At the playground.
A boy and a girl met at the playground, worn down. Their meeting point was a swing set, they sat down on seats made of wood half-rotten, hold up by rusty chains. For a long time they said nothing to each other. The swing set was the only that spoke, squeaking like it was tired of life, as the boy pushed himself back and forth in stiff motions.
The girl took out a pocket mirror from a room in her winter coat. She examined her reflection, noted the vaguely yellow teeth. Other than that she looked okay, maybe even good. She tried not thinking about the pale skin, with large areas of acne underneath the thick layer of foundation. She was trying to cover a spot by gently smudging the make-up when the boy spoke: “You’re so obsessed with yourself”, he said looking at the mirror with annoyance. “Jeez, woman, you’re not even that good-looking.”
“I look better than you”, she answered swiftly in a sharp tone, though she knew it wasn’t true. His big brown eyes, short dark hair, soft skin and the dimples, made him the cutest boy in school. The only thing not perfect about this boy was the bruise he had around his left eye, but that didn’t really make him look any less attractive, it just made him look tougher. Normally she would even think a flaw like that was kind of sexy, but she had a feeling of what the backstory to the bruise could be, and she felt nothing but compassion towards the boy.
She closed up the pocket mirror and slid it back into the pocket. She then fished out a cigarette and a lighter from the same room of the coat. Her fingers shook in the cold as she lit up the smoke. “What did you get yourself into now?” She nodded towards his eye.
“Nothing” he hissed. “Just some idiot who thought he could take me.” The girl looked down at her feet, thought about what to say for a second, then her words came out almost as a whisper: “Your father?”
He didn’t answer just stared at her, his eyes glistening. He then broke the eye contact, pushed his hands against his temples and looked down at the ground. “I don’t feel like talking about it.” She didn’t feel like talking about it either, so she just moved up in front of him, and kissed him.
She then stopped, and wrapped her arms around him, but he pulled away, denying her hug. She felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment, but then just shook her head. “Fine” she said and turned her back to the boy and the swing set and headed for the gate in the decayed wooden fence that surrounded the playground.
“Don’t leave”, the boy's rough voice sounded behind her.
And she couldn’t leave. She walked back and sat down on the rotten seat of the swing, and like before they didn’t speak to each other. They kept sitting at the swing set, listening to the squeaking of the chains.
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