Void to Volume in Quick Succession

We were practically lovers then — but I keep it secret.
Over beaded bodies, the sun rose, warming knees and knuckles, rose and rose and rose, blanching the town, so classically trifling everyone we know fits in a small boat. 
I rolled lawlessly from under a hornbeam to a loud patch where my friend stood sulking in a sizable shaft of light. 
“So,” I said, “where’d you spend the night?”
Jer stretched his hairless legs in the wet grass beside me and started to laugh in this way that nine times out of ten alienates, which aggravated my friend who stood. Chump, I thought, taking his burnt out basset hound for a pee. And pee it did by the frill of my skirt.
That’s when I remembered I had to go.
I got vertical and didn’t wonder about my shoes. I walked straight to the house, cutting across the lawn in a clingy humid cocktail dress, ankles collecting dew. The house and garage were aluminum white and shined in the mist like toys in a meadow.
I was a third toy, a doll — what’s the use in faking?
I was a sight to behold.
This is the long void — even then I knew — where snappily young men become thumbtacks in the background. And who cares what they’re talking about nowadays? In the verdant divide between salt split roads and quaint porticos.
And furthermore — god — what’s a town like this doing sticking in your mind forever? Cockling like print paper, puckering from a bitter autumn’s sweet atmosphere. Images don’t register like when they’re flat. St. Bel comes across crisp at daybreak. Deceiving. Then, she muddles, a dull hue by noon.
Nah, fuck him, I overheard from the hall.
In the bathroom, a triptych of girls, bedheads. Lumbering…came to mind. Three of them in the middle of a meeting or something. I made a beeline for the toilet and pulled up my skirt and sat with my toes on the tile and my heels off the ground.
The two girls who leaned on the vanity, they left. The other one, nearer my naked legs, looked at me. “And I’m supposed to watch this?”
I didn’t say anything, I just peed, and she turned her back to me, pondered something sticky on the pale side of her wrist.
Just yonder the cold toilet, my oldest friend sat on a fuzzy violet loveseat, her bare feet curled over the brim of an angular table that exhibited a few drink cans, upright or toppled. I sort of loomed over her, though she didn’t react, and placed my hand lightly on her hair. It was soft and red but dark brown at the roots. Oily. 
She was talking, I don’t know to whom she was talking, not to me; I’d just been in the bathroom peeing, and I wasn’t even awake yet fully.
I might’ve inhaled hard when my fingers ran through thick tangles because her eyes tilted up like marbles, white, red, pale green. “It’s soft, isn’t it? It’s always like that.” 
Yeah, I nodded, flattening an unruly kink near her part.
She looked down again, eyelids, veins and lashes.
My body was waking. My elbows bulged palpably, and it was bothersome the way they jutted out at my side like boney wings.
Hours earlier in the crux of night, I skimmed our slick streets to find a party — to be hosted in another house — same hamlet. Down a familiar hill, under a huge evergreen, beneath the nickel of a moon. I couldn’t resist; I hadn’t been to a party in so long, and all my oldest friends were there:
Jessie, Riley, Soph, John, Fanny, Chris, Tabatha, Cynthia, Jerome, Jade, Marie-Helene, Oceanne, Pierre, Sab, Desi, and Élodie.
It was nice how Jer and I laughed all the time way back when.
I kind of assumed we could stand very close.
The island in the kitchen cut him at the hip. His belt buckle looked pretty heavy, and his feet looked really flat, like he gravely needed insoles.
I considered his carriage unattractive. If a man was a ski slope.
Yeah, he knew I was around. He perked up quite a bit, his cheeks flushed, but they were almost always flushed, so what percentage of redness could be traced to my presence was unclear, and drinks probably contributed to the pigment a certain degree.
On a different but equally pertinent note: I can’t shake the lankiness of my body from my mind. I’m always thinking what a stick I am, and especially when someone bows forward for a hug.
He didn’t make a scene — if my frame was on his mind or not. One thing led to another, and we were on the front porch checking out the moon and stars.
“My little campaigners.”
“Your what?”
The road was wet, no cars, except for the handful parked half in the ditch.
Would be right to run — this occurred to us at the same exact time.
Down the solemn street we went, and I got on his back ‘cause my shoes were mislaid, but it was better to be on his back than to fetch them.
And then my legs got tired of wrapping around, so I let them drop. He kept carrying me until my hips aligned with his, and we bumped clumsily like skeletal runaways.
It got heavy to carry me even though we didn’t make it far, so we lied flat in the neighbor’s garden, which wasn’t an issue, the neighbor was at the party himself.
We were parallel under a hornbeam in the dark, everything tapering out, the dark giving in to meat-pink sky, and the oomph, but things got sort of breathy between us anyhow.
The sound of our jackets chafing made me think of animals digging in garbage. My ear pressed the pocket of his denim until it burned, and I fell asleep. We both did. Then the sun rose and we were soaked.
My friend with the dog sniffed us out, in all likelihood, he was already sulking since he’s the type, probably he wanted to lie with me, and I thought, I’ll lie with him when he doesn’t want it so bad.
The reason I could rest with Jer unreservedly was he cracked so many jokes.
I’m the type to say, “We’re flying through life, man!” That’s pitiful to him. I like that he doesn’t care what I’m feeling too much.
He’d rather laugh.
The girl’s spine curved in the mirror on account of an open-back sequins top. I peed in her virtuous company and — I couldn’t help it — pictured beer cans, empty of liquid, shiny, sharp, trash-ready.
Sometimes, I threw a can as far as possible and watched for the spark in the sun until, like practically nothing, it crashed on a pressure-washed walkway.
Well, back then, when I laughed, my laugh flew out like a hair from my head, clean and white. Shrill, I guess.

ξ

Jancie Creaney is a writer from the outskirts of Montreal whose texts have appeared in American Chordata, Tammy Journal, Entropy, and elsewhere. More at www.jancie.net.