flashes are going off and every other second she's suddenly backlit by a hot white light. He catches visions of her; hair on fire; a wild coronal crown, tendrils of gold and copper floating up, up into the hazy air.
And then she's off again, the crowd sweeping her up, as though she's some lost gull at sea, wingless but defiant.
He'll always follow; he'll never stop chasing. Because finally she's his and he's hers. Her what though, he doesn't know. But finally they are together; should be together. But right now, she's at one side of the room chasing halos and he's on the other, fantasizing about that phantom girl, phantom kiss.
These feelings are still something warm, bright and new; untouched as of yet.
She's in front of him, suddenly close and pressed up against his shirt, hand on his heart pushing him down onto the sofa behind him.
She collapses into his lap; bare thighs cautiously nestled into denim. He can feel her staring at his temple, and the air playing about his ear rises in temperature, filled with heat and unspoken words, and then suddenly, filled with her.
'You kissed me Andre'
He's too scared to look at her; scared she's just wistful thinking and in all reality is still across the room, still dancing out her emotions, still unaware of his affections.
'We kissed, remember?'
She presses her mouth against his ear, the word remember, repeating across her lips
'We kissed,'
Warm pressure on his cheek. Breathing her in. intoxication overflowing his brain.
'We kissed,'
His mouth, her mouth.
'We kissed and you didn't call,'
She leans back.
'I tried,' He manages to utter.
'Don't you like me?' She doesn't understand how she killed his brain so sweetly, slaughtered all comprehension, all basic general thought he had. His whole life; building up to that one single moment, that one perfect connection.
'My mouth wasn't working,' Is his lame excuse. He regrets it as soon as it is born out into the air.
'It's working now,' She smiles, but doesn't smirk.
'I didn't know what to say,'
'All you had to do is say hi,' She's close again; her nose brushes his. He can taste the colour of her words.
He turns towards her sugary skin, noses glancing, his lips press slowly unto hers.
'Hey'
'Hey'
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ii.
He's had a lot of proud moments, he's made a lot of proud moments, but for him, just watching her remove her make-up, being allowed that rare insight through the open bathroom door, is one of the greatest wonders he'll ever come to know.
She slips off her bra from under her vest and casts it to the ground. Her shorts come next, slipping over bruised knees to crumple on the floor of his tiny bathroom. She rolls her shoulders, and squints her eyes against the naked bulb swinging from the ceiling, as she leans forwards to wipe away her makeup. She's always slow and methodical. She splashes her face first, just letting her mascara relinquish its hold, and run down her face. Water on water washes her clean and she drags liner and rouge off with lathered soap. A face of tiny freckles is finally revealed, as though as a child someone came up to her and splattered her with sunny paint.
She stands there, her face empty, her eyelashes still curled and laden with dew, the prickle of pink blush across her cheeks as she catches him watching and only the slick of mouth wetted lips to question 'What are you looking at?'
He could say 'Nothing, nothing at all,' but he'd be telling a lie.
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b) iii.
It's June and from in amongst the sounds of lawnmowers and low flying airplanes Cat's phone flickers into life with the jerky drill of one of her automated ring tones.
'Jade?'
'You need to check this.'
'Check what?' All Cat can hear is the sloshing sound of water and the dry husk of Jade's mouth.
She doesn't answer so Cat assumes everything.
She walks down the length of her garden and lifts her self over her peeling white fence onto Jade's lawn. Slipping in through the sliding glass door she finds the house chaotically still. Nothing moves and Cat is suddenly fearful that if she were to touch anything it might suddenly explode with built up tension into a dusty plume.
She slides her shoes off and creeps through the single story of Jade's home. Her room, unlike the rest of the house is a still chaos, clothes discarded on the floor in small fabric mountains, the wall of photos they'd made together two years ago still clinging to the wallpaper. The heavy curtains are almost closed, but from between their folds bright, hot sunlight bursts out, throwing the sheet fortresses of her bed into light.
A low moan breaks out from the ajar bathroom door and Cat, feet paced one after another slowly pushes it open.
Jade sits in the bath in a bra and boots, a milk white sliver of plastic resting on the curve of the bath's side.
'Check it for me,' Jade commands from her murky depths.
'Jade what's go-'
'Its been sitting there for hours, I just couldn't bring myself to - to,' Jade is almost barking but her voice trails off into a quiet whimper.
'Jade,' Cat murmurs softly; settling herself down on the cold tile floor, her own shoes making an uncomfortable scraping sound across the white venire.
'Check it for me, now,' She pleads. Her eyes are raw, and there are more sticky tendrils clinging bloody fingers to her iris than Cat had fingers.
Cat rests her small chin on the rim of the bath and looks up at Jade, her hands tucked into the crease of her folded legs.
'You're sitting in the bath, with boots on,'
With every word Cat's head bobs up and down, her chin still clamped to the cold bath.
'I need to be numb,' Jade whimpers enclosing her knee in a tight, wet embrace, goose bumps erupting across her empty skin.
'Check it.'
'Please,' Cat suddenly realizes manners don't quite apply to the situation, though they could both do with a dose of reality.
'Please,' she says through gritted teeth as she looks at Cat through the wet branches of her slick hair, plastered to her white skull.
Cat picks up the test like it might bite her.
The air prickles with the icy cold and unsaid reservations.
Cat drawing her lungs, in a single breath spills out, 'Negative, which is a positive, for you, but a negative thing for the baby.'
'There's no baby,' Jade almost screams.
'Is that a question?'
'No Cat, that's, that's - wonderful!'
The word sounds strange in Jade's plump mouth.
'So a positive?'
'A big fat mother-fucking positive!'
She snatches the test from Cat's loose hands and throws the plastic down hard on the floor, causing the thin white line and all sign of a child to crack and splinter. She gingerly steps out of the bath, her boots sloshing and squeaking as she leaves the room, grabs the shattered test and a discarded shirt from the floor and splays her self across the bed.
'Geez my mom would have freaked,' Jade's voice is slightly muffled from their distance, so Cat, uncurling her self moves to rest in the doorframe.
'Well if I could find her.'
'They haven't got her?' Cat's head suddenly snaps up from the interest of her nails.
'No - who the fuck are they Cat? She's skipped out 'cause she's freaking. Which I don't get, she and Paul broke up months ago.'
'I liked Paul,' Cat moves to sit cross-legged on Jade's bed next to the still soaked girl.
'Yeah you would, - at least he wasn't your dad number three.'
'Maybe she's just scared of life- like how big it is. Life is huge, and not metaphysical-,'
'Metaphorically,'
'Yeah metaphorically, but like life is really, really big,' Cat extends her arms, pushing them out so the creases of her elbows are enveloped in white sun.
Jade chuckles dryly, not sure how to tiptoe round Cat's utterances.
'Haven't you realized yet?' Cat continues.
'What?'
'That life's scary, terrifying even?' She turns to Jade, studying her profile for any flicker of agreement.
Jade waves the remains of the white stick in Cats face as an answer.
'Yeah,' Jade whispers
'But it's okay, cause you have Beck and I have Andre, and they have each other, and we have us.'
Cat slips her hand into Jade's and squeezes it in reassurance because she can already see the tears prickling in the pale girl's eyes.
'I feel sort of - empty now,' Jade throws out into the air.
Cat sighs.
'You're just hungry.'
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iv.
He finds her on the beach, ill dressed, as always, sitting as though meditating, in front of a small, slick tide pool.
A shivering ghost lurks in its depths. A jellyfish, trapped by the recent storm and the high tide its surly broodings brought. Now it's a prisoner, by no fault of its own, but by the cruel intentions of the world at large, swept from shore to shore along a ceaseless path.
Fate had condemned it, and Jade was there to watch its static passage onto other plains.
He likes it when she ties her hair back. He can see the nape of her neck, a triangle of flesh, untouched by the sun, an uncharted territory only his fingers have grasped in familiarity.
Her face is made up in a deserted glance towards the sea, arms tight around her sides, playing a tune across her ribs.
The breeze picks up, her hair sways slowly, and that glance of flesh returns to his sight.
He leans down to settle beside her, kissing her in full on that secret square between her collar and hair.
She leans back and presses a thumb to her lips, and then, slowly, releases its hold.
'I thought I was pregnant,' She swallows the words as she rapidly swallows the air, her breaths as shallow as the beating waves.
'Really?' He chokes after a long pause
Her voice is suddenly so small, as she traces unintelligible thoughts in the sand.
'Yeah.'
'Thought, as in past tense?'
'Yeah.'
He studies her frowning face, as the midday sun beats around them. She seems to be exploring the limitation of her face, as her mouth twists round, lips struggling to stay shut as she resists blurting out everything.
He takes the lead and speaks instead, mumbling the first idea that crosses his mind, picked out from all infinity.
'Jellyfish evaporate in the sun.'
She looks alarmed and for the first time she stares straight into his eyes.
She pulls off his shoes and without a word begins to attempt to scoop up the poor stranded spectator. He leans forwards and together after a long period of handling, dancing and glancing around each other, they manage to prop the jellyfish upon a shoe stretcher, Beck's shirt a makeshift net in anticipation of a fall.
Finally they reach the sea, and submerging Beck's shoes in the soaked sand and the lonely spectre slips into the sea as the tide pulls it gently away.
Beck doesn't know, doesn't really care if they're messing with nature, messing around with the general order of things, their general order.
But the girl standing next to him, the cold, hard, clean girl, is there, in the present tense, never in the past. As he pulls her into an embrace he hopes she'll never stop being his constant.
And the words just slip out,
'I really do adore you.'
As though he doesn't say it enough already, he repeats it out again, louder, so the gulls too, like the jellyfish, can be the natural spectators to their unnatural relationship. Unnatural to most religious bodies and their condemning fingers, but he's sure he can remedy that.
'Oh really?' She mocks playfully.
He mouths the word 'Yeah' into her fluttering hair as they watch the glistening shadow of the jellyfish float away with the ebb and flow of the slow tide, a pale tentacle waving in slow, wonderfully sincere gratitude.
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c) v.
Every relationship comes to a point of maturity, a point of trust and equal understanding. That probably explains the dread he's feeling, the mix of isolation and panic. Fight or flight he decides.
He's pretty sure a thousand eyes are upon his back, but when he turns to survey his artificially lit surroundings for the nth time, but the aisle is wonderfully empty. A wall of boxes stands before him, all declaring several different and often contradictory features in large letters and all claiming to be better in function and purpose than the next.
He sighs, and drags a hand across his forehead; was it always this hot? He was sure supermarkets were meant to have air-con, legendary for their inappropriate artic conditions even, where was it when he actually needed it?
'Hey – Andre.'
He whips his head around to see Beck walking towards him with a grin on his face.
'What are you doing here?' Beck smirks, consciously noting how uncomfortable Andre is in this previously foreign aisle.
'Same as you I guess.'
Beck nods
'Tampons.'
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d) vi.
They're all tumbling through the streets at some ungodly hour.
The day is but a child by their watches' count, but its not just sleep that tugs at their minds. Intoxication seeps through their pours, leaking out, leaking in, as Beck keep them all fully hydrated with his rapidly empting control.
Tori and Robbie should be there, but Cat was the one to call Tori, and might of, with her rum slick tongue let slip some simple convictions. Robbie didn't even pick up.
It's a shame; their empting numbers are threatening to dwindle further as Jade whispers incoherent promises into Beck's ear and slowly guides him through the streets with slurred steps. Cat doesn't give up so easily, keeping an eagle eye on the two, from her perch on Andre's back, legs wrapped around his waist. To stagger near any secluded spot or dark alleyway triggers a shrill command from Cat, who demands they keep on forging forwards, chasing the jumble of teenage limbs like some deranged jockey.
A gnome enters their misfit gang of four at some point and joins them as they dance in the midnight showers of garden sprinklers, and is victim to Beck's loud serenades as Jade rocks the small man like a babe.
Finally the five of them slip through Jade's front door, the gnome left to stand vigil at the living room's entrance as they settle themselves upon the floor. Cat plops herself on the sofa as Andre rests his back on it's edge, Cat's knees sit softly either side of his head as he slips off her blood red heels.
It takes no time for Jade to start pawing at Beck's shirt and looking up at him like there's no one else in the room. If looks could kill, Beck could expect a sweet death, as his eyes follow Jade as she abruptly leaves the room. He salutes himself an excuse and slips out.
Its clear now, suddenly, of their virgin divides. The air laden thick with sweat and booze suddenly holds a new tension, something exquisitely new to the two remaining lovers.
Cat pats his head and he turns as she leans forwards, folding her chest onto her thighs. Their faces meet with a kiss, mouths whispering together as one as she spells out his name. Her hands are at the sides of his face, tracing his cheeks with her thumbs and together in a single twisting movement they're lying side by side on the sofa, a tangle of limbs and aching joints. They're dancing together at a pace never yet explored; the metronome of their previous exploits dissolves in the air with their sudden scramble.
She tastes like neon. A sweet, intangible flavour.
He watches as she lightly paws the sofa's arm with the side of her foot.
'When you die, don't worry, I won't cut you up into little stars,' She looks up from heavy lids as she talks with kitten's breath from cupid bow lips.
'Stars are lonely, so very, very lonely. Lonely and lovely. That's what you are, but not lonely. But you are lovely, lovely to me.'
She prods his chest.
'Lovely to me, lovely, lovely, love-ly, love ly.'
Her words begin to slur, syllables become defined as they mix up and slip into an unordered form as her mouth spells out her own secret, intoxicated language.
Lovely
Love - ly
Love - y
Love - me
'Love me, love me, love me André, an - dre.'
Her lashes veil those beautiful eyes, and consciousness slips from between her lips in a silent sigh.
Her words descend into sleep and he's left tracing a ski slope down the sleeping girl's nose.
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e) vii.
A woman commits suicide in their mall. She plummets three stories to be dashed faceless in front of everyone like a clumsily dropped egg. And the last thing she sees is to be her blood flowing into the veins of the faux-marble floor.
Speculation by all good nature runs wild. But she still remains nameless, only a simple bouquet of flowers and a sliver of an article detailing that inquiries were being made and the next of kin had been informed.
Rumours run rings round their own tails, one detailing that apparently her leg caught on the escalator, another rather saying she'd tried to fly. Each following story contradicted its predecessor until no one really cared. Eventually the story just slipped away, as quickly as its mysterious source had.
Jade drags Cat along because she says she wanted to see the stain.
Every time they visit, which turns out to be multiple times, Jade always looks up, up, up into the sky. Looking up through concentration. Looking up through the ceiling.
They go and inspect the infamous stain everyday for the rest of the week; bringing it drinks, their hand measurements and company. They'll then drag themselves through the mid-day swelter to either one of their house and try and fail at making burgers and almost faint each time from trying to blow up Jade's old paddling pool with only the small capacity of their combined lungs.
It's a week after the incident that Jade confides in Cat that her mom really has disappeared again.
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viii.
She runs, runs and runs because running is the only thing she knows how to do properly.
Her feet are bare and pounding against the tarmac veins of the city's breath. She's blinded by the night and her nearly weeping eyes. She's drifting, drifting from the world as her mind is filled with the need to continue, to need to endure the pain of her soles, the stitch climbing through her chest, and the dull ache of her heart.
It works, driving her body to near collapse drives out the demons, and finally with a spinning head, she drops to the floor of some deserted street.
Her sighs caress the sky, and soon her wails to do. Dry howls to the moon, singeing the stars with her abandonment.
Time stretches on, only the mumble of the trains, their journeys caught up and carried by the wind, marks its passage. So she stays, sitting there in the middle of the road, cross-legged watched with dull eyes the knats senselessly throw themselves at the streetlight, its golden glow a seemingly safe harbour.
And so he finds her. He always does. He'd say she's predictable, but she's not, because it takes him three hours to do so, driving round every street in her stamina's diameter.
As he approaches, she looks up through ink stained eyes. Their smudged edges follow him as he sits face her, mirroring her cross-legged position.
He's scared, for once, of losing her, letting her slip away, slip through the empty streets.
He takes no time in making a move to prove, so he slips a small brass ring on her finger. Its cold against her flesh and is a constant weight.
'What?'
He cocks his head.
'What's this?'
He still doesn't answer, letting her mull it over.
'A ring?'
'Yeah, simple as that.'
'What you want me to do? Marry you?' She rubs her cheek with the heel of her empty hand.
'Just - just stay. With me. Stay with me. Here,' He pats the ground by her hand.
Her face flashes with the need for further explanation.
'Stop running,' He pleads, 'Or at least, just run a little slower, so at least I have a chance at chasing you,' He chuckles and cups her rapidly crumpling face.
Jade dissolves before his eyes, her resolves melting into the tarmac floor. The tears that had been building up for so long pour out of her; long cashmere strokes down her cheeks. Like hot tea they drags their path down her skin and rub her eyes red raw.
She tips her head back and pours her sorrows out into the night, wails in long hot breaths as he strokes her bare shoulders with a brass clad finger.
'Please - just don't ever stop chasing me,' She finally chokes.
He kisses her hair and promises the world and all its infinite solidarity, until finally she confides in him her mother's disappearance.
And so they set off into the night, her eyes wiped clean and his hand clenched in a tight grip, as though she believes the world might steal him too.
He drives her round every bar, until in some smoky joint she sees the edge of her.
She presses her face into the woman's shoulder and thanks fuck she's safe.
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ix.
Yeah.
What?
It's a yes.
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f)
The August sun is setting, throwing a deep pink flush across her shoulders, as the shadows of her lace curtains and the draining light pour down her face and smother her lips and cheeks in a golden glow.
He kisses her bare shoulders, slowly marvelling at the softness of her sun kissed warmth and the tiny minute freckles that are blown across her bare planes, like constellations; they are the stars of her skin.
'I'm ready,' she whispers with pink frosted lips into the curve of his neck and commands his gaze with the touch of fingers.
'Love me,' she sighs again, and he knows he need not answer, just comply.
It's a Wednesday of all days. He always imagined it happening, on Valentines Day, or a birthday – someday of some, even if it be small, significance. Not Wednesday of all days. But it's happening, in her bed, surrounded by unicorns.
He glances down at her eyelashes fluttering and tiny whispers at her lips, that he knows if he lowers his ears to, will be his name. He's known her since she was a child, bonny and brassy in life and vivacity, and he can't quite shake the image of that toothy, prancing child.
The thought then strikes him, no – she's definitely not a child anymore.
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g) x.
They keep it a secret, not even a knowing smirk in the street. No one knows their secret newfound dimension.
She smiles at him as he gets up to leave, tracing her eyes through the hot air to follow him as he bends to press his lips to her hair. She obligingly lifts herself up slightly from the sticky plastic bench to hover; as her thighs un-stick from the moist red plastic to meet him in a brief kiss.
'Pop' she whispers to his lashes as they break, slowly apart, to rejoin that asphalt world of shouts screams and hormones. He waves as he and Beck leave, to be enveloped by other academic commitments. Though, she guesses, she is still an academic commitment.
'Was that the metaphorical sound of your cherry popping or what?' Jade suddenly projects out to the table.
'Or what?' answers Cat playing all naivety, all too aware of the few swivelling heads, rotating around their table.
Jade's face actually lights up. Unbridled curiosity flashes across and she lets the question tumble from her hesitant lips.
'You serious Cat?'
'Am I serious about what?'
'Pop' Jade demonstrated with jazz hands.
Tori looks round, her book suddenly losing its fascination to Cat's own loss.
'Pop?' she asks, throwing glances between the two girls, the mix of blush swimming the air before her.
'Pop!' Jade answers slowly, letting her lips smack as the word melts on her lips and she stares the suddenly bashful Tori down.
Tori comes in later that week, looking grave. She hides her face in her locker, her books, her hair; any curtain she can find to cover her stormy face. Her lips remain a harsh blushed line across her face for the rest of the day, losing all subtly Tori had to masking her emotions.
Its only at lunch, with the other two girls remaining, chatting lightly over weekend plans does that single syllable blossom from Tori's lips to rise up into the soup of moisture ridden air to hang in the air like an ugly bird.
Pop
No one of significance notices Tori's hunched shoulders that day, rather writing off extreme moods as something to do with Vega genetics. No one notices either the look of pure elation bursting from Robbie's face and the sudden, inexplicable lack of Rex.
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fin.
The summer is at its end, and they've run out of numbers and letters. The only thing left is the slip foretelling dwindling bank accounts and the not so large piles of acceptance letters. Shorts are traded for pants and sunglasses are stowed away in glove compartments for rare the appearances of winter sun. But hands are still clasped in hands. Beck and Jade celebrate another summer survived with a three day disappearance and a newly acquired set of rings, Cat and Andre simply smile and touch forehead to say 'well done' whilst Tori accepts the first college place that is at least five states away, and Robbie, he just follows.
The last day of summer finally closes its cloud-stained eye and says a sky blue goodbye to the world with a collective, saddened sigh.
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I can proudly say that the first word I typed for the fic was indeed 'tampons.' My mind was a little addled.
Reviews and comments are warmly welcomed, beckoned and will be serenaded.